Imagination rule

ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world to 196@lemmy.blahaj.zone – 439 points –

Alt text: Using AI is the coolest new way to let people know you have no imagination of your own

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As much as I have issues with AI, I feel like it would actually help you get your imagination set down in a way you could actually show people? Like I can think of a wonderful scene in my head, but I can't even draw a straight line with a ruler and you want me to draw that scene? Hell no, and lack of ability isn't lack of imagination, it's just a skill issue.

Drawing however is a vital part of the creative process. Creativity is not only about getting your mental image on paper, but also to learn and hone your limits as an artist.

Bob Ross said that stuff about "happy little accidents" for a reason.

Trust me there are a lot of accidents with AI generators

But they're never interesting. It's never due to some human factor, but always a "huh, I guess the stochastic model doesn't work properly."

You can definitely input the wrong words in your prompt, swap the positive and negative prompts, forget to select the correct controlnet pre-processor. These errors do turn out interesting results, I wish I had some to show you. How much experience do you have working with this stuff?

So a paraplegic quadriplegic can't be creative? 🤔

Or, let me rephrase because this is a serious question testing the limits of your statement: what impact would you say being a paraplegic unable to perform basic motor functions has on someone's ability to create art, given that (according to you) they cannot perform such critical parts of the creative process?

Well first off, most paraplegics still have use of their arms, so drawing should not be a problem there.

Quadriplegics have access to digital interfaces and there are many example of an artists who use their mouths to paint. Henry Salas has lost function in 90% of his body and has been a digital artist for over a decade. https://www.henrysalas.com/digital-art

Well first off, most paraplegics still have use of their arms, so drawing should not be a problem there

Lol fair enough, my bad, I'm still shaking off the sleep, I did mean quadriplegics!

So then in this view it's not just using your extremities to create art, but any part of your body, which is a crucial part of the process. Your mouth, a foot, a nostril - all valid bodily extensions to interface with the world and create "real art" with.

But language is another interface between someone's mind and the world; why is that not a valid extension to create art with? What about people who generate their AI art piecemeal, using inpainting and careful prompting to correct features they don't want? What about professional photographers using their existing knowledge of photography to create award-winning compositions entirely with AI? Is it fair to say these people have no imagination?

Of course paraplegics can create art. The vital part is "uutting the work in" and being playful with your limits. Paraplegics still hve limits, don't they?

The usual argument goes "finally, I can create art that 'looks good'". But "looking good" isn't really the main point of art. It's a human expression and that includes supposed "mistakes".

"Not being able to draw" is indeed a limit, one I share with *quadriplegics as another commenter was kind enough to correct me (😅).

Using a tool to break that limit sure seems like playing with limits to me, sifting through iterations and refining prompts sure sounds like a drafting process, and changing elements with inpainting to stitch together your drafts into something close to what you have in your head sure sounds like revision. All of this, which can take hours or days of you want to be so exacting, sounds like "putting the work in".

Does using AI suddenly mean you can draw? Of course not. But I don't think it's at all fair to say using AI means someone has no imagination.

I'd argue that creativity shouldn't be linked to technical skill. I've met people who have really creative ideas and solutions that they couldn't carry out because they couldn't weld, machine, do carpentry, paint, draw, or otherwise carry out their idea. Are they not creative? Sure, to be a great artist you need those skills, and using AI does not make you an artist as a result, but using AI to demonstrate your creativity shouldn't be demonised. Creating AI using other people's IP without their permission should be demonised.

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The issue is when people use chatgpt or whatever to form a reply for them, like i get that people can't draw hence cannot implement said imagination, but...word? It doesn't have to be fancy, just type out what they have in mind. It happened right in Lemmy as well.

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AI art is real art because people get mad at it

Thomas Kinkade agrees. Or his ghost-artists do, anyway.

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Okay. I write lyrics and have Suno turn them into full songs to make wife laugh. My wife laughs. But according to you I don't have any imagination because I'm not a multivocal singer, can't play any instruments, don't have my own band to play for her on demand? Fuck off.

For personal use I see little issue with it. If you, however, start publishing them, suppressing other voices and/or making money off of it, it becomes less clear.

Well, I've shared my creations because I think they're funny too, and maybe other people will, but I'm not gonna put them on an album and sell them! I'm just arguing the creative side of it. Those tracks wouldn't exist without my lyrics, and I typically go through a bunch of "takes" to get the melodies and rhythms I want, so for someone to say there's no imagination involved feels thoroughly unfair to me.

They're a replacement for skills and knowledge, not imagination.

This is why people point out that they lack skills and knowledge.

I am all of the issues to some degree and AI outputs to me* just seem like dairy-free maple-coconut water cheese. So personally I'll just stick with nothing (substantial) until the format/workflow that I'm looking for (hopefully) becomes viable for me.

Luckily writing a book or painting hyper-realism are not the only type of creativity.

(also funnily enough, AI currently is just a different set of skills/knowledge especially for the better results or wrangling custom inputs/training/adjustments etc)

*= Particularly what I can run locally, w/a 1050Ti. But also just really most examples of AI (aside from maybe the stuff that is either extremely overproduced/hand-picked or potentially faked)

I understand not liking AI but you don't have to be a jerk to aphantasics to do it

Aphantasiacs have imagination though, it's just not images

You are correct, what would be the correct term for this? I tried looking up 'no imagination' and all I got was results about aphantasia.

who needs imagination when you have algorithms to do the thinking for you? 😜


This was chat GPTs attempt at writing a funny reply to this post.

lmao the proompter cope in this thread is real

Maybe other people just enjoy something and there's no reason to put them down for it. I wish I knew something you enjoyed so I could make fun of you for it. Sad person.

ah yes im so very sorry, i should have kept the feelings of people who gladly feed on stolen labor and exploitation of the global south for their slop generator to work, in mind uwu

fuck outta here lmaoo

people who gladly feed on stolen labor and exploitation of the global south for their slop generator to work

What is this even supposed to refer to

besides the fact that the models are trained on stolen, copyrighted work, the output is trash without millions of man hours painstakingly tuning it: https://www.cjr.org/tow_center/qa-uncovering-the-labor-exploitation-that-powers-ai.php

of the global south

I meant this part specifically.

I already know y'all think storing the .01% of data derived from the images is theft. What's the labor specifically being stolen from "the global south"??

Edit: my bad for skimming the whole comment lol, I see now

Look up what people used to say about digital art and tell me if history repeats itself or not

I was actually there. The backlash against digital art usually came from:

  • people who were otherwise already elittist towards one or two painting styles and media,
  • art gallery regulars (they can't sell JPEGs or PSDs),
  • poor people as back then graphics tablets were way more expensive and alternatives to Wacom also worse (the patents for their battery-free pens haven't expired yet), thus it was cheaper to buy paint and/or markers.
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The reality is 99% of people that create images or music have little to no real creativity, it's far higher for text.

You can be crazily creative with thrown paint and make images you can stare at for hours or you can do the most generic shit with a hundred brushes and 12 years of art education.

Of course a creative person can use ai in fascinating ways to create visually stunning images. The better tools get the more control we have over output and the more intricate and ¹complex the things we'll make. I've seen loads of really cool things from ai which are every bit as creative as anything else, as with all art you have to seek out creativity and originality.

I’m pro AI at this point. Any use it has in the real world have and will continue regardless if AI art somehow gets restricted. AI is choosing who gets jobs, doing the work previously done by humans, and companies will continue this trend.

Being able to create art that is good and makes someone money is already a 1% kinda thing (I don’t mean money-wise, I mean just the ability to earn money as an artist at all). If we can’t save the rest of humanity, artists are just going to have to join us.

I believe that people with a good imagination actually make use of Ai better, they can generate way more interesting prompts.

Then the choice of where to do inpainting and outpainting with further prompts is a very artistic decision.

I like these apps to help me come up with ideas for different story concepts.

I use it to kickstart my email replies. I'm a great editor but terrible at creating from scratch.

ChatGPT is great for yapping about patriotism for a school history essay, but It's completely unable to write anything useful or sensible. So I'll keep on doing things like art, storywriting and programming myself, but I'll use whatever cheats I have available for the pointless things I'm forced to do.

there is a lot of nuance in the discussion, but a lot of people just want a quick black and white answer. you can use AI to supplement other artistic projects (like using AI to create images for a comic you wrote), so i don't agree with the premise of the post

but i also don't agree with people who say that AI is just another tool. i think that it is a paradigm changing tool, that is going to make us have to rethink how we interact with art.

Jokes on you, I don't need AI to tell me that. I couldn't make a good build in Minecraft if you held me at gunpoint.

You can do wild shit that's barely possible with any other tools.

You can feed in images instead of text, or alongside it, and turn blobby sketches into photoreal renders.

You can describe contradictory nonsense and get a decent effort to square the circle.

You can keep saying more, more, more, and get exaggerations revealing an adjective's visual essence.

... but yeah, folks keep posting "woman naked anime" five hundred brainless images at a time. So few people are even making comics with this shit. Do they not understand each panel is its own little drawing? You piece together what you need. Story exists in the edit. Not even the people with a paragraph of "Remember, if you lose--" dialog in ev-er-y fucking image have figured out they can just show that now.

Does this count for AlphaFold 3 and other similar ai’s?

Looked it up, it's quite different (actually useful) than the programs that imagines things instead of a person that writes an article.