AI art and AA

Argent Dawn
42

Actually, having now read Loras’ linked posts of Acrona’s points from the other thread, I will change my opinion. Somewhat.

Some / Most AI art is theft. Theft in the sense that it steals your data without your consent, or makes it unimaginably hard to opt out of having your data taken from you.

Theft is of course wrong. Problem is, theft is so integrated in our increasingly digital lives to the point that reloving it is very, very difficult.

The data sales industry generates hundreds of billions of revenue annually- And those are some fat lobbying interests.

Even EU, probably the most aggressive undertaker of Data regulation in tte world, is working several years, maybe even decades, behind progress.

Acrona is a far smarter, qualified & knowledgeable person than I am in this matter- So I bow to that expertise.

But, I would also like to point out that the last thing to come out of Pandora’s box was hope. And there is and can be great avenues to use AI in the future for - Including art and music.

I am for example in the process of worldbuilding for my novel, and I am trying to generate body plans and skeletons for my creatures that are the process of evolution, which radiations can then be seen in the other species of the same group and their radiations. I have been thinking og using AI to help me figure out the skeletons.

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43

Both AI art and AI generated/prompted stories, IMHO, have absolutely no place anywhere regardless of how casual or formal a website is. A lot of people here are noting how unfair it was for AI and automation to claim other industries and millions of peoples jobs/livelihoods, so I don’t quite understand why they acknowledge it’s unfair and ultimately negative whilst also being okay with it gobbling up another industry, one that is all about the creativity of the human mind and imagination.

I can understand people feeling overwhelmed by how initially much better AI art or writing might look than their own, but that is solely due to AI thieving and processing thousands of other people’s works every second in an entirely nonconsensual way at that.

I do not look at AA or people’s TRPs or their RP to RP with a text-generator AI. I RP and read people’s stories to see the different creativity and imagination of each and every single roleplayer; their unique perspectives, outlooks, how they shape their characters and how those characters process the world around them. Even if someone is simply a beginning or amateur writer it will always be better than even the most well-formulated AI slop.

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44

There’s a big difference between a human using their hand to make it and a machine copying it through modern technology tbf.

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45

I’ll go even further, at this point I’m keen on seeing an expansion where the story is written by ChatGPT instead of Danuser and his underlings and then see how much better or worse the results are.

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46

Perhaps- But where does one draw the line? Do we even know where the line starts or ends at?

My stance hasn’t changed re: the learning comparison. I do not really think we as humans truly understand even our own way of learning and intelligence and inspiration to try and draw arbitrary lines between man and machine.

But what I have changed my view on is the theft part- Which, consequently most of this stuff is.

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47

For me, regardless of the morality, using AI for writing and art for a hobby that revolves around writing or making art about something feels self-sabotaging.

Of course, people have their own ways of how to enjoy this hobby and all that, but it just bamboozles me how someone will pay fifteen bucks/month so they can engage in their writing and art-making hobby only to slap a few prompts on an AI and call it a day.

Have we reached such a level of vanity that people’s goal in this hobby have shifted from enjoying the writing that they do, to cranking the lever of the Steal-Art/Writing-O-Nator machine so they can flex about it on a public forum? It’s a damn hobby. It doesn’t need to be industrialised. Cranking out as many stories and art pieces as possible isn’t the point of this whole thing.

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48

I wonder, do people who’d remove AI art from AA also stand up against traced art and remove that as well?

The majority of cheap bought online art is traced…

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49

The same way people will buy boosts for given content in WoW instead of working for them.

I have only ever bought 1 boost in my life and that was for the moose mount in WoD. In hindsight, I do not get why did I buy it. I never use it, I have 0 characters who have use for it…

Truly got Tyler Durdened there.

50

I think this goes a bit deeper.

On one had I can 100% understand the artists that are worried about their income, customer flow and originality. It sucks big time, especially for people who have made whole careers out of their skills and now might be struggling financially because of this.

On another hand I can understand why people would generate AI art for their characters. Not everyone can afford to pay 60+ bucks to get a custom portrait of their character but they still wish to have some visual representation on hand.

Atm I feel like the AI generated anything has to be accepted just like the other inventions of the past. I was repeatedly told in grade school that I have to memorize mathematical tabs and formulas because I will not always have calculator with me.

I remember how upset some people were when computer drawings started to be a thing. Calling artists who use photoshop and different brushes/techniques frauds because they do not use the real canvas, real shadows, real paints and real brushes.

Same happened with music. When we started using computers to simulate sounds of instruments that can be put together to create wonderful melodies people were upset that they are not using real life orchestra to record their music.

At the end of the day we can all anything a copy, the geometric shapes, shadows, colours, depth, sounds, compositions, all have already existed somewhere before and is an inspiration to the artists.

It is about adapting. An AI art will never have the true soul of the human artist, it can only imitate and not really create anything ground breaking and new. But at the same time there are millions of people who can express themselves by using the program when they couldn’t before for various reasons, and I think that is a good thing too.

It will be the same as in other branches of art/industries. Get cheap copies that anyone can get or pay for premium, original work. We see that literally everyday from clothes to furniture or housing.

There could even be some people who can jump start their creativeness by using AI art generating, same as there are people who use sample music to compose their own music.

At the end of the day, I think we just need to accept that these programs exist, learn how to get the best out of them and be creative going forward when creating more niche and original arts.

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51

Yeah, and the difference between AI art/writing and digitial tools to make music and art is the fact that with the latter, copyright still applies. Digital tools to make art, writing and music exist, and they facilitate much of modern pop culture - but copyright, which protects the identity of things made and makes sure that the original artists are properly compensated exists.

There is a very large difference between the digital tools in the music industry and their creations, that still have copyright and you need to buy the rights to to even sample or make your own creations with it, and AI art/writing, which is made to steal the material that they use for free by design.

It’s not that artists don’t want to be like the music industry, it’s that if art and writing was like the music industry, or any other industry for that matter, AI bros would be getting such a copyright-induced law court beatdown because of copyright infringement that it would make the Butlerian Jihad from Dune look like a joke.

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52

sniff

Smells like whataboutism in here.

53

Ethical or not, AI art has a distinct ugliness to it that tars a lot of profiles. It started years ago with those soulless, half-melted AI faces you could make with that one program. Naturally, programs like Midjourney were the next logical step.

I don’t believe AA is regularly moderated enough nowadays to justify a harsh stance on AI-generated content, and as the art becomes more and more seamless, we will likely see a lot more of it. AI art is in a stage right now where you can almost immediately tell that it is AI-generated, but that definitely can and will change too.

I had a lot of friends who made part their living from selling custom art to customers on Argent Dawn and other roleplay spheres, and the rise of AI art could definitely take away a lot from their income.

For now, just look at the hands.

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54

Thing is- AI has won several art competitions as of late.

There was a photography competition for example where the winner, to prove a point, refused the price and revealed that thw picture he used was AI generated.

AI can and will do better art than artists. And it can and will be indistinguishable from every other art.

In the future, maybe it can invent too.

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55

A counterpoint to the overwhelming amount of defeatist attitudes heralding a pessimistic AI dawn in this thread: hundreds of governments at the behest of cultural departments, influencers, celebrities etc. are now setting their sights upon AI work and automation and rapidly bringing up-to-form legislation that bans or greatly curbs it in many ways.

I don’t think this rolling over and dying attitude at the first sign of rich tech bros playing with AI is a very good or healthy mindset to have, especially not towards things like literature and art, the backbones of many cultures.

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Thing is, effective legislagion and/or harmonization takes time.

Take car seatbelts for example. Cars existed since the start of the 1900’s, yet it took until 1968 to make them mandated by law. And the car industries lobbied heavily against it, and succesfully so.

Same with tobacco industry etc. Not to mention that it will be very hard to tell which art is AI and which is not.

57

There’s plenty of ways to get your hands on “free” art without resorting to theft anyway – websites like picrew exist for a reason.

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58

I just checked it out and saw only anime-like pictures. On top of that, having seen other “picture maker” images in the past, they quite frankly look pretty bad.

I think it’s a bit disingenuous to say that it’s a good alternative to AI when the results it provides are so inferior to what AI can make.

59

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the work of artists who upload their work to picrew have much more character to them than the same-face, uncanny valley, and weird handed stuff that AI works currently comprise of.

They’re a good alternative because they’re cute, they’re free, there’s literally thousands of options, and they’re not pilfering the hard work of artists (who are, let’s be clear, not some wealthy elite jealously guarding the market).

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60

What is and isn’t art is hardly a new debate, and this is just the most recent nuance to that discussion.

My problem with AI art isn’t whether it has “soul” either, truth be told, but that most if not all of the AI generators have stolen references from human artists without giving them due credit or compensation. That is my issue.

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61

The stolen references side of things is the practical issue for sure, but I do think there’s very real merit in noting that art is something intrinsically tied to human creativity and we should be defending that.

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