The virtues of A.I. art

[LargoKitt]

In my opinion, one should not generalize categories and then judge about them. One should examine the rules of the game, gather knowledge around the subject, and then examine the future perspectives of the field. Ai is as good or bad as the prompts you type in, and there are thousands of new LLMs every Month, and each differs in its abilities and specifications. AI is yet at the very beginning of its existence, and if you carefully craft your prompt and learn by the way others shape visuality with language, then you will perceive: AI can be art. AI usually does not mean that you simply press a button and mutually generate an ugly image, but it rather means to carefully select your context, your perspectives, your references to artist, designer and scenery. It means, for example, to describe an image with words, optimize the prompt manually and then tell the AI it should first optimize, then convert the text to a JSON prompt for a visual AI. It is also possible to finetune the prompt with the parameters given in the JSON section.
I did not use AI so far for erotic images, but in my opinion the possibilities are already pretty widespread in the field and will induce branches like an eternally growing tree. I also love to paint with oil colors and I draw a lot and I love handwriting concepts, stories and fantasies.
What my core concerns are : Sex displayed with mere visuality lacks the feelings of the real thing, although the future might have some methodical turns ....
erotic greetings
tantrablack

There's a difference between art which has an erotic element and images of sexy scenes made to arouse us. Of course the two can overlap, but my OP is trying to make the point that if you are looking for erotic images then A.I. is an easy way to provide them. Don't pay for them.

 

[Husky_Embrace]

In my opinion, one should not generalize categories and then judge about them. One should examine the rules of the game, gather knowledge around the subject, and then examine the future perspectives of the field. Ai is as good or bad as the prompts you type in, and there are thousands of new LLMs every Month, and each differs in its abilities and specifications. AI is yet at the very beginning of its existence, and if you carefully craft your prompt and learn by the way others shape visuality with language, then you will perceive: AI can be art. AI usually does not mean that you simply press a button and mutually generate an ugly image, but it rather means to carefully select your context, your perspectives, your references to artist, designer and scenery. It means, for example, to describe an image with words, optimize the prompt manually and then tell the AI it should first optimize, then convert the text to a JSON prompt for a visual AI. It is also possible to finetune the prompt with the parameters given in the JSON section.
I did not use AI so far for erotic images, but in my opinion the possibilities are already pretty widespread in the field and will induce branches like an eternally growing tree. I also love to paint with oil colors and I draw a lot and I love handwriting concepts, stories and fantasies.
What my core concerns are : Sex displayed with mere visuality lacks the feelings of the real thing, although the future might have some methodical turns ....
erotic greetings
tantrablack

I was a Beta tester for DALL•E, now flaccidly incorporated into chatgpt. I understand what you mean. That picture generation had potential. There was a feature called inpainting/outpainting that allowed you to update parts of an image, or extend images. You could for example grab two images, set them apart, and have the AI fill in the rest. If they had build that out, you could create true art. On the iteration of parts you could create something new.

That being said, I got dissatisfied with it. The secondary reason was because it took the prompt from you in later iterations. It became a generic, highly stylised picture generator.

The primary reasons were much larger though. They just took art of others, dumped it into the learning machine, and have you pay for it while the artist gets nothing. It is plagiarism and theft. If they would buy the rights, or create their own to feed the algorithm, it would be fine. The other is cost. They form technology around them, driving up prices of tech, power and water, just so people can make 30 different pictures of a corgi balanced on a ball.

AI has many great applications. In research, in medicine. Did you know it solved enzyme folding? If applied correctly it is amazing!

LLM aren't it. They are unapologetic in their theft and cost to society. If they allowed AI to make porn at large scale it would be propelled to new heights, until they Grok it up and people realise that it might not be the technology we're hoping for.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I sometimes see a kind of "Turing test" attitude in these discussions: if you can't distinguish between the work of a human artist and the work of generative AI, then you have to accept the latter as art, right? But that misses the point.

I like to hear the sound of my cat purring. Now, there are websites that will simulate that sound, and if you optimise the prompts tinker with the settings enough, you could probably get it to sound enough like my own cat that I couldn't tell the difference.

But the reason I like hearing my cat purr isn't because I have some need for my eardrums to be vibrated at 50 Hz or whatever. It's because it's making some kind of link between me and another living creature and what that creature is feeling. It's the closest we get to telepathy. When my cat purrs, that sound lets me share in her happiness, and that's why it matters.

I have read words written over two thousand years ago that brought me to tears, because they made a kind of connection to somebody who was feeling emotions that I too have felt. A LLM could put words together to say a similar thing, and maybe if I was deceived as to the origin of those words it could make me cry. But it's not a real connection to a real person.

I work for a business that's spread across multiple offices with a bunch of people working from home, so when somebody leaves/has a baby/etc. it's not practical to take a card around and get everybody to write a message. Instead, they'll do an e-card so everybody can write their message from wherever they are. Just recently, our e-card site added a new feature: instead of writing your own words, you can just get generative AI to write a message and sign your name to it.

Can a LLM write a message faster than I could? Can it write something that feels like something I'd write? Sure. I suck at thinking of original things to say. But if I delegate that to a LLM, I've missed the entire point of writing a farewell message. At that point I might as well use my own LLM to read the card and formulate responses, and at that point why bother doing it at all?

That's how I feel about 99.9% of AI-generated "art". There are a few people out there who use generative AI as a kind of technical tool, in the same kind of way that another artist might use a brush pattern, and I'm willing to acknowledge those folk as genuine artists (without erasing the ethical issues associated with generative AI). But to me, the origin of the art does matter.

 

[TheExperimentalist]

I sometimes see a kind of "Turing test" attitude in these discussions: if you can't distinguish between the work of a human artist and the work of generative AI, then you have to accept the latter as art, right? But that misses the point.

I like to hear the sound of my cat purring. Now, there are websites that will simulate that sound, and if you optimise the prompts tinker with the settings enough, you could probably get it to sound enough like my own cat that I couldn't tell the difference.

But the reason I like hearing my cat purr isn't because I have some need for my eardrums to be vibrated at 50 Hz or whatever. It's because it's making some kind of link between me and another living creature and what that creature is feeling. It's the closest we get to telepathy. When my cat purrs, that sound lets me share in her happiness, and that's why it matters.

I have read words written over two thousand years ago that brought me to tears, because they made a kind of connection to somebody who was feeling emotions that I too have felt. A LLM could put words together to say a similar thing, and maybe if I was deceived as to the origin of those words it could make me cry. But it's not a real connection to a real person.

I work for a business that's spread across multiple offices with a bunch of people working from home, so when somebody leaves/has a baby/etc. it's not practical to take a card around and get everybody to write a message. Instead, they'll do an e-card so everybody can write their message from wherever they are. Just recently, our e-card site added a new feature: instead of writing your own words, you can just get generative AI to write a message and sign your name to it.

Can a LLM write a message faster than I could? Can it write something that feels like something I'd write? Sure. I suck at thinking of original things to say. But if I delegate that to a LLM, I've missed the entire point of writing a farewell message. At that point I might as well use my own LLM to read the card and formulate responses, and at that point why bother doing it at all?

That's how I feel about 99.9% of AI-generated "art". There are a few people out there who use generative AI as a kind of technical tool, in the same kind of way that another artist might use a brush pattern, and I'm willing to acknowledge those folk as genuine artists (without erasing the ethical issues associated with generative AI). But to me, the origin of the art does matter.

This, exactly. It's the dehumanization. The depersonalization. The degradation of genuine human connection, which was already happening with technology and social media and clickbait and artificial engagement and parasocial interaction... but it's been accelerated a thousand times by AI. There's no heart, no soul, just machines regurgitating words that have been said a thousand times before, and will be said a thousand times more. Mathematical averages in place of feeling. A statistical model of human spirit.

And yes, maybe it proves that most humans are mostly predictable most of the time. To me, that's not uncomfortable. It just means that our feelings, thoughts, and ideas are far more similar than they are different. Those similarities give us unity. The differences give us beauty. It's worth expressing that beauty, and connecting to that beauty in someone else. A machine can't replace that.

 

[ZinJ]

I started off liking generating AI art but now with the fact that it's just seems to be copy/pasting things, it's actually made me want to get into creating my own art. AI art just can't do certain things (not yet anyways). AI should just be info gathering and that's it.

 

[ZinJ]

This, exactly. It's the dehumanization. The depersonalization. The degradation of genuine human connection, which was already happening with technology and social media and clickbait and artificial engagement and parasocial interaction... but it's been accelerated a thousand times by AI. There's no heart, no soul, just machines regurgitating words that have been said a thousand times before, and will be said a thousand times more. Mathematical averages in place of feeling. A statistical model of human spirit.

And yes, maybe it proves that most humans are mostly predictable most of the time. To me, that's not uncomfortable. It just means that our feelings, thoughts, and ideas are far more similar than they are different. Those similarities give us unity. The differences give us beauty. It's worth expressing that beauty, and connecting to that beauty in someone else. A machine can't replace that.

I don't know if others think this, but it makes me think of that show, 3 Body Problem, where the thing they're facing seems to have a hive mind (at least that's what I took away from that). I keep imagining that's where we're heading.

 

[000zing]

In relation to the concept of 'art', time and again I feel we shall always end up in a discussion regarding the meaning of the word 'original'...

 

[Cubik]

I make no pretense that A.I. art generated by my prompts is by me. That said, it seems to be a possible source of high-quality erotic images. It can be real and explicit and yet not require any real human to disrobe or perform a salacious act. It can be imaginative and fanciful. Yes, A.I. art is stealing jobs from illustrators. Yes, it can 'sample' real humans for its images. But if it is created as A.I. art and has both aesthetic and erotic value, isn't it a good contribution to this genre? It certainly beats the adolescent smutty line drawings that were a fixture of this site. Might erotic art be one place where A.I. art is very welcome?

Your 'yays' and 'nays'?

You're wasting your time, honestly. The total resistance to AI on here by the self righteous pricks is as laughable as it is ultimately futile, especially considering how 99.9% of the "art" on here was embarrassingly bad, utterly shite scrawls by people who can't draw to save their lives.

 

[Husky_Embrace]

You're wasting your time, honestly. The total resistance to AI on here by the self righteous pricks is as laughable as it is ultimately futile, especially considering how 99.9% of the "art" on here was embarrassingly bad, utterly shite scrawls by people who can't draw to save their lives.

I feel we have a hypocrite in our midst! How do you address any of their concerns? I saw at least one addressing the quality, where they like the scribbles more than the AI generated stuff. Where do you address their arguments?

If you say the others aren't open to chance, it would not bode well if you aren't open to change either. Are you open to it? Or are you just going to insult others while doing the thing you accuse them of?

I've addressed the quality myself, and I'll do it here again for you. I prefer a human making it. There is just a difference between the art. One feels like a plastic skin over a mannequin, and the other like a human. I'll take an uglier real thing over flawless plastic any day. That being said, I would hire a professional. I'm not settling for lower quality unless I have to.

 

[THROBBS]

You're wasting your time, honestly. The total resistance to AI on here by the self righteous pricks is as laughable as it is ultimately futile, especially considering how 99.9% of the "art" on here was embarrassingly bad, utterly shite scrawls by people who can't draw to save their lives.

Your observation/assessment sounds very self righteous.

 

[PennyThompson]

by people

Yeah, that's the part I like

 

[LargoKitt]

I'd never suggest that all smutty images created by hand are "art". Some folk say that any/every image made by anyone is "art". I contest that — If that were the case – then there is no "bar" for "art" (other than human made). I say that there needs to be at least some measure of competency (the standard is another debate) and some intent AND context (society, time frame...). ALL human made imagery is "expression", but that is not enough to qualify as "Art".

A parallel is dance or music. We (society) does not consider one a "dancer" just because one dances. One is not a "musician" just because one plucks a guitar (or belts out a song). This may seem nitpicking, but words do matter.

And further more — A.I. is not "Art" no matter how "Slick" the product is.

Just finished an art class with a bona fide fine teacher who is fascinated by using A.I. to create compositions he can then use to paint. He trust A.I. to critique a painting, to create a variation on a famous work, and to modify student works as a suggestion on how they could improve or change a composition. I find this fascinating, possibly useful and scary as shit.

 

[AlexBailey]

Just finished an art class with a bona fide fine teacher who is fascinated by using A.I. to create compositions he can then use to paint. He trust A.I. to critique a painting, to create a variation on a famous work, and to modify student works as a suggestion on how they could improve or change a composition. I find this fascinating, possibly useful and scary as shit.

That sounds like a teacher who is interested in engaging with modern students rather than fighting philosophical battles.

 

[LargoKitt]

I feel we have a hypocrite in our midst! How do you address any of their concerns? I saw at least one addressing the quality, where they like the scribbles more than the AI generated stuff. Where do you address their arguments?

If you say the others aren't open to chance, it would not bode well if you aren't open to change either. Are you open to it? Or are you just going to insult others while doing the thing you accuse them of?

I've addressed the quality myself, and I'll do it here again for you. I prefer a human making it. There is just a difference between the art. One feels like a plastic skin over a mannequin, and the other like a human. I'll take an uglier real thing over flawless plastic any day. That being said, I would hire a professional. I'm not settling for lower quality unless I have to.

Ah, here is a good parallel: We now see plenty of games and porno ops where you can help invent your own perfect avatar sex partner and have she/he/it do just what you want, perhaps with an idealized avatar of yourself. So every idealized sex scenario is available for a few bitcoin with 'people' with just the body you want. Now. of course, these avatars have been 'trained' on images of real human beings. And pick your number of real sex workers will lose their cam gelt to an artificial human. Is this biz stealing work from real sex workers? You bet. Should we make an effort to shut it down in the interest of real hookers, jigalos, porn stars, futanari, and tentacle creatures?

 

[LargoKitt]

That sounds like a teacher who is interested in engaging with modern students rather than fighting philosophical battles.

Yup, and this is a person with deep roots in ancient painting traditions.

 

[AlexBailey]

Yup, and this is a person with deep roots in ancient painting traditions.

My grandmother used to paint portraits. It was funny to me that she would take a picture, wait for it to come back from the developer, then paint the portrait from the picture… until she told me how long I would have to hold still if she didn’t take the photo.

 

[THROBBS]

Just finished an art class with a bona fide fine teacher who is fascinated by using A.I. to create compositions he can then use to paint. He trust A.I. to critique a painting, to create a variation on a famous work, and to modify student works as a suggestion on how they could improve or change a composition. I find this fascinating, possibly useful and scary as shit.

Indeed, "fascinating". But in and of itself, it is not "Art"

I also have some credentials as a bonafide art instructor (although, admittedly, my imagery may be considered "embarrassingly bad, utterly shite scrawls") and I feel it is important to discuss what A.I. can and "should" do.

Students (and all serious artists are always "students") must put in the work.

 

[THROBBS]

That sounds like a teacher who is interested in engaging with modern students rather than fighting philosophical battles.

Indeed. That is the role of a good instructor.
Which includes: not avoiding philosophical issues. Present them!

 

[THROBBS]

Ah, here is a good parallel: We now see plenty of games and porno ops where you can help invent your own perfect avatar sex partner and have she/he/it do just what you want, perhaps with an idealized avatar of yourself. So every idealized sex scenario is available for a few bitcoin with 'people' with just the body you want. Now. of course, these avatars have been 'trained' on images of real human beings. And pick your number of real sex workers will lose their cam gelt to an artificial human. Is this biz stealing work from real sex workers? You bet. Should we make an effort to shut it down in the interest of real hookers, jigalos, porn stars, futanari, and tentacle creatures?

That is a "fork in the road" on this topic. (or a fuck in the road). Pretty sure that few folk feel they are creating "Art" with their idealized pornish avatars.

 

[Venefica]

I love AI because it gives me the ability to visualise my fantasy what would be otherwise not possible.

BTW: Does anybody believe that any image on the net or in magazines is not worked over by software, i. e. AI. And yes, AI builds images by copying pixels from other pictures. But it is always combined into other output and, from my view and in my humble German-based legal opinion, that is no action violating intellectual property.

 

[Husky_Embrace]

I love AI because it gives me the ability to visualise my fantasy what would be otherwise not possible.

BTW: Does anybody believe that any image on the net or in magazines is not worked over by software, i. e. AI. And yes, AI builds images by copying pixels from other pictures. But it is always combined into other output and, from my view and in my humble German-based legal opinion, that is no action violating intellectual property.

This was a discussion once between me and a colleague, before LLM existed. He argued that a picture is no different from a painting. Both are going through a process of change. One is thanks to the person painting it. Visualising, correcting, and getting inspired for certain changes as they go. Photography does the same, only with other tools. Instead of paint and a brush, you set a camera. Changing aperture, ISO, angles, to just daylight and position. After you do the post processing. Adding filters, mashing fotos together, removing certain lines, accentuating others. It is a creative process.

AI definitely has the potential to create art, as I said in my first post. However, the current implementation has several flaws, and AI has one more problem we need to address. The problem is that there's a large part of freedom from the AI to create something, removing part of the creative process. This is what many focus on. It can be mitigated, but still.

The flaws are for me a bigger issue. Take DALL•E, the chatgpt/copilot picture creator. They take the prompting from you as well. This prevents a good iteration process. Second is that it generally creates a single image. It is difficult to iterate on a picture, which again, removes creativity from the person.

However, my biggest gripe is the blatant stealing. We build a world where this was important. You either show your sources, or create something new. An LMM takes your work, your data, and uses that work in a commercial setting. It is like it reads all books you've slaved a long time over for free, and reselling the ideas in them for profit. In what commercial setting are you allowed to steal information, and use them to your advantage?

If books are a difficult subject to imagine, how about news. Say you have a website. You get the story that everyone wants to read. Other news stories are in line to use your information, your sources. People come to your website, generating traffic and income.

Now someone searches for the news. An AI takes your information and gives it to them. No traffic to your site. That is also true for the journalist who wants to buy your story. The information lost monetary value, even though the news importance is the same. Did I mention that keeping you on their platform (google, x, copilot, etc.) gains them revenue? So they profit from your work, while giving nothing to you.

Same with art. Same with books. Your hard work is stolen and used for profit, while you get nothing.

 

[Venefica]

There is no stealing, not more than being inspired by the work of others.

 

[Husky_Embrace]

There is no stealing, not more than being inspired by the work of others.

Interesting take. Disney has a different take on it. They are doing major legal actions for infringement right now.

Besides, denying that it's stealing doesn't make it true. It is a fact these bots scrape the internet without returning anything for the people who worked on it.

People can get inspired, and generally they do so by buying the books, by going to the musea, by visiting a page. There's many options available, some of them free, but for most you're investing something. For the internet where data is everything for income, taking it without paying is stealing.

But don't take my word for it. Maybe start asking the AI these questions. People have been found to be more convinced if an AI tells them. Ask them if using other people's work for the LMM is stealing. Or the ethical and moral considerations of how they get their data.

 

[Venefica]

I am not used to US law. My opinion is based on German law.

 

[Cubik]

Indeed, "fascinating". But in and of itself, it is not "Art"

This is a bit of a strawman argument. I don't feel I'm an "artist" in the sense we all understand that term, when I generate images and videos using AI. For me it's just a tool for translating ideas in my head into images, and I think there is some merit in this when it's done well. I'll include an example of the type of thing I do with AI.