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[Bohandas]

I know of at least one artist who has compared taking commissions to being a generative AI.

How could it be otherwise? Those artists aren't expressing themself. They're expressing somebody else's idea as described through a short prompt.

If art really is supposed to be as much about personal expression as people here are saying then it follows that taking comissions makes you a sell out (and that doing it for a corporation is equivalent to selling your soul to the devil; you've taken something that is - allegedly - supposed to be intimately personal and traded it away for money to something that isn't even human.)

 

[The Firebird]

Reflecting on the band and the music. Whether or not the individual works are art, I think the project itself is. A creative vision asking questions about technology and society and how we assign meaning.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

I know of at least one artist who has compared taking commissions to being a generative AI.

That's a... strong stance on the question.

I think it might depend on the level of precision of the needed artwork.

Working for a patron (who gives you money to let you create without any input on what you do) certainly doesn't limit or influence creation. We attribute David to Michelangelo and not to the Medici family who made it financially possible.

Working to create something to the specification of a commissionners is a wide category. I would say the illustrator keeps a lot of creative leeway if the commission is "Draw my character. It's a young blond elf with big boobs". It might not be the case if the commissionners has an exact image in his head, gives a five-pages description of the details needed, and won't accept anything that doesn't match his vision (can you make her left arm a little higher?), then I can see how the illustrator would feel limited. That's how IP rights are credited in some jurisdiction: the moral rights (the paternity of the work, not the commercial rights) are granted to the person having the creative input, and in case of commissionned work, it can be attributed to the person giving the instruction, not to the person who execute the instructions.

I see how a parallel can be drawn with AI. If someone prompts "1girl, elf, big boobs", I wouldn't say the resulting image is the result of a creative input, the result should IMHO uncovered by IP. When it's the result of a complex prompt, and back-and-forth between the human user and the AI program (change the left arm so it is a little higher, now move the sun a little to the right...) until the human user's vision is met, I'd say the result should be protected by IP and belong to the human user. Which is fortunate, since that's exactly how it works in my juridiction, so I can only praise my lawmakers ;-)

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

I suppose one could argue that there isn't enough space in the prompt to sufficiently describe what one is feeling, but that is a lilitationnof the state of the technology, not the technology itself (and in any case the era of text messaging and twitter have made people better at explaining themselves succinctly)

That was certainly true two years ago, when prompts were limited to 75 words. Nowadays, you can get quite detailed prompts (1000 words) all taken into account and the most recent solutions (like SeedEdit), including open source one you can run on your own computer (Flux Kontext), allow for modifying an existing image. So you do your initial prompt and the if the hairstyle of the character drawn doesn't match your vision, you thencommand the AI to change it. Sometimes, you'll need the correct vocabulary to get what you want, sometimes you'll need to provide input in other way (for example clicking the exact area where you want the sun to be in your image), and you can do "back-and-forth" as long as you need to get the exact image you had in mind when you did the creative work of conceiving it.

I use it to express myself. I know other people who use it to express themselves. I can't draw well but I can type. It almost feels like people feel like expressing yourself need necessarily be difficult and time consuming.

Which is bollocks. Above I mentionned Friedman's 1000 hours of staring. Though one could say it, by definition, requires 1,000 hours, it's not like staring is difficult (and Friedman, as far as I know, didn't provide documentation on the time spent staring). Along the same lines, not being there while museum-goers can prepare and share a pad thai doesn't require any time. At the other end of humanity's history with art, I don't think putting you hand in red clay, and then on a cavern's wall, require times or skill. It is however a powerful work of art.

I agree that the tech isn't as good at this now as a skilled artist, but it is better than a bad artist, even for the purposes of expression. I suspect the threshold for being good good, for both quality and expression, will be when the prompts can fit the proverbial thousand words.

Well...

I agree though that AI drawing isn't quite there. The first usable products were launched in late 2022, though, and it certainly isn't at its peak yet. Gimme my mind-reading headset!

 

[trappedslider]

That's a... strong stance on the question.

I think it might depend on the level of precision of the needed artwork.

here's the full quote "I'm really not happy with this one, so I'm redrawing the top half right now. It was a commission, so I feel like I gotta get it right, but at the same time, I don't have any personal feelings for it. I think I gotta stop taking commissions, because I have no naughty word clue what I've been drawing recently. I'm not different than an AI that vomits images based on prompts. "

 

[Morrus]

here's the full quote "I'm really not happy with this one, so I'm redrawing the top half right now. It was a commission, so I feel like I gotta get it right, but at the same time, I don't have any personal feelings for it. I think I gotta stop taking commissions, because I have no naughty word clue what I've been drawing recently. I'm not different than an AI that vomits images based on prompts. "

I mean, he is different than an AI that vomits images based on prompts. I get that he finds the work creatively unsatisfying, but he is no way the same as an AI that vomits images based on prompts.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

How could it be otherwise? Those artists aren't expressing themself. They're expressing somebody else's idea as described through a short prompt.

Well, having been on both sides of this situation, I’d say yes and no. They’re expressing someone else’s idea, but unless doing it in someone else’s style is part of the commission, they’re probably doing it in their unique manner.

And art history is full of commissioned work that was initially received with a “Not THAT way!” reaction. My personal favorite is the sculpture of a a fallen Lucifer by Joseph Geefs that was removed and replaced by one by his older brother, Guillaume.*

Beyond that? A prompt for an AI is almost guaranteed to be much shorter than an analogous discussion between a patron and an artist.

To clarify my personal POV: even knowing all of this, I’ve never had a work I’ve commissioned turn out exactly as I’ve envisioned it. Nor has anything I’ve been commissioned to do ever been mistaken for someone else’s work, nor a perfect realization of the idea the patron had in mind.

The person doing the crafting always influences the final product.



* Joseph’s is on the left, Guillame’s is on the right.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

Beyond that? A prompt for an AI is almost guaranteed to be much shorter than an analogous discussion between a patron and an artist.

With models that focus on modifying details used after a model doing a first draft, it can be the same amount of detail changing, up to minutiae.

To clarify my personal POV: even knowing all of this, I’ve never had a work I’ve commissioned turn out exactly as I’ve envisioned it. Nor has anything I’ve been commissioned to do ever been mistaken for someone else’s work, nor a perfect realization of the idea the patron had in mind.

The person doing the crafting always influences the final product.

And it can be both a boon (when you don't have something very specific in mind and are positively surprised by the other person's creative input) or a bane (when you had something very specific and wanted a "perfect realization", but gave up because well, you can't really ask for an unending string of minor modifications to be included in the price of the commissionned work). There is certainly a place for both methods.

This was especially true with statue. In your example, the commissioner failed to mention that Lucifer shouldn't be too handsome, and the artist focused on the "angel" part of the fallen angel, but it's more expensive to change a statue than touch up a painting or edit a digital art.

 

[BookTenTiger]

Well, having been on both sides of this situation, I’d say yes and no. They’re expressing someone else’s idea, but unless doing it in someone else’s style is part of the commission, they’re probably doing it in their unique manner.

And art history is full of commissioned work that was initially received with a “Not THAT way!” reaction. My personal favorite is the sculpture of a a fallen Lucifer by Joseph Geefs that was removed and replaced by one by his older brother, Guillaume.*

Beyond that? A prompt for an AI is almost guaranteed to be much shorter than an analogous discussion between a patron and an artist.

To clarify my personal POV: even knowing all of this, I’ve never had a work I’ve commissioned turn out exactly as I’ve envisioned it. Nor has anything I’ve been commissioned to do ever been mistaken for someone else’s work, nor a perfect realization of the idea the patron had in mind.

The person doing the crafting always influences the final product.



* Joseph’s is on the left, Guillame’s is on the right.

Can you imagine taking the time to carve an entire sculpture out of stone and then being told by the client, "Eh, it's not quite what we are looking for."

 

[BookTenTiger]

here's the full quote "I'm really not happy with this one, so I'm redrawing the top half right now. It was a commission, so I feel like I gotta get it right, but at the same time, I don't have any personal feelings for it. I think I gotta stop taking commissions, because I have no naughty word clue what I've been drawing recently. I'm not different than an AI that vomits images based on prompts. "

It sounds like they don't want to be a commission artist!

On the other hand just today I had a talk with my friend who is really excited to get to work on a bunch of commissions.

I think the truth is that when anyone is asked to do a task they do not want to do, they feel somewhat like a robot being commanded.