Submitted by razorbeamz t3_zf0q7a in singularity
Since DALL-E 2 went public, traditional artists have been pretty angry about AI art, but it seems like very recently, triggered by a Chinese AI that "anime-fys" pictures, the anger has taken off rapidly.
What do you think of the detractors of AI art right now? Do they have a point with their claims that all AI generated art is "stolen"?
^
This
See, back in the day people were litterally antiwriting because they thought it would make people forgetful. People were anti car, TV, and so on. People were anti books, computers, internet, and now crypto. And like everything there is people anti AI.
Do they have worries? Yes. But are they founded? Not really. They think AI will kill us. But they never ask why. Like do you go out of your way to kill random bugs and germs for no reason? Same here
Now should people worry about it taking their jobs. Yes. But that is a good thing. There needed to be an economic shift. It hasn't happen, but there needs to be changes. Too many hard working people can't really survive on what they have, and they basically turned into a lifetime slave. AI is likely to fix this.
We need UBI period.
UBI, UBS, and UBN
Paired with a LVT
Very well said. I’m optimistic.
Nick Bostrom would like a word with you.
I will include the following quote from Contact:
We pose no threat to them. It would like us going out of our way to destroy a few microbes on some ant hill in Africa.
Interesting analogy. And how guilty would we feel if we went and destroyed a few microbes on an ant hill in Africa?
AI will likely be used to concentrate wealth more effectively.
more effectively towards the rich.
^ This is the way.
[deleted]
[deleted]
It isn't that our demise is particularly desired, it's that it is ultimately an inconsequential side effect of AI exponentially scaling an objective.
Max Tegmark (I beleive) compares it to us worrying about destroying an ant colony while constructing a highway. It isn't even a consideration.
Here is a back and forward
Person A: Max Tegmark (I beleive) compares it to us worrying about destroying an ant colony while constructing a highway. It isn't even a consideration
Person B: Do you like your fridge or should we go back to ice boxes? Keep in mind fridges save lives because you can store medical stuff.
Person A: wants fridges over ice boxes
Person B: the biggest industry in the world and history was the ice industry. What killed it was the fridge.
So pick killing the biggest industry humans ever known. But in return countless people can get medical stuff, food can go to more places, and so on. Or keep that industry, all the people working it in the job, etc. But have everyone who is living today thanks due to the fridge dead.
There is always outcomes to every choice. Sometimes good and sometimes bad. But a simple risk assessment shows way more lives and way more good will come with AGI. And like the fridge. Even if you delay it, it will still come out at some point.
Are you not aware of the existential risk that AGI/superintelligence poses?
I'm obviously pro AI, but it's also the greatest risk to humanity and all of life.
Ya it is a risk. But this is my viewpoint
The debate I see is about attribution not necessarily about the existence of AI art. There are many people sharing AI art without saying it is AI generated. It should be treated no different than any other piece of art, we expect a piece to be labeled with the medium and the artist.
As a hobby artist, I'm excited about AI art, but there still is something to be said about a piece that a human being has spent hours or days to create using their earned skill and talent. Things should be labeled as such.
Edit:https://www.reddit.com/r/lotr/comments/zeoweh/gandalf_paper_art/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
Here is an example.
They want attribution, which would lead to royalties, on all art used as training material.
Which is not how it works with human artists. We, as humans, learn from others and use that knowledge to develop our own way of doing things. A human artist does not assign attribute to every other artist he learned from or was inspired by.
Even with human artists there is a line that can be crossed between "inspired by" and plagiarism. Some AI work has fully cut and pasted actual artwork with a bit of embellishments. That is wrong and if used in a commercial way, may require royalties.
But that isn't the gut reaction people are feeling when encountering AI artwork.
The real issue is ensuring that man-made art is appreciated and that AI art is labeled as such. There will always be people who create art. With a singularity there are going to be many folks without work and they will choose to push paint around a canvas for fun. I think there is value in maintaining separation between man-made and Computer generated.
Personally, I also have issues with digital artists calling pieces "paintings". It suggests a certain medium has been used when it hasn't and the way an image is created is often as interesting as the piece.
> The real issue is ensuring that man-made art is appreciated and that AI art is labeled as such.
From everything I have seen the major issue is attribution and financial compensation. I personally see no direct connection between AI art and human art in how it makes me feel. I have seen some AI art that has touched me very deeply just as I have seen some human art that has done the same.
I have some good friends who are artists and honestly feel for them. And I am an aspiring fiction writer looking at the same issue for myself (although thus far these tools have also been hugely helpful for my own productivity so its not all bad). But I think the reality is that when anything changes from being difficult/rare/expensive -> easy/common/cheap it changes everything about that area of life.
Yes, there is a line that can be crossed, and I would expect AI to be held to the exact same line as a human.
If the art is substantially different, it should not matter what training data was used,
As for appreciation: that is up to the beholder. It’s not something that should be legislated.
Example?
They're annoying and I don't like them.
Leeway ought to be given for people actively losing work to A.I. in the here and now. It's easy to deride the horseshoe makers for losing work cause the car is here, and cursing the car and so on, but we have to remember that for every couple of dozen of hobbyists or professionals who are still gainfully employed, there's someone out there living off of art commissions whose been losing business and going hungry over this.
Of course, long term, this is for the best, and the genie is out of the bottle anyways. This is inevitable wonderful progress that we should all be happy for.
Let's just not forget to have sympathy for people whose lives are genuinely being made more difficult in the here and now.
Course this only applies to those folks in particular. The rest need to either shut up or prepare for when it's their turn to feel automation's cold warming embrace. No sympathy for people who are actively seeing the writing on the wall and assume that complaining about the inevitable will somehow stop it from coming to pass.
Yeah, I agree with everything you wrote here. I do understand and empathize with that subset of people, but only that subset.
only angry because can’t make money competing with robots. if we had UBI nobody would care
That’s absolutely untrue. They are angry about corporations stealing their artistic innovation and using it for profit and without credit. They trained for years to develop style, they made it their livelihoods. UBI isn’t the issue. They should be getting royalties. The computers didn’t generate these ideas.
by that logic most artists need to give royalties to other artists they copied to learn from. no artists is created in a vacuum. its pure fear and money, end of. if you create art and love it, and people love your art too, why would you care so much what a robot does? I love to draw and couldnt care less about ai art, no matter how good it gets. I also see people saying this is a tool and have to say it is not. A tool is what you use to help you, this pretty much replaces the doing entirely. an artist doesnt create just for the final result, its also about the process. I love to see my progress over time, what Im capable of. I'll always follow and appreciate art from my favorite artists but I also think its so silly how some of them are waging this war against ai.
A.i. isn’t creating or inventing a style, it’s mimicking a style that was R&D’d by an artist. That cost time and money and should be compensated.
When A.I. combines styles in ways that haven't been done before I'd say it is creating a new style.
artists should use the A.I. to make their art better instead of complaining. Whether they complain or not people will still use A.I.
I can understand when it specifically mimics an artist exactly but when they use a ton of different sources, it's no different than what an artist does.
[deleted]
I will disagree with this statement … you’re partly right I think, UBI would make a lot more people not care, but only those who don’t care about their work… and let’s get something straight, NO HUMAN can compete with a Robot. That’s why we need laws in place to protect Humans
Right? It’s the same as every other field pretty much. Tech advances and you have to adapt. It sucks bad, but artists are in no way the only profession that has to deal with this
exactly, its like horse carriage drivers complaining that cars took their jobs.
This is only just the beginning.
Today it's art.
Tomorrow it's whole video games, or movies
The day after that it's legal documents or architectural designs or political speeches.
I say a descent fully AI generated political speech will come much earlier (GPT3 does okay short ones) than a descent fully AI generated movie. Almost obvious when you remember that some movies contain political speeches, but speeches don't contain movies.
I think at some point someone will train a model from scratch using copyright free works along with synthetic datasets generated using makehuman style systems and NPR render engines.
If these cannot make good artwork of [style] AI will be used to curate lists of artists good at [style]. This will then be cross referenced with other missing [styles] till there is a web of required artists where moving in the space between them will achieve whatever style is required.
A selection of artists from each [style] list will be contacted and paid a lump sum for rights for a block of their work to be used to generate models.
Then you will have a model that is trained on a completely 100% provably legal dataset (Edit: cleaned up the phrasing). A few select artists will make out like bandits, all other artists will be exactly where they are now without the ability to claim that the system is only good because it stole things.
The same will happen with music and literature.
This is why attempting to stop AI artwork in any field is a pointless expenditure of effort. Learning the tools is a better use of time.
That's the thing, all art pre 20th century is public domain, plus a good portion of modern art is Creative Commons. So like, anyone including AI can use parts of those works.
Heck even with copyrighted works, transformative works are allowed in many places. Sorry luddites, I think you're boned on this one (and thank goodness, the alternative is awful).
Copyright is a long outdated concept.
AI art is just an immovable object that makes that fact obvious.
Copyright in its current form is ridiculous. It may be necessary in some limited form until we reach post scarcity. Agreed we should see it abolished this century though.
Copyright is alive and well. Copyright protects many of the worlds largest businesses. Much of the code behind these AI is in fact under copyright. What is being made obvious here is that there are two sets of laws at play. Copyright for the rich and mega corporations. Nonconsensual open source for individuals and creatives.
I can see where you got that, but I see the problem being that copyright is fundamentally incompatible with the information age.
I think even if you had a dataset that'd only Creative Commons and public domain arts, you'd still have a lot of people whining. Because arguing that this is only about the dataset is disingenuous. This isn't only about the dataset. This is about the threat of automation and the extreme disruption of a status quo where artists are necessary for the production of large-scale media.
I honestly want to see datasets that are entirely Creative Commons, and a Stable Diffusion based on them. I personally suspect that not a lot would change. (Regardless, this is a moot point because training is now at the point where randos with a subscription to Google colab can easily create their own checkpoints. If you don't believe me, let me point you to the Furry diffusion server on Discord.)
Some online artists are really mad at the idea itself that people can "press a button and get a piece of art", and are trying to discredit the idea of "prompt-engineering" as a form of art. Even in videos like Steven Zapata's "End Of Art", he suggests that this should be a tool for traditional artists. The idea of individuals using this to create their own pieces (And worse, sell them!) is intolerable because it's inherently the intrusion of non-artists playing in the field of art.
People who say that 1. Don't understand how these AI's work and 2. Don't understand how art works. They are small minded and short-sighted. Luddites essentially.
I tend to agree. People grandstanding about AI art “stealing” are either unable to appreciate how their use of artistic “influence” is fundamentally the same, or else they’re arguing disingenuously.
There is nothing new under the sun. What artist can point to any aspect of their work that cannot be broken down into a simple mishmash of things other people did before? The only thing “proprietary” about it is the set of weights: a pinch of Bosch’s religious macabre, a tbsp of Escherian perspectives, etc. Some of this is conscious; most is not. That doesn’t make it any less true.
At the risk of over-reduction, all creative endeavor can be viewed as the combination of pre-existing concepts or categories in a novel way. How well your art is received is a function of how cleverly you mix these ingredients and how well you disguise this “trick of the light” so that the whole is more apparent than its parts. If any sufficiently sized “chunk” of pure influence makes it through, you can be accused of plagiarism.
I’d argue the models we have are already playing the game better than a lot of human artists. Soon they’ll be irreproachable.
You clearly have no clue what youre talking about, and its even worse knowing youre talking so confidently that people who are against this have "dont understand how art works". Its ridiculous to call these people Luddites. Do you think anyone reacted like this when new tools for any sort of program release and make the artists life just a little bit easier? Or when vertex painting was introduced in Maya and Blender, or when Laserscanning was used to perfectly replicate a model through mechanical means? Every artist I talked to would happily use any new tool available to make an artists job easier. Its just that most people who arent as unaware as you can usually see the difference between a "tool", and a replacement. Do you think artists reacted like this when an AI was able to artificially light up drawn images from any angle possible? No, because thats a "true" tool. It's not a replacement.
If you were a worker on an assembly line, and were to complain about every new rivet gun, wrench and drill that would be given to you to make your life just a bit easier, youd have no reason to call these things a replacement. But once the business rolls in a robotic arm, youd have every reason to complain.
People who disagree, usually artists themselves, arent small minded and short-sighted. You however, are pretentious and intolerant of the gravity of automating something as delicate as human craftsmanship, you would happily throw your fellow colleagues under the bus to make your life just a little bit easier. You throw around baseless insults such as luddites in your reddit echochamber because the thought of combatting your arguements with people outside of your hugbox is unreal to you. Just remember, shouting "tool" multiple times wont change the fact its still a replacement.
Mr. the-sun-is-gone, basically they are scared of losing their source of income. Here we are all going to lose our jobs, not just artists. But thanks to that, we will be freed from slavery.
They are very comfortable with their meritocracy receiving $100 for each drawing. But they should not cry, the world has to move forward, they will not obstruct it.
EDIT: Also I add, this opens doors to many people who are artists 'mentally' but don't have the ability. I myself have created wonderful liminal scenarios thanks to AI. And no one has stolen anything.
The artists' process is "to steal" too, they are ALWAYS based on something else, someone else. No ones creates something from 0.
Being able to create art “mentally” but not having the ability to physically do so is such a ridiculous concept.
Just being able to imagine something does not make you an artist.
The physical ability to create a piece is merely one aspect of artistic production. Another important skill is the capacity for creative thought; it can be viewed as a sort of art in and of itself. So it's not a crazy idea in my opinion.
I can tell we won’t see eye to eye on this so I’m not trying to convince you or anything.
Creative thought is something essentially every human in the world has to some capacity, so sure everyone is an artist. It doesn’t make them an artist to the degree we are talking about though. I feel like the bare minimum required is being able to physically convey your idea yourself, no matter how good it bad it may be.
Asking an AI to make you something, that has been trained on millions of actual artists good images, doesn’t make you an artist in my opinion.
First of all, I‘m not your mister. Your foreseen outcome is not only cult-like, but also a short-sighted pipe dream, bound to blow up in anyones face pigheaded enough to truly believe this. Anyone who only believes that, just like the original poster, is either blissfully unaware or purposefully setting aside reality. These programs are backed by huge corporations, who, like corporations usually do, tread over anyone and everything to get their wanted results.
While this scenario is admittedly (and hopefully will be) still far away from reality, but certainly in it’s birthing stage; the end result will not be „being freed from slavery“, the end result will look dystopian, where a constant, ai-generated and curated feedback loop of your interests are fed back to you by a megacorporation, to distract you from working and contributing and making you a mindless blot that infinitely consumes media from a privately owned station at will. You are not in slavery for having to work, but ironically, you will be put into slavery by the very thing you attempt at trying to play off as a „good“ thing. The Bourgeoisie like the World Economic Forum have already made their intentions clear with statements like; „You will own nothing, and you will be happy.“
In a perfect world, AI could serve to improve the artists work, serve to aid them or prove to make certain tasks easier, possibly for handicapped or otherwise disabled people. But you and your peers do not aim for this sort of outlook. Like the original commentator, you also would tread over your own colleagues, blinded by the consequences of overindulgence, it is embarrassing, really.
What is more embarrassing however is your total lack of understanding what a meritocracy is, but trying to downplay an artists struggle. To view a „merit“ in arts is cynical at best, and in your case, downright malicious at worst. „Just as it is pointless to criticize people for their lack of meritocracy in choosing their lovers, merit has no place in fine arts. A price of an artwork does not point to anything but to itself.“ Art in its purest form is not meritocratic, it is the people around them who value art as it is. And more commonly now, in modern forms of social media like Twitter, art communities have formed creative fields, whose base is not on its merit, but because of its subjective beauty. Sure, you could argue that by gaining likes and followers through recognition this can also seen as a merit, but all it serves it to prove the talented craftsmanship of the artist. And also very often salesmanship, as artist usually are most aware, and get rewarded for being exceptionally well at something (as anyone with a talent should).
But to return to your previous statement about being unhappy about having to pay $100 for each drawing. This only goes to show that you are possibly either a child, or you have never had experience in working a real job in the first place, neither of which would surprise me considering how bafflingly egotistical and crude you have to be to make such a statement. Receiving personalized art is a luxury. There is no gain except personal gratification. This luxury also comes with the fact that mosts artists that charge these prices are spending more than several hours per piece, and most of the time are well open to changing particular things you might not enjoy. Paying $100 is not only acceptable for a personal luxury, but prices can differentiate per artist. However I know this comment came out of a point of malicious intent, so I don‘t blame you for trying to make something as basic as „being paid for your hard work“ seem ill-intentioned by the artists, especially since you probably have never worked a talent-oriented job yourself.
There is no such thing as „mentally“ being an artist, it just proves you are not only creatively, but also morally bankrupt, as you have never felt the rewarding review of your own art, and want to replace your lack of sense with a robot to generate a bunch of scenarios in brutalist architecture for you to call „liminal“, and for some reason, trying to desperately push this fake sense of completion onto everyone else. My personal recommendation to you, personally; pick up a pencil and just draw whatever is on your mind. It might not look as great as your little AI imagery, but it will certainly feel nice!
To imply that the artist „steals“ from others like the AI does is simply not true. The fact that nothing is created from 0 is infact true, it is a statement that can be made for any sort of scenario, whether it be technology or any other mechanical advancements. You however, fail to realize the fact that the profit organizations behind the AI programs are not using imagery in the same way an artist is possible to, legally or even virtually accessible to, as the datasets used have proven to have personal images of peoples faces, private medical images and pictures normally hidden in said datasets. But on an arts and nature based response, AI is only able to replicate images by its exact datasets and its nessecary references. The artist uses reference to collect and transform images and use it to create original pieces. No matter how many pieces of Picasso the artist has to look at, he will never be able to exactly recreate Picasso without confusion. AI is trained on this exactly, to replicate and memorize. Whilst the human artist uses other images to transform and create in their own very often original means. To call it „stealing“ is a disoriented statement on its own. Within context of your comment, it is once again demeaning.
Your techno-utopian future is one that is held by companies, shady businessmen and „capped profit“ organizations, who when given an inch, will take a mile. You see artmakimg as this tedious, expensive chore, however anyone with enough experience understands that it is not. You are distracting yourself with the impossible idea of a future where people have to suffer so YOU can get what you want. But in the end, it is not ever about the replacement, it is about the people behind the replacement. and their agendas.
Many forms of media like Wall-E and Cyberpunk 2077 (to name the most well known ones) have already proven technological overadvancements lead by ill-intentioned corporations and its dystopian consequences. You should brief these medias before making badly thought out statements, or sign Equity‘s petition to make AI an even playing field for everyone, hopefully in the future aswell.
Your rants are very long, authoritative and filled with insults. But convincing? Not at all. Least of all your description of how AI art models work and how this tech is actually being deployed in the real world.
You talk about evil megacorporations, I'm here using my free copies of Stable Diffusion and GPT-JT. You talk about shady businessmen, I'm listening to the scientists who are actually building this future. You talk about the rationale of paying $100 for an art piece, I'm already living in a world where the price of art is dropping close to zero.
And before you ask, yes, I've seen Wall-E and Cyberpunk 2077. I assume most people here are familiar with dystopian sci-fi. You're not bringing up anything new.
Here we have another example of someone actively avoiding any and all of my statements to subside in a reality to comfort himself with his own preposterous future.
I can promise you very much, in an echochamber like this subreddit, full of self-gratifiying hacks, I dont write these to convince anyone, because I know I wont. The idea of challenging someone elses warped beliefs in an uneven playing field is thrilling, and I already take enough enjoyment out of that alone. If there is anyone who I've convinced with this, I would be extremely happy.
You choose to purposefully avoid any and all of my claims, only to attempt to debunk my claims with a "gotcha" like, "Oh, well it is free so there is not any monetary incentive from it, right?". Take a moment to research the foundations behind these AI creators, you like to willingly avoid seeing them because it shatters your profound reality, but no matter how "free" your copies are of your AI program, their plan is not to create an open source option for users. They are for-profit organizations that reap the rewards of non-profit judistrictional and tax exemptions, whose "capped profits" are baffingly high. But hey thats alright with you I guess, because atleast ITS FREE!
You see your free copies of Stable Diffusion and GPT-JT, I see a honeypot for gullible viewers to get entranced into the beauty of automation without realizing the immediate consequences that happen behind the scenes, away from prying eyes. You listen to "scientists who are actually building this future", I'm listening to a corporates mouthpiece to lull viewers into a dark-age of hyperconsumption, making dream-like promises of a better future. I live in a world where workers should be paid for their work, you live in one where you, like the others, avoid seeing the harsh reality to live in a world where your obligations are passed to a lifeless bot. This song and dance between you and me can continue, but I'd rather you research about the people you vehemently support as if they were your own flesh and blood;
Open AI explaining how they invented their own legal structure because nothing else worked for them: https://openai.com/blog/openai-lp/
Stable Diffusion release info with no mention of “artists”: https://stability.ai/blog/stable-diffusion-announcement
A great article summarizing the data laundering techniques of AI companies: https://waxy.org/2022/09/ai-data-laundering-how-academic-and-nonprofit-researchers-shield-tech-companies-from-accountability/
Of course, in my naturally "authorative" and "insulting" fashion I could also call you a fruitfly-like person and assume you wont read into any of these, but I'd atleast like to see you try.
>comfort himself with his own preposterous future
>echochamber
>self-gratifiying hacks
>warped beliefs
>your profound reality
>gullible
>fruitfly-like person
Fascinating. I took a quick glance at your profile. Noticed that "k--- yourself" is also among your repertoire.
Tell me again why anyone should listen to you?
>assume you wont read into any of these
I am very familiar with what Stability AI and OpenAI are doing, both in research and policy. Suffice to say, I'm not interested in being lectured about stuff that I've been following since day one. I'm also not interested in hearing made-up stories about what I believe or who I support.
Thanks for not only once more avoiding to refute any of the sources to back up my claim, but also for scowering through my reddit history to disprove my point by citing my post responding to a literal void for hating on coleslaw.
But I also appreciate for avoiding anything of the statements I made.
Your "made-up stories" are cited right there in my previous response, but that isnt as important to you right? Carry on living in your technocratic-utopian loopyland, and try not to respond to me again. Maybe deconstructing a few more ad-hominems without elaborating on any of your disagreements will totally help you and your point when youre arguing with someone else who is not as close minded as you. I would have had more respect for you if you just outright admitted that you are a corporate apologist.
>technocratic-utopian loopyland
>close minded as you
>corporate apologist
That "k--- yourself" says everything I need to know about you as a person.
And here I see an endless barrage of insults and straw-men. This has nothing to do with me. I'm currently reading this, in a universe utterly disconnected from whatever the hell you're saying about me.
PS: Unless you didn't know, GPT-JT isn't by OpenAI.
Theres only one thing I can tell you, cope. I'm sure you have a great little quip to end your sentence off of to weasel yourself out of any attempt of responding to anything I said, mostly because you know im right one way or another.
Edit: Still didnt respond to any of my statements, good work soldier!
I draw a hard limit with people who say things like that. Most do.
Over and out.
Honestly, I wish I'd able to respond to all your arguments. But you have made such a massive text that it is a very arduous task to have to answer one by one.
I would like to chat with you about this, but in a more interactive way, because reading such a great book is hard to digest
You are absolutely correct. The luddites are the ones who have zero understanding of how an AI works while shouting down those that do. Sadly I'm not sure right and wrong are going to matter much. This is a battle of money and power, both of which are in short supply among starving artists.
Im glad you can agree. I went into this subreddit not expecting anybody to agree with me. But Im glad theres atleast fairly sensible people like you who can atleast back me up. Even though it might be grim, theres atleast trending hashtags like #HumanArtists on twitter that show that theres still an overwhelming amount of support for art created by companies that arent performing shady business practices. Honestly id recommend you check out this:
https://www.equity.org.uk/getting-involved/campaigns/stop-ai-stealing-the-show/
Its really informative, and I feel like letting someone atleast know that people are unhappy about this atleast helps a little bit.
edit cuz i didnt like the way the comment got embedded
they can complain, but people will still use A.I. to generate art, myself included, and I am an artist.
Adapt.
Then youve just proven yourself to be a part of the problem. Probably only reliant on asset-flipped meshes you found on sketchfab before AI took the limelight.
Your warped idea of "adaption" is the absurd equivalent of the aforementioned human laborers on an assembly line outworking the robotic arm.
If you're an artist yourself, you most likely have no problem posting artwork youve made before? Right?
Technology will advance that is inevitable, so you can keep using the typewriter, or move to the computer. People will use the tool which is more efficient regardless of the fact that anyone feels its "unfair".
You can still express yourself in an artistic way, there are just more tools available now.
Artists make valid arguments.
It’s absolutely a problem that these programs are trained using material the developers don’t have permission to use. Imagine you spent your entire life creating a portfolio and then somebody you have no affiliation with fed your work to a software without your permission and is now using the software to produce new work based on your style.
It’s not hard to see where these guys are coming from.
Yeah except I can also go to any artist page, and learn how to draw in their style...just because an AI does it better faster than I could doesn't mean its stealing.
also where's all this "its stealing my ART" when it comes to book writing? or poetry? this is a systemic problem. They care (understandably) about their income, if they didn't have to make money from their art, NOBODY WOULD CARE. people would just do ART because they ENJOY DOING IT.
Be mad at the economic system not the AI.
I agree with your general point, for the record.
But:
>It’s absolutely a problem that these programs are trained using material the developers don’t have permission to use.
This part I mentioned earlier is still valid.
Just because something is posted on the Internet doesn't mean you have permission to use it. These AIs are using artist's work in ways the developers don't have permission to and that's a fair complaint.
It's one thing when somebody uses somebody else's artwork for personal use, and often artists say that's fine, but it's something else entirely when a for-profit company uses somebody else's artwork to train an AI for their commercial product.
Is that an issue with our economic systems? Absolutely. Are some artists taking their anger out on the wrong people and issues? Absolutely. Does that make them backwards luddites? No, they still have legitimate grievances.
>use it
in copyright parlance that means making money from a direct copy. training an AI is akin to an art student going to a gallery, then creating art in a similar style. Not the same as photographing art, then trying to sell photos of it.
this!
I think many people in this thread are intentionally missing the counterpoints because they want to miss them. There is a lot of having an opinion and working backwards happening…
When a landlord adds ridiculous or exploitative fees to a lease agreement, who do we hold accountable? Both the landlord and the capitalist system that perpetuates & amplifies their exploitative qualities.
In turn, the reality of the current generation of AI-generated art, as it exists today under capitalism, is pro-capitalist, anti-individual, and walks a very dubious legal tightrope. It takes advantage of artwork uploaded to the ‘free-and-open’ internet to turn a profit… And that's without even touching the topic of deepfakes, which comes saddled with several of its own quandaries.
> Yeah except I can also go to any artist page, and learn how to draw in their style...just because an AI does it better faster than I could doesn't mean its stealing.
I don't see what you are trying to imply. When a human does is still called plagiarism, no?
I'm no artist, but tracing has been a topic of discussion in the art community since forever.
I remember in like 3rd grade the teacher had us look at Van Gogh Paintings and then try and make our own with that similar style. Does that mean we plagiarized? Just now the AI could do it 100x better lol.
If you think about it, plagiarism is just using a source so well that derivated work becomes indistinguishable from the actual source. Your third grade self wouldn't really be able to do that.
Using a more realistic example, if you went to Nerd & Jock (or any artist) page on Instagram, learned their style perfectly (as AI can do), and started to create/sell comics with this style, people would probably still call it plagiarism, wouldn't they?
I imagine that this possibility is what most artists fear and why they say that every model is using "stolen art", even if they don't articulate it very well.
>people would probably still call it plagiarism, wouldn't they?
That would be trademark violation likely, not plagiarism.
>draw in their style
is not the same as tracing.
No, people do art to have a purpose and an identity, and then they make money off of it. Picasso is special because it took Picasso going through life and experimenting with artistic principles and processing his emotions about the world wars and pushing the medium to the edge of what was accepted back then. And when other artists mimic that style, yeah it’s fucking stealing. When Lana del rey makes a song that sounds like a rip off of Radiohead, they sue her. Because it’s fucking stealing.
Also people arguing that the words “theft” and “stolen” can’t apply here. This to me is a clear case of technology coming faster than we can make up a new word or phrase for what’s happening because it’s unprecedented. Technically it’s correct in the context of the literal meaning of stealing. But we also don’t have examples that quite apply here.
Artists have been “copying” each other to learn for generations, yes, but to make a perfect replica of someone’s exact art style to a point where it’s indistinguishable from an original is rare (traditionally) and heavily frowned upon in the modern scope.
So what do we do?
Human artists copy each other's style all the time and nobody ever cared about that. It's only when a computer does it that everyone gets pissed.
Human artists DO care about being copied. Trust me, some of them can get very (and very pointlessly) shirty about that, too.
Well okay, I shouldn't have said that nobody cares. But for the most part, the concept of "copying" each others styles is generally not considered an important or serious discourse within artistic communities. The vast majority of artists want to learn from and teach one another. The ones who aggressively try to go after people for copying them are typically regarded as assholes.
Here's what ChaptGPT had to say:
I think that it's natural for people to have mixed feelings about AI-generated art. Some people may be excited about the possibilities that AI art opens up, while others may feel threatened by it. It's understandable that traditional artists might feel concerned about the rise of AI art, as it could potentially disrupt the way that art is created and valued.
However, I don't think that the detractors of AI art have a valid point when they claim that all AI-generated art is "stolen." While it's true that AI algorithms are trained on large datasets of images and other art, this doesn't mean that the resulting AI art is stolen. The AI is simply using the information it has been trained on to create new, unique artworks. It's not like the AI is copying existing artworks and passing them off as its own.
Ultimately, I think that AI-generated art is just another tool that artists can use to create new and interesting works of art. It's not necessarily better or worse than traditional art, it's just different. And as with any new technology, it's up to the artists themselves to decide how they want to use it.
​
Of course an AI program would say that…
I mean everyone one who ever published a text on the internet, or wrote a text on reddit before 2021 could have the same complaint with language models - but I have only seen the outcry a bit from programmers. I understand their reactionism, but the genie is out of the bottle, and humanity will be better for it.
for real. they should take advantage of it, instead of complaining.
We used to light candles on street lamps manually. It was a dedicated job. I can imagine these workers were pretty pissed when electric lamps took over and they were no longer needed.
World changes. If you want to survive, you have to adapt. Being angry about the inevitable change doesn't benefit anyone.
That's a pretty bad comparison lol
Bad comparisons are my speciality, lol
I'm not an artist myself, but yeah I don't really think people using AI to generate art from only keywords are the actual "creators" of that work, more like "art curators" (since they do choose what outputs to keep).
My father does abstract art as a hobby. Not trying to plug him, but here's his instagram, just for reference. None of his work is AI-generated, but it looks like it could be.
It's a difficult line to define, though, with how powerful photoshop-style programs are these days. Filters and transforms can do a lot of the work for you, compared to traditional hand-to-canvass artwork. Still, he spends hours on each artwork he makes. Also, he has motor disability due to an illness, can barely use his hands, so if he didn't have those tools, he couldn't create what he does.
I guess I'm of the broad frame of mind that says, "Art is Art is Art". But I think of AI art as pretty firmly in the category of "found" art, in relation to the human posting it. It's more like having really good google-fu and a good artistic sensibility, to be able to recognize which outputs look the closest to what you want.
Well, I suppose at the most basic level it is, but I don't feel like all AI generated art is in that category. I make 3d animations using a few different AI tools. Here's an example from one of my TikTok accounts: Stereoscopic Cyberpunk AICatgirl.
I spend about 4 hours on each 1 minute animation. I really do feel that that time and effort involved elevates the result above "found" art. And I'm sure there are far better AI artists out there than me.
Oh yeah, no doubt I would consider that "art" (very nice, too! :)). I think there may be a line in the amount of effort it takes. The AI art I'm talking about is the stuff that's done in a few seconds from a single prompt. But I understand that some artists are going through tons of iterations before getting to a 'look' that they want.
I can kind of make myself believe in it more if I think of it through the lens of fashion. To be fashionable, to express yourself through clothing, doesn't require you to make the clothes yourself. What we put together, what we "create" is the outfit, the ensemble.
With the definition of artist: a person skilled at a particular task or occupation. They would actually be artists
The claim that their art is being stolen is based on misconceptions about how AI works. I also think they are prematurely panicking about human art being devalued when AI is still not capable of seriously competing with human artists and probably wont be for at least a few years, if not longer.
Ultimately their complaints should be directed at our economic system, and not the technology itself.
They don't really care about how it really works though, I've seen many people get it explained to them but they still willfully ignore it. Those "misconceptions" are a very convenient way for them to get more press coverage, in an attempt to hinder its progress.
You're right, but progress won't stop so the only thing the detractors are doing is making themselves (and everybody else) miserable. If these people are so sure they're being stolen from then it's surprising how none of them have attempted to take AI companies to court. I think the first major trial related to this issue is going to be a big wakeup call for people who are confident their work has been stolen somehow.
It’s not insulting to say all art is derivative. Like every human creation it’s a mashup of ideas and influences and tools that pull from the common pool of other peoples ideas and creations. The artist imbues their creation with some elements unique to themselves but even that depends on the age and culture and society they are a part of.
Of course.
Problem is the AI is sometimes straight up ripping off copyrighted work explicitly. Like straight copy+paste.
I haven't actually seen any examples of that, but given all the possible images that could be produced I'm certain a collision with copyrighted art is possible.
[deleted]
[deleted]
I think artists should have at least the right to use image-generating AI models for free, as work they produced was used to train these models. The same way GitHub already provides free AI code assistant for developers on whose code this assistant was trained on.
I think it's going to be very similar to what happened when photography was invented.
Ultimately art will survive, but it will definitely change and adapt.
[deleted]
What’s funny to me is that they are basically saying their style of art is unique and no one else but then should draw in that style. Which can be reversed and applied to them as well. They want it like that than they too cannot copy a style. Every drawing they do must done in style unique and never created before no copying
Fuck em.
Luddites.
Patiently awaiting games and movies here…. Sooner than we think…
I’m an artist, my issue with AI art is that it is made using tons of artists creations without consent or compensation. Yes, there are plenty of artists that are in the public domain, it is fine in my opinion to train AI programs with those works. But that isn’t what is happening. AI is sourcing its images from all over the internet from individual artists whose work is not public domain. I know from experience. Today I went on the website haveibeentrained.com and found that a number of my images have been used without my permission. It is infuriating.
Every time this question is posed the biggest takeaway is that most people commenting on here are either severely ignorant of the concern artists have or are just assholes
DEY DOOKA JERB!!!
Everyone used to shit their pantaloons over photoshop. This doesn't feel that much different, to be honest.
I don’t understand the vitriol.
Like what is so heinous about someone wanting to be valued for having a talent that they have nurtured and mastered over time? And if they are lucky enough to make a living off of it, wanting to defend that living?
What’s wild to me is folks acting like these artists are petty or money-grabbing but not looking at the folks who used their art without permission to make money with the same scrutiny.
Is it because it’s art and nobody cares about art or is this how we react every time a new sector is taken over by AI?
As an artist myself I am biased in the favor my fellow artists - but on a grander scale we need to think hard how we handle this as a culture and society.
Lots of folks have been warning for years that AI and automation are coming and some of the biggest threats to the middle class nobody is really talking about.
So here is is. It’s easy to shrug off because art has been devalued so heavily with the digital revolution and how easy and cheap it has become to produce and reproduce.
But what about when the robots come for service jobs, desk jobs, programming? People are kidding themselves if they think it’s not coming.
Technology has always been a cycle that renders some jobs and skills obsolete but I don’t think people are really grasping how the speed and exponential growth that AI presents is going to take that to the nth degree. People won’t have time to keep up where previously a phase out period gave these sectors and their workers time to adjust, reskill, and move forward
Unfortunately creatives will be be the canary in the mines because they are not “essential” in the eyes of society so maybe the real test is when the first “real” job gets automated on a large scale. What rules and social contracts we make now may come into play when that happens.
If these people were factory workers in the 1800s, they’d be proclaiming that the steam engine is the work of satan.
It’s a survival instinct against something capable of taking their jobs, that will only get better with time. Already an AI artwork won a prize, and this is the first legitimate iteration of AI artwork I know of.
On the flipside, art for me has always served as testament to the ingenuity of the human mind. Whilst an ai can produce greater quality, I don’t see proclamation for its capabilities stretching beyond works that hang on the mantlepiece of someone’s house. True art will always remain in the human domain.
On the flipside of that, art is a complete joke nowadays. A perverse money-laundering scheme that spits in the face of the public. If an ai can create anything more meaningful than 3 red dots on a canvas, I invite it to. Artists did this to themselves
As someone with an over active imagination but no art skills I get why they don't like it. But it's a tool not a substitute for skill. A very advanced tool that they'd be better off learning how to use rather than dismissing it. I have no doubt someone with artistic abilities could make a much better thing with AI art than I can.
The artists need to stop complaining and embrace AI as one of their own artistic tools to help them. AI tools in the hands of a real artist could have amazing potential.
To the point of copying - no, AI is not copying, it is derivative work, not unlike a human artist whose works are the derivative of their own influences.
I am trying to be honest and I do my best to admit that AI makes better art than me. Those artists do the same implicitly through their jealousy. We should improve our crafts instead of pulling our competition down to live in a healthy society, tho.
This is a bad mindset, you will never be able to compete against AI, especially when it’s getting better at the speed of light
I think there is a misunderstanding. I dont believe that art should be a subject of competition. An artist however should compete with their past selves in skill and originality. Art is subjective because beauty is an elusive mirage made of public agreement basically besides of some naturally occuring sensitivity to certain patterns which might elicit positive emotions in the beholder. When I say my art is bad it is only because i dont feel like I was evolving and tbh its due to perfectionalism and my tendency of procrastination. Art is not something to compare because beauty has many hidden sources and we need all kinds of artists to teach us how to find it. After all it is all about an expression of our point of views, as human beings. An ASI obviously is able to make art in ceaseless styles, due to their capacity for pattern recognition and visual/emotional vocabulary. I never said it is wise to compete with machines, however art is not about competition to begin with. Its a different question whether anyone might just create their drama and turning it into a competition, it would be toxic tho. Do I make more sense yet?
[deleted]
I think there's a lot more nuance to the sourcing of the training data. At some point, artists have to take some responsibility for uploading their art and making it public. I don't think it's quite right to say that someone posting their art to social media did so without consent, even though I recognize that they didn't predict all of the impacts of that decision. I think it's a good time to think about what you put out in public, and how to use no-crawl tags (which have been around for a long time).
I don't think that crediting every person who's art is in the LAION database is reasonable, useful, or necessary, but I do think it's shitty to directly use these tools to imitate living artists, and I'd rather see a generator focused on nuanced style distinctions instead of celebrity status. There's no reason these tools can't be used to encourage us all to get better about how we talk about art.
On a personal level, I'm aphantasiac, and these tools are the closest I've been able to come to experiencing guided visual thinking. It's wild, I love it, and my creativity has grown greatly. I'm happy to advocate for better tools, and better understandings, and I'm not blind to the flaws that the tech currently has. But it's almost like getting a mobility support device that allows me to walk. I'll keep using it until a better version comes around, because I don't want to stop walking.
On a commercial level, I've offered a small selection of generated prints on my art table next to my fractal art, poetry, and laser-cut art. I'm very upfront about how the art is made, the flaws the tech has, and how it can be improved. In person, I have met nothing but glowing praise for the work, in spite of the intensity of the debate online.
However, I recognize that the painters and artists around me at these art shows are pouring much more trained skill, time, and resources into the things they create, and I've tried to be mindful in how I present the value of generated prints. I don't pretend that I'm doing the same work as manual artists, and I base my prices on my own effort and contributions to the process, not based on the fine art it might resemble. Generator art is a lure to attract people who might not know they like fractal art, and as a result, I've had more fractal commissions this year than the last 3 combined.
I’m an artist and an aphant, and art is the only way I can fully visualize things. I’m also pro AI art progression, but with regulation. We already reap the benefits of computer assisted art in myriad ways, and beyond that it’d be stupid to stand in the face of progress and demand it halt, but I agree and feel strongly about living artists being compensated for work that couldn’t have been generated without their years of work and efforts.
It’s really nice to see a nuanced take here.
I think it's the beginning of what will be a common response to AI. The issue isn't the AI, the issue is ethics... there is nothing to keep someone honest. The artists that I see taking issue with AI art is that its being used to literally steal another artists style. Why do I need to pay this artist when I can get nearly the same results from an AI.
It's robots for your brain, so it's going to take work from people.
>a Chinese AI that "anime-fys" pictures
Here in Germany, nobody is talking about the Chinese Different Dimension Me website https://www.animesenpai.net/ai-that-transforms-you-into-an-anime-character/
But there was a lot of criticism about the Magic Avatars from the Californian Lensa app recently https://www.heise.de/news/Geklaute-Stile-tiefe-Dekolletes-Nacktheit-Kritik-an-KI-Avataren-von-Lensa-7368671.html because of sexualizing women.
[deleted]
All these big models took a lot of artists works and jammed it into their data sets. They aren’t crediting artists for anything. They aren’t paying artists anything. They are enabling people that are not artists to do things they couldn’t have previously done without an artist.
I think what is wrong is these AI companies not getting artist opt in when creating these models. These artists should be paid if their style is being used to generate images that can be used commercially.
These arguments by Steven Zapata Art on YouTube are very well thought out.
I don’t get it. Art is art, regardless of who or what creates it.
Laws always come after culture. We'll have to wait and see what laws countries come up with. There are ill minded people that use power tools like this for profit of their own.
In the meantime, artists need to figure out what AI can't do and use it to their advantage. (Incorporate small changes in requests, have five fingers, etc.)
AI tools allow anyone to create art no matter their skill level, time or natural talent. Sure, AI will probably kill off some business where low effort art is "good enough" like furry porn or something, but actual artists using these tools will be able to output far more quality at a rate unheard of. It's basically a concept tool. No non-artist will know how to take an imperfect AI output and paint over it to make it amazing. Don't miss the bus artists. Get on or get left behind. This applies to writers as well (ChatGPT) and pretty much every other profession eventually.
I feel for them and completly understand where they are coming from but i think ultimately (based on my current understanding of how this tech works) they are wrong.
One video that did trigger me latelty is this one that i've seen some people posting on Twitter https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MravA_dgUkQ when people say "its just pattern recognition" in a dismissive way, im like "WHO CARES! We teached machines to write code and paint!"
They crazy
AI generated images can be pretty but there's still work to be done to make it beautiful. Whenever I browse r/midjourney for example, I can see that there's a lot of tweaking and rolling needed to achieve a desired image. Much more if you actually want the image to look less like a soulless husk and more of a meaningful picture. So in a sense, artists are still needed to make these these things come to life.
Also, if artists depend on making art as their source of income, shouldn't they already think how to use this new piece of technology to their own advantage? Like, how AI generated images will help waking up your muse faster or how will it help your work flow? You know, like how businesses needed to think how to adapt to the ever changing trends and technology in order to survive?
I'm just saying that perhaps it is more profitable to treat the AI as another tool to your artist's arsenal like Photoshop, for example? There's no point in making it your enemy. It's not like if you use AI, you have to use it exclusively.
Also, if the person you think as a potential client thinks that it's better to use AI art because it is "cheaper", then that person is never a potential client in the first place. There would always be people who would pay good money for human artist's because they prefer communicating what they want to have in a picture instead of typing prompts into a terminal and hope that the machine understood what they're trying to say. (Let's face it, using AI art at its current stage is like a box of chocolates).
Although I think this drama started when an AI generated art won in a painting competition of some sort. All I can say is, whoever decided on that did not help with the case. AI art should have its own category, just like digital art and photography.
First, I don't call it art, it's more wallpaper generators. Secondo, why don't I call it art? I haven't seen Botticelli, Da Vinci, see Ingres. These generators mix different influences, but do not include them. A freshman, understands him.
The only advantage I see is that it can give very interesting starting bases
Did you write this in another language and machine translate it to English? It doesn't make sense.
Okay, so I'm going to simplify: I can't call it art, because these "works" not of affect, are "created" by "individuals" endowed with sensitivity.
I'm excited about the tech but the art is in fact stolen and one doesn't cancel out the other. The code that Co-pilot suggests has been verifiably proven as stolen and it's the same underlying system that's powering AI art. If all of the artists whom these AI were trained on had been compensated or even consented to this it would be a whole different story.
I can understand them. My favourite artists have declared that they aren't going to complain or fight against it, I wrote about this with one of them privately and he wrote that it's a part of natural progress and he finds it fun. I personally still much prefer human art. What I certainly dislike are people who upload too much of it. A human artist uploads 2 per month. An AI artist uploads 2 per day - that's the difference. Search, filtering and recommendation basically use algorithms from the 1990s, while AI art is miles ahead. Weird order of things. But I don't think it's stolen art, AI learns like a human learns, on someone else's art. No human ever could paint very well without seeing other people's paintings and learning on them.
I want to know who this is actually hurting. Is having cheap ai art causing people not to buy from human artists? I understand that the programs gather data from other images but isn't that pretty much how humans learn what things look like? The ai isn't preventing artists from existing and offering their services, it is up to people to put value in human effort and skill.
The answer is yes, there are people selling “aI art in the style of artist” already online for a fraction of the price an original. It devalues the artists work and is a form of theft we don’t have a name for yet
Ok THAT is different then. Everything I've heard of so far was that it would generate art based off of thousands of images, not knocking off any one artist or marketing it as in any one artists style. But I also don't think that what makes an artists work valuable is its uniqueness. We should support artists, crafters and makers because of the human element, the skill and time it took. If people are buying a particular artists lookalikes they don't really value that artist.
You’re not wrong, and there will always be people who value the human part of art.
I think the issue here is a lot more abstract and wide scale.
The argument that’s happening right now is in its infancy - what we’re going to see down the line when all this goes to market for practical use is going to be interesting. I’m cynical but all I can think is the thousands of corporate creative jobs on the line in near future.
Like why would Disney pay a team of real humans a living wage and all the benefits that come with that to animate a film / show when they can feed their Disney style to an AI that can do all that work for them for a fraction of that cost? For the love of art? This is what I see coming and why I think it’s important we really have this discussion now while it’s fresh and not yet at it’s full potential
I feel like it would ultimately be up to consumers to vote with their dollar. If no one watched an animated movie because the company used an ai instead of human artists the company would stop real quick. I'm curious, how do you feel self check out registers? Or CAD machines? Both are examples of machines reducing or replacing humans.
They do, because by and large it is stolen. To such a degree that AIs will attempt to replicate the signatures in the corner.
The signatures are replicated in the corner because a lot of art has signatures in the corner. It's not trying to replicate any particular artist's signature (especially because it doesn't and can't try anything), it's just reproducing something seen in art.
Next you'll be saying linear regression is plagiarism too
HeinrichTheWolf_17 t1_iz9lyjj wrote
The Genie is out of the bottle 🧞♂️
That’s what I think, everything else is philosophical.