[iansteyn]

This post makes me wonder - does anyone else think there is a need for a term to more strongly differentiate between procedural generation (like this knot-drawing program) and genAI? I feel it really diminishes the impact of the work of programmer-artists nowadays to say they make “computer-generated” art. Or maybe we already have such a term?

[vlz]

There is algorithmic art:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithmic_art

> From one point of view, for a work of art to be considered algorithmic art, its creation must include a process based on an algorithm devised by the artist. An artist may also select parameters and interact as the composition is generated. Here, an algorithm is simply a detailed recipe for the design and possibly execution of an artwork […]

Creating art by AI certainly also uses an algorithm to some extent but it cannot be said to have devised that algorithm and arguably also not to clearly define all parameters to the algorithm.

[jonahx]

I instinctively agree there is an important difference.

If you try to define systematically what that difference is, though, it's not obvious. At the end of day, I think it's something like "degree of difficulty" or "amount of thought", which are vague concepts. Yet most would agree what the author here did requires more skill and thinking than typing "image of celtic knot" into Gemini.

[marssaxman]

I used to work on procedural graphics, and to me the clear difference is that all the training involved happened inside my brain. This author's article describes a similar process. He's not throwing a lot of existing examples into a black box, letting it learn their features, then driving it to emit new images with similar features: he is learning, himself, what those features are, inventing a process which fits those bounds, then automating it with code.

[NoboruWataya]

Is "procedural generation" not exactly that? I wouldn't think of genAI when I hear that term.

[iansteyn]

Yeah fair enough. I don’t think of genAI either when I hear “procedural generation” (or CGI - “Computer Generated Imagery” - for that matter). But the word “generate” has taken on new significance for the broader public now and I’m not sure that non-technical folks know the difference.