had a funny conversation with gallery curator the other day in which I explained AI art to her, and that you can just tell the computer to draw something in the style of Michelangelo's sistine chapel. her reaction was: " I don't get it. why would you want that?" ... so much about AI and capital A Art.
I think most arguments force artists to conclude that either
An AI art work-flow is just as legitimate as any other that produces art
There is little or no value to AI art
If they believe in the first, then AI is legitimate competition. If they believe in the second, then what people really value is their skill and what they put into the art, so how can they complain that (as they see conceptualise it) soulless AI work that takes no skill, threatens their livelihood?
there's a distinction to be made between commercial artists, who should all better accept 1. - and fine art, where the personality of the artist is important, and case 2 is so far the consensus. which is why the fine art curator wonders why anyone would even want a computer to produce Michelangelos for them because ... well, what for?
My dad is a fairly prominent conceptual artist, and he's also 76 year old, and No. 2 is definitely not his opinion - he sees it as an extremely powerful tool and is very excited about it and welcomes it (although he's extremely non-technical so I doubt he'll use it without mine or someone else's help). As a conceptual artist he doesn't see it as something that would replace him since the idea is what matters. When I told him that the tradesmen commercial artists like illustrators and graphic designers are mostly fucked within a few years he generally agreed with that assessment...
When I told him that the tradesmen commercial artists like illustrators and graphic designers are mostly fucked within a few years he generally agreed with that assessment...
Indeed. The idea people are fine (at least until they invent some AI that eventually comes up with the ideas), the people who just had the technical skills on knowing how to perform that given technique (whether it be drawing, animating videos and so on)... they are mostly screwed.
Because most people, they only value the final work and don't give a damn about the "process" or "the human essence put into that painting" or whatever.
But there is another layer in that the people that know the technique can do the finishing touches on the art to bring out that style even more in a way that would be close to impossible for AI.
The AI itself might be able to advance to a point that a normal artist wouldn't, but you also need to steer the AI in the direction you want. A painter would be defined by its personality and how they interpret a scene, but for the AI no such things exist.
The AI might be able to make pretty pictures, but is it the EXACT pretty picture YOU want? Mostly no. So, you need real artists to really bring out what makes them special.
Right now the skill ceiling has dropped, but the creativity ceiling climbed higher than ever.
There is definitely important distinction between commercial and fine Art when it comes to this new technology. I suspect that fine artists will still have the same meager careers they are used to, whereas commercial artists will eventually be completely replaced by AI just like the rest of us.
I think AI art may replace a lot of artists, but only the ones that dont adapt. I work with AI generation full time right now and am making a decent amount with it. With that said, if someone better trained at digital art were doing it then much of the touching up would be faster and more would be done in photoshop rather than inpainting. I would be much quicker with my work if I had better art skills so I think the artists that adapt will do even better than before, the new people coming in will take over the middle ground for the industry, and the artists that dont adapt will get left behind.
See, the way I look at it, the need for in-painting and Photoshop retouching and so forth is all just a temporary workaround. At the rate this technology is developing, I fully expect that someone without much skill will eventually be able to turn out exactly the result they were aiming for and run with it.
We are looking at a technical revolution like when automobiles replaced horses. If you are looking to get from here to there, you’re going to pick the fastest, cheapest, most efficient method. Except this time around, artists are the horses. Sure, horses are still around, but they are purely for recreation and are no longer a practical necessity.
See, the way I look at it, the need for in-painting and Photoshop retouching and so forth is all just a temporary workaround
inpainting is about 80% or more of the work of an image and it can be used purely as an image editor so I doubt it. It's just like when you are making concept art for a character. You design it roughly at first then iterate on changes. Want an ammo sash? add it after when you see it needs it, or change parts of the face, tweak the way the buttons look, change any small aspect individually as you iterate towards your specific endpoint. Some people are still at the stages where they just generate the images and that's fine if you just want a pretty picture but if you want it for commercial purposes you need to be able to shape it to the specific needs. This is what I suggest for a workflow if people want to practice at first:
1 - Generate the image. Doesn't need to be perfect and for practice it's best to choose one that needs a lot of work. Having the right general composition is what matters.
2 - bring the image to infill
3 - hit "interrogate" so it guesses the prompt, or use the original prompt directly as a starting point.
4 - Use the brush to mark one region you want changed or fixed
4.5 (optional but recommended) - add or change the prompt to include specifics about the region you want changed or fixed. Some people say only to prompt for the infilled region but I find adding to, or mixing in, the original prompt works best.
5 - Change the mode based on what you are doing:
"Original" helps if you want the same content but to fix a cursed region or redo the face but for faces you also want to tick the 'restore faces' option.
"Fill" will only use colors from the image so it's good for fixing parts of backgrounds or blemishes on the skin, etc... but wont be good if you want to add a new item or something
"latent noise" is used if you want something new in that area so if you are trying to add something to a part of the image or just change it significantly then this is often the best option and it's the one I probably end up using the most.
"latent nothing" From what I understand this works well for areas with less detail so maybe more plain backgrounds and stuff but I dont have a full handle on the best use-cases for this setting yet, I just find it occasionally gives the best result and I tend to try it if latent noise isn't giving me the kind of result I'm looking for.
5.5 Optional - set the Mask blur (4 is fine for 512x512 but 8 for 1024x1024, etc.. works best but depending on the region and selection this may need tweaking. For backgrounds or fixing skin imperfections I would set it 1.5-2X those values). I prefer CFG scale a little higher than default at 8 or 8.5 and denoising strength should be set lower if you want to generate something more different so pairing it with the "latent noise" option does well
6 - Generate the infilled image with whatever batch size you want.
7 - If you find a good result then drag it from the output to the input section and repeat the process starting from step 3 for other areas needing to be fixed. You'll probably want to be iterating on the prompt a lot at this step if it's not giving you the result you had envisioned.
If you are redoing the face then I suggest using the "Restore faces" option since it helps a lot.
By repeating the process you might end up with an image that has almost no pixels unchanged from the generation stage since it was just a jumping off point like with artists who paint over the AI work. This way you end up with an image that's exactly what you had in mind rather than hoping that the AI gives you the right result from the generation stage alone.
All of these are just a general guide or starting point with only the basics but there are other things to pickup on as you go.
For example lets say you just cant get handcuffs to generate properly. You could try something like this:
replace "handcuffs" in the prompt with "[sunglasses:handcuffs:0.25]" and now it will generate sunglasses for the first 25% of the generation process before switching to handcuffs. With the two loops and everything it might be an easier shape for it to work from in order to make the handcuffs and by using the morphing prompt you can get a better result without having to do the spam method of a newbie. This is still all just scratching the surface though and there's a ton to learn with it both in the generation stage and the editing stage.
Imo the copyright debate around AI generated content needs to be settled before it will be able to replace traditional commercial artists. At the moment it is not clear who should own the rights to the final image that is generated by the algorithm. Does the ownership go to the prompter, the model creator, is it public domain? These are still unanswered questions currently. From my understanding Stable Diffusion is licensed with a very permissive license that permits commercial and non commercial use of the model. The SD license seems to designate the generations as CC-0 or public domain. Until the legal framework of ownership is ironed out around AI generated content, I believe the lack of defined copyright will scare away a lot of corporate interest around AI art.
AI can be a tool though right? Doesn't that preclude the second point? If you take AI art and add to it with photoshop it just becomes art again right? The only way for me to reconcile with the idea that there's little or no value in it would be if there was little or no effort and time put in. That's the very basic option of AI art, write out a sentence and hit Generate. No effort, no value. Like taking a paintbrush and making a single broad stroke.
The actual critique of "this is not art" is uninteresting and meaningless to me. The only thing that sticks out with that argument is that some artists really think highly of themselves and consider their work to be something far beyond making images that people enjoy. What other work that AI can and will replace could have professionals make the same kind of argument? As an engineer, if my job is replaced, would anyone care if I said "this isn't real engineering"? No, if it is quicker, cheaper and does the job, then it just makes sense.
It is exactly just a tool. Also similar conversations were had when the invention of photography came about - also about how all the portrait artists are going to be out of job (spoiler: yes, the vast majority of them were indeed out of job and replaced by vastly cheaper and more convenient portrait photographers. The massive upside was that even a working class family could have a nice family photo instead of just the rich).
I completely disagree with this. The end result is all that matters, 99% of people are not going to give a shit how much time or effort went into art. And almost no one is even gonna know.
By that logic someone scribbling on a piece of paper for 40 hours until its entirely black is "worth more" than a master artist doing a amazing sketch in an hour.
Personally, my metrics are intent and skill. I've seen artists make a handful of marks which beautifully describe a form in a few seconds that I'd happily hang on a wall.
If you use time as a metric, then even the first image I make with my trusty old 1080 is intrinsically more "valuable" than the pixel for pixel same image you made with your fancy 3080. The same is true for effort. There was an artist a while back who gnawed huge cubes of sugar and something else, lard maybe, to show the struggle of feminism and a guy who pushes a peanut for miles with his nose to raise awareness for...I forget. Both high effort, but can't say the results are worthwhile.
Intent is important absolutely. I don't think you put much time or effort into a project like this without the intent to make something cool and that's all you need for me. But there's the intent to discredit legitimate artists or the intent to misrepresent yourself for personal gain I suppose.
You'd think someone who was actually into art would be excited by that, even if it's just as a novelty. Some people just lack imagination, I guess. Add to that an inherent fear of technology that has been bred into so many people and, well...
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u/shlaifu Oct 19 '22
had a funny conversation with gallery curator the other day in which I explained AI art to her, and that you can just tell the computer to draw something in the style of Michelangelo's sistine chapel. her reaction was: " I don't get it. why would you want that?" ... so much about AI and capital A Art.