William Overington

I find it interesting that often the request for a style is the name of an artist. I have requested, at least once, impressionist rather than name an artist, but usually i have named an artist. Yet what if, now, using Affinity software, some of us produce pictures in a new style with a specific specially coined name and post the pictures in a thread in the Share your work forum? Would we need to contact the people who organize the training of the AI system, or would the posting of the pictures or even just a text description of the style on the web be enough? Would posting such a specially coined name in this thread be enough? But if the text description of the style is in this thread, would that disrupt the training using the pictures? So to carry out the experiment, I can post some pictures to start, and if anyone is willing to produce a picture in that strictly designed style, send me a private message and I will send you details of the style. Nothing complicated, just so that In that way, a text description of the style will not be available on the web. Is anyone interested in participating in producing some pictures for the experiment, just for research, no fees or anything? William

Your contribution to our discussion has been very helpful. Thank you for participating. William

But why? I have been able to use Bing Chat AI to produce beautiful pictures and I have had a print of some of them made and framed them. I could not have produced them myself, I could not have afforded to pay an artist to produce them for me. So nobody has lost work as a result of me using AI to produce those pictures. Yet I have got some pictures based on text prompts that I have authored. Indeed, researching what generative AI can and cannot do has encouraged me to try more to produce pictures myself using Affinity software programs. Alright, at present, and maybe for always, my art output is nowhere near the quality of the work produced by other people. Yet, hey, hey ... 😄 William

Yes, fine. William

Regarding the so-designated indeterminate squiggle,

Writing a prompt to an AI system for the AI system to produce a painting is not necessarily lazy, it depends why it is done. It is not zero effort. Yes, I am at the whim of what the AI decides to produce. I can accept or reject what the AI produces. One can reset the same AI and use the same prompt again and get very different results. Sometimes I am delightfully surprised at what is produced. For example, when I asked for a painting in the style of Claude Monet of a lady in a long green dress feeding an okapi in a garden with a pond and flowering water lilies. Even more so when I edited the prompt and changed "an okapi" to "a stegosaurus" to observe whether the AI would produce that and it did. William

Possibly. Yet just because lazy artists may do that does not mean that everyone who decides what to type as input to an AI system is a lazy artist. To argue otherwise would be to be by a fallacy, the Fallacy of the Undistributed Middle. I have produced custom greetings cards each with an AI generated image on the front, and where normally the greeting would go I put a title, a statement that it is an AI generated picture and the prompt that I used. I state that I authored the prompt, and add the date. That seems perfectly proper. William

Readers are invited to look at the drawing and think about it before reading the hidden content.

@Bryan Rieger Thank you for your post. Influenced by your post mentioning the title 'Poems to the Sea' (I have not at the time of writing seen the picture) and by a picture entitled Aurora Borealis at The Museum of Bad Art, Unlikely Landscapes – Museum Of Bad Art But that title was not necessarily the intention of the artist. both of which I saw yesterday, and have intertwined in my mind. I have produced the following I have deliberately not added a title that might influence how people view it. There is one reply already. William

But it can have the effect of retrospectively affecting earlier uses. William

Sometimes people don't like to ask, they fear that they may appear stupid to others. It is far better to be clear in the original writing. I have read your comments, thank you for providing specific examples, but I opine that mansplaining needs intent and I have had no such intent. Also, mansplaining not only needs intent, it is from a man to a woman. Adding meanings to an existing word, perhaps swamping it so that its original meaning is gone, simply reduces the expressiveness of the English language. This is supposed to be a thread about using Affinity products to try to get as good effects as are in images being produced by Bing Chat AI. Why its existence was questioned and why you liked that post I do not understand. Anyway, the thread now has 2.5k views this morning, so it is being read. William

Possibly. Well, I don't do it. I am just trying to be helpful. Not really if it is an article on the web. Maybe ask in a forum, but inefficient. Far better that the post be written without assuming people know lots already. I just try to be helpful. Would some people prefer silence? William

I neither describe myself, nor think of myself, as an "AI artist". I wonder if I may include in this discussion something not about AI. I saw something somewhere sometime about an art exhibition where it was all, and only, wall panels with text of the kind that are normally used to describe a work of art that actually exists and is on display in the art exhibition. So the idea was to imagine the artwork from the description. I wonder if there is something on the web about it. William'

In this post. I wrote that trying to be helpful. I consider that to be good advice. If some people know that already, well, better to know twice than not at all. Well, I don't assume that others know basic facts. It is pointless to explain something in terms that assume a prior knowledge of something when in fact the person that one is trying to help does not have that prior knowledge. Face to face I first need to establish what knowledge the person has and go from there, in a text based forum that is not possible, so I explain from first principles. My intent is to enable learning, not to prove that I know something regardless of whether the person learns anything. I have often read posts in various places where people use acronyms and I do not know what they mean and I try to look up the meaning only to find that that acronym has many different meanings. I was taught to always write an acronym in full the first time it is used. But I suppose that some people might take offence if I write about using a PDF (Portable Document Format) file, as telling them something they know, whereas I am thinking of the beginner who might be reading the post who may not know what PDF means. My personality. I tend to think that a personality is like a signet ring in that it can produce an impression, but that can depend on the wax. William

Not at all. I never treat anyone like that. But if that is how I seem to you, perhaps I do to some others too. It is something I need to know about. Can you provide some examples please? William

Well, I just do not do that. It is not in my nature. Whatever you or others may consider you observe, it needs intent, and there is no such intent in my personality. William

No. Well, I suppose that the answer is yes. But I like to think that it is also in deciding what to type in and critically assessing the output. Thank you. I had not thought of that. I will try to look into those. You might like to have a look at the output that has been achieved by looking at the AI threads on pages 1 and 2 at the following place. Art & Literature (Page 1) — Alfred's Serif Users' Forums (punster.me) Well, I am trying to do that. William

No I did not. I had not realized that it was a link, I had thought that you had underlined the word for emphasis. In the meantime I have been writing in another thread. I will try to have a look. William

Mansplaining! Surely, mansplaining is when a man is explaining something to a woman with an intent to make her feel undermined. I never try to undermine anybody. I do tend to explain things thoroughly without presuming that someone must already know some basic facts when I do not know whether they know or not, on a better to know twice rather than not at all basis. But that is my thoroughness and skill as an adviser. But I do not undermine anyone, it is not in my nature, and I feel no need whatsoever to do so anyway. I like to achieve, yes, but I do not aspire to win such that others do not. William

I have just checked and found that as of writing this note that this thread has had 2.2k views. So there seems to be something regarded as interesting and relevant about it. William

Well, yes and no. I have entered some text as a prompt. The AI system has acted on that prompt. So, yes, the poem, or song, or story, or picture often, usually, is in some way qualitatively what I asked it to produce. But the result can be something that surprises me and causes me to smile with delight. Alas, due to the restrictions imposed by some of the moderators I am not allowed to include examples here, and I am not allowed to link to them. For me it is because I do not have the ability to produce paintings of that quality myself, and I find it interesting to be able to express a picture that I would like in text and then see the result that the AI system produces. I am a researcher so I find exploring what AI will produce is fascinating. While I do look at what other people produce, for me, just watching the world go by from the sidelines is not enough - I need to produce things myself. Generative AI has allowed me to produce beautiful pictures that may well never have existed otherwise as I could not have painted them and I could not have afforded to pay an artist to paint them. William

@KarinC @R C-R Look, I am retired, filling my day with things such as learning some Welsh on Duolingo.com, trying Generative AI, trying to improve my artistic ability using Affinity Designer, having a chat in this thread and some others, sending off for prints, framing them, keeping my mind active, and other bits and pieces in addition to everyday things such as eating and housework. If people start grumbling about this thread, all that is likely to happen is that one of the moderators may intervene, take some action of some sort, and that will be that. So the grumblers may get a win. But will that make them happy? Is it that using Affinity Designer and AI can only be discussed in Alfred's forum rather than the Affinity forum? The thread has now been controversialised. I just don't understand people who are not moderators stirring like this. There should be more happiness, less grumbling. If you would like to discuss using Affinity products to produce a picture like those produced using Bing Chat AI then fine. William