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Not really, no

AI is the revenge of school science nerds against smug creatives
Arty types are about to become the middle-class equivalent of miners – the future is bleak

We mechanised realistic painting with photography. People still became painters.

The art of being creative is to, well, be creative, no? Do the stuff that others and machines cannot do?

AI might well be a danger to plodders like me, but to creatives?

14 thoughts on “Not really, no”

  1. The lure of no state taxes will do that, although property taxes wielded by counties (in this case Miami-Dade) will provoke nose bleeds.

  2. So, since offspring saw “Stranger Things” on TV and wanted to play D&D – I started on AD&D back in the 1980s, 5th Ed is actually not just better produced but much better to play and run – they and their friends have been creating characters and seeking out “what does my Dark Elven dancer bard look like?” images.

    The various AI “generate an image” projects are not bad for ideas and concepts, but the strike rate of “looks like a usable image” is surprisingly low and all sorts of odd artefacts and “uncanny valley” effects appear. Pretty much every time they settle on an image, it’s human-generated artwork off somewhere like Pinterest.

    The flipside – and the real issue with pretentious artists – is that the tools exist for keen young folk with some talent, to produce pretty good work for low cost – and they do, often just because they enjoy doing it and putting their work up to be seen and Creative Commonsed.

    I wouldn’t pay for “after your first trial, subscribe here!” on an AI art generator – I’d pick someone whose style I liked and ask “how much for a custom portrait to be a D&D character’s image?” (because thanks to the Interweb it doesn’t matter if they’re in Huddersfield, Houston or Hong Kong)

  3. And yet… most modern artists do not routinely make their own paints or canvases. Did they seize the convenience or did they bemoan the industrialization of their raw materials?

    I expect (but have no numbers) that the greatest revenue stream in art is through selling prints. Is this any less commercial that using AI. Not much I’d say.

  4. @decnine – November 4, 2023 at 9:08 am

    I wonder if AI could do a better job than Westminster/Whitehall?

    Let’s face it, it would be hard-pushed to do a much worse job!

  5. Plenty of tech guys that I have worked with have had creative outlets in their hobbies, from the classic train sets (making dioramas) to leg turning on a lathe. In contrast the self declared creatives claim never to have the time and produce little other than ticket stubs for exhibitions, performances etc and the accompanying expense claims.

  6. Well, there was that AI painting which won in competition.

    An A.I.-Generated Picture Won an Art Prize. Artists Aren’t Happy

    When I first saw it I was quite amazed, but having seen a fair few of them since then it’s easy to spot the sort of artefact’s that AI tends to generate. The backgrounds are a bit rough-around-the-edges and the figures are a bit more lithe than humans.

    Plus the whole hands, fingers and well. Let’s make no bones about it. Cocks.

    Nice enough for desktop wallpaper, but that’s about it.

  7. Indeed true. When photography mechanised representational art, artists were incentivised to be creative. Go visit Tate Modern & see what you think of the result. It’s not just creative. It’s usefully creative that’s the point.

  8. Once upon a time it was confidently predicted that TV would be the end of books, radio, cinema and destroy the art of conversation and families. It was Hippies and feminists who achieved the latter.

    And at the start of the 20th Century, the Human body would not be able to withstand the forces of travelling at speeds of 60mph or greater – so cars and train speeds should be limited.

    If only the doomsayers knew history instead of hysteria.

  9. Meh. Remember when “Big Data” was the big issue? Turns out not to be not worth the petabytes it’s written on. The only reason we’re hearing so much about AI is because journalists have just realisid its their jobs at risk. Maybe they should learn to code 🙂 I recommend “In Search of Stupidity” to anyone who hasn’t read it.

  10. As soon as AI mastered text, audiences shifted to TikTok videos which are much harder to fake. Humans have a sixth sense for detecting inauthentic work.

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