[paraschopra]

Here's an unpopular opinion: such applications aren't going to trivialize art.

Like competitive sports, art is all about display of human ability under constraints. This is why even in the age of photographs, we still value hand-painted canvases. Such techniques are simply going to make people more discerning between real effort v/s automated means of generating the same outcome.

Rather than thinking AI-assisted style transfers are the end of art, we should think that these are new tools for artists to do even more interesting stuff. See this upcoming tool for example: https://runwayml.com/

[monsieurbanana]

A interesting parallel could be made with chess. How did Deep Blue affect the interest of humans in the game of chess? I'm not a chess player, but I seem to recall the effect was at least neutral, if not positive.

And more recently with AlphaGo. Now that humans have no chance of ever beating AI again in the game of go, what will change?

I'm a go player so I'm more interested in this question. Professional go players said that AlphaGo is positive for go, that they will be able to learn from it and reach new levels of play.

Although of course their livelihood depends on the popularity of go, it would be bad press for them to say the opposite.

[hellofunk]

I entirely agree with you. It's one thing for computers/AI to emulate the creative work that humans have already achieved, essentially copying, or porting, or manipulating prior art, but it's something else entirely to genuinely create something new and fresh and connects with people emotionally, and I have yet to see any evidence that AI is close to this.

[krapp]

Most modern art isn't made to great something new and fresh... it's mass produced pastoral stuff like Thomas Kinkade or connected to a multimedia franchise (book covers, movie posters, game art, etc.) and a lot of that is certainly formulaic and derivative.

Maybe AI isn't able to copy human technique well enough yet but whether it succeeds or fails will have little to do with whether or not it creates work that resonates emotionally like classic art, because that's no longer the purpose of the vast majority of art that people encounter.

And I would argue that human beings, for the most part, copy other human beings anyway. Working within a "genre" and using cultural references and even recognizable techniques are all essentially copying or at least adapting what came before.

[hellofunk]

I guess it depends on how broad a definition of "art" we are using.

[rm_-rf_slash]

The same argument was made about the Mona Lisa when copies of it began appearing in books and newspapers and such. Instead of obsolescence, it made Da Vinci’s work more popular than ever.