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#2 is a fake. I can list the tells if you'd like,
Yes I was probably very conservative and we are just 1 year away.
I will give you two photos one by AI and one by a famous photographer could you tell the difference?
FWIW, Hollywood was always a content source, but the business was always the distribution.
Hollywood was always there merely to fill the pipeline.
And as the means we use to experience the content has changed, so has the way that the pipeline is filled.
Ironically, all of this might actually be good for the theatre. Unless and until they come up with better robots and/or better holograms, live theatre will still need live actors to create the experience that live theatre offers.
I expect that is one of the reasons that my wife and I enjoy more British and, to a certain extent, European TV drama. So many of the actors - and I assume writers - have busy careers in the theatre as well.
#2 is a fake. I can list the tells if you'd like,
FWIW, Hollywood was always a content source, but the business was always the distribution.
Hollywood was always there merely to fill the pipeline.
And as the means we use to experience the content has changed, so has the way that the pipeline is filled.
Ironically, all of this might actually be good for the theatre. Unless and until they come up with better robots and/or better holograms, live theatre will still need live actors to create the experience that live theatre offers.
I expect that is one of the reasons that my wife and I enjoy more British and, to a certain extent, European TV drama. So many of the actors - and I assume writers - have busy careers in the theatre as well.
You are correct!
#1 is August Sander and #2 is ChatGPT
Please list the tells. They are not so obvious for me in the sense that it could very well be some editing that caused the different result, not necessarily generative AI
The looming (depressing) reality is that "Hollywood" and studios worldwide will not factor into any future entertainment content whatsoever. They will likely be an empty husk that licenses ip to ai entertainment creation systems. I doubt that will even do much to protect their ip. At some point soon, these tools will be open source and able to run locally on most desktops. Anyone could spin up a session and say, "Generate a new Star Wars movie in the style of the originals" and a few mins later they're watching a new SW film. It would be all the same characters, lore, environments etc. They wouldn't bother sharing it, so no one would even know it existed. Another level would be VR and you can be in the movie. Everyone will generate content locally and on demand. Maybe Netflix etc will offer generative ai options and ability to watch what others created and what is rating the highest, but I think most will generate their own content and get their ais to learn what they like so it becomes refined. I'm not seeing much future for humans in this industry (or I guess most industry). Not saying I want this at all, just making predictions based on the trajectory I see.
I sometimes can't avoid hearing some pop music, but the rare experience makes me wonder if you're right. It seems that people to a large extent are actually quite satisfied with the predictable, repetitive media. It's apparently soothing. Remember Dallas, or As The World Turns? That sort of thing seems pretty Ai-able to me.But people will grow bored of Star Wars versions 6.02, 6.03 etc.
But people will grow bored of Star Wars versions 6.02, 6.03 etc. Innovation and creativity produces new things, and AI seems to be lacking in that ability. It does a lot of mimicking. It could be that AI will push humans to try even harder to be different and create new products that make them stand out from the day-to-day AI stuff. After all, no one is going to get an Oscar for Star Wars 6.04.
I think that AI getting so good will kill a lot of artistic work that humans like to do, especially for hobbyists. Why compete with AI? Let's face it. There is a certain amount of ego and competitiveness in photography and other hobbies. People want to see themselves improving against themselves and against others. We enjoy atta boys. Well, I do. What's the point of busting your butt on DOF if a ten-year-old can do better than us sitting at a keyboard typing prompts? We might switch our creative and hobby efforts to bowling or furniture making, things that computers can't compete with us. Who wants to be embarrassed by a snotty ten-year-old?
The problem in that sentence isn't AI. It's the choice to frame this in terms of competition. The nice thing about a hobby is that we don't have to compete. We can just enjoy doing something. Most things people do for a hobby they don't do particularly well. The fact that it's a hobby means we can set the bar as high or as low as we want. You can still make and enjoy your crummy photo of Half Dome even though Stable Diffusion will give you a technically better image. That's the nice thing about hobbies. We can ignore the competition because there isn't any.Why compete with AI?
The problem in that sentence isn't AI. It's the choice to frame this in terms of competition. The nice thing about a hobby is that we don't have to compete. We can just enjoy doing something. Most things people do for a hobby they don't do particularly well. The fact that it's a hobby means we can set the bar as high or as low as we want. You can still make and enjoy your crummy photo of Half Dome even though Stable Diffusion will give you a technically better image. That's the nice thing about hobbies. We can ignore the competition because there isn't any.
I think that AI getting so good will kill a lot of artistic work that humans like to do, especially for hobbyists. Why compete with AI? Let's face it. There is a certain amount of ego and competitiveness in photography and other hobbies. People want to see themselves improving against themselves and against others. We enjoy atta boys. Well, I do. What's the point of busting your butt on DOF if a ten-year-old can do better than us sitting at a keyboard typing prompts? We might switch our creative and hobby efforts to bowling or furniture making, things that computers can't compete with us. Who wants to be embarrassed by a snotty ten-year-old?
This is a non issue for me. Where we are already I can't compete. I do it for myself. I enjoy the fruits of my own labor. I can't ever see myself being proud of an AI generated image that I prompted. A digital rendering sure, digital photo yes, film of course, even using AI to build a scene sure, I can see that. But to jot down some instructions and have the program crank it out is the same as popping a microwave meal into Chef Mike. I don't need art like I need food. If the art doesn't satisfy me artistically it's useless.
The problem in that sentence isn't AI. It's the choice to frame this in terms of competition. The nice thing about a hobby is that we don't have to compete. We can just enjoy doing something. Most things people do for a hobby they don't do particularly well. The fact that it's a hobby means we can set the bar as high or as low as we want. You can still make and enjoy your crummy photo of Half Dome even though Stable Diffusion will give you a technically better image. That's the nice thing about hobbies. We can ignore the competition because there isn't any.
What would you like to hear from others? - "That's a great shot. How did you do it? or, "Did you Photoshop it?"
CGI has pretty much put car photographers out of business. Never mind how much is used in car commercials. No need to detail the car, or transport it to an exotic location, even option it out with items not yet available at the time of producing the ad or commercial. Stunt drivers not needed either.You know, this got me thinking. Back when CGI started in movies it looked pretty bad. Sometimes laughably so. Over time we got pretty good at it to the point it looks really really good. However, no matter how good CGI has gotten, CGI without practical effects backing it up still looks like GCI. It looks awesome and cool but it still looks like CGI. We don't care anymore because of how good it's gotten but that doesn't change that you can spot CGI when its used.
CGI has pretty much put car photographers out of business. Never mind how much is used in car commercials. No need to detail the car, or transport it to an exotic location, even option it out with items not yet available at the time of producing the ad or commercial. Stunt drivers not needed either.
This limits the scope of what art is to work produced with involvement and arguably control by the human mind. I think in the end, that's really going to be the dividing line. And that automatically means that imagery (or sound, or whatever) that's made essentially by a digital agent with no direct control of a person over the outcome will never be accepted as art by a broader audience - with the 'audience' being defined as people who have an interest in art to begin with. That's an important caveat, because the majority of mankind in my opinion has no real interest in art. People like pretty things, overall, but that's a different matter.art is a way for a person to communicate something about their experience of the world. It's an expression of self.
I think the whole talk about AI not being capable enough is bogus really; I'm with @Sean on this. For the most part, it's already there, and insofar as it isn't, it's a matter of a very short amount of time until it gets there. Seems like presently it's mostly the step that needs to be made from "too perfect" towards "sufficiently wabi-sabi to trick us into believing it's real". That puts us in a position where photo-realistic AI is literally just that, and indistinguishable from the real thing.
Where would that leave us?
Well, let's put aside one important matter - when it comes to art, there's a heck of a lot more than photography. The thread asks about AI being used to produce art in a broad sense, so that inherently includes everything else except photography. This spans forms of art that do not need to mimic anything that already exists. There are entirely new avenues that are open for exploration. What's limiting us mostly at this point is the limits to our own imagination and ingenuity. I follow AI 'art' generation with a slanted eye and for the most part, it really is uncreative slop - renders of barely clothed women in violent "Lethal Weapon, Kill Bill" kind of situations (what the heck is wrong with people). Or when it's a little more 'out there', it remains stuck at rehashes of Star Wars and Dune type of imagery of fantasy landscapes or space stations. Mind you, this is all being done with exceeding technical prowess and the images as such are pretty mindboggling/stunning. Particularly creative or artistically compelling they are not, and that's not due to the use of AI. It's due to the fact that most of this 'successful' imagery is made basically by nerds with an interest in IT, and not by artist. Wait until capable hands (minds) start wielding this technology. We're in for a ride, for sure.
The more important issue I'd like to put to the fore is the in my view kind of hilarious argument about AI being 'not good enough' as a means to disqualify it from the domain of the arts. That's not the point, at all, in my view. That AI can be used to make art is not even up for debate in my opinion. See above; the fact that for now, it's mostly relatively uncreative minds using it and this resulting in fairly unartistic slop (including the 'crazy realism' video above) does not mean the potential isn't there. It's like arguing that cars are useless because once in a while someone drives into a tree with one. It's a logical fallacy to discredit the technology on the basis of a non-exhaustive set of counter-examples. Black swans don't exist until the day you see one, and all that. There's no doubt in my mind we'll be seeing plenty of black swans soon enough.
The real question is whether or not we'll accept that art as actual art. And I think, it depends here on the degree to which we recognize a human hand in it. In the end, I think the question what is or isn't art boils down to what @thinkbrown said very early on in the thread; specifically this bit (I do not necessarily agree with what followed):
This limits the scope of what art is to work produced with involvement and arguably control by the human mind. I think in the end, that's really going to be the dividing line. And that automatically means that imagery (or sound, or whatever) that's made essentially by a digital agent with no direct control of a person over the outcome will never be accepted as art by a broader audience - with the 'audience' being defined as people who have an interest in art to begin with. That's an important caveat, because the majority of mankind in my opinion has no real interest in art. People like pretty things, overall, but that's a different matter.
The underlying question is why we would draw a dividing line between 'art' and 'not art' on the basis of human control. In my mind, that's simple - we want to be able to relate to it, that's all. We can't relate to a datacenter any more (and in fact, much less so, on average) than to a pet cat. It's just too different a beast. When it comes to Ai-generated work, one of the key problems is that a datacenter is just too...good. It yields a perfect result, even if we require it to be imperfect - then it'll be perfect in its imperfection. For whatever underlying psychological or evolutionary reason, we can't really cope with that as humans. Probably it's just too threatening in the end and we can't cope with that in the way we usually do.
Think about it - why do people read tabloids? For that matter, why do people read biographies of people like Einstein or Musk? A large part of it is to be able to spot all the imperfections, vices, character faults, misbehaviors and flaws exhibited by the rich and famous. Those people we all somehow measure up against, who are the benchmark of success in one way or another - one of the main ways of dealing with them and the notion that most of us will never really succeed in life the way these happy few have done (that's why they're few, after all), is to focus not just on their success, but also on their failure. Einstein married his niece - LOLWUT! And didn't that video of Musk smoking a joint during a podcast recording go viral? Sex! Drugs! Human weakness!
It's a lame piece of Hollywood trash in many ways, but in some ways, Bicentennial Man is an interesting movie. At what point does Mr Robot get accepted (American-style: in a legal sense) as a human being? That's right - the moment he 'failed' in a human way: by (arguably irrationally) opting for mortality.
It shows in this thread as well. The moment the notion of Ai autonomously creating art arises, the response is essentially "it can't be, it's not supposed to be!" Arguments are all over the place - it's not good enough, it's too good, it can't think, it can't feel etc. In short - it's not human enough. It's insufficiently like me, and if it's not like me, I won't accept it. In the end, that's the criterion, the way I see it. And I think there's nothing wrong with that. If anything, AI is going to help us understand a little better what "being human" involves. Maybe that's the greatest 'innovation' it'll bring.
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