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An AI-Generated Artwork Won First Place at a State Fair Fine Arts Competition, and Artists Are Pissed

Ballthyrm

Member
Just because this has been true in the past, doesn't mean you can extrapolate that indefinitely. Eventually there has to be some threshold where jobs do get massively affected. The car didn't make horses go extinct, but it certainly reduced it's peak population by more than 90%. What would you have to see that would make you worry about the ability for most artists to make money?

This is a good question as most of the value added by automation only goes to an ever shrinking part of the population.
I don't think it is sustainable at all, like you said. Like anything that becomes mostly software based , you don't need a big amount of people to serve a big market.

This problem is not limited to art though, we are heading for big political change in the future if things stay as they are and the benefit of automation aren't distributed.
 
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Azurro

Banned
There's two types of people in this world: those who pretend a trash bag on the floor is art, and those don't play that nonsense.

If you cut all of that weird "Everything is art" shite out, it's easy to see why this isn't a problem. The reaction isn't part of the submission, and it's a competition for humans so it does matter where it came from.

Not to mention the good old fashioned dishonesty of it all and the implications for future art.

I was in the Museum Pompidou in Paris and a fucking triangle canvas in black with a red line across, slightly shifted to the left was there. There was also one where they painted white over what looked like cardboard. Art is BS, or at least, modern art is.
 
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StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
I dont know anything about AI art, but got to say those space opera pics look pretty darn good.

Hey, it's like AI playing chess, assembly line robotics, ordering food using an ipad, or those new robot servers you see at some restaurants.

Sometimes computers are better than humans doing it manually.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
I made this last night using the same program

As an artist i dont know how i feel about all this....on one hand...it wont stop people from doing this kind of art by hand...matter fact it just makes me feel liek doing artwork by scratch every image i see. see star trek tng...people still writing and putting on plays even though they they can prompt a holodeck to create their own plays. What we have achieved basically is Data painting in his room...thats literally what this is.

On the other hand it does kill the concept art market....literally what i see coming out of MidJourney is all a studio needs since you can iterate off of the same image infinitely. People will still be hired of course to rework the ideas and images but the number of needed artists will decrease to a large degree. I think the patreon fan artist is over though...except those that pocket change off of very loyal fans. The age of sakimi chans is over.

My prompt was simple....i put in the name of a dead can dance album title and nothing else.
I then chose from a few of the available selections and ran it through a few revisions and upscales and finally a remaster.

grid_0.png
Looks good. Not the type of thing I'd buy since it looks creepy and I dont hang much on my walls.

But if I was looking to hang stuff on my walls, I personally dont give a shit if it's done from the ground up, or from a 100,000 copy batch of Ikea prints.

I dont know how easy or how long it takes to make AI art, but if I was an artist, I'd be pumping out shit seeing if it can become a hit selling tons of prints for $15 each like Ikea.

When it comes to art, not everyone cares about one of a kind authentic stuff. All the art I have in my house is either $20 touristy things which probably arent even one of a kinds, or various things I bought at Ikea or Homesense. For me, I dont spend more than $50 on any art, since I can always find something I like at any store for dirt cheap.
 
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Soodanim

Gold Member
I was in the Museum Pompidou in Paris and a fucking triangle canvas in black with a red line across, slightly shifted to the left was there. There was also one where they painted white over what looked like cardboard. Art is BS, or at least, modern art is.
Damn. I'd be annoyed if I went all that way and paid money for the opportunity to see works by the history's most renowned artists but was presented with a shitty little triangle.

I blame Picasso. He was great at traditional painting, then he got bored and went all gimmicky. Maybe that paved the way towards the shit we have now. But the blame still rests with the fart sniffers and money launderers that perpetuate an industry of absolute bollocks.

picasso-early-work-6.jpg
 

Toots

Gold Member
No human is able to compete against an AI technically.

No AI is able to compete against human emotionally.

I guess the status quo stands, as long as androids don't dream of electric sheep...

What i really want to know is what AIs could do without us. I don't know what we have created but the possibilities are truly endless.
 

Azurro

Banned
Damn. I'd be annoyed if I went all that way and paid money for the opportunity to see works by the history's most renowned artists but was presented with a shitty little triangle.

I blame Picasso. He was great at traditional painting, then he got bored and went all gimmicky. Maybe that paved the way towards the shit we have now. But the blame still rests with the fart sniffers and money launderers that perpetuate an industry of absolute bollocks.

picasso-early-work-6.jpg

I mean, they did have some really nice paintings and interesting sculptures, like this one from František Kupka

0oU7o5Y.jpg


But when you see the "progression" to the modern stuff and you see that shitty big triangle or this nonsense

3vmP0Pm.jpg


That's when you begin to wonder, whatever criteria they are using for art, it is a complete failure.
 
I wonder how some of you would feel if an A.I program helped reduced video game development from 4 years to 2 or 1?

I for one would welcome it. Game development is crazy ass long and getting more games during a console cycle is never a bad thing. Especially since it seems like with each console generation we get less and less.
 
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Soodanim

Gold Member
I wonder how some of you would feel if an A.I program helped reduced video game development from 4 years to 2 or 1?

I for one would welcome it. Game development is crazy ass long and getting more games during a console cycle is never a bad thing. Especially since it seems like with each console generation we get less and less.
I don't think you can compare the two. One is mimicking traditional art by using AI fed existing art then doing AI magic to make something "New", and the other is/would be a tool among many in the creation of entertainment products for the purpose of being good enough to make a profit.

It's hypothetical, but assuming it wasn't glaringly obvious then I see no reason for anyone to be against it for game development. To an extent, it already happens. Some worlds/areas are made by hitting the randomise button then tweaking the result, which must save a huge chunk of time.
 
I don't think you can compare the two. One is mimicking traditional art by using AI fed existing art then doing AI magic to make something "New", and the other is/would be a tool among many in the creation of entertainment products for the purpose of being good enough to make a profit.

It's hypothetical, but assuming it wasn't glaringly obvious then I see no reason for anyone to be against it for game development. To an extent, it already happens. Some worlds/areas are made by hitting the randomise button then tweaking the result, which must save a huge chunk of time.
I think you could make the comparison. We've heard on and off for several years now about how people compare video games to art. A game that comes to mind to me would be Journey.

Now how this affects traditional art, does traditional art even exist anymore? The art community can't be too upset with this considering what they pass as "art" nowadays.
 

chixdiggit

Member
The guy who used the AI is still an artist. Doesn't matter what method he used to make it. Machines can't imagine or make art, and niether can people on twitter who have anime profile pictures.
But that's exactly what the machines are doing.
I just made these in seconds using AI. Does that make me an artist?
R8b5VoY.jpg
xq84Pb6.jpg
 

Soodanim

Gold Member
Yes actually. It makes you a really quick artist.
This I can't agree with. At best it's delegation. There was no action involved, instead instructions were given and the task was performed on his behalf.

The AI is responsible for the creation of the images, even if they are just drawing on source material and combining it in complex ways.
 

Tumle

Member
This I can't agree with. At best it's delegation. There was no action involved, instead instructions were given and the task was performed on his behalf.

The AI is responsible for the creation of the images, even if they are just drawing on source material and combining it in complex ways.
So the criteria for art is the process not the outcome?
Who decided that?
If that is the truth then those modern art peace’s are more art, than what was made with ai, even if the end result of the AI is more thought provoking and Aesthetic pleasing than a bunch of boxes thrown in a corner..
Yea I can’t get behind that.. you still have to guide the ai to the result you want and the objective you want to be focused on in the final picture, you don’t just press a randomiser button and hope for the best.. even if that is also fun to do😊
 
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lukilladog

Member
It seems very likely to me now that some form of conciousness will persist after biological life ends on Earth... imagine if it decides to replicate its creator billions of years later on another galaxy, imagine if you turn out to be one of the chosen ones for some reason, waking up one day in some beautiful planet in Andromeda, just like that.

... ok, i´m going to sleep now.
 

Lady Jane

Banned
Jobs aren't the problem here. We are on a fast track to producing super intelligent imposter minds. Once people start pushing for ai rights we are officially in deep shit.

It's already happening in small doses (sarcastic or not) and from what I've seen with social messaging, that's how it starts before it becomes real.
 
Im not even gonna get into what a real artist is but this AI is insane. The tech behind it, the fact it gets you results so fast and then you can request more variations till you are satisfied by just typing "gothic vampire in red coat witch castle and cinematic lighting painting". But thast the thing, this isnt only painting style...you can request zbrush / unity engine look etc. If I was in a band, id rather sit infront of a computer and type words of what i want my cover art to convey instead of pay a guy and wait maybe even months for a result.

Dv8JhuK.png


wAZElFB.png


dcu6J7K.png
 
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StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Im not even gonna get into what a real artist is but this AI is insane. The tech behind it, the fact it gets you results so fast and then you can request more variations till you are satisfied by just typing "gothic vampire in red coat witch castle and cinematic lighting painting". But thast the thing, this isnt only painting style...you can request zbrush / unity engine look etc. If I was in a band, id rather sit infront of a computer and type words of what i want my cover art to convey instead of pay a guy and wait maybe even months for a result.

Dv8JhuK.png


dcu6J7K.png


8Tewt9E.jpg
If that's AI art, thats better than 99% of what traditional artists can make.

Never tried making AI art for fun, but long does it take to do? A few clicks here and there and the program churns out a pic in seconds?
 
If that's AI art, thats better than 99% of what traditional artists can make.

Never tried making AI art for fun, but long does it take to do? A few clicks here and there and the program churns out a pic in seconds?

So these guys are using Discord as a portal for the AI. Basically you type /imagine in the chatbox and then literally add sentences/bulletpoints of what you want the image to have. It takes about 30 seconds I would say. You get 4 versions always, then you can ask the AI to make again another 4 versions of one of the ones you like the most. Its insane :)

Way more user friendly than those browser operated AI because I never managed to get it to work.
 
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Solarstrike

Member
Testing out "Fotor" A.I generated creator site. Idk, seems to be a bit dumb at the moment. Needs more time in the field to gain experience before operating for the general public. Here's an example/test I did. The words at the bottom I put in per reference. I guess the A.I got some of it right?


Example 1:

wKgg694.jpg



Example 2:
TGOPN8P.jpg
 
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As a professional artist I can tell you this is a paradigm shift. There's no use trying to fight it. It's like pissing in the wind, trying to stand against a crashing tidal wave. It doesn't matter what art is anymore, so much as what the AI makes is passable enough or better to fool the majority of people that will see it as art. Art is as much about provoking emotion or experiencing something as much as it is who (or what) makes it. Art imitates life and art is abundant in nature, which is made by no human. And the AI has no problems fitting into that. Artists argue what the AI is making is "not imagination", and that it's "stealing" or "learning" from real artists without any credit or payment. Well when you can see clear influence or homage but can't pinpoint any one specific artwork the AI borrowed from it's not plagiarism is it? In fact that's what real artists have been doing since time immemorial. Any artists will be lying if they said they didn't study in great detail or even copy a lot of other artists to learn their craft at any given point in their artistic journey. And any concept artist working today will also be lying if they didn't just take stock (and sometimes not so stock) photos and just bash/collage them together then do a bit of speed painting over it and call it a day. Any gatekeeping of the sort against AI doing the same is well intentioned to protect artists but it's all semantics and useless for the practical world.

11895-Pablo-Picasso-Quote-Good-artists-copy-Great-artists-steal.jpg


By Picasso's own definition, AI artists are the greatest artists of all.

In terms of commercial application, this is a huge win for corporations, and number crunchers who want to cut costs. Artists in most industries are hard to keep in line just by nature of being creative people. They are emotional, inconsistent, unpredictable and oftentimes combative. To be creative is to be out of the box, to be individualistic, to be unconventional. The lucky ones reach the top and make stuff that defies all expectations. But the rest of us are just finnicky tools. The push-pull between creatives(artists) and non-creatives (management, HR) happens everyday at every studio I work at. The AI can eliminate all that uncertainty, all that, and give commercial art production at the top what they've wanted all along: soulless factory line products that appeals to the masses, from 100% obedient slaves who won't fight back. Soon most artists will be out of work, and only those who can prove themselves useful alongside the AI providing complementary skills will remain, albeit at far lower wages and far lesser demand.
 

poppabk

Cheeks Spread for Digital Only Future
I fell that every game concept art is just the description of the game they want to make thrown into one of these AI's.
 

Solarstrike

Member
A human hand, mind, eye or any combination there-of will always be needed in art. So is a brain because it can remember, empathize, understand, restrain, decide, analyze, intercompare, question itself before the brush/pen/tool hits the canvas/display area. Artists should not panic. A.I is still dumb and will be for some time. Somewhere, somehow I have a feeling programs like "Fotor" are cheating. In that they are merely using a database already made, such as from Art Station. The client/program just collects the tags for all the created artwork and picks pieces here and there for the main image with the end user's words acting as the set of directives/rule set. A.I should not be confused with Procedural Generation because that's what this stuff is. It's procedurally generated art. Still art. But not 100% original art.
 

Bragr

Banned
A human hand, mind, eye or any combination there-of will always be needed in art. So is a brain because it can remember, empathize, understand, restrain, decide, analyze, intercompare, question itself before the brush/pen/tool hits the canvas/display area. Artists should not panic. A.I is still dumb and will be for some time. Somewhere, somehow I have a feeling programs like "Fotor" are cheating. In that they are merely using a database already made, such as from Art Station. The client/program just collects the tags for all the created artwork and picks pieces here and there for the main image with the end user's words acting as the set of directives/rule set. A.I should not be confused with Procedural Generation because that's what this stuff is. It's procedurally generated art. Still art. But not 100% original art.
The next generation will look at painters, musicians and programmers like we look at floppy discs.
 

FeralEcho

Member
Im not even gonna get into what a real artist is but this AI is insane. The tech behind it, the fact it gets you results so fast and then you can request more variations till you are satisfied by just typing "gothic vampire in red coat witch castle and cinematic lighting painting". But thast the thing, this isnt only painting style...you can request zbrush / unity engine look etc. If I was in a band, id rather sit infront of a computer and type words of what i want my cover art to convey instead of pay a guy and wait maybe even months for a result.

Dv8JhuK.png
This one is some Bloodborne 2 shit....Incredible stuff.I am absolutely mesmerised by it.
 
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you can claim you are an artist while doing nothing but feeding words to a computer program but don't go comparing that to actually painting in photoshop or traditionally, because that process includes a whole lot of thumbnailing, sketching, figuring out color and light, failure, anxiety and impostor syndrome etc. there's no way or time in hell or heaven I could feel pride from AI generating images for me.

Ai is only a tool. It requires planning, reiteration, and programming to create something good and memorable like we see here. Just like anyone can pick up a pencil, but only few can actually create something of worth.

Get off your high horse.
 

xrnzaaas

Member
For me the situation is simple - if you create art as a traditional job for people in need of certain artwork/generic music etc. then you're screwed, because the AI can do the same or better and it doesn't require a salary. If you're a proper artist who sells art with your name attached to it, then you can still succeed assuming your work is good (and preferably if you have your own style or something that makes your work unique).
I don't think AI should be allowed to learn freely based on everything - it should be limited to stock content and to artists who agree (or are paid to agree) to share their work... but I think it's too late for that unless AI art is going to be banned and everything will be reset.
 
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Bragr

Banned
It's hard to wrap your head around, we are on the cusp of creating a new form of life that outcompetes us in everything on a scale where we might as well be nothing. We are gonna use it for simple things first, like smart homes, entertainment, and sex dolls, but hopefully, it can find solutions to poverty, the housing crisis, and maybe even global warming. It can invent and design things we can't dream to do for hundreds of years.

Or it might too difficult to do right now and all we sit back with fancy text and image generators.
 

QSD

Member
It's hard to wrap your head around, we are on the cusp of creating a new form of life that outcompetes us in everything on a scale where we might as well be nothing. We are gonna use it for simple things first, like smart homes, entertainment, and sex dolls, but hopefully, it can find solutions to poverty, the housing crisis, and maybe even global warming. It can invent and design things we can't dream to do for hundreds of years.

Or it might too difficult to do right now and all we sit back with fancy text and image generators.

I don't think we are on the cusp of creating a new form of life. People forget that a lot of what makes us human, a lot of the experiences that furnish our lives are intrinsically linked to the fact we have bodies that have needs. AI as it stands has no motivation of any kind, it wants nothing, it values nothing, it fears nothing because nothing can hurt it. The classic fear is that AI will rise up, deem us unworthy or inferior, and exterminate us, but why would it want to? It has no desires, no value system, no will to live or dominate, nor a fear of being switched off.

I remember when I was younger I had a program - contained on a single floppy disk, so less than 800kb in size - called NIALL (non intelligent algorhythmic language learner) on the Amiga, which was a lot of fun to play around with. You could type in messages and NIALL would respond. At first the program knew no words so would simply respond with the same thing you said, but after a while of typing different messages NIALL would start to produce unique sentences by recognizing patterns in the words you would input and recombining them. At certain points it almost seemed alive and intelligent because it produced unique and humorous utterances. However it was not intelligent, nor alive. I look at this new AI as a fancy new version of NIALL, except in doesn't take words and sentences but visual art, and it has more than 800 kb to store its database. I don´t know if I would call it intelligent.

It seems like people readily attribute intelligence and consciousness to whatever can produce a facsimile of the outcomes of consciousness, but I just want to remind everyone to hold their dinero because we are still a long way from where they think we are.
 

Bragr

Banned
I don't think we are on the cusp of creating a new form of life. People forget that a lot of what makes us human, a lot of the experiences that furnish our lives are intrinsically linked to the fact we have bodies that have needs. AI as it stands has no motivation of any kind, it wants nothing, it values nothing, it fears nothing because nothing can hurt it. The classic fear is that AI will rise up, deem us unworthy or inferior, and exterminate us, but why would it want to? It has no desires, no value system, no will to live or dominate, nor a fear of being switched off.

I remember when I was younger I had a program - contained on a single floppy disk, so less than 800kb in size - called NIALL (non intelligent algorhythmic language learner) on the Amiga, which was a lot of fun to play around with. You could type in messages and NIALL would respond. At first the program knew no words so would simply respond with the same thing you said, but after a while of typing different messages NIALL would start to produce unique sentences by recognizing patterns in the words you would input and recombining them. At certain points it almost seemed alive and intelligent because it produced unique and humorous utterances. However it was not intelligent, nor alive. I look at this new AI as a fancy new version of NIALL, except in doesn't take words and sentences but visual art, and it has more than 800 kb to store its database. I don´t know if I would call it intelligent.

It seems like people readily attribute intelligence and consciousness to whatever can produce a facsimile of the outcomes of consciousness, but I just want to remind everyone to hold their dinero because we are still a long way from where they think we are.
Yeah, I should have said it's the beginning of a new life, the very early stages. But eventually, it's not hard to imagine programs that have needs and wants like any other lifeform. It depends on how we made them or how they come to be, but it's assumed we will model them after us.
 
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QSD

Member
Yeah, I should have said it's the beginning of a new life, the very early stages. But eventually, it's not hard to imagine programs that have needs and wants like any other lifeform. It depends on how we made them or how they come to be, but it's assumed we will model them after us.
I actually find it quite hard to imagine AI with wants and needs. Sure you can program an AI with certain goals, like for example to kill the player in a single-player FPS campaign. But attributing desire to it, like it 'wants' to kill the player, seems unwarranted to me. It's like if you work for a boss, and the boss instructs you to do X, does that automatically mean you want to? No, you are simply following instructions.
 

Chronicle

Member
It's not AI generated if you have to load a program and push a button to make said art. If I had to rate aemrtwork and knew a painting was ai generated I wouldn't accept it as art.
 

Bragr

Banned
I actually find it quite hard to imagine AI with wants and needs. Sure you can program an AI with certain goals, like for example to kill the player in a single-player FPS campaign. But attributing desire to it, like it 'wants' to kill the player, seems unwarranted to me. It's like if you work for a boss, and the boss instructs you to do X, does that automatically mean you want to? No, you are simply following instructions.
But AI will likely be built based on how our brain works, not from nothing. Imagine the mind of a child, that tries to understand basic inputs like yes and no, but its mind is its own, not what we tell it to do. The want will be to react to what sort of input it gets.
 

QSD

Member
But AI will likely be built based on how our brain works, not from nothing. Imagine the mind of a child, that tries to understand basic inputs like yes and no, but its mind is its own, not what we tell it to do. The want will be to react to what sort of input it gets.
Ahhh but the mind of a child is connected to a body, that has needs and is evolutionarlily programmed to react to novelties, explore the environment, seek out pleasure, avoid pain and loss, etc etc.

What 'want' does an AI have? Why would it want to react to input when it can also do nothing, and suffer no pain or loss as a consequence? IMHO you are still attributing some kind of human qualities/motives (like curiosity or sociability) to a machine that it will never have unless we specifically instruct it to do so.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
A human hand, mind, eye or any combination there-of will always be needed in art. So is a brain because it can remember, empathize, understand, restrain, decide, analyze, intercompare, question itself before the brush/pen/tool hits the canvas/display area. Artists should not panic. A.I is still dumb and will be for some time. Somewhere, somehow I have a feeling programs like "Fotor" are cheating. In that they are merely using a database already made, such as from Art Station. The client/program just collects the tags for all the created artwork and picks pieces here and there for the main image with the end user's words acting as the set of directives/rule set. A.I should not be confused with Procedural Generation because that's what this stuff is. It's procedurally generated art. Still art. But not 100% original art.
Traditional artists should be panicking.

Looking at some of the stuff in this thread made by AI is 10x better than what a trained artist can do. And it can be done in what? 2 minutes? It'll get to a point (if it hasnt already happened) where a ton of art sites will pop up, you create your own AI art, and they print it and frame it for you. Ship it to your home. The frame will cost more that the AI art itself because it'll churn out all kinds of stuff the user actually wants lightning fast..... not what an artist made and someone has to be lucky enough to find something they like.

Nothing wrong with AI art. To me, art is art. I dont care if it's a $20 aluminum framed Ikea print (which I bought 15 years ago and is hanging on my wall now) or a one of a kind oil painting someone is charging $500. I'm not an art expert. Nor do I invest in art for money. 99.9% dont either. They just want something good looking on their wall for cheap. I'll buy the $15 print even if 100,000 other people in the world have the same thing on their wall.
 
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