Technology

I made a comment about a week ago about how copying people's art is still art, and it was a bit of an aha moment as I pinpointed for myself a big part of why I find image generators and the like so soulless, inwardly echoing a lot of what Inman lays out here.

All human made art, from the worst to the best, embodies the effort of the artist. Their intent and their skill. Their attempt to make something, to communicate something. It has meaning. All generative art does is barf up random noise that looks like pictures. It's impressive technology, and I understand that it's exciting, but it's not art. If humans ever end up creating actual artificial intelligence, then we can talk about machine made art. Until then, it's hardly more than a printer in terms of artistic merit.

I often hear AI enthusiasts say that AI democratized art. As if art weren't already democratized. Most anyone can pick up a pen, draw, write, type, move a mouse, etc. What AI democratizes in art, is the perception of skill. Which is why when you find out a piece of art was made by inputting some short prompt into a generator, you become disappointed. Because it would be cool, if the person actually had the skill to draw that. Pushing a few buttons to get that, not so much.

Edit:spelling and spacing

I think this is completely missing the point when it's talking about "the minutiae of art". It's making two claims at the same time: art is better when you suffer for it and the art is good whether or not you suffered. But none of that is relevant.

When Wyeth made Christina's World, I don't know if he suffered or not when painting that grass. What I do know is that he was a human with limited time and the fact that he spent so much of his time detailing every blade of grass means that he's saying something. That The Oatmeal doesn't draw backgrounds might be because he's lazy, but he also doesn't need them. These are choices we make to put effort in one part and ignore some other part.

AI doesn't make choices. It doesn't need to. A detailed background is exactly the same amount of work as a plain one. And so a generated picture has this evenly distributed level of detail, no focus at all. You don't really know where to look, what's important, what the picture is trying to say. Because it's not saying anything. It isn't a rat with a big butt, it's just a cloud of noise that happens to resemble a rat with a big butt.

What a beautiful read. I feel the same about AI art and I remember a longer talk I had with my tattoo artist: 'I need the money so I will do AI based tattoos my clients bring to me. But they have no soul, no story, no individuality. They are not a part of you.'

I feel the same.

Also I like Oatmeal's reference to Wabi Sabi: The perfection of imperfection in every piece of art.

Thanks for sharing! I haven't read much of the Oatmeal in quite a while but I've always liked their style and humor.

I appreciate this bit out of context:

Also loved the shoutout to Allie Brosh!

That was a beautiful read.

But do i find myself conflicted about dismissing it as a potential technical skill all together.

I have seen comfy-ui workflows that are build in a very complex way, some have the canvas devided in different zones, each having its own prompts. Some have no prompts and extract concepts like composition or color values from other files.

I compare these with collage-art which also exists from pre existing material to create something new.

Such tools take practice, there are choices to be made, there is a creative process but its mostly technological knowledge so if its about such it would be right to call it a technical skill.

The sad reality however, is how easy it is to remove parts of that complexity “because its to hard” and barebones it to simple prompt to output. At which point all technical skill fades and it becomes no different from the online generators you find.

"Yes, but I'll be quick, I promise."

Isn't quick.

As a passable quality 3D artist who does it for a living I've found AI art (which can do 3D now to some degree) has kind of narrowed the scope for me. If you want generic Unreal style pseudo-realism or disney toon then AI can do that for you* I've had to focus much more on creating a unique style and also optimizing my work in ways that AI just doesn't have the ability to do because they require longer chains of actual reasoning.

For AI in general I think this pattern holds, it can quickly create something generic and increasingly do it without extranious fingers but no matter how much you tweak a prompt its damn near impossible to get a specific idea into image form. Its like a hero shooter with skins VS actually creating your own character.

*Right now AI models use more tris to re-create the default blender cube than my entire lifetime portfolio but I'm assuming that can be resolved since we already have partially automated re-topology tools.

This was a great read! As someone who was initially excited about the possibilities of AI art, it's been hit or miss with me.

I've come to realise over time that I like the connection that art offers. The little moment of 'I wonder what the artist was thinking when they imagined this and what experiences did someone have to get to a place where they could visualize and create this?'

And I think that's what missing with AI art. Sure, it can enable someone like me who has no skill with drawing to create something but it doesn't get to the point of putting my actual imagination down. The repeated tries can only get to point of 'close enough'.

For me, looking at a piece and then learning it's AI art is basically realizing that I'm looking at a computer generated imitation of someone's imagination. Except the imitation was created by describing the art instead of the imitator ever looking at it. An connection I could have felt with original human is watered down as to be non-existent.

That was excellent. Thanks for sharing... although I'm more into pottery, I'm sure some soulless shithead will want to "democratize" it with a janky robot hand controlled by a dumb algo.

I want to touch on how he mentions hitting the button to automatically make music on a Casio keyboard.

I fully realize I'm being reductive to the point of being offensive but that's not my intent and I preemptively apologize, when I say: that's at least in part, the very first seed to becoming a professional DJ. That's not nothing.

Using AI to generate images can be the same thing if it's extrapolated out into complexity and layered nuance. It might not make you an artist exactly, in the same way that a DJ might not be a musician but it IS a skillset that potentially has value.

And even if you think I'm totally off-base in saying so? I liked pretending with the little automatic music button on the keyboard.

That was a really good take on the whole thing. The Oatmeal is my people.

I watched a short saying you might be an art director, at best, but not really an artist. Because you have the vision but you're only telling someone (something) to materialize it. I was kind of happy with that.

I was kinda against their argument at first, then I was with them and continued reading. But then they went into all sorts of detail, weighing pros and cons etc., and after reading more than half I evtl. gave up.

It seems all "why AI is bad" articles seem to go this way.

It seems all "why AI is bad" articles unwillingly even support the hype.

Fuck AI "art", it's not art you morons, it's automation, which takes away real people's jobs. The current implementations made by greedy companies also very obviously steal. 'nuff said.

I forgot how loooong Oatmeal cartoons are. I don't think I have made it to the end of one in years.

One thing I've found interesting with AI art is that it's changed how I look at handmade art. It is similar in a way to appreciating a handmade piece of furniture or a machine compared to a mass produced commodity item. Art that I previously would have dismissed instantly sometimes makes me think for a second about the artist and how it was made, even when it lacks a professional level of quality. That said, I've also seen enough AI art that I can distinguish between garbage slop and something (at least a little) interesting made in Comfy UI. There's always been a lot of low quality art out there, but I think the real issue is with people trying to pass off low effort generated slop as real art, rather than the gen-AI tech itself (environmental impact notwithstanding).

Haha. "Keith".