Ask Lemmy

I don't even consider AI generated images to be art since there is no expression of skill, imagination, or feeling in them.

In general - yes. There is a flood of shitty and lazy “art” that has infected search results and creative spaces. I’m also deeply uncomfortable with it being trained on artists work without their consent - for all the talk about it being equivalent to human inspiration I’m pretty sure there have been examples where it’s started generating attempts at signatures.

It’s terrible in knitting and crochet spaces (I imagine woodworking and sculpture and architecture too) because there are lots of things generated which are physical impossible and just wrong to anyone who enjoys the crafts. It gives false understandings of what those art forms look like.

I think the entire point of art is the human intentionality aspect. Art is humans using materials to do things that don’t serve an immediate practical purpose. There has to be some element of “desire” on the part of the artist.

So it’s not that it is impossible to use AI tools to generate art (there’s stochastic computer generated pieces from the 70s that are lovely iirc) To me though, the way these tools are used is what is important - if you’re using an AI you’re training and adjusting yourself, if you’re spending hours tweaking prompts and perhaps sifting through hundreds of pictures to combine and really participate in “making” something.

The current trend is really just a bunch of content sludge. I don’t see the appeal in either the process of creation or in what can be appreciated from it. The best stuff is mostly memey topical political jokes, where it rests more on the symbols rather than the art itself.

Like, when I make art - my process is adding layers over weeks and weeks. It’s noticing that I don’t like the way this section looks, so I go back over it, come back to it later… it’s a process - I engage with and shape the work. I’m just a guy who glues trash to things and paints them, my art doesn’t really have external value - but it still feels like art in a way that getting Midjourney to make pictures of Gandolf with big honking naturals isn’t.

What I hate about AI art: How it's based on stolen work. How it is purpose built to replace real, talented artists and devalue their labor. How it uses way more energy than it needs to and is pretty wasteful

What I love about AI art: Instant stupid shit for meme madness.

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If AI art was all just stupid jokey shit like this that a friend of mine made when we were discussing how people were making Ghibli-fied versions of important moments in history, and we decided to go with "George Bush doesn't care about black people" but make Mike Myers dressed as Austin Powers, I'd be okay with it entirely. It's not for profit by devaluing artists and using this work instead of a real artists work, it's just stupid shit that makes us laugh. Everything else aside, I can get behind stupid shit that makes us laugh. The rest of the issues with AI art suck though.

It's soulless. A mere imitation.

I'm not entirely against LLMs as a tool, but I especially despise the image-based LLMs. They are certainly neat for some fun things. I've used them a little bit here and there for a dumb profile picture or a "I'm kinda thinking about this..." Brainstorm, but even in those cases I noticed the capabilities of the LLM and its tendencies quite literally pidgeon hole my artistic vision and push me in other directions that felt less and less creative. (Sidenote: I feel the same way about coding LLM tools. The longer I use them at any given time, the less creative I feel and it has a noticeable impact on my interest in the code I'm writing. So I don't really use them much. Also I consistently manage to point out coding LLM code in PR reviews because it's always kinda funky)

I've avoided using AI art tools for a while now. I'll consider some limited use if the cost, billionaire ownership, blatant theft of real IP without compensation, and environmental impact problems are solved. (No, an "open source" model doesn't solve all of these problems, especially since nearly all open source models are not truly open source and are almost always benefiting from upstream theft)

You know what I do like about AI art? I like the older Google machine learning art experiments from the mid-2010s. They invoked a strange existential curiosity. But those weren't done with LLM's.

Outside of LLMs, I like that there are some newer tools for editing that can do a better "lasso" select, that can mix and match into brushes as an alternative to something more algorithmic, the audio plugin that uses a RNN to simplify or expand upon an audio technique. Things that are tools that can be chosen or avoided and have nothing to do with LLMs.

I honestly cannot wait for this bubble to burst and for these tools to return to a cost that they'd need to be for these companies to turn a profit. A higher cost would eliminate all this casual use that is making people worse at research, critical thinking, and creativity, as well as make the art tools less competitive to just paying artists, even for scumbags wanting to cut the artists out. And it'd incentivize non-LLM, non-insanely costly ML techniques again instead of the current "LLMs for everything" nonsense right now.

I don't hate the "art." The AI can't do much about it.

What I strongly dislike is people who manage to draft literally 40 words or less and think they "created" something.

You didn't. You a mathematical model to do something for you. You therw 175 tokens into a whirlpool and got am 87% what you wanted image out. If you even had an idea of what you wanted before hand.

I'm not sure hate is the right word. When you've got someone stabbing you in the back multiple times, is it really hate you're feeling toward them? Or is it anger, fear, and danger?

I "hate" it in the sense that it's built on theft and requires the exploitation of underpaid workers to develop and maintain it. I "hate" it in the sense that we're living on a burning cinder with dwindling fresh water resources and "AI" is adding fuel to the fire. I "hate" it in the sense that it's being used to further undervalue artists and writers. I "hate" it in the sense that it fills our spaces with crap that so often looks like it was cribbed off of Rapunzel, Wreck-It-Ralph, and some other things.

I don’t hate AI art. I hate people who pretend they’re artists when all they do is writing prompts.

Yes, I hate it. I hate that it fills every image platform. It is not art at all.

It’s a fun toy thing and can make decent images but its not art and can never replace actual art. When you compare for example an anime art of someone who actually drew it and the AI image, the drawn art is 9 out of 10 times better.

It’s also petty pretty easy to spot whether an image is AI or drawn made.

No, because I don't have an irrational fear of AI. I don't like when poor or unfitting AI art is used, but it isn't AI who makes that decision to use it.

I hate those who call themselves artists when they're just commissioning a computer to make a picture for them. I also hate it when those same people deny the unethical aspects of AI generation.

Edit: to add more, I also hate the AI images themselves. They are filling up the internet with slop. This is very annoying, and the same goes for LLMs. I don't want to get AI generated results when I didn't search for them specifically.

Firstly, it's not art. I already hate that OP called it that. It's AI generated imagery. There is no art involved outside of art theft.

Secondly, it's legal art theft created by those types of people that either never considered artists to have any value, or have a chip on their shoulder against artists.

Thirdly, at no point in history have artists ever been appreciated, despite art being the most important element of everything. Imagine right now what a user interface would look like without artistic design. Or a car. Or your toothbrush. AI gen shafts artists... again... with the absolutely ridiculously, flippant argument that it "democratises art", as if it's some sort of noble privilege rather than a skill literally anyone can practice.

Art is cool cos it’s like holy shit a person did that!?

If it’s just an algorithm it’s not very impressive.

It's ruined art for me. Someone posts something, and I don't know if it's real art or a theft of other people's work.

As an artist who had her art stolen for usage in AI, I hate AI generated images for several reasons. I've personally had my art stolen to be used in a prompt without my permission, and said art got mangled so much that it looked terrible. AI image generators scrape the internet for art so they can amalgamate these pieces of art together to correspond to a prompt, and this art is taken without the permission of the artists. In some AI generated images, the mangled remnants of artists' signatures are still visible. Beyond art theft, it's instant gratification with zero effort. A huge part of why I appreciate art is because someone made it, someone spent potentially hours to create this beautiful picture! When I look at my old art, I can instantly get a feel for what vibes I had going through my mind at the time, like I could almost take a peek into my past self's brain, and this applies to other artist's work too!

Prompting an AI image generator, in my eyes, is like prompting an artist to draw something for you, except that artist turns out to be someone who traces bits of other people’s art without their permission, or copy and pastes it. Sometimes AI generated images aren't immediately recognizable, so me and a lot of other artists have tried to make it a trend to post progress pictures and other receipts along with our art.

AI art is fine being used as a tool. What I have a problem with is it's users calling themselves "artists".

A person who types a prompt into an AI is no different than a person who hires a painter and describes what he wants them to paint.

Just because that "painter" in the first case happens to be a computer, that doesn't mean that by default the title of "artist" defaults back to the person who wrote the prompt. That person is still just someone telling someone (or something) what to draw.

In other words, you don't become the artist just because you eschew paying an actual artist and instead have your computer do it for you.

I'm an artist / writer and I don't see problem with generative AI when you're at a really early concept stage. Exploring ideas, try to get over creative blocks, that sort of stuff. Maybe the AI hallucinations and fuckups can give you ideas worth exploring.

But using them as a literal basis for artwork you work further on is a fool's errand. It's easier to maybe take ideas from there, but work from scratch anyway. And I do realise that even that is controversial.

Also, could be a legal quagmire. Also not happy about the copyright appropriation situation or the environmental impact.

Art is an attempt to communicate (usually to communicate something of the human condition). Current 'art' AI is too far away from intelligence to have anything to communicate. All it can do is mindlessly try to copy and blend what it's seen before without understanding it.

I don't hate it, but I also don't value it.

Not a fan. It admittedly can be an amusing toy - type something in and wow look what it did! But the costs are high, and our society isn't a utopia where people don't need to labor for survival.

Maybe if we were post scarcity it wouldn't matter that much. But we're not, and this AI stuff is going to hurt labor, benefit the ownership class, and probably be mildly bad for end users too.

Yes. It's flooding places, and suddenly people decided that "smooth looking" was the absolute end goal of any drawing/music/creation/etc. It's not. Some of the most famous art piece are completely wrong, some aren't. That's not the endgoal. Nobody's gonna care that you can take that very simplified drawing and "generate" an extremely high-detail, fully shaded image that looks like it, as it was never the purpose.

Creative direction, intent, consistency (or absolute lack of consistency), execution, style, and a lot more goes into any creation, art or not. That's what make a piece feel interesting. There's a reason even now, with generated content being plausible as far as glaring mistakes go, we can still point out which image "feels" AI across a lot of different styles. At best, to remove that feeling of it being wrong, you'd have to spent a lot of time on the output of a model to touch it up everywhere and change details, which requires time and proficiency, which a lot of people jumping on that trend definitely lacks. Some of the worst results I've seen have been from people trying to make other "pay" for their output.

There's also the issue of how these works. For decades, creative people (among other) have been sued by big companies, some very harshly, to protect IP from such overexploitation as "using a three second excerpt in a video" or "using the vague likeness of a character". And now, these same targets are getting fleeced of their work by more big companies under the cheer of the people. That's a gut feeling of disgust right there. Combined with the utter lack of creativity in these, we're really watching the potential death of an activity (artistic creation), and that's not a good place to be. If one wants to argue that "generated art" is also a form of creation, keep in mind that these models can't be trained on generated pieces without extreme prejudice. Killing the very source they need to operate does not seem like a good long-term plan. But who cares about long-term when you can make a quick buck, right?

I'd also like to point out that all this rambling is about generated content that goes from "output of a model" to "final piece" with little to no afterthought. The "common" piece, where people will be happy to see twenty broken pieces because "well, there's a lot of them, so it's good". AI and LLM models, as a tool, may or may not be useful in the long term, but I can see smaller applications, even for art. A lot of menial tasks can be improved, general posing, references, simple background that are marginally considered part of the product, guides, etc. Taking something you've drawn/created, and locally use an AI "filter" to remove an extra line cleanly or touch up a mistake you want out? Great. The tool carries the intent of the artist, the same way a pen do.

But AI generated content? Make a prompt, a stick-figure sketch, and call it a day? These, IMO, will always look and taste like garbage, no matter how pretty they look. Because it was never "pretty" we were looking for.

Hate it? Yes. Respect people who use it? No.

As an art appreciator it just looks bad

As an artist I'm conflicted. I like new technology and methods and mediums, but it's entirely unethical to make models on unconsenting artists with no compensation or recognition.

I don't hate AI art. I hate AI art being passed off as "traditional" art.

It's fun to play around with but it has zero value and wherever I see it used anywhere I cringe

Almost all of the images generated by AI models are just eye candy and not art. It can be eye candy based on a bunch of art, but it still isn’t artistic. It’s often just an image aimed at farming engagement. “Here’s a picture so that your algorithms don’t ignore my post. Do I have your attention now?”

Yes, as it conveys nothing more than the prompt it was given. Art is a means of communication, but when all it does is chop up pictures it’s seen to match a prompt there just isn’t anything to analyze.

It may look pretty in the moment, but lacks all substance and will be forgotten as quickly as it was generated.

I feel old because I remember when this conversation was happening with airbrushing photographs and then Photoshop.

And now these days, really good Photoshop is invisible. We can remove people from backgrounds. We can improve the lighting. Movie CGI is just photoshooting stills.

AI will reach that stage too, where it will be so good, it's scary that you can't tell.

it's fucking annoying. it looks like shit. it's boring the hell out of me

Yes, because It's not art. I have a very liberal definition of art. I'd call John Cage's 4′33″ art. Art requires concious effort, an AI has no conciousness.

Edit: I thought the question was do you like AI art? I can't read apparently. I wouldn't say hate. I just don't respect it from an artstic standpoint.

I don't hate it, some of the images generated look awesome. But that's just an image that "literally anyone could do". It's the equivalent of instant lamen or cup noodles.

Afaik, it can't come up with new styles and most of the stuff pumped out just wholesale copies existing stuff: the majority either looks like a Disney 3d animation, or fancy anime-esque render. Some try to look like realistic oil paintings, those look cool and pretty, but nothing worth making a poster.

I think the only people, besides tech bros, who are happy with this are those that hate giving art any value.

of course! aside from detracting from artists with actual talent and creativity, there is one example i’ve seen in my school that makes me hate it even more: teachers deciding to print out posters, flyers, etc. with obviously ai generated images, despite the fact that we have an entire art department in the school, full of students who’d be very much interested in making something up for them. even then, tools like canva and the sort are always available, hell, even mspaint could work! i’d rather see 10 poorly made posters than have to see one more ai image used in the school.

A lot of reasons, but the most straightforward one is that it looks like shit.

I hate it because of the theft.

It's possible AI could be interesting but the current iteration is garbage.

Does anyone else feel ill when seeing some AI images? It's like an out of tune piano for me

I think it's fascinating. I don't think it holds the same reverence as man-made art by any means, but I still find it impressive.

I prefer real people and real artwork hand painted or hand drawn. Yes, doing it digital with your hand and mouse count as hand made.

I don't consider it Art, but the specific reason I hate it is because it is meant to be an illusion of something that it's not, and it's crafted that illusion off the blood sweat and tears of people whom it treats as a line item in a database by people who don't respect it. It is fundamentally a bastardizarion of the creative soul and rather purposefully at that.

I mean, every highly contrasted media we've ever watched, just about, is about someone with a modicum of empathy struggling against a fascist with no empathy to their cause, and what is more fascist than diminishing or dilluting the perceived value of art to the public? Art is the only language allowed to those who are repressed.

Environmental impacts 🤷

I see them mostly as fun toys now but eventually someone will use them to create something we have never seen or even considered before. I don't think that makes them artistic but a tool of an artist.