Did someone say “AI images are bad”? Are you attributing this claim to me, in particular? Images don’t have moral character; decisions do — and moral character never reduces to the binary good/bad, on my view.
Of course images aren’t really generated by “AI” anyway… they’re generated (upon indirectly-paid request) through neural-net circuitry which digests1 and churns through vast input of images not generated by AI (and eventually will be re-digesting prior output of its own kind)… And this technology can be leaned on to greater and lesser degrees, with greater and lesser skill, and greater and lesser transparency about the role of this tech.
Of course there’s more and less interesting use, more and less responsible use. Clearly, at least two of our maximalist version-banner entries have engaged in a process that takes considerable initiative, time and tinkering, and the results (quite different as they are, despite being similarly maximalist in detail!) reflect on the image-tech users as individuals to that degree.
My point is not to “shame” (as it apparently came across to @stobot above) in a blanket way, but to ask for transparency and reflection.
And also, I admit I’m trying to read the room.
I’m a bit of a geeky luddite; I enjoy working with graphic design tools such as bezier curves (including the fonts built on these), gradients, compositional shape-play, and alpha transparency effects. “Such quaintly pre-2022 stuff!” people may now say.
In response to Jeremy’s suggestion (that it would be nice for the banner to include more than typography), I’d like to put more effort into my germ of an idea, but I’m not sure it’s worthwhile…
Over the years, I’ve put many hours into generating candidates for version-banners, and I don’t regret any of it! I have cheered on dozens of entries that have left my entries in the dust… I think this site dedicated to version banner contest entries shows that enthusiasm.
But entries like pmario’s image don’t just leave me in the dust the way a faster runner would; they take the wind out of my sails, so to speak, the way a flash flood would.
I feel a bit as if I’d be showing up to a coffee-house with my acoustic guitar, while others arrive with an amplified app that instantly transforms their voice into pitch-corrected Stevie Wonder or Taylor Swift in real time, with an automatic beat-box over an infinite array of popular chord-changes at the press of a button.
It’s not that multi-track beat boxes and voice-transformation apps (or people who use them) are intrinsically bad, or that there’s no skill inovlved in using them well. It’s just when the environment is so amped-up, it no longer feels like the place to show up with an acoustic guitar and a trained-but-mortal voice.
Of course, this is just a version-banner contest. It’s not a Big Deal. But our discussion is a microcosm of the discussions happening all around us. 2
- … digests and finds patterns in this vast prior human input… by harnessing the deposited-underground solar energy harnessed by organisms that came long before us. (Yes transportation and electric technologies have already been burning up this reserve of ancient organisms’ metabolic surplus, but “This isn’t simply the norm of a digital world. It’s unique to AI, and a marked departure from Big Tech’s electricity appetite in the recent past.”)
- Why send a selfie that shows your warts, if you can send an enhanced one? Why write your own love poem when you can tap into curated algorithms of seduction? Why learn a language with your ears and mouth when you could have an instant bidirectional translation app? Why learn to cook when your spouse wants the AI-robotics kitchen gadget designed to serve you fusion Mexican-Indian culinary delights on cue, based on your Data-Distilled Taste Profile? Why should we all bother setting up a community poll as asking participants to look at entries and vote on them, when the entries could simply be submitted to a super-smart evaluation engine to decide instantly which is the best one?
Is democracy, too, not bumblingly inefficient, quaint, naively un-ambitious?..