AI assisted art

[lwise]

AI images from AO3, so far:

Spoiler: Sigrun Eide • show

You want my picture? Of course you do! I'm the most best trollhunter in Norway!

Spoiler: Mikkel Madsen • show

Yes, I know I look a bit scruffy. I've been pushing a wheelbarry for days and haven't had a chance to shave. It happens.

Spoiler: Reynir Árnason • show

Oh, we're doing portraits? That's great! Can I help set up the lights?

Spoiler: Emil Västerström • show

We're sitting for portraits again? Okay, then, I need a comb. You don't have a comb? Or even a brush? Do you know how windy it is out there? Fine. You can take my picture with my hair like this. I look like a slob. This is sooo lame.

Spoiler: Tuuri Hotakainen • show

Yes, it's rough not knowing. Still, we've done a lot here -- I've done a lot here. And I still have hopes that someone is looking out for me.

Spoiler: Lalli Hotakainen • show

Why are you bothering me with that camera?

Spoiler: Onni Hotakainen • show

I haven't shaved in a while. I've been busy. If you don't like the beard, I don't care.

Spoiler: Taru Hollola • show

I'll concede the expedition didn't go perfectly. If the Danes had properly maintained their bridge, though, it would have. And I advised against looking for the so-called cure. So I don't take any blame for the unfortunate events.

Spoiler: General Trond Andersen • show

Yes, by all means, show the entire Known World what Norway's spymaster looks like. I can't imagine this going wrong at all.

Spoiler: Siv Västerström • show

Do we have to do portraits now? I didn't sleep last night, worrying about … everything.

Spoiler: Torbjörn Västerström • show

Yes, I'm Torbjörn Västerström, of the Mora Västerströms. Doubtless you've heard of me, as I'm one of the sponsors of the famous Silent World Expedition. And you'll have heard of my nephew, Emil Västerström, as well. A brave young man! If I didn't have three children whom I didn't wish to leave fatherless, I'd have volunteered to go in his place, of course.

[dmeck7755]

I loved them all.  You definitely nailed it for Trond

[lwise]

Thank you.

[Jitter]

I got really cool stuff for the apocalyptic Christmas on Stable Diffusion (NightCafe) setting ”modern comic”. The prompt for this one was ” Apocalypse, monsters, city ruins, happy, christmas, colorful, celebration, christmas tree, candles, magic”. I’ll try and see if I can find the time to put up some more of them.

The good point about not having time to do them is that the credits accumulate (I have visited evefy day to get the daily 5) and it allows some playimg around. Still not on Discord, therefor no MidJourney.

Lwise, the point of this thread is to post the art so please don’t be shy Your portraits are great, I especially Ike Sigrun (even with the makeup), Onni, Trond and Taru. As well as Reynir and Tuuri which we already discussed. Great work!

The more I work on the characters and admire yours, the more it bugs me that there’s no way to lock a look. Like say ok this is my Trond, now show this person in a scene from a spy movie, and it would retain the likeness. I mean such tools have to exist because there’s talk about using AI for movies etc, and the DeepFake “photos” and such require this, but it’s not available on NightCafe.

[lwise]

You can actually install Stable Diffusion UI on your own machine, if it has the GPU power.  See https://stable-diffusion-ui.github.io/docs/installation/

I don't think it's quite as good as NightCafe, though I put the final touches on Sigrun and Tuuri using my local install, and I've gotten some nice images out of it.  Like this one:



It's free to get and free to use.

[lwise]

The more I work on the characters and admire yours, the more it bugs me that there’s no way to lock a look. Like say ok this is my Trond, now show this person in a scene from a spy movie, and it would retain the likeness. I mean such tools have to exist because there’s talk about using AI for movies etc, and the DeepFake “photos” and such require this, but it’s not available on NightCafe.

It's not really available, but you can do some things with inpainting.  I couldn't find any really good YouTube videos about it, but here's something from NightCafe that gives a brief introduction: https://twitter.com/NightcafeStudio/status/1568056211450503169.  I'm trying it out now.

[lwise]

I tried out inpainting.  Here's my initial image (prompt was "plump gritty mechanic engineer, woman by bob eggleton"):



Here's the mask that I drew around her:



And here's the result with a new prompt ("plump gritty mechanic engineer, woman in busy repair garage, tractors"):

[dmeck7755]

It is cool (and frightening) how good the AI's are.  I also see what you mean by AI's left eyes

It has become a big deal on how someone can put a person in a place or position they were never at.  (This has been a worry in the fake news arena)  Add that with the AI voice editing. 

There are tools that discern real from fake.

Hollywood has definitely been using them (The ending of the Mandalorian Season 1, and Tron2 are early examples)

[Turnstylus]

I really agree with you, dmeck7755 - it's impressive to see the AI technology get better at taking direction from a person and sending back cleaner and more accurate pictures.

I also agree that it's frightening, particularly for artists who make their living doing illustration. I frequent ArtStation and many of the creators there have been posting images that are essentially a boycott of the platform, because (in these creators' opinion) ArtStation has allowed too much AI art to be highlighted alongside their purely hand-made creations. Here's an example:



I understand the fear is that robots will take art jobs away from people, a thing that no one ever thought would happen, but I'm not convinced we're at that point yet, or ever will be. I've seen several professional illustrators use Midjourney as a "jumping-off point" or idea generator at the beginning of their process, and when the AI gives them a composition they like, they improve the details and fill in the elements that the AI left out or didn't quite get right. Artists still required!

[dmeck7755]

Turnstylus,

I think you are correct.  AI is going to turn up more frequent in litigation as time goes on.  It has done so in the non-art arena (fake news/images).  There also was a recent reversal of judgement against a comic artist who used AI for their work. 

This to me is a quandary.  The art may have been done by the AI, (or at least started) but the story was created by the individual.  So does this person lose everything because they used AI to do the art? 

Lwise has said below that it takes many tries and a lot of time to generate the artwork that they did for us in generating the images for the SSSS cast.  Lwise also uses many tools to get the effect of each individual. I consider lwise's work art.  The same with the images Jitter has created.

I agree with you, I do not think AI on its own will equal something a person can do.  A person will still be needed to fit that image to whatever they are needing/wanting it for.

An AI cannot  generate anything by itself.  It can take what it learned an make something.  It will be nice, but it would resemble something else.  A human on the other side of the keyboard supplying the code/text, initial image will create something unique and thus art. (I am not sure if my thoughts are coming out right here )

I sort of remember the same conversations about this when CG art was coming into vogue.

[Jitter]

I can easily see why professional artists are worried. However, we still have painters despite the fact that we also have photographs. An AI doesn’t have imagination or creativity. Maybe one day it will, but that time is still far off. And if and when it happens, will the entity still be a machine? Or would a creative AI be considered an artificial person?

[lwise]

I can easily see why professional artists are worried. However, we still have painters despite the fact that we also have photographs. An AI doesn’t have imagination or creativity. Maybe one day it will, but that time is still far off. And if and when it happens, will the entity still be a machine? Or would a creative AI be considered an artificial person?

AIs such as we have now also don't really have cognitive abilities.  My brother is a computer scientist, so he demonstrated this by asking ChatGPT, "Does 53 kilos of feathers weigh more or less than 53,000 grams of plutonium?"  It brilliantly argues that, because feathers are lighter than plutonium, feathers are heavier than plutonium: "Plutonium is a dense, heavy metal with a high atomic mass, whereas feathers are much lighter and less dense, with a lower atomic mass. As a result, 53 kilos of feathers, which is equal to 53,000 grams, would weigh significantly more than 53,000 grams of plutonium."

[Turnstylus]

lwise, your brother is my hero for the day! Brilliant!

Jitter, if only I had the answer to your last question! Some of us would have a hard time saying a truly creative AI wasn't a person of some kind. When we speak of "Creativity with a capital 'C'", we mean making art of some kind: visual, tactile, music, literature, etc. But creative actions are happening all the time. The simple act of forming a sentence that reflects your life, or telling a funny story in your own voice - these are creative acts of self-expression. And an AI that could do that - really do that, and not just assemble pieces from the lives/works of human persons - would seem very personal indeed.

I read a little more about the ArtStation situation, and there's more to it than I thought: ArtStation has made some changes to their site's structure so that when an artist posts their work, they can tag their artwork to prevent AI's from using that art in their machine learning process.

So artists weren't just worried about AI art being given equal honor to their hand-made stuff: The artists realized that AI's were using their art to get smarter - the equivalent of "ripping off" their style or technique -  and the artists felt they should be able to give/refuse permission to do so. More to think about...

[lwise]

Spoiler: Admiral Olsen • show

One day soon we'll have the bridge repaired, and then we'll march across and recover our homeland.

Spoiler: Pastor Anne • show

Welcome!  I'm so glad to see new people!

[Jitter]

Anne is perfect!