That AI image generator we all know has been gaining some fame lately and I've came across some comments on social media, made by people who believe that AI-made art is or isn't art. Since we're all also appreciators of art, as within music and heavy metal, I would like to know your thoughts on this.
Do you consider AI made art to be art or not, and why?

Well, I've seen that a metal musician, whose name I don't remember, has capitalized on an AI art generator to create a cover art for one of his releases or to decorate merch. There are certainly other examples of this within the music or metal world, but I really can't recall anything else, as I haven't research that much about it.

Personally, I believe that, with the constant development on technology and on artificial intelligence, this would be inevitable.
Aesthetically, one could assume that something like this is just a regular piece of art, without even having to know it was AI generated:


And it surely looks more "artistic" than some art of the synthetic cubism, suprematism and dadaism movements. If those movements, especially the Dada, made art by rejecting the then-conceived meaning of art, then, could we be facing a new kind of Dada, nowadays, since it'll eliminate the artist behind the act, by replacing humans with a machine? What is the critheria that defines, effectively, what art is?

Want to see your thoughts!

It's art. There's just less direct control over its creation than more traditional art.

The real question here is, is the person who inputs the prompts into the AI an artist, or is the AI the artist?

I've looked around at the random outdoors many times in my life and thought, "this is art." I grew up in the eastern Mojave, surrounded by a desert of art. I sailed the oceans for six years in the Navy, surrounded by oceans of art. I've lived in forests, near lakes, and around mountains. Always surrounded by art.

Art is art. Doesn't matter how it gets there.

I consider art bots to potentially be an invaluable tool for album cover creation. Like, if you want a cover real quick or want to brainstorm ideas for one.

As for art bots taking over human artists' positions, that ain't gonna happen any time soon. You look at these things, there's things they just can't do. Most of them are censored to not be able to produce gore, excrement, etc. I haven't seen one yet that can successfully do legible text that I give it, like print a name on a street sign. I haven't seen one yet that can do good human faces if I tell it to do so. If you're not looking for anything photorealistic, art bots might be immensely helpful. But when doing photorealistic stuff, they still have a way to go. Whether this is by design or not, I don't know.

ART – the definition™

The term "art" can be applied to any item that people can

- put on a (material or figurative) pedestal and
- enjoy for its aesthetic (not practical or functional) qualities.

Hopefully, everyone agrees. Even though it's a very broad definition, it's way better than the more traditional one: 'Art is whatever the teachers and tastemakers deem art.'

I think art should have a human element to it. These AIs just take photographs, paintings and drawings that already exist and mash them together when you give them a prompt. Not sure how to feel about that, honestly. The technology itself is impressive, but it does make me feel a bit cynical.

I say it's art, but I would never consider the person behind the prompts to be the actual artist, despite some of them kinda trying to take ownership lately. I found it interesting at first, but my main issue with it right now is that there's so much of it out there, and barely any of it is worth a second glance.

When you say the program is censored to be unable to produce extreme images, is that the software designer's choice or a legal requirement?

Edit: spelling errors

If a machine made picture is art, then any and every object is art too.

Personally I would not. I think art is a human craft by necessity.

This.

Sorry in advance if this is a bit off-topic for the thread. I would like to ask a question related to this:
There was an article about Beata Kurkul - an artist (computer graphics drawing/painting) who creates illustrations that are related to the war in Ukraine and who also uses MidJourney for this, and there was a mention that 'painting' in MidJourney can be used as art therapy (not as a part of the process of diagnosing by drawn/painted pictures, but just as a subsequent therapy and as one of the ways to normalize your psychoemotional state and to get rid of negative emotions in your everyday life):
Беата погоджується, що причиною популярності нейромереж може бути і можливість їх використання як арттерапії — малюючи за допомогою нейромереж, можна нормалізувати психоемоційний стан і позбутися напруги та страхів.
(https://armyinform.com.ua/2022/08/11/il ... a-z-lytvy/)

Are there people (or even therapists/psychologists) here who agree with this and find it helpful/effective for this purpose?
I personally don't feel that, for me, it can replace (or that it can be an addition to it for that matter) art therapy in its traditional physical form (i.e. with real paper/chalk board and tools - pencils/paint brushes+paints/crayons/felt pens/chalks, etc.) and don't understand how it could work that way, tbh. Your personal drawing/painting on a PC/tablet in graphic programs - maybe (although I personally don't use it for this purpose), but without using artificial intelligence like MidJourney.

Or is that phrase not so much about the drawing/painting process as about the result (i.e. it just gives you a possibility to see an interpretation of 'pictures' of your experiences/emotions in some visual form) and that some people find it helpful/effective?

You guys sure? Then if I give you an image and you're not sure if it was man made or not, you can't tell if it's art or not either.

When you think about it, the AI art isn't that different to photography. The amount of effort it takes us to point and click with a camera is minuscule compared to the amount of energy that went into forming the hills and eroding the rocks into sand etc.


Or to what degree are the programmers who created the AI in the first place the artist?

A guy won a State Fair fine arts competition recently, having spent about 80 hours using Midjourney and other software to create the work:
https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvmvqm/ ... are-pissed

Well, if you think that you can separate the art from the artist, presumably that means it's possible to have art without an artist.

I'm sure it's "real art" in some objective sense, but it'll always be more impressive to see stuff an actual person made.

It's "art", I guess. Anyone who's seen what Midjourney is capable of should agree. The "artist" in this case is a combination of the original art the AI is trained on, the AI/algorithm and the person inputting the parameters, I'd say.


Pretty much, sadly. It'd be pretty funny/depressing to see if anyone passes the "is this done by AI or not" test.

I think it's art, as much as products like the Resident Evil movies, or a bad drawing, or electronic music, is art. There was a human behind the prompt that had an intention to create somethign and the AI is just the tool. Now that doesn't mean that I regard it at the same level as a painting, a superb photograph, a moving movie or a good tune. Art doesn't have to be good to be art. Not to say that AI art is always bad, though, some of it is amazing. But I think humans will remain the essential artists. I can see some company using AI to cut costs here and there.

Not sure why that would be a contradiction. If being human-made is a necessary condition, then it's possible to be wrong about whether something is art or not. I guess in terms of being aesthetically pleasing, it's a meaningless distinction I agree, but I think art is a bit deeper than that. It has to be a craft that communicates the thoughts and feelings of a human mind.

Well, this is difficult terrain.

Put a customary hammer in a frame. (This idea isn't new; there must have been truckloads of hammers in frames in the museums of the 20th century…) Viewers will get into the mindset of an art recipient: "Ah, I see, my role is to look at this thing closely (shape, colours, the way the lighting plays on the metal etc.), experience it (beauty? menace? order? confusion? etc.) and decipher potential meanings (What does the artist want to tell me? Does he want to tell me anything at all?)."

If there's a "communication of human thoughts and feelings" going on in that moment, it doesn't stem from the hammer but from the act of framing. The hammer itself is just an object of utility with no meanings attached to it. The secret's in the frame – or frames, since the museum serves as a second frame.

Viewers may say: "This is bollocks!", but that would be just a subjective value judgement. If they said: "This isn't art!", they would wilfully obstruct the communication process and misinterpret the situation because the framed thing is clearly intended as art: it's a framed thing in a museum, not a bargain offer in a DIY superstore.

I think one of the things many 20th century artists demonstrate(d) is that "art" isn't just the individual item itself but that it has a lot to do with presentation and perception, the context and the spectator's imagination.

I'd really like to pretend I didn't just read that, but I can't.

Dude...

Well that's one way to account-suicide.

Imagine having an account on here for over 11 years and deciding "yes, today is the day I will be a racist chud and get banned"

I mean. What a way to go out.

To answer the thread question, I think AI art can potentially be art. Pretty much anything can be art if you use it a certain way. But no, if you just input "something racist, in the style of Claude Monet, realistic" and it gives you that, that's not art. That's a fun trick. Art is expression, unless you manage to achieve expression by letting a machine spit disoriented images out for you, AI art isn't art.

This isn't any different than issues that come up when demarcating the parameters of "art" even when just considering art made through conventional means, though. Like, it's the same thing as saying "you could spit on a canvas and hang it on a wall, but that's not art." So, if the problem doesn't seem to change at all when transferred from "regular art" to AI art, maybe that tells us something about the question that we began with.

In that case, if we deem art as being a manifestation of an expression, then, I guess the result of that input can be considered art? Because, there was, at least, a try in achieving some kind of expression by inputing all those terms on the machine, by the a priori thought that it'll generate something that could potentially be already imagined by the person or just for the sake of curiosity, absurdity, or thinking it as being funny.

But, if we deem such procedure as an artistic activity, even when it is made for something serious, then, can we assume that pretty much everyone who uses AI is an artist? Or it is just an engine for people to create art without having to be artists themselves (and what can be assumed as a definition of artist, at all?). Even then, what can be a less ambiguous definition of an AI artist - is it just when it is used for serious purposes, but how can we draw the line? Art can be made accidentally or with funny and derrogatory purposes as well.

I'm not sure I know what this question means, to be honest.

I really enjoy making AI art. Nightcafe is my go to but midjourney is incredible and craiyon is interesting.

In terms of if it's "real", it's important to understand that the algorithms featured in the software are only interested in replicating existing art. If that didn't exist, it wouldn't matter what you would enter into a prompt.

It's also easy to create interesting visuals, but hard to control composition and context. The lack of control can quickly wear out the novelty. So it's unlikely to replace human art.

This is stunning for example.

https://imgur.com/gallery/oDaJT7E

Well, I guess it's not as inspiring in principle as traditional art would be, since it lacks that human touch, but it can still be considered a form of art, and besides, it's just too much fun to recreate album covers with it on Midjourney, and have people guess which records they are, like this one:



Anyone have any ideas on what this one is, by the way?

Please refrain from using dictionnary definitions to try and "solve" questions that have been debatted for centuries by philosophers, artists, art historians and specialists of all sorts. It's truly one of the most insulting and reductive things you can do.

You said this a lot better than what I was about to say.

But, I will say, when Script Bot 2000 starts writing movie scripts I will be taking the hard stance against them.

Somehow I get the feeling that's not actually AI generated.

That isn't a dictionary definition but my opinion (sorry that the "™" is, perhaps, a bit too subtle). I'll never refrain from using it to insult the only philosophers, artists, art historians and specialists who could feel offended by it: the snobs. Insulting them is less aggressive than the reductive thing the Revolutionary French did when they… shortened… the snobs's brothers and sisters. (... )

As far as I'm concerned, the debates you refer to can go on forever –: the outcome will always only reflect the taste of certain people in a certain period, a transient hegemony of taste. Mozart is art, Motörhead isn't. Experimental music is true art whereas the accessible Mozart is pop(ular) – so he can't be art. Van Gogh is art whereas your own little drawings… you better give it up. And so on.

It's all about power and gatekeeping, always, the power to shape the thought fashions of an era, the power to decide which entertainment products are superior and which are inferior. The nebulous term "art", made mythical by mixing it with value judgements when nobody's looking, is used as a seal of approval in order to institutionalize a certain taste. Hopefully, that circus will be a thing of the past someday.

"You drink water, I drink anarchy!" is my new catchphrase.

I've always been a big fan of digital fractal art. It's computer generated, but with human input; to select and modify the algorithm, add the coloring, shading, and layering effects, and so on. Some really stunning images have been created from fractals.