Thoughts on AI use on the new album?

[Pebsie]

So is photography.

Agreed.

All of this also leaves out my point that typing a prompt is not the full extent of AI generative art. As I have said previously in this thread, one option would be to literally create your own art style and then train your model on that. Maybe augment some photography or other imagery with your personally trained model, such as the guys who did this video. Say what you will about the quality, but this is still AI art, and it takes a lot of effort and creative vision.

This is cool, and I'd totally agree that this is art. But it isn't what most people are doing in this field. If it was, they'd likely just hire an actual artist. The only reason to use AI for a cover - unless you're making a point of using it for the cover - is to save money on hiring an artist. We can argue over the technicalities of what is and isn't art and how much effort typing prompts is and so on, but at the end of the day it isn't artists using this stuff, because why would they?

...if there is ever a programming or computer science question raised here, I will definetely defer to you. But none of that necissarily makes you an AI artist. Having built the camera doesn't automatically make you a competent or knowledgeable photographer. And the rejection of photography as a potential art form by any optical engineer doesn't really mean that much.

So I think this is where we our views diverge too much to reach an agreement. I don't think typing in AI prompts can be even remotely comparable to spending 1000s of hours and a lifetime learning to produce something beautiful, but you believe that the prompt typing itself is where the beauty lies. I cannot disagree more. The camera is the tool, the photographer is the person who goes out and takes the picture with their creative eye. An AI image generator is a tool, but it is also the photographer. As the prompt typer you're perhaps pointing the photographer to a nice looking tree, but the photographer is making every move from there.

Ultimately, if AI image generation was as complex and difficult a task as you suggest, then no-one would be using it commercially because it looks substantially worse than what an actual artist could produce. It is used primarily to cut down costs, and in my view that is all it is good for.

And regardless of what our views are, it's a fact that it is killing the art industry. I have several friends who have had to stop working freelance because their clients have switched to using AI art for things. Spotify and streaming services killed everyone's chances of making money from music, and AI image generators and their defenders are killing everyone's chances of making money from art. I simply can't fathom how anyone could support it.

[MirrorMask]

I'm sorry but that's absolutely a nuts take. This is the idolatry of the arts that I was referring to. John Petrucci is only valuable because he had to suffer to get where he is? People put their own suffering on a pedestal and then gatekeep the very thing they strove to be, all because somebody might have a chance at matching or exceeding them with less physical turmoil along the way. John Petrucci is admirable even if AI guitar can sound as good as he can.

I don't see it that way and I don't think it's a matter of gatekeeping, but rather recognizing the creative process.

As it has been discussed in this thread, AI art sometimes requires much more effort than "writing a prompt". That is what I do, I write prompts 'cause I use an image creator for fun and for hobby; if I can say it myself, I more or less got the gist of it, I can be creative in my prompt and obtain nice images.

This doesn't make me an artist however. It just makes me someone who understood how to interact with a machine. And even though I can picture in my head the image I want, not always all the details are 100% right, sometimes they are worse and sometimes the AI adds some cool detail I would have not imagined.

If writing a song with AI would be equally easy, with the major part of songwriting made by AI, it would not really make someone a songwriter or a guitarist.

No one expect people to "suffer", but you become a guitarist by learning to play guitar. If person A travels a long distance to attend school while person B follows online lessons in the cushy comfort of their home, it doesn't matter. They both studied the instruments. Learning how to ask an AI to come up with a song would not be songwriting.

I'm a big music lover, I took singing lessons for some years a long time ago. But I can't write, I can't compose. Do I have enough imagination and creativity in me to come up with a vocal melody? maybe. Do I have the ability to put that into a song through an instrument? no. Best I could do is humming a melody and have someone who actually plays put that into a song. Learning how to ask an AI how to musically describe best the "uplifting melody" or "major chord progression" I have in my head would not make me someone able to play an instrument.

[Pebsie]

I'm sorry but that's absolutely a nuts take. This is the idolatry of the arts that I was referring to. John Petrucci is only valuable because he had to suffer to get where he is? People put their own suffering on a pedestal and then gatekeep the very thing they strove to be, all because somebody might have a chance at matching or exceeding them with less physical turmoil along the way. John Petrucci is admirable even if AI guitar can sound as good as he can.

Skill has value only because it requires effort. It wouldn't be skill if it took no effort. We can look at JP and see that he's put in the work when we watch him and that makes him admirable. If achieving those tones and that style of playing was easy then the music would still be good, but the man himself wouldn't be of much interest beyond how he uses that style to express himself. Imagine a world where you could press a button and become the most skilled guitarist in the world with style and expression and everything else; do you really think we'd still appreciate guitar skill in that situation?

If making films like Tarantino or building a body like Arnold or performing like an Olympic athlete was easy then we wouldn't covet those achievements. Yes, things are more impressive the greater suffering required to achieve them. If that wasn't the case then sitting on the sofa watching TV would be seen as an equally impressive feat.

It isn't gatekeeping or elitism, it's just a fact of how humans are wired. Hard things that lead to great results are impressive. Shortcuts aren't. Creative expression is inexorably linked to skill which is inexorably linked to suffering.

[Mladen]

Those are some valid points, Pebsie. I'd only take objection to the term suffering. It's more about the hard work and effort than suffering.

[Pettor]

I agree with Pebsie.

What I hope we move towards is an AI that emphasizes teaching and guiding humans to learn, rather than one that bypasses the learning / creative process almost altogether. The "prompt + button" approach to art is impressive in its own right, but it doesn't reflect the creator's personal ambition and vision. Honestly I find this approach to be such a dystopian capitalistic approach to art. Basically you skip most of the art and just produce more content based on others work. But it has a place like sampling or anything else that progress the field.

Perhaps in the future, AI will evolve to offer a more interactive, iterative process where you can shape and design songs piece by piece. That would be a far more engaging and creative tool than simply having the AI generate an entire composition. The copilot approach I quite like where AI can help and guide in the context of what you are doing. So when I create a song and get stuck or feel unsure how to do something, the AI can help me progress.

Right now I think we're amazed by the technological achievement that something can produce a song like this, but I think (hope!) we will end up with better tools to guide and most likely some impressive unique ways of using AI to create a new blend we haven't thought about.

Also when it comes to DT + AI I just think there's no current application where DT would really need or feel compelled to use it., more than maybe video and images. They know their craft better than most, love producing it from their own creative minds and AI would maybe at best produce something to get inspired by, but that would most likely take more time for them. Also their certain genre and craft isn't what the AI is mainly trained on anyway.

[hefdaddy42]

As it has been discussed in this thread, AI art sometimes requires much more effort than "writing a prompt". That is what I do, I write prompts 'cause I use an image creator for fun and for hobby; if I can say it myself, I more or less got the gist of it, I can be creative in my prompt and obtain nice images.


This doesn't make me an artist however. It just makes me someone who understood how to interact with a machine.

Exactly.  If you can't make the art without AI, then you aren't an artist.

And if you were already an artist, and for some reason you decided that going forward you would ONLY use AI to create your art, I don't know what you are, but it would make me sad.

[BlackInk]

So I think this is where we our views diverge too much to reach an agreement.

Maybe, but I'm beginning to suspect that we're probably more aligned than we feel that we are. Not completely, of course, but perhaps more than we think.

It seems to me that you don't want lazy, soulless art. I'm 100% with you, which is why I have agreed that most AI art sucks, or at the very least can be interesting or impressive as a technological achievement more than as a creative product. But there are high-effort and cool creative applications of this technology that I (and, it seems, you, as per your response) would still call art.

So it looks to me that you can join me in thinking that there are--however rare--legitimately artistic applications of this new tool. Meanwhile, I can join you in rejecting the bland crap that is most AI art, and feel negatively toward applications of it that are only for the cost benefit and corporate profit, or work that doesn't have the human creative spark behind it. I wouldn't want to defend any of that (other than doing it for fun, such as MirrorMask (and myself)). I think that's enough agreement to make me feel like this is a productive exchange.

What I've been saying is simply that I don't categorically condemn the application of this technology for creative ends. The video I linked was meant to be a sort of paradigmatic example, a high-water mark perhaps, of the technology being used with genuine creativity. If DT had a really passionate idea for an AI cover, one that took actual work by actual people utilizing AI as a tool of genuine creation, to the level portrayed in that video or something analogous for DT, I would not have a problem with that. That would be interesting. A cover generated from a simply typed prompt would be less so, and I wouldn't be as interested in that (although I suppose it could still be cool, TesseracT's album cover for War of Being was apparently created through a lot of work with prompts, based on very specific ideas and concepts that the band came up with as part of that concept album, and I think that looks kinda neat).

It's also possible that I'm not as sensitive to AI artwork because I come to DT albums, or any album, for the music. The album cover to me is just packaging, not the product. As I've said previously in this thread, if they started generating the music with AI, that would be a different discussion. It's like going to an art gallery and being told that, while the paintings are all made by humans, the frames are AI generated. I wouldn't really care that much as long as they looked nice.

[hefdaddy42]

Comment to bring this thread back to the top, since it was actually created this year, not in 2010.

[WilliamMunny]

Super good convo going on here...lots to chew on, but yet another example of why this forum is such a special place.

[Puppies_On_Acid]

To those of you who are anti-AI, and I understand some of your points, I have a question for you.

I have used computer programs, like Cinema4D, Blender, Photoshop, and numerous others, to make what I would consider art. Now over the years a lot of those programs have added AI components to take some of the tediousness and effort out of what I create. Does this make me less of an artist because I'm using the tools to make my life easier and by extension easier to create art?

I mean, there's only so much time in the day, it would be stupid (at least in my opinion) to not use advancing tools to help. If you only judge the quality of the art by how long the artist took to make it and how hard they had to work for it, then by that logic every artist should only be allowed to make art chiseling stone by hand (which they mined themselves) or making our own parchment, paint brushes, and paint. Otherwise it's all just too easy for the artist and thus isn't art...

[Schurftkut]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKXkpJb7zKQ

Jordan talks about AI tech he's involved in, first live demo will be 21st at MIT!

[TheHoveringSojourn808]

maybe they never made a new DT album and they're just going to ask Chat GPT to make it a few minutes before the first show of the tour

[Glasser]

maybe they never made a new DT album and they're just going to ask Chat GPT to make it a few minutes before the first show of the tour

 

[MirrorMask]

maybe they never made a new DT album and they're just going to ask Chat GPT to make it a few minutes before the first show of the tour

All this additional time without updates is really them trying over and over to refine the ChatGP prompt in order to get the results they want.

[TheHoveringSojourn808]

lmao