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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[–] wirehead@lemmy.world 28 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Funny, just this morning I woke up to someone commenting on one of my pieces of art that I'd posted on Reddit that if I hadn't put in the comment how I did it, they'd have thought it was an AI generated picture.

It's super-painful to be a technologist and an artist at the same time right now because there are way too many people in tech who have no understanding of what it means to create art. There's people in the art community who don't really get AI either, of course, but since they are trending towards probably the right opinion based on an incomplete understanding of what the things we see as AI actually are, it's much easier to listen to them. If anything, the artists can labor under the misapprehension that the current crop of AI tools are doing more than they actually are.

In the golden age of analog photography, people would do a print and include the raw borders of the image. So you'd see sprocket holes if it's 35mm film or a variety of rough boundaries for other film formats. And it was a known artistic convention that you were showing exactly what you shot, no cropping, no edits, etc. The early first version of Instagram decided that those film borders meant "art" so of course they added the fake film borders and it grated on my nerves because I think it was the edges from a roll of Velvia, which is a brilliant color slide film. And then someone would have the photo with the B&W filter because that also means "art" but you would never see a B&W Velvia shot unless you were working really hard on a thing. So this is far from the first time that a bunch of clueless people on the tech side of the fence did something silly out of ego and ignorance.

The picture I posted is the result of a bunch of work on fabbing, 3D printing, FastLED programming, photographic technique, providing an interesting concept to a person and an existing body of work such that said person would want to show up to some random eccentric's place for a shoot, et al. And, well... captions on art exist for a reason, right? It adds layers to the work to know that the artist was half-mad when they painted it and maybe you can tell by the painting's brushwork or just know your art history really well but maybe you can't and so a caption helps create context for people not skilled in that particular art.

And, there's not really "secrets" in art. Lots of curators and art critics will take great pains to explain why Jackson Pollock or Mark Rothko so if you are still wandering around saying "BUT IT LOOKS LIKE GIANT SQUARES" that's intentional ignorance.

Now, I've been exploring my particular weird genre of art for a while now. Before AI, Photoshop was the thing. Much in the same way as I could have thrown a long enough prompt into a spicy-autocomplete image generator, I also could have probably photoshopped it. Then again, the tutorials for the Photoshop version of the technique all refer back to the actual photographic effect.

Describing something as it's not has long been a violation of social norms that people who are stuck in a world of intentional ignorance, ego, and disrespect for the artistic process have engaged in. In the simultaneous heyday of Second Life and Flickr, people wanting to treat their Second Life as their primary life caused Flickr to create features so people could mediate this boundary. So, on one level, this isn't entirely new and posting AI art in the painting reddit is no different from posting filtered Second Life to the portrait group on flickr. It's simple rudeness of the sort that the unglamorous aspects of community moderation are there to solve for.

I have gotten quizzed about how I make my art, but I've never seen anybody go off and then create a replica of my art, they've always gone off and created something new and novel and interesting and you might not even realize that what got them there was tricks I shared with them it's so different. Artists don't see other art in the gallery and autocomplete art that looks like what they saw, they incorporate ideas into their own work with their own flair.

Thus, there's more going on than just mere rudeness. I've been doing this for a long time now and the AI companies have a habit of misrepresenting exactly what content they have stolen to train their image models. So it's entirely likely that the cool AI picture that someone thinks my art looks like is really just autocompleted using parts of my art. Except I can't say "no" and if there was a market for people making art that looks roughly like mine, I'd offer paid workshops or something.

[–] mrbaby@lemmy.world 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Well now I want to see some of your work. It sounds interesting as hell

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[–] bunnyfc@kbin.social 24 points 7 months ago (20 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

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 6 points 7 months ago (7 children)

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

Funnily enough, that was what Mark Rothko was doing with paint. Exploring color to get the perfect shade of something. Looking at color at its most basic. That's why those of us who understand what Rothko was going for often really love his paintings while most other people say, "I don't get it, it's just rectangles."

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[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 11 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Maybe an unpopular opinion, but I like AI art. It can be fun and interesting, I play around with a couple engines myself. I occasionally use the imagery to kick-start my imagination or as inspiration for things I might be working on or thinking about. It’s useful to give your brain a “starting point.”

What I don’t like is people trying to pass off AI computer generated images as some form of accomplishment for themselves (excluding working out a good prompt or modifiers, that can be a bit of work) or trying to pass off the imagery as real in any way. Real IRL or like “I painted this.”

As far as the corporate models scraping content…yeah, they are definitely playing the usual game that it’s ok for them to fuck over the little guy but heaven help you if you’re a day late with a payment to them or torrent a movie.

[–] Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world 8 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (4 children)

Art is a key branch of human endeavour that can be described as "the study of choice". That's what so many people misunderstand in modern art, is that it's often more focused on the choices themselves rather than trying to be a skillful representation or depiction of some kind. "That's just a ___, my kid could do that."

What is missing from every conversation about AI art is what contribution to "the study of choice" can be made here. There are a thousand variables in the choices made along the way, from which AI and training data was used, to the myriad of prompts used. I am certain that if you were thoughtfully making these choices along the way with a clear idea in mind, you'd be able to make incredibly impactful art that actually enriches us in the usual sense that good art can.

My complaint about AI here, if we will set the enormous scale of theft to one side, is simply that it is being used to create art that doesn't mean anything, which is inimical to the pursuit of art itself.

[–] kent_eh@lemmy.ca 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

My complaint about AI here, if we will set the enormous scale of theft to one side, is simply that it is being used to create art that doesn't mean anything, which is inimical to the pursuit of art itself.

Thank you.

The meaninglessness and soulelessness is a big part of the problem with AI art.

It has no more "point of view" than a random number generator.

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[–] Daft_ish@lemmy.world 10 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (20 children)

Typically, I don't find anything offensive about the images ai creates. What I do take issue with is the outlandish claims of artistic ownership because they strung some words together.

[–] drislands@lemmy.world 5 points 7 months ago (5 children)

Agreed. Consider this absolutely batshit take from the reddit post linked in the article.

Your art looks pretty good, so most people wouldn't be able to tell it's AI unless you told them it's AI.

Generally it's always best to just lie and tell everyone you made it yourself, just to avoid all the toxic people that hate AI, because not having to read hateful comments from people like that is reason enough to lie. Don't need to provide any evidence or go into details, just tell everyone you made it yourself and ignore anyone that question it.

"Your art". I'm sure clicking the "regenerate" button on mid journey for 5 hours took lots of work. It's hard not to feel real hate for these people.

[–] MB420GFY@lemmy.world 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

you're all hung up on ownership. IP is completely a result of capitalism. no one would care who used their images if we weren't all struggling to survive in a post scarcity world. the problem isn't AI, it's the people that own this shit and insist that the world cling to these outdated ideas of ownership. I use AI in my art all the time. I'm an artist with 40 years of experience. I have no problem with it.

Quit bitching about AI and start dismantling capitalism (by any means necessary).

[–] Womble@lemmy.world 3 points 7 months ago (4 children)

One of the saddest things I've seen on Lemmy is that while people here generally have sensible left wing opinions on things (the tankies aside), as soon as AI is brought up in any context most of the users seem to transform in to pearl clutching petite bourgeoisie.

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[–] adam_y@lemmy.world 3 points 7 months ago (14 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.

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[–] Draedron@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 7 months ago (8 children)

The anti AI movement is so interesting. Its what I imagine how people would have imagined other progress like the printing press

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[–] Plastic_Ramses@lemmy.world 3 points 7 months ago (2 children)

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

Human art will prevail.

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