HN readers, do you consider the images generated by these AI models to be art? Is it really ethical that they were trained on other artists' work?
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/1/23332684/ai-generated-artwork-wins-state-fair-competition-colorado
If we don't want to give stable diffusion the art label, maybe we need to stop giving out Oscars for Pixar?
Is performance art art? What about artists shit in a can? or Marcel Duchamp's found objects? Or Andy Worhol's factory? Does anyone really engage with a 15 hour movie of "the kiss"
I really struggle with half a shark in a tank of formalin.
Stable Diffusion works on human prompts. If you hook it up to prompt engines which have no human component, you might be onto saying "its not art"
The extent of the re-use of other artists work is a real question. "Bittersweet Symphony" is in the corridor, tapping its toes.
That kind of position gets you in trouble. I think of Roger Ebert and his absurd denial that video games are art. I'd get in trouble if I said "The Mona Lisa isn't art, it's just crap. Sheeple get on a plane to Paris, rush to the Louvre, see a little bit of the Mona Lisa not obscured by the flock, skip the other paintings, rush back to the airport and go home."
If somebody frames a print of the Stable Diffusion output and it gives them pleasure I can't take that away from them. If I owned a "Umberto Boccioni" painting that wasn't made by Umberto Boccioni, I'd feel like I'd been cheated, but I don't feel that a DALL-E 2 generated magazine cover is "not a magazine cover".
The kind of artist who sells works for $1,000,000+ frequently has a team of artists who do the actual work, just as Jim Davis hired out most of the work for the Garfield comic strip. A Terminator 2 that looks like artist could hardly be more corrupt than some in the art world, see
https://socratesinthecity.com/socrates-picks/the-painted-wor...
I do agree with the framing of the ethics question. I don't have anything much original but this comment said it well, https://bakztfuture.substack.com/p/statement-on-stable-diffu..., the AI work is highly dependent on a huge base of preexisting work, and it is at the very least important to keep this in mind.
There are only so many works by Picasso; the supply is a small finite number. As long as demand for Picasso works stays stable, the price should stay stable.
As for works by AI, the supply is effectively infinite, but the demand is finite, so the price for most of it will be low. (Some clever marketing people will figure out how to make a lot of money on a small number of AI-generated works, but the price of those works will be due more to the clever marketing than rarity. The recent NFT-art bubble is a good example.)
And my answer is : "Not so much anymore, not always".
So, yes, to me it's art. If I can't make the difference then I can't discredit it.