Art, AI and I

[dragonrider]

I honestly find it difficult to see it as a tool, I prefer to see it as a "subject that makes art". It is as if you ask a friend of yours who paints to make a picture with "this, this and that" and then he gives it to you as a gift. You are not the artist and he is the tool, but he is the artist and you are the input of the idea, the inspiration.
The artist is the AI in these cases that we discuss, I think, but then I would have difficulty calling it an artist for the reasons I have already written about.

The prospect of a humanity that entrusts artistic progress to AI is among the most apocalyptic things that can happen to us. It would mean eternal stagnation.

Probably worse than mere stagnation.

And theoretically it wouldn't limit itself to only art, but apply to anything that now is the fruit of intellectual labour. Science, engineering, philosophy, entrepeneurship, design, journalism, cooking, whatever....

I think it would invariably alter the fabric of society. Take away the sense of human agency. Decrease the socio economic value of talent or skills. Reduce us to mere consumers.

 

[hug454]

Let's not kid ourselves into thinking AI is or will ever be sentient no matter how complexly "intelligent" it gets.

That comment is based on your beliefs. I don't think that any of us can say one way or another about AI and sentience being possible.

 

[Voidmatrix]

Let's not kid ourselves into thinking AI is or will ever be sentient no matter how complexly "intelligent" it gets.

That comment is based on your beliefs. I don't think that any of us can say one way or another about AI and sentience being possible.

Yeah, it's been shown that there is a virtual impossibility to discerning whether an AI that seems sentient is actually sentient or is just abiding by complex programming structures. This was shown in the Turing test (which, to be clear, specifies whether a person can tell a person from a machine based on certain inputs. Someone not being able to tell the difference does not indicate that the machine is sentient, but rather that the human mind cannot tell the difference) and the whole conundrum is related to the "problem of other minds."

One love

 

[MAGMA17]

It could be that in order to freely conceive art, being sentient is an indispensable but not sufficient requirement.

 

[necromanteum]

i've become a convert. midjourney gives you 200 renders for 10 bucks a month., i could see using this forever it's awesome

 

[Jees]

In Japan, they turn a lot in a human soul serious practice, be it drumming, making a katana or baking a noodle, the involved human part is soo important to them. The value of the end product is directly related to the human investment. They became high level surfers because of it. Hardly see AI beating that approach.

 

[fink]

I agree completely about the beauty of the human part being so important. But I believe it's important not to simply dismiss things based on them being new. Portrait artists must have been dismissive when photography was developed. There are endless examples of this if you look at human history.

With every new evolution or technology we must believe that we are adding not replacing.

 

[Jacubey]

Something I haven't seen brought up in this thread, is that these AI work by studying millions and millions of images with a description attached to them. Everything that gets spat out is an amalgamation of everything the AI has seen/read, interpreted via the lense of what you've typed in the text box.

In a sense, every image you see coming from the AI is a combination of all the images it has trained on. You could argue that it's not producing anything new, but then we have to think about what artistic inspiration is, and what's really going on in your brain when an artist paints something. The AI doesn't feel anything, hasn't had personal experiences that resonate in a particular way.. It's just producing what it expects to see based on everything else its seen, using the words in the text box. An artist is generally unprompted by any specific text, and gathers inspiration from real lived experience.

I don't think it's right to compare this to an invention like automatic DJ mixing stuff or photographs. Both of those things have very clear distinct goals (matching BPM and key, producing an image that mimics what you see IRL), and the inventions make a task easier while not eliminating the artistic aspect of it. Producing art doesn't really have any clear objective, besides to externalize something that is inside the artist. In this case the artist is an AI whose only experience is a bunch of training images with descriptions attached to them, and anything that comes out of it looking like inspiration is just an imitation of all that it has seen, attempting to make the imitation match the words written. Most non-commissioned artists producing art (outside of school) probably don't start with a prompt. They start with their experience of the world. (I'm not an artist, I could be wrong).

 

[fink]

That is a very good point. Perhaps we could argue that the scale of human input is all that changes since even for the AI art in question there is some human input even if so very minimal as a few words.

The analogy about the DJing for me was more to highlight how the artist feels when new technology seems to negate a practiced skill.

But overall, I'd have to agree with your post and now can think about it from a different angle. Cheers!

 

[MAGMA17]

Something I haven't seen brought up in this thread, is that these AI work by studying millions and millions of images with a description attached to them. Everything that gets spat out is an amalgamation of everything the AI has seen/read, interpreted via the lense of what you've typed in the text box.

In a sense, every image you see coming from the AI is a combination of all the images it has trained on. You could argue that it's not producing anything new, but then we have to think about what artistic inspiration is, and what's really going on in your brain when an artist paints something. The AI doesn't feel anything, hasn't had personal experiences that resonate in a particular way.. It's just producing what it expects to see based on everything else its seen, using the words in the text box. An artist is generally unprompted by any specific text, and gathers inspiration from real lived experience.

I don't think it's right to compare this to an invention like automatic DJ mixing stuff or photographs. Both of those things have very clear distinct goals (matching BPM and key, producing an image that mimics what you see IRL), and the inventions make a task easier while not eliminating the artistic aspect of it. Producing art doesn't really have any clear objective, besides to externalize something that is inside the artist. In this case the artist is an AI whose only experience is a bunch of training images with descriptions attached to them, and anything that comes out of it looking like inspiration is just an imitation of all that it has seen, attempting to make the imitation match the words written. Most non-commissioned artists producing art (outside of school) probably don't start with a prompt. They start with their experience of the world. (I'm not an artist, I could be wrong).

I generally agree with what you said, but I want to add a thought.
I think that if we put the discourse on the database, from a mechanistic point of view we could then say that even the experiences of human beings are a sort of database that they take as a reference and then make art. We store experiences as data and then reuse them.

So, surely most of the artists start from their experience of the world, but at that point, I think of Francis Bacon, who manipulated his life in an extreme way to create the experiences that he knew could give him that something to paint (he was specifically looking for abusive partners because he knew that after being beaten to death he would paint as he wanted). Or I think of Dostoevskyi that also manipulated his experience to force himself to write. The only way for him was to lose all his money on gambling and then be forced to write for the money to live. Or the so many musicians that use psychedelics to change consciously one's vision and experience.

So this ability of human beings to decide for themselves what to add to their database, and what maybe even change in the existing database, in my opinion is one of those things that cannot be simulated. Also this ability of ours to understand that something generally wrong at that moment can be right...is incredible.

 

[Bill Cipher]

I have to say that my Instagram feed is starting to be overrun with these images, often with no acknowledgment of the obvious use of AI, and sometimes even with misleading hashtags attached (like #zbrush, #vray, #blenderartist, #3Dcharactermodeling, etc.)

That's just 100% fraud in my opinion. And don't even get me started on all of the AI I'm seeing up for sale on NFT platforms now.

 

[Voidmatrix]

I have to say that my Instagram feed is starting to be overrun with these images, often with no acknowledgment of the obvious use of AI, and sometimes even with misleading hashtags attached (like #zbrush, #vray, #blenderartist, #3Dcharactermodeling, etc.)

That's just 100% fraud in my opinion. And don't even get me started on all of the AI I'm seeing up for sale on NFT platforms now.

I anticipated something like this; people want credit without putting the work in. Disappointing, but not surprising.

One love

 

[Bill Cipher]

As if you can't dumb this stuff down enough on its own, along comes a marketplace for you to buy preconceived AI keyword prompts, so that you literally don't need to bring anything whatsoever to the process other than copy and paste.

PromptBase | Prompt Marketplace: Midjourney, ChatGPT, DALL·E, Stable Diffusion & more.

Search 100,000+ quality AI prompts from top prompt engineers. Produce better outputs, save on time & API costs, sell your own prompts.

promptbase.com

It's hand fed plagiarism for 99 cents a pop! Wheeeeee!!!!!!!!

 

[MAGMA17]

As if you can't dumb this stuff down enough on its own, along comes a marketplace for you to buy preconceived AI keyword prompts, so that you literally don't need to bring anything whatsoever to the process other than copy and paste.

PromptBase | Prompt Marketplace: Midjourney, ChatGPT, DALL·E, Stable Diffusion & more.

Search 100,000+ quality AI prompts from top prompt engineers. Produce better outputs, save on time & API costs, sell your own prompts.

promptbase.com

It's hand fed plagiarism for 99 cents a pop! Wheeeeee!!!!!!!!

That's tragicomic

 

[Fridge]

Tragicomic is a good term for this, Magma. Especially if buying prompts will become a new trend. It's mindboggling, I have difficulties wrapping my mind around this... perhaps my morning coffee will shed some light.

 

[Jees]

...to buy preconceived AI keyword prompts, so that you literally don't need to bring anything whatsoever to the process...

There's still the manouvering arty way of pressing that "Enter" button.

Some AI rock-n-roll with a fair bit of AI art:
[YOUTUBE]

We're not at the end of AI so it's 'art' will also develop.

 

[Bill Cipher]

...and in a surefire sign that the end times are upon us:

An A.I.-Generated Picture Won an Art Prize. Artists Aren’t Happy. (Published 2022)

“I won, and I didn’t break any rules,” the artwork’s creator says.

www.nytimes.com

He actually said in an interview afterwards, “It’s not going to stop. Art is dead, dude. It’s over. AI won. Art lost, people.”

Someone drained my Metamask wallet yesterday and stole two of my pieces (in addition to cash). I actually have more respect for the person who did that than I do for this jackoff.

 

[MAGMA17]

He actually said in an interview afterwards, “It’s not going to stop. Art is dead, dude. It’s over. AI won. Art lost, people.”

So basically he admitted that "his" works are not art :lol:

Someone drained my Metamask wallet yesterday and stole two of my pieces (in addition to cash). I actually have more respect for the person who did that than I do for this jackoff.

This sucks :x

 

[Bill Cipher]

Thanks. It’s an expensive and upsetting lesson. Luckily I only had $400 in the account, but it feels pretty damn violating. I’m more upset about my pieces.

I clicked on a bad link to update Metamask security.

 

[Voidmatrix]

He actually said in an interview afterwards, “It’s not going to stop. Art is dead, dude. It’s over. AI won. Art lost, people.”

So basically he admitted that "his" works are not art :lol:

Someone drained my Metamask wallet yesterday and stole two of my pieces (in addition to cash). I actually have more respect for the person who did that than I do for this jackoff.

This sucks :x

It's always funny how people try to admonish me for not liking him... :lol: Shallow view from a shallow dude.

And maybe the hijacker liked your art? Maybe? Perhaps? Regardless that sucks.

One love