AI Talk

I totally agree, Jerry and a few others are creating great work from AI programs. Lets not forget though that a server is creating these images albeit with text prompts.
I've been trying to figure out where these AI works fit in my personal art universe. They make me think of magazine illustrations, for some reason (maybe the general glossiness and smoothness of them). And Jerry's latest combining two, for example, feels to me kind of like collages people make using magazine illos (though it doesn't look at all like those -- no torn edges, for one thing).
 
I've been trying to figure out where these AI works fit in my personal art universe. They make me think of magazine illustrations, for some reason (maybe the general glossiness and smoothness of them). And Jerry's latest combining two, for example, feels to me kind of like collages people make using magazine illos (though it doesn't look at all like those -- no torn edges, for one thing).
I came across this guy who's creating portraits made with AI.
So the people are just bot created images not real people. This sparked my interest, in fact I opened a Stable Diffusion account just try try this. The results were quite interesting I have to say. But not something I'd post on a Mobile Photography Community who has the No.1 rule - 'All images must be created and edited entirely on mobile devices'.

For the record and the kangaroo court, I have no objection to Jerry's art or any other AI wielders on MobiTog and I definitely don't make the rules here :lol:
 
869355078_realistic_polaroid_photograph_of_an_old_man_in_black_and_white_.png

One of mine for the purpose of debate.
 
for the purpose of debate.
The debate being should we change the MobiTog rules to allow AI-generated art?

As to AI art in general, I have mixed reactions. I've got some techy in me, so part of me is boggled by what these systems are doing. And I have, so far, enjoyed looking at some of the results, although I already find that much of it is looking rather same-y. The pieces I seem to like the most are those like juryjone's, which are not straight out of the AI's mouth but show some evidence of "the maker's hand" (pardon the arty talk).

I did spend a little time with Wombo Dream when it first came out and just lately with NightCafe. I had some fun, but so far it doesn't have any pull on me, and it's not anything I'm planning to pursue. (There's a lot of photography and digital art that I enjoy but don't have any desire to emulate.)

Does AI art belong in MobiTog? To my eye, a strict interpretation of the rules would say no. It's not executed on mobile devices, so it doesn't fit. (And that would also apply, for the same reason, to "painterly style" apps that upload your image to a server and then download the result.

But... I don't think mobile photography needs to be in circle-the-wagons mode in the 2020s. That skirmish is over -- we're photographers and artists producing photos and digital art, and we're doing it on mobiles. So we could set aside a forum for posting and discussing AI-generated art, if that's what people want to do.
 
But... I don't think mobile photography needs to be in circle-the-wagons mode in the 2020s. That skirmish is over -- we're photographers and artists producing photos and digital art, and we're doing it on mobiles. So we could set aside a forum for posting and discussing AI-generated art, if that's what people want to do.
Absolutely agree.
 
I thought they were generated via certain apps, or on a browser which you could access/perform on a mobile device.
You can access most AI programs via a phone browser but the heavy lifting is definitely done via a server. Obviously you could then adapt or embellish that image further like Jerry does with some of his. Making them tenuously 'mobile'.

It's an interesting area, I like Ted's circle the wagon comment. How dissimilar would it be for me to process an image via pc then upload it via mobile to Mobitog? Hence if it comes from a mobile it's a mobile image.
 
Of which I had no real input to, but thanks!
Me to my wife: "thanks for making lunch"
My wife: "someone else grew the potatoes, wheat, corn and raised the cow mainly using machines and mechanised processes.
Someone then harvested the plants and slaughtered the cow, again, with machines.
The food was transported in a machine to a place that machines further processed and packaged it, then someone put them in machines that moved them to a central location where I went, in a machine and bought it. I used a trolly and bags to carry the food and a regulated system of exchange to buy it. The exchange wss processed and recorded by a network connected system of accounts.
I then drove back on a road made mainly by the labour of machines in a car made mainly by the labour of machines and put your lunch in the microwave and turned a dial to heat it up. The microwave uses electricity I didn't generate myself.
I served your lunch on a plate I didn't make but you're welcome.
You do the washing up."
 
Me to my wife: "thanks for making lunch"
My wife: "someone else grew the potatoes, wheat, corn and raised the cow mainly using machines and mechanised processes.
Someone then harvested the plants and slaughtered the cow, again, with machines.
The food was transported in a machine to a place that machines further processed and packaged it, then someone put them in machines that moved them to a central location where I went, in a machine and bought it. I used a trolly and bags to carry the food and a regulated system of exchange to buy it. The exchange wss processed and recorded by a network connected system of accounts.
I then drove back on a road made mainly by the labour of machines in a car made mainly by the labour of machines and put your lunch in the microwave and turned a dial to heat it up. The microwave uses electricity I didn't generate myself.
I served your lunch on a plate I didn't make but you're welcome.
You do the washing up."
You tell a good story . . .
 
At the risk of labouring my point, we have a new, to us, circular saw this year.
IMG_20221105_124940.jpg

This took me about 30 mins to do.
IMG_20221105_124952.jpg

That's several hours of hard work if I do it manually with a hand saw.
I'd argue there's no way to sensibly argue that I haven't sawn the wood, that the machine did it, even though all I've done is make assumptions about where to cut based on the results I want, pressed a button and moved the saw at the hinge.

How is that different to making assumptions about a group of words based on the results I want and pressing a button to start the process?
who has the No.1 rule
An abitary rule made 12 years ago in a different world with different technologic sophistication by people who are no longer here who, never the less changed those rules recently based on the fact the world moves on.

kangaroo court,
Change the record John, we've heard this one before.
 
It's an interesting area, I like Ted's circle the wagon comment. How dissimilar would it be for me to process an image via pc then upload it via mobile to Mobitog? Hence if it comes from a mobile it's a mobile image.
Yeah, it's the drawing of lines (or not drawing) that's the thorny problem. Personally, I think there's still value to keeping an emphasis on mobile-only, if nothing else because it provides constraints (which I find to be a good thing, creatively) and because it gathers together like-equipped (and more likely to be like-minded) people who will have tips and tricks to share. But I think there's room to allow a forum slot for the occasional special case, which I think AI art qualifies as, although I'd prefer to keep such a slot separate from the standard MobiTog threads.
 
Me to my wife: "thanks for making lunch"
My wife: "someone else grew the potatoes, wheat, corn and raised the cow mainly using machines and mechanised processes.
Someone then harvested the plants and slaughtered the cow, again, with machines.
The food was transported in a machine to a place that machines further processed and packaged it, then someone put them in machines that moved them to a central location where I went, in a machine and bought it. I used a trolly and bags to carry the food and a regulated system of exchange to buy it. The exchange wss processed and recorded by a network connected system of accounts.
I then drove back on a road made mainly by the labour of machines in a car made mainly by the labour of machines and put your lunch in the microwave and turned a dial to heat it up. The microwave uses electricity I didn't generate myself.
I served your lunch on a plate I didn't make but you're welcome.
You do the washing up."
Bravo.
 
An abitary rule made 12 years ago in a different world with different technologic sophistication by people who are no longer here who, never the less changed those rules recently based on the fact the world moves on.

Yeah, it's the drawing of lines (or not drawing) that's the thorny problem. Personally, I think there's still value to keeping an emphasis on mobile-only, if nothing else because it provides constraints (which I find to be a good thing, creatively) and because it gathers together like-equipped (and more likely to be like-minded) people who will have tips and tricks to share. But I think there's room to allow a forum slot for the occasional special case, which I think AI art qualifies as, although I'd prefer to keep such a slot separate from the standard MobiTog threads.
Agree and Agree! Lest we become like our grandparents always looking back on how life “used to be” and not seeing what the world has become and embracing it. I would not want to open MobiTog up to “big camera” images, but offshoots like AI are interesting, fun and a cool creative outlet. Plus how boring is it to constantly regulate and reinforce rules and block new ways of being, rather than delight in a new art form and have the flexibility to adapt the rules.
 
Since I am one of a couple people here who has embraced AI art (dscheff is another), you may be surprised that I agree with everything that is said here. Yes, the actual image is made on the server, not on the mobile device. So Mobitog rules could certainly be interpreted to “ban” those images (most likely, politely ask them to be removed, since we have a very agreeable community here). As terse said, we could also carve out a separate area. I’ve done that in large part by creating my own thread where I show my images, and keep everything out of photo challenge threads.

I also fully believe that, as of right now, AI art is very antiseptic and boring UNLESS it is not displayed as a finished project. If we use it, as Ted says, like we would use source images in a collage, then it can be a valuable tool. (Lest anyone call me a hypocrite, due to today’s image coming straight out of an AI, I don’t always consider images in my thread to be finished projects. Sometimes it’s just, “isn’t that cool!”)

I wrote an article on my blog in 2016, “Musings on Mobile Art”, that addresses questions that the art world at large had at the time about that day’s technology. We’ve all heard from big camera photographers that digital photography isn’t art. We’ve all heard from painters and sculptors that photography isn’t art. And so on and so on. My response is that art comes from intent. If I make changes to saturation, clarity, etc. of a photo, especially targeted changes to part of s photo, then these are artistic changes. It may not be good art, but the intent makes it an artistic endeavor.

And that’s where I run into issues with the “prompt crafters” of the AI art world. The ones who add all kinds of verbiage to their prompts (“cinematic lighting”, “ultra high detail”, “8k”, “photorealistic”, “taken on a Sigma 35mm F1.4 ART DG HSM Lens for Canon DSLRs”, for god’s sake) that make no consistent material difference, then present it and say, “look what I did!” Really, is that exactly the image you intended to get with that prompt? You wanted that mouse to have five whiskers on one side and two on the other, a closed nostril and a withered paw? And if it isn’t what you intended, why didn’t you do some editing to more fully capture your vision? Because that’s where the art enters in.

Yeesh, this is a big topic, and I could go on and on for days. And I haven’t even addressed @sinnerjohn’s questions about photorealistic portraits of people that don’t exist.

tl;dr: AI text-to-image is a tool. It’s certainly within your right to use or not use the tool. It’s certainly within Mobitog’s right to allow the tool’s use or not. And merely using the tool is not what I consider art.
 
then present it and say, “look what I did!” Really, is that exactly the image you intended to get with that prompt?
Yes, it's a bit like saying "Hey, Claude, those water lilies sure look nice. Why don't you paint a picture of those?" and then claiming the result as your own. "I created it using my Claude tool!"
 
Since I am one of a couple people here who has embraced AI art (dscheff is another), you may be surprised that I agree with everything that is said here. Yes, the actual image is made on the server, not on the mobile device. So Mobitog rules could certainly be interpreted to “ban” those images (most likely, politely ask them to be removed, since we have a very agreeable community here). As terse said, we could also carve out a separate area. I’ve done that in large part by creating my own thread where I show my images, and keep everything out of photo challenge threads.

I also fully believe that, as of right now, AI art is very antiseptic and boring UNLESS it is not displayed as a finished project. If we use it, as Ted says, like we would use source images in a collage, then it can be a valuable tool. (Lest anyone call me a hypocrite, due to today’s image coming straight out of an AI, I don’t always consider images in my thread to be finished projects. Sometimes it’s just, “isn’t that cool!”)

I wrote an article on my blog in 2016, “Musings on Mobile Art”, that addresses questions that the art world at large had at the time about that day’s technology. We’ve all heard from big camera photographers that digital photography isn’t art. We’ve all heard from painters and sculptors that photography isn’t art. And so on and so on. My response is that art comes from intent. If I make changes to saturation, clarity, etc. of a photo, especially targeted changes to part of s photo, then these are artistic changes. It may not be good art, but the intent makes it an artistic endeavor.

And that’s where I run into issues with the “prompt crafters” of the AI art world. The ones who add all kinds of verbiage to their prompts (“cinematic lighting”, “ultra high detail”, “8k”, “photorealistic”, “taken on a Sigma 35mm F1.4 ART DG HSM Lens for Canon DSLRs”, for god’s sake) that make no consistent material difference, then present it and say, “look what I did!” Really, is that exactly the image you intended to get with that prompt? You wanted that mouse to have five whiskers on one side and two on the other, a closed nostril and a withered paw? And if it isn’t what you intended, why didn’t you do some editing to more fully capture your vision? Because that’s where the art enters in.

Yeesh, this is a big topic, and I could go on and on for days. And I haven’t even addressed @sinnerjohn’s questions about photorealistic portraits of people that don’t exist.

tl;dr: AI text-to-image is a tool. It’s certainly within your right to use or not use the tool. It’s certainly within Mobitog’s right to allow the tool’s use or not. And merely using the tool is not what I consider art.
I agree too. I actually toyed with the idea of setting up Stable Diffusion on my Mac Book Pro, which is mobile and, would squeak by the mobile rule. Sadly, I would have had to upgrade to Apple Silicon to do that.

Mobile Photography is my passion: admittedly a passion that has kinda cooled for a while. Photographically I'm in the doldrums and I don't like it one little bit. And in the meantime I kinda got away from the real intent of Mobitog. Lured away by the sparkly bits and a warm blanket, so to speak.

What I have noticed lately is that there are many sites popping up that allow a user to make "point and click" prompts, then copy and paste and create an image that has very little skill or creative input, save perhaps a title, (not that AI art can be compared to hours, days, weeks in front of a canvas, or waiting for days, or weeks, for that one shot of a landscape or wave formation). There is very little trial and error, little testing and design. Well. I've been guilty of this too. I do see a value in creating a start image in Dall-E2 and evolving it into SD to create a piece that is unique to the creator. Where possible I use the style of artists who have transitioned in to the Public Domain so as not to create a copyright nightmare.

I love what you do with your creations Jerry. My own attempts are not as polished but I persist 'cos I know one day they will make me happy.

I'm doing a show next year called "In Your Wildest Dreams," which will coincide with a published children's book. AI, in this case, has saved me a boatload of money and work as I evolved my own images into something completely different that fits fairly well into my imagination. As long, that is, as no hands are visible.
 
Back
Top Bottom