#anyway. if you want to make the argument that ai shouldn't be trained on people's art without their consent that's one thing

[phaedo]

okay so can everyone make art because it came free with your humanity or is art defined by how much physical effort you put into it. answer quickly

[modularnra40]

Thoughts On Gen AI Art

I want to put my thoughts on the subject down in words, and this seems as good a place as any

I hate that society and capitalism have forced me to be anti AI Art! Ten years ago, this was literally my biggest dream! There is a *very* close alternate timeline where my career is fully enmeshed in generative ai (as opposed to only sort of enmeshed)! Like, I cannot emphasize enough that I was basically a coin flip away from going back and getting my graduate degree *in AI* (instead I decided I liked having money, and kept working as a software dev)

Also! It is so so so frustrating how many of the complaints and scare tactics around Gen AI are ultimately bogus. Mostly - plagiarism and the environmental impact are both wildly misconstrued... Most folks do not understand the Sheer Amount of data that these LLMs are trained on.... It is an amount of input which is essentially incomprehensible. The actual impact any individual piece of art has on the model is so minute as to be meaningless; and frankly, it icks me out to be on the side of 'strict copyright good actually'???? Like, one of the consequences of putting your work out publicly is that people can use it - there is definitely a good discussion to be had around if models are trained on media that is supposed to be behind a paywall, and if so how we either prevent that or make them pay to use it, but the way the discussion is currently framed is *actively dangerous* because it is in *direct opposition* to fair use. (This is a complex subject! I know! But there is a big difference between 'this is cruel/immoral/tacky' vs 'this should be illegal'! If it becomes a legal issue you MUST consider the WORST consequences as well as the intended ones! Laws generally, and US laws specifically are *not* historically good at differentiating between actual human individuals and corporations or abstract technological entities! And 'actually it should be harder to appeal as fair use' is NOT the right side to be on!!!!)

And the economic impact.... Guys please don't believe pop sci articles, shits always more complicated then that

But anyway, I think that right now there is no way to justify the use of generative ai for the creation of static media. That is so clearly taking jobs out of the hands of actual living humans - even the argument that you would never have actually paid someone to do XYZ is a bit suspect along basically the same lines as making fan content for jk Rowling - like.... Sure, that may be true, but now you definitely won't, and also you are tacitly endorsing this use. (Similarly to making fan content for jkr, I consider this to be tacky but not actually A Sin)

HOWEVER -- I think I am pro AI Art for things that you literally could not possibly get a human to do.

The main use case I have in mind is video games. Either more traditional viddya games, or things like endless choose your own adventure novels**.... Also new kinds of musical instruments --- imagine a synth that changes itself as you play it? There is some really really cool stuff just over the horizon in these sorts of directions - and there is no person they are replacing, no one *could* do those things. Harm still has to be considered on a case by case basis, it should go without saying, but like. At that point the argument really becomes 'this piece of art shouldn't exist because it's taking resources away from this other piece of art' - which is to say, fundementally a bad argument. There is no ethical consumption etc etc

**there is an argument that this is tt:RPGs but guys... It really isn't. Like, I love DnD as much as the next millennial nerd, but there really is a fundementally different urge met by a Group Role Play activity and a Single Person Visual Novel, or RPG video game .... Like, people play DnD with their friends and then go home and load up Baldur's Gate - these are different activities. The 'anytime anywhere completely private AI story book writer' is a role that *could not possibly* be filled by a human

AND all of this is sort of eliding over the fact that like, using AI good is a skill! AI output sucks! It is genuinely hard to get AI to consistently produce useful output! I think that will become more and more apparent as time goes by and the shine wears off - a lot of uses for AI will become ubiquitous and common place, and improve as that occurs, but a lot will just go away because it is fundementally easier to work collaboratively with a human being then to use generative ai.

I Do estimate that in like... 15-30 years there will be some Andy Warhol type artist who uses AI in some fancy and challenging way, fundementally altering the social landscape around AI Art... But like, we'll see.

Tl:Dr: Taking existing jobs out of people's mouths in favor of shitty AI slop=bad; making new, previously literally impossible art with new tech=super cool