The US copyright office review board, found that Théâtre d’Opéra Spatial, an AI-generated image that won first place at the 2022 Colorado state fair annual art competition, was not eligible because copyright protection “excludes works produced by non-humans”.
Jason Allen claimed his use of #Midjourney allowed him to claim authorship of the image because he “entered a series of prompts, adjusted the scene, selected portions to focus on, and dictated the tone of the image”.
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“Judges don’t understand art, or have an old-fashioned idea of a very specific skill that is being able to re-produce a very specific vision of the world by hand,” said New York artist-critic Walter Robinson, who has been using Midjourney, he said, “for fun”.
“When I enter prompts into Midjourney, and re-enter them until I get what I want, it’s true I’m not drawing, but I am crafting an image using a tool.”
𝘑𝘶𝘥𝘨𝘦𝘴 𝘥𝘰𝘯’𝘵 𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘢𝘳𝘵, 𝘰𝘳 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘢𝘯 𝘰𝘭𝘥-𝘧𝘢𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘥 𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘢 𝘰𝘧 𝘢 𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺 𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘤𝘪𝘧𝘪𝘤 𝘴𝘬𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘣𝘦𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘳𝘦-𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘥𝘶𝘤𝘦 𝘢 𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺 𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘤𝘪𝘧𝘪𝘤 𝘷𝘪𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥 𝘣𝘺 𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘥. - Walter Robinson
I'm not going to ATTEMPT to define what art is ... but it does make me sad to think that anything "created with skill by hand to reproduce a specific vision of the world" is old-fashioned and no longer what people think constitutes art.
The future is bleak as will be those that inhabit it.
I'm not saying that AIArt isn't art. It is absolutely a kind of artistic vision using tools. I think the category for AIArt should indeed be a category ... but I don't think artists who use their skills to create art by hand are somehow ... old-fashioned or "not keeping up with the times" ... that sounds like madness to me ...
... but then again ... this where we are in the world.
@thewebrecluse AIArt deserves it's own category for sure. Both are art in different ways. Are people who paint better or worse than people who draw? Is penciled art better than chalk art? Water colors or oil?
It's really just a new medium that some of society has not decided where it fits - and others are waiting to be told where it should fit instead of deciding for themselves.