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Notes -
Restating and extending this:
In theory I have no qualms with AI art, in practice I’ve yet to see a (knowingly) AI-assisted work I consider decent.
I suspect because (at least to me) originality and relatability (i.e. taste) are important in art; language and diffusion models especially lack both, and they lack the (predictable, easy) control necessary for the artist to infuse theirs.
An artist with taste can make incredible art in B&W, pixel, low-poly, etc. The medium is less important, and those being easy mediums to control, allow the artist to express themselves more accurately.
I think, like how AI for code is another abstraction, AI for art is another medium. Some people disagree, partly because today’s AI is a poor abstraction; likewise, today’s AI is a poor medium, because of the aforementioned lack of control.
Art requires a huge degree of specificity to create its effects, so trusting AI prompts to get what you want is like trying to wield a giant mallet to repair a delicate wristwatch. To give an example of the specificity often required, in this image, the artist chose to highly stylize the bars in the way he did to create an effect of solidity and imperviousness, in order to convey the extent to which the character on the other side was locked there, and that's just one detail among many for just one comic frame among many in a very long manga book. Zeroing in on the bars in particular while also controlling all the other details and framing with AI would be incredibly difficult and arduous. It would probably be faster for a skilled artist just to draw them himself, not even counting the superior quality (especially in terms of exactness) he would undoubtedly achieve. Furthermore, while there are many non-artists who claim they have 'ideas in their head' just as good as the man who drew this scene, the truth is that in order to conceive this scene in its full panoply of detail, you need to have a highly developed artistic skillset in the first place. That is to say, to even know that you ought to stylize the bars in a given way to achieve a particular effect, you need to already be fairly well trained in this kind of art, what its potentials are and how they are craft-wise achieved, because the art is more in its buildup of details and controlled effects than any central, floating idea. So the notion that AI would allow non-artists to get those ideas out of their heads and onto the page through bypassing the actual need to learn the foundations of a craft ends up being inert.
Why would that be the case?
It won't allow them to get their ideas in same detail as a trained artist but it's worlds better than getting nothing onto the page which is the remaining option when you take away AI.
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