Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by Alchemista 1162 days ago
Yeah, I don't get it. It doesn't look very good to me. It is also obviously AI generated, with the telltale signs of deformed limbs and hands.
4 comments

And I can tell the difference between tube amps, profilers and modellers in both feel and tone, but it's good enough for the average Joe that they won't care if they like the image or sound. It only serves to illustrate the point that trying to evaluate the best x work is futile because tastes vary.

Personally, I don't like the image, nor do I like any AI-generated "art" thus far. I'm a big camera wonk and a tone chaser, so I appreciate detail and that elusive quality that makes something more than just competent.

Camera wonking is great, but if you don’t like any AI art, that suggests you are rejecting the concept out of hand.

Being so low-barrier, there is naturally a flood of images from beginners who are just futzing around. But, I hear a common refrain that sounds to me like “DeviantART.com has millions of sketches from bored 13 year olds. Therefore I don’t consider pencil to be an artistic medium.”

I’d be interested in your opinions of the works of https://twitter.com/rainisto

It's not so much a rejection of concept, I just find that it does nothing for me emotionally or intellectually.

I had a scroll through the Twitter profile, and whilst at least unusual in terms of content, I close the app and remember none of it. None of it is bold enough to be memorable compositionally for me. It's competent, sure, it's just unremarkable and lacks humanity. Does that mean it's "bad"? It's just not for me, in the same way I don't care for tuna even though I acknowledge that plenty of people enjoy eating tuna.

Until the artist confessed, the 'photo' had won a photography prize.

So it has gotten to the point where contest judges think AI can (be used as a tool to) make good pictures.

That's giving far too much credit to judges in the first place. Consider art critics as a whole, they have been proven to be cork sniffing blowhards many times over with them believing that paintings done by elephants, monkeys and toddlers are somehow masterpieces and that the artist had fine motor control and clearly put a lot of thought and emotion into their work.

Art is subjective. If you can accept that art is subjective then quantification of the quality and value of art is absurd.

Those who can, do, those who can't—judge photo contests?

All it tells you about is the taste of the judging panel.

Ok ... but .. it's not a photography, it shouldn't win a "photography" contest

If you bring a photography to a "realistic painting" contest does it work ? Or an helicopter to a f1 race ?

It's not the same medium, it doesn't matter if it looks good or if people like it

I agree, but contests within the context of art are absurd. They're as surreal as the music charts where because boy band x sells y units, that somehow makes them "better" than z obscure artist making microtonal music that's never been heard before. The charts are a measure of commercial success.

A contest is a measure of what? The taste of the judges?

But this is clearly not! at best it looks like someone modified photo or maybe had some horribly hand-deforming disease.
Yeah agreed.

As much as AI has trouble with hands and we can assume that it’s AI because we know what to look for, those hands are not outside the realm of human deformities and/or photography tricks. Pair that with the absolute PR nightmare possible in calling a real human fake just because they don’t fit the expected norms and it’s totally reasonable for judges to accept it as a real photo.

The hands in the photograph are immediately noticed (e.g. the smudged, mushy look of the hands). I wonder: why did the judges not noticed the hands in the photo?
Yeah thats a 5 second exercise for anybody who ever came to contact with ie Midjourney output, fingers here have various usual bugs.

Honestly I believe author did include this on purpose, since its very well known shortcoming at this point. He could have done image without fingers displayed and then nobody would have a clue. But clearly judges are oblivious to recent development in some too-old-for-this-shit fashion, so they didnt pick it up and then embarassed themselves.

Guessing that if you come to a photo assuming that it is an actual photo you're not exactly prepared to exercise your AI skepticism.

And truly it is the eyes that capture your attention. The hands (or fingers rather) are something like a vignette.

Could be that they assumed it must be a photo and the smudge was done intentionally as an artistic expression? The art world is so out of touch now I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case.
My guess is that they focused on the focal point of the image - the face, and especially the eyes - and didn't try to pick apart the whole image.

The white smudges in the center/top, and the yellow glow on the top of the left side seem like artifacts of a manual development process. That's likely something that would interest a photography judge - maybe the judge(s) here were just biased toward experimental analog processing and was therefore blind to the issues we immediately see?

It's not a photography in a strict sense (although I'm surprised as well why it carries a "photography" denomination; see other entries here: https://www.worldphoto.org/sony-world-photography-awards/win....

I presume this entry is not a photo at all: https://www.worldphoto.org/sony-world-photography-awards/win....

They used AI for voting too.