this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2024
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depends. for "AI" "art" the problem is both terms are lies. there is no intelligence and there is no art.
Define art.
Any work made to convey a concept and/or emotion can be art. I'd throw in "intent", having "deeper meaning", and the context of its creation to distinguish between an accounting spreadsheet and art.
The problem with AI "art" is it's produced by something that isn't sentient and is incapable of original thought. AI doesn't understand intent, context, emotion, or even the most basic concepts behind the prompt or the end result. Its "art" is merely a mashup of ideas stolen from countless works of actual, original art run through an esoteric logic network.
AI can serve as a tool to create art of course, but the further removed from the process a human is the less the end result can truly be considered "art".
Well said!
As a thought experiment let's say an artist takes a photo of a sunset. Then the artist uses AI to generate a sunset and AI happens to generate the exact same photo. The artist then releases one of the two images with the title "this may or may not be made by AI". Is the released image art or not?
If you say the image isn't art, what if it's revealed that it's the photo the artist took? Does is magically turn into art because it's not made by AI? If not does it mean when people "make art" it's not art?
If you say the image is art, what if it's revealed it's made by AI? Does it magically stop being art or does it become less artistic after the fact? Where does value go?
The way I see it is that you're trying to gatekeep art by arbitrarily claiming AI art isn't real art. I think since we're the ones assigning a meaning to art, how it is created doesn't matter. After all if you're the artist taking the photo isn't the original art piece just the natural occurrence of the sun setting. Nobody created it, there is no artistic intention there, it simply exists and we consider it art.
there's something's highly suspect about someone not understanding the difference between art made by a human being and some output spit out by a dumb pixel mixer. huge red flag imo.
and yes, the value does go. because we care about origin and intent. that's the whole point.
if the original Mona Lisa were to be sold for millions of dollars, and then someone reveals that it was not the original Mona Lisa but a replica made last week by some dude... do you think the buyer would just go "eh it looks close enough"? no they would sue the fuck out of the seller and guess what, the painting would not be worth millions anymore. it's the same painting. the value is changed. ART IS NOT A PRODUCT.
Translation. I can't argue your point so I'm going to try characters assassination.
Pretty ironic to say art is not a product and then argue that its monetary value would decrease, which can happen only if you treat art as a product.
Imagine if instead of a physical painting Mona Lisa was a digital file and free on the internet, would people think Mona Lisa is less impressive as an art piece because anyone could own it? I think it's artistic value wouldn't decrease, only its value as a product would decrease because everyone could get it for free.
it's not a product in the sense that its value does not come from its function, otherwise it would not lose value when it would be revealed to be of a different origin, but otherwise exactly the same. i spoke of the monetary value just because it's quantifiable; it's not otherwise relevant.
if Mona Lisa was free and digital it would be as valuable as a digital Mona Lisa could be. being free and digital doesn't make it pointless, without agency or intent like AI art is.
It seems like you're agreeing with me on the reasoning why AI art is art, you just refuse to accept AI as art. So let's try a different way. Who says art has agemcy or intent? Clearly it's not just "everything made by humans" because if I showed you the toilet paper I used to wipe my ass we can both agree that it's not art. Neither is the comment I'm writing right now. So there needs to be something more that separates not art and art. The two most common ways would be the intent of the artist and the perceived intent of the viewer.
If it's what the artist intended the am artist can prompt AI until AI generates the image the artist intended. Since the artist intended the AI generated image to look that way the intent is inherited from the artist.
If it's what the viewer perceived we can reach the original question I postulated. If an image makes you feel something and you can't know if it's made by the artist or by AI, how do you know it's art or not? If we take by whether you perceive intent of not then you're attributing intent to art and it doesn't matter how it was made. If you feel something and after the fact you find out it was AI generated image then it doesn't invalidate what you felt.
You can come up with whomever to validate intent or agency and I'll show you how AI wouldn't play a role in that decision because AI isn't sentient. It's a tool like a camera or a paint brush or just chalk. We give the intent by using the tools we have.
That's like saying photoshop doesn't understand the context and the meaning of art.
"Only physically painted art is art".
Using AI to achieve an concrete piece of art can be pretty complex and surely the artist can create something with an intended meaning with it.
i won't, but art has intent. AI doesn't.
Pollock's paintings are art. a bunch of paint buckets falling on a canvas in an earthquake wouldn't make art, even if it resembled Pollock's paintings. there's no intent behind it. no artist.
The intent comes from the person who writes the prompt and selects/refines the most fitting image it makes
that's like me intending for it to rain and when it eventually would, claiming i made it rain because i intended for it.
How can you tell if an entity has intent or not?
comes with having a brain and knowing what intent means.
Yes, but where do you draw a line in AI of having an intent. Surely AGI has intent but you say current AIs do not.
yes because there is no intelligence. AI is a misnomer. intent needs intelligence.
How can you tell there is no intelligence? If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, why is it not a duck?
because if you teach me to pronounce some japanese words without teaching me what it means, i may say them perfectly, and even trick some people who don't see my face into thinking I'm speaking native japanese, even though i don't know what the fuck I'm saying. the fact that i tricked some people into thinking otherwise does not make me a japanese person.
That is a very poor comparison. AIs do not use prewritten answers, unless you think we live in the 1960s
that's not the point... the point is that AI doesn't know what the fuck it's doing.
AI is a tool used by a human. The human using the tools has an intention, wants to create something with it.
It's exactly the same as painting digital art. But instead o moving the mouse around, or copying other images into a collage, you use the AI tool, which can be pretty complex to use to create something beautiful.
Do you know what generative art is? It existed before AI. Surely with your gatekeeping you think that's also no art.
I'm so sick of this. there are scenarios in which so-called "AI" can be used as a tool. for example, resampling. it's dodgy, but whatever, let's say the tech is perfected and it truly analyzes data to give a good result rather than stealing other art to match.
but a tool is something that does exactly what you intend for it to do. you can't say 100 dice are collectively "a tool that outputs 600" because you can sit there and roll them for as long as it takes for all of them to turn up sixes, technically. and if you do call it that, that's still a shitty tool, and you did nothing worth crediting to get 600. a robot can do it. and it does. and that makes it not art.
So do you not what generative art is. And you pretend to stablish catedra on art.
Generative art, that existed before even computers, is s form of art in which a algorithm created a form of art, and that algorithm can be repeated easily. Humans can replicate that algorithm, but computers can too, and generative art is mostly used with computers because obvious reasons. Those generative algorithms can be deterministic or non deterministic.
And all this before AI, way before.
AI on its essence is just a really complex and large generative algorithm, that some people do not understand and this are afraid of it, like people used to be afraid of eclipses.
Also, you seems not to know that photographs also take hundreds or thousands of pictures with just pressing a button and just select the good ones.
cameras do not make random images. you know exactly what you're getting with a photograph. the reason you take multiples is mostly for timing and lighting. also, rolling a hundred dice is not the same as painting something 100 times and picking the best one, nor is it like photographing it. the fact that you're even making this comparison is insane.
If you know how to use an AI you also know how it's working and what are you going to get, is not random. It's a complex generative algorithm where you put in the initial variables, nothing more.
the AI itself doesn't know what it's doing, neither are you. the fact that you're putting in words to change the outcome until the dice fall somewhat close to where you want them to fall doesn't make it yours. you can't add your own style to it, because you're not doing it.
Please, do not extend your lack of knowledge to me. Thanks.
Also, most traditional artists never develop a style of their own. If you believe that every single artist has its own unique style... You'd be much incorrect. That does not make it less of an artist.
I remember back in the day when lots of people followed the Bob Ross style to do some nice paintings. Luckily you are here to gatekeep them from doing art.
there's a difference between not having a unique style and physically being unable to have a style because you have next to no input in the process.
Because mixed media does not exist.
Nothing forbid anyone to train an AI with its own drawings in its own style.
Once again, AI is a tool. Like many others used in digital art. It's just a statistically driven generative algorithm. People can use a tool as they please to make art, same as they can use any other tool, and you have not the authority to gatekeep an artist of doing art just because you think their tool, their style, the object or anything about the artist does not fit with your morals.
And they also can, and will, mix it with other tools to produce the piece of art they want to create.
Also all this discussion about "the style(tm)" could be just disproven given the fact that if you weight your variables and use a specific dataset you can generate consistent images in a determined style. And some AI artists does have a representative style due to this... So...
again, there are instances, like resampling, depending on the algorithm, where "AI" (misnomer) can be used as a tool.
what people generally mean when they say "AI art" is not that.
I'm also not referring to resampling. I'm referring to full image generation.
I know. that's not a tool.
It is though.
Your morals does not decide what is it or not a tool. I thought we, as society, had already go through this debate with Religion.
you keep saying morals; I'm pretty sure you don't know what that means.
People said exact same thing about CGI, and photography before. I wouldn't be surprised if somebody scream "IT'S NOT ART" at Michaelangelo or people carving walls of temples in ancient Egypt.
the "people" you're talking about were talking about tools. I'm talking about intent. Just because you compare two arguments that use similar words doesn't mean the arguments are similar.
Intent is not needed for the art, else all the art in history where we can't say what author wanted to express or the ones misunderstood wouldn't be considered art. Art is in the eye of the beholder. Note that one of the first regulations of AI art that is always proposed is that AI art be clearly labeled as such, because whomever propose it do know the above.
i didn't say knowing the intent is needed. i believe in death of the author, so that isn't relevant.
the intent to create art is, however, needed. the fountain is art, but before it became the fountain, the urinal itself wasn't.
I get you but it's really not necessary. In case of (somewhat) realist art you can still recognize AI artifacts, but abstract art is already unrecognizable (and this is the precise reason they want AI art to be marked, so they won't embarrass themselves with peans over something churned out by computer in few seconds), not to mention there is also art created by animals, and it is considered art but it's not created with intent, except maybe the intent of people dipping dog's paw in paint. Thus we again just get to the distinction that art needs to be created just by living things? It's meaningless.
Anyway, i guess next few years will make this even more muddled and the art scene will get transformed permanently. Hell recently i've encountered some AI power metal music which is basically completely indistinguishable from normal, but in this case it mostly serve to show how uninspired and generic entire genre is.