AI Art - the art world does not uniformly despise it.

There have been allegations made recently on DU that AI Art is uniformly offensive to artists and photographers, and that it cannot be used creatively at all. The former is not true, and the latter is only arguably true when you reduce the use of AI art to its simplest form: inputting a text prompt and accepting whatever comes out. That is not the totality of AI or of how artists use AI.

Let me introduce you to Scott Eaton - an artist who is not only not offended by AI - it is an essential tool in his toolbox. Rather than painting with a paintbrush, he paints using his sketching style matched with a photographic image database he has created.

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https://thelondonmagazine.org/interview-scott-eaton-artistai/

He has been using machine language and neural networks trained on his own creative works (largely photographs and matching sketches) since 2016 to created 2D representations of sculptures. His process (roughly) includes sketching shapes which are translated via AI into a 2D rendering of the drawing. The input is his own sketching on a drawing pad, so he creates shape and essential details of the output he envisions. He processes that through one or more of the neural network datasets into a form which is human-like, and refines it until it matches his vision.

The training content he uses is not stolen - it consists solely of his own photographs. His work has been featured in Wired Magazine, Vogue, Vanity Fair, the Times, the Telegraph. He has also worked with Pixar, Industrial Light & Magic, Disney, Sony, Warner Bros, Blizzard, Electronic Arts, Ubisoft. In other words - there should be no question about his creative skills.

Here's a short video that gives you an idea of the process (no sound): https://vimeo.com/345881421

A more detailed explanation of the full process: &t=2849s

I'm not particularly drawn to his style - but it is unquestionably a creative use of AI in art. Separately - it does not use stolen artwork as the basis of its machine learning.

Much of the slop that shows up here as memes does use tools trained on stolen art. I wish people wouldn't share those - or, at a bare minimum, identify them as AI.

But as a creative, and an artist-in-training (I am roughly halfway through a BFA), I find it offensive when new technology is rejected in its entirety as offensive to all artists, a forbidden tool in creating art, and impossible to use creatively.

I have been a photographer since the 70s. Photography was initially rejected as not art - because all you do is point and click. It is still only grudgingly accepted - my program does not offer a simple art major in photography - they only offer a BFA (a much more rigorous program which requires that I take about twice as many general art classes as I take in photography). In other words - if I have to prove my non-photographic art chops in a way many other art majors do not. Digital photography was greeted with skepticism, as was the electronic darkroom (as opposed to in-camera processing). We have now moved to the point at which it is acceptable in the art world to take digital images and process them in an electronic darkroom (Photoshop)s. But for a long time, Photoshop was used as a derogatory verb.

AI is currently being treated the same way as photography was, and in the same way as the early electronic darkrooms were. Most technological tools which make art more accessible with less training are greeted with skepticism. I don't know where AI will end up - but just like the electronic darkroom it is a tool. Although it has some uniquely troubling aspects (most existing commercial versions are trained on stolen artwork), the technology itself is not inherently troubling, nor does using it inherently lack creativity.