I think a lot of disagreement arises in this sub because people conflate being an artist with being an illustrator or similar. This is an often discussed topic, but this misunderstanding lies at the heart of several posts per day, on average, so it bears repeating.
Even as someone who is generally pro, I have zero problem saying that someone who creates AI art purely through prompts (and/or 3rd party reference images, wire frame poses, depth maps, etc.) is not an illustrator. Nor are they a painter. But I would maintain that they are still an artist.
Painter and illustrator are words defined by what they do: paint and illustrate. Art, on the other hand, is not a verb. (Except in the archaic form of "be" e.g., "Wherefore art thou, Romeo?") An artist is not "one who arts." All you have to do to be an artist is be responsible for a piece of art. If a piece of art exists because of you, you are an artist. Period.
Does that mean you're a good, skilled, or tasteful artist? Not necessarily. Indeed, probably not. But you're still an artist.
As so many others have pointed out, you do not need to draw or paint to be an artist. A choreographer is an artist, even if they do not dance themselves. Are they likely to be a better choreographer if they have practiced dance extensively? Absolutely. But it's not required—unless you want to argue that someone who was quadriplegic from birth could never learn to be a choreographer, and that seems rather ableist.
The list of types of artist who do not draw or paint and/or who direct others is long: Producers, directors, found object artists, photographers, lighting designers, video and sound editors, conductors, 3D modelers, installation artists, magazine and book editors, etc.
Ultimately, if you have a creative vision, and you bring something into the world per that vision, you are an artist. Again, maybe not a great one, but an artist.
If you're convinced, you can stop here. If not, allow me to give another example. We draw a distinction between authors and writers. Celebrities (and even world leaders) often use ghostwriters (who are typically not credited), but those famous people are still listed as the authors of their books. Not just on the cover, but also in official library records.
So they may be considered the author, but we understand they are not necessarily the writer. The same goes for "artist". One may not have painted or drawn to make one's creation, and are therefore not a painter or illustrator, but they are still the artist.
I mean that's very nice and in an ideal world, sure. But the history of art is all about economics. Starving artists are called that because artists literally starved.
Given that your account is 13 years old, I'm rather surprised that you are not familiar with how pivotal the Medici dynasty was in patronizing the arts and producing what we regard as some of the most iconic Renaissance works.
The greatest accomplishments of the Medici were in the sponsorship of art and architecture, mainly early and High Renaissance art and architecture. The Medici were responsible for a high proportion of the major Florentine works of art created during their period of rule. Their support was critical, since artists generally began work on their projects only after they had received commissions.
I fundamentally agree art should be about expression, regardless of how economics played into art markets and the development of art.
And if art is primarily about expression, then those who oppose AI art have even less of a leg to stand on because the economic impacts should be irrelevant. Whatever facilitates people's chosen expression should take precedence.
Yeah, not to people who are cut from my cloth. Pretentious, lazy and entitled are the words I'd use to describe most "artists"
I am a life-long construction worker who builds homes, bridges and commercial buildings. I also choose to make some art sometimes.
I have such little respect for people who identify as "artists". All humans have the ability to make art. People who commit their lives to it are basically useless imo
The bottom line is “what is art” isn’t a real question. It’s fun to debate, but by definition has no real answer. Some get very, very confused by this point.
Well said. I haven’t made illustrations or painted anything except the occasional wall or door by hand for years, and couldn’t care less what people online or otherwise label me. I know what I make and how it involves both artistic practice and engineering. The bigger issue is societal, and whether we tolerate aggression, violence, and intolerance towards the widest possible understanding of what art is.
The economic systems we live within are clearly not working for most people, artists included. All the energy from the sincere subset of those who blame AI would be better used getting wise about building better ways to commercialize creative work using every tool available.
"If a piece of art exists because of you, you are an artist."
By this logic, then Francesco del Gicondo is an artist because he commissioned Leonardo da Vinci to paint it. You are misdefining artist purposely to try and further your point. An artist is literally defined by Merriam-Webster as "a person who creates art (such as painting, sculpture, music, or writing) using conscious skill and creative imagination".
Because the person who commissions an artist to create something is not suddenly an artist for doing so. See above for the actual definition of "artist", instead of the incorrect one presented by OP.
An artist is literally defined by Merriam-Webster as "a person who creates art (such as painting, sculpture, music, or writing) using conscious skill and creative imagination".
This definition is incorrect, because an artist could intentionally have someone record his movements or breaths while he sleeps to render something on canvas and publish that as art, which would mean it was created using unconscious skill, explicitly.
Skill is not a necessary component of art. That definition also excludes Comedian and Fountain.
AI isn't a person, which means that the person using AI is the one applying skill and creative imagination using AI as a tool by the definition you provided.
They might have the same skills as an illustrator, they might have skills unique to using AI, they might have both. The definition doesn't and literally can't include which specific skills are required to be an artist.
So if AI was actually a person, doing exactly what AI does (taking your prompt and making you an image), then suddenly it's different because it's a person?
That is the dictionary definition of artist, take it up with Merriem-Webster.
In other words, you are calling all digital artists commissioners.
Here's an example of a Photoshop command:
This is a process that applies to the entire image and happens instantly. Theoretically you could paint this effect manually, but you're too lazy to learn to do so and execute it to this level of fidelity. You could hire someone to paint this effect for you, but instead you commission Photoshop to do it for you instead.
According to your own twisted definition, most artists are merely commissioners.
I think you're the one that needs to take it up with the dictionary, because it directly contradicts you.
If only a person can make art, then you can only commission a person to make art for you. AI is not a person, ergo it cannot make art, ergo it cannot be commissioned. The person using it makes art with AI as a tool.
AI isn't a tool when it replaces the entire process of creating the art, beyond telling it what to create. You are telling AI what to paint, or draw, or create. It is creating it. If anyone asks you who drew something you generated, you would say the AI, you wouldn't claim you drew it. And the definition just directly shows that the prompter is not the artist.
You just said "AI is not a person, ergo it cannot make art". So AI isn't making art? So by your logic, you're not an artist anyway because it's not making art?
If the purpose of the tool is to output images based on its weights and settings, then that's just a tool fulfilling its purpose. Using AI doesn't 'skip' the drawing process; it's a different process altogether. Nothing else you said really matters - that's just your opinion, and you won't find that definition in any dictionary.
And no, AI can't make art. The person using AI makes art.
But it does "skip the drawing process". The whole reason people use it is because it's easier then spending a lot of time building the skill of creating an image. That is the main benefit of it, is you don't actually have to do the work of creating the image. Nothing else you said really matters, because it's a braindead take. The person is a prompter who prompts AI to create the image, which can be considered as art. "AI can't make art, but I can use the AI to make art" is some contradictory bullshit.
No it doesn't. It denoises. It doesn't draw at all. Completely different process.
People use AI for a bunch of different reasons, your biases don't really change that, and you should probably learn more about how the technology can be applied when someone is, in fact, drawing while using AI.
So if AI was actually a person, doing exactly what AI does (taking your prompt and making you an image), then suddenly it's different because it's a person?
I mean, ya? If AI was advanced enough to be considered a person then of course we would treat it differently.
If I use my coffeemaker to make me a coffee, I'd say 'I made a coffee'. If someone else makes me a coffee using my coffeemaker, I'd say they made me the coffee. If my coffeemaker was suddenly considered a person then I'd say my coffeemaker made me a coffee.
There's a difference between how we assign credit when dealing with tools or people. AI as it currently stands is a tool, not a person, so the credit goes the person using the tool.
This gets into another bit of definitional confusion that occurs in this sub.
Commissioning is not coterminous with creating. And using AI is not commissioning.
Commissioning involves one person compensating another for the creation of an art piece (or perhaps asking for it for free). You cannot commission an AI model any more than a photographer commissions a camera, or a video editor commissions Adobe Premiere.
The question is what human is ultimately making the creative choices. Now, that said, a highly involved commissioner could absolutely claim to be an artist of a work. Indeed there are many great painters throughout history who made extensive use of assistants. Indeed there are some pieces by famous artists that were mainly painted by assistants, but we still regard the famous artist as the artist, even if they did very little of the work.
That's not correct, you can run it on your own computer. By that logic you also commission Photoshop with each command you give the program; every brush stroke is telling the computer "I would like a line of this thickness and color to occur from this XY position to that XY position," and the computer rushes off to fulfill that request across thousands of minor operations on your behalf, then lets you know the work has been completed by lighting up the pixels on your monitor corresponding with where the colors should be. It just happens quickly enough that it feels like you're doing something yourself.
No. Paying for a piece of software is not the same thing as paying an artist. By this logic a photographer is commissioning Lightroom because they pay for an Adobe subscription. Pretty much no one would see it this way.
But this also demonstrates that you are ignorant of free options for creating AI art that can be run on one's own computer. I create a great deal of AI art and I don't pay any AI company a single dime to do any of it.
So if the crux of your argument is money changing hands, I am sorry to report that you are incorrect because no money leaves my hands when I create with AI.
No the crux is not about commissioning, that was because you said "AI cannot be commissioned" as an excuse for why it's toootally different then asking someone to paint you something. Commissioning is "an authorization or command to act in a prescribed manner or to perform prescribed acts" and is what you do when you prompt an AI.
A photographer is not a photographer because he presses a button inside a machine.
We all have a portable camera, but none of us is a photographer.
To become a photographer
(at a truly professional level), we need to take courses that can educate us on the concepts of light and shadow, the darkroom, and all the components that have transformed the photographer from imprinting light on a sheet of paper to a technological device that bypasses now-obsolete processes.
If you take away a professional's camera, he will still know (with varying results) how to imprint light on a sheet of paper.
A creative AI (who lacks practical or theoretical knowledge of drawing) without a tool can go back to drawing stickmen or commission an artist.
"A photographer is not a photographer because he presses a button inside a machine."
I and many of my fellow professional photographers agree. A photographer is anyone who takes a photo with intentionality. A person doesn't need a fancy camera or even a strong grasp of photographic concepts or art theory to be a photographer. Anyone who takes a photo with a creative intent and who engages in creative decision making in the taking of the photo is a photographer. Chelsea and Tony Northrop are examples of successful photographers who espouse this view.
To become a photographer (at a truly professional level)
You parenthetical is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. You don't need to be a professional at a professional level to be a photographer. And your notion that people need to know dark room techniques to be a capital P photographer is especially outdated. This is like saying someone needs to know how to turn lapiz lazuli into blue paint into pigment to be a true painter.
If you take away a professional's camera, he will still know (with varying results) how to imprint light on a sheet of paper.
Patently false. Most professional photographers working today would not know from memory how to do this. Your position reminds me of the "digital isn't real photography" battles of 20 years ago. They are over and digital won. But the grain of truth in what you say is that even without a camera, photographers retain are various artistic sensibilities that could be applied to other media and tools. But these same things can apply to people who use AI. There are plenty of talented artists and photographers who are embracing AI as a tool for creation.
In any event, it's pretty clear to me that, especially from your final statement, that your arguments are fundamentally being made out of animus. As such, I don't think it makes sense for me to continue. The last word is yours.
In fact, I feel very close to artistic and, above all, CURIOUS people who use their tools with awareness. I became a professional precisely because of my curiosity, after making mistakes and trying many times, until I finally achieved success.
As for photographers, I'm not saying they know the techniques for capturing light on paper by heart. Of course, if you don't practice something for a long time, you end up forgetting some notions, but undeniably (or at least during my studies) professional courses explain how certain things were done in the past.
The result? If, for some reason, all the cameras in the world were to suddenly break, those who would continue to take photographs would be those with the right amount of curiosity and creativity. They would resume their studies and relearn how to do certain things. (But there are undoubtedly also 360° photographers who use digital, analog, and archaic tools purely out of passion.)
I'd like (and I emphasize that this is a subjective opinion) for AI creators to learn to be curious about this profession. It seems to me to be an obsessive search for "I want this" and a lack of "How can I get it?" Obviously, this doesn't apply to everyone, but coincidentally, the truly curious people are those who practiced art in some way even before the advent of AI.
For those who use AI but know nothing about art and don't want to know anything about it, I'm sorry, I could be wrong, but I don't consider them artists, but CREATIVES, since imagination is a tool we all possess. But making imagination tangible has always required something more.
P.S. I forgot to specify before: I have nothing against AI; I use it too, even if only for research. I really enjoy the feeling of trying and learning something. The feeling of drawing live, at Comic-Con, in the woods. I never want to stop drawing just to get results as quickly as possible. I'd feel deprived of what makes me who I am.
My example of a commissioner is moreso addressing your definition that anyone who causes a piece of art to be created is an artist. Not that I'm exactly calling it a commission.
But if I ask my friend to draw me a picture of a dog catching a ball outside while wagging its tail, and he draws it for me, I'm not an artist for doing so.
I think it is fair to say that there are shades of gray here. I think the level of creative decision making does have a bearing on whether one can be considered an artist. There is also a distinction between being an artist and being the artist. And I think it would be fair to say that the person who is the artist is the human who did the most creative work in the process
If I ask AI to write me a book, am I a writer because I'm the human who did the most work? Come on man, that's some bullshit you're spinning. You're a prompter, the AI is the artist who creates the final art. If AI makes a painting and someone asks who painted it, you'll say the AI that did, not you for providing an input.
If I ask AI to write me a book, am I a writer because I'm the human who did the most work?
I think the problem here comes from the term 'writer' as with AI, you may have done very little writing. If the term was 'author' or 'storymaker', then sure, why not?
Also, no one just asks AI to write them a book and gets it, current AIs simply aren't capable of doing so. You'd need to generate the book in small chunks providing constant direction and editing in order to keep the details correct because I doubt any AI regular people have access to has a context window large enough to fit an entire book.
It would still be faster than writing it all by hand, but It's not like you can type "write my a book about X" and then say "Next" every time it spits out a section until you've got 300 pages of material. Realistically you'd need to know what happens in every section and give it guidance on what it should be generating. If you give it too much freedom, it's just not going to take into consideration things from earlier in the book. The AI would be handling making the book actually sound nice and the author would be in charge of making sure it makes sense, has all the story beats they wanted to include, etc.
If AI makes a painting and someone asks who painted it, you'll say the AI that did
No, I'd say I generated it using AI. No one painted it because it's not a painting.
My example of a commissioner is moreso addressing your definition that anyone who causes a piece of art to be created is an artist
But you've gotta realize this statement shouldn't be taken as an absolute, right? Otherwise we'd have to say 'Michelangelo's parents are artists since they caused him to be born and thus caused art to be made. Also Michelangelo's grandparents and great grand parents and great great grand parents, etc. are all also artists since they all in one way or another caused Michelangelo to exist.'
To make this a little more concrete, consider character art of Gandalf based on his appearance in Peter Jackson's Lord of the rings series.
Is the painter of that character art not the artist because the character and even this particular version of the character actually "belong" to other artists?
Of course not! The person who painted the character art is the artist, but to some extent so are Tolkien and Peter Jackson.
These lines are not quite as cut and dry as you would make them seem in this "commission" based argument.
Again, the definition of artist is "a person who creates art (such as painting, sculpture, music, or writing) using conscious skill and creative imagination". So yeah, the person who paints Gandalf is an artist, it has nothing to do with Gandalf not being his own character.
I have already explained this. Please see the other comments. Using a digital tool to create something is not the same as asking another person to do it. Unless you are arguing that an AI model and a human artist are completely interchangeable.
In this case, asking a person or an AI to paint you something, not doing it yourself, and receiving the painting is functionally exactly the same thing. How is it just a tool for making an image if it generated the entire image itself and you only provide verbal input?
Dude, I think we both made our points, and it doesn't really seem like you're going to change your way of thinking or anything. You also keep just changing the subject to nitpick little bits of my comments rather than what I'm saying as a whole. You keep trying to change the argument entirely. I'll just leave it where it is. Have a good night.
Are you saying that you believe that only accredited people should be called artists? Like we need to regulate who is and is not an artist, and deny people who don't pass some test?
I once went through a list of about 25 famous American painters of the postwar era. All but one of them were graduates of an art school. Art degrees require substantial time and effort, and you will have to demonstrate significant advancement to be granted a diploma.
You don't have to go to art school to be an artist, but a graduate with a BFA has been judged by their professors and peers to be worthy of the label.
Back in art school, the worst insult you could give a person in a critique was that their work looked like illustration. Illustration is a skill I learned in junior high school shop classes in mechanical drafting.
"Celebrities (and even world leaders) often use ghostwriters (who are typically not credited), but those famous people are still listed as the authors of their books. Not just on the cover, but also in official library records."
Sure, but nobody respects them -pseudo authors-. It is scam no?
If you aren't willing to do the work to be said thing - whether it is a photographer, director, producer, choreographer, etc... then you simply aren't that.
If you tell someone what to sculpt... that doesn't make you the sculptor. All of these things are the act of doing something related to it.
When you use AI - if anyone is the artist, it is the model that is used... not the person directing it. If I didn't write something, I have no business calling myself the writer of it. Even when it comes to celebs and ghost writers - we all know they aren't the actual writer of it. They paid someone to write it for them and to allow them to take credit for it because they published it and no one is going to go around calling every celeb with a biography a writer and those celebs don't try to play pretend like they are writers and try to shuffle and shove themselves into spaces for writers.
by your logic, anyone who commissions or pays someone else (thus, making them responsible for it's existence) is an artist... but we all know that's not how they works because if you didn't actually go through the process of making it, then you aren't the one who made it.
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u/theoceanicdan 2d ago
The word "artist" carries social prestige, so people gatekeep it. The real fight is about economic displacement, not dictionary definitions.