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by Retric 654 days ago
Do you feel anything when looking at DALE 3 images on this page? https://openai.com/index/dall-e-3/

I can’t tell you why, but I don’t really react to any of them or really any AI art I’ve seen.

10 comments

Perhaps you just feel that way because it's made by a machine. Would need some double blind experiment really, preferably with people who don't know the 'style' of these models.
I think we've already had those experiments, really, when that generated piece won an art competition ('Theatre D'opera Spatial')
It won a Colorado State Fair contest.
The camel's nose under the tent.
I'd be willing to bet that a lot of it is influenced by context and expectations.

Take one of those images, put it in a nice frame, hang it in a quiet art museum, stick a little placard on the wall next to it with a made up backstory, and your emotional response will probably differ.

Conversely, go to your local art museum and randomly pick 10 paintings. Take a hi-res picture of each and place them on a web page entitled, "AI is getting better at generating art" and you'll probably pick out a bunch of tell-tale flaws that are evidence of machine-generate pictures. :)

I would hazard a guess that there will eventually be art you consume that won't immediately be obvious to you that no human artist made it

With the context of looking at images on the dall-e page you're looking at a gallery of ai images not art in its natural habitat.

Art deserves to be contextualized properly not be evaluated by the large batch.

My current background on my PC is AI generated. I only know about it because when I was looking for a higher res version I found the origin. It's my current favourite image(which always changes).

My point is that your argument is non-sensical. Just because you don't feel anything from AI art doesn't mean others don't.

I was making an observation not an argument.

With hundreds of millions of such images someone is going to feel something when looking at some of them. But so far I don’t which seems kind of odd.

Which is why I was asking if you feel anything looking at those specific images on their home page?

No I don't feel anything. But it's very rare for me to feel anything from a piece of art. Even something as renowned as the Mona Lisa evokes nothing for me. The only classical piece of art that I know of the top of my head that makes me feel something is Edvard Munch’s “Anxiety”. Most of it seems drivel to me where well constructed AI art is better.
Most people respond to movies and songs etc.

If you specifically mean still images it’s worth remembering the context. A great deal of “art” in museums isn’t really aiming for emotional responses. Portraits are just selfie’s before camera phones etc. It’s degraded because the colors have changed over time as the paint degraded. At the extreme ancient sculptures weren’t just stone they got painted. Further even modern art was meant to be viewed in person, a life sized animal sculpture hits very different than that same art on a screen.

Anyway personally walking around museums I responded to quite a bit of the art excluding portraits etc.

I like them, if anything a little more than the contents of the pre-AI art galleries I've walked around.

But some of my friends say as you do.

I wonder if this could be uncanny valley? I understand that sense of off-ness will be in different places for everyone, as we know (and therefore spot) different things about what we're looking at.

I also don't feel anything looking at most "modern art".

It is still considered art.

Modern art is considered art because it's a form of human expression, regardless of whether you "get it" or not - it matters that a human being made it, as opposed to a machine.
If a machine makes something that elicits genuine emotional response it is not art?

Art must necessarily be made by a human to be considered art?

The definition gets less useful by the second.

The definition i'm using is a commonly held one. Art is subjective, and obviously people disagree about what is and isn't art, but most people agree that some degree of human intent and expression is required, at a baseline, for something to be considered art.

But your definition seems to be that anything which elicits an emotional response is art, which seems far less useful.

I suppose it could be argued that because AI requires models and prompts, the end result could be considered art. Also that it's art simply due to the controversy it provokes. Then again, I have a difficult time considering something art if it can be exactly duplicated with the correct inputs. To that end, the human being doesn't really matter. To me, if the human being doesn't matter, it isn't art. I'd also dismiss most "generative" art for the same reason - even if fractals are pretty I wouldn't consider them art.

> But your definition seems to be that anything which elicits an emotional response is art, which seems far less useful.

Your definition is not very useful either: "some degree of human intent and expression is required, at a baseline, for something to be considered art."

A lot of mundane things done by humans - from smoking a cigarette to filling a form -qualifies as something that elicits a "degree of human intent and expression"

> I have a difficult time considering something art if it can be exactly duplicated with the correct inputs

If I make a perfect copy from "Starry Night Over The Rhone" is it not art? Impasto on canvas and all?

If I sit at the Organ and play Tocatta and Fugue in D Minor is it not art?

I would argue that in both examples I am duplicating art with the correct inputs.

Oh of course not, they're not accompanied by 5 paragraph essays about what they mean.
Do you think that will always be true?
There’s people already creating content with AI that resonates with me as much as content without. AI is just another tool in the box.

One example I recommend is the Unanswered oddities series. Really funny. All visuals and audio AI generated.

https://www.reddit.com/r/singularity/comments/1e6c1d4/unansw...

I do.