zlacker

>>dredmo+(OP)
I've been finding that the strangest part of discussions around art AI among technical people is the complete lack of identification or empathy: it seems to me that most computer programmers should be just as afraid as artists, in the face of technology like this!!! I am a failed artist (read, I studied painting in school and tried to make a go at being a commercial artist in animation and couldn't make the cut), and so I decided to do something easier and became a computer programmer, working for FAANG and other large companies and making absurd (to me!!) amounts of cash. In my humble estimation, making art is vastly more difficult than the huge majority of computer programming that is done. Art AI is terrifying if you want to make art for a living- and, if AI is able to do these astonishingly difficult things, why shouldn't it, with some finagling, also be able to do the dumb, simple things most programmers do for their jobs?

The lack of empathy is incredibly depressing...

>>meebob+kc
Artists have all my sympathy. I'm also a hobbyist painter. But I have very little sympathy for those perpetuating this tiresome moral panic (a small amount of actual artists, whatever the word "artist" means), because I think that:

a) the panic is entirely misguided and based on two wrong assumptions. The first is that textual input and treating the model as a function (command in -> result out) are sufficient for anything. No, this is a fundamentally deficient way to give artistic directions, which is further handicapped by primitive models and weak compute. Text alone is a toy; the field will just become more and more complex and technically involved, just like 3D CGI did, because if you don't use every trick available, you're missing out. The second wrong assumption is that it's going to replace anyone, instead of making many people re-learn a new tool and produce what was previously unfeasible due to the amount of mechanistic work involved. This second assumption stems from the fundamental misunderstanding of the value artists provide, which is conceptualization, even in a seemingly routine job.

b) the panic is entirely blown out of proportion by the social media. Most people have neither time nor desire to actually dive into this tech and find out what works and what doesn't. They just believe that a magical machine steals their works to replace them, because that's what everyone reposts on Twitter endlessly.

>>orbita+Z62
That's exactly that lack of empathy the OP was on about: if you don't see that there is something wrong by a bunch of programmers feeding everybody's work into the meatgrinder and then to start spitting out stuff that they claim is original work when they probably couldn't draw a stick figure themselves then it is clear that something isn't quite right. At least, to me.

>>jacque+Zl2
As someone who has always had a huge gap between what I can imagine and what I can manifest, outside of text anyway, I find the whole thing amazing and massively enabling. And I think it is possible to come up with original images, even though the styles are usually derivative.

At the same time I recognise that this is a massive threat to artists, both low-visibility folks who throw out concepts and logos for companies, and people who may sell their art to the public. Because I can spend a couple of dollars and half an hour to come up with an image I’d be happy to put on my wall.

I’m not sure what the answer is here, but I don’t think a sort of “human origin art” Puritanism is going to hold back the flood, though it may secure a niche like handmade craft goods and organic food…