Setting aside the usual arguments on the anti- and pro-AI art debate and the nature of creativity itself, perhaps the negative reaction that the Redditor encountered is part of a sea change in opinion among many people that think corporate AI platforms are exploitive and extractive in nature because their datasets rely on copyrighted material without the original artists’ permission. And that’s without getting into AI’s negative drag on the environment.
If I create a robot that throws a football, would you call me an athlete?
No, not even that! If I tell a robot that someone else created- to throw a football….
Would you call me an athlete?
Thats an unfair comparison. Were not talking about “painters” or “illustrators” but using the very general term “artist”
I literally started by saying i agree that just asking sm premade like bing to generate x with y isnt making art.
But there can be deep creative processes involved in getting an ai to generate just right and any actual professionals i do know use AI will more often then not use photoshop edits as parts of their process. The ai is a tool.
If you are intentionally using creative process to create an imagined output then you are by dictionary definition an artist.
Stable diffusion is also much more a technology then a product, anyone with a decent gpu can train their own models and many people have. Using someone elses models is no different then using someone else’s brushes in a painting program because what counts is what you do with it, which often involves alot more then just typing in a prompt.
If you want some examples of the creative freedom and complexity one can get just search for “comfyui workflow”
In your sport example, if you managed to step for step guide and train a basic robot (so not a toy preconfigured to play sports)into properly playing sports you wouldn’t perse fit the dictionary for an athlete but you having the knowledge to do this could create a reasonable assumption that you are. Otherwise i would say amateur-engineer could also apply because you probably need to know a lot about how the robot joints function. At the very least i would call you an artist because it would take a lot of creative trial and error to pull off.
That would be a programmer, not an artist. It’s not art. Period. No argument. If they want to call themselves an artist, I cannot stop them- but I can refuse to agree- or call them an artist.
Well that’s very interesting for me personally to think about. Thanks for bringing this up.
I always really enjoyed programming but i hated being a developer.
Ive always loved making art but objectively suck at painting, not great at drawing while i am pretty good with computers, i’ve long realized i can use that to scratch my creative itch as opposed to traditional tools. I have dabbled in 3d modeling, scripting, creating custom theming, general indie game development but my real long time dream is opening a workshop where i reconfigure old hardware into cool looking contraptions operating silly programs that serve no practical use besides inspiring joy.
When i worked as a developer i was assigned a task and told to program x or y within z limits and standards. I had no creative freedom and really hated that job for that reason.
i guess when it comes to how i work with ai its fair to compare it to being a programmer much more then a conventional painter, it definitely taps into my technical insight on a similar level, but it does much more then scripting scratch my very real itch to create things.
On principle I’ve always been very openminded to what art can be, a literal toilet can be art so i also considered that the thoughts of a philosopher are art. Writing is art, cooking can be art, Video games are art.
Its absolutely ok to make distinctions yourself, if art is anything at all it is subjective but i hope you can see that following my logic i don’t see why my creative projects wouldn’t count towards the definition.