In a post-scarcity solarpunk future, I could imagine some reasonable uses, but that’s not the world we’re living in yet.
AI art has already poisoned the creative environment. I commissioned an artist for my latest solarpunk novel, and they used AI without telling me. I had to scrap that illustration. Then the next person I tried to hire claimed they could do the work without AI but in fact they could not.
All that is to say, fuck generative AI and fuck capitalism!
Every artist complaining about AI art is like John Henry.
If AI is stealing because it’s using art in it’s learning algorithm, then so is every artist who has studied other artists for inspiration. AI just happens to do it a hell of a lot faster, kind of like how all technology does when it replaces any other form of labor. And while AI art can’t compete with the top 0.1% of artists, it can certainly compete with the bottom 99.9%, and it can produce thousands of images in the time it takes an artist to produce 1, which is plenty good enough for most applications.
No. AI art isn’t going anywhere. It’s too convenient and we’re not going to reverse course just to save jobs, something we have never done in the advancement of technology. No one stopped the steam engine driving railroad spikes because they wanted John Henry to keep his job. No one stopped the printing press because they were concerned about scribes. No one stopped the DVD because they were worried about what VRC repair men would do afterwards.
AI art is a tool, and it’s here to stay. Adapt or fall victim to the progress of technology. “AI art is sTEaLiNg” is some desperate nonsense that I think even those making it know deep down is BS. It’s the only argument being made because all the technical ones about quality, speed, and availability have quickly fallen flat. AI art is higher quality, faster, and more accessible to users than regular art and it’s not even a question. So all they have left is “it’s theft!” while conveninetly ignoring that it’s the same fucking thing they did to learn art, just in a much faster, more optimized way.
“If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts; if you have the law on your side, pound the law; if you have neither the facts nor the law, pound the table.” Artists are firmly in the table pounding stage.
I agree. Times change. Putting people out of work is not inherently a bad thing. How many oil workers and coal miners will be out of work when we ban fossil fuels? How many jobs emptying chamber pots and hauling dung were lost when cities installed sewer systems? Hell, how many taxi drivers were put out of work by Uber, and how many Uber drivers are about to be put out of work by self-driving vehicles? When specialized labor is replaced by technology that can do it faster and cheaper, that’s good for society as a whole.
The problem is, society also needs better support for people whose jobs are replaced by technology, and that’s something we don’t have. The logic of capitalism requires unemployed people to suffer, so workers fear losing their jobs and don’t oppose their bosses. OP’s comic shouldn’t be read as an attack on AI, but as an attack on capitalism.
If only we’d replace Uber drivers and taxis with trains and busses -_-
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You said this very well. It’s no more stealing than you looking at a piece of art and remembering details, and producing output from that input no more immoral.
It’s clearly necessary to have the broadest possible training data in order to be useful at all. If it isn’t familiar with Spider-Man it can’t create art depicting an accurate representation of him.
If anything I’m proud of the pioneers ignoring the legal implications and pushing forward, instead of letting copyright limit what AI understands.
Every single picture on the Internet, ever created, unless specifically licensed Creative Commons or equivalent via licensing has an implicit copyright. AI art is impossible under international copyright framework at written, so thank God they ignored the insanity of intellectual property fuckery the US has imposed on the world.
Yeah I can’t look at artists with zero nuance for AI as anything but being hypocritical. Most artists I know from the industry understand that legally they have no case against these companies because they use the same fundamental freedoms and ideas extracted from the collective human creativity they themselves used to get where they are. And art and creative studies explicitly teach you this. You will spend a lot of time analyzing great works to see what makes them so special, and replicating those ideas as practice.
It’s how it’s been since forever, and many great artists in history are on record as having directly studied, imitated, or producing homages of other great artists. The Mona Lisa is the best example, it has uncountable derivative works, but nobody questions the ethics of that because we accept even works directly based on another have room for creative input that can make it distinct. And nobody is claiming to have made the original, just their own version.
Hiding or downplaying those facts about the creative industry so you can call AI theft without being a hypocrite is very questionable behaviour, especially since it’s often used to convince people that don’t know much about the creative process and can’t properly realize their ignorance is being taken advantage of to condition them these aren’t just a normal part of becoming a better artist. And if pressed on that, the response is usually “but it’s okay if a human does it.”, admitting that the point was intentionally misrepresented to not hint people in on the fact the AI is doing the same as the human, and not explicit copyright infringement akin to real theft.
You can still not like AI or argue to provide better protections for people displaced by AI, I honestly partially agree. The technology needs to remain something in the hands of the working people that contribute to the collective, not gated behind proprietary services built to extort you. But arguing against AI on a level of theft or plagiarism (barring situations where the person using the AI intends to do exactly that) is just incredibly disingenuous and makes allies not want to associate with you because you’re just spouting falsehoods for personal gain. Even if I think you deserve all the help in the world, you’re asking me to accept and propagate a lie to support you, I will not do that.
And there’s the flipside. Limiting those freedoms in a way that AI would be outlawed or constrained would most likely cause unintentional side effects that can blow up in artist’s faces, limiting not only their freedoms but also the freedoms of artists that embrace AI and use it as the tool it’s meant to be. And you bet your ass that companies like Disney are just salivating at the idea of amending copyright law once more.