#ai art debate

[batcavescolony]

I didn't think if have to explain this, Human mediocrity is hundreds of times better then ANYTHING an AI could come up with.

[jessiarts]

Too many people are willfully misunderstanding why artists are protesting AI art right now.

All they hear is "Artists are mad at fun new tool and scared it will replace them, so they're trying to take it away from us!!"

Artists are not protesting the tool itself. Many even like the concept of the AI tools, believe it or not.

We are protesting that it takes and uses our work without our consent and without any compensation, all while the companies behind the tool are making loads of money off this practice.

We're fighting for regulation of the tool. Not only does it scrape work created by artists into it's database without the artist's permission, private medical photos have also been found in these datasets. None of that is ok.

From the start this tool should have only been fed images in the public domain, and any artist work fed to it should have come from artists who have consented to it and who were then also compensated whenever their work was used by the AI tool. There's also other issues like:

Sites like ArtStation and DeviantArt refusing to place AI in it's own category to separate it from human made art. Just like traditional and digital art get separate categories, so should AI generated art. (Also some are trying to hide when they generated something from AI and try to pass it off as done by their own hand??? If you believe it's 'just another tool,' why are you trying to hide it???);

How DA tried to pull a fast one and first made AI scraping an opt-out function and said that dead artists work would be scraped because they weren't alive to tell them no;

How the companies behind the tools are knowingly making money off the AI scraping artist work without artist consent;

People are selling AI art with no regard that their generated image likely contains work that another artist created;

Etc.

"But humans take inspiration from other artists all the time! The AI is just doing the same thing!"

First off, it's not. And I don't even mean that in a "AI art is soulless and can never be the same as Human Art!" way or anything.

I just mean these "AI" tools aren't 'true AI' like how you're thinking. They're no Hal3000 that actually make decisions on their own. They're algorithms programed by humans to search the acquired database and photomash together a product based on a prompt. They're not actually becoming 'inspired' by anything. (And it's not insulting the tool to say this either!)

And that's not even the point, but let's pretend for a just minute that what AI Art programs do is the same as a human taking inspiration- Even humans are not allowed to take too much of another artists idea/work with the intent to profit without getting in trouble. Even if that 'profit' is just internet clicks, people very much still do get mad at other humans for copying another artist's work and trying to pass it off as their own.

And that is what's happening with a lot of generated art. It will spit out pieces very similar or nearly identical to another artist's work and will often even include artist's signatures or watermarks in the product. Because it just photomashes, essentially. (Again, not a dig!)

And I'm not knocking photomashing, it is used in the industry. And I bet most artists are actually fine with the concept of a photomashing tool. However, even when humans in the industry use photomashing, they have to use their own photos, public domain photos, or have permission of the owner to use the photos they intend to photomash with. And we sure as hell are not allowed to use someone's private medical photos in our work either.

We're only asking that the work generated by AI Art programs follow these same standards. Again, we're only fighting for regulation, not to take this "new fun tool" from you.

But unfortunately that's all some who are already enamored with the idea of AI Art are willing to hear from our arguments.

It's easier to just believe that artists are simply "afraid of change" or "afraid of being obsolete" and are trying to rain on your fun than to look at our arguments and concede that, "Hey, maybe this tool was implemented in a bad way. Maybe artists do deserve the basic respect of being allowed to consent to their work being used to train AI, and to being compensated by the company behind the tool if their work is used. Maybe we should look into more ethical ways of implementing this new tool."

No one seems to realize that artists would not be fighting this tool if it was done right from the start and didn't just outright take our work to train the AI without our permission. Hell, artists release stuff to help teach/'train' other human artists all the time! We release full tutorials, stock images, even post finished art for people to use for free sometimes!

The difference is that when we do, we consented to do so. It wasn't just ripped from our hands by people who felt entitled to our labor for their own gain.

We're not trying to take away your fun new tools! We're only asking that your new tool does not come at the expense of abusing us!

I really don't think that's a hard ask.

[joshua-beeking]

" You artists are panicking over nothing! No one is gonna steal your job just like photography didn't kill it! It's just a tool!"

....

-living struggling artists have their specific art made into AI and people are already buying AI reproductions of their style.

-There are already popular youtubers using AI pictures to illustrate their videos instead of hiring an artist.

- Publishing companies are making statements about having bought AI pictures for bookcovers without knowing.

But yeah sure, we are "worried for nothing."

[ohnoitstbskyen]

The Robot That Makes Houses For Free

I have built a robot which creates new houses entirely for free. It's an amazing new innovation, a huge leap forward in robotics and it's going to solve homelessness, probably.

The way it works is the robot goes around to hundreds or thousands of other houses all over the town, and rips out the construction materials it needs from each of them.

But don't worry! It only rips tiny little pieces out of each house, completely insignificant bits which they would never miss, and then it makes this entirely new house for free out of all the little bits and pieces it took. Free houses! How amazing is that!

You just type into the computer what kind of house you want, what style of architecture, how many floors, what kind of floor plan, and it'll just do it - like magic! Out of nothing! For free! What amazing technology, it's incredible what we can do with modern advancements.

Anyway, this recent plague of houses collapsing is really worrying. Apparently they're falling down because they're being slowly worn away by some kind of mysterious erosion? Huh, that's weird.

But it's kind of a blessing, really, because it means now there's a huge market for new houses, so we're going to build even more robots to make those houses, and so long as the traditional old construction companies keep making new houses for us to sample, we can make new houses totally for free forever!

Wait, what do you mean the constant supply of free houses is crashing the market and driving them all out of business?

[xj4cks]

[iinkbones]

My thoughts on AI "art"

Today a youtuber who I've been following for years started giving his perspective/argument towards the usefulness of AI image generators for content creators. It really put into perspective for me how, outside of the art sphere (with the exception of a handful of outliers), the general public has absolutely no concept of the value of art and artists, much less the damage being created by these AI "art" generators. The accessibility of art on social media and the mentality of content creation have completely commodified art, rendering the figure of the artist just another worker to purchase a service or a product from. For years, I've tried to hold onto the hope that a large amount of people still have some semblance of appreciation towards art. Hypebeast imagery, NFTs, and AI "art" have completely shattered any hope I had left.

One of this youtuber's arguments was that, for just $15, an AI could make you hundreds of images to choose from, in varied styles. That it's much more efficient than searching for an artist whose style you enjoy and then going through the back and forth of concept sketches and then the rest of the artist's process. This argument feels like a slap to the face; to completely disregard the artistic process as an inconvenience, to act like the soulless images produced by AI are of equal standing as art made by an artist's hands, born from a creative mind- it hurts.

As artists, every day we are met with a world that continues to lose artistic literacy; we create for audiences that no longer give themselves the time or do the self reflection needed to form emotional connections and intellectually explore the messages of a piece.

Art isn't a commodity, it's a necessity. It's the most human form of self expression. Art has been a fundamental part of humanity since the very birth of our species. There will never be a single line of code in this world that can replicate the all-encompassing complexity of the human experience contained within every piece of art.

It's completely soul-crushing to think that art could be in its dying days. AI "art" is not art. It is the culmination of the death of the artist.

[viktoriamagrey]

Frustrating that few people talk about the fundamentally demoralizing and disrespectful aspect of AI "creations" for an individual person's identity. Voice actors have had to put up with their literal voice being stolen like some kind of horror story with no regard whatsoever for their personal autonomy. I can't even imagine how horrifying it must feel on a primal level, to hear your voice used without you being able to have a say in it. When AI discussion so often gets entangled with talk about laws and rationalizations about how "the process is very complex" (as if that changed anything about it ethically or mattered at all when technology is constantly changing anyway), it's important to remember the ways in which all these non-consenting people were abused and deprived of their rights as individuals, not a collective, theoretical group like some AI supporters like to see artists from all fields. These people have a unique voice, figuratively and literally, that feels special to them because it's theirs. It doesn't come just from training, or talent. It's a fundamental part of who they are as a human being because it is a result of their lived experiences. There is a reason making art is so important to so many people - it's an extension of who they are.

Having someone forcefully take something so personal to you to make a forgery of it as they see fit, and most of all, to hand out random people the ability to use what is rightfully yours, without your consent, is humilliating, dehumanizing, and vile. Going through entire databases of stolen art should make you sick. Hearing the voices of people saying things they didn't say should make you sick. Watching people make entire tools dedicated to copying someone's specific art style and themes like it's a sheet of paper you can pass around, should make you sick. You are not "copying" a mass of concepts, you're not "referencing" something, and what is just "harmless fun" to you shouldn't matter if it's a violation to the individuals involved. You're robbing the intent, and fingerprint of individuals to churn out what you want out of something you alone decided was fine for you to take. AI "art" is an ethical nightmare.

[piinfeathers]

i keep trying and failing to come up with an informed post about why you really shouldn't be using ai generators that basically consist of a database of pictures stolen from working artists, but it all boils down to me just screaming and begging literally anyone to just give a shit about us

i see photosets reblogged CONSTANTLY of very obvious ai art, but no one really seems to be able to recognize it anymore except artists. these posts get tens of thousands of likes on mass produced, soulless prompts that use exclusively works stolen from artists who have no say in the matter and absolutely no protection or power to stop it

every time i see ai ‘art’ now, all i see it stolen art, stolen time and stolen money. it hurts

also please just consider that this wont stop with us. fanfic writers are already discovering that their works are being trolled for content by ai farms. and from a security standpoint, if you’re uploading pictures of yourself to ai generators, they now just have an image of your face to use however they want, since legality isn’t really a huge issue for them

please just care, please just research

please just give a shit

[fluffielox]

please don’t feed the ai

[dyspunktional-leviathan]

“AI art is not an accessibility tool, you know what actually makes art more accessible? Mobility aids! [& etc, not quoting it all]” you sound like my mother telling me that I shouldn’t want a wheelchair since I technically can get by with a cane

[cookies-super-secret-blog]

something something grow a pair and state thoughts on ai?

So, funny story, I made a post about this before, whenever the topic tag for it was trending. And like, I still stand by that, sans the part where I call the AI itself a form of art under my definition. A little bit after that, I saw a post, while definitely not in response to my own post, made the point that while we should hate AI art for the rampant theft of jobs and content, that its somehow bad to dislike it as Bad Art or Not Art because "gatekeeping art is baddd". Which like, in the context of someone drawing stick figures or painting giant blocks of color, is valid; we shouldn't gatekeep art from people. I still think AI doesn't deserve that privilege. Like, not to try and define art again, but, like hold on ket me grab something.

This is an ai generated adoptable from deiantart. Now, I have to ask, what's being expressed here- besides "cute girl in big hoodie (despite the one on the left not having a hoodie)"? Like it's easy to take these apart mechanically, but conceptually? It's somehow easier. Like, part of character design is visually communicating stuff about the character. There's nothing here besides anime girl in big outfit with minor armor details maybe? Like nothing else here is coherent! Like she looks sampled off of genshin and honkai characters but that's it. Like the cutains are just blue, and its dull and boring because of it. Why is the jacket neon green? The prompter wanted it that way. Why does she have the shoulder pieces and the case she's holding? Because the prompter likely put "battle girl" and/or "solarpunk" into the prompt. And it's not bad to have design elements for the sake of it, but the ai can't do anything but that, and the content it generates suffers because of it. There's no artistic value there, imo.

Now, not to toot my own horn, but here's my take on this design:

This is still a "cute girl in a big lime green jacket", but there's more to it. It's a high visibility jacket, with stripes reminiscent of construction vests. In the other doodles on the page, this high visibility theme is expanded to a theme of her being some kind of rescue personnel, and/or an angel (see; the halo in the bottom right). While it's fairly easy for me to point these themes out- it is what I intended- I'd still argue an obersever would be able to point out similar, or other themes and motifs that bring this character together.

No ammount of prompts and generation models can recreate that. Even if the prompter had the exact same intent I had when making the og ai content, that intent doesn't come across whatsoever. Because AI cannot replicate human intent and artistic processes.

These image generators register to me as the miserable end point of the sad, art-illiterate belief that art only is, and is only meant to "look pretty". Every time modern art is decried as "ugly and pointless", another prompter gets validated in their shameless attempts to assert their narrow-as-fuck vosion of what art is.

Art is human. Art is messy, art is intricate, art is sloppy, art is beautiful and art is ugly.

No machine on earth can comprehend or replicate that. And the ceasless attempts to commodify and capitalize on art have made some people forget that fact. The kinds of people who prompt really only see art as a gimmick product, pretty knickknacks that will make them rich quick.

For lack of better terms, the dehumanization of art itself is disgusting, and so like hell am I going to consider AI's mass-produced, slot machine-esque, drivel as art.

And I will not be guilted by other people on this hellsite who think its a moral failure to call mindless content what it is because its dressed up in distorted frills and anime girl boobs.

Art is human, and AI is not human. And what a sad world it is, that we're automating and strangling human creation, instead of letting it thrive.

Thank you for reminding me to share my thoughts.

[jessiarts]

I once saw someone try to say that Ai art was anti-capitalist and I just-

Ai art is straight up capitalism!

Literally can't get more capitalistic than outsourcing the most basic form of human expression to a machine that is only able to produce anything because it devoured the work that human artists spent hours, days- months even- creating, all without their consent!! All just so the company behind the tool can rake in a ton of money from the users who pay to use the tool to generate their images!!!

The companies behind the Ai tools straight up profit off the labor of human artists to train their Ai, without consent of or compensation to those artists, for the company's own profit.

That's 100% capitalism. Profiting off of the labor of others is capitalism.

Hell world. We're in hell.

[alvie-pines]

seeing AI covers of a character from a tv show on my dash so im gonna say it

if you want a character to say or sing something, pay their fucking VA to do it. these people make a living (well, often not because VA work already pays poorly) making that character say or sing things. dont use a machine to steal their voice and make the machine do it for free.

[ohnoitstbskyen]

Hey TBskyen, what's your opinion on AI taking over, or at least really hurting the creative field. Like say taking over writing, art etc etc.

Sorry if this was asked before, AI just makes me wary of my own aspirations as a writer cause if an ai can just do what I do a lot better and faster is there a point in trying to publish that work?

What AI art and writing is a threat to is your professional career first and foremost. It is automation, and the function of automation is to drive down labor costs and outcompete artisans by sheer volume. I can't promise you that you'll be able to earn a living from writing in the future, this technology could genuinely destroy the commercial market, but if your worry is that the AI is going to simply be better than you, then let me put your fears to rest.

The AI cannot and will never be better than you.

These machine learning algorithms (which are not actually even AI, I should say), can only ever do one thing, which is reproduce the data that is fed into them. They can mix and remix that data in a hundred billion different configurations according to whatever parameters are specified, but they can't actually create anything.

Algorithms have nothing to add, they don't invent anything. They have no experience, they have no perspective, they have no intent. Algorithms will never write a story to express anything, they'll only reassemble parts of other stories to fit a desired output.

This is not to say that algorithm art won't pass the Turing test, that's a fairly low bar, just that fundamentally, algorithms will never, ever generate something that is of higher quality than what's fed into them. And they will never invent anything new, or add anything to the conversation.

Something which is true and will remain true forever is that somewhere out there, there is someone who needs the thing that you create. And they need that thing from you, in your voice, from your perspective and informed by your experiences. This isn't poetic fancy, this is observed experience. Humans tell stories and create art because we fucking need to. And we need these things to connect with one another.

That is always going to matter.

You might only have an audience of one. You might never make any money doing it. You might not even be alive when the person who needs your work finally finds it, or if shit goes really bad, it might be lost to time and they never find it.

But it fucking matters that you tried. Algorithm art is the mechanisms of capital trying to suck the soul out of one of the few areas of human existence that they haven't managed to drain completely yet, and to keep writing and creating while under this assault is a form of resistance that we sorely need.

[demonic-shadowlucifer]

I wanna talk briefly about the AI debate because some of the takes I've seen are very much pissing me off, especially since most of those takes aren't helpful at all (and some are just straight up bullying). I already posted about this on my other blog (post in question has since been deleted since it was kinda harsh and ngl very dismissive of very valid concerns!), but the biggest issue I have with the Anti-AI crowd (And, to be honest, the AI debate in general) is that it feels like they're getting mad at the wrong things. No, AI itself is not the problem. No, someone calling themself an "AI artist" is not the problem. No, using AI for fun is not the problem. No, partaking in some AI trend is not the problem. No, someone simply generating AI images is not the problem. The actual problem is: -People feeding other people's art into AI generators and then claiming it as their own (Scraping basically) -People putting other people's writing into AI chatbots/AI text generators (ex. ChatGPT) to "finish" the fic (Again, scraping). -People using AI to make eerily realistic Not SFW deepfakes of either people they know or celebrities. -Corporations and companies screwing over artists, musicians and actors in favor of AI (such as replacing them). -People using AI to make racist/queerphobic/misogynistic/ otherwise bigoted stuff (Something that I've also been seeing unfortunately) -People not being honest about using AI (Transparency, people!) -People using AI to mimic other people's voices without those people's consent (not sure how to word this but i'm sure some of you know what I mean). -The fact that there's almost no regulations when it comes to AI. AI gets a lot of criticism, and it should! Until it becomes more ethical and there's regulations imposed, we should still be skeptical of it. However, I feel like we've gone very off track when it comes to criticizing AI. Personally, I don't think someone posting an AI-generated image of an elf with wings surrounded by mushrooms and rainbows makes them a thief by itself.. But if they made that image using someone else's art, then in that case yes they are a thief! And no, someone partaking in the Pixar AI trend is probably not going to cost you your job. You know what will cost you your job though? Companies favoring AI over actual living beings. So maybe instead of getting mad at someone using Character.AI or posting an AI-generated gothic phoenix, how about we get mad at corporations screwing artists/actors/musicians over and the people using AI with genuine malicious intent?

(Image ID: A banner that is blue with flowers framing it. The text reads "OP is a minor. Please respect my boundaries" End ID)

[letrune]

"ai"s, another rant

Consider: what is the product? Most of these "ais" (large language models) are "free", but you get only a few rounds for free. It's like a casino, you ask a thing, get images, and you can roll again if you liked it enough.

There are many of these LLMs that say in their TOS that they may save, sell and base their new generations on the images you produced. That they will access your computer data, save it, may even sell it. Some even proposed to use your own computing power, CPU and GPU for these.

But the money comes from somewhere - namely, bitcoin, nft sales and now, premium generation with ai, and lending them out for rent to companies. This is where the LLM companies get their money. The way they can replace artists, and get whatever they want, even if it breaks the law or worse.

Many articles rely on fake news dreamt up by a LLM textparser. Fake images circulate. Many dictators love to doctor images, and now thry got it even faster. Truth is being harder to find when it is easier to fake.

The product is you. Your gambling addiction. Your artistic efforts. Your truth. Everything the internet was meant for. All of it is now for rent, for sale, and to be reimagined by techbros who don't understand the systems they want to ruin as long as it makes them money.

Consider again: bitcoin ruin the economy of the little people and make a few rich. Nfts ruin online markets and videogames, and make a few rich. "Ai" ruin art and text and news, and make a few rich.

There is nothing to be gained in it. It is a toy for a bunch of gambling addicts in the 5% who want to be the 1%, and now, thanks to many big companies taking these, the tool for megacorps to get even richer by spending even less.

Imagine, Warner Brothers gets their own. They can start producing a movie, announce it, then can it, delete it and start anew. No spending beyond paying the energy and water bill and the server costs, but there are no people involved. They can produce for anyone, remove any piece, use any bodies, living and dead, for anything, from selling slop to playing the big bad. They have to spend less and you got to pay the same or more. Why would they even finish any movie? Just produce a slop, toss on a streaming service, then remove and make more, half of them go for tax refunds anyway.

It is a tool for instant gratification for you, and then more cash for the top? Yes. It is.