Ernie wrote: ↑3 years ago
How many AI art images of Supergirl just standing there are too many? These uncanny valley images are suddenly everywhere. It was interesting for about a minute - you know, something new. But now there are thousands of these vaguely familiar, different yet similar, art but not art images everywhere you look. Weird.
Yes, and some producers have already hopped the bandwagon. While he's still producing live-action, the much-revered Rye has begun to offer AI image sets (in fact, just the Supergirl kind you're talking about ) on SHG Media. These are not "photo sets" of live actresses from his productions, like Powervixens.com. I'm not 100% sure that kind of stuff is in the spirit of the genre, but then again, I'm not the one running that site. If it makes money and sells, I guess it should be there if it ploughs more money back into live productions.
Shall we get philosophical and dystopian about this?
You could go back and reference all of the technologies that made our world seem just a bit more artificial. TV and video presented an artificial version of what used to be a live theatrical drama; photographs and paintings presented an artificial version of what used to be a live human moment in time; even cave paintings and books presented an artificial version of what used to be oral traditions told by live humans.
But technology marches on. In the 1980s, cosplay and video games rose around the same time, and they both represent one more step in artificiality.
Video games are nothing but a lower-resolution simulation of live-action recordings, while cosplay is almost always a frozen moment in time reflecting a piece of art from a comic book or a photo still from a live-action video (I've found that most cosplayers simply do NOT have the ability or the confidence to act out a scene, although there are rare exceptions. It's just not in their skill set.) Yet everyone has become used to these artifices and they have fully embraced them. "Computer-generated imagery" (CGI) is just extremely high quality video game images placed into live-action movies, but they still have to be created by a roomful of dudes in Bangalore.
But with all the inevitable compromises that all of these representations entail, there's one thing that ties them all together: we are all fully aware that they have been created by actual human beings, who are listed in the credits. And while whatever AI program makes these Supergirl images was of course originally programmed by humans, it is specifically designed to be 100% free of those strictures and does not need a human for guidance going forward.
While it is an image, it is not "art", because it does not create, it merely collages and reassembles art made by humans, and it's not even collage art, because no human contributed any creativity to the assemblage.
If you think about it, it's only just a matter of proportional levels of computing power from "AI, make me an image of Supergirl" to "AI, make me a movie of Supergirl". I shudder to think that today's young generation of actors (McKenna Grace, for example) might be the last to gain employment in a real industry of live-action productions, and also that in the future, there might no difference between "live-action" and "animated" because it will all become "animated", except by AI.
As far as SHIP exists two generations from now (if it's even allowed), it just might be a production of AI-generated scenes created by nothing more than a series of commands: no humans otherwise involved, all fetish actresses out of business. Porn, too, as a whole.
Our grandchildren might never experience a live-action movie or TV show - perhaps everything that they watch (who knows if they'll even able to read?) will be produced by AI. Possibly, live theatrical plays could become the ultimate rebellion, and maybe in a dystopian scenario, they would be outlawed. The word "actor" would become equivalent to "terrorist", and you'd have the Drama Gestapo busting down doors of clandestine film shoots or cosplay sessions, etc. [Now, that's an interesting premise for the ten billionth dystopian sci-fi series on Netflix..let's call it BAD ACTORS.]
Anyway, I just allowed my philosophical speculation to run wild for a minute there. Your mileage may vary. But I can promise you that I wlll personally have nothing to do with AI, nor support art created by it, *especially* in comic books. One of our two interior artists had a meeting with me a few months ago, suggesting that he use AI-generated backgrounds in comic book panels to save time. I was absolutely against it. Luckily, he came around (thanks to some convincing by my comic book creator friend, who was there at the meeting) and is still on board.