Are Generative AI (LLM programs) produced illustrations… art?

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

2 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

No. That is completely different. 

 

How is it “completely different”? 

Would you support film studios using GAI to create “generative actors” who never existed in real life instead of hiring background actors?

Edited April 24 by Ser Scot A Ellison

[Spockydog]

1 minute ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

How is it “completely different”? 

An actors face and voice is a unique thing. 

An artistic style is not. Nobody owns Art Deco or Impressionism. 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Just now, Spockydog said:

An actors face and voice is a unique thing. 

An artistic style is not. Nobody owns Art Deco or Impressionism. 

See my edit.

[polishgenius]

 

11 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

Okay, but someone explain what's the difference between a professional artist spending their youth and young adulthood copying work by other artists (cos that's what they all do - every single fucking one of them) whilst developing their own style. And then should these artists be forced to pay royalties to all the artists whose work they copied while honing their skills?  

 

An artist who learns by copying work does so to figure out the techniques needed to create it. When they start selling work they are then using those techniques to make new things.

The way 'AI' currently works is by amassing as many images and words associated with them as possible and them mashing them together when similar words are given in prompt (okay that's an extreme simplification but... basically). It's not using techniques it's learned- it's using the images themselves as the basis. 

 

 

To put my writers hat on for a second: I'm a boxing analyst. Of course I learned about boxing by listening to and reading other boxing analysts- but when I break down a fight I see or predict one that's upcoming, anything I write is mine, my own perspective, my own thoughts on it.

  It would be possible for an AI to write boxing articles, and carefully enough you could probably get it to do one about technique of the sort I write. But any AI-generated article which convincingly does that would not be presenting anyone's perspective but the writers' that went into the AI, remixed and reassembled. Specifically, and why this particular example is personal to me, since boxing analysis is a pretty niche market, it'd almost definitely be using my work as part of it- and not filtered through any perspective. It'd just be my words and those of people I know, repurposed. 

 

The process on the artwork is a bit more complex but essentially the same thing. There's no new perspective, no thought there. It's just images that have been put into it, disassembled, assembled and spat out. 

 

 

That AI art generators are also really stupid is a separate issue, although also goes in to why no-one should be seeking to replace artists with AI anyway. 

Edited April 24 by polishgenius

[Spockydog]

4 minutes ago, JGP said:

For the record, I was a pro artist. Illustration and animation.

Spocky: You know, I usually find myself agreeing with your positions, but I'd suggest you do some digging on how the generators were trained.

 

Yeah, and I was a budding rockstar when the internet almost destroyed the recording industry. 

The world changed then, and me and a lot of my contemporaries just had to accept it and move on. 

[polishgenius]

I take it back.

Martin Odegaard is shit. 

Edited April 24 by polishgenius

[Spockydog]

6 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Would you support film studios using GAI to create “generative actors” who never existed in real life instead of hiring background actors?

What, you mean like they already do when filling up scenes with CG crowds and shit? 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Just now, Spockydog said:

What, you mean like they already do when filling up scenes with CG crowds and shit? 

Instead of hiring actors for “background” yes.

[JGP]

2 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

Yeah, and I was a budding rockstar when the internet almost destroyed the recording industry. 

The world changed then, and me and a lot of my contemporaries just had to accept it and move on. 

Superposition, collapse. Superposition, collapse.

Spooky goalposts, bruh >.< 

[Conflicting Thought]

25 minutes ago, Mentat said:

You're defining art and literature through the process of creation (which, to you, must involve a human) rather than through the result itself.

You're also conflating a different, separate issue (that of what is the adequate compensation for artists whose work is used in the process of training an AI).

If you read a short, beautiful poem which inspires powerful emotions in you and I later told you it had been produced by a thousand chimpanzees with typewriters or by Scrabble letter tiles falling randomly on a board, is that poem not art?

If I train an AI to produce pictures of still-life paintings in the style of 17th century Dutch masters (whose work is in the public domain) and succeed to the point where neither you nor an expert can tell the difference between the AI's output and the real thing, is that not art?

These are far more complex and philosophical questions than you seem to think.

 

Art is not just the effect it has on the "consumer", in my view its inseparable of the intent of the artist. Seeing a beautifull sunset is not art, beatifull landscapes can make you feel incredibly profound things, but they are not art. To me there must be intention to create somehing artistic. Artificial inteligence can be a tool, but nothing generated by the ia is art. At most its the art of other people being stolen to make a profit

[Spockydog]

8 minutes ago, JGP said:

Superposition, collapse. Superposition, collapse.

Spooky goalposts, bruh >.< 

I don't even know what that means. 

Anyway, look, I come from a creative background. Most of my family are creators. My nephew is an artist straight out of art school. I fully support the humans. But what is the point of this discussion, really? 

The thread was started by the board's biggest luddite and technophobe. Who, frankly, just seems to want to fight over the issue. He's doing the usual shtick of just ignoring counter viewpoints. He doesn't care about any of these arguments, so why fucking bother. 

My last word on this. A lot of the problems raised here are not AI issues. They are human greed issues. Simple as that. 

Edited April 24 by Spockydog

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

This is my honest view of Generative AI “Art”:

I’m going to say until computers have sentience and an ability to be moved by beauty, crushed by despair, frustrated with ennui, they will not be able to create “art”.  Art is intrinsically tied to the emotion that is a necessary part of human existence.

Computers cannot make “art” until they can be moved by their brain’s  own existence to create “art”.  

Do you see what I’m driving at?  

Even if Computers could “feel” their art should be incompressible to us because our existences are so very different from our silicone children’s existence.

Edited April 24 by Ser Scot A Ellison

[JGP]

6 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

My last word on this. A lot of the problems raised here are not AI issues. They are human greed issues. Simple as th at. 

Ok, well I hope you'll continue participating because you're one of the few creatives I know who appear largely ok with AI generator theft.

Insofar as the latter part of the quoted, it's an AI issue because until they achieve sentience, they'll never be better than us.

So yeah, greed is part of it.

 

Edited April 24 by JGP

[Spockydog]

7 minutes ago, JGP said:

Ok, well I hope you'll continue participating because you're one of the few creatives I know who appear largely ok with AI generator theft.

Who said I'm okay with it? As I get older I'm simply getting better at not getting upset by matters that are completely beyond my control.

I don't see the point of fifteen pages of Scot trying to squeeze ChatGPT back into its toothpaste tube. 

Edited April 24 by Spockydog

[Phylum of Alexandria]

Is it possible for AI to generate art that moves people? Obviously, yes.

And if they do so, it's not necessarily any more copying than what humans do. Artistic creation always involves the combinations of different references, and what is an innovative work versus a derivative one is largely, if not wholly, subjective.

Is it possible for current AI to generate art that moves people? Sure. Again, in theory.

Is it likely to happen very often? I'm guessing no. Certainly not for me.

It'd be interesting to tease apart what I think is missing given my rather generous definition of creativity above, but I'd have to chew on it some more.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

4 minutes ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

Again, in theory.

Hypothetically… a theory is something else.  I hate that particular use of “in theory” because it undermines what “theory” actually is…

[Kalbear]

47 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

Okay, but someone explain what's the difference between a professional artist spending their youth and young adulthood copying work by other artists (cos that's what they all do - every single fucking one of them) whilst developing their own style. And then should these artists be forced to pay royalties to all the artists whose work they copied while honing their skills?  

If they're selling that, yes. 

[Mentat]

6 minutes ago, Conflicting Thought said:

Art is not just the effect it has on the "consumer", in my view its inseparable of the intent of the artist. Seeing a beautifull sunset is not art, beatifull landscapes can make you feel incredibly profound things, but they are not art. To me there must be intention to create somehing artistic.

Art as a pursuit, rather than an object or product, is a good answer, and, from a philosophical point of view, I don't entirely disagree. The 'Death of the Author' theory might defend the opposite, though (and it predates generative IA by a lot).

And yet, at the same time, the result of the creative process is also a commodity. A bad pun in a news headline, a comercial jingle for a cereal advert, a review of a boxing match, a promotional image of a Lazyscrog on mars, a legal report, the design of an Ikea chair... These daily, banal examples of creativity which we mostly do to earn a livelihood rather than as a means of artistic expression are far more threatened by AI than anything else.

[Phylum of Alexandria]

20 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I’m going to say until computers have sentience and an ability to be moved by beauty, crushed by despair, frustrated with ennui, they will not be able to create “art”.  Art is intrinsically tied to the emotion that is a necessary part of human existence.

Computers cannot make “art” until they can be moved by their brain own existence to create “art”.  

Do you see what I’m driving at?  

Even if Computers could “feel” their art should be incompressible to us because our existences are so very different from our silicone children’s existence.

I get that not everyone is into modern and postmodern art, but generative/aleatoric music has been [designed? curated?] by human composers since the 1950s. 

One of the most moving pieces of the post 9/11 era was William Basinski's Disintegraton Loops, which consisted of composed synth loops put to tape that were played and recorded in a state of decay--so, a composed work modified by incidental "improvisation."

Not saying you have to like stuff like this, but it's been part of the human musical repertoire for a while, and plenty of people are moved by it.

2 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Hypothetically… a theory is something else.  I hate that particular use of “in theory” because it undermines what “theory” actually is…

I am a researcher and I have no problem using layman's definitions of words in casual speech. Just as I don't correct every person who fails to recognize peppers and eggplants as "fruits."

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Just now, Phylum of Alexandria said:

I am a researcher and I have no problem using layman's definitions of words in casual speech. Just as I don't correct every person who fails to recognize peppers and eggplants as "fruits."

Understood.  It is a pet peeve of mine.  Sorry.