Thank you for your report!
We have received your report and it is currently under investigation by a forum moderator.
So sad....Another copyist
Welcome to the forum.
Here you can discuss all things art with like-minded artists, join regular painting challenges, ask questions, buy and sell art materials and much more.
Make sure you sign in or register to join the discussions.
Hang on Studio Wall
This is a Studio member-only feature!
Join our Studio membership and save your favourite Painters Online content, from gallery artwork to step-by-step guides, to your own online mood boards. Create your go-to place for inspiration and learning. Plus, members can also enjoy a range of exciting features including monthly art videos and a digital magazine library.
If you are already a Studio member, simply login to your account.
Not a Studio member? Why not try our free 30-day trial - no commitment, no credit card required
Message
Posted
There's a huge amount of hype in the press about AI at the moment. Current AI produces believable artefacts -- sometimes 'wrong', but always plausible -- but is a long way from acquiring anything we would want to call consciousness. At that point I might start to get worried, but I think we're some way from that.
AI is a useful and potentially powerful tool, nothing more. Like all tools it can be used for good or ill, but the same could be said of social media.
Posted
I shall worry about AI, so far as artists are concerned (and problems with it go much farther than that) when I can't tell an AI image from an oil-on-canvas painting: and I've yet to see one that looks just the same. I've seen good digital art, on the other hand: but so far anyway, I can still identify it as such. We have several good, honest artists who use AI - now: do I really mean digital art? I think I do - on POL; they've produced some fine work. In artistic terms, and I can't speak further than that, my ignorance would speedily reveal itself, I think there's always going to be a large space for those of us who use physical materials to make our work; I would be bored witless by creating stuff on the computer all the time - the joy of painting, to quote one Mr B Ross, whom I'd quote in precisely NO other circumstances, really lies in the manipulation of paint, pen, pencil, ink, colour - things you can touch and hold and feel. I don't believe that'll ever go away, even though fatuous fashion may relegate it to a distant place temporarily (most often, because it doesn't half save money: but it always shows - take Wile E. Coyote and Bugs Bunny, Yosemite Sam, Huckleberry Hound, Tom and Jerry - the digital versions are just dismal - no magic, no atmosphere, no human skill in hand and eye: I've given myself away there as one who laughs like a drain at the original cartoons, but dammit - I could also be a dead-in-the-water techno-geek, and I know which I'd rather be).
OK, it's dinner-time now and I'll shut up.
Posted
We shouldn't conflate AI-generated art and digital art; the skill involved in the former is merely typing a few words into the generator, while the skill level required for the latter spans a wide spectrum which is barely distinguishable from analogue painting at one extreme.
I think the day when one can't tell the difference between an AI image and an oil-on-canvas painting better than chance won't be that long in coming. However, I imagine punters will in the main prefer (to buy) the human product if given a choice.
I will be genuinely impressed when AI generates a new genre of art without human prompting, but I see that as a long way off. It is one thing to produce an image of say "climate change in a surrealist style", but quite another to change art in the way that e.g. Picasso did, or for that matter to innovate in music as did Miles Davis, or to write a novel like Jonathan Franzen say.
What will happen/is happening is that AI will replace many jobs in areas like graphics design and proof-reading, and doubtless many others. This worries me because the current economic model on which the world largely runs has no interest in replacing these jobs with other meaningful work, but that is another debate entirely.
Posted
Interesting observations - snag is, we can only judge digital art and AI from what we can see in front of us today - Lord alone knows what it might look like 20, 40, 60 years down the line: by which time I shall - nay, contain yourselves, do! - be dead.
Or not, since I'm a vampire...
I don't know, none of us can know, where AI could lead: I'm determined not to worry about it, to be honest. I THINK there will always be a place for hand-crafted work; I hope there will be; but we can't live in the future; we can just hope it'll be better than the present (without much evidence!).
Let's just enjoy what we do - the problem with AI is that it's destroying jobs: sadly, that's what industrial advances do: maybe the process will, one day, be reversed and human creativity will arise again. I hope so - because AI and all that goes with it is de-humanizing.
What can we do about it? Well - we can refuse to participate; we can refuse to take refuge in AI and digital art: we can absent ourselves from AI "creativity". And yet we know that there are hundreds of "creators" who will happily take our place and produce the images that are required. And they'll be worse; and one day someone will realize that. Sorry that I have no more comforting answers than these - but I think this is where we are.
Posted
Yes. Well, they said vinyl records will be obsolete, but they’ve come back with a passion. People become sick of the digital ether and revert back to old ways.
Musk says Ai is more dangerous than nukes. Surely he means if it gets into criminal hands. Self aware machines will never be, that’s in the near future anyway… that is to know the meaning of life, when the meaning of life might be ‘life itself’, …humans being, touching, feeling, smelling, flexible in their makeup of water. The computers can trick us that they are self aware, but clearly they never will be, not for many-many years to come
Edited
by Martin Shaw
Posted
I agree Dixie, it isnt art. The image I posted on page 3 of this conversation was created as follows:
Open a google photo of Charles in Photoshop Elements
Crop to unrecognisible size
Add an "artistic filter" - I chose coloured pencil*
Alter pencil size and stroke width
Save as jpg
Upload here.
(6 clicks in all)
The longest step was looking for the photo. Likeness was guaranteed. I couldn't draw that freehand in less than a week knowing my portrait skills :) even on a computer.
*My concern about digital art is that using photography is so easily disguised by modern software, let alone AI.
But yes, I agree Robert, there's a saying along the lines of: help me to accept the things I cannot change.
Posted
Being a member of Dynosaurs Incorporated, I try not to further befuddle my mind with things that began a life with chalk and slate, pen and ink and progressed through telephones, television, computers and mobile phones...and now this AI nonsense. Who exactly decides we need such things? It seems like we are doing our utmost to abolish the need to learn anything in favour of letting technology do it all for us. Will there be be a time when getting out of bed is an unnecessary waste of energy and brain power and we just tell a black box to paint us a masterpiece or write a world-shattering tome on just about anything?
I once attained a first-class advanced City and Guilds certificate in my given trade, finishing second in All England that year and winning a book prize. At the time I had to attend day and night school for five years to get there? What value that now? Indeed, will we need universities for anything but holding annual punt shuffles up the River Thames and make gap-years nothing more than staying in bed and doing visual trips up the River Nile? Don't bother answering my questions by the way, I'll get my wife to aske her mobile what's her name?
Crazy world, not half? Thank goodness for Wilfred Pickles and Mabel...(-:
Edited
by Jim Morris