I have very strong feelings about AI and how it's being used lately to make art, primarily because there is absolutely no proof or even anything behind it that says it was made by a real person.
We've already seen how this has scraped and taken away from previous artists work, their styles & techniques along with the time it takes to bring the creation they are trying to handle to life, there's none of that degree of anything that shows legitimate effort gone into the creation of that piece.
It needs a model to train on otherwise it can't function, at least with an original piece you want compiling whatever reference you can assemble along with your own interpretation and imagination to bring that creation to life and at least with the time you take to bring that to life, depending on how much effort you put in that proves that AI can never really live up to whatever a real artist is able to achieve.
Especially as this cancer is spreading itself really far and wide into different areas not just art, how it affects the work of writers and even musicians and performers in film and television is truly quite shocking not to mention insidious how so many people who are enthusiastically behind this want to see those people out of business and with nothing.
Currently as it stands look how much AI is over flooding social media, aside from the memes it's filling up different parts of the internet in areas that you wouldn't expect it to. Horribly made deepfakes & propaganda which can be quite hard to believe & how that can always be mistaken for something real is even more troubling.
Accompanied by how much people that will support this in really absurd ways, will always spit on and look down upon human creativity as a bygone concept & in the subject of art they will always use terrible excuses to justify their lack of skill or effort gone into what they make.
At least from looking at a painting from DaVinci or even Van Gogh, you can tell who made it and you can tell that it was made during a time that it's impossible to recreate. The lengths people will go to defend AI and say that it's easy only just shows how rotten to the core a majority of the AI Revolution is.
I see what you're saying, but the messaging I was going for in my original post was that we are already dealing with enough atomization in society. People feel alone, and families are spread out, or broken and this will only create more incentives for this to continue. We mustn't only create and consume media that glorifies "the good", we also should build and strengthen community of such like minded people.
No I completely understand that. Because I think what AI is doing and I'm not just referring to how it's primarily robbing the people in the creative industry out of work, what it's also doing and this is one thing that I don't think we're talking about enough is it's making us feel and respond to things much slower and a lot more easier than how we would normally be able to handle something.
The danger that AI is pushing on to us and so many of these AI enthusiasts are so head over the moon excited for is how AI could be used for communication, handling a very simple task like something physical or even worse how it's being used to profit off of people's misery such as the mistreatment of a deceased relative etc.
The evils behind AI are driven mostly by the evils of the most money hungry, delusional and incredibly dangerous people that seem motivated in obtaining everything the easy way rather than trying anything out for themselves.
Artists vs. Technology is an ancient battle. The question is whether technology opens up art for more people or reduces the avaliablity of art. Frankly, no artist today doesn't benefit from the technology of the past 30 years and yet they resist the next innovation. It's akin to plato railing against the written word, scribes protesting the printing press, painters angry about photography, photographers frustrated with cellphone cameras, ect. etc. ad. nauseum.
Michael, I read your article, artist vs ai, and I can appreciate the argument you are making and even agree to some degree with some of the message, but my issue is that using the ai to generate the art works will reduce the artists to editors, rather than what I consider an artist to actually be. When you punch in prompts you wait with anticipation at what the machine will present you with. This might be fun, and redirecting the software with more prompts might feel like there is a struggle happening, but gone is the thoughtful conscious intent at the heart of artistry. With the willful disciplined direction of the mind decisions are made that speak for emotions and tastes, a linking of the innermost subtle aspects of ourselves in harmony with the mind's eye, whereas with ai you are just reacting to unintended images. Sure, the "creativity" may be from your own ideas you chose to prompt, but results are unintentional. While there is such a thing as 'happy accidents' when an artist is creating a work of art, the bulk of the work is intentional and willed from within. Art requires artistry, artistry requires the human will into a disciplined focus. Generating ai imagery, and then redirecting it to alter outcomes, is more akin to editing accidental and unearned visuals. You might like to compare this to those other disruptive technologies you listed in your article, buy here we have ai art able to draw from an unlimited backlog of created works to ensure that you are not actually starting with a blank canvas. I agree with you, in that it raises the bar for those with the discipline for artistry, and lowers it for those who don't feel the need to invest in that, but this is not the same as the printing press for the scribe or the camera for the painter. This is something else entirely.
Agree. That's also a point I make in the essay. It's a process. However the same argument was made about cellphone cameras vs the more manual ones especially when you can auto ad filters instead of having to use Photoshop.
But the process price is exactly why I don't use AI for my writing. Those are my ideas that I have to form, uniform, and reform. It's the micro decisions I discuss in the essay.
Fundamentally, many things would not have art if not for AI artwork, making stories in general poorer. Human artists remain ahead of machines, but human artists require payment, and the 15 year old writing their free online fic is generally neither able to make the payment, nor economically incentivized to do so.
https://brianheming.substack.com/p/illustrated-conan-adventures-the : Or to take another example, my (public domain) illustrated Conan book, which, being an illustrated version of a public domain book, is likely to sell too few copies to hire a human for even one illustration. For almost a century, the first Conan story sat unillustrated because there was no money in hiring someone to illustrate it. AI artwork allows us to have an illustrated version when there is no economic reason to make one.
In short, the idea that all use of AI artwork takes away the opportunity for an artist is false. We can enrich the world, and still have beautiful art by brilliant artists.
I agree with you. The post didn't say that the A.I. takes away the opportunity for artists, it said it takes away the potential opportunity for human to human connections to occur. The opportunity to build community in the indie scene, specifically.
I have very strong feelings about AI and how it's being used lately to make art, primarily because there is absolutely no proof or even anything behind it that says it was made by a real person.
We've already seen how this has scraped and taken away from previous artists work, their styles & techniques along with the time it takes to bring the creation they are trying to handle to life, there's none of that degree of anything that shows legitimate effort gone into the creation of that piece.
It needs a model to train on otherwise it can't function, at least with an original piece you want compiling whatever reference you can assemble along with your own interpretation and imagination to bring that creation to life and at least with the time you take to bring that to life, depending on how much effort you put in that proves that AI can never really live up to whatever a real artist is able to achieve.
Especially as this cancer is spreading itself really far and wide into different areas not just art, how it affects the work of writers and even musicians and performers in film and television is truly quite shocking not to mention insidious how so many people who are enthusiastically behind this want to see those people out of business and with nothing.
Currently as it stands look how much AI is over flooding social media, aside from the memes it's filling up different parts of the internet in areas that you wouldn't expect it to. Horribly made deepfakes & propaganda which can be quite hard to believe & how that can always be mistaken for something real is even more troubling.
Accompanied by how much people that will support this in really absurd ways, will always spit on and look down upon human creativity as a bygone concept & in the subject of art they will always use terrible excuses to justify their lack of skill or effort gone into what they make.
At least from looking at a painting from DaVinci or even Van Gogh, you can tell who made it and you can tell that it was made during a time that it's impossible to recreate. The lengths people will go to defend AI and say that it's easy only just shows how rotten to the core a majority of the AI Revolution is.
I see what you're saying, but the messaging I was going for in my original post was that we are already dealing with enough atomization in society. People feel alone, and families are spread out, or broken and this will only create more incentives for this to continue. We mustn't only create and consume media that glorifies "the good", we also should build and strengthen community of such like minded people.
No I completely understand that. Because I think what AI is doing and I'm not just referring to how it's primarily robbing the people in the creative industry out of work, what it's also doing and this is one thing that I don't think we're talking about enough is it's making us feel and respond to things much slower and a lot more easier than how we would normally be able to handle something.
The danger that AI is pushing on to us and so many of these AI enthusiasts are so head over the moon excited for is how AI could be used for communication, handling a very simple task like something physical or even worse how it's being used to profit off of people's misery such as the mistreatment of a deceased relative etc.
The evils behind AI are driven mostly by the evils of the most money hungry, delusional and incredibly dangerous people that seem motivated in obtaining everything the easy way rather than trying anything out for themselves.
Artists vs. Technology is an ancient battle. The question is whether technology opens up art for more people or reduces the avaliablity of art. Frankly, no artist today doesn't benefit from the technology of the past 30 years and yet they resist the next innovation. It's akin to plato railing against the written word, scribes protesting the printing press, painters angry about photography, photographers frustrated with cellphone cameras, ect. etc. ad. nauseum.
More on Artists vs. AI and whether it results in more or less art in the world here: https://www.polymathicbeing.com/p/artists-vs-ai
Michael, I read your article, artist vs ai, and I can appreciate the argument you are making and even agree to some degree with some of the message, but my issue is that using the ai to generate the art works will reduce the artists to editors, rather than what I consider an artist to actually be. When you punch in prompts you wait with anticipation at what the machine will present you with. This might be fun, and redirecting the software with more prompts might feel like there is a struggle happening, but gone is the thoughtful conscious intent at the heart of artistry. With the willful disciplined direction of the mind decisions are made that speak for emotions and tastes, a linking of the innermost subtle aspects of ourselves in harmony with the mind's eye, whereas with ai you are just reacting to unintended images. Sure, the "creativity" may be from your own ideas you chose to prompt, but results are unintentional. While there is such a thing as 'happy accidents' when an artist is creating a work of art, the bulk of the work is intentional and willed from within. Art requires artistry, artistry requires the human will into a disciplined focus. Generating ai imagery, and then redirecting it to alter outcomes, is more akin to editing accidental and unearned visuals. You might like to compare this to those other disruptive technologies you listed in your article, buy here we have ai art able to draw from an unlimited backlog of created works to ensure that you are not actually starting with a blank canvas. I agree with you, in that it raises the bar for those with the discipline for artistry, and lowers it for those who don't feel the need to invest in that, but this is not the same as the printing press for the scribe or the camera for the painter. This is something else entirely.
Agree. That's also a point I make in the essay. It's a process. However the same argument was made about cellphone cameras vs the more manual ones especially when you can auto ad filters instead of having to use Photoshop.
But the process price is exactly why I don't use AI for my writing. Those are my ideas that I have to form, uniform, and reform. It's the micro decisions I discuss in the essay.
I reject anything Ai.
Hayao Miyazaki of Studio Ghibli said, "...it's an insult to life itself."
Fundamentally, many things would not have art if not for AI artwork, making stories in general poorer. Human artists remain ahead of machines, but human artists require payment, and the 15 year old writing their free online fic is generally neither able to make the payment, nor economically incentivized to do so.
https://brianheming.substack.com/p/illustrated-conan-adventures-the : Or to take another example, my (public domain) illustrated Conan book, which, being an illustrated version of a public domain book, is likely to sell too few copies to hire a human for even one illustration. For almost a century, the first Conan story sat unillustrated because there was no money in hiring someone to illustrate it. AI artwork allows us to have an illustrated version when there is no economic reason to make one.
In short, the idea that all use of AI artwork takes away the opportunity for an artist is false. We can enrich the world, and still have beautiful art by brilliant artists.
I agree with you. The post didn't say that the A.I. takes away the opportunity for artists, it said it takes away the potential opportunity for human to human connections to occur. The opportunity to build community in the indie scene, specifically.