Comment on ‘Mass theft’: Thousands of artists call for AI art auction to be cancelled
Zaleramancer@beehaw.org 6 days agoThe university I went to had an unusually large art department for the state it was in, most likely because due to a ridiculous chain of events and it’s unique history, it didn’t have any sports teams at all.
I spent a lot of time there, because I had (and made) a lot of friends with the art students and enjoyed the company of weird, creative people. It was fun and beautiful and had a profound effect on how I look at art, craft and the people who make it.
I mention this because I totally disagree with you on the subject of photography. It’s incredibly intentional in an entirely distinct but fundamentally related way, since you lack control over so many aspects of it- the things you can choose become all the more significant, personal and meaningful. I remember people comparing generative art and photography and it’s really… Aggravating, honestly.
The photography student I knew did a whole project as part of her final year that was a display of nude figures that did a lot of work with background, lighting, dramatic shadow and use of color, angle and deeply considered compositions. It’s a lot of work!
I don’t mean here to imply you’re disparaging photography in any way, or that you don’t know enough about it. I can’t know that, so I’m just sharing my feelings about the subject and art form.
A lot of generative art has very similar lighting and positioning because it’s drawing on stock photographs which have a very standardized format. I think there’s a lot of different between that and the work someone who does photography as an art has to consider. Many of the people using generative art as tools lack the background skills that would allow them to use them properly as tools. Without that, it’s hard to identify what makes a piece of visual art not work, or what needs to be changed to convey a mood or idea.
In an ideal world, there would be no concern for loss of employment because no one would have to work to live. In that world, these tools would be a wonderful addition to the panoply of artistic implements modern artists enjoy.
barsoap@lemm.ee 6 days ago
And that’s not precisely the same for AI… why? Why are the limited choices in photography significant, personal, and meaningful, but not the limited choices people make when generating pictures?
Yes. Because the majority of stuff that’s generated by people without much intentionality, by amateurs, or both – but so are most pictures, they just don’t ever even get analysed in the context of being art or not because their purpose is to be external memory, not art. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t control lightning, or that someone who does have a sufficiently deep understanding both of the medium of pictures in general, as well as the tool that is AI, would not, at some point, look at what’s on the screen and ask themselves “Do I want different lightning”. Maybe you do, Maybe you don’t. Like, there’s a reason there’s standard lightning setups, not every work has to be intentional about that particular aspect.
And maybe you want different lighting but the model you use doesn’t provide that kind of flexibility – when you say “still life” it insists on three-point lighting because it thinks one implies the other just as “mug” implies “handle”. You can then go ahead and teach it about different lighting setups, “this is an example of backlight, this of frontlight, this is three-point”, and, with some skill and effort, voila, now “still life with backlighting” works. There absolutely is intent in that. Speaking of models that can do that, here’s usage instructions for one that does.
Zaleramancer@beehaw.org 5 days ago
You make a compelling and very interesting point here. I’m still l considering it, because it’s provoked a lot of thought for me. Once I feel like I can definitely make an argument against or in favor of your point, I’ll get back to you.
Well done, I love intelligent discussions like this so much, I really missed them when my online communities started decaying. The pursuit of truth is so much fun!
Zaleramancer@beehaw.org 3 days ago
Hey, thank you so much for your contribution to this discussion. You presented me a really challenging thought and I have appreciated grappling with it for a few days. I think you’ve really shifted some bits of my perspective, and I think I understand now.
I think there’s an ambiguity in my initial post here, and I wanted to check which of the following is the thing you read from it:
barsoap@lemm.ee 3 days ago
Both are in there, and neither of those are wrong. Generative AI does have serious limitations when it comes to detail control, and it’s also used a lot by people (not necessarily executives) who don’t respect or understand art – even to create things that they then consider art.
The thing is that we’ve had the same discussion back when photography became a thing. Ultimately what it did was free the art of painting from the shackles of having to do portraits.
One additional thing is that I recommend extremely against trying to try and develop art skills by generating AI. Buy pencil and paper, buy a graphics tablet, open Krita or Blender, go through a couple of tutorials for a few days you’ll have learned more about what you need to know to judge AI output than what hitting generate could teach you in a year. How do I know that the eyes in that AI painting have an off-kilter perspective? Because, for the life of me, I can’t draw them straight either, but put enough hours into drawing to look at both the big picture and minute detail. One of the reasons I switched to sculpting.