this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2024
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I think AI art is comparable to photography. Photographers do a lot of work behind the scenes to get everything set up, the equipment, lighting, angles, lenses, etc, But at the end of the day, the only action they're taking to capture the art is they press a button, it's not nearly the same amount of work that a painter or a musician puts into their art. So I think the idea of "capturing" art is still a valid thing. Sometimes a photographer can capture an award-winning masterpiece with a spur-of-the-moment photo on some shitty disposable camera. Maybe it took them 1000 bad photos to get that one photo, but they still just captured it from somewhere else, they didn't create the work.
Similarly with AI, a person may have to work with the AI software to setup and craft the prompt that will eventually generate the art, then there may be dozens of iterations of that and fine-tuning to get the result they're imagining, and even after that there may be some photoshopping involved to get it to where they want it. They're capturing artwork from a source that may not be their own creation, just the same as photographers. I think AI art is just as legitimate as other forms of art, it's just open to a wider range of people that can participate because many of the physical hurdles (equipment, space, time, lighting, etc) are not as much of an issue.
I think what you're describing is more like 3d rendering.
IMO using AI is more like directing in a film. You're not the one creating the art, and the level of control you have is restricted to providing guidance and retrying.
So would you say film direction is not an art form?
I'd say it's a grey area, like AI prompting
You're not the one implementing the final result, you're just providing guidance to other(s) who produce the final piece of art.
If there is artistry in that, it seems like it'd apply equally to directing as it does to prompt engineering.
You can recognize the style of good film directors. I think it is certainly an art.
I don't necessarily disagree.
The style of a director is the common set of guidance that they provide to the artists who do the work of making the film (eg the actors, the grips, the editors, the lighting, the markup, etc).
Likewise someone who uses AI to make art can have common things they seek in all the AI images they generate. Common things they include in their prompts to push the images to appear in a particular way.
They're not the same but there is enough commonality that criticism of one mostly applies to the other.
Therefore, AI art is art. Whether it is ethical is another story.
AI art can be art, anything can be art. But I would say I don't consider most AI images to be art.
But the ethics of AI is a far more important discussion.
I agree. "Can be" might be a better way to put it.
Agreed, the process is very non-artistic. There are too many layers that remove the creator from the process of creating. It's more of a science than an art, and unsurprisingly an artistic spirit is usually lacking from it.
The results are better when in the hands of artists, but many artists don't enjoy using the tools because they are so removed from an artistic work flow and are such a black box most of the time. It's not artistically fulfilling to press a button and see what comes out.
Just my 2 cents as an artist who has experimented with the tools quite a bit and still doesn't love them.
I like this take.
How far can the artist be removed from the art, and still be considered the artist?
And is it even important to ask "is this art" if art is inherently subjective? It's probably more important to ask "who is this helping?"
I have a pretty wide definition of art, so I hesitate to say it can't be art flippantly. I do think that for something to be art it must contain the voice of the artist, though, and for many AI generations I don't think you can see that voice, even if a lot of work went into creating it. Maybe that will change as the tools become more sophisticated and easier to get what you want out of them.
I agree but I don't think that has to do with AI necessarily. There are people who create images without soul, no matter the medium and tools used.
I think that people who make soulless art are just drawn to AI generators because it allows them to make something aesthetically passable without hours and years of tedious practice (which they otherwise wouldn't be willing to do since they obviously have no care for the art).