Growing up my mother had (still has come to think of it) a book about Wyeth at the Kuerner family farm. The Wyeth picture in the Oatmeal story is not part of the larger collection of works all from that farm, but it still has the feeling. I can’t reccomend people looking into Wyeth and his art high enough
Pregnant Mario lactating Jamba juice all over Blanka from street fighter, indeed.
The Oatmeal! 😍😍 I haven’t been to that site in so long, I’m so glad they’re still around! Thanks for sharing!
Walther Benjamin examines this point extensively in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, which should be required reading for everyone, but especially anyone who thinks that AI art is the same as human art. The crux is that an authentic work (you can think of it as the “original”) has some… thing , some Je ne sais quoi that he calls the Aura. It’s a feeling you get from the real authentic thing. It’s the reason people line up at the Louvre to see the tiny Mona Lisa behind thick plate glass instead of just looking at a poster. Or why NFTs tried to be a thing and basically failed after the meme of it all died out.
I think the “Je ne sais quoa” is the human element: art is fundamentally about human communication and interaction.
We can (usually) infer the meaning and emotion an artist is trying to convey – particularly if given context. Even if we don’t “get” what the artist is trying to say, we can come up with something an equally valid. Real art only “works” because of empathy.
AI generated “art” fails for that reason: you can’t infer the thought process of a machine that doesn’t think, or emphasize with emotions it doesn’t have. As a tool it can assist with creating art, but the more heavily it’s involved in the creative process the less meaningful the resultant “art” becomes.
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In photography, the photographer makes choices using lenses, lighting, framing and so on to make choices about how the image is created.
With Photoshop, the digital artist uses the tools to create and manipulate the image, making choices about how the image is created.
With AI, the prompter tells the computer what they want and no choices are made. The computer generates things with an algorithm and that’s it. The prompter doesn’t choose anything, they just make another prompt.
So yeah, prompters will never be artists, and I have more respect for a kid doodling in the dirt with a stick because they at least are making choices and making something.
It’s not gatekeeping, you’re just simply not making art, and no, you can’t sit with us.
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Unexpected mention of Allie Brosh in the thanks at the end. Genuinely nice to be able to confirm she’s still out there, alive and kicking, doing whatever it is she’s doing now.
She wrote a book a couple years back that explains where she vanished to. It’s good.
She’s written a couple, at least. Þe two I have are boþ good.
tl;dr - “art” generated by LLMs is ultimately lame and uninspiring. It’s probably never going to inspire people very much. It’s a parlor trick and everyone intrinsically recognizes it. Don’t expect to be taken seriously as a creator if this is your primary tool.
It’s generative AI though, not creative. It can literally only create what it’s seen before. It’s incapable of being original. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Andy Warhol painted soup cans. But anyone who expects inspiration and creativity from generative AI doesn’t understand the technology as it’s applied…
It generates new content based on what is trained on. not just what is trained on
Where is the new part coming from? The new part can only come from combining things it already knows.
And even that is the part that is already provided by the human as part if the prompt.
Just like it can Hallucinate text, it also hallucinates content. That’s a core part of the generative feature
It hallucinates from incorrectly putting other info in its network together. It is all just stochastics.
That is not original or new its is the core of what slop is.
The problem is that it does not have a goal or even just understands why it is doing what it is doing.
If you know what a ice sculpture of a human looks like and you know what an ice sculputre of a swan looks like you can maybe infer what an “ice sculpture of a flying crocodile with wings” might look like too, by combining what you already know. It’s as much incorrect as your imagination, no?
I am skeptical about “never”, but right now I agree that’s true. I expect it to be true for many years to come. That being said, we have seen a lot of improvement (over even the last few months) in AI image quality, composition, and prompt adherence.
In order for an art piece to exist, an artist have to have something to say by said art. Fancy autocomplete is not an entity, it’s an algorithm to generate something looking like something else, and even if it crawls out of the uncanny valley at some point (which I’m not sure is possible), the best case scenario is that it will generate something that looks like some people did at some point. It’s not what art is, and it’s not what people look for in art. This will never change, this is the never in said never.
AGI will create art, but at this point we’re further away from it than we were 10 years ago, or even 50 years ago (and I would argue it’s a goos thing)That’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is that it’s going to be increasingly difficult (for the layperson) to tell if a work is by a human or computer. You and I may think there’s some sort of moral superiority in human art, but the average TikTok user doesn’t give a fuck… and they outnumber us greatly.
Your opinion of an average person is overly negative.
Generated shit is the new Muzak, the new Alegria clipart, but done very badly. When a person who doesn’t care about music and doesn’t understand music hears Muzak they don’t think about it at all, that’s kind of almost the point of it. It’s an amalgamation of a corporate default sequence of sounds invented to be approved by a committee. And that’s the best that generators can wish to do, and I suspect there is a fundamental quality to it that will prevent it from being that ever.
That’s the thing about art, intentionality, it’s not that “human art” is somehow superiour, it’s that only human art exists, copying algorithms are doing copies, and even if sometimes it works, you don’t get art without an artist saying you something.
Obviously, people who don’t enjoy art don’t care. But that doesn’t really matter.
To me, a big part of it is that I’m tired of commodity art. I don’t care about your pretty pixel soup. I’ve seen other pixel soups before that were similarly pretty.
And I’ve been tired for many years, long before every middle-manager under the sun could cook up their own pretty pixel soup.
Back then, it was humans trying to make a living off of their passion and then settling for commodity art to make ends meet. I was cheering them on, because they were passionate humans.Now that generative AI has destroyed that branch of humanity, there’s no one to cheer on anymore.
Even if generative AI never existed in the first place, I’d like to see commodity art being relegated to the sidelines and expressive art coming into the limelight instead.Tell me a story with your art. About your struggles or a brainfart you had, or really anything. This comic is great, for example. There’s emotions there and I can see the human through the art. I would’ve chosen a very different illustration for whatever, for example, which tells me a lot about the artist, but also about myself.
I have never had that kind of introspection with pretty pixel soups.I agree, and I think it’s closely related to something else I dislike about AI — art or other media. The best it can do is interpolate among other, generic, mediocre training data. There are a few cases (novel go strategies, optical illusions) where a human has carefully guided it to a new creative output. But on its own, it’s missing that obsessive need to render some internal idea into the world.
I run into this in programming. I can add the AI agent to do some administrative tasks, like factoring out a React component. But it’s never yet been able to solve a problem I got stuck on, where a teammate quickly identified the extra aspect I needed to take into account, or the way I needed to shift my approach.
AI is great at the instinctual, pattern-matching part. I wish we would use it to eliminate the redundancy in our writing and art, rather than amplify it.
Yeah, this discrepancy really irks me in programming, too. It’s really good at known problems, like student homework or whatever task a middle manager will throw at it to see how well it works.
But because of the nature of software – if there is a solution, you can easily share it with everyone in the world – it’s kind of our job to work on anything but known problems.Yeah, there’s gonna be some known parts, where it may be able to assist, similar to a library or StackOverflow. But if it can put together your whole solution without tons of human input, chances are that solution is already out there and you should be using it instead.
It’d be interesting to have an AI look for recurring boilerplate from StackOverflow and suggest new libraries or language features.
I find this li’l guy hilarious for some reason.
AI art is great, because now I can make artsy pictures in my presentations. AI art can never replace real artists though, it’s just not that good. There will always be a place for real artists, AI art is only for amateurs that would never pay for real art anyways.
Or where hiring an actual real artists - for example if you were to need dozens of graphics for, say, a TTRPG you’re running.
On the other hand, if you’re e.g. writing your own TTRPG, and getting it published, you ought to use a real artist.
IMO the best way to determine if AI is okay to use or not, is by the purpose - is it a personal project, something you won’t profit off? Then sure. Is it something you’re going to profit off of? Then use a real artist and include them in the profits.
I think this can be summarised as “fair use”, something the AI providers like OpenAi could learn a thing or two about.
Or where hiring an actual real artists - for example if you were to need dozens of graphics for, say, a TTRPG you’re running.
The only issue with that is that the AI was trained off the art from people who did create art for their TTRPG either paid or as a passion project.
Does that mean that new art effectively stops getting made for these scenarios? That real artists who are inspired to make cool art for their games just disappear or get assumed it was just AI?
I kind of wonder if we just stagnate from here, with very little new art being created that doesn’t come from AI. In 10 years will we still be using the long recycled art from the last human artists? (Not that humans will stop creating art, but less will and they will often be drowned out from the flood of AI output)
Very, very few TTRPG sessions have artists creating art for each of them. Mine certainly didn’t before I could run genAI models locally. At most I’d grab generic, CC-licenced ambiance art, or, if the group had an artistic veined person, they’d help out with some character sheet art and such.
AI took no jobs here. And as I said, if the art is for something you profit off of, you should use an actual artist.
I’m not talking about jobs, just people who do art for fun. Before AI there was still a lot of D&D fan art for example. Tons of people drawing their character or getting a commission done of the party after a long campaign. That kind of thing.
I think AI art has a negative impact on that sort of expression. People who might have tried it instead just generate something instead, never learning they really like to draw. People who would’ve commissioned something now can just generate a pic instead. People who had fun sharing fan art lose their motivation because for every one picture they complete, 1000s of AI images bury their art so it never gets appreciated.
One of the best minis in a game I was in that was ever used was a hydra made out of paper, and when we killed a head, the dm pulled one out of the slots and it was a bloody stump drawn at the base of the neck. Everyone at the table flipped their shit, it was awesome.
If the dm just used ai to make something, that wouldn’t have happened. It would’ve been disappointing to find out if was an ai image for the players, and he wouldn’t have made that fun memory.
AI takes away potential in more ways than one.
Wow. Way to be ignorant.
I’m not disagreeing that said mini scene isn’t epic, but AI literally doesn’t take away from such events - in fact it can help make them happen.
There’s tons of people out there (including myself) who have the mental/cerebral creativity, but lack the ability to translate it to something hand-drawn. To take my own example further, I can’t draw for shit - and this isn’t for lack of trying, mind you, I’ve spent 4 years in an architectural high school, each year having 2-4 weekly freehand drawing classes, and while I can manage more regular objects in perspective… that’s about it. On the other hand, I’m really good with CAD in general, or mechanical drawings. To me AI isn’t something that takes away my creativity, or replaces the human element, because I know what I want on-screen, and simply require an aid, a tool, to make that happen.
With my TTRPG games (which are more sci-fi oriented), I still do 90% of the prep by hand. I plan ahead for the possible paths my players will take, generate backdrops to be used on my projector, and recently even started generating background music to play.
Even if I was a “real artist”, the amount of work required to eliminate AI from the workflow is simply not doable by a single person.
But yet again, it doesn’t take away from my creativity. I still have to come up with the scenarios, the possible outcomes, how my players might react, plan the backdrops and music and battle scenes and whatnot, and have everything I’ve envisioned, translated into something my players can see.
AI isn’t providing the creativity, but a way to translate the vision to visual.
That’s really sad that you think that way and telling that you missed the point.
If you hand make something for your game, during the creation process you’ll have a hydra moment and make something different than your initial idea. If you just use AI then you stay with that initial idea and don’t explore it. So yeah, it does take away from your creativity and you don’t even realize it.
I guarantee you that if you actually made something yourself for your campaign your players would like it much more than the AI stuff.
Because the big secret of artists? Stuff never turns out as good as it was in your head. Not once. And it’s not supposed to.
With the same attitude one could campaign for ditching digital art tools, hell, even paint and paper, and going back all the way to cave paintings.
AI is a tool, period. Using it does not denigrate the process, and no, unlike your claim, does not take away from creativity, in fact it can trigger the exact same new ideas other creative processes can.
What’s truly sad is that you, in complete lack of understanding of how and why AI can be used, are dismissing not just AI but people who use it, putting your ideology of “art purism” as something superior. My recommendation is, you look back in history and see how every single technological advancement that resulted in such outcries and purist movements, has ended up. Small hint: you’re very much on the wrong side of things.
Heh, AI is about as much of a tool as a drive through window is to cooking. You aren’t making anything, you’re not part of the process, you’re having a computer copy someone else’s choices and spill it out for you. This isn’t like a camera where people make choices with lenses, lighting and framing, this is you giving up your creative agency because you want a picture and don’t care how you got it.
Ai images aren’t art, and it’s sad that you think they are.
Ah, so you’ve been debating in bad faith all along.
off you fuck then, troll.
Enjoy making Clipart Storyteller.
I think that there is AI “art” that goes beyond typing a few words into chat gpt and waiting for a result.
I don’t know how popular this is today but about two years ago I watched lots of people go wild with stable diffusion workflows. It was a whole palette of tools: Control net, Inpainting, sketches with img2img for the composition, corrections in Photoshop and so on. It took hours or days of manual work until people “generated” the image that they initially imagined. I would say that this would count as art… Writing one prompt into your favourite llm and take what you get: not so much.
One example for reference: https://youtu.be/K0ldxCh3cnI
It’s still used a lot. ComfyUI is the software of choice for the people you’re thinking about, and there’s some pretty advanced workflows that blow my mind how anyone even came up with that stuff. The end results are worth it though.
AI slop that we are used to seeing are people just throwing prompts at chatGPT or Gemini, maybe ask it to change a detail or another if they are feeling less lazy than usual, and then share it on the web
There are difficult ‘AI’ tools.
Look up controlnet workflows or VACE, just to start, much less little niches in vapoursynth pipelines or image editing layers. You could spend days training them, messing with the implementation, then doing the manual work of carefully and deliberately applying them. This has, in fact, has been happening in film production for awhile, just in disguise.
Same with, say, LLMs used in game mods where appropriate, like the Rimworld mod. That’s careful creative expression.
…As usual, it’s tech bros fucking everything up by dumbing it down to zero-option prompt box and then shoving that in front of as many people as possible to try and monopolize their attention.
In other words, I agree with the author that what I hate about ‘AI art’ is the low effort ‘sloppiness.’ It’s gross, like rotten fast food. It makes me sad. And that’s 99.999% of all AI art.
…But it doesn’t have to be like that.
It’s like saying the concept of the the fediverse sucks because Twitter/Facebook suck, even if 99.999% of what folks see is the slop of the later. It’s not fair to the techniques, and it’s not holding the jerks behind mass slop proliferation accountable.
I’ve spent five, six hours getting an ai generated image to be just what I want using stable diffusion models, comfyui, various Lora’s, op adapters, etc. I’ve made ai generated songs that I’ve taken the considerable time writing rhyming lyrics that express what I want.
Generating ai art doesn’t make me an artist. Generating ai music doesn’t make you a musician. Though if you’ve written the lyrics yourself it DOES make you a poet. And if you’re getting down into the nitty gritty fine tuning modules (which I have done), as well as using more complex tools available, it IS difficult and it DOES take time to learn.
This shit can get REALLY technical and there is a lot to learn and it can be very difficult to produce something you’re proud of.
Does it mean making something with ai means it’s as difficult as making real art? No. They’re completely different skill sets.
Does writing the lyrics to an ai generated song make you a musician? No. Do writing engaging, catchy lyrics that you have a computer into a song make you a good lyricist? Yes.
People use familiar terms to describe new skill sets and technology. The new thing can’t be hard because the old thing is hard. writing lyrics doesn’t matter as an act of personal creation because an ai did the rest. When you start really looking at this shit and drawing you see dimensions of nuance far beyond “ai bad”
Precisely. AI art is bad because the users making “art” with it essentially have such bad taste they’ll publish anything the AI shits out.
There exist artistic ways to use AI as a tool, but none of them are easy. In fact they might be harder than just painting the damn picture yourself.
based and real-pilled, the both of you.
i’m excited for the future of art. we have the potential for a new age of renaissance men who master the arts, humanities, and sciences all at once.
i think a lot of people shitting on genAI don’t see engineering itself as art… and i think that’s a piss-poor, deathly sad view of this world. it’s like 2/3 of westerners weirdly resent anything “math or science coded” as they might call it. a shame. a damn shame.
To me, thins kinda screams of “I suffered so you should too”. There are good arguments against AI art, but this one doesn’t resonate with me in any capacity.
It is good that AI has made art more accessible. Art is meant for everyone, and anything that makes it more democratic is great.
There have been painters who are blind who made great paintings. People without hands who learned how to paint with their feet.
Art was already accessable to everyone, ai drones say that it wasn’t to feel better.
There are different kinds of accessibility. While I admire people with disabilities who were so dedicated in the pursuit of art, there’s more to it than pure desire.
Art takes gift. It takes a lot of time to make it into talent, skill. It commonly takes a lot of money for the courses, materials, etc. And in the modern world, not everyone can realistically have or afford all that.
When I talk of accessibility, I don’t mean “with a ton of effort, every person can technically become at least a bad artist”. I mean “everyone needs to create, yet not everyone can dedicate their life to it”.
AI art allows us to communicate our visions and ideas, which is to me the most important parts of art overall, without having to grind through art classes. This, in turn, means we can hear and see new voices, ones that previously were never heard.
Art does not take gift. The myth of the naturally talented artist needs to die because that’s never been true. It takes effort, like you said, but it does NOT take courses and classes, especially in the modern world. There’s everything you need to learn right there on the Internet and in books. You just have to try.
And that’s the thing, you used to try and know that it was fun to make stuff, but at some point you wanted to make something that looked good and didn’t have the skill for it, so you gave up instead of having fun with it anyway.
But here’s the thing you forgot: the process. When you draw, you make choices. Where to put sister and brother, there to put the sun, how many windows are in your house, etc. The choices being made while making art are where you actually get creative. That’s where the happy accidents happen or the changes you decide on. It’s where the actual express happens, between wanting the picture and having the picture.
AI eliminates that crucial step. It eliminates choice. It makes those choices for you, cribbing notes off of other people’s choices, not yours.
So no, it doesn’t communicate anyone’s voice. Ai repeats static based off of other people’s voices and choices, not yours.
It’s very sad and somewhat indicative of our society that you only care about the finished product, and not the part that actually nourishes you.
It’s absolutely true. All you have to do is spend any amount of time around someone that has never drawn before that has the talent and you’ll be just devastated at how good they are on their first attempt. Meanwhile, there are plenty of people that have been drawing for a couple decades that never have been able to make it past crude representations.
There are various levels of talent and it’s possible to maybe become a bad artist by grinding, but you cannot become a good artist with a complete lack of visual art talent. I’m not sure why visual artists are unable to see this until you tell them okay so everyone can sing and then they quickly admit. “Okay, not everybody can sing.”
Everyone can sing. Even if they sing badly that’s at least their own voice, and no one is fooled into thinking they are singing when they hit play on their phone, so why think someone’s an artist when they get a computer to make an image?
I’m telling you that “artist talent” is literally just when someone likes drawing enough they keep going even when they aren’t at the level they want to be and they practice it. Anyone can be an artist, and anyone can be a good artist, if they put in the effort to try. Even you.
Absolutely untrue If you don’t have the spark your ceiling is quite low
I have it for other arenas so I’m not making excuses, I know there are people that will never match me on those arts because they don’t have it. People are different and that’s okay but let’s not pretend everyone can do everything because that’s not really true.
If you have the ability to hold a pencil you can do art. I’m not saying everyone can do everything but art is a thing ask humans are capable of making and should be encouraged to do so with their own hands. Or feet or mouths or whatever.
That’s a well thought out response, and I appreciate it. There is certainly something important between what you want and what you end up creating, but any kind of AI art that is harder than “make an image by a simple text prompt” still has that step.
What I’m saying is, AI is not just one thing. When people hear it, they think of text prompts and automatic responses - yet I think of AI being the assistant in the creative process. You provide the vision, and AI tools help illustrate it the way you wouldn’t be able to.
Personally, painting is just something that never clicked for me. I can draw a line, an exact shape, I understand perspective and shadows, but the second it moves to “let’s draw that irregular line”, everything gets messy no matter how many hours I put into this. Back in the school years painting and choreography were two only things I failed at, because it requires a lot of intuitive behavior people never care or are never able to put into algorithm. Later, as I tried again and again, I always stumbled with the same thing - circles and squares are all fine, but how am I supposed to draw THAT? For me every break out of basic geometry feels like a good old meme about drawing a horse:
And for me, AI tools are essential to make my vision into something more complex than a stickman figure. It is still a creative process - AI gets something wrong, some ideas are physically impossible and can’t fit the composition, etc. etc. Any struggle a competent artist faces is still there.
If only you were making your vision. You are simply getting a computer to do it.
I’ve said it before, AI destroys the creative process, it doesn’t enhance it. Making the mistakes and choices are essential to you expressing yourself. Even if it’s flawed.
It’s regrettable that you only care about the end result, and feel like you’re incapable of getting where you want with your art. If you genuinely wanted to learn to draw I have suggestions on what to actually do.
Again, I’m not saying you should prompt AI to draw everything for you. There are tools that allow you to enhance the quality of your work using AI as a “make this, but properly” option. The person is still there, making the drafts.
Learning to draw again is not my current priority (focusing on other aspects of self-development at the moment), but I always appreciate the resources and revisit them once I come to it. I do not abandon the idea, and if you have resources that work well with the issue of being able to produce random shapes, I’d always welcome and appreciate them.
Except it’s not made properly. I’m not even talking about the wonky hands and bad design choices. If you didn’t make it then yeah, it’s not from you, which is the whole point.
You’re so focused on the end product you don’t care what’s being stolen from you.
You must have stopped reading halfway, because he makes your argument, too.
He acknowledges that it makes art more accessible, by removing the tedium so that artists can do the creative work.
If their “creative work” begins and ends with prompting the AI, the prompter is basically saying that all of the work of art making is tedium.
Does that not resonate with you ?
I did read it to the end, I just don’t believe it’s quite the same argument.
The Oatmeal seems to insist that while AI is helpful to eliminate the boring tasks, art is still a product of effort and struggle. They even later make an argument that these “boring, administrative” tasks might be an important part of creative process, that taking it away means taking something away from the art itself.
And AI art is not just text prompts and pictures. There are AI tools that allow you to draw basic lines and the AI will fill in and complete the hard parts, so you could male your vision come true without proper artistic skill. This is good, because not everyone can dedicate themselves to art classes, not everyone is talented enough (and I insist that talent is part of building a good skill, unlike The Oatmeal who seems to emphasize effort over gift), yet everyone wants and needs to create beauty.
To me, the main purpose of art is to communicate our vision, our thoughts, our ideas. Until recently, the ability to do so was limited by the talent, by that skill ceiling. Those who excelled were heard, those who did not were not. By assisting people with things they don’t know how to do well, we can amplify their voices and their visions, which can help us build a more active and inclusionary dialogue.
Until recently, the ability to do so was limited by the talent, by that skill ceiling. Those who excelled were heard, those who did not were not.
My dude, I have never seen someone shoot their argument in the foot so hard.
Have you seen The Oatmeal drawings?
You can put out creative effort and be successful without having to churn out a Sistine Chapel every time.
It’s not as easy as it looks, and I bet you $100 that most people wouldn’t be able to recreate this work. Comic art is a bit of a separate discipline: it looks extremely simplistic, yet it’s not.
You can put out creative effort and be successful without having to churn out a Sistine Chapel
I never said it was easy. You keep saying you read and then demonstrating that you haven’t.
I think you just want permission to use AI and get your voice “amplified” without having to put in the effort of learning how to do art of any kind.
It’s fine to want that. You don’t need permission to use AI. Do it.
But no one owes you amplification or even a positive reception when you do.
I don’t need anyone’s permission, least so from strangers on the Internet. Neither do I think someone owes me anything - your response is one of scorn, and honestly, I couldn’t care less.
But I’m arguing for why, in general, AI assistance in art is a good thing. I, for one, am an apt learner when it comes to nearly anything but painting - yet, I too have something to show and illustrate. And I’m not alone. For some people, it’s not a matter of effort but of genuine lack of abilities, and others just can’t afford spending thousands of hours learning how to draw well when all they need is to illustrate a point, or just create something beautiful for themselves and others to enjoy in the meantime.
Some artists see it as a threat, as a way to devalue their effort and contribution - but it’s not; nothing will ever replace manual art, and it will always be seen as more valuable. Also, only learning to do everything yourself can give you the ultimate control over what the outcome will be. But for people who can’t do it so well themselves, AI assistance is a good way of creative expression, of making the voices we never heard to be heard. You can, of course, plug your ears and ignore it - or you can listen. It’s up to you and your beliefs, and I’m not here policing your decisions.
I read the whole thing, and no it didn’t resonate with me. I’m not a middle manager who sees himself as a story teller. Neither am I an art afficionado.
I don’t have a visceral emptiness that overwhelms me when I learn an image that was interesting was generated by AI. It didn’t come from a talented human? Who cares? Does it help to better articulate a thought or idea than the person trying to create it could do on their own? Then it’s ok with me.
There was a very reasonable web comic that made a clear point today in the Palestine community and rather than agree with the message and see that it was much better presented as a comic, it turned into “this smells like it could be slop!” People say “oh I wish it was just MS paint or shitty ppt because at least then YOU made it” but I would have to disagree and say it can detract from the message when you turn out something that looks like shit.
There’s more to the utility of AI art than minutiae. I would be willing to entertain the argument that I don’t want to see AI art in a museum, but while I find the oatmeal’s take to be a well considered perspective, a fair bit of the blanket hatred surrounding AI art applications borders on deranged.
Its not really about the suffering, its about the journey that is unique to you that you cannot possibly share with others since you’ve never taken it, and so it reflects in the art you bring.
The thing about ai is that if it was perfect to make the image in your head appear on a screen, is that youd notice actually that the image in your head would be shit (its ok). Youd experience this if you did any art, and it takes both an artistic mind with good artistic skills to come up with an effective “medium” or “tool” “image” to transfer your idea to another human being’s mind. It takes a fluency that can’t be grasped unless you pick up one of the tools you’d use to make any art.
And the suffering part comes if you are forcing yourself do get the result you want. You can learn art without suffering, without feeling ashamed at your lack of skill if you arm yourself with patience, something that ai confirms to the audience and other people you don’t have, and so can’t possibly make any contribution to what we understand as art.
The suffering is brought on by this lack of patience about thinking HOW every stroke has to be measured and precise in like a Van Gogh’s painting (pointillism) to the pov and line art of that famous dio vs jonathan confrontation in jojo’s bizarre adventure, each form of art taking inspiration of art before it that an art enjoyer might be familiar with. But it doesn’t have to be, but it is since time in this world time is money, and less is afforded to us for every waste.
I am not shaming btw, I only learned to communicate in an adversarial way soz.
Oh, I know the struggle - it’s not that I never made any art whatsoever. What’s in the artist’s head is less of an image and more of an impression to be put into words or lines.
And I believe that, given more truly free time and less of the simple mind-eating distractions, much more people would embark on an artistic journey, even in the age of AI. It’s just a very human thing to do.
But while we’re at it, we have what we have, and sometimes having a medium to express yourself right now is better than only having hope to get the tools you need.
My even shorter review:
I always found this such a silly argument. Imagine eating a pizza and thoroughly enjoying it but changing your perception of taste willingly depending on how it was made. It’s admitting you are judging art based on everything except the actual piece, which sounds the opposite of what art is about.
It’s like in olden times when they judged a piece depending on the artists birth and status.
Not to say there isn’t a lot of slop out there that definitely belongs in the dumpster, but it’s hard to take someone seriously when they judge all of it broadly on this kind of basis.
For me, art is in the eye of the beholder (so like his initial emotional reaction, and like what I understand your point to be).
But there are also aspects that are a bit more innate to the art itself. It’s sort of like a conversation, for me; if I see a piece of art I think is beautiful, and I’ve felt something emotional in response to it, I start to try and understand what the artist was trying to say through the work, what story they might be trying to tell, who they might be. It’s a connection. They might be expressing their emotions, thoughts, or experiences, and I might be empathising with another human going through that. There’s a level of trust from my side that they’ve put in effort and are being genuine.
If I find out it’s AI art… Well, there’s no conversation there, is there? Nobody made that picture. Nobody is communicating anything. Nobody is considering how a viewer might feel. Nobody has created anything. A machine has, unfeelingly, mashed a bunch of actual art together, and now the result is in front of me. If I know beforehand, I won’t bother looking. If I’ve felt emotions, I’ve been lied to and will look away.
You can feel differently, of course. I’m just explaining how I feel about art. I don’t enjoy being lied to.
It’s a fair point. When I think about it, I come to the conclusion that at first I both consume them the same way, as pictures on a screen. So they start at both the same baseline (my immediate enjoyment) and learning something was done in a more complicated method or has a deeper meaning just adds to that baseline, but it to never will go down for the opposite.
I attribute more value to human made art, just like how I attribute more value to hand painted pieces compared to digital ones. I just don’t change my opinion towards the negative.
I also think there’s an error when assuming something can’t communicate because it was made partly or completely with AI. The GoP uses it to communicate hate for instance, that part mostly transcends the medium imo (even if again, the medium can add to it at times). I see AI as a tool, I don’t see it as the AI creating the piece.
Obviously, 3/4 of the scene is smut so it’s not like much high level communication is going on most times though lol. I’m selective in what I actually consider art, I wouldn’t call most outputs art just to be clear (or what the GOP is doing for that matter).
Interesting! I understand your first point, about not devaluing the art from your baseline of enjoyment just because it’s not human-made – I don’t agree, but that’s just a personal opinion of mine, and I can totally see what you’re saying.
Your point about the American Republican party using AI images to communicate (or create) anger is really interesting to me. I was thinking after writing my reply that, despite my feelings about generative AI, I ultimately don’t care if AI imagery is used in advertising because adverts are not genuine conversations anyway.
I feel similarly about the Republican party, or any political party from any country, using AI imagery as propaganda.
Propaganda, to me, is an intentionally dishonest and manipulative communication. That’s not a criticism of propaganda; advertising is dishonest and manipulative too. A prosecutor’s closing arguments may “spin” the truth and intend to manipulate a jury. Dishonesty and manipulation aren’t “bad” to me, per se, on their own - it’s what the intention behind the dishonesty and manipulation is that makes those things bad, or neutral, or good.
When I see adverts, or political propaganda, I don’t even begin to establish that “trust” or “connection” I mentioned in my first reply, because I know it’s not a genuine communication. Similarly to if I open a spam email and it contains a sob story about a family that needs money - I know it’s bullshit, so I don’t feel bad for them.
I think you hit the nail on the head when you called it a tool. Part of me feels that for something to be “art”, the kind we’re (I’m) talking about at the moment, it can’t have a utility like a tool would. I’m not sure if I really believe that but it’s certainly a distinction that feels natural to me without thinking.
Sorry mate, this was mega rambly 😂
Cool if the context doesn’t matter I’ll sell you a replica of the state of David for the price of the original!
Alright let me make an analog for this - Because context does absolutely matter.
You are buying shoes. (… And have probably already made the connection)
You find a dooooope pair of sneaks. The colors, the lines, the fit. Perfect.
Then you find out your sneakers were made by Ari in a town that has no running water, people shit in ditches, and the median income of a family of 4 buys enough rice to feed 3 people. And then there’s Ari. Ari is 7 and has been working for 2 years already.
How those kicks looking? Do they envoke the same joy?
That’s an unhinged analogy soaked in emotion. Whatever point you are trying to make, it has nothing to do with the one I’m talking about in the comment.
Unhinged how? Its not far from the truth for some industries and could have been equally ugly not using child labor. The point was to highlight how one might have a different feeling about the same product when it has context. I figured that was clear enough but perhaps I was mistaken, lol.
It’s emotional exaggeration the moment you try to compare it to a child imo.
My pizza analogy was spot on, if you want, you can talk about the pizza factory using a lot of energy, then I could explain how the energy grid is at fault. I could explain how one pizza factory services millions at the same time so the impact is actually very small compared to real climate change drivers like cars, planes and shipping boats. There would be place to mention how AI is actually using energy that wasn’t necessarily expected and it’s worsening the grid which was already shit to begin with and making transition to green energy more difficult.
But you just went hardcore “think of the children” to try and frame AI as the greatest evil. Republican type tactics tbh.
What’s funny is no one gives a fuck where their shoes come from but they have been trained to care really really hard about the big bad AI.
I quickly provided a story that would effectively answer the question. It seems to have accomplished its goal: like it or not part of human condition is applying value to things based on human weights such as empathy and pride. Absolutely unhinged idea, I’m aware.
Don’t want children and a semi-fabricated story? Not a problem: let’s talk about a product - an iPhone. Its a fine product and people seem to like it. Some of those same people stopped enjoying that same product when they found out that it was, in part, made by foxcon. The company with literal nets around their roofs because their workers really loved their situation.
There are dozens of examples. I’m sorry you were set off by such a simple story… But frankly - as I already mentioned - that means the analog did it’s job. It invoked feelings which, last I checked, we use when assigning value to things.
If you want to strawman something out of the fact I used child labor in the example… Go burn that effigy elsewhere.
Pizza tastes better, even retroactively, if you find out someone you love made it for you.
I went over this in an other comment a bit.
Real painting > digital painting > AI
I associate more value depending on skill level. All I’m saying is: if the pizza only taste like shit once you hear the opposite, the bad taste is in your head.
I do get that having the feeling one way leaves place to having the same type of feeling the other way. I guess it feels different though, hard to explain. It’s a valid sentiment in the end, it just feels a bit petty from my viewpoint.
Well, as a human I’ve got plenty of biases, some of them petty I suppose.
Maybe it’s a the curtains are blue situation? Like we attribute all this meaning to art, and we get to guess at whether we’re right, or whether the artist wanted us to be drawn to specific components. We understand that art often has symbolism and that it’s meant to be evocative.
But with AI art, there’s none of that. Whatever meaning I attribute is purely projection - which is often true in regular art too, except that I have a social contract with the artist that we both agree we want me to look at this art and have feelings, whatever they may be. A social contact with a computer isn’t real and feels disingenuous.
I think petty is the wrong word to use in this case and it doesn’t really apply. It’s a bit harsh.
I think it’s your last paragraph that I struggle with. It’s like if someone was saying the same about Photoshop, how in the end, it’s a computer that is doing all the work and the software can’t convey any messages.
This is true for a lot of AI work. 90% of it is slop with little though behind composition or anything of the kind. The last 10% does have someone behind it trying to convey a message, but most are ignoring him and listening solely to the medium.
I also think it’s fine to have bias, and it’s a part of the process, but a lot of people are trying to redefine what art is to fit that bias.
It would be fine if people were saying “this is art I don’t like because of the ethics of it” but most are saying things like “this is bad Art” or even worse, “this isn’t art at all” in broad strokes without actually trying to understand it.
Same. Art is in the eye of the beholder. I for example find Pollock just shit but there are those that pay actual money to see what a baby elephant could’ve made. All that modern art is talentless shit to me. But there are people out there who will vehemently defend it. There people out there who will pay money to go to a talentless art museum and come out feeling smug that they could recognise a piece made by some person who just had the luck to know the right people.
We all have our opinions about art, but they are just that, opinions. People will continue to throw shit at a wall or use period blood to drip onto a canvas and attach some grand message to it in order to call it art, and people will just generate a prompt and paste it into an AI art generator then share whatever looks pleasing to them.
Art is in the eye of the beholder but ai shit is not art… It is just tech corporate spam clogging up the internet.
AI art is the Tostino’s pizza of art.
it looks like pizza, but it doesn’t really taste like pizza, and not a single human touched it
Except you can’t tell, because it taste the same (as he clearly admits by saying his enjoyment only changes once he learns it’s AI).
It’s basically willingly entertaining and reinforcing your own placebos.
If it tastes the same to you, your taste glands are dead.
The artist of the piece im commenting on said it tasted the same.
There’s a websites where you can guess if random artwork is AI or not, I invite you to test your own skill. It has become very hard to tell for a while now.
Even if the cartoonist says it; I’m not endorsing a dumb opinion.
The whole conversation is about seeing an image where you don’t notice it’s AI, and then changing your opinion after when you learn it is.
No need to lash out if you misunderstood.
Listening to music and finding out it was made by ai ruins my experience because i imagine the greasy lazy thief behind the grift. I want my music by real musicians with a personal connection to their craft, not a good for nothing trying to make a quick mindless buck, but in any case i have never heard ai music i personally liked it is usually all incredibly bland and lacking personality.
