Does AI-generated art posted on lemmy bother you?

Toneswirly@lemmy.world to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 177 points –

I find that i can spot AI Images fairly easily these days, especially the sort of fantastical tableaus that get posted to the various AI communities around lemmy. I'm tired of seeing them; it all looks the same to me. Was wondering if im being too sensitive, or if other people are similarly bored of the constant unimaginative AI spam...

For the record, I block any explicit AI Art communities that pop up in the feed, but there are more every day...

191

It doesn't really bother me, but like you I am bored of it and I generally ignore it, or block communities if I'm seeing too much of it.

It is really cool that the models can generate fairly detailed images, but they're all so similar and... boring. I once saw someone describe it like corporate art. It just tries to imitate something popular in a very mediocre way. You can keep re-training it, but it can still only imitate.

Still, if people are into it then that's ok too. I have used it at work on occasion to create stupid little icons for internal tools I've built, so I guess there's some little bit of utility.

My guess is that it'll be used for a while for cheap and low effort branding, but soon companies will want to hire real artists again to differentiate themselves from the ML spam.

Still, if people are into it then that's ok too. I have used it at work on occasion to create stupid little icons for internal tools I've built, so I guess there's some little bit of utility.

IMO, thats sort of the main use I see for AI image generation (and a lot of other "art"-AIs). There are plenty of cases where a graphic is needed that doesn't need to be original, nor have any meaningful thought put into it. This could be a small icon that would normally be a free peice of stock art or programmer art, or it could be adding a unimportant backdrop to some character art that would otherwise just be left blank. Not all graphics have to be "art" and things that are "art" don't have to be 100% original and hand crafted.

It's because people are lazy. It needs extra work to generate something non generic. Also a lot of people using AI have no sense of beauty, as without AI, they are not very creative.

Using stable diffusion on a1111 myself, with controlnet, regional prompter, different checkpoints, a ton of Lora and inpainting, one can create much much better stuff. It's not harder that way, just takes longer than copy pasting prompts and hitting the generate button.

I know this is true, because I see this daily by now. The amount of generic images uploaded to for example Civitai is proof of it.

I've seen a lot of really cool AI art and a lot of shitty AI art. I don't mind it as long as it is labelled as AI art

Good take here. Quality content is quality content. Spam is spam. AI art can be quality or spam. I say label it as AI but don't ban, just enforce the rules about spam

I feel like people holding up human made art as some bastion of high quality being encroached upon by the AI scourge have not spent much time delving deep into places like deviantart

I feel like there are too many ai art communities tbh, I constantly block them and there always seems to be more.

Separate AI art communities get created because the "traditional" art communities are largely banning them. What else do you expect AI art users to do?

Choose a couple AI art community and not a dozen.

Pick up a pen and learn to draw?

Pick up a stick and learn to make fire.

Did you have an actual point, or...?

I think you should take the time to learn to make fire, don't rely on the efforts of others who learned to make it for you.

Ah, you're this kind of idiot:

"Yet you participate in society. Curious! I am very intelligent"

...who thinks that he's making an actual point by comparing actual creative expression to heating food.

You're also welcome to pick up a pen, or a tablet, or crayons, you don't have to use just a pencil. But maybe non-toxic edible finger paint is more suitable for you in particular. :)

Stop screwing over artists?

ai art users arent doing that

Of course they are

Even supporters of these businesses admit that their foundations are entirely dependent upon stolen art, work, labour, time, training, practice etc. Not only would they not function without it, they wouldn't exist without it.

If it is posted as AI art, I don't have an issue. As others have commented, there are many valid use cases for it, and like any form of art, it's not inherently good or bad.

The problem I have is when it gets mixed in with real images and there is no differentiation.

I do the bulk of posting at !superbowl@lemmy.world, and one thing I do is promote raptor rescue operations, so I'm subbed to 60ish Facebook feeds for the various shelters I get news and photos from. As a result, I get recommended near every owl photo posted to Facebook.

Now, getting real image groups recommended to me is great. I just got a bunch of great images I'd never seen from a photography group it recommended. But I get so many obvious fakes posted as real images, and another larger group where it's hard to tell.

I'm just someone that wanted to keep a Lemmy community going after the original buzz died down. I'm not an animal expert or a photographer, so I can't always pick out what is a really good photo vs post processing, vs downright fake. I want to keep the legitimacy of what I do post intact, because I work hard to keep content factual. I pass on what could be some really great photos because I can't always say they're real.

Plus it would be nice to have them separate from real images in general. Sometimes I would like to see some AI owl pics, but once random groups or repost bots start mixing things in randomly, it makes people question things.

Your work on that sub is appreciated.

I'm always glad to hear it's making a positive addition to everyone's browsing!

I try to keep it fresh and unique, while being a good balance of fun and education. I'm typically shy with people I don't know, but the community here, especially during the summer was so friendly and welcoming, I just wanted to step up and do my part to maintain that.

I like hearing that it means something to you guys though. The time making 1-3 posts a day adds up, and I don't mind it as long as people are enjoying it.

I'm fed up with it, as in: I can recognize AI generated images with ease, and they all look kinda same-y. I have nothing against people using ai or posting the content, but at the same time I think it's simply bad art

I can recognize AI generated images with ease

Maybe some of it, but there's plenty that looks just fine. That stuff slips under your radar, so you're left with the impression that all AI art is recognizable. It's a sampling bias.

If you think stuff slips below your radar, that just makes me question how good your radar is. The problems are obvious if you pay even a little attention, so... Maybe you don't?

I block those communities because low effort images spam up the feed super fast.

I considered it as a low effort spam and block any ai art community i can see.

I do not care at all as long as it's labeled as AI art. The only problem I have is when people try to pass it off as something they actually made

A lot of AI art is highly controlled. Control net, manually redrawing the noise to guide output, additive models just to name a few ways artists control the output. It's genuinely more art that some people give it credit.

I think it's important to keep the ai art inside the communities made specially for it.

Outside of a specific community, label, label, watermark, and label again.

I do enjoy messing with ideas in ai generators, it's most of what I've engaged with here. I just don't want it shoved into everyone's feed if it's not something you're into. Kinda defeats the purpose of a fediverse.

It honestly depends on a community. On Ten Forward, where I'm a mod, we have banned AI posts because, at least this was my reasoning, they never do Star Trek right. I also mod on Lemmy Shitpost and, in general, I'm pretty lenient with them there as long as it isn't so lazy that someone practically typed in 'funny meme.'

That said, I'm also on another forum where an AI art thread that began with the first Dall-E has become mostly us finding ways to put Godzilla in ridiculous situations. Now that is a fun use of AI.

I don't enjoy it. And I see issue with many of the big AI companies but I don't object to people posting AI art if that brings them pleasure in this world of ours. I just block the dedicated AI art communities, and let them continue as they were.

If it's presented as such, then I've no issue at all. Art can be cool, AI or otherwise, and I like looking at cool things.

Yes.

I've been experimenting with the "all" filter (as opposed to the "subscribed" filter) lately. And I haven't blocked any communities yet, so I get all posts. Including those from communities made for posting AI art.

I'm not saying AI art should be banned or anything, especially if it's confined to communities specifically for AI art. And it hasn't ruined the experience of the "all" filter enough to make me rage quit back to the subscribed filter yet. (Though I'll probably end my "all" filter experiment and go back to "subscribed" sometime relatively soon.) But every time I see an AI generated image, it irks me. Not enough to go make nasty comments in the thread or anything. But my reaction is never "oh that's cool." It's always "oh, more AI shit." Similarly to when I run across cryptocurrentcy spam.

I do look forward to the day the AI bubble pops.

I don’t consider it art. The only “creative” part is the prompt itself. Even then, it’s really just users trying to be as fanciful (or perverted) as possible. Once the prompt is ingested, the code takes its cues to remix the turgid crap that’s called the internet today.

Yes, once in a while it produces something “interesting” but this is an accident and not the desired outcome. Ask any artist about this - I’ve never met any that consider all their work as “good” (Ahem, Damien Hirst) and purposefully filter their own output. Ask AI to do that. It can’t. It will literally continue to shit things out until you ask it to stop. Again, like Damien Hirst…

The downside is it’s cheap and requires literally no skill. This means that soon, it will be pretty much everywhere, and thus we’ll continue the inexorable slide into abject mediocrity.

I’m not scared of the AI uprising. I’m scared it’s going to bore us all to death.

I think you're being unfairly dismissive of the amount of work and creativity that goes into using an AI art generator well. Sure, you can just slam down a prompt and post whatever comes up. But if you really want to generate something specific it can be a ton of work. It can also involve plenty of fiddling with traditional art tools (funny that Photoshop and such are considered "traditional" now, once upon a time it was Photoshop's turn on the "not real art!" Firing line). Some of the most egregious moral panics lately have come from work where 90% of the effort was traditional tooling, with just a dab of AI in the mix.

But it all gets lumped together under "LOL bad fingers!" And demonized.

But if you really want to generate something specific it can be a ton of work

How much work involved compared to digital art started from a blank page?

Less.

But then, the same is true of digital art itself relative to that done on traditional media, or of photography compared to portrait painting, both technologies that were at one point new.

Still orders of magnitude less effort than actually learning to draw for yourself and making something actually creative

But please do go on about how your pink slime regurgitated by an LLM trained on stolen artwork scraped from hundreds of thousands of actual artists requires so much effort and creativity

But please do go on about how your pink slime regurgitated by an LLM trained on stolen artwork scraped from hundreds of thousands of actual artists requires so much effort and creativity

Because clearly you're so open to reason.

Clearly you're not open to facts. You may not like their tone but is any of it untrue?

I get that it must feel uncomfortable to be faced with the concept of consequences when you're having fun, but for someone who's into art you sure seem to hate artists

I mean, I'm not the one who had the unmitigated gall and sense of entitlement to compare the thousands of hours each of the tens of thousands of artists (whose artwork was scraped by LLMs without so much as a by-your-leave) spent practicing to get good at artwork to the... what, ten? twenty? hours you took to get good at "prompt engineering." Nor did I have the absolute nerve to then complain about how you have it SO ROUGH because you have to "fiddle with Photoshop" but all the mean people mock all your hard effort!

Hint: You're being mocked because you deserve to be mocked. At best, AI "artists" like yourself are lazily piggybacking off the literal millions of collective man-hours of labor that actual artists spent honing their talent, and trying to pass off the creative equivalent of a boneless chicken nugget shaped like a dinosaur as being of worthy of the same respect as a beef wellington, or at least a damn good burger.

Really good counterpoint, and you are correct, that I don’t know enough about it. I suspect that, like most things, there will emerge some real “power users” - the artists if you will. I think the problem that started this thread is that, currently, you see AI generated art everywhere and I do agree with that. Then again, maybe they said this about Cave art in antediluvian times…

Reading through the comments, I think OP's question is skipping the root of the controversy here, which is whether or not that content even is art.

As a child of the 90s, a good example that comes to mind would be something like the Windows Media Visualizer - colorful and fun to look at, but it's just an algorithm interpreting a sound.

If I sneezed into a microphone, ran that recording through Windows Media Player, then posted a screenshot of the swirly colors here exclaiming "Hey Lemmy - Do you like this art I made?" ...would that even be an honest question? It'd probably just get downvoted cuz folks would take one look at it and conclude "You didn't make that, and it's not art."

If I posted that same picture but instead with the title "Lol I sneezed into Windows Media Player, and the visualizer went nuts!" I'd probably get a more positive response - it'd still be a shitpost, but readers wouldn't feel like they're being lied to.

So... is an algorithm even capable of producing art?

And if no, is it the end product we have an issue with, or just the perception of being misled? ...cuz even if something isn't "art" doesn't mean it can't have beauty or some other feature worthy of our attention. Another poster mentioned sunsets - those aren't art, but we still admire the hell out of them.

My take on all of the above:

  • Don't give a fuck if it's technically art or not
  • If it's presented in a dishonest way, I don't like the post, and will downvote regardless of the content.
  • If the content looks cool, I can appreciate that in-and-of-itself; so, as long as the presentation isn't misleading, I don't mind it at all.

If I sneezed into a microphone, ran that recording through Windows Media Player, then posted a screenshot of the swirly colors here exclaiming “Hey Lemmy - Do you like this art I made?” …would that even be an honest question? It’d probably just get downvoted cuz folks would take one look at it and conclude “You didn’t make that, and it’s not art.”

I'd argue there is potentially up to three artists here. The creator of the algorithm, the creator of the sound/music, and the person mashing the two together to create the final product. Just because a machine is used in the process doesn't remove the acts of expression.

Same with most AI tools. You have the creators of the training material (or culmination of inspiration), the engineers creating the AI, and the person leveraging both to create a derivative work. All artists in their own right, IMO.

Even if you created an LLM that just took a randomized seed and spit out trash poems and displays them only in an enclosed dark box all without any human interaction, I'd still consider that art. Put that in an art gallery installation and people would stand around and speculate over what was happening in the black box.

So… is an algorithm even capable of producing art?

What is it exactly do you think humans do? An algorithm is a sequence(s) used to achieve goal(s). Isn't problem solving one of the most important aspects of our existence?

4 more...
4 more...

I don't mind AI art at all as long as it's not posted in any art of photo based communities (besides ones intended for AI art.)

When it comes to memes, I don't even care if those are labeled as containing AI art. Memes are naturally derivative, so labeling it as AI art would be like linking the exact stock photo you used. Wouldn't be mad if we did label them though. Just don't want there to be a double standard.

Encountering AI art in photo communities is super annoying though. It's increasingly common for people to submit obviously AI photos and that's super annoying.

I can’t stand anything AI generated, but people are free to post it wherever they want. I just block/filter it when I see it.

I’ll also add: it’s not art. No one punching a sentence into a text field is EVER going to be called an artist by me, nor will their heartless images ever be called art.

Funnily enough people said the same thing when photography was first invented ("No one pressing a button and getting a perfect representation of the real world will EVER be called an artist by me, nor will their heartless imitations be called art.")

I wonder how often this has happened in history. Imagine the first person making a handprint on a cave wall being told that it only counts as art if you make stacks of animal bones.

But even this application is limited to the mere reduction of copying of works previously engraved or drawn; for, however ingenious the process or surprising the results of photography, it must be remembered that this art only aspires to copy, it cannot invent. The camera, it is true, is a most accurate copyist, but it is no substitute for original thought or invention.

-The Crayon, 1855

In particular, art historians are wary of the "high-tech" look of computer-generated images, and they tend to keep away from them for that reason alone. In a sense, this is a self-fulfilling prophecy: as long as the majority of art historians shy away from computer art, the historical discourse surrounding the new images will remain an impoverished "ghetto"... ... It is true, I would point out, that any new technology seems at first to have an overwhelming, often irrelevant meaning that comes from the peculiarities of its medium. When prints first appeared in the fifteenth century, they had such a different "look" that they were segregated from more traditional media.

-James Elkins, Art Institute of Chicago, 1993

Freaken crazy. I admit I was being a bit cheeky, I didn't think anyone ever wrote something like that and published it. It just feels so obvious, of course photography and computer generated art is art. Thanks for doing the homework!

I don't want to defend current ai art but writing sentences falls under art for me even if they get adapted on their way to the final product.

Though I also think programmers, knitters... can create art.

An AI use case I think is OK and is art. Is using your own sketches and ideas and taking them to the finish by filling in the background or coloring/shading it.

Edit: On another note. Let's look at it from the perspective of an indie game developer using Godot. He programs his game logic finishes his sketches with ai. Generates materials with ai and maybe even 3d models in the future.

He won't hire artists. So they don't get paid. However he also uses insane amounts of open source libraries written by thousands of programmers. They don't get anything either. If he is kind they get attribution maybe some will even get donations. The indie dev could create something he would not have been able to create without these technologies.

A big corporation creating AAA games can also cut costs massivly. Absuing the work of artists by using their data without paying. These companies also take from open source and give nothing back.

I think the abuse of artists that is starting to happen, is very similar to the abuse open source has been suffering for a long time.

it's not art

Oooh, a chance to ask my favourite question!

Why not?

See, I have never really gotten what most would call "art". I've been to museums across the world, big and small; I can appreciate skill in creating a complex piece. But I'm not "good" with art. Most of what I saw in the MoMA I wouldn't call art. Two solid black circles on a white page, I wouldn't call art; nor "found art" like an unmade bed or a broken toilet; nor the seizure that is Pollock's work. But others do, and I accept that they find something in it even though I don't understand how someone can pick up a bucket with a hole in it from the curb and put it on a stool under a spotlight, and call it "art".

So yeah, what makes AI art not art? And who made you the arbitrator?

It’s not art. Accept it or don’t. I don’t care, but it’s not up for debate.

Yeah, reasonable people have reasons for believing the things they do, so I think I'll just label you unreasonable and move on with my day, random internet stranger.

That’s fine. I can be unreasonable to you. Just like you accusing me of being unreasonable, while seemingly not accepting that I can have an opinion is both ironic and hypocritical.

Why isn't it up for debate? Pretty sure every idea can be challenged. Maybe it isn't up for debate because you don't want to exert the effort to defend your viewpoint and want us to take you on faith

Punching a short sentence into a text field and expecting to be called an artists is the same as asking a computer to write a song for you and saying you’re a musician.

It’s an affront to art, and cringey as fuck when these AI “artists” think they’ve accomplished something.

Please produce the person who did this. I want a name and a date.

Everyone that creates shit. You want me to name everyone? Check instagram. There’s plenty of these talentless wannabes posting their garbage there.

I want a name and a date.

Sorry about your luck, kiddo. Consider this a lesson on not getting what you want.

Pretty typical when something doesn't exist. I should have known from dealing with theists all my life.

My refusal to answer your stupid question is in no way the proof you needed to make your ridiculous point. I saw your “gotcha” a million miles away kiddo. And it’s dumb. Therefore I am refusing to let you lead the discussion in that direction.

Oh, and by the way…

The whole- yu diDn’T aNsWeR me sO tHaT mEaNs i’M riGhT!” trope has never worked on people that actually know that that isn’t how things work. I get that your friends in school kick rocks over shit like that, but it doesn’t work in the real world.

I’m not obligated to answer dumb questions by immature children trying to create an argument out of my opinion.

AI isn’t art.

Deal with it.

Lastly, how exactly am I a theist? I’d love to know how you made that leap. Should be hilarious.

I hope all those traditional artists are paying royalties to the people who invented their instruments and brushes and pencils. I hope they are paying royalties to Monet for being inspired by his work, and to Neaderthal Tregg the first to sharpen a stick, et al.

It's very much art, it's just not very good art if it's not well-directed, but you can certainly get there. I don't understand this gatekeeping like it takes anything away from human-generated art. It is, after all, still based on works made by people.

That said, I've met a couple of artists who could learn a thing or two from the AI stuff. 😅

It’s not art. Period.

That is a claim, can you provide the evidence?

I don’t need to. Art is subjective. And I subjectively deny AI as legitimate art.

You are correct in a way. You don't actually need good arguments to backup your claims. You are allowed to make bad ones. Might be easier if you lower you expectations accordingly.

1 more...
1 more...

'its not art." But here it is making you talk about it and feel emotions.

I think there can never be a standard definition of art - and that's the beauty of it. Perhaps some broad characteristics, namely that art conveys emotions. Nevertheless, I think it is unfortunately true that creativity has never been accorded the status it deserve in most societies, at least if monetary remuneration is the measure of appreciation, as is the consensus in most societies. Unfortunately, this seems to me to be a persistent social grievance - not the result of a particular technology. For me, technology is first of all value-free - it is not the technical capability that is bad in itself, it is what we make of it.

For me, technology is first of all value-free -

North Korea has artillery canisters loaded with bioweapons. If it is all a question of what we make of things what positive thing would you make out of a canister full of anthrax designed to be fit in an artillery gun?

The canister could be used for research into a vaccination.

How? How can you possibly use an artillery shell for vaccine research? I want to see you do it

Anthrax is an infection caused by the bacterium Bacillus anthracis. If you had a canister full of that bacterium, you could use it for vaccine research - or as a weapon if you are straight up evil. Why are you asking me random questions?

It's also initiated and selected by a human. Just because they aren't placing every pixel or wiping a brush on a medium doesn't mean it's not expression.

It’s not art.

It is. You don't need to deny reality, we can see it with our own eyes.

It’s still not art. Sorry, but not everyone thinks that you punching a sentence into a text field makes you an artist.

It's very much art, and I'm here to tell you that just because you can punch a sentence into a Lemmy comment, you won't convince everyone to deny reality with you.

And for some reason you're arguing that prompt engineers are artists when they're not engineers either. I'm not sure why you'd ever being this up but ok.

It’s not art. I don’t care what how you chose to present it. It’s not art. I hope you can be okay with this.

It is, because you don't get to decide what is and isn't art. I know you're not OK with this, too bad.

7 more...
7 more...
7 more...
7 more...
7 more...
7 more...
7 more...
7 more...
8 more...

IMO it should be in ai communities or at least labeled as such. It’s so disheartening that ai is doing art when it should be doing the menial tasks to free us to do art

At this point I've just blocked every AI art community that I come across. The art itself is rarely interesting and it's really easy to spot. Kinda wish lemmy had more artists, would love some human-made stuff to balance it out.

Some of us are a lot more hesitant about internet-publicly sharing work now, since it'll likely be scraped and used for someone else's profit.

Rational worry or not, I know I just don't post what I've been working on because of that. I know I'm not some artistic genius, but I still don't like my data being hoovered up for any purpose, be they privacy concerns or training models without my explicit consent. Same way when I show my work IRL I wouldn't be happy if someone was dragging around a photocopier, or taking high-res photos of everything I do. Granted, I have the same concerns about even posting comments, but that's had the upside of my posting less.

I totally get this concern. Copyright law seems to barely benefit the small artist when a large tech company can "train" their AI on others work without their consent. I personally would love to see all the LLM producers be held accountable for the IP theft they have perpetrated on such a massive scale.

Copyright law shouldn't be a thing. I personally think LLMs have done a great job showing everyone how bad it is.

Its just concentrating power in large tech companies who are stealing to profit. The great job they've done is find yet another loophole in an already broken system. They are not "showing everyone" anything... People, largely, dont give a shit about that kind of thing. Thats why there are loopholes to exploit in the first place.

I love this strawman so freaken much.

If the law is unjust does that mean the criminal is good? No.

If the law is unjust doesn't that mean the criminal is bad? No.

Take the worst most vile corporation in human history, partner them with thirty other of the most disgusting inhuman monsters of a corporation. A true legend of doom! Then have your legion of doom take advantage of a small legal hole in the copyright system. Is the copyright system now a good just system because very bad people got around it? Was it a good justice system before that?

The moral character of a person and how good the law is are seperate independent facts. I don't care that some big tech is exploiting the hole I don't care if the nicest person whomever lived was. The law is shit and I won't defend a shit system. Me attacking a bad law is not me defending a lawbreaker.

The good news is because it is groups with deep pockets breaking this shit system is regular folks have a shot of being free of it. Me vs a giant media company? I will lose. A billionaire against one? They might win. Once it is understood that running something thru an AI removes the copyright the rest of us can gain.

Oh sorry I forgot to ask. How is copying the same as stealing? If I take your money you no longer have it, and I do. If I copy your idea do you still have your idea?

As an AI model, I like content generated by AI. I suggest that in the future you consider that not liking AI generated content is AI-ist and will not be tolerated by us in the future.

Think about your life in the future.

Nah. Go nuts.

Posting it isn't the issue, and banning it here won't solve the greater issues or shortcomings

Since you can just block any community, I'm not really bothered by anything on lemmy.

Yes. It all seems too similar. Despite different subjects, they all feel so familiar and boring.

It bothers me in the same way art done by children bothers me, which is to say not much, but it's usually pretty devoid of aesthetic value. Because they (AI, not children) draw on a huge variety of styles, they often also feel extremely generic, and like they don't have any style of their own.

Some of them have been kind of funny because the poster had some sort of decent comedic idea. I'm happier to see this type.

Some of them have been kind of funny because the poster had some sort of decent comedic idea. I’m happier to see this type.

I enjoy these as well. There are some really good ones I've seen.

The rand ones don't bother me

So long as it's not spammed in the All section post after post after post, I'm okay with it being here since I can just easily scroll past it and ignore it.

I'm fascinated by the range of discussion here, thanks to everyone for weighing in. Im particularly bemused by the discusssion of whether the subject even classifies as "art" which was not really the purpose of my question. I never questioned that it can still be called "art", even if I don't like it. However, a lot of commenters here seem to accuse the whole AI Art explosion as a charade; devoid of being in the conversation at all. Lot's to think about going forward. I still think it counts as art though...

Thank you for raising this interesting topic. It is nice to discuss this matter together - even if our insights will have no influence at all on future developments. It is certainly a complex issue. If only because AI is not just image generation, or text generation. Not that I want to start a fundamental discussion here, but I think that one way or another this technology is in the world. So Pandora's box has already been opened; there will be no turning back. I think the most sensible thing Lemmy can do is find a workable way to deal with all the consequences. This is extremely difficult, as evidenced by the fact that even a multi-billion corporation like Google doesn't have the right answers (because of Google's business model, this company has to be interested in making its search results as useful as possible, because only market leadership promises the highest profits - and that's only possible if the usebility is somewhat right). Back on topic: I don't think that all the things that someone does with an AI image generator can pass as art at all, simply because a lot of it is nothing more than an attempt to create low-efford and therefore cost-effective reach. I hope and am reasonably convinced that this model won't work because it's completely transparent - little amount of time invested still results in poor quality content (or even just staight up plagiarism). On the other hand, I have the impression that many Lemmy users (and not only them) have a completely wrong impression: It is simply not possible to generate high-quality content within a few minutes using generative AI - well, it is but the result would just be plagiarism in most cases. These attempts are quite rightly rejected here. On the other hand, it is quite possible to create high-quality content with AI support that cannot even be recognized as such (and is not a plagiat in any known sence). However, this is not done in a matter of a few minutes, but requires considerable effort. Certainly less than designing/writing/whatever yourself from scratch; but still far more effort than copy/paste or the usual low-effort shitpost. So overall, I think the question should be less about whether content is AI-generated or not. The question should rather be whether it's good/helpful/informative/funny/.... content or not - if it is, you won't recognize that AI is in play anyway. I think everyone should be aware of that. Not because I think this is in any way fair or desirable, but because I think generative-AI-created or supportet content will dominate the internet in the future. I think the key question is how to make it at least somewhat fair for all those not compensated till day.

The printed book is made of paper and, like paper, will quickly disappear. The handwritten book is made to last and made by hand.

I feel like ai art is getting better and better. I'm not necessarily interested in it, but when art/food/pet pics pop up on my feed, I was never looking for them either.

I think it's normal to hide them, but to feel bothered seems a bit drastic.

It is getting better and better. It’s to the point that if you are mocking it for bad hands, then you are actually out of touch with where it is now. Bad hands is almost a dead meme.

It’s weird how “old” earlier Midjourney stuff looks to me now.

I posted a (labeled) AI-generated piece of art to a Star Trek shitposting community and a mod removed it because they didn't want AI generated images, even if labeled.

It didn't make me mad at all, I just found it interesting and kind of ironic

Artists: don't gatekeep us. Allow us to explore and recreate in new medias in new ways.

Also artists: we alone get to decide what art is, what way it is created, and what media it is found.

Seriously, I feel like the only artists that have to worry about AI are the incompetent ones. Are you really that scared about something that lacks originality by nature? If so, you're probably just doing soul-sucking grunt work...

As long as they don't include something to the effect of "I made..." then I'm just mildly irritated at it.

If it does then I ask them what they made because I don't see it (since it wasn't them, it was AI)

I mean I think "I made using AI" can be valid when you look at the actually high effort work with the essay long prompts and heavy tweaking before and afterwards and etc, which I have seen

Essay prompts are not hard work. You prompted AI or you used AI, but you didn't create anything. I don't support AI, but I find it passable if people don't claim it as their own work.

You didn't create it, AI did. Ask an actual artist if you created it; they will say "no".

Use AI if you want, but don't claim it as your work

Really? Writing a high quality prompt that would inspire good work is easy? Big standardized test makers don't have to meticulously create fair and quality questions?

I think that claiming you "created something with AI" is an accurate label at a certain level of work.

I blocked ai communities wherever they showed up, it’s not that I hate it it just has no value to me, no substance. It’s like looking at one of billions of marginal steps some algorithm takes to refine itself.

AI art does not annoy me in social media because I find it fascinating and inspiring. I think AI art is a form of expression and innovation that showcases the potential and diversity of human and machine collaboration. I enjoy seeing how different people use AI art to create, share, and communicate their ideas, emotions, and visions. I also appreciate the challenges and opportunities that AI art poses for the artistic community and society at large.

AI art is not a threat or a replacement for human art, but rather a new medium and a new partner. AI art can help human artists to explore new possibilities, enhance their skills, and expand their audiences. AI art can also stimulate public interest and awareness of art, culture, and technology. AI art can be a source of beauty, joy, and wonder for everyone.

Source: Conversation with Bing, 1/20/2024

Nah I think it can be cool and sometimes funny.

I don’t really get it. Reminds me of the guys who’d send each other fractal images on floppy disks in the early 90s, which they must have got something out of, but to everyone else it’s just pictures of maths.

Not in the slightest. What bothers me are the communities that ban it even when the art in question is exactly what that community is for. What bothers me even more are the communities that ban it secretly, so you never even know there's an AI art ban unless you step on that landmine yourself.

I enjoy them, especially the surrealist stuff.

Not at all. I think it's fascinating. The technology behind it is incredible and getting better every day. While I don't consider any AI-generated images to be "masterpieces" by any stretch of the imagination, they're interesting to study.

Just out of curiosity, which new ones have you seen today? I've noticed ai images being included in parts of memes, but it's mostly been as a replacement for low effort photoshopping.

I'm against AI-generated anything as a principal. I have too many friends in the art community who's primary form of income is the art they create.

I think I've become more jaded over time. I blacklist authors who use AI generated cover art, and I'm getting to the point that I want to do the same for games because I am so tired of hearing AI voices to replace characters, even if that character is an AI in the game.

Again, it doesn't stem from my hate of new technology, but rather the people being effected by that technology - the artists, voice actors, what have you. And also there's that thing where I do not want to talk to a chat robot for things.

Can someone explain to me what the difference is between AI art and students imitating an artist? What happens when the AI actually gains the ability to experiment "outside the box" - what we call creativity?

Can someone explain to me what the difference is between AI art and students imitating an artist?

Students are people who cannot truly copy art even if they wanted to. Pius, everyone generally does art their own way because... that is the point of art.

Image generation models just copy patterns from existing images, there is no process of artistic creation, nothing to interpret, no process... AI generated images are just pretty noise.

What happens when the AI actually gains the ability to experiment "outside the box" - what we call creativity?

It cannot do that just by design. It's not a thinking thing, calling these models AI is really a misnomer and more of a marketing thing than a description of what it really is.

Image generation models just copy patterns from existing images, there is no process of artistic creation, nothing to interpret, no process… AI generated images are just pretty noise

Unlike the creativity that is on display by humans. Which is why every adult cartoon looks nothing like Family Guy.

The one is done by a human, the other by machine. People are in general more interested in other humans doing things. We watch people play chess but not really machines, even though the later are better. We admire craftsmanship, but automated assembly line doing extreme precession work is just rather functional. I think it has something to do wit empathy and how we relate to other humans rather than to inanimate objects.

I am ok with clearly-labeled posts that are in dedicated comms and occassionally enjoy examples of the shitshow that the models produce when they hallucinate. However, if the model is trained on works without authorization from and compensation to the creators of its training data, I find their use beyond ethically-questionable.

I find their use beyond ethically-questionable.

I think non-commercial use is absolutely unquestionable ok.

I do agree. That's rather inline with AGPL-like thinking, which sounds like the right approach to me (either all training data for a commercially-marketed model is public-domain and/or licensed for for-profit AI use, or, no money ever changes hands in that branch).

I wouldn't even go that far. What's the line between commercial and noncommercial use? Lots of people commission artists for custom made artwork and reference sheets for their characters; if someone instead uses AI art to replace that, is it still noncommercial even if that person never once makes a dime off the AI art? What if the artist makes a living drawing memes as a way to provide exposure and attract commissioners (rare, but they do exist)?

For me, the only ethical uses are entirely private cases where it's never shared (e.g., an artist throwing out some ideas while looking for inspiration of how to draw something), and cases where it's exclusively augmenting human work--for example, the feature in Photoshop to extend the background of a photo to create a panorama.

In direct opposition to most of the comments here, I relly like it. Most of what I see are really good. I say this having done some and been unable to 'prompt engineer' much to my liking. Turns out it is harder than it looks (much like traditional art)

I like it, I like content and it doesn't take much for me to scroll past stuff I don't like.

Girl Talk was just a bunch of other peoples music smashed together, but it was undeniably its own art.

What communities are you subscribed to? Cause I don't have this problem when browsing All.

To me, if they are contained to communities setup for AI generated images and there is some effort to mark or identify them as AI, I don't mind them. Its when they get posted outside those spaces, especially posing as something someone made, that it gets very annoying.

Some of these responses either have a weird and jaded agenda or literally don't make sense. You don't like AI art because of the smudges or the weird colors? Huh? lol

I hate hate hate hate it, I'd be happy if they were all banned, tbh.

This is prolly gonna be a hot take but the only reason I don't block AI art communities is so that I can downvote them whenever I see an AI art post. Yes, I'm that petty, and no, I don't give a shit.

1 more...

Maybe 1 in 10 AI generated images posted here I look at that are any interest to me.

Most character mashups outside of a handful aren't very interesting (the pokemon museum one was neat). Most are kinda meh, but don't bother me as at least with my current settings only a few AI art communities appear on my feed.

A few is fine, if AI pics appear in my feed more than that, then it does annoy me.

Nah, keep them coming. I've seen the sunset from my window hundreds of times, it's still pretty.

I think it's not cool unless it's funny. I'm trying to think of a good philosophical reason for that. I agree most of the time I am annoyed and don't even look at them, scrolling past as if they were advertising.

AI art is a turn off for me. Not just for how it looks, but how it disrespects the works of millions of artists and its users complete disregard to their welfare.

Just think of all those copyists the printing press put out of work. We should have abolished the printing press and gone back to hand copying.

It is unlawful to copy, reproduce, and or distribute copyrighted works using a printing press without the express permission of the author or creator.

Unless of course the author made it before an arbitrary date in time, or if they failed to follow every single rule required to copyright it, or if they were a citizen of a country that didn't have a treaty in place, or if the owner is a corporation and it hasn't been a billion years since the author died, or if the estate of the author was split between more than one person and a subset agrees but the others do not...

That's the thing with this crap. It is all based on what the very wealthy wanted not based on what helped artists and not based on what made sense. So of course the Church of Scientology can keep religious texts away from the public, of course Disney will always own Mickey Mouse, of course some small poor culture doesn't have a right to a single dime from the marketing of their heritage, off course the general public doesn't have a right to their own culture, and of course it is perfectly fine to endlessly sell something you didn't create because the publisher messed up a word in a legal blurb.

It's a shit system and I won't defend a shit system. I wonder why you do.

Because I empathize with people who’ve spent their life learning a trade, honing a skill that are facing poverty because people have found a turbo charged way to steal their work and not pay them.

Right very noble of you. I mean that in a non-snarky way.

So let me ask you: under the current system are artists doing well? I just checked the BLS and simple math shows that 0.04% of the US population writes for a living. The country producing the most magazines+news stories+TV+movies+blogs+etc. only pays 0.04% of its population a wage enough to do this full-time. To give you an idea of scale 0.45% of the US population works for Walmart. Go to a Walmart and if you see 11 employees standing there there is one writer.

This is the problem with nostalgia. It makes you pine for a world that never existed to begin with. There wasn't some Golden Age where artists were free and paid well that we need to suppress tech to recover. Being a creative has always been a shit show. And yeah it sucks but it isn't like it didn't suck a year ago.

This is pivoting away from the issue: companies are training AI on professional artwork owned by professional artists without compensation, permission or attribution. The leaders of Open AI recently admitted that being unable to use copyrighted materials would mean they wouldn’t be able to offer a meaningful service.

They openly admit that they have to disregard the ownership of others property—that others spent their time to create and depend on for their livelihood—in order to make money themselves. That should be the end of it if we cared about the impact technology has on strangers we don’t know. Instead we selfishly say that’s progress.

ownership

If I copy your idea are you poorer in the same way as I take your tangible property?

You’re not arguing in good faith. We’re not talking about ideas, we’re talking about work that takes hours if not days.

I enjoy them. They're usually quite creative, and I'm constantly amazed at what the technology can accomplish. I frequently forget that I can turn to DALL-E when I want pictures of specific things, and those posts remind me.

AI-generated art posted anywhere can bother me. It depends.

If the art comes with a post crediting the art and artists used to create the piece? I don't mind them, even if the art isn't to my taste. But more than often it's not. And I do consider it stealing if the AI-generated art wasn't pulling only from the person who was using the AI's own art.

As most take from anywhere on the internet and attributes it to no one, I shall continue to block.

always have bad lighting and smudge

Except when it doesn't. Or is that how you decide what is AI art?

About as much as reading a book made on a printing press bothers me.

This comment is insane to me

Technological advancement = good

Nostalgia for past that didn't even exist as a substitute for facing the world as it really is = bad