I suppose it would depend on who the “artist” is considered to be at the end.
Say for instance I had an idea that I wanted a painting of Sir Issac Newton wearing a cowboy hat and riding a mechanical bull, and I commission a painter to create my vision. Instead of using paints or pencils or anything to create the image the painter goes online and downloads a bunch of pictures of Isaac Newton and mechanical bulls and collages them together in a way that looks kind of like an original painting.
Who is the artist in that case? It’s not me, since I didn’t make anything. It’s not the painter since they didn’t actually create anything original, they just stole a bunch of pictures someone else took. It’s not the people who made the original images that the painter stole since they never even agreed to be part of any of it.
We hit the same dilemma with AI. The person putting in the prompts hasn’t really “created” anything. The AI engine hasn’t created anything either, it just takes parts of other existing works. The people who made the original works had no say in any of how their work was used.
How is that “art”?
I love playing with AI to make silly images or even workshop ideas for things I might do in the future, but I wouldn’t call it “art”
Painters can either splash paint on the canvas or spend months working on a photorealistic masterpiece. There’s absolutely a difference in skill needed for both but to claim the former is not art would also be gatekeeping.
That argument also disregards the actual difficulty of crafting the perfect prompt to get the AI to output what you want it to. Anyone can create pictures with it but it’s not trivial to get it to create exactly what you want.
I suppose it would depend on who the “artist” is considered to be at the end.
Say for instance I had an idea that I wanted a painting of Sir Issac Newton wearing a cowboy hat and riding a mechanical bull, and I commission a painter to create my vision. Instead of using paints or pencils or anything to create the image the painter goes online and downloads a bunch of pictures of Isaac Newton and mechanical bulls and collages them together in a way that looks kind of like an original painting.
Who is the artist in that case? It’s not me, since I didn’t make anything. It’s not the painter since they didn’t actually create anything original, they just stole a bunch of pictures someone else took. It’s not the people who made the original images that the painter stole since they never even agreed to be part of any of it.
We hit the same dilemma with AI. The person putting in the prompts hasn’t really “created” anything. The AI engine hasn’t created anything either, it just takes parts of other existing works. The people who made the original works had no say in any of how their work was used.
How is that “art”?
I love playing with AI to make silly images or even workshop ideas for things I might do in the future, but I wouldn’t call it “art”
I disagree with the premise that such mosaic of online pictures wouldn’t be “original” piece of art. It absolutely qualifies by my books
Who is the artist though?
One who wrote the prompt. It may be the AI that does all the heavy lifting but it’s still a tool and alone it doesn’t create anything.
But the person who wrote the prompts didn’t create anything. With AI there really is no “artist”.
How did they not create anything? They inserted a prompt into the tool and received a picture.
They had a rough idea and left it to the AI to make any sense of it and “create” something.
Painters can either splash paint on the canvas or spend months working on a photorealistic masterpiece. There’s absolutely a difference in skill needed for both but to claim the former is not art would also be gatekeeping.
That argument also disregards the actual difficulty of crafting the perfect prompt to get the AI to output what you want it to. Anyone can create pictures with it but it’s not trivial to get it to create exactly what you want.