this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2024
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How far does the artist have to be removed from the art before they're no longer considered an artist?
Is it even meaningful to ask if something is art, when anything can be art and art is subjective? It seems more important to ask who a given tool is helping.
I'm not suggesting that the director has full responsibility for the art. They are part of a team, and the creative style of a director heavily influences the finished product. You can tell who directed a movie just by watching it. There are very important creative decisions and directions that point the team of more specialized artists in the right direction.
This is not analogous to AI art. That would be like the director of a movie telling a team of interns to cut together clips of other movies as best they see fit, within a general outline of the script. A person using AI to generate art isn't part of the creative process in the same way; they tell a machine what to do, and decide whether to rerun or tweak the prompt after seeing the result. This takes some small modicum of creativity, but it isn't creating art. It's fine for fun, or to use as a stand in tool, or to mock-up designs, but it will never have the creative direction of a human being, or stand on the same level with true masters, regardless of how well it can copy their style. It can't understand the art.
Directing is an art form of its own. The cinematography, the pacing, the set design, acting, and so much more is all influenced by the director's decisions. It would be like saying a conductor or a music producer isn't an artist. Easy to say if you don't have an understanding of the art form, but dead wrong. There are a ton of creative choices at all levels made by directors, and there's a reason we've been using them in one way or another since we first started performance art. I've worked under and beside directors in the past, and I have only the utmost respect for what a good director can do for the art.
A bad director however... I might agree with you.
This still seems very analogous to me.
For example, when you say
Replace "machine" with "film crew", "rerun" with "do another take", and "tweak the prompt" with "provide notes". If they're giving notes to a computer or a person doesn't really change the nature of their work, only the language they use to provide those notes.
Just like there are bad directors, there are bad AI artists.
And just like I'm sure there was a surge of bad directors when digital video made lowered the skill and cost bar to film making (see: YouTube), so to is there a surge of bad "artists" now that AI has lowered the skill and cost bar for aesthetic image creation.
I don't think that some AI art produced by some random idiot is really art, just like I don't think that making a backyard YouTube video makes you a director. But I don't want to automatically discount something as art just because it was fully or partially made using AI.
But like I said, I don't actually think this is an important question. If something is art is a question that everyone has to answer individually, and there will simply be no demand for things that people don't view as art.
Instead the question is about who does AI help? Does it help people who might otherwise be unable to bring their creative ideas/vision to life? Or does it help a bunch of corporate overlords lay off a bunch of creative staff so that they can get big bonuses and pay their shareholders big dividends?
If you think that this:
is what a director does? You have no clue what you're talking about. They're far more involved in the creative process on every level than you understand.
Your question about who AI helps is a valid one. I agree that that's what's important about AI use. I use AI in my work, but not to replace human beings, but as a tool to make easy mock ups or test ideas. I find trying to replace human creativity in a way that replaces jobs or the human spark that makes art, art, abhorrent. AI art cannot exist without humans to train on, so humans cannot be fully replaced, but I hope to never see a day where AI takes the positions of well compensated artists leeching off the work of unpaid or underpaid humans.
I mean, I was reductive wrt what a director does in the same way that you're reductive about what crafting a prompt involves. Do I think they involve the same level of effort? Absolutely not, directing is at a way larger scope and scale. But it's a matter of degree rather than kind. They're involved with the creative process at a remove, by providing instruction to others so that they may change the end result to fit what the director (prompter) envisions.
I think we have a powerful new tool, and in the hands of artists it will make art, and in the hands of the laypeople it will make soulless images devoid of meaning. The power of this tool has simply attracted a lot of laypeople because it gives them access to something they never had before, and as a result we get a flood of non-art.
But I think we agree wrt the ethics, which is by far the more important discussion.