Ask Lemmy

I can't say that I am a fan.

AI siphons the end result from the process involved to get there - a very human process. Scraping loads of work from artists to mimic a signature style or pop culture trends in art doesn't exactly scream innovation. Using AI to aide a creative process is one thing, but using it to generate imagery, claiming originality, and using it for internet clout is farcical, lazy, and an insult to artists.

Art is a skill honed over time and given life through the human experience - and the beautiful part is that when others interact with it, it connects them through their own experiences. I really do think AI cheapens that.

I think it substracts from everything but itself. That is on its own, its pretty cool. But it's gross when it's used as part of a bigger project.

If I don't like a piece of art it's not because it was made using AI but because it's bad art. If it's good it's good no matter who or what made it.

No. It’s useful when you need a quick picture for something or help visualizing something. A huge timesaver. I haven’t seen it generate anything good enough to be hung in an art museum, so I don’t really understand why anyone would hate it. It’s not really competition for actual art. Also, I want to say that I don’t think anyone’s art was “stolen”. That’s the same ludicrous argument the RIAA uses against online file sharing. Any images used in the training was downloaded, mathematically analyzed, and deconstructed. “Stolen” would require a heist at the museum.

Depends on what it's used for. Looks tacky when used by big businesses, but looks fine if used by small independent people. Like dbzer0.com just uses them for blog thumbnails. But coca cola AI adverts? Ai bots spouting stuff on Facebook? Entirely AI generated websites (although that's moreso text)? Awful.

It is not art.

Ai is capitalism maximizing productivity and minimizing labour costs.

Ai isn’t targeting tedious labour, the people building these systems are going after art, music and the creative process. They want to take the human out of the equation and pump out more content to monetize at ever increasing rates.

It’s an insult to life itself.

I don't hate it, in fact I use it a lot for my D&D game nights - not being an artist myself.

it's extremely obvious and always seems as if they could do it with a real artist, 3d modeller and or an actor for less than 1% their budget, so it's extremely trashy

On the other hand, because it's so low effort me being able to realise it is AI also makes me feel disgusted, Atleast spend effort prompting it so it doesn't look like shit, I swear, lazy bastards

For solo developers that use it for games or backgrounds, it's not that bad, and it's usually temporary.

Good for memes, bad for the environment.

I do, but not for the reasons you think.

What makes a Jackson Pollock painting so valuable? I've heard time and again people saying "I could do that too", "it's just paint thrown at canvas" etc. But it's not the actual paint on the canvas that makes the painting. It's Pollock's aesthetic sense that chose that color, that pattern, and that's what you get to see when you look at his paintings. It's an image that said something to him, and we have decided to put value on that.

The vast majority of AI generated imagery is not art just like the vast majority of people throwing paint at canvas won't get a Jackson Pollock painting. It might become art if used by an artist with purpose and intention. Which at the moment is pretty hard, given that small, iterative adjustments are really hard to do with AI. But in the end, AI is yet another tool that would allow humans a bit more freedom of expression.

It used to be that a painter had to literally prepare his palette from raw ingredients. Then he could buy pre-made paints. When digital art came along, we gave up paints entirely. Now we skip the painting part. The one common thread though is the honest expression of intent, and the feedback loop given by the artist's aesthetic sense. If either is missing, you get kitschy garbage. And that's most AI generated imagery these days.

No, quite the opposite.

Honestly, I find the vast majority of the arguments against it to be be made from a point of ignorance, propagated by a rabid sub-set of artists looking to generate clicks for their sensationalist YouTube videos.

Some pertinent reading/watching:

https://youtu.be/gWmEXCJIIZ4

https://epoch.ai/gradient-updates/how-much-energy-does-chatgpt-use

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-54271-x

https://craigboehman.com/blog/in-defense-of-ai-art

https://www.fxhash.xyz/article/in-defense-of-ai-art

https://andymasley.substack.com/p/a-defense-of-ai-art

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/how-did-you-do-on-the-ai-art-turing

https://i.redd.it/ch5wpbz7tkje1.jpeg

Art is about expressing one emotion from one person to another.

We have a word for fake pictures: advertising.

The easy answer is: Yes, because it's mostly bad.

The Long answer is: Like everything in art and life, If you can set it in right context it could also work. If you cannot, it's just bland and bad in the classic artistic craftmanship standard and modern art and Action Art.

Like anything art generators are a tool. One that can be very useful in a creative process, to convey an idea that is hard to present in text, to explore variations on a concept without having to draw something a hundred times, etc. It would be very difficult to argue that something like that has no valid uses.

However, as it stands the majority of the tools in place cost a fair bit of money to set up and run and so there is a high barrier to entry, and so the profits made from running them end up going primarily to those who are rich enough to set them up in the first place. Wealth inequality is a massive issue right now and so this sours a lot of people against these tools.

Many people also subjectively dislike AI art, which is a fair comment, as all art is subjective, but I don't think it necessarily helps anyone to debate over whether it looks good or not, that shouldn't be the issue here.

You could argue that the root of the problem is that most users of these tools will never consider the repercussions of paying for them, the people they are supporting are obscured behind many layers and it is impossible for the average consumer to know what the recipient will do with those funds.

Like any tool, these machines have created a new way for the already powerful to exploit the weak, it may be abstracted away behind closed doors but it is happening.

I'm not a fan of it as their are just certain details an AI can never do. A color here, a twist or turn there, a stroke this way, a drip in that place. It is something that one can't program to have AI even think to do. I do think AI has its place and is a good tool.

I'm not a fan of AI generated stills, but I've seen a number of AI generated music videos that are kind of fun to watch. It's not so much the art itself, but the way it collapses from hallucination to hallucination repeatedly that just goes well with some music I guess. Theres obviously still a lot of work from actual artists to make it into a video and time it with music, and the music itself of course is still human (afaik). Here's a few examples I've seen, I'd love to know what people think of this style specifically, as opposed to the AI slop photos we are getting bombarded with. Especially if you hate it, I want to hear about why!

Mormaid - Wet Summer

Probass Hardi - Polonyna

Elgrandetoto - Dinero

Die Antwoord - Age of Illusion

Not really, if they actually look good and doesn't have the uncanny valley stuff to it. But there should be rules on Lemmy (and hopefully other platforms too) to required images to be marked as AI.

low effort crap is low effort crap no matter how it's made, that said, there is plenty of high quality, high effort AI art out there that has a lot of prompt engineering put into it; it is merely drowned out in a sea of sludge. It's just about as easy for someone to put in zero effort and churn out AI sludge as it is for them to scribble in MSPaint, the difference being scribbling in MSPaint usually has some level of charm to it for its simplicity. That doesn't mean the guy who spends a lot of time tweaking their prompt to get it exactly right isn't an artist, it means they create art with different tools. Whether you use a rattlecan and stencils, or pencils and paper, or paint and canvas, or a wacom tablet and stylus, or type in carefully crafted prompts, art is art is art is art. But if you don't spend the time required to get good at it, your art will be shit.

Also, watching the artist crowd melt down again saying "that's not real art!" is absolutely hilarious. Those who weren't around at the time may not remember, but when digital art was starting to become a thing, there were plenty of people who firmly attested that if it was digital, it wasn't "real" art. Watching the same set of creatives having the same meltdown ~30 years later, "REEEEE YOU CAN'T JUST USE TECHNOLOGY TO MAKE THE PROCESS EASIER", is extremely funny.

AI “art” has made me realize how important part human behind art is to the point where I will never pay for any AI “art”. AI “art” is worthless and I would even say it devalues rest of the thing, if its part of some bigger whole like game for example. I do not want to see it, I dont want even glimpse. When I see AI “art”, its only a reminder to me of theft that has been done to make it happen and of some smarmy slimy techbro behind it. Whenever I see AI “art” only thing I feel is either sad or angry depending on day.

If I was religious type, Id even go as far as say I believe in soul now because how soulless AI “art” is.

I am fucking sick of it and deeply despise AI “art” in its entirety with every fiber of my being.

I am sure I will get downvoted to deepest depths by techbros and people who dont care and simply consume whatevers brought in front of them, use every AI filter they get their hands on. But hey, I was asked, I gave my answer.

i'm utterly bored by it and annoyed that it mucks up all the places I'd usually steal images for my TTRPG games.

Don't know about "art", but I use it sometimes to generate contextual imagery for blog posts and videos. I would've never hired an artist so the only real difference is that it looks a lot better than when I used to try to draw something myself.

It looks so detached from reality.

I am fine with AI art as long as its properly credited to its creato. Not the person who wrote a prompt to generate the image, not the company that created the program. The AI should be credited in a way that no person could confuse it for something someone made

If thats too hard, banning AI art is also fine. I havent seen any real use for it

I like playing around with it myself but I never upload it I just keep it on my computer cuz it's neat so I don't get why anyone else would upload AI generated stuff online

Most of it reminds me of that tacky clip art that got bundled with word processors and Corel Draw in the 90s. It’s just all got this “uncanny valley” sheen to it.

I don't hate it. I think it's fun as a sort of moment by moment ( I want to see this ) and just generate it and enjoy the wackyness. It does leave a lot to be desired in terms of composition and polish. I also absolutely hate people representing it as their own work. I also really enjoy art produced by people. I think what people produce is still superior in lots of ways. People are often telling a story with their art, and that really comes through. Also I love knowing the amount of thought and effort has gone into a work it makes it that much more impressive. The art people produce is often strongly influenced by art trends, culture, and life experience which we connect to as humans and AI can't produce that because it has no concept of these things. Sure AI can replicate that but it's not the same as the interaction and conversation I have with a piece of art produced by a person that I know must have felt certain ways about their work when producing it.

Nice try. I'm not helping you improve your art algorithms for free. You need to pay some art teachers for feedback like that.

Hate is such a strong word. Some bad, some good.

Bad:

• Copyright infringement and other unethical practices in acquiring training data
• Unimaginative AI art flooding the graphics market and the Internet
• Taking work from actual artists that might generate something new
• So much energy used on pointless, quickly forgotten "single-use art" in the middle of a climate crisis

Good:

• Okay starting point for logos for eg. small associations or clubs, preferably treated as version 0.1 and later worked on, but still an affordable option, and more personalised than clipart
• Creative visual outlet for people with no interest in developing their graphical skills, but who have an urge to get a small number of specific images out of their system
• Probably a good media for some commentary on the relationship between real a unreal, familiar and alien cognition, and such, but that itself is such a cliche
• Simply a fun toy

No, just see it as another medium . Extremely overhated

Tbf tho lotsa popular styles that show in AI art am indifferent towards (even dislike outright . Example : this's somehow even greater assault on the eyes than Alegria illustrations) , but that's bcus it's really hard to create (unique|distinctive) styles with current tech (source : tried developing style for >1 yr (find|combin)ing artist tags in furry models → (genn|tweak)ing ~20-30 training imgs Once satisfied → testing outputs of style LoRA trained with PixAI and result on merge models don't lꝏk like the training data at all . PAINFUL) and not criticism of genAI itself