I was checking to see if anyone caught this.
It’s an interesting thing that happened, but much ado about nothing in the grand scheme.
The takeaway is that the judges were under qualified. I’ll explain.
I think it’s really important to put this story into context. This was at the Colorado state fair. Colorado, the place known for skiing and smothering all good in green chili.
(I live here).
I checked the state fair site and reviewed the bios of the judges.
These are people connected to the arts in Colorado. They are probably slightly more in lockstep with the forefront of the art world than their counterparts in Montana, but it’s a far way off from dominant thought leadership in the art world.
Not for me to judge, (yet here I am), but I suspect their resumes wouldn’t land them a judging position in an art show in New York City or LA, or Rome, or Berlin.
The judges stated they are not familiar with AI generated art before this. The artist even stated the platform he used in his submission. No one bothered to check what he meant.
To me, there’s a parallel here with “is it cheating to make music using pre-made loops?”
but how far did he go to explain what he had done?
or did he just state that it was AI generated on the little card that has his name and name of the piece on it. if no effort was made to clarify, then it is on him I would think.
I mean…im no judge, aficionado, or competitor. but I DO understand that in an art competition, the competitors make the art. im sure the guy that submitted the piece did as well, and wanted to see how it would go. giving a prompt takes no talent. and those selling prompts…me…im disgusted.
You gotta read the article.
He submitted the prompt about 100 times and tweaked/reprogrammed the algorithm continuously until he got something he was happy with.
Not saying this makes it ok. Just pointing out, he didn’t create it in 30 seconds.
It was the most famous case of AI generated art that has gone viral, and I also want to thank @shankiphonic that you did some research and gave a little more insight into the judges, but I myself have already done some recent work for a theatre production here in Cologne (Germany) where we use some AI generated content for their next play, and there are also some more interested in implementig it in the near future.
I also read here and there that people also have earned some money by selling prints, doing concepts etc.
I think the question is not if AI generated content will change some industries around it, but more like where and how far. Coming from an art school context and knowing the brutal gatekeeping the galleries, art markets and other commercial comissioned projects have, I also understand the emotional reactions that people have, and also will continue to have towards these new tools.
But the midjourney discord officially became the biggest discord group ever today. You cannot ignore that anymore, and this is just the beginnkng of a public breakthrough of AI generated content.
What I personally see as someone who has already been in artistic work for nearly 10 years now, is that this is, at this moment, “only” filling the decorative art markets and commercial applications like marketing images etc., but where it might get serious is the remixing and expanding site of it.
Besides that me, and also so many others, who have a good idea of how these images are generated, know what to value in this very niche part of generative art. I still prefer artists that have a personal language and original style, like 404.zero, Max Cooper, Ryoji Ikeda, Emptyset, TUNDRA etc, who already use AI generated content since several years, but not as an immediate prompt to print approach, but more creatively.
And I also think that what we describe as “art” is in many cases “curating”: A DJ also curates a great collection of specific music that they creatively present to others, which also evokes deep emotions in the recipients, without being the producer or initiator of the individual tracks that are presented. This is also the case in AI art.
And something else is happening soon: Performance Arts and interactive/immersive installations are something that I personally enjoy much more than classical fineart. I somehow want to see the people during their creation process, or to have zero boundary between me and the artwork, which is something that an AI based zechnology cannot achieve (yet)
I can hear the Amen Breaks and Pads in this.
Ya…I’m not buying that either. “Refining the prompt” also known as typing.
The guy did not open a tube of paint or put brush to hand. It is infinitely more difficult painting with oil than trial and error prompts till you get something.
He didn’t refine the prompt.
He used the same prompt over and over, refining code until he got a result he was happy with.
The distinction is important.
The award was not for the hardest working artist. I respect you, man, but I’m struggling to see your point. We have no idea how much effort was expended by any of the artists.
Pharrell can seemingly crank out top 40 hits all summer long. He’s made it look easy since the NERD days. Does that mean his beats, that were easy for him are less good than the last thing I worked really hard on?
What if the artist used illustrator and a Wacom tablet? Is that hard enough to qualify as art, or would that be out of bounds too?
To the point made by @floralesq - is all classic jungle and dnb just rubbish because those artists took shortcuts with the amen break? Or wait, is it even worse that they used samplers and drum machines instead of recording live drums?
Buggy whips were super important until motor vehicles came along and disrupted the place horse drawn carriages held in peoples lives.
Until the fall of man, there are going to be advancements in various aspects of our output. There is value in remembering what was, just as there is merit in understanding the new.
There is even werk putting samples together, actually composing something vs hitting enter over and over till getting got something they liked.
Now that you clarified that, it makes it even more pathetic.
But it’s not the effort, it’s the creativity and how you use the tools and build something. The artist in this case is actually the people that built the AI he used.
Even Autechre don’t necessarily compose their music anymore, it’s algorithms, that they build….they BUILD
This “artist” that entered that comp is doing nothing. Just waiting for the right pretty picture.
You’re really trying to blur the lines. Someone painting in photoshop with a Wacom [whatever tool] is using the tool to extract the design from their mind, by hand. AI boy did nothing. The image might not necessarily be what he is envisioning. They’ve probably accepted the best they could land on.
They did nothing man…art tourist.
I appreciate your contributions as a graphic artist.
I read more closely the article and, whether the artist was genuine or justifying themselves retrospectively, it appears they put in some kind of work. I found similarities in what they described in how big name pop artists or even CEOs work: they have a team of people executing tasks required to see through their vision. Furthermore, I see little difference between using a sample or template and using AI. Perhaps in the future, AI will make these things redundant.
I can see this as both a cause for celebration and concern. Celebration because AI - as all the techno-utopiasts claim - will make unnecessary certain jobs and we can all bask in leisure making art and eating grapes. Concern because, I mean, the advances of technology thus far have not exactly been great for our lives considering who controls the wealth created. And it seems to be going that way yet again:
The AI industry does not seek to capture land as the conquistadors of the Caribbean and Latin America did, but the same desire for profit drives it to expand its reach. The more users a company can acquire for its products, the more subjects it can have for its algorithms, and the more resources—data—it can harvest from their activities, their movements, and even their bodies.
Neither does the industry still exploit labor through mass-scale slavery, which necessitated the propagation of racist beliefs that dehumanized entire populations. But it has developed new ways of exploiting cheap and precarious labor, often in the Global South, shaped by implicit ideas that such populations don’t need—or are less deserving of—livable wages and economic stability.
I personally don’t see AI itself creating something unique or emotionally resonant enough to move the zeitgeist (the winning work above was…ok). But I personally don’t see anything wrong with a human capable of ingenuity and empathy pulling AIs strings.
Ok that makes sense - so like spending time curating prompts and using your imagination to create something unique, using the AI as a tool to fascilitate that?
Oh ok then.
I do love how the subject of AI art turns everyone into the most pompous of art critics. It’s the new Tracey Emin.
just dumping some stable diffusion demos here as a warning to humanity
and a possible source of wicked enjoyment.
(and for me to quickly find them later…when they will be needed most)
I’m interested to know if you see the image I your head that you are prompting. Or if you keep hitting enter till you get something that kinda looks like what you’re after.
The person putting pen to paper has a vision or an idea they are are extracting, translating to paper. Hitting enter till you get something that matches your description with a random art style is not being creative. You are allowing a machine do something you either can’t or are to lazy to do.
Pompous art critique!? I’m not judging art…I’m just saying, after taking art from the age of 8 to 28, and going through all the shit just trying to be good at it and getting what I see in my head down on appear or canvas is NOTHING like AI spit out an image that you can’t even imagine what it will be like till you get it. Having your own take and style is huge. Sure you can tell it to plant “said artist” but it will be literal. Everyone that handles a pen, pencil, brush, what have you, uses it differently adding to their own unique approach.
AI stuff all looks so samey. You guys are basically accessing one brain, and not really using your own. You are giving a description of something you thought of for someone else to paint. Is that being an artist?
Not many people have someone else to to the art for them and then claim it as their own. Except that one guy, that teacher….I’ll look him up. But that was different as the people that painted for him went on to be their own individual artists. Those that are doing AI art not coming out with any more artistic experience.
I’d like to see someone draw the image first, then give the AI the prompt that describes that image, without uploading that image and see how close it comes. I wager it will be quite different.
Now to your response I never attacked you, just stated the AI is lame. Yet you were name calling.
I criticized the process. Rather than criticize me, perhaps defend the process. Or is it indefensible and it feels better to attack me?
This is a fairly narrow, and personal definition of art.
If I take a can of paint and fling it at a canvas emphatically, with an intent of passion it will create something I might have imagined, but it is not an exact replica of an image in my mind. This is still art.
Likewise if I lack the motor function to throw that can of paint, so instead ask an AI to render for me “A thrown can of paint against a white canvas, angry, blood red, force, extreme emotion”, and it renders something comparible to the above - have I not used my imagination and creativity to create something comparible?
If not, why not?
Without my prompt, my human creativity, that image would not exist - it didn’t will itself into existance - it is a manifestation of my creativity.
Apologies btw that was a bit inflamatory, I didn’t mean that as an insult directed at you, it’s more the position that folks seem to adopt when tackling this subject. It’s hard to draw lines around creativity without being a bit pompous, to be fair.
It does tho. My buddy gave a fairly involved prompt to MJ, he thought it was great. Looked just like a bunch of other renders. But, aside from that…
You go to an an firm with your idea for a image, giving the artist a detailed description of what you’d like, in the case, painted. Do you sign that and call it yours? Or is because it just a machine rendering your prompts that that makes it okay?
There’s nuance to this. Am I a client or a creative director? There’s a difference between a request and a collaboration. It can be subtle.
But art directors do get creative credit - often they are the primary person that gets the credit - with the person executing the work refered to as an art-worker, not an artist.
In terms of ownership it’s very interesting - I think I’m still getting used to what feels natural. Right now I consider works I create with AI as collaborations. They’re not my works, but they’re also not the AI’s - we’re both key ingredients.