[Janique]

Apparently AI can make art now. I am honestly not pleased about this, because art is so hard to make! The poeple who like technology try to get involved with what we love so that they can do whatever they want. This will be very bad for people who do product designs, book covers ect. Because when this intelligence becomes more widespread and available, people are going to obviously go with the faster, cheaper choice. Anyway, what are y'alls thoughts on this.

 

[iandandavies]

Not sure it will be a problem. We can make diamonds too which are more pure than natural diamonds, but the natural diamonds are still far more expensive.
In thailand I saw an elephant paint a picture of a house in a garden with the sun shining. It was amazing to see. It was of the standard a 5 year old would do. I think this would be more of a threat if all elephants started to paint pictures because they would literally sell them for peanuts

 

[iandandavies]

 

[Suhail]

Nothing is permanent and change is the only constant in life.

I believe AI technology is going to be the next big thing in our lives. It has been in the development stage for over a decade and I think it will take off in the next few years on a bigger scale. The sky is the limit for AI technology.

 

[Janique]

Yes but, the AI intelligence is only going to get better. Soon poeple some poeple are going to give up their art because they can use the AI technology. We all have a time in our lives when we feel like giving up on our art because it looks wonky. We wish we could just snap our fingers and have it done. AI would only get in the way of that. So that's means fewer artists in the future. The problem also is this, think of the average person looking for art they can buy. Sure it would be nice to have something hand printed, or a print. But they are very expensive. All you have to do is come to AI with a cheap price that can give you ANY painting you want. It wouldn't be very hard for that person to choose. AI shouldn't be messing with this stuff because this is what us artists do. Not them. It might not be a problem, but if there is a chance there will be, then why take it? Because there is a chance this will be a problem

 

[iandandavies]

Whn you say AI do you mean AI producing digital art and then printed copies being made? If so a printed copy will always be distinguishable from a hand painted original, especially in thicker mediums such as oils. If you mean a dedicated machine that can hold a paint brush and convert a digital image into an actual painting then I dont think that will be practical for some time. I think the technology is there but initially such paintings will be more expensive than human painted ones.

 

[Janique]

Whn you say AI do you mean AI producing digital art and then printed copies being made? If so a printed copy will always be distinguishable from a hand painted original, especially in thicker mediums such as oils. If you mean a dedicated machine that can hold a paint brush and convert a digital image into an actual painting then I dont think that will be practical for some time. I think the technology is there but initially such paintings will be more expensive than human painted ones.

The AI will be able to recreate texture in the future. I don't know if you've seen the videos of artists trying out AI art, but alot of the art actually looks like handmade art, or digital art! And what I mean by prints is that you type in the art you want and it gets sent to you as a print. Just like some artists do by taking pictures of their art sell it. Even though some of the art that A1 makes is not good, some of it is amazing and it's only going to get better. It's not an actual robot painting, it's just typing into the computer what you want, and it makes the art.

 

[Naeira]

Hi! Really interesting topic. I remember a few months ago when i wanted to get into the art printing and digital commission field, tried to do a bit of research and stumbled on
Ai-Da(the robot)

Meet Ai-Da, the first robot that can paint like an artist - National | Globalnews.ca

Ai-Da, while highly talented, is raising ethical questions about human relationships with robots and AI.

globalnews.ca

and Dall-E( ai tech)

DALL·E 2

DALL·E 2 is a new AI system that can create realistic images and art from a description in natural language.

openai.com

It was both shocking and amazing. On one end i felt really offended because these new technologies will make earning money through commissions really tough for artists but sadly this is the business, they have to develop ways to make money. It really helped me evaluate why i made art in the first place, i remembered when i was a little girl painting on my mom's walls, i loved the look and feel of multi coloured soft pastels on my fingers, clothes and that funny noise the pencil makes when it slides across paper. Art is fun for me.
So maybe try to look at things from a different perspective, if you're trying to make money from your art then your goal should be to provide the best product to satisfy your customers needs and find something that helps you stand out. Im a software engineer and from what I've seen there's a lot of tech out there and others emerging that will put many people out of jobs, so its a good idea to add a few more skills to your repertoire and wherever you can, make the tech work for you and not against you.
Sorry for the long post

 

[Janique]

Hi! Really interesting topic. I remember a few months ago when i wanted to get into the art printing and digital commission field, tried to do a bit of research and stumbled on
Ai-Da(the robot)

Meet Ai-Da, the first robot that can paint like an artist - National | Globalnews.ca

Ai-Da, while highly talented, is raising ethical questions about human relationships with robots and AI.

globalnews.ca

and Dall-E( ai tech)

DALL·E 2

DALL·E 2 is a new AI system that can create realistic images and art from a description in natural language.

openai.com

It was both shocking and amazing. On one end i felt really offended because these new technologies will make earning money through commissions really tough for artists but sadly this is the business, they have to develop ways to make money. It really helped me evaluate why i made art in the first place, i remembered when i was a little girl painting on my mom's walls, i loved the look and feel of multi coloured soft pastels on my fingers, clothes and that funny noise the pencil makes when it slides across paper. Art is fun for me.
So maybe try to look at things from a different perspective, if you're trying to make money from your art then your goal should be to provide the best product to satisfy your customers needs and find something that helps you stand out. Im a software engineer and from what I've seen there's a lot of tech out there and others emerging that will put many people out of jobs, so its a good idea to add a few more skills to your repertoire and wherever you can, make the tech work for you and not against you.
Sorry for the long post

Don't be sorry at all! I found it extremely useful, because you helped me be aware so I can prepare for the future!

 

[Jules Pew]

The AI art is based on images scraped from the internet, albeit a rather large database, but there could be some legal copyright ramifications that might be raised. Just because AI produced it, doesn't mean it's actually original. Anyone who relies on it, might find themselves in dangerous waters.

 

[caution]

some of its cool but there is no substatute to human art

 

[Schteiner]

There is a sense of falsity in the art created by AI. Every time you look at these paintings you realize that there is no soul in them.

 

[picassolite]

When it comes to Ai and art ...

I find each comment to be right on point - within it's own sphere of thinking.

Yet - even though music sharing wiped the old music business model - more musicians are today in control of their own music.
Barring covid ... it has brought 'touring' back in vogue.

As Amazon upended the old publishing book business - today more indie book stores are opening up - because people
have rediscoverd reading books - and they don't like reading books on computers (big or small).

I believe the artistic spirit will find a way to do an end-run around Ai, if not out of necessity - simply because artists who
have the drive to sell - will simply find another way to sell art. Some may even adopt the new technology into their business model.

Of course some parts of the art world will use Ai - because yes - it is cheaper and faster. But that has always been the
march of history in all walks of life.

The camera did not put fine art out business. TV did not put radio out of business. Ai won't put 'art' out of business.
It will skewer some parts of the art world ... but it won't skewer art.

Artists who have always painted for fun or hobby won't change their ways. They were never in it for the money anyway.

 

[picassolite]

Janique says - "AI shouldn't be messing with this stuff because this is what us artists do."

Jules Pew says - "The AI art is based on images scraped from the internet, albeit a rather large database, but there could be some legal copyright ramifications that might be raised. Just because AI produced it, doesn't mean it's actually original. Anyone who relies on it, might find themselves in dangerous waters."

My father - a boxing coach - used to tell me - everyday ... "You've got to roll with the punches. And don't forget to 'stick and move.'
Which brings me to Ai, today's artist and the prior observations ...
as artists get over Ai's punch to one's solar plexus (otherwise known as a body shot) ... there are always loopholes and opportunities - to wit ~

yes - there could be copyright issues if one solely relies on Ai to generate images via 'prompts'... (text to img) - which scrape the net of other's images.
But Ai also has the ability to take one's original work and re-work that - right before your eyes... in seconds. (img to img)
As an example - let me share a Thomas Kincade story ~

Kincade painted many themes. The one theme that took off was his little country cottages. People just could not get enough of them.
Over time Kincade reached a point where he detested those little country cottages - because they really taxed his imagination.

Suppose you - like Kincade has found a theme that your buying list wants over and over.
Ai to the rescue. Now you can take your original - run it through innumerable permutations with Ai - and paint your way to the bank.

The point I'm making is - the graphic artist and or illustrator may find Ai invading their turf rather quickly.
But the fine artist - one who is committed to making and selling original work, building a clientele, and selling new pieces to past buyers -
may find that Ai is a god-send when it comes to churning out new ideas - based on past best-selling original work.

Many artists may chafe at the idea of re-working past work. However - if one has a head for business - and one wants to paint for a living -
rather than working a job to support one's painting - then Ai just might be a timely tool to churning out new twists on an old original idea.

like so ... one of my original auto paintings -

and re-worked ...

Best regards ~

 

[ezraszandala]

Excellent post Janique, and the post that brought my to the forum actually. I think it a fascinating topic and whilst I have explored AI art I have to say honestly that art made with hands and real life materials, I think, is an amazing experience that humans will likely never stop. Making things with metal, and clay, and wood, and expressing ourselves through materials on paper and canvas. To me AI is a tool. It is a tool for inspiration, for motivation, for collaborating. I find it quite awesome at giving me new ideas and inspiration and ultimately if I can fuse all kinds of traditional and digital art (and music also in my case) then I think that's brilliant. I think there are plenty of examples of mixed media art and experimental art and this is still very emergent and as of October 2022 I can say for many artists the style is immediately recognizable whilst many AI experts would say it is not. It really depends on which platforms, websites, and AI models people are using as clearly shown in the posts above. Thanks!

 

[lancelot]

I mean, I wrote a petition to try to create a sovereign wealth fund from companies that are training these things off of art repositories.

 

[ezraszandala]

I mean, I wrote a petition to try to create a sovereign wealth fund from companies that are training these things off of art repositories.

Good on you, I think expressing our opinions on this topic is so important though I am UNSURE how I really feel. On the one hand, from a data science perspective the tool was always going to create the greatest results when enormous amounts of data was used to train the models. However, just because artists showcase their work on the Internet it doesn't mean that all artists have expressed how they feel about their work influencing AI models. I know Flickr was a massive dataset used for training models as well as Wikipedia, and even Google Images, and I heard 123rf.com was used too for some, so um....pretty much most of the Internet!

This has led me to actually start creating dedicated data sets for audio training of models, which is what I'm focusing much of my time on now. Probably doing a Google Search on Auricular.ai will start showing up soon as I only launched the project a week ago.

Lots of people are already doing this, and I've been producing music and audio for a fairly long time now, and I feel that taking the approach of dedicated content creation I am also considering ethically and insightfully about how that content influences the end result of these trained models. Of course the original post was more about big data models, but I still think as artists we can maintain our uniqueness, our creativity, our style, and this does actually shine through. We can ask for more documentation, more transparency of where the data is coming from.

Being an artist but also someone extremely interested in science, data science, and ai/machine learning, there is already ALOT of academic papers written and documentation about machine learning and model training so there is already a very established community around this. I mean everyone quotes Turing right, so we're talking decades and decades ago. Its just that now, with DALL-E, Stable Diffusion, and so many more, its just so easy to create works that it is causing this to come into the fore. Its important to also note, that traditionally there just wasn't the compute power to train models in the way we're training them now. Some of these MASSIVE models take only a few months to train on huge amounts of data, and even in hours you can train your own models.

This is the artist forum, and we are artists, and I think we can navigate through and make it work to our advantage!

 

[shellifitz]

I was intruiged at first because I am a techy but when I read that they are using the art of artists to train the bots to do "in the style of" art, that is when I started to get uncomfortable about it. I am still on the fence as to whether I am worried or not. Time will tell.

 

[Micky Wagmo]

I'm an old artist. A few things I've learned from my entire life as an artist are as follows.
We're always afraid of what we don't fully understand.
AI has a place, but has no feelings.
Artists have and express their abundance of feelings.
Everything seems to run in cycles. Are we all now just into the beginning of the AI cycle?
I don't have many years left, therefore I will create non-AI art fast as I can for as long as I'm able.
I suggest you all do that too.

 

[Janique]

Samdoesart released a very good video on ai art, I highly reccomend watching it.