AI art is antithetical to art. Art requires artistic intent.
It could have some limited application for very early exploration in commercial art, or perhaps as very limited tools used in existing art software, but generative art is inherently pointless and you need artists to be able to do incremental iterations properly, which is required for real work, which isn’t supported yet. I’ll sure it’ll get better and more convincing, but it’s still inherently pointless to use AI for art, since the is supposed to be human expression.
I love Ai defenders who are ready to tell you what art is and what artists wants. Like maybe instead of recomending this cloud based bullshit app, first try to pick up a pencil actually?
I understand the excitement, but it is very much a situation of a layman trying to describe to experts what the expert and all their peers need.
I think it is just because AI has been hyped so much, and has genuinely made such impressive progress that people get swept up by the excitement, and idea that they could make their ideas into something tangible. They just don’t know the amount of consideration that goes into translating that.
Right now AI art is like Google translate poems.
The majority of people using AI will not insist you use it, aside from just trying to get others a realistic look on what the technology actually is. Just like a photographer won’t preach to a painter that they should pick up a camera. But that does not mean there isn’t benefit to derive from understanding how the other produces art. And if the painter thinks the camera is doing all the work and the photographer is a fraud, it’s probably good for them to get some exposure and realize it’s not just pressing a button. Like I explain here how that metaphor works for AI.
Most people I know that use AI are *shocker*, artists from before AI was a thing. They know how to draw with pencils, brushes, sponges, but also painting programs like Photoshop, sculpting programs, modeling programs, surface painting programs, shader production, algorithmic art. They are through and through artists. Them adding AI to their toolbox does not change that.
People that say that AI could be used as a tool to help artists clearly as never pickup a pencil to draw. The thing that makes an artists voice, that makes that art theirs are the decisions they make while making their art.
When you are drawing something, you are constantly making small micro-decisions with every stroke of your pencil, and those decision and how you make them is what makes art so beautiful, as no two artists make those decision the same way and each artist as a certain consistency in those decisions that evolves with them as a person. As such, art is so much more than a pretty picture, it is a reflection of the person who made it. Those decisions are also the fun part of making art.
AI art doesn’t let you make any decisions: you type the prompt and out comes an image. An image made of an weighted average of human made images with a similar description. You have no say in the micro-decision the machine makes, you have no say on where exactly the pencil strokes go. Therefore this machine is useless for artists. You might say “Just edit the image!”, but that doesn’t help either, as editing the image still doesn’t give you that micro-level of decision making. Also, editing a flat image with just one layer is just as useful as any other image form any search engine image search result. Unlike text, which can be easily edited to be exactly what you want.
I know their might be some wait to integrate machine learning into art, but right now the tools available don’t do that.
People who say that AI can’t be used as a tool to help artists clearly have never tried using AI as a tool. Everything you’ve written here is untrue.
Artists can manually curate unique datasets to create LoRAs. They can draw from their own photographs, drawings, paintings, etc., and then coordinate prompts and parameters to blend their custom LoRAs with other creators’ LoRAs/models/checkpoints to craft something unique. The process can be even more involved with tools like ControlNet, where artists can sketch an outline of the scene by hand. I.e., you can have precise control over where the pencil strokes go.
The tools available right now do that
Hi, person here who’s drawn extensively with pencil as a kid but then slowed down. AI has reignited my passion for art, because unlike pencil or even digital drawing, you can iterate much more quickly, which allows me to do so while working a demanding job and having a life besides it. You are severely underestimating the amount of micro-decisions that go into AI art, and more importantly AI assisted art. If you’ll allow me, let me explain.
Lets break it down into levels of effort and creative input, I like to refer back to photography since it has some comparison:
- Empty canvas prompting.
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To me that is essentially the equivalent of taking a selfie or a random shot. On the scale of effort this is none to very little. But a prompt can be unique if you put an extreme amount of effort into specifying the exact details, just like a random shot can in fact be a very informed random shot.
You can put a rather massive amount of tokens into your prompt that all further specify this. At this point you can reasonably say you imagined at least the general look of the image before it was created. But you can’t say you had any part in actually drawing it or significantly determined how it was drawn. It’s basically impossible to get any kind of copyright protection over this unless you can back up your prompt very well, and only then would you get protection over your prompt, not what the AI drew.
- Image to image
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You can feed an image into the AI, you add noise to the image, and let the AI try to remove that noise (After all, this is the exact same as it does on an empty canvas, but that is completely random noise). This means that a large part of your original image specifies how the AI will further try to denoise the image. As such, you are guiding a large part of how the AI moves forward. No other artist would likely use the same input image as you, so human decision making plays a bigger part here.
To me this is the equivalent of choosing a location you want to take a picture, and then scouting several locations to see which one works best. That’s the micro-decisions sneaking in. You are giving the AI an existing image, either created by yourself, or from previous iterations.
At this point, you are essentially evolving an image. You are selecting attributes and design choices in the image you want to enhance and amplify. These are decisions the artists makes based on their view of how the final image will look like. Every iteration adds more decisions that no other artist would take the same way.
- Collaboration.
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The point where AI starts becoming a tool. You don’t start with point 1, or at least only use point 1 for brainstorming. You imagine the image beforehand, just like you would do with pencil. You can develop the image as much as you would like before going to the AI. You are making the exact micro decisions you are with drawing by hand, since it’s essentially the same up to this point. A photographer at this point would work out every fine detail before snapping the picture.
Except for the fact that you know you are going to be using an AI, so certain aspects need more or less refinement to properly be enhanced by the use of AI. Just like you don’t start the same if you’re going to make a painting, or a silhouette, or any other kind of technique. At some point, you return the image to the AI and mostly perform step #2, perhaps returning to brainstorming with step #1 if you want to add or remove from your existing design.
- AI truly as a tool.
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Now to make something actually with #3, you start doing this process in iterations. Constantly going back and forth between photoshop and the AI, sometimes you spend days in photoshop, other times you spend days refining a part of the image with AI. There are also additional techniques like ControlNet, LoRAs, different models, different services, that can drastically enhance how well you get to what you want. A photographer at this point would take as many shots as they would need using their creatively controlled setup, and find the best on among them. Different lenses, different vocal lengths, different lighting (if applicable), different actions in the shot.
Sadly, most people that talk confidently about how much they hate AI just know point #1 and maybe point #2. But I see point #3 and #4. And when I talk to artists that haven’t yet picked up on AI, but if they are aware (or made aware) of #3 and #4, suddenly their perspective also changes in regards to AI. But the hostility and the blind anger makes it quite hard to get through to people that not all art with AI is made equally. We should encourage people that want to use AI to reach the point of #3 and #4 so that their creative input is significant to the point it’s actually something produced by their human creativity. And this is also where an existing artist switching to using AI will most likely start off from.
Also, in terms of time. #1 might take seconds, #2 might take minutes to hours, but #3 and #4 can take days or weeks. Still not as long as drawing those same pieces by hand, but sometimes I wish it was as easy as people would make it out to be.
I never said that art will necessarily come from AI in its current form but it’s true that it’s what I had in mind. You basically expressed something very similar to what I meant in your last paragraph.
And yes I do love pencil drawing :)
But I’m more thinking about conceptual artists with decades of work behind them that I can imagine will create art using these AI tools that will transcend what the average Joe/Jane is producing with these tools right now. To produce something that will shock, move us, make us think.
There are so many different facets to art.
Right now it is not a tool. Right now it is an attempt at replacing artists.
It could be implemented in existing softwares in parts to make it a useful tool. Like a tool that could easily recolour parts of a fully rendered illustration, while still respecting the artistic intent with the form and lightning.
But right now it just spits out the blandest stuff, based on what it has identified as the most common denominators in art.
Right now it is not a tool. Right now it is an attempt at replacing artists.
A lot companies are using the AIl to attempt to replace artists, that does not mean that some artists are not using it like a tool already.
I know quite a few artists that are already training their own artwork into custom data sets.
AI art is human expression in the same way that the Gaussian blur tool is. It’s a bunch of math spitting out a pattern based on specific inputs.
All while currently being as ethical as the fast fashion industry producing scam versions of high fashion products.
It has the potential to be very useful in certain applications, but right now, all it really does is create Content to be consumed. Kinda like elevator music or that horrible Corporate Memphis style that has invaded every piece of corporate media/advertising in recent years. Soulless and without meaning. It’s pretty high quality slop, all things considered, but slop nonetheless.
I strongly disagree. 99% of the work is being done by an algorithm. It’s like if we had autonomous driving and you said you were actively driving all day, because you told the car where to go, and then took a nap in the car until you had arrived.
Photography is widely recognized as an art form, even though the scene exists independently and the photographer “simply” frames and captures the shot.
A better driving analogy might be Tesla’s current level of self-driving, where you have to keep a hand on the wheel and eyes on the road the whole time, and remain in charge of all the critical decisions. When someone arrives in a Tesla and says, “I drove here,” no one goes “ackchyually…” Even if we follow your analogy, it’s the individual’s idea to reach that destination- often a novel place no one has even been to before.
Creative individuals curate unique datasets, which can take countless hours of manual work, to create LoRAs. They often draw from their own photographs, drawings, paintings, etc., and then coordinate prompts and parameters to blend their custom LoRAs with other creators’ LoRAs/models/checkpoints to craft something unique. These creations exist only because they had the vision and put in the effort to realize it. The process can be even more involved with tools like ControlNet, where artists might even sketch an outline of the scene by hand.
A quick selfie might not be considered art, but intentional expression through creatively capturing a scene is (photography). Similarly, a quick generation via Copilot for a meme might not qualify as art, but intentional expression through creative generation certainly does.
Nope.
When humans make art, they are constantly making decisions. Decisions, decisions, decisions. With every stroke of the pen, with every color (not just a generic pink, blue or yellow, but specific tones and shades of those), with every everything they to while making that piece, they are making a lot of micro-decisions. Those decisions are made in respect to the person that is making the art, as their personal life experiences are what dictate how they make such decisions, even if they don’t notice it.
AI art is not like that. With AI, you type a prompt and outcomes an image. The user does not have a say in any of the micro-decisions that when into making that piece. The AI it self isn’t making any decisions either, it is just making the mathematical weighted average of what images with a description with similar tokens look like, and simply copying said decisions. The AI does not decide, it simply regurgitates previous decisions.
You are looking at the lowest form of AI art and then declaring that to be all there is. There is more than just pressing generate to a prompt. If you’re actually interested, I wrote a lengthy post about it: https://lemmy.world/comment/12743504
