I was on stable diffusion art and one of my comments got removed for saying the OP didn’t “make” the AI generated art. But he didn’t make shit the AI made it, he typed in a description and hit enter. I think we need a new word for when someone shared art an AI made, like they generated it or something. It feels insulting to actual artists to say you made art with AI
I know the feeling lol
Yeah I largely agree, the fact that it is replacing humans is rough and really speaks to such a depressing view of art in our society. Even before AI, the commercialization of art was hugely detrimental, and really sucks the soul out of much of what it touches. The fact that AI attacks the starting footholds for artists to find any money at all in the industry is particularly upsetting.
All that being saying, I guess I would still push back a little bit on the idea that it can’t be art when generated in it’s entirety. I would argue that while yes it does have less intentionality, even at the most base level of a prompt and picking your favorite generation, is enough to qualify it as art. I may be a bit of an absolutist in this regard, but I justify it by pointing to things like splatter or fluid acrylic painting. Where the exact lines of intentionality is hard to draw. All of that to say I don’t think there is much value in drawing a strict line that excludes AI work from art just because the discrepancy between choice of the artist and the choices on show is so vast.
The counter I would give here is that those are just techniques. The challenge, then, is whether the generation machine can be made to do things that are interesting and meaningful. I know it can produce spectacle, but spectacle and meaning are different concepts.
I don’t know much Pollock, but isn’t he valued largely for his process and expressionism? I’m not making this accusation of you, you do seem to actually care, but a lot of people who bring him up seem to think that his work actually is random and unintelligible—I don’t think that it is.
I will concede that the process of interacting with the generation machine to produce something is a creative one, I just don’t think it’s anywhere near what a lot of proponents claim it be.
I’ve used Suno, and my lasting impression of it is that it was fun, sometimes really funny, and overall kind of soul sucking. As a musician, there were essentially no times that I felt anything produced there was mine. It was just novelty. Some of it sounded really cool, but none of it was an expression of me or what I was really looking for.
That’s fair, even while typing it, the point felt shaky. I still think there are pieces of art that fail to have intentionality or design, but I would still call them art. I could carelessly scribble on a page to pass time in a meeting and I think that would still qualify as art, even if absent conscious meaning or design.
May point was more against the process than Pollock specifically because I think much of the high art world is shaped by folks in power over anything else. I agree that folks are too quick to dismiss his work, and I completely believe it is art. I don’t think it’s random, and looking at his work you can see intentionality. I think I bring it up more to show the broad spectrum of art. Similarly, I think it’s completely valid to sign a urinal and call it art. Even if you have no sway over the structure of the porcelain beyond picking what toilet you think works best. A curation I would argue is equally valid when selecting what pieces of AI work best fit what one is going for.
I guess I don’t know what proponents claim the level of creativity is, but I also think that critics don’t realize the level of depth many of the folks that use AI go to for what people assume was a few tries at a prompt. I think this gets back to the original counter point above. Trying to make something similar to what folks show off, or trying to realize a vision with AI tools is harder than many realize. And I think without having worked with them too much, it can be easy to not see the intentionality that went into AI work, in the same way it can be easy to assume Pollock is random splatters. Now I will clarify again, I don’t hold it in that high of regard or say that it’s comparable to Pollock or any other painters really. More my point is to show that the specifics can be lost, particularly because AI does so much spectacle.
I think that it’s totally valid, and I don’t really think I take any ownership with AI work, I just enjoy it for what it is. Personally I use it as a DM in various ways, so maybe it doesn’t rub me as wrong because it is a smaller piece of everything else, rather than standalone art.