[HN Gopher] GenAI Art Is the Least Imaginative Use of AI Imaginable
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GenAI Art Is the Least Imaginative Use of AI Imaginable
Author : jebarker
Score : 91 points
Date : 2025-01-31 20:52 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (hai.stanford.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (hai.stanford.edu)
| moffkalast wrote:
| > "What we need is a computer that isn't labor-saving, but which
| increases the work for us to do." -- John Cage
|
| Arguably both are needed. The kind that replaces the mindless
| repetitive work (e.g. dishwasher, roomba) so we have more time to
| focus on the kind that lets us do more than before (e.g. an
| orbital satelite, 3D printer).
|
| There are only 24 hours in a day and you can't do more without
| doing less first.
| portaouflop wrote:
| Inventions like the dishwasher for domestic use never really
| led to meaningful work reduction for the people (women) doing
| this kind of work.
| RandallBrown wrote:
| It may not have reduced overall work, but certainly it
| reduced the amount of work they did washing dishes. That
| would allow them to do other things (or allow them to use
| more dishes.)
| skybrian wrote:
| Seems like you can pretty easily use more dishes with less
| effort? If you end up spending more time on other chores,
| that's up to you.
| asdff wrote:
| Having lived in apartments with and without dishwashers its
| not as much of a time savings as you might realize. the
| dishwasher needs a degree of maintenance. Dishes have to be
| loaded precariously in a way to effectively wash them from
| the sprayer jets. Some dishes have to be washed by hand
| still. Everything needs rinsing and scraping. Its a modern
| dishwasher so that means its too weak to dry dishes on dry
| cycle to skirt energy efficiency standards, so dishes are
| then loaded into the rack by the sink to dry. and the whole
| cycle takes like 2 and a half hours.
|
| And I'm wondering why I'm not saving much time and its
| because the time savings isn't really significant to begin
| with. Coupled with the fact that when I was hand washing,
| I'd actually wash dishes as I generated them during
| cooking. It only takes me about 30 seconds to wash a plate
| or pan with sink and sponge and soap. I could have most
| dishes done before dinner was even served saved for the
| plates and silverware it was eaten with and maybe the last
| pan in the process, maybe 30 seconds work hardly less
| effort than the act of rinsing and scraping before the
| dishes go into the dishwasher.
|
| All that begin said I still use it, but I probably am not
| saving much, if any time, with the new rituals it requires.
| moffkalast wrote:
| > Everything needs rinsing and scraping.
|
| If you say that into a mirror five times an angry
| Canadian named Alec will show up behind you and start
| grumbling about prewash powder. It's amazing how
| absolutely nobody knows how to use a dishwasher properly.
| macrocosmos wrote:
| I had a broken dishwasher with a part I didn't feel like
| replacing for a few years that I only used as a drying
| rack.
|
| I replaced it recently because the door hinges broke as
| well. I now only run it once a week just to keep the
| parts moving. It is so much easier to just wash dishes as
| I go. And they're way cleaner when I wash them no matter
| how empty I keep the washer or how I arrange the dishes.
| Oh and I use it sometimes after I have guests over.
| vbarrielle wrote:
| The dishwasher, maybe not, but a washing machine is reducing
| the laundry work by a lot. Have you ever tried to do your
| laundry by hand?
| asdff wrote:
| In those days you had fewer clothes and wore them longer
| between washes as well. Something to consider as we
| dedicate time to fold 7+ full outfits of clothes every week
| per person today.
| darkwater wrote:
| And on average families, especially the poorest ones, had
| 4 kids each.
|
| (Ok, I just made up the number to make a point but you
| get what I mean)
| sunshinesnacks wrote:
| Agreed. Washing machines have had a huge impact. See [1]
| for some summary info.
|
| Anecdotally, having a dishwasher seems to simply mean that
| our house can go through 4x more dishes every day than I
| would expect...
|
| [1] https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/how-appliance-boom-
| moved-mo...
| crucialfelix wrote:
| Yes, life for housewives and mothers before the washing
| machine was hell. There are still billions of women in the
| world slaving away beating clothes on rocks.
| asdff wrote:
| That is not the tradeoff being made. When you go from a home
| without a dishwasher to one with a dishwasher, you don't work
| more or less hours as an engineer at JPL. You work the same
| hours. Likewise for someone who does their housecleaning by
| hand or one that hires housecleaners, the latter doesn't start
| working 50 hour shifts at the office in response.
|
| Then the question is what are people doing with the extra time?
| We'd all like to imagine we are an artist or poet or musician
| deep own if we had the time, but are we really? Or would most
| people take an extra ten minutes and use it not to pick up a
| violin or to work a garden, but to scroll through tick tock
| perhaps?
|
| And you have to at least be aware to the fact that there is a
| lot of money to be made trying to get you to scroll tick tock
| instead of playing a violin not looking at advertisement, and
| very few interests out there pushing back as a result. So what
| gains we might make in efficiency today are liable to be
| gobbled up by some sort of profit making addictive product. And
| personally speaking, sometimes these low effort tasks like
| dusting the home or cleaning the dishes or mowing the lawn are
| great ways to disconnect active process into an automatic sort
| of action, to mediate while you are doing the thing, and think
| inwardly about some other idea you might have. In some ways
| washing the dishes is a forced chunk of time you actually have
| to think your thoughts. And scrolling an algorithmic feed in
| its stead is very much not giving yourself a chance to think
| your own thoughts about your own situation; you've in fact
| offloaded your thought process to the highest bidder to think
| for you. And that seems quite dangerous in society.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Perhaps that was a bad example since it's too much of a
| person-by-person thing (for myself I can definitely say I get
| more done if I don't have to spend hours on chores), but the
| fact that we can as a society actually do anything at all
| beyond just surviving is down to tractors and combine
| harvesters, so 98% of us don't have to work in food
| production anymore. The base level of complete chore
| automation that we've apparently all forgotten about. The
| fact that a job at JPL even exists is down to that and to
| manufacturing automation afterwards.
| sunshinesnacks wrote:
| My chemical engineer friends like to point out that the
| Haber-Bosch process has doubled global food production, or
| something like that. In the same "industrial agriculture"
| category as tractors and combines.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Yes indeed, it's the main source of nitrogen for
| fertilizer. Otherwise we'd be back to leaving a third of
| the fields empty to regenerate with clover or similar
| plants that deposit nitrogen, plus having lower yields in
| general.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| You say this with quite a bit of confidence, and I can see in
| a later comment you've got some personal experience. I do as
| well, but it totally contradicts what you're saying. I had to
| get rid of my dishwasher last year because it had been
| installed incorrectly and leaked without us realizing it
| until it had caused quite a bit of water damage. I had to
| wait to get that fixed before installing a new dishwasher,
| and that took about three months. I washed all dishes by hand
| during that time. Like you, I tend to wash all dishes as I
| generate them, but I don't live alone, and my wife does not,
| so that didn't make much of a difference, and washing dishes
| by hand did, in fact, take an hour or so every day.
|
| Now that I have a new dishwasher and don't need to do that
| any more, I'm not on TikTok, but actually do mostly just work
| more.
| cozzyd wrote:
| it's pointed out in the story, but Ge Wang is the author of the
| ChucK strongly timed programming language (which has the famous
| upchuck operator...)
| gedy wrote:
| I'm what people who know me call a "creative person", but
| generative AI for images and especially music really is a
| terrific tool.
|
| > What if the point of art is that we actually make it?
|
| It seems the author's point is the struggle and effort is what
| makes it worthwhile, but I kind of disagree. I used to pour a ton
| of time, effort, and heart into making something I wanted to see
| or hear, but unfortunately the results weren't particularly
| memorable (for me or others). The effort seemed to erase a lot of
| the novelty and interest for me as well.
|
| Gen AI has made creating a lot more enjoyable for me, even if
| much of it is curation of trial and error.
|
| Most of the music I listen to in past year is created in Suno (my
| own), and it's a lot better than my musical efforts in the past.
| bobxmax wrote:
| it's a great tool if you aren't an ornery artist who refuses to
| adapt to new ways and means.
| spencerflem wrote:
| most ai art is bland and worthless and has no meaning behind
| it.
|
| im not postmodern enough to say its all the struggle, but
| regardless of if AI us used or not I expect the artist to
| have some idea of what they're trying to do or say, and
| typing a sentence into a box ain't it
| Filligree wrote:
| 95% of everything is shit. That doesn't make the remaining
| five percent worthless.
| spencerflem wrote:
| i would prefer instead of an ai stock photo, an ugly
| unprofessional doodle. that would tell me something about
| the person drawing it, how they see the world, and if its
| bad at least its human.
|
| ai stock photos also tell me something about the person
| making it and not much about it is endearing
| caseyy wrote:
| Art has a broader purpose than just unique artistic expression,
| indeed. Sometimes it is used to help visualise, create an
| atmosphere, communicate ideas, so on and forth. AI generated
| art fulfils these utilitarian purposes, doesn't it?
|
| People are a bit snobbish about art, but they forget there are
| thousands of printed t-shirt mills where tons of art is being
| pumped out so people can wear a message on their body. And
| thousands of homes and hotel rooms with Kinkade paintings no
| one will search for meaning in, to make the atmosphere
| "quaint". Thousands of home developments with 3D renders on
| their construction site walls and PowerPoint presentations.
|
| And that's alright, art has many purposes and applications,
| even AI. I disagree with the elite-ish tone of the article.
| gedy wrote:
| Yes agreed, and not to knock people, but I worked with and
| around other artists for some years, and frankly many people
| really don't have some deep meaning around what they make,
| they just have a "style" and make things around that with a
| sprinkle of some meaning (which in some cases I suspect is
| added after the fact).
|
| When I was younger I'd get into mild arguments with people
| that style !== meaningful art, and especially when they'd
| question why the things I made were sometimes wildly
| different styles.
|
| AI can generate around a style almost effortlessly and I
| think it may expose a lot of people who have nothing else to
| define themselves as An Artist.
| dumpsterdiver wrote:
| Same. Also, I spend just as much time curating what I consider
| to be the right elements of the Suno music I generate as I did
| before GenAI. I just get a lot more mileage out of it.
| Consequently, when I generate that final cut, I feel a strong
| sense of ownership over it, even though I understand clearly
| that I didn't "make the music". I described it. Doesn't stop me
| from listening to it over and over again and feeling pride.
|
| There may also be a lack of awareness around the current
| capabilities of these tools. You can replace individual
| sections of a song seamlessly. You can use non-vocal prompting
| patterns to elicit desired elements, textures, and transitions.
| You can capture the essence of different patterns and apply
| them to new creations.
|
| This space is rapidly converging towards DAW-like capabilities,
| and it won't be long before we reach similar levels of control
| that we had when we were in complete control. Midi support,
| nobs and sliders for discrete elements. You can already export
| vocals separately from the main music track, so separating
| elements for individual processing and modification doesn't
| seem far fetched.
| gedy wrote:
| Yeah agreed, I think issues come from people's
| misunderstanding (and likely companies misrepresenting) what
| "AI" does.
|
| It's not correct to knock down creators using it as some
| magic box that just pumps out worthless "AI Slop" on its own.
| If you have no taste, no ideas, AI won't turn you into a fine
| artist. But that's similar to buying an expensive camera
| won't make you a great photographer.
|
| Conversely, AI is also not just an English alternative UI for
| perfectly understanding what you want and make something to
| your exacting specifications.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| Art is often still something people do to sell to others.
| Possibly sport and fitness are the real examples of what
| machines can't do for us. I spend hours a day over years as a
| kid perfecting my jump shot and my fastball. Ran miles a day.
| Here in middle-age, I haven't been in any team sports since
| school, but still spend a lot of time lifting, working on basic
| range of motion, and have quite a bit of fun getting as good as
| I can get at skateboarding and rock climbing.
|
| If you gave me an exoskelton that I could put on that would
| allow me to just do those things without any practice, I would
| not want that. I'm not just looking for the thrill of being on
| the board or hanging from a rock wall. Building the skill to do
| it myself _is_ the point.
|
| I haven't been into any more explicitly artistic creative
| endeavors since high school, but I think I'd have said the same
| thing then. I spent 60-100 hours per painting back then, and I
| did it because I enjoyed doing it, I enjoyed seeing the fruit
| of lots and lots of practice, developing skills. If I could
| have just pressed a button and had the same paintings but not
| done them myself, it's hard to see what the point of that would
| have been. The effort involved was most of the reason I even
| wanted to do it. But this was 30 years ago and I guess it was
| different days. We had schoolwide and district-wide art shows
| and it was cool to win awards, but I wasn't selling anything or
| trying to gain fame in an attention economy, never hoped to
| make any kind of living off of art and I never did.
|
| I would have said the same about school band, too. Probably a
| programmed synthesizer could have produced better melody than
| me, but physically practicing and playing the instruments
| myself was part of the point to me.
|
| But I think this reveals at least two entirely different
| purposes to art, creativity, skill, whatever, reflected
| different in the author, myself, and you. I don't mean to
| invalidate your approach by any means. Creating something you
| and others love, by any means at all, even automatically by
| machine, is entirely valid. There is still that other side,
| though. Think of the whole meme of engineers who take up
| woodworking. I highly doubt they ever really make better
| furniture than could have been made by some more automatic
| means that doesn't involve their own labor, only expressing a
| desire and letting someone or something else do the work. But
| that isn't the point. They're doing it because they want to
| make something they tangibly did themselves, even if it's shit
| at first, shit for a long time, or even shit forever. It's why
| my neighbor (we live in downtown townhouses) insists of growing
| her own peppers. They're not better than she could buy from the
| store, or cheaper. DIY is its own reward.
| skybrian wrote:
| > Increases the work for us to do
|
| This sounds like a video game to me, and we do have lots of them.
|
| How should generated AI images be presented? I think of it as
| wandering in Borge's library of babel. Maybe it looks like
| Google's image search, or like Minecraft?
|
| Unfortunately, current AI image generators aren't fast enough to
| do it interactively.
| Kuinox wrote:
| Some current gen ai can generate images, in real time, how
| that's not enough interactive ?
| skybrian wrote:
| Can they fill the screen with 20 variations nearly instantly?
| If so, I'd like to see that.
| Jordan-117 wrote:
| There are already efficient models that can generate single
| images in real time as fast as you can type the prompt. I
| wonder if you could tweak this approach to instead generate
| a page full of static thumbnails on submitting a query
| (using different seeds for each result), and then upscale
| the desired image when clicked.
| Filligree wrote:
| It won't be the same image once you upscale it. Moreover,
| while the fast generators do exist, they're lower
| quality. That doesn't mean just resolution--it also means
| comprehension and prompt understanding, so upon running
| the same prompt through a better AI you'll get something
| entirely different.
| TZubiri wrote:
| So we experience a marvellous breakthrough in technology
| and your big complaint is that it's not fast or voluminous
| enough, and your big idea is to make (demand) more of it?
|
| There's million of useful stuff you can create with what
| you are given. Do not chose to complain about what you have
| and demand more.
| vasco wrote:
| I haven't seen any that could seamlessly replace a Google
| images search result window at the same speed as Google image
| search, which is what I imagined upon reading that comment.
| TZubiri wrote:
| As long as you are still thinking of "images" and especially
| images as the product, you are not being creative.
|
| A really creative and productive use is to start talking in
| terms of what specifically the images contain, what information
| they transmit and what purpose they serve:
|
| "Providing training for pilots with an infinite amount of
| flight under distress material."
|
| "Show how real estate projects would look like after they would
| be finished."
|
| etc..
| CephalopodMD wrote:
| I feel the same way about using nfts to sell jpegs on the
| internet
| noman-land wrote:
| What about NFTs as registrations for domain names a la
| ens.domains?
| spencerflem wrote:
| much better, for sure. one of very few real valuable use
| cases i can see for NFTs
| noman-land wrote:
| Love you.
| packetlost wrote:
| I think there are _some_ good uses for NFTs (and other token
| stuff), and this is one. The stupid jpegs thing is just...
| uhg, it 's dumb and it's sad that that is where the
| technology went.
| jayhartley wrote:
| Absolutely
| bbor wrote:
| I'm a huge fan of this person if they're behind the ocarina app
| (God, what nostalgia!) but I found this piece somewhat
| philosophically empty. They acknowledge that they don't have any
| answers on broader philosophy of aesthetics questions (which is
| good, very few do), but give in to cynical rejection regardless.
| Namely: ...they purport to be tools for creating
| art, but by making every effort to dismiss and eradicate the
| process of learning to expressive ourselves, what they are
| actually creating is a new generation of consumers... I am
| not philosophically in opposition to generative AI, even for
| artistic creation. For one, I don't know what "AI making art"
| evens means at this point; I barely, if at all, understand
| "humans making art". I am inclined to say, therefore, "there
| should be room for that, too". At the same time, I am committed
| to preserving and protecting the room for humans to labor
| profusely, unenjoyably, illogically to creatively express
| themselves... "There should be room for that, too" should apply
| both ways.
|
| This cynicism ultimately shows a lack of imagination, IMHO. If
| use of generative AI is just consumption, then why are there
| people held in high regard in those communities for producing
| particularly great stuff? Why is some output more popular than
| the rest?
|
| The simple answer is that humans are _far_ from being out of the
| loop in art creation. AI can clearly generate aesthetic material
| based on some inputs, reason about the meaning of a piece given a
| description, and maybe take some intuitive guesses on overall
| aesthetic "quality" or "appeal" -- but all of that is a)
| piecemeal and b) not nearly as sophisticated as human engagement
| with aesthetic value. Some would say it's one of our most
| fundamental talents, and _I_ would say it's at the core of
| morality, happiness, etc! The robots are not replacing human
| artists any time soon in my opinion, and I think it's a plain
| fact that Suno alone is not up to the task.
|
| As more of a side note, I don't love how they engage with effort
| and aesthetics (/value more generally, as in mountain climbing).
| Yes, some people like some activities that inherently have
| arbitrary amounts of effort attached -- the people who beat dark
| souls using a drum kit or a banana as their controller come to
| mind! But that kind of leisure activity is neither exhaustive nor
| universally-appealing.
|
| I guess no one wants to do things that are so trivial that they
| are _instant_ , but beyond that there's a huge range. Musicians
| in particular employ a plethora of newfangled tools, both to
| increase output (eg virtual instruments, autotune, smart
| composition software) and to enable entirely new modes of
| production (eg loop pedals).
|
| As they so poignantly say: there should be room for both ;)
| TZubiri wrote:
| Other unimaginative pitches I hear every day:
|
| - We will use LLMs to create/summarize documents. - "You are
| StartupAI, an AI that is an expert in X and answers questions
| about X" - An LLM that I can replace an employee with and fire
| them.
|
| As with any revolution, we get to revise a whole generation of
| software and see how we can retrofit or rethink the
| solution/product. If you seek to build something novel, we will
| have to actually be creative, not minimally apply the technology
| to immediately extract value.
| jedberg wrote:
| Of all the things I do with AI, art is probably the one I do the
| most. When you create written content on the internet, "the
| algorithm" rewards you more if you add art to it. I am not an
| artist, but I can write good.
|
| So when I'm done writing, I pop over to my AI image generator,
| describe a few images I want, pop them into the post, and away I
| go! And then boom, greater engagement. As an added bonus, I don't
| have to worry about copyright, because at the moment copyright
| law considers me the creator if I modify it or the AI (which
| makes it uncopywriteable). So I'm in the clear there (for now).
| andrepd wrote:
| Isn't it amazing when a good chunk of monetary incentive in the
| present day is directed towards the terrifying concept of
| "engagement"?
| Fricken wrote:
| Once I was an editorial illustrator, and the mantra always was
| "concept is king". Stick figures are kosher so long as they
| communicate something.
|
| Impressionists emerged following the invention of the camera,
| as they had no more incentive to pursue realism. I think in the
| age of AI slop any form of crude image making is better so long
| as it's human. Scribble something out with crayons. Shape an
| animal out of a slice of bread, post a pic. It's all legit now,
| technical art abilities mean nothing. To impress you actually
| have to have a good idea.
| tspike wrote:
| Would you consider the images you create to be art?
| jedberg wrote:
| Of course. The writing I create is art too. There is still
| creativity involved: I still have to come up with the prompt
| for the AI.
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| Edit: Retracting my original statement.
| jedberg wrote:
| I never said anything about the degree. Of course my art
| is not as _valuable_ as someone who has spent a lifetime
| perfecting their craft. But both are still art.
| 0xcafefood wrote:
| What you've described is the exact mechanism through which
| generative AI will actually kill search on the open web.
|
| It's less likely that search will be threatened by the
| alternative of Q&A with a chatbot as much as by slop
| overrunning valuable content. More and more of the discoverable
| content will be machine-generated filler produced for exactly
| the reason you describe, it's rewarded by rankings.
|
| People won't even bother writing on their own, let alone
| producing images to go with the writing. It'll be like the
| herculean task of just finding a damn recipe online without
| reading someone's life story first, but 1000x as bad. It's
| already here I guess. We've seen the baby peacocks in the
| coalmine.
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| This not creating art, but illustration. Art is where the
| meaning is inherent to the work, whereas illustration is when
| it is derived from something else that it accompanies (e.g. a
| text). There's obviously a spectrum here, but GenAI blogpost
| decoration are pretty much the terminal point on the
| illustration part of that scale.
| emaro wrote:
| Kinda understandable, but as a consumer, I already dislike that
| a lot.
|
| In the beginning, AI 'art' was novel and interesting in a way.
| But now I've already seen so much generic illustrations, and in
| 95% they don't add any value to a blog post. I'm even less
| likely to click on links with a generated thumbnail these days.
| It creates an expectation of SEO spam or low quality and I have
| to wonder if the author also used AI to write the text. The
| generated seems so soulless to me.
| redeux wrote:
| GenAI is not capable of making art. Self expression is not only
| inherent in art, it's essential. What AI does is make pretty
| pictures, but nothing more. It's not a tool for making art
| because it removes the means for artistic expression. It's
| possible for someone to make art from GenAI outputs, but that
| requires taking artistic liberties post generation.
| ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 wrote:
| > It's possible for someone to make art from GenAI outputs, but
| that requires taking artistic liberties post generation.
|
| Plenty of people use others' expressions as a form of art,
| (sharing song lyrics, singing others' songs in the shower, cat
| memes, and so on).
| zxvkhkxvdvbdxz wrote:
| Indeed, one could argue that everything is a remix of pre-
| existing expressions.
|
| This, of course does not rhyme well with current copyright
| laws.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coGpmA4saEk
| idle_zealot wrote:
| As far as I understand, art is typically understood to have two
| components: expression and impression. The creation of
| something, anything, as a form of self-expression, is
| considered art. Additionally, though, art is in eyes of the
| beholder. If a feeling is inspired in someone by the
| observation of a thing, act, etc, then it becomes art _to them_
| , in that moment. Notably, though, it doesn't necessarily make
| that thing art to anyone else, _unless it is curated_ at which
| point that curation is a form of expression.
|
| These definitions are distinct from the requirements for
| copyright.
| marssaxman wrote:
| It's not the AI that's making the art, but the person telling
| the AI what to do. A painter friend of mine has gotten into
| generative AI lately, and the sometimes-pretty, sometimes-
| intimidating pictures she comes up with sure look like an
| artistic expression to me. She has a vision of something she
| wants to see, and she uses tools to bring that vision into
| reality, just like she does with paint; the new tools just give
| her new options.
| 0xcafefood wrote:
| No, Chatbot All The Things is the least imaginative use of "AI."
| There's even a chatbot to search your Chrome history [1]. Nothing
| screams solution in search of a problem more than this.
|
| [1] https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/15248971
| Mistletoe wrote:
| Google Photos just added this completely subpar feature for how
| I have to search my photos in the app. -.-
| crucialfelix wrote:
| Although the chatbot in chrome devtools is really useful. I
| selected a DOM node and ask "why isn't this visible" and it
| queried the DOM, css and figured out the height was 0 and
| explained exactly what lead to it being 0.
| crucialfelix wrote:
| > "I am going up to Princeton to start grad school in computer
| science." I replied, "I want to build the world's most advanced
| automated music composition machine." > The guitarist studied me
| for a moment and asked, succinct and earnest, "What's the point?"
|
| Strongly agree. The whole point of music is the process of making
| it. That doesn't mean we can't repurpose generative systems, hack
| them until they do something fresh and expressive.
|
| Around about the same time (2001) I visited Princeton and gave a
| presentation of my music generation system built in Super
| Collider. I jokingly stated that I wanted to eventually just
| press a button and have it spit out a hit song. Composer Paul
| Lansky scowled when I said that!
|
| I also got a chance to sit in classes with Perry Cook (mentioned
| in the article) and he was the best professor I've ever seen.
| Really inspirational.
| Hatchback7599 wrote:
| As a software engineer and artist[1], my views on art and
| generative AI have been evolving.
|
| In my opinion, GenAI has revealed that the art isn't primarily in
| the creation, but in the selection. It used to take incredible
| talent to create something worth selecting (writing, painting,
| sculpture, etc), so creation and selection were often so close to
| be seen as indistinguishable. A technically skilled artist was
| likely to create something great, because they were likely making
| high quality selective decisions all along the creation process.
| So the end result of a gifted writer was probably a high quality
| work.
|
| But now the creation of technically skilled works has become
| detached from the selection process. Now we're flooded with
| technically skilled work, but no selection. But the selection
| process is still critical to make something compelling and
| innovative. The artist needs to evolve to inject themselves into
| selective decisions of GenAI, both in the process and in
| selecting the final result.
|
| 1. https://youtu.be/ggRcDQZWD_8?t=1253
| asdasdsddd wrote:
| This is a boomer take. Technology in music has evolved over time
| and people continue to enjoy old and new music nonetheless,
| whether it's created from samples on a computer or performed live
| at a bar, despite the fact that people decry every generation
| that the next generation's music is not real music.
| davely wrote:
| It will take a long time, but I think the ever growing usage of
| GenAI tools will ultimately make people desire human created
| works even more.
|
| That said, there's a common thread in a lot of writing similar to
| this piece. Basically, it's some form of, "GenAI isn't art. GenAI
| creations lack a human element present in the creation process.
| GenAI creations cheapen the creative process in general due to
| the ease at which they can pop out new things."
|
| I'm mixed on this. This is something we've always had to deal
| with as a species. This greatly simplies a lot of human history
| here, but consider:
|
| - Our (long, long ago) ancestors had to paint on walls with their
| fingers. They had to make music by banging sticks together
|
| - Paint brushes were invented. Musical instruments were invented.
| These things make it easier and quicker for people to _create_
|
| - Mechanical machines made it easier to make garments and print
| books
|
| - Digital machines made it even easier to write stories, or make
| music, or play music
|
| The word processor alone made it ridiculously easy for highly
| evolved apes to start pounding on keyboards and outputting works
| of various lengths and quality.
|
| Prior to the GenAI craze, there were music creation tools that
| contained multi-gigabyte sample packs. You could throw together
| random samples and make good sounding songs.
|
| Photoshop and Illustrator made it exceedingly easy for artists to
| flex their creative muscles and get their ideas out there.
|
| At the end of the day, these are all tools. And I think GenAI
| will ultimately be used in a similar way. It's a tool. Can it be
| used in a bad way? Sure. Just like PhotoShop. Just like Word.
|
| Regarding what is and isn't art -- I don't think it's up to us to
| decide. And does it matter? History is full of ridiculous
| examples of things that might or might not be art.[0][1] Humans
| don't necessarily need to be involved in the creation process
| either.[2]
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_(Duchamp)
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comedian_(artwork)
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Brassau
| KaoruAoiShiho wrote:
| I don't disagree at all, the process of human storytelling is key
| to art. But at the same time I'm still going to use genAI 99% of
| the time when I just want a pretty picture, when I'm in the mood
| for doing it myself I will, but most of the time I probably won't
| be.
| ilaksh wrote:
| I would really like an objective explanation of why this attitude
| "that the whole point of art is the process of making it" is
| anything but pretentiousness in it's purest form.
|
| Surely the actual artifact itself has some value? And even if one
| supposes that a key part of the value is self-exploration (which
| I disagree with generally because that presupposes an excessive
| level of self-importance), then being able to iterate more easily
| by leveraging AI art can be a huge advantage for many artists.
|
| This is not to say that actual fundamental skills like drawing
| ability etc. aren't valuable. And it will be hard to develop them
| if you rely entirely on AI, especially while learning. But I
| don't see how it is logically necessary at all to completely
| exclude AI.
|
| To me, this is a rationalization for disliking AI because it
| displaces humans to some degree or another. I think that is a
| fair reaction, but the rationale is nonsense.
|
| I predict that the number of people who start to resent AI will
| increase dramatically over the coming few decades. Especially if
| we can't improve the structure of society to be less centered
| around exploiting labor.
| dingnuts wrote:
| The point of art for the artist is expression. The point for
| the audience is to gain something through shared experience
| with the artist.
|
| AI outputs are not created by a conscious agent experiencing
| affect, and its audience shares an experience with no one. It's
| not compelling, and isn't art.
| nelsondev wrote:
| The audience member can share the experience with the person
| sitting beside them.
|
| Doesn't have to be shared with the artist.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| > I would really like an objective explanation of why this
| attitude "that the whole point of art is the process of making
| it" is anything but pretentiousness in it's purest form.
|
| It's not necessarily pretentiousness (though it's definitely
| pretentiousness adjacent), but a view from the point-of-view of
| an artist. I say it's adjacent to pretentiousness because I
| think implicit in the entire article is the assumption that
| creation is superior to consumption (and also the assumption
| that art created just to pay the bills is inferior to art
| created for its own sake[1]).
|
| 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potboiler
| sampton wrote:
| Gen art space has seen a flurry of new developments that give
| artists great deal of control. Everything from control net, lora,
| ip adapters, to layer level noise injection. People with lazy and
| regressive attitudes will be left behind.
| shombaboor wrote:
| AI art is theft, especially when created via text prompt.
| Drawings needs to drawn, paintings need to be painted etc. Art
| via prompt is 'find and take'.
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