A refined parody, for a more civilized age...
May 16, 2023 2:16 PM   Subscribe

Star Wars Characters as Baroque Portraits. [SLYT] [AI] What it says on the tin. 3 minutes long with optional music. Images generated by Midjourney..
posted by gentlyepigrams (14 comments total) 5 users marked this as a favorite
 
Wtf is up with the Game of Throne actors facial structure mixed in?
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 2:36 PM on May 16, 2023 [1 favorite]


I like the concept. I liked Leia! But most were just a hair too photoreal (HDR-esque?).
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 3:07 PM on May 16, 2023 [2 favorites]


I'm having a hard time understanding this as "fair use" when there are ads attached to it.

Somebody explain to me again how generative models aren't just the latest tech for infringing copyright...
posted by dsword at 3:11 PM on May 16, 2023 [10 favorites]


I'm having a hard time understanding this as "fair use" when there are ads attached to it.

To be fair, in many cases, YouTube will put obligatory ads on videos and take 100% of the revenue associated with them, the creator does not get a penny. In 2023 this is standard practice for smaller channels, I shared the details of how this works earlier this year.
posted by jeremias at 3:36 PM on May 16, 2023 [5 favorites]


Can't wait til they add new functionality to MidJourney so it can produce literally anything whataoever outside of "already-existing thing that nerds like A in the style of already-existing thing that nerds like B"
posted by ominous_paws at 4:05 PM on May 16, 2023 [5 favorites]


It's wild how six months ago I would have been blown away by this and now I'm like it's... ok (the eyes need work, they look less like "Baroque Portraits" and more like illustrations, etc. but more to the point, we've all seen mash-this-popular-culture-thing-with-this-other-older-medium) The speed at which we as a society move from "that's magic!" to "been there, done that" with both tech and culture never ceases to amaze me.
posted by gwint at 4:29 PM on May 16, 2023 [2 favorites]


(but really, there's Chewbacca, and then there's everything else.)
posted by kaibutsu at 4:46 PM on May 16, 2023 [4 favorites]


I don't really think it's baroque; too photorealistic, not enough interplay of light and shadow, and most imporantly, baroque portraits rarely had a blank background.

Baroque Chewbacca is a delight and the highlight of the piece.
posted by LeRoienJaune at 4:48 PM on May 16, 2023 [4 favorites]


I am really, really excited for the future of fan edits
posted by rebent at 5:47 PM on May 16, 2023


To be fair, in many cases, YouTube will put obligatory ads on videos and take 100% of the revenue...

So it's fine, I guess...
posted by dsword at 6:12 PM on May 16, 2023


It's funny how the tech genius VC industrial complex's vision of the future is just the computer pumping out Just Two Things entries forever.
posted by Reyturner at 6:35 PM on May 16, 2023 [1 favorite]


I'm having a hard time understanding this as "fair use" when there are ads attached to it.

Fair use, in the US anyway, is based on a variety of factors. Whether the work is commercial or not is one consideration but it being commercial doesn't bar it from being fair use. Other factors that come into play is whether or not the market for the new work overlaps with the market for the old, and whether there is some substantial transformative value to the new work. Does it add value to the old work, or have a substantially different purpose? These are reasons why it would be viewed as fair use. Parody and commentary being textbook examples of transformative use.

This looks a bit like something that could've been featured in the pages of the old Mad Magazine, which in its time was basically the embodiment of the word "parody."
posted by xigxag at 7:31 PM on May 16, 2023 [1 favorite]


I would frame that Chewbacca portrait and hang it up. I wondered what they would do with him and he's the best one.
posted by ceejaytee at 3:47 AM on May 17, 2023


Somebody explain to me again how generative models aren't just the latest tech for infringing copyright..

I know this is more snark than an honest question, but I'll answer anyway. These machine learning models are basically big function approximators. You're fitting a line to some datapoints, but at an incomprehensible level of complexity. Gathering these statistics involves analyzing the numbers that make up a digital image (the RGB values of each pixel). The images themselves are stored nowhere in the model and, with a properly-trained model, cannot be reproduced from the weights (the internal parameters) of that model; the same way you can't reconstruct the score of a specific baseball game if you look at the season-long stats of the league.

I don't believe (and the law so far agrees with me) that gathering statistics on publicly available data is copyright infringement. People are upset about this because it's art and this very personal and human, but being upset that someone's using your art in a way you don't like isn't the same as copyright infringement.
posted by riotnrrd at 2:52 PM on May 17, 2023 [4 favorites]


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