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Vanechka's avatar

In A History Of The World In 10 1/2 Chapters by Julian Barnes, there's a chapter about a man who gets into Heaven, the realm with infinite possibilities: no boundaries, no unfulfilled desires. The eternal cycle of indulgence. The protagonist can do anything he could imagine. Food, travelling, sex, meeting Hitler (kind of) so on and so forth, every day for the rest of his life that never ends. But "after a while, getting what you want all the time is very close to not getting what you want all the time." Heaven stops being fun anymore. It becomes normal. Even novelty must not be abundant otherwise we start looking for a different orthogonal or reversed kind of it. The protagonist feels this, too, and chooses to leave Heaven and die permanently. "I dreamt that I woke up. It’s the oldest dream of all, and I’ve just had it," he says.

So, why I wrote all that is I think this applies to literally everything. Even excessive novelty is prone to inflation, and any abundance is satanic in a way :D Anything in abundance quickly becomes “boring”, less stimulating, “not sparking joy” and often we start looking for something new / unique / scarce. Not exactly in the same way, but I think something similar might happen to images or whatever AI can generate.

Although I agree Dall-E 2 will disrupt commercial illustrations industry at least somehow, I think it’s quite different for Art and it’s different for mass-produced vs specially crafted, just like it is now. I think we as artists will find a way to create something that stands out stylistically or with some other qualities, something surprising and stimulating, or at least something that has a mark “made by human” and costs x2 just like “organic” products now.

So, pardon me a repetition, but I want to highlight one of the ground truths of human existence, "after a while, getting what you want all the time is very close to not getting what you want all the time."

P.S. your suggestion on writing a short fiction is very tempting, I can’t think of anything else now.

Cheers

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CNP's avatar

All the styles Dalle creates in are pre existing styles of art that have been developed by humans in the past - is AI going to come up with new styles that appeal to humans do you reckon or is stylistic innovation still a human centric domain?

That pic of the Andy Warhol astronaut looks like what I would think an AI would think is a Warhol-esque style but I wouldn't say it's very aesthetic - why is it centred so weirdly on the page for one thing. There are a lot of blobby looking artefacts where the reins would be. The astronaut's arms aren't defined and kind of join onto the mane in a mess. Warhol's screen prints are neat and sharp.

The artwork is impressive on the whole. I'm impressed with how it looks for AI generated art. But the pencil drawings of horses are almost all horrendous and have weird growths, if you look at them closely. Anyway, those are some of my thoughts, but I am a commercial illustrator, so I'm feeling quite judgy.

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