Does a new form of “art” evolve that makes use of these seemingly omnipotent brushes?
It’s simply a new tool for artists to create art with. It will change art but I doubt it will destroy art. Like you said, a new form of art will evolve from it.
I'm becoming more and more redpilled on the generative art stuff. The risk-benefit analysis checks out in favour of LLMs, but maybe art is something we can keep our Markov chains off of.
Those spirals got backlash for being "too easy to do", but others have done more creative things with the same technology: https://www.reddit.com/r/StableDiffusion/comments/15wdoqa/be...
That's the importance of accessibility, and has happened all the time in art history (e.g. photography did not kill painting on a canvas)
For instance the emergence of extremely good reproductions didn't affect the price of the original paintings. Same way the evolution of photoshop doesn't have much effect on the price of picture prints.
Now stock photography could be impacted. But otherwise generative AI only opens the door to more picture production, and won't be put in competition to the traditional painting/prints market/direct artist support market.
> What does a world without art look like.
As an aside I always find it funny when 'art' is used as short form for 'pictures', especially in the world's context.
I think, given the context being an generative AI for images it should be fairly obvious what I’m talking about.
I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before they do it for music, dancing, fighting and whatever else you care to tag with the term.
For example, Flag by Jasper Johns sold for $110M in 2010 [1]. The fact that almost anyone could make something like this (the subject matter is public domain, and the technique is within reach of anyone who has taken an art class) doesn't seem to have diminished its value.
And as for all of the art you see in the everyday world, being able to design it more easily would likely lead to more of it, not less. Instead of seeing the same 20 things that they carry at IKEA over and over, you'd have custom artwork everywhere.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_(painting)
EDIT: Added the last paragraph while you were replying.
Nope. I mean the visual art we see all around us. If it’s trivial to generate it’ll be everywhere and nobody will value it. It will become a annoyance to people - so what fills that space then? Bare walls? Or will things go to a new level. Was kind of my line of thinking.
Is that true? Are there fewer live music shows, plays, live comedy, etc... than there were before cinema and television?