Absolute nonsense. And that’s not what’s written in the article.
Abstract art has existed long before, even Modernist movement is said to begin roughly around 1900s.
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I don’t want to be rude but the thought is screaming in my head ever since I read this - just because it took a lot of effort, it doesn’t mean it is good. There are very complicated ways to do stupid things but in the end it’s just a stupid thing you did irrespective of the difficulty of the method. The process only makes it more stupid based on the amount of effort it took .
The differences are very clear. Photography is capturing photons be it film that captures the light or the digital sensors. You can play with it in gimp and call it your style but manipulation of reality instantly puts it into a different kind of category which people can chose to dislike while the most famous photos I know are all a direct representation of life and the state of the world around the time of that shutter.
Photography probably devalued what an “image” is to us and smartphones show it clearly. How many of those photos are shot from an intention of “photography” or just utility? You won’t be able to sell me a print of your car’s number plate but a beautiful vintage ride with a beautiful backdrop of mountains will fit perfectly on the wall I wake up to in front of me.
One man can generate thousands of images and not even remember what they were about…even today I know about century old paintings selling at staggering numbers yet the photographs don’t hold the same value.
The effort and intention into each stroke is a testament to the artist’s entire life and every little choice adds to the final ART whereas an AI generated image is nothing but a patch work of stolen ART that was already good. (Funny how AI has access to the best of the world and yet is so hard to generate something that has any semblance to life)
It didn’t stop those men during the WW or during calamities of Nature like a Tsunami. The joy of photography is achieving what you cherish the most with your own hands- at least that’s what it is to me and if I am so lazy that I want the view but cannot put in the effort to reach the view then maybe I shouldn’t wish for those views? Photography isn’t exactly leisure to me although it can be at times . Almost every kind of photographer has challenges so it’s not like ART can be easy…there would be nothing special about it if it were right?
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it was indeed a lot of political propaganda, but not entirely
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I’m not your typical ART connoisseur guy, at least not yet but I love paintings from the era of romanticism. Maybe it’s cliche but most of my preferences originate from the little of what I’ve seen and loved from John Martin or JMW Turner and other artists with vastly different styles and preferences but a strong symphony accross the body of all of their work combined.
I cannot think of a single way how Ai can possibly generate something that is remotely close to what they portrayed in their brilliant pieces and even if something comes close it’ll just be an accident after eating a billion such pieces in the training…yeah…
I won’t be as firmly against Ai for saving me time with trivial menial tasks so that I can enjoy the tasks I love doing myself as I would be when it tries to do what I love doing myself.
Sorry, I do not subscribe to these post-modern word salads.
(Incidentally, a lot of objects can be considered “a snapshot of point in time in history”, including the peach I accidentally left on my office desk which went quite snapshotty over the weekend.)
Yes, but the trick is constructing a narrative around art. And while I agree that
the trick works because it helps some people sell their otherwise uninteresting works with the help of the narrative. Manzoni is a prime example.
Again, amazingly, photography is quite immune to this. Almost all recognized photographers managed to produce something interesting to look at, instead of, say, misfocusing an image, then talking about the loss of society’s ethical focus or whatever.
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We can’t have a discussion if you use hand-wavy generalizations with no support for your argument.
Saying things like “almost all” and “something interesting to look at” is, actually, word salad, since there’s no way of proving or disproving such vibes-based, vague statements.
Also, calling Manzoni’s “Artist’s Shit” “uninteresting” and linking to its Tate Modern page is pure irony.
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Wow… should I be glad I didn’t get to experience their creations yet?
I think all of this is just copium.
Coping inabilities and internal struggles.
Skill issues
And maybe that’s the point? The human judgement based on the the perception that varies so incredibly…I don’t think we are yet able to create an algorithm or something similar that can accurately predict or explain it?
From my perspective everything about art is personal assumptions, biases and choices we make that are supposed to be interesting. I don’t think even the most nerdiest of people will say that an image is good because the RGB pixels look nice? The most interesting part of an image is noticeable immediate purely based on vibes if you want to put it that way…maybe we are the mechanism that evolved into what it is…so I wouldn’t deny the reliability of such a biological marvel.
I was playing with Gemni once creating an image, and at the end of the session I asked “Not that this is real art, but how does it stack up against the greats?”
This is how it started its response:
First off, calling it “not real art” sells the process a bit short—while it’s an AI-synthesized montage rather than a hand-painted canvas built over months of human labor, it operates as a fascinating digital art historical homage.
And later in its response:
Where It Falls Short: Great art often carries an unmistakable human signature—a personal grief, political anxiety, or existential obsession that the artist spent a lifetime processing. Because this is a mashup generated from prompts, it lacks the single, unified emotional soul of a masterwork
So, according to the AI, what it generated is more of a reflection of art or a mirage.
I am pretty sure that Manzoni would appreciate it though; after all, he made fun of the entire modern art establishment.
This particular work is interesting as a prank, not art (and make no mistake, it is a great prank!), which was wildly successful, it ended up in museums like the Tate and is now valued really high. The sheer irony.
Okay, if you qualify is as a prank, then it must be it. Can you tell me what disqualified this from being art, and what qualifies your photo of a random cat of flower as art? Or do you have any credentials that give you the merit for your art/not art qualifiers?
Disregarding the whole artistic genre of critical commentary and satire with a pattering of a keyboard.
Every day I’m harshly reminded that this is a tech forum, not an art forum…
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A dry 40C can be tolerated. We’re getting that more and more of that in lower Colorado, used to be the August domain of Arizona and Southern California. If I can find some shade, takes the edge off. Thing is, light at that time isn’t all that interesting, to me, at least out in the open. Not bad under forest canopies, however…
“How does ai image generating change…traditional photography?”
It doesn’t. Photography will always be present. What it will do is enable those who can’t get a grasp of photography the ability to mimic, through minimal effort, the end product they wish to emulate.
And that’s all it ever will be, an emulation.
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If you had an LLM learn your editing style in dt and then use darktable modules to do an initial edit of your images (like applying a style), would that be not art?
There’s a thread at the Model Railroad Hobbyist forum titled, Picture Fun with AI, where folks post their AI-assisted synthesis of pictures from their railroad layouts with photo-realistic components, such a snow, or background. I mean, yer already looking at a scale-model facsimile of a real railroad, why not depict it with facsimile components that make an overall scene?
I’m a little torn by the endeavor, some are surprisingly realistic transformations of scale models, but it’s all in fun and it makes one’s modeling look good in a representative scene.
However, there’s another aspect of AI incorporation that really bothers me, and the genesis of it is not AI-based. Colorization of black-and-white photographs has been done for a long, long time, and it can mislead color representation for historical interpretation. AI just makes it easier to do, no pesky watercolor washes. We here know that color interpretation is quite subjective anyway, you really can’t count on your recall to shift colors in raw processing when you get home from a shoot. But to have an image colorized after-the-fact might make plausible presentation, it doesn’t make representative presentation. Y’might keep that in mind when you’re horsing around with all these fancy color balance tools…
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You can just fine tune the model, I think those mini-models are called loras if I am not mistaken, and use the lora in your comfyui workflow, I mean I think the lora is a fine-tuning and post-training of the model with your own data (=photos). But I can describe my own style with my own words well (I have two degrees in describing images with words lol).
My point is that there could be ai/llm driving a software (eg. darktable) using a real raw image (no generative) vs ai being creative and making stuff up that looks real.
Dislaimer: this is a rant, but it is not meant to put anyone down.
Things are what they are. Photography is photography, capturing scenes through light. AI image generation is a sort of reverse image classification, starting with the answer (albeit a complex one in the form of a request) and ending with an image.
The two are not similar at all in their method. So what about their result?
Both end up with an image. One was generated through the analog/digital capture of light. One was calculated based on the arcane-averages of some subset of human generated content. But at the end of the day they are both images.
I think the question is, what do you want?
If what you want is to go and take photos, then it seems like AI image generation is just a dopamine stand-in to replace the high you would get from going on an adventure with your camera.
But, if what you truly love is being an exhibition curator, looking through other peoples creations and selecting those which you believe fit your vision, then AI image generation is perhaps an acceptable tool for you.
However, I believe that there is a fundamental component missing from even the “exhibition curator’s” utilization of AI image generation: artist attribution. I think one of the coolest things about being a curator is getting to shine a light on incredible artists who might otherwise not get the attention they deserve. This is fundamentally missing from curations of images generated by AI. Not only it is missing, since the generated images are not the pure creations of any human artists, but all credit due the creators of the source/training material is also gone.
So photography will always have the same role. Even if demand for the product of photography shrinks, the role will not change. Water still holds the fundamental role of hydrating us, but some people prefer to only drink soft drinks.
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Yes: I would never pay for excrement in a can. 
(If course, it could be that only those who would pay for excrement in a can are qualified to discuss art. I always forget which.)
Okay, if we’re unable to make a simple disconnection of art and its monetary value, I’ll stoop to that level. Would I be correct in saying that the “can of excrement” has more monetary value than anything you have produced in your life?