> There's weird random reflections on things that shouldn't have reflections

It's an image depicting a whale made of stained glass; realism is off the table there.

Well no. I can imagine lots of things in my head that are impossible but would be correctly lit, and I could do the same in Blender.

Not really, you could imagine another technique that 3D models it without force but with raytracing, puts it in that scene and takes a picture, the result would look better. That could then be a starting point for trying to get the lighting an panels just right to make the best reflections.

When you forgo process the odds that you'll make good art drop to 0. Tool use is a much better path forward for self driving, artistic computer than big data. Images 2.6 only has use as a tool.

I've never understood why people have this viewpoint. If there is no preference for one property of a work (ie. lighting) to match reality just because another unrelated property (biology) doesn't, then surely the only possible scenarios remaining are an exact replica of the real world (where all properties match the real world) or an entirely arbitrary construction (where no properties should match reality). Fiction is predicated on the idea of "reality, but...". Saying that any single difference from reality should lead you to expect no similarities to reality at all, if followed, would collapse all fictions into pure arbitrary soup.

nah, the physical light is still a real concept, and it looks really shitty here.

The point of fantasy or even surrealism is to contrast with the parts of the work that are chosen to be realistic. When random parts of the work are broken in meaningless ways it becomes slop

Unpleasable nerds with “I can tell by the pixels” ass comments is what keeps me coming back to HN year after year

Just an absolute race to post a contrarian take to hit the top of the comments.

Never change bros

If not by the pixels, how else could you assess the quality of an image?

Vibes?

It's a reference to the very old https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/this-looks-shopped

Long before generative AI, unpleasant nerds would poop on fun images by claiming they could "just tell" that they were altered in photoshop. Today I'm seeing a complaint that the path tracing from the multi-layered stained glass into the cloud simulation is not as accurate as a human would have painted by hand. And, that apparently makes us grumpy.

There have been unending examples of people liking an image until informed it was made by AI. Then, suddenly they see all sorts of fine-detail excuses to dislike it. And, of people calling out "obviously AI" problems in the works of human master artists when someone lies and tells them it was generated.

I'm not seeing any difference in the discussion here. The whale is a bit overly high-frequency. The owl is fine. The guy at the computer would be considered great if a human made it. The travel ad is bland. The balloon letters are fine.

None of these are "terrible eye sores". Some people don't like AI generated imagery as a process. Seeing generated images make them feel upset. That's reasonable. But, claiming these images in isolation are objectively awful regardless of their source is reactionary. If any of them were made by a person using Photoshop and/or Blender, they would be received with a resounding "Meh" or better.

You’re trying to rewrite history here. People didn’t dunk on shooped images because they had been altered, they dunked on them because people were trying to pass them off as real, or were content that would only have been notable had they been real. Not liking misinformation doesn’t make you an “unpleasant nerd”, but your reply certainly makes you one.

> Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.

> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

> Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

thanks bro I would have never known

Tell that to all the top level comments. Just a bunch of shallow reddit snark.

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I don't personally see the issue. It's a highly stylised image so there's not any reflections or anything that immediately jump out to me as obviously wrong

> anything that immediately jump out to me as obviously wrong

Trace any light ray through the scene, and you will see they are bending in ways that light does not.

I'm sure we could teach a world model about light, but this image model fundamentally does not understand how light behaves (which is one of the primary things an artist needs to understand).

We've gone quickly from "I can't believe AI can generate photo realistic images like that" to "Looking at this image makes me grumpy because it doesn't feature ray tracing accuracy of the light sources".

It can still be technically incredible while not being pleasant to have it proliferate.

This surely varies by platform, but in the occasional glances I make at social media feeds it feels like uncanny, off-putting AI slop is creeping up in percentage of content. I can't speak for GP but that affects how I feel when I see AI generated imagery, whether or not I'm impressed by the technical capability.

I have felt both of those things simultaneously for years. It's cool that computers can just do this now, but it's completely missing the spirit of art and I hate looking at it.

This is not "kind of close, but not as accurate as a ray traced image", it's just completely wrong. The whale itself is fine: sun comes from behind, and sun rays refract inside the whale to make it glow. Believable enough. But then the whale is somehow shining light on the clouds below it, as if the sun was high in the sky and slightly to the left. Which is decidedly not where the sun is. And then out of nowhere light from round church windows shines on the church - but nothing on the whale has that shape, and that side of the church isn't even facing the church

I can only conclude that this image is taken on a world with two sun (one in frame, one out of frame to the top left), and somewhere out of frame in the same direction are floating church windows. Even then we might need a third sun to make this work

A local playground has multiple giant walls decorated with images in the following style:

https://share.google/bJFHzUfQnyowJhPa1

Let's not pretend the technology is what we're mad about here.

There's a moment in Cory Doctorow's The Reverse Centaur's Guide To Life After AI where he quotes Mark Fisher's definition of eeriness (from The Weird and the Eerie) as "when there is something present where there should be nothing, or is [sic] there is nothing present when there should be something." It's a great description of why so much AI art in particular just feels wrong, even if you can't put your finger on it.

You must not be a fan of Rembrandt.

undervalued comment

These type of AI can't make art, art is about the human intention, the way the artist looks at the world, the experiences they have had, the feelings they want the viewer to have and how that viewer's perception can be affected by the techniques the artist developed.

These type of AI imitate existing art but have no intention or experience behind the image which is why they feel like slop because they are soulless.

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