For some reason this gives me vibes similar to RMS' "The Right to Read"[0], but also to Cory Doctorow's ouvre like "The Things that Make Me Weak and Strange Get Engineered Away"[1] or "Unauthorized Bread"[2].
I think it is worth asking what is cut out of the artistic process when you delegate to a black box as this piece has. In my opinion it is worth demarcating AI art from handmade art so the possible intentions can be identified.
At the same time, I'm not sure it's realistic to convince everyone who enjoys AI art that they're not getting the full picture unless they put in the effort to create handmade art. I think if AI art hadn't been invented as of now, all those people would just be doing other things that they believe have a higher return on investment - other unrelated hobbies, for example - instead of anything related to art at all.
I had tried picking up pen, pencil, and ink for a year to try to relax and find enjoyment, but for me it was the opposite result, much like the frustrated guests at the end of the piece, and it never really got better for me even though I could see the slow and steady progress I was making.
It didn't help that much of the time I wanted to draw for real, I found that I had some other programming projects on the backburner I wanted to work on instead. So I did those things and was generally happier about my free time. When AI art came around later that year, I found the process much more enjoyable than the sketching and doodling I had been doing for months.
I accept that because of how my mind works, AI art and the related computer code will be more interesting to me than penciling, and because of this difference in interest I might never become a decent penciller in my lifetime. Is that a bad thing, if I'm not necessarily trying to embark on a profound artistic journey?
I'm imaging hordes of businessmen tired from their daily activities that at most have an hour of free time to make something they like. In the past these people would have silently given up and did something else. Except, now there is a solution to that problem of skill and effort that has been placed in front of us and it's impossible to ignore.
The problem I see is, how do you convince a "kindergartner-at-art" who will turn down a crayon and paper after a few weeks to grab hold of the interest in physical art and not let it go, lest their interest fall back to AI art for an indefinite time? It feels like this allocation of interest has almost become political with the ethics surrounding AI art being hotly discussed - the ones who have the "correct" interests and hobbies are placed on one side of the discussion or another.
The AI will write, paint, render, stylized, mix, match, re-mix, denoise, film-grain, celebrity voice, etc.
But since it is drawn from a relatively fixed swath of culture, patterns will emerge. I don't mean extra fingers or other anomalies, but the things "left over" from over-engineered prompts. Flying heroes always show a copyright friendly Superman analogue in crisp HDR lighting, group photos will always have a mix of skin tones to avoid lawsuits of racism, etc. Scrubbed head to toe of offense or legal issues.
Ever visit some of the bigger cities in Texas? Concrete empires filled with various food and store chains on flat land to the point pics of Houston look interchangeable with Dallas. Art, as we know it, will start to look like that.
I quite enjoyed the story but that said I feel like you can say this about almost any advancement. I’ve heard it about higher-level programming languages enough, heck my EE teacher in college regularly made fun of or belittled anyone who wanted to be a “web developer”. Honestly I don’t have the time or patience to hear about how bad “AI” is. It’s a freaking tool, that’s it. A powerful one but no different from the printing press up through the smart phone.
The AI doomers are so tiring (not saying that’s what this story is about). In fact in the end this story praises the ideas over what’s generated but at the end of the day the idea isn’t worth much if you don’t have the skill or means to bring it to fruition. It’s the same way I dislike people that hate electron because it’s electron. There are countless apps that would not exist without electron. The choice was not “native app” or “electron”, it was “electron” or “nothing”. I assume those people also thing 1 piracy = 1 lost sale, just absurd.
At the end of the day tools that let people accomplish more on their own than thought possible are a good thing. My entire side business hinges on tools (not AI) that make it possible for me to write code once and use it in many places, without that I’d need to know 3 languages/ecosystems verses 1. Now, would full native be better? No doubt, I’ll never argue against that _but_ if the alternative is something not existing then I’m happy to settle.
Double-replying, and I don’t altogether disagree. I think there’s something subtly unpleasantly moralizing about it. I don’t know how to explain it beyond that. The feeling I got from the OP and that your comment alludes to is the same one I get from this other short story, Manna.
[0] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html
[1] https://www.tor.com/2008/08/06/weak-and-strange/
[2] https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-...