What does the Human-Made mission mean to you?

It would be great if we had access to the "Human Made" graphic so we could include it in our social media posts.

The short answer: I'm in favour of the mission, but history suggests caution.
Long answer: I am watching this space with great interest. Anyone here old enough to remember what happened in the 1980s-90s when Photoshop and other image manipulation tools invaded the mainstream? A great deal of effort expended to introduced a 'Manipulated Image' badge, or similar. You all know the result of that. And look, Photoshop is now so mainstream it's become a verb (well, metonym) for all image manipulation.
Machine-learning has been in photography since 1984, so a limited kind of AI has been in art and photography practice for a many years.
What gets under the artistic collar is generative AI that takes text and changes the mode to visual output. Generative AI can also take visual material and add stuff to it.
It's useful to glance at industry practice: Getty Images makes a distinction between Retouching and Modification: essentially retouching doesn't materially change content and when done with 'traditional' tools is OK. Modification changes content: even radical changes but provided by done with Photoshop-type tools it is OK; however, same result using generative tools is not.
It doesn't take a lawyer to see big holes, grey areas and very smudged lines in any attempt to determine how much is too much, what is difference is significant or sufficient. That's why the issue of verification is central. But look at the US Copyright Office: after thousands of words jumping over fences and back again, they give up and say it's "necessarily a case-by-case inquiry".

The fact that there is an actual community dedicated to promoting Human-Made Art should be a big deal in and to the art community. Having access now to the graphics would be a great boost to us as artists. I know personally I cannnot wait to start affixing a sticker to my work and hanging some type of sign on my art tent in the future.

The Human-Made mission means a lot to me. For the past few years I've watched various companies and organizations try to implement their own type of AI identification solution with little success or adoption. As artists we need the ability to brand our own work as Human-Made and have it verified by an independent and impartial association. Hopefully the "Human-Made Art Society" can serve that purpose because there doesn't seem to be any group out there willing to do this. Certainly there will be stumbles along the way, but hopefully the credibility will become more and more accepted.

There is nothing more pure and simple but man made, means the energy comes from the heart, the heart is more pure and purposeful than any AI intelligence will ever 🐝 🩷🩵💛

At my gallery (we have 24 artists) two paintings were flagged as being copies of other AI created work -- bringing up all sorts of intellectual property issues. The two paintings were removed. We are now discussing how to ensure art that is in the gallery is human made and human inspired. The brand says to the public that the work they are viewing is not an AI product or derivative. The Human Made mission is to draw clear distinctions between real art created by humans and non-human creations. The public will appreciate the difference.

I think it’s very important. We should be able to get stickers with the logo to put on the back of all our paintings. I’m glad to be part of the movement to stand apart from the AI takeover.

Quick verification by an online buyer that you created the piece. As a photographer, I use Photoshop for combing photos and tweaking them. I am still confused how your verification process can figure out that I took all the combined photos when I am posting a flattened single file to my Art Storefronts website.

It is my experience that Human-Made Art originates as a deeply emotional/spiritual connection and vision. Therefore, the strongest connections with human collectors are based on a shared emotional/vision human connection. This seems likely to hold true and be a well-honored and successful path.

Where does the message about the art and the art itself separate and merge in the mind of the collector? It seems this would be why the language and voice of the Artist serving the human client collector is most meaningful in that relationship - they share an originally Human emotional vision. Those who communicate with the collector to support sales and distribution would be essential to have a shared vision voice with the human artist, or the connection will not potentially be as strong with the human collectors. Therefore, there will be snags until this process is worked out. I believe this is a worthy path to develop because blazing this trail at this time is essential and unique approach, so is well-positioned for this time in the market. (Analogy may be like a Healthcare institution (Management of site, printer) who provides essential facility and tools and works with an independent Human Physician (artist) to both serve a Human patient (Human Collector) who deeply trust their Doctor (Human artist) due to the emotional language and vision. It is 2 entities caring for the patient in different roles - the primary language is that of the Human Doctor.) As we move forward in this growing and shifting world, it will be important for us all to support each other.

AI-originated art experiences some futility currently - actually just learn new ways to try to imitate a human element - This because the Human building blocks were essentially absent to begin with...(a possible analogy to the person who does not have a brain that fully developed in the areas of empathy that may go to counseling but sadly, in the end only comes away learning better ways to imitate someone with empathy - not to have empathy - so has ineffective relationships). But they have not yet reached critical mass of learning so there are some flaws...and some are talking about the brain chip being developed...

At least until Humans and computers become permanently merged in some way, I m deeply encouraged and hopeful that the Human-Made approach may well stand the test of time
Bravo for taking this on,

I would like to see your definition of human made art?

I am a human. If I paint a painting is it by definition human made art?

I’m not AI. I’m not digital. I’m not a camera but I love to use my eye and can make art photos. I’m not a canvas, a pencil, a crayon or a palette knife. Neither a tube of paint nor a paint brush or stick of charcoal but these are a few of my favourite things. I am an aware human being and I love to make my art using classic materials. Like a chef using their favourite ingredients. Or a guitar player creating their own sound. To make each piece delicious and unique. That’s why I joined the Human Made mission 🤩🎨☀️🎶

In this age of lightning speed technology, Art still needs to be human created, our society needs to see that, yes, technology is great, but can't replace the talents that God has given us especially as artists, in all mediums. It gives us bragging rights since is it my creation, not a computer program!

To know someone put their heart and soul into a work of art has a bigger hug than something that AI spits out in a matter of seconds. It just doesn't translate in the same human emotional way.

Human-made is getting away from the screen, back to craft as craft used to be.
(and no insult to digital artists, tech is beyond me! :)

Hola , soy Yamila Antonelli, artista plástica de Argentina. Produzco obra desde muy pequeña y en éste momento estoy trabajando en una propuesta que creé en el año 2023 que se llama PULSAR gentina, el arte es energía. La propuesta tiene un marco conceptual basado en conceptos cuánticos y en que somos seres creadores de realidades. Las obras las produzco junto a otras personas a las que voy convocando para generar series que representen energías de alto valor humano para la transformación del mundo que estamos atravesando. Creé está propuesta justamente haciendo honor al poder de crear que tenemos como seres humanos, y que el arte es justamente la sublimación de ese principio que tenemos al encarnar en esta realidad. PULSAR gentina nos invita a cocrear arte, entre dos seres, que con consciencia se ponen de acuerdo en qué energías van a elegir para ser inspirados, para conectar con el poder de su alma, y materializarlo en esta realidad 3D a través del arte, generando en el soporte plástico un campo de expresión física que emite la energía que vibraron. Este proceso, claramente no puede ser realizado por la IA.

To me the important distinction is between "I asked the computer to make this art" and "I used a computer to make this art."

There are going to be some edge cases, but I think it's not much different than an artist-patron separation. When someone commissions an artist to "make a painting" they don't generally get credit for creating the piece. In the same way, writing a prompt (even a detailed one with iteration) is a fundamentally different process than creating art. It may be a creative endeavor, but does it fit into our standard idea of "Art." I think for now that answer is no. And if it does, the artist is Gemini or ChatGPT, and not the prompter. They can have their own "machine-made" space.

It’s such a helpful partner

So my view is this: a Human-Made badge can have some value as a provenance signal for artists who truly want to say “no generative AI used.” But it becomes problematic when it implies that AI-involved artists are lesser, fake, or outside the circle of art. The field needs more generosity and better language, not another boundary line.

A cleaner alternative would be something like:

Made by the Artist
Made by the Artist with AI Tools
Primarily Machine-Generated
And what about made by a collective?

Human-made art will always transcend AI for me. Some years ago, a rapidly spreading disease brought so much disruption to our lives, in so many ways and disconnection from each other was the most profound result. Art has and always will be, in my opinion, a way to communicate through images, whether they be from a camera, or via a paintbrush etc; also through the personally written word. What we think, feel, observe and record is vitally important and can't be replaced by AI. The human-made mission is all important, in my opinion.

What does it mean to me... Well, I think this will definitely help bring clarity to this long-standig debate! AND I am starting to see this pop up in multiple areas as some other venues are also stating to adopt this concept.

I think there will be hiccups along the way until things get flushed out. I know of cases where non-AI created video and photography were flagged as AI generated detectors being flagged as AI because it was too good!

What an exciting and interesting time we live in!

I think its about full disclosure about what is "real" and what is not. I primarily do landscape photography and people want to know that I am photographing real places, not some fictional place that doesn't exist. For example, I have seen many photos of sunrise over the Golden Gate Bridge that are purely fictional because at no time during the year will the sun be at the angle shown in the photo. I am sure that this type of art is mostly generated by AI, but people think its real. Passing it off as a "real" photo would't be appropriate and definitely isn't my style.

Let's assume for a minute that I wanted to create an artistic photograph like this. If I did, it would consist of multiple photographs that I personally captured and then merged them into a final artistic piece. I wouldn't hide the fact that I did this and that it's a form of my creativity, artistic expression and growth as an artist.

Occasionally, I start with one of my photographs and use software tools to manipulate it to make it take on the look of a lithographic print or a painting. When I do this, I clearly label my art as "Artistic Photography" and I talk about my process to arrive at the end result. My customers actually love hearing about the process and they appreciate the human effort that it took to get to the final art piece. It' not something that I just press a button and its done, but rather its a laborious human process to make the transformation. Yes, we use many digital and even AI tools in the creation of art, but its the human approach, decisions and all the settings that humans must control that really impacts the quality and beauty of the final result. If I just used every tool on auto pilot without changing any settings or making any human artistic decisions, the end result would not be worth showing to anyone.

I would like to see it extend far beyond the idea of creating with our hands and that it would extend to creativity and exploration in the areas of learning, acquiring knowledge thru trial and error, learning from “mistakes” and false assumptions. I would like it to filter into classrooms and provide hands on learning experiences where there may not be an easy solution but involve trial and error and critical thinking. My thoughts are rampant—

I like the quick ability to see if the artwork is really "human-made".

I want to take this idea a step further. If we want to continue to have human made art we must support the arts in education and teach the children. Otherwise we will lose human made art. We ran a kids soft pastel class last night to do just this and to expose them to soft pastel art. Check out the kids excitement in the reels on our page TrailsEdgeFineArt on IG

It's about getting back into handmade items and putting people first not AI

I don't want AI taking credit for my art works done by hand!

I am a human, I create digital art using AI bases, please don't bash me :)

From my thoughts, it s primordial AI has to be maintained as a tool to help and not to replace human as much as possible, only main use where human cant be the first actor.

As a nature photographer and so much talk about Ai in photography , I feel this is a good way to send a message we are true to ourselves, the people who see what we create and represent what mother nature selflessly shares with us.

Well humans created AI and other forms of machine learning. AI is a powerful tool in other spheres eg medicine where AI analyses images and vast swathes of data to the benefit of human health . Here the humans control the technology . We humans have to learn now to control or live with machine crossing into creation . Lets be honest though we all study other peoples real works to assist us with our own creations . We call that Natural Intelligence! From what i can see alot of AI artwork looks “too perfect” and I agree with others comments by all means have a separate category for that work , its not going to go away so let us humans be in control of it . The human made certification is a start to that .

Thank you for inviting me to share my thoughts here. It’s actually a very profound question—one that probably can’t be answered right away,
but requires some reflection first. (🥴🥴🥴 Sorry if it maybe that I take it too seriously - or looking complicated....)

“Human Made”—my first reaction is a deep, positive resonance.
Second reaction... “Human Made” also means war and famine. Human Made is an industry that divides us into rich and poor. For years, I’ve been working in this field and fighting for awareness and understanding. As a seamstress who does everything by “hand”—well, not exactly, but with a sewing machine—I’m up against one of the largest industries in the world. Well, my answer to Taylor’s question will likely find its place in a new blog post.

I’ll just say this much: Everything used to be “Human Made”—by which I mean a craft. Made by a single person. Until the Industrial Revolution brought about modernization, and it became less about the craftsman’s skill and more about money. Mass production. And EVERYONE benefits from this by being able to obtain things cheaply or, in terms of resources, seemingly an endless variety. In the artist’s case:
Smartphones, the paints we use, brushes, glue, etc.—simply everything is industrial.
And now modernization has taken place in the digital world. And any Tom, Dick, or Harry can now create images.
So it affects our industry. And only now does it upset us?
Human-made—that’s everything in a kind of way..But catching in the way I understand how ASF now is going for.
I’m more in favor of restricting those who don’t use it in the context it’s meant for—and making them pay—rather than labeling it as “not human-made.” Rather than the other way around. Por example: KI /AI made products should be expensive or loaded with a tax xtra and well shown that the are " not human made".

Human made means that the person who created the art has a consciousness. AI has no consciousness, although you can be fooled sometimes.
A human made mission to me, means that I work and interacted with people, and the artwork is made by people. I know to some extent what it means to go through the rigor of becoming good in your art field. And I know some of my friends are posting AI pictures and they are so enamored by it. I am not. It has its place but I would appreciate if people could distinguish between conscious art by a person and the unconscious and often too perfect art by AI. It feels like AI discredit the hard work and intentions of real person art. In that sense I feel this Human-Made mission is important and I hope it will be a great success.

The Human-Made mission, means that a creatives individual's unique style, should be shared with everyone who is following you, and not to a small group of marketing people in power, who decide with their algorithms who can see it or not. For me in community groups, we can share those unique styles and viewpoints. Buyers and people who are passionate about art are allowed to see the original art that can be imperfect but done by a living person who has a vision and story to tell.

Human art is art with flaws, robot art does not have any. Arty is great for asking questions about art storefront, but lots of times I don’t understand and need someone to show me. Teaching people anything should cover, hearing, writing and visual. We are all thinking beings but I find the new marketing and Bot language hard to understand.
This is because I am seventy and was not at prep school with a computer.
I am in the age gap, that AI needs to have a first marketing and computer language dictionary first this will help a lot. So we can understand. For example, when doing medical training; you learn and pass a certificate in disiphering Latin words,
That are used. You do this first, it’s common sense.

Secondly A question and answering intelligence : for example , if you pay for gold service do you need to buy zoom?
Or any other service offered in the vault? Or is the Gold cover you for them all?
Or the bronze?
Thanks for reading this.
Julia

It is important for collectors to identify what is not created with text to image prompts and various LLMs. Text to Image AI, like many other genres before, should have its own category. So for that reason, to be able to clearly distiguish, human made is very valuable.

To me it communicates the creative thought process as well as the production of the art. With photography the perception is often thaat the process is just pushing a shutter. I appreciate the thought that went into this idea.

I wrote about it in a blog on my website with a big shout out to ASF and this initiative. https://www.annereidartist.com/blog-art-scripture-color/blog_posts/what-is-prophetic-art-why-this-human-made-movement-matters-to-art-storefronts-now

To be honest. I don't think anything is not "human made" today. I understand that Ai seems threatening, and not human, however humans created Ai, and to me it is like a tool to be used. I admit I don't now a lot about it. The term though, is well over 40 years old, maybe older.

Machines haven't taken over, have they? Did I miss it? The Borg were curios half life forms invented by the makers of Star Trek and drawn from great stories invented by great SciFi geniuses in the past. I would like to ask, what is not hand made? I see questions coming up everywhere about Ai. Isn't Ai, currently a tool for humans to use? Resistance is futile.

The thing about being human made, and the distinction for me is important. I like to create my own paints. Not use traditional toxic ones. Use materials that don't harm the Earth, natural ones. Ai consumes too many of the Earth's materials to convert them to energy to run computers. Maybe i should throw my computer away, live in a make shift log house and forage for my food. Kinda been there done that, but not for long.

I think using man made machines, tools and things I have no idea how they are made or work, like computer hardware, is ok. Its a choice we can make. Yet I still think its important to find a way to make choices based on being a caretaker for the Earth. I'm sure I don't want to have the machines take over. I just am more frightened of the machines that we have that are killing people, not the ones that are enhancing our eye candy.
But now I have strayed off topic.

Human made to me, has to do with our innate curiosity, creativity and intelligence and to make things with respect to all living creatures and the earth itself.

I studied Rhetoric. what can I say!

“Because A.I. has been designed to lie and to lie by omission it is most important that we draw an indelible line in the sand against the cognitive deception. Even people who have worked through the 80’s and 90’s to create this mess I can’t stop ranking on people who foolishly accept deception as so new kind of reality that they feel is acceptable”. Erwin Dale Brown

This mission resonates deeply — preserving the irreplaceable human element in art is so important. Excited to see ArtHelper champion this! 🙌

Quite simply, draws a line between the AI hype and fear - and creators using technology (photography. Printers, photo modifiers and use of stylus, tablets & mice etc) to implement creative ideas for artistic expression. The labels claims the effort by a living being vs digital searches and mash-ups of the works by others - ByGeorge!

Love the concept . I’m frustrated seeing fake painting videos, they get thousands of views…not real . Let’s do this human made yay !

It's terrific. It supports us directly. I love AI for supporting the business but I really like that the focus here is on our non-AI work.

This morning I was thinking about Etsy. In the beginning they promoted themselves as a handmade market place. But because they are a for profit company, the definition of handmade has evolved in order to get more sellers. According to an entry about Etsy on Wikipedia, it is “…’handmade’ as long as the original idea for the item – or its ‘authorship’, as the then CEO, Dickerson, said-comes from the respective seller.”

The above makes sense when it comes to prints and merch. It gets more complex on mass produced “art”.

I went to Etsy’s policy section on their web site to see their stance on “AI Creations”. I suppose it is no surprise (they are out to make money) that they allow AI generated art to be sold on Etsy. They require it to be tagged as AI generated. I doubt that is no more enforced than it is on Instagram. (There is a box to check when you make a listing and it is AI generated.

I like the “authorship” definition of handmade but it can twisted by someone saying I am the author of that prompt that generated that picture. (I have heard that argument).

Full Disclosure: Both my wife and I have shops on Etsy.

I think it's really important because artists already face a lot of competition from other artists and we don't need to compete with computer-generated stuff as well. I also think "human made" is important because I have had people react negatively to my artwork saying it's AI. To have that "human made" badge is a big in your face to the sceptics who think your art is AI.

FOMO 😁

Human made means it is made with emotion and imperfections which reflect the human spirit.

Art that is created by a living soul should be preserved and protected from forces that look to destroy the human integrity of true art.

It's artistic experession that's created by a living soul, a product derived through living experience.

Human made art is creating what God has put before us to interpret His creation on canvas, watercolor board or other mediums. What ever style we work in, we work to give Him the glory. Without Him, we will not be able to accomplish our compositions or goals we set out to do. He takes our eyes and our hands and guides us through the mediums we choose to work in. We as artists interperate His creation as we see it through our souls. He gives us our gifts to preserve His creation.

I love the idea. Maybe I can sell some art, that would be different :)

it's a great idea. I do like AI for other reasons...like gpt/claude and creating some videos for another business for marketing...but with my photography business, it sure is going to be great to display that badge. thank you.

If this works it could be huge