Art was never separate from the person and the culture that created it. It was its soul. Now our lives are flooded with soulless creations night and day--the product of lazy minds and an amalgamation of stolen already-bland cultural works.
I discuss it a lot with my wife who happens to be a painter.
For years we have perceived my work (swe) as a safe harbor. With AI boom, tides have changed and now I perceive her work as a much, much more future-proof activity
I must admit the prevalence of AI generated images has challenged me to be more attentive to detail, I even started looking for small artists I can commission for stuff on my walls, been going to expos a little more... I'm happy if this gives artists a small lifeline away from the more mercantile aspects that AI is conquering.
A lot of us saw this one coming a while ago. Many, many artists of all kinds have already put up "AI-free" (or similar) badges on their work. I think it will be more significant in the fine arts world, however local art fairs could be affected as well.
I say the more the merrier, but artists who use AI in their workflows are going to be pressed about it - with negative connotations - for a while. Transparency is the best solution in my opinion.
I’ve started to see (and react negatively) to a kind of “Claude design”. Apps, slides, images share the same aesthetic, and even after aggressive prompting it reverts to a the mean.
I even create these things. But that aesthetic has started to imply a kind of throwaway, low value thing
What will be interesting is if models can create more diverse styles than the neutral Claude default we see everywhere
As a human artist/film director/animator/musician etc I view "AI" as just another tool in my toolbox and what a tool it is!
In animation/film production- studios would have a "TD" on hand- a technical director- a programmer on staff to tweak workflows for artists, build new tools etc-
Now my TD chills in VsCode waiting and working for me 24/7 in the form of Claude Code, Kimi Code etc
I can also have my TD embed another TD(Deepseek flash 4.1) into the new tools(making them smarter and more useful) my TD builds for me while I am in active production on the same PC
All of this allows savvy creatives to dream bigger as a single person is capable of anything a "big studio" can do-
So artists need to leverage these new tools and be more ambitious.
There's one thing worse than "designed by AI" and it's "designed by committee".
I wish more buildings were designed by AI. There's so much depressing architecture.
Similar trajectory to "human premium" for human-authored text (when we started using synthetic AI-generated text in pre-training, around 2023 for maybe llama-3?). AI text is OK (kind of like a low nutrient content food) but labs still pay a premium for high quality domain-specific data silos. As far as the consumer, pattern-breaking media will always have a place, slop videos follow a similar distribution and so there's naturally pushback against seeing the same thing, over and over even if it's not inherently crap (just as in AI-authored text).
While there is a lot of slop, it is possible to create art with AI that does not look like slop and is as creative as a human creation. That's really the main cool thing about AI is you can create things you otherwise couldn't, and the better you are the higher the ceiling for the ai art is. It is a bit of a struggle though, as in prompting and finding the right references is difficult to get good results
Another area where prices have increased due to AI because a bunch of soulless chronically online people can feel better about themselves.
Mind you, human-painted artwork is a niche beyond expensive art. Not everyone buys the equivalent of Monet paintings. I've been eyeing a painting by a local painter just to realize the prices jumped from $500 to something like $3000 on average. Sucks.
After reading multuple discussions in this thread and a bunch of others, I feel like people on HN think about art skills in the same way as they think of their software skills.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but skills that allowed one to make software largely made one pretty employable in the last few decades.
Now, art skills do not make you employable. There are narrow industries where you can make money but throughout the entirety of human history, being an artist rarely provided any sort of economic security. Some artists did and do make money. Sometimes it was prestigious but the barrier of entry was insanely high. And yes, getting to their level of skill and sometimes even getting access to the tools (look up how much a decent harp costs) was yet another enormous obstacle. Out of the entire pool of people who had artistic abilities, very few got access to tools and resources to be able to express their abilities. Out of those, even fewer could make money off of it while also doing artistic work that was deeply fulfilling and aligned with their talent. Occasionally, the stars would align and you would be lucky to be born in a time and place where you could get the schooling, the tools, the job that paid well enough and that didn't makwe your soul die because it alined with your natural creativity.
There are a lot of people who (I think) speak of AI as if democratizes access to the tools and therefore in their mind it should follow that there must be some market for their newlyfound creative expression. But if you ever seriously considered art as a career, you know that you will likely not have a market for your skills. It is difficult to make money even as a traditonal artist (as in a painter) or, say, a musician, god help you if you want to do mixed media, if you want to play avant garde jazz, prog rock, or Barocco music, if you want to be an actor, a playwright or a ballet dancer.
Some people (I assume those who are excited about the idea of being able to express themselves) seem to be bummed that the world rejects AI art as 'slop'. I am not going to say anything about effort, laziness, etc, I believe anything can be used to make art, even a toilet put in an exhibition hall (I like Duchamp, I like modern art, I like post-modern art, I like whatever-the-paradigm-we're-in-now-art -- metamodernism? I love art, I did see early pre-ChatGPT experiments with neural networks that moved me), but I have to say something that any aspiring artist must know -- you will not make money off your art. The people who will be making the 'human premium' that the article talks about, will be few, just like there are few of them now. AI artists will not make money of their art. Art is a terrible career choice, now and tomorrow.
It's still worth pursuing, in my opinion (as I said -- I love art), but there is little point of talking about its commercial viability. It will always be shit.
I disagree. I think the result, the quality, is what matters, not how it was made.
Around 2010 I made music videos for a Vocaloid producer. Back then, people sometimes said Hatsune Miku songs were worth less because a machine was singing. I didn't think so, and in the end the songs were accepted because they were good.
Of course, Vocaloid songs were still written by people, which is different from AI making the whole song. Even so, I think what matters to listeners is the quality.
(I wrote this in Japanese and used AI to translate it.)
We should just admit that human created art is dead. Just like hand coded code. Same thing. AI will soon beat any human in quantity and quality. Just accept it. It is over for humans.
Art was never separate from the person and the culture that created it. It was its soul. Now our lives are flooded with soulless creations night and day--the product of lazy minds and an amalgamation of stolen already-bland cultural works.
I discuss it a lot with my wife who happens to be a painter.
For years we have perceived my work (swe) as a safe harbor. With AI boom, tides have changed and now I perceive her work as a much, much more future-proof activity
I must admit the prevalence of AI generated images has challenged me to be more attentive to detail, I even started looking for small artists I can commission for stuff on my walls, been going to expos a little more... I'm happy if this gives artists a small lifeline away from the more mercantile aspects that AI is conquering.
That's been the case for over a century. People pay a large premium for the original even when identical copies are available.
A lot of us saw this one coming a while ago. Many, many artists of all kinds have already put up "AI-free" (or similar) badges on their work. I think it will be more significant in the fine arts world, however local art fairs could be affected as well.
I say the more the merrier, but artists who use AI in their workflows are going to be pressed about it - with negative connotations - for a while. Transparency is the best solution in my opinion.
Why aren't we seeing a premium soft "Software made by Humans"?
I’ve started to see (and react negatively) to a kind of “Claude design”. Apps, slides, images share the same aesthetic, and even after aggressive prompting it reverts to a the mean.
I even create these things. But that aesthetic has started to imply a kind of throwaway, low value thing
What will be interesting is if models can create more diverse styles than the neutral Claude default we see everywhere
As a human artist/film director/animator/musician etc I view "AI" as just another tool in my toolbox and what a tool it is!
In animation/film production- studios would have a "TD" on hand- a technical director- a programmer on staff to tweak workflows for artists, build new tools etc-
Now my TD chills in VsCode waiting and working for me 24/7 in the form of Claude Code, Kimi Code etc
I can also have my TD embed another TD(Deepseek flash 4.1) into the new tools(making them smarter and more useful) my TD builds for me while I am in active production on the same PC
All of this allows savvy creatives to dream bigger as a single person is capable of anything a "big studio" can do-
So artists need to leverage these new tools and be more ambitious.
Aesthetics are dead- original ideas are it.
There's one thing worse than "designed by AI" and it's "designed by committee". I wish more buildings were designed by AI. There's so much depressing architecture.
And consequently a gray area of generated slop trying to pass off as created by people.
Similar trajectory to "human premium" for human-authored text (when we started using synthetic AI-generated text in pre-training, around 2023 for maybe llama-3?). AI text is OK (kind of like a low nutrient content food) but labs still pay a premium for high quality domain-specific data silos. As far as the consumer, pattern-breaking media will always have a place, slop videos follow a similar distribution and so there's naturally pushback against seeing the same thing, over and over even if it's not inherently crap (just as in AI-authored text).
While there is a lot of slop, it is possible to create art with AI that does not look like slop and is as creative as a human creation. That's really the main cool thing about AI is you can create things you otherwise couldn't, and the better you are the higher the ceiling for the ai art is. It is a bit of a struggle though, as in prompting and finding the right references is difficult to get good results
Edit: here are some examples for those wondering what I mean: https://imgur.com/a/mK3Iuzq
You can sort of tell they are AI because of the composition stuff but I think they are aight.
Another area where prices have increased due to AI because a bunch of soulless chronically online people can feel better about themselves.
Mind you, human-painted artwork is a niche beyond expensive art. Not everyone buys the equivalent of Monet paintings. I've been eyeing a painting by a local painter just to realize the prices jumped from $500 to something like $3000 on average. Sucks.
After reading multuple discussions in this thread and a bunch of others, I feel like people on HN think about art skills in the same way as they think of their software skills.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but skills that allowed one to make software largely made one pretty employable in the last few decades.
Now, art skills do not make you employable. There are narrow industries where you can make money but throughout the entirety of human history, being an artist rarely provided any sort of economic security. Some artists did and do make money. Sometimes it was prestigious but the barrier of entry was insanely high. And yes, getting to their level of skill and sometimes even getting access to the tools (look up how much a decent harp costs) was yet another enormous obstacle. Out of the entire pool of people who had artistic abilities, very few got access to tools and resources to be able to express their abilities. Out of those, even fewer could make money off of it while also doing artistic work that was deeply fulfilling and aligned with their talent. Occasionally, the stars would align and you would be lucky to be born in a time and place where you could get the schooling, the tools, the job that paid well enough and that didn't makwe your soul die because it alined with your natural creativity.
There are a lot of people who (I think) speak of AI as if democratizes access to the tools and therefore in their mind it should follow that there must be some market for their newlyfound creative expression. But if you ever seriously considered art as a career, you know that you will likely not have a market for your skills. It is difficult to make money even as a traditonal artist (as in a painter) or, say, a musician, god help you if you want to do mixed media, if you want to play avant garde jazz, prog rock, or Barocco music, if you want to be an actor, a playwright or a ballet dancer.
Some people (I assume those who are excited about the idea of being able to express themselves) seem to be bummed that the world rejects AI art as 'slop'. I am not going to say anything about effort, laziness, etc, I believe anything can be used to make art, even a toilet put in an exhibition hall (I like Duchamp, I like modern art, I like post-modern art, I like whatever-the-paradigm-we're-in-now-art -- metamodernism? I love art, I did see early pre-ChatGPT experiments with neural networks that moved me), but I have to say something that any aspiring artist must know -- you will not make money off your art. The people who will be making the 'human premium' that the article talks about, will be few, just like there are few of them now. AI artists will not make money of their art. Art is a terrible career choice, now and tomorrow.
It's still worth pursuing, in my opinion (as I said -- I love art), but there is little point of talking about its commercial viability. It will always be shit.
I disagree. I think the result, the quality, is what matters, not how it was made.
Around 2010 I made music videos for a Vocaloid producer. Back then, people sometimes said Hatsune Miku songs were worth less because a machine was singing. I didn't think so, and in the end the songs were accepted because they were good.
Of course, Vocaloid songs were still written by people, which is different from AI making the whole song. Even so, I think what matters to listeners is the quality.
(I wrote this in Japanese and used AI to translate it.)
We should just admit that human created art is dead. Just like hand coded code. Same thing. AI will soon beat any human in quantity and quality. Just accept it. It is over for humans.