I really like history based art like this one. I just feels a bit cheated when it comes from AI. When a human does it there is usually some meaning behind each choice. Such as why the golden nails, the different writing instruments on the table, lighting facilities. In order to be accurate the artist spends a lot of time verifying what was historically available at the time and then represents it on canvas. With AI the results look very cool at surface level but I cannot enjoy the details. Did ancient Egyptians use a thin candle? Did they have pencil cup, an ink bottle? Did they write on sheets of paper?
I’d argue there’s some weird interest in discussing these choices done by gigabytes of number tables. What lead to them? If only we’d know it’s LLM from the very start each time, and know the text prompt it got fed. Some imaginary worlds these machine’s create are a post-art, a collage of all our artworks and popular trends that ever existed. It’s a curious vision not replacing the intentive art.
And intentive art, even as text, isn’t to die anytime soon. For how long Google efforts with their translator existed, it’s numbers can’t decide, what words it use, just like with imagery you described, and it would always be rather mid. Enough to illustrate one’s DnD campaign in a hurry, but still lacking if you, for example, want an art of your long-going character. Even in the fact you didn’t commision it, but just prompet a LLM. Commisioned art you discuss with an artisan is a ritual that makes the result special. It is to be.
But LLM can become a destroyer of the corporate art. These ads compiled of photobank imagery*, of a kitsch vector graphic, these posts with just-some-picture to make it waste more space in your feed. Many of these are set to die because they weren’t needed in the first place, many of their sources even blocked by my uBlock rules or gmail blocking any picture in spam. Serious, old places like Forbes would be bullied out of existence if they ever have one on their cover. There’s no braindead Elon to save money on real photoes, on real designs when it comes to shipping media. It’s only ever used as an afterthought.
* And for photobanks, there’s now a natural grace period of 6 months before another LLM got trained on latest photoes. In contemporary history shootings, it covers the most sales they do. In regional cases, like ‘Murmansk on winter holydays’ it doesn’t touch them at all, because it’s too specific. It mainly hurts these meme shoots of people-doing-something. And they are an art of how unremarkable they are.
Thoth is such an interesting figure to me. Hell I wrote an entire song about him.
I just like the Egyptian gods. The artwork for everyone except Anubis and Ra is scant.
Can we see or hear it?
Not right now. I haven’t released it. Called Thoth in the Sky With Emeralds though. I have it coming out on New Year’s Day.
Can you post it somewhere in the Fediverse and ping that thread? I’d like to see it.
sure, i’ll send you a reminder when it drops :)
Ugh, okay, here’s some brain poison for any time you hear about Thoth for the rest of your life:
Thoth (from Koinē Greek: Θώθ)
If you zoom in, you’d see Thoth being an exclusive user of paper before it was ever invented. That fits him right.
