ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE and AI ART

AI (don't stop reading) is far more involving as an artform than photography ever was. Photography, you push a button and you get a picture.  You don't have to even be looking through the viewfinder.  A camera can take a photo without any participation by a human.  You can put an absolute ton of work into creating a photograph - every aspect of the photograph - and you can get an elaborate picture.  You take a picture of something that exists.

With AI (don't stop reading) you can of course push a button and the AI will generate a picture.  You can also put an absolute ton of time and creativity into creating an AI image - far far more time and creativity than was ever put into taking any photograph.  And what AI offers is a photograph of something that does NOT exist.  

AI gives an artist far more control over the image because the AI artist CAN CREATE THE SUBJECT of the photograph.  A photographer cannot create the subject.  Something has to already exist for a photographer to make a photograph.  The photographer can pick models and landscapes and every other thing that is photographed, and arrange all of it, and choose the lens and film (does film still exist?) and the point of view, and the colour balance, and they can direct models, or portrait subjects to do all sorts of things.  And then they push a button and they get a photograph of something that exists in front of the camera.

Nothing is in front of the camera for an AI generated photograph.  The artist has to create the subject.  Something the photographer can't do.

And the AI artist can create and manipulate every other aspect of the photograph - the lens, the composition, the colour, AND THEY CAN CREATE THE SUBJECT.

The art world thinks AI art takes no talent, no effort, no time, and no creative input from the artist.  Yes, you can type, "create a painting in the style of Monet," and you'll get a series of bad imitations of paintings in the style of Monet.  It takes 5 seconds.  An artist can also spend several weeks creating one AI mage.  They may make 11,000 images before they get the image they want created, by making thousands of adjustments to every aspect of the image.  I know because I do it myself.

Once upon a time, photography was not considered to be an art.  Photographs were worth next to nothing.  No museum or gallery would consider showing a photograph.  And that changed.

Right now AI is not considered to be an art.  AI art is worth next to nothing.  No museum or gallery would consider showing AI art.

And that's going to change - just like it did for photography.

Every day more tools and control are put into the hands of AI artists, and the possibilities of creating photographs of subjects that only exist in the imagination of the artist, are limitless.

Sure, a 5 year old can type, "I want a picture of a cat" and get it instantly.  But it's a photograph of a cat that doesn't exist.  Which is something of a miracle.

If you take an AI computer file of an image and have it printed on art paper like any art print, and you guarantee that it is the only one, like there's only one Mona Lisa, or it is a limited edition of a small number of prints, and they are hand signed by the artist - you have something that people are going to want to collect - like art.

It's going to happen.  It's just a matter of time.

Maybe saatchiart.com would consider creating an AI art category to sell AI art as one-of-a-kind, or limited edition prints, signed and numbered.  Keep ALL the AI art in this one category to assure buyers that they are NOT getting AI art from any other category.

Artificial Intelligence is currently being used in the creation of feature length motion pictures, in music videos, television series, fashion photography, advertising photography and art, all over the Internet and every social media platform, as stock “photography”, and as “fine art” prints, among thousands of other uses.

Please let's not have the discussions named “but it's not art”, “it's immoral because it's stealing intellectual property from other artists”, “it takes no time or talent - you just type a sentence and push a button”, “it's slop”, “it's going to take over everything in the world."

It exists, and it's going to be sold as fine art.  If not here, then everywhere else.  It's already being sold as “fine art” and being collected. 

But, like, if it's a sin to you, or it's not time yet, or if this isn't the place, then I'm fine with that. 

Luger von Ravensberg