AI and Artists

Ray Palmer

AI is increasingly be used for everything but artists are coming out and claiming it is taking work from them. The arguments stems from a belief they are special and their abilities have a particular standing. There are lots of claims of AI copying other peoples' work and how it should be banned or have extra taxes etc..

From my view actually a lot of artists have skills that are difficult to master not unlike many other occupations ranging from engineering to accounting. There used to be manual sign painters working all around Ireland but that is long gone with a few left with the traditional skills but it was seen as just normal progress. Artists seem to dislike that AI can now generate quite complex art exactly how a person wants and quickly versus them "creating" what was asked of them.

We have all seen art that is based on other artists style most noticeably copies of style from Andy Warhol. Originally it took time and effort to manually copy an image then make a stencil, screen print it in different colours maybe add some texture or paint effects but that was it. Now it can be done very simply in Photoshop, similar applications and even just a filter. How many times have you seen art use an artists style or a particular image like another one (Sgt Pepper cover a common one)?

Do artists deserve some special treatment?

HorseSea

If you relate art to engineering and accountancy, it's going to be pretty hard to convince you that AI is been seriously damaging to artists. Some would also argue that most of Andy Warhol's output was not art in it's purest sense. But beauty is in the eye of the beholder and some will find AI art quite acceptable or even better, that's fine. My issue is AI's use of artists work to train, copy or recreate is wrong without permission and compensation.

Ray Palmer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123520677#Comment_123520677

Is AI copying work and recreating works of art? I have seen plenty of human artists copy and recreate other artists, what is the difference. When it comes to training a human artist they look at other artists and try their styles so again what is the difference? if I want something like a old painting style of myself what is an artist doing that the AI isn't other than the physical act of painting but the right printer can mimic that?

I compared occupations that require learned skills and much of art is just that and AI is proving that. What makes it special? What damage has AI done to artists?

eightieschewbaccy

An artist has a creative process of some kind. It's uniquely human. AI "art" amounts to mining a load of data and outputting something. Some artists might not be very good and others will be extraordinary. AI art will only ever amount to something looking cool at best cause the human factor is simply gone.

Also worth remembering that art isn't limited to paintings or sculptures etc. I know Spotify is playing with AI generated music and I personally have no desire to listen to something that has no real human input or intent. Movies, I don't want watch a drama or comedy based on what an AI has swiped off of actual creators. It also tends to come across as clearly false.

Also the reality is it takes huge power resources to generate what amounts to shite.

Ray Palmer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123520893#Comment_123520893

That could mean the prompt put into the AI makes the result art. I understand the argument of removing the human factor of creation but why is that important? Just stating it isn’t an answer if the art elicits the same response

Art has always used technology and engineering to create big changes are happening and many artists are just the same as typing pools.

I actually buy art and antiques and appreciate the difference of reproduction, craft, copies anD parody

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123521682#Comment_123521682

The difference if knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing.

Typing pool. That's like saying there's no difference between a cup made by a machine in a factory and the one your kid makes for you in school.

There is zero appreciation in what you've written.

Flinty997

"…AI is increasingly be used for everything but artists are coming out and claiming it is taking work from them. The arguments stems from a belief they are special and their abilities have a particular standing. There are lots of claims of AI copying other peoples' work and how it should be banned or have extra taxes etc..

From my view actually a lot of artists have skills that are difficult to master not unlike many other occupations ranging from engineering to accounting. There used to be manual sign painters working all around Ireland but that is long gone with a few left with the traditional skills but it was seen as just normal progress. Artists seem to dislike that AI can now generate quite complex art exactly how a person wants and quickly versus them "creating" what was asked of them...."

Asks how will it take work from them...then describes how a whole sector has disappeared. It's not subjective, the work is gone.

I'll add that modern signs do not have artistry or craft of the old hand made signs. If you can't see that, then no amount of explaining will make you see it.

That's not to say modern signs are not good. But they are very different artistically. Also because someone with no artistic ability can now make them, they will just churn out the same thing over and over. It's why all Wordpress websites look the same and usability is shot to hell. It's why you can't tell what is button, a link, or an underline anymore.

Ray Palmer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123521850#Comment_123521850

I never asked how it would take work from artists,I asked why is it special and need protection. I also never said old signs didn’t have artistry. It would be considered an artisan SKILL along the lines of woodwork. Who are you to decide what is artistic or not? Gutenberg created the moveable type and printing presses existed beforehand so art has been reproduced for a long time to churn out copies. Take the Chupa Chup logo which was designed by Salivador Dali was he not an artist because it is constantly reproduced?

People can do their accounts without any mathematical skill why is art any different if you can use other tools to create a vision you have?

What you perceive as bad design of a website is done so for a reason and it would appear you are saying websites require artistry but that is reproducible endlessly and not physical so you don’t seem to be consistent in your own views.

You haven’t actually explained why artistry is any more special than any other skill or ability just stated it is different. I was a web designer and did technical drawings of buildings but they are considered skills and not artistry. A lot of the work that is bread and butter money for artists is just learned skills and there are tools that can do that without the skills. Typing was a skill required for a typing pool but that has died out. Mechanical watches are still made but better performing cheap battery watches were invented.

As I said I do actually buy art and antiques so I do appreciate the skills and work of humans. You are making assumptions about me but not actually saying what makes an artist learned skills more important than any other skill. If you argument is it is just special so be it but it isn’t an explanation just a belief. What happens if you look at a picture and think it is beautiful does it change if you find out it is AI generated?

redt0m

If all artists stopped working today, would AI be able to create anything?

growleaves

For me, the difference is that AI can only produce a plagarized recombination of styles whereas with an artist unless they are tracing in some manner, their own personality will be expressed in how they draw and paint.

As an art tutor explained it (paraphrasing from memory) when someone draws a line, the spontaneous bends in the line conscious or unconscious are coming from that person and are an expression of that person.

There's no reason why AI cannot produce passable commercial illustrations. But it can't produce original art because there would no unique elements to the work - it is all recombination, which real works art never are and cannot be (by my definition anyway, which admittedly excludes some working modern artists).

FrancieBrady

There is a confusion in the OP between 'art' and 'craft'.

People often confuse the two and call wonderful or intricate work 'art' when it is just craft.

Until AI can think originally it can never create 'art'.
Re the sign industry the OP mentioned. Technology did indeed end hand painted signs as the norm but while many traditional sign painters disappeared, many of them moved with the technology and just changed the way they made signs. There is still a vibrant sign painting community out there though and the financial value of what they do has increased not decreased.

magicbastarder

i've no formal education of any sort in art (i.e. i don't know what i'm talking about but why let that stop me) - but my view is that 'art' is a combination of a skill (you could call it a craft) with creativity. signwriting, which has been mentioned, is primarily a craft in that generally it'd be work commissioned to a brief where the commissioner has a very good idea of what they want, and need a skilled craftsperson to create it. that's the sort of thing most at risk from increased automation. but the act of actually creating something new is not within the ability of AI, as i understand it. it can only output an averaged out product within the boundaries of what has been input to it; and that's where the argument based on 'but human artists train on and are influenced by other artists before them' would fall down in my book.

and that's the genesis of a lot of the pushback against AI; in that it's been explicitly trained on other artist's work, with the eventual aim of disenfranchising them, without any payback for those artists. one high profile example being the recent memes ripping off the work of studio ghibli; any artist doing that would have possibly left themselves open to copyright claims, but who do they sue now? plagiarism has always been a problem, but now it's been automated and the ability to clamp down on it vastly restrained.

also there's the irony of say 20 years ago when the music industry were suing the pants off people daring to share MP3s, because copyright violation was killing the industry - but now we've titans of industry claiming the industry can't survive without mass copyright violation.

https://www.theverge.com/news/674366/nick-clegg-uk-ai-artists-policy-letter

why shouldn't there be an opt-out for artists to not have their works explicitly harvested with a goal to replacing them? the lack of such an opt-out is kinda obscene.

meta even used actual pirated content to train its AI; hundreds of thousands of authors had their works 'read' by meta without meta paying to buy the books.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-03-28/authors-angry-meta-trained-ai-using-pirated-books-in-libgen/105101436

magicbastarder

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123522330#Comment_123522330

to answer your question in a different way; what if AI does destroy the 'ecosystem' in which artists currently work, and kills the supply chain of talent into that? there could be a risk of that entire ecosystem collapsing.

students entering NCAD or similar - some of them will end up as individual artists, the stereotypical painter selling their work in a gallery; some will end up as designers, or studio techs, or any role working at any level in a creative industry. what happens if AI destroys the income they can accrue, and ruins most options of a career path in a creative industry? who would end up going to NCAD to train in something that they'll never make money out of?

we'd end up with a society of accountants in nice shiny offices whose walls are festooned in derivative art created by machines.

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123522307#Comment_123522307

It's not assumptions. Its based on your posts which are devoid of an appreciation of art. In my opinion.

Its not a negative thing. It's like someone trying to get me to like music I don't like. It simply doesn't move me. I understand on technical level why they do. But that's not me having an appreciation of that music.

AI is stealing other people's copyright. That's what needs to be enforced.

Bad websites that are bad because they have no artistry. They are copying a template done by a programmer who also no aesthetic skills either. It's not the mass production that's the issue. It's the removal of design and art from the process that originated it. It's either obvious or it isn't.

Typing hasn't died out. How do you think people use computer keyboards. Computer keyboards have qwerty layout. That layout was designed to slow mechanical typewriters and thus prevent jams with the mechanism. Every computer or laptop is a typing pool. They still don't touch typing for this reason.

That someone can't see the difference between a digital watch mechanical function and the design of the aesthetics of a watch says everything.

Some people are tone deaf. They can't hear a flat note. It's the same with art. You either see it or you don't.

It's not a hard line in the sand either. Lots of people know they prefer one thing over another but can't tell you why. Other people know why. There will also always be some who like something different. Then there are people who will just follow other people's taste, having no preference if their own.

It's like this with AI art. It's paint by numbers and it's in vast majority of cases sterile no character. It's getting better. But do I want that cup from the factory or from a friend who made it for me.

FrancieBrady

Duchamp dealt with the whole question of 'what is art' in his 'Readymades'
His thesis was 'the artist defines what art is'

Marcel Duchamp's concept of "readymades" revolutionized the definition of art by transforming ordinary, pre-existing objects into artworks. This innovative approach began in 1913 with Duchamp's playful combination of a bicycle wheel and a kitchen stool, which led to the creation of kinetic sculptures and the idea of art as more than crafted objects. By introducing readymades, such as his infamous signed urinal titled "Fountain," Duchamp challenged traditional aesthetic values and raised the question of artistic intent versus craftsmanship. His work rejected the notion that art must be beautiful or skillfully made, emphasizing instead that the artist's choice and perspective determine what constitutes art. This paradigm shift influenced various art movements, including Dadaism and Surrealism, and laid the groundwork for conceptual art, where the idea behind the work takes precedence over its physical form. Duchamp's legacy persists, as he invited audiences to reconsider the role of art and the artist in a rapidly evolving cultural landscape, sparking ongoing debates about the nature of creativity and artistic expression. His provocative questioning has left a lasting impact, making him a pivotal figure in the trajectory of modern art.

AI will never be able to do the bolded bit as long as it is 'artificial'.

eightieschewbaccy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123522307#Comment_123522307

Saying you buy antiques and art but would happily buy AI generated shite and view it as art sounds like you don't have any particular appreciation for art. Plenty buy antiques and art for the sake of seeming classy more than anything.

I also absolutely view plenty of commercial designs as artistic. That doesn't mean a machine creating a knock off of them is suddenly an artist. Simple question, would you happily listen to an AI sing over the likes of some of your favourite musicians? It might sound good cause it understands what's aesthetically pleasing.

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123522475#Comment_123522475

While all true. It goes deeper, it devalues art and design. It's means a company will not give someone the time to design something. They will just use a tool or template.

This is why the music charts filled with same type of music. So many artists, clones of each other.

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123522452#Comment_123522452

There are still people who will pay money and give time to get something that's more interesting than a generic sign. There's a lot of money around if you can tap into it. People buying bespoke furniture and architecture etc.

One of my college peers makes bespoke lighting and signature furniture. Reception desks etc. But the majority have fallen out of design. One actually has a sign making company. But it's all run of the mill stuff.

Flinty997

I think the problem with the thread is the OP can't see any difference between AI and artists, or art. So any thesis based on that assumption is also flawed. But it's an interesting discussion regardless. I value the OP point of view.

What is art and the value of design or artists has never been a simple issue.

Steve Jobs nearly broke Apple on his obsession with design and aesthetics. Scully his successor nearly broke Apple doing the exact opposite.

Ray Palmer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123522330#Comment_123522330

Yes

Ray Palmer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123522641#Comment_123522641

That applies to learning for many other skills and my point is what makes artist skills any more special. I can still program a website but you can use modern tools and create something better with a lot less knowledge.

People/artists are creating that music which goes to what I am saying that many artists aren't really that creative and just apply a skill.

People here really don't get how AI works now and that it doesn't just copy no matter what has been said. Even tools and templates are created by people.

People are trying to just dismiss the discussion by saying I just don't understand and don't appreciate art. It seems to me people don't understand a lot about how art and technology have in common and how reliant art is on tech. Missing a lot of what artists do is a technical skill. They trace images projected from lenses of real things, small models in a sand bucked and calipers to make stone sculptures etc…

If you are presented with a picture and you get an emotional reaction then find out later it is AI generated is it anything less? If you never find out?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Lichtenstein

Artists seem to copy an awful lot. Go to Naples and go into the museums and see all the copies of ancient statues created by artists. AI is literally changing the way we think the human mind works as it turns out our beliefs about how human intelligence works has been wrong since we ever tried to figure it out.

magicbastarder

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jun/09/ai-advertising-industry-google-facebook-meta-ads?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

..

..

growleaves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123527900#Comment_123527900

Tracing (from lenses), copy work, forgeries, reproductions etc. aren't really at the core of art though. They are exceptions or at best sub-categories.

Artists do copy work so they will have built up technical skills for when they do create original works which, as I said, depend partly on personality.

Art is about expression. An algorithm has nothing to express. It has to live in the exceptions where technical factors are the only factor. AI art can never get beyond 100% pastiche by definition, however disguised the original influences are.

The worst modern artists who rely on lenses, photorealism, 'found' objects, collages, gimmicks etc. have helped pave the way for AI by blurring the definitions of art.

growleaves

Renaissance artists who started by imitating classical statues went on to produce very different kinds of statues.

I forget who said it but some famous art critic made the point that Michelangelo's Pieta could not have been produced in ancient Athens where it wouldn't have been accepted or understood given how alien it is to the Greek temperament.

o1s1n

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123527900#Comment_123527900

That's a whole lot of assumptions there about art in general.

Art itself is the process of humans expressing themselves through the creation of works that are aesthetically pleasing / thought provoking.

You're correct in that a lot of art can be tool and tech assisted. We've been doing that since the dawn of art and yes, AI could potentially be used as a tool by humans to create art.

However, when you completely remove humans from the process entirely it's when it becomes questionable. You're getting into 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?' territory there.

I personally did actually study Fine Art myself in NCAD twenty years ago now and would have scoffed back then at the idea of AI being able to generate imagery. Seemed so utterly far fetched at the time.

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123527900#Comment_123527900

Your examples and comments do not show an appreciation of art. You're dismissing art as a technical skill. Your suggesting since AI can do technical things it can also create art. Thus artist's are not special. They and their copyright should not be protected. AI doesn't need to copy people's work, but at the same let's allow it to steal and copy other people's work.

That's not an appreciation of art. It's the opposite.

Hey you artist, what you're doing is not special and has no value. But let AI copy it so it can make lots of money. Kinda hypocritical no?

Flinty997

This feels like those people who come looking for some art or design work. But when you go looking for a deposit or paid they start rubbishing it saying their nephew can knock up a design for pocket money or free. Then you say fine get them to do it. Then they get annoyed because they can't get you to work for peanuts.

It's the same now with data. We don't need your data, your databases, your files, your layers of security and managed meta data. AI can do a better job than you. But can you turn off all your security so we can rob all the work you've done in collating and managing data so we can make you redundant and we can make money instead of you.

...err no you can't have it. AI goes off crying....

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123529907#Comment_123529907

Oh great the tech companies going to create AI ads and spam us even more than they do now.

thebaz

As an artist , AI has its uses in certain indusrties, Medicine , but Art is about emotion connection and soul , and AI is the opposite. Nick Cave said it best in that letter by StephenFry and I agree - ther is a lot of struggle in art and little reward, its more a human calling, try listening to souless AI music :-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGJcF4bLKd4

magicbastarder

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123527900#Comment_123527900

Artists seem to copy an awful lot.

i addressed this in my post but it's worth repeating. yes, plagiarism is an issue, and yes, of course, artists are inspired by other artists; but the vast, vast, vast escalation in scale is so large it goes way beyond quantitative into qualitative.

no novelist has ever been able to read several hundred thousand novels, to be able to spit more out on demand. no artist has been able to view and analyse hundreds of thousands of artworks; etc. with photography, etc. with music, etc.

you talk about some art being a 'skill' and this has been discussed, the difference between art and craft, etc.; but again i'll go back to the point about it destroying the ecosystem. take the example of novels - what if in five years time, publishing houses will stop paying money to actual people to write books, when they can just get an advanced LLM to spit out a wilbur smithesque novel for next to nothing? will novels be totally devalued, leading to the idea of making money from writing fiction becoming a memory? qui bono?

maybe a niche market will arise for novels from actual people who have actual insights into the human condition which LLMs can't reproduce.

magicbastarder

regarding ads; a friend who works in an adjacent industry reckons most of the spend is in placing the ads, rather than creating them; so a race to the bottom is not going to save the customer a lot of money. that doesn't mean it won't happen though.