"We did it, Patrick! We made a technological breakthrough!"
A place for all those who loathe AI to discuss things, post articles, and ridicule the AI hype. Proud supporter of working people. And proud booer of SXSW 2024.
Source (Tumblr), alternate frontend.
You don't need an uncritical belief in the Labour Theory of Value to think that human labour has a special value and dignity to it. The people who want AI to replace many kinds of intellectual labour just don't believe that there's a value to human labour, and I do think this is fundamentally an antihuman, misanthropic way of looking at the world.
Preach... this statement should be enough
Can't say I agree with glorifying toxicity as the basis of what makes art or artists "better." I also don't agree with the implication of promoting ideas that other's self expression (or your own) is inferior because of less technical understanding or execution. Art is simply the genuine desire to create and express yourself, and that should always be innately positive and rewarding. That doesn't mean you won't learn new things as you keep going, but I will tell you that I am far more interested in the emotion than any final result. I remember my stories and why I chose to create, and hold my past expressions with the same appreciation that I do for my current artwork. I am simply happy that I chose to create, and feel the same way when others do too.
Honestly I tend to value the people with lower experience more, because I know they are choosing to open up and share their stories even when it's clear they don't do so frequently or comfortably yet. Everyone should feel like they can participate and be who they are without being shredded alive for technical performance. It was daunting to get over my anxieties and share anything a long time ago, and if I was met with such vitriol then, there is absolutely no chance I would've continued to express myself and gain more self confidence as a person and an artist. I would've simply accepted that I was inferior. Why would we want to promote that culture, to crush the vulnerable?
Critique should not involve ripping pieces of work, that's super out of pocket. I'd be devastated if something I was happy with got ripped. It doesn't even make sense to rip a critiqued piece. How can you do post analysis if its destroyed
Not good arguments imo. Art can be this 'blood, sweat and tears' thing if you are into it, but art also can be an activity you do because you enjoy doing it, without a single fuck given that the result looks like the wet fart of a 3yo. I mostly don't care how people make art. Scratch your art into rock with a baguette if you feel that's the level of pain needed, or paint with your period blood if that floats your boat.
But use AI? It is incredibly bad for the environment, uses other people's work without their consent, and it's being owned by fascist fucking tech bros who want to drown the world in doom. You wouldn't kick a puppy and call it art, same goes for AI.
I have a hypothesis: Art requires creativity and other skills that are inherently irrational/emotional, so AI bros want to believe that art can be produced with AI running on a cold hard deterministic machine, because that would mean society doesn't need artists and other "irrational" people, and then their TESCREAL "rationalist" dream of a perfect society would be viable.
I don't even think I really disagree with the core of your point here, but I think you're incorrect in conflating irrationality, emotion, and non-determinism. If you want to take apart a brain and show me the warm soft non-determinism please do. But I think the reality of everything we know about the world suggests the human mind is an incredibly complex deterministic machine, orders of magnitude beyond the abilities of the machines we create.
I mean, isn't making stuff easily kind of the whole point? I doubt AI bros suck OpenAI cock due to their passion for the arts.
People being brutal, people crying over critique isn't "just how art goes", and isn't a universal experience. I would actually call it "abuse" instead.
It's a good argument against trying to be a real artist, using AI sounds far less stressful
Seriously, it's a horrible argument to make in favour of real art. Who reads that and goes "sounds great, I'm in"? Yep. Nobody.
if you want to be a REAL artists you have to accept emotional and verbal abuse from people who are supposedly helping you, and you will ENJOY IT and this is NORMAL
Lots of people in this very comment section seem to agree with it...
A tremendous amount of issues in the world stem from people not understanding what abuse is and passing it on to others as "the way it has to be."
I started painting in my late 30s and love it, and get regular compliments and good natured critiques of my work. I have never cried about it, and if someone thought I needed to be torn down to improve, they would no longer be in my life. But I don't hold any delusions that I'm making high art either.
People tend to have a really shitty grasp of context and nuance. People also do use AI becaue they want to skip the work and go straight to rewards. These all stem from the same issue: lack of care. We've been trained to see the world like rich people: devoid of empathy, compassion, and care. It takes time and energy to understand your situation and formulate a proper reaponse. Sometimes art is a struggle and it takes time and energy to overcome your limits or figure out what it is you actually want from the work. Properly offering good critique requires empathy, and it requires the time and energy to dedicate to the critique.
It's easy to cruelly criticize. It's easy to throw out slop. It's easy to just let the machine do it.
When I first learned about generative AI, I thought it was really cool. I used it to make portraits for NPCs in my D&D games, and it was tons better than what I could make myself (lacking training and practice)
Then I learned about the millions of giants whose shoulders GenAI treads on without permission, credit, or compensation. Never used it since
AI bros don't care about art or being able to draw. They only care about money
Exactly: Minimize effort, maximize return. Do nothing, get credit.
Cue that video where an aitechbrodude said that people don't like creating... (music in that case, but still).
It's a coin toss as to who's more douchey. The person who thinks the output of their prompt is a reflection of their own creativity, or the cartoonishly pretentious "artist" who wants to lecture you about their blood, sweat, and tears.
people who love ai 🤝 people who don't understand or care about consent
IMHO, creativity is also not about coming up with an idea, but the implementation of it. Drawing isn't about the initial idea, but how the end result looks, which could take a lot of time. GenAI shortcuts the idea to the implementation, that's also why they look awful.
It's one of the oldest misconceptions in the realm of human interaction. People think it's the idea that is hard in art, not the execution. People that unironically stupid thus cannot possibly understand that typing "five-boobed anime girl with big cock, huge boobs" is NOT CREATIVITY. It's just a brain fart.
Sure. okay. I'm more in the camp of "why does AI do things that humans should do?"
Why does AI draw or make music or write poems but I have to sort everything out myself and still go to work.
Why can't AI do things that make this world a job prison ?
Even then I don't trust the oligarchs using AI for our benefit. Even if AI could do menial work it would be used against us.
things ~~is~~ are*
AI bros would never be able to handle the downvotes from correcting spelling and grammar errors—only us enthisiasts are passionate enough!
I'm not mocking the post, as i am in aggreance. I'm merely attempting humor.
impove
Replace "AI bro" with photographer and "AI art" with photographs here and you have a very tired argument more than a century old at this point. Same with drum kits, autotune and production software in music, any time a technology comes along that makes making art easier a lot of "OG" artists will say it's the "blood sweat and tears" that make art.
Don't get me wrong, the VAST majority of ai images are slop, just like the vast majority of photographs are shit. When you make creating images that easy and accessible a lot of people with no concept of aesthetics or creativity will make garbage, but that doesn't mean that some can be good and true expressions of creativity.
I have no idea about all this stuff, but I have a question: so you have artists who work with computers. Let's say a 3D artist for the movie Jurrasic Park. So if a computer creates a sphere for you to build a dinosaur head out of it this is "good", because you had to work longer on it, but if it creates the whole head for you to work on this is "bad", because they need less time for basics? They would have more time to be creative this way, or not? I really struggle to understand when something is considered "good" or "bad" in that context. I mean even if someone is working on an elaborate AI prompt to generate an image, isn't that art? Maybe it's not the art of painting, but the art of describing a scene to someone? Just wondering....
I think you're asking exactly the right question. I have seen even fellow 3D artists struggle with answering this. Where is the legitimacy when a machine does work for me? and what -as an artist- do I bring to the table? As an illustrator and 3D animator, my answer is : intent. As long as I am controlling the important variables, I am controlling the gist of my creation. I am creating what I see with my mind's eye, using the sensibility and the motor control that I've developed through years of practice. What my 3D program does for me is essentially give me virtual clay to sculpt with, virtual armatures to rig with, virtual photons to render with. But I'm the one drawing textures, I'm the one handling the paintbrush, moving those controllers in the timeline, ultimately creating that vision. And I think this stays valid even when I'm using an AI texture generator to fill in some secondary stuff I can't be bothered to work hours on : it's not relevant to the intent of the film/picture.
What does that mean for Jackson Pollock style paintings, where the content of the painting is at least partly determined by chance?
Or algorithmic art, where the artist writes code for a computer to execute (such as a fractal renderer or cellular automata) but doesn't necessarily know what the final result will look like?
Or Duchamp's Fountain, or photography in general, where you're just adding a frame to a thing you didn't create.
I feel like 10 years ago it would be very uncontroversial to say something like "art is as much discovery and the act of selection as it is creation", but not so much now.
I feel like all of those are or were driven by creative intent. I am personally not moved much by Duchamp or Pollock, I feel like they exist more to advance the discourse than being art pieces in themselves. Then again I am not looking for an all-encompassing definition of art.
Why include photography here ? do you not feel most of the work lies in selecting a moment in time & a point of view ?
do you not feel most of the work lies in selecting a moment in time & a point of view?
I do feel that way, which is why in the next paragraph I mention selection.
And here we have it exactly: intentionality is what distinguishes art from slop.
Maybe it's not all there is..., but I think it's at least a good starting point
Art has always had that issue. Is a potato print worse than a hand drawn figure?
Sometimes you need to know the material or technique to appreciate the effort.
It also applies outside of art. It's not always the end product that is important. We can appreciate things for being more difficult than necessary. Like the game Roller Coaster Tycoon being impressive because it was coded in assembly, or the Olympic guy who no-scoped in the shooting competition etc.
If the AI prompt is the effort, it should be appreciated as such, instead of comparing the end product against other techniques. We also don't compare airbrushed grafitti artwork to oil paintings, because even if the end product of both is a neat picture, it's impossible to judge against each other.
The thing is people who generate images likely never would do "real art" by hand anyway. They are two different categories of people doing completely different things. They can both do their own thing, it's not as big of a deal as many of you make it out to be.
Except you’re forgetting that those people who don’t have to skills would have then hired another human-being to draw for them.
I have never in my decades of life hired someone to draw something for me. If I didn't have AI to create an image of T-Rex riding a bike I would go without a picture if a T-Rex riding a bike.
Sorry for all the hard working T-Rex Bike Painters.
You are under the impression that the majority of the population uses image generation for profit. No. Anecdotically, it seems like the average population in my experience is sort of fond of image generation and I think the vast, vast majority of it is done by people who just want to make an image for themselves personally, and no they would have never paid anyone
You’re under the impression that ai gen is going to stay free forever.
I am absolutely not under that impression, I don't even think of gen AI as free currently, except for free as in open source for the best llms.
Please don't assume and place words into my mouth.