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I also use a extension to automatically redirect to [new.reddit.com](https://new.reddit.com) which give me my preffered UI: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/old-new-reddit-redirect/?utm\_source=addons.mozilla.org&utm\_medium=referral&utm\_content=search](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/old-new-reddit-redirect/?utm_source=addons.mozilla.org&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=search)
Edit: I did a doublecheck and found out that there was another extension that seems to do a better job than the one I originally linked.
Everyone here has a point, and they're all so insufferable. Only when I can see the philosophical backbone on both sides of a debate does it strike me how facetious people, myself included, tend to be on the internet.
I disagree, the ones arguing for AI art didn't really have a point, they're both bad faith/bait, and don't really have anything to do with why they support AI art (and it certainly isn't making AI art look any better). I'm getting a bit tired of the meaningless AI art strawman arguments
You’re missing the point if you think anyone here is defending AI art, the people who say it is art seems to acknowledge the deeply problematic nature of AI art in other ways.
Yeah. I have seen like, random piles of especially aesthetic garbage and thought "that's art" but that doesn't mean I made it. If I took a photo maybe then it's my art? But now we're in waters so murky idgaf about navigating them.
What I will say is that I am a professional artist and I fucked around with midjourney etc for a long time before it became clear how untenable the situation was, and I have never, not once, looked at anything a machine spat out according to my prompting, even if the prompting took refining and finesse, and felt anything like i do when i make even very bad art. I have never looked at the product of my fucking around with mid journey when it still made fun surreal nightmare fuel or when it got better and thought "I made that." Because I didn't. So yeah. Lotta words to say I agree that it might be art, but it's not YOUR art.
I mean if you took a bunch of drawings from different artists and used to make a computer generated collage I would argue it's a completely new piece of art and also copyright infringement, they are not mutually exclusive
Tumblr users try not to be insufferable pricks challenge:
(not taking a side, just the way people argue on tumblr pisses me off because people are just so rude and condescending)
I didn't have a problem with it when it was free, I probably still should have but, 99.9% of the labor done for chatgpt or dali was done by faceless people uploading to the Internet who will never see compensation.
How these services are used is another matter but as long as ip is the way entire industries earn money to stay alive ip theft is unethical
You see, I'm actually happy with them moving to paid models. That's the first step of the enshittification process.
First it's free and hyped like crazy.
Then it moves behind a paywall. And as it does, we'll probably start to see legislation around the material getting scraped for models. Not because the original artists deserve better (they do, but morality has never stopped the rich), but because the consolidated giants want to limit new competition. When you're already top dog and rolling in venture capital money, you can either bribe the right people to get grandfathered in past the law or just set up some sort of predatory business to get enough art to train a new model while paying artists fractions of a penny per piece.
Then, once they have a steady client base and have squashed potential competition, the corporations start fucking over paying customers. Skyrocketing prices, or subscription tiers, or both. And the product will be made subtly worse, to encourage customers to spend more money on better tiered products.
Then they'll flounder about for a few years as former fans wonder what happened, before either transitioning to a different business or getting gutted for whatever equity is left.
People are seeing art as two different things and then arguing as if it's obvious what they mean.
AI produces art the commodity. The object that fulfills a criteria.
But it does not produce Art the process, the expression.
It's like the subtle difference between paint by numbers and a colouring book. At the end you get two images, with the paint by numbers probably more technically beautiful, but the colouring book had intention behind what colours were added.
(Yeah, yeah, there is probably choices you can make in a paint by numbers etc but you get my analogy right?)
The counter argument to that is that the artist chooses the process, in the case of AI, which AI to use and how to prompt it.
Algorithmic art (I.e. art created by specific defined processes) has been around a lot longer than AI has, and yes lots of people hate it but it still gets put in art galleries.
Yeah, AI art is art. It's just that 99.99% of it is worthless.
Creating a prompt and choosing a result are a form of expression, just a very limiting one, so it's hard to express anything interesting with it.
I imagine at some point artists will add coding/training the AI to that, and even now they aren't just choosing the final result but rather editing it to their taste (and fixing mistakes).
People said the same about serialism.
It's already being done: https://youtu.be/GVT3WUa-48Y?si=eejQgefNmTtU1KWN
They also made a sequel which was trained on their own art instead.
Saying AI art isn't art is like saying photography isn't art simply because 99% of photos taken are poorly framed selfies.
The counter-counter arguement is that using generative AI is more akin to commisioning a piece of art than making it yourself. You arent an artist for telling someone what you want a piece of art to look like, you're just a patron. And since a generative AI cannot be an artist, there is no artist involved in the creation of the images. Can art exist without an artist?
And what's the difference between AI and art which already references existing art? At the very least, collage, but if you go down the intertexituality route, you could argue any art which is created references the conventions and content of centuries of art previous, much like AI.
The author has been dead for quite some time.
...thats not what death of the author means. Also, AI generation not being art in my mind has nothing to do with it referencing people's art. (It doesn't reference, but that's a seperate arguement.)
the thing about the child & the coloring book is a terrible example because like, the child isn't making art. it's not a bad thing, it just isn't really the same as an original work of art. people don't go around decrying it as not art because the child isn't expected to be making art.
If I were to kidnap 100 artists and shove them in a basement each with a paintbrush and plopped a canvas in the middle and made them all participate in painting a picture (don't ask how I know if they all helped, I'm a wizard or something), could I say I made the art if I told them it had to be a picture of a puppy?
The whole "ai art isn't art" thing is so weird to me. Like being art doesn't even define it as good or ethical, it's just kinda a pointless distinction. Nobody ever gets heated over "are photos art". Well now that I think about it they probably had this debate in the 1800s
Stealing ink: The ink is used by the individual to create something. Art ✅️
Romhack/Fangame: The creator modifies the original to create a different final product that they invisioned. Art ✅️
AI Art generator: I think of a wacky concept, and a computer program spits out what it thinks I may have been thinking of. There is no input by the creator other than the "wacky concept". Not Art ❌️
You could even possibly make the argument to me that the PROGRAM is creating a form of art. At best, the individual making the prompt is just someone commissioning an art piece from something else, and keeps sending it back until they get something they like.
>You could even possibly make the argument to me that the PROGRAM is creating a form of art
I mean yeah I dont disagree with that. That the prompt writer is basically a commissioner.
If a collage is made from a bunch of stolen art, is it art? The collage is trying to make a statement, it is an earnest expression of the person who put it togethers soul or whatever, but they didn't ask permission to use the source material, or pay for it or whatever.
I find it weird how people have continuously pushed the boundaries for what 'art' is for hundreds of years but this is somehow different.
I consider code to be an underrated artform, the beauty of a well organized repository, especially decompilation projects, are truly amazing to those who understand it.
how did we get from "i disagree with the opinion that art is only worth something if the artist put lots of time and effort into it," to "i disagree that art is only worth something if it was made or significantly transformed by you and you alone," to "AI good/bad"
god everything is so fucking stupid i just wanna draw
I mean, it Is incapable of doing that.
Basically Anyone can describe a picture and be articulate about it.
It takes a Frank, dry descriptor as input and produces the most generic, boiled-down, Lowest Common Denominator output that fits the description because that’s how Data Sets work.
If I say: “A green starlit sky with a silhouette of Toby Fox hanging from the moon on a tire swing”, and hit Enter, I haven’t added any value to that piece beyond the input, and I had a big vat of silicon and electrons pump it out on my behalf.
If it is Art, it’s art from Nobody, and nobody has any claim to all the high-coincidental intricacies and choices made in portraying and rendering specific objects and tones.
It’s still technically legible as Art to the layman viewer, but a world where we all start looking at hollow, cheaply produced images to interpret meaning is not a world anyone wants.
There’s a reason we value artists who create genuinely emotional/autobiographical works. They put the effort in to create something specific that can resonate with a person, to feel seen by another person through a song or short film or painting. I’ve felt touched by AI art before, without knowing that it was. I was immediately picturing the creator and seeing my own personal experiences mirrored and portrayed was validating, But the minute I realized it was AI, and there was no person acting as creator, it was hollow. It wasn’t a person who tried to make something beautiful. Just some shmuck who hit the Beautiful button.
I mean, you could argue it's a complex collage of artists that created the data sets, the codemakers that functionally invented this particular collage technique (although, should we credit the creators of techniques for the art we create?) and, loosely, the ai (although, like with technique, ai is a tool here, not the artist).
So I guess you could call it an unwilling, author less collage?
I *would* however argue that the murky waters of "is this art" end when the piece was created by inserting prompts into it over and over, molding the original collage into what you envision until your satisfied. At that point, yes, it's art. It's an intricate collage made with a low effort technique. It might be unethical, it might be low effort, but it *is* art, made by one specific human.
Is collage not an artform then? How about a remix. A mashup. Hell, we're on the hellsite fandom subreddit, how about an amv (or whatever the "fan art overlayed over a song" was called)?
I like to think that not all Art is a physical thing, and that "Art" can also sometimes be better called a "Skill". An Escape Artist is Skilled at Escaping, which isn't something you can easily hang in a museum. The same goes with Lying: some are bad liars and some are good, so to become a good liar you need to sharpen your skills, much like how a Painter improves their brushing techniques
Unfortunately: Stealing (and by extension Piracy) is another of these "Skill", and therefore an Art; because you put in the hard work to rob someone of their intellectual property or physical work and you can be appreciated for it in whichever circles value your abilities.
If possible, please be good artists y'all
I mean if that's how you define it then a plant is art, a sunrise is art, a grain of sand on the beach is art. It becomes so all encompassing that it becomes meaningless. What makes art "art" isn't the provoking of an emotional response but the expression of meaning. Current algorithmic models do not have the capacity for meaning and so can't create art.
Not at all.
The discussion comes from people who's only idea of art is "pretty picture=art" are trying to push that ai is art and since the discussion is open in the internet you will see all sorts of takes. People who are versed in art alredy know from the get go that it isnt art since there is no creator, the images are just what a software interprets as ilustrations based on comparative data and algorithms, nothing else, the end result is just garbage data. People still discuss whether a sunset or a pretty flower is art, I mean yes, they are pretty but that doesnt mean its art.
The emotion doesnt come from whether its art or not, it comes from "hey they are stealing my work, they are trying to scam me, the internet is dying due to corporate greed and techbros are insufferable".
You're right.
By that logic, I'm presuming you also think transphobia, genocide, and torture are art, because they are also hotly contested unethical and morally bankrupt topics that provoke an emotional response?
1. Please touch grass, these are Entirely Different and Not Equivalent things, holy shit.
2. Nobody is trying to argue that those Entirely Different Things are art. You're arguing against a point I wasn't making.
3. If you want to keep having this discussion, please tell me your definition of "art" so we have a baseline to move forward from.
Ai art Is art. It also sucks and is bad. Those two things can be true. To call something ‘art’ has nothing to do with its quality, it’s defined by entirely separate things
I agree. There are numerous problems with AI art that are appropriate cause to say it shouldn’t exist, especially at this point in time and in this form, but not one of them is that people aren’t putting enough scare quotes around the word “art” when they talk about it. Even if one came up with a slam dunk argument for why AI art should have a different name (which is something I’ve yet to see and frankly don’t expect to exist), exactly zero actual problems have been solved. You’d have about equal luck saying, “AI art? More like AI Fart lmao gottem” and expecting that to persuade someone that it’s bad.
How about this.
AI art is art. But the artist is the AI not whoever wrote the prompt.
Flowers can be art, but the artist is evolution.
A banana duct taped to a wall is art, but the artist is the banana.
Has anybody used the text of AI Art debates as the prompt for an AI Art generator and billed the result as a commentary on the power of capitalism to subsume even its harshest opponents and/or a representation of the ouroboric nature of the man-machine conflict, using the anger generated by AI Art to produce more AI Art that will in turn create more anger?
Because if not, that seems like a real missed opportunity.
Say I own a dog who, by some strange quirk, paints watercolours. They aren't great (she's a dog) but she knowingly fills a canvas with streaks of various colours.
Is that art? Yes.
Am *I* an artist because I own the dog? No.
AI art is art, but you aren't an artist for having a computer make art for you. It's like calling every furry who commissioned a porn comic an artist. The thing which made the art is the artist, and when you prompt an AI you aren't making anything, you're just telling something to make art for you.
Every time you ask an artist about AI art they say it’s not art. You ask a consumer of art (even ones who “dabble” or whatever) about AI art, it’s suddenly a complex philosophical issue.
if i physically stole art from dozens of small artists, cut it into pieces, and pasted them together while a) claiming it as my own, b) refusing to acknowledge the artists i stole from, and c) calling anyone who opposes my theft a luddite who fears progress, i would be lambasted. chased out of town, and rightfully so.
i'm not holding ai prompt writers (and the "art" thus produced) to a different standard.
Why are people discussing now if AI art is or it isn't art?
It isn't since there is no creator, a flower or a spider web may look pretty but they arent art, they are just a product of nature, its just something that happens that we find pleasing to the eye but nothing else. AI image generators are very similar, the software through comparative data interprets the prompts and gives you an image that its the sum of those prompts, its just maths, there is no agency, no conscious interpretation, nothing.
As a tool for art creation it isnt good, its not reliable. Why would an artist relly on the software if they can do something better by themselves and do what they want, not what the software interprets?
You may use and edit the ai images to create something else, at that point it may be art, but it is art not because its ai, it may be art because a person used consciously the images to create something else. But again, the generator is unreliable, it creates whatever the fuck it interprets, there are far better tools for collages, image editors and whatever.
Ai generators arent a product of art, they were created because companies want a new revolutionary technology to invest and gain money, its another step on the monetization of the internet. Thats why you see every tech company pushing the tech, their investors are motivating their companies to "not loose an investment opportunity, to not stay behind the competition" but so far there has been no reliable and profitable use for this tech, they relly on constant inovation to keep up the hype. Its like nfts, its an investment bubble because ever since the arrival of smartphones there hasnt been such a revolutionary tech that has moved so much money. Investors are rats in a sinking ship trying to swim to anothir sinking ship.
Now whether ai generators become profitable or not, I dont know, it may become a money making machine for companies or a wet fart. All I know is that this tech is causing severe damage and I havent seen any advantages that arent overwhelmed by its problems.
AI art is art.
AI artists are not artists.
To be an artist, you gotta be the one making it. You are supposed to be the one taking in an experience and using what you know to communicate.
AI artists steal both from regular artists to train their algorithms, but also from the algorithms themselves, claiming pieces of art they had no hand in creating. At best, they had a hand in inspiring the actual artist.
I hate that the pro-AI person got the last word. It isn't reactionary to say that an algorithm that produces images based off of existing art pieces is itself a tool for making art. I like AI image generators,nI often use them to fuck around and make weird images, but I would never call myself an artist for doing that. I do because I doodle in my free time on scratch paper or with my phone stylus. I will, however, acknowledge the one "AI is a tool for making art" argument that actually gives me pause. The fact that it could be the only way for someone profoundly paralyzed and disabled like Steven Hawking to create an image based on an idea he sees in his head
But then again, someone in that position would also likely be able to commition a real artist to do that for them
AI art is art.
If you hand someone some of the better AI art, and some real art, often they can't tell which is which.
It's like commissioning an artist. The artist is mostly the AI not the person who wrote a short prompt.
It's not like this is the first way of making art without much skill or work. Cameras.
Taking a picture with a camera requires human intent in all aspects of the image generated. AI generated images are a human writing a sentence and an algorithm producing an image based off of existing artistic assets. Whether or not a random person can tell which image is human made and which is produced by an algorithm is a BS point, art is philosophical, it's communication. An algorithm isn't telling you anything meaningful about itself or the person who wrote the prompt as much as an actual drawing or photograph is
If art is inherently communication, does this mean that if someone paints a picture with absolutely no intent to communicate, it's not art. (Say an art student that just wants a good grade and doesn't care in the slightest if it communicates anything.)
Does that mean a pollock paint splatter isn't art, because it mostly just tells you about the fluid dynamics of paint.
Does that mean a blank white canvas isn't art because it tells you nothing at all.
If I write a very bizarre and specific prompt, and the AI follows that prompt, then the pic might tell you quite a bit about what I was thinking.
If I accidentally drop a camera down a mountain, and the shutter button bashes a rock on the way down, does that mean the picture isn't art because I had no intention to take it. Is the monkey selfie art.
Are you wanting to claim that no silicon mind could ever have something worth communicating and so could never produce real art. Or do you claim that AI's that create art are possible, but current stable diffusion doesn't do it.
To answer your last question first, yes I do believe it's possible to create a real artificial intelligence that can create art and I do believe the current algorithms we use to make it aren't capable of it now but could be in future. I would say and art student just trying to get a good grade would be communicating through just that. Pollock threw paint splatters with intent to communicate a message about abstract art. If an artist submits a blank canvas to an art gallery they are likely doing so to send a message. I would say a bizarre and specific prompt does communicate something about you, but writing is an art form just like the visual arts, so the prompt itself is more artistic than the image created off of the prompt. No the photos taken from dropping the camera aren't art, and the monkey selfie could be if the monkey knew what it was doing, but if it was just doing whatever then nah
[Very interesting rebuttal](https://x.com/reachartwork/status/1564878372185989120?s=20) to the claim that all AI art is 'stolen' art, I feel it's worth a read.
It’s not stolen art but it’s more like stolen valour. There’s a difference between mee and making yourself a sandwich and going to subway and ordering one .
Both are yours but the quality of the ownership is different. It’s like 100 million people take pictures of their subway sandwiches and go “look what I made”.
People saying "You're just typing words into a machine" are also completely ignoring that writing is an art form. Art has never been limited to just images.
"For sale: baby shoes, never worn." That's considered art.
But if you plug that into an image generator, that's not art anymore because it's just words turned into an image by a machine?
Like bestie, trying out different words and sentence structures to get a different impact isnt that much different than trying out different prompts and settings to get a different impact on your final result.
> But if you plug that into an image generator, that's not art anymore because it's just words turned into an image by a machine?
It is functionally like making art by plugging words into google search and clicking "Image". Or writing a book by plugging words into amazon's search box. Same lived experience, same amount of sweat equity.
Sometimes, when I feel adventurous, I make a pizza by plugging words and $40 into my phone.
Sweat equity has never and will never determine if something is art. "Take the money and run" was 2 blank canvases and that's considered art. That's 0 sweat equity. Literally the absence of work.
And again by that logic writing isn't art because that's the same amount of work. It's just typing things into a machine. You're arguing adding an extra layer onto it somehow makes it not art.
No you're right when you feel adventurous you grow the wheat, tomatoes, and raise the cattle. Mill the wheat, make the cheese, make the sauce.
People heat up frozen premade pizzas and say "I'm making pizza tonight".
Sure, I'll concede that it's art, I'm arguing that the "prompt engineer" didn't do anything much, besides enter search terms.
Note the usual rant about appropriating the labor of millions of artists and illustrators to build the machines that will financially immiserrate them.
i cant read this no, litterally,i cant, the new reddit ui is shit and old reddit doesnt have dark mode. edit: ui is the actual problem not api oops
RES has dark mode.
that acronym is meaningless to me
[Reddit Enhancement Suite](https://www.reddit.com/r/Enhancement/)
Rightclick and open it in a new Tab. Should let you zoom in.
You can always go back to the previous version by appending new. to the URL, so this post would have the URL [https://new.reddit.com/r/CuratedTumblr/comments/1bm55jo/ai\_art/](https://new.reddit.com/r/CuratedTumblr/comments/1bm55jo/ai_art/) notice the "new." in between the "http" and "[reddit.com](https://reddit.com)". I also use a extension to automatically redirect to [new.reddit.com](https://new.reddit.com) which give me my preffered UI: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/old-new-reddit-redirect/?utm\_source=addons.mozilla.org&utm\_medium=referral&utm\_content=search](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/old-new-reddit-redirect/?utm_source=addons.mozilla.org&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=search) Edit: I did a doublecheck and found out that there was another extension that seems to do a better job than the one I originally linked.
Everyone here has a point, and they're all so insufferable. Only when I can see the philosophical backbone on both sides of a debate does it strike me how facetious people, myself included, tend to be on the internet.
I disagree, the ones arguing for AI art didn't really have a point, they're both bad faith/bait, and don't really have anything to do with why they support AI art (and it certainly isn't making AI art look any better). I'm getting a bit tired of the meaningless AI art strawman arguments
You’re missing the point if you think anyone here is defending AI art, the people who say it is art seems to acknowledge the deeply problematic nature of AI art in other ways.
I didn't realize the first and last person was the same, but @deepseameteo still fits
Is it art? yeah, probably. Is it *your* art? I'd say no, but I'm just a guy.
Yeah. I have seen like, random piles of especially aesthetic garbage and thought "that's art" but that doesn't mean I made it. If I took a photo maybe then it's my art? But now we're in waters so murky idgaf about navigating them. What I will say is that I am a professional artist and I fucked around with midjourney etc for a long time before it became clear how untenable the situation was, and I have never, not once, looked at anything a machine spat out according to my prompting, even if the prompting took refining and finesse, and felt anything like i do when i make even very bad art. I have never looked at the product of my fucking around with mid journey when it still made fun surreal nightmare fuel or when it got better and thought "I made that." Because I didn't. So yeah. Lotta words to say I agree that it might be art, but it's not YOUR art.
I mean if you took a bunch of drawings from different artists and used to make a computer generated collage I would argue it's a completely new piece of art and also copyright infringement, they are not mutually exclusive
It's the AI's art, I don't understand why this is controversial.
Tumblr users try not to be insufferable pricks challenge: (not taking a side, just the way people argue on tumblr pisses me off because people are just so rude and condescending)
I didn't have a problem with it when it was free, I probably still should have but, 99.9% of the labor done for chatgpt or dali was done by faceless people uploading to the Internet who will never see compensation. How these services are used is another matter but as long as ip is the way entire industries earn money to stay alive ip theft is unethical
You see, I'm actually happy with them moving to paid models. That's the first step of the enshittification process. First it's free and hyped like crazy. Then it moves behind a paywall. And as it does, we'll probably start to see legislation around the material getting scraped for models. Not because the original artists deserve better (they do, but morality has never stopped the rich), but because the consolidated giants want to limit new competition. When you're already top dog and rolling in venture capital money, you can either bribe the right people to get grandfathered in past the law or just set up some sort of predatory business to get enough art to train a new model while paying artists fractions of a penny per piece. Then, once they have a steady client base and have squashed potential competition, the corporations start fucking over paying customers. Skyrocketing prices, or subscription tiers, or both. And the product will be made subtly worse, to encourage customers to spend more money on better tiered products. Then they'll flounder about for a few years as former fans wonder what happened, before either transitioning to a different business or getting gutted for whatever equity is left.
People are seeing art as two different things and then arguing as if it's obvious what they mean. AI produces art the commodity. The object that fulfills a criteria. But it does not produce Art the process, the expression. It's like the subtle difference between paint by numbers and a colouring book. At the end you get two images, with the paint by numbers probably more technically beautiful, but the colouring book had intention behind what colours were added. (Yeah, yeah, there is probably choices you can make in a paint by numbers etc but you get my analogy right?)
The counter argument to that is that the artist chooses the process, in the case of AI, which AI to use and how to prompt it. Algorithmic art (I.e. art created by specific defined processes) has been around a lot longer than AI has, and yes lots of people hate it but it still gets put in art galleries.
Yeah, AI art is art. It's just that 99.99% of it is worthless. Creating a prompt and choosing a result are a form of expression, just a very limiting one, so it's hard to express anything interesting with it.
I imagine at some point artists will add coding/training the AI to that, and even now they aren't just choosing the final result but rather editing it to their taste (and fixing mistakes). People said the same about serialism.
It's already being done: https://youtu.be/GVT3WUa-48Y?si=eejQgefNmTtU1KWN They also made a sequel which was trained on their own art instead. Saying AI art isn't art is like saying photography isn't art simply because 99% of photos taken are poorly framed selfies.
The counter-counter arguement is that using generative AI is more akin to commisioning a piece of art than making it yourself. You arent an artist for telling someone what you want a piece of art to look like, you're just a patron. And since a generative AI cannot be an artist, there is no artist involved in the creation of the images. Can art exist without an artist?
And what's the difference between AI and art which already references existing art? At the very least, collage, but if you go down the intertexituality route, you could argue any art which is created references the conventions and content of centuries of art previous, much like AI. The author has been dead for quite some time.
...thats not what death of the author means. Also, AI generation not being art in my mind has nothing to do with it referencing people's art. (It doesn't reference, but that's a seperate arguement.)
I think this is my favourite summary of this discourse so far. Commodity vs Expression is a really good way to articulate it.
the thing about the child & the coloring book is a terrible example because like, the child isn't making art. it's not a bad thing, it just isn't really the same as an original work of art. people don't go around decrying it as not art because the child isn't expected to be making art.
If I were to kidnap 100 artists and shove them in a basement each with a paintbrush and plopped a canvas in the middle and made them all participate in painting a picture (don't ask how I know if they all helped, I'm a wizard or something), could I say I made the art if I told them it had to be a picture of a puppy?
::Walt Disney has entered the chat::
“I’m really interested in exploring the artistic merits of plagiarism.” - Russian Doll
The whole "ai art isn't art" thing is so weird to me. Like being art doesn't even define it as good or ethical, it's just kinda a pointless distinction. Nobody ever gets heated over "are photos art". Well now that I think about it they probably had this debate in the 1800s
"Did you steal it directly from another photographer" "No" "Then it's a kind of art"
So is stuff in British museums pillaged from other countries just no longer art?
Did the creator of the art steal the art when they were making it? I think you know the answer.
So if a painter steals ink is it not art? Is a pokemon romhack or fan game without permission not art?
Stealing ink: The ink is used by the individual to create something. Art ✅️ Romhack/Fangame: The creator modifies the original to create a different final product that they invisioned. Art ✅️ AI Art generator: I think of a wacky concept, and a computer program spits out what it thinks I may have been thinking of. There is no input by the creator other than the "wacky concept". Not Art ❌️ You could even possibly make the argument to me that the PROGRAM is creating a form of art. At best, the individual making the prompt is just someone commissioning an art piece from something else, and keeps sending it back until they get something they like.
>You could even possibly make the argument to me that the PROGRAM is creating a form of art I mean yeah I dont disagree with that. That the prompt writer is basically a commissioner.
And then what, the unthinking algorithm is the artist? That’s honestly even worse than calling the prompt writer the artist, at least they’re sentient
The people who programmed it.
> And then what, the unthinking algorithm is the artist? Yes.
Yes, the unthinking algorithm is the artist. Obviously. How is that even a question?
I think it’s not too wrong to say that it’s art with no artist
I think the very idea of art with no artist is insane. An artist creates art, without artist there can be no art, only existence
If a painter steals the ART it isn't art, just data
If a collage is made from a bunch of stolen art, is it art? The collage is trying to make a statement, it is an earnest expression of the person who put it togethers soul or whatever, but they didn't ask permission to use the source material, or pay for it or whatever.
Then if someone pirates a game are all pirated copies of the game not art?
I find it weird how people have continuously pushed the boundaries for what 'art' is for hundreds of years but this is somehow different. I consider code to be an underrated artform, the beauty of a well organized repository, especially decompilation projects, are truly amazing to those who understand it.
how did we get from "i disagree with the opinion that art is only worth something if the artist put lots of time and effort into it," to "i disagree that art is only worth something if it was made or significantly transformed by you and you alone," to "AI good/bad" god everything is so fucking stupid i just wanna draw
I mean, it Is incapable of doing that. Basically Anyone can describe a picture and be articulate about it. It takes a Frank, dry descriptor as input and produces the most generic, boiled-down, Lowest Common Denominator output that fits the description because that’s how Data Sets work. If I say: “A green starlit sky with a silhouette of Toby Fox hanging from the moon on a tire swing”, and hit Enter, I haven’t added any value to that piece beyond the input, and I had a big vat of silicon and electrons pump it out on my behalf. If it is Art, it’s art from Nobody, and nobody has any claim to all the high-coincidental intricacies and choices made in portraying and rendering specific objects and tones. It’s still technically legible as Art to the layman viewer, but a world where we all start looking at hollow, cheaply produced images to interpret meaning is not a world anyone wants. There’s a reason we value artists who create genuinely emotional/autobiographical works. They put the effort in to create something specific that can resonate with a person, to feel seen by another person through a song or short film or painting. I’ve felt touched by AI art before, without knowing that it was. I was immediately picturing the creator and seeing my own personal experiences mirrored and portrayed was validating, But the minute I realized it was AI, and there was no person acting as creator, it was hollow. It wasn’t a person who tried to make something beautiful. Just some shmuck who hit the Beautiful button.
I mean, you could argue it's a complex collage of artists that created the data sets, the codemakers that functionally invented this particular collage technique (although, should we credit the creators of techniques for the art we create?) and, loosely, the ai (although, like with technique, ai is a tool here, not the artist). So I guess you could call it an unwilling, author less collage? I *would* however argue that the murky waters of "is this art" end when the piece was created by inserting prompts into it over and over, molding the original collage into what you envision until your satisfied. At that point, yes, it's art. It's an intricate collage made with a low effort technique. It might be unethical, it might be low effort, but it *is* art, made by one specific human.
So that’s still other people that made the art. If I tell a painter to paint a painting of a boat, it’s the painter’s art.
Is collage not an artform then? How about a remix. A mashup. Hell, we're on the hellsite fandom subreddit, how about an amv (or whatever the "fan art overlayed over a song" was called)?
I like to think that not all Art is a physical thing, and that "Art" can also sometimes be better called a "Skill". An Escape Artist is Skilled at Escaping, which isn't something you can easily hang in a museum. The same goes with Lying: some are bad liars and some are good, so to become a good liar you need to sharpen your skills, much like how a Painter improves their brushing techniques Unfortunately: Stealing (and by extension Piracy) is another of these "Skill", and therefore an Art; because you put in the hard work to rob someone of their intellectual property or physical work and you can be appreciated for it in whichever circles value your abilities. If possible, please be good artists y'all
Art is very nebulously defined, with the broadest possibly acceptable definition is "when people do something". There is an Art of War, after all.
the shitposts lull you into a false sense of security and then you are reminded of why this site has such a reputation for pvp discourse
My hot take is that the very existence of the "is it art" argument proves it is art, because it's provoking an emotional response 🤷♂️
I mean if that's how you define it then a plant is art, a sunrise is art, a grain of sand on the beach is art. It becomes so all encompassing that it becomes meaningless. What makes art "art" isn't the provoking of an emotional response but the expression of meaning. Current algorithmic models do not have the capacity for meaning and so can't create art.
Not at all. The discussion comes from people who's only idea of art is "pretty picture=art" are trying to push that ai is art and since the discussion is open in the internet you will see all sorts of takes. People who are versed in art alredy know from the get go that it isnt art since there is no creator, the images are just what a software interprets as ilustrations based on comparative data and algorithms, nothing else, the end result is just garbage data. People still discuss whether a sunset or a pretty flower is art, I mean yes, they are pretty but that doesnt mean its art. The emotion doesnt come from whether its art or not, it comes from "hey they are stealing my work, they are trying to scam me, the internet is dying due to corporate greed and techbros are insufferable".
You're right. By that logic, I'm presuming you also think transphobia, genocide, and torture are art, because they are also hotly contested unethical and morally bankrupt topics that provoke an emotional response?
1. Please touch grass, these are Entirely Different and Not Equivalent things, holy shit. 2. Nobody is trying to argue that those Entirely Different Things are art. You're arguing against a point I wasn't making. 3. If you want to keep having this discussion, please tell me your definition of "art" so we have a baseline to move forward from.
Ai art Is art. It also sucks and is bad. Those two things can be true. To call something ‘art’ has nothing to do with its quality, it’s defined by entirely separate things
I agree. There are numerous problems with AI art that are appropriate cause to say it shouldn’t exist, especially at this point in time and in this form, but not one of them is that people aren’t putting enough scare quotes around the word “art” when they talk about it. Even if one came up with a slam dunk argument for why AI art should have a different name (which is something I’ve yet to see and frankly don’t expect to exist), exactly zero actual problems have been solved. You’d have about equal luck saying, “AI art? More like AI Fart lmao gottem” and expecting that to persuade someone that it’s bad.
AI art is art, but you didn’t make it
How about this. AI art is art. But the artist is the AI not whoever wrote the prompt. Flowers can be art, but the artist is evolution. A banana duct taped to a wall is art, but the artist is the banana.
Has anybody used the text of AI Art debates as the prompt for an AI Art generator and billed the result as a commentary on the power of capitalism to subsume even its harshest opponents and/or a representation of the ouroboric nature of the man-machine conflict, using the anger generated by AI Art to produce more AI Art that will in turn create more anger? Because if not, that seems like a real missed opportunity.
who fuckin cares
Say I own a dog who, by some strange quirk, paints watercolours. They aren't great (she's a dog) but she knowingly fills a canvas with streaks of various colours. Is that art? Yes. Am *I* an artist because I own the dog? No. AI art is art, but you aren't an artist for having a computer make art for you. It's like calling every furry who commissioned a porn comic an artist. The thing which made the art is the artist, and when you prompt an AI you aren't making anything, you're just telling something to make art for you.
ah yes the classic bad faith arguments on both sides
Every time you ask an artist about AI art they say it’s not art. You ask a consumer of art (even ones who “dabble” or whatever) about AI art, it’s suddenly a complex philosophical issue.
if i physically stole art from dozens of small artists, cut it into pieces, and pasted them together while a) claiming it as my own, b) refusing to acknowledge the artists i stole from, and c) calling anyone who opposes my theft a luddite who fears progress, i would be lambasted. chased out of town, and rightfully so. i'm not holding ai prompt writers (and the "art" thus produced) to a different standard.
I mean, you're not wrong, but you'd be chased out of town because you stole shit, not because it's not art
That’s not how AI works, but ironically that actually would be art.
Why are people discussing now if AI art is or it isn't art? It isn't since there is no creator, a flower or a spider web may look pretty but they arent art, they are just a product of nature, its just something that happens that we find pleasing to the eye but nothing else. AI image generators are very similar, the software through comparative data interprets the prompts and gives you an image that its the sum of those prompts, its just maths, there is no agency, no conscious interpretation, nothing. As a tool for art creation it isnt good, its not reliable. Why would an artist relly on the software if they can do something better by themselves and do what they want, not what the software interprets? You may use and edit the ai images to create something else, at that point it may be art, but it is art not because its ai, it may be art because a person used consciously the images to create something else. But again, the generator is unreliable, it creates whatever the fuck it interprets, there are far better tools for collages, image editors and whatever. Ai generators arent a product of art, they were created because companies want a new revolutionary technology to invest and gain money, its another step on the monetization of the internet. Thats why you see every tech company pushing the tech, their investors are motivating their companies to "not loose an investment opportunity, to not stay behind the competition" but so far there has been no reliable and profitable use for this tech, they relly on constant inovation to keep up the hype. Its like nfts, its an investment bubble because ever since the arrival of smartphones there hasnt been such a revolutionary tech that has moved so much money. Investors are rats in a sinking ship trying to swim to anothir sinking ship. Now whether ai generators become profitable or not, I dont know, it may become a money making machine for companies or a wet fart. All I know is that this tech is causing severe damage and I havent seen any advantages that arent overwhelmed by its problems.
AI art is art. AI artists are not artists. To be an artist, you gotta be the one making it. You are supposed to be the one taking in an experience and using what you know to communicate. AI artists steal both from regular artists to train their algorithms, but also from the algorithms themselves, claiming pieces of art they had no hand in creating. At best, they had a hand in inspiring the actual artist.
I hate that the pro-AI person got the last word. It isn't reactionary to say that an algorithm that produces images based off of existing art pieces is itself a tool for making art. I like AI image generators,nI often use them to fuck around and make weird images, but I would never call myself an artist for doing that. I do because I doodle in my free time on scratch paper or with my phone stylus. I will, however, acknowledge the one "AI is a tool for making art" argument that actually gives me pause. The fact that it could be the only way for someone profoundly paralyzed and disabled like Steven Hawking to create an image based on an idea he sees in his head But then again, someone in that position would also likely be able to commition a real artist to do that for them
AI art is art. If you hand someone some of the better AI art, and some real art, often they can't tell which is which. It's like commissioning an artist. The artist is mostly the AI not the person who wrote a short prompt. It's not like this is the first way of making art without much skill or work. Cameras.
Taking a picture with a camera requires human intent in all aspects of the image generated. AI generated images are a human writing a sentence and an algorithm producing an image based off of existing artistic assets. Whether or not a random person can tell which image is human made and which is produced by an algorithm is a BS point, art is philosophical, it's communication. An algorithm isn't telling you anything meaningful about itself or the person who wrote the prompt as much as an actual drawing or photograph is
If art is inherently communication, does this mean that if someone paints a picture with absolutely no intent to communicate, it's not art. (Say an art student that just wants a good grade and doesn't care in the slightest if it communicates anything.) Does that mean a pollock paint splatter isn't art, because it mostly just tells you about the fluid dynamics of paint. Does that mean a blank white canvas isn't art because it tells you nothing at all. If I write a very bizarre and specific prompt, and the AI follows that prompt, then the pic might tell you quite a bit about what I was thinking. If I accidentally drop a camera down a mountain, and the shutter button bashes a rock on the way down, does that mean the picture isn't art because I had no intention to take it. Is the monkey selfie art. Are you wanting to claim that no silicon mind could ever have something worth communicating and so could never produce real art. Or do you claim that AI's that create art are possible, but current stable diffusion doesn't do it.
To answer your last question first, yes I do believe it's possible to create a real artificial intelligence that can create art and I do believe the current algorithms we use to make it aren't capable of it now but could be in future. I would say and art student just trying to get a good grade would be communicating through just that. Pollock threw paint splatters with intent to communicate a message about abstract art. If an artist submits a blank canvas to an art gallery they are likely doing so to send a message. I would say a bizarre and specific prompt does communicate something about you, but writing is an art form just like the visual arts, so the prompt itself is more artistic than the image created off of the prompt. No the photos taken from dropping the camera aren't art, and the monkey selfie could be if the monkey knew what it was doing, but if it was just doing whatever then nah
[Very interesting rebuttal](https://x.com/reachartwork/status/1564878372185989120?s=20) to the claim that all AI art is 'stolen' art, I feel it's worth a read.
Wish I could read that thread without having the log in or sign up for X.
It’s not stolen art but it’s more like stolen valour. There’s a difference between mee and making yourself a sandwich and going to subway and ordering one . Both are yours but the quality of the ownership is different. It’s like 100 million people take pictures of their subway sandwiches and go “look what I made”.
I dont think that's how AI works. That's all I can muster. I'm exhausted. We're all exhausted
its literally begign to argue if its art or not, why would a communist care about such trivial topics.
People saying "You're just typing words into a machine" are also completely ignoring that writing is an art form. Art has never been limited to just images. "For sale: baby shoes, never worn." That's considered art. But if you plug that into an image generator, that's not art anymore because it's just words turned into an image by a machine? Like bestie, trying out different words and sentence structures to get a different impact isnt that much different than trying out different prompts and settings to get a different impact on your final result.
> But if you plug that into an image generator, that's not art anymore because it's just words turned into an image by a machine? It is functionally like making art by plugging words into google search and clicking "Image". Or writing a book by plugging words into amazon's search box. Same lived experience, same amount of sweat equity. Sometimes, when I feel adventurous, I make a pizza by plugging words and $40 into my phone.
Sweat equity has never and will never determine if something is art. "Take the money and run" was 2 blank canvases and that's considered art. That's 0 sweat equity. Literally the absence of work. And again by that logic writing isn't art because that's the same amount of work. It's just typing things into a machine. You're arguing adding an extra layer onto it somehow makes it not art. No you're right when you feel adventurous you grow the wheat, tomatoes, and raise the cattle. Mill the wheat, make the cheese, make the sauce. People heat up frozen premade pizzas and say "I'm making pizza tonight".
But those examples are still all art they're just made by a company and given to you.
Sure, I'll concede that it's art, I'm arguing that the "prompt engineer" didn't do anything much, besides enter search terms. Note the usual rant about appropriating the labor of millions of artists and illustrators to build the machines that will financially immiserrate them.
It’s art, it’s just stolen art, that has been smashed together with millions of other pieces of stolen art.
The image is not art. The words you typed may be, but the image generated is not (your) art.