AI is stealing writers’ words and jobs…

[Reynard]

Tools do not do the job for you. They help you do the job. An oven is a tool that helps you cook a meal just like a paintbrush is a tool that helps you paint. Telling someone what to cook for you does not make

Where is the line, do you think?

If I take a picture, then use the AI powered tools in my phone to modify it with filters and lighting and such, am I the photographer (artist)?

 

[Reynard]

The question appears to ignore the point of my post, instead returning to wondering about whether some vocation (now an art director instead of a director) might be an artist.

I must have misunderstood you, but your post asked the question if someone was an artist if they told someone else to create art. My point was that there are some artist vocations that are exactly that: art directors and film directors are just a couple of examples. So I wanted to know if folks consider those people artists. It seems relevant to your post.

 

[Andvari]

I must have misunderstood you, but your post asked the question if someone was an artist if they told someone else to create art. My point was that there are some artist vocations that are exactly that: art directors and film directors are just a couple of examples. So I wanted to know if folks consider those people artists. It seems relevant to your post.

My point was that they are not the creator of art they didn’t make. Art director Fred shouldn't tell Maggie the painter "Paint me a troll with the art style and features the team agreed upon", then later, when Maggie is finished with her painting, go to her and say "Wow, that's the best art I've made yet. When you finish up, make sure to write Fred at the bottom instead of Maggie."

That doesn't mean Fred can't also create art, but that's beyond the scope of my post.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

That's not what I am talking about. I apologize if I was unclear.

What I am talking about is already happening to some degree and will only get more responsive.

You enter a prompt and it spits out a few samples. You ick one but then tell it to change this, or that. The process continues until you get the image you want.

At some point that turns you into the artist, as surely as a director who relies on a cinematographer is an artist.

Many people think that the creation process is limited to type "1girl, big boobs, short skirt" and voilà, art. Or "write me a book about a guy like me with a harem of big boobed girls" and voilà, novel. Either they are out of touch with the tools available or they are demeaning the work of artists who used AI tools to help their creation process. There is a world between someone typing a single sentence prompt with low effort and someone using tools to recreate his minds' vision into a graphical or written form.

There might also be a disconnect about the definition of art. Some will say art must be made by a starving and tortured guy (Baudelaire, Van Gogh, Verlaine.;.) and therefore Beyoncé can't do art. Some will say the tool matter and a guy putting his hand in red clay then on his cave wall wasn't an artist. Other might say that the length of time acquiring the talent is paramount and conclure that AI users can't be artists because they didn't toil enough to do so. Other might say that art that is paid for isn't art, just a commercial product, thinking that what matters come from the soul of the artist, not the requirement of a company, and say ads can't be art.

Depending on your take on AI and the nature of the process involved, one might consider AI-tools are incompatible with art, much like some did consider that using computer-assisted tools like Photoshop wasn't/isn't art , or that photography can't be art because it's just "push the button on your smartphone whenever you want".

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

Plus, Adobe probably owns the licence because 90% of users didn't read the licensing terms.
IMHO, this poster emphasizes a paradoxical situation, where both the largest companies (who mostly do not do AI, but are large enough to finance it until it becomes profitable) and the "little people" are pushing for exactly the same solutions, because it will lead not to the tech not emerging, evolving and impacting greatly the "little people" way of life, but it will lead to the largest player to monopolize the technology, with exactly the same impact, but the revenue will be more concentrated in their hand and increase they price-setting power.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

But you will be able to make those directed changes, and soon. You can even do some of it now, with OpenAI's current tools. So it is evasive to just lean on "it's not here now" when we all know it will be, and soon.

OpenAI just implemented inpainting into Dall-E, but they are far from being the leaders in this. They are more laggards, because they cater to the "make pretty pictures quick" market, not people who have a specific image in mind and try to get it to physical/digital form.

I want to know from people that are planting flags in the ground what their line is.

I'd say a director is an artist, a caveman puting his muddy hand on the wall an artist if his intent was so (and not experimenting a slightly ahead-of-his-time biometric access control to his cave) and so on. As long as you make something in your mind, freely, and give it some form (which can be... nothing, the art piece Promenade is based on random visitors deambulating among objects, not objects themselves, but I wouldn't say the visitors create the art, but the one who imagined the concept, even if he didn't do anything actually).

I also understand that people could honestly say that Richard Serra isn't really an artist if his contribution was just to put a series of objectfs he didn't made in a room and told people to go in and say "that's my art". And there are precendent of bad reaction: the same artist created Tilted arc, with is a simple tilted arc of steel and put in the middle of a place. It wasn't random, as he had taken minutious care to analyze the path people would take in this square and he put it in the most inconvenient place, to force people to go around and prompt more human interaction this way. It was taken down some time later because lots of people failed to acknowledge this as art but saw just an impractical, ugly, rusty wall of steel. Well, no one is a prophet in his own land, I guess.

But even if his art wasn't well received, he is thought as the artist, despite not having cast the iron wall himself nor having put it there with his own hands:

So I'd say someone using a series of tools, irrespective of their nature, to make a specific image he wants to create into physical/digital form is an artists. Someone creating "any kind of image quickly to answer a need, like me when illustrating a scene for a campaign journal, where something roughly matching is enough" would be less so, same with someone making commissioned things, if their goal isn't to create something in their mind but something to your specification. Much like IP laws works with attributing copyright to the people creating the thing and the person commissionning it, depending on the level of involvement in the final result of the commision-paying person. If the commissioned is just executing the specification with absolutely no leeway for creative input, the copyright will belong to the person guiding the hand.

So for me the dividing line would be "whose creative input it is?" and not how the realization (if any) is done.

Additional question: who is the creator of the art that is a roleplay session in RPG store, using a commercial module? Are the players artists, and if they are not, why are theatrical actors artists?

Also, I'd be surprised if a commonly-agreed definition of what is art can be reached in this thread.

 

[overgeeked]

Billie Eilish, Robert Smith and more sign open letter warning against "predatory" use of AI in music

Billie Eilish, Stevie Wonder, R.E.M., Katy Perry and other musicians have signed an open letter calling for protection against AI in music.

www.nme.com

 

[overgeeked]

My point was that they are not the creator of art they didn’t make. Art director Fred shouldn't tell Maggie the painter "Paint me a troll with the art style and features the team agreed upon", then later, when Maggie is finished with her painting, go to her and say "Wow, that's the best art I've made yet. When you finish up, make sure to write Fred at the bottom instead of Maggie."

That doesn't mean Fred can't also create art, but that's beyond the scope of my post.

Exactly. It’s simple to understand.

Did you make the art? Then you’re the artist. Did you tell someone or something else to make the art for you? Then you’re not the artist.

 

[Scribe]

Exactly. It’s simple to understand.

Did you make the art? Then you’re the artist. Did you tell someone or something else to make the art for you? Then you’re not the artist.

It's like handing the owner the trophy first in the NFL, vs the players in the NHL.

 

[Reynard]

Exactly. It’s simple to understand.

Did you make the art? Then you’re the artist. Did you tell someone or something else to make the art for you? Then you’re not the artist.

Your view of this stuff is biased and without nuance. At least you are consistent.

The fact -- whether you like it or not -- is there is a continuum, and you consistently refuse to acknowledge the continuum.

What about this: a painter who has 10,000 pieces of work trains an AI on his own art entirely. He has Parkinson's now, and can't paint anymore. He tells his bespoke AI to paint a picture that he prompts, because it is what he would have painted could he do so.

Is he the artist of the result?