It's important to remember that there are many Monet paintings that critics don't like, or that aren't 'monet enough'. He painted fast to sell and make money and many think some paintings aren't as finished as they could be. He himself destroyed a number of water lily paintings before an exhibition [1], and again a lot of the work he did when he was partly blind due to cataracts.
It’s not a physical painting made by a well known artist.
It’s trying to hard to be a late Monet.
How much of our opinions are driven by context, rather than the actual subject? If Monet’s work is not so great without the context, is it still great? Or is context a critical piece of the art itself? Do we need to view a Monet piece within the scope of other Monet pieces, other artists, time periods, blindness, etc?
I’d say for art, a lot? There’s a ton of art that a halfway decent painter could do now, the art of it was being the one to do it originally. At least that’s how I, as an absolute philistine in that regard, understand it ;)
Yeah I agree, in art a lot is driven by context: there's so many paintings or songs that are not outstanding in itself, but the full human context around it makes it significant.
That brings up the idea that art can be "outstanding in itself", aesthetic in a vacuum, disconnected from what people are caring about. That's dubious, but anyway the AI art doesn't attempt that. Instead it has access to a lot of freeze-dried human context which it rehydrates and presents like a fresh meal, so it partially succeeds at providing that significance.
For an edge case: people will be impressed and interested if you tell them that a piece was painted by an elephant, and then suddenly unimpressed if you tell them you were lying about that. So one function of art is as a sort of experiment, like the art is experimental data, where authenticity matters, because the interest is in the demonstration of a perspective, the reactions of an artist in the situation. Consider noir: a movie is much more plausibly authentic noir if it was made before about 1963, that is, if it was made by actors and directors who actually wore those hats (and lived through other tropes). Later on, it's imitation, regardless of how accurate: the experimental data is invalidated, it doesn't (seem to) mean so much.
This is like asking people to rate this plate of bugs while serving them chicken. Even if tastes great, of course some people who will have a visceral reaction against it.
I think this HN commenter is also being fooled by the AI. It's likely that a lot of comments on HN are bots, so here you got an AI to comment about AI criticizing AI.
I think it shows that art and how people relate to it is more complicated than you think. If the existence of a bunch of handpicked comments can lead you to your conclusion, then you will struggle to find any "good" art at all. Which may be an entirely coherent interpretation of the state of things; just not a very interesting one.
Not GP, but I think that's exactly the kind of bias that needs exposing. People are prone to holding a few experts/artists/objects/products in high regarding, defending/denying any flaws, while pushing down on those with less heritage.
If we learn anything from all studies in this field, that is barely possible if not impossible at all, to change people’s mind. Even when they face clear evidence of their own mistake.
AI art enjoyers and missing the point of art: name a better duo.
No one has ever claimed AI cannot imitate a Monet, but however good the imitation, it still isn't art any more than a Xerox of a painting is art. This is the exact reason why most people feel bad after discovering that what they felt was work of human ingenuity, is just a fake, a simulacrum of it. The creation of art, arguably the most human of instincts, cannot be separated from the emotions and effort that went into it.
All this proves is that most people cannot tell if that picture is a Monet or not.
> All this proves is that most people cannot tell if that picture is a Monet or not.
It proves that people don't actually know what they like about "art" or even why they think some art is good, and some is bad.
These people criticized and trashed a widely regarded, famous painting because they were told that it was a cheap imitation.
If the AI generated a real imitation and the Met hung it on their walls I guarantee these same people would celebrate it just the same because they are told that it is real.
> All this proves is that most people cannot tell if that picture is a Monet or not.
It goes beyond that. It proves that many people have an inherent bias against AI itself that's unrelated to whatever it generates. "This was made by AI, therefore it's bad in every way".
Good points, but consider what this post does prove: people’s arguments against AI art are shallow; they often attack the artifacts themselves instead of making your deeper argument.
I remember this old episode of Doctor Who where the Doctor scoffs at a postcard with the Mona Lisa on it and derides souless "art made by computers."
As a digital artist, of course I rolled my eyes at the time, but these days I just keep thinking about that storyline more and more.
We've basically transitioned to a world where digital art is almost the default, but I think the world is going to value physical art much more highly in the coming years.
Let this be an example of when you present your own work in real life. Context and framing is everything and does influence its interpretation and how people perceive your work. This has material effects on your life despite nothing objectively changing about the quality of your work.
Shows nothing about AI, shows a lot about how low the bar has fallen for not taking everything you see on social media at face value.
Enticing an easy and predictable knee jerk reaction from a couple dozen users also hardly proves anything.
Another sign that the context and the human factor will always play a huge role in how we experience art. For example, AI generated music can sound perfect, but still we value it less if we don't know anything about the musician's life.
Many artists have a distinct, original style. Originality is the ability to create novelty in a way which is aesthetically pleasing. I've yet to see AI create a single distinct style which is beautiful.
I know, but it could be AI-generated as well, because people can't tell them apart. The point was that even if AI could imitate Monet perfectly, it's not Monet. It's a worthless test.
Well, there's the Einstein test: can AI figure out general relativity if it's trained only on knowledge up to 1915 or so, before it was discovered. Similarly, you could do a Monet test: train AI on everything before Monet and try to get it to create paintings similar to Monet.
Original is something that is out of the data distribution. AI can't do anything original, because it's job is to imitate the data distribution.
Originality in itself is not hard, because pure noise is original. It should be original and beautiful.
It's important to remember that there are many Monet paintings that critics don't like, or that aren't 'monet enough'. He painted fast to sell and make money and many think some paintings aren't as finished as they could be. He himself destroyed a number of water lily paintings before an exhibition [1], and again a lot of the work he did when he was partly blind due to cataracts.
[1] https://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28...
1: the answers posted are cherrypicked to prove a speicific point
2: some of the (albeit mislead) answers basically say "it's nice but it's not something a person willingly outlined and drew" and they are not wrong
3: some answers complain on the lack of depth and detail, color blurbs, and we have to agree the tested version is of very low resolution
so in the end we are left with: "some people who were told it was AI knee-jerked negatively" and i can't even start to see what's surprising about it
You're not surprised that people's judgement seems to be worthless?
the world is big, a given proportion of people will always behave strangely to the others
Two interesting replies:
It’s not a physical painting made by a well known artist.
It’s trying to hard to be a late Monet.
How much of our opinions are driven by context, rather than the actual subject? If Monet’s work is not so great without the context, is it still great? Or is context a critical piece of the art itself? Do we need to view a Monet piece within the scope of other Monet pieces, other artists, time periods, blindness, etc?
> How much of our opinions are driven by context
I’d say for art, a lot? There’s a ton of art that a halfway decent painter could do now, the art of it was being the one to do it originally. At least that’s how I, as an absolute philistine in that regard, understand it ;)
Yeah I agree, in art a lot is driven by context: there's so many paintings or songs that are not outstanding in itself, but the full human context around it makes it significant.
That brings up the idea that art can be "outstanding in itself", aesthetic in a vacuum, disconnected from what people are caring about. That's dubious, but anyway the AI art doesn't attempt that. Instead it has access to a lot of freeze-dried human context which it rehydrates and presents like a fresh meal, so it partially succeeds at providing that significance.
For an edge case: people will be impressed and interested if you tell them that a piece was painted by an elephant, and then suddenly unimpressed if you tell them you were lying about that. So one function of art is as a sort of experiment, like the art is experimental data, where authenticity matters, because the interest is in the demonstration of a perspective, the reactions of an artist in the situation. Consider noir: a movie is much more plausibly authentic noir if it was made before about 1963, that is, if it was made by actors and directors who actually wore those hats (and lived through other tropes). Later on, it's imitation, regardless of how accurate: the experimental data is invalidated, it doesn't (seem to) mean so much.
This is like asking people to rate this plate of bugs while serving them chicken. Even if tastes great, of course some people who will have a visceral reaction against it.
But they’re confidently asserting a whole bunch of specific made up reasons this is shittier than a real Monet.
It’s like the sommeliers who can’t detect red vs. white wine when blindfolded.
People would come up with very specific made up reasons why they hate that plate of chicken as well, so I don't see your point.
As for your red vs. white wine comparison, it'd only make sense if one of those was doing its best to pretend to be the other one.
The point is the objections are bullshit. They can’t tell!
Seems the poster is the one fooled by the AI more than anything, because most likely the bulk of the replies are bots, so you got AI to criticize AI.
The absolute irony of this comment being the equivalent of the responses to that post.
it was all engagement bait to auction off some NFT nonsense.
> Seems the poster is the one fooled by the AI
I think this HN commenter is also being fooled by the AI. It's likely that a lot of comments on HN are bots, so here you got an AI to comment about AI criticizing AI.
all right, all right, who got a bot to write this comment then?
bzzz, clank
Very good. We need more of these experiments in all areas. Hopefully it helps people to at least be more conscious of their bias.
I do think this reveals peoples' biases, but not in the way you probably do.
I think Monet just wasn't as good as his renown purports.
EDIT: I doubt this experiment would go similarly for a Caravaggio or a Michelangelo.
I think it shows that art and how people relate to it is more complicated than you think. If the existence of a bunch of handpicked comments can lead you to your conclusion, then you will struggle to find any "good" art at all. Which may be an entirely coherent interpretation of the state of things; just not a very interesting one.
Not GP, but I think that's exactly the kind of bias that needs exposing. People are prone to holding a few experts/artists/objects/products in high regarding, defending/denying any flaws, while pushing down on those with less heritage.
If we learn anything from all studies in this field, that is barely possible if not impossible at all, to change people’s mind. Even when they face clear evidence of their own mistake.
AI art enjoyers and missing the point of art: name a better duo.
No one has ever claimed AI cannot imitate a Monet, but however good the imitation, it still isn't art any more than a Xerox of a painting is art. This is the exact reason why most people feel bad after discovering that what they felt was work of human ingenuity, is just a fake, a simulacrum of it. The creation of art, arguably the most human of instincts, cannot be separated from the emotions and effort that went into it.
All this proves is that most people cannot tell if that picture is a Monet or not.
> All this proves is that most people cannot tell if that picture is a Monet or not.
It proves that people don't actually know what they like about "art" or even why they think some art is good, and some is bad.
These people criticized and trashed a widely regarded, famous painting because they were told that it was a cheap imitation.
If the AI generated a real imitation and the Met hung it on their walls I guarantee these same people would celebrate it just the same because they are told that it is real.
> It proves that people don't actually know what they like about "art" or even why they think some art is good, and some is bad.
That's because those are famously difficult questions to answer.
> All this proves is that most people cannot tell if that picture is a Monet or not.
It goes beyond that. It proves that many people have an inherent bias against AI itself that's unrelated to whatever it generates. "This was made by AI, therefore it's bad in every way".
that's because when dealing with art, the "why" something was made can be as important as the "what"
Good points, but consider what this post does prove: people’s arguments against AI art are shallow; they often attack the artifacts themselves instead of making your deeper argument.
I remember this old episode of Doctor Who where the Doctor scoffs at a postcard with the Mona Lisa on it and derides souless "art made by computers."
As a digital artist, of course I rolled my eyes at the time, but these days I just keep thinking about that storyline more and more.
We've basically transitioned to a world where digital art is almost the default, but I think the world is going to value physical art much more highly in the coming years.
NFTbro discovers expectancy effect. This has nothing to do with art or social experiments, so much so it's actually insulting to one's intelligence.
https://xcancel.com/jediwolf/status/2054776716770320631
Let this be an example of when you present your own work in real life. Context and framing is everything and does influence its interpretation and how people perceive your work. This has material effects on your life despite nothing objectively changing about the quality of your work.
Shows nothing about AI, shows a lot about how low the bar has fallen for not taking everything you see on social media at face value. Enticing an easy and predictable knee jerk reaction from a couple dozen users also hardly proves anything.
“Made by Claude”
That’s nothing new.
That’s just the art scene already ridiculed in the movie Interstate 60 with James Marsden and Gary Oldman and from 2002
https://youtu.be/HHwI37hkWfM?si=iFsWo3M5oSjLgE2F
Shows the pretentiousness of the twitterati more than anything else
Is it really showing just "the pretentiousness of the twitterati" when there are comments in this HN thread making the same kind of flip responses?
Trading on pretentiousness in cliques has been a thing in art long before the internet and Twitter.
Another sign that the context and the human factor will always play a huge role in how we experience art. For example, AI generated music can sound perfect, but still we value it less if we don't know anything about the musician's life.
I think the more interesting thing going on here is the growing anti-AI sentiment. (Which I very much feel in myself too.)
Cherry picked, contrived, biased; in a word, slop.
Being able to imitate Monet doesn't make you Monet. AI can't create anything original.
I loathe the blasted copyright washing machine as much as the next intellectually honest person, but:
> AI can't create anything original.
Can we? I mean, don't we base our output on experience and reprocess references + memories of things past to create what we deem as "new"?
Many artists have a distinct, original style. Originality is the ability to create novelty in a way which is aesthetically pleasing. I've yet to see AI create a single distinct style which is beautiful.
This is a real Monet.
I know, but it could be AI-generated as well, because people can't tell them apart. The point was that even if AI could imitate Monet perfectly, it's not Monet. It's a worthless test.
Define «original».
Under many definitions, where novel composition of existing knowledge or techniques is counted, it certainly can.
Well, there's the Einstein test: can AI figure out general relativity if it's trained only on knowledge up to 1915 or so, before it was discovered. Similarly, you could do a Monet test: train AI on everything before Monet and try to get it to create paintings similar to Monet.
Original is something that is out of the data distribution. AI can't do anything original, because it's job is to imitate the data distribution.
Originality in itself is not hard, because pure noise is original. It should be original and beautiful.