Community's feelings toward AI art

[GhostOS]

"A drawing by Alphonse Mucha depicting a pretty woman sitting with the soles of her feet towards the viewer, smiling and holding a piece of paper that reads "I DID TOO !", classic drawing" -took about 11 tries to get this one, very impressed it got the words right too

I don't think old Alphonse minds too much about his art style being "stolen", LOL!

*Adding "classic(al) drawing" or "classic(al) painting" at the end sometimes helps with preventing the AI for throwing a tantrum over what it perceives as "naughty words"

 

[StF342]

People use the term "Soulless" but I think that's a bit emotional. I think the more accurate term would be "Uncanny." While I don't deny that AI image generation is improving fast, I still remember how a half a year ago, proponents of this new thing were telling us that by the next iteration, we wouldn't be able to tell the difference between art created by a human and images generated by a machine. And yet, even with the advances made, you can still pick out AI-generated images with a quick glance. I have a hard time describing exactly what looks wrong about AI image generation outside of the obvious inaccuracies that have already been described, but something else about it just doesn't pass. It's still somewhat easy to tell that most of these images are generated by something incapable of truly understanding the subject matter it's trying to depict.

 

[Kalamos]

It's theft. Pure and simple. It steals from copyrighted artwork.
I don't care if you can't draw. You don't get to post copyrighted artwork from other artists as your own creation.

You keep repeating that.
It's unclear how current AI art works, though.

If it borrowed bits from actual art, we would not get any anatomical oddities ever, since there usually aren't any in actual art.
Also, especially when given briefer prompts, AI art often "dreams up" details to fill the void.

I am not sure it's something so simple and clear cut as "you stole my picture".

People use the term "Soulless" but I think that's a bit emotional. I think the more accurate term would be "Uncanny." While I don't deny that AI image generation is improving fast, I still remember how a half a year ago, proponents of this new thing were telling us that by the next iteration, we wouldn't be able to tell the difference between art created by a human and images generated by a machine. And yet, even with the advances made, you can still pick out AI-generated images with a quick glance. I have a hard time describing exactly what looks wrong about AI image generation outside of the obvious inaccuracies that have already been described, but something else about it just doesn't pass. It's still somewhat easy to tell that most of these images are generated by something incapable of truly understanding the subject matter it's trying to depict.

Honestly, I am not always so sure I can pick up at a glance what's wrong with AI art.
Some combinations of style and technique seem to be less prone to the uncanny valley effect.
Sometimes current AI adds stuff I didn't ask for, and it just "belongs there", as if it created a whole story from a brief prompt.

 

[StF342]

I'm sleepy, so this is kind of stream of thought.

A little more wordplay. I hear a lot of people describing AI as a "Thief," but again, I don't think that's quite accurate either. I think the more accurate descriptor for Generative AI would be a "parasite." It's not stealing your work in the traditional sense, but it very clearly is feeding off of it in a way that offers little to no benefit to its host.

And the AI proponents, at least the ones I'm the most familiar with, have done very little to hide what the end goal of AI image generation is: create something that can imitate almost any style of art and render something that's transformative enough to be considered a form of fair use, all while being cheap as free. No more having to pay steep fees to a "gatekeeping elitist" artist for their naturally cultivated talents. No more rejections from artists because they don't like the message, content, or subject of the art you're trying to get them to create. Just feed the algorithm a constant stream of their work acquired legitimately or otherwise, and soon your own personal digital doppelganger is ready to churn out whatever you can clearly prompt it to. And you can do it in any style, even that of the same artists that rejected you. The weirdest of the weird fetish art? No problem. Political propaganda? We got you covered, user! Want to shill some useless merchandise? It's ad time, and you're being sponsored by the algorithm.

Who cares about the original artists' opinions or consent? In the end, they were just training data and nothing more. What's an artist's identity anyway? You can't copyright your own style of art. You can't copyright your own voice. You can't even copyright your own face, because you don't own what you look like.

And I think ultimately that's the overall argument about anything involving AI in general, be it image generation or otherwise. People have tried to frame this as an issue of AI stealing our jobs, when in truth it's about AI stealing our identities and place in the world.

 

[tickleteasing]

My problem is not so much the AI but rather people doing things with it and saying a person did it when in fact AI did it. To me this is like a college student getting a term paper of the internet

 

[TMF Jeff]

My two cents - this new technology reminds me of this scene from the comic Miracleman where a woman asks for help with the fact that she has the soul of an artist but she lacks the ability.



"Each of you should have the right to art."

I consider it a very good thing, regardless of its application in our fetish world. I hope it lasts because I think it's going to open a lot of doors for a lot of people.

 

[PeterVincentTGVK]

It almost always just looks ugly and mechanical. I've never really been a fan of digital artwork period, though. So I'm biased.

 

[Kalamos]

It almost always just looks ugly and mechanical. I've never really been a fan of digital artwork period, though. So I'm biased.

Fun fact, most of the art you see around is digital, under a fashion or another.
And AI art is not digital in the sense of 3d rendered models; it parses reality in a different way.

 

[TicklishStudent]

Honestly i love Ai generated images. Granted sometimes it looks like an acid trip but i think the technology is pretty crazy and it will only get better at time goes on

 

[PeterVincentTGVK]

Fun fact, most of the art you see around is digital, under a fashion or another.
And AI art is not digital in the sense of 3d rendered models; it parses reality in a different way.

I respectfully maintain my opinion. It just doesn't look good. There is something very off and honestly creepy about how it looks. I choose to hide deviantart pages that are made up of it just cause I don't like seeing it in my feed.

 

[Kalamos]

I respectfully maintain my opinion. It just doesn't look good. There is something very off and honestly creepy about how it looks. I choose to hide deviantart pages that are made up of it just cause I don't like seeing it in my feed.

What does not look good?
Digital art OR AI generated art?
And which AI art?
There are different generators; they don't all work the same way.

Also, above you conflated digital art with AI art.
They are not the same.
Not all digital art is AI-generated or AI-assisted.
Even MS Paint is digital art.

I am seriously curious now.
Which artists do you follow on deviant art?

 

[PeterVincentTGVK]

What does not look good?
Digital art OR AI generated art?
And which AI art?
There are different generators; they don't all work the same way.

Also, above you conflated digital art with AI art.
They are not the same.
Not all digital art is AI-generated or AI-assisted.
Even MS Paint is digital art.

I am seriously curious now.
Which artists do you follow on deviant art?

I suppose I misspoke when conflating the two. Honestly I am not tech savvy enough to explain it any better than I already have. I know AI generated work when I see it because most of the AI artists I have seen on DA literally have "AI" somewhere in the profile name or on their works. Feathers and fingers almost never touch. Each victim is shown screaming with laughter despite not being touched. And then in addition to what I have already mentioned, there is a strange kind of "stock footage" look to most of the faces. Like some really off putting, uncanny valley stuff going on.

Honestly, I don't follow many people on DA unless I am friends with them and most are other writers. I have my DA page primarily for advertising my books and taking commissions.

Anyways, that's about all I have to say on the matter. It looks ugly. That's just my opinion. What's that old saying? "I don't know if it's art, but I like it"? The opposite just applies here for me.

 

[Kalamos]

I suppose I misspoke when conflating the two. Honestly I am not tech savvy enough to explain it any better than I already have. I know AI generated work when I see it because most of the AI artists I have seen on DA literally have "AI" somewhere in the profile name or on their works. Feathers and fingers almost never touch. Each victim is shown screaming with laughter despite not being touched. And then in addition to what I have already mentioned, there is a strange kind of "stock footage" look to most of the faces. Like some really off putting, uncanny valley stuff going on.
Honestly, I don't follow many people on DA unless I am friends with them and most are other writers. I have my DA page primarily for advertising my books and taking commissions.
Anyways, that's about all I have to say on the matter. It looks ugly. That's just my opinion. What's that old saying? "I don't know if it's art, but I like it"? The opposite just applies here for me.

"Looking ugly" is more of a poster's responsibility, than an actual fault with AI generation - although there is an uncanny quality with some AI generated art.
We have seen a deluge of AI art, and not all of it was carefully curated, or fixed post creation.

Also, most of it comes from the same generator, Bing Creator, which has some very strict restrictions on even remotely adult stuff.
You'll seldom see fingers touching the main character, let alone feathers - which the generator seems to struggle with.
But that's a fault with Bing, rather than a fault with AI as a whole itself.

There are more complex generators, which have a steeper learning curve.
But even Bing, as simple as it might seem, must be weaned to fetish contents, so it won't raise a red flag and block requests outright.
Usually you won't get consistently decent results from the get go by simply entering: "woman tickled on feet".
Also, Bing is very temperamental; restrictions and results do vary a lot, from day to day, and even from hour to hour.

What you posted, "AI art looks ugly" is akin to say: "all beer tastes like piss".
Sure, you could say it, but more savvy people might object to it and call it a gross simplification.


Besides, you side stepped my question.
I find it interesting that you won't name your favorite drawing/painting artists.
But you noticed AI generated art and blocked it.

 

[GhostOS]

"Looking ugly" is more of a poster's responsibility, than an actual fault with AI generation - although there is an uncanny quality with some AI generated art.
We have seen a deluge of AI art, and not all of it was carefully curated, or fixed post creation.

I think that's spot on. I see a lot of AI art passing by on Deviantart, some look at first sight like an uncannily good 3D render (3D art tends to be unnaturally precise at rendering, whereas AI generations have "flaws" that if subtle enough the brain interprets as "realistic") while others I now easily recognise as made through Stable Diffusion of the Protogen/Opengen variety. AI's seem to default to their own "style" if you don't ask it to aim for a particular art style. A basic grasp of art history goes a long way in experimenting with this technology, I have found A lot of people playing with this technology don't have an art background, and I guess for most of them it's easy to be wowed by the output and overlook the flaws an artist's eye could pick out (and correct!)

 

[lostphilosopher]

Both with regards to tickling and just in general, I haven't seen any AI art that "speaks to me" in any way.

Honestly, the tickling AI art doesn't really do anything for me at all.

 

[GhostOS]

Both with regards to tickling and just in general, I haven't seen any AI art that "speaks to me" in any way.

Honestly, the tickling AI art doesn't really do anything for me at all.

I think that's partly subjective though. Kalamos already stated correctly that a carefully curated and fixed AI generated piece of art is indistinguishable from a human created one. At this point in time it's almost impossible to tell if a really skilled artist did or did not use generative AI to speed up their process by a tenfold.

One of the current issues is that the capabilities of Bing/Dalle-3 (arguably the most advanced AI at this moment in time) are so heavily stunted by the companies that manage them. All the AI tickling pics you've seen so far on this forum had to be generated using ridiculous workarounds to get past the filters. But it's only a matter of time before the open source community (Stable Diffusion) catches up, and then, just like what happened with Dalle-2, and then we'll be seeing some interesting things!

 

[gulbil]

I'll tell ya one thing. I want go all in for the first generator that goes unfiltered.

The whole setup of the engine, with coins, the thrilling minute before the image (or images if you really hit jackpot) is made for maximum dopamine output and probably engineered thourgholy at Openai.

People will spend their days generating these images knowing secretly they will never create the "perfect" image. The next best one is just a click away!

And I would like to make some $ out of this! Anyone knows the biggest competitors today on the market?

 

[TKLU312]

AI just has a hollow feel to it for me. And it also can get very grotesque, which I realize will probably vanish over time, but it's often a big turnoff for me. I mean, some of the stuff it does with teeth just makes me shudder. I have friends who are artists who are already seeing it affect their businesses and are having to adapt, but I know I'd rather have art created by an actual artist than a prompt.

 

[GhostOS]

I'll tell ya one thing. I want go all in for the first generator that goes unfiltered.

The whole setup of the engine, with coins, the thrilling minute before the image (or images if you really hit jackpot) is made for maximum dopamine output and probably engineered thourgholy at Openai.

People will spend their days generating these images knowing secretly they will never create the "perfect" image. The next best one is just a click away!

And I would like to make some $ out of this! Anyone knows the biggest competitors today on the market?

It does indeed have an addictive quality, but I doubt that was built in intentionally. I think it's also part of how new the technology is, and how nebulous and experimental it feels. So there's a sense of FOMO going on, "generate as many pictures now, because tomorrow the miracle machine might be gone"... When this tech becomes more commonplace I'm sure that element will disappear.

 

[spikedpsycho]

AI did not democratize Art.
Artists did that....
Free Youtube Tutorials, Sketch Pages, Deviantart BLogs, Work-In-Progress, AMA's, Process videos, Picarto, Sharing materials, Stock references,
These are all publically available to anyone who wants to view it

 

[GhostOS]

AI did not democratize Art.
Artists did that....
Free Youtube Tutorials, Sketch Pages, Deviantart BLogs, Work-In-Progress, AMA's, Process videos, Picarto, Sharing materials, Stock references,
These are all publically available to anyone who wants to view it

What you describe is the democratization of knowledge. I still remember checking out PSDtuts every day and buying ImagineFX magazine every month. Buying any of the "Wizard's How to Draw Comics" books I could get my hands on (in Europe they were rare and expensive imports).

This democratization of knowledge has led to an overabundance of "artists" of "reasonable" skill level, that is, reasonable enough for the bigger companies to easily find a young eager artist that will accept peanuts for payment. I'm no elitist, but it's a simple law of economics: when competition goes up, product value comes down. AI isn't causing the collapse of the digital art industry, they caused that on themselves years ago.

Patreon, Fiverr, Youtube influencers, Tik Tok drama, Deviantart drama. That's what has been the result.

AI is the democratization of custom pictures, quite another thing. For example the AI megathread on this forum: absolutely nobody is saying "Look what I made". Rather "Look what I managed to get out of this weird censorship ridden robot, LOL" and then they share the prompt so others can have a tinker with it. I think AI will make the process of realizing a vision more accessible. That is within the whole philosophy of making Art. Bringing something as nebulous as an idea into reality. Quite a separate thing from the job that is drawing a picture for money.