Thoughts on AI art?

[Chocolate]

What do you think of it? Do you support it? Or against AI art?

[Stargazer31]

It's not art. Nuff said

[EncryptedWriting]

It's not art, period, end of topic.

[ButterflyEmpress]

I'm sure an overwhelming majority of people here are against it. It's existence makes artists obsolete.

[NickRowler]

If you are using it to make a dumb meme to post on social media, that's one thing.

But I don't like how people see it as a way to avoid paying real artists. Especially if it is a large company which can afford real artists. Or people who make AI images just to sell for profit. There has been far more sketchy looking stickers and posters popping up on online stores ever since the AI art trend blew up.

I also hate how it is now being used as a shortcut to "enhance" art or video. It always looks weird and makes the work look more fake.

[cherrystark]

This is going to be a can of worms. But here it is. AI is the next phase of technology. We can't deny it or ignore it. While AI does need some control in place for our safety, it has so much potential to make our lives easier and tools more accessible. AI art is art because art is subjective. A three-year-old's crayon drawing is just as much "art" as any picture hanging in the museum. Just because it doesn't inspire you, doesn't mean it won't inspire someone else. AI art makes high-quality images accessible to anyone. While I would still hire an artist if I knew their work and trusted them, AI is the better option for a lot of writers to get cover art. It's literally a gamble to get licenses for photos and graphic elements, and I have known writers who've gotten scammed by artists. A lot of the indie writers I know simply can't afford to pay for a human artist. They would if they could, but it's just too expensive. I also don't feel bad about the AI art generators that I have used in the past because either they're pulling references from their own internal catalogues where artists do get paid a small stipend for the use of their image or if the artist contributes a style for the program - they get credited every time it's used.

AI writers have been in the news now, but a lot of what they're freaking out about is just nonsense. Humans still need to add their skill and talent to the prose generated to make it readable. AI also cuts down on a lot of the mental strain of brainstorming, making outlines, beat sheets, whatever. While there are certain points of AI writer programs that still need fine-tuning, it's just like using a word processor. Even the claims about it stealing from writers is nonsense. We get mad at programs like ProWritingAid or Grammarly for giving us feedback that's stilted and hollow. AI is taking examples from thousands of sources to help understand how written English works. IMO, it's only really shady if you were using AI to present yourself as said author (which is also something you can do without AI.)

AI is just a tool. It's as simple as that.

[JoshRaed]

Art is created by a person to invoke a feeling or intention. AI art is generated by a machine based on no feelings or intentions to replicate other things it has seen, whether it was art or not. It does not know what it is doing or why, and is a machine designed to create a facsimile of art.

AI art can be a tool if anything. Like that one song "the magick" has a music video that uses a combination of sequential AI and Rotoscoping to create a cool effect. "Bad apple with AI images" is a really cool use of the whole "AI image spells out a word" concept. But AI itself cannot create art.

[Mallory]

Art is about using your talents and limitations to try and communicate an idea to an audience. A lot of creation occurs in a part of a brain that is non-verbal. The intricacy - and the appeal - is to see how a creator is able to translate that soup of primordial thoughts into a physical creation.

"Big titty, trending on art station, cute girl, sexy girl, Pixar style, Elsa, big gazongas" ain't that. It's search terms on one of those websites that rip off NSFW Patreon artists. I DO think that there is some place for AI/ML tools in art creation - the time consuming steps that don't require risk and creative energy (like cleaning up the little hairs on line art, or applying flat colors from a reference sheet) could probably be outsourced to AI (calibrated on artwork obtained with consent and compensation, of course). But if you start to outsource the difficult parts - the parts where you can actually fail - then you're just telling everyone that whatever thoughts you have in your head aren't worth you confronting your own failure. Why in the world would anyone else care if even you can't be bothered to take that risk?

[morganicfoods]

I don't care for it. It's just glorified tracing.

AI may be able to creative prettier things than I can, but it can't replicate what's exactly in my head. Therefore it's completely useless to me.

[BLTX]

I'll just say, while I could be very well be proven wrong, I don't believe AI art will be REPLACING people any time soon on a significant scale. Regardless of weather you think it is even ethical or not, even if/when AI art becomes better than any human could possibly make, I just don't think humans are as invested into text prompted generations as we are things that our fellow living beings have made. And if such is the case, art based companies won't be able to survive if they go ALL IN on AI. They will basiccly always need humans for the simple fact that they're humans.

And, frankly, there are thing's I'd LOVE AI for, even as someone who really enjoys the process of doing things on his own. I've often imagined an animation program where you could essentially import an animatic, script, and general art style instructions and stuff, basiccly everything a human animation team would need, and have an AI spit out an animation for you based on all of that. Call that cheating or whatever, but to me, on a fundamental level, it's really not much different then using motion tweening. Either way, a human is setting up the scene, and a computer interpreting the in-betweens, with humans ultimately fine tuning and being in ultimate control of everything.

Alright, I said WAY more then I intended, so I'll just come right out at this point and say that while I understand the fear and the anger that people might have toward AI art, I have no real moral or ethical objection to it. Yes, even as an artist who LOVES doing things for himself, and would not so much as trace a hand. Far as I see it, it's just a new tool. Like photoshop, any digital art program, any program where you can digitally alter an image.

[RedLenai]

I'm not against the AI itself, just the people that use it selfishly.

Why?
It's database requires already existing artworks in order to operate. Said artworks in most cases was took without the consent of the original artists.
At the same time that many people just dump artworks to the IA to generate new results, constantly feeding it. At the same time, it became a biohazard of legal issues, as it takes stuff from the internet and what people manually feeds it, you don't know if the image generated may have copyright, trademark or authoral rights. The situation wouldn't be the same if someone offered to create the IA and then, asked a selected group of artists if they'd like to feed it, and as you generate your image with the prompts, you'll still receive imput of what elements of the original artists have been implemented by the software.

Not to mention that despite being classified as a tool, artists are not the ones using it most of the time. Maybe some artists may be using it properly, be it as inspiration or to come up with compositions of drawings.
But actually, the ones taking advantage of it are people that don't draw, don't want to bother to gain a skill and many want to gain money from it, be it by deceiving others about a service or product they offer.
Which is a funny situation considering that AI art is useed as an alternative to not pay artists "You can generate images for free!" but then why do they want to scam and deceive people, and why other AI users defend it?
Let's not forget how many companies or studios just shove their artists's works in a database, then fire them, expecting the AI to obtain the same results. Many do in fact consider it a reeplacement for artists because "They are hecking expensive, how dare they charge!"

At this point, AI art is not very different from contemporary art, people don't know the difference between appropriationist art and plagirism. So many won't even bother understanding why right now AI is more damaging to artist than actually a benefitial tool.

Personally, maybe the day that theey can reegulate the usage of AI, evade exploitation, or people profiting out of it through a legal hole, or making an IA that its limited to personal usage. Maybe I'll give it a try.

For example, an IA that only feeds on my local files from a specific folder, I deecide which files go there, and there are security measures to evade it from leaking to the web, at the same time, it doesn't generate a high-res illustration for me that I can simply rip-off an call an illustration, just a thumbnail like sample that uses my work, my style, my own inpputs that then I can utilize to polish my work.

[Lensing]

Here are some general thoughts about technical development:
-it can´t be stopped
-people will lose their jobs
-jobs will completely disappear
-it will be worse than you can ever imagine

[Katzalcoatl]

I have nothing against AI art as long as you don't claim it as yours.
Claiming you own a prompt command is like saying you own a google search.

Ai art is just a tool and should only be used as such.
Just like any other Ai tool you can use it as reference or for fun but when you try to make it seem as something you created then it's fraud.

It's like copying your friends homework without changing anything. Sooner or later a teacher will find out and you both will get in trouble and fail the class.

So yeah use it for references or for fun but never claim it as your own.

[thepenmonster]

Let me lay the future out for you...

1. The day will come that the software is good enough that it won't need to scrape people's art to work from. Probably within the next five years at this rate.

2. The public have never given a shit about artists and their ambitions. They only care about their entertainments and not where they come from.

3. That means, when Robot Beyonce or whatever produces a very popular club banger, AI art forms of every type will quickly become normalized. And that means the public will start shelling out money.

4. Money means giant corporations will start getting laws changed to serve their greed. Then the creator's studio will be replaced by a cold room with a collection of hard drives in it. I'm willing to bet that Disney will lead this change and the US government will happily support them.

5. Tapas 2050 will see be a legion of people very skilled at using the drop down menus in Clip Studio 10 calling themselves comic artists and no one will question it because that is the way it is now.

Personal feelings? I think it looks like shit. I also think filming in portrait mode looks like shit. As does using a phone screen to look at comics. But those are both the norm now and I lack the power and influence to teach the world to not have such trash taste.

It's disappointing because Zoomers are so much better than my Gen X is oh so many ways. (The insurrectionists on Jan 6? Those weren't Boomers. Those were Gen X!)

All I can tell you at this point is...

[Aleksei]

AI by itself isn't bad, as technology goes. BUT as long as it create their datasets without consent, compensation, credit and transparency, it will be only glorified art theft.

Also, as value goes, all that AI throws is garbage. Only fast food. It may look and taste decent, but it will only destroy your eating habits. Humans always will be needed, and their art skills will have higher intrinsic valor than any AI image. The problem is that the monetary value will not be the same, because capitalist society, but that's another problem altogether.

As long as corporations insist that we should push into something, society will go there -as car fueled with gasoline instead of electricity. Unless the population is really awkward about it and stops it full as there are only monetary losses isntead of an investment -as Meta, as NFT, as most of digital coins go- AI will have their days counted, at least as how the corporations want it to go. Its a trend pushed throw our throats, but as long as we defend ourselves, as SAG-AFTRA is doing, there is always hope for the artist.

[Kelheor]

It makes art better than I do, just like the millions other artists out there, some of which are twice as young as I am.
Honestly I am just really tired of this topic and I am not sure I care much anymore. If people consider themselves artists because they put in a few words in the program, it's on their conscious.

[sushy00]

F*CK AI
I found my work in a dataset, which is really not OK. Nobody asked for my permission?!
I just hate that there are now a few AI companies that are just making money by abusing the work of so many artists.

[RedLenai]

Oh and I must say, AI with the purpose of just being entertaining, dumb. That the person doesn't seek to profit out of it or at least credits the main source or database that it utilized. That's ok.

The issue is when you're trying to profit out of it and trying to deceive people into thinking you drew that thing as if you were an old-fashioned artist.

[JadeFang]

Paintings didn't stop being made with the invention of the camera and physical art still exist even with programs like photo shop being able to replicate it. Technology does not replace art but streamlines it, like a tool. An artist that implements it in their art may be able to cut the time it would take to complete a project in half or maybe more.

[Lensing]

Jobs disappear, that´s part of the progress of technical developement.
There will always be human made art, they just don´t make money with it.
The music business disappeared but people still guy guitars