> You're projecting,
No, I'm actually not. I'm an active creative portrait photographer and I take part in photographic communities with people much, much better than me, I am surrounded by dozens of gigging and working musicians, songwriters and composers in my friend group (and play a couple of instruments myself); I know painters and illustrators of great ability (though I am not that kind of artist).
I listen to what people say and I talk with them about how they feel about it.
> AI images make amazing collages/photobash inputs,
I fully, fully disagree. I think using AI images in this way — for collage or moodboard — is ruining the point. It dilutes the value. I do know some photographers who haven't yet figured this out, unfortunately, but they will. Letting an AI image into your collage or inspiration for another piece of work is just opting out of a creative choice; you might as well place a grey rectangle, because that is what it is.
> and AI music is useful to sample or use as inspiration for parts you're stuck on
AI music is not and cannot be inspirational. It's the absolute opposite of it. And serious musicians know it.
AI content might have some value as placeholder but even then you have to be careful that the prototype does not go into production.
I'm also aware of someone who used AI images to generate a series of test prints for her new alternative process printing practice, precisely to make sure that her test prints never had any accidental value — it makes it essentially compulsory for her to destroy them when they have served their purpose.
I have no particular problem with them being used as a more varied alternative to a step wedge like that, but the point is this:
AI generated creative works have zero value. Anyone who is seriously involved in creativity knows that even replacing something that is working against you with something that has no value either way is probably a bad idea. And putting out work that has this absolute zero value does you more harm than bad work.
It's way better to try and fail than not to try. Think for example of all the ambitious, earnest failures of movies you've seen; would any of them have been materially improved by AI?
> AI use in creative fields is similar now to PEDs use in sports, except more ubiquitous.
You were saying that you thought it was an "amazing" tool, and now you are saying it's like drug-assisted cheating? I think you still have some of the internal work to do.
> photographer
"Photography couldn’t qualify as an art in its own right, the explanation went, because it lacked “something beyond mere mechanism at the bottom of it." -- The Crayon, one of the oldest art magazines.
It turns out humans have been devaluing the newer ways to create art since forever.
> you might as well place a grey rectangle
There are so many literally {color} rectangles hanging in contemporary art museums. Here is a grey one: https://zandergalerie.com/exhibitions/la-couleur-du-renoncem...
This line comparing to photography is a trope, and IMO a category error.
> There are so many literally {color} rectangles hanging in contemporary art museums.
Yes but you understand I wasn’t talking about the colour, right, but the absence of value.
All generative output is grey.
> AI generated creative works have zero value.
Then how have I gotten value from some of them?
You're creating illusory boundaries to protect your ego. AI is not a supernatural category. It's just another thing. It can serve as inspiration the way anything else can.
You are not the arbiter of value in art, as much as you try to claim authority. You're just rationalizing your arbitrary beliefs.
I didn’t claim any authority. I just argued that I am informed and not projecting; I talk to actual working artists.
(My own work is amateur and probably shit; this is not about my creative ego)
You guys do like to read things that are not there so you can argue against them.
I don’t know any artist who has done any self-reflection about their work who thinks generative AI can do much for them at all.
At best it is tools like deep learning in upscaling and noise reduction, selection masking, separations etc. (I don’t mind AI selection tools; quite liked old style AI upscaling but I have moved away from it; I now think work should be produced with its reproduction limits in mind)
Nobody who has put in the creative ideation and self-reflection work and still wants to improve is going to tell you great things about generative AI. Because they know it is empty calories.
> AI music is not and cannot be inspirational. It's the absolute opposite of it. And serious musicians know it.
So, your answer to "people are doing a thing" is to just say "no they're not! NANANANA can't hear you!"
Musicians have claimed to take inspiration from things like water dripping from a leaky faucet and machine sounds, so your claim that AI outputs can't inspire artists is farcical.
You're obviously biased beyond the point of being able to share in a nuanced discourse, the next few years are gonna be SO rough for you, sorry to say. Buckle up.
> Musicians have claimed to take inspiration from things like water dripping from a leaky faucet and machine sounds
I don't think you really understand how this very concept undermines your argument.
If I saw an artist making creative non-AI work critiquing AI, or even using AI to pointedly critique AI, I would feel differently about that.
But I don't think you understand the core concepts here at all.
> You're obviously biased beyond the point of being able to share in a nuanced discourse, the next few years are gonna be SO rough for you, sorry to say. Buckle up.
This AI industry wizard-of-nihilism tosh gets so old. I am sure you think you're wise and informed and on some kind of nihilist high ground for saying it, though.
No wizardry involved friend, it's pretty clear to see from the way things are playing out now and the history of technological innovation/automation. You are 100% an old man waiving his fist at clouds/time, you will go down just like the scribes and the luddites and the buggy drivers and the portrait painters and the elevator operators. You can make arguments for preferring life before the change, but the change is happening and not accepting it is only self destructive.
And you thought you could criticise me on bias? :-) This is little more than tropes fresh from the blender.
(If you read many of my other posts, you will perhaps see that I am a bit more pragmatically engaged with AI than you suggest.)