Ai Art x Christianity | Icons, Religious Artwork, & LLMs

Connor Mahoney 0:00
I'm going to introduce Jael. She's my co host for tonight, and my first time having a co host happy to have her. She's been hosting a lot of spaces with autistic minded folks in and around the tech space, so I thought it would be good to bring her on. But our main guest for today is Julian Alquist. And quick bio, Julian is a graduate of Christendom college with a double major in philosophy and theology. He's also founding faculty at the Chesterton Academy, which some of you might know about. He helped develop the history and philosophy programs, though, but what we're really speaking about is a new project. He's kind of started on his own, something of a hobby, but it looks like it's really been taken off. He was recently featured in church pop magazine. The project is called Generation of the saints, and they create him in his I guess his co creator, Father, sandquist, I think that's who it is. He'll speak more about it. But they create AI images of saints and other church figures, biblical scenes, and they post them on Reddit, on Instagram. They have a few accounts online. So really neat project that he's been working on now. And so the topic for today is about that, about religious artwork and AI. What are the compiled compatibilities? How can we, how can we view AI outlook from a Christian perspective, and how ought we to be building these tools and using these things? So I'm curious to kind of hear his thoughts there. I know when the church pop interview went out, there was a lot of pushback. I think some people are kind of surprised by that. I'm not so surprised. I think, I think there's been kind of an ongoing question about how how suitable technology is within a Christian framework of understanding about who we are as humans and and how technology ought to fit into our lives for some time now. But definitely, I think if you go look at that original church pop tweet, you can see a lot of some of those fears pop up there. So happy to have Julian on to kind of speak to that, speak to what his intentions are, and how he thinks that, you know, he's using these tools in a proper in a Christian manner. Last thing I want to say, and I'm not going to monolog here too long, but I do want to say that we've been having these spaces, these Twitter spaces, on a topic I'm broadly calling Christian futurism. Since the beginning of the year, we're focusing on questions about the intersection of tech and Christianity. So a lot of AI, some blockchain, virtual reality, these types of things, some really cool technology that's being developed here recently. And I think Christians need to be having a conversation and and participating in that conversation, so that's why we're doing this. It's a pretty economical ecumenical conversation, meaning we have Catholics here, we have Protestants here. We're also happy to invite our east and Orthodox brothers and sisters when they make it out. But it's not anything goes space. You know, the way I look at it, we have a common belief in a Trinitarian God and of salvation through Jesus Christ. We often also have a common baptism, common confessions and the Nicene Creed, the Apostles Creed. And probably really important for this discussion, we have a common understanding of mankind as made in the image of God. We call that the imago day. So I think some of these questions and this conversation is really going to feature on that concept of what it means to be the Imago Dei, alright, enough, enough talking from me. Let me throw it to Julian to maybe kind of introduce what generation of the saints is all about. And also, if anybody wants to join the panel, please just raise your hand happy to invite people up.

Julian Ahlquist 3:46
All right, can you hear me?

Connor Mahoney 3:47
Sure can go ahead.

Julian Ahlquist 3:49
All right, excellent. All right. Well, thanks for having me on here. This is my first Twitter space experience. I just learned about the existence of such a thing recently, so I don't know what's going on here. So, so, yeah, just a little more intro to me and father sandquist. He's a colleague of mine at Chesterton Academy. We were just at a brewery one day, and I randomly had seen a video of AI art. It was regarding dolly that are a generator creator, and I was just totally blown away. I showed him some samples, some experimental samples that people had come out, and he was blown away too. They both kind of immediately said, Hey, this would be awesome if we could just create a bunch of Saint images, just turn them out, and especially if Christ, of course, with Mary, and they're like, oh yes, that's such a great idea. So we began experimenting with Dolly, and Dolly wasn't that great. Eventually, Father sandquist, he found mid journey, and we began experimenting with that, and that was just that just just hit the mark perfectly of what we wanted. And so I've been trying to create images of saints. Every day, more or less, I come out with like, 10 images of a. Single Saint per day on average or so. And I just, yeah, I love doing it. It does take a long time to do. Overwhelmingly, I have positive feedback, and that's usually from on Reddit, which is where we're kind of centrally, like doing our thing, as well as Instagram so. And then I show a bunch of course of stuff in person to people so overwhelmingly positive. But I definitely get a lot of negative feedback. I've gotten definitely someone on Reddit, and then, yeah, when the church pop article came out, yeah, that on x, it was, it was just, yeah, mostly negative, which was interesting. And, you know, I hear that Twitter kind of brings out the worst to people sometimes, because they have to be blunt with their short, you know, tweets, and maybe that's it, but, yeah, but I just, I do want to say mostly positive feedback the I before the church pop article, I wrote an article in Gilbert magazine, which is dedicated to the Catholic author, g k Chesterton, and my article was titled, baptized this technology as fast as possible. Because, you know, good people don't use AI, and only, let's say atheist perverts use AI. That's just going to make AI worse and worse in all sorts of ways. So if, if good people of Christians start using AI, it's going to be, you know, trained in, in a better direction, right? And, you know, restore all things in Christ, you know, if, if something can be used for good, it should be used for good. And a lot of people, even, yeah, a lot of people have said, like, the the saint images, at least, at least, many of the same images I make inspire them. And, you know, it's definitely inspired me. It's inspired me to, you know, deepen my faith. And if that does, you know, good for people, which I think it is doing good for some people, then, then that's obviously good. Anyway. Eventually, the my archdiocese came out with an article in their arch diocesan newspaper, and it was totally positive on the project we were doing on generation of the saints. And then, yeah, eventually that led to the the church pop article, and that that definitely has gotten the most flack because, I guess, yeah, because the the other articles didn't go to go to Twitter, didn't go to x, and so I get, I think there's just, like, a negative, a very loud, I think minority on Twitter. It's aI art. So, yeah, I've been, I've been interacting with a lot of critics even before, you know, I got on to Twitter, and so I've been trying to sort of catalog all the, all the objections, all the possible objections. And, you know, I've, I've narrowed it down to just a few, but I that's, that's a little intro there. I don't know if anybody has any questions, and we can take this in a certain direction, or I could just keep on rambling.

Jael 8:06
Sorry. Connor, that I interrupted. I was gonna say I just checked out your page and you don't have that many pictures. You have, like, four. I was like, hoping to, like, scroll down and see, like, massive amounts of pictures, but there's not too many...

Julian Ahlquist 8:17
Are you on the Twitter or Reddit or the Instagram page?

Jael 8:21
Twitter? Yeah, I just went on your Twitter.

Julian Ahlquist 8:22
Oh, yeah, I only have just a couple, because I just got on Twitter like, a week ago or something.

Jael 8:27
Yeah, I see... followers, it just, like, posted, like, check you out. Because, like, this is extremely cool. I was hoping to see like, a big feed, but I'm sure in time, there'll be more, but they're beautiful. I'm happy about what you're doing. I think it's really good.

Julian Ahlquist 8:40
Oh, thank you. Yeah, no, I definitely should have posted more before, before doing this Twitter space. Now I think of it. But yeah, the the main stuff is all on Reddit. That's the complete set. So if you you know search generation, generation of the saints on Reddit, you'll get to the page. The Instagram stuff was kind of the best of sort of, but, yeah, yeah, dang. I should have put more on Twitter already. Whoops.

That's okay. I'll try to dig up. I posted a few myself. I'll try to show that to the Jumbotron. But you should, I think you should definitely add Twitter to your catalog, yeah, full platform. Don't, don't be put off by the negative comments. You know, I think sometimes it just hits the algorithm in a certain way. So it's really hard to judge how this stuff works, but I think you would get some positive feedback here.

Yeah, I think so. And I'm, I'm more or less used to negative feedback on on the internet. I've been like, debating atheist, nerve nerd nerds for like, decade and a half. So yeah, I can take it. Well, hopefully we'll see.

Connor Mahoney 9:41
Awesome. Yeah, I'm glad Jael jumped in there. I was gonna say, Jael, I'll just let you pop in whenever you have questions. And I'm super happy to have you, because I know, I know JL, has been bringing on a lot of artists into questions about kind of these intersection of tech. And I think one of her, you. Recent features is down in the listeners. Is that phi architect?

Jael 10:05
Yeah, yeah. We had him on to talk recently, Yep,

Connor Mahoney 10:09
yeah, I was in that space, and I really enjoyed his insights, though. So again, if anybody wants to hop onto the panel, ask some questions, engage with conversation, please just raise your hand, hand there and request to speak and be happy to bring you up. I did bring on a couple other people to join the discussion. Feldman. I know Feldman is an artist as well, so I'm sure she would have some insights there, and she's been around since the beginning, all the way back since January, since we've been doing this Spaces. Glad to have you here, Feldman, and also my friend Ian, who was actually the one who introduced me to Julian's work way back in, gosh, about this time last year. So we, Julian and I have done there on a old podcast. I was contributing to the crypto conversion podcast, actually, which is on the listener panel, just so I can play just so I can play music in space. We aren't doing that podcast here lately, but that was a cool episode, and we talked about kind of his project and why he's doing it. So if you guys want to get some more info, that might be a good episode to check out. But why don't I throw it to you? Ian, I know you really took an interest in Julian's work, and I think you also recently wrote an essay on kind of how Christians ought to be approaching AI outwork specifically. So I don't know, maybe you might be able to start us off with a good discussion.

Ian Huyett 11:33
Yeah, for sure, Julian, I was not surprised by the negative feedback, because I've been kind of taking the heat here for a while, you really inspired me. I subscribed to the Chesterton society magazine, and after I read your piece, I really got into making Old Testament art on mid journey. I've been complaining for Yeah, I've been complaining for years to kind of any artist who would listen about just the paucity of Old Testament, quality Old Testament art. I mean, still, even though we've got this, you know, renaissance of art being made with mid journey, still to this day, you've got a ton of fantastic stories and characters from the Old Testament that there's really no high quality artistic depiction of on the internet.

Julian Ahlquist 12:20
Yeah, that's awesome.

Ian Huyett 12:23
Yeah, I've done a little bit of it, not nearly as much as you, but I wrote a piece about that, and I name dropped you at the outset, in AD Fontes, which is a Protestant journal that was in print actually a ways back and then that was controversial enough that some people wrote follow up pieces just attack my piece, that I'm promoting AI art. And then, gosh, man, on your on your church pop thing I was, I got in there, and was kind of responding to some of the comments that were kind of critical of the idea of AI art. And then other people were like, Qt, ing, my comments, ratioing them. And it was so much of it was, you know, as you indicated, just like completely unreasoning, just just like vitriol and, you know, unsupported assertions. I mean, so I'd really be interested in hearing what you kind of think the steel man argument against AI already from a Christian perspective, because it's really, it's really hard to figure it out from the attacks. I mean, it's, it's basically, you know, I'd be pleasantly surprised if anyone who's kind of more critical of Christians using AI to make art showed up in this space, because as far as I can tell, there's really not much of an argument. It's just kind of assertions that it's demonic with no kind of philosophical or physical support.

Julian Ahlquist 13:41
Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, I'll try you. So that's, that's excellent to hear. That's, that's, that's great that I my work had inspiration there. But yeah, so, so at the very least, I think I've distilled anti AR objections down to four. So I think the first the most frequent ones said is AI art is not art. Okay. Number two, AI art looks bad. And then three, AI art steals from Brother artists and whatnot. And then four is AI art is demonic. The demonic accusation was the most frequent one at first, but that, that one seems to have kind of fallen to the wayside. But, yeah, I guess I'll try to steel man each, each of these. So AI, art is not art, because the art, and this kind of goes back to ancient Greek definitions have to do with with humans making something intentionally. And, you know, with AI art, you know, the the AI, the computer is not a human, and that's the thing making the art. And therefore AI art is not art. Now, you could say, like, well, even if it's not art, like, still, is it good, right? But anyway, that's, that's kind of the steel man ish of the first objection you. And part of that is like, well, the it doesn't take any skill to use to produce this. On the on behalf of a human, the AI art looks bad. And I would definitely say probably most AI art is bad. You can you can definitely usually tell, I think if, unless you're, you know, very unfamiliar with it, usually tell if something's AI generated, at least. That's, that's my feeling. And I might, might be sure. So yeah, if you recognize, and I will say, like, when I see an image on the internet and I'm like, oh, that's AI generated, I'm kind of like, yeah, there's a sort of cheapness to it sometimes. And I do get the sense like, oh yeah, maybe AI art is just sort of cheap and bad and, you know, whatever, in terms of so AI art steel. So usually, how an AI art generator works is that it scans, you know, the internet, or some other days, it's usually the internet, in general, scans images that are related to the prompt being inputted into it, and then bases, you know, creates an image bases, based off those images. And a lot of times, it scans copyrighted images, you know, artists, you know, work by artist without their permission, and then creates images from there. So you can say, like, yeah, it's, it's stealing other other people's artwork. So that's a steel man for that. Then AI art is demonic. This is, this is a tough one to steal man. I guess some people have inputted certain things. I heard one person said that he inputted the St Michael prayer into some sort of, I don't know what it was. Maybe it was mid journey or something, and then, like, it crashed for three days. There's that. And also, oh yeah, some of the images might be drawing from, from, I guess, you know, pornographic sources, or simply demonic sources. And sometimes, you know, if you render an image and instead of a crucifix, it might like the character, the saint, might have some weird symbol, and maybe that's demonic or something. And maybe it is demonic. In fact, there was one time amongst the, you know, 10s of 1000s of images I've generated, one time there was like a, clearly, like demonic figure in the background, but, but, you know, could have been like because, you know, the devil was tempting the same, that's what it was anyway. So that's my best to steel man, that one, I don't know how. What do you think of those attempts to make those objections sound reasonable?

Connor Mahoney 17:40
I think some of the points are maybe a little more interesting to converse on than others, but probably the more less interesting to me is the question about AI stealing our work. I think that's somewhat misunderstood about how AI works. Nominus here is actually an AI Dev. He could probably speak a little more to it, but, but broadly, I say that you got to understand, like AI, it's trained on data. So there is data used in the training process. But as as far as, and I know, open AI, for example, mid journey, maybe too, I'm not sure, is open to the internet. So it might still, there might still be an active process going on there, but for the most part, the there's, there's no, there's no artwork stored in, like, mid journeys. Model, after it's trained, it pretty much operates totally independently based on the data that it that it's learned. So there's really, yeah, so that that's somewhat of a misunderstanding, I think. Is that true? Nominus? I mean, are they? Are they open to the internet now with newer models?

Nominus 18:44
So I wouldn't say that when you generate a AI art piece that it is directly stealing because the complexity of the space of possible AI artworks is what we call O of K to the 10, which is like a huge complexity space of possibilities of AI art being generated while the training data would be o to the n. And all that means is just, there's like, there's one version of the training data, but the AI basically guesses in between each picture that it, you know, learns about and so I wouldn't say it's directly copying, But where the ethical issue would come in is, basically when they're scraping for data, when they're collecting data from the internet. Is it a YouTube video with a proprietary song or, you know, that's that's where the ethical issue comes. In and and we saw like Mira from open, AI said a while ago that that they do collect things that are open, that are openly on the internet. So,

Connor Mahoney 20:16
yeah, I think that still could be an ethical question about, you know about using, I guess, AI or other work in the training data, but I just was speaking mainly to the active process of it, continuing to scrape data, is not necessarily true. It's not true that, like in a when you generate something through mid journey, it's not true that it's an, I'm going to butcher this world. What is it? Amalgamation of amalgamation. Yeah, it's not. It's not, it's not a combination of other people's outlook. It really is something entirely new, that the AI has, generated...

Julian Ahlquist 20:51
Yeah. It's a transformative work, I believe is the legal definition. It's transformative, rather than just copying. Yeah, I think that's the term.

Ian Huyett 21:02
That's exactly right,

Julian Ahlquist 21:04
Yeah. And I would say, like, even if it's being influenced by copyrighted work without the artist permission, you know, in a sense, that's how art happens anyway. Like artists, like, look at other artwork, even when it's, you know, still copyrighted, and it's gonna definitely influence the artist anyway. And you know, if they produce something that is obviously just a copy of another artist, well, then that's a problem. But if they're influenced by it, you know, maybe influenced in the style, maybe just influencing in the subject matter, that's that's okay, right? So, just because, you know, AI, like mid journey, or whatever could be influenced by workfest, copyrighted, that's that's happening in any way on on, you know, real or, you know, handcrafted art in a sense of me. So at least that's an argument.

Ian Huyett 21:52
Well, not only that Julian, but I've definitely found when I'm using mid journey, I get my best results if I tell mid journey to make something in the style of a particular artist. I'll describe the scene, and I'll say, do this in the style of Salvador Dali or Jacques Louis, to be yes, whoever I'm thinking of, yes, I do. Yeah, exactly well, and I'm, I guarantee I'm not the first lawyer to come to the conclusion that doing that is completely illegally fine. Mid journey, obviously, talked to IP attorneys and told them it was completely permissible to do that. That's how all art works. And so there, there is. There's certainly no legal problem with being influenced by another artist when you're creating something, whether you're a human or an AI, and that example I just gave where I'm just putting in do it like Salvador Dali, that's even the influence there is even more straightforward than if they just saw some Salvador Valley paintings and the training were influenced by them. So there's no legal question. And then the question is, if there's an ethical question that's non legal, what is that ethical question? And now I'm, I'm, by the way, kind of, I'm open to the idea that maybe we should create a new legal regime to, you know, offer some compensation to human artists when AI scrapes their work, and maybe figure out like a Spotify. But I think the ethical justification for that would have to be that we as a society want to promote and incentivize the arts. It would not be that people are getting stolen from anytime their art influences their AI, because already influence is not them ethically or legally.

Julian Ahlquist 23:27
Right. Yeah, good points. Good points.

Connor Mahoney 23:31
Yeah. I like I said, I think the that question, I guess the legal question, is probably one of the less interesting questions here. You know, as far as whether or not AI, is actually artwork. And then I think probably the extension of that, especially, especially when we're generating religious artwork. The question is, is that really a proper use of a machine or a tool to create, you know, this, this, this religious framework for us through the artwork that you know, that is not, maybe, as directly connected to to human, to a human creative, to a human's creative effort as at one point. So, you know, I know you draw a distinction that you're not creating icons. That process is a little bit different. That's somewhat established, you know, by church teachings or creating religious outlook, you know, so maybe, what are kind of the distinctions there that you draw?

Julian Ahlquist 24:25
Yeah. I mean, for in general, like, there's the question of, again, is AI art, actually art? And again, I do, I do agree with kind of the the the Greek Aristotelian, intimistic definition that, yeah, art is something made by a human intentionally. Basically, there's different ways to put it. I think that's the most straightforward one, and that's, you know, very broad, right? But you know the to contrast that there's, you know, things that that nature creates, right? And that wouldn't be art, or, you know. Something that happens by accident, like, if you trip suddenly, obviously, that's not art. Now you could, like, elevate an accident into an art like, if you know, if you're painting something, and then you just completely screw up or something, you're like, actually, Ooh, that looks good. And you keep it then, then you know that you elevate it to to art, because it becomes intentional, sort of after the fact. So, you know, AI, it, it, you know, uses a sort of randomness. And so there is a, there's a sense of, like it being, well, an accident, almost. But then if, you know, decide to keep it, it's, it becomes art. Now there's other, there's other ways that AI art requires human input to and thus fulfills the definition of art. So for example, obviously AI generators were created by humans. So that's kind of a big thing, a big factor of human input, input, and you know, it continues to be trained by humans. It's obviously influenced by pre existing human art. The prompts, of course, are put in by humans, which is kind of a big deal, and sometimes you have to be very clever with the prompts. If it's not cooperating exactly the you know, it's a human who gets to decide what images the generator to public, basically publish and, you know, and you know, and show what images he wants that the generators have produced that can be a time consuming process. And even if, yeah, you want to keep an image, there's oftentimes, although less and less, there's mistakes like that, messes up the freaking fingers. And you know, you can try to tell the the AI our generator to try that area again, or you just manually Photoshop, which I do all the time. So that obviously is a big human factor. And it is true that that some humans are better at creating AI art than others, and it is a time consuming process, and part of it is just time. But, you know, it does require some sort of artistic eye to figure out what images to keep and and how to modify and whatnot. You know, a guy hired me who used mid journey all the time. He's like, he's like, Yeah, you're better at this. And so he hired me to make some images. So, so it's not like, oh, you know, it doesn't require any work, or doesn't, you know, require any skill whatsoever. So I think for those reasons, at the very least, AI, art is art now, maybe the more like, the faster and easier it gets. Does it become less like art? Perhaps. I mean, I definitely would say that the someone who manually, you know, by hand, paints a picture that definitely requires more skill than than a typical piece of AI art. And, you know, coming up, you know, finding the a good image for whatever subject, using mid journey, definitely requires more skill. But, you know, technically it does. There's enough human input for sure that it fulfills sort of the traditional definition of art. So anybody's thoughts on that? Before I wrestle with the religious angle.

Connor Mahoney 28:14
Just kind of as a point of order, I'll say if somebody definitely wants to butt in here, you just want to raise your hand, I'm happy to kind of pass it around that way. But otherwise, as long as we're having a, you know, a good discussion, I think we can all just kind of hop in as we, as we feel led on that point, I'll off. I have some thoughts, but I'm going to throw it to nominal, because he did have his hand up.

Nominus 28:38
Oh, it's all good. Jael didn't speak yet so she can go ahead.

Jael 28:43
No no, Nominus, I'm just you could go first. That's fine.

Nominus 28:48
Okay. I think that the skill spectrum in AI art is probably going to be fairly similar to any art form, but we really just haven't seen people. We really don't have any way to understand what's a great piece of AI art right now, I think.

Julian Ahlquist 29:17
Yeah, once that one thing comes to mind on on that topic. I think it's usefully comparable to CGI. Like, oftentimes when, when we can tell, like, in a movie, that they're using CGI, it's usually, it's usually kind of cringy, unless it's like, you know, like Toy Story or something, right? But if it's supposed to look realistic or something, that's and we can tell, ah, that's CGI. There's kind of like, Ah, whatever. And so if, basically, if you can't tell that it's aI art and it looks like, you know, real painting or a real photo, that's at least one factor into what makes good AI art. I think so it's, it's making it like good AI art doesn't, is not supposed to look like aI art. I think, I think. That's, I haven't thought about too much, but that's something to consider.

Nominus 30:05
I wonder what kind of, what kind of I wonder if we could study what kind of things tip people off to, the fact that it's aI art. Because, you know, obviously, when there's like a human in the picture we we've seen. You may have seen, like, the weird hands. It couldn't do hands for a while. But like, maybe more abstractly, like, I don't know that's an art thing, though, I would love to, I would love to hear from will, also will, and some is done in the audience, and he's really knowledgeable on theology. I would love to hear his side. When you get to the religious

Connor Mahoney 30:47
He's actually popped up onto the speaker panel, and... something else about Will, I know he's a... Go ahead.

Nominus 30:53
I have, I've like, I have some experiments that I did a while ago with regards to the AI art potentially being like demonic thing and like it was just like emergent things, not not things I intended, but I think that, like when I was Talking about how the whole possibility space of of AI art, or any or even a word model is so informationally dense that and we don't really know what's in it. And I think, I think, I actually think that demonic things could come from an AI, but they don't necessarily have to be, if that makes sense. Like, I don't think that that demonic things come from an AI means it's necessarily completely demonic, because it depends on the person prompting it?

Julian Ahlquist 32:01
Yeah, no, I totally agree, because definitely demons, least theoretically, have the power to manipulate what's going on in the coding and whatnot. So absolutely, but you know, you say that's, that's true about just about everything, right? Any like you could say, you know, maybe when you're brushing your teeth, maybe there's, there's something happening on the chemical level being manipulated by demons, or something it out to point out to a ridiculous example. So the basically, in terms of how you know, how you deal with like matters of exorcism, is you need to generally, first establish, kind of beyond doubt, that like demons are involved and and basically, the chief factor is, is there an aversion, or, yeah, an aversion to the Divine Right? If you say, like, if you douse, you know, the person with holy water, and they're without them, even, you know, knowing it, and you know, they kind of cringe, okay, maybe they're possessed or something. So likewise, I would say, like, when you're you're inputting prompts into mid journey, for example. And you know, you're, you're inputting the name of Jesus. Like, is it freaking out? Some people claim that sometimes AI does freak out. I've really never seen that, but obviously, you know, it creates images, beautiful images of Christ and Mary and the Saints, you know, very beautifully. And no problem. So that's at least some evidence that, well, that mid journey, at least, isn't possessed by demons.

Nominus 33:29
I have seen some aversion in I've seen some aversion in a lot of different models, but I've also seen models basically confess the gospel. So, like I prompted mid journey, like you said, with this thing called, I don't know it was just a phrase that I thought of symbolic repentance, because I was in repentance for what I thought was, well, I realized that throughout my life, sometimes I had when I repented, I was only doing it like, really, symbolically, like, you know, just like to do it, you know, and but not usually, but just like sometimes, if I was really upset or something, you know, I would just do that. But when I entered that into mid journey, it gave a really, definitely demonic image. And, um, it makes sense, though, because that is like, sin is demonic. So, yeah, um, like, and that was, that was like, I wanted to see. To understand that sin better, so I could turn from it, you know?

Julian Ahlquist 35:06
Yeah. Just because image just obviously depicts something demonic doesn't mean it's obviously evil, right?

Nominus 35:12
There was also another, there was, there's also another experiment I did... sorry

Connor Mahoney 35:17
Let's pass it, let's pass it around, and then come back nominist. But I do want to quickly, too, because I asked Julian this question about, you know, the difference between icons and religious imagery, you know. And I'll just say, like, I understand that there is, there's a set way in the church icons, you know, ought to be developed and and to come about. We're not talking about, you know, that process on, or necessarily, right? We're talking about just the use of mid journey to generate religious or will go even just be used by Christians. So I do want to clarify that distinction. I'm kind of foreseeing that will might have, might want to comment on the on that specifically, but I want to throw it to JL, because she had a question, and then let's seed it to to will, because I'm interested in some of his thoughts, though.

Jael 36:06
Yeah, I just wanted to say that we're talking about creating a ir, but I also wanted to say that it's just a really great visualization tool. It's good to see this thing in a visual, not so much, even if it's art, but just to have like a visual, if you have something in your head and you would like it to come out onto it. It's different to see it. And that's all I really wanted to say,

Julian Ahlquist 36:27
Yeah, no, I totally agree. Yeah, it was like seeing depictions of the saints, and definitely make it more real. And it's ironic, because it's aI art which is supposed to be fake, but definitely, like, I think about their lives more, especially in, like, their historical context. And, you know, it, it definitely humanizes the saints. And, you know, says like, Hey, maybe I can, you know, actually become a saint too. They're not such a distant, you know, abstract, distant abstraction. They're, you know, incarnate as it were, yeah,

Connor Mahoney 36:57
yeah. And we kind of have a lack of religious imagery for a lot of these saints. I know I was super interested in the Desert Fathers some time ago, and I'm actually still working. I'm not an a visual artist, so I felt, you know, somewhat unqualified to kind of prep this conversation. That's where I was kind of happy to bring on JL, who maybe has a little more those connections. And also I'm interested in what will has to say, because I know he is. He's actually a medieval art historian, I believe. But I dabble with the arts. I've been a gigging musician for number of years. I actually don't really do a whole lot of that anymore, but I'm kind of interested in more of that, those artistic questions about, you know, what is legitimate art, and what ought we to be glorifying about as Christians? And I think, I think sometimes people who are on so autistic minded kind of miss the discussion wrote the people who have credit critiques about it and who are positive about it. So I want, I want to loop back to that, but, but yeah, let's throw it to Will.

Will Anselm 38:00
Well, thank you Connor so much. And yeah, first and foremost, I am an art historian. I have about six or seven jobs these days because I'm just rubbish at all of them. So I'm just hedging my bets, because I'll probably get five from all of them before too long, Ghana is getting increasingly increasingly more unhappy with my work in progress, with every space that we do, but certainly from the this this conversation is interesting from an art historical perspective, because just from a raw art historical perspective, I'm a Catholic as well, first and foremost, but from a raw art historical perspective, it's important to recognize that the academy, even from the beginning of the 20, end of the 19th, beginning of the 20th century, does not consider photography to be part of the history of art proper. We're not saying that it isn't artistic and that it's not creative, but it is really understood to exist in an entirely different context to the visual art, which is to say, making things, doing things, mimesis, right, as has been understood and has been examined, it obviously forms an important role in the midst of how we look at art and how we look at even photographs of the some certain works that have been destroyed now, which we've only seen this, even some paintings by Raphael, which we only know what they look like because of descriptions and a couple of very bad Polaroid photographs. I would say that the next step is that AI is not is like a that is downstream from Ai generated, generate generative AI, as it produces images, is downstream from photography, by virtue of the fact that it is even less, even less bound up in the mimetic context of people making things and doing things. And there's somebody else the question, what is art? Well. The great Kenneth Clark, Lord Clark, who who wrote the series civilization. He said, Well, I'm often asked, what is art? What is culture? And he says, like, I can't tell you you've been standing outside the Great West door of Notre Dame Cathedral. All I can tell you is it's this. It's people making things and doing things. And by what, and by that, he meant people making things and doing things themselves. Now let's not be snobbish about this. It's important to recognize that people are making things and doing things when they are carefully calibrating certain prompts to generate the production of certain images in AI. I think that it's important that we don't sniff at the level of skill and intrigue. I think as somebody, as I think, as Julian had mentioned, you can't just make things up or whatever, but it is not creating anything that is new, that is entirely the work of human hands now. And there's also this whole context of art and icons and images not made by human hands as a whole thing, of this, of these miraculous apparitions of icons, especially in the East. But the question that I wrestle with first and foremost, and I have a couple other things to say, but I'll just leave it here. I'll land the plane with this now, and I'm sure that we'll come back to some other points in a bit. The question that I have is, when somebody raised or is, is AI inherently demonic? Well, I mean, that's a question that I'm going to get into right now, but what I would say, is that there is potential. There is the potential we're already seeing, at the moment, a very uncharitable and potentially problematic displacement of well trained, careful, diligent artists and graphic designers who are Christians, who have been producing work and images for churches, for Christian content creators who are all of a sudden being replaced by generative AI. And that is a decision. I think that that whole issue is something that we need to think very carefully about, I'm not ruling on that in a final sense, but it is not, you know, it's really important to consider. There's a difference between generating an image for a quick post or a blog or, you know, something to throw at the top of a tweet. That's one thing, but if you're going to then sell that or put it in your chart or or use it for a book cover, is a human losing out for something that humans are supposed to be cultivated and encouraged to do, the process of creating holy and venerable icons being entirely consistent for two, mainly 2000 years, natura naturans, this whole principle of not just the final product, but also the making of it, which is worthy and proper to the human condition of contemplating beauty, contemplating God, contemplating the saints, contemplating Christ, who is the visible image of the invisible God, do we? That is a fair concern that I think I have at the moment. And with that, I'll end up playing, and I'm sure that a couple of points we'll come back to in a wee bit of time.

Julian Ahlquist 43:34
Yeah, no, you may make some great points. And I've definitely heard people voice them, and I've voiced them too in my own head. So yeah. A couple things is, I would say that, yeah, whenever a new technology comes about, it's gonna basically put a lot of people out of work, but then, you know, a lot of people, then, you know, those, those artisans, oftentimes, can then adapt to the new circumstances. Obviously, when metallurgy was invented, you know, metal working, that put a lot of stone nappers out of business, but hopefully, you know, they adapted. But a lot of people says, Well, you know, metallurgy could lead to a lot of evil, which, of course, it did. And you know, just because a new technology does come about doesn't mean it's going to be all, you know, smiles and rainbows, because, you know, metals, you know, killed a lot of people. So, so yeah, there's, I would say that the that manual artists are based maybe the best equipped to do AI art too well, because they have the artistic eye. And so I would encourage, you know, traditional artists to embrace AI more than other people, because I think will be the most successful and help AI art get even better. So, you know, optimistically, I would say they don't have to necessarily go out of business because of this. I'd also say that, you know, when, when recorded music came about, they a lot of people were worried like, oh, people are not going to go to concerts anymore. That's going to throw a lot of musicians out of business. Because of that. But in fact, people went to concerts even more so. Again, this is sort of an optimistic hope that with with more AI art out there and and even more people using a art, there will actually be a greater appreciation for art, especially for art that you know required a lot of manual work, and they'll be even more impressed by by real paintings and like, looking at, actually, the the paint strokes and whatnot. And I know some people who have, I mean, I've certainly increased in my art appreciation because, you know, I've studied different art styles because of of this and everything. And so I'm just, like, much more artistically aware and of art history in general and stuff. And, yeah, I've heard people when they've I've heard at least some people when they went into producing AI music, they just their appreciation of music in general increased because of that. So yeah, that, like the more traditional, handcrafted art might become a luxury item, and hopefully that'll actually keep a lot of artists in business because of that. Again, maybe that's not going to happen, but I hope it will happen. I think there's a precedent to reasonably hope that that will happen.

Will Anselm 46:12
May I just ask a quick supplementary to that, just very quickly, literally, which is, are you suggesting that, let's say Atelier trained artists in the classical tradition are the best place to sit at a computer and type in generate such and such with such and such, holding such and such in the style of such and such is that A have I understood quickly and that that's a realistic prospect of of their ability. I'm not a criticism. I'm just, I'm hoping. I'm just trying to work out because I get what you've said,

Julian Ahlquist 46:49
Yeah. So are you asking that? Am I advocating, or am I saying like...

Will Anselm 46:55
No, you said that. You said that these classically trained artists are the best placed people to create AI art on the basis of new technology coming. But you know, when you talk about the development from stone to metal or even Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, wonderful book by Ruskin, of course, about the Industrial Revolution and screen printing techniques and things like this, right? There's a bit of a difference between that which still involves the manufacturing of a physical object versus something that is on a screen and typed out, and I'm just, I'm just trying to understand is that, is that? Is that the suggestion that, if you, if you're, if you're a world class portrait painter, that your future, is that your best place to type out, basically a set of prompts, is that, is that what you're saying?

Julian Ahlquist 47:38
I see we're saying, Yeah, I would say, No, I'm not saying it's gonna be a whole. It should be a wholesale replacement of it. I think it's gonna be some sort of combination of, you know, the traditional, handcrafted art that that they'll do, but also, at least have one foot in the AI art generation. And I'm not sure what it's gonna look like, but I it feels like there's some fusion of the two. And, you know, we kind of saw this with CGI, where CGI seemed to replace all practical effects. And you know, that was, it was almost sort of a laziness. And now a lot of movie studios are going back to practical effects to some degree. And I think there's going to be like so traditional artist. I think I'm not saying there's like, abandon, you know, all your pain, pressures or whatever. I'm saying, at least have one foot in the the generative AI world. And I think that that will, again, not replace what you've been doing, but it will supplement your work and and not drive you out of business. Again. I'm not sure what it'll look like, but just having one just having one foot in that world would be, would be good in many ways.

Connor Mahoney 48:50
Sorry. Will, I think we were waiting for you to respond. I don't know if you wanted to jump back in there.

Will Anselm 48:54
No I was gonna say just really quickly again, final, final, supplementary, and then I'll be quiet for a bit. So, but what's the incentive there? Because I think the... we're looking at, we're looking at...

Nominus 49:06
I think we need to think of this in a more continuous manner, instead of necessarily declaring, I think it would, or it will be this category of person, or like, I think, I think that experienced artists will undoubtedly have a vocabulary that will no one else will have. And I've seen artists, you know, real artists that make a living with it. They know things. They know associations between of history of art, techniques, all that. But there might also be another category of people who you know there might be like, every tool you use to make any type of art is going to produce novel things, like when people started playing the guitar, it was hundreds of years before the before the latest techniques. Have come out and, you know, I think so. I think there could be multiple categories, and it's more it's more continuous as and because, as well, there could be, there could be extremely famous artists that don't know how to read, you know, like they could just do it intuitively, or, you know, so that that's just one end of a cont like continuum there, but there could be a whole, you know. So I think it's not necessarily most prudent to to say that only experienced artists will be good at it, but I would say that they have a very strong start and would likely have, would likely have more out of distribution level of vocabulary to be able to prompt these things, especially if we develop potentially ways of prompting that aren't in English and mid journey has some of those features

Connor Mahoney 51:14
I know, I know Will's itching to respond, but this is, I Think I'm just going to say quickly. I think we ought to also consider what you were saying here. Will about that this is putting people out of work, because it's taking maybe some of these graphic design jobs that artists have kind of found to supplement their income. I think we really ought to think about what we're saying, though, because, of course, we can understand that those there's kind of a lineage of the way it was compensated. I guess you could say, in the past, especially within the church, we had a patronage model. Now we have a very commoditized model, where I was so expected to somehow find mass appeal and find these odd jobs where they're basically, you know, a cog in the wheel. You're trying to create artwork for very specific specifications. I don't think that always lends itself well to to true artwork. That is, you know, is glorifying man, glorifying God, you know, I think, I think that's somewhat concerning to to think that the best we can say is that, you know, these great artists have to have kind of these menial jobs in order to support themselves. So I think we ought to kind of evaluate that in the conversation, and also the fact that there is, there's a type of artist is the type of person who obviously respects a very specific tradition of generation. And you know, that's that's great, but, but there's also a side to earth that is in constant evolution. And I think there's something we all respect about Otis that are always able to evolve with new paradigms, because Otis like a conversation. And if you're not continuing in a conversation, if you want to stay, you know, in the past, then at some point, you lose a little bit of what it means to be an artist when you when you stop, when you stop participating, you know, in that cultural conversation. So I don't expect, I really don't expect artists to illustrate even respect so much as a, you know, someone who's just sitting in front of their computer and mid journey. But I think there's ways that we can use these AI tools to help in the artistic process, whether it's, you know, generating for creative inspiration, or you're using pieces of the AI, or you're using the AI in complementary ways for our work. And I can give some examples about that, but, but I think we can imagine that there's probably a more complimentary process that can kind of develop you. But let's, let's continue the conversation. And I think people want to speak to you will, so I want to throw it to Tim, because he had his hand up and then, and then Jack as well. But let's, let's do that. Tim,

Tim @CitizenYvr 54:01
Awesome. Thank you. Thank you for hosting this space. I think these are important conversations. So you know, first and foremost, in this space, I am a Christian, first and foremost, and that's where I get my identity, you could say and worth from so I think that's fundamental. But I do speak from a context professionally, as a professional engineer and entrepreneur, and I think we have to just kind of rewinding the conversation back 3040, minutes ago in terms of some of the dialog and discourses between will and Julian I, I would caution us to ascribe that which is human to AI. AI is machine learning. Llms are basically advanced statistical models whereby it predicts. Six it outputs words or images that would most likely elicit a positive response to the prompter. That's what AI is. So, you know, we should be careful to, you know, anthropomorphize, which is to say, ascribe human characteristics to llms and AI when basically it's a tool. Technology is a tool. And I did like and I appreciated Julian and Will's point in regards to the rate at which technology replaces jobs. And unfortunately, speaking as an engineer and just understanding history and being like a avid student of history, let's say that's been the case since the dawn of time. That's what technology does. Technology helps save time, and therefore frees up time for people to do other things. And so there is an inherent element where technology is a tool and an affordance that allows us to have more comfort. And then, you know, it unfortunately replaces people's jobs, or replaces, or makes it makes it more difficult for them to continue on that specific, specialized livelihood. Let's say, right? And I think regardless of whether you're religious or not, or a Christian, I think it's important to for anyone that's like takes technology and entrepreneurship and business seriously, is to, you know, do our best in such a way that the rate at which we employ technology, in this case, llms, the rate at which we employ technology, llms or automation, we can generalize that to the control and automation, the robotics, the rate at which we do that should be, should be, should be ethical, and we should understand that there will be people that you know, and it's a very real problem that humans have wrestled with, arguably, since the dawn of time, which is you know what to do with people that have been replaced right when you know the invention of the gun, right? That's made a lot of you know, hunters and gatherers, hunters trappers, right? It put them out of a job, right? And, you know, I think, like just looking at, like human history, I think it's important to understand that humans need purpose, whether it be in their job, whether it be in their calling, we need purpose. And when their job, their calling, gets taken away or gets eroded, then that's a very real problem. And you know, there's no quick fix or easy solution. And, you know, some people say, Oh, well, you know what we can do is we can re educate these people that got put out of a job. Well, I'm telling you, realistically, it's very difficult that, let's say, you know, re educate them if they're 5060, years old, and they're a truck driver, and they've done that, and they've done well for themselves, and can put bread on the table and provide for their families and whatnot, but, and I'll just land the plane here, it's just like, realistically, it's very hard. That's why we have sayings, like, you can't, you know, teach a, you know, an old dog a new trick, right? The older you get. Generally speaking, we get set in our ways, right? And it's, it's difficult, it's not impossible, but it's like very, very difficult. So it is a very real problem, and that's where, you know, society, that's where government, policy and things like that come into play. So those would be some of my comments.

Connor Mahoney 58:52
Yeah, I... I somewhat question, you know, what, how useful it is to talk about AI as merely a tool. I do understand that, and, you know, I've used that argument before, but of course, it is. It really is shaping the way, you know, we will, we live and we create, and so there's kind of a way that it speaks to us in the same way that we use it. And I'm I'm willing to speak, I'm willing to listen, I guess to, you know, to some of those concerns that people have about how useful these tools are. But getting back to the the question that will had, and he had to jump off to join a novena, he said he will be back though about the jobs that are being displaced, I really would question, like, what, what was saying about, like, an artist job getting displaced, if you, if you're creating, you're, you're creating because, because you love, you know, you have a passion for, for what you do, and to say that merely taking away some of these super menial jobs that we've developed, you know, in modern society. You have to create an ad for Coca Cola, and now they're able to use AI, and that puts you out of a job. Like, are you really an artist, or are you just a, you know, a graphic designer? I think there's, there's got to be a distinction between, you know, what was would, what was saying there. And I don't think that people's appetite for good, beautiful load is in any way diminished by AI. So that's really, I guess, the where I come to the conversation from Jack sat his hand up for a while, and I met Jack a few months back, and he, I know he, he has some really interesting thoughts here. So go ahead, Jack.

Jack Prophesy 1:00:35
Yeah, thanks, Connor. I kind of agree with both of you and Tim's take on the financial piece of it. I think, you know, in the future, we may look back at the 20th century as this weird little blip where you had lots of people making money at art, but for most of history. I mean, even all the great artists of the past, they were all broke. They died broke. There really has not been much money at art, yeah, and yet it was art's always been made. It will always be made. It just the 20th century, this mass media environment just may be a kind of a blip. And so, yeah, there's going to be a lot of realignment. I did want to briefly talk about the copyright issue. I'm personally, like, morally opposed to copyright. And one thing I would say is that, you know, the whole idea of intellectual property is not, doesn't really come from natural law. It's a very kind of a constructed argument. And so I don't think it's we should feel bad about, you know, taking other people's work. I think I really, you look back like how much copyright has actually, really destroyed artistry. You know, that song, You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. Okay, that song, you know, it was sung all over the South in these little hollers, and there was hundreds and hundreds of versions of that song, because it was passed from person to person. So your uncle, my out of verse, or all new verses, or all new music, there was infinite variations of that song. And then a P Carter from the Carter family comes in figures out early 20th century. Oh, I can get the copyright. So he made the version he likes, the music that he likes, and now all of those other versions have been basically destroyed because they can't be replicated. And so I think you see the same thing now with all of Tolkien and Lewis's works, why can't I those are culture defining works. Why can't I go and make a knockoff of the summer alien or something in an AI version, and tell those stories? Now those stories are controlled by basically corporate interests. So that's just a little take on the on the copyright issue. I think talking about AI, think we can't. I noticed there's a lot of Catholics in the room, so I'm sure a lot of you guys are very familiar with them. Familiar with McLuhan's work. I mean, McLuhan's has really been the defining person for me, and really understanding media and art. And I think he makes a couple observations that are really interesting. He talks about art as being people or artists or people who see the present, and that most people look using look in the live living looking in the rear view mirror. Most people kind of experience life in the past, and artists, they seem like they can look at the future, but it's just because they have a really intense awareness of the present. And I think that really applies to AI, because AI is always looking at the past, right? It's just taking lots of past data, applying some mathematics to it, and generating something, but it's fundamentally backwards looking. And so I think people, you know, we've all experimented with AR, and I think, you know, I work for a lot, I've written a lot, a lot of stuff in AI, and it doesn't produce, most of the stuff it produces is kind of like, meh. You really do have to work with the prompts, with the code, to actually bring a human aspect to it. The stuff that just generates off the RIP is not that good. It's not that interesting. So I think there is something to that the human aspect is never going to go away when it comes to art. I think there's another big piece that McLuhan talks about with how, you know, whenever a new medium comes out, human beings always try to take the old medium and stuff it in the new form. So, for instance, when radio came out, they took the old plays and they stuffed it into the radio format. Right then, when television came out, you know, they just did the radio show, but they put a camera in front of them. And so now that we have this new medium of AI, we're gonna the first what's happening right now is the first version of it is going to be people who are kind of using the old world mediums, photos and videos, and they're going to try to use AI to create these new things, but the artists who really define AI, the artists, and there's a huge opportunity, are going to be the ones who really understand it in a native way and really capture how AI can really create entirely new forms. Of art so but I think McLuhan in terms of understanding the media, I mean, McLuhan is just absolutely a towering he's just, he's completely changed all of my work in the last three or four years when I really understood his work. And then going, I would say, is on the technical side of things, like someone mentioned earlier about how you know him and his friend were doing mid journey, and his friend asked him to do it because he understood prompting better. He understood how to use the tools. And I see right now, I work in AI every day, and there's tons of code. It seems very, very technical once you get down into, you know, beneath the prompting. So I think there's a whole world of we're going to see the very, very technical things come out of it. And to really the cutting edge, AI are still requires a lot of technical finesse. So, and that's what you so I think that's all my thoughts.

Jael 1:06:08
I think it's interesting how you said it only looks backwards. That's a really good point. And then I wanted to also touch on the copyright thing. So he did a space recently with, like, architect older, and we had, he had a lawyer there, and Ian, I was unaware, but like, you're a lawyer, I guess so ai art is not copyrightable. That's correct, right?

Jack Prophesy 1:06:30
I think that's the general consensus.

Jael 1:06:35
You guys think it should be able to, like, because if you're prompting it, and if you don't have, we were talking about, like, intellectual rights for, like, scraping data of other artists and even saying, like, produce this in the way of this artist. And I think, like, there's certain llms that you could, like, have the output, and it'll pinpoint which aspects of the generated art came from what sources. You know, it'll cite its sources for whatever it rendered from that influence. And I think that's interesting. I think going into the future, there will be more protections for artists, and there will be copywriting for AI art, because, like, if you take a lot of time to prompt something, you are putting in work into it, and if you're putting in work into it to create something, I mean, I think you should be able to but that's just my opinion. I don't know what you guys think?

Connor Mahoney 1:07:24
I think Jack was disagreeing. Oh, yeah, go ahead, Ian.

Ian Huyett 1:07:26
Yeah, I'll just say, on the legal front that I would not confidently make the statement A i Art is not copyrightable. You know, you make arguments either way. There's no case law on this yet. You know, I'm I'm sure that someone who, let's say, used AI to help them write a novel. You know that AI obviously, is influenced by other people's work. That person, you know, is going to have the traditional intellectual property protections that a novelist would have. Probably, I think that. I mean, that's a case where I think most, most lawyers would agree that the courts are getting...

Nominus 1:07:59
I have a comment to add on legal. The AI companies have already been watermarking their images so that could be relevant to the copywriting issue.

Ian Huyett 1:08:14
Right, yeah. I mean, they're anticipating...

Nominus 1:08:15
Like open. AI's been doing it for dolly three since earlier this year...

Ian Huyett 1:08:21
...anticipating favorable case law. Yeah, the only other, quickly thing that I'll add here on the as far as artists profiting from their work. I mean, there is a long history, you know, obviously there in during the Renaissance, there were individual artists who are spectacularly wealthy. But as far as kind of natural law and copyright protections, artists profiting from their work, I would just add that, you know, the Christian tradition, at least in Aquinas, does recognize a distinction between natural law and legitimate man made law. I mean, it's not like all man made law that is not natural law required by natural law is illegitimate, per se, right? I mean, we recognize it makes sense to have speed limits. But does the natural law require that the speed limit be, you know, this particular number as opposed to five miles an hour higher or lower? You know, we recognize the government has some legitimate role for kind of determining that number, even though it's not required by natural law. And, you know, I'd make a similar argument with intellectual property protections for artists, I would say, you know, sure, yeah, ethically, maybe you don't have natural natural law protections here, but whether or not that's the case, there's probably still a legitimate role for the government in making sure that being an artist is a profitable vocation, because We recognize a societal interest in promoting the arts.

Nominus 1:09:45
You can definitely calculate like an optimum for for different systems, especially like we do it on the roads with our whatever algorithms they use now. But we could make. Make optimal models based on the shapes of the roads. Yeah, I forgot how that related, but yeah.

Jack Prophesy 1:10:11
Ian, I agree with you that there is the human made law says I'm not. I don't think it's I don't think copyright laws necessarily immoral fundamentally. I think there is a space so that I think I look at it more on a pragmatic level. You know, go in your basement and try to make some music just on your own. Go make some music and release it and try to make money off of it. Good luck, because the labels are going to say, Oh, well, you know, in 1973 it was somebody who had a really similar beat to your music, and so, you know, you're going to pay up, and this is where the labels still control all of our cultural production, because if you try to publish something on your own, you don't sign with one of the labels and basically buy into one of their cabals, their rackets, then you're not going to really be able to profit off of that work. And you see it, so now you have to sign on with YouTube. There's now already AI that's filtering music and deciding it and allocating payments in various shady ways. So the problem is, when it comes to how do you regulate this is it's going to end up being some kind of weird corporate government alliance that just ends up bringing more dominance and corporate control over, you know, cultural production. So I don't see any hope that the government ends up coming up with laws that are really equitable. And so that's why I'm kind of just like, I'd rather just there not be any laws created about it.

Nominus 1:11:38
I'm kind of curious whether the big money maker for AI art will even be the same art forms or mediums as human art right now, like right now we go to View human art in museums and stuff, but the latest thing with diffusion models, which are the models behind image generators. If you're not familiar, they're using them to make real time game engines that just generate basically whole open world games as you go and so, yeah, I'm not really totally even convinced that we will look at art AI art the same as human art. And potentially that could mean that the expression of AI art, like in a game generation, like a diffusion model, may generate an image that has some similarity to some artwork back in 1983 but you know, in its final expression, its actual Use case, the way it's being employed is actually, like, in a game or in virtual reality, or who knows, in a in like a dynamic interface, or who knows, you know, I think the possibilities are wide open, but we're already seeing that eggshell crack it, and I don't know, I just made that up, but with like, game engines that can just generate whole worlds, and it might use a Van Gogh to, you know, For a point, oh, 1% of its diffusion generation, but like, the final product is, like, some of the coolest games we've ever played. You know,

Jack Prophesy 1:13:49
I couldn't agree with you more. I think that's a very potent observation, that the old mediums are a photograph on a screen. The old mediums are a video that's created and then produced the real power with AI is going to look like stuff that's super personalized to the individual, and that means it's going to be, it's going to look totally different. What we're, I'm working on right now is basically like a Pokemon Go style, immersive game, and 3d reality, like where you literally run around and saw different clues, a few different activities, and it's all powered by AI, but it's in a totally different kind of medium. So I think you're looking, you're thinking about the AI in the right way. It's going to create whole new categories.

Connor Mahoney 1:14:39
Well, kind of on this topic, then, of of how we're profiting off of AI. And maybe this will help throw it back to Julian. I don't know how much longer he has with us. So I don't want, I don't want, okay, cool, you know, I would just be very cautious of preserving kind of these archaic models. Monetization of artwork. And it's really been really not even an okay, they're very modern, the way we think of of how people profit off of today. So this, this tweet that I threw on the Jumbotron about paying a two year old to draw a straight line is better than the most esthetically pleasing AI image. I think there's some temptation for people to think, to oppose AI in such a way that they just want to preserve the human effort of making AI, and to preserve these to preserve human ways, I guess, of profiting off of their their work. And so it's like, maybe I'm taking the stronger argument here, but I don't want to incentivize slop. There's a lot of slop out there, and it's not AI generated. So to say that, we have to preserve, like, you know, these this vocation in such a way that that artist, a real human artist, profit off of slop and not and that's not replaced by AI like I don't, I don't have an incentive to do that. I really do not feel an incentive to do that. And if you, if you're if you talk to if you're not an artist, if you talk to artists, artists in general, are very critical of other people's work. They like what they like, and they don't like what they don't like. And, you know, I think there's something, there's something very positive to that kind of battle, if you will, among artists, that that produces better stuff. So I would be, I would be, maybe somewhat critical of preserving, really, those, those forms of monetization, in a way, in any way that it really prevents the development of, I think this, this very cool new tool that we have in AI. So here let me, let me throw it back to Julian with this question. I know Tim has his hand up, and I want to hear everybody's thoughts, but I want to throw it to Julian with this, like, have you engaged at all with, like, just the, just the weird way that the Church used to, used to incentivize, like, beautiful religious artwork, through, through patronage, and now, like, it really doesn't, and there's, there's just a lack of, like, monetary incentive to really create some of the beautiful religious outlook that we saw in the past. Like, what are your thoughts? Thoughts about that?

Julian Ahlquist 1:17:26
Oh, yeah, that's a really good question. So basically it's, yeah, that's an economic question. Like, should we go back to maybe a medieval guild system? My inclination is yes, definitely. But yeah, the, we don't necessarily need some sort of guild system, but I don't know, I That's a great question. I at the very least bringing it to church art, I guess, the, and this is somewhat off your question, but it seems like, when we're talking about art in an actual, physical church building, I would say, at least as a rule, should be really, actually handcrafted, like even if it's a real painting, but it's printed. It's like a, it's a, it's a print of a real painting. And putting that in a church, you know, seems wrong. It's probably, technically not wrong, but at least some people are probably gonna scoff at it. And likewise, obviously, if it's, if it's aI art is going to be printed, and at the very least, people are gonna, at least some scoff at that. So just in terms of, like, the AI religious art question, I would generally be be opposed to putting it in a church. Maybe in some in some cultures, they wouldn't mind that. So maybe it's up to the Prudential judgment of the local bishop or something. But at least as a general rule, I would avoid putting it in churches and but in terms of of of other, other uses of it, non non sacred uses of religious AI art, I really don't see a problem with. I mean, if you know, someone's inspired by it, that's, that's great. Now, now my again, my hope kind of bring it back to another point, is that as AI art kind of saturates, you know, everything, and even, like the common man, uses it more. There's hopefully will be a greater appreciation for Handcrafted art, right? It'll become more of a luxury item, more exotic and everything, and thus more of a demand, actually, for that. And I think maybe that will possibly incline the church to invest more in that. So again, very hopeful. I don't know if that really answers your question, but those are my thoughts, roughly on that.

Jael 1:19:48
I was just gonna say that I love, that I love, like the hand paintedness. And I want to just say I put up in the Jumbotron. There's a guy named Eric, and he does hand painted works, and he was recently commissioned to do. Do a series on Dante's Inferno painting. It not AI generated or anything, and it was really impressive. And they're like, huge paintings. And so just like to offer something on the opposite side of the spectrum, you know. And every time somebody talks about this, I always think about, like, really cheap furniture, like Ikea furniture, and then you look at like the wooden like hand crafted furniture, you know, like the older stuff, and that's what the metaphor that always comes to my mind.

Julian Ahlquist 1:20:27
Yeah, definitely. Now, I think we'll eventually see a a backlash against AI art, in the sense that people will get tired of it, and again, there'll be a big movement to just do things manually again, at least, hopefully, in an economic system where, you know, people aren't scraping by and have the have the leisure, the free time to to do such things. That's that's obviously a key part to making that possible.

Connor Mahoney 1:20:53
Yeah, I in no way think that that is going to like human artists are going to stop making on it's just not going to happen. Like others have said, like, since the dawn of time, like artists have been making on it because they love it, and a lot of them have been, have died broke, you know, so that that's not going to stop and and I think there's still a great respect that we, I mean, we all recognize when we see something just masterful, you know, that evokes that are like, like, it's, it's not going to stop. And, and I think AI can be complimentary. I know Tim has had his hand up, but I also saw that Feldman had her hand off at one point. And Feldman is an artist herself. I don't really know her full story, but I know she's, she's really been in a variety of places, and I want to hear what she has to say. So Tim, why don't you go ahead and and unmute, and then I'll throw it to Feldman.

Tim @CitizenYvr 1:21:52
Sure, I'll keep it brief and then give her a chance to chime in. So I love these conversations, because there's, you know, different viewpoints on the same thing. And I think the same thing is art and LLM is to add more nuance to your earlier true actually. So in a way, I would like to amend what I said about, you know, llms and AI being a tool, it is indeed a step change in technology is sort of like the internet, right? It is or the, you know nuclear, you know fission, which unfortunately people associate that with war and weaponry, but, you know, nuclear power can be utilized for peaceful purposes. So, you know, it's, it's, I used to think you can say that, you know, technology is neither good nor evil. It's, you know, it's up. It boils down to the motivation of the people using the technology. But now I think it's a lot more nuanced than that. I think it's actually more of a Pandora's Box whereby we do not know necessarily the long term effects of the technology. I'll give you two examples. One is, you know, the smartphones, right? And how there definitely have been very good things that came out of it. However, there have also been very unexpected, you could say bad things that came out of, you know, the ubiquitous adoption of smartphones. So two other things really quick, is, I think it's important to understand, and I really love Jack's observation about nature, let's say of AI. And because AIs are trained on human generated data, data sets that are labeled and categorized and then trained iteratively, millions and millions, billions and billions of times over to associate, let's say, like an image, like a cat with The word cat, right? That's how. Anyways, I think even if you build a perfect system, if you have imperfect things, which is to say, like human input and that then you output, right? So imperfect, even if you have a perfect black box, call it AI, you have humans inputting that data, training that AI on that data, there's going to be imperfect output, and that includes things like misinformation, disinformation, things like logical biases as well as cognitive biases. So. You know, it's, it's, it's, it is a revolutionary thing. And you know, we're, I think we're all doing our best collectively to understand that. And fundamentally art, and I'll end this here, fundamentally art, I think, conveys meaning. And, you know, art, just like you know, science, right, has been and faith, I would say, has been part of the human story since the dawn of time. So anyways, I really appreciate these sort of conversations where you have a diversity of viewpoints on things that truly matter and that, I think safe to say, that we actually all collectively care about.

Julian Ahlquist 1:25:47
Yeah, definitely, I would. I would make a comment about the retrospective nature of AI art. I think that's at least in some sense true about all art. Like, yeah, you know an artist to win. You know this, for example, make it a painting. They're, in some sense, doing something retrospective. They're kind of coming, bringing to mind images in their past. And you know, they're shaped by the the what humans have done in their culture and whatnot. And, yeah, the whole thing is like input, imperfect input and imperfect output. And that's, I would say just true about all artists, like, whatever, how the artist has been affected by previous art, you know, seeing previous art, or, you know what, what has been said to the artist, can, you know, obviously impact the art. And there's another point. Oh, yeah, right. So, you know, AI art, you know, takes pre existing art and then, and then sort of combines them, but it doesn't really create anything new. And I don't know, I think it, it technically does create something new. And, you know, there's the phrase, of course, there's nothing new under the sun. But like, even with respect to, with respect to just human things in general, like, obviously God, we can't invent something that God hasn't thought thought about, right? So everything we discover, you know, in pre existing, in that way, you know, big, cosmic, metaphysical way. But you know, really, when, like a person comes up with something new, they're basically combining some old ideas in a new combination. And that seems to be what AI art literally does. So, you know, I, I would consider, like maybe AR does do something new, least some of the images that creates, seems like I haven't seen anything like that before. But anyway, that's another perspective.

Connor Mahoney 1:27:36
Feldman, did you want to say something, to speak into this? Because, you know, I, when I was supposed to put in the space together, I really wanted to get some Otis in here to, you know, to give their perspectives. And I know you're an artist who's somewhat embraced the AI field. So, like, what are kind of your thoughts about, you know, how AI can work alongside artists?

B.A. Feldman @AIinAmerica 1:27:58
Yeah, I mean, I, I'd like to touch on tradition and new media and prompting, and just for clarity on my background in this field, I've been professionally engaged in The Fine Arts from 1990 through 2018 with little brief breaks here and there for a year or two, a thought on prompting would be so when I prompt and then this began with music, right for me this, You know when, when those first started popping off way back what two years ago feels like forever. I might suggest trying this instead of saying in the style of think of the piece that it is that you're trying to emulate, emulate some aspect of and, and. And maybe something I do is I'll ask an LLM to describe this particular piece in technical terms, and then I can play with those technical terms to really nail down technically what you know, what kinds of impacts and and effects I'm looking for. That's something to think about on prompting probably a lot of other people are, you know, it's probably not very easy as far as the nature of the you know, not seeing AI generated work as being original. Historically, a lot of work hasn't been very original till the end. And I think a lot about this. Idea of the apprentices, kind of painting things in and the master coming along to do the finishing work. And I think of the AI as filling, you know, kind of filling the shoes of those workers, right, where there's nothing saying an artist can't come in and hand, embellish and illuminate those works and make them truly unique. And to that and somebody else had mentioned something else about this. Well, to flip it around, are we trying to put new wine into old skins? I think that we will embark on artistic generation outside of these traditional forms, right? New media. This is something that we've been talking about for a couple of decades, and it seems like we still don't really have a handle on it, but I would imagine something like a DJ remixing music, something like that, but visually, you know, where maybe you can create a really bang and mix, right? And then you can just press play and walk away. And maybe there will be some kind of digital work like that. Yeah, those are my thoughts so far, I guess.

Connor Mahoney 1:31:22
Thank you so much. Feldman, I you know, I think that's actually a great example about like hip hop was, was actually it's still critiqued, to be honest, which is, I think someone who was ashamed, but for copying other looks. And so it's not really new, but I think there's something really beautiful about the way that a lot of really does reference and the past, and I think Hip Hop does that in a very visible way, and and, you know, I think, I think there is with a it's always an evolution, it's always a change, but there's always that connection to The past, and the way that the past inspires new things, and then that inspires new things. And I think that's, you know, really a beautiful process. So an AI kind of exists within that framework too. I think, honestly, I think a lot of AI right now is somewhat less inspiring in the way that it's totally disconnected from like, like, social conversation when, at least when you just letting the AI spin. It's almost like, I've heard somebody remote on this before, and I thought it was a really good analogy. But it's like listening to somebody explain their dream. Like this dream has no connection to, you know, current context. It means nothing to me. It's just, you know, it's just, it's just your mind spinning, completely isolated and kind of takes place in a conversation between people. So, you know, that's, that's really a big distinction, I think, in like, the human element to road, versus just the machine hallucinating. But let's spin it around. Let me say this jail. I don't know if you can see, like, other hands up. I just popped it on the desktop, and I it looks like maybe it's a bunch of hands up that I'm not seeing on my mobile app. So if I'm kind of missing the conversation, I apologize.

Jael 1:33:12
Yeah, no, I don't see anybody's hands up, to be honest.

Connor Mahoney 1:33:16
Okay, well, I did see that. Will join back. So if they see you on the speaker panel.

Jael 1:33:22
No I have him as a listener on my phone. I'm gonna invite him to speak right now.

Connor Mahoney 1:33:27
Okay, Will, if you wanted to pop back where you left off, you missed a lot, you know, but it's alright, we can. We would be happy to have you come back and join the Connor. But yeah, I let's talk about maybe AI a little bit on the iterative process. And I did kind of pull up, I do a lot of this with my space promos. And again, like I said, I'm not like a visual artist, so I felt, you know, maybe like I would be someone unqualified to really host this conversation too much. So I'm happy we have people like Feldman here who can maybe speak a little more to that. But I do. I have enjoyed with the promos that I do for these spaces. I've enjoyed using AI in a kind of a complimentary way to make the promos I had a head example, pulled up, and maybe while I'm looking that up again, we can toss it to to will, but let me see if I can just pull it up real quick.

Jael 1:34:24
That one promo you had remember, like your first rosary space. I remember you did a really good job with that. You do do nice promo, nice work.

Connor Mahoney 1:34:34
Appreciate it. I'm open to critique, you know, because, like I said, I'm not. My mom was actually a she graduated from the Columbus College of own design, so she's big into into that, but she kind of gave it up, you know, to have kids. So unfortunately, I stole that from, I stole that from her.

Jael 1:34:50
Awe, you're a beautiful piece of art, Connor, it's okay.

Connor Mahoney 1:34:53
Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Yeah, I'm not. I'm trying to find it. I'm gonna, I'm gonna dig through my. A profile here, but let's not stall the conversation. Will if you want to pop back in, I don't know how much you caught, kind of the tail end of people responding to maybe some of your concerns, but if you want to maybe pick up where you left off, you're welcome to.

Will Anselm 1:35:14
Well, I'm quite happy just to sit in this and I'd rather like familiarize myself just for a bit, rather than jump and maybe run overall ground so I can listen for a wee bit and pick up.

Julian Ahlquist 1:35:32
Yeah, one thing that I've been thinking more and more about, and someone said, said something to me the other day about it, but arguably, AI art puts, at least currently, how it's set up available to the public. It puts the, you know, create, the ability to make art, into the hands of the common man. A little bit more now, that can be for good or ill, but you know, there's, it's kind of stereotypical sometimes, sometimes where artists are, you know, a small minority. And, you know, are seen as somewhat snobbish because they, you know, they devote their life to a skill that most people don't have. Understand it. And, you know, the put like, it's kind of, I don't know, for example, analogous to watches. Watches used to be really, really expensive and just only a few people could afford them. And you know, when watches became cheaper and available to everybody else, there was, there was a backlash saying, like, Oh no, those that shouldn't be right, that that shouldn't be available to just anyone. Right? I don't know that. Maybe that's not but like, in terms of one person said that when, like, you're creating just even a PowerPoint presentation for, you know, business meeting or whatever, if you don't have good images that go along with sort of the abstract ideas that you have, it's probably gonna go over most people's heads. And you know, if you don't have the the means to create engaging visuals in that, then you're going to be at a massive disadvantage, right? And so, you know, previously, that was only available to a few people who'd afford to hire artists to do that. And, you know, with AI art now it's more available. And, you know, put the power into the hands of common people, I think a little bit more maybe I'm totally off. Someone said that the other day. I'm still thinking about that. And think there might be a point to that.

Connor Mahoney 1:37:29
I think there could be, you know, I'm somewhat critical of the idea of, like, the democratization of, although I think there's good aspects to it, but, you know, I do respect kind of the role of the artist of somewhat of curating taste. I don't know if anybody is really into hip hop. Knows Rick Rubin, who's a big kind of a producer, I guess, in the world, and he you'll find him a lot on like Tiktok and YouTube. He's kind of a funny character, but he speaks a lot to just the role of the artist as a curator, and how valuable it is to really refine your taste, and how much we respect great artists, not just because of the Earth they create, but really that they can curate, you know, that to curate a visual or whatever kind of a medium they're working with, they can really, You know, hone in on that because they have very refined tastes, and so we kind of respect that and honest, but that's not, that's not critiquing totally your point there. That was just a minor point.

Julian Ahlquist 1:38:31
Yeah, no, no, that, that is a good point to make. And I guess it's kind of like also, you know, there's, there's scholars, still, even though more and more people know how to read, right? And just because more and more people know how to read doesn't mean, you know, we should get rid of scholars who are like the expert readers, as it were, but yeah, there should definitely be expert artists, still, I would say be as sort of models for the rest of us. Absolutely. I totally agree with that.

Connor Mahoney 1:38:59
Yeah, and I wouldn't even just say that there must be, but just like, there will be like, I don't think that role is going to leave, but, okay...

B.A. Feldman @AIinAmerica 1:39:08
Yeah, I don't think AI is going to turn someone into an artist any more than taking a couple of classes. will, you know, however, I do think that if you're struggling to communicate an idea, you know, you might not be like a Grade A artist with AI, but you probably will be able to improve your communication skills greatly.

Julian Ahlquist 1:39:34
Yeah.

Connor Mahoney 1:39:37
Maybe to kind of spin it back, and this maybe is getting a little bit more to some of Will's questions earlier, but, like, I just threw up on the Jumbotron. This is a promo I did full space a little while back. And just kind of, like breaking down the image I I did here. And again, like I said, I'm not a visual artist. This was made in Canva, you know. So it's, um, it's not really, you know, it's not very deep. But. Yeah, just breaking down the image, there's actually a few images in here, because this is kind of like how I've enjoyed approaching the promos I do. But the hands that were developed, that was a totally AI that was made in mid journey. The coloring was different. There were elements of it that were different, but I basically cut out the hands for this promo. And then I added a few things so in the background, it's very faint, but that is actually a it's a piece of purity. So it's a piece by August of dole. I'm forgetting the the name of the, of the, some of it, some of you guys might know it's, it's, it's a bunch of angels flying around, essentially, I think, the an image of God who is light.

Julian Ahlquist 1:40:55
Is it? The simple, eternal rose thing is, every time I think...

Connor Mahoney 1:40:59
No, it's actually, here we go. So it's this it's this piece. Let me say it share this to the jumbotron. I don't know if anybody's seen that before. It's a Gustav Dore. It's the artist.

Julian Ahlquist 1:41:12
Yeah that's what I was thinking of. I don't know if that's what it's called

Will Anselm 1:41:15
It's his engraving of the Imperium from his engraving for the Divina Commedia.

Connor Mahoney 1:41:21
Appreciate it from the art historian. So again, going scrolling back, you can just scroll in the jumbotron back to the one just before. And so that is Gustav Dore. We have the AI element there with the hands. And then I'm a big fan of Salvador Dali. And so that is the Saint John of the Cross, an image of dollies that I've used that's kind of going into the sun, black hole in the hands. So you could probably question, really, like, what is, what is this mess that I made? But I don't know. I thought it was kind of cool. And I was following somewhat of a vision that I had in my head, and and then as I was playing with it and playing with the AI, I kind of stumbled on, you know what I had there. So this is not a perfect example of maybe how an artist might use this tool of AI, but I think, you know, I think there are ways that AI can be used in a complimentary manner, rather than just simply, like, I'm just prompting the AI and using whatever it spits out. So I don't know what maybe somebody might think on that matter, or you will, since you were, you were questioning, kind of, the integrity of imagining that great classical artists are just going to be prompting AIs.

Will Anselm 1:42:32
I mean, the long and short of my concern is, look, I'll put it this way, and I'm, I don't ever really speak as bluntly as this. My concern was also, what a concern is an observation that we've seen in history, right, that we've seen certain movements to do with innovations in the way that art is made, and in particular, we look at the extraordinary output of the Dadaists and the Surrealists, Christine, Zara, Marcel Duchamp, ready mades found art, the object through Bay and so on, didn't change anything in the long run, fundamentally about market value And however you square it, art at large has provenance behind it. You can't sell a picture at a gallery or at auction unless you have receipts, letters of sale provenance. It's possible to manufacture some of that kind of stuff, which is kind of what the happened with Germans who stole art in the 1930s they fabricated by the by what I'm saying is there's still a lot of weird behavior that goes into the economic activity surrounding art. So in terms of the, you know, the art world and the art market, I don't think, I think that the more AI art that is produced or created and put up for sale commercially. I think the more that it happens, we'll see a rapid drop off in price. I'm thinking about that some objects from that French collective, which were slated to sell for 7000 euros, 7000 $8,000 something like this. It's all 425 nearly basically half a million dollars. The next one that comes along will be half that. The next one that comes along will be half that. This is all the way back in 2018 before Dali, before chatgpt. This is in the rudimentary stages of commercially, publicly available generative AI. The thing that concerns me most about this religious imagery or otherwise, is that the functions or the gap in the market that generative image, generative AI fills, is not about galleries and museums and heart and I. Art that you know, you know people are thinking about, and you know will be wandering around when they look at, when they come to London, or when they go to France, or when they go to Washington, or whether so ever it might be, it is actually really graphics. It's the issue of content where we'll see the most squeezing out of human beings. Artists aren't going to be replaced. Who spend their whole lives. You've got the whole prestige behind them, of the pedigree, the provenance and so on. What we're going to be seeing is things like birthday cards, comic books, little logos, website art, promotional material, sketches, preparatory outline, drawings and those people, artists and graphic designers, creators, they will be the first person to be squeezed out art which involves a brush or chalk or a pencil or sculpture will remain the same. Fundamentally, we don't have to. I think we're all sensible enough to recognize that, like nobody's going to stop painting, right? But there is a real threat in terms of business, the creation and generation of of material in this kind of graphics and content space where people do not make a huge amount of money, but they but they work to a high standard, and they work to good lead times, and they are not going to be able to beat that. And I think if somebody else has mentioned Yes, of course, the world moves forward. The world picks up. Things change, and people have to adapt. But I can't, don't think that we can be blind to the fact that just every time that we use AI to like quickly generate a header or a promotional material, remember the days just some people may be here. Some people here are older than me. Some people here are quite a bit younger than me. We used to get our friends to draw, you know, a friend, whatever, draw a quick sketch. Or we pay a, you know, a young somebody who was studying a holographic design, maybe, like I didn't like you, buy them lunch. Or, you know, just as a favor, trading favors to get good material, you know, for for whatever you were doing and putting out that that is going to disappear for the sake of generating something in a split second on the basis of a prompt. And that is the way the world works moving forward. But that's the conversation that I'm interested in having, specifically on the context of Christianity. How do we moderate? Is there, is there room for moderating or regulating this handover period, because some people have been living hand to mouth, paycheck to paycheck, on the basis of doing this kind of work, and can we do we need to be mindful. Is there some scheme of encouraging people who you know to get behind and understanding how prompts work and how they can keep up in this market? Is that something that is, I don't know, is that a conversation that's happening? Because I think that that's the key to all of this when it comes to Christian imagery in the service of faith, right? People are going to lose their jobs. People already have lost their jobs overnight because of generative AI, yes, it's for them to keep up. But how can we support people to get the best out of these new tools in a way that works for everybody?

Julian Ahlquist 1:48:40
Yeah, that's obviously some really good questions there. The the the quickest answer I could give off the cuff is that they should just jump into it, either get, like a dolly account or a mid journey account, and just start experimenting. That'd be the quickest first step. And obviously that would be, that's very simplistic. I will say that, as in my experience in Chesterton Academy, which has sort of exploded, we have, like, you know, 60 or 70 other schools now we're a classical model. So we, we make students do art every year, and eventually they're doing oil painting. I think just in terms of, like an educational movement, we should get people to, again, keep on doing handcrafted art. And I think it'll the more and more that happens, the culture will just keep appreciating that kind of art too. The but, yeah, just, definitely, artists should just jump into it's pretty easy. It's actually pretty terrifying at first. You know, doing AI art at first, because, you know, it's just, it's like, wow, this this thing, is this thing actually sentient and intelligent or whatever? But that's. My initial, very sloppy answer, they should just start experimenting with it.

Nominus 1:50:11
I think the best prompters are going to be the people who understand the concepts the best. Basically, these models are huge semantic maps of all the possible combinations of words connected to all the possible combinations of images, and so the people who really understand their concepts are probably going to be the best at conveying them, you know, nope. No matter what language they use, they'll use their unique understanding and, uh, that's why I think artists will have an easy time switching. But, you know, in the short term, there is this effect of, sort of that pace of creation that AI generation provides. Could potentially, you know, put people out of jobs at the beginning, until we sort of find out who are going to be the best people who know which concepts the best, and how do we define concepts? And I'm actually working my kind of like side project right now is in linguistics, making huge concept maps of all languages. And these concept maps of all languages could be potentially like hooked up to a eyes, and like I was mentioning before, we might have, we might have totally new use cases for AI art. That's not traditional graphic design, it's not traditional advertisement art, it's not traditional museum art, it's not it can't be painted or sculpted, and so I don't, I don't think that human touch is really going away, because our experience is basically rooted in the real world and is happening in real time. You know, you couldn't basically just ask someone to do a Michelangelo, or asking artists to do or an AI to do, sorry, you can ask an AI to do a Michelangelo because Michelangelo was contracted to do his specific painting at his specific time With his specific skill set, and that meaning the concepts that were expressed are a product of his entire existence. And so those concepts could not be expressed by anyone else at any different time, and arguably, you know, in all of history, we still haven't seen AI match that level of of skill in conveying those wide concepts. So I would just basically, my main point is just encouraging people to, like, keep an open mind, because there's a lot of open doors with this tech and ways that we don't really understand how it works yet or how it's going to be used, but it's clearly very powerful, and so regulation of it for these Short Term Effects and that transition period is absolutely important. And, you know, we could have a easy time, you know, doing it if we sort of found out. How do we, how do we sort of onboard artists into the AI space. How can what? How can AI mediums, which are so different from human mediums right now, contribute to human art? Or will they and where are their niches? And where do we need to sort of encourage, uh, encourage human creators, because I don't know, for the purpose of a church, I personally think that I don't know human like Michelangelo with his, you know, masterpiece on the on the dome. You know, I. Human there's no replacement for human creators in making holy things, that's for sure, because the Holy Spirit is in us and, and that's all of our experience and and that that certainly cannot really be expressed except by human hands, from what I've seen.

Connor Mahoney 1:55:25
Yeah, Will, I'm really uh... I kind of tire of, like, moderating the conversation so much so, you know, I appreciate the hands and whatnot, but I think you can just, like, totally jump in and respond as you see fit. But if I can just a little bit like, I can kind of foresee that I don't think you're gonna be, if I heard your question correctly, I don't think you're gonna be entirely satisfied with kind of the response that these artists ought to just be. Start using AI will, you know, risk kind of losing the wave, although I do agree, I think it's a mistake for artists to kind of miss out on the opportunity to engage with new things, because I think, you know, doesn't kind of exist in this vacuum. You have to engage with other cultural conversations. So I think they got some mistake, but I do, I really do hear what you're saying, and I don't expect, I really don't think that AI is going to replace, you know, painted or these other mediums that that we all appreciate, and I threw this question at Julian. So I was maybe you respond to him, maybe you can also kind of take this into account. But I think your question is really not so much all we preserving, like traditional classical styles and efforts, but are we preserving, like, those monetization models of how that is incentivized, and I mean what I mean you especially as a as an historian, but like, Why? Why is the church not a patron of the arts these days? Like, why? Why are those monetization models that are very commoditized, that are, you know, focused on, not so much the artwork, but really that the purpose that the artwork serves, whether it's promoting a space, whether it's, you know, creating a header or brand logo, like, Why? Why are those monetization models really worth preserving? You know, and especially if we're coming at this from a question of Christian Christianity in the church. Like, you know, why? Why are we not providing kind of those incentive models for these great artists who create in these very classical and traditional ways to continue creating the way they do? Like, why has that fallen by the wayside?

Will Anselm 1:57:40
Brilliant, brilliant question. Funnily enough, I was going to, actually, I was planning to give a kind of quote, unquote lecture on the one Renaissance model of patronage, which I just postponed until later in the week, taken from the life of Sigismund, or pandan for manifesto, who's extraordinary, weird and wonderful guy, quite evil, very famously, one of the only people who's ever been, quote, unquote, canonized to hell, which is not a thing. It's a hyperbolic expression, just because he was so wicked. But this is not this is an important question the church does, still is a major patron of music, sacred music, and less so the visual arts and lesser architecture. There's been a huge change in the amount of resources that are available to the church. These days. We're looking at parish churches in the UK that are that take Catholic Church Catholic parish churches, and even Anglican churches, most in basically every church, apart from cathedrals, that will take 11 years to raise money to patch a hole in their roof. And when you're doing that, it just seems a bit silly to be commissioning some bright young artists to, you know, paint a mural behind the altar. You know, for the same amount of money that it would cost to fix two holes in the roof. The... I think that the... I'm I'm interested in in, I'm interested in, I'm interested in getting terms defined in this conversation. Because I think most of us are on the same page. I'm not hostile at all to, for example, somebody brought up something. I can't remember who it was. I didn't if it was Julian. I think this is a brilliant, brilliant, brilliant suggestion, which is that generative AI in terms of images, images have an enormous use application in terms of generating plans, inspiration outlines for people then to say, Okay, I'm going to drum up the. Sketch up or mock ups and models of what I'm actually going to do and sit down and paint myself, you know. But what we're seeing writ large at the moment, when we look at it very carefully and sensibly, is we're going to very quickly reach a stage where everything that a graphic artist can do, and that's really what we're talking about here. I know that it is. It's images, but let's just call it visual content, rather than fine art, right? Some people are not comfortable with making those distinctions, but I've already set out my position as far as the basically the prevailing opinion, which is that, first of all, photography doesn't belong to art history in the same way it doesn't belong to it's not art in the same way that painting, sculpture, drawing and architecture are. And even more so, I don't think any AI art would really be, well, would be considered in the same way as part of visual culture. But what we're really talking about here are certain commercial applications of generating images for particular purposes. We're talking about comic books and greetings cards, all the things that about, like promo images, content, headers, place fillers, all of these things that we see very often, you know, use grok just generate a quick image to promote or, you know, tack onto your tweet, or whatever. What we're going to see is a huge expansion. We're really seeing a huge expansion in the interest of the applications of this. Because look grocers, if you have, you know, X Premium Plus, or whatever it is, it's basically included in that with no cap on on how much you can use it. And it's pretty good. It's actually pretty like, the quality of the images are staggeringly good. But what we're going to see is that people will get so used to using this and when the public at large, upskill in learning how to use prompts, which has happened very quickly just looking at the text, you know, like chat, GPT and things. First of all, people are learning how to use prompts as ordinary, everyday people, and then whichever way you look at it, you don't need to be an art like you don't need to be an art. You just need most of these images, this group of images, this group of this group of graphics that we're referring to, are not really judged for their quality. They just have to be good enough, and they're really content in the sense that they're filler material very often. And when we push forward to a point where it's so rapidly available in the hands of a consumer, we will see a collapse in we'll see an entire sector disappear. Now this is the kind of inevitability this is going to happen, left, right and center, all over the world, all over the shop. But what, what is the what are people's attitudes or opinions as to how quickly that happens, and what happens when something goes wrong? And here's where I land my plane. When we're talking about artists, and artists classically trained, or, let's just say, you know, traditionally trained artists, you know, hands incarnation or whatever they're doing, whether they make pots or whatever they might do, sketches, digital watercolors, inks, lithographs, whatever. If I want, if I want to have a piece of fish for supper, I can go and buy a piece of fish, right? But then, at the same time, some people very much enjoy the process of going to fish themselves. I don't know if anybody's gone shooting or hunting, but you know, there is something about the process of doing it yourself. And there are some people who are very keen, keenly formed eyes, keenly formed hands, who are never, ever, ever going to countenance the idea of sitting at a keyboard and typing in a set of prompts, because they would father far rather, to use this allegory, they'd rather be sitting in a boat on the lakeside, fishing all day and catching nothing than than just having a fish put in front of them, or having a fish that they could sell to somebody. And I think that this is an important thing to remember, that there's a very incarnational human principle that adds value, and we've seen this time and time and time again. Final point in Florence, for example, I used to walk all the way down the River Arno buy coffee for a euro. I'd walk past the statue of Michelangelo's David outside of the place of Vecchio. It's a replica, and you'd see people. Taking their photographs outside of it, but then you'd also see them later that day, paying like 25 euros to go and see the real thing. And at the academia, the museum, where the real thing is, people make a distinction between what is fake, quote, unquote, and what is real. And this is a really weird phenomenon in the way that the art market works, that authenticity counts as something. Because you can make a print of a Piero della Francesca, you can make a print of a Michelangelo, but people will still pay for the real thing. We can 3d print at this point in time, an exact replica, right down to the brush strokes of a fame that of like Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper. Okay? The first one's gonna be interesting because of the tech, because of the prestige of the technical feat of 3d printing the oils to the point that it's indistinguishable, right? But authenticity still is this weird thing in art. It's not just about the quality of the finished product, but people want the real shilling. And I think that that's something that we can't overlook in this whole situation. Yeah, it's going to be exciting. Yeah, it's going to be convenient, but then interest is going to die down. And in those in between those two events, all of a sudden people won't be going to study graphic design. They won't be studying to sketch, they won't be studying architectural drawing because there's no money in it. There won't be any money in it for like, a period of 10 years or something. And then the interest in this generated stuff will die down, and then there'll be no humans who are trained or sufficiently skilled to do the real thing again, right? And we'll go around in cycles like this, which is what happened in the Industrial Revolution. Industrial Revolution. So authenticity counts as something, and it's a very weird, weird factor in the way that people consume art and visual culture. And I don't think we can ignore that.

Julian Ahlquist 2:06:54
Yeah, I agree with a ton of that. And I've actually your point about the fishing is something that I thought about that, in some sense, handcrafted art is analogously like wilderness survival. And you know, AI art is more like the modern conveniences that allow us to survive. Now, roughly speaking, obviously. Now you know if you're if you're surviving because of all these modern conveniences, you do lose touch with nature, and you know, that's, that's not good. That could have psychological impact. You know, we are, we are obviously natural creatures, and so be, even though the modern conveniences aren't bad, it's still good to have one foot in in nature and to, you know, basically, know at least some basics of how to survive out in nature. It gives us a sense of peace. Because, you know, all this, all this modern world might collapse, and that gives us some anxiety, at the very least oftentimes. And so likewise, AI art, I think, yeah, was gonna go out of style eventually, in some form or another. And if there's not enough people have, analogously speaking, you know, kept up their wilderness survival skills. You know, yeah, it's gonna, it's a lost art that we'll have to rediscover. So that's why I advocate, you know, us continuing to to do and know how to do handcrafted art and but also to engage this new technology as well, and ideally have a balance between the two.

Jack Prophesy 2:08:22
I think that observation about connecting back to nature is actually really interesting. You know, Marshall McLuhan talks about mediums, and when any medium is pushed to its limit, it basically reverses on itself, and the complete opposite is brought into the world. And it might just be seen that with all digital media, like we're kind of at the end of digital right? I mean, because now every kind of image, every kind of movie, every kind of song, is all everything, all at once, to the point that it basically means nothing. It's you're we're going to realize the fact that we're just looking at a big chunk of plastic, that's really all we're doing, because all the specific images are just kind of all going to blend together. So I do think that there's the actual the end of AI might end up reconnecting people with the real world. Maybe that's where the new art forms are going to actually emerge.

Julian Ahlquist 2:09:20
Yeah, I feel that's eventually gonna happen too, and it's very paradoxical, which probably indicates that it's true.

Will Anselm 2:09:33
Yeah, the thing, and I got, I actually don't have too much, too much experience of of the, the image side of things, funnily enough, but I can speak to the way that it's what we're seeing in writing. At the moment, I hadn't I had an interview last year to take on some regular work as to just expanding some script editing work for. Or in, you know, in the screen industry, for films and for movies and television, which I do not there anymore, but as part of the process, I had to read through and review a batch of scripts in a very short space of time. And unbeknownst to me, three of them were had been generated using, I can't remember which version of chat GPT it was at the time, but using generative AI. And I identified, I didn't know this, but I was asked, you know, okay, give us your coverage on this. And I identified the three scripts that had been written using a very, very, very high quality, like, not commercially available, you know, to generative AI, which I just said, I can't help but say this, I think that these groups have been, you know, written using AI, and for us, interestingly enough, as well, in the other half of my life, all this concern about people writing essays with with generative AI. It only works if you if you're asking it to write about something that there's a lot of material available for. You know, if you're asking it to write about Catra and the rye or Handmaid's Tale, or, you know, the laughter curve or economic principles or fiscal drag, or whatever it might be then, yeah, it's all there online. But if you're asking it about something that's original, we're not there yet, right? And a lot of these pushes, a lot of these questions are, well, we're going to have to digitize and increase all of these systems and structures to gear towards AI doing, eventually, everything that it might do, ought to, could do, should do. At the meantime, we are de skilling human beings fundamentally, and we need to be, by all means, recognizing that we need to be technologically and digitally literate. But at the same time, there are raw critical reasoning skills, especially in academia, in scholarship, in thinking, in research and productivity that are outside of the field, the digital sphere, and then also in the writing world as well creativity, networking, refining editorial skills that that that If they were developed and honed alongside, you know, digital literacy, literacy and understanding how to prompt and all this kind of stuff, then we'd end up with a very highly cultivated, like, finely tuned machine. I'm not averse to the use of AI to help productivity. I see many, many, many brilliant applications and uses of AI as as a partner, as kind of like a lazy Susan, a Dumb Waiter, alongside all these other things that humans are doing. But I think that the there's a lot of discussion at the moment which is directed, which is being directed towards gearing the world for the capabilities of AI at the expense of investing in exploring and developing the capabilities of human persons in this extraordinary world, and we have access to all of these information, information and technologies. So I think it's an interesting coefficient that has to be balanced.

Julian Ahlquist 2:13:21
Yeah, I agree. And as a teacher, I've definitely been seeing more and more plagiarism with AI and essays and whatnot. So I even, even if people are against a I encourage people to use AI to so that you can recognize it when it's being used, especially if you're a teacher. But yeah.

Jack Prophesy 2:13:41
The problem is the teachers are using AI to grade all the world, so the students are doing fake work and the teachers are doing fake grading.

Julian Ahlquist 2:13:48
I'm not doing that yet, but, yeah, it's tempting.

Connor Mahoney 2:13:54
You know, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna prematurely end the space, but I will say we've been running about over two hours. Now. This is one of the longest spaces I've posted, which I think speaks to you know how interesting the conversation is. Might have to carry it on further, maybe with another space at some point, but I do just want to kind of mention the clock, and also that I lost my co host, so maybe, maybe we start to kind of wrap it up here, but I don't know if somebody really has something on their mind they wanted to jump in and and respond to, I'm happy to kind of pass it around the panel maybe one last time. Yeah, go ahead Will.

Will Anselm 2:14:32
I'm also just going to bounce because it's very late here. But on the subject of education and the future of what our world looks like. Diana and I will be hosting our second Catholic vote space tomorrow evening. And on the subject of education, the famed Jeremy Tate the classical, the great Renaissance in classical, the. Think among homeschoolers will be speaking with us, alongside Alexis walkenstein, who's a big movie producer, and Brie Dale from the daily wire, and a couple of other people whose names don't spring to mind right this second, not because they're unimportant, but because there are so many brilliant people, and you would all be most, most, most welcome to come along to that. And this has been a treat. I'll just sit back and listen as you guys wrap up. But thank you so much Connor and everybody else, Julian, Jack, Naomi, Ian MBA and a couple of people who left as well. This been a treat.

Connor Mahoney 2:15:38
Thank you so much Will. Jeremy Tate, relation of Andrew Tate, some of you might know.

Will Anselm 2:15:44
No... stop.

Connor Mahoney 2:15:48
All right, I think Jack threw his hand up for a second, but I don't know if you wanted to give some last words there.

Jack Prophesy 2:15:59
No, I just think, sort of putting this, I was just plotting what you were saying. Thanks for putting this space together.

Connor Mahoney 2:16:05
Yeah, awesome. I appreciate you. Know, I might want to do a space on a motion McLuhan at some point. I'm, I don't know if everybody's actually familiar with, well, some people might be familiar with this walk, but I don't know if everybody is familiar with his religious life. I think he was, you know, somewhat, he kind of kept that somewhat to himself. I think it's kind of came out in later, later years, his deep Catholicism. And also he has a connection to teho de Chardin, who is somebody we bring up here in a number of spaces that I think I want to, I think I might like to invite, actually, Ian white back to speak a little bit about interesting figure there in the Christian futurism conversation. So I'm kind of more interested to engage with some of these thinkers in the future.

Ian Huyett 2:16:52
I was really hoping someone was going to show up and try to defend this premise that paying a two year old to draw a straight line is better than the most esthetically pleasing. Ai. I mean, that that is Julian was getting at this. That's kind of the premise of a lot of the attacks on AI art that we hear. And it's not at all evident where it comes from, like what the source of it is, historically or psychologically, philosophically. But at some point, I'd love to hear, you know, if we can't get anyone to show up and defend that position. Maybe some further speculation as to where that comes from so we can address it.

Will Anselm 2:17:28
Well, if I could just say quickly, I think that it sounds kind of hyperbole, but you know the effect, you can relate it to the macaroni owl on the fridge situation, granny, I've just made a macaroni out kindergarten. You put it on the fridge and wait, it's ugly, it's vile, it's awful. But there's sentimental value embedded in the fact that it's made by somebody that you know and you love and you care about, and you can understand that, you know, if you wouldn't just buy a macaroni owl, you know, you know, glued onto a piece of paper and stick it on your fridge, right? There are all sorts of these weird things that happen in terms of value judgments, in the way that we look at created things. And it threads into this authenticity thing, would you? Would you if you had a choice between a perfectly straight line drawn or produced through our through generative AI, versus one that had been drawn that was wonky and irregular by your grandchild or your child or your knees or your neck or whomever you know, which one you choose if you were in the market for buying, you know, just a drawing of a straight line, right? But there is, there a deeper there are deeper conversations Ian, which I understand that there's a lot of strawmanning around that particular question that we're seeing a lot.

Ian Huyett 2:18:53
Well, in this case his analogy is my grandchild hand drawing a straight line, or my grandchild designing a prompt to have mid journey create a line, I suppose the analogies that we're pressing it at this point, it's a little difficult, but certainly to take the owl example, right? You know, would I value an owl created by a prompt designed by my grandchild? Maybe somewhat more than my grandchild physically drawing with a pencil and output, potentially.

Will Anselm 2:19:24
In that situation, that's kind of very Yeah, I mean that the we're there is enough here to have a conversation about this at another time, really, on the development of esthetics after after Cezanne, basically because if you have if they were both identical, basically, if the macaroni out or the line, or whatever it might be, if they're both identical, are you vesting value in the process, or the you know, or the technical digital awareness to whatever it might be to. Generate something like that, or 3d printed or are you is that? Is that a novelty against creating something entirely by hand? Is this an objective judgment, and would that be true in all cases? So, but there's enough that Ian this is actually that's a fascinating, fascinating question. There's enough to pick up on that another space. Let's hook up and discuss that.

Julian Ahlquist 2:20:20
Yeah so I have to leave in just a couple minutes here, so I'll make my closing comments. So first of all, thank you for having me on. This is very fascinating, a lot of lot of great material that to have to think about. But yeah, my my closing statements is, I think I've a balanced, a balanced view that I want to promote. So don't, you know, don't condemn AI completely. I wouldn't, don't, don't embrace it, you know, in every aspect of your life, obviously. But you know, stay, stay in connection with nature, stay in connection with handcrafted art. But at the same time, I do encourage good people, especially good artists, to to use AI art, because if, if only bad people are using it for evil, then, you know, it might end the world. Might be the apocalypse, as we, we all sort of fear the robots and all that. That would be my closing remarks.

Connor Mahoney 2:21:15
Awesome. Appreciate it. So much Julian. And thanks for joining and really kind of starting this space off, giving us the thought of to have the conversation. This has been a really good one, you know, and it's gone really long. So I think, like I said, that's really a testament to, you know, how how important this conversation is. So, you know, I hope more people are willing to kind of engage with the conversation, not just from a negative view, because I see so much negativity from Christianity, about AI and about tech. I think there's a lot of fears there. And, you know, we can really dive into why that is in other spaces. And actually we have but, but, you know, there is we have to understand, as Christians that Christianity is not just concerned with the past, it's not just concerned with tradition, but it has a future vision, and that's really something that distinguishes Christianity from a lot of other philosophies, a lot of other religions. You know, Christianity is really all encompassing. So, you know, we have to have a conversation about the future, and we have to realize that the future is going to look different from the past, you know. So, so a lot of important topics there, I'm thinking, yeah, sorry.

Julian Ahlquist 2:22:23
All right, I'm gotta head off. So thank you again, Connor, this has been a blast. God bless everybody.

Connor Mahoney 2:22:28
Yeah, God bless, we're ending the space. What I'm going to do is I'm going to play some music as we go out. That's just because the recording kind of cuts off, weird if I don't. So everybody is welcome to leave. Otherwise we're going to, we're going to hear a little bit of music. But thanks everybody for joining. Take care.