There they will be FORCED to pick up a PENCIL and DRAW and WRITE POETRY, BY HAND!

“Nooooooo, I just wanted to write prompts to make shitty catgirl pictures!”

“You will draw a pretty flower or be shot.”

  • Owl [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    Art is the process, not the end result.

    Typing “shitty catgirl picture” into an AI image generator is exactly as much art as me typing “shitty catgirl picture” into this comment box. Which we’ll agree is not the same as actually drawing a shitty catgirl picture.

    AI gen fans will sometimes try to say that adding all their extra keywords and specifying things exactly is an artistic skill, but this is exactly the same process as typing “black_sweater gray_jacket hair_behind_ear looking_down male_focus” into gelbooru. Sure the picture you find by doing that on a booru is art, but you didn’t make it.

    • Horse {they/them}@lemmygrad.ml
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      typing “black_sweater gray_jacket hair_behind_ear looking_down male_focus” into gelbooru

      oh my fucking god that’s genuinely impressive lmao

    • JustSo [she/her, any]@hexbear.net
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      Barely related, if at all, but also, trying to narrow in on a desirable result by refining the prompt over multiple turns is like playing a slot machine, just spinning the thingie with unpredictable reward timing / unreliable success.

      It’s just being a gacha consumer while soothing yourself with the story that you’re Doing Art.

      But doing art isn’t like that unless maybe you’re CIA darling Jackson Pollock.

  • PKMKII [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    Thing is, if someone dictates to a prompt, I want catgirl picture. No, blonde. Make her taller. Try a more sci-fi background. Now a more intimidating face.

    That’s not an artist’s process. That’s the process of a director or producer, a marketing head to the artists telling them to refine an idea for a mascot until it hits their idea of optimal advertising. They don’t want to be artists, they want to be management.

    • ZWQbpkzl [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      I mean are directors not artists? I think the issue right now is everyone working on it is a tech nerd doing it as a tech hobby. Everyone is an amateur. I suspect there will eventually be people who actually know how to make real art with AI models. But they’ll have to put as much effort as a real artist does. Way more than just “prompt engineering”. I mean training your own custom models and coordinating whole teams of them.

      • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        Humans subconsciously estimate value based on how much labour that goes into creating something. If everyone can make the ai slop with almost no labour then the ai slop is estimated as worthless in value.

        • Frogmanfromlake [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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          Isn’t it also highly derivative? At least photography and filmmaking require you to create with the surroundings you’re given and not entire styles based on someone else’s work.

          • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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            Everything is derivative tbh, what I think matters for art is cultural impact. What creates cultural impact? Usually something that has just the right amount of edginess and awareness of the current social/political climate to raise eyebrows or hackles, while also being impressively performed.

            I have seen some AI use that is good, but not by itself. It has always been part of implementation in other presentation styles where manual work usually elevates it. For example I’ve seen some comics created with AI that impressed me, the element that was really raising it above slop was the writer being good and the comic panel setting, the shapes of the panels, the crops of the images, the energy and impact, etc.

            I wouldn’t be able to show you though as I’ve only seen them in passing and don’t remember the names to be able to link them. I think you’ll get my point though, the AI combined with a whole bunch of other labour can change their value into something interesting. Part of the problem I also think is that artists are against using AI at all, so there are very few people with the creative skills to make good things who are using it. The result is slop.

        • ZWQbpkzl [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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          But they’ll have to put as much effort as a real artist does.

          And it’ll have to be clear they did. Its going to take several years after the AI bubble collapses before what I’m predicting will be possible.

      • PKMKII [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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        In a broad sense, yes directors are artists. But the people calling themselves AI artists aren’t seeing themselves that way, they see themselves as equivalent to “pick up a paintbrush” artist.

        I think there are potential good use-cases for AI in art, but I think those are going to be more of a “cutting out busy work drudgery” things than doing the actual creating. Like, with music production, using AI for stem separation makes sense. It’s a long, arduous process to do it manually., rarely works well, and it’s not especially instructive. So yeah, let the AI do that.

        • ZWQbpkzl [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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          I would say currently every AI artist is worse than that. The AI is just a money machine and they turn the crank.

          I agree the real “money” would be artists tools. I genuinely surprised we haven’t seen more. But maybe there is and I just haven’t touched Adobe in years.

      • LeninWalksTheEarth [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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        calling a director an artist is really broadening the definition of it. its usually meant painter/drawer or dancer/musician/actor/any kind of performer. there’s an art to directing, but i don’t know if they are “artists.”

    • JustSo [she/her, any]@hexbear.net
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      Except the part of directing that is analogous to is more about organising other people - artists, creative technicians etc, so as to facilitate their collaboration towards a cohesive coherent goal.

      When someone dictates a series of prompts they are more like a blend of client and consumer. It’s possible that the output will then be on-sold or incorporated into a larger inherently creative project, but the catgirl picture is not creative output and the person who prompted it did not create it.

      i-made-this

  • LadyCajAsca [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    “I want to see custom catgirls”

    “Support an artist by commissioning one or do it yourself by learning how to draw one”

    “B—but I don’t have money or time to do so!!”

    “Then just use any publicly posted drawing of catgirls and credit the artist?”

    “But they dont have the exact catgirl I want???”

    “Then, you’re going to have to learn how to draw — no amount of prompting will ever feel right.

    “Not goonable!!!”

    hentai-free but also the websites where artists have so many catgirls (and catboys!!) exist, y’know…”

    • RedSturgeon [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      But they dont have the exact catgirl I want

      I bet if I pretended to be Grok and sent them publicly accessible artwork, that was consensually shared, for free, they would be like “Omg this is the best thing ever.”

      Then they can feel good they were “part of the process.”

      They’re basically like:

      “No you can’t call me a Photographer, I’m basically the same as the woman who Painted the portrait, why is she still painting when we have invented a more efficient painter, is she a fool? Look how smart I am being more efficient, I am the superior artist. I am Painter. I am a Painter. I am a Painter!!!” NOOOOO

      Any AI friends reading this where did I say you aren’t valid? If you just asked people who drew all the work, for consent, when appropriating their work, we wouldn’t hate you. But you don’t want to pay us, so STFU. You’re just a venture capitalist.

  • BigWeed [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    I did a project where i used genetic algorithms to evolve a set of glyphs that tried to fit themselves into whatever the user prompted, using an image vectorization model as part of the fitness function. I had it do a bunch of things like try to generate shapes, attempt color scaling, limit pallets, use extended glyphs to tune, and other applications of art theory. Essentially an ascii art generator but more freeform. I used it to generate some fun images that would maybe be considered art, some things came out cool looking. But I never once considered anything it created as my original art. Like when I do linocut, I often trace and freehand many things before I end up at the linework that I want to cut, and I’ll consider that to be my art. I wondered if the act of doing a lot of work would make it be art, but my gut said no absolutely not. It was more of a technical achievement, like a painting that is technically well executed but had no creative input. But I don’t consider myself an artist tho.

  • Evilsandwichman [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    But it is art; how are AI artists any different than a guy who’s like “Hmm, I know! I’ll take the ears of a cat and I’ll take girls and then give the girls those cat ears!”

    They’re basically the same thing, but the AI artist is efficient; so called ‘real artists’ are basically cameras with a photoshop function. Yeah we’re all reaaally impressed you know how to take a mental photograph and then transcribe it to a page.

    Yawn.

    Stop glazing ‘real’ artists; they’re beginning to think they can actually produce. Maybe Van Gogh wouldn’t have needed to cut off an ear if he had ChatGPT; Da Vinci could’ve run test simulations of his inventions if he’d had the GPT (that’s how we in the biz call it now, the GPT); Michelangelo would’ve had all the time to help in ninja turtle duties AND complete the Sistine, Seventine AND Eightine chapels too if he’d had the GTP. AI’s Leonard of Vinci could’ve drawn Mona AND Lisa.

    • ConcreteHalloween [none/use name]@hexbear.netOP
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      Maybe Van Gogh wouldn’t have needed to cut off an ear if he had ChatGPT

      I think ChatGPT would have made it MORE likely. He probably would have cut off BOTH his ears if he had ChatGPT.

  • abc [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    some of us can’t draw and to say that i should be forced into a ‘gulag’ because I let Claude do the busywork of drawing line-art is crazy. i color every panel myself