personally, i don't feel that using a daw or drum machine/synth/sampler is the same as using ai to create something. one is a process of expression through detailed decision making while the other references human work to mash data together in an aesthetically pleasing way based on a simplified prompt which takes no training, learning or significant labor to create. i don't have issue with the ai music itself, (i find it aesthetically pleasing and inoffensive and it will suit perfectly fine for corporate endeavors like call waiting music or commercial music, which is where ai creation shines—to make labor easier in service of capital) but i would be offended to have my effort in music undermined by something that lacks any human element beyond a simple prompt. if true human expression is lost in an algorhythmic sea of ai 'art' then i find that sad to be very honest. i respect if others don't share the opinion but i feel using more evolved tools to create a specific desired outcome is very different from spinning the wheel on a single sentence prompt and having it mash data together for you. one feels like roulette and the other feels like digestion of the human experience. i believe DAWs in particular have given us a golden era of music creation and i fully support artists being able to create, mix and master their own music in their bedroom. my argument about ai is not about gatekeeping but rather how ai reuses human expression as fodder for capitalist endeavors. it eases the labor and reliance that capital needs from working class artists and makes creation of entertainment media, advertising media etc. streamlined and cheap and it also floods the market (sad that art even needs to exist in a market) with what i essentially boil down to as meaningless data. things that were created to be created and not because they were things that needed to be said, expressed, painted, sung, etc.
edit: was thinking about what you said here some more because i can't really deny progress either
I’ve always been of the opinion that any new, efficient tool is progress and a good thing.
but i was wondering if this is actually progress? i happen to also be a musician using software as my primary means of creation but i don't see ai music (or ai art for that matter, my actual career is as a graphic designer, not musician) to be particularly useful for self-expression. it would be useful if i didn't know how to play a part i guess, maybe i could generate a cello part or whatever but at that point i keep finding myself confronted with the question of what is art. and i guess that's the same question people asked when drum machines came out and they said they have no soul (hard disagree but maybe it's because of where i'm standing). i guess i just wonder where the line is with what is art? i would argue that using drum samples and arranging them on a grid with synth presets and vocal lines from splice is more akin to doing a photoshop collage than it is to having ai generate a song for you. one has a series of decisions being made by a human, (re)using human-created elements and the other is a one line prompt and then the ai makes ALL the decisions for you. what is art if it's not just a series of decisions made to come to a particular form of expression? and i guess you could argue that typing that prompt in IS the art and the decision making process but if the bar is that low then how is basically EVERYTHING not art? at that point it feels like we water the definition down.
anyway, whatever, it's late and i've been thinking about this a lot and posting about it a lot and not sure if i feel like i'm 100% right but something about this ai art stuff is off to me. it doesn't feel the same as a breakthrough in recording tech or the ability to doctor photographs or the way after effects changed the film industry. it feels like it shortcuts the entire expression of art and just leaves me with a hollow version of it. not sure how else to explain it.
That's actually quite well articulated. Let me run something by you and see what you think (also just saw your edit where you mention you're a graphic designer lol, so this will be on point)
I have an album coming up that I've been working on for many years and I need art for it. It's instrumental music, no lyrics.
We need album art for it, and a logo for our music project/band. I haven't dug into this too much but one guy quoted me $1000 just for the logo (he usually does corporate logos, so maybe not the best choice, but anyway)
On one hand, we could shop around for designers, maybe try to find someone that would be willing to do it for a price we can afford and hope that they make something that we like.
On the other hand, I could buy a license for an AI art generating program and just dick around with it until we find something that we like. After all, our art is the music not the album art.
I feel conflicted, because on one hand I would love to support an indie artist and get some cool original shit made. On the other hand, I have no idea how much money that's going to cost us or if the end product is even going to be something that we like.
Or maybe we could get one made by an artist and another by AI to keep our costs down, I dunno. What do you think?
yeah, interesting. i mean the pricing isn't too far out of line, logos can be a lot of effort, especially if the designer is listening and following up, doing the research etc. the process ideally is a lot more than just the design, you're paying for a process that someone has engineered and that may or may not be worth the cost. typically for a business the cost quoted is very reasonable. for a band struggling to release an album, yeah i see the issue. anyway, there are a lot of cheap options out there (which in a lot of cases i don't think is fair to the artist, but the issue of cost cuts both ways and i'm sympathetic to that) like fiverr or whatever. but honestly, if ai art serves the purpose, then great, i don't fault you at all for it. i think if it helps people in your case that's great, but i don't think it's the way ai generative content will be used by and large. i wouldn't be surprised to see ai generated billboards and the like in the near future.
but i do think your question plays into my earlier point that ai art serves to cut costs in areas where true 'artistic' expression is perhaps not needed. if you feel that your band is the music and not the art (which you're not necessarily wrong about) then yeah why does it matter whats on the cover? you could even do the name in sharpie. but as a designer i can tell you why you probably care—capitalism and the inherent competition. you have to compete in a market saturated with album covers that are done in painstaking detail. it's the same reason a logo is valuable, it gives the IMPRESSION of legitimacy. it's the entire reason my skill set is VALUABLE instead of admired. which is an issue with capitalism, not art, or design or whatever. capitalism continues to pervert art and design into corporate tools rather than modes of human expression. do i believe design is a legitimate form of artistic expression? maybe, you could argue the process is a form of art and i would be flattered to hear that, but in general, no, not really. design is a functional form of 'art,' if you wanna call it that. i learned design so that i could serve a market of businesses that approach 'art' (if that's even what i do anymore) from a profit incentive. they want me to know that the 'art' i design, or maybe more concisely, the content i create, is going to pay off. it's in service of capital. which i believe is what ai generative content will be mostly used for. i might once in a while need to generate an image i might not normally be able to create (or have the skill, means, etc to create) but in general the process of generating ai art will undermine my work and my industry. which is okay on one level. it IS progress, that's undeniable. and progress is unstoppable, it's silly to try, you can only adapt. but within the system i exist in, it is a potentially deadly advance and i know that it's not me and my fellow artists who are reaping the most benefit (and sure, we reap some degree of benefit insofar as it helps us streamline our work/expression) but it is the capitalist class that will use this to further profit and deepen the divide between authentic human experience and manufactured content. maybe that's a little dramatic, but on some level i feel it's true. either way, like i said there is nothing truly to do except adapt but i will be vocal about it while the change happens, apparently.
Not dramatic at all, I think that's an extremely well articulated way of describing the present moment insofar as AI art is concerned. you've clearly put a lot of thought into this.
Hell, it sounds like you could probably write a short book on the topic. "Art and Human Expression in the Age of Digital Capitalism" by GuerrillaMindset
I was wondering about that. It didn't seem to be exactly the kind of book I would expect someone who had just made very insightful comments about art to make :thinkin-lenin:
(i'm very tired when writing this so forgive me if I am missing something in your post)
I don't think it's necessarily the case that AI art lacks a human element. From some of my tinkering over the past few days, I have found that getting good results often means doing a lot more than just typing a few words, otherwise you're basically looking for good art in the Library of Babel practically. If you're doing techniques like inpainting/outpainting (and definitely look that up if you aren't familiar, shit's magical), you're definitely at least expressing some specific intent, and the AI is just filling in the details. Although there is the spontaneity of what the AI can do with whatever you let it loose to do, and that is what is most unique to it as a new tool. Searching through the library of babel with a simple prompt can work just fine if you just want to find something pretty, but you definitely have to work for results that match something specific.
The positive side -- think of all of the people in history who have had great ideas of what they want to create, but haven't really had the time or commitment to learn how to express those ideas. Tools like this bring the ability to express one's ideas to the masses. We will see a lot more people actually able to express their ideas as art. It'll probably be similar to how we're able to hear everyone's opinions on the internet -- sure, there'll certainly be a sea of shit, because you don't WANT to see everyone's ideas expressed, and we'll probably never stop questioning if we made a huge mistake, but we'll probably see enough good stuff to agree that it was worthwhile at the end of the day.
personally, i don't feel that using a daw or drum machine/synth/sampler is the same as using ai to create something. one is a process of expression through detailed decision making while the other references human work to mash data together in an aesthetically pleasing way based on a simplified prompt which takes no training, learning or significant labor to create. i don't have issue with the ai music itself, (i find it aesthetically pleasing and inoffensive and it will suit perfectly fine for corporate endeavors like call waiting music or commercial music, which is where ai creation shines—to make labor easier in service of capital) but i would be offended to have my effort in music undermined by something that lacks any human element beyond a simple prompt. if true human expression is lost in an algorhythmic sea of ai 'art' then i find that sad to be very honest. i respect if others don't share the opinion but i feel using more evolved tools to create a specific desired outcome is very different from spinning the wheel on a single sentence prompt and having it mash data together for you. one feels like roulette and the other feels like digestion of the human experience. i believe DAWs in particular have given us a golden era of music creation and i fully support artists being able to create, mix and master their own music in their bedroom. my argument about ai is not about gatekeeping but rather how ai reuses human expression as fodder for capitalist endeavors. it eases the labor and reliance that capital needs from working class artists and makes creation of entertainment media, advertising media etc. streamlined and cheap and it also floods the market (sad that art even needs to exist in a market) with what i essentially boil down to as meaningless data. things that were created to be created and not because they were things that needed to be said, expressed, painted, sung, etc.
edit: was thinking about what you said here some more because i can't really deny progress either
but i was wondering if this is actually progress? i happen to also be a musician using software as my primary means of creation but i don't see ai music (or ai art for that matter, my actual career is as a graphic designer, not musician) to be particularly useful for self-expression. it would be useful if i didn't know how to play a part i guess, maybe i could generate a cello part or whatever but at that point i keep finding myself confronted with the question of what is art. and i guess that's the same question people asked when drum machines came out and they said they have no soul (hard disagree but maybe it's because of where i'm standing). i guess i just wonder where the line is with what is art? i would argue that using drum samples and arranging them on a grid with synth presets and vocal lines from splice is more akin to doing a photoshop collage than it is to having ai generate a song for you. one has a series of decisions being made by a human, (re)using human-created elements and the other is a one line prompt and then the ai makes ALL the decisions for you. what is art if it's not just a series of decisions made to come to a particular form of expression? and i guess you could argue that typing that prompt in IS the art and the decision making process but if the bar is that low then how is basically EVERYTHING not art? at that point it feels like we water the definition down.
anyway, whatever, it's late and i've been thinking about this a lot and posting about it a lot and not sure if i feel like i'm 100% right but something about this ai art stuff is off to me. it doesn't feel the same as a breakthrough in recording tech or the ability to doctor photographs or the way after effects changed the film industry. it feels like it shortcuts the entire expression of art and just leaves me with a hollow version of it. not sure how else to explain it.
That's actually quite well articulated. Let me run something by you and see what you think (also just saw your edit where you mention you're a graphic designer lol, so this will be on point)
I have an album coming up that I've been working on for many years and I need art for it. It's instrumental music, no lyrics.
We need album art for it, and a logo for our music project/band. I haven't dug into this too much but one guy quoted me $1000 just for the logo (he usually does corporate logos, so maybe not the best choice, but anyway)
On one hand, we could shop around for designers, maybe try to find someone that would be willing to do it for a price we can afford and hope that they make something that we like.
On the other hand, I could buy a license for an AI art generating program and just dick around with it until we find something that we like. After all, our art is the music not the album art.
I feel conflicted, because on one hand I would love to support an indie artist and get some cool original shit made. On the other hand, I have no idea how much money that's going to cost us or if the end product is even going to be something that we like.
Or maybe we could get one made by an artist and another by AI to keep our costs down, I dunno. What do you think?
yeah, interesting. i mean the pricing isn't too far out of line, logos can be a lot of effort, especially if the designer is listening and following up, doing the research etc. the process ideally is a lot more than just the design, you're paying for a process that someone has engineered and that may or may not be worth the cost. typically for a business the cost quoted is very reasonable. for a band struggling to release an album, yeah i see the issue. anyway, there are a lot of cheap options out there (which in a lot of cases i don't think is fair to the artist, but the issue of cost cuts both ways and i'm sympathetic to that) like fiverr or whatever. but honestly, if ai art serves the purpose, then great, i don't fault you at all for it. i think if it helps people in your case that's great, but i don't think it's the way ai generative content will be used by and large. i wouldn't be surprised to see ai generated billboards and the like in the near future.
but i do think your question plays into my earlier point that ai art serves to cut costs in areas where true 'artistic' expression is perhaps not needed. if you feel that your band is the music and not the art (which you're not necessarily wrong about) then yeah why does it matter whats on the cover? you could even do the name in sharpie. but as a designer i can tell you why you probably care—capitalism and the inherent competition. you have to compete in a market saturated with album covers that are done in painstaking detail. it's the same reason a logo is valuable, it gives the IMPRESSION of legitimacy. it's the entire reason my skill set is VALUABLE instead of admired. which is an issue with capitalism, not art, or design or whatever. capitalism continues to pervert art and design into corporate tools rather than modes of human expression. do i believe design is a legitimate form of artistic expression? maybe, you could argue the process is a form of art and i would be flattered to hear that, but in general, no, not really. design is a functional form of 'art,' if you wanna call it that. i learned design so that i could serve a market of businesses that approach 'art' (if that's even what i do anymore) from a profit incentive. they want me to know that the 'art' i design, or maybe more concisely, the content i create, is going to pay off. it's in service of capital. which i believe is what ai generative content will be mostly used for. i might once in a while need to generate an image i might not normally be able to create (or have the skill, means, etc to create) but in general the process of generating ai art will undermine my work and my industry. which is okay on one level. it IS progress, that's undeniable. and progress is unstoppable, it's silly to try, you can only adapt. but within the system i exist in, it is a potentially deadly advance and i know that it's not me and my fellow artists who are reaping the most benefit (and sure, we reap some degree of benefit insofar as it helps us streamline our work/expression) but it is the capitalist class that will use this to further profit and deepen the divide between authentic human experience and manufactured content. maybe that's a little dramatic, but on some level i feel it's true. either way, like i said there is nothing truly to do except adapt but i will be vocal about it while the change happens, apparently.
Not dramatic at all, I think that's an extremely well articulated way of describing the present moment insofar as AI art is concerned. you've clearly put a lot of thought into this.
Hell, it sounds like you could probably write a short book on the topic. "Art and Human Expression in the Age of Digital Capitalism" by GuerrillaMindset
thanks, i appreciate that comrade, but i already wrote a book… Gorilla Mindset: How to Control Your Thoughts and Emotions to Live Life on Your Terms
Ah! Well, nevertheless!
(also, cool!)
just in case i'm being taken seriously that's a book by weird mike :michael-laugh:
I was wondering about that. It didn't seem to be exactly the kind of book I would expect someone who had just made very insightful comments about art to make :thinkin-lenin:
(i'm very tired when writing this so forgive me if I am missing something in your post)
I don't think it's necessarily the case that AI art lacks a human element. From some of my tinkering over the past few days, I have found that getting good results often means doing a lot more than just typing a few words, otherwise you're basically looking for good art in the Library of Babel practically. If you're doing techniques like inpainting/outpainting (and definitely look that up if you aren't familiar, shit's magical), you're definitely at least expressing some specific intent, and the AI is just filling in the details. Although there is the spontaneity of what the AI can do with whatever you let it loose to do, and that is what is most unique to it as a new tool. Searching through the library of babel with a simple prompt can work just fine if you just want to find something pretty, but you definitely have to work for results that match something specific.
The positive side -- think of all of the people in history who have had great ideas of what they want to create, but haven't really had the time or commitment to learn how to express those ideas. Tools like this bring the ability to express one's ideas to the masses. We will see a lot more people actually able to express their ideas as art. It'll probably be similar to how we're able to hear everyone's opinions on the internet -- sure, there'll certainly be a sea of shit, because you don't WANT to see everyone's ideas expressed, and we'll probably never stop questioning if we made a huge mistake, but we'll probably see enough good stuff to agree that it was worthwhile at the end of the day.