Yup. In my day job, I used ChatGPT a bit, normally for tasks that need repeated tens or hundreds of times, or to take lists (say, keywords), and perform tasks with them that would literally take me hours.
But as you say, art? In my mind, the whole point of pursuing tools to automate mundane work is free up more time for humans to actually create stuff WITHOUT using AI.
Man, I appreciate the end of this. Automation tools don’t remove the difficulty in coming up with something worth saying. They can help in execution but the hard work remains having an original thought and piecing it all together.
Yes, the animation of Studio Ghibli is impressive yet the storytelling as whole is what makes the films. Just as nobody mistakes the pitch perfect cover band at the pub for source material, nobody is mistaking vapid slop for the work truly moving us.
The point of AI is to replace everything that humans do. Art is simply the canary in the coal mine. We really need to question more the trajectory the AI Labs are taking civilization.
"Has AI cured your disease yet? Are you living on UBI and spending your days on your favorite creative hobbies? No? Instead, AI is spending its days on your favorite creative hobbies while you are still working." - https://www.mindprison.cc/p/studio-ghibli-style-ai-art-crisis-openai
This is a good point about intention - that once you outsource the skill involved in creation to AI, that's all you have left. But this trend has been overtaking the art world for a good while now - hence the rotting bananas and signed toilet bowls, etc. Damien Hirst hires people to complete his "artworks", as does Jeff Koons, and numerous others. Actual skill is so last century. Conceptual art assumes that it is the idea that is valuable - whereas any creative knows that the opposite is really true. Ideas are ten a penny; it is the execution that gives the idea form that is the valuable thing. Even copyright will not protect an idea, only the form that that idea takes. AI is therefore the endpoint of a trend that has been ramping up for a while: the privileging of ideas over the tedious toil that brings them to realisation. I saw recently some debate on Bluesky about current attempts to copyright AI prompts - which seems silly and doomed to me, but you can see where all this is going. Once the work of the artists and writers and musicians, etc, has been ransacked, and all creators have been robbed of their livelihoods, the only people left able to make a living from creative pursuits will be those who own the AIs - and who, ironically, will have no creative input at all.
Art remains art. It's an intangible thing but usually we know it, and appreciate it, when we see it. Art involves a creative intent and an element of effort and work: to create an artwork. There's also novelty and originality to consider. Duchamp's Toilet was a revolution in perspective. It was a totally new way of considering art.
Emin's Unmade Bed, a descendent of the Readymades, not so much... Many of us felt we'd seen that done before. AI art is just wallpaper stuff, next week we'll all have seen it all before.
Asking for something to exist which technically didn't exist before is not creativity, not as we understand it really; the AI creating something from a prompt is more like productivity. Productivity is a poor cousin to true creativity, in my eyes.
As a developer but also a hobby-illustrator, this trend and use of technology makes me feel extremely depressed about the future.
In a future or, well, present time where people just replicate art ad nauseam it feels like going against the grain to insist on creating something of one’s own. I truly understand Miyazaki’s world-weariness now and it’s ironic (and not even the fun kind) that the AI-trends have now come for his intellectual property when he is so vehemently against it.
The only counterpoint here (that I'm still undecided on) is that the human requires imagination to come up with the inputs. I guess that is true... to an extent.
I'm just terribly unclear of what the end game of all this is.
I can see the value of AI in doing rote tasks, mildly complex things like summarizing meeting minutes or helpful tasks like translation.
"Creating" art has no real use or benefactor. It just devalues all of it.
Yup. In my day job, I used ChatGPT a bit, normally for tasks that need repeated tens or hundreds of times, or to take lists (say, keywords), and perform tasks with them that would literally take me hours.
But as you say, art? In my mind, the whole point of pursuing tools to automate mundane work is free up more time for humans to actually create stuff WITHOUT using AI.
Maybe that's stone age thinking now
My opinion: Fuck Altman and openai. Thanks for 'legally' stealing something for sake of vomiting ghiblified crap all over internet...
"legally" – at least for now.
See if this does anything for you:
https://youtu.be/SMOEKQtPsY4?si=G5kxfPK0MDzJno18
Man, I appreciate the end of this. Automation tools don’t remove the difficulty in coming up with something worth saying. They can help in execution but the hard work remains having an original thought and piecing it all together.
Yes, the animation of Studio Ghibli is impressive yet the storytelling as whole is what makes the films. Just as nobody mistakes the pitch perfect cover band at the pub for source material, nobody is mistaking vapid slop for the work truly moving us.
The point of AI is to replace everything that humans do. Art is simply the canary in the coal mine. We really need to question more the trajectory the AI Labs are taking civilization.
"Has AI cured your disease yet? Are you living on UBI and spending your days on your favorite creative hobbies? No? Instead, AI is spending its days on your favorite creative hobbies while you are still working." - https://www.mindprison.cc/p/studio-ghibli-style-ai-art-crisis-openai
This is a good point about intention - that once you outsource the skill involved in creation to AI, that's all you have left. But this trend has been overtaking the art world for a good while now - hence the rotting bananas and signed toilet bowls, etc. Damien Hirst hires people to complete his "artworks", as does Jeff Koons, and numerous others. Actual skill is so last century. Conceptual art assumes that it is the idea that is valuable - whereas any creative knows that the opposite is really true. Ideas are ten a penny; it is the execution that gives the idea form that is the valuable thing. Even copyright will not protect an idea, only the form that that idea takes. AI is therefore the endpoint of a trend that has been ramping up for a while: the privileging of ideas over the tedious toil that brings them to realisation. I saw recently some debate on Bluesky about current attempts to copyright AI prompts - which seems silly and doomed to me, but you can see where all this is going. Once the work of the artists and writers and musicians, etc, has been ransacked, and all creators have been robbed of their livelihoods, the only people left able to make a living from creative pursuits will be those who own the AIs - and who, ironically, will have no creative input at all.
Art remains art. It's an intangible thing but usually we know it, and appreciate it, when we see it. Art involves a creative intent and an element of effort and work: to create an artwork. There's also novelty and originality to consider. Duchamp's Toilet was a revolution in perspective. It was a totally new way of considering art.
Emin's Unmade Bed, a descendent of the Readymades, not so much... Many of us felt we'd seen that done before. AI art is just wallpaper stuff, next week we'll all have seen it all before.
Asking for something to exist which technically didn't exist before is not creativity, not as we understand it really; the AI creating something from a prompt is more like productivity. Productivity is a poor cousin to true creativity, in my eyes.
As a developer but also a hobby-illustrator, this trend and use of technology makes me feel extremely depressed about the future.
In a future or, well, present time where people just replicate art ad nauseam it feels like going against the grain to insist on creating something of one’s own. I truly understand Miyazaki’s world-weariness now and it’s ironic (and not even the fun kind) that the AI-trends have now come for his intellectual property when he is so vehemently against it.
To ‘intention’ I’d also add ‘imagination’ — from which all creative endeavors originate.
This is the one quality a machine will never ever possess.
The only counterpoint here (that I'm still undecided on) is that the human requires imagination to come up with the inputs. I guess that is true... to an extent.
Well, that's the argument you hear from Midjourney junkies...that all of the artistry is in the prompts.