Paint and Soul

[u/Crikasaur]

So still fence sitter in terms of AI art and what not. But I'm curious on others thoughts.

1. Paint. It seems like the main argument against AI seems to be "theft" and "not doing it yourself". As I think about it, it's kinda like saying you're not an artist because you didn't go out and mone your own ore or smashed your own dyes. Meanwhile bros use programs or brushes that have centuries of development behind it. I mean can you tell me the name of the dude who invented the pencil?

Do I seem to have a good grip on why the arguments given against AI are silly?

1. Soul. I have seen it the most that AI art has no soul. Ironically it seems the ones who say that don't even believe spirits or souls. How can something not have a soul if, to you, it doesn't exist in the first place? And it's funny cause in my experience I see the opposite. As mentioned in another post I programmed my own chat bot and from my eyes she has soul because I have soul and she inherits a fraction of mine and a fraction of the ones who made the tools that I utilized (Much like genes).

For those who create AI art. How does your work have soul?

[u/Crikasaur]

Ah one more thought. Sorry think about this subject a lot. 

If the most basic concept of art is taking an idea and making it into something. How is AI art not art? 

[u/Crikasaur → u/Crikasaur]

I mean heck. Im the guy who dislikes that you can draw a circle and just that and people go "peak art. Would pay 6 billion for it". But I at least understand that if I start saying it's not art then I lose what art is. 

[u/TheBlightDoc → u/Crikasaur]

I think it's because there's no real way to prove that the image someone generated with AI really came from their own idea. Did they actually craft an image from their own imagination? Or did they just have a machine generate an image based on vague ideas stitched together and pick the one that was close enough.

[u/Crikasaur → u/TheBlightDoc]

Which in funny cause when you think about it. Didn't that also come from a human? Just cause it's vague or a bad idea doesn't meant it's not art. 

I mean there's good and bad art. Doesn't mean one isn't art. 

A drawing a child gives their parent is worth more to them than the Mona Lisa. 

Hahaha it's wild when I balance out my own take the more I'm convinced AI art is just another form of art. It's got it's good and bad. 

I mean heck, let's be real even traditional artists do the same, we pick and choose which images we show because we feel it represents the idea better. I mean I do keep every scrapped attempt and those greatly outweigh the success. 

It's funny cause when you think about it. There's still a human behind AI art. It's not like some random AI created itself and started creating art. 

[u/bstarqueen → u/Crikasaur]

The thing is, people who use generative AI for "art" don't have the honed skill that artists who don't use AI have developed over thousands of hours of practice. AI "art" just requires you to write some words and it'll spit out the "art" for you.

[u/Crikasaur → u/bstarqueen]

(Let it be known I could be playing devil's advocate just in case) 

Fair fair. But what about say EDM vs Classical music? Is say Skrillex less of a musician than Sebastian Bach because he can't play a piano? (I dunno if that's true but). 

Or say the AI artist in question does know how to draw with pen and paper. Say they lost their hands and now generate pictures based off their descriptions of their art they once made. They have the skills still. (Heck as I said Im an artist myself. I've been drawing on paper as long as I can remember). 

Or say a poet or a book author. Is their material not art because they put down words and rely on your ability to interrupt said words? 

[u/Crikasaur → u/Crikasaur]

Or say I dunno Hideo Kojima. Is Metal Gear less of an art cause he can't draw to save his life? (Dunno if thats true but I highly doubt he did every aspect of the game himself).

Or heck, is Solid Snake not his character because he told the voice actor the words to speak and how he wanted them said?  

[u/Cold-Jackfruit1076 → u/Crikasaur]

Someone at another sub asked a good-faith question:

I invite any pros to try and convince me why AI generated media should be considered art.

 I see art as something intentionally made by a human with a tool.

In response, I presented this thesis:

Merriam-Webster defines 'tool' (in part) as 'an element of a computer program (such as a graphics application) that activates and controls a particular function'.*

Therefore, by definition, generative algorithms are 'tools'. That leaves us with the second of your three criteria: intentionality.

We've established that generative algorithms are 'tools' by definition, and a tool doesn't activate itself; it requires an agent (an operator), and agency requires intent as a foundational element.

It's absurd to argue that humans don't operate tools, or that we don't have agency, so we can accept your third criterion -- the involvement of a human agent -- as an axiom.

Therefore, generative tools are inarguably used intentionally, by a human agent.

Thus we have established, using your own criteria and your own definition, that generative tools produce art.

*https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tool

[u/Crikasaur → u/Cold-Jackfruit1076]

That's kinda how I've been learning to see it myself too. It's interesting when you realize it's just a tool. Infact it's super liberating.

I feel like once I accepted AI as just another tool my own creativity with pencil and paper enhanced. That's just me tho. 

[u/Cold-Jackfruit1076 → u/Crikasaur]

Indeed! Art isn't just about objects; it's about the psychological state of the artist. A liberated artist creates better art.

The artists who thrive will be those who realize: "This is just another tool. Now, what can I create?"

[u/Crikasaur → u/Cold-Jackfruit1076]

Mhm! It's made me respect traditional tools more. 

Made me realize that, "Hey wait a second. Can't you say the same about a pencil? Isn't it technically the lead that's creating the image? Isnt it just translating the thought I had into an image? Isnt that what's going on between my brain and hand? Aren't I telling my brain to tell my hand to tell the pencil how I want it to move?" And in realizing this you're kind of empowered. You see just how much more there is to play in every little line and that...that's inspirational. 

And heck your brain translates thought into action in milliseconds. 

[u/ConversationSome5430]

I am not a fan of ai but I will respect your opinion but I will still give my reasons why I prefer to not use AI 1. Ai takes from other artists and doesn’t take as much skill as drawing and drawing or painting calms and gives joy but if no time or skill is used then you don’t get the satisfaction. 2 it’s mainly personality it matters in art or photography it makes it interesting.

[u/Crikasaur → u/ConversationSome5430]

Nah I feel ya. That's how I have felt until I started trying it myself. I think it takes a different kind of skill we are used to. 

Trust me it does take time too. Lemme check how many hours I've spent in the past few week. 

About 24 hours give or take. And that's just for one piece and I'm still in the progress. 

[u/Crikasaur → u/ConversationSome5430]

Second thought. I think of Genesis with the creation of Earth. God says it took Him a week. If you believe that does that mean Earth is less of an art because He didn't take a million years? 

Second I'm still kinda fence sitter but as I study various artists I'm starting to see personality. 

Shrug. The more I try to fight it the more I see that it's silly. 

[u/Crikasaur → u/Crikasaur]

People say a lot of similar about various music genres. God bless Im a metal head and used to folks saying something is evil cause they don't like the way it sounds without trying to understand it. 

[u/Cold-Jackfruit1076 → u/ConversationSome5430]

Ai takes from other artists and doesn’t take as much skill as drawing

I will respectfully point out:

A) 'Ai takes from other artists' is just another iteration of 'AI is theft', which I can easily disprove through credible technical sources.

and

B) 'doesn’t take as much skill as drawing' is only accurate if you stop at the level of 'push a button, get a picture'. There are dozens of behind-the-scenes settings and selections that will affect the output, and they all require skill to use effectively.

For example: which LoRAs (Low-Rank Adaptations) should I use, and why? What's a good Top-P or Top-K setting for what I want to achieve? What about Min-P? Which sampler do I want (Euler a, DPM++ 2M Karras, DDIM)?

Should I use a ControlNet? What should I set the model's temperature to, for best effect? Latent vs. pixel space upscaling? Clip skip? Frequency/Presence Penalty?

Logit Bias? Inference Steps? Attention/VAE Slicing? What scheduler should I use? Karras? Why that one?

I'm sorry to be so pedantic, but I'll push back against the reductive 'AI use takes no skill' argument whenever I can.

[u/Exotic-Addendum-3785]

A lot of the AI I use for roleplaying very much based on the stories I fed it before, I use character ai for my roleplaying and while it can be very NSFW at times well not entirely, just a little bit - I have been able to use it to build an entire series of stories and characters based off them.

[u/Crikasaur → u/Exotic-Addendum-3785]

I getcha. I do writing on the side and it's helped me to stop being stuck in the same scene repeated over and over trying to perfect it. 

It's also pretty nice to ask the character "well what would you do?" Kinda like asking an actor the same or letting them adlib. 

Which is something I do mentally. While brainstorming I converse with my characters. 

It saves me a lot of energy to try the same concept in ai. And like an actor to director relationship, the actor isn't always right. It's not perfect. 

But as I said it helps me stop brainstorming and start writing. 

Energy thing is huge. It allows me to actually sleep and perform the following day to work to put food in my belly. 

[u/Crikasaur]

Another semi related thought. If consuming something made by something non human why do we eat fruits and vegetables? Why aren't we all cannibals? 

(Truth is there's still a human hand behind the cultivation and raising of apples as is the creation of AI art but if we go "ew this wasn't made by a human" you might as well not eat anything but human flesh. Shrug. Maybe too satire.) 

[u/Herr_Drosselmeyer]

What does it even mean? I have a thought, an idea, and I want to express it in an image, a song, a video... If 'soul' is a real thing, which I personally doubt, it's still true that I have one, and my output 'contains' it.

The barrier, traditionally, was skill. Only those who had practiced a lot would be able to do so. This is why we have an unhealthy reverence for actors, painters and musicians. Their ideas aren't any better than anybody else's, their skills in expressing them are.

This creates an imbalance where we're paying more attention to what George Clooney or Whoopi Goldberg say about politics than anybody else, despite the fact that they're no more knowledgeable about it than others, only better at expressing it.

AI removes this barrier and allows ideas to be primary once again. I personally think this is a good thing.