…care to contribute a link to their favorite site for an AI activity? I’d be really interested in seeing what’s out there, but the field is moving and growing so fast and search engines suck so hard that I know I’m missing out.
Cure my FOMO please!
Question: are you aware that most AI “art” is actually just cobbled together assets from human artists, often without permission from said artists?
Serious question here. Genuinely wondering if you’re aware.
Edit: I might’ve come across as rude. This was not intended and I apologize if it was.
Edit 2:
2023-11-11 – Was looking through some past comments and thought I’d edit this one with something important: I was wrong. The comments below mine taught me some important facts about AI art that I was not aware. These kind users took the time to educate me, and I appreciate that. AI art generation is a lot more nuanced than I gave it credit for. Please don’t be past Me. Past Me was kind of a dick for their original comment here, even if they didn’t fully mean to be.
Shove off, you rude person. I’m trying to be polite with a genuine question and here you are being a dick. Fuck off.
You’re not being polite or asking a genuine question, you’re spreading lies under the guise of asking questions.
When you put something out there, you allow for the possibility that people will see your work and incorporate it into their mental catalog of art and artistic process
…except when a person is doing it, they’re doing their own thing to it. They take an idea or two and filter it through their own lens and stylise it
Think about it like this - when you do data scraping, you’re still interpreting the results. You’re looking at the data and going ‘ok from this I can draw X and Y conclusions based on this and that’. AI art is like if we removed you from the process - we just shoved all the data into a black box and it goes ding “X is Y”. If you asked it why that’s so, it wouldn’t be able to tell you. You can’t see how it works so you have no idea if it’s reasoning makes scientific sense. It would not be admissible in a paper.
If you pirate shit then you have no ground to stand on for complaining about AI training.
…don’t most people kinda agree you don’t pirate from small artists where piracy is actually hurting them? There’s like, honour along thieves when it comes to piracy, and this is stepping all over the little guy who’s actually hurt by this just to get your grubby little hands on something you think you’re entitled to
Hey I got no problem with referencing art, but one should at least give credit for works referenced. Also, the AI isn’t actually sentient, so it’s just a generative algorithm; it’s not actually creatively making derivative works.
So piracy isn’t I feel a 1:1 comparison. At least in most forms of software piracy, the pirates still leave in the credits/splashscreen/whatever.
Yes, I had heard that. But isn’t all art? None of us is truly original. We are borrowing all the time. Even the greatest ones borrow.
Except I’m a sentient being; these so-called “AI” programs aren’t actually sentient. They have no self-awareness. It’s just a stream of IF/THEN statements with no actual awareness of said art.
I feel that’s the difference. I have nothing against non-human art as a principle. When these “A.I.” programs actually gain self-awareness and then create art, then I will gladly consider it genuine art.
Generative art allows more people to communicate with others in ways they couldn’t before, and to inspire and be inspired by others. The stuff people post online still requires creativity, curiosity, experimentation, and refinement. It also requires learning how to use new skills they may not have had to effectively use new tools that are rapidly evolving and improving to express themselves. Generative art is not a passive process, but an active one, where human artists get a chance to create something unique and meaningful.
Think of it like a camera that that can navigate the multidimensional latent space filled with concepts that can give rise to novel digital art. In the real world you can up, down, left, right, in or out, but in a latent space not only can you go those places, you can go to where Muppets meets impasto. Like a camera, sometimes none of the things you capture are made by you, but you still choose how it’s captured and presented.
You have a lot in common with Charles Baudelaire, even though you’re a hundred years apart from eachother.
As the photographic industry was the refuge of every would-be painter, every painter too ill-endowed or too lazy to complete his studies, this universal infatuation bore not only the mark of a blindness, an imbecility, but had also the air of a vengeance. I do not believe, or at least I do not wish to believe, in the absolute success of such a brutish conspiracy, in which, as in all others, one finds both fools and knaves; but I am convinced that the ill-applied developments of photography, like all other purely material developments of progress, have contributed much to the impoverishment of the French artistic genius, which is already so scarce. It is nonetheless obvious that this industry, by invading the territories of art, has become art’s most mortal enemy, and that the confusion of their several functions prevents any of them from being properly fulfilled.
-Charles Baudelaire, On Photography, from The Salon of 1859
I believe that generative art, warts and all, is a vital new form of art that is shaking things up, challenging preconceptions, and getting people angry - just like art should. Generative art introduces new ways to fail that no one is ready for, so if you see someone post some malformed monstrosity somewhere, cut them some slack, they’re just learning. Remember there’s another person on the other end of the internet that was excited to share with you.
Remember: It costs nothing to encourage an artist, and the potential benefits are staggering. A pat on the back to an artist now could one day result in your favorite film, or the cartoon you love to get stoned watching, or the song that saves your life. Discourage an artist, you get absolutely nothing in return, ever.
― Kevin Smith, Tough Shit: Life Advice from a Fat, Lazy Slob Who Did Good
There is not a single if/else in a neural network. You are confusing it with decision trees that are used for classification
It’s just a stream of IF/THEN statements with no actual awareness of said art.
Just like your brain neurons.
You’re comparing different things. That’s not a valid, good-faith comparison.
Conscience arises from a complex system. Just like generative data does - to a different degree.
I really don’t care if it’s “genuine” art or not. If it looks cool, it looks cool.