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An A.I.-Generated Picture Won an Art Prize. Artists Aren’t Happy.
DNYUZ ^ | 2 Sept 2022

Posted on 09/04/2022 12:52:32 AM PDT by DUMBGRUNT

But one entrant, Jason M. Allen of Pueblo West, Colo., didn’t make his entry with a brush or a lump of clay. He created it with Midjourney, an artificial intelligence program that turns lines of text into hyper-realistic graphics.

Mr. Allen’s work, “Théâtre D’opéra Spatial,” took home the blue ribbon in the fair’s contest for emerging digital artists — making it one of the first A.I.-generated pieces to win such a prize, and setting off a fierce backlash from artists who accused him of, essentially, cheating.

Reached by phone on Wednesday, Mr. Allen defended his work. He said that he had made clear that his work — which was submitted under the name “Jason M. Allen via Midjourney” — was created using A.I., and that he hadn’t deceived anyone about its origins.

Some artists defended Mr. Allen, saying that using A.I. to create a piece was no different from using Photoshop or other digital image-manipulation tools, and that human creativity is still required to come up with the right prompts to generate an award-winning piece.

Controversy over new art-making technologies is nothing new. Many painters recoiled at the invention of the camera, which they saw as a debasement of human artistry. (Charles Baudelaire, the 19th-century French poet and art critic, called photography “art’s most mor­tal enemy.”) In the 20th century, digital editing tools and computer-assisted design programs were similarly dismissed by purists for requiring too little skill of their human collaborators.

(Excerpt) Read more at dnyuz.com ...


TOPICS: Arts/Photography; Chit/Chat; Computers/Internet
KEYWORDS: ai; art; technology
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Nothing new... What a Way to Go! Paul Newman & Shirley MacLaine 1964

The robot painting arms fatally attacked the artist. Could happen.


1 posted on 09/04/2022 12:52:32 AM PDT by DUMBGRUNT
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To: DUMBGRUNT

2 posted on 09/04/2022 12:57:30 AM PDT by knarf (I say things that are true . . . I have no proof, but they're true.)
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To: DUMBGRUNT

“An A.I.-Generated Picture Won an Art Prize. Artists Aren’t Happy.”

Lrn2Cod


3 posted on 09/04/2022 1:41:23 AM PDT by Zack Attack
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To: Zack Attack
Lrn2Cod


4 posted on 09/04/2022 1:58:27 AM PDT by BlueLancer (Orchides Forum Trahite - Cordes Et Mentes Veniant)
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To: DUMBGRUNT

5 posted on 09/04/2022 3:38:08 AM PDT by Libloather (Why do climate change hoax deniers live in mansions on the beach?)
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To: DUMBGRUNT

Asimov lives. Will the Centennial Man have to give up his immortality to become a citizen?


6 posted on 09/04/2022 3:47:24 AM PDT by ToxicMasculinity ("Free country"? Good morning, Rip.)
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To: DUMBGRUNT

‘Artists aren’t happy’ - OK, duly noted. Now quit yer gritchin’ and do something about it. The most successful folks are the do-ers, the makers, the git-off-yer-a$$-and-do-something folks.

How about going forward you set up a separate category for computer created entries ... now, was that hard?


7 posted on 09/04/2022 3:57:13 AM PDT by ByteMercenary (Slo-Joe and KamalHo are not my leaders.)
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To: DUMBGRUNT
To those who say he cheated: Is “art” defined by the merits of the result or by the effort and skill of the artist? If a very skilled and talented artist creates an ugly lump of clay is that more “art” than a stunningly beautiful sculpture carved by a computer? Also, I am sure that human artists would object on the basis that an AI routine is just copying techniques used by human artists and generating images that mimic those styles, but then again human artists have always done the same as well.

I’m not proposing an answer to these questions, just raising them.

8 posted on 09/04/2022 4:10:00 AM PDT by noiseman (The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.)
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To: knarf
Mr. Allen’s work, “Théâtre D’opéra Spatial,” took home the blue ribbon in the fair’s contest for emerging digital artists — making it one of the first A.I.-generated pieces to win such a prize, and setting off a fierce backlash from artists who accused him of, essentially, cheating.

Actually, it's not that bad. Complex and inclined to make the viewer contemplate it.

9 posted on 09/04/2022 4:51:17 AM PDT by texas booster (Join FreeRepublic's Folding@Home team (Team # 36120) Cure Alzheimer's!)
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To: noiseman
To those who say he cheated: Is “art” defined by the merits of the result or by the effort and skill of the artist? I

I think that the success of Andy Warhol proves that merit has little to do with the skill or vision of an artist.

The reaction of the press and “opinion makers” has a great deal more to do with the success or failure of an artist. Or whether art will be seen by the greater public.

10 posted on 09/04/2022 5:05:42 AM PDT by Pontiac (The welfare state must fail because it is contrary to human nature and diminishes the human spiritI)
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To: DUMBGRUNT
Midjourney, which uses a complex process known as “diffusion” to turn text into custom images. Users type a series of words in a message to Midjourney; the bot spits back an image seconds later.

True artists are not threatened at all. Many will in fact embrace this, just as they embraced photography to aid in their painting. And many embraced the photo medium itself as its own art form.

I can see artists using this tech to try out ideas, and then moving things around - editing, and perhaps repainting the results using their own signature techniques. How would that be any different than working from sketches or little clay dioramas?

AI can also produce very convincing music in the style of Mozart, it isn't Mozart. My own music attempts to sound like a synthesis of Debussy, Gershwin, Keith Emerson and late romanticism. If AI would only produce that sound for me, I'd be all set as I'm lazy and just want to hear the music in my head instead of working it out, but since it isn't I have to sit down and go through the painstaking process. Even one minute of music is an awful lot of black dots on a page.

11 posted on 09/04/2022 5:19:50 AM PDT by Sirius Lee (They intend to murder us. Prep if you want to live and live like you are prepping for eternal life)
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To: knarf

I guess it doesn’t take much to win an “art prize” these days.


12 posted on 09/04/2022 5:45:28 AM PDT by VTenigma (Conspiracy theory is the new "spoiler alert")
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To: BlueLancer

‘Lrn2Cod”

Give a man a cod, he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to cod and he’ll change how seafood is AI generated for a lifetime.


13 posted on 09/04/2022 6:18:42 AM PDT by EQAndyBuzz (DJT24)
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To: VTenigma

I’ll take “who is Robert Maplethorpe for 100 Alex.”


14 posted on 09/04/2022 6:19:52 AM PDT by EQAndyBuzz (DJT24)
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To: DUMBGRUNT
Users type a series of words in a message to Midjourney; the bot spits back an image seconds later.

So, the real talent is with those who wrote the bot's code, not the person who typed in a series of words.

15 posted on 09/04/2022 6:20:06 AM PDT by libertylover (Our biggest problem, BY FAR, is that almost all of big media is agenda-driven, not-truth driven.)
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To: DUMBGRUNT

“22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all form of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to “eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings,” substituting shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms.

23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. “ Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art.”

Any of this look familiar?


16 posted on 09/04/2022 6:23:41 AM PDT by EQAndyBuzz (DJT24)
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To: Zack Attack

Series? This is Hugh. Not often a new cod word enters the freep lexicon


17 posted on 09/04/2022 6:38:17 AM PDT by teeman8r (Armageddon won't be pretty, but it's not like it's the end of the world or something )
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To: knarf

Saw it yesterday. It looks better in person.

He also entered quite a few other A.I.-generated pieces. Those were equally as cool as this one.

18 posted on 09/04/2022 6:41:41 AM PDT by Ol' Dan Tucker (For 'tis the sport to have the engineer hoist with his own petard., -- Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 4)
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To: DUMBGRUNT

Well, fake women win female competitions, too.

Guess it’s all relative these days…


19 posted on 09/04/2022 6:53:32 AM PDT by Magnatron
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To: ByteMercenary

“ How about going forward you set up a separate category for computer created entries ... now, was that hard?”

Many in the art world are leftists. The same people could create a separate category for tranny athletes rather than have them compete against girls, but they won’t.


20 posted on 09/04/2022 6:56:27 AM PDT by bk1000 (Banned from Breitbart)
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