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Comment by doublekill | Hacker News Reader

I think the 450k GAN painting was a bargain. There is no doubt that neural art will increase in quality and quantity over the years, maybe even surpassing us in stylistic insight. That painting is the first of its kind, much like owning a first-in-style classical painting from the middle ages. Either that or it becomes a worthless parlor trick (but I deem the chance of this low).

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I think it's very likely to become a worthless parlour trick. That one piece may have value as The First of Its Kind [tm], but the others will be irrelevant.

They've used a lot of signifiers of Expensive Vintage Art with a Modern Twist - dark backgrounds, exaggerated flesh tones, rich-looking clothing, aggressive modern distortions - to suggest value. But the neural networks that may (perhaps?) be being fooled are the ones inside the brains of buyers.

By the end of the year this art will be available as an instagram filter and/or from a web page. Which is why it will be worthless. Neither the software nor the imagery are special enough to survive that.

The real art - if that's the word - is in how this is being run as a startup and is trying to turn investor money into a hype train.

> I think it's very likely to become a worthless parlour trick. That one piece may have value as The First of Its Kind [tm], but the others will be irrelevant.

That's technically not disagreeing with the OP. And I do think that the first one will be highly valued, independent of the fact that it'll be available. Just like the Banksy Image that was shredded will be worth so much more now; any images from now on that pull this trick won't be as highly regarded as well.

Other than that I agree: AI art is so easy to produce that the sheer quantity will make it uninteresting for collectors.

But it is a worthless parlor trick. Hell, I could “create” pieces of art like that in Photoshop in a few hours if I really wanted to. How is that in any way anything beyond the bare minimum for creativity or artistry? Why is using a GAN to do that any more artistic? This kind of artwork is the literal definition of “derivative”.

But hey, people are free to waste their money if they like.

This sounds like every argument against Mondriaan.

It would only be an argument against Mondriaan if Mondriaan could easily be turned into a Photoshop plug-in.

I tried to make an auto-Mondriaan machine once, and I gave up after a few days. It's one of the hardest things I've attempted. It's incredibly easy to splash some black lines and primary fills around, and unbelievably hard to get the proportions and density right.

I think the artistic value in that one specific Picture does not lie in the image itself but that the artist was the first one to put an AI-generated Image on display and proclaimed it art in such a way that it found a buyer. Now that it has been done, other AI-created images are boring I think. (AI-assisted generation of Artworks which still have a substantial amount of a human artists creativity and craft involved is another matter and could find its niché (similar to other tool-assisted art like procedural art)

Here's an important piece of art from the early 20th century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_(Duchamp)

Cheap parlor tricks have a long and glorious history in art, and sometimes become important works of art.

That significance is because it was an originator and trail blazer of the cheap parlor trick.

It was an anonymous bid, and the "creators" of the piece apparently met at a blockchain conference. I know what conclusion I drew from that, but I'll leave you to draw your own.

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