• mindbleach@sh.itjust.works
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    1 day ago

    That is one of the more baffling tells for the sneer-club absolutists. How can a person spend hours tweaking a block of text and not imbue it with meaning?

    But consider: I don’t play any instruments. I have written music. If you’re hearing it, did I make that?

    • starman2112@sh.itjust.works
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      23 hours ago

      The text can have meaning, but the image generated when you feed that text into a machine does not. You have no control over what the machine does with your inputs—there is no direct correlation between the words you type and the resulting image. If you’re commissioning an artist to make a work for you, then no matter how much care you put into describing the picture you want to see, you aren’t the one drawing it.

      But consider: I don’t play any instruments. I have written music. If you’re hearing it, did I make that?

      If there’s a direct correlation between the music you write and the output of a machine interpreting it, then yes.

      • mindbleach@sh.itjust.works
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        21 hours ago

        How can an image not mean anything?

        Your control over what the machine does is that input. It put your ideas into a JPEG, and that JPEG put those ideas into my brain. What do you mean, that cannot have meaning?

        If there’s a direct correlation between the music you write and the output of a machine interpreting it, then yes.

        But it’s not music. Right? The part you’re listening to, the playback or the recording, is just a machine doing things. What you’re hearing is not music. It’s something else, somehow. What is it? Fuck if I know, but y’all are convinced there’s some other thing that a song can be.

        • starman2112@sh.itjust.works
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          20 hours ago

          Re: images. You have no control over what the machine does. You give it a prompt, it generates an image, you decide it’s good enough and save the picture, or it’s not good enough and tweak the prompt. You don’t control the machine. It doesn’t put your ideas into a jpeg, it generates a jpeg that’s consistent with the description you gave. If that picture is also consistent with your ideas, cool. You can’t give the machine an idea to put into the JPEG in the first place, because the machine cannot have ideas.

          Re: music. The part I’m listening to, the playback or the recording, is a machine doing things that have a direct correlation with your input. You do control the machine, because it only does precisely what you tell it to do. You decide where every individual note goes, how every individual note sounds. There is, again, direct correlation between your input and the output.

          • mindbleach@sh.itjust.works
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            18 hours ago

            Tweaking the prompt is control. The tool is weird and limited, but that is how you use it.

            If you can describe your ideas, then an image consistent with that description… contains your ideas.

            You can’t give the machine an idea to put into the JPEG in the first place, because the machine cannot have ideas.

            Damn, you’re right, so anything conveyed by the image must come from a human being. Wild.

            Re: music, all the music I’ve written is procedural.