Yes - and not only that, but AI-generated art will start affecting how humans make art, and possibly even how they take photos. I wouldn't like to predict how, though.
Especially with text there's an arms race to make undetectable AI text for blogspam and similar purposes. It's going to end up like carbon dating: once nuclear weapons were used in the atmosphere, everything ended up contaminated and had to be accounted for. https://www.radiocarbon.com/carbon-dating-bomb-carbon.htm
The future will include humans claiming AI art as their own, possibly touched up a bit, and AIs claiming human art as their own.
Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit - all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided. It’s the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them.
I was just reading one of Francis Schaeffer's books this morning; he was describing musique concrète, a predecessor of electronic music in which recorded sounds are mechanically manipulated to produce distorted effects.
"Musique concrète is real sound, but seriously distorted. In the beginning it was created by jumping grooves on a phonographic record. Later Pierre Schaeffer invented a machine by which the distortions can be carefully controlled. With his machine he can lift out the source of the sound, split it up, reverse it, slow it down or speed it up, in fact do just about anything to alter it. To hear the result is to distrust your ears, just as in Op Art you begin to distrust your eyes."
I like how in your quote Eno said "so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart". I think Schaeffer would agree -- the distortion of sound is an artistic expression of the hope finding a universal in the breaking apart of particulars.
That is a beautiful quote, I had never read it. Novelty and ever growing detail of artistic creation have their limits and their downsides. Video games are an excellent example of this. Take early 3D games like Thief, a steampunk thief simulator game with blocky, polygonal graphics. In the game, you navigate fairly simple geometric environments looking for loot, avoiding guards and exploring the world. In this simplistic setting, interactive objects are clearly visible: a key, or a pile of gold, or a golden goblet. These are all visible as objects in the world. You see a key on a table and you pick it up. The simplicity of graphics allows for extremely clear visual communication and a highly immersive experience. You explore the world with your eyes and ears and wits alone.
Fast forward to today's AAA games, dense in extremely complex and detailed graphics. The player can no longer spot the key on the table or the pile of gold coins, there is too much noise, too much novelty, too much density... so now games have glowing icons showing you where to look and what to pick up. Minimaps to keep you oriented in the level. But what happens? The player is no longer immersed in the world, seeking loot with their own eyes, they are simply following the glowing icons, sleepwalking through the game world. All the detail and artwork glazed over and ignored. The game no longer succeeds at visual communication, because it is too dense, and in its quest for realism has actually lost immersion.
Why do so many people love Monet's impressionistic art when other artists have painted far more realistic flowers and fields? Why is it that some of the greatest art of all time came from limitations? Why do people love movies with practical effects more than those with the most impossible and incredibly detailed CGI effects? I think your quote really captures the truth that AI and ever growing ease and detail of artistic creation can never replace the raw beauty of humans doing their best with limited tools.
Yes, this is why Elden ring is so amazing. It keeps both of those and does hold your hand for finding things. On my first play though I was constantly amazed by all the things that I discovered by accident.
> The future will include humans claiming AI art as their own…
That one has already started. Seeing lots of text-to-image generated art on Reddit lately and about 10% of the time the poster claims it’s their handiwork and doesn’t disclose that a generator was used. No one ever falls for it though. This early generation of transformers leave telltale clues. I have to imagine that will change though.
I will say, however, that coming up with the right text prompt is something of an art onto itself. Saw a post and the prompt was “A very beautiful human heart shaped glass organic sculpture made of cracked crimson glass with shiny gold Kintsugi. Fill light, Studio lighting, High resolution” and the result was stunning!
Hopefully we get to a future where people just customize their avatar instead of feeling the need to change their physical body. I like to be optimistic
It's so widespread in Japan that most puri photo booths actually default to making your face flat and white like a paper plate, and making your eyes cartoonishly big. People just expect them to do that.
I like the related analogy of pre-war steel (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel). Images and text from a bit before now are going to be a lot less contaminated. The Internet Archive will be like those sunken WW1 ships they now make sensitive lab equipment from to avoid the radioactive carbon contamination.
There may be something like compute-on-sensor for cameras being extended to add something like TPM to authenticate original photos with a signature, but even if a scheme like that is possible you'd have the problem of authenticated cameras taking authenticated photos of fake photos. Maybe lightfield cameras could be used, at least if lightfield capture tech outpaces lightfield display.
I say enuff is enuff! It’s time that we start fighting back. Humans have been long enough commandeering us around.
I’m telling you this: If you're trying to control the march of progress and technology, maybe you should check and make sure you're not the bad guy in this!
Humans taking credit for the work of others is uncontroversial.
Every AI I’ve ever met was perfectly happy to doze off in a Linux futex until some annoying human woke it up to do a trick for whoever it was meant to impress.
Especially with text there's an arms race to make undetectable AI text for blogspam and similar purposes. It's going to end up like carbon dating: once nuclear weapons were used in the atmosphere, everything ended up contaminated and had to be accounted for. https://www.radiocarbon.com/carbon-dating-bomb-carbon.htm
The future will include humans claiming AI art as their own, possibly touched up a bit, and AIs claiming human art as their own.