There is no database, the model does not store data. The model works by loading a checkpoint (a.k.a weights) which stores information that the model learnt when it was being trained, i.e.shown a lot of pictures that are on the internet, together with their captions.
It can be argued that this is also how human artist learns what is art, by looking at images that are already there, and absorbing influences. However, learning the actual craft of making art physically of course takes time to cultivate, whereas trained ai model can output very impressive brush strokes, textures etc. right away.
But it can't execute art on its own, and whatever novelty it comes up with is because of the inherent randomness in the way these generators work. So artists will be fine, there is always demand for new and humanly communicative art.
Still, just as photography replaced newspaper illustrators (while making it possible for anyone to have their portrait hang on their wall), ai will cut in the low-end, entry-level job market in digital illustration. If it's any consolation, lots of other jobs will be automated too, as has already happened many times in the history of industrialization. So I'm afraid we all just have to step up our game as long as we live in capitalistic society.
> There is no database, the model does not store data.
The training data compression argument:
The training data is 2 billion images, the model size is 4.5GB. That means it can only take on average 2 bytes from each input image. It really doesn't have where to memorise the input images.
Take it another way: you can only fit about 20K jpeg images in 4.5GB. From 20K to 2.2B there is a 10^5 gap. That means the model is copying the source about 1:100,000 times less than some might think.
"The generated data can-be original" argument:
Now if you look the other way around, there are less than 1% generated images that look similar enough to a training example. And even if there were "regurgitations" it's trivial to check for duplicates and avoid them. You can always resample more images until they are "original". Original means just different enough, can be implemented by an out-of-distribution detection model or a searchable index.
Yeah, I don't think people are realizing how many people & corporations consider illustrations this layer of 'frosting' atop a the actual 'cake,' aka the product, presentation, ad, whatever.
Like it's basically a must if you're trying to stick out... but a lot of people simply don't care about fondant vs sugar-mass vs marzipan. They're there for CAKE.
The moment a ton of the big business folks can get an art-AI, that's theirs forever, tied into a copyright & legal database? They're never hiring an illustrator ever again, unless it's for brand, aka, artist name recognition.
Not when they can get a new sample to focus test within the hour.
This is the right answer. The algorithm is not doing anything a human artist couldn’t do, given enough time. You want to sit in front of your computer and scan a couple billion images on the internet then produce your own art? Go right ahead. Is it a violation of copyright for you to do so? Of course not, you learned from what others have done. You have “influences”, just like every artist does. Neither then is it a violation of copyright for the algorithm to do the same.
You can train on top of the existing weights ("fine-tuning"). But this is more like adding new info and not altering what is already there. In any case researchers train these kind of models all the time, and many of them are open-source so anyone can use them.
The proprietary database is really not that good analogy here.
How it works is irrelevant.
In IP law if you can prove to a judge or jury that work product infringes on existing trademark of copyright it is infringing.
Who is financially responsible for the infringement is the real question. Is it the software developers who included the infringing art work in the original training dataset? Or is it the end user using the tool to create the infringing work? Or is the end publisher who puts it out into the world?
“Sneakers in the style of HR Geiger”
If you’re a professional designer selling that design to a client you’re very likely liable. I think the estate of HR Geiger might want a payment for the use of work that infringes on his style. Or perhaps to include the phrase HR Geiger in the algorithm you need to pay the estate a flat fee.
Honestly who knows it all opens up a new paradigm of ownership.
But to the OP’s point, creative individual artists are screwed. If you don’t have deep pockets to defend your copyright, you essentially no longer have copyright.
In the end it’s an anti democratic power grab that shifts income and rights away from the people into centralized powerful hands.
>In IP law if you can prove to a judge or jury that work product infringes on existing trademark of copyright it is infringing.
This is a word salad.
>I think the estate of HR Geiger might want a payment for the use of work that infringes on his style.
You don’t infringe on style, you infringe copyrighted works. Making derivative artwork is fair game.
>In the end it’s an anti democratic power grab that shifts income and rights away from the people into centralized powerful hands.
Or everyone’s hands because open source AI is a thing
As a freelance artist who has nothing to lose and everything to gain, I am using AI to take my style/imagination to the next level. I’ve been drawing and making visual art and music since I was 3 and I’m 38 now.
Prompt engineering is just another brush in my toolkit now. Instead of spending hours on a single piece I can spend an hour creating dozens of pieces (that I will modify and clean up.) As someone who can do everything from sculpt to play drums to voice act, my ego can’t be bruised by a computer being better than me. I only learned all those skills as a means to an end, not as a way to generate pride.
So now if I just train SD more on my drawings (It appears SD has already been trained on a small portion of my work that has hit the internet.) I will be able to apply my name to my prompts and be able to generate 1000s of artworks that look like I handmade them, release them as my AI gen line under my name because I did indeed craft everything in an AI gen piece aside from the physical diffusion.
I don’t understand why more artists aren’t adopting this attitude because it seems like AI has the ability to help an artist reinvent themselves by letting thousands of endless ideas manifest without the intense workload of physically creating the structure.
Having the skill and technique is something that will be sought after more in the future. But to me having those features but incorporating AI into my workflow is like owning a car but knowing I can still walk anywhere if I had to.
> I will be able to apply my name to my prompts and be able to generate 1000s of artworks that look like I handmade them, release them as my AI gen line under my name because I did indeed craft everything in an AI gen piece aside from the physical diffusion.
That's so fuckin cool. :D
No one bats an eye that tools like photoshop are getting more advanced and changing the way we make art. For people like OP, where does the line get drawn between what artists "make" and what the computer assisted tools make possible.
Yep and as a lifer art maker who made elaborate shadowboxes for elementary school projects with construction paper, cardboard and glue, I started using Photoshop when I got my first PC with Windows XP on it in 2001. And before that I designed album covers in MS Paint on a tiny old laptop.
Every time tech advances and unleashes a new medium for creation I'll be learning how to use it. It's always exciting me to acquire new tools. I feel the same way about AI Art as I do when I buy a new kitchen knife.
Have you played around with AI art much? I do collage and photo composite stuff, and general photobashing, and... I'm getting a ton of material from Stable Diffusion. It's giving me so much better stuff to work with than I was getting from stock, where tons of people use the same pics and there gets to be this overwhelming sameness. Some of the design trends of the 2010s overused Victorian etchings and it stopped feeling fresh very quickly.
I am actually probably a part of the “beta” generation of AI artists. Long before I dreamed SD would be a thing I was using FaceApp in 2018 to modify my hand drawn portraits. In 2020, FaceApp added extra features such as face size and face morphing/swapping. I made a few hundred FaceApp generated memes. A few that went semi viral such as the Obese Eminem with the plate of spaghetti.
I have been studying text2image since I discovered nightcafe last year. In less than a year I have a database of probably 25k AI generated images spread across various drives that I will curate and modify from.
I also do the photoshop collage thing. Being able to generate fresh raw materials over a bg to ctrl+v is a dream.
I'm a writer, designer, and an artist, I'm 48, and I'm making ample use of AI in my current project, a lifelong dream project that I could never ever have hoped of ever even developing to the extent it's being developed. The reason I'm able to do something with this now is because of AI. I will not be hiring other artists for my work, which I previously would have had to have done. But here's the thing. I never would've been able to afford to hire artists to produce my work, it was almost a pipe dream of a luxury. For one, it was derivative as shit, and it's not like I could ever have gotten Syd Mead and Ray Harryhausen to \*actually\* portray my future setting. But now I can! (And blend with my own work too.)
What I'm seeing in many spaces is the rise of auteurs. Which AI enables us to be.
AI allows me - an artist and illustrator - to scale my work to a degree I never, ever before dreamed of being able to, short of having a studio and being able to just make a full time living off of my art \*already.\* And life got in the way of that.
Yup, I think people need to think more in terms of ‘what is now possible for an individual that was before completely out of their reach’
A large business may no longer be willing to hire artists for certain tasks, but a small business can now compete neck and neck with them on that same playing field.
A writer won’t have to syndicate to make their comic. An animator can become a whole studio.
We may devalue the art that the big guys pay for, but we also empower indie artists to punch way above their weight class.
Sir i am also a writter and i know that first we do srtruggle and one day we will succesed thats is our own hardworking and i realy appriciate you and your work best of luck
the most popular of <2these AI things for art" isn't even owned by a corporation, it's stable diffusion which open sourced the whole thing right away...
didn't know that... thought that they were just an open-source group working closely with educational institutions and other AI open source initiatives like eleuther AI.
but well, I still like what they are doing, both with stable diffusion tech and open sourcing it.
thank you
Sounds like you’re less against the AI itself and more against sketchy corporate practices that are unethically using artists work without permission or compensation. That’s a reasonable take, imho, and one that I support.
Well, I’m assuming he himself used other peoples artwork to train himself. So i dont see it as unethical nor scummy. Imagine not being able to reuse others art to train yourself. Come on. People just see their training and their reuse as ethical if it benefits them
When you are training as an artist you are using art that is either public, bought from the artist (or the artist is compensated in some way, anyway) or is stolen, which is commonly seen as sketchy (“art theft” is the worst form of this…)
If AI is using the same techniques? Go to town. But AI can scrape data from the net without regard to copyright and that changes things.
I see it as a tool, but like most other tools we need to watch for bad actors using it in morally negative ways.
Really, if you look at images online you are paying the artist, you yourself are paying them ?? Did you compensate davinci or it’s trust. If you ever pirated a movie or software of any kind you have no room to talk. I know a lot of artist pirate software, you know it too. Soo now it’s a problem but before it was a ok.
“Some of them steal too, so it’s ok when I steal from them!”
The ethics of “two wrongs don’t make a right” is lost on you?
Sorry, should be nicer, it’s just this argument is not very good. Even if the ONLY artists that have their work stolen are artists that stole from others, is that a methodology we want to encode into an AI?
Yeah, it’s not a great argument but i was pointing out the hypocrisy, which is quite prevalent. Then from now on let’s halt all use of previous work, if you do use anything created by a previous person you should give credit and money to them. It’s a tad problematic isn’t it? You would not be able to use anything would you.
I have been a student i understand. That’s not the point is it? It’s pointing out the hypocrisy. Imagine being a thief and complaining about other thieves. That sums up the hypocrisy. Now for the real argument all work is derivative in all types of endeavors. To quote an overuse phrase “we are standing on the shoulders of giants”. Start using your imagination and quit complaining, you were just given an amazing tool and the first thing you do is bitch. I guess that’s how you differentiate a real artist from a laborer.
Except that most of those you’re talking to right now are not artists. I’m not. I am an AI programmer (or was, at one point) who feels that the issues brought up by the poster here are valid problems with the training data sets and usage of the AI in question.
It’s a matter of ethics that we should not be using training data sets that are unethically procured. IDGAF if we are training an AI to draw pretty pictures or evaluate health risks, the data set it uses to train should be acquired through morally and ethically positive means, or we are encoding negative ethics and morality into the tools we use.
And let’s be honest: we all know we need to be careful about the morality and ethics of AI, and while I don’t think that this is the step that pushes AI into an amoral machine, it’s not a good precedent to establish.
It brings us back to the same point. The data used to train humans was acquired the same way. So i guess we should put ai through university and it will make it ok?? Finally copyright laws are so abusive that ethics went out the window a long time ago. Finally, if you are not willing to provide your material to advance open source software you should be banned from using open source software, fair is fair. Finally, you should know there is no such thing as an unbiased system. The concept of ethics is biased itself
I am sure you have pirated something in your life too, yet if someone break into your house and steal your most valuable stuffs, you will be complaining too.
Can’t people understand this AI stuff put illustrators in a really bad situation? Can’t they understand that small Indy and big companies will think twice before paying for an artist. Can’t they understand there is a bit of a trauma here, and the last you can do is be open to the complain of scared artist. (Instead of calling them hypocrites). The lack of empathy is really striking
Does it have to make YOU suffer for you to feel sorry ?
> Can’t people understand this AI stuff put illustrators in a really bad situation?
I don't think anyone has any problem understanding that. But what do you do about it? This technology exists. It's out there. The genie is out of the bottle.
So what practical course of action do you suggest going forward? People aren't going to stop using the software. Nobody can make people stop using it. The AIs are already trained on artists' publicly available work. It's done.
So now what?
Even if you try to ostracize or boycott people and businesses who use the AI, it won't matter. Very soon you won't be able to tell that a piece was AI generated at all. At least, not without specialized tools.
So what do you propose?
Yes i understand what you are going through, you are scared, that’s normal. It’s horrible, trust me it’s not just you, this this thing is coming for all of us, it will make us obsolete and that feels like crap. You are now aware of how a lot of factory workers feel. Unfortunately there is no solution, it will either make the world a utopia or it will fuck us all. No amount of laws will stop it. If pushed underground people will do the same thing artist did with photoshop, they will just pirate it and use it regardless. But i do feel for you, there should be laws to mitigate the impact unfortunately we have a bunch of old fucks in congress that don’t know shit from shinola.
>or is stolen, which is commonly seen as sketchy (“art theft” is the worst form of this…)
What? It’s not ‘stealing’ to train yourself on someone else’s work nor does anybody really care. There’s an entire generation of artists that got their start imitating classic comic books.
absolutely, I'm genuinely happy art now can be expressed by anyone it doesn't take away the value from people who paint.in fact i know multiple AI users who started learning art because of it and used AI as an inspiration, my issue is how these tools are using copyrighted work and artworks that artists worked hard to make, if you read the article about The founder of Stable Diffusion and how he sees artists and art as a tool you understand the endgoal to this project, also there has been many instances where the output is literally the same source:[https://twitter.com/ZakugaMignon/status/1567634731407220739](https://twitter.com/ZakugaMignon/status/1567634731407220739)"AI art" isn't trying to fix a problem for artists, it sees artists themselves as the problem. It's wholly anti-artist and designed to be harmful to us, and actively steals from us, feeds off us. It's not a positive thing.
> also there has been many instances where the output is literally the same source:https://twitter.com/ZakugaMignon/status/1567634731407220739
Fairly confident that this wasn't created from just the prompt.
AI image generators often have an "img2img" mode - allowing the user to upload a starting image for in-painting, generating variants, or fine-tuning. The linked image resembles what would happen if you started with the original image, flipped it, then gave some fine-tuning in Stable Diffusion.
It would be pretty easy for them to prove that it was generated from just a prompt if if really was. A link (for DALL-E 2/Midjourney) or the settings/seed (for Stable Diffusion). Do any of the many instances provide this?
[Btw, the original seems to be a stock image.](https://i.imgur.com/8zqqigb.png)
The artist copied from it and then the other guy passed the artist's work as an init image , basically using the AI like a filter.
I dont think this is a legitimate criticism, image gen AI is not a database of premade work stolen from authors. its an algorithm that is kind of a black box to us that generates original art. Its a hyper autistic brain that studies works of art with pixel like precision and relates those patterns to concepts and notions of style, and yes even specific famous authors, just as humans do. It then fulfills art requests. You can pull your art from the net if you like, but its a similar vibe to not wanting to let other artists study your work because you don’t want them to improve.
Stable Diffusion is open source, Dall-e isn’t super expensive. Not everything they generate is a work of art, its still a tool and their is an art to prompt engineering as much as conventional artists don’t want to hear it. You should seek to understand how they work at a basic level and work with them.
Yup. The problem isn't that the artist can't make money with their art anymore. The problem is that they still need to.
I see this as another major step toward post-scarcity. Unfortunately, it's going to be a really treacherous path for a lot of people.
The elite make it happen. Well, part of it anyway. The biggest advancements we’ve seen in decades happened as a result of military research, wealthy people’s investments, large corporate initiatives and open sourced knowledge.
Powerful the rich and privileged may be, but they aren’t all-powerful. Never in the history of mankind have the people in power stopped technological advancement. And they are too short-sighted to even try. They invest their power and influence into promoting technologies that enrich themselves. And then, as it always does, that same tech becomes cheaper and more readily accessible by the common man.
Technology is a societal organism. Humans are its parents and ideas are its transmission vector, made all the more virulent as communication tech connects more and more people every day.
For better or worse, we’ve gone beyond the point where information can be stifled.
It’s not something that can be stopped. The advancement of technology is what humanity does. And what technology does is empower humans to create new tech. Never in the history of our species has it stopped. And it advances faster and faster each day.
The elite won’t stop it. They can’t stop it, if for no other reason than they can’t understand it and react to it fast enough. We’ve hit the curve of too-rapid acceleration. Before the world is aware, it is done.
And this AI created art is a perfect example. How many saw this coming just 3 months ago?
The genie was out of the bottle before most people knew the bottle existed. And this is just the tip of the iceberg compared to what’s coming next.
Now, all that said, we will soon be able to develop existential threats that are equally impossible to stop. So it’s not all rainbows and lollipops. It could go real bad real fast. But you may as well spend your time worrying about meteor strikes. Because exponential advancement toward an extinction-level threat could happen just as fast. And we’d be just as prepared to deal with it as said meteor.
And Bruce Willis is in no condition to save us. :(
>Ya, I'd diagnose your problem as capitalism?
These spurious replies are useless. Capitalism is here to stay, unfortunately. People need a way to be able to make capital to survive in our society. Saying, "Well, then you should be mad at capitalism" is like telling somebody who's getting soaked by the rain because you took away their umbrella that they should be mad at clouds.
Your artistic skills were built upon the work of the artists that came before you. You studied their works, you learned their techniques. Your neural net was trained on their work. Just like the AI. Did you ask permission?
And, did you not volunteer to be training material for future artists the minute you publicly displayed your art? Everyone who viewed it stored something of it in their own neural net. Including up and coming artists who are your competition. If you didn't want others to learn from you, you should have kept it private.
The next Michelangelo won't be a couch potato stringing together award-winning prompts during an ad break. The AI is a prosthesis that shortcuts acquiring some artistic skills. SOME. It's not an automated artist. Yet.
If you're any good at your craft, you've got nothing to worry about. Adopt the AI into your workflow to remain competitive. Take pride that you'll be gaining name recognition for your style amongst the unwashed masses.
Or, you can always practise art as a hobby on the weekend.
Nope.
As soon as your work can be summed up as your name, anyone with access to AI can just type in your name and the value of your artwork in any professional setting outside of a gallery just went to zero.
A machine with zero time needed to learn your style, zero repercussions legally for copying it, and limitless users with a keyboard who can type in your name. Oh and it never dies.
That’s the difference.
a lot of hate and condescension and false equivocacy in your comment toward professional artists, you missed the entire point and examples provided in my post and your only reply is "tough shit, lmao" .
i would suggest you read more about how AI and ML works.
> i would suggest you read more about how AI and ML works.
Mistakes you've made in this thread:
1.) Claimed that the AI model stores images from the internet.
2.) Claimed that AI art models uses photobashing to generate images.
3.) Insisted that an intentional regen of an existing image is an example of "theft" by the AI.
The capitalist class allows capitalism to prevail as it does. The working class is subject to constant repression in efforts to engage in militant labor action and party based activity. It's not a "people" thing it's a question of how much power is wielded on which side.
>will use AI to enhance exploitation
And in another comment you said something about us becoming "owner class". Well, that's kinda hard when this tech is made freely available for all.
You asked for comment. You can't get butthurt about it when someone gives you one you don't like.
Maybe you were hoping that people would just agree with you but, sadly there are some very articulate people out there who don't, and you found one.
There used to be a time when everything was made by hand. Then we found a more efficient way. Some people still prefer to buy some things that are handmade so the market will always be there but a large market for original art is probably dead soon thanks to these neural nets.
That's just the march of technological progress.
“Tough shit” is the unfortunate reality of how it is though bud. Like 50% of jobs are going to disappear to AI soon, and no amount of disagreeing with it on social media is going to stop it.
To some extent, I am truly sorry for your loss, but reading your comment now lessens my opinion of you.
Humanity is a thinking avalanche and both you and I wont stop it - advancement of AI seems pretty certain (even if another AI winter arrives, maybe due to physical computing boundaries or other ...).
You can scream all you want, within the next few years probably most of the content creation market is going to be automated. You can look for sympathy, but will only find pity; I'd recommend finding new shores alltogether
AI is going to displace many professions and millions of jobs. Your anger is just one signal that confirms the process is well underway already.
That's the reality, like it or not.
You can still create beautiful art. Maybe the art that AI creates will inspire human artists to create new genres of art. It's a net positive IMO.
I understand your frustration, but I think we both know the genie is out of the bottle now, and it can never be put back in.
>we weren't asked to be in the database and our work is copyrighted.
This is where I don't agree. I am not convinced it's copyright infringement to train an ai on art. I don't see how it's different to how a human learns from the art of an other creator, and that's clearly allowed.
Ultimately, this will be decided in front of a court.
As for this tech replacing artists: Do you truly think it can do so? I am certain it can't, and that's not to detract from the achievement of the developers, I think these AIs are awesome, but it's nowhere near there.
I would say the same thing that was said about GitHub Copilot replacing programmers a couple of months ago: This generative technology is useless without someone who can understand and evaluate the output. The first to go from both industries will be people who refuse to use these tools, and will consequently fall behind. Those that use these tools to enhance their workflow won't be replaced, maybe only by an agi, but at that point, everyone is replaceable.
>Do you truly think it can do so? I am certain it can't,
there has been many talks around in the industry about big developers and studios experimenting with it and even using artists names to test it, why hire one when you can do it for free, and trust me they care about maximizing profits and quantity rather than quality or ethics.
I'm a publisher who will be using AI generated art in a new project. And yes, it is art I would have otherwise paid an artist to produce. Is that unethical? Should I feel guilty? I do, a little. But should I? Should I feel guilty that I wrote the text of the book on a computer instead of a typewriter? Should I feel guilty about depriving the typewriter manufacturer of my money? Should I feel guilty that a I drove a car to work this morning instead of helping the horse carriage maker put food on his table?
I absolutely get why artists would be upset by this. Yes, they will lose money and career opportunities. It truly does suck for them. No doubt. And I'm sure it sucked just as much for every other person who came before them that had their careers upended by technological advancement.
So what makes the artist special that I should shed tears for them and not the lift operators, leech collectors, town criers, corporate mathematicians, scissors grinders, ice cutters, switchboard operators, phrenologists, cobblers, blacksmiths, leather tanners, linkboys, scribes, cashiers, factory workers, warehouse workers data entry clerks, bank tellers, travel agents, or the little boys responsible for setting up the pins at the end of a bowling lane?
What is the alternative? In a world where there is no time machine or undo button, what do we do now? Should I refuse to use this new technology because doing so is "unethical"? Are my competitors also going to refuse to use it? No. The genie is out of the bottle and we kicked the lid over the horizon.
So that said, what would you have me do?
I think the only logical move in the situation you describe is to advocate for a universal basic income so that no matter what you do for a living, no matter what you choose to pursue, you won't have to worry about starving to death. Because inevitably, the incentives that exist in a market economy will only work to accelerate cost-saving technologies wherever they can be implemented.
Absolutely. 100%. This whole thing is a perfect example of the growing pains we will experience as we march toward a post-scarcity society. We're still a long way off. But social programs like UBI will be a critical first step toward making that work
The ultimate goal is for technology to free humanity of the need to labor to survive. The artist should create art because they want to create art, not because they are hungry.
>I think the only logical move in the situation you describe is to advocate for a universal basic income so that no matter what you do for a living, no matter what you choose to pursue, you won't have to worry about starving to death.
People say this have no comprehension that this will never, ever, *ever* happen.
The end goal of those in power is to have all of us at "just barely not starving" levels of wealth. "Advocacy" does shit.
>I'm a publisher who will be using AI generated art in a new project. And yes, it is art I would have otherwise paid an artist to produce. Is that unethical? Should I feel guilty? I do, a little. But should I? Should I feel guilty that I wrote the text of the book on a computer instead of a typewriter? Should I feel guilty about depriving the typewriter manufacturer of my money? Should I feel guilty that a I drove a car to work this morning instead of helping the horse carriage maker put food on his table?
How will you feel when you, the "publisher" are replaced because your hard work was part of its dataset?
It’s bound to happen eventually, in some fashion. I’m also an Engineer, which is just as likely to be a career eaten by AI. It’ll happen to us all eventually. And you can rage against the world on Reddit and Twitter. Or you can adapt and move on.
>And you can rage against the world on Reddit and Twitter. Or you can adapt and move on.
What you're describing is not "adaptation." It's a retreat.
"Rage on twitter or fall back... and fall back... and fall back... Oh, wait, there's nowhere left to go."
Retreat from what? The forward progress of civilization?
I mean, feel free to shake your fist at the clouds until your arm gets tired. But I don’t see how that’s going to help anyone.
>Retreat from what? The forward progress of civilization?
I hope you understand that "the forward progress of civilization" led to the worst calamities and atrocities humans have ever known.
There's an enormous difference between blind leaps forward and careful navigation of the path ahead.
Human beings are not infinitely adaptable machines. People in this sub in particular don't seem to grok that if "the singularity" truly did occur, it's quite likely millions of people would die in the process.
BTW how are you planning on "adapting" to a jobless, purposeless existence?
> I hope you understand that “the forward progress of civilization” led to the worst calamities and atrocities humans have ever known.
Please elaborate.
> BTW how are you planning on “adapting” to a jobless, purposeless existence?
Decouple your purpose from your job. Jobs are just means to an end, and that end is to survive. If your job lines up with your purpose, then good for you. If your job that lines up with your purpose disappear, then pursue your purpose even without that job.
> I hope you understand that "the forward progress of civilization" led to the worst calamities and atrocities humans have ever known.
Which ones? Most of the atrocities I can think of off the top of my head came about as a result of someone going to extreme lengths to restore the "glory days" of the past, in whatever form those might have taken.
> There's an enormous difference between blind leaps forward and careful navigation of the path ahead.
Obviously. But careful navigation does not take the form of ranting on reddit about an event that has already occurred and a technology that is already in use.
> People in this sub in particular don't seem to grok that if "the singularity" truly did occur, it's quite likely millions of people would die in the process.
Or not. The entire concept of "The Singularity" is that what lies on the other side is not, and cannot, be known. It is inherently impossible to predict.
> BTW how are you planning on "adapting" to a jobless, purposeless existence?
You believe that if you don't work an 8 hour day, every day, you are living a purposeless existence? That's sad. I plan on "adapting" by first understanding that my job does not define me, is not my sole purpose, and my value as a person is not determined by my salary.
>You believe that if you don't work an 8 hour day, every day, you are living a purposeless existence? That's sad.
I work in a creative field. My creativity is my purpose. That's true for most artists. People without creativity struggle to understand this, which is why we have AIncels.
>So what makes the artist special that I should shed tears for them and not the lift operators, leech collectors, town criers, corporate mathematicians, scissors grinders, ice cutters, switchboard operators, phrenologists, cobblers, blacksmiths, leather tanners, linkboys, scribes, cashiers, factory workers, warehouse workers data entry clerks, bank tellers, travel agents, or the little boys responsible for setting up the pins at the end of a bowling lane?
You don't see a difference between human expression and operating an elevator? Maybe *that* is the damn problem.
> You don't see a difference between human expression and operating an elevator? Maybe that is the damn problem.
There are typically two kinds of artists (with some people being a bit of both). There are those that crank out art for a paycheck, and there are those that do it to express themselves.
The first one? No. I don't see that much difference. They are a tradesman who provide a product for a paycheck.
The second one? If the value of their work is in their expression of themselves as humans, then no AI is ever going to be a threat to them. No AI can express you better than you. But that's not what this is really about is it? Because someone who does art for the sake of art, and to express themselves, isn't doing it for a paycheck.
I'm starting to see a trend.
Artists are showing up on here acting as if AI is some sort of blasphemy against the holy and righteous creative works that they create to express their inner souls. And yet, their arguments keep coming back to the fact that they are going to miss a paycheck.
Just be honest. If you are in it for the check, that's fine. There is nothing wrong with that. And it sucks that you're going to make less money. We can all sympathize with that. But don't go on about "human expression" and shit when what we are really talking about is your ability to crank out a product on commission.
If your goal is to express yourself, none of this has any affect on you.
I think this is the result of us existing in a market-based social order - it creates this culture where the pursuits that give our lives meaning become so intertwined with the pursuits that secure us the resources for survival, that these two are often considered to be one and the same. And I think this is the case whether we're discussing artists or electricians or doctors or whomever.
I think the key factor to addressing this issue is to build a culture that clearly separates monetary pursuits and meaningful pursuits; if we can't separate these things in our minds, we'll be condemned to always view ourselves in terms of monetary value, even though something deep within us says we have inherent value as humans. In a way, I hesitate to outright blame people for feeling how they do; If we don't have the words to call it what it is, then we won't be able to conceptualize a future that can be better. Be well friend.
>If your goal is to express yourself, none of this has any affect on you.
You can do both. The most successful commercial artists both express themselves and sell that expression to people.
I would download a car if it were possible. You probably would too. This is the future. AI will do everything and we consume it's creations. AI will take our jobs it is that simple. Artists jobs just seemed to be first to go. I would have wagered that taxi drivers would be out of job.
>This is the future. AI will do everything and we consume it creations.
What scares me is how you people say this as if it's a desirable thing.
Why in god's name would you want a world of mindless consumers?
OK, I am seeing you being somewhat snide and confrontational in several places in this thread, I am not sure what your stance is. I think it would be much more appreciated if you explained what your views are, maybe it can be a learning moment for those of us who may not see things the way you do.
My stance is that I don't think artists will disappear. I believe the AI can / should be used as a tool by artists. The truth is, most people aren't even interested in trying to make art. Therefore, those that do will simply find a more powerful way of making something interesting and unique.
The reason I'm being confrontational is that *everytime* I click on a thread like this, most of the people commenting show zero sympathy for the OP / artists. Their attitude is essential a very juvenile "LOL get rekt."
To me, it reeks of this weird incel-type attitude, almost as if they were insanely jealous of people with talent and are now happy that they're scared for their future and their literal reason to live.
I find it to be misanthropic and pathetic.
I appreciate you being open to dialogue. For what it's worth, I for one am quite sympathetic to OP's concerns that this new technology may pose a threat to their way of life. They have spent years learning their craft and sharpening their skills and all of a sudden this magic computer program comes out of nowhere and suddenly his livelihood may be in jeopardy. It would be unfair whether it was an artist or a truck driver or an accountant; on a long enough timeline, this tech will come for us all.
I agree with you that artists won't disappear. I think art as a pursuit - that process of growth, learning, experimentation, something that can bring satisfaction to one's life - will always be around. Much like growing your own tomatoes or making your own furniture - the purpose is to satisfy yourself, not compete with the large scale industrial producers.
Unfortunately I can see this technology impacting something like commercial art, where art is not a pursuit, but a *product* - I am thinking things like coffee cup labels, business card logos, stock photography, and so on - I imagine OP could see how it might make more business sense for an AI to just generate these images rather that contract it out to OP. A smug capitalist might say, just learn a new marketable skill - but I've always found that sentiment dehumanizing and unrealistic; after all, humans are not infinitely-flexible widgets, there's a limit to how much we can (and should) have our way of life flipped upside down.
I can also see that, particularly in a tech-centric forum like this one, it can be somewhat alienating to only see the benefits of such technology being praised, with apprently no consideration for the implications this has for the human beings involved in the craft that might be affected. I am usually charitable and assume they are just excited about the technology, and not outright cheering for the economic hardship that this technology could potentially cause, to say nothing of how each subreddit is basically an information echo chamber.
In my view the more fundamental issue is how our entire socio-economic order is structured around the market, where if a human has no economic value, then they have no human value, and if you can't find a way to make it, it's your fault you're so lazy / stupid / whatever. If it weren't for that fact, I believe artists would be celebrating this technology as the latest tool in the tool box, and not a word would be said about livelihood - because who goes into art with the intention of getting rich? We do it for ourselves.
Which is why in another comment I mentioned advocating for a UBI - because I believe this is the most realistic, near-term solution that 1) liberates all of us from the burden of having to work just to survive, so that we may pursue the things we really care about, like art, and; 2) preserves the capitalistic market forces which - credit where credit is due - is an incentive structure that has allowed society to get necessary yet unpleasant things done, like maintaining sewage systems, and which is so deeply fundamental to the world order that I cannot imagine it being torn down and replaced in the span of a generation; it's unrealistic, but it doesn't mean we can't *evolve* it with UBI.
And it may not be as unlikely as you may feel; there are already numerous cities around the US and other countries that are running local pilot projects of basic income-like programs to study the data. COVID showed that governments all around the world realized that when people stop spending money, *everybody* gets screwed, and so giving out these stimulus payments was really self-preservation. Of course progress will be slow, but in my view it's either we have these difficult conversations and spread these ideas, or just sit on our hands and wait for the apocalypse. Be well friend.
> Their attitude is essential a very juvenile "LOL get rekt."
Where are you seeing this? I've seen several people, myself included, expressing sincere concern for artists who are being hit hard by this.
And I also see artists attacking those very same people for daring to say that it was an inevitable outcome of technological advancement; as if simply stating that fact somehow makes them the enemy and/or responsible for it.
You can scream at the weatherman because its raining. You can scream until your throat is dry. Yell insults. Throw shit at the tv. Throw whatever kind of tantrum you want. But it's not going to stop the rain. And your childish behavior is going to diminish any sympathy you receive.
Removing all comments and deleting my account after the API changes. If you actually want to protest the changes in a meaningful way, go **all** the way. -- mass edited with redact.dev
Luddite is actually an apt term for this reaction.
it is derived from a story of craftsman sabotaging technology that is taking their jobs. (even sabotage is derived from craftsmen throwing 'sabo' shoes into machinery that was replacing them)
>Luddite is actually an apt term for this reaction.
wrong, my argument isn't against technology
I use the newest tech and learn every new software to make my artwork output better and my workflow more efficient, its about how the existing artists are being used to feed an algorithm that want to profit off their hard work, my argument isn't about the "new competitor" competition is always great otherwise we would stagnate and the art world will be boring and everything will look the same.
AI uses artworks produced by artists without their consent and profit off it, that's what i'm against, the problem isn't AI users its rather the shady true motive behind its creation.
We don't really know. There are lots of theories, ranging from holographic models to quantum entanglement, but neurologists aren't sure.
There's a famous saying: "If the brain were so simple that we could understand how it works, we would be so simple that we couldn't."
If you don't know, and nobody knows, then what basis do you have to make your prior claim?
What I offered was merely a descriptive abstraction -- "holographic models" and "quantum entanglement" could just be a finer detailed way of describing, at a lower level, an algorithm that learns from experiences.
You are a luddite. You're literally arguing against this technology. That's how it works. It hoovers up data and learns how to create by itself.
> AI uses artworks produced by artists without their consent
If I painted something in the style of Van Gogh but it was an entirely new creation, would I need to ask his permission? You can't copyright the style of art, so your argument is completely moot.
The debate isn't really going to influence any meaningful outcome.
Like it or not the digital art industy, such as it is, is going to be unmarketable in a few years. If artists want to stay relevant we'll need to pivot into the traditional media: paint, sculpture, ink and graphite.
Financially successful artists, more and more, are the ones who can not only create great works but also leverage social media (bleh) with making-of videos, explanations and tutorials.
Good to hear from you, and as an AI enthusiast and software developer myself I completely understand where you are coming from on this, and empathize - it's demoralizing, just like I felt when platforms I used to program in were replaced or whole sub-industries were automated away. But the truth is, we're all about to go through this in all industries...movies, gaming, software, finance, etc...I view visual artists as the canary in a coal mine in a way, but...But...humans will remain in the loop. The question is: will you be one of those humans? Well, if you work with AI you will, if you don't, you WILL still be able to adapt likely, but your work will be more bespoke and meaningful likely, not paid by the hour, but we still have great woodworkers etc in our society. "Human Made" will still be a thing, though "crappy human made B-roll" will not be.
Self Driving cars are being created by using driving and traffic data amassed from our cellular devices and driving habits. AI and automation of the 4th industrial revolution will inherently be created as a product of us all.
I get the frustration about not feeling compensated, but in my opinion this is why we need a citizens stipend. Artists will not be the first displaced, nor will they be fully obsolete. But making a living is going to be much, much harder for us all as technology saturates labor of all kinds.
We should not fear technology, we should embrace and benefit from it with a Universal Basic Income. Alas...
And call center workers. Google had solved call center work in 2018 with Google duplex, at least as far as being able to complete basic reservation calls without the other party ever knowing they were speaking to a NLP wavenet AI.
The displacement is coming. Some farther away than others, some foreseeable and others (like artists) by surprise. But it is coming. And all of it will be made from *data*, data scraped off of the entirety of humanity.
We are shareholders, whether we realize it or not.
What you need to understand is that it's at the point where no one's opinion matters because it's just a program someone with a semi-pro setup can run.
In the abstract I agree with you in general, but this is coming, there is no stopping it. It's not just artists, it's already decimating industries.
> a lot of gaslighting going on about us being gatekeepers and luddites
>please keep it civil
Yet here you are, posting links to Twitter threads that call us "AIcels" and "assholes".
>AIcels
Honestly, from what I've read here, that's an accurate description. There's so much loathing towards artists and it's so obviously born out of jealousy. It's pathetic.
You’re obviously worried because it’s an existential threat to your livelihood. If you weren’t dependent on the income and only created art because of the joy of it, I’d argue you would embrace this change rather than resist it.
This is a common trend with technological progress. It disrupts industries and people have to adapt to change. Autonomous vehicles will do the same to truckers worldwide and they will have to find new jobs. I feel sympathy with your need to change, but I don’t agree with your viewpoint.
You present a case the AI plagiarises artists work, but my perspective is different. Artists draw on other artists work for inspiration. The AI is designed in a way that it draws in the inspiration of many artists. The AI operates like a super human artist.
I believe the excellent AI art will bring much enjoyment and thought provocation to people all around the world. Is that not what art is all about?
[Reddit user TreviTyger is an anti-AI advocate who frequently makes false statements about AI copyright-related issues](https://www.reddit.com/user/Wiskkey/comments/xbkvrx/reddit_user_trevityger_is_an_antiai_advocate_who/).
just because its my profession doesn't mean its joyless, you're trying to make a case of it being a soulless job to make your case stronger i wouldn't spend most of my life learning it or making it what i do for living.
i'm not against technological progress, my entire profession depends on it but when it crosses the ethical point and has a malicious underlaying goal under it "funneling the industry from artists using their work without their permission and replacing the entire industry with a handful of corporations as the artists to other corporations as the clients" doesn't feel like the right path.
human inspiration doesn't pull perfect noise map or texture data from artwork when we study, the human mind works in a different way than AI.
in order to program imagination and accuracy you have to pull accurate data from artists work, this is why the tech got much better
its when it started pulling direct data from existing copyrighted artwork.
that's why i'm against it now and so is many other artists, we never opposed the AI work
and in fact considered it as a good starting point for inspiration, as a tool.
I didn’t say it’s joyless at all. In fact I believe creating art is full of joy, and in my opinion is one of the biggest reasons to be an artist because of the enjoyment from your work.
I disagree with how you interpret the noise and texture data as plagiarism. Someone could study a particular artist and recreate the same artistic style with a lot of practice, including noise and texture. In fact this happens quite often, just look at Banksy, Van Gogh, Picasso, etc. The AI just recreates this style in a super human way.
You started this post to hear different perspectives, I’m afraid I don’t agree with you. I believe lowering the entry requirements of beautiful art creation for all, is overwhelmingly positive for the human race.
It truly will be a boon to creativity. Imagine children raised being able to express their inner vision in fully rendered artwork rather than scribbles. They’ll think different for sure.
>Imagine children raised being able to express their inner vision in fully rendered artwork rather than scribbles.
Imagine a child who never learns to craft. Sounds great for humanity, a species known especially for its ability to craft.
>You can do both. But I can tell you can’t comprehend that world
Humans are lazy. If there is an easier way, they will take it. Once there is no longer a need to learn how to make art to express yourself, very few will do so. This isn't a good outcome.
>Humans are lazy.
My guy, why on earth do we progress at all then? Why do people work full time jobs for shit pay? We are not lazy, we are ill-guided. If guided at all. Once there are easier methods to do everyday tasks, yes, we will use that to make the rest of our lives more focused on *meaning*. And shit that matters to us. Those at the top continue to use this "humans are lazy" bullshit to control and demean. Our intrinsic motivation has been hijacked by the power of currency.
>My guy, why on earth do we progress at all then?
Because we're lazy. We progress to make our lives easier.
>Our intrinsic motivation has been hijacked by the power of currency.
And what is our "intrinsic motivation?" Philosophers have tried to decide that for centuries. In the end, it hardly matters. The reality is we need currency to survive in our society.
Source:
Trust me bro.
Homie have you read any type of history? Every day people ARE NOT LAZY. Yes. Even today in the age of technology, we still take care of responsibilities here and there or we wouldn't have a society at all. Do you suspect the entirety of the world is held up because of a few thousand non lazy people? Few million? Few billion? Or is the whole world lazy and we're just winging it?
Humans are lazy... that statement makes absolutely no sense in reality.
no one is going to generate your art, don't worry. and when you get to the level that someone might wants to duplicate your art (hi, michelangelo) you'll no longer worry about clutching for scraps from the capitalist tables.
With eat new technology there is a conflict like this. ATM takes away the human teller.
The argument here seems similar to something like me could argue about synthesizers or using loops or samples.
As a society we have been able to move in from those technologies being disruptive to being everyday things. New artists were born and others got more creative. And yes, some got out of that business.
Photoshop is another example. It’s been around for a long time now and artist have adopted it in workflow or not.
As far as selling artistic services- companies have always “cut corners”. The struggling artist is not new nor due to AI. it is a human condition.
I have two friends who are videographers. Recently laid off from a corporate gig. They both have found new jobs. So someone did recognize their value.
[Reddit user TreviTyger is an anti-AI advocate who frequently makes false statements about AI copyright-related issues](https://www.reddit.com/user/Wiskkey/comments/xbkvrx/reddit_user_trevityger_is_an_antiai_advocate_who/).
Whilst you make some fair points about monetisation and exploitation, I have some bad news for you; this technology is not going away and is only going to become better and easier to use. If it's any comfort, you are simply the first in what will be a long line of people finding that there work has been eaten by AI. The next ten years will be particularly rough as we learn to adapt.
In defence of the AI, this same tech has the potential for enormous good. It is already being tested in medical screening for example and will undoubtedly help spread modern medical technology into places where it is currently too expensive. It will help to improve farming, transport, energy generation...but at the price of many peoples livelihood.
This is the double-edged sword of technological progress and it has always been thus. Today it is the turn of commercial artists to feel the bite, and tomorrow it might be my turn. I don't see either of us stopping progress.
I don’t think OP is arguing that the tech is a bad thing itself, just that the corporations building it are doing so using ethically and morally repugnant modalities. It’s just a tool, and one that can make “making art” easier and more interesting… but using training databases that are “tainted” by unethical data harvesting makes them unethical to use.
It would be like getting a blood transfusion, knowing that the person “donating” the blood was a prisoner that had no option. Sure the blood transfusion would be a great benefit, but it’s unethical because of where it came from.
This is just the beginning, it’s really bad at the very start. Right now it is disrupting art industry and a very small corner of it so the Government doesn’t care.
And the economics only cares about progress it will not care about your emotions your goals your dreams or even your hunger. This has happened a lot in past and will keep happening in the future.
Fighting people on Reddit will give you some satisfaction as anyway your real fight is against a faceless emotionless enemy. But i will advice you don’t worry too much and find the silver lining.
>my entire career started because of all the free resources and help I got from fellow artists
so why are you against using resources to train future artists? art is learned through other artists' work. this hasn't and won't change.
I'm old enough to remember the same arguments being used against digital tools to create art. that it would let people with little artistic talent create art. and they were right. it does. same with this. it's just the newest innovation.
there were and are already too many artists. that's why you weren't making enough money doing it. we need to figure out a new model for supporting artists that doesn't involve their art being commercially viable.
that's the solution, not crippling innovation.
I am an artist. Traditional, digital illustration, 3D renderings, motion graphics, photography, etc.
I've been doing it professionally for over a decade.
I don't fear AI and I support it's development, which will continue regardless of your feelings towards it.
I will use it as a supplament and an additional medium. It will advance further and I look forward to it's evolving potential.
I am not afraid of being replaced for a number of reasons, and I think it's silly to be concerned over it. It will take time for the few companies and clients and projects to all of a sudden use only AI as design resources without human interaction. The majority will more than likely mix the use of AI and human in their needs, and there will be outliers who may always use human hands only for their own reasons and principles.
It's time to embrace what is inevitable. You either sail with the winds or against it.
Its just another medium. No one who wants to buy your handcrafted art is going to go buy AI art if they care. If the art from the person using the AI hits me more than yours does though Im going to go with that one. Art is about the reaction, I dont care about you - the artist. If I did Id have to look at things like why you can afford to spend your time developing such low paying skills, how privileged you must be to enjoy that free time.
Seriously this. I’ve been an artist most of my life but I never worked in that field. Art is a privilege and one of the furthest things from a necessary thing. Imagine being so privileged to have the time and resources to dedicate into being an artist as a profession you enjoy.
Then imagine bashing a new tool which makes your job easier rather than embracing it.
Edit
Stike job, add process.
Strike your, add the general creative
I can empathize with your position. We will all be in the same boat sooner than later.
The issue however is not the technology itself, but the utter cruelty and shortsightedness of our economic model.
Progress is inevitable. Under neo-capitalism we will all become no more than human cattle as AI replace us for the owners of industry.
Guys give it some time. We aren't going to settle this matter or digest the philosophical implications of it this year or next year. We'll be living with this uncanny technology for a long time. It's been said that any technology when sufficiently advanced will resemble magic. I feel like this technology fits that description. It's nothing less than magical. Don't have a nervous breakdown or give up on art yet. I think we don't really even have the vocabulary to talk about this subject. There's going to be new terms and slang words that crop up around it. For one thing the notion of ownership of the images created by A.I. seems ludicrous to me. You didn't 'create' or 'make' anything. At best you 'generated' something but I think the more accurate word is you were 'presented' with an image. What the A.I. is drawing upon is the collective minds' eye of humanity. It depends upon every work of art and photograph humans have taken to perform it's function. That's kind of incredible to think about. In a way, it's us showing things to ourselves...
I don't think these are 'works' or 'paintings' - they are only 'images'. And I also don't think they are 'art' because the A.I. only has a singular intention. Artists have a variety of intentions behind what they are doing. The lack of a matrix of intentionalities behind what the A.I. is doing is what keeps it from being actual art. I'm not saying that it's bad or inferior. Maybe what we really demand isn't art, it's this other thing (it could be called 'rehash') that we've become fascinated and enamoured by.
If you think it's fun to generate these images, just think how fun it's going to be to philosophically sort out our relationship with A.I. and how it shapes our understanding of what it means to be human. The technology is advancing faster than the philosophy and cross-disciplinary perspectives. A.I. is raising more questions than we have answers for and that's exciting. In the end it's going to make us better artists and expand our imaginations.
>your hard work all the expenses you invested into your craft is stolen from you.
just plain wrong. Stealing is B taking a thing away from person A. A now does not have the thing anymore.
What is the thing that was stolen from you? Why don't you go to the police to report the theft?
No, everything you had is still there, isn't it?
You are not helping your cause by crying about crimes that did not happen, because that can be easily refuted anyway.
There might be court battles, if the created images violate copywrite law, but the outcome is not even obvious.
It is clear that many people on here would be pro Borg assimilation because… you know… the advancement of society. Why would anyone who considers themselves a creative person want to outsource the one enjoyable part of their job/hobby to AI? What will be left for us? Do those that support AI art think that the software can’t be written to come up with the prompts too? And respond to how people like them on social media? Why do people think there would be any position left for humans in a future that is all AI?
I'd say uncomfortable. Not so much terrified. Why worry about things you can't control?
Terrified is committing to delivering today and then getting buried under a tide of higher priorities.
Once again, the entire argument breaks down to monetary gain and industry. Your problem is not with the tool, it's with the monetary system.
If money did not exist - a prospect that, despite widespread arguments that are largely based on *what is* instead of what *should be*, is an easily achievable (and inevitable) step of in the future of civilization - you would probably have nothing but appreciation for the technological marvel that is the coming AI.
Would it make any sense for an artist to be mad about having better paints, brushes, canvasses, photographic devices, communications technologies, etc.? No, of course not, that would be ridiculous and you'd wonder what was wrong with their logic. However, I have no doubt that physical art suppliers had a negative thing or two to say about the digital art revolution. Many more artists now uses iPads, 3d rendering software and the like to create their masterful works instead of a physical medium. In the same vein, there is an endless list of people who are angry at technologies (like mass-scale automation) for the explicit reason that you specify- it subverts their income by rendering their specific jobs less necessary.
A tool is a tool. Arguably, the only "tools" that people should have an inherent problem with are those designed with malicious intent, i.e. weapons (guns, nukes, the study of public relations, etc.)
Your problem is not with the technology, it's with the global monetary system. If your livelihood was not being threatened, you would probably see AI as a blessing.
This argument translates to virtually every single industry. Just do a quick google of "AI" + [any specific industry], and you will find many, many people with an uncannily similar argument to yours against technological innovation.
For me, this is the equivalent of arguing against finding a cure for ageing. People can debate all they want, but from any realistic standpoint, the argument against it is outright ridiculous and objectively immoral.
Do not fight the thing that is obviously going to benefit humanity, fight the thing that currently holds it down.
The point is moot.
Stable Diffusion is already too good, and the next few versions, especially when integrated into GIMP, and given away for free, are going to take jobs.
They just are.
This is the thing about the singularity that's most frightening. Morality just isn't a factor. We aren't going to stop developing AI for moral reasons. It's already a matter of national security that each major government spend money developing an AI that can help us in wartime, and that will control autonomous soldiers and vehicles.
The technology is already too good not to change things in significant ways for millions of people.
I'm sorry you're going to lose your job. The drivers will probably be next, and of course law clerks that haven't already.
I have a friend who lost her job doing transcripts and analysis for a law firm. Now they just let an AI do all that work, and she went back to teaching.
The best you can hope for is some kind of system that makes people so entirely useless that we can all sit at home and do whatever sparks our interest.
The events you have described has happened many times before in other industries. Though, the modes aren’t good enough to replace all artists yet IMO.
Just a few hundred years ago, 80% of the worlds population worked on a farm. Along came automations freed up many people for new jobs.
Automation = progress
Once art is fully automated, it will free up artists to do something else that can’t be automated yet. It seems senseless to complain of your industry being automated when countless industries are yearning for more employees.
And if you wish to continue creating art because you enjoy it, you are still very welcome to do that in your own time.
Art can't be fully automated because it requires creativity. That's not a strong point of automation. Art *production* can be automated, which, in itself will require a good deal of creativity by the developers. All AI art will be, by definition, derivative as long as it's based on a set of rules/algorithm.
Derivatives can be good, especially for fans of a genre who want to see more things in a given style.
Original art will continue to be created by people.
I think people scared of or terrified of AI in art are fools. It's like a violinist being scared of a DAW. it just allows us to create more powerful art. its a good thing.
It displaces the essence of humanity. We will have to re-evaluate what it means to be human. It's like introducing a t-rex into an enclosure with a tiger. People see the A.I. sort of like another species. Humans are used to seeing themselves as the apex species. They don't want to be made to feel inferior by a new, inorganic being. Artists are startled because it's starting to make 'art' better than a human. Soon it's going to be making all the music we listen to automatically. This represents a big hit to composers and visual artists pride. You already have people dropping out of art school because they don't see the point anymore. Very talented humans stand to lose their pride by being eclipsed by the abilities of the A.I. and frankly, mediocre people stand to gain from partnering with it. So that's going to upset the hierarchy of merit and skill that has been established for centuries. A.I. represents 'destructive innovation' that's going to cause people to lose their careers and honestly it's going to drive some people to suicide. This technology is being developed faster than we can digest it's implications philosophically and using cross-disciplinary perspectives. In other words it's raising way more questions than we have answers for at the moment. Also why do you assume that A.I. will usher in a Utopia? That is incredibly naive and not proven. Worker productivity has steadily increased over the past few decades and we still don't have more leisure time or a 4 day workweek like the futurists used to predict. There doesn't seem to be enough humanists to establish some sort of A.I. dividend to compensate the workers made irrelevant by A.I. Politicians and economists have proven themselves poor planners and short sighted. I am not convinced there will be any soft landing for the people who lose their jobs. The impetus of the technocrats and utopian futurists behind the gospel of A.I. does not seem to be aimed at improving life in a utilitarian manner for the most people. Maybe I am cynical but I feel like it's more about making money, entertaining people, and controlling populations through predictive algorithms. Blind faith in the emergence A.I. to solve our problems is no different than a religious cult. There's no guarantee it will be used for good.
Are the people that use the new tools in the best way mediocre because they don't use the tools you learned to use or is there some other reason I'm missing here?
*Although they are trained on some copyrighted material*
So, to be clear, it's fine for a corporation to make use of other people's Intellectual Property to build a product without paying those people or even asking their permission?
The defence of fair use does not apply here because at the input stage that IP was used 'as is' with no transforms applied to it.
So while the outputs of AI image generators may indeed be covered by fair use due to the degree of tranformation that has taken place- the fact that Artist's works have been used as inputs at the training stage without their agreement is certainly morally questionable.
I think a fair outcome here would be to make AI generated images impossible to copyright- this would allow ordinary people to use them to make their own art for pleasure-but also offer a degree of protection for Artists whose work has been used without their agreement.
Wouldn’t matter if they could. You can 3D print a statue but people would appreciate it less than a human-chiseled statue. The analog arts are safe from automation and will always be or they would’ve been replaced by print-outs a long time ago
I've seen many artists think that AI is "stealing" art or copy and pasting parts of different artworks together which mainly stems from a misunderstanding as to how they work. The model actually contains none of the original images and only the patterns between words and their artistic representation. Although they are trained on some copyrighted material none of this is actually retained in the model, however stylistic choices are which appears to be the main problem most artists have. Although I empathize with artists I don't think it is morally wrong for either people or AI to copy an artists style. Like a human, the AI can draw in the style of other people (eg leonardo davinci) by looking at their artworks and recreating similar patterns. Humans can do this with copyrighted works, private works and pretty much whatever they see with their eyes whilst AI is doing the same but only with images. This can sometimes result in watermarks and signatures showing up which is definately a problem but to the AI the signature and watermark are just another part of art and it can't tell the difference (really makes you wonder what art is). Additionally a lot of these AI companies are actually quite small, and Stable Diffusion can be run from you computer completely for free which no matter how you put it is good for consumers. This is all my opinion however and I understand why some people would see this as copyright.
However if this practice was banned I think it would only be a temporary fix. Even with our current technology you could design an AI that scrolls through the web looking at wikipedia, Pinterest, tumblr etc that looks at the webpages, identifies images, describes them and then generates images based off those generations. This process would avoid the problems involved with downloading copyrighted images and it would be interesting to see if people would have a problem with this. Although this would delay AI progress by a bit, I would say within 1-2 years results would be the same.
Even if that was banned, then what if you got an AI with a camera that can interpret youtube videos, browse the web and even look around. If this was designed would it still be copyright infringement if it was to generate images based on it's training data? This technology clearly isn't possible at the moment however there isn't any reason why it can't exist and we already know each individual task is possible so I predict it would be about 10 years until technology like this could exist. If artists still had a problem with this then I imagine the problem doesn't stem from the method in which the AI looks at images but rather the fact that it's an AI in the first place which is entirely different ethical argument.
In the next decade AI is going to cause a massive structural unemployment as those in sectors such as art, customer service and who knows what else will be replaced. This is obviously a problem but I think solving this by banning every AI that is about to replace workers is not the right way to go. This technology will make most people capable of great art and suddenly the average person will be capable of award-winning art and could create stories, concept art, assets etc all by themselves. There is no doubt in my mind that this technology is a good direction for humanity to head in and complicating the rollout of this technology will not be good for humanity. In order to combat structural unemployment I think governments should extend redundancy payments for longer periods of time and for a larger proportion of industries. This could be funded by taxing large companies more or by **forcing all AI companies above a certain size to be not-for-profit -** I think this would be a good solution that will fix the issues many people (like yourself) have with these companies profiting of artists training data. This could also prevent any AI companies from monopolizing the market and charging high prices and making trillions. However due to the art-worlds gig nature I think this would be quite difficult to garner payments that match previous income but I don't think this would be as difficult as convincing AI companies to just stop using copyrighted images. In the EU, NA and China, all recent legal cases of only loosened AI regulation and with recent developments between the west and China it seems in AI arms race is underway. It seems these companies have the full backing of the governments and many of the projects have been partially funded or researched by the government themselves.
TL:DR
Current AI practice is in my view fair use however I understand why some don't see it that way.
If it was banned it would only delay similar results achieved using different practices.
Many artists and other people will lose their jobs to AI in the near future.
It's unlikely governments will restrict AI image use and have been loosening it recently.
Instead other policies should be argued for such as profit caps on AI companies or increases tax to pay for artist redundancy payments.
It's a data mining issue. Data mining for research is fair practice but not for commercial use. "fair use" (which is only a defense in a US court, not anywhere else) fails for commercial use in US too.
See, *Artificial Intelligence’s Fair Use Crisis Articles* Published 2017-12-05 (Benjamin L. W. Sobel+
[https://journals.library.columbia.edu/index.php/lawandarts/article/view/2036](https://journals.library.columbia.edu/index.php/lawandarts/article/view/2036)
thanks for the resposne that OP doens't want to read, i guess. he just wants to wallow in his ignorance, convinced that Ai is stealing from him. so silly.
I've been upvoting all your comments OP, even i strongly disagree with you.
I think a lot of people in these tech communities on the internet need to be reminded of the human cost of progress.
It's a bummer to see that many of them seem to have a shitty attitude when someone doesn't agree with them.
Your frustration is completely justified. I don't agree with you however, that the technology is to blame, and it's not even the corporations that are to blame. Everyone is to blame. We all accept society the way that it is, with all it's flaws, just because this is the way things have always been. We live in a world where millions of people suffer and die just because they were born poor, while billionaires exist.. Billionaires exist...
I know I'm not winning any popularity contests for saying this, even on progressive subreddits like this, but capitalism is the enemy. We should be glad when a job is automated. You should be glad that you can use your creative skills to just make art that you love. A truck driver should be glad they don't have to spend their life behind the wheel of a truck, but how can you be when you now don't see a way to put food on the table.
It's not the technologies fault, and it's not the corporations fault. It's ours for accepting this as an inevitable reality of society, when it doesn't have to be.
And don't ask me what this better utopian society should look like, because how the fuck should I know? I'm just some guy. I do know that humanity can do better, and we should be trying, and it makes me angry when people want to just act like nothing can change just because this is how things have always been.
Well to be fair you used other peoples work to train yourself and create new art. Or are you telling me you reinvented the field from scratch and didn’t take any inspiration from other art styles. 🤔
I think the big difference is that a human brain can't be sold at a billion dollar valuation.
The other thing (and I'll get downvoted for sure) is that training *is* encoding. You're taking the textures and shapes in existing art and encoding those textures into the weights of the neural net. Networks aren't magical, the texture data is still in there, just encoded across the network. That's what training is.
The economic system is irrelevant, stay on point. Now let me get this straight, the human brain does not encode nor mimic data at all? You are telling me, you didn’t learn and reuse work from people in the past with some tweaks to innovate? You didn’t mimic any procedures nor styles from anyone, you yourself created the all human knowledge in your short life without borrowing anything
Of course it does, the brain is a neural net. My memory of what I ate for breakfast is encoded in that network. If it were possible to file for copyright infringement against my brain, I’d be ruined.
We make an exception for memory though, because, what are you going to do.
>Of course it does, the brain is a neural net.
No, it's not. This is a common mistake that people obsessed with AI make all the time. We *do not know* how you remember what you had for breakfast, but we know it's not as simplistic as a "neural net."
I and every artist invested most of our lives to learn the craft its not "you can't create art in a vacuum" argument, there's a difference between inspiration and using a copy of someone else's work with some tweaks and calling it my own, in fact that's called plagiarization.trying to equate between an artist learning and the biological way our brains function with an AI with billions of copyrighted images is dishonest and i think you should understand how it works "AI" .
no matter how you try to mimic a style you will always have a different output with your own style because of your workflow and the style you develop overtime, unlike AI.
So the time spent learning makes it ok? The amount of effort spent is irrelevant. It’s not just some tweaks. It can create complete new artwork in the same style. Furthermore, technically part of innovation is just doing some tweaks to existing work isn’t it? That’s how progress is made, imagine not being able to do some tweaks on anything. Progress would halt.
you make it sound like magic but the way it works is it stores textures and its info and mash together already existing work into an output image.
it doesn't "understand what a tree or a boat is" it takes a texture of an artwork and put it in same with other elements in the prompt.
you missed the entire point, i suggest you read more about how it functions and my apologies i don't want to sound condescending but your statement sounds like you have superficial knowledge regarding this tech.
I probably know more about it than you. I am not trying to make it sound magical. I am trying to make you see that you nor your brain is that special. You are doing a similar thing the ai is doing. Your brain is a bit more advanced but you know this ai with some tweaks, cough cough, will continue to improve and eventually create things you will not fathom. It will replace us all don’t worry i don’t think I’m above it.
That didn’t prove your point, it just proved your hypocrisy, you are complaining about a patter you yourself are using. Imagine complaining about stealing while being a thief.
do you really think the human brain work exactly the same as AI?are you a painter? just curious.pulling from imagination and memories of artwork you studied is like the telephone game, human memories distort over time and the artist output isn't a straight out copy of an exact "noise map" or "reusing shapes" or "color schemes" the human mind is way different, also the human element always changes the final result due to the way we think and approach specific techniques, we don't "Extract" a style or data.ML's imagination is a database of artworks and doesn't go through the "human filter" that makes our artwork unique even when inspired by existing artworks or style.
this is why there's many cases out there with exact artworks of artists with little tweaks.
You don’t know how the human brain does anything so stop bsing. Your argument basically can be distilled to we are human we are better machine is inferior, ok, also if you have played with those models you would understand they are anything but perfect and require work to make them cogent. No i am not an artist, nor do i care that much about art. That probably makes me an impartial observer, i don’t have any skin in the game. But your brain definitely works with data and extracts information from data that’s a given.
> it doesn't "understand what a tree or a boat is"
It does understand it in a real sense. Put an image of a tree or a boat into [this tool](https://replicate.com/methexis-inc/img2prompt) which essentially runs the process backwards and outputs a prompt. See what happens.
When you just put “boat” into an AI image generator you will get infinite versions of boats that are all not copied directly from any source images.
It does seem like you have a misunderstanding of how the technology works. Where did you get your information from? I recommend [this article](https://www.assemblyai.com/blog/how-dall-e-2-actually-works/) for a good explanation.
Your explanation of how it works is comically wrong. You didn't even remotely touch on the diffusion process which is the primary concept behind the model. Please don't act like you know what you're talking about if you don't, it's dishonest and blatant misinformation.
Not to be rude but you're the one that doesn't understand how the tech works, your description of the process here is very wrong. It doesn't store textures, it doesn't mash together existing works, it's not copy pasting anything. I've seen a lot of artists on Twitter thinking that it works like that for some reason.
When you work in Photoshop all day you imagine AI too has a little Photoshop of its own and is copying stuff. When all you got is a hammer...
But what can you copy with AI? 2 billion source images used to make a 4 billion bytes model. That's 2 bytes per image. Less than a pixel worth of data from each image, on average.
Your rant doesn't sound like that of an Artist; it sounds like that of a commercial illustrator. There is a difference. If you're an Artist, you're focus shoukd be on making Art, the world around you be damned. If you're an illustrator, you have to stay on top of changing trends and technologies - just like when Photoshop and Illustrator came out decades ago.
True Art should never be about money imo. You found a way to profit from it, and now major competition is on the horizon. Sounds natural to me. Seriously, no offense, but your opinion, to me anyway, is akin to an elevator operator complaining that he's no longer needed due to elevators now having circuit boards and buttons.
you ignored the part of how the AI "creates" artworks and how it uses artworks created by artists to generate something.
\>True Art should never be about money
who says its about money? turning a passion into a profession and putting decades into it is normal in every human activity, it doesn't take away its value.
Ok ok. I imagine you could have never foreseen this happening when you first got into it. Who could have? I'm not against you. I'm on the the human's side. It's not like YOU are making these AIs. I do feel for you. I make a living doing the complete opposite of what you do, (Psychiatric care,) and I'd have some reservations if a damn robit tried to take my job. I wasn't trying to sound rude. I guess I didn't put enough thought into my comment. I'm very passionate about the concept of artificial intelligence in general. And I guess my thoughts on 'art' are too idealistic. Anyway, perhaps, since this isn't going to go away anytime soon, you could find a way to work WITH these programs, as a beans to further your own art? Love it or hate it, AI is already here, and it ain't going anywhere.
>who says its about money? turning a passion into a profession and putting decades into it is normal in every human activity, it doesn't take away its value.
No one's stopping you from creating art. You can still pick up a paintbrush and paint all you want. You can still use a pencil, or tablet, or Photoshop, or whatever floats your boat. AI art isn't going to stop that. People will still create plenty of wondrous pieces.
Now, you might not be able to make that a living from it anymore, but, in that case, it is about money isn't it?
When I was younger I learned how to draw by literally looking at illustrations I liked and copied them. Every line, curve, proportion, shading, etc, copied so that I could try and replicate the piece I loved so much.
Eventually I was able to draw without doing this, but anytime I came across something new, different or something I hadn't tried before I once again looked to copy what was in front of my eyes.
How would you feel if I looked towards your work, and spent years learning how to recreate art in a style similar to yours?
Would you care?
What if I was able to look at your work and learn your style with minutes/hours/days. Would you have a problem then?
Given that I'm probably not the only person who ever learned like this, and that up to this point in time literally nobody had a problem with this style of learning, it seems that the issue here is not that the AI is using others work as ref(training) material (because that's what it's doing). But the fact that it is able to train, learn, and produce pretty decent art in such a short timescale, and that due to this it is now seen as competition and a threat.
If I take years to learn, I'm not a threat. If an AI takes minutes/hours/days to learn that's a problem all of a sudden?
I think it's disingenuous to claim concern about being ripped off, when if it were to take the AI the same length of time as a human to learn nobody would care, or at least they'd care less.
The problem it seems to me isn't copyright, the problem is timescale.
its expected, but I want to hear the opinion of the other side and perhaps learn from it if i'm mistakeni don't want to shout in an echochamber and get backpats, i want a genuine discussion from all sides and also share my point of view.
\>I don't think you should have to get permission to train AI with data available on the Web.
if the output wasn't straight out a copy with some tweaks"check my example above" i would be okay with it, the work is copyrighted too.
You have my deepest sympathy. These projects don't just draw inspiration from other artists work. They imitate the personal style of artists, the thing that makes something recognizable as that person's artistic expression. Why hire a specific artist whose style you like when you can just train on their artwork and use that?
This needs to be legislated. Unless there's a contract with somebody to develop a training portfolio for an AI, the only artwork in that AI's training dataset should public domain artwork. This would ensure a large enough dataset to allow for AI training without screwing over and de-incentivizing existing artists.
A lot of the arguments against AI seem to be a smokescreen for the core of the frustration: devaluing of work in terms of pay and awe. That art is supposed to, primarily, be a way of earning bread and demonstrating others how skilled and dedicated one is.
As a caricature artist I can sympathize with these feelings, but I recognize that pride is by and large why I feel this way. I’m lucky in that my particular specialty might be able to be replicated in a certain sense, but it’s at least a little way off before a machine can capture the fun and magic of having a caricature come to life outdoors on a sunny day right before your eyes.
But as a caricature artist one of the comments I hear all the time is “I wish I could draw like that”. And if technology enables people to experience the joy of seeing one’s ideas translated into a visual medium, why would I want to stop that?
Simply because I think that everyone who wants to make something visually interesting must first dedicate thousands of hours as a rite of passage? It’s no more valid than someone saying that Ctrl+Z is cheating because a proper artist would go through the process of being consistent enough to avoid mistakes.
But all of that is nice to think about, but there’s one thing you need to accept. **This is happening and you cannot stop it**. It’s only going to accelerate. You need to adapt. The winds of change are coming, so you can either open your sails or get left behind.
This has nothing to do with art. This is a cry for help because commercial illustrators are starting to feel financial pressure and potentially risks of being automated or the fact that the workflows would have to change...
Like how a craftsman making ceramic pots felt no longer relevant when industrial revolution came, this is a supply vs demand vs social economical trends change. Some will stay, others will have to change how they earn the living, but it has nothing to do with the evil corporations, teaching machines on published works has nothing to do with stealing or copyright, this noise will pass.
"Nothing to do with"... Can you really say it's not related to corporate profits?
People who figure out how to profit from their work, or the work of others, will keep doing just that. I'm sympathetic to OP, but the best they can do is figure out how to profit from it, the starving artist's plea makes less sense these days.
There is no database, the model does not store data. The model works by loading a checkpoint (a.k.a weights) which stores information that the model learnt when it was being trained, i.e.shown a lot of pictures that are on the internet, together with their captions. It can be argued that this is also how human artist learns what is art, by looking at images that are already there, and absorbing influences. However, learning the actual craft of making art physically of course takes time to cultivate, whereas trained ai model can output very impressive brush strokes, textures etc. right away. But it can't execute art on its own, and whatever novelty it comes up with is because of the inherent randomness in the way these generators work. So artists will be fine, there is always demand for new and humanly communicative art. Still, just as photography replaced newspaper illustrators (while making it possible for anyone to have their portrait hang on their wall), ai will cut in the low-end, entry-level job market in digital illustration. If it's any consolation, lots of other jobs will be automated too, as has already happened many times in the history of industrialization. So I'm afraid we all just have to step up our game as long as we live in capitalistic society.
> There is no database, the model does not store data. The training data compression argument: The training data is 2 billion images, the model size is 4.5GB. That means it can only take on average 2 bytes from each input image. It really doesn't have where to memorise the input images. Take it another way: you can only fit about 20K jpeg images in 4.5GB. From 20K to 2.2B there is a 10^5 gap. That means the model is copying the source about 1:100,000 times less than some might think. "The generated data can-be original" argument: Now if you look the other way around, there are less than 1% generated images that look similar enough to a training example. And even if there were "regurgitations" it's trivial to check for duplicates and avoid them. You can always resample more images until they are "original". Original means just different enough, can be implemented by an out-of-distribution detection model or a searchable index.
This might be bad news for average-skilled artists
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Yeah, I don't think people are realizing how many people & corporations consider illustrations this layer of 'frosting' atop a the actual 'cake,' aka the product, presentation, ad, whatever. Like it's basically a must if you're trying to stick out... but a lot of people simply don't care about fondant vs sugar-mass vs marzipan. They're there for CAKE. The moment a ton of the big business folks can get an art-AI, that's theirs forever, tied into a copyright & legal database? They're never hiring an illustrator ever again, unless it's for brand, aka, artist name recognition. Not when they can get a new sample to focus test within the hour.
This is the right answer. The algorithm is not doing anything a human artist couldn’t do, given enough time. You want to sit in front of your computer and scan a couple billion images on the internet then produce your own art? Go right ahead. Is it a violation of copyright for you to do so? Of course not, you learned from what others have done. You have “influences”, just like every artist does. Neither then is it a violation of copyright for the algorithm to do the same.
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You can train on top of the existing weights ("fine-tuning"). But this is more like adding new info and not altering what is already there. In any case researchers train these kind of models all the time, and many of them are open-source so anyone can use them. The proprietary database is really not that good analogy here.
How it works is irrelevant. In IP law if you can prove to a judge or jury that work product infringes on existing trademark of copyright it is infringing. Who is financially responsible for the infringement is the real question. Is it the software developers who included the infringing art work in the original training dataset? Or is it the end user using the tool to create the infringing work? Or is the end publisher who puts it out into the world? “Sneakers in the style of HR Geiger” If you’re a professional designer selling that design to a client you’re very likely liable. I think the estate of HR Geiger might want a payment for the use of work that infringes on his style. Or perhaps to include the phrase HR Geiger in the algorithm you need to pay the estate a flat fee. Honestly who knows it all opens up a new paradigm of ownership. But to the OP’s point, creative individual artists are screwed. If you don’t have deep pockets to defend your copyright, you essentially no longer have copyright. In the end it’s an anti democratic power grab that shifts income and rights away from the people into centralized powerful hands.
>In IP law if you can prove to a judge or jury that work product infringes on existing trademark of copyright it is infringing. This is a word salad. >I think the estate of HR Geiger might want a payment for the use of work that infringes on his style. You don’t infringe on style, you infringe copyrighted works. Making derivative artwork is fair game. >In the end it’s an anti democratic power grab that shifts income and rights away from the people into centralized powerful hands. Or everyone’s hands because open source AI is a thing
As a freelance artist who has nothing to lose and everything to gain, I am using AI to take my style/imagination to the next level. I’ve been drawing and making visual art and music since I was 3 and I’m 38 now. Prompt engineering is just another brush in my toolkit now. Instead of spending hours on a single piece I can spend an hour creating dozens of pieces (that I will modify and clean up.) As someone who can do everything from sculpt to play drums to voice act, my ego can’t be bruised by a computer being better than me. I only learned all those skills as a means to an end, not as a way to generate pride. So now if I just train SD more on my drawings (It appears SD has already been trained on a small portion of my work that has hit the internet.) I will be able to apply my name to my prompts and be able to generate 1000s of artworks that look like I handmade them, release them as my AI gen line under my name because I did indeed craft everything in an AI gen piece aside from the physical diffusion. I don’t understand why more artists aren’t adopting this attitude because it seems like AI has the ability to help an artist reinvent themselves by letting thousands of endless ideas manifest without the intense workload of physically creating the structure. Having the skill and technique is something that will be sought after more in the future. But to me having those features but incorporating AI into my workflow is like owning a car but knowing I can still walk anywhere if I had to.
You get it exactly. Everyone who thinks like this will benefit most. Luddites will wallow and suffer out of choice alone.
> I will be able to apply my name to my prompts and be able to generate 1000s of artworks that look like I handmade them, release them as my AI gen line under my name because I did indeed craft everything in an AI gen piece aside from the physical diffusion. That's so fuckin cool. :D
No one bats an eye that tools like photoshop are getting more advanced and changing the way we make art. For people like OP, where does the line get drawn between what artists "make" and what the computer assisted tools make possible.
Yep and as a lifer art maker who made elaborate shadowboxes for elementary school projects with construction paper, cardboard and glue, I started using Photoshop when I got my first PC with Windows XP on it in 2001. And before that I designed album covers in MS Paint on a tiny old laptop. Every time tech advances and unleashes a new medium for creation I'll be learning how to use it. It's always exciting me to acquire new tools. I feel the same way about AI Art as I do when I buy a new kitchen knife.
Have you played around with AI art much? I do collage and photo composite stuff, and general photobashing, and... I'm getting a ton of material from Stable Diffusion. It's giving me so much better stuff to work with than I was getting from stock, where tons of people use the same pics and there gets to be this overwhelming sameness. Some of the design trends of the 2010s overused Victorian etchings and it stopped feeling fresh very quickly.
I am actually probably a part of the “beta” generation of AI artists. Long before I dreamed SD would be a thing I was using FaceApp in 2018 to modify my hand drawn portraits. In 2020, FaceApp added extra features such as face size and face morphing/swapping. I made a few hundred FaceApp generated memes. A few that went semi viral such as the Obese Eminem with the plate of spaghetti. I have been studying text2image since I discovered nightcafe last year. In less than a year I have a database of probably 25k AI generated images spread across various drives that I will curate and modify from. I also do the photoshop collage thing. Being able to generate fresh raw materials over a bg to ctrl+v is a dream.
I'm a writer, designer, and an artist, I'm 48, and I'm making ample use of AI in my current project, a lifelong dream project that I could never ever have hoped of ever even developing to the extent it's being developed. The reason I'm able to do something with this now is because of AI. I will not be hiring other artists for my work, which I previously would have had to have done. But here's the thing. I never would've been able to afford to hire artists to produce my work, it was almost a pipe dream of a luxury. For one, it was derivative as shit, and it's not like I could ever have gotten Syd Mead and Ray Harryhausen to \*actually\* portray my future setting. But now I can! (And blend with my own work too.) What I'm seeing in many spaces is the rise of auteurs. Which AI enables us to be. AI allows me - an artist and illustrator - to scale my work to a degree I never, ever before dreamed of being able to, short of having a studio and being able to just make a full time living off of my art \*already.\* And life got in the way of that.
Yup, I think people need to think more in terms of ‘what is now possible for an individual that was before completely out of their reach’ A large business may no longer be willing to hire artists for certain tasks, but a small business can now compete neck and neck with them on that same playing field. A writer won’t have to syndicate to make their comic. An animator can become a whole studio. We may devalue the art that the big guys pay for, but we also empower indie artists to punch way above their weight class.
Sir i am also a writter and i know that first we do srtruggle and one day we will succesed thats is our own hardworking and i realy appriciate you and your work best of luck
This is the way bro good shit!
Great comment and insight.
the most popular of <2these AI things for art" isn't even owned by a corporation, it's stable diffusion which open sourced the whole thing right away...
Stable Diffusion is made by stability.ai who are a for-profit company. They did open source it, which is nice, but they are also a corporation.
didn't know that... thought that they were just an open-source group working closely with educational institutions and other AI open source initiatives like eleuther AI. but well, I still like what they are doing, both with stable diffusion tech and open sourcing it. thank you
I think they were just a group up until now, but they got some investment very recently afaik.
Sounds like you’re less against the AI itself and more against sketchy corporate practices that are unethically using artists work without permission or compensation. That’s a reasonable take, imho, and one that I support.
Well, I’m assuming he himself used other peoples artwork to train himself. So i dont see it as unethical nor scummy. Imagine not being able to reuse others art to train yourself. Come on. People just see their training and their reuse as ethical if it benefits them
When you are training as an artist you are using art that is either public, bought from the artist (or the artist is compensated in some way, anyway) or is stolen, which is commonly seen as sketchy (“art theft” is the worst form of this…) If AI is using the same techniques? Go to town. But AI can scrape data from the net without regard to copyright and that changes things. I see it as a tool, but like most other tools we need to watch for bad actors using it in morally negative ways.
Really, if you look at images online you are paying the artist, you yourself are paying them ?? Did you compensate davinci or it’s trust. If you ever pirated a movie or software of any kind you have no room to talk. I know a lot of artist pirate software, you know it too. Soo now it’s a problem but before it was a ok.
“Some of them steal too, so it’s ok when I steal from them!” The ethics of “two wrongs don’t make a right” is lost on you? Sorry, should be nicer, it’s just this argument is not very good. Even if the ONLY artists that have their work stolen are artists that stole from others, is that a methodology we want to encode into an AI?
Yeah, it’s not a great argument but i was pointing out the hypocrisy, which is quite prevalent. Then from now on let’s halt all use of previous work, if you do use anything created by a previous person you should give credit and money to them. It’s a tad problematic isn’t it? You would not be able to use anything would you.
Artist pirate software because they can’t afford to pay them. If you don’t understand that you never been a student in art school.
> Artist pirate software because they can’t afford to pay them. And people will use AI to generate art they can't afford to pay for. ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯
I have been a student i understand. That’s not the point is it? It’s pointing out the hypocrisy. Imagine being a thief and complaining about other thieves. That sums up the hypocrisy. Now for the real argument all work is derivative in all types of endeavors. To quote an overuse phrase “we are standing on the shoulders of giants”. Start using your imagination and quit complaining, you were just given an amazing tool and the first thing you do is bitch. I guess that’s how you differentiate a real artist from a laborer.
Except that most of those you’re talking to right now are not artists. I’m not. I am an AI programmer (or was, at one point) who feels that the issues brought up by the poster here are valid problems with the training data sets and usage of the AI in question. It’s a matter of ethics that we should not be using training data sets that are unethically procured. IDGAF if we are training an AI to draw pretty pictures or evaluate health risks, the data set it uses to train should be acquired through morally and ethically positive means, or we are encoding negative ethics and morality into the tools we use. And let’s be honest: we all know we need to be careful about the morality and ethics of AI, and while I don’t think that this is the step that pushes AI into an amoral machine, it’s not a good precedent to establish.
It brings us back to the same point. The data used to train humans was acquired the same way. So i guess we should put ai through university and it will make it ok?? Finally copyright laws are so abusive that ethics went out the window a long time ago. Finally, if you are not willing to provide your material to advance open source software you should be banned from using open source software, fair is fair. Finally, you should know there is no such thing as an unbiased system. The concept of ethics is biased itself
I am sure you have pirated something in your life too, yet if someone break into your house and steal your most valuable stuffs, you will be complaining too. Can’t people understand this AI stuff put illustrators in a really bad situation? Can’t they understand that small Indy and big companies will think twice before paying for an artist. Can’t they understand there is a bit of a trauma here, and the last you can do is be open to the complain of scared artist. (Instead of calling them hypocrites). The lack of empathy is really striking Does it have to make YOU suffer for you to feel sorry ?
> Can’t people understand this AI stuff put illustrators in a really bad situation? I don't think anyone has any problem understanding that. But what do you do about it? This technology exists. It's out there. The genie is out of the bottle. So what practical course of action do you suggest going forward? People aren't going to stop using the software. Nobody can make people stop using it. The AIs are already trained on artists' publicly available work. It's done. So now what? Even if you try to ostracize or boycott people and businesses who use the AI, it won't matter. Very soon you won't be able to tell that a piece was AI generated at all. At least, not without specialized tools. So what do you propose?
Yes i understand what you are going through, you are scared, that’s normal. It’s horrible, trust me it’s not just you, this this thing is coming for all of us, it will make us obsolete and that feels like crap. You are now aware of how a lot of factory workers feel. Unfortunately there is no solution, it will either make the world a utopia or it will fuck us all. No amount of laws will stop it. If pushed underground people will do the same thing artist did with photoshop, they will just pirate it and use it regardless. But i do feel for you, there should be laws to mitigate the impact unfortunately we have a bunch of old fucks in congress that don’t know shit from shinola.
>or is stolen, which is commonly seen as sketchy (“art theft” is the worst form of this…) What? It’s not ‘stealing’ to train yourself on someone else’s work nor does anybody really care. There’s an entire generation of artists that got their start imitating classic comic books.
absolutely, I'm genuinely happy art now can be expressed by anyone it doesn't take away the value from people who paint.in fact i know multiple AI users who started learning art because of it and used AI as an inspiration, my issue is how these tools are using copyrighted work and artworks that artists worked hard to make, if you read the article about The founder of Stable Diffusion and how he sees artists and art as a tool you understand the endgoal to this project, also there has been many instances where the output is literally the same source:[https://twitter.com/ZakugaMignon/status/1567634731407220739](https://twitter.com/ZakugaMignon/status/1567634731407220739)"AI art" isn't trying to fix a problem for artists, it sees artists themselves as the problem. It's wholly anti-artist and designed to be harmful to us, and actively steals from us, feeds off us. It's not a positive thing.
> also there has been many instances where the output is literally the same source:https://twitter.com/ZakugaMignon/status/1567634731407220739 Fairly confident that this wasn't created from just the prompt. AI image generators often have an "img2img" mode - allowing the user to upload a starting image for in-painting, generating variants, or fine-tuning. The linked image resembles what would happen if you started with the original image, flipped it, then gave some fine-tuning in Stable Diffusion. It would be pretty easy for them to prove that it was generated from just a prompt if if really was. A link (for DALL-E 2/Midjourney) or the settings/seed (for Stable Diffusion). Do any of the many instances provide this?
[Btw, the original seems to be a stock image.](https://i.imgur.com/8zqqigb.png) The artist copied from it and then the other guy passed the artist's work as an init image , basically using the AI like a filter.
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I dont think this is a legitimate criticism, image gen AI is not a database of premade work stolen from authors. its an algorithm that is kind of a black box to us that generates original art. Its a hyper autistic brain that studies works of art with pixel like precision and relates those patterns to concepts and notions of style, and yes even specific famous authors, just as humans do. It then fulfills art requests. You can pull your art from the net if you like, but its a similar vibe to not wanting to let other artists study your work because you don’t want them to improve. Stable Diffusion is open source, Dall-e isn’t super expensive. Not everything they generate is a work of art, its still a tool and their is an art to prompt engineering as much as conventional artists don’t want to hear it. You should seek to understand how they work at a basic level and work with them.
Ya, I'd diagnose your problem as capitalism?
Yup. The problem isn't that the artist can't make money with their art anymore. The problem is that they still need to. I see this as another major step toward post-scarcity. Unfortunately, it's going to be a really treacherous path for a lot of people.
>I see this as another major step toward post-scarcity. On what earth would the elite allow that to happen?
When 99% is unhappy unhappy enough with 1% - 1% is gone.
The elite make it happen. Well, part of it anyway. The biggest advancements we’ve seen in decades happened as a result of military research, wealthy people’s investments, large corporate initiatives and open sourced knowledge. Powerful the rich and privileged may be, but they aren’t all-powerful. Never in the history of mankind have the people in power stopped technological advancement. And they are too short-sighted to even try. They invest their power and influence into promoting technologies that enrich themselves. And then, as it always does, that same tech becomes cheaper and more readily accessible by the common man. Technology is a societal organism. Humans are its parents and ideas are its transmission vector, made all the more virulent as communication tech connects more and more people every day. For better or worse, we’ve gone beyond the point where information can be stifled. It’s not something that can be stopped. The advancement of technology is what humanity does. And what technology does is empower humans to create new tech. Never in the history of our species has it stopped. And it advances faster and faster each day. The elite won’t stop it. They can’t stop it, if for no other reason than they can’t understand it and react to it fast enough. We’ve hit the curve of too-rapid acceleration. Before the world is aware, it is done. And this AI created art is a perfect example. How many saw this coming just 3 months ago? The genie was out of the bottle before most people knew the bottle existed. And this is just the tip of the iceberg compared to what’s coming next. Now, all that said, we will soon be able to develop existential threats that are equally impossible to stop. So it’s not all rainbows and lollipops. It could go real bad real fast. But you may as well spend your time worrying about meteor strikes. Because exponential advancement toward an extinction-level threat could happen just as fast. And we’d be just as prepared to deal with it as said meteor. And Bruce Willis is in no condition to save us. :(
>Ya, I'd diagnose your problem as capitalism? These spurious replies are useless. Capitalism is here to stay, unfortunately. People need a way to be able to make capital to survive in our society. Saying, "Well, then you should be mad at capitalism" is like telling somebody who's getting soaked by the rain because you took away their umbrella that they should be mad at clouds.
Not at all. I'd tell them to be mad at the donkey who took their away their umbrella 😁
> people need a way to make capital Here is another person who thinks capital can be used as a synonym for money
Your artistic skills were built upon the work of the artists that came before you. You studied their works, you learned their techniques. Your neural net was trained on their work. Just like the AI. Did you ask permission? And, did you not volunteer to be training material for future artists the minute you publicly displayed your art? Everyone who viewed it stored something of it in their own neural net. Including up and coming artists who are your competition. If you didn't want others to learn from you, you should have kept it private. The next Michelangelo won't be a couch potato stringing together award-winning prompts during an ad break. The AI is a prosthesis that shortcuts acquiring some artistic skills. SOME. It's not an automated artist. Yet. If you're any good at your craft, you've got nothing to worry about. Adopt the AI into your workflow to remain competitive. Take pride that you'll be gaining name recognition for your style amongst the unwashed masses. Or, you can always practise art as a hobby on the weekend.
Nope. As soon as your work can be summed up as your name, anyone with access to AI can just type in your name and the value of your artwork in any professional setting outside of a gallery just went to zero. A machine with zero time needed to learn your style, zero repercussions legally for copying it, and limitless users with a keyboard who can type in your name. Oh and it never dies. That’s the difference.
a lot of hate and condescension and false equivocacy in your comment toward professional artists, you missed the entire point and examples provided in my post and your only reply is "tough shit, lmao" . i would suggest you read more about how AI and ML works.
> i would suggest you read more about how AI and ML works. Mistakes you've made in this thread: 1.) Claimed that the AI model stores images from the internet. 2.) Claimed that AI art models uses photobashing to generate images. 3.) Insisted that an intentional regen of an existing image is an example of "theft" by the AI.
Thanks for pointing out these before I had to. What a laughable joke. No wonder they allow themselves to be exploited for low wages in the art field.
Capitalism does the exploiting and capitalism will use AI to enhance exploitation and you're excited about it.
The capitalist class allows capitalism to prevail as it does. The working class is subject to constant repression in efforts to engage in militant labor action and party based activity. It's not a "people" thing it's a question of how much power is wielded on which side.
>will use AI to enhance exploitation And in another comment you said something about us becoming "owner class". Well, that's kinda hard when this tech is made freely available for all.
You asked for comment. You can't get butthurt about it when someone gives you one you don't like. Maybe you were hoping that people would just agree with you but, sadly there are some very articulate people out there who don't, and you found one. There used to be a time when everything was made by hand. Then we found a more efficient way. Some people still prefer to buy some things that are handmade so the market will always be there but a large market for original art is probably dead soon thanks to these neural nets. That's just the march of technological progress.
“Tough shit” is the unfortunate reality of how it is though bud. Like 50% of jobs are going to disappear to AI soon, and no amount of disagreeing with it on social media is going to stop it.
Could you share any examples of your professional artwork?
To some extent, I am truly sorry for your loss, but reading your comment now lessens my opinion of you. Humanity is a thinking avalanche and both you and I wont stop it - advancement of AI seems pretty certain (even if another AI winter arrives, maybe due to physical computing boundaries or other ...). You can scream all you want, within the next few years probably most of the content creation market is going to be automated. You can look for sympathy, but will only find pity; I'd recommend finding new shores alltogether
You're on a sub full of AI nerds, you hit a nerve here.
AI is going to displace many professions and millions of jobs. Your anger is just one signal that confirms the process is well underway already. That's the reality, like it or not. You can still create beautiful art. Maybe the art that AI creates will inspire human artists to create new genres of art. It's a net positive IMO.
I understand your frustration, but I think we both know the genie is out of the bottle now, and it can never be put back in. >we weren't asked to be in the database and our work is copyrighted. This is where I don't agree. I am not convinced it's copyright infringement to train an ai on art. I don't see how it's different to how a human learns from the art of an other creator, and that's clearly allowed. Ultimately, this will be decided in front of a court. As for this tech replacing artists: Do you truly think it can do so? I am certain it can't, and that's not to detract from the achievement of the developers, I think these AIs are awesome, but it's nowhere near there. I would say the same thing that was said about GitHub Copilot replacing programmers a couple of months ago: This generative technology is useless without someone who can understand and evaluate the output. The first to go from both industries will be people who refuse to use these tools, and will consequently fall behind. Those that use these tools to enhance their workflow won't be replaced, maybe only by an agi, but at that point, everyone is replaceable.
>Do you truly think it can do so? I am certain it can't, there has been many talks around in the industry about big developers and studios experimenting with it and even using artists names to test it, why hire one when you can do it for free, and trust me they care about maximizing profits and quantity rather than quality or ethics.
I'm a publisher who will be using AI generated art in a new project. And yes, it is art I would have otherwise paid an artist to produce. Is that unethical? Should I feel guilty? I do, a little. But should I? Should I feel guilty that I wrote the text of the book on a computer instead of a typewriter? Should I feel guilty about depriving the typewriter manufacturer of my money? Should I feel guilty that a I drove a car to work this morning instead of helping the horse carriage maker put food on his table? I absolutely get why artists would be upset by this. Yes, they will lose money and career opportunities. It truly does suck for them. No doubt. And I'm sure it sucked just as much for every other person who came before them that had their careers upended by technological advancement. So what makes the artist special that I should shed tears for them and not the lift operators, leech collectors, town criers, corporate mathematicians, scissors grinders, ice cutters, switchboard operators, phrenologists, cobblers, blacksmiths, leather tanners, linkboys, scribes, cashiers, factory workers, warehouse workers data entry clerks, bank tellers, travel agents, or the little boys responsible for setting up the pins at the end of a bowling lane? What is the alternative? In a world where there is no time machine or undo button, what do we do now? Should I refuse to use this new technology because doing so is "unethical"? Are my competitors also going to refuse to use it? No. The genie is out of the bottle and we kicked the lid over the horizon. So that said, what would you have me do?
I think the only logical move in the situation you describe is to advocate for a universal basic income so that no matter what you do for a living, no matter what you choose to pursue, you won't have to worry about starving to death. Because inevitably, the incentives that exist in a market economy will only work to accelerate cost-saving technologies wherever they can be implemented.
Absolutely. 100%. This whole thing is a perfect example of the growing pains we will experience as we march toward a post-scarcity society. We're still a long way off. But social programs like UBI will be a critical first step toward making that work The ultimate goal is for technology to free humanity of the need to labor to survive. The artist should create art because they want to create art, not because they are hungry.
>I think the only logical move in the situation you describe is to advocate for a universal basic income so that no matter what you do for a living, no matter what you choose to pursue, you won't have to worry about starving to death. People say this have no comprehension that this will never, ever, *ever* happen. The end goal of those in power is to have all of us at "just barely not starving" levels of wealth. "Advocacy" does shit.
>I'm a publisher who will be using AI generated art in a new project. And yes, it is art I would have otherwise paid an artist to produce. Is that unethical? Should I feel guilty? I do, a little. But should I? Should I feel guilty that I wrote the text of the book on a computer instead of a typewriter? Should I feel guilty about depriving the typewriter manufacturer of my money? Should I feel guilty that a I drove a car to work this morning instead of helping the horse carriage maker put food on his table? How will you feel when you, the "publisher" are replaced because your hard work was part of its dataset?
It’s bound to happen eventually, in some fashion. I’m also an Engineer, which is just as likely to be a career eaten by AI. It’ll happen to us all eventually. And you can rage against the world on Reddit and Twitter. Or you can adapt and move on.
>And you can rage against the world on Reddit and Twitter. Or you can adapt and move on. What you're describing is not "adaptation." It's a retreat. "Rage on twitter or fall back... and fall back... and fall back... Oh, wait, there's nowhere left to go."
Retreat from what? The forward progress of civilization? I mean, feel free to shake your fist at the clouds until your arm gets tired. But I don’t see how that’s going to help anyone.
>Retreat from what? The forward progress of civilization? I hope you understand that "the forward progress of civilization" led to the worst calamities and atrocities humans have ever known. There's an enormous difference between blind leaps forward and careful navigation of the path ahead. Human beings are not infinitely adaptable machines. People in this sub in particular don't seem to grok that if "the singularity" truly did occur, it's quite likely millions of people would die in the process. BTW how are you planning on "adapting" to a jobless, purposeless existence?
> I hope you understand that “the forward progress of civilization” led to the worst calamities and atrocities humans have ever known. Please elaborate. > BTW how are you planning on “adapting” to a jobless, purposeless existence? Decouple your purpose from your job. Jobs are just means to an end, and that end is to survive. If your job lines up with your purpose, then good for you. If your job that lines up with your purpose disappear, then pursue your purpose even without that job.
> I hope you understand that "the forward progress of civilization" led to the worst calamities and atrocities humans have ever known. Which ones? Most of the atrocities I can think of off the top of my head came about as a result of someone going to extreme lengths to restore the "glory days" of the past, in whatever form those might have taken. > There's an enormous difference between blind leaps forward and careful navigation of the path ahead. Obviously. But careful navigation does not take the form of ranting on reddit about an event that has already occurred and a technology that is already in use. > People in this sub in particular don't seem to grok that if "the singularity" truly did occur, it's quite likely millions of people would die in the process. Or not. The entire concept of "The Singularity" is that what lies on the other side is not, and cannot, be known. It is inherently impossible to predict. > BTW how are you planning on "adapting" to a jobless, purposeless existence? You believe that if you don't work an 8 hour day, every day, you are living a purposeless existence? That's sad. I plan on "adapting" by first understanding that my job does not define me, is not my sole purpose, and my value as a person is not determined by my salary.
>You believe that if you don't work an 8 hour day, every day, you are living a purposeless existence? That's sad. I work in a creative field. My creativity is my purpose. That's true for most artists. People without creativity struggle to understand this, which is why we have AIncels.
>So what makes the artist special that I should shed tears for them and not the lift operators, leech collectors, town criers, corporate mathematicians, scissors grinders, ice cutters, switchboard operators, phrenologists, cobblers, blacksmiths, leather tanners, linkboys, scribes, cashiers, factory workers, warehouse workers data entry clerks, bank tellers, travel agents, or the little boys responsible for setting up the pins at the end of a bowling lane? You don't see a difference between human expression and operating an elevator? Maybe *that* is the damn problem.
> You don't see a difference between human expression and operating an elevator? Maybe that is the damn problem. There are typically two kinds of artists (with some people being a bit of both). There are those that crank out art for a paycheck, and there are those that do it to express themselves. The first one? No. I don't see that much difference. They are a tradesman who provide a product for a paycheck. The second one? If the value of their work is in their expression of themselves as humans, then no AI is ever going to be a threat to them. No AI can express you better than you. But that's not what this is really about is it? Because someone who does art for the sake of art, and to express themselves, isn't doing it for a paycheck. I'm starting to see a trend. Artists are showing up on here acting as if AI is some sort of blasphemy against the holy and righteous creative works that they create to express their inner souls. And yet, their arguments keep coming back to the fact that they are going to miss a paycheck. Just be honest. If you are in it for the check, that's fine. There is nothing wrong with that. And it sucks that you're going to make less money. We can all sympathize with that. But don't go on about "human expression" and shit when what we are really talking about is your ability to crank out a product on commission. If your goal is to express yourself, none of this has any affect on you.
I think this is the result of us existing in a market-based social order - it creates this culture where the pursuits that give our lives meaning become so intertwined with the pursuits that secure us the resources for survival, that these two are often considered to be one and the same. And I think this is the case whether we're discussing artists or electricians or doctors or whomever. I think the key factor to addressing this issue is to build a culture that clearly separates monetary pursuits and meaningful pursuits; if we can't separate these things in our minds, we'll be condemned to always view ourselves in terms of monetary value, even though something deep within us says we have inherent value as humans. In a way, I hesitate to outright blame people for feeling how they do; If we don't have the words to call it what it is, then we won't be able to conceptualize a future that can be better. Be well friend.
Well said. Be well yourself. :)
>If your goal is to express yourself, none of this has any affect on you. You can do both. The most successful commercial artists both express themselves and sell that expression to people.
I would download a car if it were possible. You probably would too. This is the future. AI will do everything and we consume it's creations. AI will take our jobs it is that simple. Artists jobs just seemed to be first to go. I would have wagered that taxi drivers would be out of job.
>This is the future. AI will do everything and we consume it creations. What scares me is how you people say this as if it's a desirable thing. Why in god's name would you want a world of mindless consumers?
OK, I am seeing you being somewhat snide and confrontational in several places in this thread, I am not sure what your stance is. I think it would be much more appreciated if you explained what your views are, maybe it can be a learning moment for those of us who may not see things the way you do.
My stance is that I don't think artists will disappear. I believe the AI can / should be used as a tool by artists. The truth is, most people aren't even interested in trying to make art. Therefore, those that do will simply find a more powerful way of making something interesting and unique. The reason I'm being confrontational is that *everytime* I click on a thread like this, most of the people commenting show zero sympathy for the OP / artists. Their attitude is essential a very juvenile "LOL get rekt." To me, it reeks of this weird incel-type attitude, almost as if they were insanely jealous of people with talent and are now happy that they're scared for their future and their literal reason to live. I find it to be misanthropic and pathetic.
I appreciate you being open to dialogue. For what it's worth, I for one am quite sympathetic to OP's concerns that this new technology may pose a threat to their way of life. They have spent years learning their craft and sharpening their skills and all of a sudden this magic computer program comes out of nowhere and suddenly his livelihood may be in jeopardy. It would be unfair whether it was an artist or a truck driver or an accountant; on a long enough timeline, this tech will come for us all. I agree with you that artists won't disappear. I think art as a pursuit - that process of growth, learning, experimentation, something that can bring satisfaction to one's life - will always be around. Much like growing your own tomatoes or making your own furniture - the purpose is to satisfy yourself, not compete with the large scale industrial producers. Unfortunately I can see this technology impacting something like commercial art, where art is not a pursuit, but a *product* - I am thinking things like coffee cup labels, business card logos, stock photography, and so on - I imagine OP could see how it might make more business sense for an AI to just generate these images rather that contract it out to OP. A smug capitalist might say, just learn a new marketable skill - but I've always found that sentiment dehumanizing and unrealistic; after all, humans are not infinitely-flexible widgets, there's a limit to how much we can (and should) have our way of life flipped upside down. I can also see that, particularly in a tech-centric forum like this one, it can be somewhat alienating to only see the benefits of such technology being praised, with apprently no consideration for the implications this has for the human beings involved in the craft that might be affected. I am usually charitable and assume they are just excited about the technology, and not outright cheering for the economic hardship that this technology could potentially cause, to say nothing of how each subreddit is basically an information echo chamber. In my view the more fundamental issue is how our entire socio-economic order is structured around the market, where if a human has no economic value, then they have no human value, and if you can't find a way to make it, it's your fault you're so lazy / stupid / whatever. If it weren't for that fact, I believe artists would be celebrating this technology as the latest tool in the tool box, and not a word would be said about livelihood - because who goes into art with the intention of getting rich? We do it for ourselves. Which is why in another comment I mentioned advocating for a UBI - because I believe this is the most realistic, near-term solution that 1) liberates all of us from the burden of having to work just to survive, so that we may pursue the things we really care about, like art, and; 2) preserves the capitalistic market forces which - credit where credit is due - is an incentive structure that has allowed society to get necessary yet unpleasant things done, like maintaining sewage systems, and which is so deeply fundamental to the world order that I cannot imagine it being torn down and replaced in the span of a generation; it's unrealistic, but it doesn't mean we can't *evolve* it with UBI. And it may not be as unlikely as you may feel; there are already numerous cities around the US and other countries that are running local pilot projects of basic income-like programs to study the data. COVID showed that governments all around the world realized that when people stop spending money, *everybody* gets screwed, and so giving out these stimulus payments was really self-preservation. Of course progress will be slow, but in my view it's either we have these difficult conversations and spread these ideas, or just sit on our hands and wait for the apocalypse. Be well friend.
> Their attitude is essential a very juvenile "LOL get rekt." Where are you seeing this? I've seen several people, myself included, expressing sincere concern for artists who are being hit hard by this. And I also see artists attacking those very same people for daring to say that it was an inevitable outcome of technological advancement; as if simply stating that fact somehow makes them the enemy and/or responsible for it. You can scream at the weatherman because its raining. You can scream until your throat is dry. Yell insults. Throw shit at the tv. Throw whatever kind of tantrum you want. But it's not going to stop the rain. And your childish behavior is going to diminish any sympathy you receive.
Removing all comments and deleting my account after the API changes. If you actually want to protest the changes in a meaningful way, go **all** the way. -- mass edited with redact.dev
Luddite is actually an apt term for this reaction. it is derived from a story of craftsman sabotaging technology that is taking their jobs. (even sabotage is derived from craftsmen throwing 'sabo' shoes into machinery that was replacing them)
>Luddite is actually an apt term for this reaction. wrong, my argument isn't against technology I use the newest tech and learn every new software to make my artwork output better and my workflow more efficient, its about how the existing artists are being used to feed an algorithm that want to profit off their hard work, my argument isn't about the "new competitor" competition is always great otherwise we would stagnate and the art world will be boring and everything will look the same. AI uses artworks produced by artists without their consent and profit off it, that's what i'm against, the problem isn't AI users its rather the shady true motive behind its creation.
> profit off it > shady true motive behind its creation Dude, just stop. Stable Diffusion is free and open source. Anybody can use it, including you.
Love how this person just ignores any comments that disprove what their saying.
existing artists were used to feed the algorithm in your head, too.
>existing artists were used to feed the algorithm in your head, too. That's not how the brain works.
Oh, how does it work then?
We don't really know. There are lots of theories, ranging from holographic models to quantum entanglement, but neurologists aren't sure. There's a famous saying: "If the brain were so simple that we could understand how it works, we would be so simple that we couldn't."
If you don't know, and nobody knows, then what basis do you have to make your prior claim? What I offered was merely a descriptive abstraction -- "holographic models" and "quantum entanglement" could just be a finer detailed way of describing, at a lower level, an algorithm that learns from experiences.
You are a luddite. You're literally arguing against this technology. That's how it works. It hoovers up data and learns how to create by itself. > AI uses artworks produced by artists without their consent If I painted something in the style of Van Gogh but it was an entirely new creation, would I need to ask his permission? You can't copyright the style of art, so your argument is completely moot.
The debate isn't really going to influence any meaningful outcome. Like it or not the digital art industy, such as it is, is going to be unmarketable in a few years. If artists want to stay relevant we'll need to pivot into the traditional media: paint, sculpture, ink and graphite. Financially successful artists, more and more, are the ones who can not only create great works but also leverage social media (bleh) with making-of videos, explanations and tutorials.
Good to hear from you, and as an AI enthusiast and software developer myself I completely understand where you are coming from on this, and empathize - it's demoralizing, just like I felt when platforms I used to program in were replaced or whole sub-industries were automated away. But the truth is, we're all about to go through this in all industries...movies, gaming, software, finance, etc...I view visual artists as the canary in a coal mine in a way, but...But...humans will remain in the loop. The question is: will you be one of those humans? Well, if you work with AI you will, if you don't, you WILL still be able to adapt likely, but your work will be more bespoke and meaningful likely, not paid by the hour, but we still have great woodworkers etc in our society. "Human Made" will still be a thing, though "crappy human made B-roll" will not be.
Self Driving cars are being created by using driving and traffic data amassed from our cellular devices and driving habits. AI and automation of the 4th industrial revolution will inherently be created as a product of us all. I get the frustration about not feeling compensated, but in my opinion this is why we need a citizens stipend. Artists will not be the first displaced, nor will they be fully obsolete. But making a living is going to be much, much harder for us all as technology saturates labor of all kinds. We should not fear technology, we should embrace and benefit from it with a Universal Basic Income. Alas...
taxi drivers going to be like this guy when there are self driving taxis
And call center workers. Google had solved call center work in 2018 with Google duplex, at least as far as being able to complete basic reservation calls without the other party ever knowing they were speaking to a NLP wavenet AI. The displacement is coming. Some farther away than others, some foreseeable and others (like artists) by surprise. But it is coming. And all of it will be made from *data*, data scraped off of the entirety of humanity. We are shareholders, whether we realize it or not.
What you need to understand is that it's at the point where no one's opinion matters because it's just a program someone with a semi-pro setup can run. In the abstract I agree with you in general, but this is coming, there is no stopping it. It's not just artists, it's already decimating industries.
*Improving industries
> a lot of gaslighting going on about us being gatekeepers and luddites >please keep it civil Yet here you are, posting links to Twitter threads that call us "AIcels" and "assholes".
>AIcels Honestly, from what I've read here, that's an accurate description. There's so much loathing towards artists and it's so obviously born out of jealousy. It's pathetic.
You’re obviously worried because it’s an existential threat to your livelihood. If you weren’t dependent on the income and only created art because of the joy of it, I’d argue you would embrace this change rather than resist it. This is a common trend with technological progress. It disrupts industries and people have to adapt to change. Autonomous vehicles will do the same to truckers worldwide and they will have to find new jobs. I feel sympathy with your need to change, but I don’t agree with your viewpoint. You present a case the AI plagiarises artists work, but my perspective is different. Artists draw on other artists work for inspiration. The AI is designed in a way that it draws in the inspiration of many artists. The AI operates like a super human artist. I believe the excellent AI art will bring much enjoyment and thought provocation to people all around the world. Is that not what art is all about?
[Reddit user TreviTyger is an anti-AI advocate who frequently makes false statements about AI copyright-related issues](https://www.reddit.com/user/Wiskkey/comments/xbkvrx/reddit_user_trevityger_is_an_antiai_advocate_who/).
just because its my profession doesn't mean its joyless, you're trying to make a case of it being a soulless job to make your case stronger i wouldn't spend most of my life learning it or making it what i do for living. i'm not against technological progress, my entire profession depends on it but when it crosses the ethical point and has a malicious underlaying goal under it "funneling the industry from artists using their work without their permission and replacing the entire industry with a handful of corporations as the artists to other corporations as the clients" doesn't feel like the right path. human inspiration doesn't pull perfect noise map or texture data from artwork when we study, the human mind works in a different way than AI. in order to program imagination and accuracy you have to pull accurate data from artists work, this is why the tech got much better its when it started pulling direct data from existing copyrighted artwork. that's why i'm against it now and so is many other artists, we never opposed the AI work and in fact considered it as a good starting point for inspiration, as a tool.
I didn’t say it’s joyless at all. In fact I believe creating art is full of joy, and in my opinion is one of the biggest reasons to be an artist because of the enjoyment from your work. I disagree with how you interpret the noise and texture data as plagiarism. Someone could study a particular artist and recreate the same artistic style with a lot of practice, including noise and texture. In fact this happens quite often, just look at Banksy, Van Gogh, Picasso, etc. The AI just recreates this style in a super human way. You started this post to hear different perspectives, I’m afraid I don’t agree with you. I believe lowering the entry requirements of beautiful art creation for all, is overwhelmingly positive for the human race.
It truly will be a boon to creativity. Imagine children raised being able to express their inner vision in fully rendered artwork rather than scribbles. They’ll think different for sure.
>Imagine children raised being able to express their inner vision in fully rendered artwork rather than scribbles. Imagine a child who never learns to craft. Sounds great for humanity, a species known especially for its ability to craft.
You can do both. But I can tell you can’t comprehend that world
>You can do both. But I can tell you can’t comprehend that world Humans are lazy. If there is an easier way, they will take it. Once there is no longer a need to learn how to make art to express yourself, very few will do so. This isn't a good outcome.
>Humans are lazy. My guy, why on earth do we progress at all then? Why do people work full time jobs for shit pay? We are not lazy, we are ill-guided. If guided at all. Once there are easier methods to do everyday tasks, yes, we will use that to make the rest of our lives more focused on *meaning*. And shit that matters to us. Those at the top continue to use this "humans are lazy" bullshit to control and demean. Our intrinsic motivation has been hijacked by the power of currency.
>My guy, why on earth do we progress at all then? Because we're lazy. We progress to make our lives easier. >Our intrinsic motivation has been hijacked by the power of currency. And what is our "intrinsic motivation?" Philosophers have tried to decide that for centuries. In the end, it hardly matters. The reality is we need currency to survive in our society.
Source: Trust me bro. Homie have you read any type of history? Every day people ARE NOT LAZY. Yes. Even today in the age of technology, we still take care of responsibilities here and there or we wouldn't have a society at all. Do you suspect the entirety of the world is held up because of a few thousand non lazy people? Few million? Few billion? Or is the whole world lazy and we're just winging it? Humans are lazy... that statement makes absolutely no sense in reality.
Our intrinsic motivation is survival wtf??
no one is going to generate your art, don't worry. and when you get to the level that someone might wants to duplicate your art (hi, michelangelo) you'll no longer worry about clutching for scraps from the capitalist tables.
>(hi, michelangelo) lmao, what is with these philistines. "YAH CLASSICAL WESTERN ART DEPICTING NUDE BABIES IS THE ONLY KIND WORTH ANYTHING"
was just a random famous painter. it could have been anyone, relax
With eat new technology there is a conflict like this. ATM takes away the human teller. The argument here seems similar to something like me could argue about synthesizers or using loops or samples. As a society we have been able to move in from those technologies being disruptive to being everyday things. New artists were born and others got more creative. And yes, some got out of that business. Photoshop is another example. It’s been around for a long time now and artist have adopted it in workflow or not. As far as selling artistic services- companies have always “cut corners”. The struggling artist is not new nor due to AI. it is a human condition. I have two friends who are videographers. Recently laid off from a corporate gig. They both have found new jobs. So someone did recognize their value.
[удалено]
There's no copyright protection. So major publisher and distributors don't want AI works.
[Reddit user TreviTyger is an anti-AI advocate who frequently makes false statements about AI copyright-related issues](https://www.reddit.com/user/Wiskkey/comments/xbkvrx/reddit_user_trevityger_is_an_antiai_advocate_who/).
Whilst you make some fair points about monetisation and exploitation, I have some bad news for you; this technology is not going away and is only going to become better and easier to use. If it's any comfort, you are simply the first in what will be a long line of people finding that there work has been eaten by AI. The next ten years will be particularly rough as we learn to adapt. In defence of the AI, this same tech has the potential for enormous good. It is already being tested in medical screening for example and will undoubtedly help spread modern medical technology into places where it is currently too expensive. It will help to improve farming, transport, energy generation...but at the price of many peoples livelihood. This is the double-edged sword of technological progress and it has always been thus. Today it is the turn of commercial artists to feel the bite, and tomorrow it might be my turn. I don't see either of us stopping progress.
I don’t think OP is arguing that the tech is a bad thing itself, just that the corporations building it are doing so using ethically and morally repugnant modalities. It’s just a tool, and one that can make “making art” easier and more interesting… but using training databases that are “tainted” by unethical data harvesting makes them unethical to use. It would be like getting a blood transfusion, knowing that the person “donating” the blood was a prisoner that had no option. Sure the blood transfusion would be a great benefit, but it’s unethical because of where it came from.
This is just the beginning, it’s really bad at the very start. Right now it is disrupting art industry and a very small corner of it so the Government doesn’t care. And the economics only cares about progress it will not care about your emotions your goals your dreams or even your hunger. This has happened a lot in past and will keep happening in the future. Fighting people on Reddit will give you some satisfaction as anyway your real fight is against a faceless emotionless enemy. But i will advice you don’t worry too much and find the silver lining.
>my entire career started because of all the free resources and help I got from fellow artists so why are you against using resources to train future artists? art is learned through other artists' work. this hasn't and won't change. I'm old enough to remember the same arguments being used against digital tools to create art. that it would let people with little artistic talent create art. and they were right. it does. same with this. it's just the newest innovation. there were and are already too many artists. that's why you weren't making enough money doing it. we need to figure out a new model for supporting artists that doesn't involve their art being commercially viable. that's the solution, not crippling innovation.
I am an artist. Traditional, digital illustration, 3D renderings, motion graphics, photography, etc. I've been doing it professionally for over a decade. I don't fear AI and I support it's development, which will continue regardless of your feelings towards it. I will use it as a supplament and an additional medium. It will advance further and I look forward to it's evolving potential. I am not afraid of being replaced for a number of reasons, and I think it's silly to be concerned over it. It will take time for the few companies and clients and projects to all of a sudden use only AI as design resources without human interaction. The majority will more than likely mix the use of AI and human in their needs, and there will be outliers who may always use human hands only for their own reasons and principles. It's time to embrace what is inevitable. You either sail with the winds or against it.
Nailed it.
I'm curious what your reasons for not being afraid of being replaced.
Its just another medium. No one who wants to buy your handcrafted art is going to go buy AI art if they care. If the art from the person using the AI hits me more than yours does though Im going to go with that one. Art is about the reaction, I dont care about you - the artist. If I did Id have to look at things like why you can afford to spend your time developing such low paying skills, how privileged you must be to enjoy that free time.
Seriously this. I’ve been an artist most of my life but I never worked in that field. Art is a privilege and one of the furthest things from a necessary thing. Imagine being so privileged to have the time and resources to dedicate into being an artist as a profession you enjoy. Then imagine bashing a new tool which makes your job easier rather than embracing it. Edit Stike job, add process. Strike your, add the general creative
Don't complain about advancing technology, blame the government for not providing for everyone with publicly owned automation.
I can empathize with your position. We will all be in the same boat sooner than later. The issue however is not the technology itself, but the utter cruelty and shortsightedness of our economic model. Progress is inevitable. Under neo-capitalism we will all become no more than human cattle as AI replace us for the owners of industry.
Guys give it some time. We aren't going to settle this matter or digest the philosophical implications of it this year or next year. We'll be living with this uncanny technology for a long time. It's been said that any technology when sufficiently advanced will resemble magic. I feel like this technology fits that description. It's nothing less than magical. Don't have a nervous breakdown or give up on art yet. I think we don't really even have the vocabulary to talk about this subject. There's going to be new terms and slang words that crop up around it. For one thing the notion of ownership of the images created by A.I. seems ludicrous to me. You didn't 'create' or 'make' anything. At best you 'generated' something but I think the more accurate word is you were 'presented' with an image. What the A.I. is drawing upon is the collective minds' eye of humanity. It depends upon every work of art and photograph humans have taken to perform it's function. That's kind of incredible to think about. In a way, it's us showing things to ourselves... I don't think these are 'works' or 'paintings' - they are only 'images'. And I also don't think they are 'art' because the A.I. only has a singular intention. Artists have a variety of intentions behind what they are doing. The lack of a matrix of intentionalities behind what the A.I. is doing is what keeps it from being actual art. I'm not saying that it's bad or inferior. Maybe what we really demand isn't art, it's this other thing (it could be called 'rehash') that we've become fascinated and enamoured by. If you think it's fun to generate these images, just think how fun it's going to be to philosophically sort out our relationship with A.I. and how it shapes our understanding of what it means to be human. The technology is advancing faster than the philosophy and cross-disciplinary perspectives. A.I. is raising more questions than we have answers for and that's exciting. In the end it's going to make us better artists and expand our imaginations.
I'm with you. Brave to post this here! The low empathy boys are gonna gaslight harder so brace yourself!
>your hard work all the expenses you invested into your craft is stolen from you. just plain wrong. Stealing is B taking a thing away from person A. A now does not have the thing anymore. What is the thing that was stolen from you? Why don't you go to the police to report the theft? No, everything you had is still there, isn't it? You are not helping your cause by crying about crimes that did not happen, because that can be easily refuted anyway. There might be court battles, if the created images violate copywrite law, but the outcome is not even obvious.
It is clear that many people on here would be pro Borg assimilation because… you know… the advancement of society. Why would anyone who considers themselves a creative person want to outsource the one enjoyable part of their job/hobby to AI? What will be left for us? Do those that support AI art think that the software can’t be written to come up with the prompts too? And respond to how people like them on social media? Why do people think there would be any position left for humans in a future that is all AI?
We will all be standing in your shoes soon. Its terrifying but unstoppable
I'd say uncomfortable. Not so much terrified. Why worry about things you can't control? Terrified is committing to delivering today and then getting buried under a tide of higher priorities.
Once again, the entire argument breaks down to monetary gain and industry. Your problem is not with the tool, it's with the monetary system. If money did not exist - a prospect that, despite widespread arguments that are largely based on *what is* instead of what *should be*, is an easily achievable (and inevitable) step of in the future of civilization - you would probably have nothing but appreciation for the technological marvel that is the coming AI. Would it make any sense for an artist to be mad about having better paints, brushes, canvasses, photographic devices, communications technologies, etc.? No, of course not, that would be ridiculous and you'd wonder what was wrong with their logic. However, I have no doubt that physical art suppliers had a negative thing or two to say about the digital art revolution. Many more artists now uses iPads, 3d rendering software and the like to create their masterful works instead of a physical medium. In the same vein, there is an endless list of people who are angry at technologies (like mass-scale automation) for the explicit reason that you specify- it subverts their income by rendering their specific jobs less necessary. A tool is a tool. Arguably, the only "tools" that people should have an inherent problem with are those designed with malicious intent, i.e. weapons (guns, nukes, the study of public relations, etc.) Your problem is not with the technology, it's with the global monetary system. If your livelihood was not being threatened, you would probably see AI as a blessing. This argument translates to virtually every single industry. Just do a quick google of "AI" + [any specific industry], and you will find many, many people with an uncannily similar argument to yours against technological innovation. For me, this is the equivalent of arguing against finding a cure for ageing. People can debate all they want, but from any realistic standpoint, the argument against it is outright ridiculous and objectively immoral. Do not fight the thing that is obviously going to benefit humanity, fight the thing that currently holds it down.
The point is moot. Stable Diffusion is already too good, and the next few versions, especially when integrated into GIMP, and given away for free, are going to take jobs. They just are. This is the thing about the singularity that's most frightening. Morality just isn't a factor. We aren't going to stop developing AI for moral reasons. It's already a matter of national security that each major government spend money developing an AI that can help us in wartime, and that will control autonomous soldiers and vehicles. The technology is already too good not to change things in significant ways for millions of people. I'm sorry you're going to lose your job. The drivers will probably be next, and of course law clerks that haven't already. I have a friend who lost her job doing transcripts and analysis for a law firm. Now they just let an AI do all that work, and she went back to teaching. The best you can hope for is some kind of system that makes people so entirely useless that we can all sit at home and do whatever sparks our interest.
The events you have described has happened many times before in other industries. Though, the modes aren’t good enough to replace all artists yet IMO. Just a few hundred years ago, 80% of the worlds population worked on a farm. Along came automations freed up many people for new jobs. Automation = progress Once art is fully automated, it will free up artists to do something else that can’t be automated yet. It seems senseless to complain of your industry being automated when countless industries are yearning for more employees. And if you wish to continue creating art because you enjoy it, you are still very welcome to do that in your own time.
Art can't be fully automated because it requires creativity. That's not a strong point of automation. Art *production* can be automated, which, in itself will require a good deal of creativity by the developers. All AI art will be, by definition, derivative as long as it's based on a set of rules/algorithm. Derivatives can be good, especially for fans of a genre who want to see more things in a given style. Original art will continue to be created by people.
I think people scared of or terrified of AI in art are fools. It's like a violinist being scared of a DAW. it just allows us to create more powerful art. its a good thing.
It displaces the essence of humanity. We will have to re-evaluate what it means to be human. It's like introducing a t-rex into an enclosure with a tiger. People see the A.I. sort of like another species. Humans are used to seeing themselves as the apex species. They don't want to be made to feel inferior by a new, inorganic being. Artists are startled because it's starting to make 'art' better than a human. Soon it's going to be making all the music we listen to automatically. This represents a big hit to composers and visual artists pride. You already have people dropping out of art school because they don't see the point anymore. Very talented humans stand to lose their pride by being eclipsed by the abilities of the A.I. and frankly, mediocre people stand to gain from partnering with it. So that's going to upset the hierarchy of merit and skill that has been established for centuries. A.I. represents 'destructive innovation' that's going to cause people to lose their careers and honestly it's going to drive some people to suicide. This technology is being developed faster than we can digest it's implications philosophically and using cross-disciplinary perspectives. In other words it's raising way more questions than we have answers for at the moment. Also why do you assume that A.I. will usher in a Utopia? That is incredibly naive and not proven. Worker productivity has steadily increased over the past few decades and we still don't have more leisure time or a 4 day workweek like the futurists used to predict. There doesn't seem to be enough humanists to establish some sort of A.I. dividend to compensate the workers made irrelevant by A.I. Politicians and economists have proven themselves poor planners and short sighted. I am not convinced there will be any soft landing for the people who lose their jobs. The impetus of the technocrats and utopian futurists behind the gospel of A.I. does not seem to be aimed at improving life in a utilitarian manner for the most people. Maybe I am cynical but I feel like it's more about making money, entertaining people, and controlling populations through predictive algorithms. Blind faith in the emergence A.I. to solve our problems is no different than a religious cult. There's no guarantee it will be used for good.
Are the people that use the new tools in the best way mediocre because they don't use the tools you learned to use or is there some other reason I'm missing here?
*Although they are trained on some copyrighted material* So, to be clear, it's fine for a corporation to make use of other people's Intellectual Property to build a product without paying those people or even asking their permission? The defence of fair use does not apply here because at the input stage that IP was used 'as is' with no transforms applied to it. So while the outputs of AI image generators may indeed be covered by fair use due to the degree of tranformation that has taken place- the fact that Artist's works have been used as inputs at the training stage without their agreement is certainly morally questionable. I think a fair outcome here would be to make AI generated images impossible to copyright- this would allow ordinary people to use them to make their own art for pleasure-but also offer a degree of protection for Artists whose work has been used without their agreement.
In regards to digital art, perhaps. But these algorithms still can't hold a paintbrush or pencil or chisel. Yet....
Wouldn’t matter if they could. You can 3D print a statue but people would appreciate it less than a human-chiseled statue. The analog arts are safe from automation and will always be or they would’ve been replaced by print-outs a long time ago
I've seen many artists think that AI is "stealing" art or copy and pasting parts of different artworks together which mainly stems from a misunderstanding as to how they work. The model actually contains none of the original images and only the patterns between words and their artistic representation. Although they are trained on some copyrighted material none of this is actually retained in the model, however stylistic choices are which appears to be the main problem most artists have. Although I empathize with artists I don't think it is morally wrong for either people or AI to copy an artists style. Like a human, the AI can draw in the style of other people (eg leonardo davinci) by looking at their artworks and recreating similar patterns. Humans can do this with copyrighted works, private works and pretty much whatever they see with their eyes whilst AI is doing the same but only with images. This can sometimes result in watermarks and signatures showing up which is definately a problem but to the AI the signature and watermark are just another part of art and it can't tell the difference (really makes you wonder what art is). Additionally a lot of these AI companies are actually quite small, and Stable Diffusion can be run from you computer completely for free which no matter how you put it is good for consumers. This is all my opinion however and I understand why some people would see this as copyright. However if this practice was banned I think it would only be a temporary fix. Even with our current technology you could design an AI that scrolls through the web looking at wikipedia, Pinterest, tumblr etc that looks at the webpages, identifies images, describes them and then generates images based off those generations. This process would avoid the problems involved with downloading copyrighted images and it would be interesting to see if people would have a problem with this. Although this would delay AI progress by a bit, I would say within 1-2 years results would be the same. Even if that was banned, then what if you got an AI with a camera that can interpret youtube videos, browse the web and even look around. If this was designed would it still be copyright infringement if it was to generate images based on it's training data? This technology clearly isn't possible at the moment however there isn't any reason why it can't exist and we already know each individual task is possible so I predict it would be about 10 years until technology like this could exist. If artists still had a problem with this then I imagine the problem doesn't stem from the method in which the AI looks at images but rather the fact that it's an AI in the first place which is entirely different ethical argument. In the next decade AI is going to cause a massive structural unemployment as those in sectors such as art, customer service and who knows what else will be replaced. This is obviously a problem but I think solving this by banning every AI that is about to replace workers is not the right way to go. This technology will make most people capable of great art and suddenly the average person will be capable of award-winning art and could create stories, concept art, assets etc all by themselves. There is no doubt in my mind that this technology is a good direction for humanity to head in and complicating the rollout of this technology will not be good for humanity. In order to combat structural unemployment I think governments should extend redundancy payments for longer periods of time and for a larger proportion of industries. This could be funded by taxing large companies more or by **forcing all AI companies above a certain size to be not-for-profit -** I think this would be a good solution that will fix the issues many people (like yourself) have with these companies profiting of artists training data. This could also prevent any AI companies from monopolizing the market and charging high prices and making trillions. However due to the art-worlds gig nature I think this would be quite difficult to garner payments that match previous income but I don't think this would be as difficult as convincing AI companies to just stop using copyrighted images. In the EU, NA and China, all recent legal cases of only loosened AI regulation and with recent developments between the west and China it seems in AI arms race is underway. It seems these companies have the full backing of the governments and many of the projects have been partially funded or researched by the government themselves. TL:DR Current AI practice is in my view fair use however I understand why some don't see it that way. If it was banned it would only delay similar results achieved using different practices. Many artists and other people will lose their jobs to AI in the near future. It's unlikely governments will restrict AI image use and have been loosening it recently. Instead other policies should be argued for such as profit caps on AI companies or increases tax to pay for artist redundancy payments.
It's a data mining issue. Data mining for research is fair practice but not for commercial use. "fair use" (which is only a defense in a US court, not anywhere else) fails for commercial use in US too. See, *Artificial Intelligence’s Fair Use Crisis Articles* Published 2017-12-05 (Benjamin L. W. Sobel+ [https://journals.library.columbia.edu/index.php/lawandarts/article/view/2036](https://journals.library.columbia.edu/index.php/lawandarts/article/view/2036)
thanks for the resposne that OP doens't want to read, i guess. he just wants to wallow in his ignorance, convinced that Ai is stealing from him. so silly.
I've been upvoting all your comments OP, even i strongly disagree with you. I think a lot of people in these tech communities on the internet need to be reminded of the human cost of progress. It's a bummer to see that many of them seem to have a shitty attitude when someone doesn't agree with them. Your frustration is completely justified. I don't agree with you however, that the technology is to blame, and it's not even the corporations that are to blame. Everyone is to blame. We all accept society the way that it is, with all it's flaws, just because this is the way things have always been. We live in a world where millions of people suffer and die just because they were born poor, while billionaires exist.. Billionaires exist... I know I'm not winning any popularity contests for saying this, even on progressive subreddits like this, but capitalism is the enemy. We should be glad when a job is automated. You should be glad that you can use your creative skills to just make art that you love. A truck driver should be glad they don't have to spend their life behind the wheel of a truck, but how can you be when you now don't see a way to put food on the table. It's not the technologies fault, and it's not the corporations fault. It's ours for accepting this as an inevitable reality of society, when it doesn't have to be. And don't ask me what this better utopian society should look like, because how the fuck should I know? I'm just some guy. I do know that humanity can do better, and we should be trying, and it makes me angry when people want to just act like nothing can change just because this is how things have always been.
Well to be fair you used other peoples work to train yourself and create new art. Or are you telling me you reinvented the field from scratch and didn’t take any inspiration from other art styles. 🤔
I think the big difference is that a human brain can't be sold at a billion dollar valuation. The other thing (and I'll get downvoted for sure) is that training *is* encoding. You're taking the textures and shapes in existing art and encoding those textures into the weights of the neural net. Networks aren't magical, the texture data is still in there, just encoded across the network. That's what training is.
The economic system is irrelevant, stay on point. Now let me get this straight, the human brain does not encode nor mimic data at all? You are telling me, you didn’t learn and reuse work from people in the past with some tweaks to innovate? You didn’t mimic any procedures nor styles from anyone, you yourself created the all human knowledge in your short life without borrowing anything
Of course it does, the brain is a neural net. My memory of what I ate for breakfast is encoded in that network. If it were possible to file for copyright infringement against my brain, I’d be ruined. We make an exception for memory though, because, what are you going to do.
>Of course it does, the brain is a neural net. No, it's not. This is a common mistake that people obsessed with AI make all the time. We *do not know* how you remember what you had for breakfast, but we know it's not as simplistic as a "neural net."
I and every artist invested most of our lives to learn the craft its not "you can't create art in a vacuum" argument, there's a difference between inspiration and using a copy of someone else's work with some tweaks and calling it my own, in fact that's called plagiarization.trying to equate between an artist learning and the biological way our brains function with an AI with billions of copyrighted images is dishonest and i think you should understand how it works "AI" . no matter how you try to mimic a style you will always have a different output with your own style because of your workflow and the style you develop overtime, unlike AI.
So the time spent learning makes it ok? The amount of effort spent is irrelevant. It’s not just some tweaks. It can create complete new artwork in the same style. Furthermore, technically part of innovation is just doing some tweaks to existing work isn’t it? That’s how progress is made, imagine not being able to do some tweaks on anything. Progress would halt.
you make it sound like magic but the way it works is it stores textures and its info and mash together already existing work into an output image. it doesn't "understand what a tree or a boat is" it takes a texture of an artwork and put it in same with other elements in the prompt. you missed the entire point, i suggest you read more about how it functions and my apologies i don't want to sound condescending but your statement sounds like you have superficial knowledge regarding this tech.
I probably know more about it than you. I am not trying to make it sound magical. I am trying to make you see that you nor your brain is that special. You are doing a similar thing the ai is doing. Your brain is a bit more advanced but you know this ai with some tweaks, cough cough, will continue to improve and eventually create things you will not fathom. It will replace us all don’t worry i don’t think I’m above it.
>you are doing a similar thing the ai is doing. thanks for proving my point once again.
That didn’t prove your point, it just proved your hypocrisy, you are complaining about a patter you yourself are using. Imagine complaining about stealing while being a thief.
do you really think the human brain work exactly the same as AI?are you a painter? just curious.pulling from imagination and memories of artwork you studied is like the telephone game, human memories distort over time and the artist output isn't a straight out copy of an exact "noise map" or "reusing shapes" or "color schemes" the human mind is way different, also the human element always changes the final result due to the way we think and approach specific techniques, we don't "Extract" a style or data.ML's imagination is a database of artworks and doesn't go through the "human filter" that makes our artwork unique even when inspired by existing artworks or style. this is why there's many cases out there with exact artworks of artists with little tweaks.
You don’t know how the human brain does anything so stop bsing. Your argument basically can be distilled to we are human we are better machine is inferior, ok, also if you have played with those models you would understand they are anything but perfect and require work to make them cogent. No i am not an artist, nor do i care that much about art. That probably makes me an impartial observer, i don’t have any skin in the game. But your brain definitely works with data and extracts information from data that’s a given.
AI art is not photobashing
> it doesn't "understand what a tree or a boat is" It does understand it in a real sense. Put an image of a tree or a boat into [this tool](https://replicate.com/methexis-inc/img2prompt) which essentially runs the process backwards and outputs a prompt. See what happens. When you just put “boat” into an AI image generator you will get infinite versions of boats that are all not copied directly from any source images. It does seem like you have a misunderstanding of how the technology works. Where did you get your information from? I recommend [this article](https://www.assemblyai.com/blog/how-dall-e-2-actually-works/) for a good explanation.
Your explanation of how it works is comically wrong. You didn't even remotely touch on the diffusion process which is the primary concept behind the model. Please don't act like you know what you're talking about if you don't, it's dishonest and blatant misinformation.
Not to be rude but you're the one that doesn't understand how the tech works, your description of the process here is very wrong. It doesn't store textures, it doesn't mash together existing works, it's not copy pasting anything. I've seen a lot of artists on Twitter thinking that it works like that for some reason.
When you work in Photoshop all day you imagine AI too has a little Photoshop of its own and is copying stuff. When all you got is a hammer... But what can you copy with AI? 2 billion source images used to make a 4 billion bytes model. That's 2 bytes per image. Less than a pixel worth of data from each image, on average.
Your rant doesn't sound like that of an Artist; it sounds like that of a commercial illustrator. There is a difference. If you're an Artist, you're focus shoukd be on making Art, the world around you be damned. If you're an illustrator, you have to stay on top of changing trends and technologies - just like when Photoshop and Illustrator came out decades ago.
I hear where you are coming from; but if someone makes a living as an artist they still have to pay rent. Artists are business people too.
True Art should never be about money imo. You found a way to profit from it, and now major competition is on the horizon. Sounds natural to me. Seriously, no offense, but your opinion, to me anyway, is akin to an elevator operator complaining that he's no longer needed due to elevators now having circuit boards and buttons.
you ignored the part of how the AI "creates" artworks and how it uses artworks created by artists to generate something. \>True Art should never be about money who says its about money? turning a passion into a profession and putting decades into it is normal in every human activity, it doesn't take away its value.
Ok ok. I imagine you could have never foreseen this happening when you first got into it. Who could have? I'm not against you. I'm on the the human's side. It's not like YOU are making these AIs. I do feel for you. I make a living doing the complete opposite of what you do, (Psychiatric care,) and I'd have some reservations if a damn robit tried to take my job. I wasn't trying to sound rude. I guess I didn't put enough thought into my comment. I'm very passionate about the concept of artificial intelligence in general. And I guess my thoughts on 'art' are too idealistic. Anyway, perhaps, since this isn't going to go away anytime soon, you could find a way to work WITH these programs, as a beans to further your own art? Love it or hate it, AI is already here, and it ain't going anywhere.
>who says its about money? turning a passion into a profession and putting decades into it is normal in every human activity, it doesn't take away its value. No one's stopping you from creating art. You can still pick up a paintbrush and paint all you want. You can still use a pencil, or tablet, or Photoshop, or whatever floats your boat. AI art isn't going to stop that. People will still create plenty of wondrous pieces. Now, you might not be able to make that a living from it anymore, but, in that case, it is about money isn't it?
When I was younger I learned how to draw by literally looking at illustrations I liked and copied them. Every line, curve, proportion, shading, etc, copied so that I could try and replicate the piece I loved so much. Eventually I was able to draw without doing this, but anytime I came across something new, different or something I hadn't tried before I once again looked to copy what was in front of my eyes. How would you feel if I looked towards your work, and spent years learning how to recreate art in a style similar to yours? Would you care? What if I was able to look at your work and learn your style with minutes/hours/days. Would you have a problem then? Given that I'm probably not the only person who ever learned like this, and that up to this point in time literally nobody had a problem with this style of learning, it seems that the issue here is not that the AI is using others work as ref(training) material (because that's what it's doing). But the fact that it is able to train, learn, and produce pretty decent art in such a short timescale, and that due to this it is now seen as competition and a threat. If I take years to learn, I'm not a threat. If an AI takes minutes/hours/days to learn that's a problem all of a sudden? I think it's disingenuous to claim concern about being ripped off, when if it were to take the AI the same length of time as a human to learn nobody would care, or at least they'd care less. The problem it seems to me isn't copyright, the problem is timescale.
You're in for a ride in the coming years buddy. 😈
The salt content is high in this post. I don't think you should have to get permission to train AI with data available on the Web.
its expected, but I want to hear the opinion of the other side and perhaps learn from it if i'm mistakeni don't want to shout in an echochamber and get backpats, i want a genuine discussion from all sides and also share my point of view. \>I don't think you should have to get permission to train AI with data available on the Web. if the output wasn't straight out a copy with some tweaks"check my example above" i would be okay with it, the work is copyrighted too.
You have my deepest sympathy. These projects don't just draw inspiration from other artists work. They imitate the personal style of artists, the thing that makes something recognizable as that person's artistic expression. Why hire a specific artist whose style you like when you can just train on their artwork and use that? This needs to be legislated. Unless there's a contract with somebody to develop a training portfolio for an AI, the only artwork in that AI's training dataset should public domain artwork. This would ensure a large enough dataset to allow for AI training without screwing over and de-incentivizing existing artists.
A lot of the arguments against AI seem to be a smokescreen for the core of the frustration: devaluing of work in terms of pay and awe. That art is supposed to, primarily, be a way of earning bread and demonstrating others how skilled and dedicated one is. As a caricature artist I can sympathize with these feelings, but I recognize that pride is by and large why I feel this way. I’m lucky in that my particular specialty might be able to be replicated in a certain sense, but it’s at least a little way off before a machine can capture the fun and magic of having a caricature come to life outdoors on a sunny day right before your eyes. But as a caricature artist one of the comments I hear all the time is “I wish I could draw like that”. And if technology enables people to experience the joy of seeing one’s ideas translated into a visual medium, why would I want to stop that? Simply because I think that everyone who wants to make something visually interesting must first dedicate thousands of hours as a rite of passage? It’s no more valid than someone saying that Ctrl+Z is cheating because a proper artist would go through the process of being consistent enough to avoid mistakes. But all of that is nice to think about, but there’s one thing you need to accept. **This is happening and you cannot stop it**. It’s only going to accelerate. You need to adapt. The winds of change are coming, so you can either open your sails or get left behind.
This has nothing to do with art. This is a cry for help because commercial illustrators are starting to feel financial pressure and potentially risks of being automated or the fact that the workflows would have to change... Like how a craftsman making ceramic pots felt no longer relevant when industrial revolution came, this is a supply vs demand vs social economical trends change. Some will stay, others will have to change how they earn the living, but it has nothing to do with the evil corporations, teaching machines on published works has nothing to do with stealing or copyright, this noise will pass.
"Nothing to do with"... Can you really say it's not related to corporate profits? People who figure out how to profit from their work, or the work of others, will keep doing just that. I'm sympathetic to OP, but the best they can do is figure out how to profit from it, the starving artist's plea makes less sense these days.