IMO all of this will blow over in a few years and most artists will accept that "AI" is just another tool that one can use to create art.
It took some time for photography as well...
edit: typo
It took some time for photography as well...
edit: typo
(However, I think the negative feelings don't come from a discussion of "real vs fake" or "classical vs new", but mostly from the point of view that using artwork as training data is stealing. I don't agree with that view, but I think it's at the core of the argument.)
I refuse to use it from a moral standpoint but I also don't use any digital tools at all in the creation of my work. Even if I worked digitally I don't create art to produce pretty pictures as fast as possible. Typing in a prompt and fiddling with some things back and forth is just that.
AND I've been pushing what can be done with Stable Diffusion, and it's absolutely a tool to create art. The idea that "Typing in a prompt and fiddling with some things back and forth" is all there is to AI art is so fucking absurd. This is the "meme" I'm talking about. There SO much more to AI art from an artistic control perspective than the prompt, and not only that, there's so much we haven't even fucking invented yet which is clear from the rate of progress in the field. These reductive "it's not real art" are even worse than the "theft" moralizing. It's akin to saying photography isn't art because you just click a button.
> I don't create art to produce pretty pictures as fast as possible.
I create art because I like to make art, sometimes that means laboring over the placement of every line. Sometimes I need three hundred frames and there's only me and my GPU against the world. AI opens up possibilities that were completely unreachable before, just like everything else I'm able to do artistically with my computer.
We're all different and again, it's great if you like making art with AI. The world needs differences, otherwise it would be quite boring.
Photography isn't gonna be painting or drawing either, it's still art that affords the artist an enormous amount of control. This is the "meme" I'm talking about. The way you talk about AI art is what's making me go AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
> typing some text and pressing 'generate', iterating, or doing layering and photobashing
It's such a self report, you have no idea what is going on, you are quick to discount it without any understanding. We are still in the infancy of the space and people are fixated with these idiotic reductive arguments. Prompt -> image is the tiniest fraction of what's possible with this technology. I wish I was better at communicating how fucking epic the set of possibilities that this opens up is, I'm sure we will see it eventually. It frustrates me to no end that people are so blind to it.
You're someone looking at Amiga DPaint in 1986 and claiming to understand the limitations and confines of digital art. It's absurd.
technobabble just doesn't change some fundamentals.
If your basis for your art is about the hot new tool, or a tool in the future then it's just novelty. Generative AI is incredible from a technological perspective, as was Photoshop before it, but neither of them are ushering in some profound new wave of art.
> fucking epic the set of possibilities that this opens up is
Most great art and great design is built on constraints. My suggestion in using these magical tools is to reduce your possibilities to find something that speaks true to yourself.
> didn't usher in a profound new wave of art
How can you claim that with a straight face?
But for one-click self-expression, AI tools will certainly come in handy.
Humans are surprisingly adept at coming up with new kinds of work.
IMO the bigger "risk" is that we will extinct ourselves in the next few hundred years, but that is a different discussion.
But I've spent well over a decade learning to write. I don't have any skill in drawing, and I don't earn any money from my writing. (...and last time I tried to hire an artist, they bit my head off when I offered an example of what I was after.)
So I'll use AI art, because it's that or no art.
How do you figure that?
UNLIKE other tools, AI makes creative decisions. No other tool has done this, and moreover, its primary purpose is to take away the reliance on artists. The ultimate aim of BIG TECH is to take away this reliance so that they can be the ultimate source of cheap art, just like cheap slave labour is the ultimate source of cheap and unsustainable clothing for most people.
Therefore, AI will NEVER be a tool to create art like other tools. It is is a tool that will outcompete humans on a massive scale so that even if "normal human art" exists, it will never gain much traction or commercial viability.
To be honest, AI is absolutely sickening and companies like Microsoft and OpenAI make me sick.
Most of this generative AI is NOT about using AI for boring tasks, and have you ever even tried to draw clouds? Not easy. Everyone draws clouds differently, which you would know if you ever tried to draw anything.
Moreover, AI as a societal phenomenon goes way beyond AI drawing clouds.
I know exactly how hard it is to draw anything because I tried a bunch of times, and failed. I for one am happy that I can now express my creative ideas, which I couldn't do before due to missing talent / practice.
The problem here is we need to look beyond our own self interest to how this will impact other people.
We don’t make a career out of art. This technology is just a novelty to us and but many others rely on it for themselves and their family and had no way of foreseeing the technology coming. They need it more than we do.
This is a uniquely AI related issue, as artists of all mediums can relate with each other about their struggles learning and improving their skills and ability to express themselves.
Tbh this sounds like gatekeeping to me.
Perlin noise on a plane, can be either in line with the camera or off at an angle. Nice effect. Very easy. I don't even count myself as a proper artist.
Clouds can obviously be hard when you have a specific cloud formation in mind — but "just" a random cloud, to the standards of most who will observe it, is much easier.
And of course, there are plenty of free photographs of clouds, and Photoshop has had plenty of filters — even from the days before people had broadband, let alone what people now call AI — to turn those photographs into different styles.
This looks like trash and doesn't look like clouds. Even if you're doing procedural clouds, everyone does them differently. And a lot better than just slapping Perlin noise on a plane. Photoshop filters cannot change the bones of a cloud, and when people are illustrating clouds they're taking entirely different approaches. They're not just "this cloud, but flat" or "this cloud, but with a fuzzy diffused look." All you're doing is showcasing your own lack of knowledge on the subject while filling the arrogant techbro stereotype perfectly.
It's tempting to just say that creative work that can be automated this quickly should be automated so that artists can focus on more creative challenges, but this is not how it plays out in practice. Rather, this only allows companies to cut down costs. It is already extremely difficult to find work which will pay a livable wage as a creative. AI has already caused layoffs and negative wage pressure on remaining employees. The only thing that AI has done (at least among my circle of friends) is reduce corporate costs and increase antidepressant prescriptions.
If you're interested, feel free to reach out to me because I am starting an anti-AI coalition.
(1) AI has already been used for IDENTIY THEFT in many places. Check this out: https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-scam-voice-clone-fake-kid...
AI here to clone a voice was used to make a mother think her daughter had been kidnapped
(2) People getting fired from their jobs such as illustrators because AI can now do things. Also, people NOT getting hired when they could.
(3) I am a professional writer, and I know of some websites who are using generative AI for articles and hiring less (or even firing writers)
(4) AI removes what remaining reliance we have on each other and makes it less likely for people to talk to each other when needing some basic information. The societal effects of destroying communities where people need each other are pretty clear.
(2) AI is unique in the sense that it has a much wider range and acts much faster. Therefore, it is much more dangerous, similar to how both salt and sodium cyanide are dangerous but the latter is much worse. You need to think in terms of the magnitude of the effect, not just its qualitative nature.
"Here, rural areas and undeveloped nations. Take this crippled, distorted window into the greater internet. It happens to be much better at viewing content than creating it and will surveil you more closely than ever you watch it. The preinstalled software is forbidden to remove. Don't view it more than ten minutes a day or the content recommended by social media algorithms may cause malaise. Like and subscribe for more content."
This is especially important when you consider how unethical the Prime Directive itself is as a principle, and how often Star Trek portrays violating it as the morally superior choice.
The position you're advancing here seems to infantilize people in rural areas and undeveloped nations, and aims to deny them the agency to make their own choices about how to fit modern technology into their lives and communities. It sounds like a modern variation on "noble savage" and "white man's burden" notions -- not exactly a good look.
I believe it seems that way to you.
Many people (in particular unemancipated minors) might likewise consider it infantilizing to place a minimum age requirement on drivers' licenses, firearms, alcohol, etc. yet the consensus is that doing so is for the greater good.
It seems unremarkable that we tend to treat actual children like children, but it's far less mundane to propose treating mature adults like children on the presupposition that due to their cultural or ethnic origins, they must exist in an immutable childlike state. The latter is an extremely dangerous notion, and we ought to be wary of anyone who advances it.
> yet the consensus is that doing so is for the greater good.
I'm not sure that any 'greater good' calculus is part of any consensus whatsoever.
What humans use it for is another discussion.
One example: - You can use nuclear fission to provide light and warmth to millions or blow up millions.
Is nuclear fission good or bad?
I would argue it depends what humans make of it.
Same with what you call "AI".
I wish you luck with your coalition, but once a technology is "out there", you cant take it back. I don't think there is an example in history where that happened, would be curious if you know one.
You mean your friends that work to produce generically pleasant looking props in order to maximize player retention and profits?
It seems like artists complaining about AI don't actually work like artists but more like office drones
I think AI use in art tools is inevitable, but replacing artists at any level is not a good thing.
Everything in the computing space has been shifting labor from one skillset to another skillset and maximizing the output per hour worked so that fewer workers are needed for the same output (but also more tasks are worth doing, because the costs are lower for any given benefit.) Why is displacing people manually building the visual component of video games any worse than, say, displacing typists, secretaries, people delivering interoffice mail -- all of whom also had salaries, dependents, and livelihoods -- while increasing the value of work in the field automating all those things?
Of course there will be people just clicking "generate" on a website. But isn't that the difference between consumer and artist? Everyone can press the shutter button on a digital camera to take a snapshot. But the artist knows how to use light, angle and technology to create a photograph with the looks and composition that they intend. (If you compare snapshots from amateur photographers and from professionals, the differences are astounding. And it's not just about the cost of the equipment.)
Certainly, there will be jobs – especially the rather repetitive jobs – that will be replaced by the use of AI, just like stock photos replaced jobs of certain photographers, or just like industrialization and automation replaced the jobs of a lot of craftsmen and artisans. But craftsmen and artisans are still around, and they are paid a lot more than they used to be paid, as long as they provide added value on top of the generic products available on the market!
There's a lot of "but wait, there's more" in what's happening around AI.
Perhaps with commercial art, pragmatic bread and butter art being automated and pooped out by noncomprehending, non-communicating consumers the job of real Art that communicates the frontiers of human experience using rich metaphor and on the edge of language and reason can work without having to also deliver hallmark nonsense.
Yeah, the economics to allow this are all fucked. But if you're an artist communicating your human experience, that does not matter, it's a part of your work.
I firmly disagree. I have a very strong imagination, but I never had time (and still don't have the time between full-time work and needing to learn German) to develop the skills to turn what I can imagine into artefacts that others can enjoy by my own hand. AI gives me the means to turn some of what I imagine into things I can share — not everything! (SD is so terrible at dragons, even the basic body plan is all over the place) — but it can help with many things.
> its primary purpose is to take away the reliance on artists. The ultimate aim of BIG TECH is to take away this reliance so that they can be the ultimate source of cheap art, just like cheap slave labour is the ultimate source of cheap and unsustainable clothing for most people.
IMO the purpose is fully automated luxury communism.
Stable Diffusion is free, so "Big Tech" (which would here have to include a small German academic spin-off) can't reap huge rewards from this, just like there's no huge business case for yet more video call services or social networks — too much competition for the money.
Finally, just yesterday I was watching a year-old video from a german robot supplier that's undercutting "cheap slave labour" for clothing.
Big Tech will benefit immensely from AI. Even if Stable Diffusion is free, it will spurn the development of new computers and new technology to run models like Stable Diffusion, so even not immediate things benefit big tech.
Fully automated luxury communism is a rather bleak future, and it will take us away from being stewards of the environment, and instead consume as many resources as possible.
Finally, even if you are doing something relatively harmless with Stable Diffisuion, many other people will use AI for malicious purposes.
Not so. Sense of purpose is important.
Your sense of purpose conflicts with the opportunity of everyone else to express themselves as they wish.
How familiar are you with utilitarian ethics, and the "mere addition paradox" criticism of it? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere_addition_paradox
> Good thing you have a full-time job....
For now. The LLMs will come/are coming for mine, just as diffusion models and GANs eat at the jobs of graphical artists.
> Fully automated luxury communism is a rather bleak future, and it will take us away from being stewards of the environment, and instead consume as many resources as possible.
It's (currently) pure Utopianism, taking on whatever hopes the proponents want it to have no matter how unrealistic. I therefore think you're arguing on the basis of which team it's associated with, without understanding the details of what it is you hate.
> Finally, even if you are doing something relatively harmless with Stable Diffisuion, many other people will use AI for malicious purposes.
Oh absolutely. Whole can of worms there.
Can say the same about basically every tech way back to the wheel, fire, and pointy stick, though unlike most using this analogy I am well aware of the problem of induction (in particular the turkey and the farmer), and don't claim that it will all work out just because it has so far.
AI in general could make us immortal, with lives of leisure and free from all suffering… or it could turn us all into paperclips to maximise shareholder value.
I do not believe people should be able to express themselves as they wish unconditionally. They should not be able to express themselves to the point of destroying the environment, they should not be able to express themselves by creating nuclear weapons or something EXTREMELY dangerous (AI), they should not be able to express themselves by disrupting society.
AI is just as disrupting as creating biological or chemical weapons, and perhaps even worse.
And it would horrible if AI could make us immortal. We should die...
Perhaps? You had death by paperclip optimiser right there in my comment :P
> And it would horrible if AI could make us immortal. We should die...
Samuel Johnson tires of London, visits an undisclosed location somewhere near Zürich.
It's actually "fully automated luxury gay space communism", all words are important there. Also, in the Culture series, arguably the seminal series about the "fully automated etc.", there's a whole scene about AI producing art (i.e. nobody cares or think it's interesting)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fully_Automated_Luxury_Commu...
> there's a whole scene about AI producing art (i.e. nobody cares or think it's interesting)
As I recall, this was a conversation between an organic person and a Mind, a specific category of AI that's quite capable of running several billion uploaded human consciousnesses simultaneously in real time, and it was the Mind who was saying that yes, they could make far better music, but they didn't want to.
And yet artists have always used tools and adapted themselves to the qualities of those tools. Paints, paintbrushes, canvases, chemicals, instruments of all kinds inform the end result just as much as the artist's initial intention.
Jackson Pollock's most famous works were produced by splattering paints on a canvas. Sure, he selected the paints, the canvas, and the trajectory and velocity of the splatters, but his works are as much the expression of stochastic fluid dynamics as they are of his vision.
Nothing is stopping people who see handcrafting every intricate detail of their work as an expression of their innermost sense of self from continuing to do so just as they always have.
If that's what they're getting out it, why should it bother them that people who do just want to obtain the end product for their own purposes are getting it from someplace else?
Even taking your arguments at face value, it doesn't really make sense: Let's agree and say that AI can never make "real art." How does AI art existing prevent human-made art with the intent of self expression from existing? You say it will make human art less commercially viable, but that's hardly related to the expression behind the art. Human art has just as much expression whether or not it is a commercial success. Is your argument about financial viability or expression? Would you agree that having deep human expression enhances the value of a piece of art? Are you aware that artists who focus wholly on expression were already stereotypically "starving," even before AI art was a thing?
No, it doesn’t.
That's just an anthropomorphization of “produces deterministic results of its inputs that are practically intractable to compute by other means”. But Stable Diffusion doesn’t “make creative decisions” any more than POV-Ray or (pre-Generative fill) Photoshop.
There. My argument works without modification but with this more precise definition.
>UNLIKE other tools, AI makes creative decisions. No other tool has done this
If you use any other tool or technology (for example certain oil paint, canvases, sculpting material, motif, etc.) that also implies a creative decision.
>its primary purpose is to take away the reliance on artists
That is not true. It might be the purpose that some people ascribe to it, but it is a technology & a tool.
Humans decide what its purpose is, its purpose is not inherent to the technology itself.
You can use Imagen to create very personal and individual self-expression. With open source models that you can tweak and train yourself there are many possibilities to get an individual result. I guess you only looked at things like Dall-E and came to the conclusion that this would replace artists.
The same thing people said about photography aka "This is just a technology to replace portrait painters/landscape painters etc."
If you learn more about how Imagen works you will understand that there are many possibilities to make it your own and create meaningful self-expression.
>even if "normal human art" exists, it will never gain much traction or commercial viability.
There is 0 indication of that. Why do you think that?
FWIW the current art "market" is what makes me sick, so I am happy for any tech or idea that demolishes it and makes room for something new and creative.