Of course, now the question the boy in the article asked - "where does the Tiger come from?" - could be answered with "the prompt".
The arguments today are whether a prompt like "draw a Tiger" are the same somehow to someone using a pencil or digital stylus or whatever to draw a tiger.
"But I do know that there’s no program that will draw one from scratch, any size or pose or color or style, like I want it, without an artist at the helm. And there’s no magic answer for us artists except that we are each unique. We are the only variable"
Not anymore! Now the only variable (for good or bad) is the prompt? Just add "super photorealistic, no bad anatomy" I suppose :)
To be fair, his “like I want it” can be a serious qualification that AI doesn’t yet meet in general. It’s still today pretty hard to control image generation specifics, and even harder to control videos. The times I’ve tried, I found the process completely frustrating. AI generated pictures are the most amazing when you have very low expectations, but when you need super controlled edits, it’s really not yet very good at that. Researchers are working hard on trying to fix it, so AI will undoubtedly become better at drawing the tiger “like I want it”. At that point, if I have to exercise a lot of control and make a lot of edits, I am, to some degree, still the artist at the helm, right?
Interesting point - usually people approach the question "who draws the tiger" from the other end. As in, the assumption is (not unreasonably!) the genAI is doing all the work and the AI 'artist' is doing nothing.
Of course, the more control you have - as you say - over the process, the more you are the artist.
I have to say, I'm not that interested in whether the output 'really' is art or not. I'm sympathetic to non-AI artists and I personally prefer art made by humans. However ... it is not impossible to make something that looks good or communicates an interesting idea with AI, but not trivially.
> the assumption is (not unreasonably!) the genAI is doing all the work
Yeah. I agree it’s reasonable, but there’s a fun twist I experienced myself. I used to do a type of generative digital art… artificial evolution… long before anything like Dall-E. I wrote the procedural tools, so I was creating the imaging software and doing all the work. Some people still assumed the computer was doing all the work and jumped to the conclusion that it was art of lower value than other kinds. There is another angle about art that can be mechanically and exactly reproduced having lower value, and I think that is also valid and factors into how people see digital art.
Personally, I also prefer art made by humans. AI can easily make beautiful and interesting images, but it has little meaning and seems far less interesting. Art is often as much about the narrative or story of the art and/or the artist, about why they’re doing what they do, as it is about the artifacts. I used to think it was somewhat ironic that the art-consuming public behaved this way, but now I realize I very much do the same and value human motivation and original ideas & execution and unique unreproducable art as much as anyone else.
I might be able in the future to get the tiger I want, without drawing it myself. There are some famous painters who create works solely in their name but have apprentice artists do the actual painting. Not entirely unlike creative directors in general, I suppose.
It can be summed up as: "An artist struggles without tools, and a toolmaker is meaningless without an artist."
It's still a valid answer in the modern era, but with AI added to the mix, confusion sets in.
But if that's the case, where does AI fit in? I am a toolmaker, but I actively use AI. So what am I?
A toolmaker who makes tools for making tools? But agents, at least when it comes to CRUD apps, work quite perfectly once I've given them a short command. So what am I, then?
One of many. Personally I’ve never seen this as a particularly confusing or mysterious question, as long as you don’t anthropomorphize the computer. The computer isn’t writing your apps out of thin air, people made all the training data, and people wrote the tools that can turn prompts into code & images. You are just choosing to use the work of other people, and tools made by other people. In a very real way, your situation supports the article’s notion that we are nothing without the others.
Art, and especially digital art, has always had the ability to use/borrow/steal/remix the work & tools of others. AI is just the newest tool other people made that can do faster borrowing of other people’s work than before. After MacPaint, we had Photoshop and that was used to do a lot of borrowing & remixing too (as well as plenty of original & creative digital work).
I’m guessing that use of AI will mirror the other tools in the sense that the people who will be celebrated for their creativity, for the most part, will be the people who limit their use of borrowing from others and bring new ideas to the work, and/or the people who can tell the best story about what they did.
Your reply has some comforting points, but there are also a few difficult ones. Because the premise of all this is basically that there's originality based on ideas, right? But realistically, the apps I deliver aren't original. They're more like, 'There's this app, could you migrate this feature for us?' or 'Could you implement X site's functionality for us too?'
In that sense, the tool creators in the original post are tool makers. They're like mold makers for tools. But I'm more like mass production, so there's a bit of a difficult point there. The problem is that I sometimes wonder whether my mass-production identity is actually better than AI.
> the premise of all this is basically that there’s originality based on ideas, right?
That’s part of it. But it depends. I’m not sure exactly which premise we’re talking about, since digital painting and writing apps are fairly different activities. It also depends on whether we’re making legal distinctions or just judging originality for the sake of narrative or discussion. Either way, I personally think that original ideas are only part of the equation, and that original execution matters for the purposes of art as well as for the purposes of software, and this goes if we’re talking about copyrights as well.
I’ve done digital painting, and written apps for others, as well as written tools and libraries made for digital artists. As a digital artist, I’ve had people wonder out loud in front of me whether I had any skill as an artists since “the computer did all the work”. As an app developer I give the person commissioning the work and giving the specifications the credit for the design, even though I might have to make many unspecified micro-decisions. Likewise, I take credit for the design of apps I write for myself. As a contractor, the client is the “artist” for the purposes of this conversation. I’m responsible for execution of their vision, and I can hand some of that off to AI in which case I’m giving away or sharing some credit for the execution. As the author of tools or libraries for artists, my credit stops with the tools or libraries, and artists that use those tools get all credit for both the ideas and the execution of their works.
Anyway, I mostly agree with you in the sense that apps I write are only as original as the original pieces I put in them. There is room for creativity (depending on the flexibility of the client/employer), maybe for novel modes of UX, maybe for thoughtful design and beautiful interfaces (both code and graphics). It’s also possible to make good apps without adding a lot of originality too, and there’s nothing wrong with that - it can be more efficient and better for the client/employer to not push your own ideas. That’s more engineering & business than art/authorship/originality, but still a valid lens for evaluating your identity and responsibilities.
Of course, now the question the boy in the article asked - "where does the Tiger come from?" - could be answered with "the prompt".
The arguments today are whether a prompt like "draw a Tiger" are the same somehow to someone using a pencil or digital stylus or whatever to draw a tiger.
"But I do know that there’s no program that will draw one from scratch, any size or pose or color or style, like I want it, without an artist at the helm. And there’s no magic answer for us artists except that we are each unique. We are the only variable"
Not anymore! Now the only variable (for good or bad) is the prompt? Just add "super photorealistic, no bad anatomy" I suppose :)
To be fair, his “like I want it” can be a serious qualification that AI doesn’t yet meet in general. It’s still today pretty hard to control image generation specifics, and even harder to control videos. The times I’ve tried, I found the process completely frustrating. AI generated pictures are the most amazing when you have very low expectations, but when you need super controlled edits, it’s really not yet very good at that. Researchers are working hard on trying to fix it, so AI will undoubtedly become better at drawing the tiger “like I want it”. At that point, if I have to exercise a lot of control and make a lot of edits, I am, to some degree, still the artist at the helm, right?
Interesting point - usually people approach the question "who draws the tiger" from the other end. As in, the assumption is (not unreasonably!) the genAI is doing all the work and the AI 'artist' is doing nothing.
Of course, the more control you have - as you say - over the process, the more you are the artist.
I have to say, I'm not that interested in whether the output 'really' is art or not. I'm sympathetic to non-AI artists and I personally prefer art made by humans. However ... it is not impossible to make something that looks good or communicates an interesting idea with AI, but not trivially.
> the assumption is (not unreasonably!) the genAI is doing all the work
Yeah. I agree it’s reasonable, but there’s a fun twist I experienced myself. I used to do a type of generative digital art… artificial evolution… long before anything like Dall-E. I wrote the procedural tools, so I was creating the imaging software and doing all the work. Some people still assumed the computer was doing all the work and jumped to the conclusion that it was art of lower value than other kinds. There is another angle about art that can be mechanically and exactly reproduced having lower value, and I think that is also valid and factors into how people see digital art.
Personally, I also prefer art made by humans. AI can easily make beautiful and interesting images, but it has little meaning and seems far less interesting. Art is often as much about the narrative or story of the art and/or the artist, about why they’re doing what they do, as it is about the artifacts. I used to think it was somewhat ironic that the art-consuming public behaved this way, but now I realize I very much do the same and value human motivation and original ideas & execution and unique unreproducable art as much as anyone else.
You'll never be able to draw the tiger how you want it unless you draw the tiger. Prompting is not drawing, it's commissioning from another creator.
I might be able in the future to get the tiger I want, without drawing it myself. There are some famous painters who create works solely in their name but have apprentice artists do the actual painting. Not entirely unlike creative directors in general, I suppose.
The author sadly skips showing off the much more interesting claimed Etch-a-Sketch art.
>We are none of us much without the others.
It can be summed up as: "An artist struggles without tools, and a toolmaker is meaningless without an artist." It's still a valid answer in the modern era, but with AI added to the mix, confusion sets in. But if that's the case, where does AI fit in? I am a toolmaker, but I actively use AI. So what am I?
A toolmaker who makes tools for making tools? But agents, at least when it comes to CRUD apps, work quite perfectly once I've given them a short command. So what am I, then?
> where does AI fit in? […] what am I, then?
One of many. Personally I’ve never seen this as a particularly confusing or mysterious question, as long as you don’t anthropomorphize the computer. The computer isn’t writing your apps out of thin air, people made all the training data, and people wrote the tools that can turn prompts into code & images. You are just choosing to use the work of other people, and tools made by other people. In a very real way, your situation supports the article’s notion that we are nothing without the others.
Art, and especially digital art, has always had the ability to use/borrow/steal/remix the work & tools of others. AI is just the newest tool other people made that can do faster borrowing of other people’s work than before. After MacPaint, we had Photoshop and that was used to do a lot of borrowing & remixing too (as well as plenty of original & creative digital work).
I’m guessing that use of AI will mirror the other tools in the sense that the people who will be celebrated for their creativity, for the most part, will be the people who limit their use of borrowing from others and bring new ideas to the work, and/or the people who can tell the best story about what they did.
Your reply has some comforting points, but there are also a few difficult ones. Because the premise of all this is basically that there's originality based on ideas, right? But realistically, the apps I deliver aren't original. They're more like, 'There's this app, could you migrate this feature for us?' or 'Could you implement X site's functionality for us too?'
In that sense, the tool creators in the original post are tool makers. They're like mold makers for tools. But I'm more like mass production, so there's a bit of a difficult point there. The problem is that I sometimes wonder whether my mass-production identity is actually better than AI.
> the premise of all this is basically that there’s originality based on ideas, right?
That’s part of it. But it depends. I’m not sure exactly which premise we’re talking about, since digital painting and writing apps are fairly different activities. It also depends on whether we’re making legal distinctions or just judging originality for the sake of narrative or discussion. Either way, I personally think that original ideas are only part of the equation, and that original execution matters for the purposes of art as well as for the purposes of software, and this goes if we’re talking about copyrights as well.
I’ve done digital painting, and written apps for others, as well as written tools and libraries made for digital artists. As a digital artist, I’ve had people wonder out loud in front of me whether I had any skill as an artists since “the computer did all the work”. As an app developer I give the person commissioning the work and giving the specifications the credit for the design, even though I might have to make many unspecified micro-decisions. Likewise, I take credit for the design of apps I write for myself. As a contractor, the client is the “artist” for the purposes of this conversation. I’m responsible for execution of their vision, and I can hand some of that off to AI in which case I’m giving away or sharing some credit for the execution. As the author of tools or libraries for artists, my credit stops with the tools or libraries, and artists that use those tools get all credit for both the ideas and the execution of their works.
Anyway, I mostly agree with you in the sense that apps I write are only as original as the original pieces I put in them. There is room for creativity (depending on the flexibility of the client/employer), maybe for novel modes of UX, maybe for thoughtful design and beautiful interfaces (both code and graphics). It’s also possible to make good apps without adding a lot of originality too, and there’s nothing wrong with that - it can be more efficient and better for the client/employer to not push your own ideas. That’s more engineering & business than art/authorship/originality, but still a valid lens for evaluating your identity and responsibilities.
Thank you for your comforting reply. I appreciate you taking the time, and I think I feel a little less depressed now.
If you think, at least, you are.
temporary