Setting aside the usual arguments on the anti- and pro-AI art debate and the nature of creativity itself, perhaps the negative reaction that the Redditor encountered is part of a sea change in opinion among many people that think corporate AI platforms are exploitive and extractive in nature because their datasets rely on copyrighted material without the original artists’ permission. And that’s without getting into AI’s negative drag on the environment.
Pretty sure that artists are pissed because they are gonna lose jobs and money. To which I say we’ll you chose that career path deal with it or go on another career. I hate the argument that AI is stealing art as it’s using existing art to generate other art, oh yeah ? Then what about you, how do you think you get inspired? Oh by looking at other art ? Hmm sounds an awful lot the same to me! Let me put it this way due to AI even I might loose my job in the future but you know what I do to combat that ? I try to learn how to use AI as that’s the skill that will be required in the future!
I’m pretty sure that artists are pissed because techbros have taken the artists’ creations without permission and used them to train computers to mimic the artists. This is bad for a host of reasons. One obvious reason is that the thieves can then use this to make money, using the artists’ work but without paying them - ever. Another reason is that since the AI can make work using the ‘style’ of an artist but without the creative direction of the artist, it devalues the style that the artist has worked to create. The new AI created work looks similar, but is not of consistent quality. Another reason is people generally think of art as a creative outlet; where someone’s thoughts and efforts go into creating something. But if the work is done effortlessly, and primarily through the lens of what the AI sees rather than what a person sees - then it just devalues art and artistic creation itself. Art creation is basically the very worst thing to automate; economically, morally, and philosophically.
Sometimes I think we could get to a point where nothing new is created. Like, if everyone is just using prompts and profiting from other people’s work without consent, and this is more lucrative than creating content yourself, what’s the point in creating new things?
I don’t know how to put this without sounding alarmist, but I fear we might be heading towards a halt in creativity. Trying to come up with something fresh will become less rewarding, so we’ll be feeding from the same source material over and over again.
It’s always been that “there is little new under the sun.” Whether it’s math, science, or the arts, the “new” is all built on what went before. It’s all just incremental and very often what was old is now new again.
AI might be good a copying, but the desire to create and destroy is a human drive. It will remain and find a way.
People will always want to create, but if they can’t make a living creating, that’s going to put a roadblock in their artistic development, because they won’t be able to dedicate themselves to it full time.
Your comparison of taking inspiration and literally generating something from someone elses image is the most braindead take on ai I’ve read. As a human you can’t replicate someone’s style to the extent that ai does. And if you are drawing from reference and trying to make something as close to the original as possible then it’s normal to give credit (with digital art at least).
Yeah, sure, you can’t replicate someone style to that extent. It not like people made fakes of famous paintings to sell them as originals just because the originals are expensive. Please tell me how humans can’t replicate someone’s style some more!!!
First of all, you can’t make a perfect copy. Second of all, faking paintings and advertising them as original just so happens to be illegal. Can you give me a reason why it should be acceptable when AI does it?
My point is humans do it, and not even AI can do a perfect copy as it is impossible due to how old those paintings are. I never said it should be legal for AI to do that but if you ask AI to do some painting you want but to do it the style that Rembrandt did his painting that’s not illegal that something that people do too and those kind of request are normal for painters so why should AI not be allowed to do it. ?
And exactly which part of this process could not be done by AI too?
Which part will still require hiring a human?
The one where you have to give inputs to it in order to get what you want from it
That will not be a marketable skill, if the intended “customer”, who just wants the end product, can do all of that themselves.
There are already improvements being made in understanding the intent better, which will eventually render all “prompt engineering” unnecessary and obsolete.
The necessity to tweak prompts will be a very short-lived thing from these early days. At best it will give you an extra year or so.
Similarly if you picture yourself as an owner of a company - you cannot sell something to people that they can just make themselves with zero effort required. Especially in an environment with a million competitors. At best your moat could be the network effects of a large user base, but that’s not an easy place to get to.
Really? Are you sure that someone that knows a lot about art can’t create better art with AI then your average Joe ? And are you sure that’s not marketable ? Cause I’m pretty sure I can make a banner or a poster my self for advertising if I wanted to but I still prefer to pay a professional to make it as it will be better! Everything is marketable so don’t give me that. This shit is pretty much the same issue that was created with automatisation when factories started using robots instead of people. It’s inevitable, it’s the future and just like then people will find other jobs!
You are assuming that progress in AI capabilities will stall somewhere close to its present day state. Because today, a professional-made poster will still be better than one you can make yourself. But that won’t be the case forever.
This is more akin to how there used to be elevator operators vs. people just pressing a button themselves, or how people couldn’t easily book their own airline tickets without going through a travel agent, and now they just order them through a website.
Yes, it’s called progress. Some jobs will disappear but others jobs will replace those. The world population is quite bigger then what it was 100 years ago and even thought computers and robots replaced a lot of jobs we still have jobs today as a matter of fact we have more jobs. As someone has to mention and program those robots. Someone has to create programs and games, someone has to mentain the infrastructure. Youtube videos and streaming became a job. Simply put the point I’m trying to make is AI might take away some jobs but it will also open up new jobs opportunities for other people. And no matter how pissed of you are that AI is doing something that you consider wrong and think that only humans should do it you will never be able to stop AI from becoming a thing. There was a lot of push back against automatisation too and that did absolutely nothing and humans got replaced by robots on assembly lines and shit like that.
And no I don’t assume that it will stall, it will evolve but humans will still have to give inputs to AI in order to crate those posters, and we will find more creative ways to give better inputs in order to get better art. Simply put using AI at a professional level will become a skill and a new job. I’m pretty sure that I wouldn’t be able to create better AI art the someone that does that everyday as a job. At best I will give some input like make this picture in the style of Picasso or something while someone that studied art will know more art terms and concepts then just make it like Picasso.
Why couldn’t an AI do that?
Same question.
This will only work because of the parasocial aspect, and there will probably be strong competition from AI there too.
For every thing you imagine, simply ask yourself - will AI be able to do it better?
So far I haven’t heard anything convincing where the answer would be “no”.
This whole “giving inputs” argument is 100% leaning on today’s technological limitations.
With enough advancements, no input you could ever come up with will be able to compete with the automated ones - even if they are working from some very high level goal, like “make something people want” (to give a slightly exaggerated example).
Nobody’s going to pay you to utter the phrase “make something people want” (and it’s not competitive as a business either).
For now it can’t, but it will in the future. Still we will always need someone that has to check on it in case something happens. And AI kinda needs to be prompted to do things if the checks say everything is fine the AI will always think it’s ok even if it’s not doing what it’s suppose to do. That’s why we still have infrastructure and monitoring teams. If everything would have been automatized for any niche and particular issues that can arise it would have been done a long time ago.
I feel ya. They complain a lot about something being better than them. Aren’t humans supposed to adapt and overcome or did we forget that skill a long while ago?
Adapt and overcome how? Using AI? By the nature of the matter, less artists will be needed using AI, some will not make it. So, what then? Dropping their artistic career to go carry boxes for Amazon? What a shitty path we are making for humanity if we need to drop careers of passion to do menial jobs.
No, make art for fun and not for money. 😒 Art is for fun and culture, not for profit
We can argue that when Disney ceases to be one of the biggest corporations in the world, and most people can live with part-time jobs, that leave them plenty of time to create art. AI is not going to make it so all art is made for fun rather than money, it’s just going to make it so media corporations get all of the money, without having to pay any to actual artists.