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

[Spockydog]

Scot, here's an experiment....

Q. What is art?

A. At its most basic, something you look at or listen to that pleases and/or moves you emotionally.

Agreed?

Now, look at these.

A while back, I was feeling really, really down. So one day I told Dalle I was in need of cheering up, and asked it to create some whimsical desktop wallpapers featuring my dog, Maggie, and her late big sister, Kolo.

They affect me emotionally every single time I look at them. 

Especially this one.

Yeah, they are not exactly Caravaggios, but so fucking what. I don't care. They make me happy. So please don't try and tell me that this isn't art. Because only an art-snob would say such a thing. And everyone knows there isn't a more boring person on the face of the earth than a fucking art snob.

Edited April 24 by Spockydog

[JGP]

Laughing at the art-snob bit btw, not the loss.

[Phylum of Alexandria]

3 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

And everyone knows there isn't a more boring person on the face of the earth than a fucking art snob.

Hell, I'm probably the closest person here to an art snob here and I largely agree with you.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

@Spockydog

My take is that the person seeking to create art needs to at least be sentient.  Art created by an LLM isn’t being created by anything with sentience… as such… it isn’t art.

[Spockydog]

Guess what, Scot. I might be an uneducated oik, but one thing I do know for a fact. Neither you, nor anybody else, gets to say that is and isn't art.

You might think you do, up there in your thatched Ivory Tower with your wax tablets and phonograms and 20-inch TV. But nobody making this stuff cares what you think.

 

 

Edited April 24 by Spockydog

[Spockydog]

4 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

@Spockydog

My take is that the person seeking to create art needs to at least be sentient.  Art created by an LLM isn’t being created by anything with sentience… as such… it isn’t art.

So you're denying my experience as a consumer of art. You are saying that all the emotions I feel looking at these images are worthless because a computer made them. Honestly, you can just feck right off with that superior art-snob attitude.

[Phylum of Alexandria]

3 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

Guess what, Scot. I might be an uneducated oik, but one thing I do know for a fact. Neither you, nor anybody else, gets to say that is and isn't art.

You might think you do, in your up there in your Ivory Tower with your wax tablets and phonograms. But nobody making this stuff cares what you think.

I think it's fair to say that in most cases of art there is a process of give and take between artist and audience. The artist either does it for self-expression, to meet the specifications of a patron, some more high-minded or abstract reason, or some combination. The audience gets some sort of emotional response, some changed aesthetic or philosophical understanding, or some combination. 

It's just that AI disrupts the normal process. It creates art to meet the specifications of the audience, and it can elicit emotions (and possibly even a changed philosophical understanding). But the reasons for creation are no longer part of the equation. Or are at least obscure to us sentient meat robots.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

9 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

Guess what, Scot. I might be an uneducated oik, but one thing I do know for a fact. Neither you, nor anybody else, gets to say that is and isn't art.

You might think you do, up there in your thatched Ivory Tower with your wax tablets and phonograms and 20-inch TV. But nobody making this stuff cares what you think.

 

 

Ok

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

7 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

So you're denying my experience as a consumer of art. You are saying that all the emotions I feel looking at these images are worthless because a computer made them. Honestly, you can just feck right off with that superior art-snob attitude.

I’m saying three things… I support living artists and their work.  I oppose stealing from them via LLMs.  I don’t believe LLMs create anything but output.

Disagree all you like.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

5 minutes ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

I think it's fair to say that in most cases of art there is a process of give and take between artist and audience. The artist either does it for self-expression, to meet the specifications of a patron, some more high-minded or abstract reason, or some combination. The audience gets some sort of emotional response, some changed aesthetic or philosophical understanding, or some combination. 

It's just that AI disrupts the normal process. It creates art to meet the specifications of the audience, and it can elicit emotions (and possibly even a changed philosophical understanding). But the reasons for creation are no longer part of the equation. Or are at least obscure to us sentient meat robots.

Well stated.

[Spockydog]

2 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I’m saying three things… I support living artists and their work.  I oppose stealing from them via LLMs.  I don’t believe LLMs create anything but output.

Disagree all you like.

OK. Tell me what's been stolen in my whimsical desktops. The likeness of a cloud? Or a Border Terrier?

Edited April 24 by Spockydog

[JGP]

3 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

OK. Tell me what's been stolen in my whimsical desktops. The likeness of a cloud? Or a Border Terrier?

All of it. 
 

 

edit: I mean...

 

Edited April 24 by JGP

[Conflicting Thought]

6 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

all the emotions I feel looking at these images are worthless because a computer made them

no, your emotions are valid, its just not art, if everything is art then nothing is. and im with scott in this one, art must be created by a sentient being, art is purposeful. to me art is more than a colection of random things that happend to be configured in something beautifull or awe inspiring

[Conflicting Thought]

1 hour ago, Mentat said:

The 'Death of the Author' theory might defend the opposite

in what way? 

[Spockydog]

14 minutes ago, JGP said:

All of it. 

Well, I disagree completely. But then again, it's probably fair to say I'm biased to some extent.

Personally, without the assistance of ChatGPT, my invention would probably be stuck in my living room forever. It has literally changed my life. I have used this tool to help turn my idea into a company potentially worth hundreds of millions of pounds. 

And directly because of assistance rendered by ChatGPT, I could be on the verge of doing something really good in the field of sustainable agriculture and crop security.

And I'm sure I'm not the only one.

People just have to accept that, as with most technological advances, some industries are going to be negatively affected. That's life. That's the way it's always been. And the way it always will be.

Edited April 24 by Spockydog

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

5 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

Well, I disagree completely. But then again, it's probably fair to say I'm biased to some extent.

Personally, without the assistance of ChatGPT, my invention would probably be stuck in my living room forever. It has literally changed my life. I have used this tool to help turn my idea into a company potentially worth hundreds of millions of pounds. 

And directly because of assistance rendered by ChatGPT, I could be on the verge of doing something really good in the field of sustainable agriculture and crop security.

And I'm sure I'm not the only one.

People just have to accept that, as with most technological advances, some industries are going to be negatively affected. That's life. That's the way it's always been. And the way it always will be.

In all sincerity… congratulations!

[Phylum of Alexandria]

3 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

People just have to accept that, as with most technological advances, some industries are going to be negatively affected. That's life. That's the way it's always been. And the way it always will be.

It probably always will be that way, though the persons affected can't afford to be so sanguine about it.

@Ser Scot A Ellison, I do worry about all the ways that artists these days are devalued and screwed over. But this was happening long before AI started pumping out art. With predatory contracts, media consolidation, torrents, streaming, cheap production software, general anti-art populism, and countless other factors, artists tend to be shafted. AI will likely make it worse (further down the road at least), but not all that much worse. Because it's been bad for a while!

[Spockydog]

3 minutes ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

@Ser Scot A Ellison, I do worry about all the ways that artists these days are devalued and screwed over. But this was happening long before AI started pumping out art. With predatory contracts, media consolidation, torrents, streaming, cheap production software, general anti-art populism, and countless other factors, artists tend to be shafted. AI will likely make it worse (further down the road at least), but not all that much worse. Because it's been bad for a while!

I am totally in agreement here. Just as I don't think ANYONE should be allowed to release "lost recordings" and demos from deceased recording artists, Hollywood shouldn't be able to use an actors likeness without coughing up the $$$.

As I said upthread, studios abusing this isn't an AI issue, rather it's just another example of the extreme Late Stage Capitalism bullshit we're ALL suffering through at the moment.

 

[Rippounet]

2 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I don’t think so.  No more than a story produced by a generative AI is literature.  I think Generative AI is a magic plagiarism machine and artists and authors should be compensated for LLMs using their work to produce output.

I think you're not asking the question you actually want to ask.

The question isn't whether AI produces art. In the common sense of the term (an artistic creation produces emotions) or in some scholarly perspective (art is reception of a work, which is an active and evolving process), AI does produce art.

But this raises a few interconnected questions:
- AI can reproduce the artistic processes of humans (copying while introducing variations). This is a big one, because on some level life itself is also generating copies with variations.
- The pursuit/production of art is one of the few things that is considered to elevate the human -mortal- existence. On some level, it is sacred, because producing meaning is the domain common to humans and God(s).
- In a socio-economic structure that seeks to extract profit/rent out of all activities, won't AI-generated art be used to reduce humans to mere consumers of art, in yet another example of economic liberalism cheapening/lessening the human existence/experience by merchandising it?
- Will we be able to notice if the quality of art stagnates - because we rely on machines too much, and their capacity to innovate ends up being less than that of humans?
[i.e. if the first point/question turns out wrong, we may not even notice - at first]

Or, as this tweet says in simple terms:
Humans doing the hard jobs on minimum wage while the robots write poetry and paint is not the future I wanted

So Scot, I think you want to ask whether AI should produce art, or whether this shouldn't be a sacred domain reserved to humans (and God(s)). Or, to put it differently, whether AI-generated art is a form of blasphemy.

And though I'm not a luddite, I'm inclined to think that it is. Recent history shows humans tend to misuse technology, and in the current socio-economic structure, this kind of tool crosses the line.
It would be more sensible to introduce a moratorium on AI right fucking now, before it crosses the next line.
But of course, we're not going to do that.

[Mentat]

8 minutes ago, Conflicting Thought said:

in what way? 

To paraphrase Barthes, a text is a tissue of quotations, drawn from innumerable centres of culture, rather than from one, individual experience. The essential meaning of a work depends on the impressions of the reader, rather than the passions or tastes of the writer; a text's unity lies not in its origins, or its creator, but in its destination, or its audience.

Though Barthes writes about literature, I would think it's applicable to any other art.

As we subject the theory of art as a purpose to the rigours of reality, it may encounter other problems. There are many works of art where the author or their intentions (whatever they may have been) are unknown to us. Some pieces of art may be serendipitous accidents, experimental uses of materials or technology, a collaborative conjunction of intentions (if you listen to a Mozart piano concerto, whose intentions or purpose are you experiencing? Mozart's? The conductor's? The pianist? The orchestra's?).

Anyway, as I said, this is a complicated matter, I'm not really an expert and I don't entirely disagree with you. You may take all this as a diversion or food for thought rather than as a challenge to what you said.