Supple jurassic body is just what I needed right now. XD ❤

(And thanks for all the rest too. ❤)

Honestly, great take from multiple directions.

This weekend, I made a t-shirt and a logo for a nonexistant studio in about an hour.

How'd I do it?

Text layout in Zazzle's store and clipart in Canva. Didn't push any of the AI buttons; did definitely use someone else's drawing of a dog and someone else's image of an upward-pointing arrow. And someone else's fonts. And someone else's t-shirt printing machinery.

Because my goal wasn't to create any of that; my goal was to composite it into a mildly-entertaining seasonal shirt I could wear. And because it took an hour, i could do that between the things people in my life care about me actually accomplishing.

Enjoy making Clipart, loser.

Thank you! I have not aspired to more in this domain.

"Pregnant Mario lactating jamba juice all over Baka from street fighter"

<spurfs coffee out nose>

ow!

the rest?

Keep doing talented shit you wonderful bastard, Matthew.

I've used generative A.I. to make concepts and backgrounds for a TTRPG campaign I was running, and while that produced perfectly adequate images, I found the process PROFOUNDLY unrewarding. I make art. I'm good at it, in my own niche, but there are other specializations that I haven't practiced. When I make something and it turns out great, that makes my soul sing. I don't get that sense of joy from using A.I. image extruders.

Thanks for sharing your ideas!

ever noticed how it's "AI art" when generated but "content" when human made?

(just to be clear, this is not a jab at your use of the term, it makes sense here obviously as a way to connect to the audience; just a general observation)

Related: Here's the definitive documentary about the guy who made those original Jurassic Park dinosaurs not suck:

jurassicpunkmovie.com

Tip: the doc is about much more than CG dinosaur production.

image description:

a drawing of a falling laptop and a paintbrush on dark grey background; the paintbrush and the laptop both drip a bit of colorful paint.

text:

A cartoonist's review of AI art

If there's anything I really really appreciate about AI art

it's that it finally seems to make people care about the process and not just the resulting picture.

Drawing with digital tablets is significantly easier compared to manually mixing paints from manually collected pigments.
I'd say that doesn't mean either is more valid than the other, but you can appreciate the difference in process, you can imagine the blood sweat and tears it took, it gives the creation a body, a background

You talk about feelings and stuff when viewing a piece. I think I have a similar concept, but mainly about the amount of work put in something. The sum of all details, big and small, known circumstances, etc. that lead something seemingly basic (xkcd, or indeed the ratcopter) to really click, while some seemingly perfectly rendered thing don't trigger anything in the viewer.

Somehow, I think the work of the authors creep into their productions, one way or another. And we can see that.

I agree with most of what you said.

What I do know is that AI art will do what clipart did, and give the talentless people who understand the value of having visuals break up mind-numbing blocks of text the opportunity to illustrate their documents.

As long as nobody pretends that it's an original artistic composition, there's no harm done. In return we give people who are otherwise visually mute the opportunity to mumble a little

Also, thank you for "ten trillion teraclops per floppyshart"

> AI has accelerated our abilities (…)

“AI” as in the overused since the 70 wanketeering term, or as the current overhyped “AI” as LLMs and diffusion slop extruders?

If first then well okay.

If second then heeeeeeeeell no.

The current lineup of AI wank can't do the things you mention, as it doesn't understand what they are. Being probabilistic models they only statistically estimate the next word or static noise iteration.

"You work in tech, shitbird!"

YESSSSS

(I also work in tech)

AI doesn't give us "extraordinary abilities" either. It's weird that you see how it's shit in the context of art but will gladly use it for other purposes.
It's atrophying people's cognitive skills, it makes ABSURD mistakes that no matter how much ppl claim "well, we check the output first" keep slipping through (which is because it's made to create outputs that *look* correct, so it's harder to spot)

And it takes more power and water than anything we ever did in datacenters before

Solid take, but you skipped the part where LLMs(they are not intelligent, AI is a marketing term and I'm not being paid to market for them), which is really what you're talking about, are built on stolen data and complete disregard for copyright law, near slave labour in the testing stages(outsourced to Africa for a dollar US a day), and a business model designed to make the rich richer and put folks out of work.

The tech has uses, the current model needs to sued out of existence.

Not sure when I did fav, re-toot, reply to a toot AND even subscribed to the newsletter, because I just loved the whole thing.

Just thank you for that, from one artist (composer) to another!

I was on the same page as you until I watched this video : youtube.com/watch?v=1gZaJpnTEb…

This video is AI (from their own acknowledgement) and yet it is *very* good.
The part made with AI isn't good, but it's acceptable enough, and it allows the genuine creativity (that was made by humans) to strive.

This video would not exist without AI, considering how expensive it would have been to make it otherwise.

So now I really don't know what to think.

It's a beautifully crafted and very thoughtful take. It reminded me of something @pluralistic said in one of his many blogs some time ago (I think). That what makes something art is the dialogue between artist and the audience. It's not the object. And with AI generated art, the artist's part of the dialogue is reduced to the prompt to generate the object.

It may be a very pretty object, but it's an empty dialogue.

Well told how I feel about AI „art“ - The oatmeal has a point.

theoatmeal.com/comics/ai_art

By AI I mean that which steals art and words, mixes it, like this comic assumes.

yes, AI is for lazy people. The use of it often reveals those who don't know what art is.

AI often involves silent theft, changes the tolerance for taking work off the internet, so you can't be neutral about that.

AI involves shitloads of energy and bulk computing for trivial things.

a large comic about the feels of AI is missing these points.

#cartoons #ai

times changes

Ai replaced jobs - ai art everywhere - ai music will 100% replace modern music - just look youtube (only "bangers" from 80s will be left)

people change view on "value" of art/music/reading/content

maybe only what people need - is tiktok like website with infinite content - maybe this is "peak" of human compression of content

Doing the work is important: work is where the artist provides their input. Choices are what make art art.

An AI artist's only input is in designing the prompt itself. The prompt can take real work to craft it, but once done, anyone can make essentially the same image by using the same prompt. So the prompt itself is the only actual content, the only actual art.

When AI artists fall to the allure of conjuring images with a click, real artists become all the more valuable, at least.

Excellent analysis. This reminds me very much of my early days as a communications professional, specialising in small business needs.

At the time, technological limitations (anf the skillsets needed to use professional-level prepress tools) meant that generally, most clients recognised the need for professional help with layout, design, and so forth.

But the *copy* (text) of whatever was needed? Clients overwhelmingly insisted they could write and would want to provide that content -- despite it generally being terrible for the intended use.

It took me a long time to figure out that many of them considered writing merely to be a functional thing that they already spent 12 years in school doing, so they 'must' already be experts.

There was zero understanding that graduating grade 12 is not the same as knowing, practising and developing the conventions, skills and techniques specific to writing for different genres and audiences, or in this case, target markets.

😐

The part about "enjoy making clip art" resonated with me a lot. I work in tech and (believe it or not) I am really good at telling a story. In WORDS.

Let's face it: I have NEGATIVE drawing talent.

So I use Gemini for exactly one thing: Slide deck illustrations. They are just as soulless as stock photos, but at least they are specific to my story.

At least I know that "art" is the wrong word for that. And I loved that cartoon.

I really liked your comic!

Not every type of AI is bad, in my opinion. Most people think of GenAI while talking about "all AI". Spellchecker or algorithms (e.g., on YouTube) are AI too. Some can even detect cancer. All the while, GenAI is just pretending. Pretending to write like a person, pretending to make music, pretending to draw art. You might as well call it PretendAI.

It made me really happy to see Allie Brosh's name in there. I hope she knows she still has alot of fans.

As for AI art. Prompts can sometimes be "art". Someone has an interesting idea but can't draw, so...

But, the resulting art is going to be "what would art matching this prompt look like?" It's going to be an averaging of matching influences. There's no thinking outside the box, no clever twists. So, AI art is mostly only interesting when the "art" in the prompt manages to shine through.

strong colonialist’s undertones in that title.

“The Biggest Mechanical Turk” is a great idea for a movie.