With how much artificial intelligence has been improving, in many areas such as text reading/generation, picture reading, picture generation, convincing voice synthesis and more, I think there's a lot that can be discussed, about the effects that this technology will have on society.
I'll start off with one example.
I'd been thinking about the enshittification cycle of tech, and I think it's coming for Google hard. The search engine just isn't so great at finding what you actually want, and I think that's gonna leave a big opening for Bing with their use of AI. If the AI can sift through the crap and actually find what you want for real, due to its understanding of language, it'll actually make searching super useful again.
In the pre-Google internet, search engines used to search only for exact words and phrases, which had its uses, but also meant finding a lot of sites that simply crammed in a lot of popular words and phrases to get visitors. Google cut through the crap with a better understanding of how to "rank" sites relative to how relevant they are, and even find sites that are on the topic you were looking for without using the same exact words.
But Google started to become more advertiser-friendly, then later, more shareholder-friendly. There's a limit to how much one can make their product built entirely around shareholder growth, so as it turns to crap, it leaves an opening for a competitor to show up.
Since Bing/ChatGPT (which Bing is plugged into now) understands the use of language, it can actually understand context and determine relevance based on that. And that'll make it huge, I think. Context-based understanding of web pages can potentially do an excellent job of finding what people actually want, in a way that goes way beyond Google's page ranking systems, or the examination of exact words.
There is also a more specific thread for the legality, ethics and nature of AI art
Edited by Mrph1 on Jun 22nd 2024 at 11:53:33 AM
@editerguy: You're right, both on the counts that the conversation isn't really about literature or high-end work at the moment and the fact that the loudest people generally aren't paying for their translations anyway. My concern is that, like any hate mob, they're pretty well-mobilized and can make it downright hazardous for translators to promote themselves or their work on social media.
That section of loud and virulent opposition to creatives stretches over both the AI art and AI translation contingents.
It's been fun.![]()
How much of that movement was purely digital though?
Like, one of the big reasons why AI art is unlikely to catch on in the fine art sphere (at least on its own) is literally because of the inherent disposability of it. But the thing is like, the fine art collectors, even the ones in it for the money laundering, aren't gonna touch AI art because they need an actual physical thing with clear providence. A few of the dumber ones bought into NFTs...and now they're stuck with a basically valueless thing they can't even sell or display properly because it turns out that having a screen with a gif on it just reads as weird and cheap to most people and not like "I spent $30,000 on this". They're not buying into AI art because 1) it was humiliating to be stuck holding the bag with an NFT, but also 2) it's just a thing a computer spit out after someone put a single sentence into it. The technology might be impressive, but the output isn't.
But with AI art, you run really hard into the problem of "so, if you used an AI to generate this thing and you want to sell it to me for $40,000, why shouldn't I just go use a similar prompt and make a similar output for $10?" I did come up with an art installation idea that would use an AI art generator, but it's not one that makes AI art itself look valuable. (I can say what it is if anyone's curious)
Even the mass produced art of the zombie formalism movement took more than typing a sentence into a program and had an actual physical thing as the end result.
But I think, ultimately, what art needs to get long term attention is a story of some sort around it. Like, yeah, it's not great when the story is "wow, this artist is basically nuts, I'm gonna buy their art", but AI art doesn't have a story. It always just boils down to "I wrote a sentence into a computer program and it spit this out".
"Why did you choose these specific colours in this specific arrangement?"
"I didn't, the computer did."
"Why did you decide to have this figure in the background facing away?"
"I didn't, the computer did."
"Why's this one bit really messy and unclear?"
"I don't know, the computer did that."
It's not interesting.
Edited by Zendervai on Feb 21st 2024 at 8:35:39 AM
I’m not sure I understand the question? Zombie formalism is a fine arts movement that primarily concerns painting, and the argument that I mentioned earlier was about fine artists using AI to automate the production of commercial gallery art. Why are we talking about NF Ts and digital art all of a sudden?
The fine arts world has always embraced enforced scarcity. The ease with which a piece can be produced has essentially nothing to do with its sale price. Can you really say that, for example, Lucien Smith’s pieces at the height of zombie formalism took any more effort than typing a prompt? His art involved essentially zero skill or mechanical technique whatsoever and I’m sure you or I could easily do the exact same thing, except our pieces wouldn’t sell for six figures at the auction block.
In other words:
"I didn't, the fire extinguisher did."
Edited by archonspeaks on Feb 21st 2024 at 6:37:48 AM
They should have sent a poet.Oh, I've seen one of Lucien Smith's Rain Paintings in person. It's actually pretty impressive and the technique used to make them, while simple, is also not one most people would think of. And it'd be a little difficult to actually accomplish because I think most people wouldn't know how to fill an industrial fire extinguisher with paint and then pressurize it.
But like, if I made a piece of AI art with a prompt and then tried to take it to a gallery or an auction house, they'd be like "so why should we care about this?" and then I wouldn't be able to explain because of how inherently disposable anything AI generated is. And, I want to be clear, I am talking about the "plug prompt in, get picture out" type AI generated, not AI assisted stuff.
I brought up NFTs because they are a digital art form that actually did get some activity on the fine art circuit that collapsed really quickly because it turned out it was difficult to display in a way that didn't make the owner look cheap as hell and most people didn't take it seriously. And AI generated art has exactly the same problem.
Except, that he had to choose the specific colours and the specific order he sprayed them in. He also had to choose the size of the canvas and he was able to have some control over where on the canvas the paint went. It's not an even mass of splotches. His stuff isn't a good counterexample because there's actual work and thought that went into the production of those paintings. And, again, there's a story around the Rain Paintings that doesn't really exist for AI generated stuff.
One of the most important elements of modern and post-modern art is context and the context of AI generated art is basically always "I told a computer to make it and I thought the end result was good enough."
A really good example of this is actually Unfinished Painting by Keith Haring.
It's clearly unfinished, right? If you don't know what it is or why it's like that, you'd just be like "weird, it's not finished." The context is that the painter was gay and was dying of AIDS and he deliberately intended it to be unfinished to symbolize the lives cut off from the people killed by AIDS and the disgusting American government response to it. But the average person should be aware enough to wonder why it's not finished.
And then someone came along and used an AI to "finish" it. Not only was the "finished" version garbage, the AI very clearly didn't understand the existing pattern, the sheer concept of "finishing" it is revolting. Like, it's genuinely disgusting to think that it's okay to do that because it means the person who did it doesn't understand the point of the original or worse, does understand and doesn't care. It turned out that the person who did it never bothered to stop and wonder why it wasn't completed. That's a terrible mindset when engaging with and attempting to create art.
I don't think Zombie Formalism was a good movement, but it was at least like a movement. There was something driving it and there's a story that can be spun out of how sheer crass commercialism fucked up the art world for a while. It wasn't just "well, the AI generator is here, might as well use it."
Edited by Zendervai on Feb 21st 2024 at 10:00:24 AM
For the record, the person who "finished
" the painting with AI was probably a troll (given that their Twitter feed is mostly one long stream of s**tposting).
Edited by HavocCrow on Feb 21st 2024 at 4:46:38 PM
"Someone used AI to badly 'finish' a painting symbolically left incomplete" also crosses over into the exact situation where carelessly using AI to draw something also gives you a piece of work with an interesting story to it even without much thought put into the what. Like, there's a lot of implicit meaning in something like that (even if the person doing it was just being a troll).
That it's horrifying and offensive doesn't actually make it any less the counterexample to "AI art can be pretty looking but devoid of any deeper meaning or interest".
Zendervai: You’re twisting yourself into knots here because I suspect you’re aware that any argument against AI art is also an argument against modern art, hence the attempt to create nonexistent distinctions by playing up process.
You can buy paint-filled fire extinguishers and other sprayers online, they’re widely available. Smith’s “technique” was to spray the extinguisher directly up into the air and let the paint fall where it may.
Let me illustrate:
Smith’s paintings are a perfect example here because they almost perfectly mirror the act of AI generation: there is a minimal level of premeditation, but the actual “act” itself is very simple and the outcome is ultimately decided by random chance.
So, would you maintain this statement to be true about the works of, say, Sofia Crespo? [1]
Her artistic practice is, in essence, “telling a computer to make something and then finding the end result good enough”, so I’m curious as to whether you’ll argue there’s no greater context beyond that in her work. Additionally, compare her work to Lucien Smith’s Rain Paintings: in both there is a minimal level of premeditation, but the actual artistic “act” (spraying an extinguisher vs. hitting enter on a keyboard) is very simple and the outcome is ultimately decided by random chance.
Whether zombie formalism is a “bad” movement or a “real” movement or had something driving it is irrelevant. Those are arbitrary distinctions you’ve created. Zombie formalism proves that the art market has an appetite for the type of art which could be produced by AI, as the practice and output of the artists from that period are functionally identical to the practice and output of AI artists.
Edited by archonspeaks on Feb 21st 2024 at 8:17:38 AM
They should have sent a poet.I'd assume that fine art collectors would be uninterested in AI-Generated art for the same reason that diamond collectors don't value artificial diamonds.
Leviticus 19:34![]()
She’s a fine artist who creates images with AI. Even a cursory glance at her page should be enough to show that she’s creating with intent, immediately invalidating the point I was responding to about all AI art being created on a random whim.
Your mistake here is in thinking that art is assigned value based on some arbitrary metric of “realness”. Consider monochrome paintings, or readymade art. Collectors aren’t buying those because of some intrinsic value in the construction of the artwork, they’re buying them because of the social and cultural prestige associated with the artwork.
I am sorry, but IF all she does is "creates images with AI", then she is not an artist, just like I am not an artist despite having created dozens of images by using AI.
Also, what is your definition of "intent" here? What counts as "creating with intent"? I feel like this is important to clarify...
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If you don’t think she’s an artist, I would suggest you read her CV. [1]
I’m assuming you haven’t exhibited your generated works in dozens of galleries or had them put on display in a museum, or been featured in art world periodicals and on panels at prestigious institutions.
If successful artistic practice at the highest levels of the art world doesn’t qualify someone to be an artist, I’m curious what would. How do you define “artist”?
As far as intent, this is the particular point I was responding to there:
For what it’s worth, intent isn’t strictly necessary to create art, and both parts of that point are wrong on a number of levels. I believe I’ve already addressed that above though.
Edited by archonspeaks on Feb 21st 2024 at 11:58:13 AM
They should have sent a poet.Doesn’t that apply regardless of how it’s ‘finished’? The idea of “finishing” a deliberatly unfinished piece of art is horrible if you do it with an AI, a fire extinguisher or by hand.
Also money laundering.
Anyway, to bring us onto another real example of AI being used in art, a recent developer diary including a senior illustrator for gaming company Paradox Interactive had a section on how the writer uses AI.[1]
Specifically they use “A locally installed Stable Diffusion with Control Net” to take composite sketches they make and generated colour thumbnails that can be selected from for an actual project that becomes a colour sketch and then goes to the art team.
They do go on to note that one has to be carful when using AI for this, as if you let the AI generate to many images you end up with so many you never look at them, like photos on a phone.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran"They do go on to note that one has to be carful when using AI for this, as if you let the AI generate to many images you end up with so many you never look at them, like photos on a phone."
I think this is part of why a lot of the AI image generation cheerleader stuff falls so flat. Like, it's extremely hard to buy that someone actually likes AI generated art on anything but the most superficial level when they're generating and sharing 20 pictures a day on Twitter and they never mention any of the older ones. It's playing with a toy. It's a sophisticated toy, but if all you're doing is constantly generating stuff to look at and share for 10 seconds before throwing it away, what's the point? The people doing that don't seem to get anything out of it and at least some of them seem to just really want to be smug at people who don't use AI like that.
Like...I think it's fair to say that part of the reason a piece of art has value to the artist is because of the work they put into it. I'm not particularly good at painting, but I'm proud of my paintings because they're mine. I put work into them, I display them in my home and the main reason I care about them is because I put in that time and effort. If I generate a piece of AI art, it's like "oh, I guess that's cool, whatever" and I forget about it, because it's an ephemeral toy.
Also, it's very strange to see the cheerleaders gushing about AI art and not noticing the really glaring errors that are still showing up on a regular basis. Like, clearly they're not looking at it very closely.
I suspect what you’re encountering online is people who aren’t actually fans of art, even AI art, they’re fan of generative AI.
It’s the difference between enjoying folded napkins and enjoying watching a napkin folding machine.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranOf course, and you’ll note I haven’t defended the art world. The art world’s purpose as a money laundering/tax haven scheme exists side by side with the dynamics I’ve been describing though.
Also, it's very strange to see the cheerleaders gushing about AI art and not noticing the really glaring errors that are still showing up on a regular basis. Like, clearly they're not looking at it very closely.
This argument, to me, is somewhat odd. You say you find value in your own paintings even though they’re not particularly good because you took time on them. How do you know the people you see doing AI art aren’t also taking their time? You look down at those enjoying some piece of AI art because they’re overlooking imperfections and technical errors, but isn’t it possible they’re simply doing what you’re doing, just in a different way? I’m assuming you wouldn’t particularly like it if someone came along and said, “whenever I paint it’s just a quick scribble and I throw it in the trash. I can’t believe this person enjoys these paintings, look how bad they are!”
The only way your argument really works is if we assume the premise that your experience with art represents the totality of all experiences with art and the objectively correct way to appreciate art. I shouldn’t have to explain that’s not the case.
Edited by archonspeaks on Feb 21st 2024 at 12:39:22 PM
They should have sent a poet.I just had a conversation with a podcaster who uses AI (don't know which program) to clean up interviews in which there is a lot of "um's" and "ah's" and things like background noises. It also corrects badly mispronounced words, and does this is such a way that no one can tell. He recently had an interviewee who couldn't appear live on his show, so with her permission they agree on a script of his questions and her answers, and used AI to simulate her voice. According to him, you can't tell the difference. This led to a conversation in which we discussed the ethics of using AI this way, including possibly removing accents, or regional/ethnic colloquialisms. He agreed it would be wrong to do that, because those kinds of speech patterns are part of who they are. I was left with a feeling that this technology is moving a little too fast for me.
I'm done trying to sound smart. "Clear" is the new smart.- If I write down a small prompt and then, using it as a base, I draw a picture, then I am an artist (a terrible one, but still).
- If I take that small prompt and pay someone to draw me a picture based on it, then that person is the actual artist, not me.
- If I take that same small prompt and have an AI make me a picture based on it, then again I am not the artist. You can think that the AI is the artist, or you can disagree with that claim, but either way I am NOT the actual artist. Even if, by some coincidence, the result generated by the AI is so great that it gets shown all around the world, in galleries, museums, etc., even if it gets declared the greatest piece of art ever made in human history, I am STILL NOT an artist, because I did not make the art myself.
That is my definition of an artist. I get the feeling yours might be different, though.
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I'm talking about people who will say things like "now this is real art, it is perfection" and it's some woman with three hands and she's not supposed to have three hands. It's a whole thing where like, if they are slaving away on the prompts somehow and are tweaking them to get the perfect picture, you'd think they'd notice something like that. Like, it's genuinely weird that they wouldn't notice it or like, mention it in some way.
This is an actual thing, and the people who do this tend to be extremely loud about AI art while not paying enough attention to their own output to notice really fucking obvious problems. And it's obvious that they didn't notice, because they never try to spin it, it's just getting really defensive about the program still improving.
And yes, my own paintings have more value to me than AI output, especially wonky AI output with obvious errors the prompter didn't intend for but didn't notice, because everything I did with my paintings was entirely and completely my own choice. If I generate an AI image, most of it is out of my control. That is just me though. This is also why I don't use AI generators myself, because they're literally incapable of doing what I want from art or writing. Which is to get my actual real thoughts and ideas onto the page and not just a sort of approximation of it.
And, to be completely clear, if someone did an AI prompt and were like "yeah, this is kind of wonky, but I really like these parts of it, which is why I kept it", fair enough. It's when it's someone who really clearly isn't engaging on even that level and talks in a way that makes it clear they're not aware of the issues that it's an issue, especially if they decide to be all rude and smarmy about it. But it is a pretty distinct thing that very few people seem to be actually passionate about AI generated art in general. In large part because it's framed as being inherently disposable in a really fundamental way. And, I want to be clear. I mean the output, not the idea of generating AI art.
Edited by Zendervai on Feb 21st 2024 at 4:05:48 AM
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Just to be clear, do you only consider a person an artist if they produce visual outputs?
Are musicians or writers artists? What if they use an AI to generate a part of their finished piece that sits in another medium? So a book author who uses an AI image generator for their map inserts? Have they invalidated the purity of their written art by using AI?
This can breakdown even further, is someone who scouts a model but has another person or a bot paint it still an artist? What about the reserve where someone uses a pre-sculpted model but paints it?
Edited by Silasw on Feb 21st 2024 at 9:10:18 AM
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran

The fine art market has already functionally embraced mass produced crap, just look at the whole zombie formalism movement in the early 2010s. A lot of those pieces commanded the prices they did because of virality-ready process videos and the social antics of the artist more than because of any inherent quality of the art.
They should have sent a poet.