The argument AI fanboys make that it’s the same creative effort as directing or photography is absolutely insane and falls flat with even a tiny bit of critical thinking. Anyone can plug in a prompt. People study and work hard their entire lives to become good photographers and directors. Being able to take a decent picture is not the same AT ALL as a professional photographer, especially one of the successful ones, like all art. It takes incredible patience, timing, creativity, and technical knowledge. It’s an accessible art form, like most forms of art, but doing it at the highest level takes a lot of skill. You need to select and know a great deal about your subject in order to capture it well, and timing is often incredibly important. There are people that spend their entire professional lives pursuing one shot, and when they finally get it, the photo is priceless and nearly impossible to replicate. The idea that an art form people get degrees and spend years pursuing is the same as typing a prompt is crazy. Just because anyone can pick up a camera (or a pen, or a paintbrush, etc) does not make the art form that simple.
Directing is an art form too, and there’s a very good reason the art of great directors is immediately attributable to them on viewing, even with no context. Anyone making that argument has no idea what it means to direct. Just because some directors might be lazy or uncreative doesn’t mean the artform doesn’t exist. AI could never replace it.
Like I said I tried AI art once to see what it was about. I did not get anything good but I’ve seen AI art that looks good so I know it is possible with experience in prompting.
Getting the right prompts can be done by anyone in the same way anyone can take a photo. I expect people will spend time learning how to prompt in the same way people learn the knobs and lenses on their camera. Anyone can take a photo. It takes skill to take a good one. Anyone can generate an AI image but it takes skill (less skill but skill nonetheless) to create a good one.
The skill and knowledge to create an oil painting is several orders of magnitude greater than taking a photo. The only reason photography is defended is because everyone grew up with photography slop. Today phone cameras make it even more automated with their automated bokeh and red eye removal.
I cannot disagree more, as someone that paints with multiple mediums, including oil. It may be much more time consuming, but most of the art is in learning how the human eye views images, how to make the eye be drawn around the image in the order you want, and many other technical and artistic details. I can’t even begin to discuss it here, it’s a field of professional art like any other. Frequently, it intersects with sculpture and other physical and digital mediums. There are colleges of photography that offer the same level and quantity of schooling that other artistic studies do. The skill in art is not in the fine motor controls and techniques, though they are important to learn. Much harder is learning about forms, color, values, how to arrange artwork to be pleasing to the eye (or discordant, like a tritone), and all the other multitude of steps in arranging and capturing the message the artist is trying to convey.
You’re just wrong and misinformed. I’m an artist, and every professional artist I know and went to school with shares my opinion. You have a very limited view of what photography can be, and it shows.
Edit: To be clear, professional photographers can spend huge amounts of time applying the knowledge they’ve learned through study and practice to arrange their subject, which is not simply “point and click.” Look at the work of professional modern photographers. Photography is accessible like a set of cheap acrylics is accessible. High level art of all mediums takes far more study and skill to do well than AI art.
I’m not dismissing it, and that doesn’t address the point at all compared to AI. It isn’t that technique isn’t important, it’s just far less of what you learn as an artist compared to the theory. Photography has its own advanced techniques just like all artforms.
You did dismiss it by claiming it was a small part compared to what a photographer has to learn.
Ai doesn’t do anything without prompting. You need all the same art knowledge to prompt an AI to create an image. In another reply here I compared it to a film director. Film directors don’t say the lines, do the cinematography, create the sets, costumes, or anything else. They only prompt others do do what is in their mind until it satisfies their artistic viewpoint.
My experience with AI art is extremely limited. I got garbage out. I’ve seen good AI art so there is skill to prompting in the same way a photographer uses skill but has a machine that actually creates the art.
There were no photography art colleges 150 years ago either. Photography was widely derided by artists. Impressionism was created as a response to the increased use of photography. They wanted to show that art was a human interpretation, not a mechanical reproduction.
Yeah I don’t know if that source or that college make the point you think they do. AI art cannot exist without a constant feed of (non-consensual) human creativity. You can learn everything there is to know about AI “art” in a relatively short time span, because you have the plagiarism machine to do the composition for you. It isn’t so for any other medium. This point isn’t worth arguing, because it’s so self-evident. The knowledge and skill of photography clearly set it apart as an art form, whereas AI does not. AI “art” requires the knowledge and skill of actual artforms to even exist.
Photography’s genesis is fascinating and is taught about in art school. You conveniently left out the other side of that time, where the fledgling artform pushed back to prove its validity through multiple evolving forms and styles, which demonstrated that it is simply a new medium, not trying to replace or replicate any other style. That is explicitly what gen AI stands to do, and it even requires constant input of actual art to exist. Additionally , impressionism was far more a reaction to realism than it was to photography. Every new wave in art creates pushback from the other styles more popular at the time. Never before has every field of art so unanimously opposed what is clearly the cheapening and commoditizing of creativity through soulless reproduction. Gen AI can be fun to mess with, it can be interesting to explore the technology, but it is ultimately just a bubble being propped up by the exploitation of actual artists and consumers alike.
You clearly do not produce or understand the production of art, and why there is such a difference. Prompt engineering is not composition, and the only art that uses AI relies on human composition to give it any form of soul. This conversation isn’t worth having, as you’re still trying to argue that photography is analogous to AI art. Talk to artists.
The argument AI fanboys make that it’s the same creative effort as directing or photography is absolutely insane and falls flat with even a tiny bit of critical thinking. Anyone can plug in a prompt. People study and work hard their entire lives to become good photographers and directors. Being able to take a decent picture is not the same AT ALL as a professional photographer, especially one of the successful ones, like all art. It takes incredible patience, timing, creativity, and technical knowledge. It’s an accessible art form, like most forms of art, but doing it at the highest level takes a lot of skill. You need to select and know a great deal about your subject in order to capture it well, and timing is often incredibly important. There are people that spend their entire professional lives pursuing one shot, and when they finally get it, the photo is priceless and nearly impossible to replicate. The idea that an art form people get degrees and spend years pursuing is the same as typing a prompt is crazy. Just because anyone can pick up a camera (or a pen, or a paintbrush, etc) does not make the art form that simple.
Directing is an art form too, and there’s a very good reason the art of great directors is immediately attributable to them on viewing, even with no context. Anyone making that argument has no idea what it means to direct. Just because some directors might be lazy or uncreative doesn’t mean the artform doesn’t exist. AI could never replace it.
Like I said I tried AI art once to see what it was about. I did not get anything good but I’ve seen AI art that looks good so I know it is possible with experience in prompting.
Getting the right prompts can be done by anyone in the same way anyone can take a photo. I expect people will spend time learning how to prompt in the same way people learn the knobs and lenses on their camera. Anyone can take a photo. It takes skill to take a good one. Anyone can generate an AI image but it takes skill (less skill but skill nonetheless) to create a good one.
The skill and knowledge to create an oil painting is several orders of magnitude greater than taking a photo. The only reason photography is defended is because everyone grew up with photography slop. Today phone cameras make it even more automated with their automated bokeh and red eye removal.
I cannot disagree more, as someone that paints with multiple mediums, including oil. It may be much more time consuming, but most of the art is in learning how the human eye views images, how to make the eye be drawn around the image in the order you want, and many other technical and artistic details. I can’t even begin to discuss it here, it’s a field of professional art like any other. Frequently, it intersects with sculpture and other physical and digital mediums. There are colleges of photography that offer the same level and quantity of schooling that other artistic studies do. The skill in art is not in the fine motor controls and techniques, though they are important to learn. Much harder is learning about forms, color, values, how to arrange artwork to be pleasing to the eye (or discordant, like a tritone), and all the other multitude of steps in arranging and capturing the message the artist is trying to convey.
You’re just wrong and misinformed. I’m an artist, and every professional artist I know and went to school with shares my opinion. You have a very limited view of what photography can be, and it shows.
Edit: To be clear, professional photographers can spend huge amounts of time applying the knowledge they’ve learned through study and practice to arrange their subject, which is not simply “point and click.” Look at the work of professional modern photographers. Photography is accessible like a set of cheap acrylics is accessible. High level art of all mediums takes far more study and skill to do well than AI art.
Everything you said about photography also applies to painting AND it requires the physical skill that you dismiss as trivial.
I’m not dismissing it, and that doesn’t address the point at all compared to AI. It isn’t that technique isn’t important, it’s just far less of what you learn as an artist compared to the theory. Photography has its own advanced techniques just like all artforms.
You did dismiss it by claiming it was a small part compared to what a photographer has to learn.
Ai doesn’t do anything without prompting. You need all the same art knowledge to prompt an AI to create an image. In another reply here I compared it to a film director. Film directors don’t say the lines, do the cinematography, create the sets, costumes, or anything else. They only prompt others do do what is in their mind until it satisfies their artistic viewpoint.
My experience with AI art is extremely limited. I got garbage out. I’ve seen good AI art so there is skill to prompting in the same way a photographer uses skill but has a machine that actually creates the art.
Repeating it does not make it so. There are no AI art colleges.
There were no photography art colleges 150 years ago either. Photography was widely derided by artists. Impressionism was created as a response to the increased use of photography. They wanted to show that art was a human interpretation, not a mechanical reproduction.
https://www.artinsociety.com/pt-1-initial-impacts.html#%3A~%3Atext=Some+painters%2C+such+as+Courbet%2Ctrained+discriminating+and+expressive+eye.
Edit: Looks like AI is being added to art classes in colleges. https://hyperallergic.com/944834/school-is-back-in-session-and-so-are-ai-art-classes/
So art school is already recognizing AI art as a medium.
Yeah I don’t know if that source or that college make the point you think they do. AI art cannot exist without a constant feed of (non-consensual) human creativity. You can learn everything there is to know about AI “art” in a relatively short time span, because you have the plagiarism machine to do the composition for you. It isn’t so for any other medium. This point isn’t worth arguing, because it’s so self-evident. The knowledge and skill of photography clearly set it apart as an art form, whereas AI does not. AI “art” requires the knowledge and skill of actual artforms to even exist.
Photography’s genesis is fascinating and is taught about in art school. You conveniently left out the other side of that time, where the fledgling artform pushed back to prove its validity through multiple evolving forms and styles, which demonstrated that it is simply a new medium, not trying to replace or replicate any other style. That is explicitly what gen AI stands to do, and it even requires constant input of actual art to exist. Additionally , impressionism was far more a reaction to realism than it was to photography. Every new wave in art creates pushback from the other styles more popular at the time. Never before has every field of art so unanimously opposed what is clearly the cheapening and commoditizing of creativity through soulless reproduction. Gen AI can be fun to mess with, it can be interesting to explore the technology, but it is ultimately just a bubble being propped up by the exploitation of actual artists and consumers alike.
You clearly do not produce or understand the production of art, and why there is such a difference. Prompt engineering is not composition, and the only art that uses AI relies on human composition to give it any form of soul. This conversation isn’t worth having, as you’re still trying to argue that photography is analogous to AI art. Talk to artists.