General AI Discussion

If you think clearcutting, stripmining and homelessness crises are just fine but marvel movies are the real problem in society, I’m not sure we have much more to discuss here.

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Thanks a lot for the very clear description!

Without doubt, what people consider to be art is very different. Even though my personal view doesn’t completely align with yours, I appreciate you took the time to write it down!

In the context of this thread, do you think that AI is able to create art?
For the sake of the argument, let’s assume the AI had access to the whole internet, to archives and all sorts of imaginable sources, such that it could get an ‘understanding’ of what happened in the society and how it changed over time, what were and are important topics, … .
In the case that it would want to create something physical it could provide a description of what to do to a human. Like place a urinal on display and call it ‘Fountain’, but obviously with something new.
If an AI could do that in the future and foster some form of cultural progress with it, would you consider it art?

A counterargument to this is that the culture both reflects and shapes collective values and intelligence.
The problems you mentioned are much more serious right now, but in the long run the cultural shifts can be much dangerous and should be dealt with great amount of care and understanding.
The difference is in the reference point and in the knowledge of history how similar problems happened.
But I get that they are not as ‘flashy’ as picture of a homeless person.

If you can’t distinguish it from human Art, then it is Art, the chances have increased in last 100 years, since deconstructionists took over is much easier to do Art. You put a progressive political motive make a collage and it is automatically Art. So the answer is yes, AI can make Art.

I agree that art can form culture, which is a driving force for all the associated triumphs and ills of culture.

How many kids today grew up on the MCU and Michael Bay movies will wind up singing up for the military so that they can be badass heroes too?

What art informed that veterans choices?

Mostly I wanted to clown on @Ace_Dragon 's rightwing fearmongering about how liberal Hollywood is ruining America with women, racial minorities, and lgbtq people being cast in movies.

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It seems you don’t consider the progressive political things as art (hope I got that right, sorry if not!).
Hypothetically, if the 5th symphony was not composed by Beethoven, but some AI machine wrote it during that time period, would you still consider the 5th symphony as a piece of art?
As far as I would interpret what you wrote, I would assume that your answer is yes, because:

I contest the imperialism of progressive art critic, teacher and the self serving “inbreed” cottage that degraded Art as long as it touched some buttons it was validated. Not all progressive Art have that low value, i consider for example Guernica a great painting.

The answer is obviously yes.

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That is essentially a trick question because neither us nor AI were even around during that time period.

You can ponder on ‘what if’ scenarios all day, but the bottom line is that both history itself and historical opinions are not something that can be retroactively changed with the thinking of today (even though there are some now actually trying to do that).

Who’s that?

It seems Bullit had no issue with my question and understood what I meant.

Bullit hinted at the 5th sympohony being a piece of art, that’s why I went with this example. It could as well be something very recent that Bullit considers to be art. The question ultimately was whether Bullit would still consider it art, even if it was created by some sort of a machine or AI. Because I was pretty certain that the historic context would not make a difference for Bullit, I didn’t bother to dive into it.

At emotional level it still feels diminished Art if i know it is done by a machine. It feels soulless. even worse if said AI will have to compose 1000000 to have 1 at 5th level. But if AI creates something completely different and opens another art avenue that human artists will follow?

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That’s totally understandable. It would clearly feel less valuable to me as well.

That would be rather cheap indeed.

And it IS soulless; machines have no souls. However, I don’t think humans have any such thing either, so that doesn’t make any difference to me. I generally only care whether a piece of art either touches me emotionally, or whether it makes me think. Interestingly, a work can do either of those things without the artist intending it.

Because with most art I encounter I have absolutely no idea why the artist created it, whether they had deep, creative thoughts behind it or just wanted to create a pleasing composition to hone their craft, whether they cranked it out for the money, or because they had some deep, driving motivation that’s somehow more “pure”. I don’t know how long it took them, how “original” it really is (I am no art history buff), how hard they worked on achieving it, whether it constitutes immense growth in their own personal development as an artist. I am often too ignorant to assess whether a work has cultural value. I just see the work without context. I might not even know what the subject is, if it’s one of those art styles where that’s not obvious or not relevant. If I find out about the context that might affect me in some ways – or it might not.

And if I can’t tell from looking at the work whether the creator was a human, a monkey, or a computer program, then it’s all the same to me – does it touch me emotionally, or does it make me think?

I can appreciate art outside of those aspects, but only through intellectual study. Like, much famous art does nothing for me, but I can learn why it is important and why it is meaningful to others; what the cultural impact of it is.

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Hi,

nowadays I see more and more AI generated content. The existence of these are ok for me, but Artstation for example is now flooding with AI generated pictures. Is this Art by itself? I would say no, you enter some keywords, press “recalculate” after a while something is created that looks quite ok.

If you use it for inspiration or use some parts of it for your own creation would be something I would call a “creative process”, but only posting something randomized has no value in Art in my opinion.

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If people still respect the craft and artists, I am fine with it.

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I think Pinterest is a great place for people to post their Artbreeder characters, or AI generated landscapes and other images, but ArtStation should not be allowing purely generative content on their platform (except if the artist created the generative system and that generative system itself is the art being demonstrated.) Or at least not encouraging it by having buttons for it when people select their software used for their art.

Quite frankly I’m getting tired of all the boring MetaHuman characters being uploaded en masse too. Almost no one is doing anything actually interesting with it, so the results all end up feeling dull and samey most of the time - or downright goofy if they’re just playing with how extreme they can make faces with the mesh to metahuman plugin work. It’s nowhere near as good as the work being put out by the skilled character artists on the platform. I know this seems like a different topic, but it’s a pretty similar issue.

I’m all for letting people have fun with their toys, but for a platform that doesn’t want non-artists even leaving comments on artists’ work (you can’t comment until you have at least one upload in your own portfolio because Artstation is supposed to be an art website for serious artists) it’s odd when raw output from AI systems or screenshots out of MH’s character creator webpage is on the front page as if it’s the artists’ original artwork.

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AI generated contend mixing into artist generated content, something hard to control. Probably it is not possible to prevent it from happening.

I fear the moment, if someone who actually creates figures all by himself gets accused to let AI do the job for him.

Well, both MetaHuman and ArtStation are owned by Epic now, and one of the first things that the company did on the latter’s purchase was create a showcase page for work made with Unreal. Did anyone not think the site in general would start learning towards feeling like an extension of their ecosystem?

Though they could’ve done worse with the commenting, CGSociety meanwhile has devolved all the way towards having people choose from a list of canned praises for each posted work (ie. forced positivity and affirmation without critique).

Artbreeder and Midjourney are options Artstation offers when selecting the software used for a project, so users aren’t simply choosing to upload AI generated work because artstation can’t stop them, artstation is recognizing these as artistic software and encouraging their use on the website.

And in combination with other tools AI can be a valuable tool for artists: Like people who use ArtBreeder to design a character that they then draw or model from a reference, or the equivalent of doing that with other AI tools for other kinds of art. Or using it as part of a photobash or paintover.

I just feel like without a human touch, it’s fine for fun and regular social media, but if ArtStation is supposed to be a serious and professional website for artists it’s really not something that belongs there.

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To be honest, aside from using the same annoying login bot test, I haven’t really noticed much of a change on ArtStation since the purchase. Unreal has always been a popular render engine for 3D artists, and you still see lots of work produced with other render engines everywhere on ArtStation too.

You’re definitely right that they’d have a clear financial reason to want MetaHuman promoted among artists on ArtStation, but the MetaHuman work that’s getting uploaded and even popping up in trending isn’t particularly inspiring most of the time. The models are not bad per se, just dull and samey and kind of like uploading your Sim, or Mass Effect/Fallout/Dragon Age/etc character to ArtStation. Except maybe a bit more limited than some video game character creators.

I really wanted to like MetaHuman too. It seemed like had the potential to be really cool. It’s just been disappointingly underwhelming so far, both trying to use it myself and seeing what other people are doing with it. I found it difficult to make characters with it because it’s so limited - probably works better for people who enjoy just mixing the different face parts without having a specific end result in mind, or can accept that Mesh to MetaHuman might interpret their character differently than they modeled it without getting nitpicky.

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