[protocolture]

Depends.

This is a very old argument within artistic communities.

In cinema, authorship has resoundingly been awarded to the director. A lot of film directors go deep in many creative silos, but at its core the process is commissioning a lot of artists to do art at the same time. You dont have to be able to do those things. Famously some anime directors have just been hired off the street.

In comics things went the other way. Editors have been trying to extract credit for creative work for a long time. A lot of them have significant input in the creative process, but have no contractual basis for demanding credit for that input. It frustrates them. They can also just commission work, or they can have various levels of input in to the creative process, up to and including defining characters entirely.

Really then, in your example, theres clearly a point where you have had enough of a creative input in the creation to be part of the artistic endeavor. One judge in china ruled in favour of the artist after they proved that they had completed 20 odd revisions of the artwork, before watermarking it.

That is of course, assuming we only follow your strict, reductionist argument. Even for AI art, most generators these days take more than text input. You can mask areas, provide hand drawn precursor art and a lot of other things. And that also assumes no post processing.

Not all AI generated items will be art. But what I find offensive, is the judgement that as a class nothing touched by AI could be considered art. Mostly because I lived through "Digital Art is not Art" and "Computer Games are not Art" proponents of both got overtaken by history and rightly shamed.

[_DeadFred_]

I never claimed you can't use AI tools. I never claimed Digital art is not art. Don't imply I should feel shame for questioning the world around me. You can stop with the trying to silence your critics and position yourself as superior.

If I ask a comics guy their favorite comic artist they aren't giving me back editors names. They will have favorite editors, or even editor artist pairs, but the artist remains distinct from that.

I simply posited that commissioning a piece of work does not make you an artist. Having art generated for you to your taste is not 'making art'. Hiring an interior decorator to decorate my house does not mean I decorated. Ordering off a menu and requesting extra cheese does not make you part chef.

A better blurring for your argument would be the use of session musicians. If I say I love The Beach Boys, how much of what I love is session musicians work versus Brian Wilson's? Is he the artist that I enjoy? But that gets back to it, doesn't it. We as humans want to connect art with it's creator. Why? Because art is some reflection of something. Art is 'life is a shared experience'. AI 'art' is not part of that shared experience. I want to connect with Brian Wilson. But I don't connect with some music critic who writes about Brian Wilson's music even though we both connected with the same artistic work, even if I learned about the work though the critic making my relationship to them just as important (I wouldn't know it without them). There being an artist in the middle improves/transforms it/means something (what it means is what is up for discussion).

A pretty crystal is just as pretty as a piece of art, but it is not a piece of art. AI art might be more like the crystal. It might contain beauty/interest/capture attention. But it's not connecting with someone's creation, with intention. I have a local museum and I love exhibits that a specific curator there has focused on more than ones they didn't touch. But that doesn't make them an artist. AI 'artists' fall into that category.

[protocolture]

> I never claimed Digital art is not art.

No but its the same genetic fallacy. Some digital works arent art. Therefore all Digital art is not art. These people were rightly ridiculed.

Suggesting that because some people put no effort into AI Art, that AI art as a category cannot be art is also a silly genetic fallacy.

>If I ask a comics guy their favorite comic artist they aren't giving me back editors names. They will have favorite editors, or even editor artist pairs, but the artist remains distinct from that.

Correct. Because the authorship debate in that space settled in the opposite direction. If Comic Editors succeeded and were treated like film directors, they would have headline billing on comics and they would be a household name. But it went the other way, and instead Editors who try to claim credit for artistic works, even with receipts, get laughed at.

>I simply posited that commissioning a piece of work does not make you an artist.

Right, but the implication there is that is all people using AI generators do.

>Hiring an interior decorator to decorate my house does not mean I decorated.

Right, but if you are giving the interior decorator creative input, like, "No that sucks this should be red" and revising their output hundreds of times, you are actually involved in the decoration process. And if that decorator is just, hanging up exactly what you tell them to, then they might just be a dogsbody and you the interior decorator.

>I have a local museum and I love exhibits that a specific curator there has focused on more than ones they didn't touch. But that doesn't make them an artist. AI 'artists' fall into that category.

Some do. But the vast majority put a lot more effort in than simple curation. I remember seeing people, when Midjourney first became viable, simply generating 12 images with a single prompt, and sharing all 12 on facebook to pages that wanted nothing to do with them. Thats not art. But its also not the done thing anymore.