Maybe there is a way to fix the AI problem!? (Let's talk about how we can handle this sh*t)

[BertKoor]

Good news: AI will achieve human levels of intelligence next year!

Bad news: This will not happen as a result of improvements to AI.

[BONES]

Consumer cameras have been around for a very long time. The only thing adding them to a phone did was create more photos, but if you're actually interested in taking a really good photo, I don't care what phone you own, a good DSLR or mirrorless is going to do a way better job, and someone who's studied how to use them is going to do better than a person who doesn't.

I think you are operating under the assumption that people want to take the best possible photos but, as award winning professional photographer Chase Jarvis famously said, "the best camera is the one you have with you". Even someone like him understands that getting the shot is more important than getting the best shot. By the time you get your DSLR out of your rucksack, take it out of its case and take the lens cover off, Bigfoot is going to be long gone. You can always fix a bad photo in post but if you don't get the shot in the first place, you 've got nothing. It's a very different discipline to music or painting or most other forms of art.

When my daughter was 3, we took her to a professional photographer and got photos that would blow away anything I could take of her, and I studied photography in high school and college.

That's not art, though, you could say the same about the guy who built your house or fixes your car. He'd take a better photo with your phone than you could, too.

I think AI represents a very different paradigm than the camera, though. It's one thing to go to a studio photographer and have them do a session with a person and to tell a computer to generate images of my daughter from a sample image.

That ship has sailed. Have you seen some of the things video AIs are doing? They can take an almost completely side-on shot of someone and create a video where they turn to face the camera and the face is close enough to perfect as makes no difference. It's freaky.

Will it stumble upon a few images that look good? Maybe

That's what a professional photographer does, they snap literally hundreds of shots to get the half-a-dozen or so good ones they can use. Portrait photos, of course, are different because they can take as much time as they like setting it up so it's exactly right, but so can anyone.

what I want is to capture a moment of my daughter's life. This is the time, this is the record of the time, sort of thing.

Which, of course, is precisely where "the phone you have with you" excels. What I notice about prof portraits is the for most of them, it's the only time in that person's life they will ever look that good. It's not a realistic snapshot of a person, it's about as fake as it gets.

I once tried iZotope's plugin and I basically had to go in and manually fix what it thought was "good." Maybe it's gotten better. Not sure.

I find it excellent for doing all the technical shit I can't be bothered with, like setting up the dynamic EQ to get the best out of the limiter and that kind of schizz. The Mastering Assistant gets it to a point where I can take over, creatively, to get the result I want, knowing that the technical stuff is taken care of. I've been using it since Ozone 8 and I find I always get better results than using my old mastering tools (in Adobe Audition and, before that, SoundForge). Of course, the more I do it, the better I get at it (hopefully), so there might be a bit of that as well.

@BONES...so how do you feel now that you've been inspired by it if it all goes away cause of record labels?
viewtopic.php?p=9154088#p9154088

Yeah, don't believe everything you see on YouTube. There's another video that suggests the no download thing only applies where you have used specific artists in your prompts (i.e. artists signed to Universal). The gist of that video is that they are trying to stop people from making money from fakes, not to stop people from making their own original music. Fans will still be able to do their music fan fiction stuff, they just won't be able to commercialise it. What will happen, of course, is that the scam artists will just move to another AI platform and continue their scammery. It will be years before it gets cleaned up properly.

Anyway, we're not using Udio and I am now reasonably confident we won't be releasing any AI generated music as such - just taking it, deconstructing it and rebuilding it in a DAW - so it's irrelevant to us. I already have three songs in a usable state, although they still have AI vocals. We'll be adding my dulcet tones soon enough, then we'll know if the whole thig is going to work or not. If it doesn't and we do revert to releasing the AI versions, we will be giving them away on Bandcamp, so there'll be no money involved. It will be a purely promotional tool to try to raise our profile a bit.

Professional photographers have lighting setups (and know how to use them), that's the part that can't be replicated by consumer smartphone cameras.

Of course it can, once the lighting is set up, you can use whatever f**king camera you like to take the picture and if you use the manual settings on your phone's camera, you can have as much control over the result, too. The only thing you're stuck with is the lens (or lenses) that come with your phone, so you might not be able to frame it as well, although it's likely you'll just have to take the picture from much closer to get the right framing.

Having said that, I would imagine AI will easily be able to simulate those soft shadow lighting effects.

Phone cameras are all about the software. When I bought my current phone, the low-light pictures were pretty bad but after I'd had it a year or so, it got a software update and now it takes night shots that are as good as any camera I've seen.

I know what I’ve observed.

That's not to say that you have correctly apportioned the blame. I would suggest social media is pretty much completely and utterly to blame, not the internet itself and certainly not AI.

[BONES]

Almost none of you will ever have a career in music that can define your life, let it go.

That's an interesting thought because, career or otherwise, music absolutely, completely and utterly defines my life, far moreso than my actual career(s) ever could. Motion Designer is what I do, half of NOVAkILL is who I am.

AI has many problems, but it is the most useful tech we've seen in decades, perhaps centuries. If you can't see that, it might not be the tech that is the problem.

It never is, my friend, it never is.

[BertKoor]

Almost none of you

You know what that first word means, Warren? Never mind, I'll explain it.
It means you should not take offense and shut up if you're that exception to the stated rule.

We have some members who can't even decide on their artist name, for decades.
That type of dude is far in the majority, and you know it.

[zerocrossing]

Consumer cameras have been around for a very long time. The only thing adding them to a phone did was create more photos, but if you're actually interested in taking a really good photo, I don't care what phone you own, a good DSLR or mirrorless is going to do a way better job, and someone who's studied how to use them is going to do better than a person who doesn't. When my daughter was 3, we took her to a professional photographer and got photos that would blow away anything I could take of her, and I studied photography in high school and college.

I think AI represents a very different paradigm than the camera, though. It's one thing to go to a studio photographer and have them do a session with a person and to tell a computer to generate images of my daughter from a sample image. Will it stumble upon a few images that look good? Maybe, but that's not really the point, because what I want is to capture a moment of my daughter's life. This is the time, this is the record of the time, sort of thing. But AI can be useful on a phone when it takes multiple frames and applies an algorithm to them to form a composite image that's better than a single frame. I see my iPhone doing that all the time. I could see mastering a track being done with AI, though I once tried iZotope's plugin and I basically had to go in and manually fix what it thought was "good." Maybe it's gotten better. Not sure.

Professional photographers have lighting setups (and know how to use them), that's the part that can't be replicated by consumer smartphone cameras.
Having said that, I would imagine AI will easily be able to simulate those soft shadow lighting effects. It's already simulating the renaissance painting type styles which also use those lighting effects (invented them) and generating stylised images based on photographs of people.

Sure, but comparing the lenses and CCD or CMOS chip on the best smartphone to what’s on a professional camera is vast. AI can compensate for some of the shortcomings, but getting details in the darker areas of an image can’t be replaced by AI, unless pure digital conjecture is fine with you.

That’s what’s going to separate the wheat from the chaff in the future of art. If you’re fine with a digital guess of what you might want, you might enjoy AI models, but if you’re after something specific, you will be frustrated. The time I tried to use Midjourney for some concept art, it was a resounding failure. I got a ton of cool images from it, but nothing that satisfied my requirements. I ended up just modeling the concept in Maya and using it as a reference for a digital painting using Procreate. I would have saved myself some time if I’d just spent the whole time doing it myself.

[zerocrossing]

I know what I’ve observed.

America has always had a strong anti-intellectual faction. I think what you’re observing is just easier to see due to social media, though now has less stigma than in the past. It used to be more regional, so what was happening in your community might be vastly different from the town one over. It’s now being promoted by the federal government, for the first time ever, so maybe the numbers are growing. One thing I always laugh about is when people in power put down the “elites,” when they are graduates of elite universities, and sending their children to those universities.

[chagzuki]

That’s what’s going to separate the wheat from the chaff in the future of art. If you’re fine with a digital guess of what you might want, you might enjoy AI models, but if you’re after something specific, you will be frustrated. The time I tried to use Midjourney for some concept art, it was a resounding failure. I got a ton of cool images from it, but nothing that satisfied my requirements. I ended up just modeling the concept in Maya and using it as a reference for a digital painting using Procreate. I would have saved myself some time if I’d just spent the whole time doing it myself.

Yeah, the degree or method of control of the AI is crucial to real-world applications, so presumably that's where all the growth will be. Using a prompt alone is way too basic for most use cases, but once the AI interacts with an artist's pencil input, that will be a humongous augmentation.

[Bombadil]

I know what I’ve observed.

America has always had a strong anti-intellectual faction. I think what you’re observing is just easier to see due to social media, though now has less stigma than in the past. It used to be more regional, so what was happening in your community might be vastly different from the town one over. It’s now being promoted by the federal government, for the first time ever, so maybe the numbers are growing. One thing I always laugh about is when people in power put down the “elites,” when they are graduates of elite universities, and sending their children to those universities.

A part, I suppose. But I know a fair number of young people and they can’t even write in cursive, and are utterly clueless. The actual studious ones out there will either go into computers or business, which doesn’t really address their specialization myopia. Fewer and fewer students are getting degrees in art and the Humanities.
The young people I know are gamers. Maybe they can get gigs in the army for drone warfare.

[vurt]

The young people I know are gamers. Maybe they can get gigs in the army for drone warfare.

or they could control robots...

[gauderbock]

they can’t even write in cursive

To be fair, neither can I any more and I'm in my 50s. I struggle to even sign my name. Thirty years of keyboard use...

[VOODOO U]

At the expense of going OT a bit, does anyone else say "Thank You" to Chatgpt when you're done asking questions? I think I'm too much of a nice guy.

[bermudagold]

so we have AI charting on billboard now...first genre to do it?...country and gospel


The prompters of Breaking Rust have another "artist" called WD-40, a rapper BTW! lol

[VOODOO U]

No? Nobody else? I'm the only one who is courteous enough to say "thank you" to Chatgpt after a chat??
Wow. You guys are inconsiderate snobs.

[ghettosynth]

At the expense of going OT a bit, does anyone else say "Thank You" to Chatgpt when you're done asking questions? I think I'm too much of a nice guy.

Sometimes. Sometimes I tell it to f**k right off with its dumb take on shit.

[VOODOO U]

Sometimes I tell it to f**k right off with its dumb take on shit.

I'm not talking about BONES. I'm talking about Chatgpt.