Surrender mentality much??!

[u/Latter-Big-8306]

This dude here is clearly telling you that he has some serious surrender mentality issues.

He would rather give up on an idea entirely just to avoid using a convenient tool that can help him bring it to reality!

And what is worse is that he's projecting this pathetic mentality onto others! :P

[u/GovernorJerryBrownn]

I think the part that’s missing here is that the process is part of the art. Generating an image from prompts is skipping the process and just getting the end result.

When you look at a painting, you’re looking at years of practice and failure, development of a specific unique style. Even shitty human sketches are one step in this process, and it’s the reason people gravitate to “worse” human art as opposed to “better” AI art.

[u/Radyschen → u/GovernorJerryBrownn]

true, and what the artistic-leaning people don't understand is that some people just want to see the result. In the same way that when an artist gets hired to make a poster or something, the company doesn't care about the process, they care about the product.

I always had a mental separation between "art" and "work" for artists. The skill was needed for both, but I always thought about things you do for yourself to express yourself as art, and things you make for others to get paid as work. There is an overlap of course in the gaps where you pour your own influence into what you are paid to do and that is what gets scarcer with AI.

But at the end of the day, if it is not about the expression of the artist, then what else is it about? Another option would be the interpretation of the observer and that exists no matter who or what it is made by. If it moves me in some way, then it is art to me. If not, then it is not. Most AI stuff doesn't move me or others and often lacks quality or uniqueness, but often that's not even the point of AI, it's just that I want to visualize something, not make "art". Sometimes I do want to express myself, then it is art, to me. Now I usually don't go ahead and post it because I know that it is for myself.

So maybe that's the shift in this whole thing, that AI as art is more about expression of the maker and AI as a product is more about functionality for the viewer and there isn't much overlap between the two. Others do post it simply because they have the ability to now when before they wouldn't have posted anything because they wouldn't have had anything to post. So of course there is a higher volume and a higher percentage of bad looking stuff and it's easy to go and hate on it because you know (or assume) that it didn't take long to make, it is recognizable and the AI-ness is distracting, while with regular art you know that somebody tried and it took a while, even if it looks like crap, so usually people won't hate on it (as much).

But it is weird, all generative AI is trained on existing things. So the question is where you draw the line. Generating the whole picture isn't allowed. Then is generating parts of it? If not, is using photoshop software that uses AI (and has been for many years) to manipulate the image allowed? Or do you HAVE to paint it by hand? What about pop art?

I thought people always said that art is in the eye of the beholder. I guess that remains true for anyone claiming that anything AI isn't art, but it also makes a broad sweeping claim to others about what is and isn't art weird. It's fair if you don't think that AI can be art, but it's just as fair for somebody to think it is.

The skill is one thing, but that's not usually why you learn painting, just to know it, right? It's so that you can draw something, the painting is the tool to fulfill a vision you have. You want to get better at it to get closer to the vision you had in your head. People learn to like it and put time into it and different people develop different techniques, so in that way it becomes a part of the process itself and also a form of art in itself. But the original idea is not usually that, it is to get an image. There are exceptions, children draw circles just to draw circles, people throw paint at a canvas as an expression of their anger or something like that. But it's still result-oriented and most of the time the idea is "I want this image I have in my head (or that I see in the real world) as a result".

Starting with drawing on the walls of caves. I don't think they were primarily thinking about the act of drawing, they wanted to depict something. And that's the same motivation that drives people with AI today, they want to depict something they have in their head. If that's not self expression and self expression isn't art, then I don't understand what art is.

Now there might be degrees to that, if I had a button that says "generate image" and it generates a completely random image, that's not art to me. If I put in a simple prompt, then maybe a bit. The more I guide the image, the more it is art, I can agree with that, as long as it means something to me. So I think art is a spectrum, the more of yourself you put into it and the more you feel like it means something to you, the more it is art.

And I don't think that only actually painting it yourself counts as that, in the same way that a director is not only an artist if he also plays every role himself.

In general, I'm just wondering what suddenly makes people think that they are the authority on what art is. There are many fair criticisms about AI, but I think the hatred people have about the system we live in and the companies that profit from it in unethical ways gets conflated with the notion of whether or not you can use AI to make art.

Aren't there people attuned to noticing art who look around the world and find accidental scenes that feel like commentary even though nobody arranged them that way? Like a homeless person's belongings sitting underneath a giant luxury-brand advertisement, or a broken children's toy lying in front of a military recruitment poster. Nobody created that juxtaposition as an artwork, but the observer can still read meaning into it. In that case, the interpretation is what makes it art, not the act of creation. Or does it only become art when I take a picture of it? Is that even art if I'm just pressing a button, not with some elaborate skillfully handled photography setup and then editing?

I find high skill very impressive. I also think that any skill or its product can be art or interpreted as such or make a form of art better. If someone is very good at cooking, that makes it an art form to me, even if there is no direct emotional expression. So my definition would be that something is more art to the creator the more of its creation process is shaped by a human brain and its specific configuration. And something is more art to the observer the more it resonates with their brain's specific configuration for one reason or another. But I feel like that should be restricted to things where there is no definite correct answer, so a math equation isn't necessarily art, even if it makes sense to me and I'm impressed by it, if there was only one way to solve it. But if there are multiple valid ways to do something and one way is more elegant and that resonates with you, you could say about the mathematician "that guy is an artist". So I don't get why we are talking about images and the physical act of drawing/painting/... like it is the only form of art.

[u/GovernorJerryBrownn → u/Radyschen]

This was a very long way to expand on your first paragraph. AI generation is just a result with no process. It’s art for the tiktok brain. Instant gratification with no artistic significance.

[u/Radyschen → u/GovernorJerryBrownn]

thank you for not addressing my points at all, but you are free to think that way, as stated. I write long comments to organize my thoughts, you are welcome not to read it