Just an additional observation here. Similar concerns can also arise without AI being involved.
There’s an artist whose works I’ve seen, and I am wondering if he is cheating. (Not a public figure that anyone here is likely to have heard of.) He makes strikingly photorealistic paintings on canvas. I have seen these canvases close enough to be sure that they really are painted, not printed. And I know that there are artists who indeed perform artistic miracles of photorealism. But I still have the suspicion that this artist is doing a paint-over of something printed onto the canvas. Perhaps a photograph of his intended scene, reduced to grayscale, edge-enhanced, and printed very faintly, to resemble and serve the same purpose as an artist’s preliminary pencil underdrawing. Then he might paint using a full colour print of the image alongside as reference.
This suspicion somewhat devalues his art in my eyes. This method (if that is what he is doing) eliminates the need for any skill at draughtsmanship, but at the same time it removes the possibility of any creativity in the draughtsmanship. And if he is then slavishly copying by hand the original photograph onto this automated underdrawing, then he is just being a human photocopier. The only human thing left is the technical skills of mixing and blending colours, and handling a brush.
I’ve heard that Jehovah’s Witnesses use a similar technique in their Watchtower publications for years. Except, sometimes they change things, for example if they want to make a Biblical scene of some guys fighting with swords, they just make them hold sticks, take a photo, and then somehow repaint it, but replacing the sticks with swords.
Just an additional observation here. Similar concerns can also arise without AI being involved.
There’s an artist whose works I’ve seen, and I am wondering if he is cheating. (Not a public figure that anyone here is likely to have heard of.) He makes strikingly photorealistic paintings on canvas. I have seen these canvases close enough to be sure that they really are painted, not printed. And I know that there are artists who indeed perform artistic miracles of photorealism. But I still have the suspicion that this artist is doing a paint-over of something printed onto the canvas. Perhaps a photograph of his intended scene, reduced to grayscale, edge-enhanced, and printed very faintly, to resemble and serve the same purpose as an artist’s preliminary pencil underdrawing. Then he might paint using a full colour print of the image alongside as reference.
This suspicion somewhat devalues his art in my eyes. This method (if that is what he is doing) eliminates the need for any skill at draughtsmanship, but at the same time it removes the possibility of any creativity in the draughtsmanship. And if he is then slavishly copying by hand the original photograph onto this automated underdrawing, then he is just being a human photocopier. The only human thing left is the technical skills of mixing and blending colours, and handling a brush.
I’ve heard that Jehovah’s Witnesses use a similar technique in their Watchtower publications for years. Except, sometimes they change things, for example if they want to make a Biblical scene of some guys fighting with swords, they just make them hold sticks, take a photo, and then somehow repaint it, but replacing the sticks with swords.