this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2024
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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.
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.
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.
So it won't be popular. But then there is AI art that's popular isn't there? Did a landscape have a point of view when someone took a picture of it? No. But the photographer and everyone that saw something in it afterwards did. The viewer can give the piece meaning. It's well known that art is subjective. That means you, the subject, determine if what you're seeing is evoking emotion.
For what it's worth, I don't think the brain is magic. So someday something synthetic will have a complex opinion and express it metaphorically. Maybe we're already there, just not on a human level. Could a rat make art? Because at some point soon computers are going to be on the spectrum of intelligence of a living thing, if it's not already.
I really like that description! The study of choice. I think that under that lens I'll be able to appreciate art in a new way. Thanks.
Someone really smart said it to me a few months ago and it changed my world
Fair enough. AI art is often just a highly skilled visual meme generator used in a reactionary manner to whatever is happening at the time, whether it be denim-infused fediverse posts or mocking political figures.
Other than a few drop-down menus that aren’t any better than an iPhone photo filter app, yeah, all the choices have essentially been already made and recombined by the art generation software.
A lot of the more technical art generators seem to have a lot fewer fixed parameters. The failure to put in the effort to learn about them and make those choices is what I'd argue makes most AI art inherently worthless.