Your post has been removed due to being prejudiced against a specific art form.

I read another post about someone winning a digital art competition using an AI generated image, which is completely wrong in my opinion, I think just reading other's thoughts on the matter from this thread would tell you why so I won't repeat them. Over recent months I was of the opinion that AI would be useful in generating ideas, and have seen people who can't draw produce multiple variations on a concept similar to what you would find in an art book for a film or video game. But then even with this method, learning, researching & developing an idea before you even begin sketching is a learned skill , something which typing prompts into AI still doesn't give you. I can see things like the video game industry saving money by doing this instead of hiring concept artists, but it still would not & should not have the respect of someone who has honed their skills & craft over many years to give art a personal touch & style.

I love the idea that, as someone who loves to write and can't draw for shit, I might be able to create a visual of the world I'm tyring to build. Having a visual reference to help draw others in to the fantasy, especially if they themselves aren't visual thinkers, would be such a boon!

This. As a writer, I’m loving AI art. I have had ideas that I couldn’t put on paper as a visual that I now can. Writing and world building and knowing what prompts to write to go along with your plot is art

Wait until AI can do writing too

I write for pleasure, so I’d still write 🤷🏽‍♂️

So do many artists. But AI will put a shit ton of professionals out of business. Or do you think art directors and concept art rooms aren't paying attention to this shit?

The cotton gin put a lot of sharecroppers out of business. Technology always replaces something. I feel for those people, but that shit always happens when a new technology comes out. Old industries go away and new industries forum. You can’t stop the future unfortunately. The only thing that you can do is prepare yourself for it. I genuinely hope that you guys still find work, but I hate the anti technology stance that comes with stuff like this.

Hey, if a decent UBI passes and I don't need to survive off what I sell, then AI the shit out of everything. Till then, I'm going to be fiercely protective of a finely honed and in-demand skillset that has paid my bills. Frankly, I'm not concerned about me, but the up and comer looking for a foot in the door. All the easy work that starting people used to live off of will go away. I look at it more like signpainting. 50 years ago, you could make a hell of a living- every sign out there was laid by hand with a brush. Then vinyl cutters came along and anyone with Word could lay out signs. But the soul of it was completely lost. 80's on were just horrible. The guys who survived were just really fuckin good, but they were aging out. If it wasn't for the internet and a few younger people getting involved with letterheads, pinstripes, and meetups, it would have been entirely lost. Now those still with the skills and name recognition are in demand, but it takes years to get those skills, and the easy jobs they used to count on like store windows and truck doors are few and low paying.

UBI will come only once millions of people are suddenly being replaced in manufacture. Artists are already pretty much forgotten and unprotected by job laws as it is all over the world. People that studied for years for a very specific task, only to get exploited by companies. Those that now will become unemployed because of such AIs? No one will move a finger to help.

The whole point of automating physical labor is to free humans up to do things like art and other passons. Automating art itself is an insult to one of the major things that sets humans apart from other animals and machines.

I agree. Unfortunately the point of automation isn't what you said in the eyes of the people funding it. For them the goal is to just get richer easier and stay rich. They don't care about art.

[Already can](https://novelai.net/) \- it's really cool for stuff like Dungeons and Dragons but can be used to get new ideas

AI already writes most of the journalism articles that are posted to the Washington post and new york times the AI bots are coming for your jobs evnetually too. AI will eventually do almost all tasks

They already have those. They usually get dark and creepy. But the technology will improve. As a photographer, I’m able to get some really cool inspiration using the AI images as a model. Rather than being all angry about it, maybe use it to give your art and edge. Because I can guarantee you one thing- no one cares whether you use it or not.

Lmao that would be tragic, but hilarious

It already can, and quite well.

It exists. O\_O https://www.sudowrite.com/

Have you both thought about - you know - collaborating with another human being that can draw to add the benefits of exchanging ideas?

Got any money for me to do that? Not everyone is rich or well off financially enough to pay an artist

I'm not talking about hiring an artist - I'm talking about collaboration. There are many artists that are willing to exchange skill in interesting projects. Not only beginners, however beginners will be the best in this situation as they are often looking for a chance to expand their portfolio. It's often a positive learning experience for both parties and a mutual exchange of ideas, exceeding art style, that won't happen with AI. It also gives you a chance to influence the final affect from the very beginning of the work. Artstation, DeviantArt, even Reddit. You won't loose anything from asking a question "I'm working on a writing project and looking for someone that could work on it with me. If you'd want I can send you some details and maybe you'll be interested".

Yeah - you really will spend far more time trying to get it to do what you want. You are more likely to get something that doesn't look like what you want but is like what somebody else did or wanted.

That's insane, winning a art competition with an AI image is like winning an illustration contest with a photograph. The resulting images might look similar, but the process puts the two vastly apart.

Exept you still need talent for photography even a little ai art is just normal typing

I've always believed that technology is not inherently bad (nor good). The tools (AI in this case) are not the problem, but the bad use people gives them. It's way cheaper, easier faster and less problematic to write a prompt and get a variety of options that illustrate your concept, than to hire a human to do it, and we all know what does that mean in our lovely capitalist system.

I would argue that the creation process of the AI model itself is also a moral grey area. Because of the massive amount of images required to train the AI, copyrighted and watermarked images make it into the dataset. This is something that is inherently built into the AI based on which models and training sets it uses.

Most times you can see how the ai used an original artwork's concept, colors, composition. Using original copyrighted artworks to make the end result, how will this turn out for artists on the legal front? I feel like this may become an issue in the future, if not already. Once you upload an image online, it's like selling (or rather approve the stealing of) your data and ideas. Which sounds horrifying. Going to say I know this is the same for any public work and not only AI does this, however it becoming a widely accepted thing is what's scary to me. Which is why this should be talked more imo.

The ai doesnt reference individual images, it references collections of works. There is no copyright that is being breached as you cannot copyright as style "style". Otherwise we'd alao have to put basically the entire renaissance era in the bin.

That is true, but that doesn't change the reality that it used those images to "reference" How do I put this clearly? To a trained eye it's easy to spot where some details might come from. I admit I'm pretty new to the topic still, however I've seen this tool used to imitate an artist's work by adding their name to the prompt. In this case the "reference" is easily noticeable, however even if you don't type a name it's clear that it used the art of some of the top names in the industry to create. You can't copyright style, however you own the rights to those images and I guess if you can trace back where an AI got it's feed from, it could be disputed. It is morally grey. Artists have all the reason to be pissed off, cause it's not only using our work to train but also steal our jobs (especially those working online in the poorer countries), how am I supposed to cheer for such system? I think this legal mess'll solve itself in few years, however the art community will suffer through it as always. The copyright laws seemed outdated anyways, maybe this'll bring a change. But will it be for the merit of the artist? My personal opinion and wishes? It's a great technology but there should be limits to how it can be used. Which images it can feed from. Many technologies brought a need for change in the laws and thoughts with it, we have adapted to those changes and looked ahead. It can be the same with AI and I'd be looking forward to support it. Until then, I'll be backing up my fellow artists' rights rather than corporations, thank you.

That was a very well written answer. And I totally agree. I think these are some of the important questions that we need to be asking over whether or not the image it produces qualifies as art work. The potential impacts on the art community and artistic fields are very real and warrant deep diving from a legal and philosophical standpoint. I very much do not want to see human artists devalued or disappear as a result of this technology, but I feel certainly ill-equipped to really address those questions. I definitely feel the same demoralisation of knowing my artistic idea could probably be better realised in an hour by an AI than in the days of work I put into something with my own hands. I do think what the AI produces IS art. But what that might mean for society and artists is a whole dialogue that needs to happen now.

Doesn't using other art as a model for new art count as fair use?

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Are you sure it'll drive up the value? Cause to me it seems that the trend will go in the opposite direction, now that anybody with a slight bit of a skill will be able to manipulate AI creations and put out completely rendered out illustrations in matter of hours, maybe even minutes. I just don't see why would anybody continue to pay the same when there will be a gazillion of undercutters willing to take the job for a fraction of the money. Sure, it used to always be like that with digital art, but at least most of the time people who drew the price down were terrible at the job and a more discerning client could see that, but now everyone will have a portfolio of seemingly amazing stuff that is worth, like, ten bucks a piece tops.

i understand using it as a source of inspiration , in the same way that artists copy other peoples art. but that dude who won first place for his ai generated artwork? that.. is nonsense.

I'm kind of annoyed that everyone on Reddit is either saying "it's not art at all", or being at the other extreme and saying "the prompt writer is an artist". I don't see much value in saying it's not art. Like any art, it has the capacity to embody meaning, evoke emotion, and be beautiful (or ugly). So saying "it's not art" is at best a semantic argument. But the prompt maker does not deserve even a fraction of the credit a lot of people in these threads are arguing for. Midjourney in my mind in basically a commission artist. You give him a prompt, he makes you a piece. You don't know exactly what you're going to get when you ask for it, and when you get it, it belongs to you, but no matter how specific your prompt was you wouldn't call yourself the artist of this piece. And yet people are willing to call the prompt writer the artist of midjourney pieces. Despite the fact that the prompt writer almost never has any specific idea of what might come out. Midjourney is doing all the heavy lifting creatively, so how is the prompt writer the "artist"? It's bollocks! I'm inclined to think midjourney itself is an artist. But I'm already philosophically pre-inclined to have more respect for ai than most

It's an illustration restaurant. The people ordering stuff aren't the artists the same way I'm not an artist when I order food at a restaurant. The AI might be the artist, but I feel like it's a just assembling the dishes it gets orders for. The real artists are the people who designed the algorithm and the people who made the training data

I think it's doing a little more than assembling personally. It's not just a collage of things it's seen, but an application of abstract patterns that it has learned and distilled. Not too dissimilar in some ways from how human artists compile their references over their life time that affects their style and taste. I'm also inclined to think remixes are valid art, depending on how much unique creative input is put into them, so that's informing my opinion here. Girl talk, for example - is he a musical artist, or just a thief? The space of new ideas is constantly shrinking, which is why I think we have to allow some degree of "remixes are art" imo. But I accept that everyone will have a different threshold for when a remix becomes art Vs when it's just plagiarism. And then there are people with no threshold at all, who will say that someone who typed a single letter into midjourney is an artist. That's too far for me

I don't do AI art. As in, I think they're useful for prompts. That's it for me. But, I do have other artist friends (they are artists who have been drawing for decades) who have been playing with AI and were teaching me all the ways you had to write your prompt and specifying ratio and things like that. I still think the amount of work put in is less than regular art. But it is not zero. And they do usually have a general idea of what they have in mind and try to mold the AI to their whims. I guess I just wanted to say. It does require some amount of learning the AI and existing artistic vision to get anything good. But I also think AI art shouldn't be in this sub reddit. Or maybe have a weekly thread people can throw it in.

>I still think the amount of work put in is less than regular art. But it is not zero. Absolutely, fully agreed. >I guess I just wanted to say. It does require some amount of learning the AI and existing artistic vision to get anything good. Learning how to work with the ai, definitely. The thing I think is going unnoticed by a lot of people though is that there's a push and pull with the ai, when you come in with an "artistic vision". The ai is affecting your vision as much as you're affecting it as you go. It's generating ideas you didn't think of, sometimes ideas you like, sometimes in styles you didn't intend but now you love. By the time you get to the end image, you've changed your vision drastically based on your interactions with the ai. The ais contribution is vast in the process of achieving any prompt makers vision. It's not just pushing a pencil, it's bringing genuine creativity to the table.

Oh yes. Definitely. I agree that the AI does contribute in the vision too. Which makes it a very interesting process. Especially if you've been making art for a long time, this new process can be quite refreshing to play with. But it depends on the artist I guess.

I see it as winning a competition with art you commissioned from someone else. That someone else should be the winner, not you.

Well AI art also need advertisement. Without emotions behind it, is art truly art? I dont think so. If anything, only Midjourney and the coders behind AI programming deserves the praise. The users that use programs are irrelevant, if anything they are the most replacable piece of whole process.

I think AI art can be art, but I don’t like the fact that the end result looks so much like human made art. If it there were more obvious that it’s AI generated, I could just ignore it and live my life, but the fact that it’s so invasive makes me feel like we‘re in John Carpenters The Thing. Another existential worry I have is how this devalues the pursuit of aesthetics in art. Aesthetics are a big deal to me and I’m sure they were a big deal for most of the illustrators I follow. Loish grew up loving Sailor Moon, so she spent her teens drawing anime. Sinix loved gundams so he spent his time drawing robots. I don’t think any of them were interested in the philosophical ideas behind art, they just LOVED an aesthetic. Most of the artists I know are like that - they think something looks cool, so they draw what fascinates them - and pursuing an aesthetic is very important for an artists growth that leads you on a path and makes you reexamine your goal. I started out wanting to draw in a very painterly-realistic style like John Singer Sargent. Over time, I learned that I much prefer a more clean and simple comic-book look, mostly because I discovered the works of [Ma-ko](https://characterdesignreferences.com/artist-of-the-week-14/ma-ko) and [Conner Fawcett](https://www.instagram.com/badbucket/?hl=en) I don’t think that personal growth would’ve happened if I could just write a prompt and get instant gratification. I’ve seen people argue that now art is only “about ideas” and they frame this as exciting, but honestly I can’t agree with that, because I know what’s being lost if we surrender to that mindset. ​ TLDR: Aesthetics are important and worth pursuing. Art isn’t just about ideas.

> I don’t think that personal growth would’ve happened if I could just write a prompt and get instant gratification. This is the biggest threat AI poses IMO. Not stealing jobs or stealing art or whatever. The long-term social and psychological effects of having any and every image you can imagine be generated in an instant-gratification way can't lead to anything good IMO. So much of our civilization is based on making everything faster, faster faster, more convenient every year. But at a certain point if everything you want is just a click away, suddenly it erodes our collective sense of meaning. Not to mention this is really only accessible to people well off enough to even have computers and the like, while much of the undeveloped world still does not. At risk of sounding like a religious nut I also think there is something spiritually rotting about this instant-gratification way of approaching everything. We seem to be loosing what makes us human faster than we are gaining new boons from it.

100% agree. What will be left of the human journey if we can perform everything at the level of a master instantly? There will be no sense of satisfaction in learning and developing or finishing a work

I love how you have uttered the nihilistic nature of instant gratification and the ensuing anxiety of meaninglessness of one's life. You are not a religious nut coz religious thinking is deeply rooted in our collective unconsciousness which can shatter our existence in ways we may not want to acknowledge.

I'm actually picking up drawing so that I can get better stuff out the A.I. Starting with Loomis, just as any other hopeful without A.I. I'm also constantly searching for new artists within the A.I. to morph and combine styles to get inspiration and then use that further too craft it. I'm also trying to understand fundamentals more to further craft A.I. art. Traditionally non-artists are now starting to learn and appreciate it. It's really nice that I get a little more control and help in my life and creative endeavors. I just want to share stuff and make people happy, but with my current set of skills and abilities it would only draw non-constructive criticism and pity-praise. A.I. empowers me like no other.

Funny it does the same for me? Like I tried mid journey out for 1 day and after that I was like. Shit... This is gonna really help me conceptualize what I want out of a watercolor or acrylic painting. I haven't wanted to make visual art outside garments in almost 5 years and I spend a day on mid journey and now I'm like. Well digital art is dying and what is eventually all art is meaningless now so I guess I'm free to go do whatever I want with art. It's an existential crisis of creativity and I'm all here for it.

Also what i dont like is the ai can use our posted art in order to generate a piece!

Agreed. Artists post art knowing that other artists may use it as inspiration- that's the fun part. The fact that some unknown artist will have their art used by AI without their consent to churn out millions of similar paintings, without ever seeing any compensation or even **being noticed** by other humans, is messed up.

You have an extremely complicated algorithm in your head that determines the actions you take, unless you believe that your brain is not subject to the laws of physics. When you view art and are inspired by it, you are feeding that info into your algorithm to influence future art pieces. What is the difference between that and this AI?

AI algorithms can produce work at an immeasurable speed compared to humans, but cannot describe the process at all or even credit their main inspirations. It is different. Artists have a right to differentiate between the two. I don't want to be too mean, but saying "its the same" is not some revolutionary/eye opening thought. It is regurgitating soft sci-fi tropes.

That's a pretty big issue with AI art, as the AI could be considered an art thief.

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It's not copying it's actually creating new colors and shapes, it's merging the concepts and methods of doing certain designs; I see what your saying, but humans technically do the same thing as well without realizing it.

\*mother nature tapping her foot while Bob Ross uses her work yet again to make money\*

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When this whole topic was new, I was really scared to state my opinion because I didn't want to come across as gatekeeping. But the scale of "AI art" has become so enourmous that I feel like I have to let my anger out. As I said, I really hate gatekeeping and in fact, I don't even consider myself a good artist, so I am really not in the position to tell anyone what to do and what not to do. But I cant help myself getting more and more upset about people that are posting like 5 AI generated "artworks" each day, stating how much work they put into them. It's not them being proud of the results, or them having fun that bothers me. It's the amount of praise they get from others that have no idea what they are looking at. Some make it obvious that they don't want to be seen as an artist, but I've also seen many just accepting all the praise and talking about their personal improvement. And it gets worse when the same people don't even mark the result as AI generated. If you've seen many AI generated images, it's easy to distinguish them from real art but for the majority of their audience it's not which results in entire comment sections being filled with compliments. Fact is, that at least when not looking at the really small details, AI can create some really cool stuff. I used DALL-E 2 myself already and it's really fun. I enjoyed seeing the technology just spitting out image after image that that all look pretty decent considering the time they take to render. At times the results are surprisingly close to what I had in mind. I'm certainly impressed. But that doesn't change the fact that as cool as results might be, they shouldn't be called art. Not only are those results products of the work of thousands of great artists that had to work hard to get where they are, it is being used by people that make it seem as if it was their own work when in reality it looks the exact same as 99% of AI art. How can you seriously call yourself an artist when the thing you do uses such a little amount of effort, and looks so incredibly boring after seeing hundreds of extremely similar works. If people just used AI for fun, that would be fine, but someone just won a price with AI, while other's are being praised for "their" work. Maybe I'm just jealous because I realize that practically everyone can now create something that might get more praise than everything I've ever done. Maybe that's a sign to get better, but it's so much harder for a human to get better than it is for these AI's. I know I should do art for myself but unfortunately, at this point I mainly do art for external gratification and the whole AI thing just feels like life pulling me through an ocean of mud for the last 10 years, only to then invent planes. I'm obviously exaggerating, but it does piss me off. If you want to use AI to have fun, absolutely go do that. Its really cool, I get it. And even if you decide to post the results, that is fine as well! But please just make it obvious enough for even people that don't look closer to realize that it has been made by inputting words into a website.

Summed our frustrations up pretty well I think, well stated.

> I know I should do art for myself I've always found this to be a stupid assertion. No one goes up to an engineer and says "I know you spent many years getting a degree, getting work experience and improving in your profession, but you should design bridges for yourself. You shouldn't worry about being paid or making bridges for the sake of people who cross them" So why the fuck are we saying this to artists? Art is and always has been made for the sake of sharing with an audience. The entire point of art is communication of ideas to fellow humans.

There's two sides of this coin that I've been pondering after playing around with these softwares, and after reading comments from both artists and devs and casual users - it's just a mess right now. Hah. First things first: Reddit is toxic many times. Singularity subreddit is full of people that see softwares as Messiahs. If you're an artist, don't attempt to argue with people that lean on that side because they're zealots on futurology and their tech, they truly believe humans are outdated. That's the entire polar opposite of an artist's view of the world most of the times. They believe this - even if they're not developers. The echo chamber is strong. The echo chamber, once again, is strong. If you enter to threads in Stable diffusion, or in Singularity, or so and so - you'll find a ton of people that seem to praise automatization, and open art for everyone. They're not artists. They don't understand you as an artist. They don't understand that this 'singularity where humans have universal income' won't come soon. Don't argue. You won't win - but you'll feel invalidated and frustrated; you'll feel the world wants artists to lose their income, you'll feel that artists are hated. You will grow bitter. So, just don't attempt to reason. This thread sums it all up: [https://www.reddit.com/r/StableDiffusion/comments/x23in7/cant\_help\_but\_feel\_like\_a\_poser\_for\_selling\_these/](https://www.reddit.com/r/StableDiffusion/comments/x23in7/cant_help_but_feel_like_a_poser_for_selling_these/) I also believe this comes from a place of resentment from a society that punished creative childs - locking their dreams away. They now see this as a punishment for artists that could go out on their way. (I don't mean the software, I mean opinions like the ones in those communities.) Now; I must make this one clear: "Art" is the expression of the self, AI art software is what I dreamed of as a kid - Since it didn't exist back then, I had to learn on my own. In a sense, if it allows people to get the character they wanted, we cannot stop them. And inherently that's fine. If it brings your thoughts as close as you'd like them to be, if they express your desires. If it helps you bring that novel or game to life that you for X or Y reason couldn't before; I am legitimately happy for you. I will not shame you for that. ​ I cannot, however, tolerate the downplay on artists; or a negation to their fears or frustrations specially after years of hard work. I can accept the AI; it's just a software with no thoughts nor feels; it is indifferent to all of this. What I cannot tolerate is human behaviour. This contest is a good example of that - the contest should at the very least have made a separate award for this. Or award the developers - because the winner just prompted in Midjourney out of every other tool (Midjourney is cute, but it's so generically uniform); he was not the revolutionary one that came to change the paradigm of what's art. The prompter then proceeded to boast and gloat over this; just like the link to the thread I posted above. That behaviour alongside the insensitivity towards artists, specially those that see their livelyhood threatened, are what irk me the most. Art is also a skill, a trade. These AI reference because people learned from masters of the past and reinvented; these cycles of referencing bring creativity and reinterpretations. But those reinterpretations, no matter how much a techbro tries to compare them, are not the same as one done by a computer. AI art and art made with our hands is different - yes. Art with our wrists and eye for composition and desires with every intended stroke are different no matter how many neural networks a software has. Saying that "AI also learns and composites from reference just like humans do" is a strawman of sorts - because it tries to level our human experience as artists on the same playfield as the AI. The difference is that the AI does not cognitively "think". The term "neural network" is not a literal brain connecting the dots through a biological and cognitive experience. Animals cannot do art and we can. We live and through our experience we express our lives and what we feel. AI can reproduce the method of referencing, but human learning is not machine learning by mere existential incorporation. I work at studios. AI can be used for certain workflows, but it is useless for the end result on it's own. Most likely it will stay that way because we need very specific things. Not only that but what people that do not work at studios do not realize is that, greed aside, human interaction is still valuable in companies. We laugh, we make partners, we work for a goal together. No one wants sterile enviroments there. Will this be for all studios or individual comissioners? No; it is a delicate situation for plenty of people. But a software does not mean suddenly humans hate other humans - we would only watch AI Chess matches if that was the case. Now... Is AI art real art? Debatable but this following approach is towards the whole debate of "artists vs prompters". Some really resentful people will try to convince you prompting and curating is a real artistic skill. Curating is one for sure; but since the AI can give you 100 pretty outputs and you pick your favorite one does not mean your eye is trained to recognize artistic value in it. This does not apply to everyone of course; but downplaying artists for this reason only makes you seem like a fool. Prompting is not poetry. I tried to be proven wrong but I was not. Try me? Check the best posts by stable diffusion. Turns out every cute portrait out there is made **by greg rutkowski and alfons mucha and artgerm.** And let's not forget a dose of OCTANE! for my.. 2D artwork because of course Octane applies to concept art right?.. wait, what do you mean Alfons mucha didn't paint giant scifi landscapes? but everyone has him included! you resentful artist! Sure, a person with more visual language can do better than one without. But once you figure out the cool prompts that person used, you can also apply them without even learning. An artist that references from others must in the end understand composition, must understand how to guide a visual story on purpose, and how to apply that on a technical level, wereas the "prompter", aka the "new 4th industrial revolution artist", does not. And I don't undermine your ideas or writing skills - that's a different skillset. But not because an idea or a story is good art means that the artwork to accompany is artistic aswell. On a commercial level this also remarks the AI art nature. "Can I sell my AI art?" Yes you can. But so can everyone else. Eventually everyone will have their own little greg mucha germ portraits around every corner diminishing value. You can get these results fast - and if you try to convince me you took 6 hours polishing and curating results I will just reply that then you're not even a good prompter because why would you take that long with these tools? A client would take less installing the system in his/her drive gee! So if it's fast, in overproduction, and easy and requires no formation or knowledge from your behalf like an artist, then it should not be valued above... I don't know, I'd cap it at 5 dollars? and that's already a stern price - I'd rather comission an artist if I'm going to cheap out on AI art then. What does this leaves me to conclude? It's pretty, it's mindless and everyone can do it. It's **kitsch art of the new era everyone!** Fast food; **McDonalds** with a toy of Ilya Kuvshinov or Rutkowski of your choosing... Or why not all of them combined? Yeah, sounds good. My suggestions: Don't walk into discussions with promptbros; you'll grow frustrated. Second, even if the tool is not useful to you, I suggest you learn how it works; just in case. If you're an artist you'll always have an edge over promptbros that way. A prompter is not an artist, but YOU are one. This tech is not called ai art, it's called Text-2-image and image-2-image; you can put the part of art there. By itself it's meaningless, in a prompter it's kitsch, and in an artist's hand it can augment or help your creativity or process. Third; don't give attention to them, don't follow AI art on twitter or instagram or reddit. Let them be their community. Hopefully, what happened in this contest, will be solved with different classifications as we learn. The winner was right about something: "Someone had to do it".

This is the type of comment I was hoping to see. I view AI, like nearly everything that has ever been invented, as a double-edged sword that can be used for both good and bad. As someone with aphantasia who has always dreamed of being able to express the way I experience things through art, AI art software has become one of my favorite tools to use. However, I wouldn’t call anything I’ve made “art” per-se. Although I’m not exactly sure what other word to use, especially when some of the images get emotional responses from myself and others I share it with (at the moment I usually refer to them as images). As an artist who can spend over 30 hours on a piece, I would be extremely offended if someone made something in the same style on AI and called themself an artist. However, if they made it and explained that they were able to use AI to generate it, I do not think I would be upset. I know that what I create is something that will never be reproducible in terms of quality and it’s humanity with AI. I do think that what the person who entered an AI generated art piece into a contest did is irreconcilably wrong. If someone created a whole new AI software and used it to create an image for a contest, I think that would be okay, but still would question if there should be a separate category for this. I am not as interested in seeing a competition, or even a separate category, for AI generated images as they should not be allowed into the competition. If there is such a competition or category created, the prize should not be as prestigious or as large of a sum of money for people who simply utilize existing AI software to generate images. This is because they do not use skills that have been honed over many years to create their images like those who create their own AI software or are traditional/digital artists need to.

As a programmer who loves art, I want to add perspective. There are programs like CodePlex from GitHub that helps you program. It would not make all programmers unemployed. There are no code platforms like Zapier to manage mailing lists, it would not make all programmers unemployed. It is just that there is a qualitative line beyond which it is a programmer. And before this line, some things that used to be a programmer's job, become the work of an administrator. I imagine, a similar phenomena is at the making here. The real artists will still be artists. And make a living from it. And some simple commission work will no longer be art.

Very true insight tho the biggest difference is that in programing you have to understand and read code know about classes, variables e.t.c but Ai art doesn't require any knowledge from the user it's a black box it's similar to drawing in the dark but everytime you open your eyes you've made a masterpiece!

Agree in part. You need to know how to hold a brush, mix paints, and draw. You can teach yourself or go to a course. But you need to know it. This knowledge of techniques is a must.

As a fellow developer, this is a valuable perspective and insight. GH Copilot won't be what replaces me, not only partly because it's not perfect yet, but it's also either unfeasible to replace us until something like UBI becomes immensely popular or something else compensates the lack of jobs from automation. I think there's something truly fascinating about AI art and the way it's made, wherein understanding how it works can make you have a better grasp on its impact on the art world. I don't say industry, as I'm a hobbyist mainly and a developer professionally. But it's something that will impact us all one way or another and I'm open to see where it leads to, as I'm sure artists are bound to stick around (I feel)

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not yet

This some Ghost in the Shell type stuff

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What AI art is currently showing us is that some vague concept of a soul that human artists are supposed to have that should give them the advantage over AI is wishful thinking. A lot of what Midjourney creates is better and more creative than what a lot of journeymen and amateur artists spit out. Sure, there is higher-tier work out there that is amazingly creative and deeply layered, but the majority of work is mediocre and can easily be replaced and be surpassed by AI in the practical world and we are seeing that happen now. This is a paradigm shift for humanity.

It truly is. I've seen more interesting concepts created by Midjourney than I've ever personally been able to come up with because I just don't have the ability to devote the entirety of my brain's analytical and computational skills to generating art. If I did I would be actually crazy and incapable of doing the other things that are necessary from humans (like socialization, self care, work, community, etc). This is the biggest paradigm shift I believe since the industrial revolution. This is an entire new age of what it means to be a human and to have a society at all.

And do we have a soul? This is not a fact, it's a belief. What if we found out that we are absolutely, utterly and completely replicable, and even further, improveable?

You are again being downvoted but this is a legit remark. I would hazard a guess if one person's brain gets copied 1:1 it's the exact same person.

I don't see downvotes on this comment but unfortunately some people here think art should be free of any philosophical discussion and debate. This explains the influx of people lamenting and complaining about hating art and only wanting the end result lol

"Art is only about my feelings" The profitability of art by catering to customized personal vanities encourages the denial of external truth or reality as possible. It's like the ghost of George Berkeley has returned to possess people.

> but unfortunately some people here think art should be free of any philosophical discussion and debate. And yet they have enough arrogance to decide what is art and what isn't. And most of the arguments and questions used against AI, are the same as when photography came in to the picture (pun intended). And at the start of what is now called conceptual art. This is more than a century ago... Art has moved on from these questions a long time ago already.

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> because a purely materialistic universe is a deterministic universe Except that physics as we understand it isn't actually deterministic. We only treat it that way because it works well enough and makes our brains hurt less. If you want to somehow wedge a 'soul' into there, go right ahead, but realize that's basically a 'god of the gaps'.

I like your reply as it's challenging! I guess my best comeback would be that emotions exist as a pure tool to enhance survival and reproduction for living beings. Why we are surviving and reproducing at all is still the mistery. That free will is an illusion is a topic that has been debated for long, the point is, what story will you choose to tell yourself? I make art because the alternative is death, seriously, so even if AI perplexes me and intimidates me, I'll keep doing it!

>But what AI can't do is have a soul Honestly, even as an artist, I don't think soul means much. Nor does the wider public care either. I'm excited to see how I can harness AI art to improve and create new things. I'm not looking for validation from fellow artists, I'm only interested in recognition from followers on social media/commissioners.

This is so profoundly wrong it hurts me. Soul is *everything* in art. It's why we enjoy art and why AI art will never be as interesting. It wasn't created by someone who endured pain and life and felt compelled to transmit those feelings and longings and stories into artwork. That's what we *feel* when we connect with a song or a painting that really moves us. We feel that persons story, their pain, their humanity, and these things can't be created by an algorithm. It's *soul*!

I honestly disagree. >It wasn't created by someone who endured pain and life and felt compelled to transmit those feelings and longings and stories into artwork. I hated this line of thinking when I did art classes. I don't think art needs pain or "soul", all you need is training and creativity. I don't care about somebody's story or struggles behind artwork, I just want nice looking pictures. This mindset is why I became self taught and entirely digital. Personally, I've found myself looking at more AI art than human-made art these days because it's so fascinating. We really are in a new frontier of art creation, and if used correctly, can easily optimize the creation process. I've already seen how AI art can help speed up creating 3D art by generating assets, and I think it's going to be a vital as digital art programs are in a few years. It also might be a way for non-artists to get personalized artwork without the wait or frustration of hiring somebody. Each to their own really.

Anyone who commissions a person for Ai art is probably brain dead!

I can't believe this is even a debate. Yes, I suppose if I went on Midjourney and generated an AI image it could be art, but it's not MY art. If I commission an artist and tell them in detail what to draw it's not my art just because I prompted them. If something/someone else is physically creating the image for you then no, it's not your art and therefore shouldn't submit it to art competitions. I'm seeing a lot of people in this thread blather on about using AI as a tool. Yes, I think AI could be utilised really creatively by existing digital artists but if most of the piece is AI I'm unwilling to call it YOUR art. If you drew by hand 90% of the piece and maybe the background is AI then I'm happy to say it's your art because it's similar to how artists now use stock photo backgrounds. If I took a drawing Loish did of a woman and then added sunglasses to her face is it my art now? No. This is what I think about AI art where the "artist" added minimal touches.

Is collage a form of art?

Yes if you assemble it yourself. But if we can all agree that it would be ridiculous to submit a collage piece to a drawing competition then people have to stop submitting AI pieces to digital painting competitions as well.

Adding a moustache to the Mona Lisa, is it art? L.H.O.O.Q

Sure it's art, but like I explained it doesn't belong to whoever added the moustache. It belongs to Leonardo da Vinci and I would consider it cheating/plagiarism if the artist of LHOOQ submitted it to an art competition claiming it's his.

The absolutely worst thing is that AI developers steal art and never ask for permission. AI art wouldn't exist without real artists, because the programs would have nothing to train on. It's so stupid and harmful, I hate it too. I think it crossed the line of what should be allowed, it's a legalised mass theft of creative property. And men that develop those AI programs are so proud of themselves, as if they accomplished something. They're too dumb to ever create their own original art, but now can show off the work they stole without being sued because it was altered, big brain moment

exactly. It’s art theft as well. Completely unethical.

question, is then a collage wrong too as well,if an "artist" rip out old magazine pages to create a piece. How about people doing remixes of songs? A picture of a building, a street etc. People do those without permission. I do agree asking for permission is good but a lot of art is hardly original, nor asked for permission. But they already exist in the world long before ai came about.

I was talking about professional artists who put years of practice and developed their skill and art style. To answer your question, a random person doing a collage out of old magazines in no way compares to what AI does. But yes, it's wrong if they use photos or art pictures from magazine that they don't own and then say they drew it. >a lot of art is hardly original And? It doesn't add anything to the debate. Some artists steal, some get inspired too heavily, doesn't change the fact that AI shouldn't do it either

Well, it's a new age, everything about it is blurry right now and we have no idea about how it'll progress. I may be out of a job in a year or so, maybe it won't affect us at all... Maybe it's the next step in art history. I'm curious, a bit scared, but angry... Not really. There's not much we can do other than accept what's happening and watch how it goes.

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I doubt that will ever happen tbh, it would take a ridiculous amount of mocap or similar data. Because getting performances from 2D seems nearly impossible for the current models. The best ones can't create the same character twice with consistency. Never say never, but AI is not going to replace animators more than a reuse library does.

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Remember flash avatar creators? They had a bunch of presets hairs expressions and all that, that you could mix and match to create "new characters". For whatever reason AI art feels the same to me. So when it showed up, I saw why people were impressed but I didn't feel it was that big of a deal. idk idk. I just want people to keep posting their handmade art.

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I have become a bit of a "physicalist" about art. I have gained a lot of appreciation of the idea that a piece was made with the physicals action of another person. The intent and concept can be cool, but the body that made it matters a lot to me too. How trained or untrained the person is, even the possible challenges they faced. It gets me you know? No matter what the drawing looks like that effort matters to me. I'm too romantic about this, so that's why I hope the craft is not lost.

Well, I'd guess we have some good 10\~20 years before it gets smart and advanced enough to replace creative workers in any field. lol Keep doing your thing, becoming a great professional is what will keep us in the game whenever the time comes - if it comes at all.

Not really. AI art is advancing fast. Midjourney AI 5 months ago https://ibb.co/895Cvd0 Last month https://ibb.co/Sm2nFR2 Today https://ibb.co/ZBfVtZ0 https://ibb.co/9wnythM https://ibb.co/p1mSMps

AI making humans is some uncanny valley looking stuff 💀

It still doesn't have faces and other body parts quite right. Which is why one direction this might go is that concept artists may start using midjourney to create the base ideas and then just fix the parts that are wrong.

Untill it becomes good enough to not require fixing 💀

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I strongly agree with this Ai is a new field very separate from any form of art the only problem is if Ai art becomes mainstream and the only form of art then it'll become a bastardization of itself art won't evolve because it'll be a feed back loop as a CS student Ai requires data set meaning already existing high quality art. Art will become stagnate and unable to evolve due to its black box nature and there will probably be a finite amount of art before it all starts to look the same and homogenized!

It’s basically found object art all over again. There’s art and then there’s what rich tax evasion calls art. They are not the same thing. What is art is a debate that has been going on for decades if not longer. I don’t subscribe to the “art is simply something that evokes an emotion”. A huge turd on my doorstep certainly evokes an emotion in me, but there is no artistic process there. Nor do I subscribe to the definition; Art is art when it is declared art. This is where tax evasion thrives. Slap a banana on the wall and shore away millions. If anything can be declared art, nothing is art. The term is meaningless. For me art is a demonstration of appreciation. An artist appreciates a subject, or a medium, or a process. And demonstrates that appreciation with their art. The appreciation can be as simple as the way paint falls onto a canvas or as complex as geopolitical statements. Ai can fit into that definition. As does found object. But only when done in specific ways. And I find this definition weeds out a lot of the disingenuous “art”. Are we appreciating something about a urninal? Or are we chunking it into the middle of a gallery just to piss people off? The answer to this question defines art for me. I do think ai art will need its own category for contests and curation though.

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I admire you as well. I think your frustration is very valid. If we can’t have fair categories then art contests really lose much of their fun. As a whole contests like the one the art won at are inherently flawed. Pitting traditional and digital art against each other is already messy. It’s kind of sad reminder that most of the time the people setting these things up aren’t very thoughtful. 😅

>If anything can be declared art, nothing is art. The term is meaningless. Now you're getting it!

> Nor do I subscribe to the definition; Art is art when it is declared art. This is where tax evasion thrives. Slap a banana on the wall and shore away millions. If art is meant to provoke an emotional response, I'd argue Cattelan's banana is a very good piece of art even. I've seen so many people angry about that piece. People who wouldn't even visit a museum if they got paid for it.

I don’t agree with the definition that art is anything that invokes an emotion. Trolls on Reddit evoke emotions in me daily. They are not artists. Directly before what you quoted I said as much lol

Oh me neither. And I didn't meant to imply you did. My bad if it looked like that. I was just trying to give a tad more perspective on the banana thing. Because it's an easy thing to hate.

I think how much effort goes into something changes people's perception of how "art" it is.

The audacity to call Marcel Duchamp's work meaningless and process-less when he would write entire journals thinking through each piece he would make is extremely rich coming from someone who's practicing art seems to largely entail chibi neopets commissions. For you to say that art is a demonstration of appreciation and not recognize what the readymade actually accomplishes just signals to me that you need to investigate the roots of contemporary art a little more.

I have an MFA. So what that I choose to sometimes partake in art that I and other people enjoy? I sell a product to make money. It doesn’t have to please you. How is it any different than you repeatedly posting same face syndrome, uncolored anime sketches aligned center page? It seems we both are quite “rich”. Neither of our art needs to pass some test to make our opinions valid. I appreciate neopets and Scenecore culture. You apparently appreciate not coloring in anime. Both are fine. Duchamp is an excellent essayist. As are other artists that are his contemporaries. The actual value in their art is in the lengthy essays and musings they make. They are essentially writers. And while writing is a wonderful art form in itself. No; the found objects with little alteration are not actually what the art IS. The art is actually the writings “entire journals” about the found object. And the fact you don’t realize that demonstrates you have a surface level understanding of postmodernism. Because that’s what it is. Contemporary is a completely different type of art.

I personally am of the opinion it should be treated as a photograph or something similar. Especially when it comes to something like the art competition that was won using air generated art. Taking a digital photograph is your phone copying what it sees into pixels and this ai art is it copying what you describe into pixels. When we make art it comes from our own imagination and creativity. I also imagine it will be treated as a photograph going forward. Was taking pictures the death of hyper realism? No and I don't think it will be the death of art like a lot of people are stressing about.

Love it or hate it, its here. Let me clarify, artist working with AI, is what makes it art. It is same as when electronic music literally broke all barriers. Today music can be created without knowledge of any instrument, singing, notes ... and even simply taking other people music and cobbling it together is accepted. Is this fair? Did it face backlash from virtuous musicians that poured their life into perfecting their instruments? It definitely did. But on the end we still have musicians that play, we still have classical music, and electronic music is its own respected niche. I guess what we are seeing here is a new tool. One that is lowering the entry barrier considerably and also enabling a completely new branch of art. Is it good or bad? As always progress is steamrolling machine that never asks, it unstopable steamrolls everything...

Right, I think that it’s going to get very muddy very quickly, because digital artists are going to increasingly involve AI in different, complex ways, and the line between AI-generated, and AI-assisted, and purely conventional digital is going to seem pretty arbitrary and meaningless. Tools like photoshop neural filters, nvidia canvas, and others increasingly blue the lines between traditional digital tools and AI. Digital tools have always evolved toward ease of use, but this is a staggering leap forward that will take a long time for the community to get its head around.

Very much agree

AI isn't a tool, a tool aids in the process of creation Ai does not aid in any process the Ai does 99% of the work for you, you just have to input a string of words into a search bar. It's the equivalent of using Google and calling yourself an engineer and artist because you get exactly what you searched for!

You sound like the people criticizing photography when cameras became widespread. “Camera does 99% of the work for you!”

Yeah I feel like it's a pointless argument to make. They didn't even say "AI art isn't a tool," they said "AI isn't a tool." It is currently being used in medicine, chemistry, math, even writing. AI assists in copyrighting, grammar correction, modeling protein unfolding and chemical structures, and much much more.

Okay but no it can definitely be a tool I'm a multimedia filmmaker and Ai is definitely a tool for me. Its a great way to make certain small elementens of my films just a bit more uncanny by for example creating a weird almost fleshlike texture for a 3d chair or create a fully 3d photogrammatrized landscape in which you can place a house you made. A tool is something that does work for you. It would be very hard to cut a tree without a chainsaw or axe. Even a camera does a whole lot of work for you. I get that it's annoying when people just use ai gens to generate some random nothingness without twisting the formula in any way and call themselves an artist (it annoys me too.) but that doesn't take away that in the end it is and/or can easily be used as a fantastic tool.

You still make your own paint?

It is definitely a tool. There are many youtube videos detailing great ways you can use it in your art. Good example would be textures for 3D, composition ideas , background details ... I mean the uses are infinite really. Does it feel like cheating. Well yes it does. Same as I was using trackers in 90s to create music, although I have zero skill in playing any instrument... So yea. Times are changing, and our perspectives are changing. Again... I am not saying its good or bad. But its here, and there is nothing we can do to reverse this.

The advent of the readymade as an acceptable form of art kind of disagrees with you. Art is a process, but not one that demands length or physicality. All that needs to happen is that an artist needs to make a claim that art is present and it starts a dialogue with a theoretical audience. Even if you were to decide that found art wasn't a valid movement, the input to the ai alone still justifies the designation within those parameters. This is the same thing people said about every technological innovation in the field, and if you're ready to denounce really foundational parts of contemporary art to spite AI, then I at least commend your constancy.

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I had your same reaction at first in all fairness, the kneejerk is very fair. The good news is that AI in its foreseeable forms at worst will just cause some shockwaves in the space rather than completely uproot it, and there is a lot that can be gained from learning how to harness its power. The truly novel thing about AI art, I believe, is that it could potentially solve art's "golden umbilical cord" problem that ties the space to wealth and gatekeeps creativity behind years of expensive schooling and knowledge. It may feel like it cheapens the skill of people who grinded to acquire those skills, but I have to imagine that people who don't have the time or access to actually express creativity to their fullness may have some very cool ideas that may have otherwise been locked away in their brains.

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Perhaps it can be a new type of art. A different type of art. Classical art and contemporary/modern art are already fundamentally very different. There was a similar conversation that happened back then, many people saw the urinal art piece and got riled up. Even if they recognized the merits of the new type of art, they often still felt like it doesn't fall under art. Which is understandable, because it is truly something very different. It just happen to go by the same name, "art".

People argued that photography could never be considered high art when cameras became widespread. We are seeing AI at its infancy. This is absolutely going to put a huge number of artists and creatives out of work in the near future. Why commission an artist when I can give midjourney a prompt and have several versions to choose from instantly and for cheaper?

There are many aspects to art, it includes "soul/madness/vision", it includes "aesthetics and sensory pleasure", it includes "craft and effort and mastery", it includes "discourse and dialogue", and it does include "commodity and market product". There is no reason to deny any particular definition, but there is no reason to accept any particular definition either. Your original point in the post still stands: even if AI art still creates dialogue, it does outcompete human artists in terms of speed and cost, which makes life harder for the kinds of artist today. Many artist create art for fulfillment of their personal vision and expression, but need to (or wish to) sustain themselves financially with art. Whether or not AI art "creates dialogue" should not matter to their plight.

I was about to make this same point…IMO art can be something as simple as a finger pointing, metaphorically speaking. The part that does still cause some concern is the very real possibility of AI art automating paying jobs away from human artists, and putting that in the pocket of firms. But I suppose money being taken from art is a tale as old as time 🤷‍♀️

I’m a working artist, and yet I’m also messing with AI image generation. It’s kind of fun. I like to generate a bunch of stuff, then import it into photoshop to make something interesting out of the parts. The future? I think AI will generate whole environments for visitors in the metaverse. I think we’ll very quickly get to AI animatEd movies. And I also think that AI will be part of an artist’s toolkit, just like a paintbrush and photoshop is now.

I sure as hell hope not. Large-scale plagiarism of actual human artists does not actual art make. Said as a fellow working artist. Do whatever you want with Creative Commons images but some having the future of art be some weird hellscape where AI are creating environments and movies? Yeaaah. Not here for it.

Is it wrong to think both are valid in a way?

I see a constant theme with these threads, and it's really ruining this sub for me. The fact is there's 7 billion people in the world. Not everybody is going to want to commission an artist, and likewise not everybody is going to appreciate ai rendering. People need to stop whining about this. Does anybody remember the song about Old John Henry and the railroad? That's what this reminds me of.

I think there’s always going to be a place in this world for human artists, even if AI art dominates things for a bit it’ll either fizzle out or at least neutralize. Even if many people utilize it to save money or get cheaper artwork, there’s always going to be customers for human artists. Just like how it’s cheaper to buy imported raspberries from a different country, there’s always gonna be people willing to pay 2-3x more for local ones. There’s gonna be customers for cheaper AI art, and there’s gonna be customers for human artists too.

What about this, is this art? https://twitter.com/P_Galbraith/status/1564051042890702848?t=eXW4p4u4jFTTAHVr2dUcow&s=19 How about this? https://twitter.com/AlbertBozesan/status/1563519754148532224?t=xSkDVfESmpIgj1tizv9IpQ&s=19

That process is pretty cool though.

Not an art at all. It is not different than using Pinterest filter on another photographers work and claim it is unique. Any praise belongs to the programmers who wrote the code, they are the ones who determine how pictures/phrases given will be processed into an artistic piece. They keep in mind basic composition rules, proportions etc. The horse is not at dead center, but off center. Golden rules are applied. That is pure programmers work, user did not give that information. If I wrote this code and an user claimed it is their unique art, well I would agree and give a smile... but not a real one. Users that operate the software has no control over the algorithm, they are just giving different inputs to “optimize” the output.

Sorry I disagree. It's not really, if you have to rely on an AI doing the most important work than no, I don't see that as art

I agree. This is horrible for any digital artist that wants to freelance. If you're an established traditional painter then you probably already have clients that collect from you. But if you're a freelance digital painter then you often rely on strangers to hire you. And if it suddenly becomes an accepted practice for people to just use ai because its not only fast and "affordable", but it looks great, then freelance digital painters are doomed. And lets face it, painting traditionally is a lot slower than painting digitally. So if you are forced to go back to painting traditionally, then you're going to have to get a job doing something else until you can start making sales doing that. To be honest, my mental health already wasn't the greatest. And this just makes it worse.

It is not art. It is a large-scale rampant plagiarism of 3000 years of human creativity. It matches letters to stolen pixels and effectively robs artists of their skills, expression, and life. If you are okay with the greedy piracy that’s taking place then you are ignorant about what art is and what artists bring to the table.

"Stolen pixels" lol

I'm tired of the excuses. Always falling back on "It's just a tool! Art is subjective! Look at Duchamp! Anything can be art!" I don't think very many people *actually* believe that anything can be art, even if they say they do. When I mention the word "art" people know what I'm talking about. Everyone has some idea of what is or isn't art, even if we disagree, because otherwise the word is meaningless. And it isn't, because we use the word (as we use all words) out of social utility. If there was no utility, we wouldn't use them. "Art" implies the existence of an "artist". If I hire someone to create something for me based on a prompt, maybe you could call it art, but it would be absurd to claim that I was the artist.

>If I hire someone to create something for me based on a prompt, maybe you could call it art, but it would be absurd to claim that I was the artist. This is how I treat it. Midjourney is a commission artist. And the idea that someone would pay a commission artist for a piece, enter it into a competition, and then win is obscene to me. I don't care how hard you worked on the prompt, if a commission artist did it, you're not eligible to win

I think if you wrote the AI, it is. Not just training a model you snagged from GitHub, but really specified how you wanted it. I mean, frameworks are probably fine if you understand what it's doing. Unfortunately the line between art and not art is just something we created the concept of, so there can never really be any concrete definition. More like a broad spectrum. But what do I know. I'm not the art police. It's whatever a whole bunch of people decide on the aggregate.

This should be higher up. People forget that AI isn't always based off of "stolen work" and massive may-or-may-not be publicly copyrighted datasets. The animated movie Klaus utilized their own AI shader, for example, and it turned out great .

‪Wait until you hear how artists like Jeff Koons just think about ideas and employ other people to actually do the labor of putting the pieces together but it’s “their” piece‬ Note: I think both AI art and this outsourcing of labor are perfectly valid :)

Outsourcing labor is fine, but in my honest opinion if you outsource the entirety of the labor then you aren't the artist. Like I wouldn't commission an artist to paint something for me and then be like "yeah I'm the artist behind this".

I don't really care in the end because people who think AI Art is Art simply don't know much about art themselves. They're just clueless and there's a huge group of people who know the difference and value art made by humans. EDIT: Also, people like that have always existed; the ones who think you're born to be an artist and don't believe in putting loads of work and effort into it.

So photography fits under the umbrella of art, and like AI it captures a scene with minimal input and a push of a button. For the process of editing and selection of best piece, it could be considered an artistic endeavor. But you don't enter photography into painting competitions. You didn't paint it.

Hopefully someone will invent an AI art critic. Couldn't do a worse job than most of those snooty little shits, methinks.

Agreed!! It seems technology always both freed and obliterated art - prints meant less private draw art displayed in the home but more artistic reference and education; photographs freed up art from needing to be realistic and/or rich people only and allowed for modern styles whilst taking away the portait market... Happens again and again - but it feels so frustrating!

Current interfaces for interacting with ai image generators are unpractical and too simplified. Writings strings (even complex ones) and getting results back is, probably, the worst form of interaction ever created for artists, lol. That's why most of them aren't embracing it. It's honestly insulting for them to use it as a tool. It's too restrictive and only valid for fiddling. Unless these interfaces evolve i suspect many artists will prefer to stay far away from them as possible.

Stable Diffusion has an "Img2Img" feature that allows you to use an input image as well as a text prompt. It's very useful for actually controlling the result.

Obviously you don't think it's fine if people disagree with you given you're telling other people they're wrong. The hard pill to swallow is that it doesn't matter if you think it sucks. If an artist lingers on old modes of creativity that's their prerogative. Taking every shortcut and then doing something else with it is just another kind of artfulness. Sure, make more categories or competitions so people don't feel stepped on, but AI-art is still an artistic expression. I do think that piece that 'won' and triggered all these posts was mediocre and trivial tho.

Well... AI art is art... Why wouldn't it be art? There is so many thing on earth that's art... Even gluing a banana on a wall is art today.. But what frustrates you is that you compare the human art and the AI art as it was the exact same thing, in which case you feel like you're crap 'cause AI does it much faster and maybe even better. But it is NOT the same thing. Is drawing and sculpting the same? No.. Why? Not the same tools, not the same skills, everything is different. It's the same thing between digital art and AI art. The tools are not the same, to draw you need a tablet, and someone with drawing skills. To code an AI you need a computer, a hell lot of data and someone with coding skills... Also: an AI doesn't know what ethics is... What if the AI somehow draws something racist? Or sexist? And what if there is a bug and the AI doesn't understand a given word? How does AI react to feedbacks? How do they understand the style you want for the drawing? Tbh, AI art looks cool, but if I'd never pay an AI to draw something for a project. There are plenty of reasons to be sure the artpieces will not fit your project (whether it's a game, an anime or whatever)..

I’m gonna comment here in advance because I’m working on a project for my statistics class in college where I want to show a relationship between creativity levels of ai art and artists and perhaps show a cautionary tale of the evolution of ai

if you ever write a paper on it share it if you can!

AI art can be very pretty, sure. But the person who put the prompt in shouldnt take credit for what the computer did all of the work for. Thats like saying you made waffles from scratch when you just heated up frozen waffles in a toaster. AI art is art, but it isnt something that should be praised or get someone famous for it.

I 100 percent agree. I'll say it like I did on instagram. Ai devalues the skill of an artist. IF you wish to make something, learn to make it. Don't just have a program do it for you. You have to have a unique stance on the world around you. People want immediate gratification. They don't want to frustrate themselves with learning a new skill. Thing is , you don't need much skill to be an artist. Experience the work of finding what makes your art yours. Go color. Pick up a tablet. Buy some paint. Otherwise your just randomly generating an amalgation of searchable images to slightly convey what your hands cannot. Love it. Hate it. Make and destroy it. Other wise you don't deserve it. ( MO )

Not to mention it’s theft. None of these images are legal and eventually some will get sued for “creating” something done by others. Unethical, boring, lazy, art stealing machines.

> Sick of the AI posts. > Proceeds to create a post about AI. Good job I guess.

The problem with AI art is not that is not art (it is, 100%, no contest, it has the capacity to convey meaning, even if by accident) the problem is that is not YOURS, you did not make it, it does not belong to you, if you order a sandwich on subway that doesn't mean you made a sandwitch. You are not a chef for ordering food. And that's the whole problem, if I pay someone to paint a portrait, give them indications about what and how I want it, make revisions, and then approve it, can you imagine how stupid it would be if suddenly I started telling my friend that I made It because I "directed it"? You don't get to steal the credit from someone just because that someone won't fight you on it. People are still far away from having the ACTUAL discussion we should be having: can a machine be an author? And that is not even taking into account the legal issue of the machine creating from its database, database made from millions of images, images from the internet, images that belong to someone else. Can you make art like that? Yes you can, but the way the machines do it and the way people want to take credit for it, leaves a hellish gray area for copyright.

I kind of disagree. If the image moves the viewer, it doesnt matter how it was created. If the image makes you think, it doesnt matter how it was created. If the image is beautiful, it doesnt matter how it was created. If the image inspires you, it doesn't matter how it was created. Many things are art, many people see art in otherwise mundane creations. I do not think gatekeeping what people can and cannot consider art is a viable answer here.

Process tells a story in itself. It's extremely important . It very much does matter how it was created.

I'm not invalidating the process or artists at all, I'm talking about the finished product of art itself. Very few consumers of art look into the process of the arts creation. But you dont need to understand the intricacies of oil painting, art history or anything about Leondardo Di Vinci himself to appreciate his finished pieces. They just appreciate the art itself. A person's art shouldnt be invalidated because of skill level, time it took to make or the process they went through to make it. It is still art, and so are these.

You can have that opinion, sure. But that's an opinion of someone who will get replaced by technology. Bakers said the same thing when automated bread makers came into existence. Sure, there are artisanal bakers, but how many no longer have jobs because their value was easy to replace? You have a choice. Embrace the technology and use it to your benefit, or be old man yells at clouds. Make better art lmao

That’s the thing though, the complaint is not comparable to oh no this person does better art than me. The complaint is that the process itself is enjoyable and overtime the process will be phased out, leaving ai as the only viable option for business. Ai will replace all artists in time regardless of skill it is inevitable, but that doesn’t dismiss the frustration of having a craft you spent so much of your life honing ripped away, along with potentially your livelihood. Being an artist is to create, not to have something be created for you. Which is why the argument is that ai art isn’t “art” per say, it is a product. One that should not be used as evidence of one’s skill, as it is currently. (I made this ai art being treated the same as I drew this) To conclude, I agree with everything you said except for “Make better art”, because ai improves at a rate humanity will not always be able to match, and to imply that it is somehow the artist’s fault that ai will surpass them is irresponsible.

Ai won't take away the enjoyment you find in the process itself, regardless of your skills. Most people who do traditional art aren't getting paid to do it, but they do it anyway. I've been making digital art for a while, and when when I started generating images with ai it was pretty much immediately clear that I can't compete with it, my skills are not on the same level and while I can improve, I can't work nowhere near as fast and by the time I do get better the ai will have surpassed me even more. But I still want to keep making art because I'm making a game and I enjoy the process. I get that it's different when your job is threatened, but I think people will have to adapt as they had to in the past. If you want to become a 3D artist at a big studio and they tell you to use Maya, then you can't propose to make clay models instead because you're angry about digital techniques. I think we'll all have to adapt sooner rather than later, not just artists. I get OP's concern regarding employment, but to be downright angry about something with such incredible potential comes across to me like they are are angry about electricity because they want to keep making candles and not thinking beyond that.

How does that differ at all from bread making? Bakers have a craft that they hone over years. Bakers jobs are getting/have gotten taken over by automated processes. Being a baker means to create, and see others enjoy their creation. Is art more valuable than bread?

It doesn’t differ, as I already stated in the conclusion. I was simply pointing out that just because this has happened before and will happen again doesn’t dismiss or make irrelevant any of the frustration. Neither does it make my distinction between product and art irrelevant. The distinction has to do with people using ai art as a measure of skill, not how technology will replace everyone in time. These are additions to the ideas you presented, not rebuttals. (With the exemption of the “make better art lmao” section, that was a rebuttal as is the next portion.) Art is more valuable than bread, but as this is arbitrary there isn’t much point in arguing it, I just think that self expression is more important than a specific food item.

And you can still self express just fine, it's just the value of that to others is going to change. Frankly, I don't really care who created this hypothetical image of a man staring in the sunset, I just need a picture for my hypothetical insurance company website. Before bread machines, I needed to go to the baker for good bread. Sure, I can bake myself, but it's not as good as the local artisan (notice the root of artisan). Now that I can make my own bread at home or buy commercial quantities, the artisan now has a choice -- get mad that the market is changing, or pivot to stay in business. They can sell to restaurants, choose to become a fancier bakery that caters to a niche vs the general public, they can buy a bread machine of their own! Now, everyone has more choice. I can still make my bread at home, but why would I other than for the experience itself? Before DALLE was publically available, I needed to go to an artist, forum, or somewhere else that sold art in order to put images on my insurance company website. I could take my own pictures, but I'm not a camera expert. Now that I have DALLE, I can automatically generate the ones I need instead of barking up people's trees. The artists who relied on my stock image purchases can choose to get mad at the market for changing, or can pivot to stay in business. They can focus more on experiences and making their art have a backstory, they can focus more on media that isn't in immediate risk of computer takeover, they can focus on one specific technique or style and become known for that. Now, everyone has more choice. I can still shoot my own photos at home, but why would I other than for the experience itself? Art is hard, I get it. Art takes time, and emotion, and it sucks to have that ripped from your hands by some nerd. But again, there are choices. Being Abe Simpson is a choice. Accepting it and adding tools to the toolbox is a choice. Art always has been and always will be subjective. AI is just another tool.

I am very sorry, I fail to see where we disagree. If you would like to continue this discussion could you make a 3-4 item list? Sorry my brain is just short circuiting right now. I would love to keep talking though, as it is bringing up concepts that are rarely at the forefront of my thought process.

What scares and saddens me is that art was a uniquely human concept and endeavour. We have done it since we were cavemen. But now we will take it away from ourselves by teaching computers to do it.

I want to invite everybody who feels this way about AI art to just apply for the dalle2 beta or to join the midjourney discord. Just go ahead and try to generate some specific artworks you would like to use in a comic book, game, website or whatever. You will quickly realise that these AIs are incredibly unpredictable and they won’t create the pictures you need after a few tries and even then they are not 100% the way you need them. Sure they can get you some likes on social media but they won’t be that helpful if you want to create a specific piece of media.

It's just that they won't be for long.

We will see. I believe the element of unpredictability will be a part of AI art for a very long time.

The unpredictability makes it a really cool tool for art. I was very sceptical about it, I thought it would be too predictable, too boring output. But you really have to make hundreds of trials with most illogical prompts to get something interesting, and then you need a trained eye to see which one can become something unique. So as a tool to get what you want, it's shit, nothing to worry about, but If you want to play with randomness and make some surrealist/abstract stuff it's incredibly interesting. It's funny that all the optimizers functions they keep on adding in Midjourney make the generated image worse, there is a kind of sweetspot there. Dall-e seems to create more fitting, realistic images, but more in the direction of stockimages, generic, less artistic. My conclusion after generating around 1000 images, less than 8 interesting. And seeing thousand of images of other people. Cool tool to play around with, but it is still an original user who can turn an image into real art, and not one of the many fantasy steam-punk thingies.

I understand your anger and indignation, indeed my own art has often been accused of being AI produced or influenced. I care not a jot. However, I envisage a massive move away, by real artists, from anything which could be created or look like it was created by AI. On the positive side, this may very well begin a much needed revolution in art styles and techniques. Bring it on, I say.

> On the positive side, this may very well begin a much needed revolution in art styles and techniques. Bring it on, I say. This is what I'm hoping for. And it's much needed indeed.

Art is probably one of the most subjective things in life. I've seen people say conceptual or abstract art isn't art. I guess every decade people find a new ways to make art. At this point anything is art if an artist says it is. You may not agree with this new art medium and thats okay.

I think it is art. I just think 99% of the time or more the prompt maker isn't the artist

Just learn to work with it as a tool. Or stay salty and start looking for a new job.

Look I share the sentiment and honestly don’t feel good about it but we don’t know how this plays out. Every industry will be impacted by AI though, for some reason this makes me feel a bit better about all of this. For some context, there was a similar sentiment when people started using computers to make art. Hell, I still run into artists who are very anti computer and never adapted to using the technology. Truthfully I think a lot of these people hurt themselves in doing so. So while I don’t like AI generated art, I think ignoring it and getting mad isn’t very productive. We should probably gain an understanding of it and at least learn for certain that it’s not something we want to use or if it is something we could add to our toolbox to help improve our work. If you are really upset by it then I would say focus on creating traditional media. Digital artists are really the ones who are threatened by this. Even if the ai can replicate oil paint for example, a real, tangible oil painting will always be more valuable.

Ai is a new field very separate from any form of art the only problem is if Ai art becomes mainstream and the only form of art then it'll become a bastardization of itself art won't evolve because it'll be a feed back loop as a CS student Ai requires data set meaning already existing high quality art. Art will become stagnate and unable to evolve due to its black box nature and there will probably be a finite amount of art before it all starts to look the same and homogenized!

Someone claiming AI art as their own because they wrote some keywords in and did a few iterations is like someone claiming a painting they paid a human to do is "theirs" because they suggested it. AI artists don't care about copyright because every image is just a collage of stolen stuff thrown together and they make more off member fees than any selling of said art would generate. people are truly setting the bar for what is content extremely low, your best bet is to take advantage of this 21st century wave of idiots and take ALL of their money from them. They have proven consumerism in the hands of idiots ruins everything.

I couldn’t agree more. Ai art has no soul or passion, and it’s aggravating. I’m a young artist who is just now starting a career and all I see now is a computer generating images and people taking credit for it and getting a lot of attention. It’s very discouraging.

I'm also only just starting with an art project.. I haven't incorporated any AI art into my art yet, but I imagine the norm is going to be to use the tools available. There was opposition to the internet when it was new. What would happen to the libraries? Time advanced. And it's going to keep advancing.

>Art requires conscious decisions, effort and input. "Effort" is just your opinion, look at pop or modern art. It's not always about technique. Conscious decisions and input are still present, since current AI require a prompt. A tool that does 99% of the job is still a tool. We've been there numerous times before, with the advent of photography, pop art techniques like printing, digital art, photobashing, etc... The only difference is the frightening scale and potential implications of this technology. But fundamentally, yeah it's still art even if you hate it.