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Comment by nineteen999 | Hacker News Reader

> it wouldn't look out of place in some modern art galleries and some collector would lap it up

Sure, if you were dishonest about its origin, and that says a lot about the pretentiousness of the modern "fine art" industry.

If you told them it took 0.00001 cents worth of electricity/compute power to create both the artwork and the description from an algorithm and some random numbers, I doubt most collectors would be prepared to lap it up at any price.

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at my state art gallery there was a HUGH blank white canvas with a yellow dot in the middle.

At the bottom left corner it stated "sunrise" and in the top right hand corner upside down was stated "sunset" and it sold for $20,000..

... who was the artist? Similarly, a baseball hit by Babe Ruth might go for tens of thousands but we know they’re all made the same.

The first one sells for $20k. The second one doesn't sell at all.

I love this argument. It's the same thing that motivates people to write comments that say "First!", low effort but you got there faster.

The first one sells for $20k. The second one sells for $200k. The third one sets a worldwide auction record.

Just as plausible given the motives of art buyers.

Charitably, you could say they are paying for the artist's ability to synthesize art from their experiences but then you could argue that the NN is doing the same thing but is just more efficient at painting. If that's the case then why should there be a difference in value? Are collectors just paying for the blood, sweat, and tears of a human artist regardless of what they produce?

If you're honest about it, and the customer is prepared to pay your asking price for the computer generated art, then it's no issue.

All collectors are individuals - you'd have to ask them whether/how much they are prepared to pay if they know the art is synthesized. All I'm saying is that pretending it's generated directly by a human instead of a human-driven algorithm is unethical. Whether they can tell the difference or not on their own is beside the point.

But if a famous artist copied one of these as a statement on 'the origin of creativity'. $$$$$

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