Current Events > Another topic about the implications of AI art

(+) Yeah! (+)

I originally wrote this as a reply to another topic, but was told nobody would look at it and the topic kind of fizzled. So allow me to try again!

I wonder why people don't think good AI art is a big deal.If computers can do everything as good if not better than a human (we aren't there yet with AI art, but it's coming) then what are people supposed to do for work? How do we better ourselves? Increasingly sophisticated robots will come for most manual labor jobs in time. In the past, new technological innovations created new jobs. With competent machine learning and good robotics, you just won't need nearly as many people working as we have now. People dream of a more enlightened humanity with greater leisure time and UBI, but that doesn't seem to be the path the world is headed down.

AI "art" is also problematic for other reasons than taking jobs. Images and voices can already be generated with OK realism, and in time they will be perfectly real. Video and 3D modeling are being worked on. You'll soon be able to fabricate news and criminal evidence that is indistinguishable from reality. Our legal system and society at large aren't prepared for that. Another negative social aspect is the diminishing and devaluing of human creativity: already people are claiming that they "painted" or "drew" an AI image, often one generated with a common prompt that they changed a word or two for. They often won't admit it when confronted either, even if they have a picture with that weird floating ghost text or funky hands and fingers that even a total beginner wouldn't draw. There has even been at least one case of somebody taking what an artist was drawing in a live stream and having an AI "finish" the piece. If you have the know-how, you can apparently already train the AI to produce works in the style of even relatively unknown artists if you have several pieces.

It's kind of a more philosophical thing, but if computers can even mimic human creativity, then what can humans do to find meaning or value?

Bump

I'm part of a few anime-adjacent fan groups that have gotten pretty crazy since the recent release of a new model/generator/etc that does like 10x better on anime-esque art than previous generators did. It's made me see (and take part in) a lot of AI art discussions recently so I also have a lot of random stuff on my mind about it but I'm not sure I can put it to words very well.

In general, I think it's a pretty good thing? There are many processes that people do that require artwork of some sort that would be much easier to do if you could just request artwork from your computer. Someone who designs fliers, or webpages, or makes video games, or creates youtube thumbnails, or etc etc. In the same sense that some artists may feel pushed out by AI, other non-artists that use artwork for other uses are now enabled by not having to either also learn art (lots of effort) or track down an artist to work with them (organizationally challenging, may be expensive)

darkmaian23 posted...

what are people supposed to do for work?

Something other than art, I guess? Alternatively: the value of like, paintings and such doesn't really come from the image depicted in the painting, so that's still valid. Or you can use AI art to help in your own artwork. I have a friend who likes drawing characters but hates drawing backgrounds and now he just generates the backgrounds with AI. I think there will definitely be a shift somewhere in related professions in the coming future but it doesn't strike me as particularly disasterous.

darkmaian23 posted...

How do we better ourselves?

No reason you can't continue to do it as a hobby. Chess is a massively popular game, even getting growth in the past few years, despite computers being significantly and objectively better than the best humans.

darkmaian23 posted...

Images and voices can already be generated with OK realism, and in time they will be perfectly real. Video and 3D modeling are being worked on. You'll soon be able to fabricate news and criminal evidence that is indistinguishable from reality. Our legal system and society at large aren't prepared for that.

I definitely can sympathize with this point, though. The concept of fake "proof" (either in a legal sense or just to show someone that something happened) definitely exists nowadays, with say something like photoshop, but there is certainly a lot more potential for better and easier deception coming along with this technology and people will need to get used to this somehow. I hope there is a better way to resolve this than just not believing anything you don't see in person but, well...

darkmaian23 posted...

Another negative social aspect is the diminishing and devaluing of human creativity: already people are claiming that they "painted" or "drew" an AI image, often one generated with a common prompt that they changed a word or two for.

Most of the people doing this I think would not be involved with creative visual art in any way were it not for the AI. So why not let them have some sort of input into the creative process and see what happens? It's obviously not the same as actually drawing, but as someone who has tried generating a bunch of art there is definitely a certain level of self-expression in the prompt design, settings tweaking, filtering through the results for good looking ones, etc. Well, obviously there is, or everyone generating would just make exactly the same stuff. That said I do think people should not try to pass off AI generated art as stuff they drew themselves (or vice versa I guess lol)

darkmaian23 posted...

There has even been at least one case of somebody taking what an artist was drawing in a live stream and having an AI "finish" the piece.

This is pretty scummy but it's not like stealing other people's art and pretending it's your own is a new concept. This is just a new way of doing it. I don't think it's any better or worse than any other method

The invention of the camera didn't end art. I don't think AI generated media will either. People will find new ways to be creative using means computers can't yet replicate.

People thought cameras and photography in general would destroy art.

kirbymuncher posted...

I'm part of a few anime-adjacent fan groups that have gotten pretty crazy since the recent release of a new model/generator/etc that does like 10x better on anime-esque art than previous generators did.

Oh, one thing I forgot to mention - some of these groups have banned posting AI generated fanart. And even though I'm definitely a supporter of the whole AI generated art thing, I can totally understand where they're coming from because there is one thing neither of us mentioned and it's that AI art can be extremely spammy. When I messed around with it, it took a while at first to find a good prompt and settings, but after that, I can basically crank out like 4-5 pieces of art per minute. Say like 50% of them are so bad they're not worth showing anyone (the actual number is lower but I'll be generous here) and that's still a reasonably nice piece of art every 30 seconds. If you have any sort of art posting channel / forum, or a twitter that tweets artwork, or you upload it to some artwork database site (deviantart? does anyone still use that??) you can completely overwhelm even hundreds of normal artists if you wanted to. And it's not like it's just wasteful spam either, it's topically relevant and looks good so any pic in isloation isn't a problem but someone a bit overzealous with it can get totally out of control

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU

kirbymuncher posted...

Most of the people doing this I think would not be involved with creative visual art in any way were it not for the AI. So why not let them have some sort of input into the creative process and see what happens?

Because they still aren't involved: there is no creativity involved in AI art. You are not drawing or painting or sculpting anything. So-called "prompt crafting" consists of going on Reddit or one of those gallery sites and grabbing an already existing prompt for something you like and messing with random seeds until a thing you like more pops out from Stable Diffusion, NovelAI, or whatever else you might be using. Maybe it's just something cool to mess with, and that's fine---I like it too. But you see a ton of people claiming they "made" a piece and are proud of it, or just flat out claiming they are good at drawing, painting, pastels etc. and made it themselves.

You have not become creative by imagining it might be cool to see a "chibi catgirl in an autumnal forest with a wizard tower and purple sky in the background", because literally anybody who draws or paints thinks things like that. It's what you do before you start working. As you work through the forms on paper or in clay or on canvas or digital tablet, you become closer to your work and begin to express your sensibilities. It becomes your "chibi catgirl in an autumnal forest with a wizard tower and purple sky in the background", not an algorithm's "interpretation" of your prompt. Claiming an AI piece as your own work is like claiming something you paid a guy on Fiverr for is work you made.

Now, the use case you pointed out where a guy maybe wants a background because his real interest is character drawing is fine (though it would be better if he at least touched that background up a bit before using it---especially with unanswered questions about copyright). Even better, I think, is using AI generated art for inspiration or as the basis for a larger piece.

Kakapo posted...

People thought cameras and photography in general would destroy art.

Machine learning--AI--is fundamentally different than what came before it. There is active work being done on AI 2D art, AI 3D art, AI animation, AI text generation, AI chat bots, AI voice generation, and AI music generation. Some of it is already very impressive. How much need will there be for any form of human creativity in say 10 years? Companies won't pay people for things they can have a program spit out. Robots also continues to advance. In 10 or 20 years of software and hardware advancement, how many jobs will be available for regular human beings?

Those this topic is about AI art specifically, watching an unforeseen leap in a computer's ability to perform what many considered to be a uniquely human task is unsettling, and rams home the point that humans aren't special and calls into question what a future world will look like.

Hey, as long as it results in more r3- art. More art I mean.

Smiffwilm posted...

Hey, as long as it results in more r3- art. More art I mean.

The latest version of WD produces some OK results; don't know about the more niche stuff. But there is a definite tendency to generate extra arms and hands below the waist instead of anything you'd actually want to see.

Overall, it's definitely going to filter out the low-tier commission-based artists. How long it will take them to reach the level of cohesive style is another question. There's also the current issue of them simply pilfering from existing art way too heavily, but that will probably be solved in time. It probably won't completely kill the good artist, but it's definitely going to heavily change the dynamics going into the future as the tech evolves year after year.

darkmaian23 posted...

Those this topic is about AI art specifically, watching an unforeseen leap in a computer's ability to perform what many considered to be a uniquely human task is unsettling, and rams home the point that humans aren't special and calls into question what a future world will look like.

This is definitely something worth thinking about, like not as an individual but a society. Some sort of new standards and expectations are gonna have to be figured out, and it better be done quick too since watching the quality of AI generated art skyrocket in just the past "few" months is honestly a bit spooky. Not because I dislike the art itself but because it's shown that AI is a lot more capable and powerful than the vast majority of people realized (myself included) and general society is not really keeping up in terms of the related expectations, restrictions, education, and so on.

There's a lot of people I see arguing against it who have complete fundamental misunderstandings of how it works, which I don't really blame them for since it's nearly impossible to find a comprehensible yet complete layman's explanation