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Comment by redeux | Hacker News Reader

GenAI is not capable of making art. Self expression is not only inherent in art, it’s essential. What AI does is make pretty pictures, but nothing more. It’s not a tool for making art because it removes the means for artistic expression. It’s possible for someone to make art from GenAI outputs, but that requires taking artistic liberties post generation.

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It's not the AI that makes the art, but the person who tells the AI what to do. A painter friend of mine has gotten into generative AI lately, and the sometimes-pretty, sometimes-intimidating pictures she comes up with sure look like an artistic expression to me. She has a vision of something she wants to see, and she uses tools to bring that vision into reality, just like she does with paint; the new tools just give her new options.

> It's not the AI that makes the art, but the person who tells the AI what to do.

Would you still call them an artist if they commissioned another human actually skilled instead of an AI model?

Why can't people accept that their role in this new process simply isn't the one we've always called artist? We don't call computers to the people using a computer, that role is now the machine's. I'd rather label the model itself an artist than its user, as much as it pains me.

> Why can't people accept that their role in this new process simply isn't the one we've always called artist?

I think what has happened here is that you are talking about something very specific. Putting text into midjourney, maybe. That's not the only way people use AI in their art. Are "prompt engineers" artists? Maybe, maybe not, maybe not yet. Maybe they are only as much of an artist as I was back in 2005 while clicking "generate clouds" in Adobe.

We all have to start somewhere.

Artists have been using assistants to get their work done since forever; in modern times, Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst are famous for doing little or none of the actual fabrication of the artworks which bear their signatures.

You are right that this is a new process, in which a machine does work that was previously done by a human, but I don't think that means the human is not an artist. Consider the DJ, who "merely" plays back other people's records: yet there's a whole art form in weaving disparate music together. Or, consider, is a composer a musician? The only sound they make is that of a pen scratching on paper; it's not until a room full of other musicians perform the score that you actually hear any music. Yet we still think of the writing of that score as an artistic act.

Isn't this what creative directors do? E.g. the creative director at a game development studio isn't creating art assets, they're directing other artists to produce art in a particular style or theme. Likewise, sculptors and other big art projects often have understudies that carry out a lot of work.

I would still call them artists if they delegate parts of the work to other artists - or machines - if they're the one at the helm of the overall artistic vision.

> Would you still call them an artist if they commissioned another human actually skilled instead of an AI model?

Nope, I'd call them a patron

As far as I understand, art is typically understood to have two components: expression and impression. The creation of something, anything, as a form of self-expression, is considered art. Additionally, though, art is in eyes of the beholder. If a feeling is inspired in someone by the observation of a thing, act, etc, then it becomes art to them, in that moment. Notably, though, it doesn't necessarily make that thing art to anyone else, unless it is curated at which point that curation is a form of expression.

These definitions are distinct from the requirements for copyright.

>Self expression is not only inherent in art, it’s essential.

That idea is only about 200 years old and strongly Western. The vast majority of cultures saw no difference between "art" and craft, regarding pictures and sculptures as simply decorative objects, of the same basic cultural standing as pottery or textiles. Our understanding of "art" was fundamentally transformed by the development of photography and mass-manufacturing.

Anyone with a glib answer to questions about the cultural meaning of AI-generated art really needs to familiarise themselves with the thinking of William Morris and Yanagi Sōetsu, because this isn't the first time we've had this argument.

> It’s possible for someone to make art from GenAI outputs, but that requires taking artistic liberties post generation.

Plenty of people use others' expressions as a form of art, (sharing song lyrics, singing others' songs in the shower, cat memes, and so on).

Indeed, one could argue that everything is a remix of pre-existing expressions.

This, of course does not rhyme well with current copyright laws.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coGpmA4saEk

It is all the genius really of Duchamp's Fountain from 1917.

At this point the conversation is just boring.

Sure it isn't art but I guess it will be a substitute for art for many things: do people care that much if their workout music is actual art or artificial not-art art-like stuff?

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