AI and AI Art

[Kestrel]

I'm a pretty heavy advocate against the use of AI outside of it's uses in science. I was about to go on a long drawn out tangent about how it contributes to destroying the environment, vacuuming up energy resources from poor neighborhoods and stealing people's data, but that's a conversation for another day

[DoubleO]

I have a friend who is just totally into the whole AI schtick. He'll acknowledge the issues but in a very 'yeahhhh I know' kind of way but he uses ChatGPT for so much shit. We're going to China together and he used ChatGPT to make an itinerary that was so full of errors and just completely ridiculous and outside the realms of possibility. He's always sharing AI song covers or AI videos and he even used it to come up for slogans for posters he has to make for work and then gets upset when everyone is like 'wow that's so shit' despite the fact he didn't come up with it. He has essentially replaced googling with asking an AI chatbot.
It's very frustrating to me. I'm very anti-AI in the forms it's reared its head recently. The AI art, videos, music, it all just feels like a bad direction to take. Part of a thing being admirable and impressive is that it was somebody's idea that they either enlisted others to realise or realised themselves. Art in all its forms should be a celebration of human collaboration. Machines can be used as tools to reach that end but I have no interest in art where a myriad of the decisions were made by an AI.
This absolute buzzword-ification of it as well is hindering tools that artists have been using for years. Automated processes on blender or photoshop that an artist makes use of are now being lumbered in with fully generative AI. Every company ever is trying to shove it down our throats without actually bothering to explain what they're talking about. 'Enhanced by AI,' 'Now with AI,' 'Powered by AI.' These phrases have been true of many computer products and processes for a very long time...so what are they talking about? The spearheading of the phrase is flattening the public's understanding of what it truly means and obscures what 'AI' is actually in use. The advancement of these tools and the way in which they're used can very easily get out of hand. And who is in charge of it? Who keeps it in check? The corporations? The government?
Companies have been training their AI on sources like the internet archive and libgen secretly, these sites are then being targeted and taken down. The information isn't just being amassed but gatekept. These sites are some of the backbones of what the internet has been for since its inception. They encourage free access to information and learning, they are massive collections of human culture and history, preserved digitally. Some people have dedicated their lives to helping that cause. And now their work has been co-opted and is under threat of being scrubbed off the web. It's the kind of act you'd read about in a cyberpunk story.
There's an obvious hypocrisy in this using generative replications of voice actor's work to make this point, but it does drive home just how relevant the kind of things MGS2 was saying are to this situation:

I saw my comment on this video from 2 years ago, I still think it's excellently written. 
Your last comment is exactly why I can't completely hate on AI and why I love AND hate it, I think it's great it can be used to help enhance or accelerate the process of more larger projects but it saddens me how it has cheapened simple art pieces, portraits ects. 
Whether we like it or not this is gonna change the way we consume and rate art and entertainment and it's gonna be next to impossible to truly decipher who uses it as a tool similar to photoshop or 3DSMAX, who uses it to do everything and who doesn't use it at all. 
I'm sure when photoshop first came out people thought it was too cheap, easy slop and the art of cutting, glueing and pasting for thing like magazine covers irl was lost. 
When digital art came about people weren't too fond of that. I don't know if this is the same but I'll tell you that storytellers and writers can still use this to possibly do amazing things, it allows people without the resources to bring their stories to life in a way that the soulless art seems less soulless because of the writing behind it but then... they'll start using AI for the writing too.
If you can't tell I both love and hate AI by now with my ramblings lol

[Aragorn]

I have a friend who is just totally into the whole AI schtick. He'll acknowledge the issues but in a very 'yeahhhh I know' kind of way but he uses ChatGPT for so much shit. We're going to China together and he used ChatGPT to make an itinerary that was so full of errors and just completely ridiculous and outside the realms of possibility. He's always sharing AI song covers or AI videos and he even used it to come up for slogans for posters he has to make for work and then gets upset when everyone is like 'wow that's so shit' despite the fact he didn't come up with it. He has essentially replaced googling with asking an AI chatbot.
It's very frustrating to me. I'm very anti-AI in the forms it's reared its head recently. The AI art, videos, music, it all just feels like a bad direction to take. Part of a thing being admirable and impressive is that it was somebody's idea that they either enlisted others to realise or realised themselves. Art in all its forms should be a celebration of human collaboration. Machines can be used as tools to reach that end but I have no interest in art where a myriad of the decisions were made by an AI.
This absolute buzzword-ification of it as well is hindering tools that artists have been using for years. Automated processes on blender or photoshop that an artist makes use of are now being lumbered in with fully generative AI. Every company ever is trying to shove it down our throats without actually bothering to explain what they're talking about. 'Enhanced by AI,' 'Now with AI,' 'Powered by AI.' These phrases have been true of many computer products and processes for a very long time...so what are they talking about? The spearheading of the phrase is flattening the public's understanding of what it truly means and obscures what 'AI' is actually in use. The advancement of these tools and the way in which they're used can very easily get out of hand. And who is in charge of it? Who keeps it in check? The corporations? The government?
Companies have been training their AI on sources like the internet archive and libgen secretly, these sites are then being targeted and taken down. The information isn't just being amassed but gatekept. These sites are some of the backbones of what the internet has been for since its inception. They encourage free access to information and learning, they are massive collections of human culture and history, preserved digitally. Some people have dedicated their lives to helping that cause. And now their work has been co-opted and is under threat of being scrubbed off the web. It's the kind of act you'd read about in a cyberpunk story.
There's an obvious hypocrisy in this using generative replications of voice actor's work to make this point, but it does drive home just how relevant the kind of things MGS2 was saying are to this situation:

I saw my comment on this video from 2 years ago, I still think it's excellently written. 
Your last comment is exactly why I can't completely hate on AI and why I love AND hate it, I think it's great it can be used to help enhance or accelerate the process of more larger projects but it saddens me how it has cheapened simple art pieces, portraits ects. 
Whether we like it or not this is gonna change the way we consume and rate art and entertainment and it's gonna be next to impossible to truly decipher who uses it as a tool similar to photoshop or 3DSMAX, who uses it to do everything and who doesn't use it at all. 
I'm sure when photoshop first came out people thought it was too cheap, easy slop and the art of cutting, glueing and pasting for thing like magazine covers irl was lost. 
When digital art came about people weren't too fond of that. I don't know if this is the same but I'll tell you that storytellers and writers can still use this to possibly do amazing things, it allows people without the resources to bring their stories to life in a way that the soulless art seems less soulless because of the writing behind it but then... they'll start using AI for the writing too.
If you can't tell I both love and hate AI by now with my ramblings lol

But this is exactly the crux of the problem and what Max is talking about. I don't think you can compare a tool like Photoshop or 3DSMAX because while there might have been people that believed it's a cheap way out; it was a question of effort rather than creativity and artistic capability.

AI removes creativity out of the equation, it subsists on stealing other people's work and replicating that for you. It already tightens a bone grindingly tough industry, squeezing out artists. The end product is completely soulless not just because of obvious and clear technical limitations, but because it misunderstands art - it views it as a binary of 0s and 1s and a subseries of color codes and shapes, a commodified product or service akin to a Google search. Art is given meaning by intent, by people and by the hand behind it. The process and assumption of effort is integral to interpretating a piece. 

There is a world of ethical AI use where artist rights are protected and they are fairly compensated, but that is not today.

---

I will also add that I say this as someone in stark and ardent opposition to the concept of copyright in general, especially in the form that it exists in and how big corporations weaponize it to stifle access to art; but I also live in the real world and understand that people who spend blood, sweat and tears to bring their vision to life need to eat. AI deprives them of that.

[DoubleO]

I have a friend who is just totally into the whole AI schtick. He'll acknowledge the issues but in a very 'yeahhhh I know' kind of way but he uses ChatGPT for so much shit. We're going to China together and he used ChatGPT to make an itinerary that was so full of errors and just completely ridiculous and outside the realms of possibility. He's always sharing AI song covers or AI videos and he even used it to come up for slogans for posters he has to make for work and then gets upset when everyone is like 'wow that's so shit' despite the fact he didn't come up with it. He has essentially replaced googling with asking an AI chatbot.
It's very frustrating to me. I'm very anti-AI in the forms it's reared its head recently. The AI art, videos, music, it all just feels like a bad direction to take. Part of a thing being admirable and impressive is that it was somebody's idea that they either enlisted others to realise or realised themselves. Art in all its forms should be a celebration of human collaboration. Machines can be used as tools to reach that end but I have no interest in art where a myriad of the decisions were made by an AI.
This absolute buzzword-ification of it as well is hindering tools that artists have been using for years. Automated processes on blender or photoshop that an artist makes use of are now being lumbered in with fully generative AI. Every company ever is trying to shove it down our throats without actually bothering to explain what they're talking about. 'Enhanced by AI,' 'Now with AI,' 'Powered by AI.' These phrases have been true of many computer products and processes for a very long time...so what are they talking about? The spearheading of the phrase is flattening the public's understanding of what it truly means and obscures what 'AI' is actually in use. The advancement of these tools and the way in which they're used can very easily get out of hand. And who is in charge of it? Who keeps it in check? The corporations? The government?
Companies have been training their AI on sources like the internet archive and libgen secretly, these sites are then being targeted and taken down. The information isn't just being amassed but gatekept. These sites are some of the backbones of what the internet has been for since its inception. They encourage free access to information and learning, they are massive collections of human culture and history, preserved digitally. Some people have dedicated their lives to helping that cause. And now their work has been co-opted and is under threat of being scrubbed off the web. It's the kind of act you'd read about in a cyberpunk story.
There's an obvious hypocrisy in this using generative replications of voice actor's work to make this point, but it does drive home just how relevant the kind of things MGS2 was saying are to this situation:

I saw my comment on this video from 2 years ago, I still think it's excellently written. 
Your last comment is exactly why I can't completely hate on AI and why I love AND hate it, I think it's great it can be used to help enhance or accelerate the process of more larger projects but it saddens me how it has cheapened simple art pieces, portraits ects. 
Whether we like it or not this is gonna change the way we consume and rate art and entertainment and it's gonna be next to impossible to truly decipher who uses it as a tool similar to photoshop or 3DSMAX, who uses it to do everything and who doesn't use it at all. 
I'm sure when photoshop first came out people thought it was too cheap, easy slop and the art of cutting, glueing and pasting for thing like magazine covers irl was lost. 
When digital art came about people weren't too fond of that. I don't know if this is the same but I'll tell you that storytellers and writers can still use this to possibly do amazing things, it allows people without the resources to bring their stories to life in a way that the soulless art seems less soulless because of the writing behind it but then... they'll start using AI for the writing too.
If you can't tell I both love and hate AI by now with my ramblings lol

But this is exactly the crux of the problem and what Max is talking about. I don't think you can compare a tool like Photoshop or 3DSMAX because while there might have been people that believed it's a cheap way out; it was a question of effort rather than creativity and artistic capability.

AI removes creativity out of the equation, it subsists on stealing other people's work and replicating that for you. It already tightens a bone grindingly tough industry, squeezing out artists. The end product is completely soulless not just because of obvious and clear technical limitations, but because it misunderstands art - it views it as a binary of 0s and 1s and a subseries of color codes and shapes, a commodified product or service akin to a Google search. Art is given meaning by intent, by people and by the hand behind it. The process and assumption of effort is integral to interpretating a piece. 

There is a world of ethical AI use where artist rights are protected and they are fairly compensated, but that is not today.

---

I will also add that I say this as someone in stark and ardent opposition to the concept of copyright in general, especially in the form that it exists in and how big corporations weaponize it to stifle access to art; but I also live in the real world and understand that people who spend blood, sweat and tears to bring their vision to life need to eat. AI deprives them of that.

I pretty much agree with this guys take in the video below and James Cameron's use of AI, he has more or less the same detest of AI as us all but still understands the way it can help artists too. Ironically I've seen anecdotally, a lot of artists I know get excited about AI art capabilities but people who don't normally dabble in Art hate and detest it. People who actually work in the field seem to look forward to the way it could help cut down the time and hours it takes and crunch to make art for bigger projects, they'd still need to tweak and manipulate certain results depending on the quality of the project you're working on and you still need a creative mind to do that. This will probably be how we differentiate between slop and great works in the future but yeah, individual art is dead, no one will appreciate that anymore and that fucking sucks. But AI Art will only help much bigger projects DEPENDING on how it is used. 

Interesting video 

[NateDog]

This will probably be how we differentiate between slop and great works in the future but yeah, individual art is dead, no one will appreciate that anymore and that fucking sucks.

This just isn't true though? Where is the evidence of that?

[Dirty Duck]

Ironically I've seen anecdotally, a lot of artists I know get excited about AI art capabilities but people who don't normally dabble in Art hate and detest it. People who actually work in the field seem to look forward to the way it could help cut down the time and hours it takes and crunch to make art for bigger projects, they'd still need to tweak and manipulate certain results depending on the quality of the project you're working on and you still need a creative mind to do that. This will probably be how we differentiate between slop and great works in the future but yeah, individual art is dead, no one will appreciate that anymore and that fucking sucks. But AI Art will only help much bigger projects DEPENDING on how it is used. 

Very anecdotally. Obviously there are gonna be artists who are fine with it but the lion’s share I’ve seen online and off are against it for various reasons. It’s more the people who don’t do art where it’s more up in the air whether they’re opposed or not.
Individual art is not dead. Even if this makes it harder for people making it to succeed it will always exist. The industry’s move to CGI over traditional animation did not mark the death of traditional animation. Art exists independent of industries and whatever decisions they’re making for profit. It’s important to support and root for that instead of shrugging and being like well this is the future now better get used to it. 

Saying AI is a good way to stop crunch is the wrong angle I feel. Crunch should be stopped by employing more artists or longer project times rather than by cutting the percentage of a project that is worked on by humans. It’s the latest in a long line of ways to not pay for what is needed for the massive project you plan to make bank off of.