Pestilence Defends Their AI Album Cover, Is Wrong

Subjectively, the cover seems nice, and more importantly if the band itself are happy, it's their choice to make about what best fits their music and what message (if any) they want to send with it.

Am I understanding correctly that:

- A metal band unveiled their album art created using generative AI.

- The band expressed satisfaction with the outcome.

- However, the author of the article criticized it, suggesting the band's approval was misplaced simply because the author personally disliked it.

Is this matter truly significant? Perhaps I'm overlooking some context, especially since I'm not deeply familiar with this music genre.

From the Facebook post linked in the article:

> Are we so caught up in the past that that we do not embrace technology? Is recording with tape better than digital daws. Is taking a polaroid picture better than the newest tech phone? It's still about the music and lyrics and that's REAL!!!

That seems to me to be a false equivalence: Whether you use tape vs. a DAW, a Polaroid vs a phone, you're still putting in effort. I wonder what AI they used, and what their prompt was, and how much time they spent on it.

All that being said, reviewers are gonna review. An established group will be reviewed in the context of their previous works, and that includes the album cover.

this is weird criticism for me as much as i do worry about ai generated art taking work from artists, but this is a pretty stock and boring album cover as far as metal albums go. least for me album art is kind of a relic of bygone era — you don’t need to sell the band and album image with an actual image, you can just preview the album on any number of legal services.

album art can be good of course and very impactful but i’m not sure it’s worth criticizing bad album art because there’s a ton of it. art which is bad from a technical perspective can still be used effectively —- for example nekrogoblikon’s album cover for Goblin Island very much so looks like someone’s notebook sketch, probably by design, and it works well to convey the mood and attitude for the album and band.

while i get what the author of the article is trying to say i thjnk this is a needlessly harsh criticism of a band just trying something new with album art, which is fine i thjnk it’s okay place for it. artists who work with other mediums still will get work in this field i suppose because with album art it’s about conveying a specific “feel” for the album or it’s mostly just stock-like art anyways.

again still not a fan of ai art but this article does not make a compelling point

(also arguably a good font artist is more important for metal albums ))

The band's Facebook post, with the both cover images mentioned (for the new album and previous album "Consuming Impulse"), is here:

https://www.facebook.com/Pestilenceofficial/posts/pfbid035hF...

Thought experiment: if their record label pulled their album because of copyright concerns on the album cover, would you be ok with that?

It’s what Valve does for games.

The annoying part of AI is that there’s so much potential, and much of it is being limited by gatekeepers. Bands are spiritually the opposite of big companies, and even they can’t escape criticism. At least they’re still able to make things (for now).

The only reason this isn’t a huge deal in the music space yet is because all AI music workflows suck right now. Once you can make full songs and craft them to what’s in your head, it’ll be yet another round of outrage plus court cases.

Perhaps I am different, but I actually like the AI generated album cover better than the one the non-AI one.

I think AI generated art is as much an art as photography. Photography freed people from having to actually draw and paint what they were seeing. However, there is still a lot of human choice in subject selection, framing, exposure, and other controls.

Similarly with AI art, although you do t have to draw the images, I think there is human choice and expression in what prompts you use, what parameters you use for the models, and you selection of the many images generated as your final image.

This author seems to have no understanding of how AI art generation works. It’s easily as difficult (if not more complex) to fully grasp and build an advanced generation workflow using something like comfyui. Some of the workflows I’ve seen are mind blowing and are clearly people working to “hone their craft” it’s just not using pen and paper anymore. Say what you will about the data it was trained on (a fair argument, but also a Pandora’s box situation; ) but AI is here to stay, it’s a matter of how we adapt, not old man yelling at a band for using AI.

Ooo fun an article I hate from the very depths of my soul. Here are my very biased thoughts:

A) any artistic criticism based in “ew it’s so obviously bad that I don’t even need to discuss why it’s bad” is pretty useless to me. As another comment said, I think the new cover is fucking sick.

B) This quote lays out a faulty argument (“analog and digital both require skill, and AI art isn’t the same thing as non-AI art, therefore AI art is bad” doesn’t make any sense):

  Recording on tape and recording digitally require different skill sets that are equally difficult to master. Taking a photo with a digital camera and a Polaroid do as well. Creating AI art and actually honing your craft are not the same things. Not even close.

…but more materially, this quote completely misses the point of the discussion. Digital cameras are easier than analog ones. I’m sorry, they just are. Modern analog cameras are easier than old ones are easier than daguerreotypes are easier than drawings are easier than paintings are easier than books are easier than stories over the campfire.

C) Any article aesthetically criticizing the art that some band chooses for their album is goofy. They like it, their fans might, who cares?? I mean, take the very worst album art of all time IMO: The Life of Pablo by Kanye West. In all my criticism of that album, it never occurred to me to make it a normative or objective claim.

D) AI crap

I don’t love this level of polemic on HN in general. Like, if I responded in kind I don’t think my comment would stay up for long ;)

Am I so daft as to not see this as obviously AI generated?

> Recording on tape and recording digitally require different skill sets that are equally difficult to master. Taking a photo with a digital camera and a Polaroid do as well. Creating AI art and actually honing your craft are not the same things. Not even close.

Yes they are. Very close. To get the art your want in a deliberate fashion with AI requires honing a skillset. Saying it doesn't is akin to saying that pointing a camera at any random direction and pushing a button is equatable to taking deliberate photographs. Using an iPhone is much easier than keeping track of lenses, knowing what film to use, etc. Prompt engineering is analogous to the skillset difference.