That's a testable hypothesis. Go sample every AI output until you find one that doesn't have a previously created 1:1 analogue.
Unless of course you mean "original" as in, some kind of wishy washy untargetable goal that's really some appeal to humanity, where any piece of information that disagrees with your hypothesis is discarded because it is unfalsifiable. Original might as well mean "Made by a human and that's it" which isn't useful at all.
I messed around with Udio when it first cam out, and it wasn't just writing a prompt, and there's your song.
You got 30 seconds, of which there might have been a hook that was interesting. So you would crop the hook and re-generate to get another 30 seconds before or after that, and so on.
I would liken it more as being the producer stitching together the sessions a band have recorded to produce a song.
This is a very old argument within artistic communities.
In cinema, authorship has resoundingly been awarded to the director. A lot of film directors go deep in many creative silos, but at its core the process is commissioning a lot of artists to do art at the same time. You dont have to be able to do those things. Famously some anime directors have just been hired off the street.
In comics things went the other way. Editors have been trying to extract credit for creative work for a long time. A lot of them have significant input in the creative process, but have no contractual basis for demanding credit for that input. It frustrates them. They can also just commission work, or they can have various levels of input in to the creative process, up to and including defining characters entirely.
Really then, in your example, theres clearly a point where you have had enough of a creative input in the creation to be part of the artistic endeavor. One judge in china ruled in favour of the artist after they proved that they had completed 20 odd revisions of the artwork, before watermarking it.
That is of course, assuming we only follow your strict, reductionist argument. Even for AI art, most generators these days take more than text input. You can mask areas, provide hand drawn precursor art and a lot of other things. And that also assumes no post processing.
Not all AI generated items will be art. But what I find offensive, is the judgement that as a class nothing touched by AI could be considered art. Mostly because I lived through "Digital Art is not Art" and "Computer Games are not Art" proponents of both got overtaken by history and rightly shamed.
I never claimed you can't use AI tools. I never claimed Digital art is not art. Don't imply I should feel shame for questioning the world around me. You can stop with the trying to silence your critics and position yourself as superior.
If I ask a comics guy their favorite comic artist they aren't giving me back editors names. They will have favorite editors, or even editor artist pairs, but the artist remains distinct from that.
I simply posited that commissioning a piece of work does not make you an artist. Having art generated for you to your taste is not 'making art'. Hiring an interior decorator to decorate my house does not mean I decorated. Ordering off a menu and requesting extra cheese does not make you part chef.
A better blurring for your argument would be the use of session musicians. If I say I love The Beach Boys, how much of what I love is session musicians work versus Brian Wilson's? Is he the artist that I enjoy? But that gets back to it, doesn't it. We as humans want to connect art with it's creator. Why? Because art is some reflection of something. Art is 'life is a shared experience'. AI 'art' is not part of that shared experience. I want to connect with Brian Wilson. But I don't connect with some music critic who writes about Brian Wilson's music even though we both connected with the same artistic work, even if I learned about the work though the critic making my relationship to them just as important (I wouldn't know it without them). There being an artist in the middle improves/transforms it/means something (what it means is what is up for discussion).
A pretty crystal is just as pretty as a piece of art, but it is not a piece of art. AI art might be more like the crystal. It might contain beauty/interest/capture attention. But it's not connecting with someone's creation, with intention. I have a local museum and I love exhibits that a specific curator there has focused on more than ones they didn't touch. But that doesn't make them an artist. AI 'artists' fall into that category.
No but its the same genetic fallacy. Some digital works arent art. Therefore all Digital art is not art. These people were rightly ridiculed.
Suggesting that because some people put no effort into AI Art, that AI art as a category cannot be art is also a silly genetic fallacy.
>If I ask a comics guy their favorite comic artist they aren't giving me back editors names. They will have favorite editors, or even editor artist pairs, but the artist remains distinct from that.
Correct. Because the authorship debate in that space settled in the opposite direction. If Comic Editors succeeded and were treated like film directors, they would have headline billing on comics and they would be a household name. But it went the other way, and instead Editors who try to claim credit for artistic works, even with receipts, get laughed at.
>I simply posited that commissioning a piece of work does not make you an artist.
Right, but the implication there is that is all people using AI generators do.
>Hiring an interior decorator to decorate my house does not mean I decorated.
Right, but if you are giving the interior decorator creative input, like, "No that sucks this should be red" and revising their output hundreds of times, you are actually involved in the decoration process. And if that decorator is just, hanging up exactly what you tell them to, then they might just be a dogsbody and you the interior decorator.
>I have a local museum and I love exhibits that a specific curator there has focused on more than ones they didn't touch. But that doesn't make them an artist. AI 'artists' fall into that category.
Some do. But the vast majority put a lot more effort in than simple curation. I remember seeing people, when Midjourney first became viable, simply generating 12 images with a single prompt, and sharing all 12 on facebook to pages that wanted nothing to do with them. Thats not art. But its also not the done thing anymore.
Trying to convince some tech people about how artistic creation works, and why it's more than just the right amount of "optimization" of bits for rapid results, is about as pointless as trying to make a chimpanzee understand the intricacies of Bach. The reductiveness of some of you is amusing, but also grotesque in the context of what art should mean for human experience.
I don't think you really understood what I was saying, or what you're even talking about. I've got nothing to "gatekeep" and a defense of skill over automated regurgitation in creating things certainly isn't gatekeeping. People can use whatever tools they like, but they should keep in mind what distinguishes knowing how to create something from having it done for you at the metaphorical push of a button.
No, I understand the insults and ad hoc requirements just fine. And I can point you back to the decades and decades of literature about how anyone can be an artist and how anything can be art. The stuff that was openly and readily said until the second people started making art with AI. As for "push of a button", Visarga has already done a decent job of explaining how that's not actually the case. Not that I have any issue with people doing the metaphorical button push either.
If you're too lazy to put effort into learning how to create an art so you can adequately express yourself, why should some technology do all the work for you, and why should anyone want to hear what "you" (ie: the machine) have to say?
This is exactly how we end up with endless slop, which doesn't provide a unique perspective, just a homogenized regurgitation of inputs.
Yeah and it worked great until industrial agriculture let lots of people eat who had no skill at agriculture. In fact, our entire history as a species is a long history of replacing Skill with machines to enable more people to access the skill. If it gives you sad feelings that people without skill can suddenly do more cool things, thats entirely a you problem.
Again, I wholly reject the idea that there's a line between 'tech people' and 'art people'. You can have an interest in both art and tech. You can do both 'traditional art' and AI art. I also reject the idea that AI tools require no skill, that's clearly not the case.
>nature
This can so easily be thrown back at you.
>why should anyone want to hear what "you" (ie: the machine) have to say?
So why are we having this discussion in the first place? Right, hundreds of millions are interested in exploring and creating with AI. You are not fighting against a small contingent who are trying to covet the meaning of "artist" or whatever. No, it's a mass movement of people being creative in a way that you don't like.
• I didn't say there's a line between "tech people" and "art people". Why would there be?
• We're having this discussion because people are trying to equate an auto-amalgamation/auto-generation machine with the artistic process, and in doing so, redefining what "art" means.
• Yes, you can "be creative" with AI, but don't fool yourself-- you're not creating art. I don't call myself a chef because I heated up a microwave dinner.
• The other guy certainly did. And your subsequent reply was an endorsement of his style of gatekeeping, so. I mean, just talk to some of the the more active people in AI art. Many of them have been involved in art for decades.
• If throwing paint at a canvas is art (sure, why not?) then so is typing a few words into a 'machine'. Of course many people spend a considerable amount more effort than that. No different than learning Ableton Live or Blender.
