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DPChallenge Forums >> General Discussion >> Is it an Art to Create Images With AI?
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05/10/2023 11:11:46 AM · #1
I decided to create a new thread, as this topic is coming up in multiple threads.

To answer this question, it's important to address certain terms which are overlapping and getting confused with each other.

The ones I want to highlight are "talent", "skill", and "art"

When we say "talent," we imply a certain innate ability, whereas when we say "skill" we imply that it is something that can be learned with hard work. There's no hard and fast distinction between the two words. A lot of the difference is emotional.

If I say it is a "skill" to create good images with AI, that might be easy for you to accept. You might imagine someone spending hours crafting their image descriptions.

But if I say it is a "talent" to create good images with AI, that might be harder to accept, because now you are thinking about the human spark of creativity, human talents like a "good eye" and the timing needed to catch that decisive moment.

The only real difference between the two above statements is a narrative of humanity in your own head. This shifts over time. It used to be that clicking a button was considered mechanical and inhuman, compared to the embodied arm movements of the painter, the illusion that the painter was creating something from nothing.

Another implication of "skill," however, is "skilled labor." In other words, you are good at something so you get paid for it. If you are a professional photographer, then yes, you should be scared. We are already at a point where companies are using AI to create stock images. Already there! At this early stage! Who would have guessed that photographers would be replaced before truck drivers? Not me.

But what about that level above stock photography? Well, if you want to document something, you still need a photographer. And a lot of professional photography is for that reason. But if you just want really good looking images unique to a specific purpose, AI is coming for that market as well. And maybe there will be a career for people who talk to AI and get it to create great images, and maybe that will be a completely different skill set than photo and photoshop. We'll see. Who knows the pay grade or difficulty? Nobody knows yet, or how much that will change. All I know is that AI is coming for you people who've trained so hard and long at lighting/set up/camera settings, etc. Sorry about that. It happens over and over in history.

Finally, the thing I really want to talk about, Art. Is it Art to talk to AI and pull images from it? The answer is the same as it's always been. It's Art if you say it is. Art is a personal journey that you take to express what you need to express. You might argue that the AI is making too many of the decisions about the details of the image. Sure, that's an argument. It could become a problem. It could get in the way of you really expressing yourself. These are concerns every artist has in every art form. Am I pursuing something authentic, something meaningful? You will have to decide that for yourself. You are the Artist. The audience will decide which artists they like. There is already an audience for AI images. This is the same audience for polished DPC blue ribbon winners. Enjoy your eye candy! That being said, I don't doubt that AI will soon enough create posthumous ribbon winners if it hasn't already. That doesn't scare me. Or should I say, everything scares me anyway. It's always scary to look at a new image and open myself to it and decide if I care about it or not. Every time, I have to question everything again... what is art, what is photography, does anything matter... it's very similar to the difficulties with Modern Art, where a trash can left by a janitor might be mistaken for a brilliant new piece of conceptual art. It's a difficulty that makes you question genius, spirit, humanity itself. Art is a deep hole if you let yourself tumble into it. Good luck, everybody.

Message edited by author 2023-05-10 11:14:57.
05/10/2023 12:00:42 PM · #2
I view image creation with AI as similar to creating a collage from existing images, or creating a song using audio samples, but without attribution (or payment) to the sources.
05/10/2023 12:02:11 PM · #3
I haven't read the other AI threads, so I apologize if some of these thoughts have already been shared, but, for me, there's always been a direct connection between art and the artist. This may be a trained belief through visits to museums, reading literature, listening to music, etc., but all of this art (well, almost all) is attributed to someone or a collective, and it's that personal connection that, again, to me, makes a world of difference.

I work in publishing, so my greatest concern with AI is plagiarism and outright theft, co-opting words that shouldn't belong to anyone. This, of course, has already been happening with great frequency at universities and elsewhere, but it's especially troubling when it's used for longer works of fiction and nonfiction that have supposedly been created by real people.

So I guess my greatest concern is not that photos or words or scores are being generated by AI but that there are people taking credit for them as artists. It's incredibly disingenuous and soulless.
05/10/2023 12:27:53 PM · #4
“Everything in life is art. If I call it art, it’s art; or if I hang it in a museum, it’s art.”
Marcel Duchamp
05/10/2023 01:28:38 PM · #5
Originally posted by bohemka:

it's that personal connection that, again, to me, makes a world of difference.


Originally posted by posthumous:

This shifts over time. It used to be that clicking a button was considered mechanical and inhuman, compared to the embodied arm movements of the painter, the illusion that the painter was creating something from nothing.
05/10/2023 01:43:32 PM · #6
Art, skill, Duchamp, photography, stock photography....a game of pebbles on our playing site.

Pandora's box is opened again; technology unleashed another existential and moral dilemma.

AI has been tasted - too late, we can't go back
05/10/2023 05:17:37 PM · #7
Pandora's box indeed. Tread softly.
01/02/2024 06:50:33 AM · #8
Originally posted by posthumous:

I decided to create a new thread, as this topic is coming up in multiple threads.

To answer this question, it's important to address certain terms which are overlapping and getting confused with each other.

The ones I want to highlight are "talent", "skill", and "art"

When we say "talent," we imply a certain innate ability, whereas when we say "skill" we imply that it is something that can be learned with hard work. There's no hard and fast distinction between the two words. A lot of the difference is emotional.

If I say it is a "skill" to create good images with AI, that might be easy for you to accept. You might imagine someone spending hours crafting their image descriptions.

But if I say it is a "talent" to create good images with AI, that might be harder to accept, because now you are thinking about the human spark of creativity, human talents like a "good eye" and the timing needed to catch that decisive moment.

The only real difference between the two above statements is a narrative of humanity in your own head. This shifts over time. It used to be that clicking a button was considered mechanical and inhuman, compared to the embodied arm movements of the painter, the illusion that the painter was creating something from nothing.

Another implication of "skill," however, is "skilled labor." In other words, you are good at something so you get paid for it. If you are a professional photographer, then yes, you should be scared. We are already at a point where companies are using AI to create stock images. Already there! At this early stage! Who would have guessed that photographers would be replaced before truck drivers? Not me.

But what about that level above stock photography? Well, if you want to document something, you still need a photographer. And a lot of professional photography is for that reason. But if you just want really good looking images unique to a specific purpose, AI is coming for that market as well. And maybe there will be a career for people who talk to AI and get it to create great images, and maybe that will be a completely different skill set than photo and photoshop. We'll see. Who knows the pay grade or difficulty? Nobody knows yet, or how much that will change. All I know is that AI is coming for you people who've trained so hard and long at lighting/set up/camera settings, etc. Sorry about that. It happens over and over in history.

Finally, the thing I really want to talk about, Art. Is it Art to talk to AI and pull images from it? The answer is the same as it's always been. It's Art if you say it is. Art is a personal journey that you take to express what you need to express. You might argue that the AI is making too many of the decisions about the details of the image. Sure, that's an argument. It could become a problem. It could get in the way of you really expressing yourself. These are concerns every artist has in every art form. Am I pursuing something authentic, something meaningful? You will have to decide that for yourself. You are the Artist. The audience will decide which artists they like. There is already an audience for AI images. This is the same audience for polished DPC blue ribbon winners. Enjoy your eye candy! That being said, I don't doubt that AI will soon enough create posthumous ribbon winners if it hasn't already. That doesn't scare me. Or should I say, everything scares me anyway. It's always scary to look at a new image and open myself to it and decide if I care about it or not. Every time, I have to question everything again... what is art, what is photography, does anything matter... it's very similar to the difficulties with Modern Art, where a trash can left by a janitor might be mistaken for a brilliant new piece of conceptual art. It's a difficulty that makes you question genius, spirit, humanity itself. Art is a deep hole if you let yourself tumble into it. Good luck, everybody.


Crafting prompts for AI software might be considered an art form, but labeling AI-generated images as art is a different story. In my view, photography and fine art provide more fitting definitions of what truly constitutes art.
01/02/2024 07:43:46 AM · #9
Originally posted by victoriaperry:


Crafting prompts for AI software might be considered an art form, but labeling AI-generated images as art is a different story. In my view, photography and fine art provide more fitting definitions of what truly constitutes art.

Hmm. This reads like a piece of AI generated text as well (based on Google results of segmented phrases). :-)
01/02/2024 08:58:09 PM · #10
Originally posted by tnun:

Pandora's box indeed. Tread softly.


One of my mentors 30 years after my first SLR was a graphic designer. Photoshop was designed for his profession. I watched him work. Let’s just pretend for a moment that AI is just part of that profession’s toolbox. Skill? Oh hell yes. Incorporating the pieces into (dare I say art?) is one hell of a lot of work and to pull it off takes way more than simply telling software what to do. Note: I didn’t say this is photography.
01/03/2024 02:32:07 AM · #11
Well, I dabble a little in Midjourney (AI) (far too little to be any good I can tell you).
So here are my random thoughts on whether this is art.
The person firstly needs a vision, an idea. Then they need the skill to tell the AI what they envision. At this point, working purely with AI I get frustrated, because my prompting skills are not very good. While I may get the main subject and the general setting, to get it where and how I want it exactly usually doesn't happen. So I bring it into PS anyway and finish it to how I envisioned it in the first place.
My point is that an artist, whether painter or photographer, or AI artist (or any other artist of course), has to have the idea, the concept first and then use whatever tool they happen to be working with to create their vision. If you don't have the vision, no matter how skillful you are, your work will at best be "blah". If you don't have the skill to use your tool(s), no matter how visionary you are, your work will also be "blah".

On occasion, when I use AI created images I like using backgrounds, because I am a lazy photographer and am not good at creating/setting up elaborate backgrounds. I also like using AI to get inspiration for lighting. I then go and try to recreate the light in PS using my own images. But that is just me, and as I said I am really not good at giving prompts, so I am "stuck" at that rudimentary level of AI generated images for the time being.
https://web.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10228382616662835&set=a.1230985907108 My dog photographed on a red floor/BG so it was easy to blend her into the AI image. Everything else generated with AI. I knew what I wanted, this was for a FB post, I certainly wasn't going to spend hours creating that in PS, not to mention the fact that I wouldn't know where to source such a chair :-D.

Message edited by author 2024-01-03 02:33:59.
01/03/2024 04:40:58 PM · #12
All good replies and all very valid. I did a quick query and came up with the following:

What is the difference between AI art and art?
AI art and human art both have their own unique characteristics that differentiate them. AI art is created using algorithms, mathematical equations, and machine learning, while human art is created using intuition, personal experiences, and emotional expression.
I think in time we'll come to accept and work with AI much in the same way we adjusted to the World Wide Web. Twenty years ago did we think we'd be using iPhones and drones to photograph our DPChallenge entries?
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