in this hypothetical future, why would anyone spend the time learning to make art when an AI could produce things far more technically proficient than anything they could while learning?
Some AI technologies will require precision. You will not prompt precision in human language. You will either has to describe them in a precise domain-specific language or just draw them. For the hypothetical “anime producing AI” tech that I describe, it requires humans to draw key frames and outlines. And if there’s demand, there will be supply.
because AI has no motive to make art, it just makes what it is told to do
AI doesn’t make art by itself, it was a human who told it to do so, and its purpose depends on the human.
The core argument of your second paragraph doesn’t exactly disagree with me, just a different perspective on the same truth: The purpose of an art depends on the intent and purpose of the maker. Most makers will indeed make arts for nothing but a quick buck, which is what already happened in mainstream entertainment even without AI. I don’t yet have any example of meaningful AI arts, but I will never say never.
Perhaps this could lead to an unexpected result, where if the tech becomes easy enough to use, regular people can create their own animes, entirely without studios, entirely generated by AI
Do you consider memes “arts”? I do, as long as these memes convey a message, which they usually do. In this scenario, we will just have more visually impressive memes.
and if that were the case, the studios would struggle to compete, unless they could somehow produce work that is higher quality than what personal use AIs can generate, which would probably loop back around to needing a professional artist’s touch once again.
This is what I meant by “current method will be obsolete”. The studios will need to create even more impressive works which would demand professionals.
The “precision” with AI art is largely just fine tuning the prompts and code, it’s a technical, not artistic, precision, and that in turn leads it away from being meaningful art. Though with this hypothetical AI art anime you’ve described, it just sounds like Flash animation to me, people designing key frames and the program tweening the inbetween frames. If that’s all AI art ends up being, a more competent and fancier looking flash animation, then there really isn’t a problem, in fact flash animation was pretty good for making the most exploitative parts of the industry (usually overseas animation studios in Korea and Japan etc.) have far less brutal workloads. If that’s how it ends up working in practice, then that would be fantastic.
The problem is that it is currently trying to be sold as something that won’t just make artist’s jobs easier, but something that will make artists obsolete. Though I think we’re in agreement that that won’t actually happen completely, though I’m sure some studios will attempt it (and fail). I’m arguing for the point that the proliferation of AI art will result in a generation of “artists” who cannot do much more than type in prompts, the skills and dedication required to master the profession would become rarer and rarer.
I don’t think we’re really in disagreement at all about most of this, just the minutia of it. I just can’t imagine meaningful AI art existing because it is a paint by number procedure. Someone else has done the work of making “an art” and it just reorganises that. Meaningful art is an idea + execution. And AI art automates the “execution” part, so it is just someone’s ideas assembled by the algorithm. I would not say this is art, but then, people can’t already agree on what makes something “art” or not already so this isn’t exactly a groundbreaking topic, just with fancier gadgets involved.
I do consider memes to potentially be art, even memes that are derivative of other memes can still be “art.” A painting doesn’t stop being a painting because it was inspired by another painting. The difference between making something based on something else that already exists vs AI art is that the person making something inspired by existing art is doing so deliberately, the AI just picks things that seem to be a good fit for the prompt. I think intent is very important when it comes to art, which I guess is my core issue with AI art. The AI cannot have intent, and though the prompter can, the AI stifles their intent.
And with your final point, I certainly hope so. I’m doubtful, as internet flash cartoons and youtube didn’t actually force studios to produce higher quality products previously, despite the public making a lot of content (and some of it quite a bit higher quality than most of the stuff on tv), but it would be nice to see this sort of thing cause a complete collapse of the studio industry as it exists entirely, to have a kind of “reset” of media where they go back to trying to make high quality art instead of made by committee generic garbage.
Some AI technologies will require precision. You will not prompt precision in human language. You will either has to describe them in a precise domain-specific language or just draw them. For the hypothetical “anime producing AI” tech that I describe, it requires humans to draw key frames and outlines. And if there’s demand, there will be supply.
AI doesn’t make art by itself, it was a human who told it to do so, and its purpose depends on the human.
The core argument of your second paragraph doesn’t exactly disagree with me, just a different perspective on the same truth: The purpose of an art depends on the intent and purpose of the maker. Most makers will indeed make arts for nothing but a quick buck, which is what already happened in mainstream entertainment even without AI. I don’t yet have any example of meaningful AI arts, but I will never say never.
Do you consider memes “arts”? I do, as long as these memes convey a message, which they usually do. In this scenario, we will just have more visually impressive memes.
This is what I meant by “current method will be obsolete”. The studios will need to create even more impressive works which would demand professionals.
The “precision” with AI art is largely just fine tuning the prompts and code, it’s a technical, not artistic, precision, and that in turn leads it away from being meaningful art. Though with this hypothetical AI art anime you’ve described, it just sounds like Flash animation to me, people designing key frames and the program tweening the inbetween frames. If that’s all AI art ends up being, a more competent and fancier looking flash animation, then there really isn’t a problem, in fact flash animation was pretty good for making the most exploitative parts of the industry (usually overseas animation studios in Korea and Japan etc.) have far less brutal workloads. If that’s how it ends up working in practice, then that would be fantastic.
The problem is that it is currently trying to be sold as something that won’t just make artist’s jobs easier, but something that will make artists obsolete. Though I think we’re in agreement that that won’t actually happen completely, though I’m sure some studios will attempt it (and fail). I’m arguing for the point that the proliferation of AI art will result in a generation of “artists” who cannot do much more than type in prompts, the skills and dedication required to master the profession would become rarer and rarer.
I don’t think we’re really in disagreement at all about most of this, just the minutia of it. I just can’t imagine meaningful AI art existing because it is a paint by number procedure. Someone else has done the work of making “an art” and it just reorganises that. Meaningful art is an idea + execution. And AI art automates the “execution” part, so it is just someone’s ideas assembled by the algorithm. I would not say this is art, but then, people can’t already agree on what makes something “art” or not already so this isn’t exactly a groundbreaking topic, just with fancier gadgets involved.
I do consider memes to potentially be art, even memes that are derivative of other memes can still be “art.” A painting doesn’t stop being a painting because it was inspired by another painting. The difference between making something based on something else that already exists vs AI art is that the person making something inspired by existing art is doing so deliberately, the AI just picks things that seem to be a good fit for the prompt. I think intent is very important when it comes to art, which I guess is my core issue with AI art. The AI cannot have intent, and though the prompter can, the AI stifles their intent.
And with your final point, I certainly hope so. I’m doubtful, as internet flash cartoons and youtube didn’t actually force studios to produce higher quality products previously, despite the public making a lot of content (and some of it quite a bit higher quality than most of the stuff on tv), but it would be nice to see this sort of thing cause a complete collapse of the studio industry as it exists entirely, to have a kind of “reset” of media where they go back to trying to make high quality art instead of made by committee generic garbage.