With all the fuzz about IA image “stealing” illustrator job, I am curious about how much photography changed the art world in the 19th century.
There was a time where getting a portrait done was a relatively big thing, requiring several days of work for a painter, while you had to stand still for a while so the painter knew what you looked like, and then with photography, all you had to do was to stand still for a few minutes, and you’ll get a picture of you printed on paper the next day.
How did it impact the average painter who was getting paid to paint people once in their lifetime.
A discussion around the extent to which painters were replaced by photographers (and professional photographers replaced by laypersons with smartphone cameras) isn’t going to quite be the same as a discussion about human illustrators being potentially replaced by “AI”.
I suspect the words “soul” and “character” (and derivatives thereof) to turn up more.
I imagine a better analogy would be scribes talking about the printing press.
Prior to the invention of the printing press, the endeavor of mass creation of copies of a book could employ dozens of highly trained, highly skilled workers whose recreations were frequently seen as an artistic endeavor as much as a literary one. When the printing press was introduced and didn’t carry illustrations in the margins or nice little flourishes on some of the letters, the works were considered “soulless” and “without character”
I think the key difference is that the words put out via printing press were still arranged the way they were by human hand.
The painting and the photograph are framed by human eyes.
The output of an “AI” seems different because it seems that there is less (of potentially no) human input. I say “seems” because that may or may not be true. If a human guides the AI with instructions, is that enough?
In my line of work, AI is coming. I see it as a friend in silico
I don’t disagree that it feels way different, and honestly I’m still not sure if it’s going to be a good thing or a bad thing.
But are the words you and I are writing a lesser form of communication just because we’re tapping a screen or typing on a keyboard rather than writing them out by hand?
Granted, it’s still not the same thing. These are my words being arranged to my liking, but will we one day look at AI art as an extension of our hand the way that a keyboard is?
Is the world a better place because the commodification of art is monopolized by AI, or will art be better for the fact that it’s only practiced for the love of art and more bespoke purposes?
This subject is super complex and philosophical and definitely something I hope I live long enough to see the resolution to, some day.
What if I tasked an LLM with replying to your comment? Say I instruct it to provide something with an agreeable tone and I pick one out of two or three drafts.
Is it still me?
I suppose that by that point it’s not much different than having a speech writer…