Omega Games X Claude Monet 🎨
[Satire]
It is with extreme pleasure that I announce the collaboration between Omega Games and Claude Monet! 🎉
Thanks to a fantastic time machine ⏳ I was able to go back 120 years and create these amazing masterpieces together with the artist mentioned above :3 🎨
Of course, what I am saying in a joking tone is just a playful way to introduce a real topic.
On X (formerly Twitter) a post is going viral where a user disguised a real painting by Claude Monet (the one in the first image, without Anna though) as if it had been generated by AI.
This sparked a strong debate among artists who heavily criticized the painting, saying it was ugly, that it did not follow basic artistic rules, that the colors and style were terrible, and much more.
A few days later, the author of the post revealed that the painting was not AI generated at all, but simply a lesser known real work by Monet.
This triggered a massive wave of deleted comments and self proclaimed artists trying in every way to walk back their statements.
This event made me think a lot. Beyond definitions and labels that do not really interest me, many people strongly insist on having a bias against anything remotely connected to AI, without fully seeing its potential.
AI should not be something that replaces humans and their cognitive and creative processes, but in my opinion a supportive tool that helps us work more efficiently.
And let me give you an analogy: a good camera does not automatically make someone a good photographer, just like owning an expensive pen does not make your handwriting perfect.
Many years ago, writers who worked by hand criticized the arrival of the first typewriters, considering them impure and soulless, believing handwriting was an essential part of their craft.
In the same way, those who learned typewriters saw the introduction of PCs and keyboards as limiting because they could no longer instantly print a message into the real world.
And this pattern repeated itself in many other fields: traditional paper artists who hated digital tablet artists, old analog phone users who hated early mobile phones, and later smartphones with touchscreens.
I could give many more examples, but whether we like it or not, AI is becoming more and more present in many jobs. I hope it never replaces the work we love doing, but it is already an extremely useful tool in our daily and working routines.
What do you think? This post is meant to be something a bit different, where you can peacefully share your thoughts and criticisms about my reasoning.
In particular, I am curious about your opinion on the double standard that appears when people find out that the author of a work is not famous, or that it is AI prompted.
Comments (10)
I was pretty sure you did not use the "Wayback Machine" to get Monet to help make those images 😂. As for AI you already know my feelings about that and the previous comments not only agree with me for the most part also bring up some other valid points 👍. I also happen to be a huge fan of Monet. Many people do not realize that seeing a picture of a Monet painting is nearly meaningless. It must be viewed in real life. Step back a bit and really look and you will quickly understand that the man was a genius or you are an idiot 😉. You are correct that there is an obsession with anything AI. Many of the people complaining the loudest have no idea what they are talking about or even what AI is about. The are just sheep following the flock. They could use a little education in AI themselves but that would require actually educating themselves 🙄.
I agree with you again this time. I have a strong passion for travel and art, and I’ve been lucky enough to see many original works by Monet, and I can confirm what you’re saying, seeing them in person is a completely different experience. Yeah… people often think in terms of ideology rather than using their own reasoning… and sometimes it’s really a shame.
I like "good" renders and I don't like "bad" renders. I don't really care whether the renders are AI-generated or not. If a developer uses AI to enhance his work (but still QA/QCs the work for 6 fingers, 3 legs, etc.) I'm fine with that. I do feel that many renders seem to look alike and very young; I'm assuming perhaps that's due to a small sample size with which to work? I'm assuming that as with most tools, as more artists use AI and expand the available templates, so long as the developers continue to check and refine the work, I'll learn to appreciate it more. My concern is that new developers will simply come to rely blindly upon AI without making any effort to learn the basic (analog) skills first and, instead, will just push out whatever is generated. If one uses AI to enhance their skills and work, I'm fine with that. When AI is used to replace a lack of skills, I'm not a fan at all.
Yes, bad renders are pretty common. In the future I’d like to show you how much work actually goes into each of my renders. Typically they all go through some color grading and upscaling once they’re finished, while others are assembled from multiple renders using editing software like Photoshop or Gimp. For example, this year has been a turning point for my editing skills. I already had a decent foundation, but now they’ve improved a lot and I think they’ll keep improving because I enjoy experimenting, also thanks to Sierra’s story, which combines many abstract and alternative elements. I also agree with your final point, in fact my early renders were really basic, but over time I learned several tricks to combine different elements and get more coherent and higher quality renders.
My two issues with AI is that it's usage is too deep. Used as a background tool to help out is fine. But most artist will use it for more than just that. And worse, most companies already think it can replace artists. Second is what Wicks99 said. It's becoming too fast that all we're getting is slop. And the AI will train itself on that slop, so all we get is worse and worse quality when AI gen isn't regulated. It's the reason so many self-learning models are becoming dumber and dumber rather than smarter. They train themselves on their own data. It's like a dude who eats up their own hype. Eventually they'll think they're better than God-adjacent entities if there's no one to prove them wrong. AI as a tool is fine. AI as a generator is dangerous slop.
You make a good point on AI learning its own rubbish, especially wrt AI AVNs. This is a particularly acute issue for AVNs as the powerful mainstream proprietary image / video models do not allow porn. What most developers do is to make use of a combination of Civtai checkpoints and LORAs in their workflows to churn out stuff. Most of the checkpoints and LORAs there are low parameter merges of merges with uncontrolled additional learning of god knows how many composite mish mash stuff out there. The end result is not only common errors like fingers and limbs, but fundamental issues like proportions, physics, logical coherence etc. Currently most NSFW models cannot churn out quality stuff that can be used without heavy inpainting and/or manual edits.
Ngl, that would have been pretty amazing to collab with Monet.
If I could bring an artist back to life, I'd choose Vincent van Gogh... He was truly phenomenal.
Yea pretty common for vested financial / personal identity interest people to reject change. AI ain't the first and won't be the last. However having said that, there is indeed something different between AI and other technological advancements in that the extent it lowers barriers to entry is unmatched compared to the examples you cited. Every idiot can really generate AI graphics, videos and music with close to zero effort these days. What this means is am explosion of digital junk that drowns out legitimate uses. While the good AI artists can still do good, what is undeniable is that the proportion of totally crappy works is much higher than in the past. Just look at the dozens of AI AVNs coming out every week. Most are so bad that they are basically churned out en masse with the developer neither knowing nor caring about their craft.
Agreed. As a photographer/videographer I relish the opportunity to "make" a photograph or video grab. Having said that, AI has the power to enhance the lines, fine tune the curves, import alternate sources and sharpen the focus. But I select the subject, adjust the light, play with depth of field and tweak exposure to capture the soul of the image as I see it. AI can't do that. The biggest issue we face is differentiating AI from tech. AI thinks for us, fast. Tech is user based enhancement. AI can extrapolate, tech can adjust. Both can be important but AI costs you originality. AI can speed up process but loses the emotion, while tech can refine and dial that emotion in proportionally to the artist's specs. AI can "learn" what my tendencies are... until the subject changes. What does it do when I want a dark portrait, with exquisite detail to wrinkles in shadow, with my light source high/right one day, and the next day do a wedding shoot with a truncated DOF, slow shutter speed and soft focus to detract from blemishes? AI is only an answer once it can read a mood or subject based on existing history of similar events. Until then, you just end up with baby puke green. In my world, AI is for big shit where detail and emotion mean less... rubber stamp stuff. What sets a dev apart is knowing when or when not to use it. In other words use it on body shapes, but not faces. Use it for scene organization, but not dialog.