One word....

Good.

Agreed!

I'll third that.

Let the great artists use the algorithms. Let them earn their money via programming

I mean, it is the US after all, where state authorities/bureaucracy claim reality is subjective some of the time. As far as I understand, author identifies himself or herself with the work done via software. Even when most of the work is done via software that requires minimum to no input from the 'author'. I mean, the one giving commands to the software claiming to be the sole author of the product ? Yea lol. But it should be important that the 'complainer' identifies self as the author, Based on subjectivist 'reality' or cult/religion/ideology, the self-identifying as Author, should be praised and put in competition against those who do not use any such software tools to do their work for them.

I think there is some analogy to the use of calculators vs you doing maths yourself. When you do it, it is you. When calculator does it ? Your skill decreases in time- you only set the parameters for calculator to work for you. But it is not you. The author of the finished calculation is not you, even if you did use said calculations in your work. I consider this a circus that tries to grab attention - however with subjectivist 'reality' aka fantasy, you get people who will claim many things to improve their financial or other situation. They just made a breakthrough - hen you read and follow, well, no breakthrough, only theories, wishes.

The very notion how software, advanced algorithms gained marketing shock and awe, artifishool antellizhanse... bubble came, bubble burst, or at least it seems it does. Until the need to make money you get some new techno shock and awe propaganda campaign, where those wanting to make lotsa money invent some new 'breakthrough' and how you 'cant' really live without it.

I wonder how those who wanted to see living beings in computers with fancy pieces of metal or plastic, trying to hide that it is all about money will cope, if it will be a memoryhole and pretend they werent sept by techno charlatans.

This calculator analogy doesn't work in this scenario. Digital art created from others original copyrighted art is more comparable to plagiarism of copyrighted written word, which I might add is illegal to publish or copyright. Even though the created digital art may be new, it is still created from pieces of other's copyrighted art. It's original, but should not be copyrightable. Some artists who have had their art stolen (used without permission) by AI learning models have successfully sued for their art to be removed.

Although I don's see anything inherently wrong with AI created digital art, I don't believe the US courts will ever allow it to be copyrighted.

I fifth that.

Exactly.... and I'm old enough to remember a time before calculators existed.  When I got my first one I always had to do the maths in my head to verify the result was correct...couldn't trust that bastard technology...not back in the early 70s.

BTW...I used to do...and still can do long division in my head ...

I do not see the reason why the analogy supposedly doesnt work. It is just a tool that does what it is told. Yes, there are layers and layers upon layers of maths. It is not a person by any stretch, as some would love to imply by making it look as such. It does look to me in basics like you are still in essence putting 1+1 and the fancy calculator proceed to generate results.

AI creations, even with the most explicit of prompts is not art. The "artist's hand" is an extension of his deep feelings, not his linguistic vocabulary nor a keyboard. The emotions, memories and sentiments used to initiate the generation those...souless creations...cannot be translated into prompts just as music cannot be put into words. They are separate and independent media.

No intermediary can do it for you.

"There is no royal road to geometry." - Euclid

Am old enough also and did long column addition well into the 80s.

Could not even afford a cheap TI calculator. 

Same here. We had no crutches...either you knew it or could derive it or you flunked.

At no time in my primary, secondary, or tertiary education did I ever use or have the opportunity to use a calculator.  [in 1973 some fellow students made it to Germany and bought a Braun calculator that cast them around 180 GBP which at the time was about $300 AUD ... to put that in perspective the 26 hour flight to the UK return was $600 and that was a chartered 707, so no, couldn't afford a toy like that].

Every single bit of 'maths' I did was my knowledge only, no machine input.

Same goes for all my Architecture in the 50 years I was at it... no machine input, no CAD, Not a penny was spent with Autodesk.  I could never afford the time to 'learn' CAD as I was busy drawing the way past Masters did... by hand.

My graphic art was ink, pencil, Conte, bit of watercolour...

Then when computers came along it was Paintshop Pro.  The interface was now keyboard and mouse...but still manual cause and effect, simply electronic.

AI means giving the task to a 'slave' and telling it to do it for you.  The slave is the author... you are the facilitator.

If the Intelligence is 'Artificial' then by definition the 'art' is also.

Currently a lot of the AI output suffers terribly from failure to comprehend perspective in particular.

It sometimes gets pretty close with '1-point' perspective.... but at one time I was drawing renderings that had up to 13 VPs ... all generated mathematically [geometry]  so all could be proven to be correct and accurate.

AutoCAD can generate perspective correctly [particularly Revit], but the so-called 'Intelligence' that datamines online images to compile 'Art' clearly does not think well in 3 dimensions, heck, half the time it can't get mirror imaging right ...

Very simple example...ink and ink tone markers on plain paper... freehand...[can't rub out so errors remain] drawn from memory 45 years ago [only datamine was in my head].

You'd probably have to give the AI a lobotomy to draw simplistic like this one...

Actually, you'd have to give it an extra lobe to deal with simplification.  

I agree too paul, they are NOT "synthetic media artists", they are a "person with a computer".

A calculator doesn't pull material off the internet and manipulate into something else. Math is a science, not art!

JAFO - pretty darn good, considering the handicap of being a mere Human   

Doesnt a computer with software do that ? Doesnt software run on maths ? them zeroes, ones, so I guess by that definition it is imagery, but not art. 

If you're discussing the AI in image manipulation software, there's actual human photography or painting, etc. that's being altered via verbal (which is problematic) or non-verbal methods...and modified/masked or adjusted by the artist...actual human direct pixel pushing, as it were.

Yes, the machine works via binary values (1,0) but also via applying more sophisticated models which were 'taught' using human created art and plagiarized w/o express consent of the artists. That's the basis of why AI "art/non-art" is non-patentable.

Just so we are all on the same page, this is the piece we are discussing.