As someone who occasionally writes a bit of music, I've had trouble putting into words exactly my feeling around AI generated art. One of the best takes I've seen on it which perfectly captured my feelings was by the Oatmeal: https://theoatmeal.com/comics/ai_art
The Oatmeal gave it away in the first 10%. If you like it until you find out it's AI, then it's not about the art, it's about the viewer, their judgement, preference, and opinion, not something intrinsic to the piece.
That's fine, but every attempt to then justify that judgement, preference, or opinion, in a way that does reflect an intrinsic aspect of the piece is a lie, a post hoc rationalization that cannot withstand the simple fact that it was liked as a thing in itself before it's story of creation was known.
Let's say I introduce you to a friend of mine. You chat for a little while, and everything seems to be going well, you like them. Then, I tell you that my friend loves kicking puppies and infants. Really hard too, like he's kicking a field goal.
All of a sudden, you start acting like he's a "bad guy," who should "burn in hell." You liked him just fine before I gave you that info, so clearly that's just a post hoc rationalization that cannot withstand the simple fact that he was liked as a person before his interests were known.
What are you talking about? Knowing a person and knowing a painting are nothing alike. You're the first person I've ever met that has ever suggested similarity.
Person or painting is not relevant in this argument by analogy. It's the commonality of "more than meets the eye", or "don't judge a book by its cover", or "appearances can be deceiving" between the two situations. There's dozens of idioms for this situation because it's so common.
I could just as easily make a painting analogy. You go to an art gallery and a piece immediately catches your eye. The composition, colors, you even think you can see a rosy meaning behind it all.
Then the curator comes by and explains that it was painted by David Duke, grand wizard of the KKK, and that the piece represents his deeply racist hatred of black people and his desire to murder innocents.
What you feel after having that explained is not "post hoc rationalization" - you're just recontextualizing your previous feelings towards the piece now that you have new information. That is the argument.
You could explicitly declare a separate judgment of quality apart from whatever else that was context-dependent.
If an artwork references something outside of itself, like making social commentary, then you need to understand that context to judge the quality of that reference: like whether the commentary of the artwork is astute or not.
The quality you can judge independently of context basically has to do with esthetics and craftsmanship, complexity, detail, consistency with itself and the like.
And in real life that's not what I see. I see people making comprehensive judgements about a piece that change when it's revealed that AI created the peice. When people rewrite their opinions, it doesn't come across as honest or authentic.
This is because people are using the artwork as a proxy to praise or criticize the creator.
When they say that the work is intricate, showing great skill and perseverence (to pick some quality judgments), they mean that the artist has skill and perseverence. When that turns out to be an algorithm that is mashing up information from the training data, then people take that back; there is no artist there with skill and perseverence. The artwork itself doesn't contain skill or perseverence; it's just potential evidence that skill and perseverence were involved in its creation, which is not confirmed when it's an algorithm.
Nobody actually cares about the art; it's always about the person.
People idolize the arists, while pretending to be idolizing their works.
That's why an artist can commit "career suicide" with a neo-nazi rant, or possession of child porn, or whatever; it was never about the actual artistic artifacts.
Why was Bob Ross, the painter, regarded as kitch? In large part because he used tricks to create detail without deliberation; almost like an algorithm. You use this kind of brush, dip it lightly into white, dab it it a few times this way on the cavas and that way and, hey look, it's an ocean spray above the rocks: "anyone" can do it if they follow along. It's thew same thing: the dabbing thing and whatnot were like his AI; he just "prompted" the brush, make me a realistic spray and the brush did it with a trick.
Art has to be confirmed evidence of Hard and Deliberate Effort having taken place, using Skills that took Years of Practice combined with Talent to acquire; that's just the way it is.
Art fans are basically sports fans; art is a kind of sport, where any kind of shortcuts are like steroids, hidden motors and course cutting; those who retract their judgments believe that they have all of Honesty and Authenticity entirely on their side, because it's never about the Work by itself, but only circumstances of its creation.
>People idolize the arists, while pretending to be idolizing their works.
100% in agreement. No judgement for idolizing or at least appreciating hard work, talent, or skill. Just don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining. Be honest about that reasoning otherwise it sounds like lies because that's what it is.
Suno music is the modern equivalent of sample packs that are like Lego blocks, to allow people to quickly throw together cliches.
It can pass for OK music and good musicians sometimes use stuff like that, too.
But it's much closer to these soulless "London Authentic Jungle" loop sample packs or to "Dance eJay" than to a musical instrument.
I also feel it's not very similar to generative electronic music, which is about control and experimentation in a very different way (generating cliches with generative synths is hard, apart from some ambient drones or meditative arpeggios).
Suno and similar tools are designed to generate cliches from... text.
It doesn't matter that it incorporates AI and does stuff that was thought impossible a couple of years ago.
It's still a pastiche of cliches and not a musical instrument.
And the comic is nice!
Others mentioned sampling and synthesizers here, and I can't think of a comparison that I'd consider more misplaced.
Good sampling is really creative.
And bad sampling is the same as a bland, commercial cover version of a song. Many people don't bother to differentiate, but sampling and cover versions are very different things, and it's rare for both to appear together in one good song.
