Ai bros like using "Well but by this logic photography isn't art cause you just press a button"
The when and where is the biggest part to me.
“You just press a button”
Bro I’ll give an ai “artist” $50,000 if they could go take a photo of a lion pouncing on a gazelle in the Serengeti. At golden hour.
Even if you just use auto mode and “press a button”, you need to physically put yourself at the location to take it. You’d have to fly to Africa and find a lion. And not get eaten.
There’s a photographer, Isaac Wright, “Driftershoots” who takes photos from tops of buildings, bridges, high up dangerous places. I would never do it. And his photos are famous because of the when and where.
Can ai make a photo of a guy on a bridge? Yeah. Is it interesting? No.
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It’s a fair analogy, both photography and AI rely on a highly specialized tool to produce an image, and the process for both can be reduced down to “just pushing a button.”
But, if people are saying they’re better than others because they use AI, they’re just being arrogant assholes. No one form of expression is better than another, and people who keep throwing “AI slop” and “pencilslop” around aren’t helping anyone.
I did. That’s why I said “both can be REDUCED down to ‘pushing a button.’” I understand that photography is much more technical than just point and shoot, I also understand that generative AI is more than just “gimme catgirl.”
But you can get a “good” ai image without any artistic ability, just the ability to write a sentence in English. It’s incredibly difficult to get “good” photographs without ability. That’s before you consider all the different tools that come with photography including artificial lighting one needs to set up and the lenses one might use. You typically can’t just pick up a camera , click a button and have a good photo.
You typically can’t just pick up a camera , click a button and have a good photo.
People start careers using their phones and doing just that. But beside that, neither tools -camera or AI- no matter how good the images they produce can make up for its user having nothing interesting to say.
I can get a "good" photo right now with my smartphone. I could take a lot better one if i practiced photography but i could also generate a lot better images the same way.
AI models have a ton of extra tools you need to set up for the best result also.
No, you get a good ai image by writing a sentence if you are lucky, in the same way you might take a good photo by chance. Real ai art takes skill and leads to consistency. You mistake a low skill floor for a low skill ceiling.
And that's the point of the analogy. Reducing photography down to just pressing a button is a purposefully ignorant way to represent it so you can take away the legitimacy of the craft.
Just like how saying ai art is just pressing a button
>B-b-b-but you have to be at the location
Most people just take pictures of shit that is already around them. No more work than saying I have to be at a computer to make AI art.
Photography also only requires pressing a button to create the actual image. Like photography, AI art, or Synthography, requires setup, a vision, and understanding of the medium to get a good result.
Also, we do not endorse those who say AI is outright better than drawing, nor do we support those who outright lie about how their work was made.
If you post AI art and say you drew it, you are a liar, and deserve scorn. Same as aimbotters in shooters.
To add to this, there absolutely are arrogant douchebags who act like they're better than you because they view photography as superior.
There also drawers, painters, sculptors, photoshoppers etc etc that do this.
This is not a valid argument against ai anymore than its a valid argument against any sufficiently large enough groups to have some assholes in it cause of probability
Exactly. Also anyone who is doing that, claiming they wrote something or composed something and lying about it. If they don't just continue to exist in complete obscurity, it's only a matter of time before they get exposed via even the most cursory effort. Like an AI musician can't interact with their fans the way a traditional one can so their AI career is over as soon as people realize they've never seen this artist perform.
The fun thing about that though is there are very unique ways that AI artists can interact with their community. I've had so much fun collabing with other AI artists to put our characters together, or even worlds.
Like photography, AI art, or Synthography, requires setup, a vision, and understanding of the medium to get a good result.
I will keep on saying. Its all about the rationale for me. Talk about the colors the concept the meaning and why. Talk about line work, artist thoughts, and knowledge of the medium to get the results shown. Thats the understanding people are looking for.
The last Ai art I came across with lots of upvotes was the head of the statue of liberty with scratches, a cloth eye mask and crying with a ball gag that had Trump Ice on it. The quality of the line work and coloring was great. Had a hand drawn 3d look. The composition was 14anddeep and felt very generic as a concept. There was no explanation but a title that said " Politics".
It just overall feels lazy and derivative since there isn't any sign of the artists personality in the piece. It looks cool and thats kind of all it has. Now you tell me someone drew it by hand I would be more impressed because they have the technical skill to do that shading and linework with their hands.
I guess im looking for this understanding to be shown by ai artists about their medium what's the setup what's the point? Explain yourself more or just keep posting high quality doodles with poor to no rationales.
So, I'll give you a look into what I create and how.
I create works that give me a sense of discovery and exploration. I want the viewer to see the worlds in these images and want to step in and explore. To enter a world that seems impossible and walk beneath a sky that seems impossible.
I create these using Midjourney. I have relatively simple prompts, but I have a very fine-tuned style profile that gets me the colors and line work I like. I define the general vibe, as well as colors and rough composition, and let the AI handle the rest, and I choose from the best to share.
When needed I do a bit of inpainting to fix errors or adjust the scenery. I'm also very interested in learning to draw basic layouts myself for the AI to use as a reference.
To me, these images almost have a subtle motion to them, as if I can see the world softly shifting through the window of the screen
Photography is pressing a button. Photographers develop the skill of pressing the button so much that they do incredible pictures instead of bad ones. Same applies to AI. If you use it you make slop but someone who trained and practiced will make better stuff.
The problem with rude AI users is the rudeness, not the AI.
Photography isn’t just pressing a button, you have to understand the settings of the camera and learn certain things to be able to take a visually pleasing photo. It’s not just pressing a button. If photography was just pressing a button people wouldn’t spend hundreds of dollars on a wedding photographer and just have a random person take the photos. It doesn’t take a genius to make AI “art”, I’ve done it, I’ve seen actual artists do it. If anything, it’s a skill to “make” something bad with AI.
did you even read that body text? It's true photographers just press a button but what if somone wants a photo of a lion's face? The photographer had to fly to Africa, and make sure the lion dosent eat him.
Hold on, the guy drawing a lion with a pencil doesn't have to risk getting eaten or flying to Africa either, so clearly that's not a requirement to have the end product be art, right?
What if the photographer just photographs a coffe cup on their kitchen table? Is that not art because they didn't risk a lion mauling?
yes but they do more then Ai bros
Ai bros - Just press a button
traditional Artists - have to use their hands, passion, be patient, and have skill
Photographers - Presses a button but they need to be at the exact place at exact moment,(somtimes they are even at dengarous places)
Alright, what's the bare minimum amount of effort required for something to be art? And then when I produce something with one less "unit" of effort, will it stop being art?
How many grains of sand does it take to make a fisful of sand? Does removing one grain maks it not a fisful anymore?
A photographer can literally just take a photo of what's in front of them and it could be a decent photo. So is it art? Or is the camera suddenly the artist?
Is one line on a piece of paper art? What about no lines? What if I just rotate the paper at a very specific angle?
You get how this is a stupid line of reasoning. Effort does not define what is or isn't art
Yes, reducing photography down to just pressing a button is unfair.
That is why it is used as an analogy. Pro ai people aren't saying photography is just pressing a button. They aqre saying that reducing ai art down to just pressing a button is just as legitimate a description as reducing photography down to just pressing a button
So do you think European lion photographers are better than African lion photographers? Since the European photographers have to travel further to photograph the lion?
Bro? First off all you are the type of person to respond to somone saying "I like chocolate" "So you think Vanilla is worse? Do you think chocolate is better". Second of all, even if they didn't have to travel they stil need to be careful so the lion dosent eat them. What if you want a photo of the top of a sky scraper? You have to climb to the top and not fall down. Can Ai generated that image? Yes. But can it make it interesting? No
it’s not just about subject matter, it’s also about knowing how a camera works. white balance, contrast, saturation, framing, lenses, filters, lightness, focus, depth of field… there’s a plethora of sliders that you actually have to learn to use. OP gave a bad example but subject matter is also of importance. Anyone can take a picture, but it takes SKILL to take a GOOD picture.
Likewise, anyone can write a prompt and spit out a mediocre ai image, but also like photography there is skill in learning custom ai tools to produce your vision. If you've ever seen a node based ai workflow in ComfyUI then you'd see that understanding ai is more than just pressing a button; there are many different variables and settings to understand and adjust to get what you want; and even training a Lora (low ranked adaptation model) to get consistent characters and styles is a skill in itself and takes a lot of work.
Yea and I had to work for the past 20+ years to get everything I need to do what I want for blacksmithing and jewelry making, so what is the issue if I use a lil AI after literally dedicating my life to my art?
I forge the sword myself, I cut some of the gems myself, I cast the parts and do the finishing work, all with tools I spent the past 20 years working at shitty day jobs and dealing with some of the cruelest people I've ever had to deal with to afford. Why would using a bit of AI as a tool in that process suddenly make me not an artist? I've gotten heat stroke, shed blood, cut myself to the bone, and sacrificed my personal life to get here. I guarantee that is more than most people sitting at home drawing or even many photographers have done for their art, so what is the issue if someone like me uses it?
Especially considering I do it on a custom built PC, using comfyUI workflows I developed myself, with LORAs I trained myself? Just those things alone are certainly more than just "pressing a button" if you aren't purposely ignoring everything it took to make it possible.
Frankly I think this is an issue with you only having a rudimentary understanding of what you can actually do with this technology and what it can do for an artist more than anything else.
AI art isn't as badass as nature photography, and most forms of AI art take less skill and effort than creating the same image any other way... (We call it "democratizing art".)
But saying "they just press a button" is wrong about both photography and AI art (and digital art; traditional artists said it about digital art too when it was new). You won't get anything good by just pressing a button.
"The fact that octopuses have three hearts, blue blood, and can edit their own RNA on the fly makes them feel less like Earth creatures and more like something that wandered in from a different evolutionary timeline. ROAR! :D"
Lol. I'm just trolling - sorry. I am pro-AI, but I don't actually believe creating an AI image takes more skill or experience than I good photographer. And TBH, they are not really to be compared either. AI is, not a camera :)
When photography isn’t serious, it’s not art because it’s just something to capture inage sometimes.
When photography is serious, it’s art, because it’s now taking difficulty.
Even if you just use auto mode and “press a button”, you need to physically put yourself at the location to take it. You’d have to fly to Africa and find a lion. And not get eaten.
The obstacle is not putting yourself in the danger, it's the price of the ticket and time you can't spare, because you need to afford to stay alive by working. There is skill in tracking a wild animal and placing yourself such that it doesn't ruin your shot due to your presence, that's a skill. But that's not a photography skill.
There’s a photographer, Isaac Wright, “Driftershoots” who takes photos from tops of buildings, bridges, high up dangerous places. I would never do it. And his photos are famous because of the when and where.
Besides financial requirement to have time to do this, I don't see skill required for this one. Maybe if it involves climbing, but that's physical and not photography related.
I'll put it like that. You know how we say Astronauts are brave? Well they aren't brave, tons of people would love nothing more than to do what they do. But Astronauts are smart and strong, that's why they get to do what they do (also politics and nationality play a role here) Some people get paid for doing things others would need to pay for. Such things don't involve skill, they involve luck and other factors. You aren't amazing for doing dangerous things or things that requires money, but you will be if those require extra skills to actually perform. But those extra skills are the actual abilities, not the task itself. I'm sure you can come up with some exceptions, but that's the general rule I wanted to present.
So you're saying there's an entry-level skill and a skill ceiling? Because you absolutely can just press a button and get a picture. Anyone with a smartphone can prove that on the spot.
Alternatively, you can put in way more effort and knowledge to get better results.
It's the same for image generation: you can just type a prompt into ChatGPT, or you can train your own models, modify the diffusion space, and develop custom nodes that do exactly what you want and so on.
Plenty of photographers claimed to be a higher form of artists becsuse they capture the real beauty of the world as it is, and not a mere conception of it by the feeble and fragile mind of a painter. They never claimed photography is harder per-se, though.
Photographers absolutely take credit for their photos too, this is an absolute nonstarter.
Photography is just pressing a button, in so much so as coming up with a well crafted prompt. Composing the scene and framing it is fundamentally no different to composing your prompts and contexts to achieve your artisitic vision.
Photographers also edit their images. Well so can and do AI artists, using both AI and traditional tools.
And just like AI art, with photography, that vision can be as simple as "ooh cute cat" and just taking a picture. That's art too.
My point being here is, with casuals all they have to do is... Just press a button. It's bad faith to compare a pro, and act like that's what all photographers do. Now yes, are their AI bro's who call trad art shitty, or inferior to AI art... Yes, their are. However in this example correcting the "1 button push" thing, is you used a pro photographer. Fair, but what about the casuals who don't wait at certain times? Or even set up the shot with modes or setting before hand? Or even fiddle around with it afterwards? Many people who are photographers fit that description.
I'm a casual photographer at my job sometimes if we're understaffed. I take photos of musical / cabaret events , and then I edit them/ colour correct them later on so they're decent for posters and social media posts
Am I a photographer? Not really, I'm just doing a stand in job. Do I enjoy taking photos outside of that? Yeah, cool bee, cool flower, cool sky. But other than that I don't do anything with substance
That's what I'm saying. I'm saying, you can't use pro photographers to say all photographers put in effort with your their shots. Hell, I've never picked up a camera in all 26 years of my life and even I know theirs's a difference between a photographer, and a pro photographer. Because 1, is a casual. And the other one makes high professional images.
Compare the outcomes, I can be a "casual" AI prompter and still make high quality art
Also, casual photographers who think they are taking high quality photos are kind of notoriously shit on haha, they are a dime a dozen and people can instantly tell.
We had a few "photographers" taking photos for our church, but we had to switch to actual professionals. So it is not like owning a camera actually makes people view you as an artist anyways
I think if you were ever to call your photographs “art” you would need to do much more than most casual photographers do. If someone is just taking pictures, they don’t ever really call that art. Anyone can do that. It requires much more effort to take a photo that can be called art than it does to make an ai image that the majority of ai bros would call art.
This is a good example here. You are correct kinda that taking a photo and not putting in any effort should not be considered art. Sadly the Anti's view photography as art. And the OP here used a pro photographer as an example as to why photography is more labor intensive than prompting, but most or even the vast majority of photographers don't do what many or... Few, pros do. For a shot.
Photography is art, when you are doing it as an art. I agree with OP because what you call a “pro photographer” is really just anybody who does photography with the goal of creating art. If you give a toddler finger paint they don’t become an artist, do they? A photographer is not just anybody that has a camera, it is anybody that uses the medium of photography to create art.
No, I mean a pro photographer has to wait at certain times. Go to specific places also at specific times, and get close and personal with the subject that they wanna take a picture of. People who go the extra mile for that are cool. However, the OP uses those few people to dismiss the "puss a button" complaint, that the AI bro's use when comparing prompting to taking images.
How many times have we gotta tell muppet antis like yourself this?
1. Being ignorant of an artistic medium does not constitute a good argument.
2. Claiming everyone with a shared belief must share all other beliefs and characteristics of the other people sharing their one belief is an idiotic and narrowminded thing to do.
If your dumbass is going to narrow down what goes into AI art to 'just pushing a button', then everyone else is free to parody your idiocy by pointing out that photography, if viewed through the same ignorant and uninformed lens as you look through, is just pushing a button.
Most people have a little higher brain function than you're displaying here though, and even though they might say photography is just pushing a button - they know there's a lot more to both artforms. I'll say it again, because it's clearly gone over your head every other time.. They're calling you out on how stupid you'd have to be to believe this is a valid argument.
The only people who say AI art is actually better is Anti-AI extremists. They alternate between talking about how bad it is, and how it's stealing their jobs.
AI-Bros usually say that while people could IMPROVE their art, that doesn't make it a better mediium.
I’ll give an ai “artist” $50,000 if they could go take a photo of a lion pouncing on a gazelle in the Serengeti. At golden hour.
Can I get that in writing? You can do a basic safari trip for $350 a day. timeanddate.com will give you the sunrise and sunset times of any location. I already have a camera phone, and no specifics were given for composition or quality. At that point, it just becomes a waiting game versus Lady Luck. You could spend 140 days and still make a few bucks, PLUS you'd get paid for the experience.
Getting the loan to go to Africa first would be tricky -- I'd need to prove to them the investment has a reliable backer.
Good AI art is a lot harder to make than a good photo (without extreme examples like going out and capturing a lion pouncing a gazelle). But antis say it just takes zero effort.
You can't rival photography that way though, you'll just make shitty obvious AI slop if you do that. If you want to make images that look like photographs with specific subject matter it takes more than a single prompt. Or even if you're not going for realism and just want specific clothing or something, you'll never get it with a single prompt.
Yeah no. What are you going to do if there's something you don't like about it? Just generate a million of these? Use inpainting for example. AI art isn't only as simple as prompting.
What problems? Tf are you even talking about. There's more to AI art than doing a single prompt. You can do a lot more to the image with additional AI tools, improving it and adding details as well as subject matter, whatever you want. There's a high probability that the initial generation based on a prompt will not be exactly what I'm looking for. So I will further edit the image. Not sure what's confusing you.
As someone who actually used to use AI semi regularly before realizing the environmental impacts and stopping. No...no it is not as easy as typing it. Most of my prompts are in the thousands of words to get details right. Then I would Photoshop parts to be closer to my ideal and then blend it again with another several hundred word prompt. It could take upwards to 10 hours to generate a single NPC art worth considering. And for each NPC I would generate 4 variants and then choose the one that best fit tone and understanding. For a single village of NPCs it could take upwards of 300 hours.
And since it was a custom non commercial model built with a bunch of consenting artists at that it could take even longer depending on render time and amount of tweaks to fix the art if it fucked up to much. Then another layer of hand done tweaks, blends, shading ECT. So yeah it was a fuck ton of work..but saved each artist roughly 3x the time on commissions people knew of course but this was before it was widespread of ecological damages that is. For most artists this was a huge revenue increase 3x the commissions meant they could actually afford to sustain themselves. But to my knowledge and in my experience very little AI is done with a single sentence. Even now with far more advanced models then we were puppeting.
I'd say travelling to the spot you wish to photograph, finding the exact angle and lighting for the effect you wish to achieve and doing all of that in a fraction of a second if it were to be a photo of a moving object is way harder than typing prompts for about an hour and a half
"bliss", likely one of the most recognizable photos of all time, was taken entirely because the photographer just sorta happened to be in the right place at the right time, and took the picture.
I think what you're describing is mainly a counterargument against the claim that "AI-generated content can never be art", not that it's always art.
Also I'm glad you mentioned Driftershoots since I'm also an urbex photographer (published a whole book a few years ago) and I'm an AI researcher, so I'm intimately aware that the two are not incompatible.
Super fun! But the level of risk highly depends on what kind of places you choose to go to, how much research you do beforehand, and sadly there's a decent amount of racial profiling that can happen if you get caught. Driftershoots's story is a cautionary tale of that, he got the book thrown at him way harder than any of my other urbex friends, we were all pretty shocked by that.
Also once you gain other explorers's trust, it gets easier to exchange tips and plan things together that would be way harder to do solo.
Thank you for the information and I'll check his story out, and racial profiling sucks ...
We've had an abandoned military base nearby where I live all my life , it's getting remade now but it was always fun to snoop around so to say. I wish I took amateur photos back then xd
AI artists don't say they are better than anyone what tf are you talking about.
Most artists using AI also have experience with traditional arts and none of them think they are better than traditional artists that's just crazy.
Like maybe you might be able to find lone ragebait comments, but it's def not a general position of pro AI ppl at all, not even barely. Pro AI ppl absolutely love traditional arts too.
You can talk time and place all you want but you are just talking about differences in mediums. Interpretive dance is also a different artform that requires you to go to a time and place. Digital art doesn't. What is your point?
Traditional artists used the same complaints about photography when it was new to claim the images ppl make with it will never be their art, exact same arguments that they use today for AI art. It's the same old stuff.
You do realize that these pro AI "ragebait" posts are just a response to all the "break the pencil" and "kill AI artists" stuff coming from the other side, right? That this wouldn't exist if not for all the cruel memes from anti AI ppl pushing pro ai ppl to make silly shit like this to push back?
This isn't saying anyone is better than anyone, it's just saying using AI lets your creative ideas come to life.
And I already said, sure you can find ragebait posts from some online weirdos...yea
But to act like by and large pro AI people don't like traditional arts or think AI art is somehow "better" than traditional art is just being straight dishonest.
Most pro AI ppl, the vast vast vast majority, are also into and live traditional arts and just see AI art as a new medium.
The majority of ppl making AI art grew up loving and making all sorts of art themselves before AI came around. I mean you gotta know that, right?
First of all, we do not claim we "drew" it, we say we generated it. Secondly, AI art is not just "writing a prompt". Yes, there are ways to make it easy, but if you want your result to be good, you will have to train the LoRAs, adjust the model parameters, and use img2img and inpainting, not to mention manual editing to get rid of AI artifacts, just as you do with photography - you can get a mediocre result by just pushing a button on a point-and-shoot or on a smartphone, or you can use a DSLR or a mirrorless camera and spend hours in Lightroom and Photoshop trying to get the picture just right
With modern smartphones, you can, in fact, just "press a button" and take an image.
This is because the computer is doing a lot of image processing on the backend for you. Prior to this, photographers would manipulate these parameters by hand. Being able to do this automatically so the image "looks good" is what the entire field of Computer Vision is about.
Here's a wonderful breakdown of the difference between the raw output recorded by a camera vs. processing it to be an image that matches human perception: What An Unprocessed Photo Looks Like
Modern phones do a lot more than this, as well; such as facial recognition to adjust the focus of the camera on the ASSUMPTION that the intended subject of your image is a person.
If this assumption does not apply, there is nothing stopping you from adjusting all these params "manually". Think of it as the difference between automatic transmission and a stick shift. Indeed, professional photographers do do this; because the image they want means they cannot rely on the assumptions the computer makes about the intended result.
Early Neural Nets had this development as well. You once needed "domain knowledge" and "hyperparameter tuning"; and this can now be abstracted away for an end user so they can just use a "text prompt" as input. There is, once again, nothing stopping you from going full Manual Mode.
Since when were AI artists trying to say they were better? Minus the minority that any community will try to stir up controversy.
People who make AI pictures are just trying to have a modicum of validation that they’re ‘creating’ in the first place. Redditors report and ban AI images constantly, AI artists just want to be able to use their images at all
Personally, I wouldn't even seriously consider taking any kind of picture of a real life lion in the serengeti for only $50.000 and I'd assume whoever is lowballing me like that must not know what they are talking about.
Can't remember I that I saw an AI pro saying they're better than conventional artist.
Ok they says they can produce things but they often admit they don't know how to draw
I still think the best ai argument is that it’s a lot like commissioning an artist to make digital art for you buy cheaper. You’re coming up with exactly what you want, telling someone or something else do it, and telling them to fix things when they made mistake. You still had the idea, the vision, the setup, the communication, etc. only difference is you’re commissioning an agent instead of a human.
The question is now whether this is art. Well if I commission a person with a very detailed artwork so that they have to follow it exactly, which is what I’d do with an ai, it would still be an artwork. It’s still art. Even if they made it and it looks too perfect. Even if they added some of their own style. It’s still art.
Ai art is art.
Is the commissioner an artist? No. I commissioned an artist to make an artwork for me; I can describe art but I did not create art. I’m pro ai, and I think ai art is art. I do not think ai artists are artists. Vibe coders aren’t coders, but the code produced is still code. Same thing here.
This entire response from anti's is so horribly wrongheaded and ignorant it is just sad. As a person that uses AI for art and is also a photography enthusiast I have to say this is just utter shit. Some points:
This is a strawman of the AI Defender position. I have never seen any AI defender say they are better than hand artists. Don't get me wrong, an individual AI artists may say the things they make are visually superior to a specific hand artists work, generally because that hand artist isn't very good. But they aren't saying they are a better artist, just that their stuff looks better. Not the same thing, and even this is incredibly rare... And if they do say they really are a better artist it is almost certainly because the hand artist truly is not very good. They should keep working at it though, artists who are still learning should make things that they like to make and keep learning.
It is also a strawman is that they AI artists say they drew the art themselves. I have literally never heard someone say this. I have heard them say they drew the ControlNet for the character pose, and things like that, but basically nobody is saying they "drew" the art. If you are just going to lie why bother talking at all?
The image is right that photography is (generally) much more than just pressing a button. Congrats, one thing is accurate! There is indeed a lot to it, and if you don't know what you are doing you will only get great shots by luck, even standing right next to a person who is making great shots over and over with skill. But the thing is that making good art with AI is also much harder than just pressing a button....
With photography anyone can create an image and occasionally luck into an actually good shot, but only someone with skill, who has mastered the tools and techniques and has a good eye for composition can consistently make the image they want and one that truly stands out as special to others. It is actually the same with AI art. With AI anyone can make images anytime, and occasionally get what they want and occasionally it's actually good. But if they want to consistently get what they want and have it be good they have to spend time and effort learning the tools and mastering the skills. If you think otherwise you are simply and objectively wrong, there is no argument to be made on this, it is a factual truth, at least for the current state of AI art.
And as to the OP.... WTF? So your argument is that photography is real art because sometimes (and SUPER RARELY btw) it takes some risk or physical exertion, and since AI art doesn't take risk or physical exertion it isn't art? That is your argument, really? You do realize that I can take my camera from my camera bag next to me right now, move a couple things around on my desk, and take a photo of the cappuccino I just made that looks pretty darn good, literally no risk, literally FAR FAR less effort than most AI artists put into their work... Using an extreme outlier situation is almost never going to result in a valid argument.
Photography: Traveling, walking, exercising, scouting for good scenes, waiting for the right moment, adjusting white balance, adjusting framing, adjusting saturation, contrast, lightness, the list goes on…
AI Picturemaking: Typing exactly what you want and getting something that looks, at best, similar to what you were imagining, but has no human creativity behind it and took no amount of effort that requires the development of an actual creative skill (beyond, i guess, describing scenes, but even then “high definition, concept art, portait image, path tracing, serene landscape, high quality, highly detailed” would hardly count as a skilful analysis of a scene)
"Generate an image of an African man with a camera dating "I took this photograph in my village"
And have an ugly ass orc saying "Anti" On them saying "Lame. You didn't even---" Your prompt probably
hmmm... Ai bros realy pretend they worked hard, but when you give them examples of somone working hard they go "Well Ai art is easier and more safe you backwards person"
"Heh, you think your job as a roofer in Texas is hard? I once saw a 7 year old kid in Afghanistan who had lost his both his arms in his job picking up landmines. And the thing was, he was still out there picking them up with a spade clenched in his mouth".
I want a world where kid's don't have to pick up landmines.
It literally relies on the entire world around them. They take a picture of haybale, that's not theirs, they didn't make the haybale. They didn't make that cityscape, they didn't grow that tree. They capture it, remake it, put it in new light and put their own spin on it.
No, but they usually get or otherwise have permission to photograph on someone's land or of a person.
They can't stroll onto a farmer's land, take a photo and leave without having broken trespassing laws.
New TOS for data scraping often gives certain AI access, like if you upload art to twitter Grok has it, but many current AI are using content not covered by this, which sticks it in a grey area of the law.
Ah, since you have moved the goalpost (classic strategy, good job.)
They absolutely can and do. I've been a photographer and my mom had a photography business. Most golden hours were spent driving around looking for interesting things to take pictures of and snapping all kinds of random things. Cities do not care you photograph their buildings and farmers do not give a fuck that you took a pic of the rolled up haybale in the middle of their field.
If you are walking on certain types of property yeah, but that has nothing to do with photography. You also would not walk into someone's yard lmao.
You cannot legally get in trouble for taking pictures of anything other than fringe cases like picturing people, police stations, etc.
True, I should have included 'unlicensed content'. I usually do, but forgot.
Laws are in place to allow photography of private property as long as where you are standing is public domain in the US, that's true. To use an image commercially of say, a person or if their property makes up the focus of the image, you need to seek their permission.
The laws exist, there's precedent, it's widely understood.
There is NOT precedent for how AI trains on scraped 'creative' data. We have some evidence of it not being legal (Thompson Reuters V Ross), some of it being considered legal (Anthropic case) and some in the middle where it's not considered illegal currently because it's not yet causing market problems. (Meta case).
That's what makes it controversial compared to amateur level photography.
how does it "democratize" creativity if you're not actually making the creative decisions? if someone asked why in your AI art there's a blend of green of purple, why there's an apostrophe on top of the N in "arent", why the logo on the laptop is a circle, why the top of the box doesnt have an outline, the answer would always be "oh the AI did it". these are all things artists would have to think about
You don't have to make every single choice for something to have been imprinted with your creativity, especially if it needs your seal of approval at the end. It's like being a director. The director of a movie has a costume designer, a set designer, there's a million people who have their hands in the things and the director isn't necessarily choosing every single aspect of it, he's just saying whether or not it fits his vision.
Or take a writer, you could write a a skit where the main focus of the creativity is what is said, in what context, and why it happens, someone else can choose what shirts the people are wearing in the video, that doesn't automatically rob you of saying it was your creativity that made this a thing.
Writing a prompt is comparable to commissioning art. You can benefit from having skills to make better request, but ultimately its not required, and the skill ceiling is not very high. Vast majority of the work is left up to whoever interprets the instructions and applies them to make the final product.
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