there's only seven stories in the world
There isn't. That's a completely nonsensical statement, no serious scholar of litearture/film/etc. would claim something of the sort. While there have been attempts to analyse the "basic" stories and narrative structures (Propp's model of fairy tales, Greimas' actantial model, Campbell's well-known hero's journey), they're all far from universally applicable or satisfying.
there's only seven stories in the world
This, to me, sounds like the opinion of someone who doesn't read for entertainment. No, manga does not count.
If your only exposure to stories are TV shows and movies... yeah it's gonna seem like there aren't very many types of stories.
I remember when photoshop became widely available and the art community collectively declared it the death of art. To put the techniques of master artists in the hand of anyone who can use a mouse would put the painter out of business. I watched as the news fumed and fired over delinquents photoshopping celebrity nudes, declaring that we'll never be able to trust a photo again. I saw the cynical ire of views as the same news shopped magazine images for the vanity of their guests and the support of their political views. Now, the dust long settled, photoshop is taught in schools and used by designer globally. Photo manipulation is so prevalent that you probably don't realize your phone camera is preprogrammed to cover your zits and remove your loose hairs. It's a feature you have to actively turn off. The masters of their craft are still masters, the need for a painted canvas never went away. We laugh at obvious shop jobs in the news, and even our out of touch representatives know when am image is fake.
The world, as it seems, has enough room for a new tool. As it did again with digital photography, the death of the real photographers. As it did with 3D printing, the death of the real sculptors and carvers. As it did with synth music, the death of the real musician. When the dust settles on AI, the artist will be there to load their portfolio into the trainer and prompt out a dozen raw ideas before picking the composition they feel is right and shaping it anew. The craft will not die. The world will hate the next advancement, and the cycle will repeat.
When it comes to AI art, the Photoshop/invention of the camera argument doesn't really compare because there's really 2 or 3 things people are actually upset about, and it's not the tool itself. It's the way the data is sourced, the people who are using it/what they're using it for, and the lack of meaning behind the art.
As somebody said elsewhere in here, sampling for music is done from pre-made content explicitly for use as samples or used under license. AI art generators do neither. They fill their data sets with art used without permission and no licensing, and given the right prompting, you can get them to spit out that data verbatim.
This compounds into the next issue, the people using it, and more specifically, how those people are using it. If it was being used as a tool to help make the creation process more efficient or easier, that would be one thing. But it's largely being used by people to replace the artist and people who think that being able to prompt an image and use it unedited makes them just as good an artist as anybody working by hand, stylus, etc. They're "idea" guys, who care nothing for the process and only the output (and how much that output is gonna cost). But anybody can be an "idea" guy, it's the work and knowledge that makes the difference between having an idea for a game and releasing a game on Steam. To the creative, creating art (regardless of the kind - music, painting, stories, whatever) is as much about the work as it is the final piece. It's how they process life, the same as dreaming at night. AI bros are the middle managers of the art world - taking credit for the work of others while thinking that their input is the most important part.
And for the last point, as Adam Savage said on why he doesn't like AI art (besides the late-stage capitalism bubble of it putting people out of work), "They lack, I think they lack a point of view. I think that's my issue with all the AI generated art that I can see is...the only reason I'm interested in looking at something that got made is because that thing that got made was made with a point of view. The thing itself is not as interesting to me as the mind and heart behind the thing and I have yet to see in AI...I have yet to smell what smells like a point of view." He later goes on to talk about how at some point a student film will come out that does something really cool with AI (and then Hollywood will copy it into the ground until it's stale and boring). But we are not at that point yet. AI art is just Content. In the same way that corporate music is Content. Shallow and vapid and meaningless. Like having a machine that spits out elevator music. It may be very well done elevator music on a technical level, but it's still just elevator music. You can take that elevator music and do something cool with it (like Vaporwave), but on its own, it exists merely for the sake of existing. It doesn't tell a story or make a statement. It doesn't have any context.
To quote Bennett Foddy in one of the most rage inducing games of the past decade, "For years now, people have been predicting that games would soon be made out of prefabricated objects, bought in a store and assembled into a world. And for the most part that hasn't happened, because the objects in the store are trash. I don't mean that they look bad or that they're badly made, although a lot of them are - I mean that they're trash in the way that food becomes trash as soon as you put it in a sink. Things are made to be consumed in a certain context, and once the moment is gone, they transform into garbage. In the context of technology, those moments pass by in seconds. Over time, we've poured more and more refuse into this vast digital landfill that we call the internet. It now vastly outweighs the things that are fresh, untainted and unused. When everything around us is cultural trash, trash becomes the new medium, the lingua franca of the digital age. You could build culture out of trash, but only trash culture. B-games, B-movies, B-music, B-philosophy."
That is precisely it. Generative AI is a tool, just like a digital canvas over a physical canvas, just like a canvas over a cave wall. As it has always been, the ones best prepared to adapt to this new tool are the artists. Instead of fighting the tool, we need to learn how to best use it. No AI, short of a true General Intelligence, will ever be able to make the decisions inherent to illustration, but it can get you close enough to the final vision so as to skip the labor intensive part.
On this topic, I am optimistic on how generative AI has made us collectively more negative to shallow content. Be it lazy copypaste journalism with some phrases swapped or school testing schemes based on regurgitating facts rather than understanding, none of which have value and both of which displace work with value, we have basically tolerated it.
But now that a rock with some current run through it can pass those tests and do that journalism, we are demanding better.
Fingers crossed it causes some positive in the mess.
Exactly
I hope it has same effect than mechanization for menial work. It raises the bar for what people expect other people to do.
Long term it helps reach a utopia, short term there will be a lot of people impacted by it.
Honestly I think AI will actually make a really cool tool for a lot of artists. They'll be able to do things like focus on the core subject of the image and tell the ai to just put some grass over in that corner there and maybe a butterfly or something... nah a blue butterfly specifically so it goes with the models eyes. Or to help fill in minor NPCs in a video game or make the textures for the inside of openable crates. The part the big execs don't understand is that you still need a human with a genuine and interesting idea. The AI is just the polish, and a polished turd is still a turd. And there will of course still be some kind of demand for media with the kind of attention to detail where every flower petal is hand painted. People still buy bespoke ~~handbags and jeans and teapots and-~~ literally anything.
To me the important part is making sure it's a public resource. The cat is out of the bag and they're not gonna stop. To me the most important thing now is making sure it's something everyone has access to. A coworker also recently pointed out that making sure everyone has access to it means everyone knowing how it works. A lot of people are acting like this is some horrible evil thing to exist, but I would like to present the idea that it could be just as horrible and evil AND completely within the knowledge and under the control of the bourgeoisie.
We have to deal now with periods of crap content, until people will fatigue and became aware of the shitty ai things made for quick bucks.
Yeah, I just noticed that with generated music getting better I feel more demanding towards the music I listen to.
Not the same thing, dog. Being inspired by other things is different than plagiarism.
And yet so many of the debates around this new formation of media and creativity come down to the grey space between what is inspiration and what is plagiarism.
Even if everyone agreed with your point, and I think broadly they do, it doesn't settle the debate.
This sounds like the kind of shit you'd hear in that "defending AI art" community on Reddit or whatever. A bunch of people bitching that their prompts aren't being treated equally to traditional art made by humans.
Make your own fucking AI art galleries if you're so desperate for validation.
Also, this argument reeks of "I found x instances of derivative art today. That must mean there's no original art in the world anymore".
Miss me with that shit.
Sir this is a meme community
That’s a weird take. I’d say pretty much everything from impressionism onwards has (if only as a secondary goal) been trying to poke holes in any firm definition of what art is or is not.
Now if we’re talking about just turning a thorough spec sheet into a finished artifact with no input from the laborer, I can see where you’re coming from. But you referenced the “only seven stories” trope, so I think your argument is more broad than that.
I guess what it comes down to is: When you see something like Into The Spiderverse, do you think of it as a cynical Spiderman rehash where they changed just enough to sell it again, or do you think of it as a rebuttal to previous Spiderman stories that incorporates new cultural context and viewpoints vastly different from before?
Cuz like… AI can rehash something, but it can’t synthesize a reaction to something based on your entire unique lived experience. And I think that’s one of the things that we value about art. It can give a window into someone else’s inner world. AI can pretend to do that, but it’s a bit like pseudo-profound bullshit.
What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.
Ecclesiastes 1:9 (written at least 2200 years ago)
Heh. People still act like the Bible authors invented the global flood myth, as if that idea hadn't already been around for thousands of years at that point.
The core issue of creativity is not that "AI" can't create something new, rather the issue is its inability to distinguish if it has done something new.
Literal Example:
You receive a pre-written response baked into the weights to prevent abuse.
What is wrong with this picture? Not the picture the "AI" made, but this scenario I posit.
Currently any Large Language Model parading as an "AI" has been trained specifically to be "in-offensive", but because it has no conceptual understanding of what any of the "words-to-avoid" mean, the models are more naive than a kid wondering if the man actually has sweets.
the difference between a genius and regular artist is knowing which of their own works to keep or throw away
-someone
FTFY: 1000 years.
This Creativity-Detraction fetish must be studied...
So which story is Jesus on the cross in a jar of piss?
I'm guessing #1, but this sounds like a load of #2, so...
