Art Created by Artificial Intelligence
Ive been paying attention to Midjourney, a program that uses artificial intelligence to generate visual art. In order to use Midjourney, you input text describing the subject matter, style of graphics, preferred artists, colors, and other descriptive features. It costs money to join, but they post selected images. No, I am not a member. Heres a link to their showcase page, which changes often.
https://www.midjourney.com/showcase/recent/
Note that, if you run your cursor over an image, it will show you the input used to generate the image. I assume these are selected from among the best generated by their members. Heres another link to the Reddit subreddit r/Midjourney, where members post their own creations.
https://www.reddit.com/r/midjourney/
Some preliminary thoughts and observations:
More generally, I find the creations disturbing, empty. This is similar to how I feel about written work created by Chat GPT. Im not sure how much of this is related to my own prejudice, how much comes from the early level of software development, and how much is in the images themselves. Maybe the biggest reason for the hollowness I perceive is the idea that the people using the programs believe that theyve created something significant. That they deserve credit.
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 dont really want to ask Is it art - weve 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
So Thoughts? I have no particular agenda here. I guess Im just looking to clarify for myself how to think about these things.
https://www.midjourney.com/showcase/recent/
Note that, if you run your cursor over an image, it will show you the input used to generate the image. I assume these are selected from among the best generated by their members. Heres another link to the Reddit subreddit r/Midjourney, where members post their own creations.
https://www.reddit.com/r/midjourney/
Some preliminary thoughts and observations:
- Lots of attractive women. Often redheads.
- No pornography, although a bare breast from time to time. I dont know whether this is because the program has limits built in or if sexually explicit images are not selected.
- Lots of images in the styles of Gustav Klimt and Vincent van Gogh, especially Starry Night.
- Its funny how often the program ignores parts of the instructions, often leaving things out and making its own choices. In some ways, this is the most interesting part of the images.
- I really like a lot of the images. Some of them are (intentionally) funny. Some would be thought provoking if I didnt know where they came from.
- Looking at the Reddit page, many of the creators are clearly proud of what theyve created, as if their input was an important contribution.
More generally, I find the creations disturbing, empty. This is similar to how I feel about written work created by Chat GPT. Im not sure how much of this is related to my own prejudice, how much comes from the early level of software development, and how much is in the images themselves. Maybe the biggest reason for the hollowness I perceive is the idea that the people using the programs believe that theyve created something significant. That they deserve credit.
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 dont really want to ask Is it art - weve 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
So Thoughts? I have no particular agenda here. I guess Im just looking to clarify for myself how to think about these things.
Comments (91)
This is not as bad as the NFT bubble crap though so kinda refreshing.
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.
Quoting 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.
I'm not sure that's true, although that question is what led me to question the value of some human-created art.
Quoting DingoJones
That makes sense.
Quoting DingoJones
I wonder where there will be room for humanity when it's all over.
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.
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.
No way to reliably guess, its a coin toss. Im gonna go with AI
Quoting simplyG
I am going to go with human then. Let's see which side it lands.
For what it's worth, it looks like a lot of the stuff on Midjourney.
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 artists soul, the artists 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 Michelangelos 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 doesnt 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 didnt 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.
Heres 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.
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.
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.
Quoting T Clark
Good guess. :smirk:
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.
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.
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.
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.
Yes. Your thinking parallels my own, but your solutions seem pretty unsatisfying. I'm sure you feel the same way.
Sure, but the whole process is brand new and seems to be changing very fast. What comes next?
Quoting 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.
This is an explanation of what makes art art that I find convincing and consistent with my own experience.
Quoting 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.
I would like to think you're right.
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 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.
Quoting 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.)
Quoting 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.
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 wont know until the AI does whatever it ends up wanting to do. Best case for us is it just leaves its insignificant creators behind.
Quoting 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.
I feel the same way about all things digital. Maybe its the medium, or that all of it is largely a string of ones and zeroes, and a portrait of the artist as a person who moves a contraption around on his desk, clicking it every once in a while. Of course artificial intelligence could do that better than a human being, when you think about it.
Me too, though part of the reason for me saying that is that it doesn't really seem like AI art has advanced all that much since this year began compared to 2022 when DALLE-2 was introduced. Although generations have gotten more detailed and covered more subject matter as a result (I suspect) of models being fed more data, I don't really see much progress being made in addressing the obvious shortcomings that I've mentioned in my previous post, and it doesn't really feel like feeding it more will change that. My guess is that it's because it doesn't understand the world the same way we do, since (to my knowledge) the way it "learns" is largely a matter of statistics.
Now I could be wrong, and things could change rapidly in the next few months but the more time passes the more doubtful I become of that happening. At this point it just seems like society is settling into a harmonious coexistence between AI and human artists.
Looks like AI has a Kitch sensibility. It all seems like tasteless crap to me.
I think special effects such as CGI have to be combined with compelling story telling otherwise its just unsatisfactory eye candy which after novelty loses its appeal it becomes tedious and empty but the same criticism can be levelled at human created art. The issue is art is meant to evoke emotion to the observer by changing the way we look at the world.
Pop art has been around for ages now, but that does not negate its value - if it can alter the perspective to the viewer then its been successful in that regard no ?
Im not referring to pop art. I mean what I said, art that is cheap and produced in mass. There will always be a place (market) for it in a capitalist/materialist society. AI just makes production more efficient. The fact is that modern society (all of us) loves efficiency and predictability.
Could a comparison then be drawn with production line of other products such as cars, electronics, fashion where automation has taken over why should art be different if the end result is the same if not better eventually. There is human input in both art that is currently output by current AI and production line manufacture of other goods - the question pertinent is that of originality which is what real art should bring to the table and if originality is indistinguishable between ai and human art then ai has been a success no ?
Also its the aim of every artist, be it bands who wish to make it into the mainstream rather than stay under the radar and thus reap the rewards of their creativity. So to me just because something is cheap and mass produced does not always necessarily mean its of lower quality.
We have higher bit rates of music reproduction since the days of Vinyl though vinyl retains its value in terms of a physical asset/sentiment which you can exhibit in your living room.
People have various criteria for art, such that it should be original, authentic, true, meaningful, reflect the values of society, or whatever else. I wonder if aesthetic experience is taken for granted or if it's practically an afterthought in our materialistic society and it is not enough.
Whilst aesthetics is an important part of art its not the be all end end all of art because as long as art is able to meaningfully communicate some aspect of human experience than beauty (aesthetics) does not necessarily come into play because life sometimes can be ugly in certain ways such as misery and suffering but if these can be expressed aesthetically then the better the work is for it without depriving it of subjective interpretation from the viewer point aspect.
I agree, and like I said it's not enough. I'm wondering what it would be like if it were enough. If it were maybe there would be no need for AI art.
Art is a creative process but sometimes its a destructive one too. Destructive in terms of destroying our deepest held convictions about the world and creative via romantic ideals or impressionism. Whatever the style may be beauty is mostly universal if its expressed elegantly enough and transcends time by being timeless and says something no matter how much society changes through the centuries.
The question is what distinguishes human creativity from machine creativity as the latter is merely a program which produces results via input whereas human creativity stems from something different altogether such as emotion which machines are incapable of feeling.
As emotion can be conveyed in an aesthetically pleasing way in a sense the AI is just faking emotion but we only know this post fact of the work being produced.
If Midjourney allowed it, I'm pretty sure most of the images created would be pornographic.
Quoting Tom Storm
That is what I was thinking about when I wrote "this makes me question my responses to human-created art."
Quoting Tom Storm
We've talked about what art is and what good art is before. I don't think your standards are unreasonable. In reading fiction or poetry, I judge written works first by whether or not I am moved. With visual art it's harder. I am very easily moved intellectually, so I'm a sucker for something interesting and clever, unexpected and unconventional.
I agree with what @Angelo Cannata wrote - "The essence of art is human inner experience that is communicated." It's communication from one person to another. What happens when there is no actual experience being communicated?
Yes, I guess there are two sides - the aesthetic one and labor rights one.
I'm still not sure about that.
That seems like a pretty short-sighted view. I can't imagine there won't be significant advancements in the near future. AI as a real thing has only really been out in public for a year or so.
There is truth in that, but I'm not sure I would say much different about most of the human-produced graphics I've seen.
Forgive me for going off on a tangent, but this makes me think about political issues like the 32 hour work week and universal basic income. At what point are humans just along for the ride while machines do all the real stuff? Would that be a bad thing? I'm retired and I'm as happy as I've ever been. What would human life be like if we never had to work?
Yes, this is at the heart of what I have been thinking.
But think about all those poor guys who make motel room and doctor's office art. They need to work too.
For me, "aesthetic experience" is an act of communication between two people. What happens when there is only one person there?
Seeing beauty in what's normally regarded as ugly via aesthetic experience can be rather depatterning, if you asked me. Anyway, it's not like revolutionary art comes before the impulse to revolt.
Once again we're talking about the utility of art, I note.
Quoting simplyG
So far, AI doesn't identify creative problems or possess the impulse to express itself. Nor does it explore, play, or innovate of its own accord. I guess the impulse to express oneself requires consciousness, but I think the rest could be developed without it, and that's just around the corner.
I think you misinterpreted what I wrote, as if I was talking about one single thing and nothing else, while actually I have been talking about degrees of importance. Degrees does not mean that what is secondary and below can be ignored. As in a house, you cant have just the pillars, just because they are the essential. As in a path, starting is the primary most important step, but you cannot stop just after the start. Many other examples can be made. If an abstract painting is upside down and nobody notices it, this doesnt mean that the correct direction can just be ignored.
We can consider that actually everybody approaches any work of art by steps, it cannot be otherwise, simply because we are humans and we are immersed in the flow of time. I think that, in the gradual personal approach that everybody builds in their enjoyment of art, the fact that art is communication of what the artist has inside themselves should be kept all the time as the essential reference point. This does not mean that you just need to concentrate on this aspect and ignore everything else. Art is an infinite phenomenon, so, stopping at any stage, at any aspect, is just disrespectful of it.
As I said, art is infinite, so aesthetic experience can have a lot of meanings. As a human, I dont want to waste my time with low quality aesthetic experiences, so I want to look for the richest ways of enjoying art. This does not mean that what I consider less rich ways should not be practiced. It is just my way. I think that the richest way to live an aesthetic experience is when you try to think that there was an artist who tried to communicate themselves. This does not mean that enjoying a stone shaped by nature is meaningless. Personally I find myself very prone to admire the stones that I step on, for example, when I have a walk near the sea, and I admire them in themselves, as they are, I am not a believer in God.
However, I find that a work of art produced by a human gives me a richer experience than the one I can have with things produced, for example, by nature; I even think that I have to continuously educate myself to the appreciation of art produced by humans. Primarily, not exclusively. Secondarily, there are other things, like the works of art produced by nature and everything else, even including art produced by AI.
One of the first jobs I had was working in a painting factory that would mass-produce crap for hotels and the like. It was piecework, doing batches of around 20 canvases simultaneously. Talk about starving artists. :cry:
Quoting T Clark
One person viewing a pretty sunset is like :starstruck:
The devil would make some work for idle hands.
Or in modern parlance, ennui leads to mindless violence and destruction, much bombing etc, until there is some work to do clearing up and fixing things. :sad:
That's a whole other issue. Since retirement, I have had time for creative endeavours that I only dreamed of while I had a family and a full time job. We might all be much happier, tinkering and inventing, exploring and foraging, painting and composing, volunteering and teaching, if it didn't have to be done either on top of a job or as a job.
But then, arts and sports should never have become jobs in the first place.
When it makes art in its spare time, without a prompt, we'll be able to ask it why.
Two people viewing that same sunset is more like :starstruck: :starstruck: :hearts: Which is why my SO immediately calls me when he notices something remarkable or funny or beautiful.
It would be a short sighted view if I said it in early 2022 when alot of the immediate advancements were made in AI art on a monthly basis as people explored what technologies like DALLE-2 can do. The better part of a year has passed since then and it doesn't seem like the exponential growth of the past year has carried over which suggests that we've reached a limit to what current AI image generative technologies can do. Even if we can get Midjourney to produce proper hands more often, it's never truly "taught" how to depict them properly every time, and my suspicion is that the same is gonna be involved with text generation (as some of the ones I've tested out mess it up a good portion of the time).
Now of course I'm not saying that some significant advancement will certainly not come soon. We can never accurately predict technological progress and when it will come. However it seems like that would involve some sort of breakthrough in the technology itself, and isn't just a matter of feeding models more data like we've been doing. As for when that breakthrough will come it's not really clear but I don't expect it to come in the near term.
You're right. I should have said "artistic experience."
Robots can do that too.
Yes, retirement is wonderful. I'm as happy as I've ever been. Yesterday I was talking to a friend with his two children, 4 and 2, standing there. I suggested he retire too, but he felt he should continue to feed his kids.
We live in interesting times, for better or worse.
Not sure I can agree with that. Wouldnt that mean that getting a different experience from what the artist is communicating is impossible? That is, if art is only communicating experience of the artist then when someone gets a different experience (a different emotion for example) then we couldn't call it art.
Also, an AI may not have an intent like a human but they can still make art intended to provoke an experience. For example if you ask it to draw something scary it will reference what images scare humans and generate an image based on that. I would argue that there is no real difference other than where the experience is coming from. Again, I think if you cannot tell the difference in a blind test between AI art and human art then you cant rationally say something is missing from the AI generated image.
Also, communication might not be the right word. That implies a two way exchange in my mind. Isnt art more provoking a response than communicating something?
My apologies for misinterpreting your post.
No, it would mean that art is subject to misjudgment and misunderstanding just like all other type of human communication.
Quoting DingoJones
Communication can be and often is a back and forth between people, but it doesn't have to be and often isn't. The user's manual for my new CO meter is a one way communication unless I have questions and contact the customer service line.
Ok, but then you are saying getting something from art not intended (communicated) by the artist is essentially incorrect.
Your doing it wrong! Its a happy painting not a calm one you fool!
This is a very restrictive way to define art isn't it? Im not saying thats bad, just clarifying.
Quoting T Clark
Fair enough, I retract my suggestion.
Actually I agree with Gadamer's idea that, in interpreting something, there isn't much point in looking for the intention of the author. Once it has been produced, a work of art gains a state autonomous from its author. So, I think it is even legitimate to criticize the author's interpretation of their own work and disagree with them. But this does not mean that the author and their intention are just negligible. I still think that reference to the authors intention is the best criterion, provided that we are aware that actually it is impossible to reach and that even the author might not be the one who has the best awareness about their own intention. I would add, also, a reference to the "hermeneutic circle": when I interpret art, I am also interpreted by it.
I'm glad we adopted ours when we were in our thirties, not our sixties.
Substitute "convey something" for communicate. If the original message is lost in transit and is replaced by something equally valued, there has still been a connection. I don't interrogate Van Gogh every time my spirits are lifted by sunflowers; I don't take Yeats to task each time I read a poem. Something of them passes to me, by however indirect a route, that simply doesn't happen with computer generated art; those images never get past my eyeballs.
Right, and I think that is because most of the human stuff is also just robotically imitative.
If I were the artist, I guess I would say I had failed to get my point across to that particular person. Again, that happens all the time with communication. If I write a post here on the forum and you don't understand what I'm trying to say, I'll go back and look to see if I could have been clearer. If no one seems to understand, I've probably done a bad job.
Yes. My brother had his children when he was in his late 50s. I love my nieces, but the idea of raising kids at this time of my life is daunting. He always really wanted kids. I certainly can understand that.
Quoting Vera Mont
I have no objection to saying it that way.
Is there a difference between ordinary communication and art ? By some criteria a well articulated piece of writing done so with flare can be artistic in a sense it all depends on how touched or moved the person receiving such a communication is by it that makes it art rather than just another informative blurb of text.
I've thought about that. I think there is a difference, at least by convention. On the other hand, it seems like communicating ideas is conveying experience, an intellectual one.
Incidentally, I paid 10 bucks for a bunch of computer-enhanced avatars of yours truly, at least some of which came out looking a lot better than, ahem, I actually do, I'm even using some of them:
I've been using ChatGPT daily since it came out. It's been amazingly helpful with drafting and research. It really is like interacting with a knowledgeable academic tutor. The actual prose suggestions it offers are often a bit lame, but it's really good at critique, suggestions, structure, etc.
Indeed, but I'm just trying to hold on to whatever bit of realism is left nowadays.
Pornography or not, I wouldn't mind hanging around long enough to take a look. They'd better get cracking though.
I don't think visual artists are worried much about elephants stealing their jobs or taking over their niche in the aesthetic ecology.
I agree about the worries of individuals, though that is fodder for the Economics Forum.
The concepts I outlined are valid, though (here in the Philosophy Forum).
I looked up the expression 'get past my eyeballs' and apparently it has something to do with vitreous detachment and floaters. I didn't know AI had that effect. Anyway, just for fun I wanted to see how Midjourney might forge some Van Gogh sunflowers. Some renderings were much closer but the following is interesting. Looks like impasto painting over a 3D sculpture.
Click the reveal button at your own risk of eye damage.
[hide="Reveal"]
[smart-ass remark]Yes, it's clearly a much better version than all those slapdash ones Van Gogh did. He just didn't seem to be able to get it right. [/smart-ass remark]
I said it was interesting. I didn't say it was better or that I even liked it. It's mildly interesting in how it kind of lost the plot and confused the 3d impasto technique with the still-life elements.
Should I have expressed fear and loathing to be more in the cool kid camp? :snicker:
It held my interest for a full minute, because I wondered how the computer got the idea of a collage. It's pretty.
Sorry, it was intended as a smart-ass remark. I've edited the post to clarify.
To clarify further, as I noted, it's fun to mess around with this. I can see how a real artist would enjoy it. I enjoy messing with Chat GPT writing.
Actually, I understand that a lot of the NFT crap was AI generated. It helped to provide a new plaything for the rich and contributed to a big waste of energy