alt Hacker NewsI was thinking about this (while drawing), and there's a few points to make:
* There's meaning in all the little marks. Drawings are potentially layered with meaning. I was drawing a stick I found in the park, and thinking: this is the extent and the way in which the stick is straight or curved, and the specific way and form that it's knobbly, and that's all explained by how it grew; this green on it is the peculiar blue-green of lichen; it's a oak stick, I like oak; my drawing is just a stick, good, I might frame it, call it anti-art maybe. Some or all of that is expressed in the marks, though this becomes more apparent if I tell you that it is.
* So, an AI - diffusion - could undoubtedly draw a stick in an arty way. But to draw one that fits the above meanings, it has to be prompted with the meaning. The AI can't prompt itself, so there's a role for artist-as-prompt-writer. Whoopee, right, what fun. These prompts, if about graphical matters and a sort of meditation on the stick, would be essentially lies, because no such exploration of the form and significance of the stick would have really taken place without trying to draw it. It can't prompt itself or be honest.
* So to come up with the above words that might do as a prompt, I had to draw a stick. I had to learn by drawing a stick, even though I've been drawing for decades. Experience isn't the whole deal, otherwise the artist is only churning out filler material, which would be like AI art. Instead the artist has to explore all the time, while leaning on experience. The viewers are into that, they sense the excitement of exploration. They want to see an artist. Well, not exactly, most artists are unrewarding to look at (Brian Froud for instance), but they want to see creativity unfolding, over several pictures.
You can have non-graphical (non-mark-making) prompt-art, a bit like collage or photography, sure, but that's its own thing. Like you're saying, you can't just fake the craft forever, and even faking it once is less than ideal, unless you're narrowly focussed on output that meets targets, instead of meaning.
With programming, this might be different, since hitting targets and getting functionality might be all that's wanted, but I'm sure it depends.
The way I see it is with every stroke, an artist makes multiple decisions, most of them unconscious. They’re based on everything from the media, to our experience, mood, inspiration, and very much on our physiology… the arc of my shoulder and the length of forearm are just as much a part of the process as what inspired me about something to draw. To some extent, much of that is even true in photography.
Diffusion models basically record, classify, and amalgamate those decisions, which is why it’s so dang difficult to get generated art to look like something distinct. Not distinct like an existing artist, but genuinely unique.
The workflow of the prompter is very similar to an existing workflow in the art world: someone commissioning art. There’s often a discussion where the customer gives the artist a textual description, back-and-forth with sketches and preliminary versions, and sometimes revisions if the proposed final product isn’t what they wanted. Commissioning a piece of art is a creative process, but it’s not the same thing as being the artist. Even an art director who has extremely granular control over what they commission would never claim to be the artist. They’d get run out of town. I believe creating a collection though juxtaposition or even curation could be art, but you’d still never be the author of the contained pieces.