Cool article! I think on a more general note it underlines what I have been thinking for some time now: most people, also on HN, get this generative art stuff totally wrong.
Yes, this will be the end for some artists but not for others. DALLE2 et al. are merely new tools for new generation of artists. And, we are still figuring out how to use these tools effectively.
In other words: The “AI” is a tool that we humans will use to get things done faster/better etc. Nothing less, but also not much more.
To your point, I read in a board game group the other day of an artist using AI generation for a first pass with new clients to save themselves time. "Is this close to what you want?" then does the actual art with alterations by hand. If the client says no or flakes out, a lot less effort was lost than before.
While this is true to a certain extent, you're probably underselling it a bit. A lot of "evocative" art (e.g. art on Magic The Gathering cards) can now be done by complete non-artists playing around with prompts for a little while, in less time than it would take a professional artist to make the art manually.
Now, if you're actually Wizards of the Coast, you probably wanna spend the money with real artists anyway, but for any smaller teams, I can see the appeal of just using AI for that kind of use case now.
I think people overlook the fact that there's more to a photo than shutter speed, more to a comic than the drawing... There's message, composition, design, focused iteration, etc, etc.
I really enjoy using DALLE for simulating photographs as it forces me to think outside of just the viewfinder.
The more worrisome aspect for me isn’t that it’s already going to replace some artists.
I always thought in my head that this level of creativity would remain our domain for centuries. Even as of like two or three years ago I thought that.
It’s insane to me that today some artists feel they’re going to be replaced soon. The idea of centuries is completely shattered for me and now I don’t know if we’re a year or 50 years away from AI replacing humans entirely in the creative domain. I spent the other day completely in an existential crisis, tbh.
>I always thought in my head that this level of creativity would remain our domain for centuries.
From what I've seen these networks are rehashing learning set images into something matching some criteria to produce visually pleasing results. Not to belittle the results - it's impressive - but the stuff I'm not seeing here is understanding of generated material - nonsensical z-order, scale/proportions, configuration.
Fantasy images are an easy target because it's all about visually pleasing nonsense.
From what I've seen, these tools aren't making _new_ styles (yet? I guess they will eventually, now that would be existentially fascinating/horrifying) -- so my worry with them is that they'll basically lock us in to what we have today.
But then that's sort of a self-limiting factor: it means theres still space for human creativity in creating new things, new styles (as not every style exists yet!) -- at least until said new style gets loaded into the model, I suppose?
The only reason an artist would think they’re being replaced is someone told them they would. So the solution is to not tell them that, as it’s not true.
(The main instigator on Twitter is a guy who draws “realistic Pokemon” and hates that an AI may have stolen the art he already stole from The Pokemon Company.)
Yes, this will be the end for some artists but not for others. DALLE2 et al. are merely new tools for new generation of artists. And, we are still figuring out how to use these tools effectively.
In other words: The “AI” is a tool that we humans will use to get things done faster/better etc. Nothing less, but also not much more.