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Five days ago, The New York Times ran this article about a guy who won a digital painting competition by using an A.I. program to convert written text into an image:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/02/technology/ai-artificial-intelligence-artists.html

With human painters already toppled, it stands to reason that A.I. will replace human miniature painters in a matter of days.

In one week, A.I. will replace human miniature sculptors.

In two weeks, A.I. will replace human tabletop gamers and miniature collectors.

In three weeks, A.I. will replace human game publishers and stockholders.

And in just one month, A.I. will be painting, sculpting, selling, and collecting US.

(You can trust that these projections are accurate: I used an A.I. program to generate them.)

I would love an AI to paint miniatures and then print them fully painted on a 3D printer.

I would see a lot less of the grey army on the field.

I have no problem with letting A.I. painting my minis

 Easy E wrote:
I would love an AI to paint miniatures and then print them fully painted on a 3D printer.

I would see a lot less of the grey army on the field.

On the Cyberdyne Systems T-100 all in one printer no less

I remember people proclaiming that AI would be taking over many things during the 2010's. Still waiting for it to happen

AI has made significant advances in imaging, but they are still pretty "dumb" in many other areas of interest.

Racerguy180 wrote:

 Easy E wrote:
I would love an AI to paint miniatures and then print them fully painted on a 3D printer.

I would see a lot less of the grey army on the field.

On the Cyberdyne Systems T-100 all in one printer no less

Necron buffs? Again!?

Seems relevant...

 tauist wrote:
I remember people proclaiming that AI would be taking over many things during the 2010's. Still waiting for it to happen

AI has made significant advances in imaging, but they are still pretty "dumb" in many other areas of interest.

The issue is that AI is already objectively superior to humanity in answering easily defined questions. Robotics are objectively superior to humanity in manual labor, even if they're not always the most economical choice... so far. Now they're making inroads into creative decisions.

EDIT: That was getting beyond AI/robotics and economics, and starting to verge into politics. Best left alone.

 Vulcan wrote:

 tauist wrote:
I remember people proclaiming that AI would be taking over many things during the 2010's. Still waiting for it to happen

AI has made significant advances in imaging, but they are still pretty "dumb" in many other areas of interest.

The issue is that AI is already objectively superior to humanity in answering easily defined questions. Robotics are objectively superior to humanity in manual labor, even if they're not always the most economical choice... so far. Now they're making inroads into creative decisions.

EDIT: That was getting beyond AI/robotics and economics, and starting to verge into politics. Best left alone.

Obejctively superior to humanity? I assume you have some sort of proof for your claim?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Crispy78 wrote:
Seems relevant...

This video very much aligns with how I feel about AI. It's dumb, it doesn't really understand what it's doing. It's kind of like a Dilletante, someone who pretends to know more about a subject matter than what they actually do.

An artist goes into painstaking efforts to create details in his art - whether it be a drawing, painting, sculpture, etc. Every single nuance and stroke is a creative choice. Being a professional illustrator myself for many years I ran into many times the issue of how far to push a piece, how many more details do I add, when is it done? At some point you just have to say, "it's done" and move on; however, the main point being every single speck took work and effort from the artist.

AI has no restrictions. It has no work limit. It can create as many teeny-tiny details as it wants to, as there is no time constraint or real effort involved. So, will AI generated pieces possibly be more clever, dynamic, detailed, etc., than an artist created piece? Sure, probably so in most cases. But that does not diminish the beauty of the work, just a sad spot in my brain that I cannot look at it as a labor of love, but a piece spit out from a factory-line.

The game Astro Inferno (https://astroinferno.com/) recently posted an update about AI-generated art in their book:

There have been some questions about the AI art that is being implemented and I just want to make sure you backers got the right idea of this new direction. We’re not looking to make instant images that look like a jumbled mess and insert them into our high end product. The AI art is being used in conjunction with my own illustrations. Sometimes as backgrounds to existing images, sometimes on its own as landscapes or cityscapes and sometimes as an amalgamation of AI generated art and my own distinct style.

We’re pretty amazed at how far it can take images, create atmosphere, mood and describe scenes. These are some examples of finished pieces for the game including AI art to give you a hint of what the images will look like.

BTW: If you'd like to see more updates and art pieces join our facebook where we share images and WIP stuff whenever we feel the urge to get some likes.

www.facebook.com/AstroinfernoRPG

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

Many see the AI art as stealing the jobs of illustrators but I see it as a tool that can be utilized as any other to enhance the work of illustrators. Bring new ideas, fasten work flows and just inspire when inspiration has run dry. The day when illustrators are obsolete has not come yet and probably never will.

Some commentators did indeed come at them for putting human illustrators out of work ...

In all seriousness, A.I. will never "kill" human art in the absolute sense. It could seriously diminish areas where current human artists can make a living, especially in commercial design. But speaking as someone who does art for myself rather than for sale, I'd love to play around with this A.I. program and use it to generate images to inspire and inform my own hand drawings.

The value of human art is inextricably bound up with the fact that a human made it. That definition of "made" can be stretched - I'd say even the NY times guy who used A.I. to create an image still arguably authored it, because he, not the A.I., chose (or wrote himself - it's not clear which in the article) the descriptive text and theme. And when hand craft is involved - i.e., a human labored over painting a work by hand - it will always have a different value than other, less hands-on forms of human art authorship. Even found art like Marcel Duchamp's toilet "fountain" can't be simply replicated, because it was a statement made at a distinct moment in time in a specific place and context. Philosophically, it made a point that was original then, but would be redundant now. Anyone, A.I. included, could replicate it today, but the meaning of the replica would be different, and likely so shallow ("I wanted to show it's bogus because anyone can do it") that it wouldn't be interesting or meaningful.

When computer printed, computer painted minis become ubiquitous, gaming tables will be more colorful than when they were filled with unpainted minis. It will have its place. But the perfection of computer printed / painted minis will also start to get stale as it becomes universal, and human painted minis will start to be admired for their level of achievement within the bounds of human imperfection, and for the human character that gives them.

Ultimately A.I. will try to imitate that human imperfection too, to achieve the same appeal of that human-painted character. That will probably come after the deluge of slick, pro-painted looking printed minis, which will itself come after earlier rounds of "just OK" flat painted A.I. minis. So it will be awhile before we get to that point, and it will be awhile before A.I. gets consistently good at it.

But when A.I. finally gets superb at making a miniature look like it was painted by a skilled but imperfect human, to me, it still won't be the same, because it didn't do so with the same intent or ideas driving it. "Have all your miniatures painted by John Blanche!*" (*Our all-new JohnBlancheatron2000 home A.I. miniature printer and painter!) For me, that'd be lame, and a lie. The real John Blanche didn't touch those minis, and they'll only be an A.I.'s imitation of his style, not actual productions from the artist himself. Thousands of other people will have JohnBlancheatron2000 minis that look exactly like the ones I could print on my JohnBlancheatron unit, so what's the point? However good they might look, the idea bores me. I don't want a collection of beautiful but lifeless John Blanche-alike minis pretending to be what they aren't. I'd rather use my own hand painted minis, even though I'll never paint as well as John Blanche.

Now when an A.I. finally gets sophisticated enough to have it's own real individual character, tempered and formed over a significant period of time by personal history rather than pre-programmed and uploaded in a second, replete with unique desires, fears, neuroses, strengths, and weaknesses? That individual A.I. person's work could become genuinely interesting to this human being. Not as a replacement for human artists, but as a fellow individual creator among them.

AI-assisted art sounds a lot more reasonable to me than 100% AI generated. The synthesis of man and machine, just as Ominissiah intended. Imperator. Ave.