A.I. generated Art (where do you stand?)

[LuchaSloth]

With the surge in interest of art created with artificial intelligence, I'm starting to hear more people complain about the "inevitability" of artificial intelligence replacing "real" artists. - My personal opinion is that it simply won't. (Most people lack the creative process to make "good" art even with artificial intelligence). You still need a creative process. (Taking a selfie and turning yourself into a Viking or a noble doesn't count). The whole thing makes about as much sense to me as suggesting that photography killed painting.

If anything, I see AI as a jumping-off point for people who don't yet know that they have creative ideas. Being able to visualize something, take that thing, and then create traditional art with it...it's a gift. - I honestly think that the future accessibility of artificially generated art is going to open the door for more people to practice traditional art.

When 'Guitar Hero' was released, people argued that it was making kids lazy...or somehow "wasting" time that they could have been using to practice actual instruments. However, we all know that Guitar Hero influenced millions of people who otherwise might not have ever obtained an interest in guitar or music in general. - I see AI generated art as a similar introduction as a means of creating.

What are your thoughts?

 

[Kitsuragi]

i don't care for it, and i don't care about it. it's cool in theory but its easily usable to steal art/ideas as we've seen before. it's also pretty bad unless you're extremely specific with prompts and it still doesn't replicate humans (a major art topic) well, eyes/mouths/fingers still give AI problems.
i've seen cool AI art and ive seen bad AI art. i vastly prefer art with a human touch.

 

[LuchaSloth]

i don't care for it, and i don't care about it. it's cool in theory but its easily usable to steal art/ideas as we've seen before. it's also pretty bad unless you're extremely specific with prompts and it still doesn't replicate humans (a major art topic) well, eyes/mouths/fingers still give AI problems.
i've seen cool AI art and ive seen bad AI art. i vastly prefer art with a human touch.

I think the main application for AI art is to create a basic idea, and then flesh it out more fully with traditional means. As you said, the process rarely yields results that are identical to what you ask of it. - For that reason, I think it's neat to start with something that was created by AI, and then "make it your own" by adding to it. (I'm seeing more of this lately, and I think it's great). It's almost like creating art from a dream. The dream is not going to give you an exact blueprint of what you want on paper/canvas...but it can lay the groundwork. It's your ideas...visualized to an extent, so you can further investigate what it is that you actually want the piece to look like. It makes it easy to say "Huh...I wonder what this thing would look like if..." and then you can see it and say "Oh...that works" or "No...that doesn't work at all."

 

[Corrie]

I laugh at it for the meme but don't really care much about it eitherway otherwise. I don't think it should be taken too seriously.

 

[daringred_]

bane of my existence because almost all it does is steal from actual artists, and typically without their consent. if it wasn't so prolific at theft, i probably wouldn't mind it, but the majority of results are uncanny at best anyway. immediately makes me think about that idiot on twitter who calls himself an artist because he spent a couple of hours in photoshop or something touching up an AI piece he generated that used stolen art.

 

[Xara]

i think it’s pretty neat. my current phone lock and home screen wallpapers are actually A.I generated artworks of my late kitties, zeva and alize. the app i used had me choose a photo of them, then select a theme, and then turned the photo into art that matched the theme i chose.

Spoiler: wallpapers

original photo

A.I generated

original photo

A.I generated

i didn’t know some people were worried that A.I generated art would replace real artists, but i doubt that’ll ever happen. to me, it’s not any different than photo editing apps, and those existing haven’t stopped anyone from taking authentic, unedited photos. it might inspire some people for sure (certain ones i’ve seen have inspired me, at least), but i don’t think it’ll stop people from creating art of their own.

 

[Flicky]

I'm very neutral towards them. On one hand, it's fun to see what happens. On the other, I really dislike that it's stealing artists' work. I've even had some generated works featuring someone's warped signature on them!

I'm also a little tired of people claiming them as 'their' art. You told the AI what to draw. The AI then drew it by stealing from other artists. Then there are the people who deliberately claim to have drawn it themselves, even though there are tell-tale signs that it was AI generated. Or the people who use AI art to generate quick upvotes, without being honest about where it came from.

 

[spawnpoint]

I think it's cool, while not drawing art I've heard a song that had ai generated lyrics and it was REALLY good, and someone in the comments said it was an example of how this ai generated stuff can help inspire human creativity instead of replacing it, and I agree

(The song in question is Reckless Battery Burns by ghost and pals btw)

 

[amemome]

Speaking just about visual art, since I have the most exposure to visual art AI:

I thought it was interesting to look at when it was taking photography and generating new images. I thought that it was a good way to find inspiration about the oddness of everyday things. Like what the average image of a sunrise would look like, what the average pig would look like, that kind of trivial stuff.

But now it's mostly used to rip off and profit off of artists and their hard work, so I grew to detest it. I feel like as long as AI is opt-in and doesn't infringe on artists' rights and nobody profits off of the results, I'd be ok with it, but I really doubt that this would happen.

 

[LuchaSloth]

bane of my existence because almost all it does is steal from actual artists, and typically without their consent. if it wasn't so prolific at theft, i probably wouldn't mind it, but the majority of results are uncanny at best anyway. immediately makes me think about that idiot on twitter who calls himself an artist because he spent a couple of hours in photoshop or something touching up an AI piece he generated that used stolen art.

Personally haven't heard anything about this. Do you have examples?

 

[daringred_]

Personally haven't heard anything about this. Do you have examples?

no, since it's not something i specifically looked into, it's just something i've read about multiple times across multiple platforms. i keep seeing a tweet on my home-page citing examples of artists that have had their work fed into AI generators, and i've seen multiple threads on toyhouse where people had linked sources. it might not be all AI generators, but how else are you training an AI without showing it what to replicate/mimic in the first place? whether or not it's every single one, it's still prevalent enough of a problem, unfortunately.

 

[nightglow]

I think it's interesting, but I don't think it will replace artists. Maybe from a corporate level it will cuz cost. But corporations already use clipart graphics for many things. Also I don't believe AI has been used for 3d models yet. I could be wrong though.
AI is self learning and it's art will improve with time.
I also think it will inspire artists like past artists inspire today's artists. Also I personally don't see how AI steals people's art since it is programed for self learning. It's like saying a student painting with their own hands that they see somewhere else is stealing. AI is a little more than feeding it stuff and it mashing or mixing it up in a blender. Some AI art is so well made that you may think a human made it, and the piece doesn't exist outside what the AI made.
But all this is just my perspective.

 

[Croconaw]

I’m honestly shocked at how close the poll is. I was expecting it to be more lopsided. I personally don’t care for it, although I can’t say much else about it.

 

[-Blue-]

Before I understood what it was, I just didn't care about it. It sounded like a cool idea to have AI generate its own images, but all it is doing is stealing other peoples works and meshing it together. So it's technically not creating something new, it's just Frankensteining other artist's works. It's also being backed by the NFT people, so you know there's also that. They claim it's going to be the way of the future for art creation, but it's really not if it can't create something actually new and is just reliant on stuff that exists already.

I saw some social media posts by artists where they showed the AI pretty much just straight up stole their work and didn't do much to alter it. Even kept their signature/watermark. So yeah it's just a lazier man's approach to art theft.

 

[Seastar]

Personally haven't heard anything about this. Do you have examples?

In the image below, it has clearly taken various fan art of Sans to make these. At least to me, it's clear.

Spoiler: Sorry, just realized phone images are enormous

 

[QueenCobra]

Not a fan. I think some of the Dall-E Mini generations are funny, but besides that, I don’t like how easy it makes stealing from other artists.

 

[Millysaurusrexjr]

The Dall-E Mini stuff was cute and funny, real meme material there but this newer more powerful stuff needs to die, like now.

AI is so unethical. It can't make these pictures just from nothing. It's stealing from other artists without their consent, it's giving some people the false idea that digital art is made with just the push of a button, it's going to make having a career in the arts a lot harder for a lot of artists, and oh, the stupid cherry on top, now some people think they can call themselves an artist just because they write a few sentences in a program to squeeze out some "original art". No, it doesn't make you an artist, just like how me ordering a burger in a restaurant doesn't make me a chef.

And it can't even do hands properly.

 

[nightglow]

As a side note, I do think there is a problem of people making an "AI art generator" that really isn't one, or it is at its very beginning stages and they aren't giving it time to develop it's self learning more before showing it off. AI art analyzes multiple things, like photos, articles, not just other art pieces.

 

[-Raven-]

AI generated art is terrible to me because it’s going to remove a ton of entry-level jobs in what is already a difficult career to get into.

Sure, there’s always going to be a place for traditional and handmade art, and handmade digital art, but how many people do you know that spend money on that? Do you buy art simply to support the community, or because you like someone? Do you think beginner artists who aren’t famous will get many commissions simply because people are interested in them as a person, their work, etc.? (It happens, but it’s already uncommon.) And also, the blatant stealing is disgusting.
AI art definitely has other uses and the technology itself is pretty cool, but there’s absolutely no doubt this exists for higher-ups to cut more jobs. Automate more and more, own the technology, cut out actual people so you don’t have to pay them- the idea of concept artists still being there to touch up artwork still means cutting a lot of professional jobs as the concept artists have more time and get more of the load thrown on them, you’ll get closer to just having a handful of people who are exceptional, again making the field even harder to get into. There are many professional artists right now who, while they overwhelmingly do original work, are also pumping out touched-up AI art so it’s already moving in that direction.

I’m usually pretty interested in/optimistic about new technology and this absolutely isn’t it. I think people don’t realise how bad it really is. AI art imo is a real-life case of not asking wether we should do something, just wether we can. Just because we can, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t. We should not be doing this imo. The current level the AI art is at is just the beginning and other mediums, careers, etc. will suffer the same thing. We already have AI helping with court cases and justice by crawling through cases to find useful references/precidents.

On another note I’m sick of seeing a rush of AI art memes getting spammed every few months when a new bot comes out and I’m tired of seeing more trolls/rude people acting like art isn’t a genuine career (the “lol get a real job” folks). Both of those things have proliferated alongside the trend.
Now if you think it’s good for seeing wether ideas really worked or not, we could already do that by thumbnailing and sketching- they make a point to teach you to do those and not just be ornate and spend tons of time without exploring the ideas first. That isn’t new.
The new stuff to come with AI art is overwhelmingly bad to me and I will not budge on that position. I don’t even want to pursue art as a career anymore and I haven’t for several years but the best case scenario looks like cutting out a lot of entry-level jobs.

This isn’t even getting into more detail about how gross it feels seeing the AI steal and use art. It isn’t the same as an artist using reference because the AI just pumps out a result at such a different rate. It isn’t the same. It would be unreasonable to keep up with opting-out of the bots as well, even if/when you could.

All-in-all I’m also yet to see a good argument for why this tech should proliferate as it is right now. If you just have artistic ideas but no skill to draw them, honestly, you should support the art community and get a commission. And otherwise, you could probably undertake the journey yourself- and if you can’t, then frankly, we can’t have everything we want. A lot of the same people saying there would still be a niche for art aren’t going to order commissions, and even before this, getting fair pay as an artist was hard enough. I’m not going to pretend I was an amazing artist, but I was good enough to draw people in and have people reach out for commissions. I studied my butt off. I have some experience doing this as work even if I was never professional. And hell, the things I were drawing were really specific character-based stuff that AI wouldn’t replace right now, but it doesn’t change my overall point. AI art is dystopian.

Compare this with companies walking on eggshells around AI music because, while music copyright is horribly stifling, they have more protections and stand up for themselves more than illustrative artists. There are pros and cons to art being so free and the cons will make it really easy for companies to exploit AI.

I rambled enough but lastly, while I don’t remember all of it this video is also a very dreary, but interesting and not really unrealistic take on the topic

 

[-Blue-]

The Dall-E Mini stuff was cute and funny, real meme material there but this newer more powerful stuff needs to die, like now.

AI is so unethical. It can't make these pictures just from nothing. It's stealing from other artists without their consent, it's giving some people the false idea that digital art is made with just the push of a button, it's going to make having a career in the arts a lot harder for a lot of artists, and oh, the stupid cherry on top, now some people think they can call themselves an artist just because they write a few sentences in a program to squeeze out some "original art". No, it doesn't make you an artist, just like how me ordering a burger in a restaurant doesn't make me a chef.

Yeah when I made my comment I was really surprised to see how evened out the polling was. Calling it a new way to inspire artists is weird. Using references is fine (everyone does it), but just straight up ripping is not an artist. Especially if there is no hands-on with the work. It's all the computer.

It's actually kind of sad to see how many people support this as true art and or call themselves as artists because of this. It really feels like a no-brainer, but I guess we have just set the bar so low in society that people accept it.