this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2024
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Setting aside the usual arguments on the anti- and pro-AI art debate and the nature of creativity itself, perhaps the negative reaction that the Redditor encountered is part of a sea change in opinion among many people that think corporate AI platforms are exploitive and extractive in nature because their datasets rely on copyrighted material without the original artists' permission. And that's without getting into AI's negative drag on the environment.

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[–] [email protected] -2 points 7 months ago

Simply put, it requires an artistic sense to pick out the art from the junk that AI generates

[–] [email protected] 17 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

The images.

Not terrible, usable as rough concept art but not nearly good enough to be reference. While the general likeness has consistency there's inconsistencies in the eybrows and ears and don't get me started on the costumes they're all plain different.

The main issue I have here, knowing that it's AI, is whether he's holding his blade by the, well, blade because he's just that kind of vampire or because the AI messed up and the human didn't notice.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (3 children)

What your link points me to. Do i need an account to see them?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

I have no idea but yes I didn't delete my account. Here's a link to the thread on old.reddit.com, it's the link in the top comment.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

People who are scared of ai art would also be scared of cameras in their inception.

Human art will prevail.

[–] [email protected] 123 points 7 months ago (18 children)

people forget that what makes art impressive is also the skill of the artist in the respective medium

if someone creates a perfect color gradient fill in Photoshop nobody is going to be impressed but make it with colored pencils and people may regard it as stunning

the beauty is also in the effort it took to create, not only in what the result looks like - i don't need to take time to look at stuff people didn't take time to make

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago (3 children)

people forget that what makes art impressive is also the skill of the artist in the respective medium

I bet you don't like it when people put urinals on a pedestal.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

there was an 'also' in that sentence - and he put it there himself without leveraging other bathroom-installations-on-pedestal works

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

He put it there leveraging a whole urinal factory. Transported into today's world, instead of clicking "generate" on a prompt with "urinal" on it he put "urinal" in the amazon search box, picked the first result, and then hit "buy".

The art is in the idea, the message, the thought or impression that's getting transmitted, the effect in the recipient's mind (in this case it was a shitpost to troll conservatives on the one side and have a good chuckle among people who got it on the other). The rest is craft. Craft, on its own, can be fucking impressive but it's not art.

And, of course, yes, not everyone hitting "generate" is putting a urinal on a pedestal. Much of the AI stuff out there is devoid of artistic intent, much of it isn't even crafty, but that doesn't mean that something being AI generated cannot be art, or that it would need craftiness to become art.

In the case of his bicycle wheel thing he went through a gazillion wheels -- hitting generate a million times if you want -- until he found one that was neither beautiful, nor ugly, but one that was profoundly uninteresting, "just a wheel, nothing special". That was work, the actual work of an artist (judging the impression something makes), and with precise artistic intent -- to make a statement about how art should be about engaging the mind, be not about aesthetics.

The people producing profoundly uninteresting works with AI don't do that. Just goes on to show that the author is very much not dead.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago

the beauty is also in the effort it took to create

While I support your whole statement, I think the beauty of art lies in the message, vision or emotion that the artist wants to convey to the world through a visual medium. You can have a super realistic portrayal of a human and still prefer the art of Van Gogh because he shared his emotions through his art and people could feel that.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 7 months ago (8 children)

Respectfully disagree. There's a plethora of artists with exceptional skills that create photorealistic art in several mediums. While the process takes an inordinate amount of time it is completely devoid of any creative input. These are essentially human xerox machines that match color values from a photo using the naked eye. The skill is impressive, the art: not so much.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Does anyone want anyone’s art? Has any artist other than the rare 0.01% ever been sought out or recognized? How is this any different?

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 7 months ago

"I feel like a lot of the anti-AI people just... want there to be less beautiful art in the world"

I certainly don't want to speak for all "anti-AI people", but personally ...yeah.

Even before the generative AI boom, you could find an essentially limitless stream of artworks on the internet. If you exposed yourself to that for long enough, you'd eventually go numb to things just being beautiful for the sake of being beautiful.

Occasionally, you'd stumble over expressive art, which had a meaning beyond that, which conveyed an emotion, which was a labor of love and/or hatred.
Even before the generative AI boom, this expressive art was buried under heaps of profitable artworks, because artists were taking the second-best option for pursuing their passion.

So, while I would've preferred less profitable artworks and more expressive art, I was always perfectly fine with it, because I knew it was humans doing the necessary.

Now with generative AI, it's just yet another magnitude more artworks thrown on top, with even less meaning.
Where a missing finger might have been a powerful expression of the artist's struggles, now it's just an every-day-defect of the AI.

It just buries the expressive art even further, obstructs any meaningfulness and makes me even number to beauty. I absolutely do not care for a greater quantity of art. I want greater quality, and not in terms of beauty.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 7 months ago (2 children)

AI art is, by very definition, average.

It's the best fit line. It's the most common. The mean or the median.

The best art is exceptional.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 7 months ago

Wow this really succinctly describes what I feel whenever I see AI art. It's just an overwhelming feeling of indifference.

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