No, because the human involvement in creating AI art is so little that it’s considered de minimis --i.e. so minimal that it’s not worth talking into account. All you’re doing is putting a prompt into the generator–regardless of how much time and effort you put into crafting the prompt, it’s the AI interpreting that prompt and deciding how to convert it into an image, not you. In comparison, when you take a photograph, you’re interpreting the scene, you’re deciding that the object you’re photographing is interesting enough for a photo, you’re deciding what should and shouldn’t be in the shot, you’re deciding the composition of the shot, and you’re deciding what settings and filters to use in the shot.
It’s like the difference between someone taking a sketch of a model and making 20 revisions/alterations to the sketch before inking/coloring it, and a picky commissioner paying an artist to draw something and asking the artist to make 20 revisions before approving color/lines.
I get where you’re coming from about human involvement in AI art. But consider this: the artist isn’t just dropping a prompt and walking away. They’re often curating the dataset, fine-tuning the model, and making tons of decisions that influence the final piece. It’s kind of like a movie director who shapes every scene even if they’re not on camera.
Also, AI art usually isn’t a one-shot deal. Artists go through multiple iterations, making tweaks and changes to get to the final result. Think of it as sculpting, chipping away until it feels right. It takes hundreds if not thousands of different tries with prompts.
And don’t underestimate the prompt. A well-crafted prompt can guide the AI in ways that make the end product unique and meaningful. So while the AI is a tool, the human is still very much the artist here.
You ring up your artist friend and would really like to see this specific thing drawn. Your friend gets inspired and is happy to oblige completely for free as they make art for fun. You give them specifications, they send you progress pictures and you tell them how to tweak those WIP pictures until you get the piece you envisioned, drawn by this artist friend of yours.
Now, who owns the work? The artist, right? You don’t get to claim ownership just because your instructions got that piece done.
And yet that effort to make something from AI is trivial compared to the effort required to become a professional artist or photographer. If I commission art from a human, I’m curating and fine-tuning the output by browsing the artist’s gallery, deciding which artist to commission based on their art style, deciding on a prompt to give the artist, and revising the output by adjusting my prompt based on the artist’s preliminary sketch. Yet despite all that effort, I don’t get the copyright for the completed artwork, because I didn’t make it.
I wholeheartedly and completely reject the notion that human creativity has any more than de minimis influence on AI art. It’s no more a tool than an actual live artist is a tool.
I disagree on the notion that a person that prompted the AI didn’t „make“ the picture. This is the same argument as with digital art, you aren‘t making it, you are simply moving your pen on a screen to create lines and fillings to impress an image. (Also, when it was becoming popular a lot of artists complained that is wasn’t „real art“). To be fair, what someone thinks is art is quite subjective (many people scoff at these random blocks standing around in cities like statues) so it’ll ultimately be up to the lawmakers (that mark my word will lobby to eternity for this to exist) to decide. I respect your opinion, but don’t agree with it. It’s not like you or I can’t enjoy something just because someone else doesn’t.
I disagree on the notion that a person that prompted the AI didn’t „make“ the picture. This is the same argument as with digital art, you aren‘t making it, you are simply moving your pen on a screen to create lines and fillings to impress an image. (Also, when it was becoming popular a lot of artists complained that is wasn’t „real art“). To be fair, what someone thinks is art is quite subjective (many people scoff at these random blocks standing around in cities like statues) so it’ll ultimately be up to the lawmakers (that mark my word will lobby to eternity for this to exist) to decide. I respect your opinion, but don’t agree with it. It’s not like you or I can’t enjoy something just because someone else doesn’t.
It’s literally not the same as digital art and I find the comparison offensive. One is a human directly putting pixels on the screen, the other is output from a program that processed millions of pieces of actual artwork into the creative equivalent of pink slime.
No, because the human involvement in creating AI art is so little that it’s considered de minimis --i.e. so minimal that it’s not worth talking into account. All you’re doing is putting a prompt into the generator–regardless of how much time and effort you put into crafting the prompt, it’s the AI interpreting that prompt and deciding how to convert it into an image, not you. In comparison, when you take a photograph, you’re interpreting the scene, you’re deciding that the object you’re photographing is interesting enough for a photo, you’re deciding what should and shouldn’t be in the shot, you’re deciding the composition of the shot, and you’re deciding what settings and filters to use in the shot.
It’s like the difference between someone taking a sketch of a model and making 20 revisions/alterations to the sketch before inking/coloring it, and a picky commissioner paying an artist to draw something and asking the artist to make 20 revisions before approving color/lines.
I get where you’re coming from about human involvement in AI art. But consider this: the artist isn’t just dropping a prompt and walking away. They’re often curating the dataset, fine-tuning the model, and making tons of decisions that influence the final piece. It’s kind of like a movie director who shapes every scene even if they’re not on camera.
Also, AI art usually isn’t a one-shot deal. Artists go through multiple iterations, making tweaks and changes to get to the final result. Think of it as sculpting, chipping away until it feels right. It takes hundreds if not thousands of different tries with prompts.
And don’t underestimate the prompt. A well-crafted prompt can guide the AI in ways that make the end product unique and meaningful. So while the AI is a tool, the human is still very much the artist here.
I think about it along this analogy:
You ring up your artist friend and would really like to see this specific thing drawn. Your friend gets inspired and is happy to oblige completely for free as they make art for fun. You give them specifications, they send you progress pictures and you tell them how to tweak those WIP pictures until you get the piece you envisioned, drawn by this artist friend of yours.
Now, who owns the work? The artist, right? You don’t get to claim ownership just because your instructions got that piece done.
And yet that effort to make something from AI is trivial compared to the effort required to become a professional artist or photographer. If I commission art from a human, I’m curating and fine-tuning the output by browsing the artist’s gallery, deciding which artist to commission based on their art style, deciding on a prompt to give the artist, and revising the output by adjusting my prompt based on the artist’s preliminary sketch. Yet despite all that effort, I don’t get the copyright for the completed artwork, because I didn’t make it.
I wholeheartedly and completely reject the notion that human creativity has any more than de minimis influence on AI art. It’s no more a tool than an actual live artist is a tool.
I disagree on the notion that a person that prompted the AI didn’t „make“ the picture. This is the same argument as with digital art, you aren‘t making it, you are simply moving your pen on a screen to create lines and fillings to impress an image. (Also, when it was becoming popular a lot of artists complained that is wasn’t „real art“). To be fair, what someone thinks is art is quite subjective (many people scoff at these random blocks standing around in cities like statues) so it’ll ultimately be up to the lawmakers (that mark my word will lobby to eternity for this to exist) to decide. I respect your opinion, but don’t agree with it. It’s not like you or I can’t enjoy something just because someone else doesn’t.
I disagree on the notion that a person that prompted the AI didn’t „make“ the picture. This is the same argument as with digital art, you aren‘t making it, you are simply moving your pen on a screen to create lines and fillings to impress an image. (Also, when it was becoming popular a lot of artists complained that is wasn’t „real art“). To be fair, what someone thinks is art is quite subjective (many people scoff at these random blocks standing around in cities like statues) so it’ll ultimately be up to the lawmakers (that mark my word will lobby to eternity for this to exist) to decide. I respect your opinion, but don’t agree with it. It’s not like you or I can’t enjoy something just because someone else doesn’t.
It’s literally not the same as digital art and I find the comparison offensive. One is a human directly putting pixels on the screen, the other is output from a program that processed millions of pieces of actual artwork into the creative equivalent of pink slime.