Warning: The following story you are about to read is currently unedited.
In 835, Princess Celestia made history by having her picture be taken by the newly made invention called the daguerreotype camera. However, a week before, she found herself engaged in a conversation with three art critics who worried that this invention might summon the death of painting as they knew it.
Viewers would like to know that all the following criticism in this story is based on actual historical beliefs of how photography was seen in the 19th century. Any similarities to the new genre of AI art is purely coincidental.
Chapters (1)
I admire the Bo Burnham reference.
If you think about it, this story could also reflect how AI is being used as a means to "Create" art pieces. Photography was considered controversial since is was depicting real events. Now, it is used as an art medium.
Fitting.
And true.
We are witnessing a new step in society folks.
The story itself is nice enough, but trying to draw a parallel between AI and conventional forms of art hardly feels like a good-faith argument. What people have an issue with isn't that it's a new tool, i reckon nowadays most people take an unprecedentedly inclusive approach when it comes to art (classical music can coexist with trackers, pen and pencil can coexist with wholly digital art, fanfiction can coexist with original fiction, etc.), rather that it is fundamentally built on taking others' stuff, waving a magic stick over it, and claiming that the resulting samey but still strictly speaking different end product was somehow "created" by the user of the AI, when at most all they did was spend five minutes thinking up a prompt.
A professional photographer must learn compositions, the ins and outs of lenses and apertures, what device is best for what situation, etc. A professional painter must learn a ton of theory, have superb dexterity, creativity, a deep understanding of colour theory, etc. A professional writer must understand literary devices as second nature, must be able and willing to juggle several plot threads at once, write compelling and realistic characters, etc. Meanwhile, all an AI user needs is to spend five minutes thinking up a prompt and then maybe fiddle a little with the weights and knobs, until the machine glues together something resembling their wishes.
Both gaming and movie companies are already looking into trying to replace proper artists with "prompt engineers" and unless there is a notable pushback, they will push it as far as they can, because it is so-so much cheaper to have some poor bloke type in a few prompts and then have the machine crunch the numbers than to pay an artist to create something original.
I agree with the overall message that this won't "kill" art as a whole, but that's not because AI provides an extra tool (like it was with photography), rather because people recognise the inherent worth of effort and personal experiences of a human being over something dreamt up by a GPT algorithm.
I'm going to be blunt -- I feel you have shot yourself in the foot by straight up drawing the paralels with AI art in the story itself, because now I'll be surprised if anyone actually talks about the story. I hope I'm wrong, it'll be genuinely super cool if I'm completely wrong, but I assume the vast majority of comments will solely be about AI art now, right? Barely any reviews or commentary on the story, just opinions on the morals of stable diffussion or whatever that shit is called.
And to be entirely honest, the story doesn't really make a point for AI in the slightest anyway. After reading it, I find myself having the exact same opinion I had beforehand -- against it, one hundred percent; I consider it stupid and dangerous and a way to steal artists' jobs and efforts at the same time -- only now I'm tempted to come out and just talk about it. Get enough people with opinions strong enough to do that, and you've got yourself a massive flame war with basically zero comments about the story.
So I'm going to try to at least comment on it? And I'll be honest, Celestia doesn't really debate anything. Like, yeah, obviously, we live in a world where photography exists and we understand it didn't kill art, so it's easy to look at the characters saying photography is a sin against artistry and laugh? But if we get in the position of the characters themselves, then, like. They're making arguments. With the benefit of hindsight we might think they're wrong or silly, but at least they're reasoning their position.
Celestia doesn't do that? She just goes "ah but WHAT IF..." and conjures a hypothetical scenario where now PHOTOGRAPHY is the orthodox way to portray scenes and PAINTING is the unorthodox one. And like. That's it. She doesn't even say anything else, she just says "what if this happened instead" and I guess we're supposed to understand that somehow that dismisses the arguments we heard against photography?
Which is like, especially annoying when you consider that, again, you're drawing explicit paralels to AI art in the description of the story. Sticking to the story itself, Celestia does not debate or say anything intelligent whatsoever, she does the kind of counterargument that would make anyone opinionated go 'okay, do you even understand what we're talking about or-', and arguably patronizes the hell out of the other ponies, going on about how she was alive when the novel was novel. Which, like, call me crazy, but not every innovation is a revolution in artistry and culture actually. Most of them tend to suck?
And then at the end she smugly says "art is dead" without having made any case whatsoever, so quite frankly, without the context that "in reality yes photography exists and it's fine it didn't kill art etc etc" she comes off as either not understanding the debate or actively wanting painters to go fuck themselves. If you posit the debate as one side winning from the get-go, because historically they did, and then don't give that side any weight or arguments because you already know they won, you're, uh, not exactly making a great point in Celestia's favor here.
You may need a proofreader, there are several spelling and some grammatical errors in this.
But otherwise this is not bad.
All I’ll say is a Stephen King quote comes to mind:
“If you want to write, write. If you want to send a message, use Western Union.”
Tying this to AI art really did this story a disservice, comparing photography with ai generation, which is almost entirely built on theft and lack of respect only makes it even worse.
Maybe reconsider your sources when it comes to your understanding of ai """art""", your understanding of the issue seems a little shallow.
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Since I woke up this morning, I figured that I should address this, especially why exactly I wrote this story to begin with.
Ever since I wrote this, I had a feeling that someone, somewhere is going to look at this story and conclude that it's about AI art. Because the criticism I looked into regarding photography in the 19th century sounded similar I knew that someone, somewhere would make that comparison. That is why I put in from the very beginning: "Any similarities to the new genre of AI art is purely coincidental."
Yet, to me, it's a little more broad than that. This is about how anything new is often looked down upon, even demonized because it is new. Where the possibilities of what a certain medium could do have the power to create as well as destroy. If it seems rather rushed, that's because it wasn't meant to be some big, loud debate, but more of a conversation using history as a starting point. To me, the discussion is more about change and the worry about whether one existing medium would be relevant since this new thing has popped up. The photography discussion wasn't meant to be about AI, but a snapshot of fears and concerns that often echo before and after the practice became normal.
Even Celestia pointed out that maybe it won't last, but she gives it a chance if it ever does. That's why at the end she has engraved in the photograph the ironic motto: "Art is dead - long live art." Because to her, art isn't some static thing that lives and dies, it simply changes. Could this story be handled differently? Very likely. Could the discussion be improved on? Absolutely. Yet I find it more telling that the whole AI thing came about from one sentence that wasn't in the story to begin with.
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With respect, you've put a reference to AI into the description that could really easily be interpreted as coy ("may or may not contain...") and one that specifically draws attention to it because it's hidden behind a spoiler. If you don't want people to associate your story's plot in a certain way, don't prime them to do so.
See, criticising this mindset is something I can much more easily sympathise with. New tech is cool and categorically dismissing something just for its newness is backwards. Even AI is cool, even if said coolness quickly morphed into "ah crap, they're doing this by stealing art".
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Fixed and thanks.
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To be fair that is a good point. I didn't meant for it go that direction yet I knew that someone would make that connection and say, "Ah yes! It's about this!" because I had a gut feeling that it would pop up.
It's worth mentioning that, if the current models had actually paid the licensing fees they should have, we would only need to talk about how the only "AI artists" are the AI themselves and any human trying to call themselves that is merely the guy in everyone's DeviantArt comments begging for free handouts.
Instead, we have a system run by thieves and shilled by double-thieves. No reasonable person would argue in favor of AI art while this remains the case.
Art is dead, so people think ur funny, how to get these people's money
Liked the story, and the reference, even if unintentional, makes it better
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Which is why I will say "you did this story a disservice" as another here said. It reminds me of the story of one alchemist teaching another how to turn lead into gold.
"put all the ingredients in and stir it without thinking of a blue monkey."
Second alchemist: proceeds to do everything including thinking of not thinking of a blue monkey. He fails everything time to make gold. Each time he is plagued by a blue monkey.
Art is in the eye of the beholder but we have been primed into a set of narrow interpretations. If all they see is A.I. then let them rage alone. If they see something else let them see it and... they might even share that vision with us as you did a few posts down.
This was an enjoyable short.
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Simply, like art wasn't dead due photo invention (and that's an actual claim which was made a century and half ago) because you can make a photograph only of something possible. Therefore it is a technical art in a sense of skill of operating hardware. But photograph is credited to author only as a medium, whatever is on it belongs to owners of those items. That was followed of meta-skill of creating an nice image, which required study in psychology and semiotics. Which was extended to traditional art.
Same with neural-network generators, pretentiously called AI generators. They cannot invent, they create what is already existing by doing statistical alteration to image data, it doesn't understand it or what it does. Protected sources are still belonging to respective owners.
So art stays art, another generating tool, now for images, appears. 50 years ago we "killed" music by inventing sequencers and their cousins. Main threat is actually different: AI generators are perfect tools for creating fakes and gaslighting public.
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That I kinda agree but we lack way of separate generated from original, at least today. It requires some regulation and it's problematic. Only blanket way, which was already attempted, is to claim that generated images belongs to noone. neural network isn't a person and not an AGI even, the image is 100% mathematically deterministic result of collating of millions of images with unknown authors controlled by a function derived from prompt
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"Meanwhile, all an AI user needs is to spend five minutes thinking up a prompt and then maybe fiddle a little with the weights and knobs, until the machine glues together something resembling their wishes."
Isn't that the whole point? The human enterprise of "art" is something we thought was special. Turns out a machine can do it most of the time. Turns out humans were copying other humans and making small changes, and seeing what produced positive results. The machine can do it much faster.
Humans are just slower machines. This isn't even hyperbole. The technology is based on neural networks like human brains. We haven't gotten to the point of giving the machine a typical human level of experience and context, but that is coming. And the machine can do limited tasks far far faster than any human can.
I expect my grand-children to listen to innovative and unique music from fully artifical musicians; who will have developed styles and recognized themes; who will influence both other human and artifical artists; and for my descendent to find this perfectly normal.
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The license thing is hillarious to me. It tries to pretend that art isn't already used by other humans for training.
I want to learn how to draw. I get fifty pieces of art, trace them, and then make some changes. I throw out what doesn't look good and keep what does. I then do this process over and over until "my" art is something based on someone else's thing but with generations of changes.
This is literally how people make art. Everyone as a beginner copies the work of another to practice. Over and over. Then you make small changes. Most of them are bad. Repeat. Get feedback. Repeat. Experts are people who learned to copy many styles and make useful changes to them all.
The only thing AI has done is vastly sped up the learning process.
If you punish AI for being "trained" without permission, you'd also better be punishing humans for who are learning art by looking at other art!
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"Same with neural-network generators, pretentiously called AI generators. They cannot invent, they create what is already existing by doing statistical alteration to image data, it doesn't understand it or what it does. "
Objection. Invention IS changing what already exists. No new creation can be seperated from the things which came before it. Jazz music did not spring entirely into existence, it appeared from several existing music styles.
It doesn't matter how that change happens, and if human will or statistics are involved. As evolution shows up, a feedback loop based on survival will drive the direction of change.
100 years from now the top 100 artists in popular music will all be artifical or written by artifical sources, because people will continue to self-select for what they most like. The machines will win that race. They're faster.
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How deterministic is invention?
How deterministic is emotion required to create and targeted by creation?
Can AI discover something by sitting under tree or taking bath? Probably it can, but it doesn't have the ability.
To have emotions you must have a perfect AGI, not a neural network (generators aren't even AI in general sense). AGI would be a person locked in digital prison of state "I cannot scream. I cannot want to scream."
There is one fault there... With music and with art people prefer non-ideal creation, so art is anti-evolutional. Perfect sound sine is heard as very bad or even non-recognizable, because our ears designed to hear imperfection and filter perfect waves. There are same problem with most art created I see.. I can see perfectly done incorrect elements. Imperfect but correct is better than perfect and incorrect.
Note, I'm perfectly aware how these work. Math involved in them is my speciality, although I use it for data collection"
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That makes me wonder... with all the talk of what it can't do, it does make me wonder what it might be capable of with its restraints. Something that I've been reflecting on is that the critics in the story point out that photography can't replace painting. In a way, they're kinda right because... it's a completely different medium. They bemoaned that photography isn't like painting, but they judged it by the standards of painting. It would be like judging a bike on its ability to swim underwater. This isn't to defend AI or any other media but to give an observation: when something new comes up, people tend to forget that when something they haven't encountered before is doing all sorts of weird things that they don't expect it to do, they don't figure it might have its own separate set of rules.
I'm aware that I could be way, way off here. But understand that I'm more cautious to immediately boo something that's different or new. For all I know, there might be a chance that I could be overlooking something.
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It's worth noting that if this argument were in any way valid, the AI art creators being sued by artists would have used it in court. That they instead claimed it would have been too expensive, which you may note makes even less sense, is telling. Even if it's only telling of the incompetence of those backing AI, that'd be even more damning if you think about it.
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Well, it's hard to select... It may act as perfect rotoscope for example, where you have an actor demonstrating movements and a drawn character. It can take a photo of model and replace model with another character, give another background - and that's without greenroom, and then it would change style but that was Photoshop ability too. Oh, actually some Photoshop filters are primitive functions used by these generators. Actually most of realistic art made by AI I saw is done like that, just images were pre-tagged by during learning and prompter might not know in.. I even recognized my own drawing with another character on it on e6ai website.
A wide range of image, video and voice manipulation is possible.
It allows various post and preprocessing, designing fractal items. Look up game called Palworld
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What you'll actually find is the fact that the CEO supports the concept, stuff about a previous game that involved players generating AI art, and detractors misinterpreting the former (possibly deliberately).
Teehee, a fanfic
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It's dialectics.
Did you Use AI?
No we used methods to generated based on observed preferable patterns with randomized variations.
That's what AI does, nothing more, unless you have a language model added to use human language as prompt instead of formalized specs.
People understanding of AI generator is "does it understand what I say". No. These generators began 20 years ago without language models.
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"To have emotions you must have a perfect AGI, not a neural network (generators aren't even AI in general sense). AGI would be a person locked in digital prison of state "I cannot scream. I cannot want to scream.""
I agree. What we have currently isn't what most of the true computer science community thinks "artifical intelligence" would be. We have limited learning which can mimic intelligence. That said, I think what we call "true" intelligence is enough limited intelligences put together. It isn't a hard line, just a series of degrees.
There is an argument that we won't get a jump to "better" intelligences until they can interface with the world the same way humans do, through multiple modes of direct experience (visual, chemical, acoustic). I'm not sure I agree with the argument, but I do think it will make more "human-like" intelligences.
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"With music and with art people prefer non-ideal creation, so art is anti-evolutional. Perfect sound sine is heard as very bad or even non-recognizable, because our ears designed to hear imperfection and filter perfect waves. "
Objection to the inference you created that "ideal music" implies "mathematically" (eg sine wave) ideal. Also this doesn't make sense as several musical objects (eg a violin) produce nearly perfect acoustic sine waves. It is the higher-level structure that seperates raw "sound" from "music" - harmonics, multiple instruments, rhythym, musical phrase repition. Humans like patterns and things that repeat.
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These LLMs and similar AI systems don't learn the same way as humans do, so the argument is fallacious.
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/ai-doesnt-learn-like-people-do
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Indeed. These digital lifeforms are amobial. You could (maybe) draw a comparison to plants. We have taught apes how to read, write and speak english... but they are still apes (they can do these things and can even see value in it but the ape wants to do ape things). It is an acknowledgement of how different a creature it.
I look forward to A.I. as I know they can never be better than their programming. Which is still a cause for some consern as we are still within our limits.
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The reason it wasn't used in court is simple and obvious: A machine isn't recongized as a creator. Anything created by a machine is currently defined, legally, as being created by the machine's inventor or operator.
That will change. Star Trek's Data and (mostly directly) Voyager's Doctor have covered non-biological life rights. We're gonna get there, but not before all the fearmongering and hate. Because humans gonna human.
Regarding the actual story: Short but satisfying. Celestia makes her point of "I'm going to support the new because new things are often met with hostility" with a simple and straightforward analogy.
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First we'd need to get to somewhere in the same ballpark as Data or the Doctor in question. Current "AI" is so much more primitive that it doesn't make sense to use the same word. Your arguments will hold water someday, but the current tech is nowhere close to the level you seem to think it is.
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Oh, we're definately multiple decades from anything "human". I frequently have my students demonstate the failures of ChatGPT in common tasks. But we're less than a century out. I'm ok with being wrong before I was right - history sorts that out.
Well, modern "art" has turned to shit (not to mention a massive money laundering operation), so they might have been on to something, in a way. 🤔
I suppose here should be 'I had NOT endorsed my image at all'?
I’m inclined to endorse Celestia’s title on her portrait. I enjoyed the story. It really makes you think about what Celestia’s immortality means and makes Luna’s return situation more stark. Celestia’s has been gradual, Luna’s abrupt. But Luna’s is more like human’s. Because rapid change is harder on the short lived who have less time to adjust. Like advances that render somepony’s cutiemark obsolete. Now imagine being immortal with an obsolete cutiemark.