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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   30978 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 15, 2023

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Will AI bring back beauty?

Looking at midjourney's top pieces of art I am struck by the beauty in them. They contain detail, high degrees of realism even when depicting surrealist themes. They tend to be symmetrical and often portray idealized versions of reality. AI art tends to portray archetypal depicitions of its motifs and often excludes blemmishes, dirt and grime.

Compare it with corporate memphis a primarily human generated art form that has gained significant traction in the public space in the past decade. This is the most expensive painting painted by a living woman.

Compare the buildings drawn by the AI with the best exterior of 2022 in Sweden according to architects.

AI gives people what it gets positive feedback from. It gives people what they want. People want visually stunning rather than the output of the art community.

That midjourney stuff is utter pabulum. It's only beautiful by the most shallow and insipid standards of beauty. The kind of "beauty" that would rank Thomas Kinkaide's paintings above Rembrandt's, because the former is bright and sparkly while the latter is brown and muddy. Or the kind of "beauty" that would consider N*SYNC's music superior to Bach's because the former's is free of dissonance and the later's is rife with it.

I don't particularly like the human art you linked either, but at least the artists are trying to do something interesting. We can do better than ugly modern art without resorting to saccharine crap and calling it beauty.

AI gives people what it gets positive feedback from. It gives people what they want.

Marvel movies and McDonalds chicken nuggets are examples of giving people what they want. Mass appeal produces boring hyperpalatability, not greatness.

Sure the dog can write poetry, but it’s bad poetry.

Anyways, we’re still in early days of this technology. It’s getting batter and it’s getting better fast.

I'm not criticizing midjourney, I'm criticizing OP's standards of beauty. It's probably possible to get actual good art out of midjourney in its current form, but OP's examples are crap and were selected based purely on what was most popular among users.

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