Ask Lemmy

I don't hate the "art." The AI can't do much about it.

What I strongly dislike is people who manage to draft literally 40 words or less and think they "created" something.

You didn't. You a mathematical model to do something for you. You therw 175 tokens into a whirlpool and got am 87% what you wanted image out. If you even had an idea of what you wanted before hand.

I hate that it’s built on theft. The idea of AI art is fine, but so much of it is just art theft. “Picture of A in the style of artist B.” That kind of shit really makes me hate AI art.

It's soulless. A mere imitation.

I think it substracts from everything but itself. That is on its own, its pretty cool. But it's gross when it's used as part of a bigger project.

I'm not sure hate is the right word. When you've got someone stabbing you in the back multiple times, is it really hate you're feeling toward them? Or is it anger, fear, and danger?

I "hate" it in the sense that it's built on theft and requires the exploitation of underpaid workers to develop and maintain it. I "hate" it in the sense that we're living on a burning cinder with dwindling fresh water resources and "AI" is adding fuel to the fire. I "hate" it in the sense that it's being used to further undervalue artists and writers. I "hate" it in the sense that it fills our spaces with crap that so often looks like it was cribbed off of Rapunzel, Wreck-It-Ralph, and some other things.

I don't hate AI art. I hate AI art being passed off as "traditional" art.

I hate those who call themselves artists when they're just commissioning a computer to make a picture for them. I also hate it when those same people deny the unethical aspects of AI generation.

Edit: to add more, I also hate the AI images themselves. They are filling up the internet with slop. This is very annoying, and the same goes for LLMs. I don't want to get AI generated results when I didn't search for them specifically.

Yes. It's flooding places, and suddenly people decided that "smooth looking" was the absolute end goal of any drawing/music/creation/etc. It's not. Some of the most famous art piece are completely wrong, some aren't. That's not the endgoal. Nobody's gonna care that you can take that very simplified drawing and "generate" an extremely high-detail, fully shaded image that looks like it, as it was never the purpose.

Creative direction, intent, consistency (or absolute lack of consistency), execution, style, and a lot more goes into any creation, art or not. That's what make a piece feel interesting. There's a reason even now, with generated content being plausible as far as glaring mistakes go, we can still point out which image "feels" AI across a lot of different styles. At best, to remove that feeling of it being wrong, you'd have to spent a lot of time on the output of a model to touch it up everywhere and change details, which requires time and proficiency, which a lot of people jumping on that trend definitely lacks. Some of the worst results I've seen have been from people trying to make other "pay" for their output.

There's also the issue of how these works. For decades, creative people (among other) have been sued by big companies, some very harshly, to protect IP from such overexploitation as "using a three second excerpt in a video" or "using the vague likeness of a character". And now, these same targets are getting fleeced of their work by more big companies under the cheer of the people. That's a gut feeling of disgust right there. Combined with the utter lack of creativity in these, we're really watching the potential death of an activity (artistic creation), and that's not a good place to be. If one wants to argue that "generated art" is also a form of creation, keep in mind that these models can't be trained on generated pieces without extreme prejudice. Killing the very source they need to operate does not seem like a good long-term plan. But who cares about long-term when you can make a quick buck, right?

I'd also like to point out that all this rambling is about generated content that goes from "output of a model" to "final piece" with little to no afterthought. The "common" piece, where people will be happy to see twenty broken pieces because "well, there's a lot of them, so it's good". AI and LLM models, as a tool, may or may not be useful in the long term, but I can see smaller applications, even for art. A lot of menial tasks can be improved, general posing, references, simple background that are marginally considered part of the product, guides, etc. Taking something you've drawn/created, and locally use an AI "filter" to remove an extra line cleanly or touch up a mistake you want out? Great. The tool carries the intent of the artist, the same way a pen do.

But AI generated content? Make a prompt, a stick-figure sketch, and call it a day? These, IMO, will always look and taste like garbage, no matter how pretty they look. Because it was never "pretty" we were looking for.

As an artist I'm conflicted. I like new technology and methods and mediums, but it's entirely unethical to make models on unconsenting artists with no compensation or recognition.

Art is cool cos it’s like holy shit a person did that!?

If it’s just an algorithm it’s not very impressive.

Firstly, it's not art. I already hate that OP called it that. It's AI generated imagery. There is no art involved outside of art theft.

Secondly, it's legal art theft created by those types of people that either never considered artists to have any value, or have a chip on their shoulder against artists.

Thirdly, at no point in history have artists ever been appreciated, despite art being the most important element of everything. Imagine right now what a user interface would look like without artistic design. Or a car. Or your toothbrush. AI gen shafts artists... again... with the absolutely ridiculously, flippant argument that it "democratises art", as if it's some sort of noble privilege rather than a skill literally anyone can practice.

It's not art. Expanding the sense of the word to all kinds of nonsensical phenomena is both damaging art and artists as well.

I take the liberty of a personal definition of art, or if not definition, at least prerequisites for something to be considered art, and that is that art must be made by the hand of the artist and that it's conception must include deliberate thought/mental process of the artist. It may not be the best definition, but I consider it to be good enough to draw a definite line between Michelangelo and the internet lady who vlogs about the art of tying your shoelaces or some similar shit.

It's ruined art for me. Someone posts something, and I don't know if it's real art or a theft of other people's work.

AI art is fine being used as a tool. What I have a problem with is it's users calling themselves "artists".

A person who types a prompt into an AI is no different than a person who hires a painter and describes what he wants them to paint.

Just because that "painter" in the first case happens to be a computer, that doesn't mean that by default the title of "artist" defaults back to the person who wrote the prompt. That person is still just someone telling someone (or something) what to draw.

In other words, you don't become the artist just because you eschew paying an actual artist and instead have your computer do it for you.

As an artist who had her art stolen for usage in AI, I hate AI generated images for several reasons. I've personally had my art stolen to be used in a prompt without my permission, and said art got mangled so much that it looked terrible. AI image generators scrape the internet for art so they can amalgamate these pieces of art together to correspond to a prompt, and this art is taken without the permission of the artists. In some AI generated images, the mangled remnants of artists' signatures are still visible. Beyond art theft, it's instant gratification with zero effort. A huge part of why I appreciate art is because someone made it, someone spent potentially hours to create this beautiful picture! When I look at my old art, I can instantly get a feel for what vibes I had going through my mind at the time, like I could almost take a peek into my past self's brain, and this applies to other artist's work too!

Prompting an AI image generator, in my eyes, is like prompting an artist to draw something for you, except that artist turns out to be someone who traces bits of other people’s art without their permission, or copy and pastes it. Sometimes AI generated images aren't immediately recognizable, so me and a lot of other artists have tried to make it a trend to post progress pictures and other receipts along with our art.

Not a fan. It admittedly can be an amusing toy - type something in and wow look what it did! But the costs are high, and our society isn't a utopia where people don't need to labor for survival.

Maybe if we were post scarcity it wouldn't matter that much. But we're not, and this AI stuff is going to hurt labor, benefit the ownership class, and probably be mildly bad for end users too.

No. It’s useful when you need a quick picture for something or help visualizing something. A huge timesaver. I haven’t seen it generate anything good enough to be hung in an art museum, so I don’t really understand why anyone would hate it. It’s not really competition for actual art. Also, I want to say that I don’t think anyone’s art was “stolen”. That’s the same ludicrous argument the RIAA uses against online file sharing. Any images used in the training was downloaded, mathematically analyzed, and deconstructed. “Stolen” would require a heist at the museum.

Environmental impacts 🤷

of course! aside from detracting from artists with actual talent and creativity, there is one example i’ve seen in my school that makes me hate it even more: teachers deciding to print out posters, flyers, etc. with obviously ai generated images, despite the fact that we have an entire art department in the school, full of students who’d be very much interested in making something up for them. even then, tools like canva and the sort are always available, hell, even mspaint could work! i’d rather see 10 poorly made posters than have to see one more ai image used in the school.

I'm an artist / writer and I don't see problem with generative AI when you're at a really early concept stage. Exploring ideas, try to get over creative blocks, that sort of stuff. Maybe the AI hallucinations and fuckups can give you ideas worth exploring.

But using them as a literal basis for artwork you work further on is a fool's errand. It's easier to maybe take ideas from there, but work from scratch anyway. And I do realise that even that is controversial.

Also, could be a legal quagmire. Also not happy about the copyright appropriation situation or the environmental impact.

It's fun to play around with but it has zero value and wherever I see it used anywhere I cringe

Art is an attempt to communicate (usually to communicate something of the human condition). Current 'art' AI is too far away from intelligence to have anything to communicate. All it can do is mindlessly try to copy and blend what it's seen before without understanding it.

I don't hate it, but I also don't value it.

As an art appreciator it just looks bad

Good for memes, bad for the environment.

Hate it? Yes. Respect people who use it? No.

It looks so detached from reality.

Almost all of the images generated by AI models are just eye candy and not art. It can be eye candy based on a bunch of art, but it still isn’t artistic. It’s often just an image aimed at farming engagement. “Here’s a picture so that your algorithms don’t ignore my post. Do I have your attention now?”

I prefer real people and real artwork hand painted or hand drawn. Yes, doing it digital with your hand and mouse count as hand made.

I don't hate it, in fact I use it a lot for my D&D game nights - not being an artist myself.

I don't hate it, some of the images generated look awesome. But that's just an image that "literally anyone could do". It's the equivalent of instant lamen or cup noodles.

Afaik, it can't come up with new styles and most of the stuff pumped out just wholesale copies existing stuff: the majority either looks like a Disney 3d animation, or fancy anime-esque render. Some try to look like realistic oil paintings, those look cool and pretty, but nothing worth making a poster.

I think the only people, besides tech bros, who are happy with this are those that hate giving art any value.

i'm utterly bored by it and annoyed that it mucks up all the places I'd usually steal images for my TTRPG games.

Hate is too strong of a word. AI art is sometimes freaky to look at, sometimes it's pretty. It is usually devoid of a certain intangible thing that you can get from human art, even shitty human art. But it's occasionally a fun toy too? I can't conjure up any strong feelings for AI images unto themselves.

I do have intense loathing for the capitalists who want to use that AI art to replace human work. And for the AI "Artists" who are enabling them by acting like this is the next evolution of art and anyone with concerns is just holding back "DA FUTER".

I also have concerns about the environmental/energy costs of AI -- Just in general. Not just AI Images or Chatbots or whatever. AI can be a good thing, a tool to help us. And even when it's useless, it's kinda fun to mess about with. But the energy and environmental costs of all that computing, especially the amount of it that is wasted because even if AI ultimately becomes a part of our lives, it is DEFINITELY a wasteful investment bubble right now -- THAT sucks. And THAT seems to have no obvious solution.

I hate it because of the theft.

It's possible AI could be interesting but the current iteration is garbage.

I don't consider it Art, but the specific reason I hate it is because it is meant to be an illusion of something that it's not, and it's crafted that illusion off the blood sweat and tears of people whom it treats as a line item in a database by people who don't respect it. It is fundamentally a bastardizarion of the creative soul and rather purposefully at that.

I mean, every highly contrasted media we've ever watched, just about, is about someone with a modicum of empathy struggling against a fascist with no empathy to their cause, and what is more fascist than diminishing or dilluting the perceived value of art to the public? Art is the only language allowed to those who are repressed.

Yes, because It's not art. I have a very liberal definition of art. I'd call John Cage's 4′33″ art. Art requires concious effort, an AI has no conciousness.

Edit: I thought the question was do you like AI art? I can't read apparently. I wouldn't say hate. I just don't respect it from an artstic standpoint.

low effort crap is low effort crap no matter how it's made, that said, there is plenty of high quality, high effort AI art out there that has a lot of prompt engineering put into it; it is merely drowned out in a sea of sludge. It's just about as easy for someone to put in zero effort and churn out AI sludge as it is for them to scribble in MSPaint, the difference being scribbling in MSPaint usually has some level of charm to it for its simplicity. That doesn't mean the guy who spends a lot of time tweaking their prompt to get it exactly right isn't an artist, it means they create art with different tools. Whether you use a rattlecan and stencils, or pencils and paper, or paint and canvas, or a wacom tablet and stylus, or type in carefully crafted prompts, art is art is art is art. But if you don't spend the time required to get good at it, your art will be shit.

Also, watching the artist crowd melt down again saying "that's not real art!" is absolutely hilarious. Those who weren't around at the time may not remember, but when digital art was starting to become a thing, there were plenty of people who firmly attested that if it was digital, it wasn't "real" art. Watching the same set of creatives having the same meltdown ~30 years later, "REEEEE YOU CAN'T JUST USE TECHNOLOGY TO MAKE THE PROCESS EASIER", is extremely funny.

Does anyone else feel ill when seeing some AI images? It's like an out of tune piano for me

Depends on what it's used for. Looks tacky when used by big businesses, but looks fine if used by small independent people. Like dbzer0.com just uses them for blog thumbnails. But coca cola AI adverts? Ai bots spouting stuff on Facebook? Entirely AI generated websites (although that's moreso text)? Awful.

Most of it reminds me of that tacky clip art that got bundled with word processors and Corel Draw in the 90s. It’s just all got this “uncanny valley” sheen to it.

it's fucking annoying. it looks like shit. it's boring the hell out of me

I can't say that I am a fan.

AI siphons the end result from the process involved to get there - a very human process. Scraping loads of work from artists to mimic a signature style or pop culture trends in art doesn't exactly scream innovation. Using AI to aide a creative process is one thing, but using it to generate imagery, claiming originality, and using it for internet clout is farcical, lazy, and an insult to artists.

Art is a skill honed over time and given life through the human experience - and the beautiful part is that when others interact with it, it connects them through their own experiences. I really do think AI cheapens that.

I see them mostly as fun toys now but eventually someone will use them to create something we have never seen or even considered before. I don't think that makes them artistic but a tool of an artist.

Bad for artists, but for the environment, low quality, low effort, and the most annoying people in the world love it.

AI “art” has made me realize how important part human behind art is to the point where I will never pay for any AI “art”. AI “art” is worthless and I would even say it devalues rest of the thing, if its part of some bigger whole like game for example. I do not want to see it, I dont want even glimpse. When I see AI “art”, its only a reminder to me of theft that has been done to make it happen and of some smarmy slimy techbro behind it. Whenever I see AI “art” only thing I feel is either sad or angry depending on day.

If I was religious type, Id even go as far as say I believe in soul now because how soulless AI “art” is.

I am fucking sick of it and deeply despise AI “art” in its entirety with every fiber of my being.

I am sure I will get downvoted to deepest depths by techbros and people who dont care and simply consume whatevers brought in front of them, use every AI filter they get their hands on. But hey, I was asked, I gave my answer.