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Comment on A cartoonist's review of AI art, by Matthew Inman

ech@lemmy.ca ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

I made a comment about a week ago about how copying people’s art is still art, and it was a bit of an aha moment as I pinpointed for myself a big part of why I find image generators and the like so soulless, inwardly echoing a lot of what Inman lays out here.

All human made art, from the worst to the best, embodies the effort of the artist. Their intent and their skill. Their attempt to make something, to communicate something. It has meaning. All generative art does is barf up random noise that looks like pictures. It’s impressive technology, and I understand that it’s exciting, but it’s not art. If humans ever end up creating actual artificial intelligence, then we can talk about machine made art. Until then, it’s hardly more than a printer in terms of artistic merit.

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AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net ⁨55⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
I’ve been practicing at being a better writer, and one of the ways I’ve been doing that is by studying the writing that I personally really like. Often I can’t explain why I click so much with a particular style of writing, but by studying and attempting to learn how to copy the styles that I like, it feels like a step towards developing my own “voice” in writing.

A common adage around art (and other skilled endeavours) is that you need to know how to follow the rules before you can break them, after all. Copying is a useful stepping stone to something more. It’s always going to be tough to learn when your ambition is greater than your skill level, but there’s a quote from Ira Glass that I’ve found quite helpful:

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it’s normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take a while. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

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- ech@lemmy.ca ⁨8⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
  Agreed.
  
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ExcessShiv@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

It’s impressive technology, and I understand that it’s exciting, but it’s not art.

I would add that a lot (most?) graphical elements we encounter in daily lives do not require art or soul in the least. Stock images on web pages, logos, icons etc. are examples of graphical elements that are IMO perfectly fine to use AI image generation for. It’s the menial labour of the artist profession that is now being affected by modern automation much like so many other professions have. All of them resisted so of course artists resist too.

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- agent_nycto@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  The most generic logo from ten years ago still was made with choices by a designer. It’s those choices that make a difference, you don’t choose how things are executed with ai
  
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  - ExcessShiv@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    But you still choose the final result…for something like that, the how is really quite irrelevant, it is just the end result that matters and that still remains in the hands of humans as they’re the ones to settle on the final solution.
    
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    agent_nycto@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    That’s like saying you cooked a chicken sandwich because you ordered it off the menu.
    
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    ech@lemmy.ca ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    
    the how is really quite irrelevant
    
    That’s our point. The how is entirely relevant. It’s what makes art interesting and meaningful. Without the how and why, it’s just colors and noise.
    
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- laxu@sopuli.xyz ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I’d argue that logos are a hugely expressive form. It’s just that 90% of them are basic ass shit tier stuff.
  
  AI has basically raised the level of “shit tier” pretty high. I sometimes go check out Hotone Audio’s Facebook page to see if there are new firmware updates for my device, but they mainly peddle pointless AI slop marketing images. I’m sure there are tons of companies like this.
  
  It’s the literal example of the marketing person being able to churn out pictures without an artist being involved, and thus the output is a pile of crap even more vapid than stock photos.
  
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- ech@lemmy.ca ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  The impact on livelihoods is important, but it’s ultimately unrelated to defining what art is. My consideration of art is not one born of fear of losing money, but purely out of appreciation for the craft. I don’t think it’s entirely fair to suggest all the criticisms against generated art is solely borne of self-preservation.
  
  In regards to corporate “art”, all the things you listed, even stock images, are certainly not the purest form of artistry, but they still have (or, at least had) intent suffusing their creation. I suppose the question then is - is there a noticeable difference between the two for corporations? Will a generated logo have the same impact as a purposefully crafted on does? In my experience, the generated products I’ve noticed feel distinctly hollow. While past corporate assets are typically hollow shells of real art, generated assets are even less. They’re a pure concentration of corporate greed and demand, without the “bothersome” human element. Maybe that won’t matter in their course of business, but I think it might. Time will tell.
  
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