What do you think of it? Do you support it? Or against AI art?
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Oct '23last reply
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What do you think of it? Do you support it? Or against AI art?
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Let me lay the future out for you...
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.
The public have never given a shit about artists and their ambitions. They only care about their entertainments and not where they come from.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
I can argue this. I have seen several of your works. And it does not pale in comparison. You are a pretty great artist.
That being said I am comparing the sketches I have seen you draw to similar art styles done by either AI or other artists.
When comparing yourself to others or in this case the AI do remember to compare the artstyle you are using and the amount of details you are adding.
It's not the same making a drawing for a comic than to do a drawing with way more levels of shadows and lightning.
@irresponsiblepics can't take the things we do out of love, eh
Many folks here already tackled the current ethical issues with many programs and the illegitimate means and uses of the database used to train A.I. , so i will focus on a pragmatic and practical analysis of this tool.
AI art is good at doing more of the same that's already there, but doesn't work well when you try to go outside the box.
They can't come up with stuff outside the database used to train them. Ironically, the closest it comes to lateral thinking are misinterpretations of prompts/objects, like "salmon swimming upstream in the river".
I prefer working with humans, they give more consistent results and give a personal unique touch to the art.
I've given my thoughts on A.I. before, but to say it again: I don't think it's inherently bad. I think, with proper restrictions, it could be useful. I've used it before for inspiration.
But the more recent iterations of it I've found significantly less appealing. Results are too stale and less accurate to my prompts. I miss the more abstract results from earlier models because it left more open for interpretation, rather than just noticeably getting things wrong.
In any case, while it definitely needs to be properly regulated in the workplace, I'm personally not worried about being replaced by A.I., no matter how advanced it might get in the future. Because I create for the joy of creation, and no A.I. can replicate that.
It helps to explore ideas, but I'm concerned that people who can't draw or do anything creative can profit from their "works" along with artists who actually draw something. At the same time companies start to prefer AI over real people. There was a huge issue with copyright and license from the very start. I hope that this will be regulated in some way.
I think AI art is a little scary but it's also interesting how it mimics the human imagination and creativity. I do think that some AI art has something missing when I look at it, it just looks off to me and uninspired but it could advance in the future to where you can't tell if a human or robot made complicated pictures which scares me lol. I don't have a reason to use AI art, maybe for fun, I would rather make my own stuff and just be proud of it.
I quote Brenda Blitz, she is a musician and I just read an interesting interview with her and I really
liked what she said.
I try to translate it from german to english:
creative ideas are the result of soul exploration, nightmares, hope and desire. Anger, hate and
love, fear and pain. The overstepping of taboos, the joy deconstruction, obscenity and
political consciousness. Where is the computer which has nightmares, soul and hope or
a gut with bacteria which shapes it´s abstract logic?
I recently got back from a conference where AI in art was heavily covered and debated. And I have mixed feelings about it all.
2 things I find encouraging about our situation- the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes have brought actors and writers together to reclaim the humanity in their art. AI will still be in film and television, but it won't erase people like it would have- not when people make themselves heard and are willing to fight for their living (so let's amplify their voices out of gratitude for their suffering and help mitigate others).
As artists, we have to drive the conversation too. AI is a tool, but it can't read a creative person's mind and spit out an image that lives up to it. Maybe one day, but as of now, it's just a fancy tool with a lot of hard edges. Know your worth. Advocate for yourself and your art. Fight the illegal databases (and so help me, if I see anyone say their art is less than what AI can do I will... Try to buy your comics on my VERY fixed income! You're better than robots, people! You contain multitudes!).
My day job is in packaging design for the beverage industry and I have found no evidence that AI-generative art can speed up my process yet (my God, and I really wanted it to because I had to make an illustration for one of those weird, cut up mango slices (you know, the cubist kind) for a fruit beer label and it would have saved me some time- but the robots failed me hard, y'all. All that art ended up being mine in the end with NO help from our robot overlords. But one day, AI might speed up my ideation phase for work and it might even be abstract enough where it makes a visually connection I didn't think of that my human brain and skill can then run with and make, well, human. One day maybe.
Regardless, the business trend we see coming is that AI won't replace people in the short term, but artist who knows AI will be hired over those who don't. So in the meantime, know your value as an artist and drive the conversation in the field. Let the non-creatives understand that AI is a tool and not the ONLY art solution they need.
I sat in on a session led by IBM's AI unit and they covered scenarios for artists and implored us to drive the conversation with our employers so they understand AI is just a tool and it needs to be ethically implemented so people aren't left in the dust (insert gif of human skulls being crushed by a tank from The Terminator).
(Transparency note, Daniel RKM has 3 comics staring sympathetic AI-based characters and probably can't be trusted in this debate. Insert skull-crushing Terminator tank imagery once again).