[avmich]

I mostly disagree.

> 1... The narrative/life of the artist becomes a lot more important.

When I watch a movie, I don't care about the artist's life. I care about character life, that's very different.

> 2... Originality matters more than ever. By design, these tools can only copy and mix things that already exist.

It's like you assigning to humans divine capabilities :) . Hyperbolizing a little, humans also only copy and mix - where do you think originality comes from? Granted, AI isn't at the level of humans yet, but they improve here.

> 4... It's not going to get better, because the lack of taste isn't a technical problem.

Engineers are in business of converting non-technical problems into technical ones. Just like AI now is way more capable than it was 20 years ago, and able to write interesting texts and make interesting pictures - something which at the time wasn't considered a technical problem - with time what we perceive as "taste" may likely improve.

> 5... Above all, AI art is uncool, which means it has no real future as a leading art form.

AI critics are for a long time mistaking the level with trend. Or, giving a comparison with SpaceX achievements, "you're currently here" - when there was a list of "first, get to the orbit, then we'll talk", "first, start regular payload deliveries to orbit, then we'll talk", "first, land the stage... send crewed capsule... do that in numbers..." and then, currently "first, send the Starship to orbit". "You're currently here" is the always existing point which isn't achieved at the moment and which gives to critics something to point to and mount the objection to the process as a whole, because, see, this particular thing isn't achieved yet.

You assume AI won't be able to make cool art with time. AI critics were shown time and time again to be underestimating the possibilities. Some people find it hard to learn in some particular topics.

[javier123454321]

> It's like you assigning to humans divine capabilities :)

I can't tell if you're being facetious. But being an embodied consciousness with the ability to create is as divine as it gets. We'd do well to remember.

[avaer]

> being an embodied consciousness with the ability to create is as divine as it gets

This is a very, very weak criterion for divinity. If this is truly it, we should prepare with great haste for the arrival of our artificial gods.

Because by this (IMO silly) metric it seems they will be more divine than us.

[slumberlust]

Not understanding how consciousness is created doesn't make it divine. Do you think it's an impossible task or just one we need more time to figure out?

[ACCount37]

It's kind of like the difference between something being enjoyable for you, and something being widely popular?

In a hypothetical world of "AI can produce a lot of extremely high quality art", you can easily find (or commission) AI art you would absolutely love. But it probably wouldn't be something that anyone else would find a lot of value in?

There will be no AI-generated Titanic. There will be many AI-generated movies that are as good as Titanic, but none will become as popular as Titanic did.

Because when AI has won art on quality and quantity both, and the quality of the work itself is no longer a differentiator against the sea of other high quality works? The "narrative/life of the artist" is a fallback path to popularity. You will need something that's not just "it's damn good art" - an external factor - to make it impactful, make it stick in the culture field.

Already a thing in many areas where the supply of art outpaces demand. Pop music, for example, is often as much about making sound as it is about manufacturing narratives around the artists. K-pop being an extreme version of the latter lean.

[empath75]

I think because art is usually so difficult to create that “popularity” is sort of an unstated metric that most people use to judge its quality, but ai can make disposable art for one person on demand and if doesn’t matter at all if anyone else sees it, let alone likes it.

If someone makes a dumb video that they got an AI to make of a panda surfing on mac and cheese, giggles and deletes it, that’s maybe good art? I don’t know. The scale they are able to produce stuff is unbelievable and changes a lot of assumptions you make about the way that world works.

The future isn’t watching TV, it’s talking to your tv show while it is created in real time based on your feedback.

[SpaceNoodled]

Was Titanic actually that good of a film? Perhaps I should watch it again now that almost three decades have passed.

[CryptoBanker]

> When I watch a movie, I don't care about the artist's life. I care about character life, that's very different.

I’m fairly certain the original comment was referring to instances where the artist is the character/primary subject.

[CWuestefeld]

I agree with everything you said, except that #1 is clearly wrong. I can prove it with one word: autotune.

At least in popular, mainstream culture, the viewer is heavily invested in the identity of the artist. The quality of the "art" is secondary. That's how we get music engineered by committee. And it's how we get paparazzi, People Magazine, and so forth.

On the other hand, this isn't anything new at all. We've had this kind of thing for decades. Real art still manages to survive at the margins.

[KPGv2]

All this being said, I think comparing the art market and popular music markets is foolish. 12yo boys aren't buying emerging mixed-media artists. But they are picking Spotify songs.

When I buy art, I have often spoken with the artist in the past couple days, or I am aware of their history and story and how they developed their art as a response to some other movement or artist collective.

It's rare for people to buy art just bc oil paints go brrrrrm

[oliyoung]

> When I watch a movie, I don't care about the artist's life.

And here we come back to the aged old "can you seperate an artist from their art" because I'd argue when you watch a movie you are watching a product of their life

[chii]

The artists life might've been highly affectual and shows in the art, but they doesn't mean the viewer cares about it - at best only so far as it makes the art more enjoyable.

[keiferski]

1. I meant artists writ large, not specifically movies. My point being that community management, PR, having a brand, etc. are becoming a key element of an individual artist’s career. Examples of this abound – see the recent Markiplier film as a case in point. That movie did well because Mark’s audience wanted to help him, not because it’s such an original genius concept for a movie.

But even then – people obviously go watch movies because they like the actor/director involved. It’s not really clear why anyone would care about an AI actor. People want to watch people, not imitations of them.

The rest of your comments seem to be summarized as “it has gotten better and therefore it will eventually solve all problems it has now.” Which may be true in a technical sense, but again this is not taste.

A technical company like Space X really has nothing to do with this conversation, and I think you missed my point about it being uncool. It’s not about critics, it’s about culture at large.

At this point I think identifying a work as AI-created makes people instantly devalue it. We are rapidly approaching the point where no one wants to admit something is AI-created, because it comes with negative perceptions.

Originality comes from humans experiencing the world and interacting with it. What AI tool is a living being interacting with the world? None, of course. Hence the constant generic slop images of Impressionism or some other already-existing art style.

Just look at the images in the link: this is the best they can do? A kangaroo at a cafe in Paris? Could anything be more devoid of good taste?

[vintermann]

> I meant artists writ large, not specifically movies. My point being that community management, PR, having a brand, etc.

This was always the case. Without an idea of what it is, no sound wave is going to register to a human as music. If you heard a violin for the first time and had no idea what it was, maybe you'd like the sound, maybe not, if you weren't used to it you might make up a theory of what it is and be fascinated by it.

But these days, if you hear something that sounds different, of course you will likely just assume oh, some AI made it, and that theory makes it less interesting, because then it makes no sense wondering what the person on the other side is trying to communicate, because there is no person on the other side.

Of course you can still be interested in for other reasons. Like you'd be interested, on seeing a bowed string, "how does it make a sound like that?" You might even find the sound enjoyable in itself, because of associations you for some reason get from it. But no sound is terribly enjoyable for long if it isn't interesting.

[gamerDude]

In response to having a community and building a brand. This is not necessarily human anymore. Most famous people are not someone you will actually meet. Plenty of people do meet them, but nowhere near the amount that composes their fans.

And we have AI generated influencers now, ex. https://www.instagram.com/imma.gram, so why wouldn't people care about an AI the same way they do about people they never meet?

[vunderba]

> At this point I think identifying a work as AI-created makes people instantly devalue it.

There was a study around this exact thing:

https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/study-gauges-h...

[avmich]

> Originality comes from humans experiencing the world and interacting with it. What AI tool is a living being interacting with the world? None, of course. Hence the constant generic slop images of Impressionism or some other already-existing art style.

I suspect here we have underlying disagreement regarding assumption that AI - in general, not necessarily today's models - isn't qualitatively different than human mind. The part "Originality comes from humans experiencing the world and interacting with it" isn't an accepted truth, and even today AIs do interact, in a limited sense, with the world - so "None, of course" is questionable. And even if so, concluding "Hence... slop..." seems like a jump in reasoning. For example, why don't you think this slop is more like child's early paintings? Just because today's AIs have limited means to learn in the process?

> I think you missed my point about it being uncool. It’s not about critics, it’s about culture at large.

What it is about culture at large? SpaceX analogy was brought to illustrate how much arguments about AI incapabilities are applicable today, but not necessarily tomorrow - just like arguments about SpaceX inability to reach a particular goal quite a few times turned out to be a matter of - not so long - time.

I agree that many AI results today can be uncool. But how do you know it's not passing the uncanny valley period? How can you know they can't be cool eventually?

> people obviously go watch movies because they like the actor/director involved. It’s not really clear why anyone would care about an AI actor.

Let me stretch a little to illustrate here. Imagine "personal" experiences of AI - making AIs unique. One of those AIs consistently produces good movies, which, if you're honestly don't judge by the authorship - are actually good. Yes, people may not care about non-existent AI actors, but they may still care about existent AI author :) . Do you think it's impossible?

> People want to watch people, not imitations of them.

How can you tell the difference? You're watching a movie with actors who are not familiar to you. Would you refuse to watch just for this reason? You just came to somebody's party, and here's a movie going on, and you watched it to the end, because it looked interesting, and you don't know anything about producers, actors etc. - you still can talk about the movie, will you be predominantly worried that it's "AI slop" even if it looks great? Suspiciously great maybe?

> The rest of your comments seem to be summarized as “it has gotten better and therefore it will eventually solve all problems it has now.” Which may be true in a technical sense, but again this is not taste.

It's hard to define taste, to be honest. People can definitely have different tastes, almost by definition. But more importantly - why do you think AI products may not have tastes?

> At this point I think identifying a work as AI-created makes people instantly devalue it. We are rapidly approaching the point where no one wants to admit something is AI-created, because it comes with negative perceptions.

Yes. But doesn't it look like a prejudice? Of course we can point to how many times we looked at it and didn't get some perceived value out of the work, and got annoyed that we spent time and efforts, but didn't get some results - but what if we'll mostly get results from AI works? Do you think that's impossible?

[rand_r]

> When I watch a movie, I don't care about the artist's life. I care about character life, that's very different.

It may seem like this, but up to now, you haven't been able to divorce a story from its creator because every story has an author, whether it's a novel like Harry Potter or a movie that has a writer and director. When you're experiencing the story, in the back of your mind, you always know that there is someone who created the story to tell you some kind of message. And so you can't experience something like a movie without trying to figure out what the actual message behind the movie was. It is always the implicit message behind the story that makes it valuable versus just the elements of the story.

The story has more weight because it is the distillation of somebody else's life and most likely, if it's a successful story or book, it is the most important lesson from that person's life and that's what makes it more valuable compared to the random generation of words from a computer.

The food analogy is that a cookie baked and given to you by a friend is going to taste far better than anything you buy in a store.

[krisoft]

> you can't experience something like a movie without trying to figure out what the actual message behind the movie was

I believe you that your brain works like that but this is absolutely not how mine works. I care if i enjoy the movie, and if the characters are believable, i absolutely do not care what the message is supposed to be.

[rahimnathwani]

"When you're experiencing the story, in the back of your mind, you always know that there is someone who created the story to tell you some kind of message."

I might know that, but I usually don't care.

[jplusequalt]

>Engineers are in business of converting non-technical problems into technical ones.

Art is not a problem to be solved.

[tmountain]

Art is a reaction to life. AI is thereby incapable of producing anything with any degree of authenticity unless it conveys the experience of being an agent to the world.

[wasabi991011]

> You assume AI won't be able to make cool art with time. AI critics were shown time and time again to be underestimating the possibilities. Some people find it hard to learn in some particular topics.

You misunderstand their point: it's not that AI can't make art that looks cool, it's that a portion of society (mostly artists but a certain amount of lay people) who consider the act of prompting AI for art to not have any cultural cache, or even to be socially distasteful.

[jacobriers]

> It's like you assigning to humans divine capabilities :) . Hyperbolizing a little, humans also only copy and mix - where do you think originality comes from? Granted, AI isn't at the level of humans yet, but they improve here.

I reckon we copy God - who is a creator - which means we're creators too - and our creations will copy us. But the created won't ever match the creator.

[michaelbuckbee]

Well, there are definitely people who care about the vision and style of movies from certain directors. It's not so much "story" like plot, but story in the sense of a "brand story" where there's recognizable elements in all the work, repeated themes, changes and decisions and evolution to how they approach things.

[imtringued]

>"You're currently here" is the always existing point which isn't achieved at the moment and which gives to critics something to point to and mount the objection to the process as a whole, because, see, this particular thing isn't achieved yet.

This is a contradiction that is so blatant I don't even know what language you're speaking. The definition of that phrase is the exact opposite of what you're saying.

"You're currently here" is the always existing point which is achieved at the moment.

>gives to critics something to point to and mount the objection to the process as a whole, because, see, this particular thing isn't achieved yet.

No it doesn't, because unless progress is reversed or undone, you can always point to your current success and say that the critics have been wrong so far. In fact, that's exactly the argument you're making here, which is why it's so weird that you're twisting it into its opposite.

If you want people to understand you, then you actually have to articulate what you're thinking instead of wrapping it in layers of euphemisms and hoping that the recipient nods along because they happen to agree for a completely irrelevant reason (e.g. "I like AI" or "I like space") to the argument presented.

[squidsoup]

> It's like you assigning to humans divine capabilities :) . Hyperbolizing a little, humans also only copy and mix - where do you think originality comes from? Granted, AI isn't at the level of humans yet, but they improve here.

Every human being is unique, both biologically and experientially. Until an AI can feel and have a lived experience, it can not create art.

[adventured]

There's nothing special about art re humans and it doesn't require feeling or lived experiences. That's an arbitrary wall you're putting up.

[selridge]

Will smith eating spaghetti is art, sorry.

[fauigerzigerk]

>It's like you assigning to humans divine capabilities :) . Hyperbolizing a little, humans also only copy and mix - where do you think originality comes from? Granted, AI isn't at the level of humans yet, but they improve here.

Humans do that a lot but it's not all we do. Go to a museum that has modern(ish) art. It's pretty incredibly how diverse the styles and ideas are. Of course it's not representative of anything. These works were collected and curated exactly because they are not average. But it's still something that humans made.

I think what people can do is have conceptual ideas and then follow the "logic" of those ideas to places they themselves have never seen or expected. Artists can observe patterns, ask how they work and why they have the effect they do and then deliberately break them.

I'm not sure current genAI models do these sorts of things.

[avmich]

> I'm not sure current genAI models do these sorts of things.

You might be right here. Two points though - first, we don't know if current AI is actually incapable of something in particular; we didn't find this, didn't prove it. Second, we might have a different AI approach, which would actually be capable of these things you mention. To me, it's way too early to dismiss AIs - at least in principle - regarding all of this.

[KPGv2]

> When I watch a movie, I don't care about the artist's life. I care about character life, that's very different.

The target audiences for art and film are not the same. The latter is far more pop culture. You can't apply them the same way, and the narrative of the artist has been extremely important for decades. People will watch slop movies. They don't pay $30K for slop art. They're paying that for historical importance or, if contemporary, artist narrative.

I'm in fandom spaces, and the prejudice against AI art is overwhelming. I also run in art collecting circles, being somewhat wealthy but not a billionaire. They also care about authenticity.

That is to say, the people who pay for original art, and participate in art spaces, are generally educated who actively hate AI. Filmgoers are probably a standard deviation lower in education, and are far more willing to part with the cost of one unit of consumption (a $10 ticket) than art buyers.

AI is a threat to graphic designers and those in their orbit.

The only way I see AI being a threat to professional artists is AI copies of their work. And AI isn't anything new there. I have a friend who gets commissioned by hotels to do one-off pieces for display all over the world. People have been making knockoff pieces of her style and selling them for at least a decade. And that's her lower margin, small pieces made for a couple thousand dollars to hang at your house, not her $100K+ pieces for hotels where they fly her out to supervise reassembly and mounting.

[selridge]

Yeah, those people love authenticity. They pay a lot for authentic Modiglianis.

[squidsoup]

> They don't pay $30K for slop art

I beg your pardon, but have you heard of Jeff Koons or Kaws?