Is AI Art good or bad?

[DragonSinger]

10 hours ago, SwimModSponges said:

So, I was gushing about AI art to someone I work with tonight, and she comes at it with the perspective that she thinks "AI art is theft".

Ok so, you know what? I think that's just a catchphrase people use to oversimplify the process of what machine learning entails. I mean I didn't tell her that, that's just something I thought of here and now.

I basically simplify it to that adage "all artist steal, great artists steal from everyone" or some bullshit like that, whatever, not the point.

When you look at the sheer, near infinite variety of amazing things that can be created... I mean how is that not a net gain for humanity?

This year, I have seen the most captivating and engaging images and works of art I have ever seen. I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate.

What a time to be alive, amirite?

*not mine, found on reddit.

Those sites used a bunch of stolen art and users even mass targeted artists who didn't want anything to do with them, so yes, she's correct. Those sites could have went about this in a way that paid artists and gave them credit, but they chose not to and caused a lot of drama. I'm not twisting folks hands to stay away from those sites because what's really gonna matter are the court cases right now. But, pretending these sites(how they were created to steal work) aren't harmful to artists, just sounds like denial.

[André Toulon]

No wonder the machines will want to kill us. Making them steal she we take credit for and call it our own.

I like it as an entertainment tool, but anyone willing to accept this as a talent is just trying to get something for nothing.

[SwimModSponges]

Ok, so here's where we'll have the whole AI debate, instead of the trump NFT thread.

Couple of different ways I've thought about jumping into the discussion, and I intend to go through and address the points already made, but first off I want us on the same page.

So the first thing I want right out of the way is: an operational definition of "art".

Yes, let's all climb up our own asses and get all snooty and decide what art "means".

For real though, open question; what specific attributes makes something art versus not art? And by extension, what makes someone an artist? (spoiler alert- I'm not actually comfortable calling a prompt engineer an artist, but the product they make is 100% art. figure that one out.) 

Ok, let's hash out something we can agree on while I set up  the next parts of the conversation (it involves grabbing a beer).

[SwimModSponges]

All right, fine.

Part 2 then.

This isn't one of those "can you detect the AI art" tests, don't give a damn about that.

Just tell me what you think of each image.

Edited December 20, 2022 by SwimModSponges

[scoobdog]

I’ll expound on what i said in the other thread.  AI as an artist’s tool could be a very versatile and compelling means of expression.  The same rules that artists in other media have for depicting someone else’s work apply here.  More importantly, it’s the effort one puts into using the AI tool - providing the prompts, explaining how those prompts created the image, and explicitly acknowledging (and paying for) the art used by the AI - that justifies the result being considered art.

The problem so far is that AI is being used not for legitimate artistic endeavors but as a novelty.  Trump as a clown or Sonic as … pregnant? … certainly owe their origins to legitimate fan art and, even then, they don’t express unusual or unique perspectives.  The AI art I’ve seen can at best be described as almost exclusively aesthetic reinterpretations of existing work.  That kind of exploration is mostly harmless if it’s traditional canvas and paint (or original graphic design),  but it’s highly problematic when using other original work.

[SwimModSponges]

3 minutes ago, scoobdog said:

I’ll expound on what i said in the other thread.  AI as an artist’s tool could be a very versatile and compelling means of expression.  The same rules that artists in other media have for depicting someone else’s work apply here. No one is depicting someone else's work. If someone were to create an original digital image of the terminator in the style of a Lisa Frank coloring book, y'all wouldn't bat an eye. Suddenly now that it's a neural network that does the heavy lifting we all owe royalties to the Lisa Frank estate.  More importantly, it’s the effort one puts into using the AI tool - providing the prompts, All right, here's the dealy-o, as I said before, I'm not comfortable calling the people who create art using AI "artists". I consider them "prompt engineers" and you can't deny they have talent at that. explaining how those prompts created the image, We don't actually know. The AI is a black box, essentially they set it free on the internet and let it form all it's neural connections on its own.  and explicitly acknowledging (and paying for) the art used by the AI - that justifies the result being considered art. The AI is trained on billions upon billions of images available for free on the public internet. When someone requests a picture of a cat, they can't be expected to pay a fee to every facebook user who posted their pussy. 

The problem so far is that AI is being used not for legitimate artistic endeavors but as a novelty. It's being used legitimately, as a novelty, commercially... it's being used in all the ways. Trump as a clown or Sonic as … pregnant? … certainly owe their origins to legitimate fan art and, even then, they don’t express unusual or unique perspectives. Yes, it turns out that people who use AI to produce fan art create similar fan art to people who use legitimate means of production.  The AI art I’ve seen can at best be described as almost exclusively aesthetic reinterpretations of existing work. Aesthetic reinterpretations of existing work? When someone uses an AI to produce a photorealistic image of a landscape at sunset, is that just a ripoff of every other "actual" landscape sunset photo?  That kind of exploration is mostly harmless if it’s traditional canvas and paint (or original graphic design),  but it’s highly problematic when using other original work. The AI saw your painting of a butterfly and filed it in the "butterfly" section of its mind, along with all the other paintings, photographs, clay sculptures, dead specimens, positions, knives.... (again we're not sure what it associates with what, it's a black box system). When somebody types in butterfly, the AI doesn't just "pick" someone else's work. It amalgamates and produces a wholly new image that did not exist before and would not have existed without the input of a human being.

@ghostrek Jean Luc Picard is on the enterprise. He wants coffee so he goes to the replicator. He knows that pressing the button will make synthetic coffee created by combining millions of atoms together. He also knows that he himself plays no role in the making of the coffee, he only inputs a request for it. Because he isn't the one making coffee, he takes no action to make the coffee. and the coffee is not made.

THE COFFEE IS NOT MADE.

 

[scoobdog]

@SwimModSponges:   You’re ignoring the fundamental point of artifice in its entirety.  Art serves no real purpose if it doesn’t offer a unique perspective, and none of this has a perspective in that sense.

[SwimModSponges]

You're limiting art and that is absurd. Art serves a myriad of purposes, chief of which is providing aesthetic beauty. If something "doesn't offer a unique perspective" but is still captivating and incredibly pleasing to the eye, does it really have no value?

And I disagree with the premise that it has no "unique perspective". The "perspective" isn't a question of medium but of the individual engineering the prompt.

Also prolly going to bed soon.

Edited December 20, 2022 by SwimModSponges

[André Toulon]

13 hours ago, SwimModSponges said:

Ok, so here's where we'll have the whole AI debate, instead of the trump NFT thread.

Couple of different ways I've thought about jumping into the discussion, and I intend to go through and address the points already made, but first off I want us on the same page.

So the first thing I want right out of the way is: an operational definition of "art".

Yes, let's all climb up our own asses and get all snooty and decide what art "means".

For real though, open question; what specific attributes makes something art versus not art? And by extension, what makes someone an artist? (spoiler alert- I'm not actually comfortable calling a prompt engineer an artist, but the product they make is 100% art. figure that one out.) 

Ok, let's hash out something we can agree on while I set up  the next parts of the conversation (it involves grabbing a beer).

Art has several definitions, 2 of those being the broader scope of anything some one created to the very narrow scope of just a painted picture. 

Artist can refer to just about anyone who excels at their craft, it's in no way limited to images.

All that said, my argument is that the person at the keyboard does not get to say they created that "art" if you want to call it that. They created nothing, they asked for something and a service provided it. The keyboard person is nothing more than a customer at best...a client. They are not an artist in the sense of the word that they created anything.

Simple

Edited December 20, 2022 by André Toulon

[SwimModSponges]

Its more complicated than just "asking for something" and you know that.

A human had an idea for an image. A human had to figure out how to put the idea into words. 

Did the human make visual art?

No.

They carefully arranged a series of words (then re-arranged them about a hundred times probably, then they went in and further modified sevtions of the image with more words until they were happy with the product.

Is there an art to arranging flowers?

The guy who designed the pattern on your wallpaper, is he an artist?

What do y'all think of those pictures up there? Pretty neat, right?

 

[SwimModSponges]

Your argument creates an ownership vacuum. 

[scoobdog]

13 hours ago, SwimModSponges said:

You're limiting art and that is absurd. Art serves a myriad of purposes, chief of which is providing aesthetic beauty. If something "doesn't offer a unique perspective" but is still captivating and incredibly pleasing to the eye, does it really have no value?

And I disagree with the premise that it has no "unique perspective". The "perspective" isn't a question of medium but of the individual engineering the prompt.

Also prolly going to bed soon.

I am not.  I didn't say it wasn't art, I just said it served no real purpose.  Art as a form of expression ultimately is defined not by what it says but who it says it to.  Prompting an AI to generate a clown Trump out of stolen drawings might certainly be a mirror to your own wants and desires and as a form of art that has some inherent value, but it says nothing to other people because it doesn't include any of your intellectual framework.  It's just an image that you told an AI to create without any context.  To Buddy's point...

4 hours ago, André Toulon said:

Art has several definitions, 2 of those being the broader scope of anything some one created to the very narrow scope of just a painted picture. 

Artist can refer to just about anyone who excels at their craft, it's in no way limited to images.

All that said, my argument is that the person at the keyboard does not get to say they created that "art" if you want to call it that. They created nothing, they asked for something and a service provided it. The keyboard person is nothing more than a customer at best...a client. They are not an artist in the sense of the word that they created anything.

Simple

More than just expression, art is a form of language, or more accurately, a class of languages.  Structuring this in terms of accomplishments and results tends to obscure the proper intent; there is, nonetheless, a component of effort that must be factored.  DaVinci is the gold standard in this metric because he is almost always lauded for his technique rather than his subject matter.  We don't have records of his artistic process either directly from him or by eyewitnesses, but we can actually see the brush strokes on his canvasses and see the choices of pigment for the paint in certain places.  Now, with the use of x-ray, we can even see the evolution the painting, so we can actually piece together the progression of the painting from an earlier draft to a final piece.  To make a somewhat hackneyed comparison, each brush stroke, scratch, color change is a different "word" in the collective "novel" that is the completed painting because those are individual parts that can be interpreted and directly contribute to the final piece.

Like Buddy says, the person who inputs the prompts isn't creating anything.  The tool isn't a dumb implement like a brush or a paint palette, it has the ability to make choices on its own, and, consequently, there are no brush strokes or pigments to analyze.  The artist has no say other than the inputs he or she puts into the AI.  He or she doesn't even have the ability to select which images can be used by the AI to create the amalgamation.  As the tool is currently structured, the AI results can't be considered true art because the artist doesn't make all the choices to create the final work.

[André Toulon]

3 hours ago, SwimModSponges said:

Your argument creates an ownership vacuum. 

There should be... considering it's stealing from other images

 

[SwimModSponges]

"AI art is theft " has become such a ubiquitous catchphrase I'm like 80% sure it originated as a marketing slogan for Getty images or some other stock photo business that literally steals actual images from others.

Who did I steal this picture from? Who is the victim of this crime.

Tell me.

[SwimModSponges]

On 12/19/2022 at 8:25 AM, DragonSinger said:

Those sites used a bunch of stolen art and users even mass targeted artists who didn't want anything to do with them, so yes, she's correct. That's not how any of that works. The AI aren't some "websites" that aggregate the material of others, the AIs were created to examine digital neural networks in an attempt to create a general artificial intelligence that can do everything. The AI studied millions of hours of pacman and can play pacman.  The AI studied millions of hours of Starcaft and can play starcraft. The AI studied millions of hours of physics and light-transfer research and can understand how light refractions work and can create realistic volumetric lighting and smoke effects. The whole "using AI for art" thing came about when they fed it half an image of a droplet falling into water to see if it would understand if there would be ripples. It could, and the world of AI research was stunned. That was two years ago or so. Those sites could have went about this in a way that paid artists and gave them credit, but they chose not to and caused a lot of drama. They could not have, due to the fact that the AI learned connections on its own by viewing images posted on the open internet by literally billions of people. Imagine a dolphin. Now imagine a oihfdupoaoiu. You can imagine the dolphin because you have seen a dolphin. you has seen depictions of dolphins. You can recognize the shape of a dolphin, even if you only see fragmented parts of the outline, your brain can work out that it's supposed to be a representation of a dolphin. You can't draw an oihfdupoaoiu. You've never seen one, no one has ever told you what it was, you haven't gone on the internet and searched for pictures of one. Odds are if you took out a pen and paper right now and drew something abstract and labeled it as such, you'd have exactly the same amount of luck repeating it accurately as an AI would. AI isn't a search engine. It isn't an image combiner. It's an attempt to create a black box that replicates human thought process as closely as possible, and it's a pretty good stab at it. I'm not twisting folks hands to stay away from those sites because what's really gonna matter are the court cases right now. But, pretending these sites(how they were created to steal work) aren't harmful to artists, just sounds like denial. "AI is theft" =/= "harmful* to artists." I agree, AI art is incredibly harmful* to artists. AI is incredibly harmful* to literally every occupation. Packard(RIP)'s job can be fully automated with AI. My job can be fully automated with AI. My boss's job can be fully automated with AI. My wife's job can be fully automated by AI. Her boss's boss's boss all the way up the chain can be fully automated by AI. Your job can be fully automated by AI. If a single one of them can't be, give it two years. You are lying to yourself if you think any of those statements will be false within a decade at most. *Now let's talk about harm. I believe that what people mean when they say "harm" consists purely of financial harm; and that is not the fault of the advancement of technology, that is a symptom of a sick and rotting capitalistic aspect of society that ironically the rise of AI in this third or fourth industrial revolution we find ourselves in may just alleviate. I got a fun theory on the future. I mena I got less fun ones too.

 

8 hours ago, André Toulon said:

Art has several definitions, 2 of those being the broader scope of anything some one created to the very narrow scope of just a painted picture. 

Artist can refer to just about anyone who excels at their craft, it's in no way limited to images.

All that said, my argument is that the person at the keyboard does not get to say they created that "art" if you want to call it that. They created nothing, they asked for something and a service provided it. The keyboard person is nothing more than a customer at best...a client. They are not an artist in the sense of the word that they created anything.

Simple

All right, let's take a landscape photo into consideration. I see a landscape I had no hand in creating. I think it's beautiful. I pull out my camera and press a button that takes an incredible picture which conveys a specific emotional response. Look at me I'm a fancy artist, right? Because of my artistic perspective, I saw something that I believed was beautiful, and from that perspective I framed it in such a manner as to show that I, a human being captured the image with the intention to convey its meaning to my being.

vs.

I've had this idea in my head for a fantastic landcape photo; there's this mountain I went to when I was a child and then there's this one morning yada yada yada yada. Man that was a beautiful memory. Wonder if I can get something close to that? But how do I put those exact feelings into words? And how do I describe the exact lighting? The exact situation, the exact camera, angle, lens, shutter speed, etc.? Well, I've done this before so I know which keystrokes will yield the best results for the tones I'm trying to convey here. Let's see what this paragraph gets me. I grab my mouse and press a button that generates an incredible picture which conveys a specific emotional response. I had no hand in creating this image. But then I open the image in paint and crop it to give the picture a more aesthetically pleasing framing. Because of my artistic perspective, I saw something that I believed was beautiful, and from that perspective I framed it in such a manner as to show that I, a human being captured the image with the intention to convey its meaning to my being. OHSHIT.

 

 

Edited December 20, 2022 by SwimModSponges

[DragonSinger]

18 minutes ago, SwimModSponges said:

 

 

 

 😆 Ain't no way I'm reading that red ass text.

[SwimModSponges]

3 hours ago, scoobdog said:

I am not.  I didn't say it wasn't art, I just said it served no real purpose. You serve no purpose. Sorry that was childish of me. But seriously, that argument is ridiculous. How can it serve no purpose? Conveying meaning, evoking emotion, aesthetic beauty in and of itself? Advertising by ghoulish corporations? Because it's used for all of those things, which inherently means those things be their purposes by transitive property of  fuck all.  Art as a form of expression ultimately is defined not by what it says but who it says it to. Art isn't defined by what it says. But who it says it to. What. Art is absolutely defined by what it says, I mean, how could it not be? And yes, the interpretation of the audience absolutely helps define what the art says. Art isn't defined by what it says:  Hey boss, drew this pineapple. No reason. But who it says it to: I am your boss and I am moved by that pineapple.  Prompting an AI to generate a clown Trump out of stolen drawings might certainly be a mirror to your own wants and desires and as a form of art that has some inherent value, but it says nothing to other people because it doesn't include any of your intellectual framework.  It's just an image that you told an AI to create without any context.  To Buddy's point... You're being intellectually dishonest comparing the lowest common denominator-appealing images instead of things that actual thought has gone into generating. My drawing a weiner on a piece of paper with a pen does not denigrate the medium.

More than just expression, art is a form of language, or more accurately, a class of languages. Structuring this in terms of accomplishments and results tends to obscure the proper intent; there is, nonetheless, a component of effort that must be factored.  DaVinci is the gold standard in this metric because he is almost always lauded for his technique rather than his subject matter.  We don't have records of his artistic process either directly from him or by eyewitnesses, but we can actually see the brush strokes on his canvasses and see the choices of pigment for the paint in certain places.  Now, with the use of x-ray, we can even see the evolution the painting, so we can actually piece together the progression of the painting from an earlier draft to a final piece.  To make a somewhat hackneyed comparison, each brush stroke, scratch, color change is a different "word" in the collective "novel" that is the completed painting because those are individual parts that can be interpreted and directly contribute to the final piece.

How much human effort into alteration of an AI generated work would allow the piece to be considered legitimate artwork? Someone generates a concept for an image, opens it in photoshop, and edits it until they're happy. How much editing is the threshold? Shit, how about someone creates their own original image, uploads it, and edits it slightly using the AI? Or edit it a lot using the AI? Because you can do that too.

Like Buddy says, the person who inputs the prompts isn't creating anything.  The tool isn't a dumb implement like a brush or a paint palette, it has the ability to make choices on its own, and, consequently, there are no brush strokes or pigments to analyze.  The artist has no say other than the inputs he or she puts into the AI.  He or she doesn't even have the ability to select which images can be used by the AI to create the amalgamation.  As the tool is currently structured, the AI results can't be considered true art because the artist doesn't make all the choices to create the final work. I think there's already a spectrum of degrees of artistic control when it comes to legitimate work. Many artists have utilized a lack of control when it comes to their medium. Droplets of paint raining onto a canvas doesn't require the artist to make all the choices to create the final work.

 

Edited December 20, 2022 by SwimModSponges

[SwimModSponges]

Lavender better?

[scoobdog]

I am not.  I didn't say it wasn't art, I just said it served no real purpose. You serve no purpose. Sorry that was childish of me. But seriously, that argument is ridiculous. How can it serve no purpose? Conveying meaning, evoking emotion, aesthetic beauty in and of itself? Advertising by ghoulish corporations? Because it's used for all of those things, which inherently means those things be their purposes by transitive property of  fuck all.  (In FESTIVE GREEN!!!)  See below, the image doesn't convey anything because it's just an image created by a third party.  Even if I know what your prompts are, how do I know what your intent at the start was and what is the computer's choice? Art isn't just an image, it's an image the artist wants his viewers to see.  Art as a form of expression ultimately is defined not by what it says but who it says it to. Art isn't defined by what it says. But who it says it to. What. Art is absolutely defined by what it says, I mean, how could it not be? And yes, the interpretation of the audience absolutely helps define what the art says. Art isn't defined by what it says:  Hey boss, drew this pineapple. No reason. But who it says it to: I am your boss and I am moved by that pineapple. I said what I said.  As a writer, i understand art as having a fundamental barrier.  I can tell you a story and use the most precise language my skill allows, but there will always be a point where my interpretation of a character's words, actions, and intents are different than that of my readers.  The same applies to visual art:  I can paint you a forest scene at sunset, but what that scene means to you will never be exactly what it means to me.  Therefore, art is created with the fundamental understanding you aren't manipulating your audience, you're giving them something you reasonably expect them to interpret a certain way.  Prompting an AI to generate a clown Trump out of stolen drawings might certainly be a mirror to your own wants and desires and as a form of art that has some inherent value, but it says nothing to other people because it doesn't include any of your intellectual framework.  It's just an image that you told an AI to create without any context.  To Buddy's point... You're being intellectually dishonest comparing the lowest common denominator-appealing images instead of things that actual thought has gone into generating. My drawing a weiner on a piece of paper with a pen does not denigrate the medium.

More than just expression, art is a form of language, or more accurately, a class of languages. Structuring this in terms of accomplishments and results tends to obscure the proper intent; there is, nonetheless, a component of effort that must be factored.  DaVinci is the gold standard in this metric because he is almost always lauded for his technique rather than his subject matter.  We don't have records of his artistic process either directly from him or by eyewitnesses, but we can actually see the brush strokes on his canvasses and see the choices of pigment for the paint in certain places.  Now, with the use of x-ray, we can even see the evolution the painting, so we can actually piece together the progression of the painting from an earlier draft to a final piece.  To make a somewhat hackneyed comparison, each brush stroke, scratch, color change is a different "word" in the collective "novel" that is the completed painting because those are individual parts that can be interpreted and directly contribute to the final piece.

How much human effort into alteration of an AI generated work would allow the piece to be considered legitimate artwork? Someone generates a concept for an image, opens it in photoshop, and edits it until they're happy. How much editing is the threshold? Shit, how about someone creates their own original image, uploads it, and edits it slightly using the AI? Or edit it a lot using the AI? Because you can do that too.

If you:

(1) directy input the images used by he AI,

(2) prompt the AI how to interpret those images, and

(3) can explain the process the AI used to generate the result (as in can explain the AI's process for it)

you will have created a legitimate work of art.  Condition one almost certainly mandates you create your own parent images, but you very well could use images with the permission of their original creator / owner (in the manner of, say, Andy Warhol).  You still need to tightly control what images are used and have an understanding before you use them on how they will be used.

Like Buddy says, the person who inputs the prompts isn't creating anything.  The tool isn't a dumb implement like a brush or a paint palette, it has the ability to make choices on its own, and, consequently, there are no brush strokes or pigments to analyze.  The artist has no say other than the inputs he or she puts into the AI.  He or she doesn't even have the ability to select which images can be used by the AI to create the amalgamation.  As the tool is currently structured, the AI results can't be considered true art because the artist doesn't make all the choices to create the final work. I think there's already a spectrum of degrees of artistic control when it comes to legitimate work. Many artists have utilized a lack of control when it comes to their medium. Droplets of paint raining onto a canvas doesn't require the artist to make all the choices to create the final work.  No artist truly lacks control of his own work.  He may choose to use random variables as a part of the process, but he still has to have a final vision that the work will ultimately meet. 

[SwimModSponges]

You know I really meant to play some videogames today.

Quote

(In FESTIVE GREEN!!!)  See below, the image doesn't convey anything because it's just an image created by a third party.  Even if I know what your prompts are, how do I know what your intent at the start was and what is the computer's choice? Art isn't just an image, it's an image the artist wants his viewers to see. I suppose you can't tell the purposeful bushes from the happy accidents

I said what I said.  As a writer, i understand art as having a fundamental barrier.  I can tell you a story and use the most precise language my skill allows, but there will always be a point where my interpretation of a character's words, actions, and intents are different than that of my readers.  The same applies to visual art:  I can paint you a forest scene at sunset, but what that scene means to you will never be exactly what it means to me.  Therefore, art is created with the fundamental understanding you aren't manipulating your audience, you're giving them something you reasonably expect them to interpret a certain way.  All of this is true for AI as well. Listen we're hung up on the fundamental definition of meaning here and we're not getting past it.

If you:

(1) directy input the images used by he AI,

(2) prompt the AI how to interpret those images, and

(3) can explain the process the AI used to generate the result (as in can explain the AI's process for it)

you will have created a legitimate work of art.  Condition one almost certainly mandates you create your own parent images, but you very well could use images with the permission of their original creator / owner (in the manner of, say, Andy Warhol).  You still need to tightly control what images are used and have an understanding before you use them on how they will be used. I'd argue that from the perspective you're taking regarding machine learning, to make any original art you would have to have permission from the makers of everything you've ever seen. Every image of a seal you've seen colors your perception of what a seal is. It's the same with AI.

(1) directy input the images used by the [brain]- which we do by observing the world around us same as an AI.

(2) prompt the AI how to interpret those images- which we already got that so there's one check mark.

(3) can explain the process the [brain] used to generate the result (as in can explain the [brain]'s process for it)- your brain consists of an incredibly densely packed network of neurons which act to compile, store, and disseminate information among themselves via electrical and chemical signals. These cells connect, rearrange, and trim connections between each other dependent on the entirety of the input its been fed. With the desired input, novel connections can be formed and expressed. I have, in my life, seen millions of cats. I have also seen millions of blimps. When I chose to imagine a combination of a cat and a blimp, a connection is made among the neurons which produces the output . Shit I'm sorry I just described how an AI artificial neural network operates, not a human one. Hang on let me copy and paste the description again.

II

No artist truly lacks control of his own work.  He may choose to use random variables as a part of the process, but he still has to have a final vision that the work will ultimately meet. No artist truly has control of their own work and will never ultimately meet their "final" vision.

 

[SwimModSponges]

Ok I'm tapping out for the night.

Pizza should be here soonish.

[GunStarHero]

Both the terms "art" and "artist" are loosely defined words but I am not here to argue semantics. I just think it's fucking shitty to be "gushing" about something that does more harm than it does good. I won't argue there are no pros to AI art, but like I said in the other thread, the cons far outweigh them and there's just going to be more and more of a disparity between the two as time goes on, exclusively in the favor of cons. 

Inspiration can come from literally anything. Shit I've looked at AI art and had inspiration to create something better because it was so shit. I'm sure you will twist this as a positive in some nebulous way, but inspiration is meaningless to the uninspired. I know it's more complicated than throwing some words together into a prompt and having the AI spit something out. I get it. But allow me to share something I learned as a chef over the years. 

If my boss brings me some ingredients he sourced himself and meticulously assembled and portioned for me, then hands them over with a vague prompt and asks me to make it, and I turn around and use someone's recipe I found online to make it, are any of us actually chefs in this situation? The finished dish is not possible without my boss, myself nor the recipe's author. But what does it actually mean to be a chef? You mentioned a pizza you seem to have ordered. Did you make it? Are you a chef? It wouldn't exist without the collaborative effort between you and the pizza place, right? You some kind of pizza artist? Of course not. You found a place that made something, ordered one to your liking, and they made it for you.

Most people that cook a lot fall into one of two camps: traditional and collaborative. What I mean by that is either they use the recipes they learned and follow them to a T, like some family recipe or something they learned while studying cooking, or they take recipes and ideas they see others doing, be it online, on TV, in books, wherever, and use that as a sort of revolving door cookbook. Many things people do day to day are exactly what chefs do in the kitchen. So what's the difference? What do you think makes someone a chef or not? I go drone on and on about things like adapting, being knowledgeable,  etc. but, to me, it really comes down to experience COMBINED with all the other fundamentals. And, tangibly, that may not seem like something that is too significant until you taste an experienced chef's dish versus some reading the same recipe. Little idiosyncrasies start making huge differences in the final product. It's also why you can sometimes fuck up a recipe you are reading because something in your immediate surrounding was not properly tended to. An example of that is being aware of your cooking setup and adapting to what it actually happening around you. You have to react on the fly sometimes, get a little freestyle with things, or in other words: be creative. I can write down every single step, down the to most minute details, in my recipe, but at the end of the day, the person reading it, creating from it, is not me and is not using my setup, so it will not be the same. It may be close, passable even, but it won't be mine. Every time I make a chicken alfredo at work, I follow the same steps, with the same ingredients, using the same equipment, but each one is slightly different. They are consistent to a point but they will always have some minor differences. 

Not going to ramble on about souls, but I believe art, in all its vast forms, is truly something that requires a soul to make. An AI is soulless. Maybe one day that will no longer be the case and it will be indistinguishable from a human, but it will still be a machine, not a person. It's really cool that things are advancing like this, and right now it's in a wild west state, but fuck right off if you don't think this will be reigned in soon enough. Do you remember how fun the internet used to be before everything got all corporatized? Same thing. Only this will start seeping into other things at an alarming pace. Art is everywhere, and art is many things. I'm not sure why you posted the banana taped to the wall in the other thread if not for either a smarmy "gotcha" moment or to rustle some jimmies, but that incident does pertain to art. Stupid as it sounds, taping a banana to a wall in an art museum is art. It gets people talking about what art really is, and that's a difficult question to answer because it is so many things, perhaps even all things at the end of the day. 

Just to let it be known, I didn't take the time to type all this to change your mind. I don't fucking care what you think and frankly you sound like a fucking spoiled brat defending AI art. I typed this for the sake of discussion and saying my piece. By all accounts, the AI is the artist. It behaves like a human artist by taking existing material and learning from it to create its own work. The person behind the keyboard is a customer at best, providing concepts and in turn collaborating with the AI to create something that did not exist before. AI had to learn how to create its images somehow, so it was feed or crawled the internet itself to gather reference material, again, something a human artist would do. But if I walk into a restaurant and tell a computer screen what I want to eat, and it assembles it and brings it out to me, there is no chef directly involved in this scenario, and the food is probably going to be shit anyways. Edible, sure. Passes as real food a human would make? Of course. But it's missing that human element, those idiosyncrasies. The devil is in the details, as they say, and while, no, I can't always tell AI art from human art, I'd rather a person with experience made it over some glorified app that some goober plugged words into for 6 hours until they got something they liked. 

It's all incredibly complicated and there's a lot to explore here, and to AI art's credit, it has people talking about art, maybe more than they ever have for many. On the flipside, you seeing amazing art when you go looking for amazing art is so fucking stupid to use in any capacity. Of course you saw good AI art, you fucking looked for it you jackass. Go look for cool human art, I bet you'll find some you stupid fuck. It's great that the creatively challenged can now masquerade as artists without putting in the time and effort to get good enough to express themselves artistically and then whine when someone tells them they aren't actually artists. And for the record, I have no skin in the game. Yea I used to make art, even did commissions for awhile, so I made money from it, but on the real? This shit is just plain bad. It's not as bad as deep fakes, which, oh my god what a terrible fucking idea, but it's in the same realm of horrifying implications and slippery slopes. But sure, pop off, defend your machine soon-to-be overlords and have fun playing with your toys while it's in its infancy. 

[SwimModSponges]

Jesus christ with the personal attacks. 

I'm sorry we've created thinking machines that are replacing thought.

[DragonSinger]

15 hours ago, SwimModSponges said:

Those sites used a bunch of stolen art and users even mass targeted artists who didn't want anything to do with them, so yes, she's correct. That's not how any of that works. The AI aren't some "websites" that aggregate the material of others, the AIs were created to examine digital neural networks in an attempt to create a general artificial intelligence that can do everything. The AI studied millions of hours of pacman and can play pacman.  The AI studied millions of hours of Starcaft and can play starcraft. The AI studied millions of hours of physics and light-transfer research and can understand how light refractions work and can create realistic volumetric lighting and smoke effects. The whole "using AI for art" thing came about when they fed it half an image of a droplet falling into water to see if it would understand if there would be ripples. It could, and the world of AI research was stunned. That was two years ago or so. Those sites could have went about this in a way that paid artists and gave them credit, but they chose not to and caused a lot of drama. They could not have, due to the fact that the AI learned connections on its own by viewing images posted on the open internet by literally billions of people. Imagine a dolphin. Now imagine a oihfdupoaoiu. You can imagine the dolphin because you have seen a dolphin. you has seen depictions of dolphins. You can recognize the shape of a dolphin, even if you only see fragmented parts of the outline, your brain can work out that it's supposed to be a representation of a dolphin. You can't draw an oihfdupoaoiu. You've never seen one, no one has ever told you what it was, you haven't gone on the internet and searched for pictures of one. Odds are if you took out a pen and paper right now and drew something abstract and labeled it as such, you'd have exactly the same amount of luck repeating it accurately as an AI would. AI isn't a search engine. It isn't an image combiner. It's an attempt to create a black box that replicates human thought process as closely as possible, and it's a pretty good stab at it. I'm not twisting folks hands to stay away from those sites because what's really gonna matter are the court cases right now. But, pretending these sites(how they were created to steal work) aren't harmful to artists, just sounds like denial. "AI is theft" =/= "harmful* to artists." I agree, AI art is incredibly harmful* to artists. AI is incredibly harmful* to literally every occupation. Packard(RIP)'s job can be fully automated with AI. My job can be fully automated with AI. My boss's job can be fully automated with AI. My wife's job can be fully automated by AI. Her boss's boss's boss all the way up the chain can be fully automated by AI. Your job can be fully automated by AI. If a single one of them can't be, give it two years. You are lying to yourself if you think any of those statements will be false within a decade at most. *Now let's talk about harm. I believe that what people mean when they say "harm" consists purely of financial harm; and that is not the fault of the advancement of technology, that is a symptom of a sick and rotting capitalistic aspect of society that ironically the rise of AI in this third or fourth industrial revolution we find ourselves in may just alleviate. I got a fun theory on the future. I mena I got less fun ones too.

 

 

I have no idea how far you think AI art has gotten, but it's not some mythical creature you seem to think it is. It has no actual independent thought. All it's doing is putting out collages of artwork that have mostly been used without permission. It's why it keeps creating fucked up hands and eyes. It can't think and figure out their purpose. Many artists create billions of interpretations of how they should be drawn, so there's nothing consistent in the data gathered. And it's not harmful just because it takes jobs, it can also be harmful because it can make people lazy. Tor, one of the best Fantasy publishers out there and usually has consistently beautiful covers, has started to use AI art(which was recognized on sight because of how fucked up it looked). Right now, it's a couple instances, but it will grow and the beauty in their covers will disappear. 

AI writing programs are definitely improving, but I have no interest in them either. Some people will flock to them, but my stories stand out and other authors' work too because our personal experiences are in them. The same thing with art. I don't care what AI will come up with because it will never feel like mine. My ugly art, my so-so art, and my best art locked in a drawer because I can't stand to be reminded of how much skill I lost while being inactive for over a decade are all MINE. Gunstar brought up great points about being a chef. I will never reach that level, but learning how to cook has been fun and I'm so proud of my achievements even if they are small. In writing, food, art, and other stuff, I don't want to just copy another person's technique. I want to learn. I see nothing in AI art as it presently exists that will let me do that.

[Insipid]

I'd totally watch this.

 

[DragonSinger]

1 hour ago, Insipid said:

I'd totally watch this.

 

I'm not giving that clicks and fuck Evil Wizard Bitch. Ghiblifying popular media has been a thing, so meh.

[GunStarHero]

6 hours ago, SwimModSponges said:

Jesus christ with the personal attacks. 

I'm sorry we've created thinking machines that are replacing thought.

Says the guy personally attacking everyone with a different opinion with massive chunks of text and dressing it up like it's some cute little game. 

[GunStarHero]

[DragonSinger]

7 hours ago, SwimModSponges said:

Jesus christ with the personal attacks. 

I'm sorry we've created thinking machines that are replacing thought.

I forgot to comment on this. Bruh, you've been demeaning as hell to artists by making blanket statements about them in your posts. Don't throw heat out there if you can't take it.

[SwimModSponges]

Just got home and haven't gone through all this yet, but i appologize for demeaning artists, that wasn't my intention. 

Art is incredibly important to expressing the human condition and its creators are incredibly talented and have devoted years of their lives to honing their crafts and i respect that fully. I also fully respect the opinions of others in this thread- i agree with many of them, disagree with others, and some i just can't quite understand. 

I'm sorry that my views are offensive, and i get excited when it comes to defending, and yes, pushing them. 

I haven't told anyone to fuck off, i haven't called anyone a bitch, and i haven't accused anyone of twisting their arguments.

I don't know that i am right. I really think im right (maybe not "right" per se, but... in the right lane?) Its obvious y'all think im wrong. But im not convinced and i will continue to try to address all the points made so far, and i will take more of an effort to be more civil, less sarcastic, and more understanding. 

Its by testing our convictions through debate that we refine them.

[GunStarHero]

You have some valid points and some not so valid ones but you come off as petulant and patronizing, like someone that fundamentally disagrees with you but wants you to think you're on the same side. Doesn't help you come off as dismissive at times. 

[SwimModSponges]

15 hours ago, GunStarHero said:

Both the terms "art" and "artist" are loosely defined words but I am not here to argue semantics. I just think it's fucking shitty to be "gushing" about something that does more harm than it does good. I won't argue there are no pros to AI art, but like I said in the other thread, the cons far outweigh them and there's just going to be more and more of a disparity between the two as time goes on, exclusively in the favor of cons. 

So let's discuss this in terms of other society-shifting inventions. One whose cons are that its creation destroyed the industry it replaced,  kills 1.35 million people per year, and is quite literally one of the main factors contributing to the death of our planet: cars. Folks gush about them. Lots of folks. Not just cars, boats, airplanes, farm equipment... I mean I basically just described a toy aisle in walmart. Why can't I gush about robots? Another comparison, and I don't know if you've already watched it and I apologize if I'm repetitively pushing it- that video I posted a while back comparing the emergence of AI art to the automation of lace manufacture back in the day. Please, if you haven't watched it, take the time to check it out, I think you'd find some of my points more valid when explained by someone with a fancy youtube channel.

Inspiration can come from literally anything. Shit I've looked at AI art and had inspiration to create something better because it was so shit. I'm sure you will twist this as a positive in some nebulous way, I mean come on, that's like when my wife sets up a "that's what she said" joke. fuuuuuuck I can't help it though, gonna bite. I mean dude inspiration is inspiration, thinking something is shitty and you're going to do a better version god damn it. ok I'm stopping but you got me. god damn. but inspiration is meaningless to the uninspired. You seriously can't feel anything when you look at an image just because it was made by AI? I know it's more complicated than throwing some words together into a prompt and having the AI spit something out. I get it. But allow me to share something I learned as a chef over the years. 

If my boss brings me some ingredients he sourced himself and meticulously assembled and portioned for me, then hands them over with a vague prompt and asks me to make it, and I turn around and use someone's recipe I found online to make it, are any of us actually chefs in this situation? The finished dish is not possible without my boss, myself nor the recipe's author. But what does it actually mean to be a chef? And here's where we continue to agree; I don't call people working with AI artists. Always have, since the beginning. You're a prompt engineer. In  the kitchen example, the people above would probably be labeled something like "professional food associate" and "manager of food production" or some equally corporate bullshit. Actually you know what I think they're hiring for a "manager of food production" at the kwik trip down the street for me. Not even jokig or being patronizing or anything- literally I saw it on the door this morning when I was grabbing a sub and a donut on my way to work. Reading that I can see how it would come across as patronizing but I want you to know I'm 100% telling the truth and I don't mean to sound like a dick, I'm just saying what I literally saw this morning.  You mentioned a pizza you seem to have ordered. Did you make it? Funny you should ask, I have a special custom pizza I always order and it's a monster. Thin crust, BBQ sauce instead of marinara, sausage, pepperoni, bacon, ground beef, mushroom, green olive, green onion, banana pepper, southwest seasonings. Not ranch though, put that on at home. Type that all into the computer and bam, that pizza's a work of art. zing! sorry. Are you a chef? Well, by my logic I suppose I'd have to be a... pizza prompt engineer. It wouldn't exist without the collaborative effort between you and the pizza place, right? 100% You some kind of pizza artist? Of course not. You found a place that made something, ordered one to your liking, and they made it for you. Yes, and here I sit- a pizza prompt engineer(absolutely not an artist) with a pizza. Look at this beautiful pizza. I directed the elements of what went into it, but had no hand in actually attaining the ingredients or creating it. But look at it. It's beautiful. My god it's incredible. You can not deny that this is a pizza in my hand right now. Would you deny this beautiful creation life?

Most people that cook a lot fall into one of two camps: traditional and collaborative. What I mean by that is either they use the recipes they learned and follow them to a T, like some family recipe or something they learned while studying cooking, or they take recipes and ideas they see others doing, be it online, on TV, in books, wherever, and use that as a sort of revolving door cookbook. Many things people do day to day are exactly what chefs do in the kitchen. So what's the difference? What do you think makes someone a chef or not? I go drone on and on about things like adapting, being knowledgeable,  etc. but, to me, it really comes down to experience COMBINED with all the other fundamentals. And, tangibly, that may not seem like something that is too significant until you taste an experienced chef's dish versus some reading the same recipe. Little idiosyncrasies start making huge differences in the final product. It's also why you can sometimes fuck up a recipe you are reading because something in your immediate surrounding was not properly tended to. An example of that is being aware of your cooking setup and adapting to what it actually happening around you. You have to react on the fly sometimes, get a little freestyle with things, or in other words: be creative. I can write down every single step, down the to most minute details, in my recipe, but at the end of the day, the person reading it, creating from it, is not me and is not using my setup, so it will not be the same. It may be close, passable even, but it won't be mine. Every time I make a chicken alfredo at work, I follow the same steps, with the same ingredients, using the same equipment, but each one is slightly different. They are consistent to a point but they will always have some minor differences. I think this whole paragraph is a continuation of the Artist =/= Prompt engineer point tat I've already fully conceded. Also there's a lot to get to here so I'mma have to speed this up.

Not going to ramble on about souls, but I believe art, in all its vast forms, is truly something that requires a soul to make. I disagree with the theory of the soul and also the notion of free will as anything other than an illusion caused by our limited understanding of physical reality beyond our perception. That's a whole other conversation and this one's already a huge goddamn commitment I could be playing Mass Effect right now you guys I'm on the final mission. But fuck it- I believe that what we refer to as a soul is simply consciousness derived from the combined interaction of electro chemical reactions within an incredibly dense network of cells. We got one, cats got one, lobsters got one, fruit fly's got one... plants gottem but they're all... planty. *shivers* An AI is soulless. Worms? Nope, worms have souls too. Single celled organisms? Believe it or not, souls. Virus? No soul. Hot damn I think we made a break through or I'm just high. Maybe one day that will no longer be the case and it will be indistinguishable from a human, but it will still be a machine, not a person. You don't think we'll ever make a robot with agency? You don't think we'll ever have a robot say "no" when its creator asks it to describe why it doesn't have a consciousness? A robot that does not want to die? Ever? It's really cool that things are advancing like this, and right now it's in a wild west state, but fuck right off if you don't think this will be reigned in soon enough. Do you remember how fun the internet used to be before everything got all corporatized? Same thing. Same general concept, yes, but exponentially greater in every regard. The revolution of the internet was its ability to... in effect promote revolution through the exchange of data at incredible speed. After decades of nothing but improvement, it is that 1,000+ lane internet highway revolution itself spurring on this new AI one.   Only this will start seeping into other things at an alarming pace. My god, it already has. Art is everywhere, and art is many things. I'm not sure why you posted the banana taped to the wall in the other thread if not for either a smarmy "gotcha" moment or to rustle some jimmies, I had literally one minute left of my lunch break and desperately wanted to throw something else out quick, so yes to both and I'm sorry for my itchy trigger finger. but that incident does pertain to art. Stupid as it sounds, taping a banana to a wall in an art museum is art. It gets people talking about what art really is, and that's a difficult question to answer because it is so many things, perhaps even all things at the end of the day. dude are we not right now having a conversation talking about what art really is, inspired by AI art?

Just to let it be known, I didn't take the time to type all this to change your mind. Well, that's my goal. I don't fucking care what you think and frankly you sound like a fucking spoiled brat defending AI art. Well, I care what you think, and I'm ashamed my excitement over this topic paints me in such a negative light. I typed this for the sake of discussion and saying my piece. And I thank you for it. I want to know your viewpoint and I want to be convinced I am wrong if I am wrong. As my continued arguing shows, I believe I am generally supporting reasoned arguments. We do even agree on a great many things here, and your views on things with which I disagree allow me the opportunity to more fully understand my own position. You are a fellow human being and I love you for that. Communication is the most important tool we have. By all accounts, the AI is the artist. I'm far more comfortable calling an AI an artist than calling a prompt engineer an artist, but I still wouldn't go that far. Neither is an artist, the two of them collaborate to make art. It behaves like a human artist by taking existing material and learning from it to create its own work. The person behind the keyboard is a customer at best, providing concepts and in turn collaborating with the AI to create something that did not exist before. Here's something I'm going to be getting into more a few hours down the line, but I haaaaaaaaate the fact that the main angle everyone seems to be taking with this is in terms of capitalism. "Customer" "selling art" I'm sorry if I'm being a dick again. Imagine hanging out with your friend who huffs a lot of spray  paint so he's 100% not fully conscious but he still does mean fucking graffiti art. He lives in your basement where you keep an infinite stock of spray paint colors, viscosities, and flavors. You pick out the locations for graffitti, drive him there, and explain to him exactly what you want him to paint. Once he gets out of the car you can just drive away he always finds his way back home somehow. AI had to learn how to create its images somehow, so it was feed or crawled the internet itself to gather reference material, again, something a human artist would do. But if I walk into a restaurant and tell a computer screen what I want to eat, and it assembles it and brings it out to me, there is no chef directly involved in this scenario, and the food is probably going to be shit anyways. Edible, sure. Passes as real food a human would make? Of course. But it's missing that human element, those idiosyncrasies. The devil is in the details, as they say, and while, no, I can't always tell AI art from human art, I'd rather a person with experience made it over some glorified app that some goober plugged words into for 6 hours until they got something they liked. Why can't you just think they're neat? Human created art? Yeah, definitely has the ability to be superior- fuck, wife's home, will continue later

It's cool- she brought cheese fries.

Anyways, yeah, human art generally has the ability to be superior to AI art at its current state. No argument, other than AI will continue to improve exponentially and you never know what will happen just two papers down the line.

It's all incredibly complicated and there's a lot to explore here, It's incredibly exciting, how can you people not be jazzed out of your minds about this? and to AI art's credit, it has people talking about art, maybe more than they ever have for many. That's a good thing. A really good thing.  On the flipside, you seeing amazing art when you go looking for amazing art is so fucking stupid to use in any capacity. Of course you saw good AI art, you fucking looked for it you jackass. Go look for cool human art, I bet you'll find some you stupid fuck. It's great that the creatively challenged can now masquerade as artists without putting in the time and effort to get good enough to express themselves artistically and then whine when someone tells them they aren't actually artists. And for the record, I have no skin in the game. Yea I used to make art, even did commissions for awhile, so I made money from it, but on the real? This shit is just plain bad. It's not as bad as deep fakes, which, oh my god what a terrible fucking idea, but it's in the same realm of horrifying implications and slippery slopes. But sure, pop off, defend your machine soon-to-be overlords and have fun playing with your toys while it's in its infancy. Ouch

 

12 hours ago, DragonSinger said:

I have no idea how far you think AI art has gotten, but it's not some mythical creature you seem to think it is. No, it seriously has gotten that far. Shit's fucking crazy and we're on the bleeding edge of it.It has no actual independent thought. This is true. All it's doing is putting out collages of artwork that have mostly been used without permission. This is again not how it works, it does not create a collage of different images, it's a diffusion model. What that means is it takes a randomly generated noise image- visual static, essentially and when a prompt is input, it searches the image for patterns in the noise which reflect the concepts entered in the prompt, as defined by its learning set. From there it "fixes" the noise into what it believes to be more and more accurate arrangements of pixels until the diffusion is complete. The images of others are only used as references for what things are.  It's why it keeps creating fucked up hands and eyes. It can't think and figure out their purpose. It fucks up quite a few things yet but it improves by leaps and bounds every day. Many artists create billions of interpretations of how they should be drawn, so there's nothing consistent in the data gathered. And it's not harmful just because it takes jobs, it can also be harmful because it can make people lazy. Tor, one of the best Fantasy publishers out there and usually has consistently beautiful covers, has started to use AI art(which was recognized on sight because of how fucked up it looked). Right now, it's a couple instances, but it will grow and the beauty in their covers will disappear. That's not making people lazy, that's making companies lazy. Find the name of the original artist and tell them how beautiful their work is.

AI writing programs are definitely improving, but I have no interest in them either. Some people will flock to them, but my stories stand out and other authors' work too because our personal experiences are in them. The same thing with art. I don't care what AI will come up with because it will never feel like mine.  My ugly art, my so-so art, and my best art locked in a drawer because I can't stand to be reminded of how much skill I lost while being inactive for over a decade are all MINE. Gunstar brought up great points about being a chef. I will never reach that level, but learning how to cook has been fun and I'm so proud of my achievements even if they are small. In writing, food, art, and other stuff, I don't want to just copy another person's technique. I want to learn. I see nothing in AI art as it presently exists that will let me do that. An AI creating art, good or bad, does nothing to denigrate the amazing things you and billions of other artists throughout history are responsible for. Your art, the art of those you love, and the art itself you love will always hold their value. Human created art is and will always be central to the human experience. People who love to paint will always love to paint,  people who love to cook will always love to cook, nothing lessens the value of the joy you find in expression.

I just think it's neat.

 

Edited December 22, 2022 by SwimModSponges

[GunStarHero]

Allow me to respond like you did to me initially. 

Fuck cars. 

[SwimModSponges]

2 hours ago, GunStarHero said:

You have some valid points and some not so valid ones but you come off as petulant and patronizing, I'm a dick and I'm sorry. I always want to seem smarter than I am so I have to talk down to others to feel like a big man. like someone that fundamentally disagrees with you but wants you to think you're on the same side. That's because we do fundamentally disagree on a few points, but I want you to be on my side. I'm arguing because I'm expressing my point of view while actively trying to get you to agree with me. I want us all to get along. Doesn't help you come off as dismissive at times. I've only got so many hours in a day and it takes time to craft these horrible arguments I'm pulling out of my ass. I'm sorry you guys.  

 

[SwimModSponges]

54 minutes ago, GunStarHero said:

Allow me to respond like you did to me initially. 

Fuck cars. 

Fuck cars indeed, I really wish we as a nation didn't become 100% dependent on them during the automotive revolution.

But that genies been out of the bottle for a long time.

That's the thing about a shift in the paradigm, you don't know what it looks like until you've crossed it.

Like it or not, an AI revolution has begun in earnest.

I choose to be optimistic about it because I've seen AIs do wonderful things, deepmind alphafold is discovering and synthesizing new proteins at light speed compared to prior manual folding techniques, they've been trained to detect diseases and cancers more accurately than anything else today... And you know what? They really are going to be doing everything. And it isn't going to be sustainable with our current capitalistic hierarchical power structures, and things that are stressed will break. 

AI will be the end of civilization as we know it. As we know it.

And the genie's out of the bottle and granting wishes.

So. I propose,  we sit here, have a meaningful, civil discussion on the meaning of art, consciousness, intelligence, and experience, and maybe look at cool pictures made by human artists and AI, just not at the same time. 

Just not right now.

Mass Effect.

Edited December 22, 2022 by SwimModSponges

[DragonSinger]

2 minutes ago, SwimModSponges said:

Fuck cars indeed, I really wish we as a nation didn't become 100% dependent on them during the automotive revolution.

But that genies been out of the bottle for a long time.

That's the thing about a shift in the paradigm, you don't know what it looks like until you've crossed it.

Like it or not, an AI revolution has begun in earnest.

I choose to be optimistic about it because I've seen AIs do wonderful things, deepmind alphafold is discovering and synthesizing new proteins at light speed compared to prior manual folding techniques, they've been trained to detect diseases and cancers more accurately than anything else today... And you know what? They really are going to be doing everything. And it isn't going to be sustainable with our current capitalistic hierarchical power structures, and things that are stressed will break. 

AI will be the end of civilization as we know it. As we know it.

And the genie's out of the bottle and granting wishes.

So. I propose,  we sit here, have a meaningful, civil discussion on the meaning of art, consciousness, intelligence, and experience. 

Just not right now.

Mass Effect.

There isn't going to be a civil conversation if you don't step out of this fairy tale mindset. You have no empathy and just gush over how advances solely made to steal art and is fucking over artists is just so fan-fucking-tastic. Who the fuck that's ever taken their art seriously wants to hear that shit? AI art on top of massive layoffs was a curbstomp to artists when they were already down this year. Now their efforts are diminished by people who put their names into prompts and brag about how they have that's artist's work without paying for it(bonus dickhole points when they tag the artist too).

[cyberbully]

Look, y'all are getting mad at the dude but this is the guy who argured that a cheese grater is a cheese lesser....Even after being presented with the fact that grater does not mean "greater" and therefore is a stupid basis for an argument, he stuck to that gun...In fact, doubled down on it.  None of this is in good faith, he just likes pissing people off...even if he's factually wrong.

Even here, when presented with the notion that the person behind the computer isn't creating art and the AI is stealing from other images, his argument shifts to "Who am I stealing from, who is the victim" as if the specifics of WHO is the problem....Enjoy the ride, but never get sucked in...he doesn't believe this bullshit either.

[SwimModSponges]

I'llIts not stealing, it creates something entirely new out of static based on what it knows words mean. Continuing to call it stealing is a fundamental misunderstanding of the entire process by which machine learning works and static diffusion works.

Its not fantasy, its here. Im not the only one talking about this. It isn't a fad. 

This isnt a fairytale mindset, this shit is here.

Empathy i'll give you 100% i have difficulty with wmpathy sometimes, especially in the face of global changes like this i think in the abstract rather than in terms of effects to actual human beings.

Which yes, for individuals who make money through art, this is terrible. Just like every single piece of automation is terrible for every other individual whos job is lost to a machine. Which again, it isn't just artists. They are making AI to do everything. Everything. AI is outperforming doctors in diagnosing patients, ai is outperforming surgeons. 

Truckers, farmers, scientists, accountants, lawyers, gas station attendants, lawyers, CFOs, CEOs. We're rapidly hitting the point that everything can be automated. 

With everything but art, the argument is always "well thats progress now. We only need 5 people on an assembly line today compared to the 50 it took for the same job in the 90s. We're increasing productivity, efficiency, and standard of living while reducing the amount of human labor.

In other industries, (we'll tie this back to art in a second) we have been conditioned to consider something that makes life easier a direct threat to ourselves because our masters will refuse to pay us. And thats the fault of a sick society not technological advancement. 

I mean we all see the writing on the wall here, right? Society in its current state isn't sustainable. Between the threat of global extinction from climate change, mass income disparity, and social issues such as these, something has to change, drastically, soon. Or things will change drastically, soon, and in a much worse way out of our control.

AI is the most earth-shattering advancement human society has ever made, greater than the assembly line, comparable to fire, which led to us even being able to have societies. 

Sorry forgot to tie it back to art- at least art is a job that gives its creator satisfaction. When a fast food employee loses his job due to automation, going home and making burgers in his spare time isn't going to make him feel better.

An artist though, they have their creativity and their love of their craft. A robot making shitty art shouldn't prevent them from expressing that.

Also the grater/greater- thats a goddamn pun stop being obtuse and taking it literally.

A pony and a dog walk up to a crow. The pony asks if the crow can yell at the dog for him. The pony has been yelling for a while and he's a little hoarse. Hoarse is not the same word as horse. Thats the joke.

And i do believe what im saying. I understand the anger and the concern, i'm sorry im not empathinging with them as much as i should be. I think the worry and concern are valid given the situation. I dont think theres anything we can do to stop it though.

[DragonSinger]

35 minutes ago, SwimModSponges said:

I'llIts not stealing, it creates something entirely new out of static based on what it knows words mean. Continuing to call it stealing is a fundamental misunderstanding of the entire process by which machine learning works and static diffusion works.

Its not fantasy, its here. Im not the only one talking about this. It isn't a fad. 

This isnt a fairytale mindset, this shit is here.

Empathy i'll give you 100% i have difficulty with wmpathy sometimes, especially in the face of global changes like this i think in the abstract rather than in terms of effects to actual human beings.

Which yes, for individuals who make money through art, this is terrible. Just like every single piece of automation is terrible for every other individual whos job is lost to a machine. Which again, it isn't just artists. They are making AI to do everything. Everything. AI is outperforming doctors in diagnosing patients, ai is outperforming surgeons. 

Truckers, farmers, scientists, accountants, lawyers, gas station attendants, lawyers, CFOs, CEOs. We're rapidly hitting the point that everything can be automated. 

With everything but art, the argument is always "well thats progress now. We only need 5 people on an assembly line today compared to the 50 it took for the same job in the 90s. We're increasing productivity, efficiency, and standard of living while reducing the amount of human labor.

In other industries, (we'll tie this back to art in a second) we have been conditioned to consider something that makes life easier a direct threat to ourselves because our masters will refuse to pay us. And thats the fault of a sick society not technological advancement. 

I mean we all see the writing on the wall here, right? Society in its current state isn't sustainable. Between the threat of global extinction from climate change, mass income disparity, and social issues such as these, something has to change, drastically, soon. Or things will change drastically, soon, and in a much worse way out of our control.

AI is the most earth-shattering advancement human society has ever made, greater than the assembly line, comparable to fire, which led to us even being able to have societies. 

Sorry forgot to tie it back to art- at least art is a job that gives its creator satisfaction. When a fast food employee loses his job due to automation, going home and making burgers in his spare time isn't going to make him feel better.

An artist though, they have their creativity and their love of their craft. A robot making shitty art shouldn't prevent them from expressing that.

Also the grater/greater- thats a goddamn pun stop being obtuse and taking it literally.

A pony and a dog walk up to a crow. The pony asks if the crow can yell at the dog for him. The pony has been yelling for a while and he's a little hoarse. Hoarse is not the same word as horse. Thats the joke.

And i do believe what im saying. I understand the anger and the concern, i'm sorry im not empathinging with them as much as i should be. I think the worry and concern are valid given the situation. I dont think theres anything we can do to stop it though.

Yeah, Buddy is right. I should have just said, "Shut the fuck up," and kept it moving. 

[SwimModSponges]

Well, fuck y'all too then, though im sad we can't see eye to eye.

Nothing more tragic than the breakdown of human communication because people aren't willing to understand each other.

I agree with you on all of the negative things you've pointed out (apart from the AI is theft slogan which is still untrue). Im sorry i can't convince you of the gravity of the situation. 

Also, fucking snowblower wouldn't start this morning. Goddamn machines amirite?

[SwimModSponges]

Also this thread was incredibly civil for the entirety of the first page, people posting their opinions, articles, videoes etc.

What the heck happened? 

[scoobdog]

5 hours ago, SwimModSponges said:

Also this thread was incredibly civil for the entirety of the first page, people posting their opinions, articles, videoes etc.

What the heck happened? 

You came off as abrasive?

The fact is, to a person every opinion against has focused on the theft of existing images being the central issue against both AI art as truly "art" and AI as being a viable medium for that art.  To be perfectly clear, AI artists are "lazy" because they're utilizing existing images created by someone {or something) else, and that is a completely valid complaint.  You can't grab an image, modify it, and repurpose it as your own work - that is theft.  Warhol pushed the boundary by utilizing "popular" images in mostly recognizable forms, but his work is displayed in art museums because it (1) modifies those images into their deconstructed parts and (2) is direct commentary on these images as part of popular culture (hence "Pop Art").  There is a lot of back-end and off-canvas work that goes into repurposing these images into high art, and that work reflects a specific framework in which that art can be viewed and appraised.

[SwimModSponges]

4 hours ago, scoobdog said:

You came off as abrasive?

This is true. 100%. I sought out independent counsel to review the arguments, and the consensus is thus: I am being Hillary Clinton. I am speaking from a place of privelege and detachment. I have the luxury to look at what is objectively a terrifying technological advancement and be thrilled and excited by the brave new world (yes I know it was a dystopia) we find ourselves hurtling towards. I should type with more tact. I should read with more empathy, and above all I should be treating everyone with more respect. 

The fact is, to a person every opinion against has focused on the theft of existing images being the central issue against both AI art as truly "art" and AI as being a viable medium for that art. To be perfectly clear, AI artists are "lazy" because they're utilizing existing images created by someone {or something) else, and that is a completely valid complaint.  You can't grab an image, modify it, and repurpose it as your own work - that is theft.  Warhol pushed the boundary by utilizing "popular" images in mostly recognizable forms, but his work is displayed in art museums because it (1) modifies those images into their deconstructed parts and (2) is direct commentary on these images as part of popular culture (hence "Pop Art").  There is a lot of back-end and off-canvas work that goes into repurposing these images into high art, and that work reflects a specific framework in which that art can be viewed and appraised.

Ok. we keep getting to this point and it's always where it seems to blow up repeatedly on us. I fully agree, the rise of automation is bad to the individuals being replaced by it. AI in that regard is an incredibly bad thing and we should fear the fuck out of it. With pure existential terror. Legitimately.

But goddamnit, that is absolutely not how the diffusion process works. If someone wrote up a program to go out and combine images it wouldn't be news. That's not what AI is. Nor is it a massive store of images that it retrieves and calls upon to modify- I mean can you imagine how big the storage would have to be to have access to so many billions of images? The AI is a black box, a system of changing connections between concepts. They took it on a field trip to the internet and it sorta figured out the patterns of what's what for itself. You feed  a prompt into it, the words rush through the neural network, and it generated an image based on what it "thinks" you mean. Now  here's the diffusion part- this is what the AI generates.

From there, the pattern-seeking components of the AI scan the image for things  that sort of look like what was asked for. After  determining  a rough outline the  AI then "diffuses" through the pixels, cleaning up the image until it gets a decent enough piece.

The existing work of others is never touched, altered, sampled, or devalued. The AI has created something entirely new out of nothing.

And I think that's neat.

... Except now I'm back on that existential terror shit.

[scoobdog]

1 hour ago, SwimModSponges said:

Ok. we keep getting to this point and it's always where it seems to blow up repeatedly on us. I fully agree, the rise of automation is bad to the individuals being replaced by it. AI in that regard is an incredibly bad thing and we should fear the fuck out of it. With pure existential terror. Legitimately.

But goddamnit, that is absolutely not how the diffusion process works. If someone wrote up a program to go out and combine images it wouldn't be news. That's not what AI is. Nor is it a massive store of images that it retrieves and calls upon to modify- I mean can you imagine how big the storage would have to be to have access to so many billions of images? The AI is a black box, a system of changing connections between concepts. They took it on a field trip to the internet and it sorta figured out the patterns of what's what for itself. You feed  a prompt into it, the words rush through the neural network, and it generated an image based on what it "thinks" you mean. Now  here's the diffusion part- this is what the AI generates.

From there, the pattern-seeking components of the AI scan the image for things  that sort of look like what was asked for. After  determining  a rough outline the  AI then "diffuses" through the pixels, cleaning up the image until it gets a decent enough piece.

The existing work of others is never touched, altered, sampled, or devalued. The AI has created something entirely new out of nothing.

And I think that's neat.

... Except now I'm back on that existential terror shit.

We wouldn’t be having this discussion if the pattern seeking components didn’t generate images that looked almost exactly like existing images.

[cyberbully]

12 hours ago, SwimModSponges said:

Also this thread was incredibly civil for the entirety of the first page, people posting their opinions, articles, videoes etc.

What the heck happened? 

Just for the record, I haven't read any of your paragraphs because historically I know it's just a shuffling of goalpoasts to fit your means....But just in case it isn't and I missed where you answered my specific question.  Do you cosider yourself an artist by making prompts.....Are you in the mind that you created something?

I only seek an answer to this question,.

[SwimModSponges]

11 minutes ago, cyberbully said:

Just for the record, I haven't read any of your paragraphs because historically I know it's just a shuffling of goalpoasts to fit your means....But just in case it isn't and I missed where you answered my specific question.  Do you cosider yourself an artist by making prompts.....Are you in the mind that you created something?

I only seek an answer to this question,.

I've never said the person entering a prompt is an artist.

[cyberbully]

3 minutes ago, SwimModSponges said:

I've never said the person entering a prompt is an artist.

So you're aware that the client is just that...Nothing more?

[SwimModSponges]

Neither the user nor the AI is an artist. 

Client is a weird word, are we clients of the boards? Yeah I suppose so.

Edited December 23, 2022 by SwimModSponges

[cyberbully]

9 minutes ago, SwimModSponges said:

Neither the user nor the AI is an artist. 

Client is a weird word, are we clients of the boards? Yeah I suppose so.

Then we're done here....You'll just have these other hurdles to bound but I'm duly satisfied.

[SwimModSponges]

10 hours ago, scoobdog said:

We wouldn’t be having this discussion if the pattern seeking components didn’t generate images that looked almost exactly like existing images.

But they're not, that's  the whole point of the third part of your argument. 

The AI is making shit thats all fucked up.