BUT IS IT ART?

**Chris M** · 17 October 2023, 10:54 PM

Originally Posted by gwpriester

Lovely image Chris. I think the interface that I have seen with Midjourney needs a lot of help. I've only started exploring so I have so much catching up to do. But the ability to create an image, then refine the image with additional input would really be helpful.

I use Topaz Gigapixel AI and Sharpen AI a lot. Even with some of my stereogram patterns which never seem to be as sharp when I export from Xara as I would prefer.

Home | Leonardo.Ai is similar in content to Midjourney, has a large gallery and shows the prompts used to create the individual pieces and which fine tune model was used.

Free AI Art Generator - Images.AI has an impressive amount of styles (Recipes), but isn't as sophisticated as Leonardo or Midjourney.

BoredHumans.com - Free AI Tools has over 100 different AI tools to play with. All are pretty much rubbish, but it shows what's available with a bit of spit and polish. Worth a look, and you never know, you might be inspired by something.

**Chris M** · 17 October 2023, 11:25 PM

Your original question of "But Is It Art"----------Is music 'art'? Music is made of existing notes. AI art is made of pieces of existing art. You could argue the similarities. The Mona Lisa is a portrait of a woman. There were portraits of women before and after Leonardo set up his easel. AI is a tool, just as a brush, pencil or palette knife is a tool. A charcoal artist probably screamed cheat when the pencil was invented. Cavemen probably grunted cheat when charcoal was discovered. Acrylic paint, oil paint, crayons, digital pixel things and inkjet printing. Isn't AI modern day charcoal? I know I can't get AI to produce what I envisage, just like I can't create the Mona Lisa with oil paint.

My son produces music (electronic dance music) with no instruments used. He can play the keyboards, but doesn't because there are more suitable tools. Watching him create a bass line is like watching Penn and Teller produce a playing card out of thin air. Can AI produce a bass line? Yes. Will it be the full, round perfectly pitched, precisely reverbed set of notes he needs? No.

No amount of prompting will have Stable Diffusion, Dall-E, or whatever, producing the image you have in your head. It will produce the frog, the skateboard and the waterfall, but not as your mind conjours the image. You could argue the 'art' is in creating the prompt.

Is AI art, art? In my (easily changed) opinion, it is as much art as quite a few modern artists who, for instance, stick a banana on a wall and describe the extinction of some Mesozoic ape. It isn't the banana, it's the thought behind the banana.

**haakoo** · 18 October 2023, 07:25 AM

I don't use any AI for it's outcome but only to get inspired or as referencing material.
That said, there's a nice opensource app with windows installer at github found here.
If one wants to know more, a youtube video about it is found here.

**haakoo** · 18 October 2023, 07:43 AM

As for the question is it art ,one could say yes, as mankind has always tried to find a way to get a result in a faster (and cheaper) way.
But I fear for my children's future as AI isn't only impacting the arts.

**handrawn** · 18 October 2023, 10:19 AM

since photography is art - here's an AI usage that caught my attention:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/techn...gle-best-take/

so the camera will now edit the photo as you take it, to give everyone a smile regardless of their actual expression, well that's the theory

no idea how well it works; what I do know is that before too long realtime processing, as opposed to post-processing, will become common - and the result may be that photos as a record of what actually took place will become less and less reliable

**behzad** · 18 October 2023, 01:01 PM

Art is made by hand not machine.

Is bodybuilding a sport?

**behzad** · 18 October 2023, 01:04 PM

@handrawn Those people are miserable lol they should hide from the camera if they can not afford to smile. Maybe it is their bad teeth.

**handrawn** · 18 October 2023, 01:57 PM

Originally Posted by behzad

@handrawn Those people are miserable lol they should hide from the camera if they can not afford to smile. Maybe it is their bad teeth.

or Alopecia

**DanFelix** · 18 October 2023, 01:04 PM

handrawn: "since photography is art - here's an AI usage that caught my attention:"

Photography was not always considered art and had a tough time being included in the NY Met Art in the early 1900's. The discussion with AI as art closely parallels the discussion of photography as art.

**handrawn** · 18 October 2023, 01:54 PM

Originally Posted by DanFelix

handrawn: "since photography is art - here's an AI usage that caught my attention:"

Photography was not always considered art and had a tough time being included in the NY Met Art in the early 1900's. The discussion with AI as art closely parallels the discussion of photography as art.

and yet good photography requires manual skill and much experience; if AI is used as a reference from which to use these skills fair enough, otherwise it is in danger of just being a complex way of painting by numbers...