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that post about the ai autofellatio problem or whatever its called was well-timed to show up on my dash because i was thinking about ai art on my drive home and that's part of it.
AI art generators give you what you ask for, in the most generic terms possible, and nothing more.
Looking at the process for creating AI art, it's a lot less like any other form of visual art, and a lot more like the actions of a patron describing a commission. At their most complex, they approach something like a comic book writer describing a scene to their artistic partner. Of course this writing is a form of art! It's the form of art I do most frequently! I describe myself as a writer more than an artist, but I feel like most AI artists would take offense to being called that.
Writing is a kind of art, of course, but saying "writer" first helps describe what part of the collaborative process I'm involved in. I describe concepts, visuals, and stories; and my partner interprets them, adds to them, and makes them real. I think AI art is missing the interpretation and addition. that's the most valuable part of the process. that's what makes it valuable to make collaborative visual art instead of just writing it and releasing it as prose.
AI gives you exactly what you ask for, and nothing more. if you ask for colonel sanders as mega man it will give you that in exactly the most generic way possible, mixing concepts of colonel sandersness with concepts of mega manness. a human artist will think about what it would mean for colonel sanders to be mega man (it would mean "haha thats funny," i imagine), and which concepts to mix specifically. what mega man design mixes the best with a 19th century poultry salesman? what art style enhances the humour most? even unconsciously, they add. maybe the way they draw hair is taken from an old, half-remembered anime. ai can't add those things, that aren't related directly to mega manness or colonel sanderness. even those that are, like which mega man design to choose, it wont pick unless you tell it to. instead, itll give you a generic mixture of all of them. the mean design, but not one that was ever real. And now, that generic recreation gets added to the data pool of mega men, further genericizing future works.
I just can't understand why. Why would you want to get rid of the human, except to cut costs? It makes it all so much worse in the end. And I won't act like I can always tell the difference - sure, they tend to not do hands, partially because they don't understand the mechanics behind them, but in some fields its impossible to tell - but once I do know, it all feels worthless. I can't wonder anymore what the artist thought when deciding this element would go here instead of there, because they didn't decide it. I can't feel the passion from the way they move their brushstroke, because they didn't. It isn't their creation. Their creation is the hidden prompt, and the AI artwork is just the least creative interpretation of that prompt. Why not just give me the prompt? My imagination can fill in the rest, and our connection would be stronger for it. Why not work with a human artist, who can make your prompt more than it was, raise it even higher through the strength of their own experiences? If you don't want to connect with others, do you even really want art?
