Art itself sometimes is the method to produce it rather than the end result itself. I looked at the first link you posted where it shows the recent creations and I’m impressed by some of them. Perhaps this is another tool to the artist as much as a paintbrush has been in the past.

This is not as bad as the NFT bubble crap though so kinda refreshing.

No pornography, although a bare breast from time to time. I don’t know whether this is because the program has limits built in or if sexually explicit images are not selected. — T Clark

It claims to be a PG-13 rating but I would class it at G. For example, if you make a prompt for Michelangelo's Statue of David it will only produce ones fully clothed. If you specify 'nude' it will refuse.

I can certainly see why it frightens graphic artists. — T Clark

:snicker: Yes it puts another dent in the industry, but we're accustomed to taking hits. Outsourcing, online templates, crowdsourcing... the devaluation is endless, or rather it's getting much closer to the end. I adopted it right away and it's a useful tool for GD, also for generating subject matter to paint. I prefer to paint from life but having any image that you can instantly generate and view from a monitor is very very handy. It takes time and effort to set up a still-life or find a good landscape or seascape.

First test would be to see if you can tell the difference between AI art and human art. If you cannot, that would imply the “hollowness” exists in your mind and not the artwork.
Also the lack of pornography is built in. There are ways around it but the programs mostly resist nudity. AI sucks at drawing humans touching as well.
The reason it ignores portions of the prompt used is usually because the latter portions of the prompt are pre-empted by the random generation of previous portions of the prompt.
Lastly, it is only a matter of time (short time) before most commercial art is AI generated. Book covers and the like are getting easier and easier for AI to get right.

First test would be to see if you can tell the difference between AI art and human art. If you cannot, that would imply the “hollowness” exists in your mind and not the artwork. — DingoJones

I'm not sure that's true, although that question is what led me to question the value of some human-created art.

The reason it ignores portions of the prompt used is usually because the latter portions of the prompt are pre-empted by the random generation of previous portions of the prompt. — DingoJones

That makes sense.

Lastly, it is only a matter of time (short time) before most commercial art is AI generated. Book covers and the like are getting easier and easier for AI to get right. — DingoJones

I wonder where there will be room for humanity when it's all over.

I wonder where there will be room for humanity when it's all over. — T Clark

There will still be a need to sift through all the Ai-generated images looking for the best ones. That doesn't require a lot of skill though. If I was a professional artist, I'd be worried. Or I'd sell my paintings with a video of me making the painting included, so there's proof a human did it.

I wonder where there will be room for humanity when it's all over. — T Clark

These AI art and writing programs are nowhere close to the kind of AI that would represent a threat to humanity, if thats what you mean.
As for art, I think commercially human art will be a pale shadow to AI commercial art but the human desire to create art will never really die.
Something else to consider is a human artist using AI like any other tool (pencil, straight edges, paint brush, various canvas types etc) to create works of art they could only imagine doing before. The scope and scale of a project skyrockets with a good AI to handle key components of an overall greater work of art, for example adding a microscopic or very small perspective image so that the paintings primary object has less of that hollowness you mentioned. The observer of the art will be experiencing a richness they cannot even detect with their naked eye.

Human or AI?

No way to reliably guess, it’s a coin toss. I’m gonna go with AI

Human or AI? — praxis

it’s a coin toss. I’m gonna go with AI — simplyG

I am going to go with human then. Let's see which side it lands.

Human or AI? — praxis

For what it's worth, it looks like a lot of the stuff on Midjourney.

First test would be to see if you can tell the difference between AI art and human art. If you cannot, that would imply the “hollowness” exists in your mind and not the artwork. — DingoJones

I think this is an important point to get clarifications.
Art can be analyzed critically, trying to define objective elements that witness its value, its richness of meaning, its depth. But this is only one way of approaching art. The most human way, I would say the authentic way, is deeper, intuitive, almost entirely subjective, but, exactly because of this, it is vulnerable, even exposed to be ridiculised. The Italian of the Modigliani hoax happened in 1984 is meaningful: those boys were able to deceive even well experienced and professional art critics.
I would answer: “So what?”
Yes, art critics can be deceived, even easily; we can even be mistaken if an abstract painting has been hung upside down. So what? This means nothing. Art is not maths. These facts do not affect at all what is really important in art.
The essence of art is human inner experience that is communicated. There are many other important aspects, but the essence is the event of communication of an artist’s soul, the artist’s intimate emotions, feelings. For this reason, I want to know who the artist was, I want to know his life.
For example, I might be a victim of a stupid mistake and I might have believed, for all of my life, that a Michelangelo’s painting was a Van Gogh painting. So what? The authenticity of art is not in the objective truth about it. The authenticiy of art is the sincere research for the deepest and richest things that we can achieve; even better if we can add truth as much as possible. But truth is not the condition for art to be authentic. I will look for truth with all of my energies and abilities, but what is important is not reaching it or not; what is important is having cultivated a research for the best that we can achieve; so much the better if we can add truth as much as possible, but this is not the essential condition; truth is not the most valuable thing in art.

Once we understand this, we can understand why art created by AI is not art: it doesn’t matter if it is able to deceive everybody. What matters is that, once we know that it comes from a computer, we know that it cannot contain the richness of a work of art created by a human being.

About this, we didn’t even need to wait for AI: the problem came out already with photography. A good photography can deceive anybody. So what? Being vulnerable to deceit is just a normal aspect of our humanity, that contributes exactly to make us humans.

What is important is not what we find, but what we are looking for.

More broadly, this makes me question my responses to human-created art. How much of that is just as hollow as that produced by machines? I don’t really want to ask “Is it art” - we’ve been through that before. Well, maybe I do… I can certainly see why it frightens graphic artists. I can see plenty of applications where it could replace human image-making e.g. book covers, posters, advertisements, book illustrations, comic books… — T Clark

Here’s an excellent argument against the notion that A.I. can ‘create’ art:

That kind of subjective free for all stains real art, diminishes it imo. A pretentious and self indulgent game of “make believe” that the bored participate in so they feel elite without having to actually earn it. A game of false status. Its why its so easy to trick that world (the wine world is like this too), its easiest to be a poser amongst other posers.
I know thats a bit scathing but setting the bar so low a painting could be “just as good” if it was accidentally hung upside down is just jerking off in public aa far as im concerned. Its a vulgar insult to artists who actually strive for meaning in their work.

I can certainly see why it frightens graphic artists. I can see plenty of applications where it could replace human image-making e.g. book covers, posters, advertisements, book illustrations, comic books… — T Clark

To an extent yes. I can see it replacing low level artist jobs involving stock photography and simple generic book covers, but nothing on the level of full on comic books just yet. With regards to depicting complicated scenes, scenes with context, and subjects consistently, those are areas where the AI seems to struggle, and given how it's been advancing over these past 2 years I'm doubtful that those issues will be solved in the short to medium term, at least barring the possibility of a sudden technological breakthrough.

What is important is not what we find, but what we are looking for. — Angelo Cannata

I'm looking for an aesthetic experience. Technically that can be found anywhere and anytime, though it's usually much easier to find in art, who or whatever produces it.

Midjourney AI. It has a feature where you can upload an image and the AI will generate a prompt from it. In this case it generated the prompt: A painting of trees by tim liu, in the style of california plein air, vibrant color fields, gari melchers, light brown and purple, bold colors, strong lines, dramatic skies, jeff danziger --ar 5:4

I used that prompt to generate the image above.

For what it's worth, it looks like a lot of the stuff on Midjourney. — T Clark

Good guess. :smirk:

houghts? I have no particular agenda here. I guess I’m just looking to clarify for myself how to think about these things. — T Clark

I think posters, rather than artwork. Of course, I have the same reaction to quite a lot of human-produced graphic art. I see a great deal of overlap between CAD and AI. They are all pretty and very neat; spontaneous human art usually isn't. I quite like some of them. The fantastic houses, I like very much. Also the balloon heads and the deer/camo wallpaper.
But I like Chimpanzee art more.

Interesting TC.

I can't say I like any of the images - it's predominantly theatrical - fantasy/sci/fi/surrealism and to my taste overstated and derivative. I wonder if it primarily appeals to a certain type of male taste.

Mind you, there's a lot of art painted by highly skilled human beings for the market that I experience as empty and device ridden. If I sense a vitality and a distinctive point of view in a work, I tend to like it. But this is entirely personal.

You can certainly see how AI could replace generic commercial art such as appears in advertising and on some book covers.

Just as CGI replaced a lot of practical effects in film AI innovation may end up eliminating real cinematic photography altogether (if it is cheaper). This prospect is terrifying. Films will become more structured like video games, where actors perform the movement and voice work, and AI tools enhance the aesthetic skin/style/rendering. There still will be a lot of work to be done for any creative enterprise that isn't just a basic prompt image generation.

From the standpoint of having an original vision as an artist, you still can't really achieve it from AI prompts at all. Heck, I'm sure even many artists have trouble translating their vision to whatever medium. Prompt generation also leaves out the sometimes fun/therapeutic process of doing art -- it sometimes being as much about the journey as the end product.

The youtube channel Corridor (a crew of CGI enthusiasts) made an animated film using AI in the style of the gothic Vampire Hunter D films (which were painstakingly hand drawn). While it doesn't meet the aesthetic quality of the hand drawn films, and acting/writing is pretty garbage, it is still really impressive.

Yes it puts another dent in the industry, but we're accustomed to taking hits. Outsourcing, online templates, crowdsourcing... the devaluation is endless, or rather it's getting much closer to the end. I adopted it right away and it's a useful tool for GD, also for generating subject matter to paint. I prefer to paint from life but having any image that you can instantly generate and view from a monitor is very very handy. It takes time and effort to set up a still-life or find a good landscape or seascape. — praxis

I appreciate the input from an actual visual artist. The closest I come to such expression is in writing, so I often have a hard time imagining how it would be for painters or musicians. I'm really glad I've finished my career so I don't have to figure out how to make it work.

There will still be a need to sift through all the Ai-generated images looking for the best ones. That doesn't require a lot of skill though. If I was a professional artist, I'd be worried. Or I'd sell my paintings with a video of me making the painting included, so there's proof a human did it. — RogueAI

Yes. Your thinking parallels my own, but your solutions seem pretty unsatisfying. I'm sure you feel the same way.

These AI art and writing programs are nowhere close to the kind of AI that would represent a threat to humanity, if thats what you mean. — DingoJones

Sure, but the whole process is brand new and seems to be changing very fast. What comes next?

Something else to consider is a human artist using AI like any other tool (pencil, straight edges, paint brush, various canvas types etc) to create works of art they could only imagine doing before. The scope and scale of a project skyrockets with a good AI to handle key components of an overall greater work of art, for example adding a microscopic or very small perspective image so that the paintings primary object has less of that hollowness you mentioned. The observer of the art will be experiencing a richness they cannot even detect with their naked eye. — DingoJones

This brings up a question that has been discussed previously here on the forum - How important is technical mastery in the production of art. I've gone back and forth about it, but at some level it seems clear to me that the technical limits imposed by the form of art are the framework, the superstructure, that artists work with to communicate with their audience. What happens when technical mastery of any sort is no longer needed? It seems to me we're left with little more than paint-by-numbers.

Yes. Your thinking parallels my own, but your solutions seem pretty unsatisfying. I'm sure you feel the same way. — T Clark

Yes.

The essence of art is human inner experience that is communicated. There are many other important aspects, but the essence is the event of communication of an artist’s soul, the artist’s intimate emotions, feelings. — Angelo Cannata

This is an explanation of what makes art art that I find convincing and consistent with my own experience.

The authenticity of art is not in the objective truth about it. The authenticiy of art is the sincere research for the deepest and richest things that we can achieve; even better if we can add truth as much as possible. But truth is not the condition for art to be authentic. I will look for truth with all of my energies and abilities, but what is important is not reaching it or not; what is important is having cultivated a research for the best that we can achieve; so much the better if we can add truth as much as possible, but this is not the essential condition; truth is not the most valuable thing in art. — Angelo Cannata

I don't think I buy this. I have no problem with putting some effort into understanding the visual language, references, symbols, metaphors, history of a work, but at the end, it needs to speak for itself.

To an extent yes. I can see it replacing low level artist jobs involving stock photography and simple generic book covers, but nothing on the level of full on comic books just yet. With regards to depicting complicated scenes, scenes with context, and subjects consistently, those are areas where the AI seems to struggle, and given how it's been advancing over these past 2 years I'm doubtful that those issues will be solved in the short to medium term, at least barring the possibility of a sudden technological breakthrough. — Mr Bee

I would like to think you're right.

I think posters, rather than artwork. Of course, I have the same reaction to quite a lot of human-produced graphic art. I see a great deal of overlap between CAD and AI. They are all pretty and very neat; spontaneous human art usually isn't. I quite like some of them. The fantastic houses, I like very much. Also the balloon heads and the deer/camo wallpaper.
But I like Chimpanzee art more. — Vera Mont

I think it's fun and I also like some of what is produced. What bothers me is that the act of creating is very important to me. In my particular case, it deals more with words than with images. When I am creating, putting my thoughts on paper, I feel as close as I ever do to the real me, if you'll allow me that. I assume visual artists feel the same. Can that be taken away?

I think it's fun and I also like some of what is produced. — T Clark

I like some of it, too. But after a while, they're all too much alike. Perfect forms, perfect faces, perfectly coloured inside the lines. Like all the advertising and illustrative computer graphics, it looks and feels mass produced. And there is already far too much of it.

I assume visual artists feel the same. — T Clark

I can't speak for all visual artists, but yes, I would agree. There isn't much more gratifying that bringing an idea or image out of one's dreams* and making it in the real world.
(* I used to have a sort of recurring dream of going to craft show and buying something I really liked, only they would never let me carry it past the glass doors, so I had to memorize it and try to recreate next day in my studio. Silly, but I made some OK sculpture.)

Can that be taken away? — T Clark

No. But a lot of artists have day jobs to pay for paints or clay, rent and catfood, and the computers can certainly take that away.

Sure, but the whole process is brand new and seems to be changing very fast. What comes next? — T Clark

My guess is AI will keep mastering things, eventually robotics will catch up and we get robot servants who can do everything for us. How that effects our civilization…should be interesting.
As for the kind of AI that kills us? My guess is we will create it by accident, a result of accumulated knowledge and stored information becoming memory before becoming consciousness. We won’t know until the AI does whatever it ends up wanting to do. Best case for us is it just leaves its insignificant creators behind.

This brings up a question that has been discussed previously here on the forum - How important is technical mastery in the production of art. I've gone back and forth about it, but at some level it seems clear to me that the technical limits imposed by the form of art are the framework, the superstructure, that artists work with to communicate with their audience. What happens when technical mastery of any sort is no longer needed? It seems to me we're left with little more than paint-by-numbers. — T Clark

I think sufficiently advanced paint by numbers will be indistinguishable from any art humans can create. Human art will change, my guess is it will blend with science and scientists will be the new artists. Once we can do anything, there will be artistry in the choices in how to do it.

Interesting! :up:

It’s not much of a threat to graphic design yet, even for low-end work. It’s output if far too generic and it can’t really do typography. That may change in the near future though. Currently the worst hit must be to stock photography and illustration. Last week I used Midjourney for a bunch of magazine ads instead of stock images. It’s cheaper, and it’s a lot quicker and more convenient to type some prompts than doing image searches and reviewing hundreds of images.