When "good enough" isn't really.

The general vibes I am getting back from my fairly intermittent and probably very personalized investigation of the massive deluge of commentary on "text to image" AIart is that of two extremes. Those vehemently against it (with the argument that it will be the end of artists, whatever that means) and those who see it as a wonderful new technology (bringing artistic creation to everyone). I don't agree with either. Like all technology there are pluses and minuses.

Created with Google
Deep Dream Generator

Let's begin by discussing a small personal project of my own. Can AIart tools be used to inspire my creativity? Specifically help me create a new cartoon character, I'm just using a simple prompt.

"cartoon of a watercolour artist painting with red hat"

I submitted this to a number of the more popular AIart tools. I definitely didn't expect similar results as I have been following most of the technical issues how each system has been created. The biggest difference is the data selected to train the neural networks, and remember there are usually two neural nets, one to review images (usually scrapped fairly randomly from the broader web, and the second to analyse associated text (usually within the websites or social media posts as an alternate text caption). Finally, it is very important to recognize that these systems are not copying the original images or even parts of those images. In the case of the image-based network it is just using "abstracted" dimensions (descriptors) that allow it to differentiate or group parts of the image. A previous post includes a video that explains these steps clearly. These could be shape, colour, texts, line ... I'll call them patches of style ... or perhaps how marks are shown might be a better description. Well, the results are a lot different.

Created in Nightcafe using a variety of methods but the same prompt.

First all these differences must make everyone realize that the common generic argument that these are copies or "rip offs" of an artist work, are largely uninformed ("fake new" in social media speak). Clearly, they are different because the neural nets were trained on different & very large datasets. In fact even submitting the same prompts can produce differences within a given tool. They are less copies and more just appropriation of some machine recognizable aspects of the style. You can quickly get into very muddy waters if you try to label this plagiarism, but even so I suspect5 legally this is a grey area.

The second myth to debunk is that because some of these systems are open source and free they are not promoted by greedy profit oriented vested interests (aka wannabe venture capitalist silicon valley types). Despite all this, yes all systems, restrict the number of free prompts you can submit and then offer ways to "buy" more "credits". To make it more game like you can "earn" credits sometimes by continuing to stay on the websites or use a specific part of their services. The really big costs in these systems are not really generating the work (although it might require more power/performance than the average PC or tablet today) it is the collating of the data and neural network training with millions of images and thousands on dimensions for characterization. These big projects requiring many people and seriously massive computer resources. Conveniently, a lot of this data is based on research projects, usually at universities and made available to the community relatively free of restrictions. I don't understand what is going on here, I do suspect some vested interests are deeply involved in academia, but I will restrain my suspicion until I know the work is noble and working towards a better future..

My final consideration for now is, are the photographers, illustrators and artists, whose work has been used in the training of these massive neural networks, happy about their work being included. I doubt they have even been consulted at all. Ok could they opt out? so that their style, characteristic mark making, colouring or composition doesn't keep turning up. I suspect not. The cat is already out of bag?

So, is AIart good enough (in terms of artistic quality)? Of course the quality of art is a very subject matter, and more relevant is the common perception that what is popular must be good. AIart has become very impressive in a short time but it doesn't live up to my expectations at the moment. There is always something a bit off (eg cropping, missing body parts, straying from the brief). Sure, you can refine the prompt, use the magic "words/modifiers", paint in or out, evolve and upscale, if you don't mind being kept using up your credits and buying more. Perhaps it is the public who have become more tolerant of lower resolution imagery and spend a lot less time actually looking at it. Instead, they are keen to scroll onto the next image, looking for that flashy colourful and more often moving picture. Well for a few seconds at least. The "good enough" threshold has perhaps become lower.