A lot of the AI art seems like a glorified search engine, but it's great. I use it all the time. I love the cartoonishness of Dall-E since that's the tone I'm often going for...
Painting is kind of an accident, too. It is heavily reliant on an artist’s skill, of course. Just as reliant on how that artist sees the world. However, a painting seldom comes out exactly the way the artist intended at the outset. How much of it is their own intention, and how much of it is ‘the process’?
Perhaps this mystical process happens with machine-created art, too, and the divine order of the world has a hand in every nauseatingly-colorful rendering of a kitten mechanically shit out by ChatGPT.
Being a visual artist, my paintings never start as accidents, they come about because of a desire to paint something which I find interesting, beautiful, abstract, whatever it is, it has caught my attention and a focus on wanting to see if I can reproduce it, to bring it home with me. Sometimes I have a very clear vision of what I want to paint, and then as I get into the mood of the painting, it's like the runners high, I get lost in it, the hours pass by unnoticed as I paint.. often the final painting is not at all like my original vision or even my original drawing, never the less, there it is finished to my perfection. I will often hang it on the wall across from the couch and get a cup of tea or something and just study it, looking for the details that came to me, from some deeper place. I can relate to other artist who say something came over me and the work just flowed out of me.
You really capture the creative process here! I'm not much of a painter, but when I'm writing, I can really relate to everything you've said. I start with an idea of what the piece will look like, it never really turns out that way, but as long as I'm not too much of a perfectionist about it, it comes out alright anyway. I love hearing stories from artists who share this experience.
There really is something else that takes over during creative work. It's like giving birth. The process is happening inside of the mother's body, but she's not really 'doing' it, at least not consciously. Not sure if it's a perfect analogy (and forgive me if you've heard me say it before—I've used it a bunch of times), but I like using it anyway.
As far as the question of whether this process happens with machine-created art, I suppose there's no way of us knowing. I'd like to think that there's something special about our flesh and blood that allows consciousness to latch on, but who's to say whether the universe would discriminate?
I hate to be 'that guy' but I do believe that like any new tech, A.I. is a tool. What makes it different from other tools is that it has a claim to producing art. Where the controversy comes in as you so rightly pointed out is in the plagiarism - all of its artistic output is based on art that it has consumed from human artists. I have been experimenting with it in a variety of ways over the past couple of years and I find that, like any artistic tool, the challenge is in finding interesting and new creative ways to, for lack of a better term. collaborate with it.
I agree 100% that A.I. art has no sense of style, that is where the human touch and ingenuity comes in. There are some creators who are doing some pretty interesting stuff with A.I. that takes it to a different level. Some days I hate it and some days I get inspired by it, it's a weird uncanny valley thing.
I totally agree with you about the uncanny valley thing. The reason AI invites all these conversations (and strong opinions in general) is because of how close to conscious it seems. Maybe it’s because we associate art (and intelligence) with consciousness?
I think you’re right that it’s a tool, and all the science fiction-y consciousness stuff is unlikely to happen (although, when you really look in the abstract, who’s to say for sure that there’s any fundamental difference between a computer ‘brain’ and a human one? If consciousness is something external that inhabits our body, can’t it latch onto a machine just as easily?)
An AI is an excellent tool in the hands of an artist, especially one who already knows the medium. In the animation world people said computer animation and Adobe Flash would kill cartoons. It really did with soulless shows like Johnny Test which tried to use the tech to cut out human animators and had a terrible looking result. On the other hand Avatar: The Last Airbender used computers to do tedious cleanup work in combination with hand drawn frames. In that sense I imagine AI could be used to do a lot of previously tedious work in the artistic field if it's not already being done.
The actual part of art that grips our soul is not the particular skill or background or ingredients. It's usually a single aspect or something put into a specific context that does it. A go-to for art that is impactful while having almost none of the technical features of a painting or drawing is Yoji Shinkawa's Solid Snake:
As a graded art piece it's technically horrible. As art it's endured many years as the iconic style and look for Solid Snake with many imitators. Yoji, an artist friend said when he got a commissioned sketch from him, is a master at using as few lines as possible to create a robust image. Snake doesn't even have a cranium in the pic above but he doesn't need it. In other pictures by Yoki characters don't have arms, they're missing limbs, some parts of them are so hastily put together it's two lines but no one ever notices.
There's a contextual economy to real art that AI's don't have. In part it's that they don't need it. Yoji might get paid by the sketch or have only 24 hours in a day so using less lines is a great skill to have. Ink is expensive, hands get tried, etc. But AI's can render laborious things that would take an individual weeks in a single minute and do it over and over and over. But that means it never gets used for economy of art. In theory you could train an AI to make a minimally acceptable piece with as few CPU cycles as possible and get something neat, but it still would miss out on those times when it is appropriate to put in a few extra minutes or a splash of color.
Can AI 'create' art? With human management or curation sure. Can you press a button and have an AI make a great off-the-shelf artpiece or video game or tv show? Probably not. I know the AI owners like Facebook are using eye trackers and crowdsourcing and etc to try and get AI to make maximally attractive output but as long as they don't have actual human artists at the helm of it it's going to be Johnny Test trash.
This is a really thoughtful way of looking at it. Frater Seamus said something similar in another comment on this post—that AI is a tool whose results are entirely dependent on how the artist uses it.
You bring up a great point about the difference between technically perfect art and impactful art (and I love the Solid Snake example—I’d never seen it before).
This actually makes me feel pretty hopeful about the whole thing. I guess all new technology is abused (just as AI is right now) until it doesn’t work anymore, and then the examples of it being used tastefully are what stands out.
I still feel instinctively like there’s something ‘different’ about this stuff. I guess it’s because creating art is such a human thing, it strikes a nerve seeing a machine do it. Or maybe it’s because, as a writer, I’m secretly kind of scared that it can manage to do what I do better than I can.
Who knows? When you put it this way, it doesn’t seem so bad.
I like the idea of posting preliminary comments! Fun way of interacting with a post. I suppose since you haven't commented again that you stand by your original statement.
It highlights a weakness in my title (and potentially the post itself). The much more interesting question that I could've posed is whether machines can create in the same way humans can.
Nope. I thought, from the title/query you were going in the, trillion monkey's with typewrites or keyboards have already... , or the science is settled, or been there, already done that. Often.
However following your postulates & your conclusion I tend to agree. No, AI can't create but I'd hesitate before saying it shan't ever be able to do so. That such will happen, I don't think so but won't completely rule out such a possibility.
BTW: As you did, I just asked an AI to draw whatever it wanted, result not art but interesting.
Yeah, while I have experimented with the "there's nothing new under the sun" way of thinking before, I'm kind of over it (ironically, I don't think it's very original or interesting).
I suspect you're right regarding AI, although I guess only time will tell.
“And it makes me wonder . . .” Led Zeppelin (1971)
A lot of the AI art seems like a glorified search engine, but it's great. I use it all the time. I love the cartoonishness of Dall-E since that's the tone I'm often going for...
I can really relate to what you said:
Painting is kind of an accident, too. It is heavily reliant on an artist’s skill, of course. Just as reliant on how that artist sees the world. However, a painting seldom comes out exactly the way the artist intended at the outset. How much of it is their own intention, and how much of it is ‘the process’?
Perhaps this mystical process happens with machine-created art, too, and the divine order of the world has a hand in every nauseatingly-colorful rendering of a kitten mechanically shit out by ChatGPT.
Being a visual artist, my paintings never start as accidents, they come about because of a desire to paint something which I find interesting, beautiful, abstract, whatever it is, it has caught my attention and a focus on wanting to see if I can reproduce it, to bring it home with me. Sometimes I have a very clear vision of what I want to paint, and then as I get into the mood of the painting, it's like the runners high, I get lost in it, the hours pass by unnoticed as I paint.. often the final painting is not at all like my original vision or even my original drawing, never the less, there it is finished to my perfection. I will often hang it on the wall across from the couch and get a cup of tea or something and just study it, looking for the details that came to me, from some deeper place. I can relate to other artist who say something came over me and the work just flowed out of me.
You really capture the creative process here! I'm not much of a painter, but when I'm writing, I can really relate to everything you've said. I start with an idea of what the piece will look like, it never really turns out that way, but as long as I'm not too much of a perfectionist about it, it comes out alright anyway. I love hearing stories from artists who share this experience.
There really is something else that takes over during creative work. It's like giving birth. The process is happening inside of the mother's body, but she's not really 'doing' it, at least not consciously. Not sure if it's a perfect analogy (and forgive me if you've heard me say it before—I've used it a bunch of times), but I like using it anyway.
As far as the question of whether this process happens with machine-created art, I suppose there's no way of us knowing. I'd like to think that there's something special about our flesh and blood that allows consciousness to latch on, but who's to say whether the universe would discriminate?
re: the prompt “draw whatever you want.”
I had lots of fun asking the AI to draw «nothing» in different styles.
Woah! That's a fun one. Should keep me occupied for a few hours later...
15 minutes at most :), as most styles produce fairly consistent output, with Paint being a notable exception.
I hate to be 'that guy' but I do believe that like any new tech, A.I. is a tool. What makes it different from other tools is that it has a claim to producing art. Where the controversy comes in as you so rightly pointed out is in the plagiarism - all of its artistic output is based on art that it has consumed from human artists. I have been experimenting with it in a variety of ways over the past couple of years and I find that, like any artistic tool, the challenge is in finding interesting and new creative ways to, for lack of a better term. collaborate with it.
I agree 100% that A.I. art has no sense of style, that is where the human touch and ingenuity comes in. There are some creators who are doing some pretty interesting stuff with A.I. that takes it to a different level. Some days I hate it and some days I get inspired by it, it's a weird uncanny valley thing.
I totally agree with you about the uncanny valley thing. The reason AI invites all these conversations (and strong opinions in general) is because of how close to conscious it seems. Maybe it’s because we associate art (and intelligence) with consciousness?
I think you’re right that it’s a tool, and all the science fiction-y consciousness stuff is unlikely to happen (although, when you really look in the abstract, who’s to say for sure that there’s any fundamental difference between a computer ‘brain’ and a human one? If consciousness is something external that inhabits our body, can’t it latch onto a machine just as easily?)
Regardless, it’s fun to speculate.
An AI is an excellent tool in the hands of an artist, especially one who already knows the medium. In the animation world people said computer animation and Adobe Flash would kill cartoons. It really did with soulless shows like Johnny Test which tried to use the tech to cut out human animators and had a terrible looking result. On the other hand Avatar: The Last Airbender used computers to do tedious cleanup work in combination with hand drawn frames. In that sense I imagine AI could be used to do a lot of previously tedious work in the artistic field if it's not already being done.
The actual part of art that grips our soul is not the particular skill or background or ingredients. It's usually a single aspect or something put into a specific context that does it. A go-to for art that is impactful while having almost none of the technical features of a painting or drawing is Yoji Shinkawa's Solid Snake:
https://shorturl.at/lqGT5
As a graded art piece it's technically horrible. As art it's endured many years as the iconic style and look for Solid Snake with many imitators. Yoji, an artist friend said when he got a commissioned sketch from him, is a master at using as few lines as possible to create a robust image. Snake doesn't even have a cranium in the pic above but he doesn't need it. In other pictures by Yoki characters don't have arms, they're missing limbs, some parts of them are so hastily put together it's two lines but no one ever notices.
There's a contextual economy to real art that AI's don't have. In part it's that they don't need it. Yoji might get paid by the sketch or have only 24 hours in a day so using less lines is a great skill to have. Ink is expensive, hands get tried, etc. But AI's can render laborious things that would take an individual weeks in a single minute and do it over and over and over. But that means it never gets used for economy of art. In theory you could train an AI to make a minimally acceptable piece with as few CPU cycles as possible and get something neat, but it still would miss out on those times when it is appropriate to put in a few extra minutes or a splash of color.
Can AI 'create' art? With human management or curation sure. Can you press a button and have an AI make a great off-the-shelf artpiece or video game or tv show? Probably not. I know the AI owners like Facebook are using eye trackers and crowdsourcing and etc to try and get AI to make maximally attractive output but as long as they don't have actual human artists at the helm of it it's going to be Johnny Test trash.
This is a really thoughtful way of looking at it. Frater Seamus said something similar in another comment on this post—that AI is a tool whose results are entirely dependent on how the artist uses it.
You bring up a great point about the difference between technically perfect art and impactful art (and I love the Solid Snake example—I’d never seen it before).
This actually makes me feel pretty hopeful about the whole thing. I guess all new technology is abused (just as AI is right now) until it doesn’t work anymore, and then the examples of it being used tastefully are what stands out.
I still feel instinctively like there’s something ‘different’ about this stuff. I guess it’s because creating art is such a human thing, it strikes a nerve seeing a machine do it. Or maybe it’s because, as a writer, I’m secretly kind of scared that it can manage to do what I do better than I can.
Who knows? When you put it this way, it doesn’t seem so bad.
OK, before I read the essay I'll post my reply to the query; why yes, of course it is possible to create any, and many, things.
If my opinion changes after reading, I'll so post.
I like the idea of posting preliminary comments! Fun way of interacting with a post. I suppose since you haven't commented again that you stand by your original statement.
It highlights a weakness in my title (and potentially the post itself). The much more interesting question that I could've posed is whether machines can create in the same way humans can.
Nope. I thought, from the title/query you were going in the, trillion monkey's with typewrites or keyboards have already... , or the science is settled, or been there, already done that. Often.
However following your postulates & your conclusion I tend to agree. No, AI can't create but I'd hesitate before saying it shan't ever be able to do so. That such will happen, I don't think so but won't completely rule out such a possibility.
BTW: As you did, I just asked an AI to draw whatever it wanted, result not art but interesting.
Yeah, while I have experimented with the "there's nothing new under the sun" way of thinking before, I'm kind of over it (ironically, I don't think it's very original or interesting).
I suspect you're right regarding AI, although I guess only time will tell.