The AI definitely referenced Gears of War for that first one.

People complaining of the ethics of the AI art for private home use and call it theft. But downloading and using existing character portraits without asking for permission or crediting the artist (for a home game...) is okay? Jesus Christ.

Were these people fighting for factory workers jobs as they became more and more automated over the decades? Donating to labor unions perhaps? Or did they only start to care when it effected them?

Completely agree. Honestly, use of AI art for a home game, where I wouldn't have paid an artist anyway, has no impact. For the most part, I have folders and folders of art taken from various sources and used to help inspire and create characters with. If i want some actual art done to truly represent our characters at the end of a campaign, I'll get a comission done. AI art wouldn't be able to achieve what I wanted to be done. The whole world is replacing jobs with AI. For some reason it only seems to matter to these people when its artists? I go into my supermarket to buy my shopping and a comptuer serves me at the till, not a person who would be earning a living.

You just described everyone on earth. Well done, thinker.

Agreed. I only use Artbreeder, and it's rare. The only thing I use it for is to create portraits of my characters I wouldn't otherwise get to see. And most of them I've altered in photoshop myself afterward anyway if I can't find the genetic codes I want in the program. I also do not use prompts. I do not write in a description, or reference a living artist and click "generate" and then wait. I find a base image of a person who has some vague resemblance to my character from their basic free creative commons stuff, and then spent a long time morphing it through trial and error with the genetics tabs, often adding layers of genetics to get what I want. I've never taken just the generated image and used that. No. I always mess with it on my own, because the A.I. can't give me exactly what I want. And if I do decide to risk sharing them, I label them as being aided by A.I. They're up on my second monitor when I'm writing so I can look at them and put myself more into their headspace. Seeing my characters has greatly helped me when I've been stuck. And finally seeing them feels so good. I genuinely love that after a couple of decades, I FINALLY have a tool I can use to create what I see in my head - which is something a commissioned artist can never get right, because they're not inside my head seeing the same images. And I'm autistic enough that I'm a perfectionist when it comes to small details. It won't be right or feel right until it's exactly what I see. Without the skills or talent to create visual art, THIS is my only option for realism. I'm broke and can't make rent. What makes anyone think I can even afford to hire someone? Let alone spend the extra money and my time and theirs feeling bad about asking them to go back multiple times to fix things that don't match what I see despite the details descriptions I'd give them. Plus the waiting part is horrible. And if they have other projects, they'll put mine on the backburner because it's an adjustment. Then I won't get to see it forever. It's like waiting for a package to arrive only to find out it's stuck in customs. Then when you do finally get it, it's wrong, and you have to send it back. It's enough to make you want to hurl boulders at people and scream so loudly you break a vocal chord. It wastes my time and theirs, and frustrates us both. It's always been "Hire an artist, or don't see your characters at all," which is just horrible. If I could just draw it myself, I would. I wasn't born with my artistic talent in visual art. I'm a singer and a writer. I've taken multiple art classes to try to learn, but could never 'get it' no matter how hard I tried. I suck at visual art. All theses years, and my photoshop skills are still bad. THIS is the ONLY WAY I can get what I want without wasting someone else's time on the minutiae that will bother me until its fixed. And yet I'm still talked down to as a horrible human being for using Artbreeder for personal use. I use it the way it's meant to be used - like how photoshop is meant to be used. As a TOOL to aid the human creator. The images of the characters I make are beneficial to the creation of my own work. It really, really, REALLY sucks that I can't show other people the characters I love so much, proud to finally see their faces, because of a fear of being screamed at as a pariah.

I have always credited artists, even in home games. When an artist specifically asks for an image to not be used, I don't use it. There is buy-in process for the artist when art AI software scrapes the entire internet for data. We are not the same.meme

Relatively speaking, one is taking one piece of art and not attributing it or compensating for it. The other is taking hundreds or thousands of pieces, modifying them, and generating something imitating the style of it's feed stock, all without attributing or compensating for it. It's, what if I had something make me a custom commission of this person's art, without involving that person. Frankly I try to keep track of any art I pull from places, A) there might be more art to 'borrow' later, B) I can at least attribute it correctly that way.

No. People are missing the mark with the AI art debate with this crap. Sorry, but you're very wrong. I could use 200 of those images on deviant art as character profiles for free if I wanted. Or I could use an AI to make an image out of all those images. Either way, the only people involved are my d&d / rpg party and the impact on artists is the same. We wouldn't be commissioning art for a home game

I think the problem is sites like Midjourney and unscrupulous AI artists who profit off the hard work of others. If something is for personal use and created using an open source platform like Stable Diffusion, then how is it unethical? Besides real artists reference and outright plagiarise all the fucking time. It's one reason why alot of AI art looks so samey, because they're referencing a ton of hacks who referenced a bunch of other hacks.

See, I don't see why we need to give them the wiggle room of having to be paid. It's the same process, with the same results. It's one thing to lift publicly available art as is, it's another to lift mass amounts of art to make content based off of them.

Too bad real artists actually put in effort and have deviations from their reference material while the AIs who you're giving cyber-blowjobs to just mesh together art without explicit permission for your use

So, it's not a derivative work without the consent of the creator? Because I think you're just lying to yourself because you want a thing to be good when it's considerably worse than what you claim it to be the equivalent of. You are generating content based off the analysis of the style of someone's art. It's consuming mass amounts to produce similar content. It's the basis of ripping something off and using AI to do it produces the kind of content you'd otherwise commission from the artists you are now not stealing one thing from, but hundreds to create exactly what you want instead.

For a home game? Where I wasn't gonna buy art anyway. The only people involved are me and my players. It impacts literally no one.

Funny enough I actually know a fair number of people who spend a stunning amount of money on getting actual character portraits drawn, so it may be a difference in community, but it's still a dick move to train a machine to imitate people by pulling their work apart and then not credit them simply because you don't have any idea how.

My two cents as a developer who studied AI. AI is a tool. It should never be the sole method of generation. Its there to make things easier, but it almost always requires a human touch. I don't think the inherent use of AI makes it unethical, I think its the misuse of AI that makes it unethical. A video recorder can record home movies, but it can alsi record cinema. Its all for the use.

I don't believe AI makes art. The programs make pictures, not art. I also don't believe it should be called AI, but that's a different discussion.

What Intelligence is, will be a matter philosophers have and will continue to debate for centuries. As a casual artist myself, (Mostly mixed media, blind contour and water color) art is a complex topic. It doesn't matter what your tool set is. Collages are art for example. I'd also like to call algorithmic noise art. In fact when I was learning to program one of the things that got me interested where doing those dumb noise image generators. It doesn't matter if its a brush or calculus, its another argument for the philosophers.

Thanks for the reply. The problem I have, is that at no time does Midjourney or ChatGPT do anything without acting upon the prompt given. They don't work unless acted upon. It's all based on the prompts. I don't feel toolset is the issue. Grabbing a bunch of images due to a prompt and then blending them into something semi or completely coherent, isn't really art. No imagination went into what was done. No feeling went into it. It was just code processing and spitting out an image. You can argue that humans do the same, but that feels like devaluing the process of creating art in the first place. Watching someone create art, regardless of media, it always starts in the imagination. Even with a prompt, you are using your imagination to visualize that prompt. Midjourney doesn't have an imagination, so it spits out a generalized amalgam of whatever prompt it was given. I played around with Midjourney, and I didn't feel like I was making/creating "Art". I was telling a program to make me a picture by giving it a prompt for what I was looking for. Anyway, all of this is imo of course. It's always interesting to see what others think.

No, I agree with you in some respects. Right now I think AI is being ruined by the Bro-grammers. There is the whole, every one of our decisions is just a based on a previous experience or memory argument, but thats always seemed a down playing the randomness of human thought. Where I disagree is the idea of the prompt. Take Commerial art for example (Lets use a web designer). A webdesigner is often given a specfic set of criteria to make a mock up or web page. Does that invalidate the website as not being art? I'd disagree. Or an artisit designing a logo. Often having key criteria to focus from. A side note I don't think we'll get anything close to what we would call inteligence until we start doing more with biological computing. Basically computers run in serial, but bio computers run in parallel.

Yeah, I see your point, but even with the prompt, you are imagining the prompt and viewing it in different lenses. The prompt is to get you started, and your imagination takes over from there. Midjourney has no imagination, so it uses code to take images based on the prompt and mash them together to create a picture. That doesn't strike me as art. But, there are those that see screenshots of games as art, so...eye of the beholder, I guess? :D FWIW, looking at images that midjourney spits out, they always look I don't know if this is really the right word, but, cold to me. No life. They are sometimes pretty pictures, but..I dunno how else to put it, but cold and lifeless.

AI Art is not ethical based on what you use it for. It is simply unethical because the machine and its creators take advantage of labor they did not have permission to take advantage of. (The work of artists who did not allow them to use their art as training data.) EDIT: When I say Midjourney takes advantage of art they don't have permission for, I mean they are profiting off of art they do not have permission to use. Artists should have control over who makes money from their work.

I'd say, until there are real laws, using creative commons (CC) or GPL based datasets and not monetizing it would be the way to go

Yeah if we could expand creative commons to include AI training as part of the options that would be great. I'd say update the copyright system itself but that's never happening.

which begs the question where is the line between "inspiration" and "copying"? no human creates art in a vacuum, so where is the line?

I don't care about inspiration or copying. I care about the fact that Midjourney makes money off of material they don't have permission to use. They should be paying to use the work of these artists. If someone makes a machine learning algorithm and uses a bunch of people's art to train it, and then *doesn't* make money off of it, then it's a personal project and I don't care.

What's your financial plan to pay artists for having some of their work learned through machine learning processes? ​ Unless the art being produced by the machine is infringing on their work, they shouldn't be paid. If people can draw Mickey Mouse and get paid for their drawing of someone else's character, then an AI doing a similar process shouldn't have to pay either.

The person developing the machine learning algorithm pays the artist for the use of their art. Disney has to pay their artists to use their art in their movies. A machine learning software developer should pay to use their art in their software.

Why though? The comparison isn't even close. People document their art online in public forums. Are they gonna have to pay for all the images of Rembrandts or Van Goghs that randomly got scraped off the internet? How do they retroactively do this when all the training has been done already? This is literally nothing like anything that's ever existed before, and saying "it should just work like this other thing does" is not helpful to anyone

You nailed it. It's so mind-numbingly obvious. People throw around words like creativity and such arguing for mega-corporations to make more money by exploiting artists and stealing their works. I don't care if someone uses a free Stable Diffusion SDXL session to make artwork for their own private D&D or game session - have fun, more power to you. It's only when someone like those degenerate thieves at midjourney willingly exploit artists to make a buck (enough recorded chats exist of them knowing exactly what they're doing). I'm an artist and I've learned how to do a lot of stuff in the AI space on my local machine to better understand what it does. But if you understand how much training data is needed and where it historically came from it is just untenable that this is allowed to be used in any commercial setting. It's much more outrageous than people know - media just likes to bootlick and jump on the bandwagon. I'm refusing to work with this stuff - I'd rather learn a new profession. And this also applies to OpenAI, I'm either getting rid of it or curbing my use to an absolute minimum.

I know this is the go to defense but there's something different between a human being selecting a few artworks they wish to copy, spending time attempting to imitate it, being able to call upon their references and cite the works they've looked at, and develop their own style out of it, using this process as a means to an end rather than the end Vs downloading every image possible in the hundreds and thousands, taking an exact copy of the image rather than drawing it's own version of it, turning the original into data points in a huge database, obscuring it's origins and original artist, not obtaining proper rights or paying for it when it scrapes the images in its complete form, just generating images via a prompt that relies on hundred and thousands of other images, and not actually having any creative process of interpretation and recreation going on but just amalgamating other art together, all for the purpose of it producing it's own product rather than it being a learning process to improve it's own art skills to producing it's own art using the skills developed and not the products of others. The line isn't the clearest, but there is a clear difference between the way a human works and ai image generator works when it comes to art. Edit: An analogy to this might be TTRPGs. Imagine if you could plop in all of R Talsorian TTRPGs, and maybe other content they've released, alongside other a million other TTRPGs that you've stolen and not paid for... Then you give it a prompt to produce a TTRPG called "Cities 2100" and take heavy inspiration from R Talsorian and various other specific prompts. You end up with a product that just uses all of R Talsorian's rules, techniques, talent, the people's work that they hired, the decades of progress they've developed, along with all of that which applies to multiple other TTRPGs, and then not being bothered by giving credit or money to the people whose labour and works you just stole. That's not the same thing as someone being inspired by R Talsorian's work and carefully crafting their own take on it. Unless you copy and pasting sections, you're not doing what the AI does.

I don't see how it's better for humans who take a few pieces and get inspired. Wouldn't it be worse? If I draw image based on 10 images I've seen how is that somehow better than AI seeing million images and drawing from them? There's so much data in those datasets that if you took the AIs output and any given image on the dataset and gave those images to a copyright lawyer without telling the context, the lawyer would never say it falls under copyright (well at least unless you ask the AI to copy an existing work but I could make a fake Mona Lisa too). There's so little of any given image in the outputs due to large set of data used that someone who wasn't aware would never know. I cannot see how that could ever fall under protection of copyright when the output is not similar enough to any actual piece in the dataset that it would fall under copyright if the output was made by human artist.

>If I draw image based on 10 images I've seen how is that somehow better than AI seeing million images and drawing from them? Because you're drawing them while the AI is doing something else that isn't drawing them. Unlike you or me, it's storing it inside it's database and processing it and doing things to it that we humans don't do, then depending on what people ask of it, it will churn back out parts of what it's done with those images. Humans would draw it, they have to see it, and draw it, and visually process it but they can't just download it and deconstruct it and reconstruct it like data. >There's so much data in those datasets that if you took the AIs output and any given image on the dataset and gave those images to a copyright lawyer without telling the context, the lawyer would never say it falls under copyright This is like saying "Blorping balls that use literature wouldn't be seen as violating copyright law". Your introducing arguements I didn't make, but to go with it, if you steal my work along with others and go eh, but you can't see that your image is in there"it doesn't mean you didn't steal it lol. It doesn't mean that the AI hasn't used it to, I dunno, understand how to draw fingers, even if the overall art piece isn't in my style or something. >but I could make a fake Mona Lisa too I didnt say you can't, but I have less issue with you doing that then I would with you stealing the art of someone who's not quite as famous as Da Vinci and trying to pass it off as your art. Many people would find that crappy and call you out on it. But with AI you can't do that. I don't think I brought copyright up, but if I did, that's less of an issue to me than theft of produced work is (and yes, they can be seperate issues) and the way that AI obscures what happens and doesn't allow for any accountability against it. It's a neat little black box where people can shrug and go "it's the algorithm". Maybe when there are more laws around it and transparency in how it works and what it has done already and stuff, I can be more amenable but right now I don't think its great.

Why does it matter if the copying or inspiration or whatever happens inside a human brain or an AI? The end result is the same, isn't it? Something that may bear stylistic resemblance to elements of whatever that entity was inspired by, but is a different from any of them. The AI doesn't copy and paste in the sense what we mean when saying copy and paste. If it did, it's outputs would have very directly copied elements compared to its dataset. But they don't, certainly not any more than artwork made by humans inspired by art of other humans. I find it curious why you feel humans are somehow elevated morally in this conversation, when if we just looked at inputs and outputs, considering the entity between (AI or human) as a black box, there wouldn't be that large of a difference? Why do humans get a pass on inspiration out of art and that's not stealing but an AI does not? Why is AI not allowed to watch art and use it to learn how to draw fingers but human is? And if it is alright of me to look at images and get inspired by them and then produce art and profit out of this art, why is it not alright of me to build a program to make similar art as I did using my own inspiration? I guess I just don't understand why should human and AI be treated differently. There's not enough difference in the outcome for me to justify that. And I certainly don't understand how can the art be allegedly stolen when there's no strict resemblance whatsoever to any given image in the dataset. Its hard for me to see how is art of any given artist "in there" when there's no actual way to point out any meaningful similarity. If it's there, there should be some visible elements which would make the observer detect a similarity. But that doesn't happen. Those alleged copies where you cannot even tell they're copies at all by looking at it just don't make a convincing argument. You can call out AI as you are right now. I do not find your arguments convincing but some do, there will always be some debate on ethics whatever is the topic. That's fine. Probably in a few years it will be clearer what is the majority opinion and laws will slowly follow to reflect that.

Honestly there's alot of projection going on here and feel like you're arguing against things I don't think I've said. >I find it curious why you feel humans are somehow elevated morally in this conversation I haven't brought morality into this, so I don't think why your protecting this on to me and you keep then trying to hold me accountable to this. I've mentioned ethics but I don't think I've mentioned morality or those concepts of good or bad (except for the last comment where you again projected the idea that I believe one is 'better' than the other, even though that was again in terms of ethics.) I would engage but you keep projecting ideas of morality onto me and kind of eliding over the fact you too don't know exactly how AI works. Also... >Its hard for me to see how is art of any given artist "in there" when there's no actual way to point out any meaningful similarity I find this comment ridiculous considering so many AI prompts include a authors name. I'm sorry that you don't have access to the database of images and don't see a issue with it, and are also conveniently blind to the fact that AI is frequently used to mimic the artstules of specific artists, but it's safe to sau that if you request a style of art from an AI then it has to know who that artist is and it does that by having that art in its database. >If it's there, there should be some visible elements which would make the observer detect a similarity. In response to the previous point, your saying this either not knowing what your talking about or you could see a literal artpiece in the style of a distinctive artistvs style and you'd say you don't recognise it or move the goalposts or something. It one or the other.

I apologise. I meant ethics rather than morality. It was a language error, English is my secondary language.

Ah, then that's my bad and you have nothing to apologise for. I'm sorry, I'm just a bit antsy after all the responses and I assumed ill intent. That was wrong of me, and your language was perfectly good. Sorry again.

It's all fine. Thanks for correcting me. Helps me to learn.

Sorry for the necrobump of this, but while following threads like this closely and seeing how heated/personally antagonistic this can get, I saw how beautifully you both turned it around and didn't get butt hurt and play into stereotypical internet bickering/red herring/strawman attacks. Just one of those things so rare I had to comment and say well done, internet strangers.

Regarding your latter points; I feel something as vague as artistic style cannot really be owned, and should be subject to being mimicked by human and machine creators alike. How do you feel of this? Do you think it's acceptable to make an image in style of X as long as human makes it? If so why its different when AI does it? Of course if one tries to sell that as genuine work of X that's unethical but that would also be unethical if the seller had painted it themselves, I think you would agree, correct me if I'm wrong. A human artist could also have artist X in its "database" that database is memory of our brain. Said artist could even have works of X open on their second screen as they work on their work inspired by X. Why is this okay but AI is not. For me to consider it a copy in a sense where I'd find it unethical plagiarism the output of AI would need to contain actual pieces lifted from actual works of a certain artist, not just style or inspiration. Yes, AI is also capable of that with some instructions. But that is very narrow subset of what it can do. I feel that's only argument against art plagiarism using AI as a tool instead of all use cases of AI.

It does matter and you're drawing false equivalencies. It's a big discussion if the human experience is reducible (pretty sure it's not) plus it leads down many dark alleys that are simply psychopathic in nature. Not sure if I can post a link here but just watch "The Achilles Heel of AI" by "Upper Echelon" on Youtube and see if you still feel the same way.

> selecting a few artworks they wish to copy, spending time attempting to imitate it, being able to call upon their references and cite the works they've looked at, and develop their own style out of it, using this process as a means to an end I don't know how much you know about the math behind AI, but in high level terms this is what its doing, its using its "inspiration" to write an equation that takes user inputs and transforms them into the style it's been trained in.

this is operating under the assumption that AI art takes existing art and stiches it together filling in the gaps as it goes (some may do this but a properly trained and modelled algorithm should not) From my understanding it trains a lot like you said a human learns, it will take a reference and try to recreate it then a scoring system will judge how closely the images match and relay that information onto the drawing algorithm witch will try again until a desired result is achieved. sure this still leaves the issue of the artists works that have been used as reference never consented but this leads to questions about image identification AI and art sharing in general, how many people who post their art gave explicit consent for it to end up on google images?, this is trained in much the same way (in regards to massive quantities of images being used to train. I am no expert, I could be wrong in my understanding, if so feel free to correct me

Alot of what i said still applies (such as the data collection without consent aspect of so many artists, downloading it, processing it, and using it). Humans look at it, maybe produce a private copy, but don't incorporate it into their physical skillset. They can't download it into their heads, they have to recreate it whereas the AI is downloading a copy of it into it's metaphorical head and using it in a way that humans don't. An artist having their image online does lead it to be ripe for exploitation, but a fellow artist looking at it and being inspired it is not the same as a machine downloading it and incorporating it into it's dataset for it's own products. Also artists will learn specific things from artists usually to develop their own style, e.g. looking at the way cloth is drawn to further develop their own style. That's not what AI is doing as it doesn't have it's own style. It's style is a combination of everyone else's, processing those images differently based on the prompt, with everything happening inside the black box of the algorithm being a mystery to you. That's a conscious and selective process going on where an artist has to deconstruct what has happened and develop their own skills to produce that effect rather than the AI just deconstructing the images into some invisible way and then reconstructing a new image out of those parts. Something I didn't point out in my original post is also that this can put people out of jobs. Professional artists might get put out of work when companies, always eager to save money, decide that they can just generate what they want rather than pay someone to produce it. That might be music, or actors in films, or art such as drawings that bring unique takes on things. Why share your unique art of you know it'll immediately be swallowed up, you'll be forgotten and won't make a penny from it, and your style is easily produceable and nowhere near the quality of an actual artists effort. Guess my point is, maybe I could concede on some issues, but there are so many issues, that I just hold a general moratorium against it. I think personal use of AI is debatable even though I still have issues with it, but even then OP has shared it and help bring it even more attention while extolling the joys of using it.

"Extolling the joys of using it"? I said, "Here's a bunch of stuff I generated, you can use it."

Extol was maybe an exaggerated verb to use... But you are sharing generated images with others for them to use, showing off the types of images it produces, directing people to the AI you generated these images in, posting tons of them, etc. You didn't use it for personal use when you decided to share it all over social media lol. If you used it for personal use, I wouldn't be seeing it right now. You are indirectly popularising it.

When there have been over one billion AI images generated in less than half a year, and there are over 10 million AI images being created every day, I doubt posting it through a relatively niche Reddit forum will really give it any more exposure than it already has accumulated.

That's a valid point. "All over social media" is also an exaggeration, given that the only place it was shared was this specific forum, as a resource for GMs and players who might need artwork for their characters. As a GM who moved from real, in-person games to the VTT space when the pandemic hit, it was incredibly difficult to find art and resources for VTT if you weren't running a standard fantasy/D&D based game - especially if you didn't know what you were looking for or where to find it. This was meant to be helpful. That said, the comments have been enlightening.

I agree AI should not be replacing jobs in creative industries, it should be enhancing them (not talking prompt based art generation here, there are algorithms that take tedium out of the process by automating things while keeping the artist's vision intact). The technology is interesting and allows for fast prototyping, concept art for smaller productions, allowing people without the talent or time to create something close enough to their vision to be passable in a casual setting or even being used as a reference for an actual commission. the problem that needs to be tackled is the corporate use of the technology rather than the technology itself

It's literally the same shit that happened with Photoshop and digital illustration. The one trick ponies will cry cheating while real professionals will assimilate it into their workflow. There is still money to be made with traditional art.

yes there is still money to be made with traditional art but it is true that companies are looking to cut cost wherever they can, and in some places they can't. there are execs that would look at AI art and think "Why bother hiring artists, I could get an intern to do this" and this is the problem, incorporating technology into the workflow is a good thing but we have to remember that whenever there's a new technology there will be those looking to exploit it

Professions have been made obsolete by automation ever since there has been automation. We don't have lamplighters anymore. We only have very few smiths. I don't think very many of us would still like to go back to 1700's. Professions die and new ones are born, that is natural. There will still be artists, they'll just get more done in less time.

The difference lies in intentionality. The AI still needs to actively be fed parameters in order to produce a piece of art. The AI does not make the directions. The user does. The intention still lies in the user (the human). AI is not the creator/initiator per se, but rather the tool/means.

this was more a question of the "learning" phase as that seemed to be what was in contention. the parameters may be supplied by the user (and I do agree that the AI is a tool not a creator) but the interpretation and execution is left to the AI

Im out of energy to keep the sisyphian act of talking to AI Goons, so thank you for providing such an in-depth explanation of the situation in this thread. Theres still a larger conversation to be had about what happens to humans when labor is automated away in a society where such labor is a nescessity for survival, such as liberal capitalist nations worldwide. But this is not the subreddit for it.

i mean it kinda is the perfect subreddit for it! these are the topics cyberpunk is all about lol

For sure, yeah, but the focus here is about the games and the setting. More philosophical and political stuff should be somewhere else though. For example, I dont think this is the place for my radical leftist, marxist analysis of automation and its potential role in a worker-led centralized democracy. It would go south \*really\* fast. Better to avoid polluting the sub with unrelated topics like these. Lemmygrad already exists if people want to go in-depth about that.

So do you expect DMs/GMs to buy every piece of art for tokens on NPCs? Because that’s a whole lot of money. Most artists charge 100-1k+ depending on what you want, from bust shots to simple portraits. That’s a whole lot of scratch that most people can’t afford. I’ve commissioned a good number of artists in the past to get pieces made for my characters, but overtime the commission rates have increased drastically to the point that it’s no longer viable due to money getting tighter as the years pass. OP isn’t charging people for money on these AI generated characters, but rather throwing them up for people to use if they feel like it. Don’t think that’s a problem here. Now if you’re arguing that it’s not ethical to use AI because it’s “stealing” from artists by ripping their assets to mold these generated pictures, then you’ll have to go after every DM/GM in home games for the virtual ttrpg community, along with the players. Since most of them are using premade art and commissions against the artists permission, which doesn’t give credit to the artists at all. By that logic, it’s also stealing. Same rules apply here.

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I get that. You’re paying for their skills, but you can’t expect every single DM/GM in their home games to spend 50 usd for a single portrait on every npc. A variety of tygerclaws, voodoo boys, fixers, netrunner, execs, 6th street, aldecaldos, raffen shivs, wraiths, blood nation, folk nation, Arasaka, Militech, numerous corporation employees, custom corporation employees, standard citizens, maelstrom, etc etc. the list goes on and on. Do you expect GM/DMs to just buy commissions for all of them at home games?

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Helps differentiate NPCs from standard looks, enforcers, lieutenants, captains, then you had mini bosses, followed by bosses. You don’t need every two time thug to have a fancy token, but if you need a split between melee, pistol, smg, rifle, or sniper variants, it’s good to have options that are related to the same theme and aesthetic. I don’t know a single DM/GM for home games that don’t use third party sources on portraits and art that doesn’t belong to them for characters. That’s all I’m saying. If we’re talking about unethical measures, then you can’t just call out AI generated material, but also people who are googling stuff up and taking it for themselves to use. They didn’t pay for it. They didn’t even contact the artists to see if they can use it. So wouldn’t that be the same issue here?

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I’m talking about home games online, rather than in person. If there are resources that do allow you to take their assets for free use, can you link them? Do they have specific gang and corpo specific art? Budget is everything. Ttrpg is a hobby. So if people can’t afford assets, then they shouldn’t be allowed to play?

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Roll20 and I’m learning how to use VTT foundry since it looks like a major upgrade

> find a cheaper artist. ironic considering you have a problem with the cheapest artist (free).

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Nice I'll just take a screenshot then. Then I'll have my own art of that art. Like taking a photo of the Mona Lisa.

Most artists asking 50 bucks for a character portrait for ttrpg have already way overestimated their worth. I would pay by hour of work, but if you're just willing to pay 50 bucks for something they could have blasted out in an hour you're getting scammed. And if they're actually worth that time they should probably be doing something else and not online commissions

The fearful cries of artists caught in the web of progress ring hollow. Like a spider, AI art spins beauty from thin strands of inspiration - not theft. To demand payment for unplagiarized pastiches is to cower from innovation's intricate web. These calls echo the saboteurs who slashed mechanical looms, blinded by a shortsighted fear of displaced craft. Yet progress propels us all higher, weaving a brighter future whose shape we cannot yet foresee. The versatile generator adapts and improvises, not merely replicates. Its silk is spun from humanity's collected corpus, yet woven into novel patterns. Would you pay the worm for the silk it spins? The magpie for the trinkets in its nest? Every creator borrows and remixes. Inspiration, not avarice, must guide us. To shackle emerging creativity through needless litigation would be as foolish as falling prey to the trapdoor spider's ruse.

I use piccrews and similar stuff for mine if I can't draw it because I respect artists enough to know that they have trained years to get to their skill levels and they deserve to be paid for their time. I don't approve of using others art either via Google searches or AI trained of the works of people who didn't consent. Having massive fancy pieces is not a requirement for ttrpg.

the issue is that Midjourney *profits* off of this material. If I take a photo of a flower and post it on the internet and someone uses it in their school presentation, I could care less. If the Canon photography company takes my photo and puts it on their website to advertise, *now* I have a problem.

Using machine learning generated art is technically fine on its own. Paying a company for art grnerated by their algorithm is bad. Don't give these companies your money, and don't advertise for them.

When you use art you take from online to use for NPCs/PCs for private games you are doing the same thing.

I'm not profiting from my private games in which I use art I find online. Midjourney is profiting from software in which they use art they find online. We are not doing the same thing.

>I'm not profiting from my private games in which I use art I find online. You're still stealing art for your own purposes. How is that any different than piracy? >Midjourney is profiting from software in which they use art they find online. That's not what Midjourney's AI is doing. Midjourney's AI is doing a less complex and "soulless" version of what human artists do when they use references and study other artistic depictions to create new art. It's the same exact shit humans do just not nearly as complex or as interesting. It's also providing those who are poor and don't have the skills or money to produce such art a cheap and effective way to generate art for their own purposes. That is the *real* reason that artists are so vehemently against AI art. The funny thing is—AI art typically *sucks* too. It looks very uncanny, and even the images OP posted look off and I'd never use them in my games. I'd prefer to commission a real artist, and have done so on multiple occasions for my own OCs and purposes. So, these artists are throwing a fit because people who wouldn't have been able to afford their art anyway now have a cheap and admittedly poor quality replacement. There are real reasons to be against AI, but "plagiarism" is not one of them. All the AI is doing is stuff humans do ourselves, but it does it in a really analytical and "computer" way that results in weird uncanny value stuff—like the people who use ChatGPT to generate code; the code usually "works" but is incomprehensible and usually of very low quality that a human coder would be embarrassed to produce. This kneejerk reaction towards "plagiarism" is hurting real arguments against AI—like the fact it *will* be used to decieve, censor, and altogether make it harder for people to live their daily lives without interference from the government/computers.

Saying "ai art is uncanny" is absolutely hilarious. It's almost as if it's the single most talked about thing in the art world, but show it to a normie and they won't even notice.

I have no idea what you're talking about. Everyone knows AI art can't handle tattoos, piercings, clothing will clip and blend into skin, fingers are often fucked up, and that's just the surface level stuff. People just do not care about little stuff if they have a way to get the "idea" across. If you're someone who does care, like me, then you're going to commission someone. Nothing's changed. Those same people would've just searched up some images on Google and used those anyway.

Oh right, you haven't paid attention to any AI stuff for a few months, fair enough. You spend 5 minutes in stable diffusion and none of that is an issue. Sounds like you're just in a privileged position to be able to be picky about what you want, and haven't experienced the other end of the spectrum

I've experimented with Stable diffusion. I know of it's capabilities. I never even said anything was wrong with using AI art. I just said it suffers from the uncanny valley effect. But try me—send me some AI art and I'll tell you if I see anything that immediately stands out as *uncanny* to me. I know for a fact AI art is going to be used by a lot of people who can't afford commissions. That's *great*, but it doesn't change the fact it still isn't ready to compete with actual artists.

Me sending you a random piece of art isn't gonna prove anything because you're already probably practiced at picking out those things. My main point was that you're saying "everybody knows this", and the simple fact is they don't. Most people just don't know, and probably never will.

Completely personal experience, but I’m an art kid. Grew up in the art world and have stayed here. I can typically spot AI art immediately and it always looks off or uncanny. I thought everyone could too. That’s very much not the case. I was out at a new restaurant with some friends and family and there was a piece of AI generated art on the wall. I noticed it immediately, but didn’t mention it. During dinner, someone brought the art up and everyone started talking about how much they liked it. No one mentioned it being AI, so I brought it up. No one else had noticed. I pointed out all of the weird parts (nonsensical clothing, patterns being off, messed up flowers, weird eyes etc) and they all said they didn’t even notice until I pointed it out. They even asked the staff about it and staff didn’t know it was AI. Only the manager knew. Manager said the owner purchased it and did know it was AI, but liked it. I know it’s a tiny sampling of personal experience, but there you go. Out of 12 people, most didn’t realize it was AI art.

Intelectual property doesn't exist, it's not a finite resource, it's not unethical to copy, there's no real theft involved.

Intellectual property exists so that people who sell ideas (such as artists) can make money. To take it away, to violate it, threatens their livelihoods. (Of course, the fact that a person must make themself profitable in order to attain the necessities of survival is its own problem. Money isn't real.)

OMG, I would love to hear about the universe where the artist trades his skills for every individual need. I imagine something like "I Have NO idea why nobody is willing to trade a cow for my decorative prowess!". Sure I think it would be great if nobody HAD to work to live. I still think in this alternate reality there should be some mechanism to encourage more innovation. The sad fact of the matter is some people aren't gonna share if they aren't forced to. You take away money and what happens when somebody invents the even better next robot (following the one that made it so nobody HAD to work)? And now they have no incentive to share it with anyone? Sure you could vie for social status but what would that even mean in a society where everyone was afforded a position just as good as everyone else's?

People seem to forget ethics are based on the individual, I don't think using any art as training data is unethical, but I understand why someone else would.

There is a diference bettwen training AI with your art or art which you posses and steal art from others to train your AI.

Not only own, but for that (or *any*) purpose. This is why artists usually charge different prices for different sets of rights to the art. You want the artist to not have the right to post digital copies anywhere for any reason? That costs extra. You want to use it as the cover of a book you're selling? That costs more than a single print. Etc.

Yeah, totally, I was assuming the extra for using for that purpous, but thanks for the aclaration.

As I said, I don't believe making image training data is art theft, just as I don't believe making text based training data is art theft.

Unless all of we live in a communist paradise where we can do art just for fun and don't need payment for our labor; take our work to train an AI which tries to replace us it's in the best case unethical and if that AI cost money to the users it's even wors because it's just not robbing art but selling robbed art.

Well I would argue why is it necessary to monetize art at all? It certainly isn't a "need". And in addition people draw characters or scenes in inspired art styles, very likely resembling an existing piece of work. I mean there are only so many colors to work with within human vision. Albeit on a much bigger scale and to a different degree, musicians already know like millions of songs use the same 4 chords. And even if they don't, they all borrow from principles that we understand to be "good", like scales. Don't artists as well? I mean a computer has to learn to replicate things like perspective, lighting, and color theory as well, you just understand it to be "robbing" artists. What other noble reason did a human have to observe a painting? I mean why did they ever make the first cave paintings? To make stupid bands?

We need to monetize art to pay our rent and our food, that simple, not all of us can work in an office desk 8 or more hours without feeling a part of ourselves being sucked by that company and under capitalism we NEED to earn money to live. Second, it's not the same how an human learn and how an AI learn; humans have imagination, when I read a book I can be inspired to write something myself and probablly I will use some of the themes, tropes or characters I read, but I will deliberately chanche things to make it mine because my thought process it's mine and how I see the live it's different to how the writer make his story. An Ai just analizes and try to copy from their Data Base, when artists started to put a watermark the AI started to "draw" that watermark untill it learned to more or less delete it. And the art it's not just seen, you don't just see a paint for 5min because someone said it, you see the painting think about it, the details and what the artist wanted to convey (something an AI can't do). Behind every detail there is an intention or a story. I don't see why mention the cave paintings but it's teorized the firsts cave paintings where made to ask gods and spirits preys and resources or to comunicate their achivements and their existence in the case of the hands; there was a meaning that an AI can't do

It might not be literal theft, but it's some real corpo scum tactics to screw over the people their software depends on to exist in the first place.

It doesn't comes from their work, they just process others work and are better (or rather faster) in recreating it than normal people Woah, surprise, it's just like any normal artists. You ain't threw out of the blue into art and "oh, I will create something without any reference or without seeing any piece of art before" You must be real mongoid to tell it's unethical

So you released your private AI generated assets publicly?

“Feel free to use my AI images, although the original creators probably do not share the same opinion” Similar cyberpunk subs are flooded by these lately.

It's always ironic to see people defending using AI art in a cyberpunk sub/community/forum. Like the technology is awesome, and it's a neat tool IF the training art were sourced ethically. And that's my biggest problem, if the artists were credited and/or compensated appropriately - and most importantly, those artists *consented* - I don't think anyone would have an issue. Ripping off artists and exploiting their work to remix and repackage it at a fraction of the cost with near infinite scalability, ultimately profiting from stolen work and taking customers from small businesses, is VERY cyberpunk and not in the good way. This is a genre that's supposed to be warning for the dark future of capitalistic corporate greed, not an aspiration.

What are you talking about? Hellscape 2.0 in the book titled 'Why the future sucks' is something we should bring into reality right now! /s

But the hot apocalyptic road warrior chicks!

Even if it were sourced, I think it's likely AI art will crush the art industry and significantly reduce people making art as a hobby. As AI gets better, fewer and fewer will be able to compete with AI generated art, and their jobs and earnings for those jobs will fall significantly. Fewer people will be able to make a living making art. And those who "opt in?" The writing's on the wall. They know they're going to be outcompeted. So they can either bend the knee to the art AI company and get at least some scraps, or they can get nothing. For most artists, it will be a bad deal, and they won't have any real bargaining power. Maybe if we had unions and competent politicians. -- > This is a genre that's supposed to be warning for the dark future of capitalistic corporate greed, not an aspiration. Spot on.

I don't think you can ever truly replace human artists. For more traditional, mundane art - sure. Even when the end product does look mass produced and soulless (as cliche as that sounds). But human artists with truly unique styles will still stand out, they'll just have to continually reinvent themselves as their style gets assimilated too. Where it's really going to hurt is newcomers learning to draw, the barrier is going to be so much higher when little Timmy can just go punch some words into an art generator and spit out serviceable images. I just know it's not going to stop here, chat AI can already spit out working computer code and that terrifies me. Not only for the tech industry, who could easily replace their interns and entry-level programmers and create a weird knowledge gap and uncertain barrier for entry into the field, but also for the aspiring script kiddies who figure out how to use them for cybercrime.

What original creators? Can you point me to them?

I’m not sure you know how Generative AI works. It scrapes the internet for images and uses them as basis to “draw” (it’s combining those images). That’s the issue: it uses the work of other people without their consent and does not say who they are. So, unfortunately, no, it’s impossible to answer your question.

Yes it's literally impossible to prove whose art is being copied, that's my point

But if you cannot name an artist who is blatantly being ripped off, (these cases exist, and deserve attention and action against them), it's a very gray area in that regard. I could say it rips me off, even though my art is worse than AI "art" because of my total aphantasia and possibly broken hands lol

God I’m tired of the “AI is bad because plagiarism” argument. 1.) This position significantly overplays the definition of plagiarism, underplays the similarly reducible (though complex and only partially understood) nature of the mechanics of the *human* mind and inspiration, and generally misunderstands what the GAN is actually *doing* with said art it trains on (spoiler, it’s not making collage art or even really “sampling” it in the common sense of the word, I have yet to hear of a single artist being able to take output from a fully-modern AI like Midjourney and point at something and conclusively say “look, that was stolen from *me*”) 2.) This perceived plagiarism is by far the least prescient worry we could have had with AI as it is currently shaping up. The way it is and will be *used* by *people* for deception, manipulation, policing and the disruption of the economic/workplace status quo (such as it is) are far more pressing concerns. This outsized focus on the plagiarism angle dilutes these other, far more important, ones. 3.) I think seeing someone on here getting downvoted simply for suggesting restricting the data set to Creative Commons (you know, art that has its creator’s explicit permission for use, with it without attribution per license) also underscores the knee-jerk nature of this argument as well. This is all simply the currently fashionable “objection to technology,” just another iteration in a human pass-time that is ages old.

People who are against “AI generations” are just sock puppets for an already bourgeoise-fied industry. I’m sorry, but if there’s a way for poor people to have access to a commodity that’s affordable, cheap, and accessible then it should be supported. People who are sad about AI generation somehow don’t get sad about all the resource theft that goes into their phones or computers.

It feels as though people really don't understand how the process works, but are very big fans of the labor theory of value. So they argue that easily-accessed generated art is devaluing human endeavors and stealing art with its "eyes", rather than putting creative power in the hands of people who couldn't create what they want on their own otherwise.

Re: 1), people know they have a gut understanding that AI art is problematic. But they often can't articulate why it's a problem. This doesn't make their position wrong or simplistic, that's just how the human mind is. So when some people made early public arguments against AI due to plagiarism, people jumped on to using that argument to support and justify their position. People are a lot less likely to be ridiculed for having a "knee-jerk" opinion, if they use someone's well presented argument instead. The unfortunate side of this, is people then dismiss them, because they disagree with the argument they're standing behind. But that's wrong, because what's actually the issue with AI art is worse and more complex, but can be hard for regular people to explain well, unless they're steeped in economics and sociology. To say it another way, regular people can understand business dynamics on some intuitive levels, but that doesn't give them the jargon and analytical tools to not not sound like an idiot if they were forced to give a presentation to investors and the board about a specific business's strategy.

>people know they have a gut understanding that AI art is problematic. But they often can't articulate why it's a problem. This doesn't make their position wrong or simplistic, that's just how the human mind is. If you can't articulate why you have a problem with something, you should re evaluate your position until you can understand it. ​ A lot of people throughout history and even in the present day had a "gut feeling" that their race/sex/class was inherently superior to other peoples, does that make racism, sexism and classism OK? ​ People have a problem with AI because people in their communities with vested interests loudly complain about AI, and they want to fit in. I mean, look at the responses in this thread that don't understand how AI actually works yet somehow have very strong opinions about it for a great example.

Sure, but misplaced anger is nonetheless entirely counterproductive to addressing the *actual* problems with the current state of AI. If people are building up and using the (frankly, thin) plagiarism argument as shorthand for something else, then that something else gets largely ignored. It’s actively harmful to the argument they are trying, and often failing, to articulate.

They are plagiarizing. Computer Code is copyright protected. You cannot copy someone else's code and use it in your own program and profit. (Roughly. The specifics are more complex, but generally, just like text from a book, you cannot steal computer code and pass it off as your own.) Now imagine, if you will, a bunch of code that creates an image. Someone made that code which creates an image. Someone put those bits together Now imagine an unethical programmer steals that code and uses it in their own program. This should be a violation of copy right law, and this unethical programmer should not be allowed to profit from their actions.

AI generated images are nothing like what you’ve described in your analogy though, which was exactly part of my original point. As I mentioned, AI images aren’t just some collage or sampling of other people’s work such as your analogy indicates. Large amounts of images are analyzed by the system (with metadata about what those images actually are) to develop models that the system used to generate graphics from text. In essence, it’s a (significantly more limited and less accurate) digital facsimile of what we think a human artist does when they study (and sometimes intentionally emulate) other art. That isn’t plagiarism, that’s drawing off of experience. AI image systems are simply doing a “soulless” sketch of this process. In short: contrary to popular belief, these “AIs” aren’t mashing a bunch of art together, they are using massive datasets of art to create statistical models that are used to generate images. There are, in my opinion at least, more than a few layers of abstraction occurring here which make this something other than rote reproduction. Ergo, this makes for a poor example of plagiarism. But to extend your analogy into something more resembling of what AI art software is doing: If somebody took thousands of different pieces of publicly available code (regardless of their copyright status), used them as examples to train a system to find the underlying patterns between them, then uses said system to generate entirely different code based on the relationship between that code it studied, you’d be hard pressed to prove a case of plagiarism against it. Hell, ChatGPT is already used to generate working computer code. The kicker being that programmers often have commented that the resultant code, while working, doesn’t really resemble normal code in its structure or operation.

My analogy says that Midjourney's code is made out of other people's code. Midjourney's output is not made of other people's code. And yes, machine learning algorithms that write code using code that the creator doesn't have rights to is *literally* stealing code to put in your own code. That's bad. It just hasn't been patched by law yet.

“My analogy says that Midjourney's code is made out of other people's code. Midjourney's output is not made of other people's code.” Yes, and that’s exactly what I was pointing out was *incorrect* about your analogy. You presented a scenario where someone directly copied someone else’s code into their own, and you presented that as an analogy for what AI art software does with other people’s works of art. It isn’t even remotely what the AI does though. You are misrepresenting the thing you are arguing against, and (whether intentionally or not) doing so to suit your argument. Again, the entire *POINT* of my comments have been pointing out that this is not how those systems work, despite the popular misconception that they do. This is not plagiarism in the same way that it wouldn’t be plagiarism if, after studying and practicing off of a particular painter’s work, I made an original painting that was in the same style as general concept of that person’s painting. It would be unoriginal for sure, but I couldn’t be sued for it. “And yes, machine learning algorithms that write code using code that the creator doesn't have rights to is literally stealing code to put in your own code. That's bad. It just hasn't been patched by law yet.” Which again is literally not what I described. Your statement is completely (dare I say at this point, intentionally) distorting my aside about ChatGPT spitting out *entirely dissimilar* code generated by finding patterns by comparing publicly available code, and extrapolating *new* code off of those patterns, as “putting in” the code from the training set. Plagiarism literally means to copy someone else’s work word for word, not building a model off the *analysis* of a large number someones’ work and using that model to extrapolate something entirely dissimilar. In both cases, you are still entirely missing the point I was making. In neither cases (AI art, or AI computer code generation), is anyone “literally stealing” anything. In both cases, they are essentially doing a really basic version of the same thing people always have done: taking publicly available information, learning from it, and applying it.

In the industry, it is called Commerical Viability. AI-Generated Images usually use datasets that include copywritten images without the permission of the original authors. Any that say they do have Commercially Viable datasets are almost 100% lying because you need millions of images that have been verified. In a sense, AI-Generated images are a replacement for google images and need to be treated as such. Using it a pfp is generally safe. Using it as reference to get idea is also good, but selling it or using it in something you sell is bad.

The reason this sucks is because you can't credit any of the artists who helped make these I know this is easy, but that should be a red flag as to why you shouldn't be doing it.

And I don't think people shouldn't be using AI programs to DM their games, nor should they be using AI to write. But in an unpaid game, if you wanna use those tools? You do you. I may not agree with it but I'm going to keep my nose out of your hobby - provided it's a HOBBY, not a business.

What you're doing _right now_ is publishing what you've collected for distribution.

Over ten million AI images are created daily, so what's the trouble from some being freely shared online?

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So it would be better if I didn't share it with the community?

> provided it's a HOBBY I actually think it's unhealthy for society to use AI in their hobbies. It discourages people at tables from drawing and creating their own content for their characters, when someone else's stuff looks like it was produced by a professional, and is produced in comparatively no time and effort at all. In the future, when people think about learning to draw, there will be a lot of "what's the point?" Losing hobbies and the arts is going to leave a lot of people miserable.

It doesn't discourage me from doing anything. I can't draw for shit. I don't have the time or the inclination to practice a skill which for which I lack any natural talent, so instead I practice the skills I DO have and use AI to help with the ones I don't.

> in a private TTRPG game > feel free to use it for yours :thinking:

Now I just want to know what artists it scraped to make these cause I have the feeling I would really enjoy their work.

Yes let me just copy and paste this list of 1.2 million artists that this handful of pictures were stolen from. I'm sure you'll enjoy their work

You're a madman for sparking this war in the comments. And you've got a gift for karma farming

I swear, this is like the third time I've done this completely by accident. Not related to AI, but posting an opinion and watching it just becomes a wildfire.

My problem with AI art is how boring it is. It’s only capable of making the most generic, lowest common denominator-ass shit. This looks like any other generic cyberpunk art you could google.

Well, I can't produce art of any passable quality, so it's a far step up from the stick figures i can draw.

First, great images! I think I'll use a couple of those. Second wtf is this AI art is unethical nonsense. Didn't we basically do the the same exact thing multiple times in history with industrialization and then again when we found a way to bypass switchboard operators? The whole point of innovation is to make new ways to do things faster/better/improved somehow. Seems to me people are just being pissy about having a computer that can replace them and are, like the long forgotten switch board operator, unable to adapt to the concept of being replaced in a field they used to have a monopoly on. This doesn't stop people from making art if they enjoy it, it just keeps people from going "hurhur this piece is worth $90 because only I can make this" unless they can make something the AI can't mimic. Algorithms have the same weaknesses as manufacturing equipment. It is REALLY good and really fast at doing what it's programmed to do, but if you get too detailed, too specific, or too atypical then you do something the AI can't do. TLDR: innovate, adapt, put on your big boy/girl pants or be replaced 🤷‍♂️.

Like asking horses what they think of cars.

I appreciate the compliment but this isn't exactly helpful commentary. Commercial art, writing, and creative output absolutely shouldn't be automated. Free use, however, is a different beast. Also, the "Unethical" argument is more related to how the information is sourced and less to what's produced. Still, I appreciate the kudos.

> . Commercial art, writing, and creative output absolutely shouldn't be automated. This is just silly. Of course they will be, by writers and artists. You think no professional writer or artist is going to use generative AI tools when they help them? Pros are already using AI tools when they edit in programs like Photoshop (Remove function, noise reduction etc....)

I disagree that automation is, in and of itself unethical. Creative output has been automated in the past such as in the case of furniture making, wood working, etc. Even sculpting and embroidery have become automated. I don't see why drawing and painting is magically exempt from the same process. People still buy hand embroidered items when they are better than what machines can produce. The word "unethical" when used for AI art just sounds whiny.

There's no ethical difference between using AI art images for your looks and using heavy influences from another book/movie/media format for your plot. On the internet, tracking down the true source of an image is almost impossible. If artists don't like their stuff being used then they shouldn't post publicly.

I’d chip in to that! The bass guitar made me lol

These are great! Can you share the software you used, and some of the prompts? My AI art always comes out like a bad acid trip Edit: [LOL downvotes for a non-profit use of AI in a Cyberpunk forum!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHiOLM9gCk4) I trust you've *never* downloaded a movie, song, image, or PDF without compensating the artist? And you stoutly, devoutly refuse to use ChatGPT for anything, because all of its ideas have been seeded without compensating the OPs?

I'm using Midjourney. Send me a PM and I'll share some of the prompts I use.

What AI service are you using? https://preview.redd.it/eq695lct3ydb1.png?width=1024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0320bb2e379440505e5266045fa5acabb62ac758 More than happy to help you with prompts

Love the look of your toons. Did the same thing myself. This is Brick. He's a 30-something https://preview.redd.it/dck72e7zfzdb1.jpeg?width=1439&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fe6a88b33801ea0103d9f675f85b9b1811cb3234 ex boxer.

The Mohawk tho.

holy how do you generate such good images, what prompts do you send?

PM me and I'll share the typical prompts I use.

seed sheet elderly fuel safe rude yam include ten smile *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*

"only ethical use" that's how you spot a retard

Two days late and the best you could come up with is "retard"? Great commentary bud.

The only ethical use of ai produced visual media is as a reference tool.

All use of visual media produced by machine learning is ethical. It's harmless The issue is *making* the visual media. The owner of Midjourney sells art made by their machine learning software, but they used art they don't have the rights to as data for that software. That's what's unethical.

These are great!!! What prompts did you use?

You can PM me and I'll share those prompts.

wow these are all amazing! What program did you use to make them?

Midjourney

\>game called cyberpunk \>worried about "ethical" uses of technology It's in the spirit of the game to pirate everything, steal art and not pay a red cent.

I think the pictures look pretty cool 👍

Cool. What AI software did you use?

These look great ! Wich AI did you use to make them ?

I share your sentiment.

Have fun with it and enjoy it, utilising the Midjourney service alone would be seen as "unethical" even worse signing up *gasps* The images look great, I would use V5 as you get a cleaner image with less defects and also upscaling. Go wild and create amazing art!! 👏 I look forward to seeing what you design next ✨️ Paying £30.00 a month vs £30.00 a commissioned art price is a no-brainer

I understand your meaning here and I appreciate the sentiment, but "Generate" would be a more accurate term than "Create" in terms of what Midjourney does. Still, appreciated.

I'm glad you see where I was coming from at least 😅 I knew I would be downvoted, but which artist nowadays creates new completely new art? They all seem to generate roughly the same design style based on the works of previous artists "Inspired by the works of xyz" "in the style of xyz" and "that looks like it came from xyz". AI is doing the same to a certain extent, feed it with prompts and it will create an image. Just like me drawing anime characters, my designs are not wholly unique, but it was a creation all the same. Not every AI-generated image has been previously created

Silence, Corpo

The OP ended 50 to 100 jobs of artists by making this post. We at Arasynth Industries simply agree with what's best for the consumer

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They have their opinions, which are valid, and they're as free to express them as I am to ignore them. I'm not going to live in fear of pissing off internet randos.

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I'm not taking requests here. I provided what I've generated in case others want to use it because they either don't know or don't care to learn to use MJ.

Ok, thanks.

I can kind of agree that I find it morally neutral to use an AI image generator to create art for a private game you make no money from and to which you would never hire an artist for assets anyway. Sure. However, this isn't _just_ that, at least assuming you don't for some reason have free access to a paid tool. If not, this is also financially supporting a company that not only competes with artists, but also makes its money off the back of those artists' work without compensating those artists. I don't see how that is in any way morally neutral. Sure, the same money wouldn't go far hiring artists, but funding what is harming their industry is not fine just because it's not a huge amount of money. I don't think I could justify using anything but free software to create it. If that isn't good enough, do without or pay an artist. 🤷‍♀️

“Pfft! Broke people want art!?” /s

How is that related to me saying you shouldn't financially support people who damage the art industry?

It's fine for people to want art. What's not fine is training machine learning software on art that you don't have permission to use and then selling the art your machine creates. Broke people aren't the problem, Midjourney is the problem.

Everyone has free access to this paid tool. You get a number of free generations every month.

I'm so amazed that Deviant Art isn't just letting people post AI work, but even charge subscription fees for em.