Did AI fix art and when will we see it being used for Creation in secondlife.

[Stephanie Misfit]

Seeing a few SL users I follow on Flickr almost exclusively post this stuff now. It looks "off" somehow. I unfollow them.

[Sid Nagy]

Quote

 

noun

noun: art; plural noun: arts; plural noun: the arts

 

the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power.

 

 

... human creative skill and imagination ..

 

That is something fundamentally different than with computer algorithms produced materials IMHO.

Edited September 24, 2022 by Sid Nagy

[ValKalAstra]

3 hours ago, Lyssa Greymoon said:

Computer, make a Thomas Kinkade painting.

Beep, boop. Computer made a Thomas Kinkade painting.

Normal result:

Alternative mode:

What I find interesting is that it gets the mood right. In terms of colour or overall theme, I could easily mistake it for a Kinkade painting. Where it really falls apart is geometry and overall believability of a scene. In the first mode the houses are just a plain failure and in the second mode, the river makes no damn sense in how it skips between grass and water. Still if someone were to touch up these images in post and sell them, they could probably pass as plagiarism.

So to bring this back on the original question of what this could mean for SL. Hmm. To start with, I'm surprised that the marketplace ain't overrun by an absolute deluge of paintings slapped on a prim yet. It's quick to make, takes no effort other than to sieve through variations and coming up with a prompt, the monetary investment is manageable (for reference, I subscribed to Midjourney for one month, which cost me about 12 CHF). So, there might be a storm coming. Case in point I uploaded one AI picture to my flickr for it's curiosity and consider deleting it because AI pictures absolutely spam that platform by now. 

The other immediate use I could think off were textures. Here I gave it two different prompts to work with. The first prompt was: A seamless tiling lace clothing texture, red colour with gold inlay. This is the result. 

Lace, question mark? Other than that, it seems like it could be made into a texture with very little effort. Now for the last prompt I gave it, I told it to create "A seamless tiling parquet floor texture with wooden varnish" and this is the result of that:

So... the answer for textures is a resounding... maybe. With the "lace" example, it managed the tiling aspect rather well but the tiling fell apart in the wooden parquet example. Could someone in theory run these through a couple of iterations until they find one that fits? Yeah, quite likely. Yet at some point you invest so much time into feeding the AI machine prompt variations that doing it by yourself might just be more efficient. Still it seems like the possibility is there.

[AzureWaves]

Stores are already selling MidJourney art in Second Life - 

 

 

[StarlanderGoods]

14 hours ago, Chaser Zaks said:

Here is my take on A.I. art. In my opinion, games are a type of art, so I'll be using that for reference.

 

This is wrong, games are a medium, and it is mostly used for entretainment, overwhelmingly so.  There are instances where the medium is used to create art, so, some games are art is correct.  All games? No, some, considering how prevalent games as purely entretainment are, Id say that a very small fraction of all games made are art.

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

On 9/24/2022 at 3:08 AM, Bree Giffen said:

I just read this article and it reminded me of this thread. I looks like this is the answer to the 2nd question by  @Vanessa Amethyst on AI being used for 3D creation.

https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2022/09/23/3d-generative-ai-research-virtual-worlds/

I was reading an article about GET3D a few days ago and, while the results may seem a little crude and unoptimized at the moment, I think this could eventually be a game changer for developers of virtual worlds.

I've always said that one of the main stumbling blocks for any platform attempting to compete with SL has been the initial lack of content but if AI is capable of populating these virtual worlds with an unlimited variety of characters and objects then that hurdle will no longer exist and SLs main advantage over its competitors will disappear along with it.

[Rick Nightingale]

Whether it's art or not (it's not) AI has a long way to go before I would consider it useful. For a start, it needs to understand things like what a hand is, how it moves, how many fingers it has and where they should point. You know, basic anatomy that an artist understands instinctively (even if sometimes they need training to be better, or in the case of many DA artists I think they need to get out more and see what real people actually look like - still, they do better than AI).

How many AI pictures are there with too many, often truncated, limbs, or hands and fingers that look like they've been through a scrap metal mangler, eyes that face forward when the face is sideways, oddly shaped nostrils, etc.? No wonder so many of the pictures just look wrong at first glance. AI has no such understanding of what it is actually making, even with a database of millions of examples.

While it's perhaps harder to see in pictures which are just landscapes, or simple, head-only portraits after a dozen or so iterations, there is still the same issue that AI has no understanding of what it is producing, any more than a sheet metal stamper understands the shape it stamps out.

Edited September 26, 2022 by Rick Daylight

[Chaser Zaks]

On 9/24/2022 at 2:12 PM, StarlanderGoods said:

This is wrong, games are a medium, and it is mostly used for entretainment, overwhelmingly so.  There are instances where the medium is used to create art, so, some games are art is correct.  All games? No, some, considering how prevalent games as purely entretainment are, Id say that a very small fraction of all games made are art.

“Art is in the eye of the beholder, and everyone will have their own interpretation.” ― E.A. Bucchianeri

What one considers art, may not be considered art to others. I personally see games as a form of interactive art.

[Brightstar7777]

[Love Zhaoying]

2 minutes ago, Brightstar7777 said:

It could be just me, but the faceless, distorted, warped avatars "in space" against the moon seem like Nightmare Fuel.

[Brightstar7777]

7 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

It could be just me, but the faceless, distorted, warped avatars "in space" against the moon seem like Nightmare Fuel.

And now you know why some of us are anthro, not human! Uncanny valley?

Edited September 26, 2022 by Brightstar7777

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

13 minutes ago, Brightstar7777 said:

I'm starting to reconsider my position on AI generated images not being art, these seem like very expressive pieces that appear to be a commentary on the average non-residents perception of SLs graphical capabilities.

[Love Zhaoying]

3 minutes ago, Brightstar7777 said:

some of us are anthro, not human

Yes, I'm in that "us" category! 

I need to stop with the human face so often, otherwise I'm always ears / tail / fangs.

[Zidaya Zenovka]

Nah. There was nothing wrong with art in the first place. Plus all art is subjective. As far as people comparing AI art to blood diamonds...really? AI art isn't killing children so no. Don't be ridiculous. It may at some point make amazing art but then so did Da Vinci and nobody stopped making art just because he was one of the best at it. Just because William Shakespeare came along and changed the face of literature it didn't cause people to stop writing. Even if AI gets to the point where it can compete with humans so what? It's not like there won't be people who prefer to deal with humans-only (a bit discriminatory if you ask me) plus you'll always have people who have their own unique style. Maybe a robot can duplicate someone's style but as people change their style changes. 

There's just so many variables and not even a computer can account for all of them. I think people getting frightened of it or calling it unethical are being narrow-minded. All artists borrow from their inspirations and influences (some more so than others). I don't see how AI scanning millions of paintings and coming up with its own based on all that input is any different from an artist mimicking people they're influenced by until they develop their own style. 

AI is the future. Either we can accept it and learn to live alongside it or we can bury our heads in the sand and pretend like progress isn't something that's going to happen whether we like it or not. 

[Zidaya Zenovka]

On 9/24/2022 at 1:12 PM, StarlanderGoods said:

This is wrong, games are a medium, and it is mostly used for entretainment, overwhelmingly so.  There are instances where the medium is used to create art, so, some games are art is correct.  All games? No, some, considering how prevalent games as purely entretainment are, Id say that a very small fraction of all games made are art.

Games are a type of art. Period. They are comprised of many different kinds of creative works. Programming, illustration, music, writing, etc. All require a degree of artistic ability or require one be creative in one way or another. Saying they're not 'art' is like someone saying heavy metal music isn't art because it's loud and distorted. Just because you can't appreciate something as being artistic doesn't mean it isn't. 

[StarlanderGoods]

8 hours ago, Zidaya Zenovka said:

Games are a type of art. Period. They are comprised of many different kinds of creative works. Programming, illustration, music, writing, etc. All require a degree of artistic ability or require one be creative in one way or another. Saying they're not 'art' is like someone saying heavy metal music isn't art because it's loud and distorted. Just because you can't appreciate something as being artistic doesn't mean it isn't. 

You are confusing art with craft, wich is a common mistake for people who have never studied art.   Heavy metal can be art, and Heavy metal can be not art.

[Brightstar7777]

23 hours ago, Zidaya Zenovka said:

Games are a type of art. Period. They are comprised of many different kinds of creative works. Programming, illustration, music, writing, etc...

 

14 hours ago, StarlanderGoods said:

You are confusing art with craft...

 

 

It might be interesting to try asking Dall-E to assist while holding a clear idea of your artistic intent just before writing the prompt and during the image generation process. See if the results reflect what you communicate and whether or not your hidden input changes the outcome.

Edited September 28, 2022 by Brightstar7777

[Persephone Emerald]

16 hours ago, Brightstar7777 said:

 

 

 

It might be interesting to try asking Dall-E to assist while holding a clear idea of your artistic intent just before writing the prompt and during the image generation process. See if the results reflect what you communicate and whether or not your hidden input changes the outcome.

To me this picture looks like Picasso painted a scene from My Little Pony.

Edited September 28, 2022 by Persephone Emerald

[Evangeline Arcadia]

From what little I know about all of this I do think it's worrying for artists, the copyright issues is a big concern and hasn't been addressed. I think it's fine to have an app where you could upload your own images and make a new composition, but allowing it to just take other's work on the web without regard for copyright isn't right, and IMO I think it's pretty unethical for companies like this to be doing that. But...as with any tech that disrupts, it usually takes a long time for the legal side of things to catch up. So it'll take a while. Individual artists can't fight back about this right now, it would need a collective or larger insitutions to be involved.

As for the original poster question - no it didn't 'fix' art. I'd agree with other posters have already said about he subjectivity of art etc. Some of what I've seen of Midjouney looks great, other stuff not so much.

On their About page they say:

Midjourney is an independent research lab exploring new mediums of thought and expanding the imaginative powers of the human species.

I can't deny the AI is pretty awesome in what it can do. But I''m not sure I understand how it expands the imaginative powers of the human species - it doesn't - it copies and reassembles the imaginative power of the human species...

 

 

[Brightstar7777]

6 hours ago, Evangeline Arcadia said:

I can't deny the AI is pretty awesome in what it can do. But I''m not sure I understand how it expands the imaginative powers of the human species - it doesn't - it copies and reassembles the imaginative power of the human species...

And from where do you believe the human species gets its imaginative power? For that matter, where do they store memories? Are they billed monthly, charged based on usage, or it is pro bono? I suppose the plants could ask the same question of the sunlight.

Culture is a collaborative shared thing. Artists serve a purpose; they guide culture according to the inspiration that they follow, and culture informs our shared collective connection to higher things. You can't own culture any more than you can own society or civilization, and yet in order for art to be relevant to culture it must be a part of it or it's simply lost. I think people get a little lost in their desire to protect culture, art, and artists from the things that actually imperil them. Copyright extensions don't seem to protect culture; they undermine, limit, capture, and extract the value from living culture, often burying it alive in pursuit of the bottom line. Copyrights from 1927 are still being enforced in the US, apparently. Who does this benefit?

Edited September 28, 2022 by Brightstar7777

[CaithLynnSayes]

On 9/14/2022 at 10:54 PM, Vanessa Amethyst said:

it shows more understanding of Beauty

No it doesn't, not even slightly. This is machine learning at work. It is simply repeating what it was told art is. No computer in the world as of today has an "understanding". It only has a set of rules it has to follow and based upon that it does something random within said rules.

There are a couple of interesting articles floating around on how Google's DeepDream works and it boils down to the same thing: It has been given a set of rules to play within and it is "free" to generate things within it.

https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/ is also a good one. Click that link and refresh the page over and over again. You will see a very realistic picture of a human being that in fact doesn't exist.

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

54 minutes ago, CaithLynnSayes said:

No it doesn't, not even slightly. This is machine learning at work. It is simply repeating what it was told art is. No computer in the world as of today has an "understanding". It only has a set of rules it has to follow and based upon that it does something random within said rules.

There are a couple of interesting articles floating around on how Google's DeepDream works and it boils down to the same thing: It has been given a set of rules to play within and it is "free" to generate things within it.

https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/ is also a good one. Click that link and refresh the page over and over again. You will see a very realistic picture of a human being that in fact doesn't exist.

AI is essentially the first steps into A Brave New World (as in the novel by Aldous Huxley).

They're currently testing out their conditioning on impressionable artificial infant minds and then once they've worked out the formula for the ideal prototype citizens of each class they'll start trying it out on the rest of us!  

[SueWorthly]

I'm not sure if there is art to be fixed. Some item isn't just an item. And with a photo you can just plainly shows something, or it can be art. A SL "photo", too, and your profile picture can be a form of art, if they have a meaning, communicate something or an emotion. Else they simply are just screenshots. My own profile picture isn't a photo-ID or a look at me, for example, but it's the humble attempt to share an emotion and joy that I feel, that probably my fellow aviators and blue skies lovers understands better, immersed inside this amazing virtual world and its freedom, under a serene blue sky.

Some computer game can be a form of art, too, and be quite emotionally involving, because of the story (those that have one) or the scenes. Some are also artistic in their own style and gameplay.

So art doesn't depends on the medium or the tools. Nor the style from others: after Caravaggio, there have been several caravaggisti, producing art in the style of Caravaggio, and they were absolutely stunning, amazing artists.

AI is just another tool, for now. You can quickly produce a not so meaningful pretty postcard, or you can spend hours fine-tuning the prompt until it produces something close to the evocative, artistic idea that you, the artist, have in mind. They are still primitive and messy and they can't even draw hands properly, but you get the idea. Here is something I tried to do:

Edited September 30, 2022 by SueWorthly