A cartoonist's review of AI art, by Matthew Inman

There was a good interview with Tim Minchin by the BBC where he said something similar to this & used the word intent.
I suppose the intent/communication/art comes from the person writing the prompt but those few words can only convey so much information. When the choice of medium & every line etc. involves millions of micro-decisions by the artist there is so much more information encoded. Even if its copy & pasted bits of memes.

I've been practicing at being a better writer, and one of the ways I've been doing that is by studying the writing that I personally really like. Often I can't explain why I click so much with a particular style of writing, but by studying and attempting to learn how to copy the styles that I like, it feels like a step towards developing my own "voice" in writing.

A common adage around art (and other skilled endeavours) is that you need to know how to follow the rules before you can break them, after all. Copying is a useful stepping stone to something more. It's always going to be tough to learn when your ambition is greater than your skill level, but there's a quote from Ira Glass that I've found quite helpful:

"Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it's normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take a while. You’ve just gotta fight your way through."

It's impressive technology, and I understand that it's exciting, but it's not art.

I would add that a lot (most?) graphical elements we encounter in daily lives do not require art or soul in the least. Stock images on web pages, logos, icons etc. are examples of graphical elements that are IMO perfectly fine to use AI image generation for. It's the menial labour of the artist profession that is now being affected by modern automation much like so many other professions have been before them. All of them resisted so of course artists resist too.

Sounds quite similar to Nick Cave's letter on the topic, read here by Stephen Fry. (anyone feel free to reply with a piped link, for some reason it's never worked for me)

yeah that's like saying chatgpt democratized writing. no, you could always write. what's changed is now you can pretend you write, without writing.

And people forget how many forms of art there are. If you can speak any language which if youre reading this you can then you can create art. Putting your feelings into words is art. The point of art is not to be good at it or to earn money with it. Its to express your feelings. Of course enabling people who express their feelings in a way that others like to earn money with it is a good thing but even that can be very restrictive. Look at all the twitter porn artists who really just want to create something else but need some sort of revenue stream.

People confuse art and craft.

What AI democratizes in art, is the perception of skill.

I was a professional artist for many years, and often noted a strong preference for photo-realistic art among non-artists, often to the exclusion of any other style or aesthetic. The people around me who tried to draw or paint or sculpt, even just one time, often had an appreciation for a more diverse array of approaches and media.

To me, most AI 'art' feels like the product of 'artists' who don't even really like art.

it's just a cloud of noise that happens to resemble a rat with a big butt.

I’d like this on my tombstone

At least by redrawing it, the tattoo artist is injecting (pun intended) some of the human skill and decision-making into it?

But, ugh! Who would get an AI tattoo?

And what's the point? Let's say I have an idea of a tattoo I want (Jack Sparrow, dressed in a McDonald's uniform, fighting off a rabid poodle, in the style of Baroque painting), but I cannot draw. So I use AI to render it, how clever!

But wait - a tattoo artist will be physically drawing it anyway. They know how to develop concepts into sketches, don't they?

Just get them to do it! Skip the pointless AI step!

I think there’s a stark difference between crafting your own comfyui workflow, getting the right nodes and control nets and checkpoints and whatever, tweaking it until you get what you want, and someone telling an AI “make me a picture/video of X.”

The least AI-looking AI art is the kind that someone took effort to make their own. Just like any other tool.

Unfortunately, gen AI is a tool that gives relatively good results without any skill at all. So most people won’t bother to do the work to make it their own.

I think that, like nearly everything in life, there is nuance to this. But at the same time, we aren’t ready for the nuance because we’re being drowned by slop and it’s horrible.

I get what you're saying.

I often find myself being the person in the room with the most knowledge about how Generative AI (and other machine learning) works, so I tend to be in the role of the person who answers questions from people who want to check whether their intuition is correct. Yesterday, when someone asked me whether LLMs have any potential uses, or whether the technology is fundamentally useless, and the way they phrased it allowed me to articulate something better than I had previously been able to.

The TL;DR was that I actually think that LLMs have a lot of promise as a technology, but not like this; the way they are being rolled out indiscriminately, even in domains where it would be completely inappropriate, is actually obstructive to properly researching and implementing these tools in a useful way. The problem at the core is that AI is only being shoved down our throats because powerful people want to make more money, at any cost — as long as they are not the ones bearing that cost. My view is that we won't get to find out the true promise of the technology until we break apart the bullshit economics driving this hype machine.

I agree that even today, it's possible for the tools to be used in a way that's empowering for the humans using them, but it seems like the people doing that are in the minority. It seems like it's pretty hard for a tech layperson to do that kind of stuff, not least of all because most people struggle to discern the bullshit from the genuinely useful (and I don't blame them for being overwhelmed). I don't think the current environment is conducive towards people learning to build those kinds of workflows. I often use myself as a sort of anti-benchmark in areas like this, because I am an exceedingly stubborn person who likes to tinker, and if I find it exhausting to learn how to do, it seems unreasonable to expect the majority of people to be able to.

I like the comic's example of Photoshop's background remover, because I doubt I'd know as many people who make cool stuff in Photoshop without helpful bits of automation like that ("cool stuff" in this case often means amusing memes or jokes, but for many, that's the starting point in continuing to grow). I'm all for increasing the accessibility of an endeavour. However, the positive arguments for Generative AI often feels like it's actually reinforcing gatekeeping rather than actually increasing accessibility; it implicitly divides people into the static categories of Artist, and Non-Artist, and then argues that Generative AI is the only way for Non-Artists to make art. It seems to promote a sense of defeatism by suggesting that it's not possible for a Non-Artist to ever gain worthwhile levels of skill. As someone who sits squarely in the grey area between "artist" and "non-artist", this makes me feel deeply uncomfortable.

All of that's great and everything, but at the end of the day all of the commercial VLM art generators are trained on stolen art. That includes most of the VLMs that comfyui uses as a backend. They have their own cloud service now, that ties in with all the usual suspects.

So even if it has some potentially genuine artistic uses I have zero interest in using a commercial entity in any way to 'generate' art that they've taken elements for from artwork they stole from real artists. Its amoral.

If it's all running locally on open source VLMs trained only on public data, then maybe - but that's what... a tiny, tiny fraction of AI art? In the meantime I'm happy to dismiss it altogether as Ai slop.

I mean, there are already better ways to automate pottery, like moulding.

I think pushing the button on a Casio keyboard is more akin to tracing your favorite comics panel than using an LLM image generator.

Are you speaking from experience? 'Cause that's not even vaguely related to how any of the DJs I know (including a couple of professionals) got started. The prime motive for most DJs is sharing cool music, and Casio keyboards don't do that..

Vision is a strong word. I think it's a vague idea in most cases

I know that art is an art of it's own and a way to express human creativity.

However people also complained once the loom was invented. It took lots of jobs.

The job argument is usually a stupid one.

The lack of creativity and quality is of course a much better argument against AI art.

I liked it, personally. I've read plenty of AI bad articles, and I too am burnt out on them. However, what I really appreciated about this was that it felt less like a tirade against AI art and more like a love letter to art and the humans that create it. As I was approaching the ending of the comic, for example, when the argument had been made, and the artist was just making their closing words, I was struck by the simple beauty of the art. It was less the shapes and the colours themselves that I found beautiful, but the sense that I could practically feel the artist straining against the pixels in his desperation to make something that he found beautiful — after all, what would be the point if he couldn't live up to his own argument?

I don't know how far you got through, but I'd encourage you to consider taking another look at it. It's not going to make any arguments you've not heard before, but if you're anything like me, you might appreciate it from the angle of a passionate artist striving to make something meaningful in defiance of AI. I always find my spirits bolstered by work like this because whilst we're not going to be able to draw our way out of this AI-slop hellscape, it does feel important to keep reminding ourselves of what we're fighting for.

Wanna go ride a bicycle?

Keith: The highbrow Kyle.

Sounds like you're not very skilled at art appreciation.

what’s the point of taking art classes?

The point is the same as taking classes for any other skill, from baseball to carpentry: you have to learn technique before you can engrain the skill through practice. Some people can pick it up on their own if they're motivated enough, by studying other people's art, watching artists working, reading books, etc., but it's more difficult and time-consuming without an instructor's feedback. Sometimes they even figure it out wrong, and develop a very difficult and time-consuming method of doing something when a much simpler one exists.

So it's optimal to both have the classes and do extensive practice outside of them. One is not a substitute for the other.

Art classes can introduce you to new techniques that you wouldn't have otherwise pursued and elevate your art to greater heights. Depending on the school, it also helps with networking. Lotsa famous animators at places like CalArts, Sheridan, Gobelins, etc.

I was going to read this but stopped halfway through because my mind went "yeah that yeah another person who never bothered trying to draw having a hot take that's just sucking off a tech bro"

I know a few seriously good artists that have aphantasia, being able to see things in your head is not necessary for making art.

Uh, lots of really great painters have aphantasia. It's very prominent in the population and 100% not a medical disability. Art is a skill. There's people without arms that paint. Deaf people who make music. There's blind people drawing. There's this cool japanese girl without an arm that plays the violin. There's all sorts of people who make art, because humans can't not make art.

Are you going to win prices and sell work for millions of dollars, or feature at the MOMA, or play at the Superbowl half time show? Or achieve any of the inane arbitrary goalpost that people like to set for calling stuff real art. Most assuredly you won't. Because less than 0.1% of all the people in the planet will achieve any of that. But every single child has and will be born an artist. Every child draws, sings, dances and plays spontaneously. All that is art.

If you think only people born artists can make art, congratulations, you were born an artists, every human is, go do your art. If you think only specific people with extraordinary characteristics get to make art. I'm sorry you were hurt so bad to develop such bleak worldview and poor self image.

If you do art, you'll get good at art. If you don't do art and instead make the slop machine manufacture expensive Styrofoam for you to chew on, then you'll never get good at art. Regardless of your biological makeup. Being shit at doing something is the first and mandatory step for becoming good at doing something. Do it poorly until you can do it decently, then do it some more. Art is the experience of doing art. Even bad art is superior to mass consumption generated pixels.

One of the things I find most awesome about art is seeing how so many people with different capacities find ways to make art.

I likely have aphantasia, and whilst I call myself an artist, there are times where I see a particular shape or form within the world and think "damn, that's beautiful". I find myself taking a mental note of it, because whilst I don't make art, I do enjoy making clothes. Aphantasia does make it hard to take those experiences and make cool stuff out of them, because without a mental image to work from, it may take me many attempts to correctly mark out the shape, where my only guiding sense is whether a particular attempt looks right though. It hasn't stopped me from making things I'm truly proud of though, and a key thing that drives me to keep creating is that sense of fulfillment I get from taking something beautiful from the world and reusing it in a manner that allows me to share that slice of wonder with other people.

I feel like I've only been half decent at that in recent years though; before that, I tended to focus on the more technical aspects of the craft, but that doesn't mean it wasn't creative. I made a chainmail hauberk for myself once, because the base technique didn't seem hard and it seemed like it would be fun (turns out the hard part is sticking with it long enough to make a whole item). Part of my quest was that I knew that wearing a sturdy belt over a chainmail hauberk is essential for the weight to be properly distributed, and I thought it might be cool to use an underbust corset in place of a belt. The creative part of that required little, if any, visual imagination — I mostly just enjoyed the juxtaposition of the traditionally masculine armour with the femininity of the corset.

Beyond my own personal experiences, I've been awed by seeing so many examples of creative people working with what limitations they have, and honing their skills in whatever way they can. A close friend has such poor vision that they legally count as blind, but their paintings have such incredible colours — they have a beautiful diffuseness to them, which is apparently how they see the world. Seeing their art makes me feel closer to them. Unfortunately, they've recently suffered injury to their hands, so they can't paint like they used to — so they have found new ways to paint that don't rely on their hands so much. And there's even more examples of this kind of persistence if we consider music to be art too.

I don't really give a fuck about art — not really. I care about the people who make it. I get that it's frustrating to try something creative when your skill can't match up to your figurative creative vision, but that's also a problem that even experienced artists struggle with. If you made something that required little to no skill, but it was something that you had cared about, then that's enough to make me care. That might sound silly given that you're just a random person on the internet to me, but that's precisely why I care; art makes me feel connected to people I've never even met.

People who make the point that you're making are often people who have within them the desire to make art, but they feel that it's inaccessible to them. I know, because I was one of them (years before AI hit the zeitgeist). I realise that this may not apply to you, and you might be speaking in a more general sense, but if it does, then I would hope that you would someday feel able to give things a go. I think it'd be a shame if someone with a desire to create never got the chance to see where that could go. I'm not saying "maybe you could start a career as an artist", because even highly proficient artists often struggle to make a career out of art that doesn't kill their soul (most working artists I know use their paid work to support work that's more artistically fulfilling to them). Just know that if you make things that you care about, there will always be people who will care about what you make.

I say this as someone who has just written out a veritable essay full of care in reply to someone I'm probably never going to speak about. And hey, if you've gotten this far, then that is surely evidence towards my point about how making stuff you care about causes people to care about what you've made — either that, or you've jumped to the bottom in search of a TL;DR. Regardless, people like me care so much about art because human connection helps us to survive this pretty grim world, and art is our most reliable way of doing that. I'd love to have you here with us, if you'd like to be.

But... It is a skill... And anyone can develop that skill. That's how skills work. Nobody is born good at anything. It takes practice and education.

And aphantasia does not stop one from being able to draw. There are a lot of artists, authors and other creatives that have aphantasia.

I think your art is probably better than you think. We're all our worst critics.

Oh wow, it's so hard to ask a computer to generate an image. You might get a repetitive stress injury from writing so many prompts to constantly pump out vapid slop devoid of any artistic merit or value.

Uh oh guys, we've got a "prompt engineer" here