Posted by Jare 2 days ago
Creative work is now so devalued the instinct when most people see something is to believe that nobody put the work in and it was generated, because that's suddenly the overwhelming majority of "art" we are seeing. It's horrifying.
In this world, however, AI companies have been permitted to cause this massive tragedy of the commons, and they are the ones we should reserve our epithets for.
His work I is what I would describe as somewhat middle of the road Fantasy / SciFi Pop art. The deviant art of old, or even before, the art that would cover the scifi magazine. It’s an amalgam of styles and interests from the nerdy spectrum, obviously done with great care by the artist. Problem is with middle of the road is that that’s where the LLM averages out. Not flaming the artist at all, these are lovely works, but an average of lots of pop art / interests. I don’t think he will lose his livelihood - art by commission will stay a thing. For poster and promo work, that’s gone probably.
With respect, you totally are. Call it what it is - your honest criticism/opinion. Calling their work “middle of the road” and then saying they can’t get certain jobs then trying to pretend you’re being nice is just dishonest.
But if that pinnacle lies on the average of a lot of types of (pop and non pop) music the LLM might give a sound that at first glance sounds like a specific artist.
The Backstreet Boys (and One Direction as well) were pretty good (lol) but any average of boybands will sound like them. That is not a digg on their artistry but on them being the middle of the road in pop.
AI classical will sound romantic? AI rock will sound Three Doors Down? AI art will be deviant like (but there still can be true artistry in that category). That /I/ usually like arts at least a standard deviation away of the middle, is just my snobbery, which I was trying to explain away because in my opinion artistry is in the craftsmanship (not taste of the public).
None of these accusers seem to have done the bare minimum of Googling the artist's name before starting making accusations. I don't know if it's laziness or just lack of tech literacy that pervades the modern world, but it's very sad to see it.
Don't let it get to you. They are all saying things without thinking.
I remember seeing his Yin and Yang piece especially trending on deviantart maybe 2010 to 2012, he was really well known and no doubt his was among the material scraped for training models.
i find it's actually easier to "discover" than it is to "create" using llms. discovery, especially in math, is mostly a question of throwing compute at a problem and trying different results. there's a verifiable answer at the end. but there's no way (afaik) to aim something you're training via RL at a creative problem and say "make the next lord of the rings". taste literally changes by the day, and so much of what makes art matter depends on cultural significance you can't specify in advance. if you were training a music model in 1915, it would never come up with rock and roll. it's so hard to know what's going to resonate. van gogh was making his work for essentially nobody and now it's worth millions. you can't pre-load a success criteria for that
i think this is important to call out in a world that seems to devalue creative work now. people think llm generated "artifacts" are creative but in reality it's garbage and based on pattern recognition
Mad respect for that. I've donated a couple of bucks.
Watch a time lapse illustration video here: https://www.peppercarrot.com/0_sources/miniFantasyTheater/ma...
The worst to my eye is the Alice in Wonderland one. What's going on with Alice's hair? What's the tea on the left being poured into? What kind of playing card has a 'C' (it can't be a messy Q as the figure on it is male) and why is there only half a heart there? What's with club on the jack next to it? What exactly is that black bird doing? (It's been a long time since I've read the books, what bird is that anyway?) How does the flamingo's body work? Is Alice sitting on it? Why are there buttons on both sides of the White Rabbit's coat, and why is it shaped differently on the left and right?