Anyone play around with AI art?

[robj144]

I've been playing around with AI art a long time. And, while, I get it's a bit controversial, I think it's getting amazing.

Here is a sample of the various images I've created (all 100% AI):

[Gitfiddlemann]

I agree with you that AI is controversial. I tend to agree with Stephen Hawking's view that it will ultimately prove to be a lot more malevolent than benevolent towards mankind, although we might not be around to experience it, even though it's currently all around us in ways that we might not even be aware of.
That said, I have no problem in what you're doing with it artistically as shown here. I think these photos are amazing looking, have artistic value, and I fully get how fulfilling it can be for someone like yourself to engage their creativity in this way.
However, you freely admit what you're doing, not in it for commercial reasons, and are very open about it, leaving the viewer to make their own conclusions about the end product. I think that's how it should be.
In a way, it's not unlike the current situation we have in the music industry with copyright laws and the emergence of Tik Tok and YouTubers. But I don't anything of the sort exists now for AI "art".
So I imagine there is a lot of blurring the line going on at the moment, and genuine artists' work and inspirations being ripped off by others who use AI for commercial reasons without proper attribution. That, I don't think is cool.
But I totally get that that's not you. I look forward to seeing more of these pics and hopefully find out more about the process. I do think the potential is huge as a form of self-expression, if it's done genuinely.

[robj144]

Originally Posted by AndreF

I agree with you that AI is controversial. I tend to agree with Stephen Hawking's view that it will ultimately prove to be a lot more malevolent than benevolent towards mankind, although we might not be around to experience it, even though it's currently all around us in ways that we might not even be aware of.
That said, I have no problem in what you're doing with it artistically as shown here. I think these photos are amazing looking, have artistic value, and I fully get how fulfilling it can be for someone like yourself to engage their creativity in this way.
However, you freely admit what you're doing, not in it for commercial reasons, and are very open about it, leaving the viewer to make their own conclusions about the end product. I think that's how it should be.
In a way, it's not unlike the current situation we have in the music industry with copyright laws and the emergence of Tik Tok and YouTubers. But I don't anything of the sort exists now for AI "art".
So I imagine there is a lot of blurring the line going on at the moment, and genuine artists' work and inspirations being ripped off by others who use AI for commercial reasons without proper attribution. That, I don't think is cool.
But I totally get that that's not you. I look forward to seeing more of these pics and hopefully find out more about the process. I do think the potential is huge as a form of self-expression, if it's done genuinely.

Delving into your first sentence, I tend to disagree a bit. If we're careful, AI will be a HUGE benefit to mankind. The key is carefully integrating AI though.

Since I've been doing AI art (about a year, but well before it got huge the last few months), it has gotten amazingly better. So, I looked into AI in general a bit. The computational efficiency doubles about every 6 months, meaning the coding is improved and the tech it runs improves so, approximately, it's "twice" as good as it was every 6 months. (I'll try to find the source later.) If this keeps up (which it most likely will... or even improve), let's run some numbers.

In a year: 4 times more efficient
2 years: 16 times
3 years: 64 times
4 years: 256 times
5 years: 1028 times
6 years: 4012 times

And, 1000x more efficient is about the same as comparing a computer around the year 2000 to now. That's only a few years away.

The AI revolution is not coming in 50 years, like some think, it's right around the corner. AI will be everywhere, at every job. While most think that could be scary, it might not.

Advanced Ai's (in 5 to 10 years), can work 24/7 on all types of problems in medicine, science, and tech. It will advance all of them by 100s of man years in a few months or a few years. If we can avoid AI taking over (again we need to be careful), advances in medicine will drastically increase humans life spans. It will solve energy demands, and most likely, start serious space travel.

I've been telling everyone that AI is not 50 years away, it's 5 to at most 15 years away. I mean you are already starting to hear about it almost daily right now and it's just starting.

[robj144]

I should also point out a common misconception about AI art which is AI art basically takes someones art and alters it to match a prompt. In other words, some people think it has access to database of billions of pieces of art it just steals from when you're using it.

This is not correct at all. It was TRAINED on them. There is zero art it's pulling from when it's running. It in fact begins with random noise and nothing more. It then denoises the image to emulate what the user wants. So AI art is technically not stealing anything at all.

But, I get artists frustration and am empathetic. I try not to use someone's style (sometimes I do, but not often). I mean artists are worried they will take away their livelihood. But, they're thinking of it as a zero sum game meaning that any profits from AI art will take away from their profits. That's not necessarily true. But, again, I do get it.

Artists are just first in line though. AI will infiltrate every kind of job very shortly.

[Gitfiddlemann]

I don't disagree at all with your viewpoints, and that AI is here and growing fast (as you point out), whether we like it or not.
I think it all comes down to what you said in your first reply:

If we're careful....

That's true, and crucial. It has the potential for enormous good. But there is also a flip side.
Who will control it best in the end, Good or Evil, and can we even prevent it from taking over?


Don't mind me. I tend to see such things with the glass half-empty, especially when it involves humankind.
Ironically, the above pics were very likely generated by AI art
which is the focus of your thread. I didn't mean to distract it with my personal feelings on AI as a subject.
Incidentally, my favorite of your pics was that old cabin in the woods. That's a very cool one. I look forward to seeing more.

[Dirk Hofman]

@robj144, what application or service are you using to generate the images?

[robj144]

I've been using Stable Diffusion since it was first released. I run it locally on my desktop.

[robj144]

Originally Posted by AndreF

I don't disagree at all with your viewpoints, and that AI is here and growing fast (as you point out), whether we like it or not.
I think it all comes down to what you said in your first reply:

If we're careful....

That's true, and crucial. It has the potential for enormous good. But there is also a flip side.
Who will control it best in the end, Good or Evil, and can we even prevent it from taking over?


Don't mind me. I tend to see such things with the glass half-empty, especially when it involves humankind.
Ironically, the above pics were very likely generated by AI art
which is the focus of your thread. I didn't mean to distract it with my personal feelings on AI as a subject.
Incidentally, my favorite of your pics was that old cabin in the woods. That's a very cool one. I look forward to seeing more.

No worries... I get it.

Cool images too.

[Dirk Hofman]

Originally Posted by robj144

I've been using Stable Diffusion since it was first released. I run it locally on my desktop.

Thanks! I tried the demo at https://huggingface.co/spaces/stabil...able-diffusion but results were...odd. Seems I have work to do to figure this out.

[FrankHudson]

Originally Posted by robj144

I should also point out a common misconception about AI art which is AI art basically takes someones art and alters it to match a prompt. In other words, some people think it has access to database of billions of pieces of art it just steals from when you're using it.

This is not correct at all. It was TRAINED on them. There is zero art it's pulling from when it's running. It in fact begins with random noise and nothing more. It then denoises the image to emulate what the user wants. So AI art is technically not stealing anything at all.

But, I get artists frustration and am empathetic. I try not to use someone's style (sometimes I do, but not often). I mean artists are worried they will take away their livelihood. But, they're thinking of it as a zero sum game meaning that any profits from AI art will take away from their profits. That's not necessarily true. But, again, I do get it.

Artists are just first in line though. AI will infiltrate every kind of job very shortly.

I have read the same objections that it's essentially taking and recomposing images it's grabbed that were done by human artists without credit or compensation. Above you report it's not doing that. The following question is meant to be informative for me (and perhaps others), not as a dispute: How do we know that? I can see why someone producing such a product might have reasons to claim that. Are any of the AI art products open source, has someone looked at the code and confirmed that it's not just a clever indexed copy/paste thing?

I'll post another more general response after this, but since this question goes to the heart of one common objection, I'd love to know if the facts of the matter on this one point have been established.

[robj144]

Originally Posted by FrankHudson

I have read the same objections that it's essentially taking and recomposing images it's grabbed that were done by human artists without credit or compensation. Above you report it's not doing that. The following question is meant to be informative for me (and perhaps others), not as a dispute: How do we know that? I can see why someone producing such a product might have reasons to claim that. Are any of the AI art products open source, has someone looked at the code and confirmed that it's not just a clever indexed copy/paste thing?

I'll post another more general response after this, but since this question goes to the heart of one common objection, I'd love to know if the facts of the matter on this one point have been established.

One method of seeing this is that I can see how the image is created in real time, step by step. I can even post a GIF of this later.

The other way is that it's just how diffusion models work and there are many peer reviewed publications on the matter.

[FrankHudson]

A generally accepted definition of AI is somewhat hard to pin down. I've watched these images and text pieces recently generated with some interest, and I've read some of the reports & objections. Here's a more general observation.

I'm an old guy (as are many here). If we call something AI if it means a computer uses rules/procedures/databases to complete a task that otherwise would be done in many discrete steps "by hand," then we are all using AI in ways large and small. Here are a couple of examples outside AI claiming to create pictures out of whole cloth:

I used to be a wizard at research in midcentury. Knowing the various paper indexes, what libraries had what collections, how to speed-read large books to extract specific answers--all these where specific skills that were time consuming to execute. Now we have ubiquitous Google.* Yes, skill and evaluation still counts, but the amount of research in the time expended is now much much greater. rules/procedures/databases do a lot of heavy lifting. It's an example of how AI has become so common to us we don't even think of it as AI.

I can't play keyboards for beans. But I can tell my DAW what chord voicings I want and have them finger them for me. I can even have them arpeggiate them in tricky rhythms. That's not exactly AI, but I'll be honest, sometimes I'll try one of the presets just sitting there in computer menus and though it's not something I'd think of myself, I say "Thanks, that sounds interesting."** I don't find the results all that interesting most of the time for featured top lines, but it sure makes accompaniment parts easier.

Spell check. I'm a terrible speller. This feature we take for granted started out as simple lookup (a computer indexed dictionary). Spell check in some of the first computer word processors I used just flagged a word as unrecognized. Now we're used to the computer knowing what word we likely meant to type, and we notice the mistaken exceptions in spell check (and are even sometimes frustrated by real-time autocorrect). Again supplied rules/procedures/database do work for us and let's us concentrate on something else. But for all that, the amount of less-embarrassing text I can create is greatly aided by AI. and has been for decades.***

In all of these cases I'm grateful for AI.





*No Google the company and the search engine isn't perfect. Yes, that's a debate. That's not my point. I'm using the term generically anyway.

**I'm embarrassed that I do this sometimes. It feels false, inauthentic. And yes, the microvariations of "real playing" has indisputable value. On the other hand, if I was some classical composer with a king or duke's orchestra at my command, just telling a section "I just need you to play a simple pattern with a dotted eighth feel here" is just a hand-labor version of this.

***I'm aware of the "but you should just learn to spell without a computer" objection. I listened to that one when I was younger and even considered that might be right. I'm now way older, and I'm glad I didn't take that advice in my case. We now understand that how people's brains work are not just a difference in willpower or hours of effort.

[FrankHudson]

Last AI point.

The objection that the AI products actually steal from other artists is complex. While I've made a choice that trying to do my niche art for money is not worth the candle, I don't want to stop other artists from being compensated.

While computers and networks make wholesale IP theft easier, I do note that when artists did things "by hand" we took things from other artists all the time. In any such discussion T S Eliot's "Good artists copy; Great artists steal." will come up.

There's a subtle discussion to follow this. Is slow, hand-done theft tolerable, maybe even desirable, but mechanized and much more pervasive theft objectionable. If so, where's the line to draw? (pun not intended).

[TBman]

Years ago I used to play around with a Pov-Ray, ray-tracing software.

[Dave in Olympia]

Personally, I don't see something created on a computer screen as art. It can be an attractive image, but it is not "art" in my mind, more like commercial graphic design. I feel the same about highly modified photographs. The colors in that sunset have never been seen by a person in real life. This is just my opinion, and comes from the school of "What is art? I know it when I see it" thought.