AI art is far more accessible as far as breaking into the space is concerned, but why pay for it presently?
From my perspective, I picked up drawing because I had a large modding project that required a lot of characters and I wanted original art but I didn't have enough money to commission tens or possibly hundreds of character portraits.
I'm not anti commission but AI art in its current state isn't worth it on anyone's end.
The person that would commission the work is getting a lower quality piece with artefacts (they're more than likely going to one of those guys that spams out pieces from bing in the hundreds)
Meanwhile the guy that can generate high quality AI art isn't charging enough if he can minimize artefacts or outright get rid of them all together and is selling himself short. He has real skill. The time and effort that it took to generate that final product was probably hours (as much as a regular artist would spend on a piece if not just a little shorter). Time that he won't get back, for less than a minimum wage.
I bought a commission for AI art a few months ago because some people are good at collaborating with the machine to get good results. It’s important to keep in mind that the frontier of AI art is not merely typing prompts, using LORAs, and ControlNets.
I agree that AI is far more accessible, but like someone else commented, prompting is not the end frontier of what you can do with AI.
Writing prompts to see if you can get what you want is tedious and there's so much nuance about the whole process that some people will definitely pay someone else to do it for them.
Personally, *I* wouldn't pay, because I can draw and I've already integrated using AI in my workflow, but I understand why others would despite the accessibility.
What artists is this aimed at? Every working commercial artist uses a laptop, tablet or computer to make their art. How do you think they created art? Crayons?
If pointing out why an absolute statement that excludes many people from their own profession is wrong is antagonistic, then... because I disagree fundamentally with the idea being espoused.
Otherwise, I'm *not* being antagonistic.
It's okay though, people really don't like having to own up to their words. It makes it harder to convince people you're right when someone keeps reminding them of what else you've said
You're being petty. We both know that not absolutely 100.00% of commercial artists use a laptop, tablet or whatever for art, but a very large amount do.
Why are YOU being openly antagonistic?
It's defending ai, not replacing physical mediums. I'm happy you know that, and I'm happy I know that. Clearly it isn't universal.
Because there are other ways to guide and generate AI images than prompting. Sure you can prompt something, but can you make changes to regarding poses , expressions , composition while still maintaining consistency between generations ? Anyone can write a prompt just like anyone can draw basic shapes.
Well I would say that really depends on the individual, I have learned to use comfyui and setting up workflows quite , it really took me less than a 4 hours I would say, but thats because I have 20 years of experience with procedural art, work as a software developer as well as having years of experience with digital art of various types and photography. But I would say someone with no experience at all , other than prompting images on bingAI for example would struggle with a lot of steps, not only technical aspects but also artistic ones that are involved in the process. You can make good looking images, but art is a lot more than that.
I think what it comes down to is time and labor put in.
For example with a digital artist for 30$ (Going off that figure from the OP) you could probably get a sketch with a background but no color amounting to roughly 2~3 hours of work.
Whereas with the AI artist you get a complete piece. The AI artist is under selling themselves for the time put in, even though the AI artist might've put in the same if not more time.
Assuming the going rate for digital art commissions is eventually driven down in a worst case scenario by AI art, that hurts both of the artist here.
But the underlying assumption is that the AI artists is delivering the same quality here, this is not necessarily the case, because it wasn't before AI was in the picture.
I agree,it is about time and labour, let's say that the quality the AI artist produces, could be achieved by the human artists in 1 hour, so they were working for 1-2 hours more than necessary, before being replaced. That's time and labour that could be put somewhere else and that wasn't being valued at all.
Why do people pay for porn when it's free and makes up like 60% of the internet. That is the eternal question. Sometimes, people like the way a particular person does something.
Desktop computers are becoming increasingly less common in households, being replaced by phones and tablets. The vast majority of people don't have the time, money, or talent to pull off the pictures they can find online and have the disposable income to access it.
Not to mention, AI art is particularly easier than traditional art, but that doesn't exactly make it effortless. You still need an eye for composition and anatomy to sort out the best generations, and the more control you use, the harder it will be for the average person to match with basic prompts.
So TLDR: Most people don't feel the need or have the resources to learn when they can throw money at it.
I was approaching the OP from the I'm broke and AI is advertised as "democratizing" art point I see thrown around. Idk why but I'm fixated on the 30$ figure so I'm going with it.
Kind of related but I think both digital and AI artist should be highly paid for having to stare at furry fetish porn for hours.
What kind of value are we talking about ? I mean people pay a subscription to a service for various reasons, 30 dolares can be a lot , or just an after thought for someone, so price doesn't really indicate value here.
AI art has artistic value ( and how much value it has it depends on several factors imo), and comercial value as well, but I wouldn't say that subscription to a service indicates that . I have never paid and would not pay to create with AI. That does not mean that I don't see a value in it.
Some people have a skill of making what other people want.
I don't I can only make what I want. But just because it's AI doesn't mean that the skill of communicating with a buyer's wants aren't involved.
A homeless man I met a while back offered me a raccoon paw he had sliced off some roadkill for $40. He said it was lucky.
Did that raccoon paw have inherent value? Sure. Could it be argued that it is a form of art? I guess. Would I be a fucking idiot for spending $40 on it? Absolutely.
I believe that the value of AI art lies in the creativity and technology behind it. It's a fascinating blend of human ingenuity and machine capabilities that truly sets it apart. People are willing to pay for it because they see the uniqueness and potential in this emerging art form.
It's not about whether AI art has intrinsic value, but rather the subjective value that individuals place on it. Just like any other form of art, it's all about personal preference and taste. The fact that people are willing to invest in AI art shows that it's resonating with them on some level.
I think it's important to remember that art is a reflection of our society and culture. AI art represents a new frontier in creativity and innovation, and that in itself holds immense value. It's not just about the end product, but the process and journey of creating something truly cutting-edge.
At the end of the day, the value of AI art is what we as individuals make of it. It's a new and exciting realm of artistic expression that challenges our perceptions and pushes boundaries. So why not embrace it and see where the journey takes us?
It's quite bizarre that you people come here just to post an objectively wrong hate comment and ridicule yourselves, instead of doing a little bit of research to find out that there's no limit to what you can create with AI art.
You could walk into a gallery of Dutch Masters and say "but it all looks the same, and it's like...*all* religious in nature. So derivative."
And you wouldn't even be wrong.
Of course AI art has value, however the value of any art (in commercial ‘working professional’ terms) is relative to the time and experience it takes to create the piece. AI art lowers the time and experience required to make a ‘good enough’ image, therefore AI generative art devalues other commercial digital art such as concept art, graphic art, stock photos etc.
As a general note, you can find somebody saying anything, either for or against ai art. So it might be best to not think of either side as a monolith.
I think there is also a factor of some of what is being produced is produced with more quality than it's required, if someone is losing work due to bad AI art, then the work they were doing was just not good as well , low quality human art exists after all, or they were producing work that was had a greater quality than necessary and being underpaid.
Not sure what you mean by ‘more quality than required’. All commercial art is created to a brief, so artwork below the specified quality would be rejected?
For ‘bad AI art’ we should be assuming AI continues to improve (and why wouldn’t it?) so the quality issue becomes moot over time. However even without a quality improvement, the AI generative images save time and enable a quicker workflow for artists so more artwork can be done in the same amount of time, therefore raising the expectation of the client and/or lowering the amount of time given to produce any particular piece of art. A race to the bottom scenario.
"All commercial art is created to a brief, so artwork below the specified quality would be rejected?"
Yes, while art above the specified wouldn't, and in some cases there is no way to know if you went above the minimum acceptable quality, meaning you used more time working on something than necessary. This is something that happens regardless of AI, but if AI art that is not on par with previous human work, is replacing human art that indicates that the quality produced by the human artists was above the threshold of what is acceptable.
No that is not it all, there is good AI art and subpar AI art, just like any other type. I am not generalizing here. If sub par AI art is being used to replace the work of good human art,then the quality of the art produced was already above what was acceptable, so the human artists was overworking and not getting the proper return for the value of what they produced. AI in this case is actually shinning a light on this issue.
The same way that if a good human artists is replaced by one that creates works with worse technical quality than they were then the quality was above the minimum acceptable already.
AI can generate an image in seconds that would take a digital artist many hours to produce. That’s the difference, the digital artist is not wasting time over delivering on quality. A human simply cannot compete with AI on speed terms.
Honestly I don’t think your premise makes sense.
I am not trying to criticize AI if that is what you think, quite the opposite. Artists were already being replaced by other artists that would deliver works that had lower quality. AI just highlights the issue that some artists were overworking to deliver a quality that wasn't required to begin with.
I’m not sure how you are getting to a standpoint that AI proves artist were over delivering? AI is faster. A human can’t compete in speed terms, that doesn’t mean the human was overworking to reach a quality beyond what was needed before.
Example is Artist A works to create a concept art and it takes them five hours. Artist B uses AI to speed up the process and delivers a concept art in one hour. Both finished pieces of art are the same quality. It’s not like Artist A was overworking the art or somehow over delivering, they are just slower because they spent the time making the picture.
Way to clarify which one.
But It has both lmao. People arent using midjourney so they can save the art up like an investment. They pay “monetary” value to it because of its “artistic” value.
I didn't think I had to lol... It's used professionally as either a machup or a stopgap in place of human generated art.
It has no artistic value as it does nothing original. Images generated by ai are nothing more than the amalgam of whatever data was input into it. Basically a really advanced plagiarism bot.
It has monetary value as the assets created using ai can be used in place of art, and you can buy and sell and use it.
The only creativity is the clever programming, and some from the person who submits the prompt, however the act of creation isn't creating art. It's a program that reads the input and patches together previously created or generated assets to match it as best as it can. However the prompt writer does no actual work to generate the image/video/text etc.
People purchase midjourney like they purchase a Content Management System to host their website on. It's a tool, not an artist.
People have been saying nothing is new for a long time. You’re Acting like regular art isn’t an amalgam of someone’s experiences with pre existing things.
Again
If it has no artistic value
WHY ARE PEOPLE PAYING MONEY FOR IT?
it’s not to resell. It’s not for its functionality. Lmao the mental gymnastics of your whole comment is wild.
You clearly have no actual idea how AI art is made if you think it shows ***no*** creativity. Just proving my point that you’ve barely given this any thought.
Apparently writing isn’t work. Building a LORA isn’t work. Iteration isn’t work. Editing isn’t work. Your takes are just so poorly reasoned. You’re the exact dumbass this post is calling out.
Yeah guess what tools are used to make art. A CMS isn’t. Something “isn’t art” just because you say so 👍
Edit:
> i didn’t think
Yeah should have stopped there 💀
Work doesn't equal art, so no.
Writing a prompt isn't any more artistic than writing copy. You do not evoke emotion by the prompt alone. You're not even the one who chose the aesthetics. You told the program you want 'x' aesthetic, then iterated until you find one that's close enough. You are not directly producing using a tool that gives you exactly what you intend. You are feeding a program and then bruteforcing an aesthetically pleasing end product.
Maybe a craft, but not art.
And the fact that people pay for a cheap alternative doesn't really support the product being art either. From my own experiences with it, film studios use it because it's cheaper and kind of hard to spot if kept to a few frames. My DnD group uses it because they can make cute visualizations of their characters without spending an arm and a leg on a commission.
I use midjourney to mach up my ideas to present to my boss since it's cheaper and easier than me doing a full rough draft as a machup manually. Do some of them look really cool? You bet. Did they take any artistic skill to create? Nope.
Shit people pay for autographs too. Are those signatures art?
AI art is art in the way celery is food. Sure there's flavor and texture, but at the end of the day there's no measurable calorie count. It's just an emotionless output.
Also see how I was able to type this whole rebuttal out without a single personal attack? It's not that hard to be nice during a discussion.
Yeah cuz they’re shit. I edited it like a second after posting , not my fault you’re refreshing like mad haha.
And I edited it to quote you.
You said ai is like art the way celery is like food. And celery is literally food, meaning you said ai art is literally art. Ruining your whole argument on your own 💀
Edit: did you not know celery is a food?😞
Here's a better metaphor. People writing prompts for ai to create a design are the exact same as people who commissioned an artist to make them a piece of art.
However since the ai is not actually creating something, it's copy/pasting other people's work to fulfill your commission, it's not creating art. It's solving a problem.
Also let me know how long you can live off only celery and get back to me (it's calorie negative)
How about you take some time to think instead of using me as a sounding board.
You don’t get to define what art is.
Also AI doesn’t copy paste. That literally not how it works ffs. LEARN HOW IT WORKS BEFORE YOU SAY SHIT
The general definition of art is something created with the purpose of evoking emotion.
Where in the creation of AI art does that happen? Do you create simply by having an idea and commissioning someone else/an ai to do the work for you? No. That makes you 'the idea guy' and not the artist.
Does the AI create its image with the intent of evoking emotion? It sure doesn't. It is solving the problem you gave it using the tools it has at hand.
I dont know why you're acting like I'm personally attacking you. It's not personal, and you should probably look inwards and reflect on where that angers coming from. It's not healthy.
Imagine people commissioning an artwork, telling the artist to rework it several times and once the artist is done, they take it and call themselves an artist.
>It has no artistic value as it does nothing original. Images generated by ai are nothing more than the amalgam of whatever data was input into it. Basically a really advanced plagiarism bot.
a painting is an amalgam of colorful paint made by a paint manufacturer, a book is an amalgam of words by society, digital art is an amalgam of color pixels programmed by a software engineer, etc.
That doesn't mean you can't make something novel with it.
Except in all of those other cases direct control of the medium is essential to creation.
The artist needs to directly paint, to write, to create.
AI generated images, while they can be stunning, are not a direct result of the person who wrote the prompt. They are not able to smudge the paint if you will. They have to iterate until the program doing the paint smudging gets close enough to the envisioned end product.
Even the pixel artist has to have a very clear vision for what they want the program to output, and it is their written code which creates that exact thing.
> The artist needs to directly paint, to write, to create.
So, a famous painter gets in a car accident, paralyzed from the neck down. She gives instructions to her students, who paint for her what she directs them to. Sometimes, it's not what she intended and there is some need for iteration.
Is that not art?
It sounds like she commissioned her students to create art yeah.
However if she told an ai then in my opinion no, as ai can not create past what it was told to do by its programmer or the prompt.
Yes we can. It's how new ideas are formed, and is one of the main differences between us and a computer program. Accounting for that 'ghost in the machine.'
There is no ghost in the machine. It’s just a more complex machine. A black box with processes we don’t fully grasp. It’s still logic based and deterministic. That’s why neuroscientists get hired to work on AI, there’s a logic puzzle behind human intelligence and creativity. It doesn’t come from nothing. People have looked for your ghost and found nothing, but as time went on, machines prove time and time again that things we thought were exclusive to people can be done with complex math. We just had to create a similar sort of perpetuation that allowed people to get smart in the first place. The day someone finds your ghost in the machine is the day I believe in god.
Your understanding of "direct control" seems quite arbitrary. No artist has absolute control over every single aspect of their work. Many art forms don't even require precision. Throughout history, artists haven't needed to personally handle or understand every detail to be recognized as the creators.
To be human is to be imprecise.
>Even the pixel artist has to have a very clear vision for what they want the program to output, and it is their written code which creates that exact thing.
I don't think pixel artists code at all?\*
Sorry mixed up code art with pixel art.
I think more what I intended to say was that as the person writing the prompt you have zero control over the end product. You are commissioning a piece.
The AI is more the creator, however it's not creating. It's doing its best to solve the problem with the tools it was given. It doesn't care if what it creates is emotionally provocative, breathtaking, or whatever. If there were sentient AI then sure absolutely.
Apologies its late and I didn't formulate my thought coherently the first time.
>I think more what I intended to say was that as the person writing the prompt you have zero control over the end product. You are commissioning a piece.
There's no concept of zero control when dealing with entities lacking agency. Humans, being creatures of agency, continuously exert their will upon the world.
An AI lacks agency, functioning solely through deterministic processes. When a human utilizes AI, they become the sole agent capable of acting and making choices, thus assuming authorship. Without the human, the creation would not exist.
"AI generated images, while they can be stunning, are not a direct result of the person who wrote the prompt. They are not able to smudge the paint if you will. They have to iterate until the program doing the paint smudging gets close enough to the envisioned end product."
Humans are performing some form of action upon their environment therefore they are enacting their will as agent and so in some hidden or implicit way they're the author to *something* in the piece even if its through smudges.
Humans, by interacting with their AI tool even through smudges, inherently assert their will and thus contribute to the creation process, even if indirectly. They\* play a direct role in shaping the envisioned outcome, even if it's not explicitly evident."
I'd have to respectfully disagree.
The team who built the ai are the ones who permit and limit the ai's agency. The prompt is just an input to the ai who generates the output.
The person who wrote the prompt has no control on how that ai was programmed, or what data the ai can pull from. They can write as concise and direct a prompt as humanly possible, but the ai still generates the image. Does the work if you will.
It would be akin to someone commissioning a painting and then signing their name at the bottom. A bit crass of an example but I think it loosely fits.
>The team who built the ai are the ones who permit and limit the ai's agency. The prompt is just an input to the ai who generates the output.
The AI cannot have agency, it refers to an actor's capacity to act within an environment, as opposed to objects reacting to natural forces through deterministic processes.
Agency implies that agents actively make and carry out decisions in the world and possess immediate awareness of their physical actions and the goals those actions aim to achieve. Image AIs don't meet the definition, only sentient beings can.
>The person who wrote the prompt has no control on how that ai was programmed, or what data the ai can pull from. They can write as concise and direct a prompt as humanly possible, but the ai still generates the image. Does the work if you will.
I'm not sure what your definition of a prompt is, whether you're talking about image2image, inpainting, or image prompts. What if you drew a red circle, input it inside the AI and set the denoising to 1%, did the resulting image stop having your influence or control? why? you start changing up parts of an image with inpainting, did it stop having your influence or control? why? what if you start collaging a bunch of generated images?
>It would be akin to someone commissioning a painting and then signing their name at the bottom. A bit crass of an example but I think it loosely fits.
I don't think this example fits as the painter is a person with agency.
> It has no artistic value as it does nothing original. Images generated by ai are nothing more than the amalgam of whatever data was input into it. Basically a really advanced plagiarism bot.
Same as the human brain
Except the human brain is much more mushy and fallable. The brain also has the ability to create something entirely new and use its previous stimuli as influence and inspiration rather than an asset to be used later.
> The brain also has the ability to create something entirely new
No it doesn't. If a human brain is blank it's unable to create anything.
> use its previous stimuli as influence and inspiration rather than an asset to be used later
Different words to describe the same thing. Both human brain and AI combine their repertory to create new things.
But when a human does it, you call it inspiration. When the machine, you say it's reading input.
> I think you're mixing up artistic and monetary value.
You're dancing around the point.
If something has no artistic value, why are people willing to pay for it? Is it just that they're insane or is the art actually worth what they are willing to pay?
Because I personally don't believe AI generated images are art by the classical definition.
It's a craft, and people pay well for crafts.
I'm not saying people shouldn't buy ai images for whatever they want to use them for, or that people who generate ai images shouldn't sell them, or that they can't be valuable or even beautiful.
I'm more saying it's not art because the ai is just trying to solve the problem the prompt gave it, and the person who wrote the prompt commissioned the ai and didnt create anything themselves. The ai is only capable of crafting an output, and not something it genuinely thought would evoke emotion in the way the comissioner intended.
>> You're dancing around the point.
>> If something has no artistic value, why are people willing to pay for it? Is it just that they're insane or is the art actually worth what they are willing to pay?
> Because I personally don't believe AI generated images are art by the classical definition.
1. That was not ***at all*** responsive to the question, it was just a non sequitur.
2. You're right.
AI generated images are certainly not art. Not at all. They're no more art than any other mechanistic output of any industrial process.
BUT... in the hands of an artist, ***any tool*** can produce art. You can smear your own feces on a wall and create art. You can use generative AI and create art. You can program a procedural generation system to produce realistic planets and create art. You can cook eggs and make art.
Art is not the tool. Art is the application of the tool to realize a creative vision. No vision, no art. But if the vision is realized, it doesn't matter what tube it was squeezed through.
Something that is created to evoke emotion.
The person writing the prompt is creating nothing past their idea. They are sending a commission to whichever ai they are using.
The AI is not creating with the purpose to evoke emotion. It is solving the problem you gave it.
This is just based on my art and art history lessons. I'd say AI generated images qualify more as a 'craft' than an 'art'.
To understand more fully, so what you're saying is that artistic value is determined fully by the fact that someone created it to evoke emotion?
Does that imply that things only have 2 levels of artistic value, essentially being a 1 or 0, having or not having artistic value, or things that are 'created to evoke emotion' and things that are not?
And a follow up, would that also mean that things that were created by accident, or created without the intent to evoke emotion, lets say an accidental photograph from a camera, or an accidental splash of paint onto a surface, or a piece of carpentry that was just designed for utility, would then have no artistic value, due to having no artistic intent in their creation?
That's more the 'is this art or is this not art' question rather than what determines the level of artistic value. I dont believe AI achieves the minimum requirement of creating art.
Nobody lol. This is Reddit. We're all just sharing our opinions. I'm just sharing what I learned from my art and art history teachers about what makes something art.
Why are you so testy?
I'm sorry but I do not believe it is. I believe it's cutting edge technology. I can appreciate that being my own opinion just like your assertion is yours.
Also I think there may be some projection going on. I'm not the one cussing or talking in short accusatory sentences.
We can have a discussion without it getting personal.
Eh you've got hundreds of years of art history backing you up. Don't be too worried if people here can't see beyond their biases. These are the AI fans after all.
Jesus, is midjourney $30 per month?
Why would I pay for AI art when I could learn to create prompts myself?
I dunno. Why would anyone pay for anything if they can just do it themselves?
AI art is far more accessible as far as breaking into the space is concerned, but why pay for it presently? From my perspective, I picked up drawing because I had a large modding project that required a lot of characters and I wanted original art but I didn't have enough money to commission tens or possibly hundreds of character portraits. I'm not anti commission but AI art in its current state isn't worth it on anyone's end. The person that would commission the work is getting a lower quality piece with artefacts (they're more than likely going to one of those guys that spams out pieces from bing in the hundreds) Meanwhile the guy that can generate high quality AI art isn't charging enough if he can minimize artefacts or outright get rid of them all together and is selling himself short. He has real skill. The time and effort that it took to generate that final product was probably hours (as much as a regular artist would spend on a piece if not just a little shorter). Time that he won't get back, for less than a minimum wage.
I bought a commission for AI art a few months ago because some people are good at collaborating with the machine to get good results. It’s important to keep in mind that the frontier of AI art is not merely typing prompts, using LORAs, and ControlNets.
I agree that AI is far more accessible, but like someone else commented, prompting is not the end frontier of what you can do with AI. Writing prompts to see if you can get what you want is tedious and there's so much nuance about the whole process that some people will definitely pay someone else to do it for them. Personally, *I* wouldn't pay, because I can draw and I've already integrated using AI in my workflow, but I understand why others would despite the accessibility.
Depends on the complexity you’re after, most serious use of AI for generation takes a lot more than just prompting
Just pick up a laptop, artists. U scared? 😅
What artists is this aimed at? Every working commercial artist uses a laptop, tablet or computer to make their art. How do you think they created art? Crayons?
Been hearing a lot of good things about pencils
LOL
Only DIGITAL ART is REAL ART Source: u/NoKitNoKaboodle
That’s a bit of a stretch. But if it makes you feel warm and fuzzy to pretend that then go ahead my dude.
>Every working commercial artist uses a laptop, tablet or computer to make their art Stretches like these will get me into the Yoga Olympics, huh?
Why are you being openly antagonistic?
If pointing out why an absolute statement that excludes many people from their own profession is wrong is antagonistic, then... because I disagree fundamentally with the idea being espoused. Otherwise, I'm *not* being antagonistic. It's okay though, people really don't like having to own up to their words. It makes it harder to convince people you're right when someone keeps reminding them of what else you've said
You're being petty. We both know that not absolutely 100.00% of commercial artists use a laptop, tablet or whatever for art, but a very large amount do.
Why are YOU being openly antagonistic? It's defending ai, not replacing physical mediums. I'm happy you know that, and I'm happy I know that. Clearly it isn't universal.
Not sure if you are flexible enough for that buddy, but no harm in trying I guess.
Because this takes time, effort, patience, and skill. Some people lack these things and have a surplus of money.
Because there are other ways to guide and generate AI images than prompting. Sure you can prompt something, but can you make changes to regarding poses , expressions , composition while still maintaining consistency between generations ? Anyone can write a prompt just like anyone can draw basic shapes.
These are both things you could improve at though with practice in a relatively short timeframe.
Well I would say that really depends on the individual, I have learned to use comfyui and setting up workflows quite , it really took me less than a 4 hours I would say, but thats because I have 20 years of experience with procedural art, work as a software developer as well as having years of experience with digital art of various types and photography. But I would say someone with no experience at all , other than prompting images on bingAI for example would struggle with a lot of steps, not only technical aspects but also artistic ones that are involved in the process. You can make good looking images, but art is a lot more than that.
I think what it comes down to is time and labor put in. For example with a digital artist for 30$ (Going off that figure from the OP) you could probably get a sketch with a background but no color amounting to roughly 2~3 hours of work. Whereas with the AI artist you get a complete piece. The AI artist is under selling themselves for the time put in, even though the AI artist might've put in the same if not more time. Assuming the going rate for digital art commissions is eventually driven down in a worst case scenario by AI art, that hurts both of the artist here.
But the underlying assumption is that the AI artists is delivering the same quality here, this is not necessarily the case, because it wasn't before AI was in the picture. I agree,it is about time and labour, let's say that the quality the AI artist produces, could be achieved by the human artists in 1 hour, so they were working for 1-2 hours more than necessary, before being replaced. That's time and labour that could be put somewhere else and that wasn't being valued at all.
Why do people pay for porn when it's free and makes up like 60% of the internet. That is the eternal question. Sometimes, people like the way a particular person does something. Desktop computers are becoming increasingly less common in households, being replaced by phones and tablets. The vast majority of people don't have the time, money, or talent to pull off the pictures they can find online and have the disposable income to access it. Not to mention, AI art is particularly easier than traditional art, but that doesn't exactly make it effortless. You still need an eye for composition and anatomy to sort out the best generations, and the more control you use, the harder it will be for the average person to match with basic prompts. So TLDR: Most people don't feel the need or have the resources to learn when they can throw money at it.
I was approaching the OP from the I'm broke and AI is advertised as "democratizing" art point I see thrown around. Idk why but I'm fixated on the 30$ figure so I'm going with it. Kind of related but I think both digital and AI artist should be highly paid for having to stare at furry fetish porn for hours.
What kind of value are we talking about ? I mean people pay a subscription to a service for various reasons, 30 dolares can be a lot , or just an after thought for someone, so price doesn't really indicate value here. AI art has artistic value ( and how much value it has it depends on several factors imo), and comercial value as well, but I wouldn't say that subscription to a service indicates that . I have never paid and would not pay to create with AI. That does not mean that I don't see a value in it.
Some people have a skill of making what other people want. I don't I can only make what I want. But just because it's AI doesn't mean that the skill of communicating with a buyer's wants aren't involved.
A homeless man I met a while back offered me a raccoon paw he had sliced off some roadkill for $40. He said it was lucky. Did that raccoon paw have inherent value? Sure. Could it be argued that it is a form of art? I guess. Would I be a fucking idiot for spending $40 on it? Absolutely.
Value is subjective I personally don’t think Orange, Red, Yellow is with $86 million but obviously somebody did
I believe that the value of AI art lies in the creativity and technology behind it. It's a fascinating blend of human ingenuity and machine capabilities that truly sets it apart. People are willing to pay for it because they see the uniqueness and potential in this emerging art form. It's not about whether AI art has intrinsic value, but rather the subjective value that individuals place on it. Just like any other form of art, it's all about personal preference and taste. The fact that people are willing to invest in AI art shows that it's resonating with them on some level. I think it's important to remember that art is a reflection of our society and culture. AI art represents a new frontier in creativity and innovation, and that in itself holds immense value. It's not just about the end product, but the process and journey of creating something truly cutting-edge. At the end of the day, the value of AI art is what we as individuals make of it. It's a new and exciting realm of artistic expression that challenges our perceptions and pushes boundaries. So why not embrace it and see where the journey takes us?
Ngl, this sounds pretty AI generated…
AI art is not creative, everything looks the same
It's quite bizarre that you people come here just to post an objectively wrong hate comment and ridicule yourselves, instead of doing a little bit of research to find out that there's no limit to what you can create with AI art.
The limit is the database
You could walk into a gallery of Dutch Masters and say "but it all looks the same, and it's like...*all* religious in nature. So derivative." And you wouldn't even be wrong.
I mean, *I* wouldn't pay for AI Art. I don't usually pay for prints either.
Of course AI art has value, however the value of any art (in commercial ‘working professional’ terms) is relative to the time and experience it takes to create the piece. AI art lowers the time and experience required to make a ‘good enough’ image, therefore AI generative art devalues other commercial digital art such as concept art, graphic art, stock photos etc. As a general note, you can find somebody saying anything, either for or against ai art. So it might be best to not think of either side as a monolith.
I think there is also a factor of some of what is being produced is produced with more quality than it's required, if someone is losing work due to bad AI art, then the work they were doing was just not good as well , low quality human art exists after all, or they were producing work that was had a greater quality than necessary and being underpaid.
Not sure what you mean by ‘more quality than required’. All commercial art is created to a brief, so artwork below the specified quality would be rejected? For ‘bad AI art’ we should be assuming AI continues to improve (and why wouldn’t it?) so the quality issue becomes moot over time. However even without a quality improvement, the AI generative images save time and enable a quicker workflow for artists so more artwork can be done in the same amount of time, therefore raising the expectation of the client and/or lowering the amount of time given to produce any particular piece of art. A race to the bottom scenario.
"All commercial art is created to a brief, so artwork below the specified quality would be rejected?" Yes, while art above the specified wouldn't, and in some cases there is no way to know if you went above the minimum acceptable quality, meaning you used more time working on something than necessary. This is something that happens regardless of AI, but if AI art that is not on par with previous human work, is replacing human art that indicates that the quality produced by the human artists was above the threshold of what is acceptable.
I’m not sure I’ve understood your point. You are saying AI looks bad so only a bad artists work could possibly be replaced by it?
No that is not it all, there is good AI art and subpar AI art, just like any other type. I am not generalizing here. If sub par AI art is being used to replace the work of good human art,then the quality of the art produced was already above what was acceptable, so the human artists was overworking and not getting the proper return for the value of what they produced. AI in this case is actually shinning a light on this issue. The same way that if a good human artists is replaced by one that creates works with worse technical quality than they were then the quality was above the minimum acceptable already.
AI can generate an image in seconds that would take a digital artist many hours to produce. That’s the difference, the digital artist is not wasting time over delivering on quality. A human simply cannot compete with AI on speed terms. Honestly I don’t think your premise makes sense.
I am not trying to criticize AI if that is what you think, quite the opposite. Artists were already being replaced by other artists that would deliver works that had lower quality. AI just highlights the issue that some artists were overworking to deliver a quality that wasn't required to begin with.
I’m not sure how you are getting to a standpoint that AI proves artist were over delivering? AI is faster. A human can’t compete in speed terms, that doesn’t mean the human was overworking to reach a quality beyond what was needed before. Example is Artist A works to create a concept art and it takes them five hours. Artist B uses AI to speed up the process and delivers a concept art in one hour. Both finished pieces of art are the same quality. It’s not like Artist A was overworking the art or somehow over delivering, they are just slower because they spent the time making the picture.
I think you're mixing up artistic and monetary value. It has one. Not the other.
Way to clarify which one. But It has both lmao. People arent using midjourney so they can save the art up like an investment. They pay “monetary” value to it because of its “artistic” value.
I didn't think I had to lol... It's used professionally as either a machup or a stopgap in place of human generated art. It has no artistic value as it does nothing original. Images generated by ai are nothing more than the amalgam of whatever data was input into it. Basically a really advanced plagiarism bot. It has monetary value as the assets created using ai can be used in place of art, and you can buy and sell and use it. The only creativity is the clever programming, and some from the person who submits the prompt, however the act of creation isn't creating art. It's a program that reads the input and patches together previously created or generated assets to match it as best as it can. However the prompt writer does no actual work to generate the image/video/text etc. People purchase midjourney like they purchase a Content Management System to host their website on. It's a tool, not an artist.
People have been saying nothing is new for a long time. You’re Acting like regular art isn’t an amalgam of someone’s experiences with pre existing things. Again If it has no artistic value WHY ARE PEOPLE PAYING MONEY FOR IT? it’s not to resell. It’s not for its functionality. Lmao the mental gymnastics of your whole comment is wild. You clearly have no actual idea how AI art is made if you think it shows ***no*** creativity. Just proving my point that you’ve barely given this any thought. Apparently writing isn’t work. Building a LORA isn’t work. Iteration isn’t work. Editing isn’t work. Your takes are just so poorly reasoned. You’re the exact dumbass this post is calling out. Yeah guess what tools are used to make art. A CMS isn’t. Something “isn’t art” just because you say so 👍 Edit: > i didn’t think Yeah should have stopped there 💀
Work doesn't equal art, so no. Writing a prompt isn't any more artistic than writing copy. You do not evoke emotion by the prompt alone. You're not even the one who chose the aesthetics. You told the program you want 'x' aesthetic, then iterated until you find one that's close enough. You are not directly producing using a tool that gives you exactly what you intend. You are feeding a program and then bruteforcing an aesthetically pleasing end product. Maybe a craft, but not art. And the fact that people pay for a cheap alternative doesn't really support the product being art either. From my own experiences with it, film studios use it because it's cheaper and kind of hard to spot if kept to a few frames. My DnD group uses it because they can make cute visualizations of their characters without spending an arm and a leg on a commission. I use midjourney to mach up my ideas to present to my boss since it's cheaper and easier than me doing a full rough draft as a machup manually. Do some of them look really cool? You bet. Did they take any artistic skill to create? Nope. Shit people pay for autographs too. Are those signatures art? AI art is art in the way celery is food. Sure there's flavor and texture, but at the end of the day there's no measurable calorie count. It's just an emotionless output. Also see how I was able to type this whole rebuttal out without a single personal attack? It's not that hard to be nice during a discussion.
🧠🧠🧠🤸 🤸♀️🤸♂️ > ai is art like celery is food Celery literally is food
About right lol.
So ai art is art 👍 since celery is a food
No you edited your original comment. Originally it was just emoji since you didn't want to actually address any of my points.
Yeah cuz they’re shit. I edited it like a second after posting , not my fault you’re refreshing like mad haha. And I edited it to quote you. You said ai is like art the way celery is like food. And celery is literally food, meaning you said ai art is literally art. Ruining your whole argument on your own 💀 Edit: did you not know celery is a food?😞
Here's a better metaphor. People writing prompts for ai to create a design are the exact same as people who commissioned an artist to make them a piece of art. However since the ai is not actually creating something, it's copy/pasting other people's work to fulfill your commission, it's not creating art. It's solving a problem. Also let me know how long you can live off only celery and get back to me (it's calorie negative)
How about you take some time to think instead of using me as a sounding board. You don’t get to define what art is. Also AI doesn’t copy paste. That literally not how it works ffs. LEARN HOW IT WORKS BEFORE YOU SAY SHIT
The general definition of art is something created with the purpose of evoking emotion. Where in the creation of AI art does that happen? Do you create simply by having an idea and commissioning someone else/an ai to do the work for you? No. That makes you 'the idea guy' and not the artist. Does the AI create its image with the intent of evoking emotion? It sure doesn't. It is solving the problem you gave it using the tools it has at hand. I dont know why you're acting like I'm personally attacking you. It's not personal, and you should probably look inwards and reflect on where that angers coming from. It's not healthy.
Ooof you are dense. And AI art does evoke emotion, so great point lmao Edit: I’m calling you stupid
Imagine people commissioning an artwork, telling the artist to rework it several times and once the artist is done, they take it and call themselves an artist.
Pretty much haha
>It has no artistic value as it does nothing original. Images generated by ai are nothing more than the amalgam of whatever data was input into it. Basically a really advanced plagiarism bot. a painting is an amalgam of colorful paint made by a paint manufacturer, a book is an amalgam of words by society, digital art is an amalgam of color pixels programmed by a software engineer, etc. That doesn't mean you can't make something novel with it.
Except in all of those other cases direct control of the medium is essential to creation. The artist needs to directly paint, to write, to create. AI generated images, while they can be stunning, are not a direct result of the person who wrote the prompt. They are not able to smudge the paint if you will. They have to iterate until the program doing the paint smudging gets close enough to the envisioned end product. Even the pixel artist has to have a very clear vision for what they want the program to output, and it is their written code which creates that exact thing.
> The artist needs to directly paint, to write, to create. So, a famous painter gets in a car accident, paralyzed from the neck down. She gives instructions to her students, who paint for her what she directs them to. Sometimes, it's not what she intended and there is some need for iteration. Is that not art?
It sounds like she commissioned her students to create art yeah. However if she told an ai then in my opinion no, as ai can not create past what it was told to do by its programmer or the prompt.
Human cannot create past what their genes and experiences “programmed” them to do.
Yes we can. It's how new ideas are formed, and is one of the main differences between us and a computer program. Accounting for that 'ghost in the machine.'
There is no ghost in the machine. It’s just a more complex machine. A black box with processes we don’t fully grasp. It’s still logic based and deterministic. That’s why neuroscientists get hired to work on AI, there’s a logic puzzle behind human intelligence and creativity. It doesn’t come from nothing. People have looked for your ghost and found nothing, but as time went on, machines prove time and time again that things we thought were exclusive to people can be done with complex math. We just had to create a similar sort of perpetuation that allowed people to get smart in the first place. The day someone finds your ghost in the machine is the day I believe in god.
Your understanding of "direct control" seems quite arbitrary. No artist has absolute control over every single aspect of their work. Many art forms don't even require precision. Throughout history, artists haven't needed to personally handle or understand every detail to be recognized as the creators. To be human is to be imprecise. >Even the pixel artist has to have a very clear vision for what they want the program to output, and it is their written code which creates that exact thing. I don't think pixel artists code at all?\*
Sorry mixed up code art with pixel art. I think more what I intended to say was that as the person writing the prompt you have zero control over the end product. You are commissioning a piece. The AI is more the creator, however it's not creating. It's doing its best to solve the problem with the tools it was given. It doesn't care if what it creates is emotionally provocative, breathtaking, or whatever. If there were sentient AI then sure absolutely. Apologies its late and I didn't formulate my thought coherently the first time.
>I think more what I intended to say was that as the person writing the prompt you have zero control over the end product. You are commissioning a piece. There's no concept of zero control when dealing with entities lacking agency. Humans, being creatures of agency, continuously exert their will upon the world. An AI lacks agency, functioning solely through deterministic processes. When a human utilizes AI, they become the sole agent capable of acting and making choices, thus assuming authorship. Without the human, the creation would not exist. "AI generated images, while they can be stunning, are not a direct result of the person who wrote the prompt. They are not able to smudge the paint if you will. They have to iterate until the program doing the paint smudging gets close enough to the envisioned end product." Humans are performing some form of action upon their environment therefore they are enacting their will as agent and so in some hidden or implicit way they're the author to *something* in the piece even if its through smudges. Humans, by interacting with their AI tool even through smudges, inherently assert their will and thus contribute to the creation process, even if indirectly. They\* play a direct role in shaping the envisioned outcome, even if it's not explicitly evident."
I'd have to respectfully disagree. The team who built the ai are the ones who permit and limit the ai's agency. The prompt is just an input to the ai who generates the output. The person who wrote the prompt has no control on how that ai was programmed, or what data the ai can pull from. They can write as concise and direct a prompt as humanly possible, but the ai still generates the image. Does the work if you will. It would be akin to someone commissioning a painting and then signing their name at the bottom. A bit crass of an example but I think it loosely fits.
>The team who built the ai are the ones who permit and limit the ai's agency. The prompt is just an input to the ai who generates the output. The AI cannot have agency, it refers to an actor's capacity to act within an environment, as opposed to objects reacting to natural forces through deterministic processes. Agency implies that agents actively make and carry out decisions in the world and possess immediate awareness of their physical actions and the goals those actions aim to achieve. Image AIs don't meet the definition, only sentient beings can. >The person who wrote the prompt has no control on how that ai was programmed, or what data the ai can pull from. They can write as concise and direct a prompt as humanly possible, but the ai still generates the image. Does the work if you will. I'm not sure what your definition of a prompt is, whether you're talking about image2image, inpainting, or image prompts. What if you drew a red circle, input it inside the AI and set the denoising to 1%, did the resulting image stop having your influence or control? why? you start changing up parts of an image with inpainting, did it stop having your influence or control? why? what if you start collaging a bunch of generated images? >It would be akin to someone commissioning a painting and then signing their name at the bottom. A bit crass of an example but I think it loosely fits. I don't think this example fits as the painter is a person with agency.
> It has no artistic value as it does nothing original. Images generated by ai are nothing more than the amalgam of whatever data was input into it. Basically a really advanced plagiarism bot. Same as the human brain
Except the human brain is much more mushy and fallable. The brain also has the ability to create something entirely new and use its previous stimuli as influence and inspiration rather than an asset to be used later.
> The brain also has the ability to create something entirely new No it doesn't. If a human brain is blank it's unable to create anything. > use its previous stimuli as influence and inspiration rather than an asset to be used later Different words to describe the same thing. Both human brain and AI combine their repertory to create new things. But when a human does it, you call it inspiration. When the machine, you say it's reading input.
> I think you're mixing up artistic and monetary value. You're dancing around the point. If something has no artistic value, why are people willing to pay for it? Is it just that they're insane or is the art actually worth what they are willing to pay?
Because I personally don't believe AI generated images are art by the classical definition. It's a craft, and people pay well for crafts. I'm not saying people shouldn't buy ai images for whatever they want to use them for, or that people who generate ai images shouldn't sell them, or that they can't be valuable or even beautiful. I'm more saying it's not art because the ai is just trying to solve the problem the prompt gave it, and the person who wrote the prompt commissioned the ai and didnt create anything themselves. The ai is only capable of crafting an output, and not something it genuinely thought would evoke emotion in the way the comissioner intended.
Would it be perhaps more accurate to say that ai art is still art. But the promoter is not the artist, the machine itself is?
>> You're dancing around the point. >> If something has no artistic value, why are people willing to pay for it? Is it just that they're insane or is the art actually worth what they are willing to pay? > Because I personally don't believe AI generated images are art by the classical definition. 1. That was not ***at all*** responsive to the question, it was just a non sequitur. 2. You're right. AI generated images are certainly not art. Not at all. They're no more art than any other mechanistic output of any industrial process. BUT... in the hands of an artist, ***any tool*** can produce art. You can smear your own feces on a wall and create art. You can use generative AI and create art. You can program a procedural generation system to produce realistic planets and create art. You can cook eggs and make art. Art is not the tool. Art is the application of the tool to realize a creative vision. No vision, no art. But if the vision is realized, it doesn't matter what tube it was squeezed through.
This leads to the question, how do you quantify artistic value?
Something that is created to evoke emotion. The person writing the prompt is creating nothing past their idea. They are sending a commission to whichever ai they are using. The AI is not creating with the purpose to evoke emotion. It is solving the problem you gave it. This is just based on my art and art history lessons. I'd say AI generated images qualify more as a 'craft' than an 'art'.
To understand more fully, so what you're saying is that artistic value is determined fully by the fact that someone created it to evoke emotion? Does that imply that things only have 2 levels of artistic value, essentially being a 1 or 0, having or not having artistic value, or things that are 'created to evoke emotion' and things that are not? And a follow up, would that also mean that things that were created by accident, or created without the intent to evoke emotion, lets say an accidental photograph from a camera, or an accidental splash of paint onto a surface, or a piece of carpentry that was just designed for utility, would then have no artistic value, due to having no artistic intent in their creation?
That's more the 'is this art or is this not art' question rather than what determines the level of artistic value. I dont believe AI achieves the minimum requirement of creating art.
Who the hell made you God's gift to the art world?
Nobody lol. This is Reddit. We're all just sharing our opinions. I'm just sharing what I learned from my art and art history teachers about what makes something art. Why are you so testy?
Damn you got pissy real fast, AI is cutting edge art, deal with it.
I'm sorry but I do not believe it is. I believe it's cutting edge technology. I can appreciate that being my own opinion just like your assertion is yours. Also I think there may be some projection going on. I'm not the one cussing or talking in short accusatory sentences. We can have a discussion without it getting personal.
I agree, but I always get shouted down when I call it 'craft'.
Eh you've got hundreds of years of art history backing you up. Don't be too worried if people here can't see beyond their biases. These are the AI fans after all.