AI and its prompters possess no ability to rework a generated image, and the few prompters who possess any ability to alter the images e.g. in photoshop have no idea what they're being asked in basic workshopping. AI still falls behind real artists.

Art is heavily skill based, and you have to have love to get those skills. A tech bro will never understand this.

The schadenfreude I am feeling about those ai “prompters”

I keep saying that if companies lean hard into using AI generated images, we're going to go through a period of boring or poor designs because the people using it don't even know the basic design principles.

Honestly, it is why I bet someone could use this tech as useful for graphics artists, but the most public-facing stuff is still at the 'makes something that looks good to someone who is not an artist/art editor/etc.'

Which is not usually where you want a commercial artist to be at.

(Useful = look, here's how to fill in a background with texture that doesn't look like you drew three elements and copy, pasted and rotated it. Not useful = ask to revise a piece the AI produced, without adding more errors.)

BeccaStareyes: It's weird because there have been people dicking around with "assistants" (as in things that don't specifically generate, but build on the information people personally feed it) and it's a much different process than just "dump a bunch of static that can fool the average person and call it okay"

It's still wrong, but as editor/betaing tool, it's an unusual offshoot

GOOD

i knew it would all go wrong but this is faster than i could have hoped for

i know we're going to have to live with it for a while yet but i waited out the crypto-NFT 'boom', i can wait this out too

and the thing where people are so thin skinned is... a generational problem, tbh

we're going to have to build that back up

chocoballs: That's interesting. How's people being too thin-skinned a generational issue?

I have noticed that a lot of the generation that is currently becoming adults are like this. Not all of them, but a lot. This is a personal opinion though.

The thing is, AI art generation could probably be used as a decent tool by artists who already know what they're doing - they could have done exactly what this director asked, easily, and come up with something really nice using an AI-generated base that they tweaked

But like...if you already know how to make art yourself, making AI art and then tweaking it is probably less efficient and less enjoyable of a process than just making the art yourself from jump...

So you have this problem where the only people who are relying heavily on AI art are the people who have no artistic sensibilities and are using it as a crutch to support their own lack of skills, and like...how can those people even compete with real artists? They don't even know what looks good or why

They're relying fully on the AI to make something that looks good for them because they can't even judge, and the only reason AI stuff ever looks good is because it's primarily trained on images that already ARE good art from real artists

It also runs into the copyright and art theft issue unless the tool has been trained on only opt-in stuff or the artist is using their own personal set of works. But also... it means that what comes out is recycled. A human artist learns and improves on the references they use well enough to outperform the machine anyway.

The AI doesn't know what looks good, either, it just knows what averages out to be popular

Yeah it doesn't innovate or use critical thinking

So these AI 'artists' don't know art, and the programs they rely on don't know it either

How are they supposed to make something as good, never mind better, than people who actually know what they're doing and can tweak whatever they make according to what's needed/wanted?

They literally can't, and yet they insist that either 1) this somehow "opens the door" to people without "artistic talent" - which is bullshit, talent is a pursued interest, not something people are just born with; anyone can become good at art if they dedicate themselves to it, these people aren't saying they can't do art they're saying they don't WANT to

(Or, at least, they don't want to enough to spend the years and money and effort required to become good, which all the artists they envy have put in)

(You don't have to have the drive to make art, but don't act like having other interests means you've been somehow ~locked out~ of making art - you haven't, you just don't want to put in the time)

Or 2) that this somehow lets them bypass/supplant actual artists, when the results cannot remotely compete

(The argument that always incenses me is when they try to use the argument that AI is somehow a disability aid, as if 1) there are no disabled artists, and 2) as if AI programs don't steal from those disabled artists too)

(AI programs are much worse for disabled artists than they are good for people who have decided they are too disabled to make art, even though plenty of disabled people can, do, and always have)

the more popular ai gets, the more I come to appreciate human artists. like... sometimes you can tell it's made by a machine.

Honestly, I have seen some AI art that looks good, but like...I swear, there really is a detectably soulless feel to a lot of it

also if they truly cared about democratizing art, maybe it would be free? all of the ai programs I know ask for money after a certain amount of time.

I don't know what it is, there's usually no direct thing you can point to about it, but often you can pick up on it

(The ones where you CAN directly point to something that is explicitly AI, it's usually blatant errors in which case there are more problems than it just feeling lifeless)

(So I'm talking about pictures without any blatant errors here)

all three ai-generated tarot decks that have come across my kickstarter recs have had me going /squint/ as soon as I see the cards laid out together

no human has that many samey images across 78 pieces

like what is REALLY OFFENSIVE is certain people ARE CHARGING MONEY to ai generate on storefronts. shit anyone can do and it ruins the point for me. I'll just pay a human tyvm, they can draw hands.

Yeah you can TELL when something is ai

It takes a while to get the hang of seeing it but it all looks soulless

Oh gross I hadn't seen any ai tarot yet, I will keep an eye out for that

yeah this sounds basically like what I'd expected, although I hadn't expected there to be people going 100% all-in on "I only prompt AI, and don't need to know anything about design or anything artistic" as a career path

like, a few maybe, but not enough for one company to hire several of them

like... there's no reason that someone who's skilled at giving the AI effective prompts can't be a thing... .......but that still requires all the analytic skills of an artist, otherwise you're as much an "ai prompter" as literally anyone who hands a prompt to an ai

^ I did NOT expect anyone to get hired as full-on artists without like. knowing the fucking fundamentals

...like... if they don't have the skills to adjust their prompts in subtle ways to make requested changes, what do they even think they're bringing to the table

composition is like 50% of art

that ability is the entire difference between "ai prompt artist" and "guy who walked in off the street"

I'm boggled at the guy asking what the people should be turned into when told to not have people in the image

this is great

Meanwhile, AI prompters being people who don't know and haven't bothered to learn even the basic fundamentals of art is exactly what I expected

Because people who put in actual effort to be artists who can do their own work don't need AI

not having a thing in an image doesn't mean that you put it in the image and then put something else over it, it just means... don't... put it in the image, I don't even know how to break this down further for someone

...there's basic fundamentals of art, and then there's basic comprehension of what it means for something to be in or not be in an image.

then again maybe I'm weird in that I don't want to apply for a job that I don't have some confidence I can actually do

like confidence based on reading the job description and comparing it to things I am capable of doing

That's the thing

maybe that's just the way the AI program they were using works? bc what people are calling AI is actually pretty dumb when you get right down to it lol

this is like someone applying for a landscaping job where they have to use a chainsaw, and then being shocked to learn that they're expected to actually use the chainsaw to cut the things they are told to cut, and they can't just start it and go to lunch

The people using AI programs as a crutch for creativity genuinely think they and their work are just as good as someone who makes the stuff from scratch

well yeah AI is just a very fancy correlation engine

Because they do not have the creative skills or sensibilities to perceive the differences

Because they've never developed those.

^^ yeah they 100% think there's no difference between generative AI and actual art created by human beings

.......I feel like it must go farther than that. I'm no artist by any stretch, but I'm also aware of that.

I had an argument with someone recently who could not seem to comprehend that a human doing art... contributes something to the image. their intent, their perspective, their message, etc. she thought my stance sounded like a "religious belief" and I was sitting there like "I don't know how to explain to you that humans are sentient"

Exacerangutan: "I'm no artist by any stretch, but I'm also aware of that."
look up dunning-kruger effect

...I guess????

if they were just overestimating their ability to compose compelling, meaningful art, I'd understand, but this is like.... someone who applies to a writing job without knowing what tenses and voices are because they can just prompt chatGPT

sorry I'm ranty I'm just so bewildered

I mean, yes. they think it's a genius box that can do it for them.

it is bewildering though.

but I think, given your writing example, the same sorts of people would do that, because they aren't aware that tenses/voices/etc are things they even ought to know about. you put prompt in and words come out and it's just as good, right?

yeah I was thinking the same

i mean... that's not just not being a trained writer, that's not being prepared to get into middle school, at least as far as I remember

......having sat through a 9th grade english class where half my classmates failed to distinguish subjects from verbs, I think a lot of people's understanding of grammar is depressingly bad actually

......

i am so tired of humans

/deep sighs at all of this

lol as soon as I read "I wanted the same images, just reworked" I was like "ah yes I see where this is going". Nobody involved in that project seems to have even a basic idea of how the tech works, including the bros who were supposed to be "experts" and should have been the ones to clarify those limitations to the execs.

the problem with the bros explaining the limitations is that they would have to acknowledge that their precious ai isn't perfect

it's the exact same as when NFTs were hot, people clung to the delusion that the NFTs were somehow precious art that would be worth millions, when i think deep down they knew that was ridiculous. But they lie to themselves about it and believe their own bullshit

I do agree that AI is a tool same as, like, Sketchup. It can be a time saver in certain circumstances but not unless it's in the hands of someone who knows its limitations + the fundamentals of the industry/purpose they're using it for, which all these execs and prompters overwhelmingly don't

Actually I could see it being used similarly to Sketchup in terms of things like generating one-off background fillers for webcomics or the like. I know at least a couple of artists who sustained hand/wrist injuries who can't do regular backgrounds any more as result, one of whom traces Sketchup models as an... aid, I guess?

It gives the comic a certain look and I only think it works because the artist in question already really knows their stuff. And if they could afford assistant background artists I'm pretty sure they would opt for that instead lol

chocoballs: joke's on them, that only gets you so far in pretty much any given industry!

Exacerangutan: yeah, unfortunately, re: "people who try to use chatgpt to write code"

agreed on AI being a perfect valid tool, but having fancy tools doesn't do away with needing to actually know how to use the tools and understanding the work

Exactly

I also feel like even the term AI is leading people to have false assumptions. Most of what's accessible to the public isn't really "intelligent" in our classic understanding of the word, it's just sophisiticated generative algorithms, but the average layman doesn't know that.

yeah it's AI only in the loosest sense

yeah, or going the other way by the definition that AI is "computer systems able to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence", a calculator is AI because it can do math

I mean generative AI is fairly analogous to how heuristics work... but heuristics are pretty much always terrible compared to logical reasoning unless the important thing is to get a quick first guess

Yeeeep

Yeah. The sorts of imagine models just have so many different avenues of 'wrong' in how it is used. (Ethical, economical, proper use and understanding of how it works...)

*imaging

ppfff

oh man. i didn't even think about how AI prompt-writers would be lacking the developed artistic eye

as an artist it's easy to forget that looking at art is also a skill you have to develop, because the development of that skill is a passive rider along with the actual drawing skill

so of course if you never put in the effort to develop the art skill, you're not going to have the trained eye either

the way they just kept giving the OP worse and worse submissions is so funny. truly done in by their own hubris in assuming AI art is a sufficient replacement for a human artist

not even understanding the most basic elements of what it is that a human artist doing commercial artwork should be able to accomplish

also "they can't take constructive criticism" is huge

learning how to take concrit is such a basic fundamental part of being a trained artist that not having that skill is like trying to work as a chef without being able to taste food

that's amazing to read, so glad

I love how much this supports arguments I've come up with in case I need to debate with a client about using me or AI...

I love this but I wonder if this could have been even better with having a group of actual artists alongside the AI prompters to further drive the point home

Just in case anyone seeing this plurk is unaware, AI generators are also terrible for the environment like NFTs are. Also the companies in charge of them have put groups of underpaid people through the hell of picking through the database to flag disturbing stuff, getting traumatized in the process.

So this contraversy goes beyond hurting artists. Don't let anyone dismiss this issue just because they don't care about artists.

oh jeez, that's so horrible...

the traumatizing thing, but also the environment

I didn't even think about the potential environmental impacts... Does anyone have a good source on this?

now we know companies won't care about the environmental impact

but they will care that having these jokers and then realizing that their shit needs to be fixed in order to have an acceptable appearance, not to mention be able to be copyrighted (remember, only things created BY HUMANS can be and AI was explicitly stated to not fall under that) will cost them more

which is something that they were likely warned about but ignored

I wish them a very "lose more money on this and fail"

i hope they lose all the money for being stupid enough to go for ai in the first place

(and i hate that it is called ai because Al is a great artist and i love his music)

it's what they deserve

by my understanding it's not actually true AI anyway so calling it that is silly in the first place

exactly, we need to call it PISS

but I'm not really terribly in the know about tech things so correct me if I'm wrong

noctowl: No, you're completely correct

yeah it's not AI, it's basically a very sophisticated text parser

it's a dumb copy machine

DCM?

so the very nature of calling the AI grift AI is in itself...a grift

normal functioning world!

here is an article about the energy cost

Images cost more. They're comparing 1 image to the amount of energy used charging a phone.

Not as completely life sucking as NFTs but the massive numbers are worrying, especially since making a spread is the norm.

Another paper points out that a single AI image technically has a smaller carbon footprint than traditional illustration by a human (gotta get that paper, feed the artist, etc) but /gestures at mountains of crap created by AI that an artist does right in one go

I'd call it IG for image generator except that's Instagram. lol But yeah there isn't anything particularly intelligent about these programs. Where artists make specific decisions for reasons, these programs take the prompt and try to find the average of it. It's a far cry from replicating the artistic process.

I vote for PISS

Found more environmental damageNeil GaimanBasically, cooling down the machines processing stuff for image/text generators like ChatGTP uses up a lot of water.

oh good! cooking AND depriving us of water!

Neil Gaiman doing the lord's work signal boosting these things tbh