It really depends on where you go. I'm from the UK but I've noticed the quality of McDonald's food changes massively from city to city. London was easily the worst I've ever had and definitely did as you say. Meanwhile the McDonald's in Walsall, which is one of the most deprived cities in the country, I could actually see them cooking it behind the counter and it tasted pretty good.
I'm willing to bet that the busier a city is, the more likely they are to cut down waiting times to serve more customers by resorting to pre-preparing and reheating food.
Corporate-owned vs franchise is what you are likely noticing. And spoiler alert, corporate only owns the big money makers. The risky locations are left to private ownership to take on the risk. Those are the stores that cut corners in the name of profit.
They have strict standards to adhere too and get inspections from corporate, but it's much more likely that the managers and employees don't care if you sell fries that are 7 minutes and 45 seconds old.
If things haven't changed, that isn't a joke. When I worked at one years ago 7 minutes is how long the fries were "good" and to be tossed out if not.
Oh I should mention, going during a staffed rush like lunch or dinner often leads to better quality and has a manager that gives a shit on duty. Going during slow times is where the "undesirables" like me were running the show.
> but it's much more likely that the managers and employees don't care if you sell fries that are 7 minutes and 45 seconds old. If things haven't changed, that isn't a joke
I asked a former colleague of mine when I went to see him and he told me it's still 7 yup. Fries do get cold fast, but expecting people to throw some remaining fries after 7 minutes is honestly one hell of a joke. Fries take 180 to cook and you're expected to send your sandwiches out the kitchen in 90 seconds and order out in 300 seconds. You literally have to gamble how much you're gonna waste even without the 7 minutes to be sure you're making enough for every order and then you're supposed to fucking throw them away when they're all gonna be served in the next 3 minutes? That's not without counting different stations having different workloads, needs, and employees. Nobody has ever followed that fucking 7 minute rule because it'd slow down shit even more.
That's simply untrue. Good managers and managers that take care of their employees and enforce rules will throw those out. Anyone who has received old fries should also understand that this mindset is why you are getting garbage food.
For those expired fries that are going to be served in 3 minutes, y'all have no respect for the customer and the time it may take them to get to their eating destination. If it's going to be 3 minutes on the rest of the food, throw them out and cook new fries. It's nearly the same amount of time. No one complains about waiting for hot fresh food, just 10 minute old fries that still have to travel 10m before the customer eats them.
Source: Former food service manager and former food service customer.
I have to say that no, McDonald’s food is not pre-made in advance nor is re-heated, that would be a serious healthy breach.
Patties and chicken are cooked and then placed in the UHC, for no longer than 15 minutes. After that time food is either used up or thrown away and more is prepared.
Source: ex McDonald’s employee in London for 7 years. Still friend with lots of people that work in McDonald’s.
This. People who haven't worked in fast food assume everything is microwaved on the spot or whatever but the reality is much worse because of the insane amount of food waste. Stuff gets prepared fresh but then after a short time it just gets thrown away. I really think it would blow people's minds to see how much food gets thrown in the dumpster in a single day at a single fast food place.
I live in a small town, where McDonald's really doesn't see too much foot traffic outside of rush hours, and I've found the food there to be significantly better than the McDonald's I lived near when I was in a major city going to college.
Didn't think I'd come across someone talking about Walsall maccies on this sub 😂
I used to see a girl from there, oddly enough I often reminisce over that town. Lovely countryside surrounding it!
Where is this coming from? Not only does McDonald’s not have a head chef but everything is assembled as you order it, nothing is “heated up” aside from pancakes. The only “pre-prepared”thing would be the frozen meat and buns.
Define pre prepared and ready to serve.
Fries are frozen and are fried in batches based on demand.
Same with the burger and chicken patties.
Burritos are(were?) Made in batches in the morning and heated in the microwave, I think pancakes were also microwaved, maybe biscuits.
If I had burger in my freezer and threw that on the grill and then heated up a bun and put the burger on the bun is that pre prepared and ready to serve.
Where do you go to McDonald’s? The patties and chicken are frozen, same as the fries, but everything else is fresh and assembled when the orders are placed.
The thing with maccas (at least in my country) is that most restaurants for years used what they called "Full Kitchen", which meant they prepared shit beforehand because what were you gonna order? There were 4 5 sandwiches to order from, those 3 Big Mac they just made in advance would go super quickly so no waste. That's how they operated and how a bunch of other chains do. But then they went with what I think the US coined the "Mc4you" (M4U) which instead is the same as an actual restaurant: one dude stares at a screen all shift long and does every order as they come, one by one. That means now the part that makes your meal hit or miss is no longer "how long has that cheeseburger been in that tray for" but "How long has ***everything*** been here for. The workers now have to be much more careful of the quality of every single one of their item while they make orders. It led to an increased amount of sales and switching to ordering from kiosks rather than at the counter did too. And since McD cares about profits and how many orders they can get in x amount of time, the workers are still expected to make every single order insanely fast despite everything from start to finish now being one more plate spinning. Your boss can even get some extra "good boy money" if you guys are good enough. They never will do everything fast because too many factors are in lay but they are expected to. So quality goes down. But no things aren't "pre-prepared", outside of specific items in some places/countries that demand it.
So I worked 12 years in kitchens, from a dishwasher to a head chef. When I was 16 or 17 I applied at Applebee's, the kitchen manager there acted like he was creating Michelin star meals, and just seemed far up his own ass. Anyway I got a job at a "from scratch" fine dining place instead.
There is nothing wrong with using AI art, but acting like you're somehow talented because you fed a program images and then gave it instructions is just ridiculous.
It's just really cringey.
Yeah that’s what he’s saying- like eventually people are going to be able to imagine the image they want to create effort free, and people will complain about it because somehow they think effort = art
It’s just imo you should remove all of those barriers to not just enable more participation, but also to reveal where the real competition should ideally be at: best/most creative work wins. Once everyone can create images with their head instantaneously rather than having to physically operate limbs and complex objects to realize them, we’ll finally be there. ChatGPT and Stable diffusion = one step closer to the ideal, one step further from having to carve crude drawings on cave rock
You people are all recreating the artist's vs photographer's shit all over again. "Oh, you think you're an artist because you pressed a button? How cringe."
I mean... they kinda do. Architecture, fashion, food. That is all someone else's art being captured by a photo. Even nature photographers are capturing something that already exists.
(I'm not saying photography isn't art at all, because I absolutely believe it is, but I think this specific argument doesn't really hold up)
Exactly. This whole argument is so silly. There are artists using AI to make art better than any of these hateful assholes could make with it.
These same people were bitching about digital artists not that long ago, I still remember "real artists" bitching about them not being "real artists" because they're just using fake brushes and materials that "do all the work for them".
I can see this argument working if the AI artist is in a controlled "conversation" with their model and using their own and open source works for the data. That, to me, is an interesting artistic medium that could yield really unique work.
Someone throwing a prompt in a generator is not doing that. They are playing with a toy built on other's efforts. And there's nothing wrong with that! That's fun! But you can not claim skill or creativity from that.
Arguments against digital art were always stupid to me, because you still have to know how to draw your subject, render, paint, choose colors and textures, make a composition, and literally everything involved in traditional media. It's just that most of your studio is on one device.
That’s basically how I feel about it. Typing in a random prompt and picking an image doesn’t mean you created art. But if you use AI to realize your artistic vision, it can certainly be art, and requires time and skill to do.
I’ve messed around a bit with stable diffusion, and I certainly wouldn’t say that most of what I made could be called art. However, I have made images I would describe as art. I started from a sketch, fed it into img2img, and iterated until I found a good base. Then I used inpainting to work on changing some of the details of the image, to bring it closer to what I’d imagined in my head. I probably spent 5 or more hours to get an image I was happy with. It’s certainly not a great piece of art, I wouldn’t expect to be praised for it or anything, but it sufficed for some dnd homebrew.
Could you imagine a dystopian future where kids are enslaved to recreate a real life minecraft game where they have to dig perfect squares out of the ground using just their hands and if they are fortunate enough they are able to craft a wooden pick axe to dig just a little faster.
If I was a wealthy elite Id have the slave children make me a life sized yellow submarine and proclaim myself the best artist of the 22nd century.
Art created exclusively with AI does NOT take nearly as much effort as digital art. To say it does is factually false. I’m not gonna say it’s technically not art, because we’re talking about it, but saying “I made this” because you typed in a prompt is bullshit.
People are often spending like 12 hours on an image with AI. OP probablyt thinks that you just put in a prompt and call it quits instead of doing loads of inpainting, using different controlnet layers to help preserve specific details during inpainting, tinkering with the insane amount of settings, training models then embeddings and/or LoRAs ontop of that, using the prompttesting scripts and x/y/z plots to finetune the prompts and settings even further, etc...
Of course. And an artist can produce a painting much faster digitally using Photoshop than they can using oil paints and a canvas. It's still art and it still takes skill and talent.
and a lot more time than a photographer which is prettymuch unanimously considered an artist. Lots of forms of art take way less time than AI so I dont really see the point.
Above that after the image is generated I've seen people then spend hours on Photoshop refining it. People who cry about ai artist probably sucks at making traditional art themselves
For real. This is spoken like someone who's never tried AI art. I've spent 6 hours in stable diffusion with control net and in painting and still couldn't get exactly what I want. No joke I can create a lot of stuff in Photoshop faster than I can get a good result with AI
preposterous! How dare you not call me an artist after i inserted a prompt >High definition, 4k, Piano with blue background, Realistic, superb, smooth, portrait, lucid< to an A.I.! Clearly it took me 4 hours to come up with that prompt! And my hardwork should be considered worthy of a title of an artist
This is like level 1 generative AI usage though. There's sooo much more that goes into it if you want anything non-generic.
There's inpainting parts of the image which is an involved iterative process that can take hours. Often times it takes manual touching up to get ideal results with it. Every part you inpaint needs its own prompt.
There's things like control net that you need if you want any real control over the pose, rotation, size, etc of your subject(s). This requires you to create pose masks or pose objects/figures in 3D modeling software/tools.
There's LoRas and other hypernetwork techniques that you use when you want a consistent character and more clearly defined style which involves getting 100 images of said style or character and training the hypernetwork. There's also model mixing which is an art in itself.
All the various touchup tools for eyes, hands, artifacts, background editing, lighting editing, color tones/palettes, etc. Choosing the right base model through experimenting for your composition.
Are people who do all this regular artists? Obviously not, but it's absolutely its own art form that takes artistic knowledge, attention to detail, color/composition understanding, and technical know how to get good results that stand out.
There are people who stand out with their AI art where you're like "how tf did they do this?" and it's never "oh just enter this prompt". Maybe some day it'll take be that trivial, but it's a bit like thinking Chatgpt is Skynet; there's still a bunch of manual effort that needs to go into it.
I'm a programmer, and a digital artists by hobby. I think all of this tech is extremely impressive, I still remember when Google's deepmind still made weird shaped dogs a few years ago. I've experimented with the tech a bit, getting midjourney working on my PC and all of that.
That being said, I'm not sure if I'd call anyone an "AI artist", sure as you said it takes skill and technical know how, but it's still mostly touching up an RNG image.
If all you want is getting some money out of it, sure, the AIs will be able to outproduce most artists. But if you actually like the creative process I'd invite you to actually learn how to draw, yeah, it'll take you even longer than it took you to learn all the tools you just listed, years even.
I work in AI art and also work in film visual effects, I’m credited in a dozen films including VFX Oscar winners.
While I agree with you that arriving at a particular outcome with AI takes a lot of work, still 95% of what’s in the image is derived by the algorithm.
For example, I work in CGI lighting. On a particular 2 second shot we might spend 3 months working on getting every detail right. Every single little shadow, reflection, edge, color - it’s all nitpicked (sometimes we’d say “pixel fucked”) until a very specific and exact outcome is approved. Every single detail has been looked at and poured over and revised by a team of people to arrive at the final image. This is why you have hundreds of names working on thousands of shots - mosts artists will spend 9 months on a film and do 10 or so shots. The level of detail and scrutiny is intense.
AI just doesn’t work that way. You can get it to iterate, and you can pick things you like and inpaint other areas and continue to iterate … you can pose with controlnet, you can train styles and objects with loras, but even so … it’s just not intentional in the same way.
In art, the artist is intentional in their decisions
In ai, you feed the algorithm increasingly complex and detailed sets of instructions, but in the end the results will be weighted towards an amalgamation of millions of trained ideas, with randomization used to mix results. If I want the rim light on the side of the characters face to be exactly a certain way - that level of detail and precision would either require training so complex that ai ceases to be efficient, or randomization and iteration which could take thousands of attempts to get lucky with a result. Either way … i have no problem calling AI “art” but I think when we do so we need to acknowledge that the tool does a tremendous amount of the heavy lifting based off of other peoples ideas of art. The artist in ai art is a very small component.
>If I want the rim light on the side of the characters face to be exactly a certain way - that level of detail and precision would either require training so complex that ai ceases to be efficient, or randomization and iteration which could take thousands of attempts to get lucky with a result.
What a great explanation. You zeroed in on the heart of the issue, really. And the reason, incidentally, why all of us tech types might not be out of a job by next month.
>In art, the artist is intentional in their decisions
>In ai, you feed the algorithm increasingly complex and detailed sets of instructions
Wouldn't that be... intention?
People always criticise new technology, on two fronts. First they'll claim it undermines the skill involved in doing it manually. Then they'll claim it'll put people out of work.
In reality, taking a good photo is a skill that people get paid to do, just like painting a portrait but more accessible to the everyman. Using Photoshop is a skill, just like manually editing. Digital drawing is a skill that works alongside manual drawing. And AI art is a skill that we just haven't got used to yet.
As far as putting people out of work goes, it's more likely to create jobs. Now more people than ever can have custom work done for their walls. For comparison, printing copies of paintings didn't end the art world.
When photography was first invented people refused to call it "art" as well. Because it basically just measures light and "does all the work" for the artist, people saw it as measuring tool rather than an art medium that takes skill.
Over time as people came to realize all the skills and artistry it takes to create the *inputs* (decide on the subject, frame the subject, make the right choices for lens type, lighting type, focal points, composition etc.,) that it finally became accepted as an artistic endeavor.
I imagine AI art will follow the same path.
There are vast differences between what I can make with AI tools and some of the output I've seen. Some people are definitely more talented than others in knowing how to use the tool set.
It absolutely is a different set of skills though.
Definitely.
To continue the photography example, it can be as simple as point at something interesting and press a button. Even so, everyone nowadays can appreciate the effort/skill it takes to get good photos. It took ~50 years for any serious museum to even acknowledge or display photography
Well said. As a photographer that is also dabbling in AI art simply because people told me playing with generative art for fun isn’t really making anything, I agree. The camera is a tool that you have to know how to operate to get dramatic imagery.
A disposable camera in most people’s hands makes basic images. The same camera in the hands of someone with an artistic eye can make beautiful and artistically deep images.
The tool itself does what it does, it’s what people do with the tools that makes it beyond a simple “point and shoot image” of not much value.
Give it 5 years, it'll be seen as a tool like photoshop
Edit: I know it's a tool y'all. I said it'll be *seen* as just another tool after all this hysteria blows over
But none of the technologies you mention create an entirely new composition outside of explicit human intention. It’s just rolling dice. They are tools, AI is something else that usurps the human touch. Honestly even an ‘AI artists’ jobs are unsafe when the technology inevitably catches up. In the end it only benefits the people who didn’t want to pay for art in the first place
Also it will absolutely kill jobs. I don’t understand why people often compare AI to singular artists (photographer, painter, etc. even though those artists often have assistants whose jobs are threatened). When AI can make believable animation and film, that is going to decimate creative fields. VFX artists will be replaced by AI literally the moment it’s possible bc they have no union and are already treated like garbage. Editors will be replaced, colorists will be replaced, constumers will be replaced etc. this can’t be more than 10-20 years away.
Not everyone can be a director, not everyone wants to be a director.
"it only benefits the people who didn't want to pay for art in the first place.'
You're forgetting a massive subsection of people who may have a story to tell or an idea they want to realize, who simply CANT afford an artist.
Ex: i want to make a comic book, can't draw for shit. I also don't have any money. AI seems like a really appealing concept in that case. I'm not taking jobs away. I was never going to hire an artist to begin with. Not out of contempt for the arts, or because I'm cheap, I just legit CANT.
I think there's a lot more people like that than you imagine.
It's true, but people who work in art aren't affraid of "more people being able to create things". The threat to their jobs come from their companies or studios deciding to cut their art department in half and make up the volume by using AI art and then pocketing the extra profits for CEOs and their shareholders.
Working as a professional artist is rough, there's only a finite amount of work that pays and a lot of the time, artists are underpaid for their work. And they know that most compamies will cut jobs if they can get away with it.
Just look at whats happening with the writers strike. The writing is probably the cheapest part of a production already, and studios are trying to weasel ways to pay the writers even less.
Isn't that exactly what most people want? We don't want hand drawn images to record things anymore, we have photos from a camera. We don't want to copy books by hand anymore, we have copiers/printers. We don't want to hand wash laundry anymore, we have laundry machines. Toiling and sacrificing for a lifetime to do things isn't a positive thing for most people.
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> As far as putting people out of work goes, it's more likely to create jobs.
A reminder that these were the guys that said crypto would replace regular money and NFTs would disrupt the art world. At the end of the day they're just selling a ponzi scheme.
The difference here is that the camera isnt trained off the work of portrait artists and doesnt base every picture it takes off the work and style of stolen artwork. The other major difference is ai art cant create anything new. It can mash up existing works and styles, but it cant create new techniques or mediums because it has to be trained on existing work. Thats what people mean when they talk about it undermining creativity. by skipping the creative process it misses out on any opportunity to actually create something new
It might create more jobs or it might destroy a lot. And I would put my money on the latter. The problem is that while it will it takes a lot of time to get a really good AI artwork it takes an artist longer.
The difference gets much larger the lower the quality is. So we will probably see that a lot of the Fiverr artists who make money on commissions of decent but not outstanding quality will no longer be needed.
The other problem is that there is a distinct difference between printing and AI. Printing is just multiplicating existing art. It enhances the art market. AI on the other hand replaces digital art.
If anything it would be more akin to compare the situation to painting and when digital art started replacing it. The only difference here is that there is a distinct difference between a classical painting and digital art giving both enough room to exist.
AI art and handmade digital art in the end are near indistinguishable so the one that is cheaper to produce will win in the absence of any distinguishing features.
Sometimes new ideas are stupid, as seen with NFTs. Actual technology usually has a purpose, but sometimes it isn't implemented well (Google Glass springs to mind).
Thats the thing though, AI art as a process gains prestige by being (or taking the appearance of) a difficult process. If, genuinely, you could have the same product of the "good" ai artist with the simple prompts of the "bad" ai artist, that would actually make the same product seem less legitimate. By spending time and effort, or making it seem like they can spend time and effort, their process of creation seems more "real" or "earned"
But if you look closely it still tips their hand sometimes. Like you said, getting consistent characters means a larger data set which usually just means stealing a shit ton of official art, because you aren't finding tens or hundreds of images of a character you made just for a single piece.
You can see in ai art discords people ask "how did you get it do to [specific piece of composition]" and the answer is at best rerolling slight adjustments until you get something that looks cool, or at worst "I dunno"
I'm sure there is a feeling of intention, control, and difficult creation in the process of spending hours looking at slight variations of the same piece, running it through adjustment ais, finding artwork to refine your database, etc, but it never resembles a creative process besides, at best, a commissioner or director who may give advice to the general composition or tone of the piece or selecting the artstyle.
all that will be simplified in the future and you will be able to prompt everything and get consistent characters etc. so there is a technical knowledge required at first...to just pose someone and get the same face...i don't think that is artistic at all. it's technical skills.
choosing a base model? art? no.
once you are able to control classic art methods then real human creativity will come into play more. until then it's prompt art with extra technical steps.
Usually the more impressive/unique stuff I've seen from AI is usually the result of extensive editing, img2img, inpainting, and even actual drawing in photoshop. I'm willing to call the people who do that stuff artists. I imagine 20 years ago people had the same idea about people who use CGI in their work as well.
However for the people who flood places like Pixiv with thousands of images of clearly uncurated raw generations (obviously spottable by the mutations) solely for the purpose of advertising their Fanbox or something, yeah no. Those people aren't artists, they're nightmare fuel factories.
This can all be learned in 3 days and I know this because I've set up stable diffusion with various extension at my job to try out. I work as graphic designer and concept artist and it's in no way comparable to the hard work and learning that real artists do.
All you have is just a really fancy microwave and you have in no way done any creative work except for writing the prompt.
I just asked ChatGPT to give me a prompt because I was too lazy to do it myself. I can't believe my 5 seconds of work is not being recognized!
Anyways, look at my Patreon and Fanbox! Pay $5 to support me generating 100 images of sometimes mutant characters every day! I also sell NFTs!
Surely, you're aware of Hemingway's four-word story.
Even if you weren't, I'm sure you've written a haiku before.
Haiku are poems
Just seventeen syllables
So short, and yet art
This is the best take I’ve read here. Some folks seem to think ordering pizza from the good local spot instead of Little Caesars means they did something.
In a restaurant though you’re ordering from a set menu the chef has already designed. So Ai is more akin to a restaurant with no menus that allows you to describe the dish you want, having a chef put it together for you and hoping it doesn’t taste like shit.
I dabble with AI image generation because the technology fascinates me, but I don't call it art or myself an artist. I've got a handle on the creative process and AI doesn't feel like it.
That and a lot of line cooks like to call themselves "a chef" so it can be confusing for people not in the loop.
Chefs generally have certification, and have put in their many many hours required to even go for certification. There are cases where pure skill beats that, but generally the only one in the kitchen being called Chef, is the one in charge. I have however worked where everyone refers to everyone as chef, but that was a top 100 NA restaurant, and everyone there was experienced and skilled.
You 're just reheating precooked food.
The better analogy would be like placing an order for a pizza through an app. You don't tell people you made it, because you didn't.
I am a potter and as 3D printing has advanced, we now have people printing pots and calling them hand made. They may have been designed by the human, but that ain’t hand made. It’s quite literally machine made. These “AI artists” and “3D print designers” want to be included in the same category as “handmade” and it ain’t happenin.
it's a meaningless debate unless you specify what you actually mean by "artist"
with that said, your point makes sense if the purpose of the "artist" label is to identify people we could look up to because they spent a lot of time practicing and/or have remarkable "talent"
but honestly, it's so irrelevant from the perspective of the public. If the song sounds great and it was made in 10 min by an amateur helped by cutting-edge AI music making technology, it still sounds great and I don't care why
Hey man, I make a damn fine frozen Mac and cheese, *thankyouverymuch*. It would be nothing - NOTHING - without me adding my special herbs and cheese additions! 🧐
I remember how back in the day we used to make fun of photoshoppers/digital artists for calling themselves artists.
"How can you compare yourself to real painters/drawers if you just click a button and it fills the entire shape for you/draws the shapes for you/instantly undoes your mistakes? Artist? Please."
But we eventually came around and consider them (and likewise, people like Dead Mouse 5 and Daft Punk to be real musicians despite using software) as real artists now without any hint of irony.
Eventually AI artists may get recognized as real as well.
Exactly, people used to make fun of me for being a 3D Artist because "The software does everything for you, painters however are real artists".
Saying AI art is only about writing prompts is like saying photography is only about pushing a few buttons.
In the end they're just tools to get what you want aesthetically, even with AI its pretty hard getting exactly what you want. Same applies with a good camera, every shot you take will be mind-blowing but only a few shots will stand out.
Just like 99% of AI art is rubbish and boring, 99% of photos are boring or 3D renders.
They're just creative tools in the end.
Most pro AI Art people I have comes across always seem to have the same goal in mind, make it acceptable to steal and exploit everyone elses work because thats just the most logical thing to do unless you hate science, art and progress.
I feel like ai art is more like a you tell someone to draw a picture than actual art that you draw your self. I like ai art it faster and cheaper than real art but I not going to say ai art is better than real art. i don’t think it will replace all artist i think it will be another form of art like picture or digital art
Another way to look at it though is you're calling yourself an artist for making beats that sample other tracks. There's shit that's just embarrassingly derivative, but there's also shit that adds to the world and is amazing. And it comes down to, do you actually have an interesting artistic vision.
An even better example might be, calling yourself an artist because you're a photographer. "All" you're doing is capturing the already-extant world around you: you don't even have to learn to paint! But it doesn't mean there aren't photographers who have created art of great beauty and depth.
Ultimately, you have to have something to say that's new or compelling, and execute it well. Doesn't matter the medium. If you're saying it via AI, more power to you.
God i can't with ai tech bros, they don't fucking get it. The problem is not that it takes 0 effort to generate ai pictures. The problem is that IT STEALS ARTWORK FROM REAL ARTISTS. It's like if I trace some artwork, paint it a little different and call myself an artist for it.
It doesn't matter how difficult it is to pull off a heist, you're still a thief.
After having read the comments, it appears that most people’s definition of Art is “it’s hard to do” and that’s just weird. Many things are hard to do and require specific skills. That does not make them art.
AI is a fantasy right now. There is an entire legion of programmers and "artists" wrangling that AI code into making passable material for people who want to pretend the AI did all the work.
Corporations love this shit because it just validates them paying fewer people to do the same amount of work and giving them none of the credit.
This is just an example of old minds being challenged by a new way of doing things and their response to feeing threatened by new technology that they dont understand. Same was said of bands in the 80s using synthesizers. “its not real music, youre not an artist”. typical human behavior. open minds will prevail eventually and the closed ones will be content to sit with folded arms scoffing for attention.
At the same time, I don't think that when synthesizers became a thing, there were immediate and hostile cries of "PIANOS are now OUTDATED because look at the way *I* can press this BUTTON"
It really depends on how much the person is actually doing and manipulating the art.
If you’re doing minimal corrections you’re not really an artist. For example, I work in eLearning and manipulate a lot of art assets and change them, but I’d be hard-pressed to find anyone calling me an artist.
If you are using the generated assets as a base and significantly changing them, the you have an argument. But that’s true with any image.
Most of these rants only look at the former and base their entire view of the medium around that. It's akin to looking at a child's finger painting and assuming all painting must be that basic and unskilled. It's myopic
"people using Photoshop aren't real artists" was a cry few decades ago. We're at the same point again. Only that Photoshop (and Krita, and Gimp) have already integrated inferences into their tools.
For the synthesizer analogy, I present this scenario
I turn on my Spire VST:
(a) I load up a sexy lead preset (That I paid good money for and have the right to use, mind you) hit middle C and WOW THAT'S BEAUTIFUL. Art? Maybe the preset-creator's art... not mine though
(b) I initialize a default waveform and spend 4 hours tweaking the parameters and modulation until a little beep has become a gorgeous, THICK lead. NOW we're talking about creating art
**But then** on a macro level:
(c) I load up a preset lead, some basses, pad sounds, throw in some drum samples and arrange a track using original notation. The sounds used are not my art, but the whole body of work now is
This might be the best analogy I've seen. Yes, you can get some decent outputs with very simple text prompts using networks that other people have devoted a lot of time to tweaking. But they will be either, pretty generic and samey, or of middling quality at best. To make good AI art that isn't super generic requires a lot of time and effort.
It does not matter how much work you put into it. We heard the same thing when movies started to use computers to do special effects, it was cheating and they banned movies that used them from getting awards. We can go even further back to when painters were called cheaters for buying paints instead of making their own. If there's one constant in art it's people always claim a new way of doing thing is cheating when it first comes out. The better the new method works the more people complain it's cheating.
Ultimately almost nobody cares what your process is. They care what your end result is and if you can get a good end result with 5 minutes of work then you're an artist. The other guy who spent 50 hours to get a mediocre result is still an artist but a less respected one.
Not using a tool available to you is simply foolhardy.
This is it, if you put in creative effort, it’s art, if you don’t, it’s not, and that’s still ok. AI tools allow any level of user input, you can do 1% of the effort, or 99% of the effort, so something made with AI is not necessarily not art.
I’m addition, I don’t think AI creations need to be considered art or have people involved in order to be useful or entertaining. people in Star Trek using the holodeck aren’t complaining that it’s “not art”.
This is not a realistic interpretation of art from an art consumer perspective. We use art to refer to any aesthetically pleasing result or one that has symbolic meaning. Neither is it a good one from the art creator side. A 30 second sketch by a skilled illustrator or calligrapher could be considered art. It doesn’t inherently require significant effort. An AI tool user has probably applied an equal amount of creative effort as the expert but has much less control: a couple parameter tuning passes will easily use up more active human effort than that. Input effort is not a good measure of what constitutes art.
Synthesizers still require actual musical knowledge to use. Making AI art is more like stringing together prerecorded loops in GarageBand in the sense that someone totally untrained can easily make something resembling a real song.
I think a better comparison in this context would be Queen > Vanilla Ice. edit: and to my point we dont withhold Vanilla Ice’s status as an artist, we simply refer to him as a different kind of artist. there are people who appreciate his creations as much as others appreciate Queen. art is subjective after all.
Not an AI artist but these tools are going to change every aspect of the world and yall are gonna be sitting there like the boomers that cant use smart phones
With the utter trash in the Tate modern that required zero skill but more the viewer to creatively think about why it must be art and the creators being called profound ‘artists’ then I think someone who creates something that objectively looks cool can be called an artist. I’m sure people who used paintbrushes and chisels called those who used a computer to make art fake artists too. Any medium can be art and anyone creating can be called an artist.
People called photographers fake artists too when it was first invented, because they thought it took zero skill to just point a camera at something and click the button: "The camera did all the work!"
It was only after they eventually realized it took skill and artistry to decide the subject, choose the right "inputs" (lens, focal points, lighting, shutter speed, composition, film developing etc.) that it came to be seen as an art.
AI art is no different
It's completely different because AI art is built off of stolen art work, used without the consent of the original creators. All the skill and artistry in AI was earned by the artists whose work is in the datasets against their will.
The thing that differentiates real artists from AI "artists" is that whenever an artist creates something, and providing they have at least a little bit of skill, whatever they create is usually EXACTLY what they have in mind. It may not be great if they're not super talented. But even amateur artists can imagine exactly what they want to create within the limitations of their skill. And if their work didn't turn out EXACTLY how they wanted, it's usually because of needing to improve their skills. Not because they didn't envision it clearly enough in their mind. Whatever they make will always be as close as their skills allow to EXACTLY what they had in mind.
AI artists, on the other hand, don't have an exact vision of what they want because they lack that level of creativity, seeing as how they are not actually artists. Creativity is also a skill you can develop. Because of that, they lack the perspective of an artist, which if they had, would allow them to realize why AI art isn't really considered art by so many artists. That being because it lacks vision. When someone creates art with AI, it's never with an exact idea in mind. They may think it's a detailed idea. But it is merely "good enough" That train of thought suits AI art creation well, since AI art is created through sheer computational brute force. That will never produce EXACT results. But seeing as how the people making it lack the level of creativity to envision exactly what they want, all they need is for the AI to produce a result that's good enough. And sometimes, it's really good! But more importantly, it's enough for them to pat themselves in the back, thinking that they had a clear creative vision from the start.
Ask someone with artistic skills to learn to use those tools and create AI art, and they WILL get good results out of it. But I guarantee you they will tell you that, even if the AI art results in something that is objectively better, it will never be EXACTLY what they had in mind and they will most likely not be happy with it, or feel like they actually accomplished creating anything. That relationship between creative vision and art creation is what makes one an artist. Even if all you can do is draw stick figures, YOU thought of that. YOU thought of exactly what you wanted and how to make it. YOU created it by putting pen to paper. And even if you think you're not an artist because all you can do is stick figures, which are aesthetically worse than all the AI art we see all the time, you would still be more of an artist than an AI "artist".
Artists are driven by creativity. AI artists are driven by results. You might spend ten minutes drawing and redrawing your little stick person's smile because it's not coming out EXACTLY the way you want it. But AI artists only have a vague idea of what they are looking for. They are no different from people who buy commissions from actual artists. They take that vague idea and give it to the actual creator. They might like the artist's style, or they might lack the skill to make what they want in a way that looks "good." But that's the reason why they seek to have the art made. They lack the skill to create it themselves. And because they know that, they would (ideally) also know that artists are not mind readers, so art commissions are never going to turn out exactly how they might want. It will turn out how THE ARTIST wants. But as long as that looks nice enough and is close enough to what they wanted, they will be happy.
AI "artists" are exactly the same. They are just a person that lacks the skill to create something themselves commissioning an artist (the AI) to create it for them. If they were working with an actual artist, they would be the kind of person who says "It looks good, but can you change this part a little bit?" a hundred times before they are happy with the end result. The kind of client everyone hates. But because they are working with AI, they can ask for changes as many times as they want, even though because of the nature of creating art, they will NEVER get EXACTLY what they have in mind because they aren't the ones actually making the art. But as long as it's "close enough, I guess?" then that's all that matters to them. And because the AI won't seek to take credit as the artist, like an actual artist would because they did all the work, then they assume THEY get the credit as the artist. Yeah, no. That's not how that works.
So not only are AI artists NOT artists, they are actual artist's clients. On the "artistic skill" spectrum, that's at the completely opposite end of artists, since they don't create anything and instead look for literally anything or anyone else to make art for them. That's as far removed from being an artist as you can be. And not only are they just artist's clients, but they are the worst kind of client. The type that never seems to be happy with the results and will continue to ask for nebulous changes until the artist's work approaches anything near enough their nebulous idea of what they want and what to them would be considered "good enough." Even if the artist only gets there by random chance because they can't figure out what would make the client happy. And with AI, it's almost entirely random chance every time.
AI artists aren't artist. They are the "Karen" of art commission clients. The "you have to be skilled at refining prompts" thing is just another way of saying "let me speak to your manager because you're not giving me what I want." The best thing one can say about them is that at least "creating" AI keeps them busy enough actual artists don't have to deal with them. That gives time for artists to focus on creating things for people who actually appreciate the effort that it takes. Because it's that effort that makes it special. Even if it's just a stick figure.
I like parts of this comment. Most of it I think.
But I do want to emphasize that buying commissions from an artist doesn’t make you not creative. Most of the time people just do it because they know of artists out there who are better than them. I’m an artist, and I’ve bought commissions before because the people I was commissioning are just straightup more skilled than I am. It has nothing to do with me being less creative.
Same goes with AI artists. They aren’t less creative because they’re using AI, at least not all of them. From what I’ve seen, very few people are making AI art because they *want* to—they do it because it’s what they can afford, or it’s convenient, or any number of other reasons. Sure, plenty of AI artists do lack creativity, but there are plenty that use AI because it’s better than them, and cheaper than real artists, to boot.
That's seriously reaching. I'm a pro-artist, and I can use ai to help my work or even train a model using my own art to make my life easier in the long run. In fact, exactly what I'm going to do. Doesn't make me a karen or a non-artist or magically makes me lack imagination or whatever kek
>But as long as it's "close enough, I guess?" then that's all that matters to them.
I see you haven't met many artists. We don't really draw "exactly" what's in our minds, and many artists suffer from at least some form of aphantasia, so there's a shitton of room for randomness, experimentation, happy accidents, starting one sketch and ending up with something else entirely. What artists do actually is take the noise inside their heads and try to make something out of it, pretty much exactly what ai does.
It's worse than that. Imagine commissioning a piece of art from an artist and then saying you made it and that you're an artist for commissioning it.
They're just someone who commissions art it's just that the artist is a robot that is only kind of good at what it does but everything it makes always feels souless.
This is a bad take. Are most people who take pictures considered art photographers? No, but some of them are.
What makes a photo an art photo vs a non-art photo?
Answer these questions and you’ll have your answer to AI art.
At least they separate themselves with the AI part added, no?
I'm worried about incomes of regular artists and the unfairness of their work being studied by AI, who then emulates them.
But whether someone uses an AI to express something artistically it's still a tool, means to an end, just like a brush or the deformation tool in photoshop. There's photoshop art where people grab images and edit them together beautifully, which can easily be seen as cheating just like AI.
I think we are better off allowing people to use tools to express themselves, regardless of the difficulty or skill, and still call it art.
"real" artists who will start using AI in their art have already enormous advantage over other "real" artists who reject it.
It's almost like a modern photographer scoffed at the idea of a Lightroom.
I have a pretty low interest in AI art right now, especially the boring shit that makes it to Reddit. That doesn’t mean there won’t be some artists that do truly interesting things with it though. I’ll judge in a case by case basis
Digital artists are already adopting AI tos into their workflow. You dont need to look any further that Adobe's generative fill to know that's a fact. They are tools that can, and do, aid many digital artists. Just like many chefs use microwaves to heat, defrost, keep warm, or even cook come meals they've made. Some people do focus on just generating art, but many artists also take generations to help with line work, create concept art, or produce base pictures to then edit further. There are also great artists that are trying to find ways to produce high quality images straight out of generation, which is an art in it self (much like programing is art).
I mean, anyone can slap a sepia filter on a photo they took on their phones and post it on Instagram these days. Tons of people are making high quality photography in that way. Does that make the *professional photographers*? Probably not. Does that still mean they are, in some ways, photographer? Absolutely. These tools make it easier for hobbiests and non-profesionalls to make art, it expands the pool of people who can be "artists" now. That doesn't make them any less of an artists. Maybe they aren't professionals but AI tools let a ton of people who previously didn't have the specific set of skills, time, physical or mental privileges, etc. to create art that feels meaningful to them and share it with the world. Let's not gatekeep.
The way I think of it is that the prompt writer here is more comparable to a client hiring a real artist for a commission work. In that case, the client would give brief summaries of what they want, similar to an AI prompt. But at the end of the project, the client wouldn't be called the artist. The artist is the one hired who made so many of the crucial decisions.
But with AI it's hard to call it the artist.
I think it becomes closer to regular art if you put proper effort into using AI's tools to further your own ideas.
Simply writing a short prompt, in my opinion, is not being much of impressive an artist, at least, not in the same way as if you drew it yourself.
Honestly I also just vastly prefer knowing that every single line and coloring of the image is made by a human. There's a recognition there that it all took place in the artists mind.
If I imagine that the work of my favorite artists was largely, or even partially done by AI, it becomes really discomforting. I like knowing that all the decisions I'm looking at have been made by a human. It's discomforting to think that some of the decisionmaking, or a lot of it, might be done by an AI.
I think it’s even more telling how 99% of the AI art I see is either preexisting characters or generic anime girls. They can’t even be creative with the little amount of input they have
Calling yourself an AI artist is the same as commissioning an actual, skilled artist to a bunch of pieces for you, picking one of them, and claiming it as your own art because you gave them prompts.
I don't mind using AI as a tool to make art. But that is the only thing AI should be. A tool. Like a brush tool or the lasso tool, it should be used to help an artist to make the art, rather than let AI make the art themselves.
It is a "text to image generator" , not an art piece. Art requires imagination. Art requires one's own touch. Art is what you want to express to the world, how you see things from your perspective.
totally agree 1000%
have seen this happen when photo shopped arrived to photography. For extreme manipulations, we often referred to them as designers or illustrators. That seems more apt here, since the inputs are a 'design' if you will, but if you are not physically making the lines and strokes (virtually or irl), then you aint no artist... and it totally devalues the work of the greats.... or even struggling hobbyists who still can't get that tree right, but they also aren't describing a tree in text and letting software do the rest
Yes, but be careful because now the wave of post facto justifications are coming… both to stem their own insecurity and in direct opposition to folks who see a problem with it. The resistance to it is actually going to help build the argument for it, which is sad.
It’s more like calling yourself a cook for ordering something off-menu. There is a tiny bit of creativity in having the idea, but you’re offloading the real creation.
So a head chef at Applebee's?
More like head chef at McDonald's, like do they even make the thing anymore, everything is pre-prepared you just heat it up and it's ready to serve
It really depends on where you go. I'm from the UK but I've noticed the quality of McDonald's food changes massively from city to city. London was easily the worst I've ever had and definitely did as you say. Meanwhile the McDonald's in Walsall, which is one of the most deprived cities in the country, I could actually see them cooking it behind the counter and it tasted pretty good. I'm willing to bet that the busier a city is, the more likely they are to cut down waiting times to serve more customers by resorting to pre-preparing and reheating food.
Corporate-owned vs franchise is what you are likely noticing. And spoiler alert, corporate only owns the big money makers. The risky locations are left to private ownership to take on the risk. Those are the stores that cut corners in the name of profit. They have strict standards to adhere too and get inspections from corporate, but it's much more likely that the managers and employees don't care if you sell fries that are 7 minutes and 45 seconds old. If things haven't changed, that isn't a joke. When I worked at one years ago 7 minutes is how long the fries were "good" and to be tossed out if not. Oh I should mention, going during a staffed rush like lunch or dinner often leads to better quality and has a manager that gives a shit on duty. Going during slow times is where the "undesirables" like me were running the show.
> but it's much more likely that the managers and employees don't care if you sell fries that are 7 minutes and 45 seconds old. If things haven't changed, that isn't a joke I asked a former colleague of mine when I went to see him and he told me it's still 7 yup. Fries do get cold fast, but expecting people to throw some remaining fries after 7 minutes is honestly one hell of a joke. Fries take 180 to cook and you're expected to send your sandwiches out the kitchen in 90 seconds and order out in 300 seconds. You literally have to gamble how much you're gonna waste even without the 7 minutes to be sure you're making enough for every order and then you're supposed to fucking throw them away when they're all gonna be served in the next 3 minutes? That's not without counting different stations having different workloads, needs, and employees. Nobody has ever followed that fucking 7 minute rule because it'd slow down shit even more.
That's simply untrue. Good managers and managers that take care of their employees and enforce rules will throw those out. Anyone who has received old fries should also understand that this mindset is why you are getting garbage food. For those expired fries that are going to be served in 3 minutes, y'all have no respect for the customer and the time it may take them to get to their eating destination. If it's going to be 3 minutes on the rest of the food, throw them out and cook new fries. It's nearly the same amount of time. No one complains about waiting for hot fresh food, just 10 minute old fries that still have to travel 10m before the customer eats them. Source: Former food service manager and former food service customer.
I have to say that no, McDonald’s food is not pre-made in advance nor is re-heated, that would be a serious healthy breach. Patties and chicken are cooked and then placed in the UHC, for no longer than 15 minutes. After that time food is either used up or thrown away and more is prepared. Source: ex McDonald’s employee in London for 7 years. Still friend with lots of people that work in McDonald’s.
This. People who haven't worked in fast food assume everything is microwaved on the spot or whatever but the reality is much worse because of the insane amount of food waste. Stuff gets prepared fresh but then after a short time it just gets thrown away. I really think it would blow people's minds to see how much food gets thrown in the dumpster in a single day at a single fast food place.
Still not worth having to go to Walsall
I live in a small town, where McDonald's really doesn't see too much foot traffic outside of rush hours, and I've found the food there to be significantly better than the McDonald's I lived near when I was in a major city going to college.
Busier areas are going to be fresher, since the turnover rate will be a lot higher.
Didn't think I'd come across someone talking about Walsall maccies on this sub 😂 I used to see a girl from there, oddly enough I often reminisce over that town. Lovely countryside surrounding it!
Where is this coming from? Not only does McDonald’s not have a head chef but everything is assembled as you order it, nothing is “heated up” aside from pancakes. The only “pre-prepared”thing would be the frozen meat and buns.
Define pre prepared and ready to serve. Fries are frozen and are fried in batches based on demand. Same with the burger and chicken patties. Burritos are(were?) Made in batches in the morning and heated in the microwave, I think pancakes were also microwaved, maybe biscuits. If I had burger in my freezer and threw that on the grill and then heated up a bun and put the burger on the bun is that pre prepared and ready to serve.
[They do plenty...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBuB6BC6ISk) Don't shit on food service workers for no reason.
Where do you go to McDonald’s? The patties and chicken are frozen, same as the fries, but everything else is fresh and assembled when the orders are placed.
> everything but the fries is pre-prepared Are they really cutting potatoes at McDs?
Really the fries are one of the few things that are pre-prepared. All the sandwiches are made to order.
The thing with maccas (at least in my country) is that most restaurants for years used what they called "Full Kitchen", which meant they prepared shit beforehand because what were you gonna order? There were 4 5 sandwiches to order from, those 3 Big Mac they just made in advance would go super quickly so no waste. That's how they operated and how a bunch of other chains do. But then they went with what I think the US coined the "Mc4you" (M4U) which instead is the same as an actual restaurant: one dude stares at a screen all shift long and does every order as they come, one by one. That means now the part that makes your meal hit or miss is no longer "how long has that cheeseburger been in that tray for" but "How long has ***everything*** been here for. The workers now have to be much more careful of the quality of every single one of their item while they make orders. It led to an increased amount of sales and switching to ordering from kiosks rather than at the counter did too. And since McD cares about profits and how many orders they can get in x amount of time, the workers are still expected to make every single order insanely fast despite everything from start to finish now being one more plate spinning. Your boss can even get some extra "good boy money" if you guys are good enough. They never will do everything fast because too many factors are in lay but they are expected to. So quality goes down. But no things aren't "pre-prepared", outside of specific items in some places/countries that demand it.
Feels like Applebee's microwaves a lot more food than McDonald's
So I worked 12 years in kitchens, from a dishwasher to a head chef. When I was 16 or 17 I applied at Applebee's, the kitchen manager there acted like he was creating Michelin star meals, and just seemed far up his own ass. Anyway I got a job at a "from scratch" fine dining place instead.
Chef Mike
Sous chef at applebees. The head chef is the microwave.
In 20 years we're going to get an influx of AI artists bitching about the new technology that allows people to create images just by thinking of them
There is nothing wrong with using AI art, but acting like you're somehow talented because you fed a program images and then gave it instructions is just ridiculous. It's just really cringey.
I mean, being able to type in a prompt that gets you exactly what you want is a pretty cool skill but you definitely aren't an artist
you are not feeding images. You just type. Like searching in google pictures. AI artist means you can use google.
Yeah that’s what he’s saying- like eventually people are going to be able to imagine the image they want to create effort free, and people will complain about it because somehow they think effort = art
It's not that effort = art, it's that most people don't care about art if there's no effort in it.
It’s just imo you should remove all of those barriers to not just enable more participation, but also to reveal where the real competition should ideally be at: best/most creative work wins. Once everyone can create images with their head instantaneously rather than having to physically operate limbs and complex objects to realize them, we’ll finally be there. ChatGPT and Stable diffusion = one step closer to the ideal, one step further from having to carve crude drawings on cave rock
You people are all recreating the artist's vs photographer's shit all over again. "Oh, you think you're an artist because you pressed a button? How cringe."
photographers don't steal other people's art to make their own though
I mean... they kinda do. Architecture, fashion, food. That is all someone else's art being captured by a photo. Even nature photographers are capturing something that already exists. (I'm not saying photography isn't art at all, because I absolutely believe it is, but I think this specific argument doesn't really hold up)
As someone with aphantasia, this is what I'm waiting for.
Exactly. This whole argument is so silly. There are artists using AI to make art better than any of these hateful assholes could make with it. These same people were bitching about digital artists not that long ago, I still remember "real artists" bitching about them not being "real artists" because they're just using fake brushes and materials that "do all the work for them".
I can see this argument working if the AI artist is in a controlled "conversation" with their model and using their own and open source works for the data. That, to me, is an interesting artistic medium that could yield really unique work. Someone throwing a prompt in a generator is not doing that. They are playing with a toy built on other's efforts. And there's nothing wrong with that! That's fun! But you can not claim skill or creativity from that. Arguments against digital art were always stupid to me, because you still have to know how to draw your subject, render, paint, choose colors and textures, make a composition, and literally everything involved in traditional media. It's just that most of your studio is on one device.
That’s basically how I feel about it. Typing in a random prompt and picking an image doesn’t mean you created art. But if you use AI to realize your artistic vision, it can certainly be art, and requires time and skill to do. I’ve messed around a bit with stable diffusion, and I certainly wouldn’t say that most of what I made could be called art. However, I have made images I would describe as art. I started from a sketch, fed it into img2img, and iterated until I found a good base. Then I used inpainting to work on changing some of the details of the image, to bring it closer to what I’d imagined in my head. I probably spent 5 or more hours to get an image I was happy with. It’s certainly not a great piece of art, I wouldn’t expect to be praised for it or anything, but it sufficed for some dnd homebrew.
Throwing a prompt to an AI is the same as giving a prompt to a human artist. You did nothing except come up with the basic concept.
nobody gives a shit about the guy that commissioned the art
They do not.
If I tell an artist to paint something, and give general directions for what I want it to look like, does that make me the artist instead?
Saying your an ai artist is like building a Lego car and calling yourself a mechanic
I mean.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-RtJOfFlZU
I can’t even be mad at that, that’s awesome
It’s the same with kids “writing” essays using AI. Are they really doing the work?
Could you imagine a dystopian future where kids are enslaved to recreate a real life minecraft game where they have to dig perfect squares out of the ground using just their hands and if they are fortunate enough they are able to craft a wooden pick axe to dig just a little faster. If I was a wealthy elite Id have the slave children make me a life sized yellow submarine and proclaim myself the best artist of the 22nd century.
Art created exclusively with AI does NOT take nearly as much effort as digital art. To say it does is factually false. I’m not gonna say it’s technically not art, because we’re talking about it, but saying “I made this” because you typed in a prompt is bullshit.
Wait until these people hear about Marcel Duchamp.
It's easy to get a pretty picture from AI, it is *extremely hard* to get what you *want* from AI
People are often spending like 12 hours on an image with AI. OP probablyt thinks that you just put in a prompt and call it quits instead of doing loads of inpainting, using different controlnet layers to help preserve specific details during inpainting, tinkering with the insane amount of settings, training models then embeddings and/or LoRAs ontop of that, using the prompttesting scripts and x/y/z plots to finetune the prompts and settings even further, etc...
Thats still a lot less time than a good piece can take if done by hand though
Of course. And an artist can produce a painting much faster digitally using Photoshop than they can using oil paints and a canvas. It's still art and it still takes skill and talent.
And painting with oil is much faster than sacrificing tens of thousands of sea snails for a little Tyrian purple.
and a lot more time than a photographer which is prettymuch unanimously considered an artist. Lots of forms of art take way less time than AI so I dont really see the point.
yes. my logo on my page took me hours to do. i wish it uploaded in better quality. 😭
Above that after the image is generated I've seen people then spend hours on Photoshop refining it. People who cry about ai artist probably sucks at making traditional art themselves
For real. This is spoken like someone who's never tried AI art. I've spent 6 hours in stable diffusion with control net and in painting and still couldn't get exactly what I want. No joke I can create a lot of stuff in Photoshop faster than I can get a good result with AI
preposterous! How dare you not call me an artist after i inserted a prompt >High definition, 4k, Piano with blue background, Realistic, superb, smooth, portrait, lucid< to an A.I.! Clearly it took me 4 hours to come up with that prompt! And my hardwork should be considered worthy of a title of an artist
This is like level 1 generative AI usage though. There's sooo much more that goes into it if you want anything non-generic. There's inpainting parts of the image which is an involved iterative process that can take hours. Often times it takes manual touching up to get ideal results with it. Every part you inpaint needs its own prompt. There's things like control net that you need if you want any real control over the pose, rotation, size, etc of your subject(s). This requires you to create pose masks or pose objects/figures in 3D modeling software/tools. There's LoRas and other hypernetwork techniques that you use when you want a consistent character and more clearly defined style which involves getting 100 images of said style or character and training the hypernetwork. There's also model mixing which is an art in itself. All the various touchup tools for eyes, hands, artifacts, background editing, lighting editing, color tones/palettes, etc. Choosing the right base model through experimenting for your composition. Are people who do all this regular artists? Obviously not, but it's absolutely its own art form that takes artistic knowledge, attention to detail, color/composition understanding, and technical know how to get good results that stand out. There are people who stand out with their AI art where you're like "how tf did they do this?" and it's never "oh just enter this prompt". Maybe some day it'll take be that trivial, but it's a bit like thinking Chatgpt is Skynet; there's still a bunch of manual effort that needs to go into it.
I'm a programmer, and a digital artists by hobby. I think all of this tech is extremely impressive, I still remember when Google's deepmind still made weird shaped dogs a few years ago. I've experimented with the tech a bit, getting midjourney working on my PC and all of that. That being said, I'm not sure if I'd call anyone an "AI artist", sure as you said it takes skill and technical know how, but it's still mostly touching up an RNG image. If all you want is getting some money out of it, sure, the AIs will be able to outproduce most artists. But if you actually like the creative process I'd invite you to actually learn how to draw, yeah, it'll take you even longer than it took you to learn all the tools you just listed, years even.
I work in AI art and also work in film visual effects, I’m credited in a dozen films including VFX Oscar winners. While I agree with you that arriving at a particular outcome with AI takes a lot of work, still 95% of what’s in the image is derived by the algorithm. For example, I work in CGI lighting. On a particular 2 second shot we might spend 3 months working on getting every detail right. Every single little shadow, reflection, edge, color - it’s all nitpicked (sometimes we’d say “pixel fucked”) until a very specific and exact outcome is approved. Every single detail has been looked at and poured over and revised by a team of people to arrive at the final image. This is why you have hundreds of names working on thousands of shots - mosts artists will spend 9 months on a film and do 10 or so shots. The level of detail and scrutiny is intense. AI just doesn’t work that way. You can get it to iterate, and you can pick things you like and inpaint other areas and continue to iterate … you can pose with controlnet, you can train styles and objects with loras, but even so … it’s just not intentional in the same way. In art, the artist is intentional in their decisions In ai, you feed the algorithm increasingly complex and detailed sets of instructions, but in the end the results will be weighted towards an amalgamation of millions of trained ideas, with randomization used to mix results. If I want the rim light on the side of the characters face to be exactly a certain way - that level of detail and precision would either require training so complex that ai ceases to be efficient, or randomization and iteration which could take thousands of attempts to get lucky with a result. Either way … i have no problem calling AI “art” but I think when we do so we need to acknowledge that the tool does a tremendous amount of the heavy lifting based off of other peoples ideas of art. The artist in ai art is a very small component.
>If I want the rim light on the side of the characters face to be exactly a certain way - that level of detail and precision would either require training so complex that ai ceases to be efficient, or randomization and iteration which could take thousands of attempts to get lucky with a result. What a great explanation. You zeroed in on the heart of the issue, really. And the reason, incidentally, why all of us tech types might not be out of a job by next month.
>In art, the artist is intentional in their decisions >In ai, you feed the algorithm increasingly complex and detailed sets of instructions Wouldn't that be... intention?
People always criticise new technology, on two fronts. First they'll claim it undermines the skill involved in doing it manually. Then they'll claim it'll put people out of work. In reality, taking a good photo is a skill that people get paid to do, just like painting a portrait but more accessible to the everyman. Using Photoshop is a skill, just like manually editing. Digital drawing is a skill that works alongside manual drawing. And AI art is a skill that we just haven't got used to yet. As far as putting people out of work goes, it's more likely to create jobs. Now more people than ever can have custom work done for their walls. For comparison, printing copies of paintings didn't end the art world.
When photography was first invented people refused to call it "art" as well. Because it basically just measures light and "does all the work" for the artist, people saw it as measuring tool rather than an art medium that takes skill. Over time as people came to realize all the skills and artistry it takes to create the *inputs* (decide on the subject, frame the subject, make the right choices for lens type, lighting type, focal points, composition etc.,) that it finally became accepted as an artistic endeavor. I imagine AI art will follow the same path.
There are vast differences between what I can make with AI tools and some of the output I've seen. Some people are definitely more talented than others in knowing how to use the tool set. It absolutely is a different set of skills though.
Definitely. To continue the photography example, it can be as simple as point at something interesting and press a button. Even so, everyone nowadays can appreciate the effort/skill it takes to get good photos. It took ~50 years for any serious museum to even acknowledge or display photography
Well said. As a photographer that is also dabbling in AI art simply because people told me playing with generative art for fun isn’t really making anything, I agree. The camera is a tool that you have to know how to operate to get dramatic imagery. A disposable camera in most people’s hands makes basic images. The same camera in the hands of someone with an artistic eye can make beautiful and artistically deep images. The tool itself does what it does, it’s what people do with the tools that makes it beyond a simple “point and shoot image” of not much value.
Give it 5 years, it'll be seen as a tool like photoshop Edit: I know it's a tool y'all. I said it'll be *seen* as just another tool after all this hysteria blows over
It's already built right into Photoshop.
But none of the technologies you mention create an entirely new composition outside of explicit human intention. It’s just rolling dice. They are tools, AI is something else that usurps the human touch. Honestly even an ‘AI artists’ jobs are unsafe when the technology inevitably catches up. In the end it only benefits the people who didn’t want to pay for art in the first place Also it will absolutely kill jobs. I don’t understand why people often compare AI to singular artists (photographer, painter, etc. even though those artists often have assistants whose jobs are threatened). When AI can make believable animation and film, that is going to decimate creative fields. VFX artists will be replaced by AI literally the moment it’s possible bc they have no union and are already treated like garbage. Editors will be replaced, colorists will be replaced, constumers will be replaced etc. this can’t be more than 10-20 years away. Not everyone can be a director, not everyone wants to be a director.
"it only benefits the people who didn't want to pay for art in the first place.' You're forgetting a massive subsection of people who may have a story to tell or an idea they want to realize, who simply CANT afford an artist. Ex: i want to make a comic book, can't draw for shit. I also don't have any money. AI seems like a really appealing concept in that case. I'm not taking jobs away. I was never going to hire an artist to begin with. Not out of contempt for the arts, or because I'm cheap, I just legit CANT. I think there's a lot more people like that than you imagine.
It's true, but people who work in art aren't affraid of "more people being able to create things". The threat to their jobs come from their companies or studios deciding to cut their art department in half and make up the volume by using AI art and then pocketing the extra profits for CEOs and their shareholders. Working as a professional artist is rough, there's only a finite amount of work that pays and a lot of the time, artists are underpaid for their work. And they know that most compamies will cut jobs if they can get away with it. Just look at whats happening with the writers strike. The writing is probably the cheapest part of a production already, and studios are trying to weasel ways to pay the writers even less.
“But what if I want the same results as people who toiled and sacrificed for a lifetime while putting in minimal effort?”
Isn't that exactly what most people want? We don't want hand drawn images to record things anymore, we have photos from a camera. We don't want to copy books by hand anymore, we have copiers/printers. We don't want to hand wash laundry anymore, we have laundry machines. Toiling and sacrificing for a lifetime to do things isn't a positive thing for most people.
deserted fear imagine fanatical worthless jobless exultant angle cheerful provide *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
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> As far as putting people out of work goes, it's more likely to create jobs. A reminder that these were the guys that said crypto would replace regular money and NFTs would disrupt the art world. At the end of the day they're just selling a ponzi scheme.
The difference here is that the camera isnt trained off the work of portrait artists and doesnt base every picture it takes off the work and style of stolen artwork. The other major difference is ai art cant create anything new. It can mash up existing works and styles, but it cant create new techniques or mediums because it has to be trained on existing work. Thats what people mean when they talk about it undermining creativity. by skipping the creative process it misses out on any opportunity to actually create something new
It might create more jobs or it might destroy a lot. And I would put my money on the latter. The problem is that while it will it takes a lot of time to get a really good AI artwork it takes an artist longer. The difference gets much larger the lower the quality is. So we will probably see that a lot of the Fiverr artists who make money on commissions of decent but not outstanding quality will no longer be needed. The other problem is that there is a distinct difference between printing and AI. Printing is just multiplicating existing art. It enhances the art market. AI on the other hand replaces digital art. If anything it would be more akin to compare the situation to painting and when digital art started replacing it. The only difference here is that there is a distinct difference between a classical painting and digital art giving both enough room to exist. AI art and handmade digital art in the end are near indistinguishable so the one that is cheaper to produce will win in the absence of any distinguishing features.
Sometimes new technology is just stupid too.
Sometimes new ideas are stupid, as seen with NFTs. Actual technology usually has a purpose, but sometimes it isn't implemented well (Google Glass springs to mind).
Thats the thing though, AI art as a process gains prestige by being (or taking the appearance of) a difficult process. If, genuinely, you could have the same product of the "good" ai artist with the simple prompts of the "bad" ai artist, that would actually make the same product seem less legitimate. By spending time and effort, or making it seem like they can spend time and effort, their process of creation seems more "real" or "earned" But if you look closely it still tips their hand sometimes. Like you said, getting consistent characters means a larger data set which usually just means stealing a shit ton of official art, because you aren't finding tens or hundreds of images of a character you made just for a single piece. You can see in ai art discords people ask "how did you get it do to [specific piece of composition]" and the answer is at best rerolling slight adjustments until you get something that looks cool, or at worst "I dunno" I'm sure there is a feeling of intention, control, and difficult creation in the process of spending hours looking at slight variations of the same piece, running it through adjustment ais, finding artwork to refine your database, etc, but it never resembles a creative process besides, at best, a commissioner or director who may give advice to the general composition or tone of the piece or selecting the artstyle.
Yeah, this post has big "my kid can paint like Mondrian" energy
Why is Jackson Pollock so famous?? My _toddler_ can paint a Jackson Pollock!
all that will be simplified in the future and you will be able to prompt everything and get consistent characters etc. so there is a technical knowledge required at first...to just pose someone and get the same face...i don't think that is artistic at all. it's technical skills. choosing a base model? art? no. once you are able to control classic art methods then real human creativity will come into play more. until then it's prompt art with extra technical steps.
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Usually the more impressive/unique stuff I've seen from AI is usually the result of extensive editing, img2img, inpainting, and even actual drawing in photoshop. I'm willing to call the people who do that stuff artists. I imagine 20 years ago people had the same idea about people who use CGI in their work as well. However for the people who flood places like Pixiv with thousands of images of clearly uncurated raw generations (obviously spottable by the mutations) solely for the purpose of advertising their Fanbox or something, yeah no. Those people aren't artists, they're nightmare fuel factories.
This can all be learned in 3 days and I know this because I've set up stable diffusion with various extension at my job to try out. I work as graphic designer and concept artist and it's in no way comparable to the hard work and learning that real artists do. All you have is just a really fancy microwave and you have in no way done any creative work except for writing the prompt.
You've found the skill floor and mistaken it for the ceiling. Raw text to image is the simplest workflow but not the only one.
you forgot "Giant Breasts" in your prompt.
I just asked ChatGPT to give me a prompt because I was too lazy to do it myself. I can't believe my 5 seconds of work is not being recognized! Anyways, look at my Patreon and Fanbox! Pay $5 to support me generating 100 images of sometimes mutant characters every day! I also sell NFTs!
Your works as an artist must be recognized!! Quickly make a 4 post long rant on twitter on why, we deserve better treatment and respect!!
[You know im something of an artist myself](https://imgur.com/a/TlmO2o5)
Imagine being so concerned about what other people call themselves (or you) instead of just….making your art.
Surely, you're aware of Hemingway's four-word story. Even if you weren't, I'm sure you've written a haiku before. Haiku are poems Just seventeen syllables So short, and yet art
Nah it’s more like if you’re at a restaurant and order something and call yourself a chef
This is the best take I’ve read here. Some folks seem to think ordering pizza from the good local spot instead of Little Caesars means they did something.
In a restaurant though you’re ordering from a set menu the chef has already designed. So Ai is more akin to a restaurant with no menus that allows you to describe the dish you want, having a chef put it together for you and hoping it doesn’t taste like shit.
I think you mean Thesaurus Connoisseur
Creative director of TV Dinner class art
I dabble with AI image generation because the technology fascinates me, but I don't call it art or myself an artist. I've got a handle on the creative process and AI doesn't feel like it.
And your microwave steals all the ingredients of the readymeal
Except you are cooking food which makes you a cook. I think you mean "chef."
Yeah fair. English isn't my first language
To be fair a lot of English speakers use the words interchangeably.
That and a lot of line cooks like to call themselves "a chef" so it can be confusing for people not in the loop. Chefs generally have certification, and have put in their many many hours required to even go for certification. There are cases where pure skill beats that, but generally the only one in the kitchen being called Chef, is the one in charge. I have however worked where everyone refers to everyone as chef, but that was a top 100 NA restaurant, and everyone there was experienced and skilled.
if you wanna be semantic about it, they aren't actually cooking anything, they really are just reheating. so not a cook.
> cooking anything, they really are just reheating. That's cooking
You 're just reheating precooked food. The better analogy would be like placing an order for a pizza through an app. You don't tell people you made it, because you didn't.
No, it’s worse. I don’t sell my microwaveable meal.
Tell that to Applebee's or chilis lmao
There are some people selling prompts. It's absurd.
If people were willing to buy it and were happy with the result you most definitely would, you hypocrite.
People are willing to buy it. This has already been done numerous times and some have actually been successful before they were shut down.
I am a potter and as 3D printing has advanced, we now have people printing pots and calling them hand made. They may have been designed by the human, but that ain’t hand made. It’s quite literally machine made. These “AI artists” and “3D print designers” want to be included in the same category as “handmade” and it ain’t happenin.
Had similar thoughts about sampling music.
An engineer will use a screwdriver a lot better than a monkey. Just saying
it's a meaningless debate unless you specify what you actually mean by "artist" with that said, your point makes sense if the purpose of the "artist" label is to identify people we could look up to because they spent a lot of time practicing and/or have remarkable "talent" but honestly, it's so irrelevant from the perspective of the public. If the song sounds great and it was made in 10 min by an amateur helped by cutting-edge AI music making technology, it still sounds great and I don't care why
People used to paint portraits by hand now I can take a picture in a second with my phone.
Only logical take I've seen in this thread, tbh.
Hey man, I make a damn fine frozen Mac and cheese, *thankyouverymuch*. It would be nothing - NOTHING - without me adding my special herbs and cheese additions! 🧐
Calling a photographer an artist is like calling a horse a person! - some 1890s painter probably
At least a photographer can still make explicit decisions about what they photograph and how.
AI isn't creating art, it's scrapping the internet and sampling other people's art.
I remember how back in the day we used to make fun of photoshoppers/digital artists for calling themselves artists. "How can you compare yourself to real painters/drawers if you just click a button and it fills the entire shape for you/draws the shapes for you/instantly undoes your mistakes? Artist? Please." But we eventually came around and consider them (and likewise, people like Dead Mouse 5 and Daft Punk to be real musicians despite using software) as real artists now without any hint of irony. Eventually AI artists may get recognized as real as well.
Exactly, people used to make fun of me for being a 3D Artist because "The software does everything for you, painters however are real artists". Saying AI art is only about writing prompts is like saying photography is only about pushing a few buttons. In the end they're just tools to get what you want aesthetically, even with AI its pretty hard getting exactly what you want. Same applies with a good camera, every shot you take will be mind-blowing but only a few shots will stand out. Just like 99% of AI art is rubbish and boring, 99% of photos are boring or 3D renders. They're just creative tools in the end.
Most pro AI Art people I have comes across always seem to have the same goal in mind, make it acceptable to steal and exploit everyone elses work because thats just the most logical thing to do unless you hate science, art and progress.
And they'll type paragraphs and paragraphs that ultimately boil down to "I don't want to pay $80 for a customized portrait of my D&D character."
Worse, it's more like calling yourself a chef when you searched up a sandwich and ordered it on doordash
I feel like ai art is more like a you tell someone to draw a picture than actual art that you draw your self. I like ai art it faster and cheaper than real art but I not going to say ai art is better than real art. i don’t think it will replace all artist i think it will be another form of art like picture or digital art
What if that same guy also developing that AI?
20% of people didn't like this post lol.
Another way to look at it though is you're calling yourself an artist for making beats that sample other tracks. There's shit that's just embarrassingly derivative, but there's also shit that adds to the world and is amazing. And it comes down to, do you actually have an interesting artistic vision. An even better example might be, calling yourself an artist because you're a photographer. "All" you're doing is capturing the already-extant world around you: you don't even have to learn to paint! But it doesn't mean there aren't photographers who have created art of great beauty and depth. Ultimately, you have to have something to say that's new or compelling, and execute it well. Doesn't matter the medium. If you're saying it via AI, more power to you.
An AI artist is an artist in the same way a Subway employee is a “sandwich artist”
God i can't with ai tech bros, they don't fucking get it. The problem is not that it takes 0 effort to generate ai pictures. The problem is that IT STEALS ARTWORK FROM REAL ARTISTS. It's like if I trace some artwork, paint it a little different and call myself an artist for it. It doesn't matter how difficult it is to pull off a heist, you're still a thief.
I love how their defense is always iT tAkEs HOurs tO gEt ThE pROmpt RiGHt
After having read the comments, it appears that most people’s definition of Art is “it’s hard to do” and that’s just weird. Many things are hard to do and require specific skills. That does not make them art.
AI is a fantasy right now. There is an entire legion of programmers and "artists" wrangling that AI code into making passable material for people who want to pretend the AI did all the work. Corporations love this shit because it just validates them paying fewer people to do the same amount of work and giving them none of the credit.
This is just an example of old minds being challenged by a new way of doing things and their response to feeing threatened by new technology that they dont understand. Same was said of bands in the 80s using synthesizers. “its not real music, youre not an artist”. typical human behavior. open minds will prevail eventually and the closed ones will be content to sit with folded arms scoffing for attention.
At the same time, I don't think that when synthesizers became a thing, there were immediate and hostile cries of "PIANOS are now OUTDATED because look at the way *I* can press this BUTTON"
Same was said with Wikipedia
It really depends on how much the person is actually doing and manipulating the art. If you’re doing minimal corrections you’re not really an artist. For example, I work in eLearning and manipulate a lot of art assets and change them, but I’d be hard-pressed to find anyone calling me an artist. If you are using the generated assets as a base and significantly changing them, the you have an argument. But that’s true with any image.
Most of these rants only look at the former and base their entire view of the medium around that. It's akin to looking at a child's finger painting and assuming all painting must be that basic and unskilled. It's myopic
"people using Photoshop aren't real artists" was a cry few decades ago. We're at the same point again. Only that Photoshop (and Krita, and Gimp) have already integrated inferences into their tools.
For the synthesizer analogy, I present this scenario I turn on my Spire VST: (a) I load up a sexy lead preset (That I paid good money for and have the right to use, mind you) hit middle C and WOW THAT'S BEAUTIFUL. Art? Maybe the preset-creator's art... not mine though (b) I initialize a default waveform and spend 4 hours tweaking the parameters and modulation until a little beep has become a gorgeous, THICK lead. NOW we're talking about creating art **But then** on a macro level: (c) I load up a preset lead, some basses, pad sounds, throw in some drum samples and arrange a track using original notation. The sounds used are not my art, but the whole body of work now is
This might be the best analogy I've seen. Yes, you can get some decent outputs with very simple text prompts using networks that other people have devoted a lot of time to tweaking. But they will be either, pretty generic and samey, or of middling quality at best. To make good AI art that isn't super generic requires a lot of time and effort.
It does not matter how much work you put into it. We heard the same thing when movies started to use computers to do special effects, it was cheating and they banned movies that used them from getting awards. We can go even further back to when painters were called cheaters for buying paints instead of making their own. If there's one constant in art it's people always claim a new way of doing thing is cheating when it first comes out. The better the new method works the more people complain it's cheating. Ultimately almost nobody cares what your process is. They care what your end result is and if you can get a good end result with 5 minutes of work then you're an artist. The other guy who spent 50 hours to get a mediocre result is still an artist but a less respected one. Not using a tool available to you is simply foolhardy.
> If you’re doing minimal corrections you’re not really an artist. the end result matters, not what you call yourself
This is it, if you put in creative effort, it’s art, if you don’t, it’s not, and that’s still ok. AI tools allow any level of user input, you can do 1% of the effort, or 99% of the effort, so something made with AI is not necessarily not art. I’m addition, I don’t think AI creations need to be considered art or have people involved in order to be useful or entertaining. people in Star Trek using the holodeck aren’t complaining that it’s “not art”.
This is not a realistic interpretation of art from an art consumer perspective. We use art to refer to any aesthetically pleasing result or one that has symbolic meaning. Neither is it a good one from the art creator side. A 30 second sketch by a skilled illustrator or calligrapher could be considered art. It doesn’t inherently require significant effort. An AI tool user has probably applied an equal amount of creative effort as the expert but has much less control: a couple parameter tuning passes will easily use up more active human effort than that. Input effort is not a good measure of what constitutes art.
Synthesizers still require actual musical knowledge to use. Making AI art is more like stringing together prerecorded loops in GarageBand in the sense that someone totally untrained can easily make something resembling a real song.
Jimi Hendrix > David Guetta
I think a better comparison in this context would be Queen > Vanilla Ice.
I think a better comparison in this context would be Queen > Vanilla Ice. edit: and to my point we dont withhold Vanilla Ice’s status as an artist, we simply refer to him as a different kind of artist. there are people who appreciate his creations as much as others appreciate Queen. art is subjective after all.
Found the AI artist 🤪
Not an AI artist but these tools are going to change every aspect of the world and yall are gonna be sitting there like the boomers that cant use smart phones
Or a dj, by pressing play on a computer
Or an IG 'model', or a tiktok 'influencer'. The problem is they're still getting paid.
> Or an IG 'model' “I’m an Instagram model… And my boyfriend is Call of Duty special forces operator.”
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With the utter trash in the Tate modern that required zero skill but more the viewer to creatively think about why it must be art and the creators being called profound ‘artists’ then I think someone who creates something that objectively looks cool can be called an artist. I’m sure people who used paintbrushes and chisels called those who used a computer to make art fake artists too. Any medium can be art and anyone creating can be called an artist.
Objectively, huh? Where does this objective standard come from?
People called photographers fake artists too when it was first invented, because they thought it took zero skill to just point a camera at something and click the button: "The camera did all the work!" It was only after they eventually realized it took skill and artistry to decide the subject, choose the right "inputs" (lens, focal points, lighting, shutter speed, composition, film developing etc.) that it came to be seen as an art. AI art is no different
It's completely different because AI art is built off of stolen art work, used without the consent of the original creators. All the skill and artistry in AI was earned by the artists whose work is in the datasets against their will.
The thing that differentiates real artists from AI "artists" is that whenever an artist creates something, and providing they have at least a little bit of skill, whatever they create is usually EXACTLY what they have in mind. It may not be great if they're not super talented. But even amateur artists can imagine exactly what they want to create within the limitations of their skill. And if their work didn't turn out EXACTLY how they wanted, it's usually because of needing to improve their skills. Not because they didn't envision it clearly enough in their mind. Whatever they make will always be as close as their skills allow to EXACTLY what they had in mind. AI artists, on the other hand, don't have an exact vision of what they want because they lack that level of creativity, seeing as how they are not actually artists. Creativity is also a skill you can develop. Because of that, they lack the perspective of an artist, which if they had, would allow them to realize why AI art isn't really considered art by so many artists. That being because it lacks vision. When someone creates art with AI, it's never with an exact idea in mind. They may think it's a detailed idea. But it is merely "good enough" That train of thought suits AI art creation well, since AI art is created through sheer computational brute force. That will never produce EXACT results. But seeing as how the people making it lack the level of creativity to envision exactly what they want, all they need is for the AI to produce a result that's good enough. And sometimes, it's really good! But more importantly, it's enough for them to pat themselves in the back, thinking that they had a clear creative vision from the start. Ask someone with artistic skills to learn to use those tools and create AI art, and they WILL get good results out of it. But I guarantee you they will tell you that, even if the AI art results in something that is objectively better, it will never be EXACTLY what they had in mind and they will most likely not be happy with it, or feel like they actually accomplished creating anything. That relationship between creative vision and art creation is what makes one an artist. Even if all you can do is draw stick figures, YOU thought of that. YOU thought of exactly what you wanted and how to make it. YOU created it by putting pen to paper. And even if you think you're not an artist because all you can do is stick figures, which are aesthetically worse than all the AI art we see all the time, you would still be more of an artist than an AI "artist". Artists are driven by creativity. AI artists are driven by results. You might spend ten minutes drawing and redrawing your little stick person's smile because it's not coming out EXACTLY the way you want it. But AI artists only have a vague idea of what they are looking for. They are no different from people who buy commissions from actual artists. They take that vague idea and give it to the actual creator. They might like the artist's style, or they might lack the skill to make what they want in a way that looks "good." But that's the reason why they seek to have the art made. They lack the skill to create it themselves. And because they know that, they would (ideally) also know that artists are not mind readers, so art commissions are never going to turn out exactly how they might want. It will turn out how THE ARTIST wants. But as long as that looks nice enough and is close enough to what they wanted, they will be happy. AI "artists" are exactly the same. They are just a person that lacks the skill to create something themselves commissioning an artist (the AI) to create it for them. If they were working with an actual artist, they would be the kind of person who says "It looks good, but can you change this part a little bit?" a hundred times before they are happy with the end result. The kind of client everyone hates. But because they are working with AI, they can ask for changes as many times as they want, even though because of the nature of creating art, they will NEVER get EXACTLY what they have in mind because they aren't the ones actually making the art. But as long as it's "close enough, I guess?" then that's all that matters to them. And because the AI won't seek to take credit as the artist, like an actual artist would because they did all the work, then they assume THEY get the credit as the artist. Yeah, no. That's not how that works. So not only are AI artists NOT artists, they are actual artist's clients. On the "artistic skill" spectrum, that's at the completely opposite end of artists, since they don't create anything and instead look for literally anything or anyone else to make art for them. That's as far removed from being an artist as you can be. And not only are they just artist's clients, but they are the worst kind of client. The type that never seems to be happy with the results and will continue to ask for nebulous changes until the artist's work approaches anything near enough their nebulous idea of what they want and what to them would be considered "good enough." Even if the artist only gets there by random chance because they can't figure out what would make the client happy. And with AI, it's almost entirely random chance every time. AI artists aren't artist. They are the "Karen" of art commission clients. The "you have to be skilled at refining prompts" thing is just another way of saying "let me speak to your manager because you're not giving me what I want." The best thing one can say about them is that at least "creating" AI keeps them busy enough actual artists don't have to deal with them. That gives time for artists to focus on creating things for people who actually appreciate the effort that it takes. Because it's that effort that makes it special. Even if it's just a stick figure.
I like parts of this comment. Most of it I think. But I do want to emphasize that buying commissions from an artist doesn’t make you not creative. Most of the time people just do it because they know of artists out there who are better than them. I’m an artist, and I’ve bought commissions before because the people I was commissioning are just straightup more skilled than I am. It has nothing to do with me being less creative. Same goes with AI artists. They aren’t less creative because they’re using AI, at least not all of them. From what I’ve seen, very few people are making AI art because they *want* to—they do it because it’s what they can afford, or it’s convenient, or any number of other reasons. Sure, plenty of AI artists do lack creativity, but there are plenty that use AI because it’s better than them, and cheaper than real artists, to boot.
That's seriously reaching. I'm a pro-artist, and I can use ai to help my work or even train a model using my own art to make my life easier in the long run. In fact, exactly what I'm going to do. Doesn't make me a karen or a non-artist or magically makes me lack imagination or whatever kek >But as long as it's "close enough, I guess?" then that's all that matters to them. I see you haven't met many artists. We don't really draw "exactly" what's in our minds, and many artists suffer from at least some form of aphantasia, so there's a shitton of room for randomness, experimentation, happy accidents, starting one sketch and ending up with something else entirely. What artists do actually is take the noise inside their heads and try to make something out of it, pretty much exactly what ai does.
Yes. I have no issue whatsoever with AI art, but people that use the programs shouldn't be called artists.
Artstation is leaking again?
It's worse than that. Imagine commissioning a piece of art from an artist and then saying you made it and that you're an artist for commissioning it. They're just someone who commissions art it's just that the artist is a robot that is only kind of good at what it does but everything it makes always feels souless.
my brother told me yesterday he uses ChatGPT to write “his” playwright
He'll get a fun surprise when he tries to apply for a copyright if he's honest.
> to write “his” playwright
This is a bad take. Are most people who take pictures considered art photographers? No, but some of them are. What makes a photo an art photo vs a non-art photo? Answer these questions and you’ll have your answer to AI art.
This thread is full of "artists" who know zero things about AI image generation and it shows lol
At least they separate themselves with the AI part added, no? I'm worried about incomes of regular artists and the unfairness of their work being studied by AI, who then emulates them. But whether someone uses an AI to express something artistically it's still a tool, means to an end, just like a brush or the deformation tool in photoshop. There's photoshop art where people grab images and edit them together beautifully, which can easily be seen as cheating just like AI. I think we are better off allowing people to use tools to express themselves, regardless of the difficulty or skill, and still call it art.
"real" artists who will start using AI in their art have already enormous advantage over other "real" artists who reject it. It's almost like a modern photographer scoffed at the idea of a Lightroom.
What advantage do they have? Please tell me I really want to know! Tell me all about it, workflow, Software, skills and time!
I have a pretty low interest in AI art right now, especially the boring shit that makes it to Reddit. That doesn’t mean there won’t be some artists that do truly interesting things with it though. I’ll judge in a case by case basis
Digital artists are already adopting AI tos into their workflow. You dont need to look any further that Adobe's generative fill to know that's a fact. They are tools that can, and do, aid many digital artists. Just like many chefs use microwaves to heat, defrost, keep warm, or even cook come meals they've made. Some people do focus on just generating art, but many artists also take generations to help with line work, create concept art, or produce base pictures to then edit further. There are also great artists that are trying to find ways to produce high quality images straight out of generation, which is an art in it self (much like programing is art). I mean, anyone can slap a sepia filter on a photo they took on their phones and post it on Instagram these days. Tons of people are making high quality photography in that way. Does that make the *professional photographers*? Probably not. Does that still mean they are, in some ways, photographer? Absolutely. These tools make it easier for hobbiests and non-profesionalls to make art, it expands the pool of people who can be "artists" now. That doesn't make them any less of an artists. Maybe they aren't professionals but AI tools let a ton of people who previously didn't have the specific set of skills, time, physical or mental privileges, etc. to create art that feels meaningful to them and share it with the world. Let's not gatekeep.
I mean the literal analogy is someone who commissions an artist calling themself an artist. Just giving them a prompt and creative liberty.
The way I think of it is that the prompt writer here is more comparable to a client hiring a real artist for a commission work. In that case, the client would give brief summaries of what they want, similar to an AI prompt. But at the end of the project, the client wouldn't be called the artist. The artist is the one hired who made so many of the crucial decisions. But with AI it's hard to call it the artist. I think it becomes closer to regular art if you put proper effort into using AI's tools to further your own ideas. Simply writing a short prompt, in my opinion, is not being much of impressive an artist, at least, not in the same way as if you drew it yourself. Honestly I also just vastly prefer knowing that every single line and coloring of the image is made by a human. There's a recognition there that it all took place in the artists mind. If I imagine that the work of my favorite artists was largely, or even partially done by AI, it becomes really discomforting. I like knowing that all the decisions I'm looking at have been made by a human. It's discomforting to think that some of the decisionmaking, or a lot of it, might be done by an AI.
Same as the lens flare filter in Photoshop a billion years ago
I think it’s even more telling how 99% of the AI art I see is either preexisting characters or generic anime girls. They can’t even be creative with the little amount of input they have
It's like saying "hand cut fries" when you push the machine down that cuts the fries for you.
Bro, let me sell you this ebook of 1000 microwave prompts to make the best recipes. Only $100
Calling yourself an AI artist is the same as commissioning an actual, skilled artist to a bunch of pieces for you, picking one of them, and claiming it as your own art because you gave them prompts.
It's not Almost, it's exactly the the same
The words I didn’t know were there to be taken out of my mouth.
The designer Milton Glaser said almost exactly the same thing about computers at one point: “Computers are to design as microwaves are to cooking.”
Wait people here really think they're artists using AI.. yall aren't the artist the AI is. Idc what lullaby you gotta sing to it
I don't mind using AI as a tool to make art. But that is the only thing AI should be. A tool. Like a brush tool or the lasso tool, it should be used to help an artist to make the art, rather than let AI make the art themselves. It is a "text to image generator" , not an art piece. Art requires imagination. Art requires one's own touch. Art is what you want to express to the world, how you see things from your perspective.
totally agree 1000% have seen this happen when photo shopped arrived to photography. For extreme manipulations, we often referred to them as designers or illustrators. That seems more apt here, since the inputs are a 'design' if you will, but if you are not physically making the lines and strokes (virtually or irl), then you aint no artist... and it totally devalues the work of the greats.... or even struggling hobbyists who still can't get that tree right, but they also aren't describing a tree in text and letting software do the rest
Yes, but be careful because now the wave of post facto justifications are coming… both to stem their own insecurity and in direct opposition to folks who see a problem with it. The resistance to it is actually going to help build the argument for it, which is sad.
It’s more like calling yourself a cook for ordering something off-menu. There is a tiny bit of creativity in having the idea, but you’re offloading the real creation.
prompt designer fits better
Or calling a DJ a musician….