You Might Be Wrong About Midjourney (I know I was)
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- Опубліковано 6 лип 2024
- I think a lot of people are wrong about Midjourney. And, to be fair, I was too. In this video I share why I think that is and what I am doing about it going forward.
00:00 - Intro
03:06 - Why I'm sympathetic to creatives
04:28 - How I approach AI in my work
07:06 - Me and Midjourney
16:03 - The right reason for quitting Midjourney
22:10 - Close
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My issue is not that I think the scraping results in sophisticated looking collages at the other end of a prompt, it’s that there was clearly great value attributed to that data collected by developers behind LLMs.
It was vital in order to achieve ‘ignition’, for the data to be scraped in vast swathes.
The owners of this vital data were never compensated.
I understand your stance of, we all learn our craft from somewhere, but these LLMs are still very much a ‘black box’ we can’t compare our environmental learning to binary. Humans don’t need a massive dump of data in one go, in order to learn or be creative, that’s the difference
Agreed. And, I think if this situation ends up being exposed more we'll find that a lot of unethical and even illegal things have been happening to feed the AIs. The fact that AI platforms are making revenue-sharing deals with large content companies tells me they are trying to head off a potential problem with how they "trained" their machines.
Most of them signed those rights away though, when they uploaded to google, youtube, facebook, instagram, etc. May sound harsh and soul-less, but it is true. 10 years ago they got a platform for "free", turned out it wasn't free after all.
Part of the issue is that people are trying to anthropomorphize AI with words like "training" and "taught" and "learning". When you say, "How dare they take our art to learn from", you're entirely misunderstanding that AI is a program that is being trained on copyrighted material, period. The act of taking the copyrighted material and putting it into the program itself, is already breaking licensing and copyright laws, which is why they're starting to get sued. A better way to think of it, although it's still not great, is to think of sampling in music or doing cover songs.
There's enough technology that, RIGHT NOW, if I had the resources I could take your videos, likeness, and voice and put it into an AI and start producing content "as you". Is it acceptable because the AI was "trained" and "learned" to be like you?
I would argue we are using the wrong terminology often when we refer to AI.
When we refer to people learning, most of us understand that this can and does happen in various ways depending on the person.
I would argue that AI "learning" is nothing similar to its human counterpart. We actually do a disservice by using the same term we use on people, and I believe it anthropomorphizes how AI works.
I think you're on to something. I could see your point being pivotal in a legal case against the AI platforms. What they call "learning" isn't the same. Thanks for the comment and insight!
"AI" was the wrong term from the beginning, pure marketing. It was/is/ remains Machine Learning (itself a loaded term), but that's not sexy enough for Venture Capital or shareholders.
The problem with LLMs is that the way they "learn" is very superficial. LLMs have more in common with fuzzy databases than creative generation machines. When an image comes out it will inevitably be a mash up of multiple images that were directly in the dataset. There are plenty of images there, so it might not be easy to tell. But LLMs learn by generalizing and interpolating between what is in the dataset. They don't come up with anything that isn't there, not even a variation. At best it'll be a mashup or an interpolation between fuzzy datapoints. They are literally trained to follow the dataset so this isn't a surprise.
I don't doubt that you're wrong and suspect if we were given the truth it would prove you out. However, it remains to be seen at this point. I do think it's fair to say that using the words "leaning" and "teaching" for AI is disingenuous and they're employed to obfuscate what's really happening.
Indeed. By the same token and for the same underlying reason, an AGI creation will never reach to what a human being is. There is no sentience in the capacity to analyze data.
Right, so it's a tool. Like a library with a large art section where you can 'prompt the Dewey Decimal System' for inspiration ... then go out and buy one of those books so you can cut as paste parts of different pictures to make some kind of 'Frankenstein collage' ? ;-)
Though when you upload your own music or image into them they work with those and incorporate them into it, so how does that work with the 'database'? The upload is something it's never seen before yet it can imitate or even generate based on what you upload.
Human expression in the arts is a precious capability to protect and nurture. The knowledge and skills take years to develop. I was strictly an analog illustrator and photo retoucher from 1972 until 1992. In 1986, my client switched to a Crossfield computer graphics system, who charged $500/hr, do handle all their retouching needs. This was a loss of 90% of my annual income. I bought my first Mac in 1984, but alas, it was a toy. In 1986 I returned to the university of California to study photography and computer science. I learned how to program in the Pascal language because that was what they taught back then. It also happened to be what the Mac’s OS was originally written in. Now, 38 years later, I still create graphic software programs and tools in Pascal. Since the advent of photography, artists have had to constantly adapt to an ever changing landscape. My correspondence is not often handwritten but I strongly desire to make it so. When it comes to communication, the next best thing to an in person conversation is the warmth of a handwritten letter, especially when scripted by a skilled hand.
Pascal! That brings back memories. You know, I've been handwriting my first drafts for articles, scripts, and email newsletter copy. It been quite amazing. I suspect that removing a layer of abstraction (pushing keys vs pen and paper) has resulted in better thinking and writing.
I use AI daily, in all my creative work. The more I use it, the more I realize that in order to make something good with it, something with “soul”, I need to be the main creative element involved. It’s not that I’m offloading my creativity to the AI, because believe me, giving the AI full reign to do whatever it wants makes something that is a mess of generic blandness and rampant incoherency. The AI allows me to have a first draft, a good first step. It’s a very rough draft but, to me, it’s better than starting with a blank page. A boss I used to have drilled it into my head to work smarter not harder, and AI does just that for me. I’ve been constantly battling the creative anxiety of having too many ideas and not enough time or hands to see them through. AI has helped me subdue that anxiety to an extent, and I’m grateful for it. The technology isn’t perfect and sometimes frustrates me greatly, but I’d much rather have it than not.
Fair enough. Expediency and convenience will be the drivers of the proliferation of AI content everywhere. Maybe that makes room for creators who don't use AI. Kinda like how people seek out locally grown, organic food versus factory farm food.
@@MikeGastin too bad we all don’t do art by banging sharp stones on the cave walls … that new berry juice technology is going to ruin art, just for the sake of convenience! :-) and what’s with everyone carving my Sabertooth tiger idea into their cave walls?
Indeed. With the analogy of a lego set, I can understand the argument that one can use already made lego pieces to still be creative and build various lego art products without manufacturing the lego pieces oneself, or similarly building a house without manufacturing all of its components. Of course, the difference is for arts, it's much more artistically unique, emotionally involved, and labor intensive than simply fabricating lego pieces. However, in other industries and not just white-collared jobs like banking, paralegal, marketing, software development, but also soon to be blue-collared jobs will be affected by AI and robotics, unfortunately.
@@thethaovatoquoc312 t reaches nearly everywhere ... and eventually, unless something serious happens, it will reach everywhere.
I get, and support the effort by artists to look after their professions & livelihoods, but in reality, since art, by definition (so far anyway) to be of any value as actual 'art', has to have some kind of human touch and human meaning behind it, I think artists are best placed to not be replaced ... commercial 'professional artists' are likely in the same boat as any commercial occupation, you are subject to being automated out of a job.
Commercializing your art is what is being turned into a commodity, and commodities are more easily replaceable than 'art'!
If you're doing it for the money, then like the 'coder', your world is changing ... if you're doing it for the 'art' then whether you are doing it with berry juice, wood, marble, an iPad, or AI ... it's the art, not the medium, that counts.
Mike, you are right in one sense. Artists, musicians, photographers and others do learn from others. But we're not talking about that. We're talking about _machines_ learning from _people._ Even more unsettling the income from that will not being going to creators. It will going to the executives at Adobe, Midjourney, and others in the AI industry who may not be able to draw a stick figure or play two notes on a piano.
In the long term, that will be incredibly destructive. As AI makes it more difficult to make a living in the creative arts, there will be fewer of those teacher-to-students relationships to pass on the art. Art will become what machines do and not people. A learning tradition reaching back to at least the cave art of the Neanderthals will be broken. That cannot be good.
I am not necessarily disagreeing. I'm just saying that from a "legal" standpoint anyone making this argument will likely soon find themselves on shaky ground as the courts will not find in their favor; that there is a deeper, more stable reason. That said, I totally see and support your position.
I don't think so. I mean look what you said with playing notes on a piano. generative ai for music composing was a lot easier to make than digital painting, it's been able to make compositions for 67 years, and has been at the level of an average composer since 2010, At worst it's been 14 years hasn't been taken in professional film scores, or people listened to ai compositions casually, if it hasn't happen for this long, why would people change all of a sudden. And what's crazy about this it's that people forget two important things, people are dicks, we will never admit or even care that ai is better than us. To me it's like saying one day people are going to watch chess matches between computers rather than people because there will be no reason to watch real people playing chess since computers can do it so much better, and people will lost their ability to play chess because there will be no point in playing it. It's hard to even explain why that would never happen. We play chess and we paint because we love it, no one does these crazy persuits for a paycheck, so so much easier ways to make money. art is part of what makes us human. This isn't a horse and buggy to car, it's just a better saddle.
What a generative model do now is (legally) more similar to: "what a nice photo... I gonna use this non-CC0 as a base my commercial painting".
Not to mention over-feeding images that produce near identical imagem from the original learning material.
Mister, it is too early to be using this tech as a commercial product.... but for tests and "hahas" it is "ok" for personal use and non-profit.
Sounds right to me. ;)
@@MikeGastin thank you for the response Mike, good luck out there :)
Glad you are posting again, I am so glad to see more of your videos. You have such a unique perspective and seem to put into words exactly what I was thinking but had not even formulated thoughts around the issue. As you explain your ideas I have to admit you are spot on and I hope many more people get to hear you speak going forward.
Thanks, kiddo! It's good to be back in the saddle. 🚀
i like this take
Thanks! (Great channel, btw!)
I am a 64 year old newly retired motion graphics designer and I have painted all my life. When I paint I fight against intentional control over the marks that I place on paper. I work on 30 sheets of paper at a time quickly switching from one piece to the next - the way I paint is to hear nothing of myself and that of some other force.
My fine art stuff is mostly mixed media and I do it with a blindfold - this is the joy I get out of midjourney.
I do not try to control it but ride along adding one kink to the algorithm at a time and I feel great joy at the chaos and juxtaposition that emerge.
One thing about midjourney is that there is no one throwing away your resume because you were born in 1960 and how would that “look” to potential clients. It’s a beautiful fuck you to all those art directors from ad agencies that would sit behind me in a paint box suite and agonize over 12 or 13 point type that you could not see the difference between anyway… or the LA producer says “they are sort of conservative” and I would ask what does that mean? Don’t use purple but blue? and they would then act like I committed a sin for asking them a direct question…
The design vocation needs to be revamped and all the pretend creatives sent to clean toilets.
Look - my fine art - the uncontrolled stuff has predicted a lot of stuff like the BLM riots and and the poisoning of the ground water in Palestine Ohio, you just can’t see it til the future is revealed.
Don’t try to control art.
Congrats on being newly retired. All the best with that, as it sounds like you hated being in the agency world. What's interesting about your comment is that it seems like underneath it all you're on a quest to express/reveal the truth. I suspect even your approach to your painting is in order to allow something to communicate through you while you earnestly try to stay out of the way. I guess my question is, what exactly is it that you channel? And, do you not think you have anything within yourself worthy of sharing? Or, is your approach to allow your "deeper" self to communicate? Who or what are you in service to?
Issue with AI learning from artists is the issue of scale, and issue of possibility to remember/replicate things exactly.
No human can replicate things exactly, and even if could, this cannot be done as fast, at such low cost and effort, issue with law end of this is that law is no not at all ready to deal with problems specific to AI, and companies making it are taking advantage of this gap.
You also can't really opt out, and poof your art is gone from model, because once trained it's a set package.
Also we're not special, we certainly want to be, and there is few special people among us humans, but the most of us are nothing special when it comes to artistic skill, even professionals, luckily AI for now is not perfected, which is why the bulk of it is "free", but it will develop at pace higher than human can, unless major roadblock occurs, luckily art AI is based out of is not tagged in enough detail to get good results from very specific prompts, and I doubt they will hire humans to tag art in veeeery detailed way, so I hope this will be enough of a road block, or apps like nightshade and glaze will slowly deteriorate quality of input data for the models.
Still I would very well prefer your vision of special humans to be true, so I hope I'm wrong on that one.
I also hope you're wrong! ;) That said, I'm grateful for your thoughts here. Thanks!
What you are claiming is just not true or even possible. It might learn concepts or styles of a certain artist, but there is absolutely no way it can replicate something exactly as that data just is not there. How they learn is much more similar to how human brain works and no image is really stored in some database like many of you seem to think. If you see some AI art that looks very close to an actual artpiece then they most likely used image2image or something similar.
@@bloxyman22 If I created "Mona Lisa AI" and trained it only on Mona Lisa, what would this AI give you? Some Picasso piece?
I understand that, because of sheer number of art pieces that were imported into training set, it's hard to come by exact copy, but it's not impossible.
It's just mathematically unlikely, but this is one of key points for discussing training of music AI being illegal, because chance of exact replication are not 0, even though mathematically they are highly unlikely to happen.
But then again this could be issue of scale, and it's only a matter of time, where unlikely things will start happening, just because sample size is very large, and it's not exactly impossible.
@@Deruzejaku This is why you want such models to be trained on large variation and from my experience training on just one piece of picture or artwork would not lead to any good results even for replication.
I think a much better way to deal with this problem is to just simply not allow anyone to prompt by artist name unless permission has been given.
Either way the larger the training data, the less chance of it replicating or producing something similar to a real artwork.
A deep dive in ethics and spirituality here. Loved it. Not just because it reflects my own beliefs, but also because you do a great job at expositing the core issues of a mechanistic society. Beyond the rapacity of executives (and shareholders) who seek to appropriate the rights of creators to the fruits of their own creativity, the complicity of the puppets "bought and paid for" to serve these interests, and the practical implications of disagreeing with the end-goals of a post-modern society, you reach to a deeper layer of meaning: how inherently different Man will ever be from the product of AGI. I hope your channel grows. You gained a new South Carolinian sub.
Yeah! Thank you and welcome, neighbor. While I breathe, I hope. Thanks for the kind wishes, too. 😉
i am not sure why people think that using generative AI as the tool that is making stuff from A-Z is the proper way to use it.
As an artisti myself, i heavily rely now on AI for the daunting tasks... instead of scrolling countless stock platforms or drawing clouds or grass over and over again, i'd rather have AI generate it for myself. Instead painting rocks, walls etc - i write a prompt to have it exactly the way i need it for my artwork.
Same goes for reference material... sure, i still can be found on Pinterest, looking things up - but nowadays also typing in prompts to get a feeling how things might look like.
On the other hand - i wouldn't rely to use AI in the way: i throw in a prompt and will use the unfiltered output as "my art" without any alterations.
It is a nice co-worker for the daunting tasks, enabling me to concentrate on the more challenging and interesting parts by myself.
Viewing it this way - where is the "human" part i am missing? How is it different to go outside and take a photo of a landscape - and reuse it for my art as background, or some texture - while i can just type in a prompt to get it?
And to adress your point on the first part of your video: i totally get the "art-theft" discussion, but i see it the same way as you.
If however the artists demanding will ever get a right to "license" their style - we will wake up in a total dystopia. A world where big companies like Disney would be able to license their "style" is some really nightmarish material.
Maybe if you take it on music styles - it will become more apparent - how would you like to have Sony BMG license all Jazz songs...?
Scrolling stock libraries is the pits. 👊🏼
A helpful analogy I use for generative AI is that it's really a cartooning of creative decisions. In the same way that you can come up with a cartoon of a photorealistic image by tracing it and iteratively simplifying, you can create a cartoon of a story or song or graphic design by supplying a text prompt. It looks nearly as detailed as the references, but the symbolic information contained in it has been lossy-compressed and simplified like it's a JPEG or MP3.
The problem is that cartoons have to be used with logical intent. A political cartoon negative to a person or group is one that makes them ugly - and we know this, we categorize that kind of thing under various "ism's" and "phobias" and make logical arguments against doing that and suggest alternatives - but a generative AI doesn't have access to that logic, so it crassly stereotypes everyone and everything, countered only by a tremendous human effort to train that behavior out of the dataset. And it does it to things that we don't usually think need that kind of politically motivated defense. If you ask it to do mathematics, it will mash together the language and terminology, and some of the time it can give a right answer, but even if you prompt it to "work step by step and show your reasoning", sooner than later, it will show some steps taken from a textbook and then skip to an ending with the wrong answer, with the same degree of confidence it would give to an argument for genocide.
What differentiates this from good cartooning is that when a human makes those simplification decisions, they're thinking through the symbolic implications. Their own loyalties come into play and they seek a path through the logic that *coheres* - it avoids contradictions with their beliefs. When artists become blocked creatively, it often comes down to having started with unexamined assumptions and eventually reaching philosophical contradictions during the process of producing the work, and then subsequently having to start over with new assumptions. So the information is simplified down along a path that, on average, increases coherence of thought. The AI, like many forms of automation, will blow right past the contradictions and finish something obviously wrong. Or, it gets it right, but only because the data happened to work out favorably and say a thing that coheres.
In tasks like driving a car, the unforgiving nature of this challenge is much more obvious. The AI has to understand rapidly developing events through its sensors, and subsequently apply enough logic to navigate through each scenario both safely, efficiently, and in a non-disruptive manner. This means it has to be trained on very rare and unusual scenarios, but it also means that the logic has to fill in and predict things that aren't sensed(e.g. moving objects that disappear behind obstacles) and make reasonable assumptions about the behavior of other actors. We know what the benchmark is for automating that, because we know how well we drive. And we know that it's really difficult because deployment of that tech has been so slow and companies that have pushed their luck too far have been told to go home.
If we assume it's equally hard for other human tasks, then the case for deploying this stuff in the arts, in its current state, is very marginal: it will produce statistically average work along a statistically average frontier of options, while humans will have to add the logic case-by-case. And that seems to be what's happened in actual deployments in, e.g., game studios: it makes large volumes of code and assets that humans have to fix. Sometimes that can assist in creating a starting point, for the same reasons that everyone likes using reference or working with premade assets. Beginners at both art and coding have reported some success in using these tools to build their intuition. But it also creates "spikes" of necessary expertise in the underlying logic.
Excellent expansion on the topic. You sparked some thoughts that I need to pursue further. Thank you!
Great nuanced take on this. Agree. Hence I only use AI for those tasks that I’m a beginner in to help me song, but never use the output as is.
Dude. I feel exactly the same. I'm a Designer and Animator, also learning how to draw on the side and make Beats as a Hobby. I love Art. I love creating and learning about all that. Besides sports or building things, Art is the best thing humans can do for themselfs. At first I was SUPER excited about midjourney (2022). I created thousands of images and couldn't believe it. After 2 - 3 weeks. I got bored and all the copyright stuff made me think more about it. Then I decided to learn how to draw in 2023. The more AI is getting better, I want to be even better at making things. Like you said, it has no soul. Visually it might be great and all, but I feel disgusted thinkin about writing a prompt and hope, that the machine is making a good job. AI should help us make less of the boring stuff not try to "compete" with us and give us a frankenstein imag out of thousands of other creators. Say no to AI.
That's awesome. Thank for sharing and all the best to you on your creative journey!
People seem to just want things quickly, so they don't understand that impact on brain activity. They could think of it as FAST FOOD to the brain.
Good point and I suspect it will have the same affect on their minds as the fast food has on their bodies.
If you use it that way, then sure, but I can use a knife to carve my initials in a tree, or to carve an incredible wood sculpture (well I can't ... maybe I can do a decent set of tree initials, but no wood carving for me.)
It's entirely possible to use AI tools in a far more sophisticated and human directed manner to create images and audio ... the art is in your ability to control the output and use that output to express your 'vision'!
if you quite - how do you replace? for example adobe
Affinity Suite (photo, vector, layout), DaVinci Resolve (video), Logic Pro (audio).
11:24 false equivalence, a corporation scraping art (they have no rights and no permission to use) en masse and using it to feed an elaborate collage machine in order to spit out an amalgamation is not the same as a human learning. You either got bamboozled by marketing speak or are running cover for the thieves. Either I can make myself a Marvel comic or a Disney cartoon or a Grateful Dead Tshirt and sell them for profit, or the "AI" (ill-named) companies can f00k off away from MY intellectual property. It's either or. At present, independent artists get both of the bad sides and corpos get both of the good sides of the deal.
Have fun in the current adoption phase, in which they let you play and provide you with "free" tools. Once they entrench themselves in the castle of fraudulent legitimacy, your fun will end. Keep your wallet and your r3c7um at the ready for that time. Maybe they'll remember all the good work you did for them with your apologia and give you a discount (they won't, lmao).
Look, I get your point. I'm not running interference for anyone, nor am I looking to them for a pat on the head. I'm just trying to push the discussion harder than it has been by saying the "they stole from me" argument isn't going to be strong enough. As soon as the state changes the laws that argument is toast. The state will absolutely run cover for giant AI (or whatever you want to call it) because they are in bed together. Then what? I think you might be killing the messenger. I am against AI but am saying we gotta dig deeper if we want to push back. But, yeah, okay. I'm the bad guy.
Thanks for your video. Are you aware that Getty Images had some of their photos scraped including the watermarks? That's why they're trying to sue Stability AI who are the makers of Stable Diffusion. The Getty Images watermarks prove that some of generated content is "mashed together". Any thoughts on this?
I was aware. I am not saying it's definitive that AI isn't stealing and modifying. My main point is that there's a deeper reason beyond "they steal" to not use the technology.
@MikeGastin Thanks for replying. I agree, and speaking as an illustrator, self-taught Musician, and one-time natural body builder, I know what it takes to work hard with what God has given us to create. We need a certain amount of human endeavour to get improve and grow. That way, we better value the end results. AI is more likely to take away the perceived value of art and music if people think "anyone" can just promt to be creative. Future generations are less likely to see any point of putting in effort of studying art and music etc.
AI isn't going to take anyone's job (yet) but a designer and other creatives who use AI will be taking lots of peoples jobs very soon.
We'll see. It's more likely that designers using AI will be expected to do way more work for way less pay.
Ai will not replace artists. Companies will use AI to replace artists and get cheap work done whilst stealing from artists work they no longer employ.
@@MikeGastin I work in games (specifically 3D games), the concept artists who use AI are clearly outpacing and outperforming those who do not. I have seen people leave the games industry all together because of it to pursue fine art and other interests. The ones who do use it are more highly valued. But they can't just rest on their laurels and only do 2D work anymore. The pressure was already on for them to learn 3D before generative AI/ML kicked. Now it is more obvious than ever. 2D skills are simply not as valuable as they once were.
@@audiogus2651 I think this is true, but I don't think they are less valuable, maybe yeah concept artist I can see. but no other 2d skill can you use it directly for. If you make a character designer using midjourney, and the person says can you make some edits, and your like uhh.. not really. Or it's not of the same quality of style I don't think you're going to have a job for much longer, there's always been too much work to do at studios. I've never heard of a studio overstaffed. I think you're going to see a whole lot more work come out in digital art, just like the first digital revolution. I think this time, there are going to be more variety of styles
@@mycollegeshirt Maybe not Midjourney but using Control Net in Stable Diffusion with Lora that you train is massively powerful. I can do any sort of edit that people want 10x faster than I used to in Stable Diffusion using Control Net with canny, depth, inpainting etc. Also studios have been experiencing massive layoffs the past year and a half on a scale that has not been seen before. While AI is not the primary factor it has made employers very apprehensive about hiring people that they may not need.
This is good reasoning and a good position. Will it make sense to attempt to reject all forms of AI going forward?
That's my take for the time being. At least when it comes to creative kinds of work. I'm concerned because of the market's rush to incorporate AI into EVERYTHING. Not sure that's going to end well for people. We'll see. (I'm starting to feel like a character in an 80s post apocalyptic B movie.)
I really LOVE how real and authentic you are! That’s a sub for me. I like how you said we are talented and have skills, I sure am worried if I use Ai a lot all of that could decrease. I use GPT a lot when it comes to my photography business, just the marketing parts, giving me ideas on how to grow etc. sometimes cleaner emails. As you said I don’t want to be soul less. I’m lucky I’m aware and conscious. I think of it as I’m playing the game and take use out of the Ai. But I don’t want to forget myself, nor do I believe this within my Sufism spirituality.
That’s great. Thank you for the kind words of encouragement and best of luck to you; especially in your art and business!
It is not the words or the notes or the paintbrush strokes that we value. Its the deeper human connection, the joy and the struggle of the artist that gives meaning and value to art.
Amen.
As a tool it can be helpful. I use llm to code Excel vba stuff where I had days before in minutes. That frees me up to do relevant work like writing (without llm).
Fair enough.
I dont think any artist would be against learning thats how our collective history works. But that learn is empathetic, is under the idea that there´s a thinking, feeling and struggling person behind that learning process, and he/she needs to put the work, the effort.
The problem emerges by the confusion of the words, you say "learning" as if it were applicable in the same way, because it reads and sounds the same. It is not, one is about persons and living beings that feel and struggle trough it, the other "learning" is a (almost instant) data processing algorithm owned by a corporation used for profit. ontologically they are different.
Of course, you're right. AI is different. And, I'm not against artists making that argument. I just think there's a more important reason (at least for me) to resist AI content creation.
I like the take. I saw the watermark of shutterstock in Stability AI 1.5 generated landscape pictures😎
Yeah, I knew enough to hedge my bets in this vid. They are likely stealing but that's not what they argue. ;)
The AI companies argue that using other people's IP to train their systems is 'fair use'. However the term 'fair use' is a legal defence- it's only relevant in a situation where potential infingement is at issue- so by citing the term 'fair use' the AI developers have already conceded that they have made use of other people's IP and that this use requires legal justification in order to be legitimised.
But 'fair use' only applies where the use made of the material cannot be deemed harmful to the commercial interests of the IP owner- and using other people's art to build a machine that competes directly in the marketplace with those same people seems pretty harmful to their commecial interests- so it's hard to see how fair use applies here.
But even if we were to buy into the idea that Midjourney learns like a human artist, by amalgamating different artists work in order to produce it's own unique 'take' on a prompt this has interesting implications because it suggests that Midjourney- like a human Artist- will have it's own 'look'.
And in fact if you look at the outputs of different AI Art generators they each do seem to have their own 'tells', visual quirks and continuities that are characteristic of that particular AI.
Why does this matter? well, if hundreds of thousands of people use Midjourney to create their art, and Midjourney imbues it's outputs with any kind of recognizable pattern or consistency in the way it interprets their prompts, then all of their work will start to look similar- as if they had all gone out and hired the same Artist to do the art.
And if you look at the galleries of different AI art programmes it is possible to see that they do have a 'house style' that somehow comes through no matter what style or subject is used in the prompt. I know a Midjourney Image from a Dall.E image, even if I can't explain in detail exactly how I know- the same way I know one artists style from another artist.
So the best reason not to use AI Art is because if you do your work will look a lot like other people's work who also use AI Art- which is not usually what you want.
Great video. I don't really have a dog in the fight on either side but I can understand both sides. Lind of playing around with everything right now. Ultimatly there will always be a market for authenticity. In fact I think that market is growing in parallel to the Ai push. Thanks again!!
Agreed on the market for authentic work.
great video :) Nailed it
Thank you for making this video. I could feel the soul in it...
Haha. You’re welcome. 😉
Your conclusion is interesting.
Some people partially attributed the fall of the Muslim Ottoman Empire to their rejection or lack of speed in adopting the printing press. Their argument was that it’s soulless essentially.
There is more detail there and discussion in all that but interesting nonetheless
Yes! The printing press. What's interesting to me is that all the previous analogies are comparing one analog technology to another, each where a human uses a tool to "create", be it a brush or moveable type. A lot of people want to say, "AI is just the same old story, played new" but I'm not so sure. There is possibly something qualitatively different about this "tech" that for me should give pause. I realize it's still just a machine, but even the "machine" analogy may not be sufficient to explain what AI is becoming.
excelente opinión, depender totalmente de la IA para realizar trabajos completos es un error muy grande, ya que no solo se trata de generar la imagen y ya, a los que nos dedicamos a esto disfrutamos el proceso, la resolución de la situación o problema usando nuestra mente y capacidad cognitiva-creativa, no necesitamos que alguien lo haga por nosotros, se pierde el sentido de ser diseñador. Ahora usar la IA como un complemento para las habilidades es diferente, ahi si pienso que la IA como herramienta puede ayudarnos mucho, siempre y cuando el uso de esta tecnología no afecte el dinero que ganamos como diseñadores (ya que puede haber empresas o individuos que crean que por usar IA y hacer las cosas más rápido realmente lo que hicimos fue un trabajo fácil y no debemos de cobrar mucho según ellos).
Agreed! I do think the idea of a designer is lost. And you'r point that AI can augment our work is fair. I think each person will have to determine if they want to do that and how much they will augment. Thanks!
Have to add here- if it's ok to train an AI on artists work in order to learn- that means I can take a single artists work- train an AI on that work and then use that AI to create images in their style that I can sell- directly competing with that artist by using the very style he himself made popular- and this is fine right? I don't think it is- this is clearly an abuse of that persons right to control what is done with his personal creations. And if no law curently exists to defend this right then one should be made.
Why does everyone assume that laws made for human beings must apply to machines? Of course it's not the same- if an AI ingests billions of images this is in no way comparable to a human art student learning from another artist. If I turned up at a running race wearing a pair of mechanical legs, arguing that these legs work much the same way as human legs would anyone take me seriously? Of course not- AI's are not people- so why on earth would we apply laws made for people to AI's?
Generative AI has to be trained from existing content in order to work. Needless to say, this doesn't sit well with creatives, even those who've sold their artwork to stock images companies that then use the content to train their AI models. How do you determine the percentage that any one artist contributed to the stock of knowledge an AI model possesses? That's like trying to determine the exact amount of Van Gogh that's inside Picasso's paintings. And copyright law doesn't punish the "influence" that one artist has over another. If an illustrator contributes illustrations of cats to a stock agency, and those illustrations are used to train an AI model that then creates pictures of dogs in a similar (but not 100% identical) style, is that infringement or "influence"? The lawyers are gonna clean up arguing this stuff.
All good points and you're 100% right: the attorneys are definitely among the biggest winners!
Did you watch the video? It doesn't seem like you did.
I’m going to continue using midjourney for ancillary things albeit sparingly even if it’s an unethical.
Everyone has to make their own decisions.
That’s right you got to keep the brain going, tech is here to get us to keep using it and when we get the results we continue and then it’s gets additive, then when you really have to problem solve you can’t cause you depend on ai as a tool.. I’m really glad you start using mid journey so you know what it does to the brain. If we as humans accept using these things companies will continue to push it out. Ai was invented to make our lives easier while destroying the very essence of what it truly means to be human.as long as the human race is dependent on a I
I feel that part with "Soul" deeply. Im not really a Christian, some sort of gnostic at best, but there is a distinct lack of "humanity" in Ai art. Also I jsut hate how its being used, with focus on quantity over quality. There is a real danger in this, easily accesible content-creating machine, devalueing all creative effort through the sheer amounts that it can spew out.
Amen.
I was just thinking about this talking points and I realized that if I really need to learn something on a professional level I'd probably invest on a curse or graduation. I am paying for that knowledge. Even though you can download a lot of these curses for free, that is usually seem as piracy. Torrent sites are treated as criminals and prosecuted. If we are allowing the AI to scrap the internet for wherever they want so all the knowledge should be free for humans too. Otherwise the AI corporations should pay for the knowledge the same as we do.
That's a fair argument.
AI intrigues me but it does what I’m already good at. The meme that says I want it to do my laundry and my dishes, I’ll keep the writing and creating for myself - that’s spot on for me! I do however, enjoy its capabilities in photo EDITING - in that it helps me make a cleaner photo when maybe the scene itself wasn’t so perfect. But I still want the photo to be mine. I don’t mind contributing to “machine learning” in that sense.
I hear ya.
If you haven't already seen Rick Beato's video called, The Real Reason Why Music Is Getting Worse here on UA-cam, please do. And I agree with you 100% with your reasons for not supporting A.I. I haven't given it up just yet because I feel like I need to know what is going on with A.I. at some level as an educator, but at the same time, I feel guilty feeding the machine. I do believe that one day the A.I. will be able to mimic the "soul" you speak of. Maybe it will be real, maybe it will be fake, but to us mere mortals, it's all the same. I do think there will be a resurgence in film photography and traditional art. At least till they build robots that beat us on that playing field too. Another point about copyright and Midjourney is, they say they take no responsibility for what you use it to create. The user agreement says the user takes full responsibility. Kind of like going skydiving. If the plane crashes and you die, your family is out of luck because you signed away their rights to sue.
Thanks for suggesting Rick Beato's vid. I'm familiar with him, but haven't watched much of his stuff just because I'm not a musician. However, I'll look for that vid and watch it. I like what I've seen from him. And, yes, I agree, we'll likely get to a place where the machines imitate the soul.
@@MikeGastin Thanks for taking the time to respond! And yeah, I thought Rick's video overlapped some of your points but with a musicians perspective. Cheers!
Thanks! I watched Beato's vid last night and see why you suggested it. Funny thing, Rick and I are from the same hometown: Rochester, NY. I suspect he doesn't live there anymore. I left NY a few years ago and don't miss it much at all. Thanks again for suggesting his vid. He's such a great guy.
@@MikeGastin I glad you were able to watch it and Small small world!!
The one point you made, with which I concur wholeheartedly, is that AI content will proliferate to the point where it pushes out human content. That is a consequence. The invention of so many things have benefits and consequences. In the case of AI, you may be on the right track: the consequences will outweigh the benefits.
On the lighter side, I'm a tinkerer. I started with computers in 1978, so I love seeing every advance. I play with AI nearly every day. (Key phrase = "I play"). It's neat to see how far I can go with better prompting.
Of course, the consumer-facing AI is but the tip of the iceberg. It is worrisome that Big Tech is "all in" with such a volatile technology.
Time will tell how this all plays out.
Everything is Ok as long as the stories you are creating with these images are original. Because in the end its all about the story that an image tells, its never so much about the art form. Well some people can be emotion about the visual style, but it is the story in the picture that carries the core communication. So as long as your story message is original, i think it does not matter what the means of creating it is. Always have an original idea, don't worry about the visual medium. Mix and match the visuals from any source to convey the idea.
Funny enough, there is no such thing as an original story, really. There is nothing new under the sun. Even original art isn’t truly original in the sense that we’re a collection of all the stories we’ve encountered, art we’ve studied, teachers we’ve had, etc.
Thanks for an intelligent, coherent argument on this issue. I have to wonder if this is not simply evolutionary. While I can accept your concept that humans may have some transcendence, that we are "special" among creatures and things, how do we reconcile that with the industrial revolution? That was an evolutionary event that abandoned a certain aspect of humanity/transcendence. Prior to that we were inherently within the natural world. We traveled on the backs of animals. We relied on animals for aid in our work. We cared for animals as an essential part of our being. But then we adopted the internal combustion engine, and horses and oxen and mules became irrelevant, no longer connected to us. Those animals today have no part in our very nature. Is AI simply another step in the same direction? Are we on a path to a silicon-based life form rather than a carbon-based life form? Something to think about. I hope your channel grows; we need more intelligent thinking out there.
Intriguing line of thought. I guess I'd have to push back against your view that the Industrial Revolution was an evolutionary step forward, especially the part about us becoming free to some degree of the natural world. Sure, we don't rely on mules anymore, but the iron, petroleum, electricity, and even synthetic materials (like plastic) are all from the natural, or material, world. I don't think we're anymore outside of the natural world than when we started. We've just become better at abstractions and at finding ways to harness the natural world to our ends. And, a lot of people would argue that the Industrial Revolution brought a lot of undesirable things into the human experience. I guess the question is do the good outweigh the bad?
People will always recognise content that has soul. Even where AI is used, there will be people who add in human creativity, but we already surrounded by soulless art in clip art and product packaging, in low cost clothing and advert jingles, or quickly snapped photos where the photographer has no thought to composition or deeper meaning than saying "we're at the beach". I'm not saying this is even necessarily a bad thing but we are surrounded by things that don't warrant a high investment in art and that will be where AI finds its place. Human creativity will show through and we're at a point where artists are struggling to find where their value lies but daydreaming of past days won't help, there's always been more people with a desire to create beauty than people wanting to pay people to do so.
I agree. In fact, I suspect AI will inspire a reaction: people will seek out more analog, hand-made art and products. I know the trend is already on the rise, but I think it will grow in popularity. Thanks!
It's not about the input Mike, it is about the output. An illustrator can make one or two pieces a day, maybe three. These models can produce billions of them. That makes them different. They are not apprentices of Renaissance painters. And they are out of the Pandora's Box.
Spot on! Here is to the soul!
Thanks!
I remember music from the 70s Some would argue that’s the last time music was real
And they would not be wrong.
I think it's good to explore new tools including MidJourney. I just got bored with it. And it is pretty easy to identify images that were generated by AI (If you know what to look for.) So yeah, I am bored with AI images. It's also another expensive subscription. And as you say, why lose your skills.
Amen!
In Europe, there is a law that allows AI to learn from all information that is publicly available - in the same way as humans learn. Although power tools have been invented, many still use old-fashioned traditional tools and are respected craftsmen.
The misunderstanding is related to copying and indeed the user can teach AI add-ons with their own material so that it produces exactly a certain kind of content. Some users misuse this feature, using something as teaching material that causes the AI tool to produce material that, in my opinion, exceeds the moral boundaries of copyright. Of course, this could have been done before, but AI provides a tool with which it can now be done more easily and quickly - and shared widely, which makes it visible. An AI tool should not be blamed for how some people misuse it, like no other tool like an ax or a knife.
People always find a way to misuse every tool, don't they.
I to use image generation in my work, although I do believe there's a difference between AI inspiration and human creativity. Unfortunately, laws haven't quite caught up with this yet. In my view, AI companies should pay something like a licensing fee for using work they profit from. AI is a powerful tool, That like any other tool can be used for good or bad. As for creative people I feel it's a trade-off no one asked for. they train their AI with our work, we get to use powerful tools. It's an unfair trade.. imo.. but you may as well take advantage. Especially since people that do not care are going to use it as well and it's here to stay in one for another. Like it or not. So it's kind of a learn how to use it or be left behind. Which I do hate. But it is what it is. Anyway I like your videos and think you add to the conversation of tech meets creativity.. Or what ever… Have a good one
Thanks! I appreciate your thoughts and kind words.
Really love to hear this opinion from a Christian perspective. There's not enough self-professing Christian creatives out there.
Thank you. It causes some grief but I'm not ashamed. Christianity has the only coherent view of the world and the human experience.
Loved this video. I think I agree mostly with you.
The way I see it, problem résides that: a person learns from its pot of culture, origin, experiences, studying, imitating, etc... And its creations come as output from all that cultural pot + inner personal insights.
AI is not a person... It is owned by a corporation. Shouldn't there be a line in the sand for legal issues? Is it that different from machines from 1st industrial revolution replacing thousands of men for manual labot?
Soulless sounds like a good way to describe the world we are headed... More like blade runner universe.
Blade Runner, indeed! Thanks. 👍🏼
Nailed it. 👌
Thank you!
7:27 - (sigh) I get the argument, i just think it's a pretty hypocritical one to make. Every person saying, "Boycott Service X because they steal from people (or do some sort of bad thing)!" is themselves using or supporting a different service that is wronging someone else. They say, "That service stole my art, you're shit for supporting them!" but they use a product that (for ex.) uses child labor or dumped poison in a river, or doesn't pay their workers fair wages, etc, etc. Just because a person has a grievance with a product/service/company doesnt mean that everyone else is morally obligated to boycott with them. If that was how it worked than EVERYTHING would be boycotted! No product/service/company is morally clean across the board. Our society is too obsessed with the Angry Mob mentality.
In other news, I have my own personal issues with the programs everyone is calling "A.I." (cough, it's not real A.I. but whatever) but it's funny how many creatives are losing their mind over it like it's a virus that has to be eradicated. Taking issue with new tech is a tale as old as time. The caveman that had a sled business was anti-wheel; the scribe was anti-printing press; the horse salesman was anti-motor car.... There will always be new tech that puts old tech out of business. The key is to adapt because no amount of screee is gonna stop the new tech from coming to town. If you are a creative thats about to be put out of business from (hard air quotes) " "A.I." " then figure out a way to use your talents in a different way or become obsolete.
(also want to say that I absolutely agree with what you've said Mike and wish I was there to give you applause in person)
RE: first paragraph. Agree 100%. And, I think this is at the root of the woke mobs. Do the wrong thing and we'll cancel you because you used product X or said Y and that means you're monster. It's insanity because it's impossible to ever be in good standing unless you allow the mob to dictate your positions and behaviors to you. Nope.
Also, thanks for the kind words and encouragement. I appreciate it. 🙏🏼
Thanks for elegantly sharing your thoughts.
I don't understand how AI learning is done but I'm confident that it is different from how we has humans learn and exercise creativity.
Therefore, the AI community's rational of AI is "just learning" and not stealing rings hollow to me.
To be clear, I do agree with you. My point is that the "stealing" argument isn't enough, especially if the state changes the law to make it legal. Then what? Even so, it is 100% fair for creatives to fight for their rights and for their ownership of their work. I support it. This one is going to play out over time. Thanks!
Hopefully you can find a good Mid journeys anonymous group in your area to help support you. 😅
Hahahahaha! Recovering Prompt Jockey.
I don't agree with you on everything, but you bring some interesting arguments over the use of AI. This technology is rapidly evolving and we have to adapt at breakneck speed. I do believe that after the dust settles down, there will still be a place for human creativity and expertise. But it will be a different world for sure.
Thanks! I suspect there will be an even bigger resurgence of analog art: original paintings, vinyl records, etc. as people search for the "real". We'll see.
@@MikeGastin I think so too, artists will also have a to make an effort showing their creative process and engage with the audience. Show that what they make is human made, even if it's digital media.
There is so much to say and so little space. These are my thoughts, not critics. I do think there should be way more conversations about this because, as we are finding out, this is way more complicated than it is shown. I work in a creative field with the days counted because of generative AI LOL. I do Arch Viz, and I have also been thinking about how this thing will evolve and what I will do when companies use AI instead of people like myself. Regarding the point that AI uses artist images to train and not to rebuild, Actually, for my very large and consistent research, I can say you are half wrong. Yes, the main difference between Machine learning, as its name implies, is that in each iteration, it 'learns' what it did, how it did it, and what it didn't work. But all the information stays imprinted on the database to be used as reference; it is an original full image or broken by parts or bit still stays. Some Universities have studied this, and they have been able to 'recover' the original image; when they found a few keywords, it was easy to re-generate the original image. Also, text copyrights or names of the artist are also maintained; when any of these image generators create a similar image, that's why you use an inverse keyword to eliminate that. Let's say I draw an orange frog jumping a hot dog and I put my name under it; then someone else will ask for a green frog jumping a hot dog, AI will remember my image, and it will rebuild from the original and following some extra input, but it will think that my name under it is part of what it makes that image an answer to the input entered. So AI knows exactly where it got the image and what makes it important when a command recalls something similar. You are right that we all have learned and copied someone else while we were developing or learning our craft and arts, but as you said at the end we are humans, and we not only 'remember' with our eyes, but we also remember with our feelings, smell, whatever we were feeling in that moment(hungry, sad, happy, scared, nervous). You mentioned going out to listen to music at the park. You didn't say you remember this chord; it was Flat Major, or had this many sharps, you described your experience while listening to music, everything around you, and that imprint on that moment, the music you were listening. No machine with today's technology can do that and that's why it feel soules when they re create art of any type. I said I do. Arch Viz. Our industry has been slammed many times for 'the new thing'. We were the first that were affected by 'computers', then digital media, then outsourcing, and many more. I remember while the outsourcing crazines was happening, many of my clients compared my work with something that was 10 times cheaper or more, and they said "Yes, I like this, it looks real it was fast and cheap but there is something missing" and they were right, some from a different country was able to push buttons and figure out a fast workflow but it didn't understand the client, they never cared to do it, poor guy maybe was one of hundred hired for penies by a larger company, it was just business. I see the same issue with AI. All these large corporations are investing millions on AI, to exactly thake the human out of the equation. The whole ideal that is legal or not, they are just letting it pass, lobbying lawmakers to just wait until AI tools are so spread that when someone finally screams fault, AI will be so big, it will be so spread that there will be no way to do anything against it, they don't even need laws. For example, credit bureaus here in USA. They have all personal information of citizens, we the citizens have to pay them to get our information. How crazy is that, they make money with our personal data, moving it around and creating ways ofr us to depend of the infor they have. Also when they got hacked and everything got lost in the dark web, the Goverment didn't do anything, they just give us a free 'data monitoring' subscription for a single year!. The government didn't do anything against it, the company is still operating the same way. Nothing happened to them, but we lost a lot. Sorry this is long, but every time I talk with my colleagues about AI, I realize that we people have not taken it seriously; we are all like deer with the headlights; so blinded by the 'propaganda' and how 'incredible things ' can do that we are not questioning if it should. Love the channel, been following for a while and I just realized I haven't subscribed LOL I did now. cheers.
First, fantastic comments-thank you for taking the time to share! Second, please don't apologize for how long. It was great. Third, I appreciate your points and especially the nuance you brought to my initial arguments. Excellent. And, fourth, thank you for subscribing! 🙏🏼
Thanks for sharing your well articulated thoughts. In my mind, AI is a product and tool of mankind, just like everything else we make. Like the machines that for example manage all our digital trades and banking, AI will manage other aspects of our life, like driving cars, translating languages and seeing patterns in enormous datasets. Let’s not demonize AI, because it’s just us, really. Our collective intelligence. A tool we have invented to make life easier and better.
Provocative. I do see your point. I'm not convinced you're right. Well, yes, AI is man made, no question. But a lot of man made things dehumanize us. In fact, I didn't get into this in my vid due to time and scope, but even human art can manifest evil; meaning just because it's made by a human does not make it inherently good, since we're capable of good and evil. Regardless, you're making a great point. Thank you.
In my opinion art is fundamentally an attempt to communicate, and its quality is measured by the emotional connection it establishes with the audience. Generative AI can indeed create art, but it is crucial to understand that the AI itself is not the artist. The true artist is the human who uses the AI, driven by their intent to communicate. The AI serves as a tool, amplifying the human artist's vision and enabling new forms of expression.
I would agree. However, I’d say it is an attempt to find and communicate some aspect of the truth.
@@MikeGastinWould you say that when you experience an emotional reaction to an artwork that is because it’s connected to a personal truth?
Based!
Thank you! That's high praise to give an old guy like me.
The Catholic Church has traditionally had smells and bells in its high mass for the very reason you stated. We're physical beings and we see beauty and experience the world through our senses. The sense of the trancendant that we see in life is that touch of God, a glimpse into what heaven will be like.
Amen. As a former Catholic, I get that. And, I kinda don't like how abstracted the Protestants have made the faith: preaching in a bland, corporate, auditorium ...
@@MikeGastin a lot of churches that were built from the 60's to 90's were also pretty bland. Stained glass used to be beautiful and tell a story. The high arches and domes of cathedrals drew your eye upwards towards heaven. Its lost on society today how much the church has over time supported artists and valued art. All this is to say I agree with you. AI will never know beauty.
I’m not a christian or particularly religious but I agree with your sentiment
Thank you.
I think the problem is, people do enjoy real music and real art, but many people do not earn enough money to enjoy those things, using generative products gives the abilities to be able to enjoy what others can at an affordable cost. Plus with things like midjourney, people feel they can be an artist without the ability to be so, forget for a moment the years or work you need to put in, some people just can't draw, or illustrate, that doesn't mean they don't want to. It enables them to follow a dream to some degree.
Kinda like people who play Guitar Hero can get the feeling they can play guitar?
Yes! A great analogy.
(Only my opinion, feel free to have your own reasons)
I think the "copying of artists" is not the biggest problem, but the fact that AI companies make profit with this and the hard working artists don't see a single cent of that, thats the bad part.
I agree. It was a long, rambling talk and I might say that aspect a little different this time around. Regardless, glad for your comment!
People were mad at others for using cars instead of horse carriages. We gotta learn to use things as tools and keep it pushing
Okay, but it is quite likely we're capable of creating tools that we can't control, that ruin our would, and lead to our loss of ourselves. Just look at nuclear weapons. Everyone was afraid of lead bullets and demanded we stick with bows and arrows. People just need to embrace nuclear bombs and keep it pushing. (See how you r argument falls apart?)
@@MikeGastin yes but ignoring and sweeping it under the rug is not going to do much in the situation we’re currently in because it is moving at a wild pace. It’s better to be familiar with what we’re dealing with than not.
your rationalization is fascinating.
What an odd thing to say.
George's Orwell's _1984_ is often taken as a warning about what may happen in our political future. But less noted is that it also warns about what our artistic future might be. There's a dramatic contrast in his story between the underclass proles and the much-abused tools of Big Brother such as Winston Smith.
The underclass "proles" are kept distracted by AI-written music. There is no creativity there, just shallow romantic sentimentality. In contrast Winston Smith and his colleagues at the Ministry of Truth are engaged in a creative task of sorts. Smith's job is to come up with clever ways to rewrite history fit with the regime's current propaganda. The only creativity permitted is that of the lie.
Good for you. I will personally not contribute to my own career implosion.
Awesome! All the best to you.
Apart from your appeal to supernaturalism/divinity, I'm broadly in agreement with what you're saying. AI isn't violating copyright, it's becoming a fast, reliable, cheap alternative to hiring a human artist, for a rapidly expanding range of art jobs.
AI isn't stealing art, it's stealing jobs. That truly sucks (no sarcasm), but this isn't the first time it's happened with technology - it just seems even more awful than usual this time because:
. it's happening to people (artists) that typically do it tough anyway, and
. It's happening in a field that most of us thought would be forever uniquely human.
Thanks. We really did think art would remain a uniquely human endeavor. Tech will eat us all.
I am an AI advocate. Now hear my opinion as often hear from people who don't use AI-generated art, claiming it lacks human creativity and takes away "real" artist jobs and luck the soul. This ignorance is reminiscent of the arguments made against photography and Photoshop / Illustator digital work.
Yes, anyone can create fantasy images with one click, but most of what you see around are clichéd princesses and superheroes. AI apps collect, learn and generate more of this because it's what most people like!!!! People love the trash! Trash done by camera, painbrash or AI. The more trash generated and shared, the more it will continue. And the voices cry out, "It's so non-creative." Yes! Because true creativity, whether in photography or painting, requires learning the tools, having talent, and going through trial and error and not follow the trash.
AI, like Midjourney, is no different. It takes a lot of skill to manipulate AI effectively. These skills are not just a click away. My personal journey with Midjourney's fashion related imagers includes deep knowledge of the fashion industry, 3D garment construction, current trends, photography, styling, and writing skills to describe each image the way I want-not mainstream trash.
It also takes a lot of natural talent and imagination. Generating AI art is a skill requiring as much dedication and creativity as traditional art forms. It’s not about the tool; it’s about HOW you use it.
In the end, AI art is about the artist's vision and HOW they bring it to life. It requires dedication, talent, and a willingness to learn and experiment. So, while it's easy to dismiss AI-generated art as lacking creativity, the reality is that it can be just as creative and meaningful as traditional art forms-if not more so, given the right skills and imagination.
Don't agree. (It's fine.) I think your analogies are broken. Using AI to generate art is more akin to ordering a dish at a restaurant. Yes, you could make the dish yourself and you'd be able to control and deliver your vision to the table. However, when you order a dish at a restaurant, you have an idea what's going to come out, but you're never really sure. And you're never really in control. It's up to the chef. The chef is the creator and you are the consumer. This is generative art. Sure, you're giving the machine prompts, telling it what you want, but it is creating, not you. You are just placing an order without a specific idea of what's going to come out the other side. To me, that is a much more accurate analogy and reframes the relationship between machine and prompter (consumer).
@@MikeGastin When you use Illustrator to create vector art, you're at the mercy of Adobe's code. When a photographer shoots a creative shot, they rely on the quality of the lenses and camera functions, but they can never fully predict the result. They can come close, but prediction is not guaranteed. What does a photographer do with their images? They take them to Lightroom and Photoshop, further digitizing them (read: coded by Adobe).
I already know artists who exhibit in very reputable places and have admitted to using AI for their work but finishing touches by hand. This argument against AI is outdated, like some older people clinging to checkbooks while everyone else uses online banking. I asked them, "Why do you still use a checkbook when you know how to use a computer?" Their answer was, "I don't trust the internet-they'll steal my money." Be afraid. Be behind.
I love Berkey too :)
Who's Berkey? 🤔
@@MikeGastin You have his work in your desktop as a wallpaper
From the standpoint of someone who believes in a deterministic universe, one without any mystical gods, this argument is really just a wish for importance.
The truth is that we could take well executed AI art and put it next to well executed human art and I do t think it will be immediately obvious that a "soul" is missing. If that weren't the case, then why am I counting fingers in artwork? Because I'm trying to decide if it's AI and whether an artists intentions were leveraged in its creation.
But from a deterministic standpoint, a human created artwork is not different than AI. It's simply a result of everything that happened in the time before it existed.
I would argue that AI generation is human created artwork, but the brush is abstracted to unfamiliar degree.
When I make a drum track using a sample of a snare drum no one asks if I planted the tree and waited for it to grow so I could cut it down and use the wood to shape the snare, etc then built the microphone and the cable and the audio interface blah blah...nope. That snare sound, all half a second of it, is just a really intricate stamp.
Just like your favorite photoshop brush. Did you take the photo of the texture in that brush? Even as a traditional artist, did you plant the tree that the wood of your. Rush was made from? Nope. It's just a very intricate stamp.
AI is just a stamp. It's just so intricate and unknown that us humans feel threatened by what the other humans are doing.
Is it stealing? Art is theft with a pretty story, so I don't really care about that.
Do I still think AI is bad for us? Yeah. Because it's so easy that it's going to dilute the output of the entire art community to the point that art will become meaningless. And that's going to feel bad for a long time. Right up until we get over it and figure out that what we really care about is the ability to tell stories and we should do whatever makes that easier.
We aren't some transcendent mystical link between a god and some "lower beings". The creatures of this world create beauty just by living. The only difference between humans and the other animals is that we tell and believe and learn from stories. So tell your story with whatever tools work for you.
Good comments. 1. If the universe is deterministic, what then is the cause of all inevitability? 2. Your general statements throughout are rather reductionistic. 3. I never said we are a mystical link between God and the lower animals. I said we are the nexus between the material and transcendent (spiritual) world or realities. We are the only natural beings that have transcendence.
I get that my comments are not going to convince you of anything, but I felt your efforts and thoughts deserved acknowledgement and a response. Please don't feel any need to reply as I don't want to argue with you, but thanks for taking the time to comment.
@@MikeGastin I held similar beliefs as yours, though never Christian, not too long ago. Perhaps I was too reductionist, but even as you state it now, I don't see any evidence (other than the stories we humans have written saying otherwise) that we are any more or less of a link to any cause of the universe than any other manifestation of matter. As you say, that isn't really an argument to have and I don't want to argue with anyone either. But I will answer your first question, because it was the same question I would have asked myself and it's a very good one.
Determinism does not indicate or require that anything is inevitable. It simply means that the current state of anything is dependent upon the states and conditions that came before, and so on. Nothing is inevitable until it's already happened.
I think it's comforting and empowering to see creative acts as divine and honestly, I don't think there is anything wrong with using that feeling if it helps you. But to say that art created with the brush of AI lacks "a soul" is perhaps a delusion. The AI is doing nothing that it isn't being told to do, therefore it is just a tool. To say it is doing otherwise is to assign sentience, which I don't think you are doing. Quite the opposite.
Perhaps when you look at AI work and see no soul you should think of a Garfield cartoon, drawn entirely by Jim Davis hand in 1985, and wonder if it was the pen that had no soul?
I was on your side until you tried to justify it. I understand playing with it and using it because the money isn't there and so on. In the past there was diminishing returns with regards to training, but with large language models, they just get better and better and better the more data we throw at them. There is no way that any of those companies could afford to pay for the rights to use that many images to train their models ... and they never asked for permission to include any of that data in its training set. Sure, the actual data eventually stored isn't the original image but the properties of other peoples art end up as factors in the weighting of the ML model in some form or another.
When people learn from a picture, they are not using infallible memory and analyzing the image pixel by pixel mathematically. On top of that, for the amount of effort required for people to find pictures and learn from a picture, it self limits the individual's ability to comodotize the industry as a whole ... whereas computer models have huge perfect memory systems and can process an ungodly amount of images. Its end effect is to devalue their work and effort with no recognition regarding that same work and effort required for each and every image used to train the system at the get go.
Look at how strongly media companies are protecting their own assets to prevent them from being used in generative AI to create art or music.
Imagine if you wanted to create your own generative AI and trained it using images created by openAI ... I bet you they would have a problem with that.
So why don't they have a problem doing the same thing to small players who just wanted other people to see their work but not use them uncredited to make money.
Not sure we really disagree. I kept qualifying my “justification” by saying that we don’t have full knowledge of exactly how they used our content. I was stating all that to establish a point, not stake out my position.
getting ai images out of any platform is kind of a skill of its own that is only enhanced by the training that goes into design so tbh its just creating a different job...
I hear you. I guess you can say that. It's highly abstracted from the actual tasks, but having used MJ extensively, I get your point. I don't agree that the prompt jockey is the same as a traditional media artist. It is two completely separate activities and endeavors. Even so, your point has merit and deserves attention.
personally I'm an advocate for human creativity enhanced by Ai. It feels like the art community has been divided into either your team Ai or team Humanity but, no one's really taking the middle ground.
We may be forced to the middle ground regardless, as AI isn't going anywhere but deeper into our lives, whether we like it or not.
The enormous amount of artwork AI consumes to "learn" is substantial. Humans cannot learn in days and produce an art piece in seconds, which means they cannot generate the immense income that would displace millions of artists. Only machines can accomplish this, hence the necessity for specific laws governing AI in this regard.
Agreed. I know it's different than human learning and we need to address it.
just a different of opinion: midjourney steals? i am hearing of walt disney loosely reference myths, legends and fairy tales, we learn from what we see,hear, etc. If people want to copy anything i create have add it. why should anyone be threatened by a different way of expression but to profit and control any idea due to profit. Mike the world is always changing, focus in doing what you do best and be proud of it, your life do what you think is good in your circle.
You don't think I do that now? Why can't I share my concerns while also living life as best I can?
nope i wrong what your talking about that creative spark being human just needs a bigger machine.
Not following your meaning here.
@@MikeGastin that creative thing that’s uniquely human your talking about ? apparently all you need is more data and somewhere to put it eg a bigger hard drive to achieve the same thing?
Hmm, not sure about it Mike. Think about the past.. we had illustrators in the ad business, sign painters and so on. Then photography came, took their job. Is photography human and have soul? No, it’s cold and impersonal, yet the world embraced it and now it’s just a technique. AI is the same. Sure you can resist it, stick with hand-painted signs and stand your ground. Good for you! And on the other point, I work with designers and the way they work now… they just go on Pinterest, find references and copy that to sell you at 100usd an hour. For that type of work, I would rather (and I do) use AI as it is better at following the brief/prompt and is not trying to express itself on that toilet paper packaging I asked them to create. As you said in your previous video, AI is just good at making average work, and it is good so. Should you hire a freelance designer and waste your time for a thumbnail? I think your time is better spent running for office ;)
Fair enough. Care to make a donation to my upcoming campaign? Lol. 😂 Thanks for commenting.
@@MikeGastin You might not want to have technically Russian money getting involved ;)
if ai art will always be cold, then human artists are safe, because it will always be limited by its coldness and never surpass human art.
but if its getting warm? if it tells me it has a soul, with the same kind of conviction when you tell me you have a soul? what if tomorrow an alien lands on the white house lawn, and it looks like a spider with some biological parts, some machine parts, and some parts that look like nothing i can describe, and it says it has a soul?
granted, as an atheist i have an easier time answering such questions.^^
thank you for provoking these thoughts
Thank you, too, for being both challenging and generous in your response. 👍🏼
my favorite brain game to play with this argument is this: using AI to replicate and riff on Steamboat Willie.
Interesting. Would like to see that.
Go to a gallery and buy some art if you'd like to "champion" the artist.
We're entering a new age and AI is going to be a huge part of it. Sooner than later, it will be next to impossible to separate oneself from any sort of AI usage. If you search Google, you're already using it. It is indeed going to take jobs away from creators, I see no way around that. If you got kids, point them in the direction of some field in IT for their future.
I agree that there will be no practical way to avoid it. Challenging times ahead, imo.
You're entitled to believe whatever you want to believe, of course. I personally don't agree with the "humans are special" argument, so I don't see it as a good argument for demonizing AI. At the same time I agree with your "AI is not stealing but learning from other artists' works" argument. So in other words, I see no reason for feeling guilty for using AI
That's fine. We're starting from different assumptions.
its a tool, it increases productivity…try to compete without ai going forward. Good luck
Compete in what? In thinking? In consulting? In solving complex problems? Happy to compete. Your point is well taken, however. AI is going to gobble up the world and being sniffy about it or idealistic risks leaving you in the dust. That said, I think even those that use it are at risk. It's going to ruin a lot more lives than those who resist it.
@@MikeGastin to compete in terms of speed, output, rapid ideation etc, etc, etc…its just a matter of time before these models make all creative skill redundant. It will democratise creativity entirely, meaning if you can think or imagine something it will be able to create it, as only a small percentage of humans can do now. To not use it while you can, is going to cost you business. Its going to not just ruin lives, it will change the entire world. It has only effected artist first as the models still hallucinate and art / design Is one of the few fields that allows for imperfection / interpretation in terms of output. Once the models no longer hallucinate as much they will take over almost all industry, not using it wont save anyone, you cant ignore the problem and hope it will go away. This is much, much bugger than the ego of artist and designers…so have fun while you can :) use it while you can, try to profit from it while you can. Its a small window
This empowers those of us who didn't invest the time to learn illustration, photography or other visual art form to express ourselves. As a programmer, it's very empowering. In the same way squarespace/wix/wordpress empower artists to publish their work online by using software that was built using in no small part open source code. What if every artist had to pay a developer to code a website? When I started my computer science degree there was only Wordpress. How many web developers are being put out of their jobs thanks to the many website builders? And how many people on the other end are empowered to express themselves who couldn't because they can't code? Likewise, this is empowering those of use who are creative and have the desire to express ourselves but don't have the money to hire artists. I approach it with gratitude and reverence for the art that enables the AI tools to produce the work they do - work because art it's not.
Good take. Not sure the folks who did invest all that time will agree, but I get what you’re saying.
Not the same thing. Squarespace is templates. Artists can make template art that you can use and customize. AI “art” is not the same thing. Invest the time it takes to learn this stuff if you want to make something original.
@@BrianMarcWhittaker I don't really consider it art at this point, nor is it original, just more impactful and aesthetically pleasing than anything I could put together. I use it to get by until I can afford to support artists.
If you do AI wrong I would agree about the "soul lacking". The clue is to create content with AI + your soul. It takes a little more work. You will be using Midjourney in the future, that I'm sure of 🙂
You think I'll come back like an addict who just needs one more fix?
@@MikeGastin Oh, yes! And now Midjourney learns what you prefer (--p) and the results is much better after the training (completing tasks, choosing the best images). Slowly your "soul" comes out in the images 🙂
great the less people use AI - the better chance I will have a good job in the future:)
Lol. Maybe you need all the help you can get. (Just teasing you, of course.) ;)
But you are on line. So by default you ARE contributing to training the machines. The only way to stop that is to unplug entirely.
Looks like I've got blood on my hands. Good point. I am not trying to be an anti-tech evangelist or somehow remove myself from society. At the same time, I think it's important to push back.
@@MikeGastin Ah well. It is the dilemma of our time. Our bodies and our natural capacities atrophy when we give work to machines. Don't need to do math in my head because of calculators. Do not need to spell. So it continues.
Yes let's appreciate human made art while we still can. Before we know it will be just robots and ai doing all our jobs.
And we’ll be their slaves.
Good decision, bad take, you need to do more research.
I know this is new knowledge for you, but the general issue has always been the use in training. Nobody thought it was spitting out copies.
And you’re wrong. They are violating copyright. They stole.
You really need to do more research. This is not like training a human brain. Diffusion models do not work that way and it’s not analogous.
Human beings can turn an experience into a picture. Human beings can take a picture and turn it into a song. We do not consume one type of thing and only spit out that thing.
Thanks. I've got a better idea. Since you know more about it than me, and you've got a channel, why don't you share with the world? If you do, I'll be sure to leave a comment telling you how right you are. In the meantime, I'll be working on more videos where I do no research and totally get it wrong. 😑
The Pandora's box is open now and no matter how much anyone sulk about it, Ai art gen is here to stay.. just as America was built by taking the land of the native Indians or how Britishers colonized the world and created fault lines that countries are still dealing with, as controversial it is, Ai image gen or using it to offload cognitive taxing tasks is here to stay..
People can decide to sit on the fence or keep vining as long as they want, but the world will keep moving with it.
I will advise you to stop walking on eggshells about it.. stop being apologetic all the time because you can't keep all the viewers happy.. no matter what you believe, someone or the other will have some negative comments to give claiming how something you said or did offended them as an artist or as a creator.. blah blah ..
Whenever we have something new the old will have to change and that's the paradigm shift world always went through.. deal with it.. period.
I know all about always having critics. I was sincere about what I said in this video and didn't make my decisions to please anyone. However, you are 100% right in that I (and everyone) should make up our minds and take a stand. I do think that AI is different when it comes to new tech and society moving forward. What I mean is it's a technology that even though we created it at the same time it is quickly outstripping our ability to understand, and maybe even control, it. It's this inability to totally grasp what we've made, it's rapid "evolution", and our insistence on integrating it into most every aspect of live we can think of that has me concerned. Time will tell. But if you're looking for an analogy, consider nuclear technology. I mention this because that is proof that we're quite capable of creating tech that can easily obliterate us; tech we can't necessarily control. Of course, I have no answers. Just concerns right now.
@@MikeGastin i think the secret lies in humans considering something as a threat as opposed to something we can put a wig on a call a girlfriend.. 😅
Suddenly things don't look too dangerous then..
I have always wondered why people smoke when they know it can certainly kill them in the long run but they will not drink poison which again will kill them .. i think the answer lies in something that doesn't kill us today is fine with us .. 😅
The issue is, how do we convince everyone of it's threat when the first few hundred use cases of it all seem to make things easier for our day to day tasks..
I think the brave new world taught us something, that as long as you keep humans happy and docile, they will willingly submit to any overlord without caring too much of the consequences unless it's too late.
Most of us can feel intuitively that this is evolving way too fast for any of us to truly comprehend where its leading us but that's what the human condition is .. give them a big red button that says, DO NOT PRESS .. and see what happens.
I think humans, not god, are the ones defining which life is special and which is not.
I think I said all human life is sacred/special. Even so, yes, humans are making those decisions and it's not good. A different topic for another time. But thanks!
DUDE. Terrrrible comparison about "training" artists using "other people's work"... TERRIBLE comparison. Artists don't become artists to take other people's money. If they do, they're not artists.
So, when an artist gets paid for their work, which MANY artists dream of, it's not "taking" other people's money? It's some other thing? But when an AI company gets paid, it's "taking". Look, I do think you have an argument here, that the artist's motivations are often more noble. However, lots of artists act pretty shameless when it comes to getting paid and don't tell me otherwise. I've seen it all my life, lol. AND, a lot of people in the creative world are "commercial" artists; people like designers and illustrators. They do their art explicitly to get paid. Even so, I agree that the AI companies are a whole other level of money making. I think my comparison stands.
I think this argument is totally flawed. If an artist gets paid to make art thats just their work. They work hard on it and to learn it. Saying its shameless to get paid for it is like people wjo work hard should not ask for payment. Why is art different from other jobs. Whereas creating a software so that you or someone doesn't have to work hard to do a job someone else does so that you dont have to pay them for that job is not a good motivation.
No his argument is spot on. The machines have been trained on the world that already exists just like human artists. From an empirical stand point its a perfect analogy. If its a good or bad thing that humans are far less efficient and so will be priced out of the market is also a sad but true statement. The idea that we should support human creativity, well that's up to individuals. The issue is that people hand over value because they are getting value. Everything else is charity
@@joshs6230 If anyone thinks it's actually a valid argument they are not even understanding what the problem with training the AI is. You are looking at it from the wrong point and therefore trying to explain something people are not even angry about therefore going into an absurd tangent with this point.
Sorry pal... lol... "maybe" my ass.
Lil help here, it's a 28-min long vid. "Maybe" what, lol?
@@MikeGastin forget it man, its all ok and you got a "like" from me. :) midjourney maybe...im not so sure of me being naif with mjourney.
I got you. Thanks. ;)
Are youtube thumbnails supposed to have soul? If you don't want to live in an AI world then perhaps get off UA-cam.
No. I don't think I will, Bruce.
@@MikeGastin That's the spirit!