I was on stable diffusion art and one of my comments got removed for saying the OP didn’t “make” the AI generated art. But he didn’t make shit the AI made it, he typed in a description and hit enter. I think we need a new word for when someone shared art an AI made, like they generated it or something. It feels insulting to actual artists to say you made art with AI
I don’t really get how this is a counter point. I don’t think anyone is contending that the pictures produced are reproducible by the same means. They’re contending that the method of production isn’t “making” art and they aren’t an artist for starting the production process.
It’s sort of like when rich people go to space and call themselves an astronaut. People have an idea of what an astronaut does and it isn’t just “space tourist.” If you fired back with “you try spending that much money and see how easy it is” then that wouldn’t answer the point of why people don’t want to call space tourists “astronauts.”
I don’t think their point was just that it’s impossible to reproduce, more that there is skill, knowledge and choice put into getting close to the intended idea when working with AI output.
With that I think your point breaks down when you compare it with something like photography. Often you aren’t ‘making’ the images that you capture, but there is skill and artistry in the choices that capture the moment or picture you want. Obviously there is more control in photography, and I would disagree with anyone that uses AI and claims the same level of artistry of photography. But ultimately I think the lines around art are so blurry in general, it seems incorrect to me to do decidedly exclude AI generated images.
That’s interesting cuz I took their point as “you can put the exact same prompt into the stable diffusion and not get the same image each time, thus good luck trying to recreate the picture.” Which seemed to me to suggest the opposite point: That intentionality has a diminished role in creating ai images, so it serves even less of a role as art. You wouldn’t say someone sitting in front of a slot machine “intended” to get a cherry, bell, and bar on a specific pull, after all.
But… you are though. Images would not exist without the photographer choosing to make them. Not to mention that many forms of photography (albiet older forms) have very real physical elements to them like dodge, burn, and film development. Even without those elements though, those images would not exist without the effort, intention, and presence of the photographer. The photographer also makes the conscious decision about what photos not to take, because they don’t align to their message. Intention is at every step of the process and that invites us to explore the meaning of their work.
Contrast that with AI art. The only intention you have is your prompt and choice of model. I would argue the fact that ai prompters need to “get close to” what they want their piece to say, rather than making the piece say what they want it to say, shows how starved for meaning the products are.
I don’t disagree with what you’re saying. But I will say that skill is not what makes art art. Skill can make you a better artist, but someone without skills can make art.
My understanding is that if you have the exact same model, prompt, and everything else, if you use the same seed, you will get the exact same image output. That and that they called it a counter point, I took it to mean they were talking about the skill in the layers of different tools folks will use to get what they are hoping for. Because, a little to your further point, there are folks that get very into it and have like 30 different fine tuned loras or whatever to finesse every finer point of the image.
At the risk of getting a little philosophically wanky about it, I guess I would argue the same for AI images. Like what exists is a nebulous connections of weights and nodes trained off stolen art that only connect in certain ways because of a given seed and prompt. Does a hypothetical random image of a muppets version of Kermit the frog as Darth Vader ‘exist’ without the high, half baked, prompt from someone using a free trial of midjourney?
I completely agree, and I think my point more was that with photography, you don’t “make” the landscape or architecture you’re capturing, but you make the image in the end.
I will say, I respect photography more, and so much of what AI generates is soulless slop. I think that ultimately my push back is on the folks that argue that it can’t be art. And just as there is intentionality in choosing what photos you don’t take for photography, there is non-zero intentionality in generating 30 loose candidates, 50 fine tuned candidates, and 3 final images with stable diffusion.
Sorry if this comment is scattered, I’ve restarted my reply like three times trying to sort out what I even think lol.