[spaqin]

Art isn't just the screenplay, or a prompt; it's the clash between reality and the intent (whether a location or practical set constraints), the individual skill of everyone involved, costume and prop department. And it may change during production. And effort. If it's easy, it's easily reproducible and not worth that much. And novelty, that's something current models aren't capable of. That's why Jarimoquai's Virtual Insanity video became popular. That's why practical effects are more impressive than CGI, even if they're jankier and hide behind clever camerawork.

[59percentmore]

If you've ever tried to get around Gemini or ChatGPT's guardrails, stock footage poisoning, and just general tendency to produce the most frustratingly banal version of your prompt possible, then you would understand that prompting AI images and video absolutely already involves a clash between reality and intent (in the sense that this is Google and OpenAI's world, we're just living in it).

I would love to get around the "individual skill" part, but all of my artist friends would excommunicate me if they knew the AI projects I've been working on, let alone if I asked them to collaborate.

[ryandrake]

> If you've ever tried to get around Gemini or ChatGPT's guardrails, stock footage poisoning

Art is (often) provocative, uncomfortable, taboo, explicit, subversive, or challenging of norms. You're never going to get that out of increasingly locked-down and Disney-fied BigTech hosted LLMs obsessed with "AI safety."

[59percentmore]

So, would you agree that working creatively around the Disney-fied locking-down of those tools in order to produce something "provocative, uncomfortable, taboo, explicit, subversive, or challenging of norms" would at least begin to approach being a process that involved at least a semblance of artistic merit?

Because I can assure you that much of what I've gen'd checks those boxes (unless Sorry To Bother You's third-act twist no longer unsettles).

[59percentmore]

Note that he simply downvoted me. I refuse to believe that it's because equisapiens no longer shock.

[hmry]

FYI it's not possible to downvote replies to your own comment

[59percentmore]

"He" being "ryandrake".

[perching_aix]

A notable chunk of criticism GenAI receives has to do with output irreproducibility and semantic instability relative to the input, so this is a bit entertaining to read.

If there's a way to do something better and worse, then one can absolutely talk about added and absent value. I browse AI generated images a ton, and the difference between beginner / low effort submissions and high effort / advanced submissions is very stark.

[timacles]

Yeah one thing people aren’t really grasping with a generative AI is that it fundamentally can’t produce the same thing twice. You can’t really create top notch art with all kinds of inconsistencies

[perching_aix]

Not fundamentally, no. It is entirely possible to keep putting in the same thing, and then getting out the same thing. To be honest, it's outright frustrating that this feature is so often neglected.

[simianwords]

I think you are making the same mistake as everyone else with respect to art.

Art has nothing to do with _mechanical_ difficulty. I see this misconception all the time. Examples

- Kumail Nanjiani roided up for his next movie. This has mechanical difficulty, sure. But what does it add to the artistic element?

- Dream Theatre guitarists play olympics with their guitar and play solo's that are mechanically impossible for normal people. Yet we still find Beatles have more artistic value, why?

I hope this popular misconception will die down. I don't want mechanical difficulty in art being praised. I feel these are things people hold on to because mechanical difficulty has some moat and people don't want to give it up.

[therouwboat]

I don't think that was fair comparison, earlier comment was that creative person can make million dollar art without having million dollar budget, then again creative person can splash paint on canvas while being dead drunk and make most valuable painting.

Most people find it more impressive if you learn to play Dream theater song on guitar than if you program it in daw.

[gilleain]

I partly agree with you - I used to think of mechanical difficulty as a kind of 'proof of work' for art. Nowadays I am less interested in the idea of what counts as art or not.

However, consider works like photorealistic drawings of eyes (usually at a very large scale). A lot of people like these, and consider them to be fine art, while others (art critics?) consider them bland. Contrast that with a Picasso flamingo drawn with a single line.

There is artistic value in high-effort, low concept works as well as low-'effort', high-concept works and other combinations. Perhaps what we are all looking for is effort of some kind (I prefer human effort) whether that is conceptual effort or practice in drawing lines on paper.

[simianwords]

I’m curious to understand why you think drawing photorealistic eyes is different from a person beating a Guitar Hero time record.

Both are pushing boundaries in mechanical dexterity. Yet one is considered art and another is not.

[gilleain]

If I was feeling unfair I would say there is no difference! However, if a friend drew me an eye on A3 paper would I frame it? Probably yes...

Others have said this better, but art is an qualitative/emotional thing, not a simply measurable quantity of an object. We tend to use the effort put in as a proxy measure for quality, but when photocopiers and 3D printers and - yes - genAI get involved, that becomes harder or impossible.

Beating Guitar Hero is emotional, but not artistic. Photorealistic drawings could be emotional, and may or may not be artistic. Putting a text prompt into a generative model to make a (frankly terrible) music video for $100 is ... something else.

[actionfromafar]

Anything can be artistic, but some things are very hard to make artistic.

Beating Guitar Hero could artistic. I don't even know how, but I'm sure some artist could beat Guitar Hero in a way that was somehow artistic.

This terrible $100 music video which I'm not even going to watch, is surely not art. Also I'm totally sure some person is going to spend $100 with an AI and make art. It's very hard, but they day will come. The slop-to-art ratio will be astronomical.

[jcelerier]

> it's the clash between reality and the intent (whether a location or practical set constraints), the individual skill of everyone involved, costume and prop department

That's not art, that's the limitations that everyone working in this industry have been working night and day to overcome for hundreds of years

[neonstatic]

> Art isn't just the screenplay, or a prompt; it's the clash between reality and the intent

Okay, clanker