I think it’s very hard to make the argument that photography is “real art” AND that the output of a diffusion model is never.

You’re the one gatekeeping work. Don’t make a dumb argument against your own dumb argument.

What I said was hyperbole, but it isn’t invalid. You’re claiming direct control over an independent process simply because it happens to be deterministic for any unique set of prompts.

But honestly, my arguement isn’t that complicated…

If the argument against AI is that it’s too little work, then Photography neesds to step it’s fucking game up.

When you take a photo, you’re the one taking the photo. You physically go to the location, you frame the shot, you’re the one who has to make sure the lighting is right, even that the camera is set properly.

When you draw a art, whether paint or digital, you’re the one doing each and every brushstroke, deciding each and every detail as you draw.

There’s a clear human creative element not just deciding what to photograph/draw, but in how every part of it is done.

There’s a reason most people hire a photographer for special occasions like weddings, and not just Bob down the road with his IPhone - good photography takes skill.

Whereas for AI art, all you’re doing is providing instruction to the AI, that then goes on to make all these decisions. It connects the dots between your prompts, it decides where everything goes, what brushstrokes to make. It draws the art, it generates the image.

If the argument against AI is that irrelevant companies get to profit off of others’ work, then say that. Don’t make stupid arguments.

That is a valid argument, and one I actually have made before. If you don’t own your training data, then how can you possibly claim ownership of anything that comes out of the AI, since it’s not just inspired by that data, it is working/pulling directly from that data. But, that is not the argument I’m making.

Edit: Do I have direct control of the LLMs that Samsung uses to sharpen the photos on my phone? Do I not still own them? You’re yelling at clouds.

Now that is a stupid arguement. Having an AI sharpen an image you already took and own is not the same as having it generate the entire image for you by instruction and then claiming that as your own.

You could transform that AI work into something you own and claim copyright over that transformative work, but the original work the AI made isn’t your’s to claim.

By your definition, you could copyright a screenshot from Google streetview without doing anything transformative to it because you prompted Google where to take you, and decided where to screenshot.