Are we free to hate on AI "artists?"

[annaportia]

I definitely agree. Simply typing a prompt does not mean you're an artist. I certainly get how you feel about these people referring to themselves as 'artist,' because the fact of the matter is they are not.

[VibrantFox]

I don't wanna dredge this topic back up but I also would prefer to not make yet another thread but I'm staying on being heavily against ai especially after seeing this

https://twitter.com/YeenieBeans/status/1637095266770665472?s=20

it's best to click the link to view the images themselves but the fact that these folks continue to actively scam and steal leave me feeling no guilt in having such staunch opposition to this "tool"

like both in connection to and apart from how it's used the point of it's conception/creation is clear which is cutting out artists to avoid having to pay people even tho that how things work for most other goods and services

[Kelheor]

If I want a commission from my favorite artist I either pay money for it or get nothing at all, because the complete vision of the work is the point of them being my favorite artist?? I just... Can't with these people.

[VibrantFox]

it's insane for sure

i personally offer simple sketches as a cheap art option for those who maybe don't have it for more expensive stuff and i've seen others do the same but knowing that there's all the more risk for that being exploited ticks me off. Like it was one thing when just plain individuals would buy a sketch then add onto it (sometimes within the limits of an artist's tos sometimes not) but this just feels like a whole other beast to try and combat which lately i feel like the best i can do is force myself to get creative with noise filters and watermarks to make things harder to screw with

[AmazementComics]

If it's used AS a tool, fine. If you claim the generated image, untouched, as your art, it's not okay. There's a reason AI generated art can't be copyrighted.

If you generate a background, and incorporate it into your piece, that's using it as a tool. If you generate something, and paint over like 50% of it, that's using it as a tool. But, if you write a sentence, and an AI generates something, you are not the artist. At most, you're a writer. That being said, I can see a poet turning a poem into a line by line AI generated performance piece, and I would consider that multimedia art.

[AxemanRifflord]

Well I’m sick of being effectively silent on this issue.

For starters, I call it diffusion, not AI. Calling it AI mystifies the situation. Makes it seem uncountable by implying the machine “thinks” on its own. Machines don’t screw with the artistic eco system, the people who use/make them do. Secondly, I don’t want to pretend that we don’t live in a post-Adobe-and-its-free-alternatives world. Even considering that we don’t live in a post-scarcity utopia, I still think the technology didn’t have to be made and implemented the way it has been.

I’ve always been irked that in the face of artists being worried about companies replacing their jobs with diffusion technology, there has been an attitude of “yeah, you deserve to not be compensated.” I think it was more blatantly antagonistic early on, as for where we are now, well, the infamous Corridor Crew video. The part that seemed to push it over the edge for the “maybe we were too harsh crowd” was the “we have finally democratized the animation process” speech. How so? There is already tons of free animation software. People have been releasing animation independently on their own for years. Ebsynth has been around for quite a while. As for them listing skill as one of the gaps this tech bridges, but what was stopping y’all from learning to draw their own keyframes?...

That last question might sound really reductive to “this tech is completely fine” people (‘if we did everything the ‘right’ way, it would cost this this and this and take this amount of weeks/months/years/etc’.) and counter productive to my fellow “this tech is screwing me over” people (‘one more closed job opportunity’). But that’s ultimately the difference between someone who can draw something and someone who can’t. Don’t get me wrong, there is doing too much of something by yourself (https://forums.tapas.io/t/when-you-cant-afford-to-pay-for-help-how-do-you-manage-alone/75242/16). But I can’t help but notice it’s very common for people who aren’t very experienced in an artistic field to jump to “Diffusion technology/having someone else do x part for free is the only way for me to do this”. These people are mystifying whatever it is they don’t know how to do. They don’t consider that people they want to replace/freeload off of all had to start somewhere. Those of us who got something done had to scale something back. Many of them don’t have that experience, they over estimate what the bare minimum looks like.

As for the future of the technology... one of the first defenses I’ve seen is that the images generated by diffusion aren’t copyright infringement. Whether or not that’s true, that defense doesn’t seem to account the library of images that were already fed into the machines. The information is still there. As for how copyright law works, what some people think is fair use is actually a case of “the copyright holder didn’t think it was worth going to court over.”

My attempt at explaining what that means.

Anyone familiar with the Five Nights at Freddy’s fan game scene? The way copyright law’s written, hypothetically, 30 years after its creator death (assuming he isn’t immortal), whoever inherits his estate snaps their fingers and says “all unauthorized FNAF art, games, gameplay footage, animations, etc, it’s all gotta go.” Legally speaking, if it didn’t file off the serial numbers correctly (or it’s a review, or it’s educational), it’s gotta go, and (assuming Disney doesn’t do it’s thing,) it’ll have to stay gone for another 40 years. (Also, said inheritor can’t just can’t go around republishing said work without the fan artist’s consent. If they still made it, they still own part of it unless otherwise signed away.)

Considering a lot of diffusion stuff threw cautions to the wind in this regard, and the fact that they’re being taken to court in the first place, I don’t think it’ll be an easy victory for them. (Again, they didn’t have to do it this way. The public domain exist.)

(I also low key just think diffusion technology will never “just work” the way people want it to. Aside from it not being actual AI, I’m just unimpressed with most diffusion results. It’s not a ironclad argument, it’s just a honest opinion that colors my view on the subject.)

TLDR: Most pro-diffusion people are just kinda ignorant about the process of actually making the art that was ‘once only accessible to the elite: ‘talented’ people.’

Also, people seem to forget this video exists:

Which, the TLDW is: people have tried to outright replace animators before with technology. The technology needed them for it to actually be effective.

Now history has come full circle yet again, expecting a different result.

(Speaking of the ‘process’, I spent 3 hours writing this... oof.)

[jeremierousseau]

when I began at school in art was to put a wheel on a marble column or to paint with white color a canvas !!
I think AI will steal job on books cover, maybe t-shirt all one picture to sell something for comics and animation film it's not for tomorrow but it's impressive.

[ShidoDraws]

AI can not steal jobs, it can threaten people's jobs but it won't steal it. Think of AI art as stock photos, you can't own stock photos but you can own the stock photos that you edit. So no, AI will not take jobs because there was never any jobs that was taken, it's just people's gotten access to something that they can never truly have legal ownership over.

[NickRowler]

To use stock photos, you sometimes have to pay licensing fees. Small creators may be allowed to use some stock images for free but larger companies are legally required to pay. People who create stock photos are still artists (photographers, models, editors, designers) and they still make money off their work.

Big companies want to use AI to side step paying these people.

[ShidoDraws]

But you're still paying for the service of the technology either way. Either way someone's getting paid.

[BlairFujin]

someone who basically stole bunch of data off internet (including some personal medical records) and put them into their contet spewing black box

[ShidoDraws]

Anyway, what I was trying to say was the only jobs that I see that are being stolen is freelancers. If you want a job you should consider leaving this field. Plus, everyone seems to come to the same conclusion that the technology is here to stay which says a lot about the future.

Though I may just be a hobbyist and never really made any living off of my art so my point of view probably doesn't matter to you.

[Mallory]

I think the part you might be missing as a hobbyist is that the vast VAST majority of professional artists ARE freelancers. There are very few art jobs that are stable employment, and even fewer that are unionized where the employer can’t just fire half of them because he thinks he can replace them with image generators (he can’t, at least with the current technology, but that won’t stop him from doing it). It’s generally accepted that as an artist you will spend at least a decade working freelance/contract gigs until you finally build enough connections and experience to get an in-house job and stable income. It’s literally killing off the young people’s professional aspirations in something that is actually a highly technical skill, that was never respected for what it was. (For the record, I went into STEM because my family pushed me to it, so am not really a professional artist even though I do now have a portfolio that attracts some interest. But a few of my friends are professional artists who still work gig shit and break their bodies because the industry built on their efforts never respected the fact that they exist on the backs of the artists’ labour)

[ShidoDraws]

You forget that I'm an artist myself. I know how much work goes into crafting your skills to a professional standard. Just because I'm a hobbyist doesn't make me oblivious to the people who are pursuing something bigger and sometimes bigger doesn't always correlate to better. Get that?

[ShidoDraws]

You know, I just realized something. Talking about this made me realize that I've always lost hope in art way before AI art. I mean, if you think about it, somewhere out there right now there are thousands of people picking up a pencil and doodling something and realizing that they want to pursue professional artistry. And when you think about how you also want to pursue that, your odds of becoming a professional artist is so slim it's luck base. I never consider myself lucky but at least I want to be able to control what I can do. So I understand your sentiment on how it affected professionals but you should also consider how you've affected people who aren't professionals either.

I don't know, maybe I'm just being depressed. I just want hope.

[Legendofgenii]

My only issue with AI generated art, is that it’s now being sold on Etsy. A (supposedly) handmade market, which boasts the ‘mission’ …

I sell clipart there and now I’m competing with folks who can churn out illustrations in seconds by typing in a few words.

Summary

They aren’t listed ai, but you can usually tell because they have a bajillion fingers - and folks are buying it because it’s cheap.

I suppose I’m just worried about my business and having to adapt etc.

[YS_og]

The art industry is to me a part of the entertainment industry. You either make big earnings by making it big individually like performing artists (1 in a million) or you are a part of a huge corporation (still low chances). Either way, you either adjust expectations lower and live as an artist, or do as you said, keep art as an enjoyable hobby. I do the same, and found a profession I enjoy.

So in a sense Im with you on that take.

[RedLenai]

AI art looks "great", sometimes its the most Sakimichan wannabe-esque thing, other times is abominations that really makes a 12 years old feel proud of their own anatomy.
AI is impressive when we talk in general and not only art, because if it's only art then the "looking great" really loses it's value at least to me.

As I've said this is my personal opinion, but to me it looks superficial, lacks a bit of feeling, it looks like that artist that desperately tries to do a 1:1 artstyle copy of these photo-cellshader artists, they lack originality and the fact that it totally depends of already existing artstyles, art pieces and general really doesn't make it look that great at the end of the day, because honestly, AI art only looks great because there are individuals that actually draw great, there isn't to me any credit for AI because it's only a very advanced/automatic editor and the fact that one with a trained eye can see the parts where the AI has cropped and edited (shadows not matching, angles, rotation, hair details or ends, clothing, etc, etc, etc) it only makes how evident and untrained those self proclaimed ""Artists"" are.

I don't believe AI artists exist, a person that only types prompts until getting what they are looking for doesn't seem to be an artist to me. To me someone who executes an artistic ability as they gain skill, that's an artist to me even if the word has been diluted so much, but if I have to be honest, a toddler has more right to be called an artist than these individuals.

Now, AI to me shouldn't be exploited in this matter.
I get the whole needing validation therefore you lie and pretend you did something or try to scam people to get quick cash, but honestly, either satisfy your starvation doing something that doesn't affect others negatively or get a job (Gotta love being an artist making a living off art and telling others this)
Yet I know that no matter what kind of tool or asset is created, there is always looking to take advantage of it and profit of it for as long as there aren't laws yet to control the usage.

I really don't like that due to AI, people are getting fired by companies because they consider it faster and with "good" results despite it's uncanny valley result, or the fact that there is people using AI as alternatives to not pay artists for artwork, and yet try to use said creations to profit despite, once again, consent has never been given by the artists whose works have been shoved to the database of these softwares.

And, to be as basic as possible: Taking a work of an artist, be it total or partially without their consent nor respecting their right to the preservation of their piece, then, that sub-derivate that is created not only violates the artist's rights but it also falls under plagiarism and copyright infringement. Especially if the works fed to the AI are actually fanart or homages to other franchises, which too have the rights of these authorized sub-derivated pieces.

Thankfully, there are laws being applied so AI isn't anymore under a gray area, and artistic places are taking action about these stuff too.

But I must admit that those AI smudged crazy stuff of celebrities doing X or Y, Dio Brando singing Baka Mitai or other things are actually fun, personally, AI should be used as another medium of entertainment like Instagram filters, but it would be great that the usage could be limited

[Skyy]

I agree, and things I've recently found out is websites like the coding website scratch is even adding AI and a lot of people use that to post art and such so y'know that didn't go down well

[JoshRaed]

Hating AI art is not just valid but a moral necessity.