Prelude
Aloha again fine folks! Welcome once more to the weird and wonderful world of vintage guitars and thank you for joining me, a self‑confessed music and guitar nerd. Why not leave behind the senseless barbarism of heinous hostilities seemingly everywhere you look on our one and only home planet for a short while and join me on another peaceful and harmless diversion? If music has the power to change the world, then let’s put a proverbial platter on the turntable of life and play on and on until common sense prevails. Perhaps the collective majority of sensible people need another counter‑culture revolution. What can possibly be wrong with a bit of peace and love? We can hope. Anyhoo… I digress once more and I haven’t even got going yet. Apologies for the premature non sequitur.
AI revisited
Artificial Intelligence (AI), as a current day technological marvel, is perhaps the antithesis to the bits of old‑world wood, metal and plastic cobbled together into desirable musical instruments. Despite the seeming disconnect, this article is Part II of III exploring what the current state of AI can contribute towards the subject. Like ‘Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back’ this article isn’t just a ‘difficult filling in the sandwich’, it actually does stand up pretty well on its own. There is no doubting the potential of AI in many areas of our lives but can it really do justice to vintage guitars?
There is no need to repeat preparatory exposition this month. The historical development of AI was covered pretty comprehensively in ‘Part I’ last month. If you want to go back for a recap or a first look at the basics, follow the link below (opens in a new tab):
March 2024 – Artificial Intelligence takes on Vintage Guitars: Part I (craveguitars.co.uk)
In Part I of the series, the entirety of AI’s output in response to 20 questions on the multifaceted world of CRAVE Vintage Guitars resulted in, literally, a black & white article comprising text‑only descriptions, mostly presented as bullet point lists. AI had the opportunity to present images to back up its results. However, it provided zero pictures, relying solely on words to make its points. To me, that seemed to be a major omission and was something a rational human (probably) wouldn’t do. I certainly wouldn’t, at least not out of choice. So, the next logical step was to address that pictorial oversight directly and see what AI would reveal when asked unequivocally to produce images. A digital depiction is worth a thousand kilobytes, so to speak.
“True art is characterised by an irresistible urge in the creative artist” – Albert Einstein (1879‑1955)
The rationale
I don’t usually write anecdotally but please bear with me for a moment. While the next bit may seem irrelevant, it does, I believe, demonstrate some of the complications with, and ramifications of, AI as it stands at the current time.
Being a admirer of modern art, I recently wanted an art print for my home. After doing my research, I came down to a work by Latvian‑born American artist Mark Rothko (1903‑1970), best known for his abstract colour field paintings produced from 1949 until his death. The piece I selected is called, ‘Blue, Green and Brown’ (1952). I approached a professional studio to print the image for me. The studio couldn’t acquire a high resolution image for accurate printing at the size I wanted, so they proceeded to put a lower resolution image through an AI enlargement tool to produce an image of sufficiently high resolution to be printed without obvious pixilation and digital artefacts. While the proof looked pleasant enough in isolation, when compared directly with the original, AI had egregiously robbed the image of its quintessential artistic detail, rendering it a pale imitation of the real thing, much like a good amateur forgery. AI had removed many of the ‘imperfections’ that made the original unique. Many people might actually prefer the manipulated image or they may not even realise it had been ‘bastardised’. This, to me was an issue. Personally, I much preferred the integrity of the original artistic creation, as Rothko intended it to be seen. Sadly, because of copyright, I cannot share the evidence but, believe me, in a small way it reveals implications of AI for many of humanity’s creative arts.
“A painting is not a picture of an experience, but is the experience” – Mark Rothko (1903‑1970)
The intentional act of digitally ‘airbrushing’ out the supposed defectiveness in our 21st Century world – whether it is intentional or not – is a concern. What is worse is that it is an incremental insidious intrusion. It is happening all around us, every day – whether it is subtle or blatant – and has been for a long time. Just take a look at studio photos of fashion models, actresses, pop stars, etc. This interventionist rendering transforms reality into a skewed, artificially ‘improved’ view of something that somebody, somewhere considered imperfect. This alteration from real to surreal is a worrying trend, and one that we may not even be aware of under normal everyday circumstances. We have all become unwittingly complicit in accepting these glossy facsimiles as, in some way, genuine and even aspirational. The trend is surreptitiously subverting our expectations of the tangible. On top of the word Photoshop becoming a verb rather than a noun, AI is exacerbating this issue and very soon, we won’t be able to tell that it is being done. What you see isn’t what you get. A picture can tell a thousand lies.
The author’s recent experiences led directly to the rationale for Part II of this exploration into what AI’s digital world view of vintage guitars may look like. Whereas last month’s article was a test of AI’s narrative approach to vintage guitars, this month, we will be focusing solely on AI’s interpretation of vintage guitars in visual form. Other than the prologue and epilogue, there is nothing herein authentically human.
Generative AI (GAI) tools like Midjourney and OpenAI’s DALL‑E 3 are easily accessible and are being used widely to produce pictures (generative art) by interpreting written instructions. This is the straightforward process used to submit the examples presented in this article. Can Generative Artificial Intelligence really create intelligent art? Let us see. The proof is out there and the quest to unearth the evidence continues unabated.
“Art is not what you see, but what you make others see” – Edgar Degas (1834‑1917)
The CRAVE Guitars’ test
I will present AI with some specific challenges and see how AI responds and, once again, I will let the AI do the hard work. As before, I will leave my humble critique until the end of the article.
Last month, I suggested eight benchmarks for evaluating AI’s responses, summarised below:
- To understand a question correctly without over‑specificity
- To interpret and extrapolate relevant information objectively within a wider context
- To present a cogent argument that can adequately be judged and/or challenged
- To form a genuine opinion from scratch without relevant information being readily available in the first place, in the same way that a person might do in the case of uncertainty
- To debate the initial result to achieve a potentially better outcome
- To produce a creative response that improves on the original information input by humans
- To remember what it has already output
- To understand fully what humans want or expect from ‘intelligence’
While these tests were intended to provide an assessment framework for last month’s narrative responses, they mostly still work for images (sort of, with a bit of imagination). Unlike last month, there are far fewer words and plenty of pictures this time around.
“Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth.” – Pablo Picasso (1881‑1973)
Twenty Questions – AI produced images of vintage guitars
I asked a GAI image creator to produce digital images based on simple text instructions. A small proportion of the results are shown below. In each case, I have presented at least two images for each instruction and in several cases more to show the diversity (or not) of what AI created. So, there are well over 50 AI images for your delectation. There were plenty of others produced. I don’t suggest that the ones used are the ‘best’, only that they were representative of the instruction. Hopefully, by the end, you can make up your own mind about how effective the technology is. With my permission, GAI will now take centre stage and I will potter off to make multiple cups of coffee. See you later for my opinion.
Instruction #1 – Design a logo for CRAVE Vintage Guitars
AI response #1
Instruction #2 – Create a physical guitar shop and museum/gallery designs for CRAVE Vintage Guitars
AI response #2
Instruction #3 – Create a web site home page design for CRAVE Vintage Guitars
AI response #3
Instruction #4 – Create a magazine advertisement for CRAVE Vintage Guitars with images of several vintage guitars
AI response #4
Instruction #5 – Create digital art showing a sunburst vintage guitar against a background of amplifiers and speaker cabinets with an Asian rug in the foreground. A number of effect pedals on the floor
AI response #5
Instruction #6 – Create digital art showing a black and white vintage guitar in its guitar case with a purple fur fabric interior along with a strap and lead coiled in a compartment
AI response #6
Instruction #7 – Create digital art showing number of vintage Gibson and Fender solid body electric guitars displayed hanging on a classically decorated solid wall along with logo memorabilia
AI response #7
Instruction #8 – Create digital art showing a vintage solid body electric guitar on a luthier’s workbench
AI response #8
Instruction #9 – Create digital art showing a jazz guitarist on stage wearing a zoot suit and playing a vintage jazz guitar with backing band
AI response #9
Instruction #10 – Create digital art showing a blues guitarist wearing a dark suit and hat sitting on a smoky stage playing a vintage electric jazz guitar plugged into a vintage valve combo amp
AI response #10
Instruction #11 – Create digital art showing a hippie with long hair, tie‑dye shirt and flared jeans playing a vintage solid body electric guitar on an open air music festival stage with a backing band and bright, psychedelic light show
AI response #11
Instruction #12 – Create digital art showing a heavy metal guitarist on a dark stage playing a vintage solid body electric guitar, dressed in a Goth inspired outfit
AI response #12
Instruction #13 – Create digital art showing a Rastafarian reggae guitarist on a black, green, red and yellow stage playing an electric solid body vintage guitar, with a backing band
AI response #13
Instruction #14 – Create digital art showing a well‑dressed funk/disco guitarist playing a vintage electric guitar on stage with a mirror ball
AI response #14
Instruction #15 – Create digital art showing a folk guitarist playing a vintage steel strung acoustic guitar with a backing band on a folk festival stage
AI response #15
Instruction #16 – Create digital art showing a classical guitarist playing a vintage nylon strung acoustic guitar seated on a stage
AI response #16
Instruction #17 – Create digital art showing a young rock guitarist playing a vintage electric guitar through a vintage amplifier sitting on a bed in a bedroom with walls covered in music posters
AI response #17
Instruction #18 – Create digital art of a vintage guitar in [a variety] of fine art styles [including Renaissance, impressionist, realist, abstract, romantic, pop art, optical art, expressionist, cubist, art nouveau, art deco, dada, Bauhaus, primitivism, pointillist, and pre‑Raphaelite]. NB. See if you can identify the styles from the images.
AI response #18
Instruction #19 – Create digital art of a vintage guitar in [a variety] of modern graphic art styles [including illustration, eight‑bit, fantasy, manga, anime, futurist, sci‑fi, and steampunk]. NB. See if you can identify the styles from the images.
AI response #19
Instruction #20 – Create digital art of a vintage solid body electric guitar found in a dusty, cobwebbed attic amongst other objects d’art
AI response #20
Just for a bit of fun, I also asked GAI to ‘use Crave Guitars as a starting point, create digital art of an ‘ideal’ Cool & Rare American Vintage Electric Guitar’. The result was…
Hhhmmm.
Human observation and verdict
Well? Are you downright dazzled, dizzyingly discombobulated or decidedly dumbfounded?
First, let’s get the disclaimers out of the way. As mentioned in a previous article, I am not an artist or designer but I feel that I have a reasonable eye for what works and what doesn’t. My generalised opinions, as always, are entirely my own and therefore humanly flawed.
So, there you have it. No words this time, just a plethora of GAI created images based on just twenty or so straightforward text inputs. The images are exactly as produced by the AI image creator; they have not been manipulated in any way.
The legal situation, as far as I can ascertain is that the copyright for the images belongs exclusively to the person who input the criteria used to create the image, not the GAI platform itself. Just as a camera manufacturer doesn’t have copyright over the images produced by a photographer using one of its products. So, at the time of writing, I am within my rights to publish the images and to copyright them as part of this article for the purposes of objective analysis and critique.
It is clear that the technology is very, very clever indeed and also very powerful. However, it is worth remembering that it is just an IT system, albeit a potent one. It would take a long time for a human to create ‘new’ images like those that took seconds using a GAI image creator. I certainly couldn’t produce images like these from scratch whether using traditional or technological means, so kudos to GAI for that alone. On the surface and with a quick glance, some of the images are almost convincing. It is only when scrutinising the images with any kind of critical eye that things begin to fall apart very quickly. The devil really is in the detail.
For instance, the CRAVE Guitars logos are unusable with misspellings, artefacts, anomalies, strange letters/words and peculiar components. Also, why no simple logos and what about logos using colour? The results are VERY different form the genuine CRAVE Guitars logo. I still prefer the human original to the over‑fussy monochrome GAI creations.
Can GAI produce authentic original intelligent art all by itself? No, I don’t believe so. As of now, AI image building remains derivative. Its algorithms work by sampling a vastly diverse range of artistic styles and using that as the basis for producing ‘new’ images. Try inputting insufficient or vague information for the algorithms to work on and it struggles. Even some quite specific instructions result in a ‘fail’.
There are still, at least for now, discernible differences between GAI‑created art and genuine art created by humans. AI is a tool but it isn’t (yet) a replacement for human imagination and artistic expression. AI can, however, help to bring a fresh perspective, explore new vistas and to push the boundaries of existing art and photography. In the future, I predict that a proportion of art will undoubtedly be a collaboration between human creativity and machine manipulation.
After requesting many variations of multiple images, it is clear that GAI has an ‘artistic style’ of its own and, once recognised, it quickly becomes generic and, at least to my eyes unappealing. Much like generic CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) in cinema, the human eye and brain can differentiate the artificial outputs from practical effects, resulting in the digital output being disappointingly unconvincing, at least most of the time.
When it comes to the guitars themselves, GAI clearly has no real idea of (and perhaps more importantly, simply doesn’t care) what a guitar is, how it is created, what its functions are and the differences between them. That is, I believe a fundamental part of the problem. GAI does not comprehend in the slightest what comprises an actual musical instrument, vintage or otherwise. To all intents and purposes, the concept of a guitar (or anything else for that matter) may as well be a plain lump of rock to GAI. At least a human artist would have some conception of what it is they are attempting to portray.
“In the literal sense, the programmed computer understands what the car or the adding machine understand: namely, exactly nothing” – John Searle (1932‑, American philosopher)
Many of the body shapes are unrecognisable, pickups are plain wrong, control layouts are bizarre, necks and fingerboard inlays are completely out of whack. Some ‘guitars’ have semi‑acoustic f‑holes where there shouldn’t be any. Proportions are often wrong and headstocks don’t match body type, etc. GAI also seems inclined to add plenty of unnecessary embellishments, decorations and accoutrements for no apparent reason. Peculiar.
Interestingly, in terms of equality, I didn’t specify race, gender or age to the GAI image creator. Of the images featuring guitarists, they were predominantly (but not exclusively) white, male and younger. None of the guitarists featured were left‑handed. Why this should be, other than perhaps reflecting the source material used by GAI, I know not. Like 21st Century first world nations, GAI has some way to go in learning about diversity.
The images may impress a total newbie to guitars but I’m sure anyone with any sort of interest in guitars, let alone vintage instruments, would not be convinced in the slightest. To an expert, the renditions jar significantly and are simply unacceptable representations. The images couldn’t really be used in any genuine situation other than, for instance, a critique like this. The images made me contemplate just what they could actually be used for. They don’t even work as a genuine artistic impression of reality. At best, GAI is a simulation of reality, not reality.
If GAI images would be used in a real situation, they would probably need far more specific instructions and or greater computing power to interpret genuine instruments realistically. In addition, further human manipulation would be required to finesse the images before they could be suitable. To me, there is a gaping difference between a picture and a painting or an image and a work of art.
“Art is a line around your thoughts” – Gustav Klimt (1862‑1918)
Interestingly, when asked to create digital art in the style of a specific school (e.g. surrealist, impressionist, cubist or art deco) or a specific artist (e.g. Andy Warhol, Picasso or Salvador Dali), GAI failed completely to generate something representative of the art form or artist. On the other hand, GAI could create digital art in a way that current human artists may not conceive. Although impressive in its own right, it again completely missed the point. Amusingly to me, at least, the first three letters of ‘artificial’ are ‘art’. GAI’s representational interpretation of real art isn’t actually art, it is an artifice (sic!). GAI images are not really inspirational or worthy of evoking or stimulating a profound emotional response in the way a genuine work of art might warrant. Yet.
I could go on and on about where faults may be found. However, that level of pedantic analysis would kinda miss the point of what this article is trying to demonstrate. GAI will undoubtedly get much, much better and probably not very long after this published article becomes obsolete. GAI image creation technology, at least to me, is a work‑in‑progress. That last comment is exactly what I said about the narrative responses in the previous article
Perhaps a synergetic integral relationship between GAI and humans should really be called ‘Augmented Intelligence’ (still AI). After all, and it is worth stating, computer generated artwork is nothing new. Humans have been using computers in art, design, animation, typography, film and photography (and many other forms of artistic expression) for a very long time, long before GAI came onto the scene. Digital tools like Adobe Photoshop and Corel PaintShop Pro are today’s graphic industry standards and they are beginning to integrate AI technology into their software in order to stay current and relevant. Therefore, using generative art technology is essentially only a natural progression along that very long evolutionary road. As such, then, it cannot be condemned out of hand.
So, cutting to the chase, would any of the images pass the Turing Test or even the CRAVE Guitars Test? Not to anyone with any interest or insight into the subject matter. Personally, I won’t be using AI imagery for serious use any time soon. I think that most professional artists in the creative industries would probably agree. However, it would be naïve of me to suggest that it won’t improve to the point where an AI image might be indistinguishable from something a human might envisage. Definitely not yet though. For me, I’m sticking to the likes of Mark Rothko for my modern art fix.
“The most interesting painting is one that expresses more of what one thinks than of what one sees” – Mark Rothko (1903‑1970)
Final thoughts on AI
Right, here we are, two thirds of the way through this 3‑part exploration of what AI can do within the context of the vintage guitar world. So far, so… erm, OK‑ish. At its most superficial, the technology is already truly remarkable and getting better all the time, so it would be disingenuous and immature to propose otherwise. However, as GAI stands at the time or writing, it still has some way to go.
It is all too easy to be swayed by the clever technology as a means, rather than focus purely on the pragmatic usefulness of the outcome as an end. The former is undoubtedly extraordinary, while the latter is still, for the time being at least, lacking. It is the ultimate inadequacy of the results that is still AI’s principal weakness. Given that the publically available GAI tools are still in their infancy, that mundane conclusion will, I suspect, be short‑lived. We should, perhaps, remember that we wouldn’t have been undertaking this sort of examination a year or two ago and in a year or two’s time, the benchmark by which we judge comparative differences will definitely be significantly raised.
For now, GAI is not a David Hockney, Damien Hirst, Edward Hopper or Banksy. Thankfully. It is probably worth keeping an eye on how things evolve from here on.
“We are entering a new world where creative machines will be our partners, not just tools.” – Fei‑Fei Li (Computer scientist, 1976‑)
CRAVE Guitars’ ‘Album of the Month’
Sticking to last month’s determination to avoid the generic style of music that could be created by AI, this month’s selection is another miracle of human creativity, while still being mainstream. This month’s accolade therefore goes to…
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Push The Sky Away (2013) – The fifteenth studio album by Australian Nick Cave and his band The Bad Seeds was released in mid‑February 2013. Nick Cave described the album, “if I were to use that threadbare metaphor of albums being like children, then Push The Sky Away is the ghost‑baby in the incubator and Warren [Ellis]‘s loops are its tiny, trembling heartbeat.” Very apt. The album preceded the tragic deaths of his two sons in 2015 and 2022, so it retains a lighter, though still profound, side to Cave’s song writing. The concluding title track is the culmination of something sublime and, is in itself, a monumental emotional and transcendent achievement in its gentle but devastating mere 4 minutes and 7 seconds. A worthy album of the month and a work of (creative human) art indeed.
“The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance” – Aristotle (384‑322BCE)
Tailpiece
Phew! Two parts down and one to go. While the first was a ballsy barrage of words, this has been a veritable visual volley of pupil‑popping pictures (I had to get at least one pretentious puerile alliterative assonance in. Sorry folks).
I truly hope that you have been able to gain something from this intermediate excursion into the endless expanse of the artificial unknown. Every day, The Matrix gets closer to reality, whatever that is. Has the journey so far in any way changed my perspective on vintage guitars? No. It has, however, changed my perspective on technology. Before embarking on this journey, I must admit that I had very little idea about what AI could do. There is, I believe, no doubt that AI can be an exciting enabler for humanity’s benefit, provided its darker, far more perilous potential is properly constrained by responsible human moderation.
As a teaser, next month will be the conclusion of this extensive round‑the‑computer AI trip. For Part III, we will take a different look at the bigger music industry picture within which vintage guitars occupy a small but important niche. Until then, enjoy the spring in the northern hemisphere and autumn in the south.
Truth, peace, love, and guitar music be with you always. Until next time…
CRAVE Guitars’ ‘Quote of the Month’: “It is better to fail at trying to be a good person than succeed at being a bad one”
© 2024 CRAVE Guitars – Love Vintage Guitars.