The Fraternity of Shadows’ Position on AI Art

[Baron Von Stanton]

(Except when you are, ugh, Azalin, or Daclaud Heinfroth, or something. )

Or a techbro. Or a shill for those unethical companies.

To be honest, I'd much rather trust undead villains like Azalin and Heinfroth over techbros and corporate shill bros.

[tomokaicho]

I think all of us here are ordinary people. Not "tech bros" or "corporate shills". The stakes here are too low, the audience entirely too fringe, for inauthentic efforts at narrative control.

[Le Noir Faineant]

Tech-bros, the vegans of the 2020s: You know their opinions because they tell you their opinions. Every time you meet them. All the time you meet them.

Bob Saget voice: Rafe owned sixty-four vegan cookbooks. He would tell you about them.

I think all of us here are ordinary people. Not "tech bros" or "corporate shills". The stakes here are too low, the audience entirely too fringe, for inauthentic efforts at narrative control.

FTR, I didn't want to imply that you were, earlier in the thread. I think it's cool that we're talking about this stuff; this is what a community does.

[doctornecrotic]

(Except when you are, ugh, Azalin, or Daclaud Heinfroth, or something. )

Or a techbro. Or a shill for those unethical companies.

based

[alhoon]

I think many of us here are old enough to remember the arguments when photoshop etc came out and started becoming widespread about whether these are real art, that this kind of art didn't require the years of dedication and skill that "real" art did and similar movements to limit their use or vote-with-your-money towards companies that employ "pen and paint" artists instead of digital artists.
Examples:
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm ... story.html
https://www.wired.com/1994/12/digital-art-2/
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-ente ... 65505.html

As I was thinking back then, so I do now: What is called art, evolves through the years. Similar arguments were done in the past as shown above. And I am pretty sure that the previous debates have not completely died out in the last 30 years. I am pretty sure there are art galeries that do not accept digital art at all.
I am not saying the FoS should "get on with the times" and throw out every barrier. Of course standards are needed, there is bad computer art and many of the AI generated images are quite similar. Many of us can tell a face is AI generated even without AI flaws because of the way many AI programs draw.
I am also not claiming that the current state of AI-generated art can beat proper skill and time - although I do claim that for the 99% of us that don't have the proper skill and time, it is much much easier to use.
I am saying that in 20 years from now a lot of people that would call themselves AI-artists would be offended to be called anything but artists, saying how difficult it is to properly curate, edit and re-edit prompts and use whatever tools are available at the time.


Honestly, having AI sketch stuff for my table has saved me hours of scouting the net for usable pics. I still have entire folders, and links to folders etc of D&D-usable art, but it is often more accurate to my imagination to create the pic with AI.

[Rock of the Fraternity]

They're already offended not to be acknowledged as artists now.
And in 20 years they still won't be artists; they'll still be people who typed what they want into a program, sat back and let it compile images from across the net - often without giving a damn whether those images were released for fair use or not.

People who make art through photoshop still put in a lot of effort of their own, and build up genuine skills over time. They just have more modern tools.

The stuff you use for your table, you are at least not trying to market as your original work.

[alhoon]

They're already offended not to be acknowledged as artists now.
And in 20 years they still won't be artists; they'll still be people who typed what they want into a program, sat back and let it compile images from across the net - often without giving a damn whether those images were released for fair use or not.

People who make art through photoshop still put in a lot of effort of their own, and build up genuine skills over time. They just have more modern tools.

The exact same things were said of digital tools ('they will never be artists', 'they will not build up skills') 30 years ago. And some of the people that said that back then still say it now.
From what I understand, AI image generation will evolve to much more than "I write a prompt, I get an image in 20 seconds that is kinda-like what I typed". There will be tools, specialized tools and the future AI-artist may actually have developed his or her own code or framework on how the AI would work. What I mean is that the future artist that creates Special effects (or entire movies!) for Hollywood would put a lot of work and skill on the AI itself, developing it, changing it, programming it.
Today, we call that "programming!" or "App development!" and not art.
But who is to say that "App development for image generation" is not going to be considered art in 20 years?

The stuff you use for your table, you are at least not trying to market as your original work.

There, I 100% agree with you.
The AI generator app you design, or the framework you design for the apps and tools etc is original work.
The prompt you carefully curate is original work.
The image generated by the App you designed and the prompt you curated is not original work. It may be pretty but it is not original work.

[Rock of the Fraternity]

There is a skill and an art to coding programs and creating tools, but a different kind of art than is the subject of this thread.

I do not, will not see curating prompts as an art. Figuring out what to ask for so someone or something gives you exactly what you want may develop a skill, but it is not creative; it's supplication.

[alhoon]

Figuring out what to ask for so someone or something gives you exactly what you want may develop a skill, but it is not creative; it's supplication.

On whether it is creative to have something put to image something a person envisions, I respectfully disagree.
One may envision a beautiful landscape with the right mix of colors and all... and lack the skill to put it on canvas. That doesn't mean that person lacks creativity, it means it lacks a specific skill.
You may state that art is the product of inspiration, creativity AND skill to bring your imagination forward, and that is a position few can argue against.
But claiming that having the imagination to think of something new, down to details even if you cannot express it well is not creative is not the same.

There are a lot of painters that draw and redraw the Mona Lisa and other famous works of art, and good copies used to sell quite high. Shouldn't these be called artists even though they lacked ... the creativity ... to create an original work of art? How about the street artists, that make sketches of people the see? Isn't that art too, despite not having an original idea?

Lastly, and this pertains to this main discussion:
If I had an image of a fire giant with a scar above his left eye up to 2023, my options were to draw him, having to rely on my skill, pay someone else and rely on his/her skill or find an image of a firegiant that was OK and slightly modify it, again relying on my skill.
In 2026, I don't have to find 150$ to pay someone for my vision, I do not have the skill to make justice to my imagination and searching the internet may not give good enough results ... and I am very glad the FoS allows me to say "This is an AI generated image of X, made with this prompt!" and be done with it.

[Rock of the Fraternity]

Figuring out what to ask for so someone or something gives you exactly what you want may develop a skill, but it is not creative; it's supplication.

On whether it is creative to have something put to image something a person envisions, I respectfully disagree.
One may envision a beautiful landscape with the right mix of colors and all... and lack the skill to put it on canvas. That doesn't mean that person lacks creativity, it means it lacks a specific skill.
You may state that art is the product of inspiration, creativity AND skill to bring your imagination forward, and that is a position few can argue against.
But claiming that having the imagination to think of something new, down to details even if you cannot express it well is not creative is not the same.

That is not what I said.
The person who envisions a beautiful landscape may have a creative mind. That, we can agree on. If they lack the skill to make their vision a reality on canvas, that is a true shame. But they could still try to describe it in words, to help others see their vision.

I said people curating prompts are not being creative in the sense an artist or a programmer or a mathmatician is creative; they're figuring out ways to get what they want out of a program, they are not making anything. They are ordering the program to assemble an image out of elements scraped from the internet.

If I tell a server at a restaurant "I want a burger with fries, lettuce but not tomato", and the server brings me such a burger, what right would I have to say: "I made myself a delicious hamburger"?

The street artist copying the Mona Lisa at least takes chalk in hand - the equivalent of firing up the grill and putting meat on it, as it were. They do not take a photograph of the Mona Lisa out of a catalogue, slap it on the cobblestones and proclaim it is their creation.

[doctornecrotic]

In the end, I guess I'll have to do what I've done with printing articles of a different fanzine... Just print to PDF, do some Frankenstein (or Mordenheim) splice job where I sub out the junk for whatever else I can fill in. If that's how it be...

They're already offended not to be acknowledged as artists now.
And in 20 years they still won't be artists; they'll still be people who typed what they want into a program, sat back and let it compile images from across the net - often without giving a damn whether those images were released for fair use or not.

People who make art through photoshop still put in a lot of effort of their own, and build up genuine skills over time. They just have more modern tools.

The stuff you use for your table, you are at least not trying to market as your original work.

Once again, based

[Le Noir Faineant]

The trap here is the public debate: The term "art" for giving minimal indicators to a randomizer, that's the term the providers of these services choose. The intellectual dishonesty here is intentional because it creates dependencies:

So, these "artists", now for their self-perception of self-expression, need to subscribe - quite literally, by the way - to a service only specific companies provide. Like, let's not get too philosophical here about how a painter can't paint without the company that sells the pencil -- just you go on try to create a slice of melon with Dall-e 2022.

You will find that your means of self-expression will be rather... Limited.

All this stuff reminds me of a song by Cake:



Excess Ain't Rebellion.
You're Drinking What They're Selling.

[Rock of the Fraternity]

Well said.
Unethical companies are unethical on pretty much every level. :-/

[High Priest Mikhal]

Not wholly related to this thread, but I believe this site has been getting scraped by LLM (it's not AI) because at the time of this post there are >6,000 "guests" visiting. "Scraping" is where the glorified chatbots scour sites for art and text to "train" AGI. It's also what causes the same to suffer those digital hallucinations that cause tech companies so many embarrassments because they aren't intelligent in the slightest. They just rehash whatever they're trained on with no ability to actually comprehend or extrapolate.