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  • Yes, as it conveys nothing more than the prompt it was given. Art is a means of communication, but when all it does is chop up pictures it’s seen to match a prompt there just isn’t anything to analyze.

    It may look pretty in the moment, but lacks all substance and will be forgotten as quickly as it was generated.

    • Just playing devil's advocate here. Let me lay out some counter points .. (it'll take me an edit or two to format this right, btw.)

      1. Instructing a machine to assemble bits in a specific way takes creativity. My prompt to AI is that creativity and without it, you can't even get much of a copy of anything. Even though AI is generally assembling stolen bits, the end result (ignoring copyright law) can be original.
      2. Music has been mostly "figured out" and many songs we have heard over your lifetime use many of the same exact chord progressions. I-V-vi-IV being one of the most common and used in the following songs:

      Journey -- "Don't Stop Believing"

      James Blunt -- "You're Beautiful"

      Black Eyed Peas -- "Where Is the Love"

      Alphaville -- "Forever Young"

      Jason Mraz -- "I'm Yours"

      Train -- "Hey Soul Sister"

      The Calling -- "Wherever You Will Go"

      Elton John -- "Can You Feel The Love Tonight" (from The Lion King)

      1. Musicians may use patterns or progressions from other songs. Painters may use the same colors and brushes designed by other artists. In both cases, techniques that have been known for thousands of years are being used in self-expression.

      I assert that given the correct instructions, you can still give someone plenty to analyze, via prompt, that has enough detail to extract a deeper meaning:

      FWIW, I am extremely fed up with this AI hype now. "AI" is just a tool, and that is it. I could go on for hours about this mess, but I am trying to make a valid point: Regardless of how you interpret copyright, art is just self-expression.

      There are endless examples I could give about technique re-use when it comes to creating art with machines. From my perspective, a particular brush stroke might be the same as using a specific bit at a particular depth of cut on a CNC. The art theft for AI training is one aspect, for sure. The biggest issue I see is that many people don't understand how to create original art and the AI just spits out a copy of something it was trained on and something the user already saw.

      Edit: After reading many of the other comments here, many people have a strange definition of "art". Yes, art can be about communication, it can be about sending a message, it can express a style of creativity or hundreds of other things.

      Art is just.. art. It's something a person sketches, composes, speaks, signs or farts. You don't have to like it or agree with it. Hell, you don't even need to recognize something as art for it to be art. Art is just self-expression. It's a feeling that is converted into some kind of other medium that others might happen to see, feel or hear, smell, taste or a combination of all of those things.

      As much as I hate to admit it, a banana taped to a wall is art. Someone eating said banana is also art. I think it's fucking stupid, but who am I to not call it someone's self-expression?

      • That some, most or all art is partly or wholly derivative of other art is not relevant because the process used by 'AI' does not resemble the artistic process. When Shakespeare wrote Hamlet (a work derived from an older play, itself derived from an older myth which itself had been through countless retellings, variations and translations), he did not do what an LLM does, which is approximately to say: 'It's statistically likely that the phrase "to be" will be followed by the phrase "or not to be"'. Putting together statistical likelihoods is not creativity. This alone shows that AI 'art' is not creative and therefore not art at all.

        Additionally, instructing a machine to make things from prompts does not require creativity. Creativity is not 'having ideas'; it's an ongoing process. When you tell an image generator to make an image, you're not asking it to create something, because it cannot do it. You're saying 'Show me the statistically likely output for this input'. Again, this statistical generator is not the same as, nor is it comparable to, the human imaginative process.

        • Example: My picture of the Lemming.

          I knew exactly what I wanted before I even typed in the prompt: My vision was for a nervous, burned-out lemming to be sitting on a log, hunched over a laptop smoking a cigarette with bloodshot eyes surrounded in crushed beer cans.

          That is not creative? Saying I have no imagination or creativity is kinda rude and giving all my credit to AI is downright insulting. Sure, I didn't draw it and I absolutely do not have the ability to draw it. However, you cannot (reasonably) deny that the idea is mine. I'm not exactly the most creative person in the world, but damn.... (The image will show up under my username over at least two instances over the span of 1-2 years? It's mine, is my point.)

          If you saw my edit, you should know exactly what I thought when you said "artistic process".

          However, my underlying point about derivative process or technique was to shoot a hole in the arguments of "cobbled together bits from wherever" and why I specifically used music as an example. Drum lines are openly copied. Not derived: blatantly copied. It's considered a compliment in many cases, actually. Progressions and transitions are all just copies. You don't even need AI to "statistically generate" music patterns. With every chord I choose to start a progression, there are only X number of chords that will work correctly after it.

          I believe there have been some projects to generate (within reason) every chord progression possible and every kind of melody that would fit it... statistically. Almost every bit of popular music you hear is a derivative or a copy or reused or whatever, is my point. How many times have you heard the "Amen break"? More times than you actually know, unless you know your music, then you do. Much of music is just, for lack of a better term, math.

          Creativity is an idea or multiple ideas. It's anything that exceeds the sum of your existing knowledge. AI by itself isn't "creative" and it is impossible for AI to be creative, we both agree. Again, from my perspective, AI can be used as a tool to fill in the gaps between two different ideas. It's the assembly of different ideas or components that is important. The sum of the key bits.

          In my CAD work, I use formulas and simulated physics to automatically generate connecting features or structures. Are the designs I create exempted from "art" because of that?

          Putting creativity and art into a box and saying you must follow "creative process" or "artistic process" is just odd. You can think that way if you want, but it's very limiting. The artists I study make a habit of saying "fuck the rules, fuck the process and do what makes you feel good."

          Just for lulz, I was wondering what another machine would think of my Lemming. It kinda got it, but kinda didn't. Statistically, it figured out the parts, but you should know darn well what my intent was:

      • based on your points (2 and 3), do you think there are no more "original art" in this world?

        • Well, to shorten everything down, there are few original building blocks. "Original art" can absolutely be original but, at the end of the day, is usually made up of large blocks of existing stuff. How those blocks function as a whole could be considered the "original" bit when talking about my specific arguments.

          I mentioned music because there really aren't many methods that haven't been discovered and used hundreds of times over. If I had a nickel for everytime I sketched out a four-to-the-floor drum variation, I would be a wealthy man. (Nearly every EDM/House/Techno beat uses something like it.) Chord progressions and transitions are best learned from the classics: Beethoven, Mozart, etc.. (Hip-hop/Pop artists are notorious for trying to sue each other over sample theft even though the samples are generally common musical phrases... Eesh.. That is a mess of a situation, btw.)

          But. Original art made with original components can still be made. This is a big world, after all.

          To clarify though: I do not support the theft of data for the use of training AI. Period. I also don't particularly care for AI art, personally.

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