That was excellent. Thanks for sharing… although I’m more into pottery, I’m sure some soulless shithead will want to “democratize” it with a janky robot hand controlled by a dumb algo.
webghost0101@sopuli.xyz
on 08 Oct 03:39
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That was a beautiful read.
But do i find myself conflicted about dismissing it as a potential technical skill all together.
I have seen comfy-ui workflows that are build in a very complex way, some have the canvas devided in different zones, each having its own prompts. Some have no prompts and extract concepts like composition or color values from other files.
I compare these with collage-art which also exists from pre existing material to create something new.
Such tools take practice, there are choices to be made, there is a creative process but its mostly technological knowledge so if its about such it would be right to call it a technical skill.
The sad reality however, is how easy it is to remove parts of that complexity “because its to hard” and barebones it to simple prompt to output. At which point all technical skill fades and it becomes no different from the online generators you find.
TheRealKuni@piefed.social
on 08 Oct 04:13
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I think there’s a stark difference between crafting your own comfyui workflow, getting the right nodes and control nets and checkpoints and whatever, tweaking it until you get what you want, and someone telling an AI “make me a picture/video of X.”
The least AI-looking AI art is the kind that someone took effort to make their own. Just like any other tool.
Unfortunately, gen AI is a tool that gives relatively good results without any skill at all. So most people won’t bother to do the work to make it their own.
I think that, like nearly everything in life, there is nuance to this. But at the same time, we aren’t ready for the nuance because we’re being drowned by slop and it’s horrible.
pulsewidth@lemmy.world
on 08 Oct 10:19
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All of that’s great and everything, but at the end of the day all of the commercial VLM art generators are trained on stolen art. That includes most of the VLMs that comfyui uses as a backend. They have their own cloud service now, that ties in with all the usual suspects.
So even if it has some potentially genuine artistic uses I have zero interest in using a commercial entity in any way to ‘generate’ art that they’ve taken elements for from artwork they stole from real artists. Its amoral.
If it’s all running locally on open source VLMs trained only on public data, then maybe - but that’s what… a tiny, tiny fraction of AI art? In the meantime I’m happy to dismiss it altogether as Ai slop.
webghost0101@sopuli.xyz
on 08 Oct 10:26
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If you download a checkpoint from non trustworthy sources definitely and that is the majority of people, but also the majority that does not use the technical tools that deep nor cares about actual art (mostly porn if the largest distributor of models civitai is a reference).
The technical tool that allow actual creativity is called comfyui, and this is open source. I have yet to see anything that is even comparable. Other creative tools (like the krita plugin) use it as a backend.
I am willing to believe that someone with a soul for art and complex flows would also make their own models, which naturally allows much more creativity and is not that hard to do.
How is that any different from “stealing” art in a collage, though? While courts have disagreed on the subject (in particular there’s a big difference between visual collage and music sampling with the latter being very restricted) there is a clear argument to be made that collage is a fair use of the original works, because the result is completely different.
Collage art retains the original components of the art, adding layers the viewer can explore and seek the source of, if desired.
VLMs on the other hand intentionally obscure the original works by sending them through filters and computer vision transformations to make the original work difficult to backtrace. This is no accident, its designed obfuscation.
The difference is intent - VLMs literally steal copies of art to generate their work for cynical tech bros. Classical collages take existing art and show it in a new light, with no intent to pass off the original source materials as their own creations.
The original developers of Stable Diffusion and similar models made absolutely no secret about the source data they used. Where are you getting this idea that they “intentionally obscure the original works… to make [them] difficult to backtrace.”? How would an image generation model even work in a way that made the original works obvious?
Literally steal
Copying digital art wasn’t “literally stealing” when the MPAA was suing Napster and it isn’t today.
For cynical tech bros
Stable Diffusion was originally developed by academics working at a University.
Your whole reply is pretending to know intent where none exists, so if that’s the only difference you can find between collage and AI art, it’s not good enough.
SchwertImStein@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 08 Oct 11:38
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AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net
on 09 Oct 01:34
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I get what you’re saying.
I often find myself being the person in the room with the most knowledge about how Generative AI (and other machine learning) works, so I tend to be in the role of the person who answers questions from people who want to check whether their intuition is correct. Yesterday, when someone asked me whether LLMs have any potential uses, or whether the technology is fundamentally useless, and the way they phrased it allowed me to articulate something better than I had previously been able to.
The TL;DR was that I actually think that LLMs have a lot of promise as a technology, but not like this; the way they are being rolled out indiscriminately, even in domains where it would be completely inappropriate, is actually obstructive to properly researching and implementing these tools in a useful way. The problem at the core is that AI is only being shoved down our throats because powerful people want to make more money, at any cost — as long as they are not the ones bearing that cost. My view is that we won’t get to find out the true promise of the technology until we break apart the bullshit economics driving this hype machine.
I agree that even today, it’s possible for the tools to be used in a way that’s empowering for the humans using them, but it seems like the people doing that are in the minority. It seems like it’s pretty hard for a tech layperson to do that kind of stuff, not least of all because most people struggle to discern the bullshit from the genuinely useful (and I don’t blame them for being overwhelmed). I don’t think the current environment is conducive towards people learning to build those kinds of workflows. I often use myself as a sort of anti-benchmark in areas like this, because I am an exceedingly stubborn person who likes to tinker, and if I find it exhausting to learn how to do, it seems unreasonable to expect the majority of people to be able to.
I like the comic’s example of Photoshop’s background remover, because I doubt I’d know as many people who make cool stuff in Photoshop without helpful bits of automation like that (“cool stuff” in this case often means amusing memes or jokes, but for many, that’s the starting point in continuing to grow). I’m all for increasing the accessibility of an endeavour. However, the positive arguments for Generative AI often feels like it’s actually reinforcing gatekeeping rather than actually increasing accessibility; it implicitly divides people into the static categories of Artist, and Non-Artist, and then argues that Generative AI is the only way for Non-Artists to make art. It seems to promote a sense of defeatism by suggesting that it’s not possible for a Non-Artist to ever gain worthwhile levels of skill. As someone who sits squarely in the grey area between “artist” and “non-artist”, this makes me feel deeply uncomfortable.
Brownboy13@lemmy.world
on 08 Oct 03:45
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This was a great read! As someone who was initially excited about the possibilities of AI art, it’s been hit or miss with me.
I’ve come to realise over time that I like the connection that art offers. The little moment of ‘I wonder what the artist was thinking when they imagined this and what experiences did someone have to get to a place where they could visualize and create this?’
And I think that’s what missing with AI art. Sure, it can enable someone like me who has no skill with drawing to create something but it doesn’t get to the point of putting my actual imagination down. The repeated tries can only get to point of ‘close enough’.
For me, looking at a piece and then learning it’s AI art is basically realizing that I’m looking at a computer generated imitation of someone’s imagination. Except the imitation was created by describing the art instead of the imitator ever looking at it. An connection I could have felt with original human is watered down as to be non-existent.
HumanOnEarth@lemmy.ca
on 08 Oct 03:51
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That was a really good take on the whole thing. The Oatmeal is my people.
Cratermaker@discuss.tchncs.de
on 08 Oct 04:20
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One thing I’ve found interesting with AI art is that it’s changed how I look at handmade art. It is similar in a way to appreciating a handmade piece of furniture or a machine compared to a mass produced commodity item. Art that I previously would have dismissed instantly sometimes makes me think for a second about the artist and how it was made, even when it lacks a professional level of quality. That said, I’ve also seen enough AI art that I can distinguish between garbage slop and something (at least a little) interesting made in Comfy UI. There’s always been a lot of low quality art out there, but I think the real issue is with people trying to pass off low effort generated slop as real art, rather than the gen-AI tech itself (environmental impact notwithstanding).
I made a comment about a week ago about how copying people’s art is still art, and it was a bit of an aha moment as I pinpointed for myself a big part of why I find image generators and the like so soulless, inwardly echoing a lot of what Inman lays out here.
All human made art, from the worst to the best, embodies the effort of the artist. Their intent and their skill. Their attempt to make something, to communicate something. It has meaning. All generative art does is barf up random noise that looks like pictures. It’s impressive technology, and I understand that it’s exciting, but it’s not art. If humans ever end up creating actual artificial intelligence, then we can talk about machine made art. Until then, it’s hardly more than a printer in terms of artistic merit.
There was a good interview with Tim Minchin by the BBC where he said something similar to this & used the word intent.
I suppose the intent/communication/art comes from the person writing the prompt but those few words can only convey so much information. When the choice of medium & every line etc. involves millions of micro-decisions by the artist there is so much more information encoded. Even if its copy & pasted bits of memes.
Tim Minchin has always come across as a good egg to me. It’s nice to hear he’s of the same mind, and I particularly like the optimism he’s promoting in his predictions for artistry going forward.
Hah, sure thing. I suppose it’s a point he’s discussed a few times.
ExcessShiv@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 08 Oct 09:21
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It’s impressive technology, and I understand that it’s exciting, but it’s not art.
I would add that a lot (most?) graphical elements we encounter in daily lives do not require art or soul in the least. Stock images on web pages, logos, icons etc. are examples of graphical elements that are IMO perfectly fine to use AI image generation for. It’s the menial labour of the artist profession that is now being affected by modern automation much like so many other professions have been before them. All of them resisted so of course artists resist too.
The impact on livelihoods is important, but it’s ultimately unrelated to defining what art is. My consideration of art is not one born of fear of losing money, but purely out of appreciation for the craft. I don’t think it’s entirely fair to suggest all the criticisms against generated art is solely borne of self-preservation.
In regards to corporate “art”, all the things you listed, even stock images, are certainly not the purest form of artistry, but they still have (or, at least had) intent suffusing their creation. I suppose the question then is - is there a noticeable difference between the two for corporations? Will a generated logo have the same impact as a purposefully crafted on does? In my experience, the generated products I’ve noticed feel distinctly hollow. While past corporate assets are typically hollow shells of real art, generated assets are even less. They’re a pure concentration of corporate greed and demand, without the “bothersome” human element. Maybe that won’t matter in their course of business, but I think it might. Time will tell.
I’d argue that logos are a hugely expressive form. It’s just that 90% of them are basic ass shit tier stuff.
AI has basically raised the level of “shit tier” pretty high. I sometimes go check out Hotone Audio’s Facebook page to see if there are new firmware updates for my device, but they mainly peddle pointless AI slop marketing images. I’m sure there are tons of companies like this.
It’s the literal example of the marketing person being able to churn out pictures without an artist being involved, and thus the output is a pile of crap even more vapid than stock photos.
The most generic logo from ten years ago still was made with choices by a designer. It’s those choices that make a difference, you don’t choose how things are executed with ai
ExcessShiv@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 08 Oct 15:09
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But you still choose the final result…for something like that, the how is really quite irrelevant, it is just the end result that matters and that still remains in the hands of humans as they’re the ones to settle on the final solution.
That’s our point. The how is entirely relevant. It’s what makes art interesting and meaningful. Without the how and why, it’s just colors and noise.
ExcessShiv@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 08 Oct 21:38
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it’s just colors and noise.
But that’s exactly my point; logos, icons, stock images etc. are already nothing but noise meant to just catch the eye…might as well just get it auto-generated.
That you can’t see or appreciate the intent of the artist behind those doesn’t mean it’s not there or not important. Why they were made or how they are used in the end is not important. All that matters is how they were made.
That’s like saying you cooked a chicken sandwich because you ordered it off the menu.
AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net
on 09 Oct 00:57
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I’ve been practicing at being a better writer, and one of the ways I’ve been doing that is by studying the writing that I personally really like. Often I can’t explain why I click so much with a particular style of writing, but by studying and attempting to learn how to copy the styles that I like, it feels like a step towards developing my own “voice” in writing.
A common adage around art (and other skilled endeavours) is that you need to know how to follow the rules before you can break them, after all. Copying is a useful stepping stone to something more. It’s always going to be tough to learn when your ambition is greater than your skill level, but there’s a quote from Ira Glass that I’ve found quite helpful:
“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it’s normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take a while. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
I want to touch on how he mentions hitting the button to automatically make music on a Casio keyboard.
I fully realize I’m being reductive to the point of being offensive but that’s not my intent and I preemptively apologize, when I say: that’s at least in part, the very first seed to becoming a professional DJ. That’s not nothing.
Using AI to generate images can be the same thing if it’s extrapolated out into complexity and layered nuance. It might not make you an artist exactly, in the same way that a DJ might not be a musician but it IS a skillset that potentially has value.
And even if you think I’m totally off-base in saying so? I liked pretending with the little automatic music button on the keyboard.
dylanmorgan@slrpnk.net
on 08 Oct 06:52
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I think pushing the button on a Casio keyboard is more akin to tracing your favorite comics panel than using an LLM image generator.
Are you speaking from experience? 'Cause that’s not even vaguely related to how any of the DJs I know (including a couple of professionals) got started. The prime motive for most DJs is sharing cool music, and Casio keyboards don’t do that…
No. Not from experience at all. I saw a small documentary once saying DJs remixed and sometimes create almost entirely new music and that they used computer based audio tools to do so. I’m probably thinking of a different profession. My ignorance, sorry.
I watched a short saying you might be an art director, at best, but not really an artist. Because you have the vision but you’re only telling someone (something) to materialize it. I was kind of happy with that.
Vision is a strong word. I think it’s a vague idea in most cases
A_norny_mousse@feddit.org
on 08 Oct 08:10
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I was kinda against their argument at first, then I was with them and continued reading. But then they went into all sorts of detail, weighing pros and cons etc., and after reading more than half I evtl. gave up.
It seems all “why AI is bad” articles seem to go this way.
It seems all “why AI is bad” articles unwillingly even support the hype.
Fuck AI “art”, it’s not art you morons, it’s automation, which takes away real people’s jobs. The current implementations made by greedy companies also very obviously steal. 'nuff said.
Option 3 is also what the historical Luddites wanted. They liked technology when it benefitted them, not when it was used to exploit them.
AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net
on 09 Oct 01:09
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I liked it, personally. I’ve read plenty of AI bad articles, and I too am burnt out on them. However, what I really appreciated about this was that it felt less like a tirade against AI art and more like a love letter to art and the humans that create it. As I was approaching the ending of the comic, for example, when the argument had been made, and the artist was just making their closing words, I was struck by the simple beauty of the art. It was less the shapes and the colours themselves that I found beautiful, but the sense that I could practically feel the artist straining against the pixels in his desperation to make something that he found beautiful — after all, what would be the point if he couldn’t live up to his own argument?
I don’t know how far you got through, but I’d encourage you to consider taking another look at it. It’s not going to make any arguments you’ve not heard before, but if you’re anything like me, you might appreciate it from the angle of a passionate artist striving to make something meaningful in defiance of AI. I always find my spirits bolstered by work like this because whilst we’re not going to be able to draw our way out of this AI-slop hellscape, it does feel important to keep reminding ourselves of what we’re fighting for.
CheeseNoodle@lemmy.world
on 08 Oct 09:25
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As a passable quality 3D artist who does it for a living I’ve found AI art (which can do 3D now to some degree) has kind of narrowed the scope for me. If you want generic Unreal style pseudo-realism or disney toon then AI can do that for you* I’ve had to focus much more on creating a unique style and also optimizing my work in ways that AI just doesn’t have the ability to do because they require longer chains of actual reasoning.
For AI in general I think this pattern holds, it can quickly create something generic and increasingly do it without extranious fingers but no matter how much you tweak a prompt its damn near impossible to get a specific idea into image form. Its like a hero shooter with skins VS actually creating your own character.
*Right now AI models use more tris to re-create the default blender cube than my entire lifetime portfolio but I’m assuming that can be resolved since we already have partially automated re-topology tools.
Simulation6@sopuli.xyz
on 08 Oct 09:41
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I forgot how loooong Oatmeal cartoons are. I don’t think I have made it to the end of one in years.
I often hear AI enthusiasts say that AI democratized art. As if art weren’t already democratized. Most anyone can pick up a pen, draw, write, type, move a mouse, etc. What AI democratizes in art, is the perception of skill. Which is why when you find out a piece of art was made by inputting some short prompt into a generator, you become disappointed. Because it would be cool, if the person actually had the skill to draw that. Pushing a few buttons to get that, not so much.
Edit:spelling and spacing
alternategait@lemmy.world
on 08 Oct 17:18
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I have always felt that I’m not good at art (the practice I did got me not very far), and I’ve recently had reason to make little collages. One thing that I’ve done is uploaded pictures to Canva and traced them so I had something resembling recognizable images (my dog, me in a kayak). I don’t think tracing is making an art, AI is definitely not making an art.
scintilla@crust.piefed.social
on 08 Oct 18:24
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Tracing is absolutely art. You choose what to trace what parts of the image are important what to discard etc.
AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net
on 09 Oct 00:52
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What makes you want to do art? I’m just curious, because I am also someone who has bounced off of attempting to learn to do art a bunch of times, and found tracing unfulfilling (I am abstaining from the question of whether tracing is art, but I do know it didn’t scratch the itch for me).
For my part, I ended up finding that crafts like embroidery or clothing making was the best way to channel my creative inclinations, but that’s mostly because I have the heart of a ruthless pragmatist and I like making useful things. What was it that caused you to attempt to learn?
And people forget how many forms of art there are. If you can speak any language which if youre reading this you can then you can create art. Putting your feelings into words is art. The point of art is not to be good at it or to earn money with it. Its to express your feelings. Of course enabling people who express their feelings in a way that others like to earn money with it is a good thing but even that can be very restrictive. Look at all the twitter porn artists who really just want to create something else but need some sort of revenue stream.
sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 08 Oct 10:35
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Fyrnyx@kbin.melroy.org
on 08 Oct 11:33
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Note: If you're just going to come in and engage with me in an uncivil manner with your dick behavior, you'll be auto blocked.
One part that gets me is when they stated that they took art classes. Just, what is the point of taking art classes today? There have been artists whose stories I've read about and heard of, who spent years practicing their craft to get to where they are. The idea of taking an art class for an otherwise approachable hobby just always feels odd to me and always will. There are countless ways to improve one's art and craft, not by AI though.
And then right after, they mention about practicing. So again - what's the point of taking art classes?
I stopped reading about half way through, because my mind went "yeah yeah yeah..." since nothing this comic artist was saying anything new that I hadn't heard of in regards to anti-AI.
Here's my stance on AI Art and it's going to rub people the wrong way but I don't care. I was told by an artist friend whom I've known and has done pictures for me before. They started raising their prices a smidge for their commissions and this artist was and is on their way of being recognized as a good artist in their community (they're furry). We got into a conversation about how I brought up that prices could be hard to achieve because of the economy and blah blah.
They told me in response that 'Art is a luxury'. And you know what? It kinda is. It is a luxury and sets a baseline as to what one can and can't afford. If someone is frustrated enough that they can't afford some $300 commission piece (yes those people do exist), they're going to go to AI because they know they can do it at home. Now it doesn't excuse the fact that they could've just picked up art as a hobby and actually practice, there is that argument. However, not everyone is an artist and not everyone is going to practice it.
And if someone isn't going to practice art and isn't able to afford high prices asked of the artists who have open commissions - what do you honestly expect them to do?
As far as things regarding like studios function and how this all relates to them, that's a whole can of worms of its own. How many times have we heard animation studios or other studios get shut down because the funding dried up? "Oh we planned 2 seasons in advance - oh wait - we can only do one season now" and then that's a wrap of that series.
I don't know where I want to go with that and this has been lengthy anyways so I'll just summarize it as this. I don't have a big problem with AI Art because Art and Creativity in of itself, is a luxury. It's an expensive luxury at that, that has its limits. That is why people have turned to AI in droves. I don't agree with a lot of the reasons behind what people do with AI Art and proclaiming themselves as 'artists' when they're not (I prefer to call them envisonists because you are still inputting and projecting the imaginations of your mind into an input that can visualize it for you).
The point is the same as taking classes for any other skill, from baseball to carpentry: you have to learn technique before you can engrain the skill through practice. Some people can pick it up on their own if they’re motivated enough, by studying other people’s art, watching artists working, reading books, etc., but it’s more difficult and time-consuming without an instructor’s feedback. Sometimes they even figure it out wrong, and develop a very difficult and time-consuming method of doing something when a much simpler one exists.
So it’s optimal to both have the classes and do extensive practice outside of them. One is not a substitute for the other.
agent_nycto@lemmy.world
on 08 Oct 14:37
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I was going to read this but stopped halfway through because my mind went “yeah that yeah another person who never bothered trying to draw having a hot take that’s just sucking off a tech bro”
Art classes can introduce you to new techniques that you wouldn’t have otherwise pursued and elevate your art to greater heights. Depending on the school, it also helps with networking. Lotsa famous animators at places like CalArts, Sheridan, Gobelins, etc.
What a beautiful read. I feel the same about AI art and I remember a longer talk I had with my tattoo artist: ‘I need the money so I will do AI based tattoos my clients bring to me. But they have no soul, no story, no individuality. They are not a part of you.’
I feel the same.
Also I like Oatmeal’s reference to Wabi Sabi: The perfection of imperfection in every piece of art.
from_D4rkness@lemmy.world
on 08 Oct 11:42
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It was an ok read for me, but mostly because I enjoyed the art rather than relating to the entirety of the sentiment.
I’m an artist and I find AI art evocative and illustrating things in a way that I wish that I could illustrate, but feel that is only because it comes from real human artists. I agree that it is a void in terms of difficulty to process, but there is still skill involved in both using search engines and describing something to an llm. A minute amount of skill, but still a skill.
I hate AI art because it is stealing from artists, not because it doesn’t feel right. It can have a million iterations and only needs to get it right once to count as feeling right to me. The relationship between the content and their artists to the ultimate product is removed, this to me is the wrongfulness of claiming new art from it. It is just stealing in a more wind-about manor. This isn’t like generating fractal art or something.
After all these years of corporations fucking up the literal social fabric and and how we communicate over IP law, for them to turn around and steal everything and just get a pass is an extra slap in face. Stealing only gets allowed2 one way in our society, and AI is just another example of that.
I’m honestly surprised to not see this take more from others and felt like i needed to mention it.
edit: emphasized that by making AI art taking skill, I only mean just a minute amount.
I think AI art serves a different purpose from the art we talk about when we say “real art has heart” or “the process of creating the art affected me when I looked at it”.
I think about how I feel when I’m scrolling through pictures in some app on my phone - some will be memes, some will be cats, but then some will be there for artistic purposes. As I’m scrolling through, such a picture will spark a brief glimmer of emotion - “huh, that looks neat” for example. I’m not looking close and examining the brush strokes, not thinking about what troubles the artist went through, and not thinking about the process of its creation at all.
In that context I don’t think it makes much difference that it’s AI-generated. I’d kind of like to know, and I don’t want to see a dozen different outputs of the same prompt because whoever hit the button couldn’t even apply the modicum of effort require to pick their favourite, but AI-generated images are just as able to instigate that glimmer of “hey that looks cool” that any image can.
There’s zero need to throw insults around; I made the context absolutely clear in my comment and it has nothing to do with what I do when at an art gallery or something.
Maybe some people are having an experience like they are looking at a Rembrandt when they scroll through /c/pics or something, but I’m not. Do you also shit on people for being unable to appreciate music because they put something on in the background? Is it only OK to go to concerts and immerse yourself in it? If you’re in a shop and a tune you like comes on, do you park your cart to really appreciate the depths of emotion it’s inspiring in you?
I think this is completely missing the point when it’s talking about “the minutiae of art”. It’s making two claims at the same time: art is better when you suffer for it and the art is good whether or not you suffered. But none of that is relevant.
When Wyeth made Christina’s World, I don’t know if he suffered or not when painting that grass. What I do know is that he was a human with limited time and the fact that he spent so much of his time detailing every blade of grass means that he’s saying something. That The Oatmeal doesn’t draw backgrounds might be because he’s lazy, but he also doesn’t need them. These are choices we make to put effort in one part and ignore some other part.
AI doesn’t make choices. It doesn’t need to. A detailed background is exactly the same amount of work as a plain one. And so a generated picture has this evenly distributed level of detail, no focus at all. You don’t really know where to look, what’s important, what the picture is trying to say. Because it’s not saying anything. It isn’t a rat with a big butt, it’s just a cloud of noise that happens to resemble a rat with a big butt.
prettybunnys@sh.itjust.works
on 08 Oct 19:50
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it’s just a cloud of noise that happens to resemble a rat with a big butt.
Oh wow, it’s so hard to ask a computer to generate an image. You might get a repetitive stress injury from writing so many prompts to constantly pump out vapid slop devoid of any artistic merit or value.
It was a good read until he started with the art is a skill and anyone can do it. He’s kind of in his bubble there making assumptions about people. People have various levels of aphantasia, it’s not binary. Those that are good at visual imagination do art, people without can’t draw a fucking apple from memory reasonable art is beyond many, even if they had the time to dedicate to it.
Everything else he said was on point. well eventually on point, that was a long ride.
I know a few seriously good artists that have aphantasia, being able to see things in your head is not necessary for making art.
AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net
on 09 Oct 00:47
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One of the things I find most awesome about art is seeing how so many people with different capacities find ways to make art.
I likely have aphantasia, and whilst I call myself an artist, there are times where I see a particular shape or form within the world and think “damn, that’s beautiful”. I find myself taking a mental note of it, because whilst I don’t make art, I do enjoy making clothes. Aphantasia does make it hard to take those experiences and make cool stuff out of them, because without a mental image to work from, it may take me many attempts to correctly mark out the shape, where my only guiding sense is whether a particular attempt looks right though. It hasn’t stopped me from making things I’m truly proud of though, and a key thing that drives me to keep creating is that sense of fulfillment I get from taking something beautiful from the world and reusing it in a manner that allows me to share that slice of wonder with other people.
I feel like I’ve only been half decent at that in recent years though; before that, I tended to focus on the more technical aspects of the craft, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t creative. I made a chainmail hauberk for myself once, because the base technique didn’t seem hard and it seemed like it would be fun (turns out the hard part is sticking with it long enough to make a whole item). Part of my quest was that I knew that wearing a sturdy belt over a chainmail hauberk is essential for the weight to be properly distributed, and I thought it might be cool to use an underbust corset in place of a belt. The creative part of that required little, if any, visual imagination — I mostly just enjoyed the juxtaposition of the traditionally masculine armour with the femininity of the corset.
Beyond my own personal experiences, I’ve been awed by seeing so many examples of creative people working with what limitations they have, and honing their skills in whatever way they can. A close friend has such poor vision that they legally count as blind, but their paintings have such incredible colours — they have a beautiful diffuseness to them, which is apparently how they see the world. Seeing their art makes me feel closer to them. Unfortunately, they’ve recently suffered injury to their hands, so they can’t paint like they used to — so they have found new ways to paint that don’t rely on their hands so much. And there’s even more examples of this kind of persistence if we consider music to be art too.
I don’t really give a fuck about art — not really. I care about the people who make it. I get that it’s frustrating to try something creative when your skill can’t match up to your figurative creative vision, but that’s also a problem that even experienced artists struggle with. If you made something that required little to no skill, but it was something that you had cared about, then that’s enough to make me care. That might sound silly given that you’re just a random person on the internet to me, but that’s precisely why I care; art makes me feel connected to people I’ve never even met.
People who make the point that you’re making are often people who have within them the desire to make art, but they feel that it’s inaccessible to them. I know, because I was one of them (years before AI hit the zeitgeist). I realise that this may not apply to you, and you might be speaking in a more general sense, but if it does, then I would hope that you would someday feel able to give things a go. I think it’d be a shame if someone with a desire to create never got the chance to see where that could go. I’m not saying “maybe you could start a career as an artist”, because even highly proficient artists often struggle to make a career out of art that doesn’t kill their soul (most working artists I know use their paid work to support work that’s more artistically fulfilling to them). Just know that if you make things that you care about, there will always be people who will care about what you make.
I say this as someone who has just written out a veritable essay full of care in reply to someone I’m probably never going to speak about. And hey, if you’ve gotten this far, then that is surely evidence towards my point about how making stuff you care about causes people to care about what you’ve made — either that, or you’ve jumped to the bottom in search of a TL;DR. Regardless, people like me care so much about art because human connection helps us to survive this pretty grim world, and art is our most reliable way of doing that. I’d love to have you here with us, if you’d like to be.
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Thanks for sharing! I haven’t read much of the Oatmeal in quite a while but I’ve always liked their style and humor.
That was excellent. Thanks for sharing… although I’m more into pottery, I’m sure some soulless shithead will want to “democratize” it with a janky robot hand controlled by a dumb algo.
That was a beautiful read.
But do i find myself conflicted about dismissing it as a potential technical skill all together.
I have seen comfy-ui workflows that are build in a very complex way, some have the canvas devided in different zones, each having its own prompts. Some have no prompts and extract concepts like composition or color values from other files.
I compare these with collage-art which also exists from pre existing material to create something new.
Such tools take practice, there are choices to be made, there is a creative process but its mostly technological knowledge so if its about such it would be right to call it a technical skill.
The sad reality however, is how easy it is to remove parts of that complexity “because its to hard” and barebones it to simple prompt to output. At which point all technical skill fades and it becomes no different from the online generators you find.
I think there’s a stark difference between crafting your own comfyui workflow, getting the right nodes and control nets and checkpoints and whatever, tweaking it until you get what you want, and someone telling an AI “make me a picture/video of X.”
The least AI-looking AI art is the kind that someone took effort to make their own. Just like any other tool.
Unfortunately, gen AI is a tool that gives relatively good results without any skill at all. So most people won’t bother to do the work to make it their own.
I think that, like nearly everything in life, there is nuance to this. But at the same time, we aren’t ready for the nuance because we’re being drowned by slop and it’s horrible.
All of that’s great and everything, but at the end of the day all of the commercial VLM art generators are trained on stolen art. That includes most of the VLMs that comfyui uses as a backend. They have their own cloud service now, that ties in with all the usual suspects.
So even if it has some potentially genuine artistic uses I have zero interest in using a commercial entity in any way to ‘generate’ art that they’ve taken elements for from artwork they stole from real artists. Its amoral.
If it’s all running locally on open source VLMs trained only on public data, then maybe - but that’s what… a tiny, tiny fraction of AI art? In the meantime I’m happy to dismiss it altogether as Ai slop.
If you download a checkpoint from non trustworthy sources definitely and that is the majority of people, but also the majority that does not use the technical tools that deep nor cares about actual art (mostly porn if the largest distributor of models civitai is a reference).
The technical tool that allow actual creativity is called comfyui, and this is open source. I have yet to see anything that is even comparable. Other creative tools (like the krita plugin) use it as a backend.
I am willing to believe that someone with a soul for art and complex flows would also make their own models, which naturally allows much more creativity and is not that hard to do.
How is that any different from “stealing” art in a collage, though? While courts have disagreed on the subject (in particular there’s a big difference between visual collage and music sampling with the latter being very restricted) there is a clear argument to be made that collage is a fair use of the original works, because the result is completely different.
Collage art retains the original components of the art, adding layers the viewer can explore and seek the source of, if desired.
VLMs on the other hand intentionally obscure the original works by sending them through filters and computer vision transformations to make the original work difficult to backtrace. This is no accident, its designed obfuscation.
The difference is intent - VLMs literally steal copies of art to generate their work for cynical tech bros. Classical collages take existing art and show it in a new light, with no intent to pass off the original source materials as their own creations.
The original developers of Stable Diffusion and similar models made absolutely no secret about the source data they used. Where are you getting this idea that they “intentionally obscure the original works… to make [them] difficult to backtrace.”? How would an image generation model even work in a way that made the original works obvious?
Copying digital art wasn’t “literally stealing” when the MPAA was suing Napster and it isn’t today.
Stable Diffusion was originally developed by academics working at a University.
Your whole reply is pretending to know intent where none exists, so if that’s the only difference you can find between collage and AI art, it’s not good enough.
only a note: LLMs are for text
Thanks. I edited
I get what you’re saying.
I often find myself being the person in the room with the most knowledge about how Generative AI (and other machine learning) works, so I tend to be in the role of the person who answers questions from people who want to check whether their intuition is correct. Yesterday, when someone asked me whether LLMs have any potential uses, or whether the technology is fundamentally useless, and the way they phrased it allowed me to articulate something better than I had previously been able to.
The TL;DR was that I actually think that LLMs have a lot of promise as a technology, but not like this; the way they are being rolled out indiscriminately, even in domains where it would be completely inappropriate, is actually obstructive to properly researching and implementing these tools in a useful way. The problem at the core is that AI is only being shoved down our throats because powerful people want to make more money, at any cost — as long as they are not the ones bearing that cost. My view is that we won’t get to find out the true promise of the technology until we break apart the bullshit economics driving this hype machine.
I agree that even today, it’s possible for the tools to be used in a way that’s empowering for the humans using them, but it seems like the people doing that are in the minority. It seems like it’s pretty hard for a tech layperson to do that kind of stuff, not least of all because most people struggle to discern the bullshit from the genuinely useful (and I don’t blame them for being overwhelmed). I don’t think the current environment is conducive towards people learning to build those kinds of workflows. I often use myself as a sort of anti-benchmark in areas like this, because I am an exceedingly stubborn person who likes to tinker, and if I find it exhausting to learn how to do, it seems unreasonable to expect the majority of people to be able to.
I like the comic’s example of Photoshop’s background remover, because I doubt I’d know as many people who make cool stuff in Photoshop without helpful bits of automation like that (“cool stuff” in this case often means amusing memes or jokes, but for many, that’s the starting point in continuing to grow). I’m all for increasing the accessibility of an endeavour. However, the positive arguments for Generative AI often feels like it’s actually reinforcing gatekeeping rather than actually increasing accessibility; it implicitly divides people into the static categories of Artist, and Non-Artist, and then argues that Generative AI is the only way for Non-Artists to make art. It seems to promote a sense of defeatism by suggesting that it’s not possible for a Non-Artist to ever gain worthwhile levels of skill. As someone who sits squarely in the grey area between “artist” and “non-artist”, this makes me feel deeply uncomfortable.
This was a great read! As someone who was initially excited about the possibilities of AI art, it’s been hit or miss with me.
I’ve come to realise over time that I like the connection that art offers. The little moment of ‘I wonder what the artist was thinking when they imagined this and what experiences did someone have to get to a place where they could visualize and create this?’
And I think that’s what missing with AI art. Sure, it can enable someone like me who has no skill with drawing to create something but it doesn’t get to the point of putting my actual imagination down. The repeated tries can only get to point of ‘close enough’.
For me, looking at a piece and then learning it’s AI art is basically realizing that I’m looking at a computer generated imitation of someone’s imagination. Except the imitation was created by describing the art instead of the imitator ever looking at it. An connection I could have felt with original human is watered down as to be non-existent.
That was a really good take on the whole thing. The Oatmeal is my people.
One thing I’ve found interesting with AI art is that it’s changed how I look at handmade art. It is similar in a way to appreciating a handmade piece of furniture or a machine compared to a mass produced commodity item. Art that I previously would have dismissed instantly sometimes makes me think for a second about the artist and how it was made, even when it lacks a professional level of quality. That said, I’ve also seen enough AI art that I can distinguish between garbage slop and something (at least a little) interesting made in Comfy UI. There’s always been a lot of low quality art out there, but I think the real issue is with people trying to pass off low effort generated slop as real art, rather than the gen-AI tech itself (environmental impact notwithstanding).
I made a comment about a week ago about how copying people’s art is still art, and it was a bit of an aha moment as I pinpointed for myself a big part of why I find image generators and the like so soulless, inwardly echoing a lot of what Inman lays out here.
All human made art, from the worst to the best, embodies the effort of the artist. Their intent and their skill. Their attempt to make something, to communicate something. It has meaning. All generative art does is barf up random noise that looks like pictures. It’s impressive technology, and I understand that it’s exciting, but it’s not art. If humans ever end up creating actual artificial intelligence, then we can talk about machine made art. Until then, it’s hardly more than a printer in terms of artistic merit.
There was a good interview with Tim Minchin by the BBC where he said something similar to this & used the word intent.
I suppose the intent/communication/art comes from the person writing the prompt but those few words can only convey so much information. When the choice of medium & every line etc. involves millions of micro-decisions by the artist there is so much more information encoded. Even if its copy & pasted bits of memes.
Is this the interview? files.catbox.moe/ddp6tp.mp4
Tim Minchin has always come across as a good egg to me. It’s nice to hear he’s of the same mind, and I particularly like the optimism he’s promoting in his predictions for artistry going forward.
No, I hadn’t seen that one, thanks!
Hah, sure thing. I suppose it’s a point he’s discussed a few times.
I would add that a lot (most?) graphical elements we encounter in daily lives do not require art or soul in the least. Stock images on web pages, logos, icons etc. are examples of graphical elements that are IMO perfectly fine to use AI image generation for. It’s the menial labour of the artist profession that is now being affected by modern automation much like so many other professions have been before them. All of them resisted so of course artists resist too.
The impact on livelihoods is important, but it’s ultimately unrelated to defining what art is. My consideration of art is not one born of fear of losing money, but purely out of appreciation for the craft. I don’t think it’s entirely fair to suggest all the criticisms against generated art is solely borne of self-preservation.
In regards to corporate “art”, all the things you listed, even stock images, are certainly not the purest form of artistry, but they still have (or, at least had) intent suffusing their creation. I suppose the question then is - is there a noticeable difference between the two for corporations? Will a generated logo have the same impact as a purposefully crafted on does? In my experience, the generated products I’ve noticed feel distinctly hollow. While past corporate assets are typically hollow shells of real art, generated assets are even less. They’re a pure concentration of corporate greed and demand, without the “bothersome” human element. Maybe that won’t matter in their course of business, but I think it might. Time will tell.
I’d argue that logos are a hugely expressive form. It’s just that 90% of them are basic ass shit tier stuff.
AI has basically raised the level of “shit tier” pretty high. I sometimes go check out Hotone Audio’s Facebook page to see if there are new firmware updates for my device, but they mainly peddle pointless AI slop marketing images. I’m sure there are tons of companies like this.
It’s the literal example of the marketing person being able to churn out pictures without an artist being involved, and thus the output is a pile of crap even more vapid than stock photos.
The most generic logo from ten years ago still was made with choices by a designer. It’s those choices that make a difference, you don’t choose how things are executed with ai
But you still choose the final result…for something like that, the how is really quite irrelevant, it is just the end result that matters and that still remains in the hands of humans as they’re the ones to settle on the final solution.
That’s our point. The how is entirely relevant. It’s what makes art interesting and meaningful. Without the how and why, it’s just colors and noise.
But that’s exactly my point; logos, icons, stock images etc. are already nothing but noise meant to just catch the eye…might as well just get it auto-generated.
That you can’t see or appreciate the intent of the artist behind those doesn’t mean it’s not there or not important. Why they were made or how they are used in the end is not important. All that matters is how they were made.
That’s like saying you cooked a chicken sandwich because you ordered it off the menu.
I’ve been practicing at being a better writer, and one of the ways I’ve been doing that is by studying the writing that I personally really like. Often I can’t explain why I click so much with a particular style of writing, but by studying and attempting to learn how to copy the styles that I like, it feels like a step towards developing my own “voice” in writing.
A common adage around art (and other skilled endeavours) is that you need to know how to follow the rules before you can break them, after all. Copying is a useful stepping stone to something more. It’s always going to be tough to learn when your ambition is greater than your skill level, but there’s a quote from Ira Glass that I’ve found quite helpful:
Agreed.
Haha. “Keith”.
Keith: The highbrow Kyle.
I want to touch on how he mentions hitting the button to automatically make music on a Casio keyboard.
I fully realize I’m being reductive to the point of being offensive but that’s not my intent and I preemptively apologize, when I say: that’s at least in part, the very first seed to becoming a professional DJ. That’s not nothing.
Using AI to generate images can be the same thing if it’s extrapolated out into complexity and layered nuance. It might not make you an artist exactly, in the same way that a DJ might not be a musician but it IS a skillset that potentially has value.
And even if you think I’m totally off-base in saying so? I liked pretending with the little automatic music button on the keyboard.
I think pushing the button on a Casio keyboard is more akin to tracing your favorite comics panel than using an LLM image generator.
I mean…I liked doing that too. DIY Spider man coloring book pages.
Are you speaking from experience? 'Cause that’s not even vaguely related to how any of the DJs I know (including a couple of professionals) got started. The prime motive for most DJs is sharing cool music, and Casio keyboards don’t do that…
No. Not from experience at all. I saw a small documentary once saying DJs remixed and sometimes create almost entirely new music and that they used computer based audio tools to do so. I’m probably thinking of a different profession. My ignorance, sorry.
All good, was just wondering.
I do DJ (non-professionally). I generally think there are two skills with DJing:
I don’t think AI can really help you do either… but I guess it could make a mixed set and you could pretend to play it, like a Casio keyboard
If I recall correctly it was a part of how Feel Good Inc. was made. That is tangential at best, I realize, but still a fun story.
I watched a short saying you might be an art director, at best, but not really an artist. Because you have the vision but you’re only telling someone (something) to materialize it. I was kind of happy with that.
Vision is a strong word. I think it’s a vague idea in most cases
I was kinda against their argument at first, then I was with them and continued reading. But then they went into all sorts of detail, weighing pros and cons etc., and after reading more than half I evtl. gave up.
It seems all “why AI is bad” articles seem to go this way.
It seems all “why AI is bad” articles unwillingly even support the hype.
Fuck AI “art”, it’s not art you morons, it’s automation, which takes away real people’s jobs. The current implementations made by greedy companies also very obviously steal. 'nuff said.
I know that art is an art of it’s own and a way to express human creativity.
However people also complained once the loom was invented. It took lots of jobs.
The job argument is usually a stupid one.
The lack of creativity and quality is of course a much better argument against AI art.
The what? It’s the only one that objectively makes sense.
Ok imagine this:
You are an construction worker. The job is hard but the pay is okay.
Now robots replace your job slowly. They are cheaper and more accurate.
You can now:
Complain about the robots stealing your job
Be happy that you don’t have to do the hard work anymore.
Many people will go for 1. But the actual issue is that the social security net isn’t existent or so weak that no job means no food.
That is not the fault of technology though.
Remember that when you vote and when politicians want to cut costs by reducing payments for the unemployed.
Option 2 is soulless.
Option 3. Destroy the capitalists owned robots and bring the robots under the control of the working class.
Option 3 still ends up with robots and no-one doing the jobs that the robots replaced.
Robots aren’t the problem.
Option 3 would be a weird way of communism. Which still enforces my point. The reason why you fear for job safety is not the fault of technology.
Option 3 is also what the historical Luddites wanted. They liked technology when it benefitted them, not when it was used to exploit them.
I liked it, personally. I’ve read plenty of AI bad articles, and I too am burnt out on them. However, what I really appreciated about this was that it felt less like a tirade against AI art and more like a love letter to art and the humans that create it. As I was approaching the ending of the comic, for example, when the argument had been made, and the artist was just making their closing words, I was struck by the simple beauty of the art. It was less the shapes and the colours themselves that I found beautiful, but the sense that I could practically feel the artist straining against the pixels in his desperation to make something that he found beautiful — after all, what would be the point if he couldn’t live up to his own argument?
I don’t know how far you got through, but I’d encourage you to consider taking another look at it. It’s not going to make any arguments you’ve not heard before, but if you’re anything like me, you might appreciate it from the angle of a passionate artist striving to make something meaningful in defiance of AI. I always find my spirits bolstered by work like this because whilst we’re not going to be able to draw our way out of this AI-slop hellscape, it does feel important to keep reminding ourselves of what we’re fighting for.
As a passable quality 3D artist who does it for a living I’ve found AI art (which can do 3D now to some degree) has kind of narrowed the scope for me. If you want generic Unreal style pseudo-realism or disney toon then AI can do that for you* I’ve had to focus much more on creating a unique style and also optimizing my work in ways that AI just doesn’t have the ability to do because they require longer chains of actual reasoning.
For AI in general I think this pattern holds, it can quickly create something generic and increasingly do it without extranious fingers but no matter how much you tweak a prompt its damn near impossible to get a specific idea into image form. Its like a hero shooter with skins VS actually creating your own character.
*Right now AI models use more tris to re-create the default blender cube than my entire lifetime portfolio but I’m assuming that can be resolved since we already have partially automated re-topology tools.
I forgot how loooong Oatmeal cartoons are. I don’t think I have made it to the end of one in years.
Wanna go ride a bicycle?
I often hear AI enthusiasts say that AI democratized art. As if art weren’t already democratized. Most anyone can pick up a pen, draw, write, type, move a mouse, etc. What AI democratizes in art, is the perception of skill. Which is why when you find out a piece of art was made by inputting some short prompt into a generator, you become disappointed. Because it would be cool, if the person actually had the skill to draw that. Pushing a few buttons to get that, not so much.
Edit:spelling and spacing
I have always felt that I’m not good at art (the practice I did got me not very far), and I’ve recently had reason to make little collages. One thing that I’ve done is uploaded pictures to Canva and traced them so I had something resembling recognizable images (my dog, me in a kayak). I don’t think tracing is making an art, AI is definitely not making an art.
Tracing is absolutely art. You choose what to trace what parts of the image are important what to discard etc.
Makes me think of this 😂 www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMwhZryRUr4
What makes you want to do art? I’m just curious, because I am also someone who has bounced off of attempting to learn to do art a bunch of times, and found tracing unfulfilling (I am abstaining from the question of whether tracing is art, but I do know it didn’t scratch the itch for me).
For my part, I ended up finding that crafts like embroidery or clothing making was the best way to channel my creative inclinations, but that’s mostly because I have the heart of a ruthless pragmatist and I like making useful things. What was it that caused you to attempt to learn?
And people forget how many forms of art there are. If you can speak any language which if youre reading this you can then you can create art. Putting your feelings into words is art. The point of art is not to be good at it or to earn money with it. Its to express your feelings. Of course enabling people who express their feelings in a way that others like to earn money with it is a good thing but even that can be very restrictive. Look at all the twitter porn artists who really just want to create something else but need some sort of revenue stream.
I appreciate this bit out of context:
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/pictrs/image/ca3bde62-ae39-4072-9e18-b345673f3452.webp">
Also loved the shoutout to Allie Brosh!
Isn’t quick.
Note: If you're just going to come in and engage with me in an uncivil manner with your dick behavior, you'll be auto blocked.
One part that gets me is when they stated that they took art classes. Just, what is the point of taking art classes today? There have been artists whose stories I've read about and heard of, who spent years practicing their craft to get to where they are. The idea of taking an art class for an otherwise approachable hobby just always feels odd to me and always will. There are countless ways to improve one's art and craft, not by AI though.
And then right after, they mention about practicing. So again - what's the point of taking art classes?
I stopped reading about half way through, because my mind went "yeah yeah yeah..." since nothing this comic artist was saying anything new that I hadn't heard of in regards to anti-AI.
Here's my stance on AI Art and it's going to rub people the wrong way but I don't care. I was told by an artist friend whom I've known and has done pictures for me before. They started raising their prices a smidge for their commissions and this artist was and is on their way of being recognized as a good artist in their community (they're furry). We got into a conversation about how I brought up that prices could be hard to achieve because of the economy and blah blah.
They told me in response that 'Art is a luxury'. And you know what? It kinda is. It is a luxury and sets a baseline as to what one can and can't afford. If someone is frustrated enough that they can't afford some $300 commission piece (yes those people do exist), they're going to go to AI because they know they can do it at home. Now it doesn't excuse the fact that they could've just picked up art as a hobby and actually practice, there is that argument. However, not everyone is an artist and not everyone is going to practice it.
And if someone isn't going to practice art and isn't able to afford high prices asked of the artists who have open commissions - what do you honestly expect them to do?
As far as things regarding like studios function and how this all relates to them, that's a whole can of worms of its own. How many times have we heard animation studios or other studios get shut down because the funding dried up? "Oh we planned 2 seasons in advance - oh wait - we can only do one season now" and then that's a wrap of that series.
I don't know where I want to go with that and this has been lengthy anyways so I'll just summarize it as this. I don't have a big problem with AI Art because Art and Creativity in of itself, is a luxury. It's an expensive luxury at that, that has its limits. That is why people have turned to AI in droves. I don't agree with a lot of the reasons behind what people do with AI Art and proclaiming themselves as 'artists' when they're not (I prefer to call them envisonists because you are still inputting and projecting the imaginations of your mind into an input that can visualize it for you).
The point is the same as taking classes for any other skill, from baseball to carpentry: you have to learn technique before you can engrain the skill through practice. Some people can pick it up on their own if they’re motivated enough, by studying other people’s art, watching artists working, reading books, etc., but it’s more difficult and time-consuming without an instructor’s feedback. Sometimes they even figure it out wrong, and develop a very difficult and time-consuming method of doing something when a much simpler one exists.
So it’s optimal to both have the classes and do extensive practice outside of them. One is not a substitute for the other.
I was going to read this but stopped halfway through because my mind went “yeah that yeah another person who never bothered trying to draw having a hot take that’s just sucking off a tech bro”
Art classes can introduce you to new techniques that you wouldn’t have otherwise pursued and elevate your art to greater heights. Depending on the school, it also helps with networking. Lotsa famous animators at places like CalArts, Sheridan, Gobelins, etc.
What a beautiful read. I feel the same about AI art and I remember a longer talk I had with my tattoo artist: ‘I need the money so I will do AI based tattoos my clients bring to me. But they have no soul, no story, no individuality. They are not a part of you.’
I feel the same.
Also I like Oatmeal’s reference to Wabi Sabi: The perfection of imperfection in every piece of art.
It was an ok read for me, but mostly because I enjoyed the art rather than relating to the entirety of the sentiment.
I’m an artist and I find AI art evocative and illustrating things in a way that I wish that I could illustrate, but feel that is only because it comes from real human artists. I agree that it is a void in terms of difficulty to process, but there is still skill involved in both using search engines and describing something to an llm. A minute amount of skill, but still a skill.
I hate AI art because it is stealing from artists, not because it doesn’t feel right. It can have a million iterations and only needs to get it right once to count as feeling right to me. The relationship between the content and their artists to the ultimate product is removed, this to me is the wrongfulness of claiming new art from it. It is just stealing in a more wind-about manor. This isn’t like generating fractal art or something.
After all these years of corporations fucking up the literal social fabric and and how we communicate over IP law, for them to turn around and steal everything and just get a pass is an extra slap in face. Stealing only gets allowed2 one way in our society, and AI is just another example of that.
I’m honestly surprised to not see this take more from others and felt like i needed to mention it.
edit: emphasized that by making AI art taking skill, I only mean just a minute amount.
I think AI art serves a different purpose from the art we talk about when we say “real art has heart” or “the process of creating the art affected me when I looked at it”.
I think about how I feel when I’m scrolling through pictures in some app on my phone - some will be memes, some will be cats, but then some will be there for artistic purposes. As I’m scrolling through, such a picture will spark a brief glimmer of emotion - “huh, that looks neat” for example. I’m not looking close and examining the brush strokes, not thinking about what troubles the artist went through, and not thinking about the process of its creation at all.
In that context I don’t think it makes much difference that it’s AI-generated. I’d kind of like to know, and I don’t want to see a dozen different outputs of the same prompt because whoever hit the button couldn’t even apply the modicum of effort require to pick their favourite, but AI-generated images are just as able to instigate that glimmer of “hey that looks cool” that any image can.
Sounds like you’re not very skilled at art appreciation.
There’s zero need to throw insults around; I made the context absolutely clear in my comment and it has nothing to do with what I do when at an art gallery or something.
Maybe some people are having an experience like they are looking at a Rembrandt when they scroll through /c/pics or something, but I’m not. Do you also shit on people for being unable to appreciate music because they put something on in the background? Is it only OK to go to concerts and immerse yourself in it? If you’re in a shop and a tune you like comes on, do you park your cart to really appreciate the depths of emotion it’s inspiring in you?
Of course you don’t.
If you think that it was an insult then that shows what shame you have for your lack of skill, not an intention on my part.
I think this is completely missing the point when it’s talking about “the minutiae of art”. It’s making two claims at the same time: art is better when you suffer for it and the art is good whether or not you suffered. But none of that is relevant.
When Wyeth made Christina’s World, I don’t know if he suffered or not when painting that grass. What I do know is that he was a human with limited time and the fact that he spent so much of his time detailing every blade of grass means that he’s saying something. That The Oatmeal doesn’t draw backgrounds might be because he’s lazy, but he also doesn’t need them. These are choices we make to put effort in one part and ignore some other part.
AI doesn’t make choices. It doesn’t need to. A detailed background is exactly the same amount of work as a plain one. And so a generated picture has this evenly distributed level of detail, no focus at all. You don’t really know where to look, what’s important, what the picture is trying to say. Because it’s not saying anything. It isn’t a rat with a big butt, it’s just a cloud of noise that happens to resemble a rat with a big butt.
I’d like this on my tombstone
Anyone who says ai at is easy has never tried it.
Oh wow, it’s so hard to ask a computer to generate an image. You might get a repetitive stress injury from writing so many prompts to constantly pump out vapid slop devoid of any artistic merit or value.
It was a good read until he started with the art is a skill and anyone can do it. He’s kind of in his bubble there making assumptions about people. People have various levels of aphantasia, it’s not binary. Those that are good at visual imagination do art, people without can’t draw a fucking apple from memory reasonable art is beyond many, even if they had the time to dedicate to it.
Everything else he said was on point. well eventually on point, that was a long ride.
I know a few seriously good artists that have aphantasia, being able to see things in your head is not necessary for making art.
One of the things I find most awesome about art is seeing how so many people with different capacities find ways to make art.
I likely have aphantasia, and whilst I call myself an artist, there are times where I see a particular shape or form within the world and think “damn, that’s beautiful”. I find myself taking a mental note of it, because whilst I don’t make art, I do enjoy making clothes. Aphantasia does make it hard to take those experiences and make cool stuff out of them, because without a mental image to work from, it may take me many attempts to correctly mark out the shape, where my only guiding sense is whether a particular attempt looks right though. It hasn’t stopped me from making things I’m truly proud of though, and a key thing that drives me to keep creating is that sense of fulfillment I get from taking something beautiful from the world and reusing it in a manner that allows me to share that slice of wonder with other people.
I feel like I’ve only been half decent at that in recent years though; before that, I tended to focus on the more technical aspects of the craft, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t creative. I made a chainmail hauberk for myself once, because the base technique didn’t seem hard and it seemed like it would be fun (turns out the hard part is sticking with it long enough to make a whole item). Part of my quest was that I knew that wearing a sturdy belt over a chainmail hauberk is essential for the weight to be properly distributed, and I thought it might be cool to use an underbust corset in place of a belt. The creative part of that required little, if any, visual imagination — I mostly just enjoyed the juxtaposition of the traditionally masculine armour with the femininity of the corset.
Beyond my own personal experiences, I’ve been awed by seeing so many examples of creative people working with what limitations they have, and honing their skills in whatever way they can. A close friend has such poor vision that they legally count as blind, but their paintings have such incredible colours — they have a beautiful diffuseness to them, which is apparently how they see the world. Seeing their art makes me feel closer to them. Unfortunately, they’ve recently suffered injury to their hands, so they can’t paint like they used to — so they have found new ways to paint that don’t rely on their hands so much. And there’s even more examples of this kind of persistence if we consider music to be art too.
I don’t really give a fuck about art — not really. I care about the people who make it. I get that it’s frustrating to try something creative when your skill can’t match up to your figurative creative vision, but that’s also a problem that even experienced artists struggle with. If you made something that required little to no skill, but it was something that you had cared about, then that’s enough to make me care. That might sound silly given that you’re just a random person on the internet to me, but that’s precisely why I care; art makes me feel connected to people I’ve never even met.
People who make the point that you’re making are often people who have within them the desire to make art, but they feel that it’s inaccessible to them. I know, because I was one of them (years before AI hit the zeitgeist). I realise that this may not apply to you, and you might be speaking in a more general sense, but if it does, then I would hope that you would someday feel able to give things a go. I think it’d be a shame if someone with a desire to create never got the chance to see where that could go. I’m not saying “maybe you could start a career as an artist”, because even highly proficient artists often struggle to make a career out of art that doesn’t kill their soul (most working artists I know use their paid work to support work that’s more artistically fulfilling to them). Just know that if you make things that you care about, there will always be people who will care about what you make.
I say this as someone who has just written out a veritable essay full of care in reply to someone I’m probably never going to speak about. And hey, if you’ve gotten this far, then that is surely evidence towards my point about how making stuff you care about causes people to care about what you’ve made — either that, or you’ve jumped to the bottom in search of a TL;DR. Regardless, people like me care so much about art because human connection helps us to survive this pretty grim world, and art is our most reliable way of doing that. I’d love to have you here with us, if you’d like to be.
But… It is a skill… And anyone can develop that skill. That’s how skills work. Nobody is born good at anything. It takes practice and education.
And aphantasia does not stop one from being able to draw. There are a lot of artists, authors and other creatives that have aphantasia.