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Comment by shit_game | Hacker News Reader

Things like washing machines and cars liberated people from labor and saved their time, which they couldn then use to persue other goals. For many, making art is their goal - generative AI isn't liberating people from the burden of making art, it's making art a non-viable endeavour for millions of people.

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Generative AI lets me make films from my desk instead of 7 AM call times, steep bills at the rental houses, and unreliable post editors who fail to meet deadlines.

This isn't just a net win, this puts power in my hand I've never had before.

It's still work and art. No LLM is going to make a compelling story or make the right artistic choices. I do that. But now I get to control way more myself and I'm empowered to see the entire vision though.

I always felt that the beauty of film is in the collaboration between all the people involved to create something larger than themselves. Everybody in the credits brings something irreplaceable to a film, and together they transcend a singular vision to build a work of art.

This generative stuff feels reductive to me. There are no actors, no set designers, prop masters, musicians. Nobody’s bouncing ideas off a colleague or working with three other departments to bring a scene together. It feels less like art when it’s a computer using models based on real stolen art to generate content off of a prompt.

> But now I get to control way more myself.

You are not, the LLM makes bulk of work for you and will choose a lot of things for you for the movie you are making.

>I'm empowered to see the entire vision though.

I think you fail to grasp one important thing about art in general - it is non-verbal by it's nature. You can't go and explain in LLM input some famous painting, it not how it works.

My partner is a graphic designer and now uses a lot of generative AI in her work. It’s very much an iterative process. She would run hundreds (sometimes thousands) of prompts over the course of compositing a single image. There’s huge amounts of editing involved, too. It doesn’t take less time than before when she was primarily an illustrator. But it enables her to do different types of artwork she wasn’t previously able to.

It’s definitely different. And has some bad sides for sure. But professionals using LLMs for creative work tends to be a lot more involved than just typing a prompt.

That's like how LLMs help me with software development. I don't work less, instead I produce more and what I produce is of greater benefit to my clients.

Diffusion models aren't LLMs and aren't necessarily text promoted. You can paint with them.

> You can't go and explain in LLM input some famous painting, it not how it works.

When directing a film, you're issuing verbal commands to your team. It's actually quite similar to prompting. And I almost never get what I envision. Diffusion in a way gets me closer to what's in my head.

I thought that was one of the problems with some of the art models - that you could input the right sequence of words and get exact copies of famous copyrighted images out.

> But now I get to control way more myself

is this a good thing? to some extent sure but I feel like limitations and collaboration leads to better art in many instances

It's like saying that cameras take away oil painting as a viable endeavor. You can still be an oil painter in today's world. It's just a bit more niche, and not many people can make a living doing it. Plenty of people are still going to make art. They're just going to have to get day jobs like the rest of us to support that activity. Or they're going to have to figure out how to do something so weird and unique that AI can't possibly replicate it. Things like multimedia storytelling, ARGs, and performance art could enter a golden age as TV and movies become outmoded.

> Plenty of people are still going to make art. They're just going to have to get day jobs like the rest of us to support that activity.

You make it sound like producing art isn’t a real job and artists are just fucking around all day. Art takes work, it is a job. One where few can earn a living.

Most artists already have “day jobs like the rest of us”. What’s happening now is that even fewer people can afford to even begin to learn or improve their artistry, they have to give up before they start. Which, by the way, will in turn reduce what image generators can consume.

No, it's just that pursuing what you love as a job is a rare privilege. That doesn't mean it isn't work. But it's different from a day job, and if you expect me to believe that pursuing art is not more fufilling than some bullshit white collar job, thats laughable. It's kind of a moot point, because these jobs are going to be displaced. There's no sense in fighting technological innovation; history shows you can't stop it. If you try, some other joker is going to come in and take advantage of the technology, putting you at a disadvantage. This is how capitalism drives innovation, and historically, it's one of the few good things about this particular economic system.

It's a double edged sword, having what you love be tied to a wage. Capitalism mediates the scope of what you are allowed to depict. Market forces have created a scenario where existing IP is a safer bet. Just get out of the game. It rarely produces anything worthwhile anyway. Most art is garbage in this system. Better to do independent things on the side.

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