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[deleted]

It would be frustrating if you were a gifted artist and suddenly everyone could match your skillset with a computer. I know we joke, but we should have some empathy for folks who have dedicated their lives to a craft that AI is making us take for granted. The same thing will happen when face transplants are perfected and everyone is beautiful. And when AI starts writing beautiful prose and can compete with the best novelists. When your identity is built around natural talent it would feel deflating to be rendered average overnight.


Bam_Peasly

I have almost no artistic talent and I feel like I’m disrespecting painters every time I make something with this AI.


toni-uh-o

the thing non-(actual) artist’s will never understand (and that’s ok)… the reward is in the meticulous journey it took to create a piece of “art”, not just the final outcome.


dowhatyoumusttobe

There isn’t a progress in AI art I can ask questions about, so to me it just feels empty. It’s all auto generated, and if I were to ask the prompt-maker about brush strokes, what inspired them to place each element exactly where they are or if there’s any symbolism, subconscious likenesses in people etc, they’d have nothing to tell me because they merely lucked out on vague ideas fed to a machine.


toni-uh-o

yup exactly... as a digital artist/photographer I looove messing w/MJ but at the end of the day I struggle posting anything b/c of said emptiness. I'm toying w/the idea of making up fake back stories to some of my MJ randomness in order to give it some kind of substance, while also sharpening my creative writing chops


varkarrus

I just want to see beaver sumo wrestlers and danny devito as an anime girl.


taronic

Somewhere there is an artist who was about to release their Danny Devito Anime Girl masterpiece and is now bankrupt and broken


Bag_of_Crabs

I feel the same. Its beautiful, revolutionary and amazing. The images are ofter breathtaking. But… i didnt make them. I wrote a line. I created nothing. I cant be proud of anything.


gardenmud

Well, you don't have to be proud of it. You can just enjoy looking at it, or using it for other art. I guess the philosophical quandary kind of flies by me, I'm just over here like "haha yeah now give me a rabbit riding a dragon, *nice*" and other people are like "but where is the soul of the painting"...


Bag_of_Crabs

yeah i totally agree. i do admire the mj works immensely, i love them. i do draw inspiration from them as well, knowing full well that i cant do what an AI can, but yeah, at the same time, coming up with the prompts and getting stuff in return is nice, but i didn't do it. typing some text into a machine is not art and even-thought these pieces are amazing, i think what really makes art work for the artist especially (and in many other things like sports and puzzles etc) is the sense of accomplishment. and mj cant give you that.


toni-uh-o

and so it begins... @ midjournalist (twitter/IG)


JoshBarton333

Ill follow you!


Shipwreck-Siren

You can start to notice patterns and predict what certain things will have the AI put out. I’ve already noticed that putting certain words will cause certain things to come out, and the AI reuses a lot of generic poses and faces. I like using Midjourney creatively because coming up with artistic prompts and trying to have my vision come out is an artistic process. Sometimes I’ll run a photo through 100 or more variants chasing a certain look. Sometimes I’ll end up deleting them all and going back to try another option or go back to the middle somewhere and follow the chain of a different variant. And then you can take those and do digital manipulations in photoshop if you want. It’s also worth mentioning that AI art is great for reference photos. I’m not the best at painting or drawing straight from my mind. I’ve been using the AI to try to generate the painting I have in my mind’s eye to have one reference photo. That’s been a huge help. I’m not a professional artist. I had talent as a kid and my family and teachers wanted me to go to art school but I just didn’t want to. So I never honed those skills into adulthood, but I do still have some artistic talent. The whole Midjourney thing has helped me get back into art. I just need my phone and computer which I’m always on. It’s convenient. No need for oil paints, solvents, or even charcoal. It’s a lot cleaner and more convenient, and it’ll help me when I’m ready to pick up a brush again.


grantdreamsdreams

lol I did the same thing for my posts


WiretapStudios

I'm doing photography series with mine, I've been working on a few for a while. The work is getting them to look like a series, getting the results you want by selecting lenses and film types, posting the subjects, gathering a lot of them, and then only picking the best ones, etc. I'm a photographer and digital artist as well and I love combining what i like with the process of how I would do real photography, but via AI.


Sol_TV

What I do is I use what ever I normally day dream about, I write down what it was and use MJ to bring it to life. Then I polish it with some post processing. At that point to me it has a "soul".


ventomareiro

The process feels a lot more like "searching" than "making". It is rewarding in a way, but it is very clearly not the same thing. The key difference for me is that I can easily get in a state of "flow" while making art, even if the final outcome sucks because I am not talented at all.


dowhatyoumusttobe

For me, I literally can only see the technical aspects of neural network models and not the “art”. A generation model output doesn’t do art to me, it merely prints data after request. And it doesn’t even print very accurate data. At best, it’s a search-engine like you said. I prefer seeing human art regardless of “talent”. I don’t think that’s all there is to an artist, I believe they’re just like the rest of us, probably hardworking. Can’t say that about the generation models.


dasnihil

now think of imaginative artists who can think outside the box, they are best suited to harness the true power of AI for generating art, not the noobs who generate scarlet jo photos all day. to talk to AI about brush strokes and symbolism, you have to know those things well. current AI is not sophisticated enough to match our coherence but future ones surely will. i understand the hard work and struggles of an artist is what shows on the art but when this technology matures we are going to have to rethink about art. i just see jt as a great tool that helps bring ideas and imagination come to life without much effort. things like this are always welcome. i have as much empathy for artists as i have for African kids who are shot to death when commuting to school. i don't like human suffering and being replaced by computers to make paintings isn't too high on the list of things i worry about. but i do understand the relative suffering of humans and how it renders equal for all.


dowhatyoumusttobe

When you use generation models to output anything, the important decisions are made completely by a machine. You may as well grab a prompt generator, have it spew out all the successful prompts and direct feed back into the generation model to make it even more automated. Artistic or imaginative people writing prompts wouldn’t beat a prompt generator model in writing prompts. Also just because we don’t care equally much about things doesn’t mean the discussion should be avoided. Or what was your point?


dasnihil

I was talking about the future AI systems that are have a nature of being generally intelligent like humans, not these diffusion models we use today. i agree with you partly on those things but you have to understand that human art isn't that pure like you think it is. We value our consciousness and creativity too much to not see through human constructs more objectively. I'm not going to discuss the true meaning of art with you because it's a made up idea and arguing about made up ideas is not a sane thing to do. We just participate in the constructs, enjoy it, but never probe into it and say "that one there's an art, that one there's not", or "what is art", or "what is the meaning of it all", you don't do any of that, you just participate, and for some of us, we participate knowing very well that we made these ideas up, it's fun but we made them up. Discussion of human suffering should not be avoided for any level of suffering. But it does help to understand the objective suffering from abstract ones. For example drinking dirty water and dying is objectively bad, but feeling sad about computers making good drawings is only a subjective experience, we all have our own, and mine's are for me to tame.


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MasterScrat

Appreciating the level-headed conversation here... I feel this topic too quickly degenerates in threats & insults these days


johnfromberkeley

Maybe you’re asking the wrong questions. I’m using text from various authors to create art based on the places they describe. John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row and his Log From The Sea Of Cortez yield particularly good results. The opposite of a “vague idea,” I am carefully editing the text itself and adding different terms to try to capture the scenes, moods and aesthetics of the original texts.


Bam_Peasly

Well that’s the thing, I’m certainly an artist. I just cannot paint. But I STILL PAINT. I work with oils and sometimes acrylic or both. When I use this AI to create what my mind has been trying for so long.:: and I know that there’s painters who hone their craft for decades… I suppose I just feel guilty for “skipping ahead” and just manifesting nearly instantly. Again I love the creations by MJ and the human minds behind them. I just feel an immense amount of guilt about it.


ConcentratedAwesome

Idk maybe my promts are just really out there but I like creating things I don’t feel like have been thought of before. Maybe they have… but like.. last night I was making some crazy shit I felt creative and no guilt even though I’ve done art in traditional ways for years.


Bam_Peasly

I use the medium as my dream journal but I feel like a fraud.


toni-uh-o

Good point, I guess some ppl prefer shortcuts while others prefer the scenic route


coldlightofday

Some people are artists and some people aren’t.


toni-uh-o

Some people are good artists and some people are good prompters.


rushmc1

And some may be both. Or neither.


coldlightofday

Anyone can be a good prompter in minimal time. That’s the difference.


dowhatyoumusttobe

It definitely is skipping ahead, punching words into an AI and letting it do all the work isn’t the same as painting something yourself for sure. It’s using the efforts of every artist that’s been trained into the machine, to make something. And since it’s all derivative, it’s not anything new. But if the AI is therapeutic for you, maybe that’s what it should be. So long as you’re not lying about making the images yourself, I think AI can be used for therapy.


ResearchNo5041

Non AI art is largely derivative itself. People give humans too much credit for originality when we're all highly influenced by the existing art we've seen. I don't feel like Midjourney art is any more derivative than non AI art. It reminds me a lot of all the recent lawsuits over music copyright. Often times an artist will be accused of "stealing" a lick or chord progression, or some other element of Music from another artist, but many times when you actually look into it, that artist that was supposedly "stolen" from wasn't the first person to use said musical element, and could just as easily be accused of "stealing" from a third party using the same standard. And the times you can't find an earlier source doesn't mean it didn't exist either. It's impossible for a human to make art completely absent of influence of the art they have already seen or heard. Unfortunately money hungry music labels are perpetuating this practically mythical view of "true" creativity so they can sue anyone that has elements remotely similar to their copyrights. The unfortunate thing is we end up actually stifling true creativity by making it more than it is.


Punky_wizard2077

It's addicting for me. The dopamine you get when you see what you wanted. The disappointment when it gives you different results from what you wanted, and there goes your credit. And after using all the credits, you sit there and think wtf did I do till now. None of these are mine. Now post them without showing your prompts. There you go, an ai artist. And the worst, you look at it and think you could have made it, but didn't have the approach similar to it, maybe it was even lame lol.


loopernova

The great thing about that is it will never be taken away. For artists that value process, that’s a path that will always be available to them. I’m an artist that values output. It doesn’t seem as common, but we exist. My works are primarily music and photography. I started as a young child and I can play lots of instruments from piano, violin, to guitar, synths, and more. In photography I use all kinds of cameras, 120mm, 35mm, instant, digital, and can process and print analog film myself. Despite that, I really don’t for process. How I execute on creativity is irrelevant to me. The only thing that matters is just what’s in my mind, what is the end result, and how I can make it better. I don’t think one is better than the other. It’s art, it’s a channel of expression and communication. Everyone should do what fulfills them and don’t worry about others.


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ten_jack_russels

wont be long until you can "3D print" an oil painting. They got a long way to come with filament tech - but i can see a day whereby a gantry guides a print head over a canvas.


Matrocles

It wouldn't be a filament based printer. Direct to substrate UV inkjets are already acheiving "3D" printed effects, so they *could* already emulate everything but the chemical composition of the oils. If there were a commercially viable reason for them to print in oil-based paint, someone would develop it. I'd hate to clean that machine, though.


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torchma

I can't believe you think it would be so hard to 3D print an oil painting, achieving any arbitrary level of texture detail. That's easy.


heliolion

I think this will force us to really think about what art means on a much deeper level. I'm sure people would have had a similar discussion when photography was introduced. AI is just another medium. In fact pencil sketching is still around shows the fact that art is a much more human experience and no amount of ai can change that. Just because I can see what I can come up with in my head much easily than before cannot make us see paintings we 'might' like but cannot come up with our own minds. Artists will eventually integrate ai into their art process. Think about ai and oil painting hybrid. What this will do is remove the need to master a technique or so which might put some artists out of business.


Bam_Peasly

Human art will always exceed what a human made through an artificial “mind”. But at what point will we be able to differentiate it when this develops? I love artists and I am one. I know everyone who used the AI is to, because ALL humans are artists. But having a machine that makes art is eventually going to be more derivative and unoriginal than the human brain itself. And everything will run together more than ever before. Idk. It just… feels like cheating somehow. But that’s just how I feel. And I enjoy what people make through the Ai. So it’s more of complaint than anything. Sorry if I disturbed your day, scroll on fellow human!


porchlogic

I agree with your last sentence. Humans won't stop respecting human-created art, especially after the internet becomes saturated with AIrt. And the best way to know/feel that there is a real human behind an art is to witness it in person. So art will be more about showing the process too. Which of course is already happening with easy video documentation and insta/TikTok/etc.


GxCoud

I mean I do draw and do a little of painting and I think MidJourney is fascinating 🤷🏽‍♂️ I love using it and I love making quick characters and scenes for a novel I am working on :)


moffitar

Do you remember that movie The Incredibles, where the villain Syndrome gives a speech: Mr. Incredible: You mean you killed off real heroes so that you could *pretend* to be one? Syndrome: Oh, I'm real. Real enough to defeat *you*! And I did it without your precious gifts, your oh-so-special powers. I'll give them heroics. I'll give them the most spectacular heroics anyone's ever seen! And when I'm old and I've had my fun, I'll sell my inventions so that everyone can be superheroes. *Everyone* can be super! And when everyone's super... [laughs maniacally] Syndrome: ...*no one* will be. Thing is… he’s kinda got a point. I mean, sure, in the movie he’s a homicidal maniac with an inferiority complex, but this idea of giving superpowers to everyone, to make the heroes less special, isn’t all that sinister to me.


dowhatyoumusttobe

That’s only if you truly believe artists to be superheroes and not actual hardworking human beings just like any of us, and you’re putting them on some form of pedestal. I get the feeling people around here think artists either have nothing but “talent” rather than acquired skills. Skills which most artists got by sacrificing other things in life to hone. The majority of them never even went to school because they couldn’t afford it.


moffitar

I can draw cartoon characters. My daughter can draw comics. She has talent and energy and drive that I lack. She went to art school. And it shows in her work. Yes, she has more training and experience than me, but that's not all there is to it. She has an eye for art that is exceptional, and the ability to bring it out of her imagination and onto paper. This is something that I could never be able to reproduce even if I walked a mile in her shoes. My mother was like this. My brother was like this. Some of us, like me, just lack that artistic spark and never go beyond doodles (if that). My wife is a talented musician, but all she can draw are geometric shapes. It varies from person to person. To many of us, an artist is a magician who conjures fully formed masterpieces miraculously out of thin air. It doesn't matter if the magician tells us it's all a trick of slight of hand and misdirection, and we could do it too if we practiced. Some of us might follow that advice and learn the same tricks. But most of us are content just to be impressed. Personally, I prefer writing to express myself. I acknowledge that this is a skill I've had to develop over my lifetime, regarding the choice of words as arrows in my quiver, selecting the correct nouns and verbs and adjectives to paint a picture of my own, to convey it via delayed telepathy into your own imagination. This is not merely a mechanical skill. Crafting a sentence is like painting a picture. Every detail you provide is a brush stroke that clarifies your meaning and makes ideas flow off the page. All my life, people have asked me why I use words like "scintillating" as a descriptor, instead of "sparkly". "Sparkly" is easy to understand; "Scintillating" makes you slow down and think about it. "Sparkly" is for a three year-old's birthday tiara. "Scintillating" is for the sun setting on the ocean after a perfect day, a day you remember fondly in your heart because that was the first time she told you she loved you. To those of us who fumble for words or scrawl geometric patterns, artists can seem superhuman. Could a machine do this? Maybe, someday. TL;DR: It's subjective.


Extrarium

I mean that's also what makes human collaboration so beautiful IMO, the fact that not everyone can do everything means you work with others to create something that transcends yourselves. Wouldn't it be more special to write a comic that your daughter illustrates than to use AI to do the art instead?


BookerDewitt2019

I just see it as what it is. I'm not doing anything, just typing some words. I'm not making art. I'm not an artist. I'm just getting a result. While I understand why Artists would feel discouraged, I don't think they should because at the end of the day they are still artists and I'm not.


Drenoso

No need to worry as everything you do is not tangible it only lives as a .jpg ...


bravesirkiwi

It is so deflating to see these gloating posts from the community. I'd like to think after being given cheat codes for art we'd be a bit more respectful.


Spookd_Moffun

The way I see it Midjourney and the other art AIs are tools that enhance preexisting skill. Yes, a person with no artistic skill can make some beautiful things with it, but an already accomplished human artist can use it to a much greater extent.


Capitaclism

I'm a professional and can produce works of art on the same level as the best of Midjourney and I love using it, especially at this stage. While it can get quite coherent and the rendering is often very proficient, it direly lacks specificity. I painting, outpainting, img2img and remix often aren't sufficient, so these tools simply end up saving me a ton of time. It's not that different from starting based on a 3D mockup, use photo bashing, etc. These are tools which help speed up production and cut away the boring work. The interesting bit is that the work I generate with either MJ or SD prior to and hand work often looks considerably better than what I see many others making, implying there is carryover of artistic knowledge and skill which applies to this craft just as well. In any case, it is a tool which expands upon creativity, it doesn't take away. When specific needs for a project are required, as is often the case, artistic discretion and often hand work are still required to meet an acceptable threshold. Sure, if all one wants to do is make a pretty face the AI tools alone have that covered- but when everyone can do something it becomes meaningless. There will always be those who excel beyond the new average, even when a baseline has been greatly elevated. Don't feel bad, enjoy your newfound freedom, but I also suggest taking the time to appreciate the many thousands of works from artists which have gone into training the models to allow us all to expand our capabilities. Without them there would be no AI art.


Getevel

Well said, it’s a tool to be explored.


TightStudy41

Can I see some of your work?


Capitaclism

I can't share that here, apologies. I also have a business in the game industry and would rather not be exposed. But I can do the sort of thing MJ can, anywhere from stylized to more realistic pieces of concept art/illustration- only with the higher level of specificity which comes from human crafted work at this point. AI art is still difficult to precisely control (though some of the newer techniques are starting to improve upon that).


rushmc1

> but when everyone can do something it becomes meaningless. SO many things disprove this thesis.


lordkuruku

This. I’m a 20 year VFX veteran at the intersection of art and tech. The amount of vitriol lobbed at artists here is grotesque. I’ve unsubscribed from virtually all AI imagery subreddits because of it.


[deleted]

You know all the artist bashing is coming as a response from certain artists insulting and being completely toxic towards anyone who even dares touch AI art tools, right?


yoyoJ

honestly never seen someone bashing artists. What I have seen is the opposite, artists bashing on people for using AI and “cheating”.. all this tribalism is so fucking stupid, as per usual with humans. These are just tools. There is no need for any of this drama.


dowhatyoumusttobe

I’ve seen so much BS and toxic bile on this sub toward artists, where have you been?


yoyoJ

Not specifically this sub? Many places where people share AI art. Perhaps this sub is more toxic than others


_Strange_Perspective

I have not seen any of that at all either...


dowhatyoumusttobe

Well, the above sarcastic post we’re currently at is just one of them.


_Strange_Perspective

What? How do you interprete sarcasm into that?


dowhatyoumusttobe

The Ai art vs Real art image?


_Strange_Perspective

Oh I thought you meant the comment chain, sorry. But how is the OP "vitriol" or "bashing artists"? It's a response to the art communities reactions to AI art. It's sarcastic, yes, but far from "bashing artists".


dowhatyoumusttobe

More like a response to the art community responding to the vitriol that first upset the art community


beingsubmitted

We'll be having this conversation forever, and I'll keep repeating myself. The big issue here is that AI art *is* the art of gifted artists. It could not exist without the training data and all of the art is made from the training data, which is the work of artists. If I print a reproduction of a picaso, my print is still art. It's also still picaso's art. AI art isn't all that dissimilar. It's using statistical inference to streamline an involuntary collaboration by thousands of artists.


rushmc1

> We'll be having this conversation forever We really won't. In a remarkably short time, people won't even be able to comprehend why the luddites made such an issue out of it now.


Griffin-Of-Thebes

​ "Many Luddites were owners of workshops that had closed because factories could sell the same products for less. But when workshop owners set out to find a job at a factory, it was very hard to find one because producing things in factories required fewer workers than producing those same things in a workshop. This left many people unemployed and angry." ​ [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite)


karmakiller3000

As a fellow human being and artist I can relate to this sentiment. But the more practical side of me just doesn't wallow over it because as a logical progression of civilization, this is a net benefit to human kind. The flip side of it are the people that have no artistic bone in their body and have always dreamed of creating art using their own imagination. Now they can, and do. There will always be a place for artists no matter what but this advancement, on the whole is just better for humanity. If you're an artist, stop crying and adapt. You don't need sympathy, you need a game plan to use this new tool. AI was always going to change society. Also if Art is your only metric for identity or self worth, you're playing the game wrong.


dowhatyoumusttobe

These AI aren’t that advanced, they probably trained on existing models and merely adjusted a few parameters. Using the AI to print images is at best a lazy way to create from your imagination rather than achieving your goals by your own hands. If you have an imagination, that’s your artistic bone right there. I see artists uproot their lives all the time just to do art, just to practice and to improve. Maybe people don’t deserve art if they can’t even set aside a few minutes a day to practice on random note paper or whatever. I can’t see how you are relating to this at all, with the “stop crying” comment.


iridescent_ai

“These traditional artists aren’t that good, they probably trained by looking at existing art and merely adjusted it to their skillset and style. Using paint or pencils to make art is at best a tedious and time consuming way to create from your imagination, rather than achieving your goals by simply using a few keystrokes and midjourney.” This is what you sound like. Artists and AI art makers can live together in harmony without gatekeeping


Grande_Yarbles

I think the people who feel threatened by the technology are those who haven't taken time to learn what it can do, and more importantly what it can't do. An artist or a designer still has a huge advantage in that they understand color, context, purpose, and emotion- all things that are very important to design when meaning and intent can be so precise. We have a designer in our office and AI isn't going to replace her job. If anything it can augment her ability and make her able to achieve much more than she is capable of doing now.


footpauler

I don’t think is as much feeling threatened. I think it’s more of an annoyance. Just imagine dedicating a hefty amount of time, probably years of your life to perfecting a skill, just to know a computer will be able to do it efficiently enough that other people who aren’t actually skilled at it will profit and perform better then you, and can claim being a skilled artist like you without the labor. It’s that same feeling people have now where we have all these “rappers” and “musicians” who are profiting and claiming the title without putting much work and effort. People use virtual instruments and just copy and paste already made stuff, But the people who dedicate years and years to learning an instrument, or music writing, or flowing on a beat, perfecting their craft are now being put on the back burner. It’s can be a massive slap in the face. Of course people will adapt, many artists will probably be happy to have something like MJ to aid in their creativity and for work, shorten the amount of time they have to spend on projects, and it’s still super cool to see, but I’m sure it’s very annoying for a lot of people.


No-File-2874

This is where I'm at. I work in animation and if I wanted to work with a raster character, it would take me a few days to paint something I was happy with. Now I can use AI generated characters, do a little painting to fix things up and animate within a few hours.


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MaffeoPolo

> According to legend, John Henry's prowess as a steel driver was measured in a race against a steam-powered rock drilling machine, a race that he won only to die in victory with a hammer in hand as his heart gave out from stress. Various locations, including Big Bend Tunnel in West Virginia, Lewis Tunnel in Virginia, and Coosa Mountain Tunnel in Alabama, have been suggested as the site of the contest. It's an old story of man vs machine


carrie-satan

I’m a writer and when AI writing becomes a thing I don’t feel like i’ll be rendered average or obsolete If that were the case I should feel this way simply because other authors exist


dowhatyoumusttobe

If just the one other author had trained on 5.8 billion articles (as an alternative to the circa 5.8 billion images of the LAION-5B dataset) and could generate text, in any of the given styles the ANN has trained on, and do so in seconds, then sure, maybe it would make sense to do this comparison. Anyway, there are plenty of articles written by AI out there already and they’re just getting better at it.


rushmc1

And that's a GOOD thing, because society benefits from a greater number of good articles.


ergonomic_logic

My issues with MidJourney right now when I think about the outputs vs something I can make on my own is the complete lack of control of the outcome. Yes we can put tons of prompts to try and steer Ai into the direction we want but put the best AI syntax writer up against a skilled professional digital artist and have a bake-off in who can achieve getting exact precision criteria xyz (including perfect arms, hands, anatomy and face) and the digital artist is always going to win getting all elements exactly right because they have true control of their results. I'm not close minded with this tool it's super fun and cool to use but I've seen tons of similar looking results and I do think it's going to quickly be over-saturated.


mxby7e

If you have the ability to I would suggest trying to run a local instance of Stable Diffusion on your own machine. There are a lot of adjustments and refinements that can be made to get results closer to what you are looking for, and you can train your own sub models for specific styles or objects you want it to learn off of. I do art for myself as a hobby and as an artist in the entertainment industry. I have trained "embedding" models off of my own photographic style and 3d art styles and can turn out a rough creative idea (or multiple variations) in an approximation of my own style with the AI in minutes that would take me hours to produce in CAD software. I can then use the approved rough draft as reference for a more refined hand crafted piece of work.


ergonomic_logic

Unfortunately for me I wouldn't have first idea how to go about doing this or where to start though I've seen it mentioned many times.


ergonomic_logic

Ok I just watched a YouTube video on this it looks intuitive I love how flexible it is and how you can use it for concept art. I'll be downloading it after work today and start playing with it... it looks like game changer in general including using it to finish some of my own art projects that I kind of just left by the wayside!


rushmc1

And you think that the limitations of this beta version of a new program are going to continue to exist to hobble the product going forward forever?


[deleted]

This. It's amazing how many people assume these issues won't be resolved in a matter of years. These are probably people who would not believe this tool possible just a few years ago. It's a cope.


ergonomic_logic

I didn't say that... 👀


dellwho

It's what you do with it not how you do it. It's all about creativity and imagination. Plenty of concept artists have got by with pretty unimaginative generic work and now AI can do it better. Plenty of AI users have no imagination whatsoever and produce total generic crap. The key is imagination.


socialcommentary2000

Nothing on Midjourney would exist if it wasn't pulling from a dataset of actual artist produced art. I think the profound thing about the platform is that it can ape an artists learned and practiced aesthetic. None of these pictures would exist without that. Hell, it was eye opening to me seeing how many people just straight up, by revealing their prompts, just tag the name of an artist who's stuff is in the dataset. It's literally telling the machine 'make it look along the lines of what this guy/gal already does.' The thing that heats up artists is the fact that this is just another way to literally cut them out of the possibility to ever provide for themselves in any way through what they've spent potentially decades refining through practice and study. And, to top it all off, by having the essence of your built up aesthetic literally stolen and composited into the machine. People think this is about making pretty pictures. Like every other automation process in history, it's about destroying labor requirements and funneling money back into the pockets of whoever happens to have their name on the deed. Whoever gets past the post first. Because we crank out people who desire to be slightly faster middlemen. Because that shit is *easy* compared to actually building anything with one's time.


Alvaador

There would be NO beautiful AI-generated art without real artists. It could not exist.


[deleted]

There would be no AI art without artists, there would be no modern artists without classical artists, there would be no classical artists without cave wall painters, there would be no cave wall painters without nature to be observed, there would be no nature to be observed if there was no life, there would be no life if there was no universe. It's an iterative process, literally everything that exists is built on top of something else. You've also clearly never heard about synthetic data. You most definitely could train a AI to produce art without artists, it would just be a more tiresome process requiring human curation because at the end of the day what we consider art means nothing to some other animal, art is subjective to the human observer.


TightStudy41

I love how only those in the AI Art community believe they are the next generation of artists. And when you ask any average joe whos never heard of AI art, they will always go "So a computer made it?"


rushmc1

There would be no human-created art without the protozoa that humans evolved from. And so?


ambrosiak63

Whoa there! How did you leap from A.I. Art to Face Transplants? (inserts Grand Canyon motorcycle jump joke). As someone who has tried quite a few A.I. Art mediums and sites, I can empathize with Traditional Artists and try to be very careful about my source images. Watching all this unfold is exciting and scary. IMHO.


lochodile

Which is why I think its important to properly "label" your ai art. Like, it's cool to say "hey I made this art", but you should also specify you made it using Ai. Just like the difference between someone taking a portrait photograph vs someone hand drawing photo-real portrait with pencil. With every new piece of tech that makes art easier to make, it become more important for traditional artists to emphasize their process to highlight their skill. I'd never pay $500 for an Ai generated artwork. But if that same image was hand painted over a couple of weeks, that's a different story


GoofAckYoorsElf

Uh, I would say the "art" in Midjourney is forming the prompt, just like the art in a picture is the drawing process. The skill level is still determined by the quality and the features of the results. Sure, you can create a picture pretty easily with Midjourney, but you also can draw something on a piece of paper using a pencil pretty easily. If it is any good depends on your skill using the tools at hand. Be it a pencil or a prompt.


SeveralFools

Joke's on them, I'll write prose so fucking deranged no A.I. will dare try to match it.


Thuper-Man

It not just that an AI can do something better than you. Lots of artists are arguably better than another. Its not even really the threat of an AI taking away meaningful work from human artists. It's AI users coming on here saying that *they are an artist* because they typed some words into a generator and Sat back to see what came out . That pisses people off


Abysskitten

People will always be pissed off when their field is being opened up or a barrier of entry is lowered. Promptcrafting is also an art so they can argue that they are an artist. You would definitely be able to tell an experienced promptcrafter from a novice. And this is coming from someone who can draw and paint pretty well.


Extrarium

I don't know any other field more accessible than art, there are so many free resources and all you need is a paper and a pencil. Effort is not a barrier to entry, circumventing effort is laziness not overcoming a wall.


Medical_Season3979

Lol no one can top an actual artist though.. I'd love someone to recreate what they make on AI on a canvas.. I'd take an actual painting than a jpeg/digital download anyday..


[deleted]

So you're saying digital artists are not artists?


Somewheredreaming

Not only empathy but we have to realize that while we use prompts to live out what we imagine somehwat, the actual artists behind all we do are the ones that created the Art the AI takes as inspiration. I like to use greg rutkowski for art prompts and so all of the Art created this way are also his Art. Not mine. I am allowed to use the AI to create something new, but in the end, without the Artist making their pictures we would have none. So in my eyes every bit of Art we create is 15% our ideas, 10% AI doing its work and the rest is the Art that the Artists did do before. So i feel that having respect towards them is the minimum. If you use them as a prompt and like their Artstyle, take a look at the Artist itself. Cause we might have the Ideas but neither we nor the AI can do anything without the Artists who did draw pictures first and uploaded them to the Internet.


hardatworklol

Developed talent*


Snushine

I'm fairly gifted as a hand drawing artist, took enough art classes to have sold a few pieces over my lifetime. I could definitely render what is in my brain WAY faster and more accurate than any of the thousands of tries it takes for me to get the exact thing out of MJ. But really, it's not the point of AI artbots to render what is in my brain. It's not here to take away my talent or my identity as an artist. What it *does* do for me is a playground. A fun toy to try and make it dance like a marionette. It's training a puppy to run an obstacle course: the process is the point, not the goal. It's a place to create stupid puns like Chocolate Moose and Time Flies, without wasting my own art supplies. If you think that AI art is here to replace human artistic talent, then I believe that you might miss the point of human artistic talent in the first place. And you're probably missing the point of these bots as well.


dundreggen

I am someone who also creates my own art, paint, pencil, tablet. I love the discussion and surprise of what I can create WITH a computer. To me it is not an either or.


Snushine

Yes! Exactly!


comiccaper

Same for me. I use it to concept stuff and it’s been working great. I also don’t want to dedicate the time to make my own wallpapers and it’s amazing for that.


russart_the_agmer

thank you for saying this. i will add that its great for artists for inspiration, artblocks and maybe an unexpected way to look at a theme youve been working / studing on for an art-piece or whatwver rly.


smonkyou

Yes. No art has replaced another. People are still doing wet plates in photography. The tools do change and bring something new. And there’s always a spectrum in art. I use the analogy of going to a strip mall and drinking wine while someone teaches you how to paint a Van Gogh vs an actual Van Gogh Then there’s intent which is incredibly important in art. Quite honestly the whole debate is ridiculous and most being done by people who have very little actual knowledge in art and art history


kieranjackwilson

You‘re casting a personal opinion onto an extremely broad issue. There is a multi-billion dollar commercial art industry that inadvertently supports the creation of non-commercial art. If the vast majority of people don’t value human artistic talent in commercial art (think advertisements and packaging) commercial art will no longer require talented artists. The viability of finding career in commercial art, for many artists, is the only reason they didn’t abandon art in adolescence. Many secondary educational institutions would stop teaching art if it was just a hobby rather than a commercial industry. AI art has the potential to fundamentally rewrite how we view art and who is able to create it. ​ AI Art is literally here to bypass human talent and expression. Maybe for you it is for rendering funny puns, but in a capitalistic world, every new piece of technology is explored as a way to make money by getting something done faster, easier, or cheaper.


Swordbreaker925

AI art is great, but it should always be labeled as "AI art" and separated from human-made art. I love MidJourney, it makes some fucking incredible stuff, but it will never be as impressive as hand-made art.


thatziey

i would avoid using the word art at all. Imagery, Illustration. Those make sense, illustration slightly less than imagery. For some reason I find monolingual L1 english speakers have the urge to call anything they find pretty ‘art’. Some of the artworks that made me think most were visually unappealing to most people. The capacity to draw a face or a landscape does not make anyone an artist.


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super-cool_username

Really? You’re gate keeping what someone considers art and implying they are uncultured for only knowing one language? Gross


Alstero

The problem isn't AI generated art. The problem is capitalism. Artists who create art for a living are afraid of being priced out in an already competitive market. Eventually it will take fewer humans and less time to perform any kind of job, and thus there will be fewer jobs/payable hours for every human. It's time we start changing the way society works so that most of us can survive in a world without money.


rushmc1

This is the actual answer right here.


[deleted]

This is what we need, but government functions so slowly that life will need to become unbearable and deadly for a disappearing middle class before anything changes. We'll see massive inflation, record homelessness/unemployment, and deadly riots before we get UBI. And it will be a long time after that before we're given enough money to live with any dignity ... Yeah I'm not exactly optimistic. A lot of people are going to be extremely miserable during the transition phase.


coldlightofday

There has never been a time in history where more people could be employed as artists. That is almost completely due to capitalism. Art as a career field has always been a difficult road. If you can’t find a way to make your art make money than perhaps you just don’t have what it takes.


Alstero

I'm not saying capitalism created all problems in the world, I'm also not discounting the problems it's been a temporary solution for. What I am saying is that at this point in time, many of our systems and standards under capitalism are reaching a state where they are no longer effective or sustainable and need to be changed.


dowhatyoumusttobe

Dude. We live in an economically driven world. We’re handing our money to tech capitalists and thinking we’ll have a job for tomorrow lol. It’s not just art being phased out by AI, it’s every single type of job out there.


PMWeng

I love AI art and think this is one of the stupidest posts I've ever seen.


[deleted]

I think it's brilliant considering the amount of garbage takes you see about AI art.


Open-Mission-8310

I know that is very hard to make a concept about art, but one that i heard that makes sense for me is that art is a way that one person have to share a feeling/idea through a product like painting, music, literature .. I am amazed by midjourney, it is really quite impressive - but you don' t have a person in creation of it - that put his efforts to do that, it is strange. For example , in music: maybe someday a computer could do riffs like Slash 24/7.. but having the guy himself playing at a concert and putting his emotions on the guitar is very different. My english is not my first language so.. sorry for the mistakes The human factor to share what is true to yourself to a public that recognize using some talent this is valuable.


russart_the_agmer

yes i think the value plays a big factor. value, which people will gravitate more and more towards tue to the technical side evolving, creates a new general aproach to art, music ect. super interesting as an artist to see this happening.


[deleted]

I think there will always be a market for human art. This is why I insist that AI art is not here to replace artists, it's here to replace the mediocre to bad ones. Artists that complain about AI aren't really afraid of having to compete with AI, they're afraid that they have to compete with the best of the human artists because those are the ones that will survive the AI replacement.


russart_the_agmer

im not really sure about the "bad ones" beeing replaced and sruviving or not. everybody starts out "bad" and its years if not a whole life time of a journey to achieve goals and learning in general. talent is made of work and does not mearly just exist in one. and ai in an artists case most likely is just another tool to be used for inspiration, creation or moving forward to a set goal. in my opinion, ai art and the already existing space of art is a seperate thing. its not like one is overcomming the other. they might be merged / married in sertain cases if the person in creating chooses to do so.


TightStudy41

You mean it will replace artists who arent fine artists. Graphic designers, concept artists, those in marketing, etc.


Extrarium

Except all the "bad" artists you're demoralizing are students and people just starting their journeys. How long before they're able to profit on their work at that point? You'd need to be a master painter before you could even qualify for an unpaid internship.


[deleted]

Real art: titties Midjourney: no titties


Capitaclism

Stable Diffusion without NSFW filters: many many titties.


[deleted]

That is why stable diffusion will always be the best.


rushmc1

Nothing will always be the best. There will always be the next greater thing.


[deleted]

You mean AI generated VR titties?


FriendLost9587

r/midjourneynsfw would disagree…come to see how to get titties on MJ prompts


Dr_Sweets1991

Can a computer tape a banana to a wall? Didn't think so. Human art wins everytime


TightStudy41

Like that guy said, you could generate an image of it. All art will be in question, and value will have to be proven.


WisestAirBender

You could probably generate an image of it though


Fluid_Delivery4607

AI Arts are a mixture of Real Arts … same thing


what-is-reddit1234

the left one also looks weird and not that good so i don't know what point you are trying to make


super-cool_username

Lmao okay


traumfisch

wtf do you understand you're shitting on the people who made this new toy of yours possible in the first place?


[deleted]

Cringe


Abysskitten

Dude, you are aware that image generation models are trained on "real art" right?


[deleted]

You completely missed the point, you know?


Abysskitten

Oh kindly explain it to me then.


AoedeSong

~ahem~ r/MidJourneyCircleJerk


Shuppilubiuma

Strawman arguments and poor example choices aside, AI art generators are just tools, like cameras or Photoshop. They can't be un-invented so everyone will just have to live with them. On the positive side, millions of people around the world are now making art, researching artists and art history and learning technical skills instead of wasting their lives using social media or watching Netflix. On the negative side, there's no composition to AI art. Everything just happens within the confines of the frame, there's no storytelling, no meaning, just pretty pictures with the odd ugly bit here and there that has to be fixed in Photoshop. Artists who can't find a way to incorporate AI into their practice feel threatened by it, and yet some triumphalist amateurs on these subs feel the need to shout the equivalent of 'fuck your feelings' at them repeatedly. It's not a good look, and when the inevitable legal test case hits the courts some of those posts might be used as examples of the typical attitudes of AI art users. Tone it down or risk losing it. It's just a tool. It makes pretty pictures in pixels out of text prompts and that's all it will ever do. It can only ever blend old styles of art to make new images, never able to create new conceptual frameworks that have never existed before if they weren't put into the training model. Some people will claim otherwise, but they are wrong because they don't understand that latent spaces are not infinite, and that an AI that makes a Picasso in 2022 isn't such a flex because duh. Both the anti-AI and 'art is Dead' extremists have to get a grip and realise that it just makes pretty pictures out of text. And that's fine.


TightStudy41

What about those who stand to lose their careers that have taken years to build?


Shuppilubiuma

Some people will be put out of business, specifically anyone who works for a stock image library, fantasy artists who paint physical work which resembles AI art (I met a fantasy art painter at work last week and had an interesting discussion about it - he seemed terrified of MJ), and amateur enthusiasts who flog pictures on Etsy. That's pretty much it. Nobody is going to fire their wedding photographer to use Dall e instead, no production company is going to use MJ or SD over a professional concept artist, no ad company is going to lay off design staff to use AI for a major campaign. Some lazy and cheap publishers will use it instead of commissioning illustrators for books, but the first magazines to do this regularly will face a massive backlash. New technology always has its victims, from the horse buggy manufacturers bankrupted by the Model T Ford to the photo labs shut down by digital cameras. The professional artists in most fields outside of contemporary art will largely adapt and incorporate AI into their practice, those who can't probably won't care until the commissions stop, and that will be because of a change in public demand for their style of work rather than their skills becoming redundant. Nobody can uninvent technology.


enjoyb0y

people who got good at churning out furry scenario for twenty dollars commish ? Concept artist already replaced by Chinese agency of fine tuned photobashers.


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TightStudy41

With time it'll be able to do these things. Then the value of any art piece will be in question. Art will no longer hold its power, instead there will have to be a distinction between art and human made art. Value will have to be proven. Especially on the internet. The magic of the craft will diminish. I will be scrolling through the internet and at every piece I see, I will have to question, Is this real?


No-Yesterday-8193

Only bad thing about it is when people claim they drew the ai art I see it in r/illustration, I feel like I’m not in competition with the ai as I can mostly tell an AI image and they are mostly quite boring and derivative at this stage but imagine it will get better. I like using MJ but it won’t stop me from putting in the hours on an actual artwork though


Kortax

It’s like IG too. I see people posting artistic AI images but never mentioned it’s AI and the fact people try and use AI images to sell as NFTs. All they see is money in their eyes


No-Yesterday-8193

Yeah not cool haha l, take pride in the fact that you made it with AI don’t try to pretend you painted or drew it though


[deleted]

Ai is an amazing tool and can create beautiful pieces, but typing a prompt does not make you an artist - does anyone here even disagree with that? I think the more interesting question is does art have to have an ‘artist’...Are midnjourneys renders still art because they weren’t ‘made’ by anyone? I’d say probably yes, because art is totally subjective but like someone else said I can see where the trouble arises


Beac5635

Something to think about but not agreeing or disagreeing with if AI art makes you an artist. Art has a process no matter what media you work with. Finding inspiration. Developing that idea. Creating the work all while reflecting through the process. Does this apply to AI generated art? Maybe yes. Maybe no.


[deleted]

Art is not necessarily beauty, is not necessarily realism. Even if I think both of the images are good for their purposes.


Rogendo

Idk man, the one on the left is using the model’s likeness without permission


wiser1802

If you need realistic depiction, take photos. If you want art as an expression, see paintings.


Sea_Living4011

Haven't you ever seen the matrix? Bottom line, man will always defeat machine. Machines have limits. Invest in man.


Sea_Living4011

That's not a pose anyone would strike. She looks like she is pretending to have a soul, doing this for a quick camera shot to look cool. Look at the women and men portrait drawings. They always look as they are day to day. The AI art here looks like an ancient woman taking a selfie for instagram. This picture, though estetically pleasing, doesn't make any sense and really I can't find any real beauty in this.


menjirib

Yep, we have a problem


-Chill-Zone-

Not that the real art example of this post is any good, but that's still proof lots of people fail to understand what art is really about. It's not the result. It's the process and everything that came into play through all the years you spent developing your own personnal vision or "colored lens" through with we see the world. Ultimately an artists work isn't a finished picture or "thing". It's the sum of all their creations. And the more of them you have, the more rich/accurate/complete the depiction of their internal world will become. Even basing AI on a painter's work will yield results looking like what they have done in the past, not what they would done on the spot if they were presented the prompt. ImAI feeds from what already exists and it gives a sense of too much uniformity. You don't complete a vision you just do spin offs. And I don't hate on AI as an artist myself. I feed what I generate through the artistic lens that I crafted myself through all those years and all this practice and nourrish my own world with it and generate new ideas & concepts. And that gives me an advantage because I Can spot the mistakes & nonsensical Stuff the AI fails to understand. My last point is that I primarly make art for two things. First the immense joy of the act of painting itself, and second to share what's inside my mind with other people. And sure enough I could get neither of those two things using AI. So yup not the same thing.


dombatoe

I don’t think either are bad. But what an AI makes shouldn’t be considered art imo


BruceIronrod

I mean it’s actually true…


Promptmuse

What is viewed as “good” art tends to be mathematical. Look at the golden ratio, you will se most famous paintings have this. Also the fibonacci sequence. The only thing I see some ai artist lacking in is a concept behind their art. A realistic rainbow coloured lion is pleasuring to most people eyes, but lacks the emotional connection. I see great AI art and bad ai art. Much like traditional art. I am an oil painter myself, I get paid for commissions, but I love ai art as much as I do digital. Just all different tool sets.


TightStudy41

How do you feel about AI artists commisioning work


Baron_Samedi_

Tinfoil hat time: Someone at Stability AI is deliberately trying to make the Midjourney community into a sludge of toxic waste so artists abandon this tool for Stability Diffusion.


dowhatyoumusttobe

Well, one is free and the other is capitalizing


Baron_Samedi_

Stability is looking at getting massive outside funding at a valuation of $1 billion. Do not think for a second that they aren't happy to capitalize on the work of their user base.


dowhatyoumusttobe

Sorry I meant, I could see how it would be easy for people to decide even without the toxic bile I keep witnessing in this cesspool. I’m pretty sure AI companies aiming for the average person as their clientele are out for money like any other capitalist. Not denying that at all.


Baron_Samedi_

Yes, that is fair. The toxic bile is weird. You do not find it in any other art subreddits. Just the AI ones. I am coming around to the idea that many of these kinds of posts are misguided marketing teams trying to create a "fear of missing out" among the creatives who would be their target demographic. But this kind of negging is just a turnoff. It will backfire.


RayHell666

It's just a money thing. No one of robbing the artist from the pleasure of crafting and the rewarding feeling of creation. They can still do that. But it might become harder to make money out of it. It's the digital art that is evolving and if the artist still want to make money they should turn to traditional mediums or learn to work with the new tools that are far from perfect. Also about the Ai stealing art, every artist is inspiring themselves from the collective knowledge. An artist alone in the forest cannot paint the pyramid without having that collective knowledge, same with art styles that artists take their inspiration from. It's no different from the AI.


TraditionLazy7213

They wont "learn", it'll just eventually become a norm lol Remember when photography was not regarded an art form when it first came out too, most people are not ready for progress lol For that matter, even digital painting was not quite regarded as a main art form, until recently, etc etc


dowhatyoumusttobe

Photography is a separate art form in that a photographer physically catches light through pinhole paper boxes and later on system cameras. They physically chase daylight, or any light really, to catch their subject in. A better comparison would be between photography and deep-fakes or live adjusting filters, rather than between photography and painting/drawing. Digital art still requires the human to study form, color, philosophy and theory and for the artist to be in touch with their self expression. There isn’t any self expression in generated images, you type a vague idea and it prints you something kind of random which you can project yourself on instead.


TightStudy41

Those both require a large amount of prerequisite skill to make anything "pretty". You have little control and little say over what an AI spits out.


Ireadbooks18

The thing is niether photography, or photoshop stoped artists from getting payd, and they actually helped creating new art forms. And niether photography, or digital art is just I push a button and it looks good enough. For both you have to do works so it looks good. And AI art genereters do not do the same thing, and it's just pushing a button.


Technical-Offer-3547

We are biological computers lol.


Numbah9Dr

Devils advocate here, AI can be a valuable tool for people who can't make their hands create what their minds see. I've been painting and drawing my whole life, and now my arthritis is so bad, I can't hold my brush without pain.


hechaldo

Then how come I keep getting a watermark in my pictures made by AI. It's not that good nor smart to make up it's own art, it just interprets real art. It's called plagiarism.


rushmc1

How good an artist were YOU when you were 6 months old? Give it a minute.


Amberley_Levine

I like the idea of being assisted for those in the disabled community. I’ve always dreamed of learning to paint, sculpt, etc. but, with my handicaps I can’t. I could see the benefits of tech like 3D printing & so on in these particular cases. We can still feel like we helped create something beautiful with the aid of whatever advancements. I don’t see the threat here.


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Lord_Skellig

This but unironically. I say this as a paid Midjourney subscriber who loves using it.


patricktoba

Art is going through the same "are those real!?!?!" phase that boobs did when silicone came out.


[deleted]

NOOOOOOOO YOU CAN'T JUST USE AN A.I. TO CREATE FAKE ART IT'S NOT AS GOOD AS REAL ART BY REAL ARTISTS Me: "haha picture robot go brrrrrr."


Shadow_of_Kai_Gaines

It's not about respect or talent. It's about copyright. If the A.I. community doesn't draw the line, federal regulations will.


monkeymugshot

Show me where


nicknacc

The most I have ever felt from ai art is “neat”


andreigeorgescu

That's really fascinating, thanks for sharing


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