AI Artwork and the Futility of Trying to Fight the Coming Tide

Image created by me in Stable Diffusion. Prompt: analog style | painting of | person sitting at a desk creating artwork on a computer screen | the computer monitor looks like it is from the 1980s PC era | the person looks like a hipster techno person | we can see the screen and its glow is lighting the face of the person | medium shot | art by greg rutkowski | art by artgerm | art by alphonse mucha

(I wrote this as a comment on Reddit (in AI artwork related subreddit) in response to someone who was getting depressed by that hating on AI artwork they saw. I figured I'd add it here since I think the sentiment it expresses is what will really happen. I'm writing this on 1/23/23.)

"The fear has sometimes been expressed that photography would in time entirely supersede the art of painting. Some people seem to think that when the process of taking photographs in colors has been perfected and made common enough, the painter will have nothing more to do." -Artist Henrietta Clopath voiced in a 1901 issue of Brush and Pencil source 

The new thing coming along and potentially displacing the old is nothing new. Painters thought it about photography. With hindsight we can see that painting wasn't entirely replaced by photography. They ultimately served different purposes. I'm sure it was a while before any photography was considered proper "art", but it did reach that status. When I was in college studying art in the early 2000s there was almost no distinction as far as prestige between photography and painting. Both were considered "fine art". 

If I was sitting in an art history class today and someone asked if AI artwork should be considered "real" art or "fine" art I would say that there would likely be a lively discussion and there would be valid points on both sides just as I'm sure there were arguments when photography was invented and started to proliferate. But I know from my art history classes that photography wasn't always considered "real" art or "fine" art. 

Early on people thought that photography didn't take any skill. How could pointing a camera at something and the developing that photo be "art" when you "didn't really do anything". "There isn't any creativity in that." But I'm sure we would find far less people willing to argue that taking a photograph isn't "art" today. 

I think something similar will happen with AI artwork. "You are just typing words into a box and clicking a button. That's not "art". That doesn't take any creativity. I'm sure many of us on this sub would agree that it takes far more than "typing words into a box and clicking a button" to create good art with AI. 

Many of us are obsessed with the process and spend hours upon hours working on creating art with AI. Just like there were artists that took to photography and created beautiful works of art just like there are painters who perfected the art of painting and made beautiful artwork with the tools they had. 

I was watching Blade Runner 2049 yesterday and there is a scene where a person is creating memories for the use of being implanted in replicants (artificial humans). The scene is one I've always thought was beautiful. In the scene the starts with a birthday cake and then beings up some files with different kids that are amalgamated into the scene, and she makes some tweaks here and there and then there is a very convincing "memory" of a birthday party that is assumedly ready for implanting into replicants to give them a memory of a birthday party. 

The actual part of the scene where she is blending together the parts of the memories is very similar in concept to what we do when creating still images in Stable Diffusion. In fact, if she had been creating a still image is might have appeared almost exactly like what we do. 

I mean what we do with SD seems like it could be ripped straight out of a scene from some futuristic sci-fi movie. If it was represented just how we actually use it today I'm sure we would balk and say that it looked fake. Like one of those "zoom and enhance" scenes where they take a small part of some grainy surveillance camera footage and somehow create a full rez image of a person's face. We can do things like that. SD upscale has been blowing me away with what it can do and img2img in amazing at being able to create details that aren't even there but look like they were always there. 

All this is a long-winded way of waying that people who don't understand the true power of what AI artwork brings into the world will try to fight against it but there is no way that this genie can be put back in the bottle. It's out there and just as it's unthinkable to image a work where we outlawed photography a time will come when the majority of people will feel the same way about AI artwork.