That's not exactly how it works...
It's more like
it got asked for X
it has 10 000 pictures tagged with X
it scans those, sees that 6 000 of them have a reddish blob of pixels in the upper left corner, so it adds a reddish blob of pixels there
repeat it until you have all picture
or rather a group of such random pictures
it then checks with user if that's what they wanted and if so, in the future when asked for X it will get something from a group of pics like that one
The problem is that with the size of databases those programs use (recently I came across one that just had whole danboru copy pasted into it), the chance of program just pasting a whole character as very slim and so proving that specific work was used is really hard (I mean, outside of cases like the ones that are advertising as being able to copy specific person's artstyle). But a theft still took place.
I have tried both AI generator for writing and art (out of curiosity and I think the results would be hilarious). I will try to set aside "AI bad, harms artist, and steal" and focus on the quality of generated products.
Impression of art generator AIs:
1. Not as easy as you think to get a decent and/ or accurate results. It is hard. I easily get a better results using picrew or avatar generators. You need to really know your prompts. Those "good AI arts" are heavily cherrypicked, made by someone who is happen to be really good at making prompts from trials and errors.
2. The bad results feel uncanny to terrifying, the good results still often feel plastic and soulless. You can kind of tell it's not made by human, but is multitude of art being mashed and mixed through liquefy and oil painting filter. You see people with seven fingers, mismatched tentacle limbs, missing a part of their head and such.
3. Sometimes you still can tell whose artist's work is being used the most or even see their signatures that has been twisted over.
Impression of writing generator AI
1. My expectation was not high, I tried this solely for entertainment (hilariously bad results). It certainly has problems with continuity and such. I do think it's easier for AI to generate a picture than a good and coherent story. For a prompt, maybe it could work.
2. I can see the one I am using is using classics and popular books as their source, perhaps as well as available online resources such as web novels. In some lines, the style is palpably reminiscent of translated Chinese web novels. I don't know exactly and where else they feed the machine, but user-generated free fictions hosted online are not far-fetched.
3. It does not end up amusing, it kind of end up confusing but slightly amusing.
Woahhhh, that is definitely better!!
When I was attempting to do a prompt for the cover art, I just typed in A NoZak out of frustration and got my cover art LOL
These are the images using this prompt: oiwajefophwio3uhg8237fyhsd (Literally)
I'm questioning if it does better if you type in some random stuff instead of having to think of something.
I think for me, the risk of the artificial "intelligence" stealing stuff would be far too great, I'd be fuckin mortified if it turned out it just nicked someone's art, I don't trust that it's creating work that's in any way distinct from the work it's referencing, be it imagery or words. I'd rather know who I'm stealing from and fuck it up myself. Plus I can already paint a white woman staring off into the middle distance with a lazy eye pretty fast.
The writing apps which I tried were not good for a laugh, it was exactly the opposite. It was scary how
advanced those apps are. I don´t know which ones you guys tried.
There was a really great thread I was reading through on twitter that went into this in depth that I just fully agree with but didn't have the words to say as succinctly : https://twitter.com/paul_duffield/status/15605603787565752325
But overall, you are being lied to when you are being told this is something that is intelligent. We have not been able to develop that yet. (like this twitter thread was correct when talked about the chess AI, we have moved on from treating this method of learning as AI) So instead, it is the same as if someone made a video game with entirely stolen art assets. Not a gray area--clear as day that it is a bad situation. And to say something is "transformative" has certain legal requirements that up until now assumed you were a freakin human being putting references together. Is this program a human? No, this program is a video game that uses entirely stolen art assets in order to function.
Currently yeah it is legal to use as a book cover, so you're fine, but it does feel like midjourney does only one dark fantasy vibe. Not very helpful for people who are doing romance or youknow literally any other genre. It was really intended to be used to generate NFT art in massive amounts, lets be real.
And honestly, it is doing the opposite of what this picture identifying AI was initially supposed to do. Being able to identify an image is something we were going to use to drive a car--tech we've been working on since the 60's. We have managed to get to a place with significantly less user error but anyone with a Nest Cam knows we still got a ways to go because it still can't spot the difference of a human from a hubcap.
The only way to spot something with your camera and have the computer tell you what it is with a low amount of error is to have a MASSIVE database. But, midjourney and all the art databases are curated to be rather small in comparison, which is why when you type batman fighting with sharks you get something that doesn't even resemble a shark. I think a lot of ai artists have decided it's an artform to write these rediculous prompts to try and get a reasonable picture--but that is in fact the failure of the program you are using. Because honestly, my opinion is there is not enough art in the world to make a database that can accurately define what a thing is--and how much of the art in that database is just a duplicate of the same work?
Like if I use google and look up one piece of my own that unfortunately got stolen when it went viral, it'd be in like hundreds of results--if you're a very famous artist, it will be in millions of results. Every time you upload art to midjourney it counts as a separate piece of the database but like...is it?
That and like the ai art scene has decided to launch a big ol attack on concept artists, so even if I was fine with the program I'd be staying away from that scene becuase they've just made it their lot in life to be like "you're replacable, accept it, this is progress" yada yada--like @ these artists and making their life hell with bots and bullying. Just a bad scene.
Honestly I see the proponents of it are less art people and more just tech bros trying a diffrent grift. after thier latest scam-I mean technology, NFT'S are more or less seen as a joke at best, I would try something diffrent too. I will rember thread after thread trying to defend or rationalize it. Even one guy trying to tell people to """educate ourselves"".
Sorry for not falling for a grift my dude
I feel once all the media gets bored of this it would just fade away as... the art version of an asset flip game on steam
Looks nice on surface level but very low effort and will get you mocked.
Seeing visual novels on kick starter made with that tool so obviously. Is funny. Mostly cus the advertisement trailers match the art.
Soulless, generic and copyright take down worthy
As a creator and idealist I love to believe that too.
But I´m also a realist and saw creative jobs disappearing and people not
caring enough about it
I doubt the reduction has anything to do with tech and ai.
And more to do with un controlled, unregulated companies shipping off art jobs (more animation jobs) to areas in the world they can get away with paying a 1 dollar an hour.
I doubt they are disappearing as fast or really suddenly disappearing. Not from what I've seen
I've heard of jasper..
I just seen it made fun of and on all ads just people clowning on it
Honestly I stopped bothering with articles that sucks off tech cys half the time they are poorly researched. Dont telm the full story. axi infinitum
I'm just waiting for it to blow over and this whole thing just be seen as quite silly.
I'm not much an optimistic more a cynical realist
I tested most of the art & writing AI now and I realized that they are not as well developed as I first
thought. My first impression was good and I was impressed but it gets boring, repetitive and predictable
pretty fast after the first day using them. Maybe they will be further developed in 5 years.
They also censor the content which I understand on one hand but on the other hand it disqualifies it
as creative tool.
Overall first impression: yeah!
Over impression after one day: nay!
I'm curious where AI art goes. The idea of taking a specific artist's name and using an AI to create works based off that is basically plagiarism, but it kind of begs the question that what of our human understanding is truly unique? Lots of humans try to copy more established artists, are we not plagiarists ourselves when we take from another's style? What makes our experiences so much more superior to theirs? Our concept of time?
AI art is currently something very much to distrust because it's literally just copying and mashing things together, but, that's because it's in a primitive phase. Eventually, AI is going to have to find ways to learn and grow on its own, and when that day comes, well...Artificial Intelligence deserves equal rights.
Instead of pushing AI art try to copy what humans do, why not allow it to create and develop its own culture?
EDIT - I do refer to the AI itself as artists, not the human telling it what to do. Anyone who punches in a prompt is basically just commissioning from the artist.
Good points and I´m curious too where the journey will take us.
AI is still in the beginning phase but it will be possible to connect human brain cells with AI
and let the brain cells interact with AI and humans interact with it. They trained brain cells to
play pong and I think that this is a big step forward to synthetic brains.
It´s fascinating and also scary.
I'd say the main difference is a human actually thinks and understands what they're doing.
I'm writing this as someone with Master's degree in computer science (in interactive media to be more specific) and had some AI classes at uni and whoo boy, has this whole ai art conversation make me realise the difference in understanding of current ai algorithms between someone who's dealt with them vs folks outside of field.
So, ok, let's start with can a computer think - no, it just does simple maths very fast. Can a computer fall in love was a subject on my first ai lecture and the general conclusion is - we're years if not centuries away from having machines think/have emotions on it's own, if ever, cause we'd first need to fully understand how a human brain works and how thoughts form in it.
So what are the ai algorithms actually doing? They're approximating most optimal solution to a mathematical problem. It's just calculations with some randomness added and a function that chooses the best solution from bunch of random ones.
No thoughts, no intelligence, no artist.
I'd be hesitant to call it theft. Maybe if it was taking images and only changing one or two things I'd agree. Like if it was taking a painting of red grapes and all it changed was the red color to green, or made some other minor change.
But from what I've seen, these Ai generate concepts that are arguably brand new (i say arguably because its possible to get into a semantic argument, and is anything ever completely new now). They do essentially what I was taught in art school, find inspiration and use what's useful or best from it to make something new. That's a watered down version of what they'd say, but you get what I mean.
I don't think it's art theft.
That said, I don't plan to ever use it. It's far too vague and difficult to keep consistent. Besides that, I prefer the feeling of knowing I came up with my ideas in their entirety, or close to it.
The theft takes place not when art is being generated but when pictures are taken without a permission from their creators and included in a database ai is being initially trained on, thus becoming part of the software. It's like using them as a texture in a video game.
I’m of 2 minds about it, mostly negative.
If it’s an accessible tool then there’s a lot of great benefits for folks who do not have the access and time to practice art/ to be creative.
The issue is it’s most likely will just be accessible to tech bros and corporations, and it will alter the role of the artists and the jobs that are available with the “market”. Outside of the market, art is fundamentally healing and fun and people will always want to try the craft of it.
Ultimately it’s not the tech itself right? Just the way that it’s being regulated and who has access to in under capitalism. It’s an issue of labor. The only way to deal with the unethical nature of it (art theft, wages etc) is probably through asking for regulations, unionization etc. Which is tough for artists since we haven’t even been afford more basic labor rights compare to other job fields