Do AI Image generators create "Art"?

[accelafine]

Right but that's just details. You said "the person who types in the input creates the art", which means realistically it's possible for a human to "create art", based on what you said, by typing in very few words and getting something you count as art out of the machine. Now I don't have access to your brain so I'm not attempting to guess what you count as art, that's why it's "just details" - only you know what you count as art. That's your concern, not mine. Mine here is that someone can type a few words and immediately be an artist according to you. Whether those few words are "mona Lisa" or something else.

You sound like a painter from a bygone era noting that photographers "can just push down on the shutter button and be an artist, absurd!"

And maybe that's a bad position - but if it is, you gotta argue for it.

3 years ago, you could ALSO type in a few words and get a picture back. It's called, hiring someone for a commission. You'd hire some guy, say "I want an illustration of this", and he'd make it for you. Even give you rough drafts so you could change up some details before he fully renders it, if you want.

But in that scenario, NOBODY would call you the artist for sending a few words off for some other guy to illustrate.

But now, with AI, people want to be called an artist for the same thing that 3 years ago was objectively -not- being an artist. I definitely don't think it's trivial that we should consider a prompter an artist. Maybe we should, but if we should it's not a trivial, obvious truth - I don't think so.

We've established that typing in "mona lisa" doesn't make you an artist, so what would someone have to type in to be an artist? Is there a minimum amount of effort, or minimum amount of originality?

I'm going to generate a few images right now by typing in 5 words or less, I want you to tell me if it makes me an artist, okay?

https://imgur.com/a/DycaocC

Now, knowing that I did little more than type 5 words, do any of these images --make me an artist--?

It's AI simulating art. What's the point in the 'brush strokes' and 'paint look'? You can see brush strokes on actual paintings because the actual artist has used an actual brush and actual paint

[FlashDangerpants]

I'm going to generate a few images right now by typing in 5 words or less, I want you to tell me if it makes me an artist, okay?

https://imgur.com/a/DycaocC

Now, knowing that I did little more than type 5 words, do any of these images --make me an artist--?

The five word prompt constraint could be considered a valid creative technique, perhaps these paintings are like haiku.

Two of those look like the prompt was just "portrait of a sad man", but the third one must be quite a leap of imagination from any 5 word prompt I can imagine. Although it also looks like quite a common tattoo design, and also something I would very likely see in my grandma's special cupboard for fancy dinnerware.

The first puts me in mind of factory produced "decor art" that gets sold to tourists for $10, it uses the same blotchy impasto techniques to quickly form a blob of a picture in muddy colours. Do we consider those art?

Both portraits distort the faces to accentuate the orbital sockets and / or cheek bones. I think the algorithm might be a bit skewed towards pointy-outy cheek bones when dudes need to look moody and pensive. That's something which could for sure be corrected in Photoshop rather quickly - probably with an AI brush. Would that make the creator a real artist?

Oddly, the second painting has the guy's face distorted into a shape resembling a shoe. The shoes in the third could benefit from a similar treatment, I think they might be on the wrong feet. But it's fun because it has that completely unnecessary goldfish that might be there to cover up that the software didn't know how to compose the rear end of the blue fish, or is just there for that pop of complementary colour to throw shade on the whole Teal and Orange Movie Posters meme from 10 years ago.

Compared to the jumble of slop fishpi presented in his youtube link, a man with deformed legs - possibly intended to be crossed but fucked up? - and a confusing jumble of a bag full of half-potato-half-goldfish blobs is really quite good.

[Flannel Jesus]

The prompts were

Moody oil painting sad man

Art nouveau illustration man fishing

Now I don't think it's disagreeable for me to say that if you sent that prompt and 500 bucks to an illustrator who does commissions, and he sent you something like that back, you, the prompter, wouldn't be the artist. Right?

It seems weird to me that people think that changes when it's not a human illustrator, but an ai. When you ask a human to do it, you're not an artist, but when you ask an ai to do it you are. Hmmm...

[Walker]

[*] Can AI make art?

Maybe in the future when AI can change its own programming out of reactionary need, like humans do, it will be able to transmit energy through art, like humans do.

[Flannel Jesus]

[*] Can AI make art?

Maybe in the future when AI can change its own programming out of reactionary need, like humans do, it will be able to transmit energy through art, like humans do.

Transmit energy like... as in, affect the emotions of a human being?

If that's what you mean, then I'd wager there are already people who have been emotionally impacted by some ai images in a way that's comparable to some human made images. MOST ai images don't, of course, but hell most human made images don't either.

[LuckyR]

Right but that's just details. You said "the person who types in the input creates the art", which means realistically it's possible for a human to "create art", based on what you said, by typing in very few words and getting something you count as art out of the machine. Now I don't have access to your brain so I'm not attempting to guess what you count as art, that's why it's "just details" - only you know what you count as art. That's your concern, not mine. Mine here is that someone can type a few words and immediately be an artist according to you. Whether those few words are "mona Lisa" or something else.

You sound like a painter from a bygone era noting that photographers "can just push down on the shutter button and be an artist, absurd!"

And maybe that's a bad position - but if it is, you gotta argue for it.

3 years ago, you could ALSO type in a few words and get a picture back. It's called, hiring someone for a commission. You'd hire some guy, say "I want an illustration of this", and he'd make it for you. Even give you rough drafts so you could change up some details before he fully renders it, if you want.

But in that scenario, NOBODY would call you the artist for sending a few words off for some other guy to illustrate.

But now, with AI, people want to be called an artist for the same thing that 3 years ago was objectively -not- being an artist. I definitely don't think it's trivial that we should consider a prompter an artist. Maybe we should, but if we should it's not a trivial, obvious truth - I don't think so.

We've established that typing in "mona lisa" doesn't make you an artist, so what would someone have to type in to be an artist? Is there a minimum amount of effort, or minimum amount of originality?

I'm going to generate a few images right now by typing in 5 words or less, I want you to tell me if it makes me an artist, okay?

https://imgur.com/a/DycaocC

Now, knowing that I did little more than type 5 words, do any of these images --make me an artist--?

Well to my mind, "art" isn't the physical object, it's what the artist is trying to say through a physical object (sound waves in the case of music). Thus the Campbell soup graphics dept aren't artists and Andy Warhol was. Another illustrative analogy, our local zoo is the leader in elephant husbandry (apparently), and as a fundraiser for the facility, the matriarch elephant has canvases put in her area with nontoxic paint and through various mechanisms ends up with what looks like an abstract painting. It's called "art", it's sold for a relatively high price, at an "art" auction, the buyer hangs it proudly in his home as an "art" piece, but to me it's not art, it's perhaps physically indistinguishable from someone else's art, but it's "artiness" doesn't derive from it's physicality, rather from the intention of the artist. Thus, to answer your question, your pictures aren't art, BUT an actual artist CAN use the same program as a tool to create art.

[Flannel Jesus]

Intention definitely seems like a central word here. Even more important perhaps than effort or skill. The tricky thing with ai art is that it's kind of impossible to know how much intention went into any given piece from the prompter. You only know my lack of intention on that art nouveau piece because I told you - someone else could have produced a remarkably similar image with complete intent, working for a specific vision.

With pre-ai art, intention was pretty unambiguous (the specific intent is ambiguous, but THAT it was intentional is usually not). With ai though... it's making so many decisions for you that it's hard to tell what is and isn't "intent" to a viewer.

So if five words isn't enough intent to call me the artist of that piece, what do you think would be?

[ThinkOfOne]

I've dabbled in illustration for the last few years, and in doing so, found myself becoming loosely involved in many art communities. About 3 years ago, ai image generators like midjourney started becoming... let's say, mildly appealing, but not convincing. At the time, most of the art community didn't really care. So a computer could generate a weird surreal painting with loads of mistakes, cool, who cares? That was the vibe back then.

And then it got better.

And better.

Now, we're at the point where it's not unusual for "AI artists" to accept art commission projects and get paid for the generated images. Some companies even get some of their projects' art needs met through ai image generation, allowing them to hire fewer human artists - in some cases, perhaps even NO human artists.

The art communities are paying attention and many of them are pretty upset about the whole thing. There's a term now, "AI slop", used to describe the flooding of the internet with low effort, easy access AI images, made by people who largely never cared to learn how to make art by hand.

So now there's a big tension within art communities right now, with the following questions becoming central:

• Can AI make art?
• If it does, is the person who prompted it the artist?
• What minimum amount of involvement does it take for an AI user to call himself "the artist" of an image
• What kinds of ethical considerations need to be made in regards to this technology displacing the jobs of human beings who would otherwise have been employed doing this work?

Depends on the definition of "art". The following is a definition that I've found useful:

"Art" is a demonstration of an extremely deep level of understanding of a subject. The deeper the subject and the deeper the demonstration of understanding of the subject, the more superior the work of art. The deeper the understanding that you have, the greater the appreciation you can have for the work of art.

Most of what is often called "art" falls well short of this. Mimicry, not matter how well rendered, falls short. How much, if any, AI-generated "art" brings more to the table than mimicry?

[FlashDangerpants]

Depends on the definition of "art". The following is a definition that I've found useful:

"Art" is a demonstration of an extremely deep level of understanding of a subject. The deeper the subject and the deeper the demonstration of understanding of the subject, the more superior the work of art. The deeper the understanding that you have, the greater the appreciation you can have for the work of art.

I really don't like that as a defintion of art. Where does it come from?

[FlashDangerpants]

The prompts were

Moody oil painting sad man

Art nouveau illustration man fishing

Now I don't think it's disagreeable for me to say that if you sent that prompt and 500 bucks to an illustrator who does commissions, and he sent you something like that back, you, the prompter, wouldn't be the artist. Right?

It seems weird to me that people think that changes when it's not a human illustrator, but an ai. When you ask a human to do it, you're not an artist, but when you ask an ai to do it you are. Hmmm...

I certainly concede that in a simple case where a prompt such as "Art nouveau illustration man fishing" you end up with picture 3 in that show, the person providing the prompt has no plausible claim to being an artist simply on the basis of such work. Yet I am reminded of an old comedy bit in which a comedian made a bunch of car insurance claims into the basis of a stand-up routine, and I am forced to hold fire because there is nothing stopping you from making art out of any old shit you happen to find lying about, such is the nature of art.

I am further disinclined to describe the AI that produces the work as an artist either. I am willing to bite the logical bullet that goes with this and say that if the same work is outputted by a human (or something so similar I couldn't distinguish) that also would be too derivative and basic to really count as art - however there are a lot of people on Instagram and Pinterest who would feel very badly slighted by that last bit because fundamentally they aren't better artists than that. Some of this is down to me not being all that nice.

I think there is a real problem with saying what is and what is not art, and I think that makes it impossible to accurately say who is and is not an artist. I don't understand the average Turner Prize winner, I would be very surprised if you agreed with me about what constitutes great Rock and Roll music. This is all uncodifiable, and most of the time we decide what qualifies by looking at who is admired for their good taste and then copying that person's example. Every time an artistic revolution comes along, the current arbiters of taste get replaced by more of the same problem.

The twee doodlings of Steve McDonald probably aren't the thing to deliver such revolution. Somebody more dramatic will come along and show a real way to create art with AI. I believe we make a great error if we assume this cannot be done or judge in advance that it cannot be legitimate. But I look at those derivative moody oil paintings of sad men and I think maybe I won't hold my breath.

[Walker]

More like pre-emotional direct physical influence, like the intimidating battle cries before and during a Zulu charge, where one need not intellectually process any conceptual meaning of the sounds to receive the energy. Or in terms of painting, like the fauvists inducing mind movement with the advancing and receding of colors that Cezanne explored, albeit less luridly.

[LuckyR]

Intention definitely seems like a central word here. Even more important perhaps than effort or skill. The tricky thing with ai art is that it's kind of impossible to know how much intention went into any given piece from the prompter. You only know my lack of intention on that art nouveau piece because I told you - someone else could have produced a remarkably similar image with complete intent, working for a specific vision.

With pre-ai art, intention was pretty unambiguous (the specific intent is ambiguous, but THAT it was intentional is usually not). With ai though... it's making so many decisions for you that it's hard to tell what is and isn't "intent" to a viewer.

So if five words isn't enough intent to call me the artist of that piece, what do you think would be?

Well, what is your vision? What are you trying to say? Probably not that pixelated representations can be made in an oil painting style. A photo in a magazine of an oil painting wasn't "art" in the pre-AI era, why would anyone loosen the criteria in the AI era? OTOH, an artist can take numerous cuttings from magazines and create art in a collage style (using source material from, say National Geographic). Similarly a present day legit artist could take several AI generated images and personally manipulate them to come up with his own legit art, with source material from AI.

[Flannel Jesus]

Intention definitely seems like a central word here. Even more important perhaps than effort or skill. The tricky thing with ai art is that it's kind of impossible to know how much intention went into any given piece from the prompter. You only know my lack of intention on that art nouveau piece because I told you - someone else could have produced a remarkably similar image with complete intent, working for a specific vision.

With pre-ai art, intention was pretty unambiguous (the specific intent is ambiguous, but THAT it was intentional is usually not). With ai though... it's making so many decisions for you that it's hard to tell what is and isn't "intent" to a viewer.

So if five words isn't enough intent to call me the artist of that piece, what do you think would be?

Well, what is your vision? What are you trying to say? Probably not that pixelated representations can be made in an oil painting style. A photo in a magazine of an oil painting wasn't "art" in the pre-AI era, why would anyone loosen the criteria in the AI era? OTOH, an artist can take numerous cuttings from magazines and create art in a collage style (using source material from, say National Geographic). Similarly a present day legit artist could take several AI generated images and personally manipulate them to come up with his own legit art, with source material from AI.

That kind of is what I'm trying to say - that perhaps it's possible to make art with ai, but if it is, it takes a lot more than just prompting. I'm not sure entirely what it takes, but it's not that. I don't know where the boundaries are, but I know I want boundaries there - boundaries over the word "artist". Many pro ai people consider that gatekeeping, and it is gatekeeping. That's not inherently bad.

[LuckyR]

Intention definitely seems like a central word here. Even more important perhaps than effort or skill. The tricky thing with ai art is that it's kind of impossible to know how much intention went into any given piece from the prompter. You only know my lack of intention on that art nouveau piece because I told you - someone else could have produced a remarkably similar image with complete intent, working for a specific vision.

With pre-ai art, intention was pretty unambiguous (the specific intent is ambiguous, but THAT it was intentional is usually not). With ai though... it's making so many decisions for you that it's hard to tell what is and isn't "intent" to a viewer.

So if five words isn't enough intent to call me the artist of that piece, what do you think would be?

Well, what is your vision? What are you trying to say? Probably not that pixelated representations can be made in an oil painting style. A photo in a magazine of an oil painting wasn't "art" in the pre-AI era, why would anyone loosen the criteria in the AI era? OTOH, an artist can take numerous cuttings from magazines and create art in a collage style (using source material from, say National Geographic). Similarly a present day legit artist could take several AI generated images and personally manipulate them to come up with his own legit art, with source material from AI.

That kind of is what I'm trying to say - that perhaps it's possible to make art with ai, but if it is, it takes a lot more than just prompting. I'm not sure entirely what it takes, but it's not that. I don't know where the boundaries are, but I know I want boundaries there - boundaries over the word "artist". Many pro ai people consider that gatekeeping, and it is gatekeeping. That's not inherently bad.

Exactly. AI generated pictures (I'm not using the word "art", since it's not art) are identical from the perspective of the artist to a Google image search. It's pixelated representations that instead of being scans of original art, is high tech cut and paste (a mosaic, if you will) of numerous scans of art (which are themselves not art since they're scans). Not a bad research tool, or a source of inspiration. For example, say I do a Google image search for the cover of the Sgt Pepper album. I will receive tens of thousands of digital files, which although quite similar, are not identical. The level of detail, shading, contrast etc can be very different, such that a small child can appreciate the differences. None of them are the art that Blake, Haworth and Cooper created.

[ThinkOfOne]

Depends on the definition of "art". The following is a definition that I've found useful:

"Art" is a demonstration of an extremely deep level of understanding of a subject. The deeper the subject and the deeper the demonstration of understanding of the subject, the more superior the work of art. The deeper the understanding that you have, the greater the appreciation you can have for the work of art.

I really don't like that as a defintion of art. Where does it come from?

Are all paintings "art"? Is all music "art"?

Some wines are considered to be works of art; Some chess games are considered to be works of art.

By what standard should they be judged?