is the accumulation of one's youtube feed truly the deepest gaze into the soul?

This is what traditional art reveals. And quite well.

Couple of years ago I was at a cannabis painting event (get stoned whilst painting), with my friend. I've got some experience drawing and sketching, very little with painting. My friend has very little experience in anything art related, yet whilst I was struggling to figure out what to paint he manages to make a lovely blend of colours and themes, in ways I never could. I was looking at it for a good while, and it had so many lovely elements. He kept thinking his wasn't good!

He would've never been able to make that with AI, it would have missed all that nuance.

Naaah. Nowadays YouTube just represents the pinnacle of enshittification. Not something I’d admit publicly to using.

If someone wants to know the weird shit people have on their minds you just have to find their social media timeline, especially Reddit, Tumblr or Fedi. Or, like, talk to them.

Given the flavour of weird shit in someone's head most AI wouldn't even slop anything like that. Like, I'm thinking of three shrimps having a raging threesome right now with Jim Carrey's head in the background watching one shrimp-dick explode. The AI would probably refuse or just make Carrey sit in front of a meal.

Thank you for that vibrant mental image

I challenge any AI to come up with a comment like this.

I chose to believe this happened. Jaden Smith has at least one friend and they were impressed with the art their friend made.

I will carry this story in my heart and retell it at the next paint and sip I go to.

If you've had very little experience with painting, how do you know how good you would be at it? Your friend might have a natural talent, but that doesn't mean that you couldn't learn how.

This is true. I'll be going to Amsterdam again soon, and I'm hoping there's another event at the time.

I actually closed my eyes and took a moment to prepare myself after reading the first sentence because I knew I was about to read the most brain-dead take imaginable.

My Youtube feed is utter shit. I watch one One Piece theory video, and that is all Youtube starts recommending. I watch one trauma video and that is all my feed shows. Youtube is so annoying nowadays, more akin to dementia addled mind with ADHD.

I understand the OOP's sentiment. There are plenty of us who have visually detailed and complex ideas, but are unable to fully express them via conventional media, due to lack of skill or disability. Not everyone can practise their way into being a master painter. It doesn't mean I think of it as art, and I can't understand why some people are fine with passing off something generated from others' work as their own creativity.

It is when a person's depth is measured in teaspoons.

I browsed some music on youtube on a fresh, logged out device a few days ago and it was so refreshing to get recommendations based the video I'm currently watching. Like 15 years ago. Now, if I'm logged in, the recommendations next to the playing video are the same ones as on the landing page, utterly useless.

What was 2/2?

AI art also helps keep starving artists unfed

Whilst true that not everyone can practice their way into mastery of painting, I usually find people don't even try.

I definitely prefer honest garbage to polished inauthenticity, but, based on AI usage, it seems the ordinary person disagrees. It's sad, don't you think?

Having a linguistic concept in your mind does not mean you have a "complex visual idea." The whole point of "practicing" is training your mind against it's nature and start to think visually for the first time. The tragedy of AI image generation is that it keeps people from exploring that side of their imagination and learning to really see. they never really develop a visual language but instead take the prepackaged style of the llm vending machine. It is sad to think that a voice is lost because they traded the vulnerability of making something to getting a predetermined product and pretend they had something visual in their mind to begin with.

Hey, that's not all it does! It uses all the water so they remain unhydrated as well! As well as all the electricity to keep them unpowered, and ruin the sleep for everyone within a 60 km2 square radius, so they also are being kept unrested. Jeez this is the dumbest timeline. By a lot

That's true, and I didn't say that. I'm talking about being able to visualise something in one's imagination, but have difficulty in translating that into reality, so others can see an approximation. I agree with the negative affects on imagination, cognitive surrender is real.

So what then for those with aphantasia? They may be able to describe something in detailed words, but not visualise it themselves at all. In that case, AI really might be able to help them express an idea.

Engagement farming? I refuse to believe the top person is for real

Also Youtube feed is the videos they haven't watched so isn't in their mind yet

Making it as an artist was always difficult, because the way artists are paid under capitalism favors giving all the money to a few big artists, who ironically aren't necessarily even that good.

100%. Obviously-AI images induce immediate repulsion in me, and I hate that I feel the need to inspect normal-looking images to see if they might, too, be AI. For some I'll never really know.

You believe people who can't draw also can't.. think visually? That's a completely different skill common in most of the population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_thinking

I mean one of my brothers is aphantasiac. He's a great 12 string guitarist. He does covers, but even with practice not everyone can write music well.

You can go into your yt history and delete videos and it will fix the recommendations

It is to a smoothbrained techbro.

That's cool, but if he was having trouble communicating a visual idea, and he wasn't good at painting, drawing, sculpting, or digital tools, would you think less of him for using AI to help him crystallise it and show it to you?

Around 825 AD, Persian scientist and polymath al-Khwarizmiwrote kitāb al-ḥisāb al-hindī ("Book of Indian computation") and kitab al-jam' wa'l-tafriq al-ḥisāb al-hindī ("Addition and subtraction in Indian arithmetic"). In the early 12th century, Latin translations of these texts involving the Hindu–Arabic numeral system and arithmetic appeared, for example Liber Alghoarismi de practica arismetrice, attributed to John of Seville, and Liber Algoritmi de numero Indorum, attributed to Adelard of Bath.[8] Here, alghoarismi or algoritmi is the Latinization of Al-Khwarizmi's name;[9] the text starts with the phrase Dixit Algoritmi, or "Thus spoke Al-Khwarizmi".

So in referring to what someone's true soul is, you can say "Thus spoke The Algorithm"

Yeah. Fuck YouTube and everything, but it's still possible to curate a decent feed.

Seems like a fundamental misunderstanding of what AI art is.

The whole point of “practicing” is training your mind against it’s nature and start to think visually for the first time.

Speak for yourself.

That sounds like a lot of fun

The deepest gaze into my soul is apparently that I enjoy disc golf, competitive pokemon battles and asian street food.

I deleted my whole history last week, and within a day YouTube was recommending me anime openings for things I have not had any interest in for 10 years. I'm pretty sure it's at least partially bullshit.

I ended up just deleting my whole Google account. I'm making do with an RSS reader and yt-dlp for now, but I'm already so fed up with that whole process that I'm making a simple QT app that does the RSS reading and yt-dlp calling for me. Akregator fucking sucks, by the way. Every time I shut down my PC without closing Akregator first, it loses its shit and does not remember any read statuses.

You don't have to be a master. Started drawing recently which you can do for less than £1 and free if you wanted to put effort into doing it for nothing.

Helps to find things which are easier to draw with minimal skill, which isn't necessarily everything. Also repeating the same or similar thing too.

I want to come up with decent patterns to engrave into wood which does limit it a bit, can't really do shading and the lines can't be too close or once carved into wood they merge into each other. I think a bird standing on a branch and some Halloween ghosts are probably things I can do well enough now that they could be worth carving at some point. Sanded some more scrap wood recently which I could use, might be worth buying some boards soon if it comes out well.

Maybe most people feel discouraged from trying art because they think it needs to be good enough to get likes and shares online. If people were more encouraging to beginner artists or people who just don't have time then maybe the average person wouldn't care as much about AI art

a few big artists, who ironically aren't necessarily even that good.

I get your point and all, but I just had to ask - how do you define and separate 'good' from 'bad' art, though?

I agree with you though, the traditional art world is no different from any other industry under capitalism. It's filled with sharks, ass kissing and networking. Most either come from fame, and/or from a wealthy family who's willing to support them. It's more important to be a driven entrepreneur with good social skills and the right connections, than an artist.

More like, it favors giving the money all the people who make a living off of what the artist produces.

Its like a factory. The artists are the workers at the bottom who actually produce and make the art work. Then there are the managers who promote the art and their bosses who sit at the top, running the factory. It is always those who benefit off of other people's hard work who get to enjoy the fruits of other people's labor.

Artists are why publishing houses exist and the reason why editors have a job in the first place, but it is the editors who drive nice cars and live in nice houses while the artists who draw and write the very books the publishers sell, get to enjoy getting paid so little that they can't make a living off of it.

If you look in places like the animation industry, you can point to any of the big animators who helped make Disney big in the 90s and you will see that none of them can get work. None. New animators have no chance. Artists who have been in the business for 20 or 30 years, who are responsible for the movies that defined a generation are jobless and if they get a job, it is the kind of entry level gig that you'd normally only give to a recent graduate.

Illustration had been fucked for decades. They are getting paid the same as in the 80s, but not adjusted for inflation. More often than npt they get offered jobs for exposure and when they land gigs that pays, it will be two months work for one week's pay. Asking for more money is not an option. There are no unions. All they can do is work faster to maybe make the low pay worth it. Meanwhile their editors live in gleaming mansions.

You might end up being one of the lucky few scammers in fine art who become rich people's favourite, but that is a completely different world from the commercial art industry. People work themselves into early graves. There's a reason why Berserk's crestor died in his 50s.

Back problems, wrist problems, eye problems, weight problems. And these are passionate souls, which is why it is so easy to take advantage of them and their skills. Most people in the animation industry burn out before they're 40. You don't see many middle aged artists in the industry today. Some end up teaching. Most leave the industry all together when those who benefit from their hard work has sucked every bone dry.

The higher ups get fat bonuses. They live the great life. Not a creative bone in their body, but they make a living on the piles and piles of passionate souls who will be eaten up and spit out with nothing to show for it.

That is the life of the artist.

The very, very few ones who rise to the top are often those who have a rich family member or spouse to finance their artistic endeavors. Illusteators, painters, authors, animators, you name it. More often than not, the ones who do well and are successful, have no real financial problems in their lives because their loved ones got them covered.

It's easy to make an amazing piece of art when you don't have to worry about money.

I just wished to drop here a novel from old times...

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Mysterious_Portrait

I have aphantasia. I still draw manually; I just need a reference photo (or subject) and "modify" it as I draw. Imagine if you couldn't remember what something looked like so you have to memorise "ok their right eye is 30% down their face and only half visible from this angle and extends 20% horizontally at about 10 degrees until it's covered by the nose which is…" etc. Then I draw that tiny line and have to check again

Writing it out, I just realised it's actually similar to how you would describe it to an LLM 😂. I will admit that I'm very unsuited to this skill, and it's extremely difficult for me, but I still find it fun. Maybe because of the difficulty itself?

Actually, lately I've been challenging myself by using pen and doing line-art. Normally, because I fuck up so much, I do messy sketches; so it was really interesting using a medium that is so punishing. I've learnt with line art it's mostly about what you don't draw, rather than what you do, if that makes sense

I fucked around with a locally installed image generator A.I. for a while in the past ~ it was fun, but I got bored of it quickly, and it became kind of hollow

My goal all through junior high and high school was to become a comic book artist. I'm still sad I never made it because I missed out on the opportunity to help Stan Lee achieve a net worth of $70 million.

Nice! Don't know why you got downvoted just for sharing your experience.

I do not have aphantasia, but a painting technique I follow could work for someone with aphantasia. It's more about pattern-recognition than imagining something beforehand.

I pretty much start by following whims. I pick some colors and do what feels right. Only after a bit do I look again at the work and think, "Huh, that looks like an alien" or "That kind of looks like a tree," etc. It's kind of like making my own Rorschach test - making sense of the noise on a canvas. Then, I start accentuating the pattern I see until others can see it, too. In the end, it's a unique piece that looks like I planned it all along.

I'm not sure if that sounds up your alley, but I figured I'd share just in case.

Yes, my middle schooler was going to hire a team of artists to create minion memes and dogs kung-fu fighting if not for AI.

I remove my own upvote from my comments because I like things starting at 0

Thanks! I'll give it a go one day

Top guy doesn't even have the checkmark you need to monetise on xitter tho...

Pro tip for YouTube: don't use the main feed. Instead, look at the recommendations under an interesting video for other ones that catch the eye, and save them into ‘watch later’ playlists by topic.

Also, don't watch random videos under the main account, open an incognito tab for that. With these two approaches combined, YouTube gives me some great recs, especially for music.