I hate the copyright discussion around AI, its taken several directions I'm fundamentally at odds with. I strongly believe copyright is bad for art and bad for artists, DRM and copy protection is for losers, and art should be free. I also don't believe AI to be theft, as copying is not theft.

I’m sorry but you’re hitting a sore spot here, and I cannot *not* comment on this.

Wanting all art to be free is convenient as long as you’re not the one depending on living from your art. Of all things people gladly pay for, like grossly overpriced takeaway coffee – why is it always art that should be free?

Many of the hardest working people I know are artists – people working in theatre, films and music. Arguing with our commissioners to get paid enough to actually justify a normal pay when we are really working 12–16 hours a day, is already hard enough.

It is the fundamental rights for the creator of a work, to decide what can or cannot be done with said work. If the creator wants their work to be free – fine. But it has to be their choice.

Copyright is not always perfect, and the system has some shortcomings for sure. But because of copyright, my country’s PRO (Performing Rights Organization) makes sure I get paid each time my music is being used, in films, on TV and in the theatre. Certain flaws aside, the system actually works. And I would not have a career if not. If all my music was free from the start, how was I supposed to be making a living for the last 20 years? Not only that, but none of that music would have been made in the first place, because I would have to do something else instead.

And so would many of the classic composers, who we often forget also worked on commission. They got paid for creating the music we still enjoy today. If they didn’t, well, we wouldn’t have Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, or any of Mozart’s operas, or Beethoven’s Fifth, or Grieg’s Holberg Suite, Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake – the list goes on.

Is an art forger using only traditional techniques a real artist? How about someone who uses AI tools available in digital processing tools? Were Renaissance painters outsourcing part of the work on their own paintings to assistants and studio hands real artists?

I cannot say if copying an artwork can be "art", but at least it is a craft that needs to be learned. The person doing it this way spends lifetime as well, for learning, and for doing the copying process. They need good eyes for proportions and colors and need to know painting techniques just like the original artist. Personally, I think maybe it could be called a different form of art. Not "free art", but "dependent" art. And if not art, it is still work, lifetime spent, a craft.

Using AI for the same process (reproducing a digital image *exactly* instead of just copy pasting, which of course would be more efficient and quicker) wouldn't make any sense, but creating actual art (or the result) doesn't always make obvious sense to the viewers either. Maybe the first time doing this would have created something "new" - just by being the first person ever doing it this way. Managing to recreate an existing image 1:1 with this process probably would take time and patience as well.

It would be wasted time and resources as well. The "fat corner" artwork by joseph beuys was art, and wasted resources at the same time. It was a new idea that hadn't been realized this way before.

I am not sure about this, when art begins.

Who is an artist? Anyone who "does art". But what is art? If art is for "self-expression" and "beauty", and both "conditions" must be met, someone who copies an existing artwork cannot express themself while exactly copying that. They can express themself only when they change it in some way.

An AI cannot express it"self" through art, since it doesn't have a "self".

I am not so sure anymore about those who write really detailled "personal" prompts for creating an artwork and express themself through the AI as a tool. Maybe not choosing what people would like and what would sell best, but trying to communicate something/some message they need to get out so it can be seen?

Not meaning "create an image based on BobVPs avatar in the style of artist XY".

But for example "create an image showing an artist starving underground, carrying the weight of a skyscraper full of companies using AI tools to produce millions of images and flood the internet, using bold black strokes on a grey paperlike background and tiny neon pink spray painted accents".

Might the generated image based on the second prompt text be "art"?

AND would it be a difference based on who generated this?
a - someone who never painted anything?
b - an artist who learned to draw and paint and lived from it for 20 years?

And what if that person copied this generated image, digitally? Or traditionally, with acrylic colors for example? Would the result be art?
Or would it be soulless plagiarism, since artistic decisions were still made by AI based on collected data, after all?

At least "art" as such was never defined by the tools of your choice, besides for categorizing, right? (visual art, music, acting, literature ...)
I mean like "it's not (visual) art if you used a pencil".

Addendum:
I am also wondering if the requirements for "what is art" will be changed in all the process of AI infiltrating everything. Even when it's "truly human made".

I have seen cases where a human had created something, and others pointed at them saying "bah, looks like AI" - and it wasn't. Which of course can hurt and destroy an artist person as well, totally.

I know artists (illustrators) who gave up their art profession and started learning something completely different - late in their lives ... since creating art doesn't seem to have a future anymore.

Some people may say "if you are good enough you'll survive it - if not, maybe you should never have started doing trying to create art anyway".

Which is sad, because I like art created by humans, and it doesn't have to be perfect for me to enjoy that.

When I learned visual design, my teacher hated all the digital stuff and would never say that anything created digitally can be art at all - it was just kitsch to him. Let's see what people may say about all this in 20 years, I guess.

I think what makes art art is when it carries a little piece of the artist’s soul within it. AI has no soul and thus cannot create art.

Is an art forger using only traditional techniques a real artist? How about someone who uses AI tools available in digital processing tools? Were Renaissance painters outsourcing part of the work on their own paintings to assistants and studio hands real artists?

Don't strawman this shit. You know exactly what I mean.

If it felt like I was calling you out or doing some kind of internet debate on you, that wasn't the idea. I'm interested in what people think and why + getting a discussion going. It's cool if that's not for everyone, this is an open forum. If you just want to make a statement, that's fine as well.

@Space Quest Historian:

Have you played Whispers of a Machine? If so, what do you think about it?

@Space Quest Historian:

Have you played Whispers of a Machine? If so, what do you think about it?

Nope. I just noticed it's on sale (-80%) on Steam so I've picked it up. No telling when I'll get around to playing it, though.

If it felt like I was calling you out or doing some kind of internet debate on you, that wasn't the idea. I'm interested in what people think and why + getting a discussion going. It's cool if that's not for everyone, this is an open forum. If you just want to make a statement, that's fine as well.

It very much felt like you were being an apologist and trying to divert the conversation elsewhere instead of tackling the point head-on. AI cannot produce art. It can steal real artists' work and morph it into something that has extra fingers. Any amount of waffling about how humans _can_ also do the same is besides the point.

Alright, thanks polite response and the clarification!

I'm curious about your thoughts on the game, it deal with AI, what it means to be human, things like that. I like that it takes a bold stance, rather than repeating some dystopian tropes.

To me, all statements and arguments here are interesting. As far as I've been following debate, it's mostly about the costs, eco impacts and shady promises but also useful applications and about a decade or more of improved capability.

Regarding art, I just really don't know. I think humanity and art have a pretty complicated relationship. It might outlive us. From a human's perspective, that's a horrid idea. I want to be pro-human, in general. And I still haven't answered the poll. -_-

Support real artists.

Is an art forger using only traditional techniques a real artist? How about someone who uses AI tools available in digital processing tools? Were Renaissance painters outsourcing part of the work on their own paintings to assistants and studio hands real artists?

You're doing a "just asking questions" routine here, as if these are difficult things to answer or edge cases that might make the AI-art question seem more complex or worthy of consideration than it is. I don't know whether that's conscious on your part or if you're just repeating bad-faith questions that AI merchants use to try to muddy the waters, but there are very simple answers to two of these, and the third is so vague as to be unanswerable.

1. An art forger is not making art, period, no matter what technique they use, so the comparison is immaterial to this argument. A forgery is made with the explicit goal of mimicking something with extrinsic value in an attempt to use it to acquire some of that value; it's not about creating art by any definition. All the aristic decisions have already been made before the forger gets there; the only thing the forger is trying to do is to convince the viewer that this is the original piece and not a reproduction.

2. You're not defining any of these terms and leaving it to the reader to automatically fill in blanks they might not even have noticed. What "AI tools" are you talking about? What "digital processing tools?" What do you mean by "uses" in this context? Without that information this isn't a real question, it's a rhetorical flourish that tricks the reader into trying to answer a separate question they think is being asked.

3. This is another trick, because it shifts the focus away from where the question actually is--"Can an image created without intent be considered art?"--to an unrelated and very different place: "How much credit does an artist who works collaboratively deserve for the final piece?"

Everyone involved in the process you describe was an artist. They were involved in a collaborative process by which their collective thoughts and intentions shaped the final work, and the final painting reflects the sum of their influence on it. We call the finished piece a Michelangelo or a Boticelli not as a philosophical statement on authorship but because that's how the system worked at that time: he who owned the studio got the credit and cashed the checks, and that mode of attribution is what passed down through the centuries to us. It would be fairer and more accurate to discuss "the artists" rather than "the artist" when talking about these works, but that's how it fell out, and the ship has probably sailed.

Intention makes art. You can look at The Last Supper and wonder why Judas's hand is placed a certain way, or what Peter's expression is meant to convey, or whether the bare-faced disciple at the table is meant to be John or Mary Magdalene, because we know every aspect of the painting was created with intent of some kind. That process of wondering and considering is what art is meant to do. It's a form of communicating from one person's (or group's) interior landscape to another's.

There is no equivalence between that process and AI image generation. None. Feeding instructions to an image generator isn't a collaborative process, because there's no one to collaborate with. What we call "AI" isn't a mind; it has no intention or thought or knowledge, and the answer to any question like "Why is the subject positioned that way" or "What's the reason for that color use" is "Because the machine was given a series of keywords and ran through its index of images to identify the patterns most likely to satisfy the search terms." The question of "Is that John or Mary" question isn't possible in an AI image--an LLM doesn't know the difference between John and Mary and not only can't weigh the impact of the possible ambiguities, but can't decide how to depict either of them itself. An LLM may be able to index the text of the Bible, but it can't make judgement calls about the identity of the Beloved Disciple or reason that the folk tradition of John being the youngest apostle would make it appropriate to depict him beardless. All it can do is put out the data that its algorithm calculates has the highest probability of conforming to the search criteria and leave it there. And that isn't and can't be art.