AI discussion (split from Canva thread)

[walt.farrell]

8 hours ago, steelblackRoan said:

There is a large majority of artists who stand against generative AI

The Affinity team have said they will not add generative AI, but they are considering workflow enhancing functions such as help for masking, background removal, etc.

Are you also totally against that kind of AI usage?

[William Overington]

1 minute ago, walt.farrell said:

The Affinity team have said they will not add generative AI, ...

Have they?

A forever pledge?

Or is it just not declaring doing it at the present time?

Not intended as rhetorical questions, genuinely asking.

William

 

[walt.farrell]

11 minutes ago, William Overington said:

Have they?

A forever pledge?

Or is it just not declaring doing it at the present time?

Not intended as rhetorical questions, genuinely asking.

 

 

[PaoloT]

At their technical documentation conference, Adobe is showing an AI-generated image of an elephant going by bicycle in the center of NYC. Ah ah. How intelligent. The world is now a much better place.

 

[William Overington]

18 hours ago, PaoloT said:

At their technical documentation conference, Adobe is showing an AI-generated image of an elephant going by bicycle in the center of NYC. Ah ah. How intelligent. The world is now much better.

What was the context of that please?

Here is a thread that has a link to a thread that has a link to a thread that has an image generated by AI that includes an elephant, the link in this forum having been added before the ban on doing so was introduced.

William

 

[PaoloT]

5 hours ago, William Overington said:

What was the context of that please?

Showing the stunning power of AI creativity by entering text in a prompt.

 

[William Overington]

7 minutes ago, PaoloT said:

Showing the stunning power of AI creativity by entering text in a prompt.

 

So not demonstrating that the saying Rubbish In Rubbish Out applies to Generative AI as it applies to all computer programs then?

William

[William Overington]

On 5/13/2024 at 11:06 AM, Dan C said:

William, the following is quoted from Page 4 of this thread -

You are the only user of the Affinity Forums continuing to flagrantly ignore our requests about posted content here, as this is not the first thread (or even post within this thread!) that we have had to moderate directly and ask you to stop.

Simply posting a link to the content on a different forum is the same as posting the content here, as both posts are wholly off-topic from the Affinity apps and as above, do not belong here.

These forums are for Affinity users, who require support, have bugs to report, are a member of the beta program or simply wish to provide feedback / share their work created within the apps.
They are not designed as a scratchboard for you to post the flavour of the week which is entirely unrelated to the Affinity apps - which you seem to continue doing even after being told not to.

There are many other websites online that will happily welcome your AI discussions, off-topic posting and 'lounge' style Forum requirements - but the Affinity Forums are not included.

I can see you have previous warnings actioned against your Affinity Forum account, as mentioned above this is not the first time, or the first member of staff asking you to stop with these off-topic posts.
Please consider this your final warning, as continuing to break our forum rules or ignore our moderation team will result in your access to these forums being revoked.

Many thanks.

Could you possibly consider lifting the ban just for this thread please? I would like to link to some lovely examples of what I and a few others have produced, and I think it would allow this discussion to proceed better.

William

 

[William Overington]

For the avoidance of doubt, it is a genuine, polite, request because I am complying with the rule that has been made, yet I opine that that rule is greatly restricting the discussion in this thread.

William

 

[Dan C]

This is not a 'ban' - it is part of the Forum rules and applies to all users. We are not adjusting the rules to suit this thread, but we appreciate you asking.

[wonderings]

19 hours ago, William Overington said:

For the avoidance of doubt, it is a genuine, polite, request because I am complying with the rule that has been made, yet I opine that that rule is greatly restricting the discussion in this thread.

William

 

People know how AI works, I don't think examples are really needed anymore. Everyone has seen the good, the bad and the ugly of AI creations. More soulless images does not help in talking about AI. 

[William Overington]

4 hours ago, wonderings said:

People know how AI works, ....

Oh, I thought that the big problem is that nobody knows how AI works!

That's the worry!

William

 

[wonderings]

23 minutes ago, William Overington said:

Oh, I thought that the big problem is that nobody knows how AI works!

That's the worry!

William

 

What is the worry? AI is not complicated. The real issue with AI is where is the line for its uses. Unlike you, many find it soulless, empty and horrifying when talking about using it for art, any art form, written, visual, etc.

[William Overington]

5 hours ago, wonderings said:

More soulless images does not help in talking about AI. 

That is interesting. It has caused me to wonder if emotion in the text prompt can feed through into the generated image.

William

 

[William Overington]

4 minutes ago, wonderings said:

What is the worry? AI is not complicated. The real issue with AI is where is the line for its uses. Unlike you, many find it soulless, empty and horrifying when talking about using it for art, any art form, written, visual, etc.

Well, my experience is that AI generated art can result in beautiful pictures and it can result in rubbish pictures and many in between those two extremes. I have chosen to buy prints of some of those, produced from text prompts that I have authored, that, in my opinion, are good, and frame them. I am not meaning any great art quality prints and framing, just what are marketed as custom one-off photo greetings cards, (but it is not actually a photo that is needed, it is a jpg file, which may contain the information of a photo or of some other image) and frames that the supermarket sells as photo frames.

And the Ai generated writing can be fascinating. Poems, stories, song lyrics. An amazing sonnet.

William

 

 

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, wonderings said:

AI is not complicated.

There are complications like where the material it is trained on comes from & if it is used with or without permission from whoever (or whatever) created it, who or what owns whatever is created by using it in whole or in part, & if in objective terms it can be described soulless, horrifying, & so on.

[Alfred]

2 minutes ago, R C-R said:

& if in objective terms it can be described soulless, horrifying, & so on

In my opinion, classification of something as soulless and/or horrifying can never be objective.

[R C-R]

8 minutes ago, Alfred said:

In my opinion, classification of something as soulless and/or horrifying can never be objective.

Nor in mine but some people seem to think there is or should be some kind of objective standard for this, or at least try to create the impression that it is more than just a personal opinion.

[j3rry]

I found this on YT - starting around 15:00 is Affinity related 

 

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, j3rry said:

I found this on YT

Go to YT & read some of the comments ... there are zillions of them! I only scanned the first 50 or so but I could find very few that were even slightly favorable to Adobe.

[SrPx]

I find it curious that he is upset (I am, too!) about what Adobe made to the Adobe Stock's contributors but still completely fine with Midjourney and etc, while in a way that's even worse...

Yet though, the moment where he compares driving with making graphics, and how important is to do all the process, to go all the way, work on the details, enjoy the ride, etc, I think that part is stellar (and almost poetic ) , and not mentioned often enough in these conversations.  Indeed, one of the main reasons why actual human made Art will always be better than a prompt.

And it is interesting to know about other people with a long experience (I don't know this person's career, but it seems so from what he's describing) in design or any related graphic field, daring -confidently, even- to use other thing than the Adobe Suite. I for one don't find any serious problem using the Affinity suite (it is actually comfy and lovely, these days), or Corel Draw suite (super pricey, also in updates, though). Both very powerful and well designed. But I can see the complications for anyone having clients needing full native support of the Adobe's formats (to support very specific features), full integration with certain pipelines. Still, a good designer/illustrator/etc (usually, though not always) can chose the kind of work and clients. Anyhow, not a problem for a bunch of us.

[Andy05]

10 hours ago, SrPx said:

But I can see the complications for anyone having clients needing full native support of the Adobe's formats (to support very specific features), full integration with certain pipelines. 

Another reason might be projects where you have to team up with other designers and/or agencies. The majority of them still rely completely on an Adobe environment as the absolute market leader. Back-and-forth import/export via formats like PDF isn’t a solution in such cases.

[R C-R]

Regarding what AI is capable of doing now or becoming capable of doing in the future, it might be worth viewing this interview with Geoffrey Hinton (the so-called "godfather of AI") from the US TV show 60 Minutes.

In particular, beginning at about 48 seconds he talks about AI being or soon becoming more intelligent than people, that we do not really even understand how it works, & that AI will eventually become self-aware. Also worth special consideration is at about 7:40 about the story Google's AI Bard created, which the interviewer describes as "deeply human."

So I think what is most alarming if not completely horrifying about all this is that it is becoming increasingly difficult to consider AI as "soulless" or incapable of experiencing emotions of its own. 

[William Overington]

Do we know when that was recorded please?

William

 

[Alfred]

9 minutes ago, William Overington said:

Do we know when that was recorded please?

It was eight months ago.