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A coffee shop owner used AI to make a menu poster. Then came the angry DMs

82 points · 316 comments · TMWNN

  1. sashank_1509 · · focus · HN ↗
    As a society we need to start seriously planning on how to ban AI in art.

    - I don’t want to listen music with AI generated vocals or tunes.

    - I don’t want to watch TV shows or movies with AI generated scripts.

    - I don’t want to read novels with AI generated text

    - I don’t want to see animations with any amount of AI in it.

    - I don’t want to play video games made by any amount of AI. (No FCKIN Blender models made with AI)

    - I don’t want any amount of my digital art or posters to be touched by AI.

    I think as a part of alignment all AI models above a certain size should refuse requests to generate stories, scripts any art object etc. text-to-image, text-to-music, text-to-videos should just be banned outright, I don’t see any good use case for them outside of art.

    If society cannot agree to do the above then at the very least, we should have a way to easily know if AI was involved in any of the art I interact with, so that I can avoid it with a ten foot pole.

    I say this as an early adopter and lover of technology in general, I bought the Vision Pro the day it came out, I bought experimental volumetric displays, experimental robot vacuums, I own 2 robot arms, LED panels etc. but generative AI in art just leaves me with disgust, I want no part of it.

    1. yjk · · focus · HN ↗
      Is the reason behind your refusal due to supporting artists, or due to quality? If quality: would you be open to AI-assisted but human reviewed art, especially when it's not the focus? Ie. if a game developer uses AI partially to do things that they aren't competent in, and likely AI is the reason the game actually sees the light of day. Would you prefer the game just never have been made? Will your view change if AI improves to the level where you can no longer tell the difference through the content alone?

      If for supporting artists: do you hold the same opinion on generative AI in other areas (machine translation, software engineering, self-driving technologies)? What if the AI was used by an actual artist as part of the process, where the AI content doesn't make it into the final version (eg. designing concept art/inspiration, creating the wireframing for animation scenes, etc.)?

      My personal opinion here is that some art is inherently about communicating a human message, which when replicated by AI loses meaning. However, in most places art is just transactional or filler - like in a poster, an educational video with animations, some parts of games, or a menu. I think that's okay.

      1. sashank_1509 · · focus · HN ↗
        It has nothing at all to do with quality. How the art is made is as much a part of the art as the said artwork itself.

        Anytime a piece of art really moves me, I proceed to study the inspiration behind it, what the creative process of the artist was like. Just imagining that in the future some “artist” when asked his creative process says “well I prompted the AI”, fills me with disgust.

        Your personal opinion is shortsighted. You do need to support a certain amount of bottom tier art jobs to keep a healthy art community. Yes a restaurant poster is not all that consequential “art”, but aesthetically I would much rather that money go to a living breathing aspiring artist than OpenAI. AI really just has no place whatsoever in any of the arts, the sooner society realizes that the better.

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