Using AI as a tool to create art takes nothing away from anyone who spent time learning a skill or craft that they use in their own pursuit of expression.

People will be arguing about whether or not art made with AI is art, and artists will just be using it or not. I remember an interview about electronic music where Bjork addressed concerns that if you use a computer to make music, it has no soul, and she said if the person using the machine to make the music puts soul into it, it will have a soul.

I remember David Bowie in the mid 90s saying if he was young in that decade he might not have been a musician, because in the 60s being a musician seemed subversive and at the time of the interview the internet was carrying the flag of subversion.

Anyway, it's interesting to watch these conversations. I'd never claim to know what art is or try to tell someone, but it seems to me that already because of the controversy artists are drawn to AI and further exciting the conversation. Commercial artists seem the most threatened; animators, designers, etc. I understand why, but I don't think arguing that AI isn't "art" is going to help their cause any more than protesting digital painting wasn't art, electronic music wasn't art, and much earlier that photography wasn't art.

All the time these conversations are happening, the art's getting made and we're barreling towards the next 'not art' movement.

> Using AI as a tool to create art takes nothing away from anyone who spent time learning a skill or craft that they use in their own pursuit of expression.

Except all those artists’ art being used without their consent to train these models that subvert the exclusivity of their style, or obviate their work altogether. It ingests their literal effort and eliminates other humans’ need to put forth a similar level of effort.

I’m all for cool new tools, but this is very much like the invention of digital sampling, and models should be required to “clear” all the works that they “sample” for training.

How precisely were those artists trained in the first place? Did they get consent from the artist of every painting they ever studied?

There's a difference between studying a work of art, and literally ingesting that work of art for training. A study is always an interpretation.

> Except all those artists’ art being used without their consent to train these models

As someone just brought up previously, though, there are other AI art models that don't use other people's work without permission.

For example, the new adobe ai stuff is done this way. And yet people will refuse to concede the argument at that point, and still think it is bad.

being sympathetic to that requires pretending that the user would have ever commissioned an artist for that idea at all. both the transaction and the idea would have simply never happened. it was never valuable enough or important enough to commission a human, hope you got the correct human, wait week after week for revision after revision.

people that want to hone a niche discipline for themselves still can do that. just be honest about doing it for yourself.