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Can AI be used to produce art?

Alan Edward Klein said:
Walks like an old man.
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We live near a seniors' care facility.
When I see some of the near centenarians who live there, it amazes me how well they walk. Purposefully, and with both clear intention and an awareness of their surroundings.
Way better than the way nearby teenagers walk when they are crossing the street and texting or doom scrolling at the same time!

It occurs to me that much of the discussion here about "creativity" assumes the sort of creativity that human thought has been known to bring into being.
In the spirit of "Mike" of "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" fame, will we be able to recognize, and how will we deal with the sort of creativity that AI brings into being?
 

Human prompts are the creative part of AI. Without them, AI just sits there doing nothing.
 

I think we all agree that AI is a tool. But my wood saw can't think either. I have to prompt it to do it's work.
 
Alan Edward Klein said:
I think we all agree that AI is a tool. But my wood saw can't think either. I have to prompt it to do it's work.
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"Think" is a problematic term. We haven't defined it. If we were to try, we probably wouldn't agree on a definition.
As to prompting, the question is how direct the prompt needs to be for it to still be human. If I directly generate an image using a prompt, then sure - that's direct enough. How about an agent that runs more or less autonomously on triggers in the outside environment that aren't human? At some point, a human decided on the general pattern of triggers, but they no longer push the actual buttons. Then how about an agent that runs agents in turn? A human may still have conceptualized the agents. But at what point do we start to regard the emergent patterns of behavior among those agents as machine-made instead of man-made? It's a grey area. Some pretty dark shades of grey, though, that are very difficult to distinguish from pitch black.
 
Alan Edward Klein said:
Human prompts are the creative part of AI. Without them, AI just sits there doing nothing.
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The cruise control on your car is rudimentary AI.
The thermostat in your home is rudimentary AI.
And the complex valve timing system in our 16 12 year old car - which uses oil pressure variable valve timing in conjunction with electrical systems - is a somewhat more complex version of AI.
 
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My calculator never makes errors. Does that mean it thinks?
 
Alan Edward Klein said:
Human prompts are the creative part of AI. Without them, AI just sits there doing nothing.
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They can prompt themselves:

my prompt to the ai: write a prompt for a fine art photo

response:

Here's an example of a well-crafted prompt for generating a fine art photograph using an AI image generator (like Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, or DALL-E). This one is designed for a surreal, conceptual black-and-white fine art portrait, inspired by classic fine art photography styles:

Prompt:"A haunting surreal fine art portrait of a solitary ethereal woman emerging from dense fog in an abandoned Victorian greenhouse, her face partially obscured by delicate floating feathers, eyes closed in quiet contemplation, dramatic chiaroscuro lighting with deep shadows and high contrast, monochrome black and white, intricate details in textures of glass and foliage, emotional depth conveying isolation and mystery, shot on large format film with shallow depth of field, in the style of Francesca Woodman and Sally Mann, hyper-detailed, 8k resolution, masterpiece fine art photography"

Tips for customizing or creating your own:
  • Subject: Describe the main element clearly (e.g., person, landscape, object).
  • Style/Mood: Add "fine art photography," "surreal," "conceptual," or reference photographers (e.g., Cindy Sherman, Gregory Crewdson).
  • Technical details: Include lighting (e.g., golden hour, low key), camera/film (e.g., Hasselblad, Kodak Portra), depth of field, composition.
  • Quality boosters: End with "highly detailed, masterpiece, 8k, sharp focus."
I fed the above prompt into nanobanana:




My only action was to ask for a prompt and to submit the prompt it wrote. This was a very crude example but not hard to imagine this being 100x more capable a year from now.
 
Alan Edward Klein said:
My calculator never makes errors. Does that mean it thinks?
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The comparison to the human brain is not fair.
We have billions of neurons and our intelligence emerged as an evolutionary mechanism.
While human intelligence evolved through biology, AI develops its own kind of intelligence, a very different one.
Today it may not be conscious, but it’s already showing the ability to "think" in ways distinct from humans.
Who knows what will happen in the future.
Maybe sentience will emerge
 

But the argument being made by some is that AI will learn how to think and perform and be creative like humans. So you argue that AI won't think like a human because you redefined the word think. Well, changing the definition of the word "think" entirely disposes of the original argument that AI will think like a human. Now what?
 

There is no creativity or humanity in any of those actions. They don;t even know I'm alive. I define what cruise and temperature settings I want. A program in these units executes them. Oil pressure settings controling the engine were determined by the auto designer, a human, and preset into the machine. This has been going on long before AI by computers and really dumb machines. The same argument you're hearing today about how smart AI is, happened when computers first came out in the 1950s and 60s. People claimed then that computers will be smarter than humans. I worked on third generation computers for Univac in the late 1960's. They're really all high-speed idiots moving ones and zeroes around. That's it. That's all they do. Computers today have just reduced the size of transistors and speed of operation. However, without human intervention with programming, they're as bright as a 50 watt light bulb. They just look smart due to their speed and the way information is displayed and the way they interact with us. There's an appearance of humanity and intelligence, even creativity. But like the Wizard of Oz, real humans are pulling the cords behind the curtain.
 

All it did was convert your creative prompts into an image. Without your prompts, there would be nothing even there. Comparing this to photography, it would be like the photographer telling his printer to dodge here and burn there to add contrast and character and art to his photograph. Who is the creative one, the photographer or his printer?
 

Read it carefully. The prompt was created by AI.
 
Pieter12 said:
Read it carefully. The prompt was created by AI.
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I see what you mean. But Sean's original prompt was a human prompt. Without it nothing happens. AI don't have minds of their own. They have no desires, no ego, no fear, no love, no pride, no intuition, no reason to even do anything. They just sit there waiting for a human to poke it. AI doesn't know right from wrong. It has no moral basis for action. Would you want it to decide life or death? They exercise action based on programs and right now only polling past results done by other humans or other AI machines. They're mimicking others and taking somewhat random action. But random is not creativity. There are programs already that operate like dice in a crap game. Each roll of the two dice comes up with random results. Is that creative? How are the resultant prompts Sean come up with with AI different from the dice? Next time it would be just other random prompts. Where's the creativity? AI can fake looking like it has a heart, but it doesn't.
 

We all create from prompts. Many are nonverbal and subliminal. Seeing a scene that makes you want to photograph it is a prompt. What differentiates human creativity from AI is humans can have leaps of thinking that are not associated with outside stimuli, truly creating something new. The flip side of the coin is most people don’t want new, they want warmed-over familiar.
 

Real creativity is rare, Pieter, I agree. That's why it's so hard to do great photography that inspires. It's easier to talk about it. Or copy it.
 

Ah ah! You were almost there! You said 'heart' but I'm going to mess up the whole conversation with theology. AI doesn't have soul.

Aside from my personal beliefs, as a musician and general creative and imaginative person I subscribe to the idea of a soul. And I can tell you that AI doesn't have one and never will. It's souless. It's dead. It's a puppet. It'll never be allowed in my club.
 

Will you require the Turing test for admission?
 
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