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Notes -
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.
Marvel movies and McDonalds chicken nuggets are examples of giving people what they want. Mass appeal produces boring hyperpalatability, not greatness.
While I agree mostly ... are the top 20% of that page really any worse than 99.9% of popular existing art? Not Rembrandt, but twitter art posts with 50k likes, or reddit posts with 10k upvotes, or 'local artist' paintings people hang in their homes.
It'd also be very funny to do blind tests on various art fans to see if they can tell the difference between the best MJ outputs and real pieces they haven't seen yet in their favorite genre. I'm certain professionals could still tell, but could 'statue avis' or fans of real anime art?
No, it's not any worse, it's about the same, and that's my point. The midjourney stuff is just as crappy as most of the art that gets made today. The "beauty" that OP thinks he's identified is just hyperpalatablity. Unlike most modern art, the midjorney art is inoffensive, but that doesn't make it good or beautiful.
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