[nickburns]

'computers' can now rival the greatest painted masterpieces from all of human history with a mere text-based prompt (or less). would you consider those generated works to be masterpieces? or is there something about a work created by human hand and derived from a human mind that can only make them so?

[abeisgreat]

The thing with masterpieces is that they don’t hold that status because they can’t be replicated, they hold it because they were novel, innovative, and unrivaled at the time of their creation.

[shagie]

> The thing with masterpieces is that they don’t hold that status because they can’t be replicated

Copying the old masters is often an important part of developing one's own skills as a painter.

https://www.sightsize.com/old-masters-copying-older-masters-...

> The training of painters in past centuries regularly involved copying old master drawings and paintings. To that end, most museums happily allowed students into their buildings for that purpose (some still do). But the practice was not limited to students. Even fully trained old masters copied older masters.

Why copying old master paintings is useful - https://youtu.be/91UXW_hSpnU

The Art of the Copyist - https://www.metmuseum.org/perspectives/videos/2023/3/copyist...

Art: France’s long history of copying Old Masters at the Louvre - https://www.connexionfrance.com/article/Mag/Culture/Art-Fran...

> The practice of copying and recreating paintings by the Old Masters at the Louvre goes back to when the museum first opened in 1793, when any artist could turn up and use a freely available easel to copy a masterpiece.

> ...

> Not all artists copied works to improve their skills. Some took up the practice professionally, since the demand for copies of masterpieces in the Louvre was high throughout the nineteenth century.

> ...

> These days only 250 copyists are permitted to install themselves in front of the museum’s art works, and a two-year waiting list shows that there are plenty of hopefuls waiting in the wings to take up a palette and brush.

> Those granted access have up to three months to work on their copy.

[jasonwatkinspdx]

That this exists as a pedagogical exercise does not disprove the original point in any way.

Source: I spent a lot of time in the library copying sketches of the renaissance masters as a kid.

AI is the pencil, not the artist. As cool and capable as large models are they are not even remotely close to replacing self directed human intent. If you do not understand this you do not understand art.

I don't believe there's some magical quality to human intelligence, just that the things we are making today with AI are still orders of magnitude short of the real thing, and that there are still very difficult open questions in that gap.

[dylan604]

There are certain jobs that we consider artists, but are very close to someone entering a text to a prompt. Consider a director for theater/film. They are prompting their "tools" (to be reductive) to produce the art they want, and have to sometimes accept when they just can't get the results they want from their tool.

I've kept considering the term hand crafted when reading this thread about what is considered valued art or not as that's what applies to this gemstone TFA directly. Then it went to the painters with brush strokes, and that too keeps the hand crafted idea. That's when I jumped to directors. To step further away from art, and switch it to sportsball. While current managers might have once been a player, now, they are essentially entering text into prompts to get their "tools" to provide the result they are looking for with varying degrees of success. The managers/coaches can't kick/throw the ball themselves to get the results. They just have to get their "tool" to perform better by constantly tweaking the text entered into the prompt. Hell, now I'm thinking parents are constantly tweaking their prompts to get their kids to do something.

Okay, at this point, I'm convinced we're all just part of the matrix.

[jasonwatkinspdx]

> Consider a director for theater/film. They are prompting their "tools" (to be reductive) to produce the art they want, and have to sometimes accept when they just can't get the results they want from their tool.

Bluntly, it's clear you have no personal understanding of such productions and did not understand the most important point of my comment and how different it is from piloting a generative model.

[dylan604]

Bluntly? You clearly have no idea who I am or what my work experience is like. I have no idea what your response has to do with anything, but I hope you feel better for getting it off your chest.

[nickburns]

incredibly well said.

[h0l0cube]

Almost every time I see an AI generated art piece, I know it's AI generated, and it looks cheap. Sometimes an actual experienced artist uses AI and manages to tweak it to look decent, either by prompt engineering or further manipulation. There's nothing that yet replaces the human taste for what looks good nor what resonates for contemporary audiences. At best, it could be said that AI has further reduced the value of derivative art and photography.

[leptons]

A lot of the AI "art" I've seen looks like a psychotic serial killer made it. There's just something wrong with it, especially when it depicts humans - the eyes are insane, the facial expressions look like the subject wants to cannibalize me. If it were a human artist, I would suggest they seek mental help. It's honestly kind of scary that this is what computers are creating, it's no wonder some people worry about AI destroying humanity.

[6510]

One time I only input the style of the image basically leaving the description empty. I was wondering what it would come up with by it self. It served a human head on a table. I didn't need a second image.

[bingbingbing777]

Hardly. They cannot mimic the brush strokes, the material choices, expressiveness, composition and more. It is absolutely abhorrent to say that any AI is even in the same field, let alone close to art masterpieces.

[leptons]

AI "artists" don't even seem to know how many fingers humans are supposed to have.

[TaylorAlexander]

> 'computers' can now rival the greatest painted masterpieces from all of human history

This is only true if you misunderstand the meaning of art as a concept and its relationship to humanity.

[nickburns]

my provocative phrasing was of course intentional (which i'm all but certain you realized). couldn't agree with you more.

[TaylorAlexander]

This was not at all clear to me, nor is it clear upon rereading it now with this information. Plenty of people believe that without reservation.

[nickburns]

i appreciate your frank reply. by posing my question in such a way so as to illicit discourse, my position was lost and does read ambiguous.

i would like to not agree with you that plenty of people believe machine-generated work is even in the same universe as human art (including that which is not painted). but i'm afraid you may be right.

[wizzwizz4]

Photocopiers can also rival the greatest painted masterpieces from all of human history.

[nickburns]

nah, they just plagiarize. (for which, coincidentally, the same could be argued for human-made and trained AI.)

[fullspectrumdev]

> is there something about a work created by human hand and derived from a human mind that can make them so?

Yes.

[nickburns]

my downvoted-to-purgatory comment you've quoted. glad to see that the phrasing of that specific question stuck out to at least someone in the manner i intended.

the answer truly is a simple 'yes.'