I can imagine that commercial art like illustration, concept art and art in advertising might change. Here in Germany we have many industrial bakeries which produce standard bread and some "elite hand made-bakeries" which cost more but which are quite successful. Maybe art will become the same.
I didn't even watch the video yet but I'm super glad to have you guys back to grace us with your podcast, you two are my favorite artistic influence! ❤️❤ To be frank my motivation took a big hit ever since I've started hearing about the implications of A.I. on the art industry, it's already a "struggle" mentally for me to be consistent and disciplined with practicing my craft while I "worry" about the competition of other aspiring/established artists, which feeds my self-doubt. And now we have the threat of technology taking over our places as the cheaper, cost-effective alternative for potential employers, as well as over-saturating the freelance market with A.I. generated images that are churned out in large volumes, which could also make it more difficult for artists to advertise themselves and have their work noticed online. Both outcomes could only make the job market that much more competitive to enter into and sustain a career. All this can definitely make someone feel discouraged from committing to the arduous path of becoming a professional draftsman/artist, when their hopes of a future livelihood are threatened by these factors... I can only hope that your thoughts on the matter can give us some solace and confidence to help stick to our ambitions (when I get to watch the full video 😅)
The day someone asks me "Why do you still draw by hand when AI generated images exist?" I will just reply "Why have a walk in the park when we have cars?"
A computer is endlessly logical and efficient but it doesnt have a personality. So when you see slick computer artwork, there is no personality informing it. So for podcast thumbnails it's fine, but at this stage I don't see how it replaces the human hand. No AI could create a Jack Kirby or a Frank Frazetta. Their art was an expression of their soul and life experience. I don't see how you could create an algorithm for something so nuanced.
"Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them." Frank Herbert, Dune The future is a terrifying prospect. Finding where I fit in as the machine gods are born is my daily anxiety.
@@gabudaichamuda2545 There have always been times of complacency before retaliation, the problem is that we're in a different world now where every part of it is accessible. If we retaliate, all eyes are on us and some people won't let that slide in order to "keep the peace".
@@gabudaichamuda2545 ummm...ok. Not advocating for violence. Rather, I would like to understand why there is such a push for machine learning to do everything. From checkout lines to art to Healthcare, I get the feeling that this is purely about disruption of current practices to establish more profitable methods. In turn, pushing the human element out of buisness entirely.
The music industry already had this before. They are way more protective and for sure wouldn't let this slide. The design community should have stood up with in the first announcement of this instead of waiting. See how AI music programs don't touch any of the copyrighted music from your favorite artists. It's because they are afraid of their lawsuits.
And how many music artists are actually being compensated for their work as opposed to getting fucked over by their own record labels who are the true copyright holders of that product and reap the profits from it? You don't actually give a shit about artists, do you?
I listened to their podcast episodes on the AI art generator last week, and then was bummed that it had ended because I wanted to know what their thoughts were on how AI is now
All the talks about ethics, morals, authenticity, the "human touch" or potential uses as a tool miss out on one very simple fact - a huge percentage of clients and corporations won't care about any of that and the "good enough" factor. If they can pay 25$ per month and generate hundreds of images on a given topic *daily*, they won't give a crap about paying an artist hundreds of dollars to produce one such image in a few weeks or more. One of those hundreds of images will be Good Enough™ and that's what matters. Most artists who say not to worry and that it won't affect as much as it seems are already successful and established. Yeah, they won't be affected much. But I think that sadly a lot of low- and mid-level jobs will be reduced SEVERELY by AI creating "good enough" images for clients who, to be blunt, often lack any sort of finer taste or knowledge of the nuanced points of art or the process of creation. In terms of creating art for personal enjoyment, growth or as a hobby - sure, it's a tool. But in terms of doing paid commissions as a mid-level artist that's in rather considerable danger.
This is why in the past couple of months I’ve given up on my dream of being a full time artist (meaning an artists that just does art full time, not like a UA-camr or educator or someone that does other things in conjunction to art) and even up until yesterday I was still grieving a career I always wanted since childhood and I’m still grieving in a way but I’m slowly coming to terms with it and I’m looking into other jobs I might enjoy. The most frustrating part of listening to established artists talk about AI and irresponsibility encouraging people not be afraid of it because they’re job is already safe (or at least they assume it is) and the tech bros/pro-AI scabs that heckle people, telling them that their concerns are pathetic and you either join the new wave or get left behind. The lack of empathy and responsibility is what has hit me the hardest and I know I shouldn’t be surprised because that mentality isn’t new but it’s still hard to choke down
While I agree with the somewhat pessimistic view on the outlook for smaller creators, it's not just big corpos that can accept 'good enough' it's also smaller creators and hobbyists and amateurs who might have an idea they want to pursue that requires some kind of image (reference, concept, material) but don't have the budget for comissioning a 2d artist. I am of two minds in that regard.
I'd argue that there is still a niche market for some designers who are targeting large companies and wealthy clients because of the "prestige" factor - I'm going to bet that companies like Google, Facebook, or Amazon are still going to pay money for full time artists because hiring a "real" designer carries a status symbol. They'll be able to generate unique designs that belong to them exclusively. It's the same reason that companies still employ receptionists or bellhops, or publish a company newsletter. (David Graeber talks about this in his book "Bull**** Jobs"). Well-established companies will probably still be willing to pay for that experience. And a real artist is always going to be better than AI (at least at this stage of AI development). But I agree that this is a considerable threat to mid- and low-level designers and illustrators. A small, local business doesn't care about having particularly unique or high-quality graphics - they just want something inexpensive and semi-professional looking. These days you don't need a professional designer to create semi-decent looking business cards or a functional website - you can just hop on Canva or Wix and create pretty decent looking deliverables for little to no cost. I think AI is going to exacerbate this "problem" (on the design side, at least. It's great for clients).
@@hellodelightfulrando those tech bros are cringe... i wanted to be a pro artist too even if i didn't achieve it ill keep drawing and ill never use Ai .
As emphasized by Steven Zapata mentioned in his video regarding AI, the developers are implementing copyrighted works in an image generating AI because they know visual artists will not defend themselves. The music version does not incorporate copyrighted works because the music industry has a stronger history of defending itself. The AI generators are denoising tools taken to the extreme. They can only come into focus by tracing existing works. It might be many or one image but it can only trace.
@@dibbidydoo4318 No, and in fact it is *quoted by Stability A.I* that they KNOW of the music industry's strict copyright enforcement: “Dance Diffusion is also built on datasets composed entirely of copyright-free and voluntarily provided music and audio samples. *Because diffusion models are prone to memorization and overfitting, releasing a model trained on copyrighted data could potentially result in legal issues. In honoring the intellectual property of artists while also complying to the best of their ability with the often strict copyright standards of the music industry, keeping any kind of copyrighted material out of training data was a must.”* These A.I companies are steamrolling visual artists, because visual artists do not have the organization or monetary/legal power to defend themselves from it.
I love how ai “experts” pretend over fitting isn’t a thing when it is pretty much the #1 problem in machine learning. It’s nice to see them finally admit it, even in this rather obscure blog post.
They don't really trace is why you can't use copyright against AI images. They take references among many pictures and identify what make those pictures unique and using them. Same process with humans learning art if we simplify the 0 and 1, except artists that want to grow eventually take references from more artists, environments, and so on to make their own style. Can it be said that AI steal styles? Sureeeeee... but if style is copyrighted, it is starting artists that would lose. Does AI pretending to be other artist, dead or alive is fine? That is a tough morality question and I am not sure if I would like it if AI 'steal' my style when I just start getting my name out there.
It's sad that "Don't hide behind your art, be a personality" is a thing we'll have to do now, because that was one of the worst parts about the online scene for art. I guess the days of drawing nice things to get by are well and truly gone. Wish I was born 10 years earlier or something. Cities are gutted, travel feels hollow, world feels homogenized, and now my one hidey hole is now taken over by this. I've already had artist friends find loads of their stuff in "have I been trained" some literally have fallen into a deep depression seeing their work in the data base, work they spent years doing and did to escape horrible lives. Really can't see how anyone can justify that in their head that that's fair, considering some of these images were on personal websites (unless they were copied over by third parties)
@@justine_see do you want machines thinking for you any more than they already do? because at the end of the day these things are tools. I would not let BlackRock or whomever is financing this operation freely colonize the means of imagination. that feels like a stupid problem to let yourself have.
And that is impossible, specially because what we call AI (Artificial Neural networks ) is not designed. What Ai can do is TRAIN other AI. These art generation AI are already that. The images in the internet are used to train an AI to identify things in image, styles and descriptions. That AI cannot draw. Then another AI is set in a competition against the first AI. It tries to deceive the first AI and based on its resposne it adjust its weights. it tries again, and again, adjusting every attempt. Eventually it will learn how to deceive the first AI with what it generated. That is the point where the AI have been trained to make visual products.
@@marsmotion, the value can't be zero because AI art is nothing without human art to take from. Art would stagnant if every human artist stopped posting human art and AI art was the only way it was being made.
@@theshocker9188 AI art has no soul and I'm not interested in it. I want the story behind that art and I want to know what feeling is behind that and what is the message behind that. AI art doesn't have a meaning. It just copies other artists' styles. It has no life, no memories, no experience, no character. So I don't think it's interesting or exciting.
Some people that are neither an artist nor a writer will be perfectly able to have “their own” graphic novel. Only it won’t matter at all. Art will be completely meaneless. Congrats, human kind!
100%. The average joe has cared less and less over the years, now they won’t care at all. What a shitty future we live in. people seem to think invention = progress. This is one of the biggest losses to humankind there has ever been.
And what about spending quality time with our families and friends without worrying about paying bills? How about people who wake up every day to do physical activities like swimming, hiking, jogging, exercising, playing sports, fishing, playing video game or other activities, etc. People do that for a living, that’s their career, how they pay bills and put food on the table. Except, if you’re not doing it for a career, then ultimately, it’s a privilege because All those things that we cannot do because of capitalism. Should we make an argument that you can get to do these things if you work and if you don’t work and contribute to society, you don’t get this privilege? Capitalism is the problem. Not AI or automation.
In a way this could eliminate the clients who try to take advantage of artists cause they want to be cheap. And even then Ai probable can't come up with something in our imaginations quite like we see. The demand for artist will take a hit but still be present.
@@alohatigers1199 yup lets play some whataboutism, lets go back to communism so we can have AI art xD you have no idea how a world without capitalism should look like and nobody else aint either so shut it.
As someone who mainly makes a living of anime-stylized art commissions for a while now and always felt on the existential edge already, it naturally makes me feel quite anxious to see this development. I wasn't one of those artists who were completely nihilistic towards the whole AI subject, but I can completely sympathize with those who shared their concerns and fears when they can already see the trend to an oversaturation on the art field and market. The issues are pretty multilayered and not something people can simplify and damp down to technological angst and anti-progressive behavior or abstract art purist viewpoints. If anything, the discussions revolving to this new development and many commentaries from the distant by non-artists mostly show once again how pretty misunderstood the art profession as a whole is. It's probably not the majority, but it can be pretty heart-breaking to read all those comments on reddit and forums where people express their enthusiasm with a certain degree of Schadenfreude because in their eyes this will finally "throw off many too pricey arrogant artists from their high horses". When I started my freelance career a few years ago after a long tedious decade of disorientation on the job market, it was quite a hard decision to jump in at the deep end, since also everyone around me including friends and family were telling me constantly why I shouldn't do it considering all the financial uncertainty and non-promising prospects that came with it. But I didn't regret it, if anything it was my happiest and best choice I made in my life, being able to finally get acknowledged and paid for the thing you thought you could do best. In my position as still somewhat small artists it is difficult to establish "a fair high price", I'm glad enough I reached the point of a regular customer base that wouldn't be put off by my rates that can at least cover my livelihood. I'm still far far away from making earnest profit - And now with automatically generated images a new big competitor enters the field that is superior in productivity and speed, while already improving thanks to its endless harvesting and exploitation of other people's intellectual property. It's a weird, devastating feeling of unfairness and constant feeling of being misunderstood. Like all those apple and orange comparisons in this debate... I always find that comparison with "artists who 'also' got inspired by other artists" rather strange - when the generator copies almost the exact same silhouette, pose and even sometimes the signature from other artist's work, would you really consider it an "inspiration"? Surely not. It is the same feeling of unfairness I tend to feel when I see all the repost accounts on Instagram in their top 10 recommendation lists that are able to generate content for every hour just by gathering and collecting the art images from other artists without work and no effort, while they are additionally getting benefitted by the algorithm through constant likes and shares by their consumers and on top of that even generating profit by offering smaller artists exposure and promotion slots for fees due to their high reach, profit that they solely got through stealing other people's work. It is already hard enough to get your work visible in the internet void, it's just getting constantly harder now that art sites get flooded by AI images. I spent much time to sort out my mind the last few weeks and reflected about the reasons behind my creative activities and my whole profession a lot. I also read through many different opinions and also asked my regular clients on that matter what they thought about it, to set things more into perspective. Most of my clients made it clear that they value the human artist and human interaction behind their commissions. Some other artists say that most people who will use this tool to save a buck weren't interested in commissioning artists to begin with. I still feel conflicted about the potential of misuse, since there were a few cases already where the tools were used to cause some trouble for genuine artists, like that one individual who sniped the artist's drawing stream and put the tool-generated "end version" of this screenshot on their own twitter account, followed by torpedoing the actual original artist for seemingly stealing their art. It's utterly disgusting and breaks my heart to see that hostility. I'm aware that this won't be the majority of people who make use of those tools, but the potential to cause a stir is there, and it's easy and cheap to cause such troubles on the expenses of the other artists's energy and mental health. We mostly want to share our joy and passion with others, and if possible make a living of our work, some of us still earn less than a minimum wage, not because we wanted to but because of our strong urge for expressing ourselves/something and telling a story through our visuals which is the dominating drive above anything else, and we naturally hope and work for a better prospect and future while staying true to our artistic vision and beliefs. Therefore, it will remain alien to me and many other fellow artists where the hostility and twisted image of arrogance is coming from. I'm not an art purist who think art and creating art is something exclusive. If anything I learned during my studies and art history seminars is that you can actually determine a lot of things as art since every group, institution or collectives define art individually on different legitimate objective and subjective basics. My big takeaway from many discussions was that for me, art can be anything, as soon as it has a certain reception, as soon as people are committed to discuss it if it can be considered art or not. Another thing is that the perception of things that can be considered art can change over time. Take the content of a museum, for example: Some exhibitions feature historic art pieces and relics that were initially nothing more than working tools for daily life needs and purposes from ancient times. That alone shows how variable and dynamic our perception of art can be. It is not the first and will not be the last time that new technology and production mechanisms lead to a new discussion about what is considered art and what is not. What is often forgotten or dismissed is that for some artists it is also about the vision and the process, and that of course it is discouraging to see a potential development where imagination takes shape at the push of a button in a wink and the process of creation and craft becomes maybe obsolete and insignificant. But I would like to hope and believe that there will be no future where this appreciation for craft is dead. A short off-topic anecdote that comes into mind regarding automatized media generators: There was an interesting situation where my former roommate felt the urge to try out music software and some randomized melody generators, so he bought a good chunk of tools, played around with it for a few days and quickly lost interest in it. He wasn't into music before, he was an established, well-paid software engineer, whose lifestyle couldn't be more different from mine - and one day he shared his rambles about how he guessed that it couldn't be that hard to create compelling music he is listening to by himself and just felt like giving those generating tools a try for once (which was totally legitimate to try out), and concluded after getting bored with it that he expected composing and creating music would be way more fun. It was a moment where I became more aware of the fact that the experience of the whole creation process as a whole, the process of creating itself was an essential part of the whole artistic drive and motivation, "part of the whole fun", and skipping those steps by generating some automatically randomized content would not give you the same fulfilling joy imo. That's what I genuinely think when people are enthusiastic about being able to skip the creation process in the future, I never consider that creation process an issue that needed to be fixed by any AI, it is the one most defining part that impacts the rewarding feeling for getting the final result done and the recognition for the hard work by other peoples for me.
"Therefore, it will remain alien to me and many other fellow artists where the hostility and twisted image of arrogance is coming from." I've honestly thought a lot about this point because you see it come up a lot when tech-bros, AI enthusiasts, and trolls defend these AI programs. They think that now with the existence of these programs, the "monopoly" that artists have on art will crumble and be given the regular people. But I have a hard time finding what monopoly we as artists have when it pertains to art as a whole because if such a monopoly exists, then why are so many artists willing to share what they have learned? Why can I google how to draw X and find hundreds of tutorials on how to draw X? Surely if you are at the top of the pyramid, sharing how you got there goes against your best interest, right? My best guess is that these people think drawing is not a skill that one can learn but some sort of blessing from a divine being or an anomaly within one's dna or brain. Talent is a word that comes up a lot in their arguments and it's used with such distain. Like they hate the fact that they weren't born with it despite the fact that talent doesn't exist the way they think it does (I personally use affinity but that's just me).
@@Lamonticus Many art seniors made it clear pretty often that they have a strong interest in teaching younger generations the craft and creation of art; not to "raise the fierce competition" but instead in the hope that more people will understand the effort behind it and appreciate its strong value and worth. Especially the concept artists veterans among them believe that such a mindset would lead to a general raise of quality and especially variety (due to individuality and different tastes of the aspiring artists) which would benefit the industry and the art field as whole due to more art influences. But also to create a future where most clients will understand the hard work and also the value in the craft itself more. They often get questions why they would give their tricks and workflow tutorials for free and if they wouldn't be afraid of competitors, and they feel like those questions often comes from people who aren't really that familiar with art, because the industry and community is much about socializing and interaction, and pushing, inspiring and motivating each other, since many of them weren't supposed to be active in this field in the first place without the help of other fellow artists, while an ego trip mindset won't get you that far.
“When the generator copies almost the exact same silhouette, pose and even sometimes the signature from other artist’s work, would you really consider it an 'inspiration'? Surely not.” Would you mind providing the examples in question please?
@@noobatredstone3001 hard to attach an image on youtube comments lol but look up Karla Ortiz's post on "afghan girl", seems like certain prompts just have the AI straightup plagerize verbatim, and since there's no button saying "don't plagerize" so it could happen at anytime
With regards to the portion about prompting as a skill: As Steven mentions in his video and elsewhere, AI prompting as a "skill" is likely going to top out very quickly. I had a logic teacher in high school who lamented that Google had streamlined boolean operators out of the search engine (basically the logical language and syntax for refining searches). This meant that his skill in formal logic no longer benefitted him as a Google user - and unskilled users no longer needed to learn anything to pull up what they wanted. I think that is where AI image and art generation will go - increasingly automating the prompting process to refine results with minimal input. In other words the goal of these products will be to lower the skill ceiling and reduce the barrier of entry. You could imagine that rather than specific prompts, you might only need to offer a few general prompts and just get a slider tool to adjust how stylized a piece is along a number of spectrums.
I think anyone who has delusions of being a 'prompt writer' will quickly get out-prompted by A.I once it learns what the most tasteful prompts are and can iterate on itself infinitely faster with access to all the data about what people find appealing.
Exactly. You can look at photoshop, blender, even music production software like logic and ableton live in their previous and current form and see how people could spin that into earning a living simply via their learning curve and potential. But search prompts? If even some programmers say theyre eventually coding their replacements. I dont see a real future for prompt engineering. I can see a future for logistical support with A.I. in law enforcement, emergency svcs and military etc. A human of course would be needed as first response or to provide context to the machine to minimize error and keep it in a support role etc.
@@tcg2717 I don't think it is the tech bros who think they can make a job out of it (preferring to simply own the algorithms as products or shill for them), but the point still stands. Its like, sure, you might be a little better at coaxing what you want out of an image generator, but who would buy that skill from you when they could actually just do it themselves and the results would be pretty close. Or Adobe/Microsoft will have built in AI tools to provide stock images on the fly.
It's even worse with how AI is being utilized to control people by checking facial recognition, emotion recognition, and AI drones in the military. The future is bleak
I think that all A.I. products (not only art) sould have a watermark of sorts that says "This product was made with A.I." This watermark should be included in the source code of the A.I. like Azimov's Laws.
YES. It should need to be disclosed. Like there should be some law that you can pretend it was made my a human. And potentially you would need to pay something to the artists the work was based on. However that gets extremely messy very fast.
@@bloop6111 What's infuriating is that people are already attempting to sell A.I imagery as their own handmade work. Or, they are trying to sell images generated based on famous artists' work as "originals."
The most dangerous thing with Ai is to call it a tool. This thing isn’t designed or developed to be a tool, its being developed to be our replacement. Sure it can currently be used as a tool and that is what the ai COMPANIES are telling us the artists but look at what they are telling to the genera public, they don’t mention artists or mention how great of a tool it will be for us. This is basically the machine arm replacing most of the human workers in the auto mobile industry to just automate processes for quantity over quality. As Proko and Marshal also brought up this wont only affect art it will affect EVERYTHING we know of in the world.
You could use the same rhetoric for a plethora of technical inventions over the years. We're still here and adapting, not too fussed that calculators have cost accountants their jobs, because they never did.
Calculators were designed to be an extra tool for the accountant to speed up their jobs. The Ai Devs aren't designing Ai and more notably marketing it as a tool for the general public. They are marketing it as a straight up replacement. The same thing happened to the Auto mobile industry where they first gave you better screw drivers and tools but eventually they brought in a robotic machine arm that made you obsolete to that company. The Ai Companies will tell artists that its a tool but that's not what they want it to become eventually, they want to make the process and people obsolete. I can only hope that we can add rules to this thing quickly so that it stops stealing from artists and only uses royalty free art.
I think the NFT craze pointed out an issue that has been growing in the art world, being the industrialization of art. Creating art just for it to exist or to be sold. And I think AI might lead people to long for the story behind the art and not necessarily the art itself. Because now if you don’t care about the story, the art that you’re looking for will be easy to create (maybe not right now). But if it’s meaning or story, something deeper, that you’re wanting then it might be harder to find.
Let's be honest, this is a centuries-long issue. "Creating art just for it to exist or to be sold." Who do you think commissioned art during most of history? Noble families and people with money, the relationship between art and money will never change and only tends to scale. You can see this on the film industry with Marvel or the music industry with most of mainstream music. AI is somehow more soulless than that.
@@20xxcomedy You are absolutely correct...you either do art for yourself or for your patron. I tell my staff how lucky we are that we have our clients...our patrons to pay us to do what we love so that we can also take that earning and do other art that satisfies us personally. On another note, people buy the story of the artist or of the art itself..it's that and the provenance is important. If you choose to create AI art and make it have some type of meaning, it has to have purpose...or a story or a particular niche market that is underserved....that is the only way, I believe, it will have value. Otherwise, it's like you said...it's just art that exists.
I've recently gone around UA-cam subscribing to every single art channel that is still producing art with traditional methods and not just AI. I've found so much great material for my self development and creative projects. Great content, guys! 👊
I think the idea of the 'art of the prompt' is short term thinking at best. Future versions of this will be a closed loop, where the AI is writing its own prompts based on the training data currently being provided by every user entering prompts.
This is correct. Like Steven Zapata pointed out, at this point the machine is gathering all the prompts used to generate the best images, but there will come a point where there is no need for human input anymore and the AI can literally generate an infinite amount of images with all the prompt data it has gathered.
@@tcg2717 What is the point of an infinite amount of images? This, to some extent, already exists with the 'Babel Image' archive. If you're looking for a cover for your book say, how do you go about that?
I disagree about not eventually needing humans. AI will be used commercially, and for commercial art use you need certain image with certain subject. For example a book cover, you want it to depict the events/ideas/plot you have in the book.... not just any book cover will do. However, it's not "art of the prompt", because 8-year old can make prompts. Drop the art part. However, prompts need to still be written, there's just nothing skilled about it
People who mostly love AI are also the people who are not familiar with creative industry. I agree that part when people who are not in the industry said it improves life, but for those who are in it, heavily affected. This conversation really refresh my mind to see both sides from artists themselves. Quite scary because it's like playing with lion cub. We never knew how it grows bcs it's wild.
Ai will kill a lot of dreams and artists before they have a chance to flourish, it could keep future artists from entering the field and we may be robbed of our chance to see certain giants . But creating art is like mediating it’s an escape those who use Ai will have missed out on that by creating push button images and putting their names to it. It could be utilised as reference or springboard for some artists so it may have merits. What about art schools surely they too will feel the affects of this technology. More bad than good I feel, but I do prefer old fashion methods of creating art , always have and I hope I always will.
@@Dookie_Blaster Indeed, if we lost many masters to war and hunger in the past, and in the present we are losing many masters to economic issues and war also, if AI can offset this by resolving world conflict and hunger, however, would AI level out what it is preventing from developing? I feel that if we can secure the knowledge of learning and art history for prosperity, and ensure access to such knowledge we may yet save human expression through art. But who will care to become a movie director, when you can have AI render an entire movie that is "perfect" in 30 seconds in the future, for example? We do make choices that are completely unpredictable, though, since humans are also emotional and not just logical. There are two hemispheres that allow for our contradictions and such, to put it simple, but at that point what can happen is a whole iRobot case where you get two separate AIs to fight each other over one robot body to produce a semblance of what contradictory emotional flawed beings we are...
hmm but if you think about it, it could have opposite effect, when AI becomes ubiquitous and common, then human art will have a very high value, don't you think that could be like a tipping point in the future?
@@a.krishna3924 I don’t see that in all honesty. For example say I work hard and spent decade’s learning and developing my art. To make a calendars worth of art would take me many many months of sweat and toil. Now a person (or even a child )with no art training or schooling can hit a button and generate very cool and apt 12 images in under 12 minutes. The calendar company owner doesn’t need to pay that person much at all as anyone can do the same but my income is my only source of income and opportunities to earn are greatly diminished. The jobs that are left are going to chased after by many artist and the patron can pay less and less as each artist undercuts the other to get that gig. My art has less value than it used to.
@@a.krishna3924 yes , what you say also has some possibilities, maybe traditional hand made art garners greater following but a majority of people won’t care about the art only how pleasing the image is to them.
I have a visceral hatred for Ai, not because it doesn't look good because some of it does but it's profoundly anti-human in it's totality. A lot of artists have dedicated their lives to this and will soon be completely disregarded and essentially depersoned.
I agree with you, but I also think this argument Stan made makes sence: that when we think of Ai advancement in fields other than our own, we tend to see how our quality of life will be better. But, of course there is the question of how I will pay for that improved life when my job gets buried...
it is already used for profit tho. By the company that makes the AI. It's cool you don't sell the paintings - the company is making crazy money out of the works of artists they did not pay to. Not every artist wants to be a celebrity or an internet personality. Some of us just want a job that doesn't make us wanna die.
Marshall’s body language is so interesting. When they are talking about something he’s open to he outstretches both of his arms as if he’s letting the idea in. When he’s unsure one arm is open, one is closed, and when he doesn’t like something they’re both closed. Really cool way to interact and communicate.
I'm honestly concerned for the Concept art industry because AI Art will and most likely already HAS replaced Freelance Artists. I've heard how for many people commissions are running dry and it's because their clients are using AI and openly promoting it as well. Feel like the Starving Artist is gonna become a more prevalent issue pretty soon.
@@buttcube6085 Bro, I'm 23 and feel old reading this shit. Wdym that person has feelings? Bruh, I don't wanna see that shit in my life. Artists open for commissions often tell you if they change the image if you don't like it before you pay for it. Next time maybe find someone like that? What am I saying, next time? No shot you ever paid an artist anyway.
@Erik Artists paint in layers so specific parts can be changed easily when the client wants. I dont think the tech bro knows anything at all cuz clients in every industry always want to revise the results, including software engineering.
I make art by hand because I enjoy it and I really have no choice, it is a deep urge....AI may change the perception of art but won't change my basic need to create by hand simply because I love doing it.
Sorry if this violates the general tone of cautious optimism but rather than sitting on the fence I would actually come down and see AI as a generally negative development. Ideally and if we really care about Art we would in my view go a little bit Luddite and actually restrict it's use. The problem as I see it is that what we're really talking about is by-passing human effort (which however you look at it is convenient but never a positive, e.g the car rather than walking, TV rather than reading etc. ) and raising the prospect of a glut of mediocre content,( even more than we already have). Nature doesn't make mistakes and there is an absolute limit to the amount of art we can consume, so wouldn't it be better to restrict the number of producers to actual artists ? . Is a dramatic increase in supply really all that desirable ?
Did an inktober challenge this year and there was a guy using AI to generate the prompts. I swear, every time his posts would pop out I thought I'd discovered an interesting new artist until I read the descriptions declaring that it was an AI. I've been drawing for 25+ years and I don't make art for a living, so I'm not that threatened by it, but it must've been devastating for all those beginner cartoonists who can barely scrape together a functional Wolverine to see this thing just crush them in both technique and generating ideas.
@@arknark No but it felt also pretty good to show something and people being impressed. Now nobody cares that you’re able to draw a pretty ok wolverine
@@arknark It's ok to draw just for your own satisfaction. But for those who really want to make a living by being an artists, satisfaction is not enough, the likes/ the audience must be there.
1:14:35 The idea of trying to be the most human you can be in the art that you put out seems really nice to me. The best way to fight AI is just being true to yourself.
Im a bit gutted by all of it. My kids are really into drawing as I was as a child. The only differences is that I have been fostering thier interest by taking them out in the world and drawing as much as possible. But its a sad thought that there just may not opportunities for them to do it professionally and they will also end up having careers in something they dont love.
*Just because a robot could speak doesn't mean we should stop speaking* SURE, but no business is gonna pay people to speak because the robot does it cheaper, more efficiently, and without the nasty bullshit of human interaction and human error.
I think the next industries to be hit by AI after art and design will be software engineers, engineers, architects, interior designers, 3D artists, filmmakers, and writers.
I am illustrator/animator and filmmaker and I can say that it is already happening. Just watch the last video of *The Corridor*... Or maybe the sht like Synthesia, actors are threatened too.
"Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them."
@Umlilo Artworks And what about spending quality time with our families and friends without worrying about paying bills? How about people who wake up every day to do physical activities like swimming, hiking, jogging, exercising, playing sports, fishing, playing video game or other activities, etc. People do that for a living, that’s their career, how they pay bills and put food on the table. Except, if you’re not doing it for a career, then ultimately, it’s a privilege because All those things that we cannot do because of capitalism. Should we make an argument that you can get to do these things if you work and if you don’t work and contribute to society, you don’t get this privilege? Capitalism is the problem. Not AI or automation.
"Outdated" is a understatement. "People want work made by other humans", also, is a blind affirmation. Nobody is seeing clearly how the majority of people (specially not artists) will access and use these AIs, and, I must say it, Marshall and Stan are pros. You have to go down, with the people in formation, and see things from that point. A pro can, indeed, use an AI as a tool. A begginer, is in direct competition with it.
99.9% of businesses want the best bang for their buck. They don’t give a rats ass about work made by other humans if an A.I. version does the trick. Aspiring artists who just want to create beautiful pictures and sell that are definitely screwed big time!
@@IvoKlerk Aspiring artists could probably use AI and still make beautiful pictures after transferring those ideas to a physical medium, especially since I think there will be an uptick in physical art after all this. The AI arena will soon become saturated and considered boring. I predict physical art will have a bigger comeback in the same way Vinyl did.
@@bladechild2449 It’s still only a fraction of the artists who get to make money that way. Most of them are digital artists nowadays btw. If 90% of the concept artists, graphic designers, 3d visual artists etc get replaced then how should they make a living? They have to adapt to something else. Staying on the frontline of the developments and only working on the stuff the A.I. doesn’t know how to do yet. For instance doing the more technical side of game development.. instead of the artistic side
As a person with severe A.I. art anxiety, this is an episode I've been waiting for. I'm more relaxed coming out of it and have a lot to meditate on. I'm not as concerned about it in regard to making money, just more stressed over what it does to the "spirit," and process of making art. I feel like a line has to be drawn at some point in how little effort there should be in creating a piece. I'm also upset by the idea of every brush stroke and thoughtful decision in a piece made by an artist could be used to make something else without the same years of study and effort without their consent. I'm very sentimental and probably overly passionate about art pre-A.I., but I might come around to A.I. art once I've calmed down enough one of these days.
Shouldn't we give everyone the opportunity to be creative and enjoy art? AI does exactly this for millions of people already, there are many AI art communities creating wonderful art pieces everyday!
@@IvoKlerk Oh no, definitely concerned about the money aspect as well. Just not ONLY concerned about the money. I hear lots of conversations about the money, but not as much about some other concerns I've had.
I was counting on my art skills to earn enough money for myself and my mother, so AI possibly taking this opportunity from me is devastating. I really wanted a secure money source in art industry...
There will still be great value of owning something that is hand crafted or hand painted.(it will cost a lot to the buyer, but many want to pay for that)
So disappointing hearing you guys tell kids they need to learn how to prompt. I don’t think anyone gets into art to become a “ master prompter” and I’d argue you definitely violate someone’s rights by using their name in a prompt bc there is copyrighted arts in these data sets
This is an excellent podcast that takes a thoughtful approach to discussing a very hot topic. As a copywriter who works closely with designers and artists, we need to stick together as creatives. Writers are getting just as screwed over and plagiarized by AI. What’s even more detrimental than your writer-uses-AI-for-art example is the majority of CEOs who won’t hesitate to replace human creatives with AI to save a buck-quality, integrity, and originality be damned. All hail the almighty bottom line, right? Looks like it’s time for us creatives to buckle up and brace ourselves for what’s ahead…this phase of late-stage capitalism is turning out to be quite wild and as soulless as ever. Sure, there’s potential for good with AI. But there’s also a lot of potential for harm-and actual harm is already happening to writers and artists alike due to this technology. We need regulations and penalties ASAP to set better boundaries on this ever-evolving beast of technology.
Being a famw programmer, artist and currently also a machine learning Uni. student, the recent developments in AI have been extremely depressing. I fear there might be a lot of suicides or severe depression that this dramatic paradigm shift will cause in the coming year. Normies don't even know how crazy it will get this year, and haven't even realized half the stuff that have come out in the past weeks ChatGPT is even crazier than these art AIs
I want to try to be more open and talkative as an artist, but I’m very shy online. And I’m also very scared because people can be so mean and really bully you. I have a lot of experience, and many people actually told me that they like my thought process when I talk about art, but I do think that people really attack you for your opinion and the whole cancel culture is so scary. There were a few artists that came out to ask people to not use their names in AI print, and in return, everyone uses their names. It’s just so toxic.
We should try to stop it and its not "a waste of time" AI music won't dare touch copyrighted music for fear of lawsuits from the record labels. They need to fear lawsuits from visual artists just as much! After all, AI would have NOTHING if they hadn't STOLEN everything from us!
> *We should try to stop it and its not "a waste of time" AI music won't dare touch copyrighted music for fear of lawsuits from the record labels* Considering that they lobbied the crap out of copyright laws to get them in a way that serves them, abuse copyright, abuse artists, definitely not the role model I'd look towards IMO.
Why I am a artist is because I love drawing and writing my own. Plus I respect a person passion and creativity. I grew up around my parents, aunts and uncles. Especially my uncle George taught us boys the value of hard work. And my mom gave me the patience and strong spirit. I been drawing since I was young and still draw. This year I have been also learning guitar and keyboard. I tried A.I. art and I felt guilty about it. Never doing again. It was not fun. I like drawing and learning myself.
I think the best point was about humans wanting content made by other humans. I agree. I went through the wow this is so cool! Ai art phase with midjourney and dall-e for a few weeks and none of the thousands of images I generated mean anything at all to me. Likewise, I don't care at all about someones AI art. But I think even an "inferior" drawing by a real artist is worthy of my admiration because the time and experience that someone put into it has value. You mentioned that people are using the phrase "democratizing art." I personally think that phrase is really stupid. Art is democratized. The tools to create art are free or dirt cheap these days. Anyone that has access to a device they can use for generating AI art could learn and create their own art. People are just lazy or they don't have the passion to actually put in the effort but want the results. This is why I don't really care for someones AI art. Real artists cared enough to prioritize it. People will make all kinds of excuses about not having the time because of other obligations etc. Everyone has obligations, if people didn't make the time, it wasn't a priority. If it wasn't a priority, they didn't have a strong enough passion for it. I think applications like you mentioned, generating stuff in texts similar to emojis make sense, among other potential applications. But people generating art and posting it online as their artwork, will never mean anything to me.
an art piece can speak to you and then you become a fan of the artists because they are truly a limited edition with a rich story, but I feel this is kind of AI art is more threatening for concept artists, CAD renderers and illustrators rather than fine art students because there's a lot of value on the story behind the art rather than just endlessly producing things for the sake of consumption and "cool" factor. I definitely feel the average person would choose AI art products as its much quicker and cheaper. Elites who can afford quality art and have taste and care about meaning and value could invest in human art in the future. if anything, I think artists will simply be safe just for that if they can market themselves well.
I can see AI being used like stock photos for the constant need for social media images..... the bottom end where people don't want to pay much for anything. I kind of agree with a comment re digital artists might be effected more then traditional artists, I mean why buy a print when you might be able to generate your own for nothing. Perhaps traditional artists doing great work will become more revered (like they used to be) as they will be authentic?
To me AI making the art takes the personality out of the art piece and i think it mainly hurts digital artists than traditional artirts who work with Oil,acrylic and etc
Yeah, I think that trad artists will be mostly fine since a big part of the appeal is that it is an actual physical thing which had it's creation process in said physical object; digital artists however I think they'll get the short end of the stick
@@vanillabatcave5677 Traditional artists that work in fine arts won't worry until a sophisticated printer hooked up to ai comes to be. But traditonal artists that work in commercial are in the same position as digital artists.
@@hepzibahhez9965 but the thing is the brush strokes and thickness of the layers wont be visible so i think some fine printers cant replicate that i guess we will have to wait
Absolutely fantastic perspectives. Marshall, this was my introduction to you and your channel and I really enjoyed getting your points of view. You are an amazing artist and teacher and a great pleasure to listen to. From one artist and teacher to another - thank you!
being a traditional artist and your final words during the podcast are the only thing that gives me hope. there will not be so many of us left i guess at some point and it will be valuable . great start of the new season
That's selfish and narrow-thinking. You're still getting rawdogged and saying "oh but they left me some crumbs so it's not that bad." We need mass pushes against this, it's enraging and soulless.
@@20xxcomedy He has a point though. I get it, I'm concerned as well. However like Proko said, it is inevitable. Now, its just a matter of how to adapt. I think Proko has probably the best pulse on this because he is a successful businessman, with roots in traditional art with knowledge of AI.
@@Chessbox09 I work in Machine Learning and do art on the side, if we have a push for regulation we can mitigate the damage to a minimum. Conformity will destroy us.
AI can create "art" in other mediums too. Pencil, charcoal, watercolor, acrylic etc. And with 3D printing it can be replicated perfectly. This affects all kinds of artists, not just digital art.
Outside of the topic of AI art, but I am so stoked for a draftsmen episode again. There were so many great take-aways before, and this podcast discussing art, teaching, current trends is always something to look forward to. Thank you Stan and Marshall. Don't hold yourself to a schedule on this if it stresses you out. I think we all enjoy just the play you two have in sharing your thoughts back and forth. Whatever allows you to keep coming back, no matter how long the wait in between :)
I took a course from Marshall senpai 10 years ago, and that changed my journey forever for better, to this day I'm so grateful. Such a rare gem he is. Big respect.
I’ve listened to Dave Mckean on this and I’m 100% with him. I absolutely know it can’t be halted but I absolutely also hate everything about it and believe we are going to be far worse off because of it.
It's comparable to A hiker vs a bus passenger going to the same destination. The hiker walks and experiences the world. When they arrive their destination, they have the unique experience of the journey. They find the destination fulfilling. The passenger sits and looks forward to going to the destination. They can go to a hundred destinations, but will never get the fulfillment of the hiker.
That's true. But the point is that art as a profession will no longer be viable. Nobody is going to pay artists money to do art anymore once AI is advanced enough. Sure artists can feel as much fulfillment as they want, but they will no longer be able to put food on the table by doing art.
@@chester7769 that is a painful fact, not gonna lie. It really will kill jobs. But maybe it is for the best to separate art from what it is today; an exploited culture. Jobs will never be completely gone though. Art, while the process can be automated, our soul will want to throw the machine away. There will always be people who will go to proko, cubebrush and everyone else to learn how to free themselves from this heresy and start to use their hands properly. Every time the generate button is pressed on the AI, the thought of doing the process manually may knock on the door. The process is so automated, so boring, that they will start wondering about walking the mile instead.
@@enniusdrusus867 I see art AI as bread-making machine, art as bread, and human artists as breadmakers. Once the machine is here, human breadmakers will be completely outclassed in terms of efficiency. Hand-made bread will always be around, and there will always be people who want to learn the process, but that's just a small minority. Like you said, maybe there are other qualities associated with human art, like the art-making process or the artist behind the artwork, that makes it more than just bread produced by a machine, but I doubt most people actually care
@@chester7769 I doubt that people wouldn't care. But that's just me having faith in the religion that is making art. Maybe the people who seek ready to consume art, the consumerists, wouldn't care. But then again, they tend to be those that see artists as product making machines that require no support at all. If their "support" will go away, nothing would really change. Which is better? A thousand viewers who do not care and only look your work for 3 seconds and move on? Or fifty viewers that see it, care for it and talk about it? If we're talking about bread, then there's artisanal bread. As expected, the bread is more expensive. Buying artisanal bread makes a statement. People are far more inclined to share their experiences with the artisanal bread than the white bread they buy at the groceries. I am confident that the same thing will happen with art. Rather, it makes the numbers more consistent. People join patreons because of the artist-artwork connection and their willingness to support it. The thought of joining an AI >USER
@@enniusdrusus867 Yeah. I guess I was just focusing more on the commercial side of art. If money isn't a concern then what you said is indeed where we are heading towards
Like, it legit took me a whole minute, having moved on to uploading comic pages...for my brain to connect what was happening at the very end of the podcast. I was just in the peripheral of my brain thinking "why does he keep saying that?" But when it finally triggered, the force with which the laughter leapt from the depth of my chest thundered off the walls and bounced from my screen. That is pompous write for "me think joke funny." Lots of food for thought in this one. Most enjoyable.
I make art because the process of making it is everything to me. I start with a vision yes, but it's a journey and I cannot predict where it takes me. I discover things that I didn't know I had in me, I learn things about myself and the world around me. Can AI provide that experience? I will always make art, it keeps me alive.
And there will always be people very interested in all of those things. Your reasons, your journey, your struggles. We aren't giving other humans enough credit imho.
@@bunnyfreakz not true in the fine art space. Comercial -- well you have to take detailed direction so more so. your process needs to be adjustable. Some hybrid process of human and ai will be the future of comercial art
26:45 What's the difference between art parents and AI combining art The problem is because we think of art as simply a 'visualization'. But it's not. The more important question is: 'What is the difference between art created by AI vs. art by humans?' To put it simply, Art as we have known it (excluding AI art), is any kind of action (or result of such actions, ie visual art creation) that are made by conscious life forms using mostly non-conscious means and conscious skills, and taking inspiration from a 'mysterious source' beyond ourselves. The results are usually non-functional, but often have aesthetic qualities. Art has a 'fuzzy' definition to begin with. Add to that that we can't even define what 'beauty' means. But art has these qualities. So it is a mysterious activity that has mysterious qualities (esthetics). So it asks a very fundamental question we still do not have an answer to: What is life? How does the minds of life forms work? Where do they get these inspirations from? What is beauty? Until we know the answers to these, we won't have a clear cut answer what difference between AI and human art are. HOWEVER we can have a fuzzy answer: As far as we can understand, art (not visualization) is a very strange and mysterious stuff made by life forms/conscious beings. It also has mysterious qualities (beauty). So the fact the AI is not a life form and not conscious (intelligence is not consciousness), it will never make true Art. It will only visualize and use human data to simulate esthetics. So we can predict that industrial artists (visualizers, concept artists, etc) will lose their jobs in the not-so-far future, but true artists (fine artists who create art for art sake) will continue to have their work in demand. Sorry, Industrial artists will lose their art industry jobs, BUT will become fine artists themselves. There. :) AND, since AI obviously cant make art using traditional media, traditional art will have a come back.
''Digital artists killed a lot of traditional jobs, so give and take.'' - this makes NO SENSE. Photoshop might have killed some traditional jobs, but those people were more than free to trasnfer their exact skillset to digital. The traditional artists were still relevant. The only effort it took was to go out and buy a wacom. also, if you think traditional is somehow safe from ai, wait till they hook up ai to sophisticated printers. AI affects traditional EXACTLY the same way it affects digital. Even fine artists are affected because now anybody can make an image in ai and just copy it to paper using oils and its a new artwork.
I definitely see lots of non artists complaining about the flood of AI "art" on art websites, some sites like Pixiv are implementing a tag for them before the upload to help sort the AI from the human works.
I tried Midjourney in beta and almost all prompts had a name of an artist whose style people wanted to generate art from - namely artists like Craig Mullins.
This is such an interesting topic because a lot of what technology provides speeds up tasks we want done quicker and better, say household appliances, searching for anything you need on the internet etc. But it becomes such a sensitive topic for artists now it's affecting their livelihood and reason to create in the first place. Years of study and practice now seem meaningless and some dishonest people are lapping up compliments for something a computer generated rather than the time they put into it themselves. But I do agree that dwelling in what we could lose is pointless so we might as well just embrace what makes us human and keep moving forward as best as we can.
The way people are using it right now is akin to identity theft and plagiarism. There needs to be regulations on this so that it's a tool in the hands of artists, not a tool to replace artists.
@@xingyuzhou1891 You don't have the freedom to plagiarize peoples work and profit on it without compensation to the artist. *Unless it's in the public domain.
Relating to the end of the talk, I imagine Marshal's reaction hearing Zapata's version of the "Perfect Metaphore" for AI and instead of "collaborator", having to swallow a "replacement" sticking right into the soul
Sometimes the Draftsmen get a little too lost in the weeds, but there was some great clarity there at the end. Our humanity and stories help our work connect in a way AI might never be able to replicate. The most successful artists I know may not have the greatest technical ability, but they're work has found an audience with those who respond emotionally and intellectually with the intent behind the work.
Another future concern is faceless corporate entities who own the ai shaping culture and human interest exclusively through curation, controlling what gets output and thus human interest over time. As avg artists are cut out of the commerical process entirely. Potentially no more grassroots born sensations. We become even more so data guinea pigs than we already are.
So glad you guys are back, had listened to your episodes several times while drawing. Even if we end up getting only two episodes, i'm happy to hear you two again
A lot of people have tried to make the claim that writing the prompt is the art itself but 21:20 proves to me that it isn't. All he did is type in 'a cover illustration of a podcast with two hosts at a table with microphones by Dave McKean'; the 'art of the prompt' at least in the context that it will be used by most people is a banal one. The distinction between an artist and a person using an ai to generate imagery is the thought that goes into the composition. When an artist creates an image every aspect of that image is curated to form an overall cohesive narrative that reflects whatever meaning they're trying to portray, whereas a person creating an ai image isn't actually influencing the composition down to the most minute aspect in the same way that an artist does.
Important and thought provoking conversation! We hear many artists worried about how AI could affect the market share for human-created imagery, and we've been thinking a lot about how other technologies have disrupted art. Photography is probably the closest analog, because it not only affected how everyone sees reality, it also made it possible for any human to create realistic, documentary images without being a trained artist. We also thought about lithography- when it emerged as an artist's process, it would have been hard to imagine using 4-color lithographs to wrap stocking stuffers or advertise a car wash! Neither of those technologies stopped people from creating art, though, and we don't think people will stop responding in a special way to images and objects made by artists, with the eye, mind, and hand.
Legal stuff is simple. Nobody can copyright a style. And AI was developed on that law. It's not going to change because some people want to cry about it. It would be like Elvis trying to copyright rock.
You're also going to get interactive AI art where a final product can be modified through a UI. Many different prompts will exist within a single piece/world and all of them will be modifiable like objects in Blender.
I knew when you gentlemen decided to stop the podcast that there was perhaps more interesting topics to explore together and glad to see it. Even if its not weekly I think Stan and Marshal have a lot left to discuss
I am glad to see the Draftsmen Podcast back, thank you! I am not a fan of AI and believe that the ethical question of using peoples names and images needs to be addressed ASAP. It is still early enough in the game to set a standard that needs to be written in the code of all these programs. The longer we wait the harder it will be to enable. Think about how much money can be gained to help museums with preservation if, for instance $0.01 went to the Prado museum overtime some uses the prompt "in the style of Bosch".
@@hepzibahhez9965 Don't compare photography to Ai art. Photographers have to learn about a lot of things like lightning etc. I think comparing both of them isn't the best thing since "Ai artists" have to just type a few words without learning about any fundamentals.
Of course speaking up about it, especially if you're influential, is important. it does matter and it will help. Make AI art frowned upon and it will lead to companies changing their behavior. It can also lead to legistlation being passed, etc
What are some of your concerns or hopes for the future of AI art?
I can imagine that commercial art like illustration, concept art and art in advertising might change. Here in Germany we have many industrial bakeries which produce standard bread and some "elite hand made-bakeries" which cost more but which are quite successful. Maybe art will become the same.
I hope it stops existing somehow.
Will be there a course on how to become an AI artist?
@lpmpyr It can't be used as a tool because it's literally tracing.
I didn't even watch the video yet but I'm super glad to have you guys back to grace us with your podcast, you two are my favorite artistic influence! ❤️❤
To be frank my motivation took a big hit ever since I've started hearing about the implications of A.I. on the art industry, it's already a "struggle" mentally for me to be consistent and disciplined with practicing my craft while I "worry" about the competition of other aspiring/established artists, which feeds my self-doubt.
And now we have the threat of technology taking over our places as the cheaper, cost-effective alternative for potential employers, as well as over-saturating the freelance market with A.I. generated images that are churned out in large volumes, which could also make it more difficult for artists to advertise themselves and have their work noticed online.
Both outcomes could only make the job market that much more competitive to enter into and sustain a career.
All this can definitely make someone feel discouraged from committing to the arduous path of becoming a professional draftsman/artist, when their hopes of a future livelihood are threatened by these factors...
I can only hope that your thoughts on the matter can give us some solace and confidence to help stick to our ambitions (when I get to watch the full video 😅)
The day someone asks me "Why do you still draw by hand when AI generated images exist?" I will just reply "Why have a walk in the park when we have cars?"
"Because it's healthier" 👏
@@heavyhead2k139I think you’re thinking about efficiency when op is talking about enjoyment. So you’re wrong for saying he’s wrong.
The walk in the park and the drawing by hand are both enjoyable and are now paid the same.
Why read a book when you have kindle?
A computer is endlessly logical and efficient but it doesnt have a personality. So when you see slick computer artwork, there is no personality informing it. So for podcast thumbnails it's fine, but at this stage I don't see how it replaces the human hand. No AI could create a Jack Kirby or a Frank Frazetta. Their art was an expression of their soul and life experience. I don't see how you could create an algorithm for something so nuanced.
"Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them."
Frank Herbert, Dune
The future is a terrifying prospect. Finding where I fit in as the machine gods are born is my daily anxiety.
It's disgusting how many people are willing to just roll over for this dystopian garbage. Real men would have had necks in guillotines by now.
@@gabudaichamuda2545 There have always been times of complacency before retaliation, the problem is that we're in a different world now where every part of it is accessible. If we retaliate, all eyes are on us and some people won't let that slide in order to "keep the peace".
@@GoldenLeafsMovies Then they all go down. We shouldn't "let things slide" out of fear.
@@gabudaichamuda2545 That's the thing, it's harder to start a rebellion cause people don't want the norm disturbed.
@@gabudaichamuda2545 ummm...ok. Not advocating for violence. Rather, I would like to understand why there is such a push for machine learning to do everything. From checkout lines to art to Healthcare, I get the feeling that this is purely about disruption of current practices to establish more profitable methods. In turn, pushing the human element out of buisness entirely.
Artist should protect their stuff as fiercely as the music industry does
The music industry already had this before. They are way more protective and for sure wouldn't let this slide. The design community should have stood up with in the first announcement of this instead of waiting. See how AI music programs don't touch any of the copyrighted music from your favorite artists. It's because they are afraid of their lawsuits.
Sadly that takes a lot of money my friend
The music industry was absolutely terrified by mp3, internet and piracy. 70+ years later, music industry is still one of the most profitable on earth
@@Edheldui Fair point! So what is your take on this with the art industrie?
And how many music artists are actually being compensated for their work as opposed to getting fucked over by their own record labels who are the true copyright holders of that product and reap the profits from it? You don't actually give a shit about artists, do you?
I think you should definitely have Karla Ortiz on to discuss further! And maybe me too or whatever...
Yes, please! :)
Somebody give this man a platform!
keep fighting for us Steven. Your monologue was spot on.
100%
Yo guys. You should make some sort of stream: Modern Day James, Steven, Draftsmen, Karla Ortiz and more.
Since Draftsmen has ended, I can only assume this entire episode has been generated by AI.
Heheheh good one.
29:52
Look at his hand. Definitely AI generated
I listened to their podcast episodes on the AI art generator last week, and then was bummed that it had ended because I wanted to know what their thoughts were on how AI is now
"This video about AI is generated by an AI" comment is so common that I won't be surprised if this comment is made by an AI
I didn’t realize how much I missed this podcast until I watched it.
I´m gonna be an artist whether or not there is an AI, and nobody can tell me otherwise.Thanks for your video man! Regards from Ásgeir in Iceland.
*That's the spirit we need right now.* Good on you.
Thank you for saying this oh my god! Its not the time for us to get scared and move away but rather to stand up and keep painting/drawing.
@@eyepatch1157 AI works like this: its supposed to INSPIRE people, and that is why it cannot take over the artworld.
That's the spirit! Dont give up before you start!
Tbh I've gone harder with my drawing and painting since the whole ai art thing became a mainstream topic.
All the talks about ethics, morals, authenticity, the "human touch" or potential uses as a tool miss out on one very simple fact - a huge percentage of clients and corporations won't care about any of that and the "good enough" factor.
If they can pay 25$ per month and generate hundreds of images on a given topic *daily*, they won't give a crap about paying an artist hundreds of dollars to produce one such image in a few weeks or more. One of those hundreds of images will be Good Enough™ and that's what matters.
Most artists who say not to worry and that it won't affect as much as it seems are already successful and established. Yeah, they won't be affected much. But I think that sadly a lot of low- and mid-level jobs will be reduced SEVERELY by AI creating "good enough" images for clients who, to be blunt, often lack any sort of finer taste or knowledge of the nuanced points of art or the process of creation.
In terms of creating art for personal enjoyment, growth or as a hobby - sure, it's a tool. But in terms of doing paid commissions as a mid-level artist that's in rather considerable danger.
This is why in the past couple of months I’ve given up on my dream of being a full time artist (meaning an artists that just does art full time, not like a UA-camr or educator or someone that does other things in conjunction to art) and even up until yesterday I was still grieving a career I always wanted since childhood and I’m still grieving in a way but I’m slowly coming to terms with it and I’m looking into other jobs I might enjoy.
The most frustrating part of listening to established artists talk about AI and irresponsibility encouraging people not be afraid of it because they’re job is already safe (or at least they assume it is) and the tech bros/pro-AI scabs that heckle people, telling them that their concerns are pathetic and you either join the new wave or get left behind. The lack of empathy and responsibility is what has hit me the hardest and I know I shouldn’t be surprised because that mentality isn’t new but it’s still hard to choke down
While I agree with the somewhat pessimistic view on the outlook for smaller creators, it's not just big corpos that can accept 'good enough' it's also smaller creators and hobbyists and amateurs who might have an idea they want to pursue that requires some kind of image (reference, concept, material) but don't have the budget for comissioning a 2d artist. I am of two minds in that regard.
I'd argue that there is still a niche market for some designers who are targeting large companies and wealthy clients because of the "prestige" factor - I'm going to bet that companies like Google, Facebook, or Amazon are still going to pay money for full time artists because hiring a "real" designer carries a status symbol. They'll be able to generate unique designs that belong to them exclusively. It's the same reason that companies still employ receptionists or bellhops, or publish a company newsletter. (David Graeber talks about this in his book "Bull**** Jobs"). Well-established companies will probably still be willing to pay for that experience. And a real artist is always going to be better than AI (at least at this stage of AI development).
But I agree that this is a considerable threat to mid- and low-level designers and illustrators. A small, local business doesn't care about having particularly unique or high-quality graphics - they just want something inexpensive and semi-professional looking. These days you don't need a professional designer to create semi-decent looking business cards or a functional website - you can just hop on Canva or Wix and create pretty decent looking deliverables for little to no cost. I think AI is going to exacerbate this "problem" (on the design side, at least. It's great for clients).
@@hellodelightfulrando
those tech bros are cringe... i wanted to be a pro artist too even if i didn't achieve it ill keep drawing and ill never use Ai .
@@d3v1lsummoner well either way the young artist dies in all of those scenarios. So thanks for that.
As emphasized by Steven Zapata mentioned in his video regarding AI, the developers are implementing copyrighted works in an image generating AI because they know visual artists will not defend themselves. The music version does not incorporate copyrighted works because the music industry has a stronger history of defending itself. The AI generators are denoising tools taken to the extreme. They can only come into focus by tracing existing works. It might be many or one image but it can only trace.
I'm pretty sure that's not the reason why they're using copyright-free music in the dataset.
@@dibbidydoo4318 No, and in fact it is *quoted by Stability A.I* that they KNOW of the music industry's strict copyright enforcement:
“Dance Diffusion is also built on datasets composed entirely of copyright-free and voluntarily provided music and audio samples. *Because diffusion models are prone to memorization and overfitting, releasing a model trained on copyrighted data could potentially result in legal issues. In honoring the intellectual property of artists while also complying to the best of their ability with the often strict copyright standards of the music industry, keeping any kind of copyrighted material out of training data was a must.”*
These A.I companies are steamrolling visual artists, because visual artists do not have the organization or monetary/legal power to defend themselves from it.
I love how ai “experts” pretend over fitting isn’t a thing when it is pretty much the #1 problem in machine learning. It’s nice to see them finally admit it, even in this rather obscure blog post.
Guess I'm switching careers to music.
They don't really trace is why you can't use copyright against AI images. They take references among many pictures and identify what make those pictures unique and using them. Same process with humans learning art if we simplify the 0 and 1, except artists that want to grow eventually take references from more artists, environments, and so on to make their own style. Can it be said that AI steal styles? Sureeeeee... but if style is copyrighted, it is starting artists that would lose. Does AI pretending to be other artist, dead or alive is fine? That is a tough morality question and I am not sure if I would like it if AI 'steal' my style when I just start getting my name out there.
It's sad that "Don't hide behind your art, be a personality" is a thing we'll have to do now, because that was one of the worst parts about the online scene for art. I guess the days of drawing nice things to get by are well and truly gone. Wish I was born 10 years earlier or something. Cities are gutted, travel feels hollow, world feels homogenized, and now my one hidey hole is now taken over by this.
I've already had artist friends find loads of their stuff in "have I been trained" some literally have fallen into a deep depression seeing their work in the data base, work they spent years doing and did to escape horrible lives. Really can't see how anyone can justify that in their head that that's fair, considering some of these images were on personal websites (unless they were copied over by third parties)
U can grab any pic and give it to the AI and it'll use it as inspo. So maybe the followers or others friends of your artists friends did that.
i love when i find someone that put my thoughts in words
10 years? You probably need to go back way more. Probably before Warhol
@@cameram-guy8684 AI will be able to do that too, soon.
@@justine_see do you want machines thinking for you any more than they already do? because at the end of the day these things are tools.
I would not let BlackRock or whomever is financing this operation freely colonize the means of imagination. that feels like a stupid problem to let yourself have.
when the world needed them most they came back
They make it less scary.
yeah, finally i can sit straight and relax for a while
“The biggest threat to mankind is when Artificial Intelligence begins to self design”- Stephen Hawking
And that is impossible, specially because what we call AI (Artificial Neural networks ) is not designed. What Ai can do is TRAIN other AI. These art generation AI are already that.
The images in the internet are used to train an AI to identify things in image, styles and descriptions. That AI cannot draw.
Then another AI is set in a competition against the first AI. It tries to deceive the first AI and based on its resposne it adjust its weights. it tries again, and again, adjusting every attempt. Eventually it will learn how to deceive the first AI with what it generated. That is the point where the AI have been trained to make visual products.
If anyone believes artists will stop creating art because of AI, they don’t understand artists.
why share it when the value is zero!
@@marsmotion, the value can't be zero because AI art is nothing without human art to take from. Art would stagnant if every human artist stopped posting human art and AI art was the only way it was being made.
it still messes over the people who do it for work
Nobody thinks artists will stop creating art because of ai, but they certainly won’t be making any money from it
@@theshocker9188 AI art has no soul and I'm not interested in it. I want the story behind that art and I want to know what feeling is behind that and what is the message behind that. AI art doesn't have a meaning. It just copies other artists' styles. It has no life, no memories, no experience, no character. So I don't think it's interesting or exciting.
Some people that are neither an artist nor a writer will be perfectly able to have “their own” graphic novel. Only it won’t matter at all. Art will be completely meaneless. Congrats, human kind!
100%. The average joe has cared less and less over the years, now they won’t care at all. What a shitty future we live in.
people seem to think invention = progress. This is one of the biggest losses to humankind there has ever been.
And what about spending quality time with our families and friends without worrying about paying bills? How about people who wake up every day to do physical activities like swimming, hiking, jogging, exercising, playing sports, fishing, playing video game or other activities, etc.
People do that for a living, that’s their career, how they pay bills and put food on the table.
Except, if you’re not doing it for a career, then ultimately, it’s a privilege because All those things that we cannot do because of capitalism. Should we make an argument that you can get to do these things if you work and if you don’t work and contribute to society, you don’t get this privilege?
Capitalism is the problem. Not AI or automation.
In a way this could eliminate the clients who try to take advantage of artists cause they want to be cheap. And even then Ai probable can't come up with something in our imaginations quite like we see. The demand for artist will take a hit but still be present.
@@jhuh24 I hope you're right!
@@alohatigers1199 yup lets play some whataboutism, lets go back to communism so we can have AI art xD you have no idea how a world without capitalism should look like and nobody else aint either so shut it.
As someone who mainly makes a living of anime-stylized art commissions for a while now and always felt on the existential edge already, it naturally makes me feel quite anxious to see this development. I wasn't one of those artists who were completely nihilistic towards the whole AI subject, but I can completely sympathize with those who shared their concerns and fears when they can already see the trend to an oversaturation on the art field and market.
The issues are pretty multilayered and not something people can simplify and damp down to technological angst and anti-progressive behavior or abstract art purist viewpoints. If anything, the discussions revolving to this new development and many commentaries from the distant by non-artists mostly show once again how pretty misunderstood the art profession as a whole is. It's probably not the majority, but it can be pretty heart-breaking to read all those comments on reddit and forums where people express their enthusiasm with a certain degree of Schadenfreude because in their eyes this will finally "throw off many too pricey arrogant artists from their high horses".
When I started my freelance career a few years ago after a long tedious decade of disorientation on the job market, it was quite a hard decision to jump in at the deep end, since also everyone around me including friends and family were telling me constantly why I shouldn't do it considering all the financial uncertainty and non-promising prospects that came with it. But I didn't regret it, if anything it was my happiest and best choice I made in my life, being able to finally get acknowledged and paid for the thing you thought you could do best. In my position as still somewhat small artists it is difficult to establish "a fair high price", I'm glad enough I reached the point of a regular customer base that wouldn't be put off by my rates that can at least cover my livelihood. I'm still far far away from making earnest profit - And now with automatically generated images a new big competitor enters the field that is superior in productivity and speed, while already improving thanks to its endless harvesting and exploitation of other people's intellectual property. It's a weird, devastating feeling of unfairness and constant feeling of being misunderstood.
Like all those apple and orange comparisons in this debate... I always find that comparison with "artists who 'also' got inspired by other artists" rather strange - when the generator copies almost the exact same silhouette, pose and even sometimes the signature from other artist's work, would you really consider it an "inspiration"? Surely not.
It is the same feeling of unfairness I tend to feel when I see all the repost accounts on Instagram in their top 10 recommendation lists that are able to generate content for every hour just by gathering and collecting the art images from other artists without work and no effort, while they are additionally getting benefitted by the algorithm through constant likes and shares by their consumers and on top of that even generating profit by offering smaller artists exposure and promotion slots for fees due to their high reach, profit that they solely got through stealing other people's work. It is already hard enough to get your work visible in the internet void, it's just getting constantly harder now that art sites get flooded by AI images.
I spent much time to sort out my mind the last few weeks and reflected about the reasons behind my creative activities and my whole profession a lot. I also read through many different opinions and also asked my regular clients on that matter what they thought about it, to set things more into perspective. Most of my clients made it clear that they value the human artist and human interaction behind their commissions. Some other artists say that most people who will use this tool to save a buck weren't interested in commissioning artists to begin with. I still feel conflicted about the potential of misuse, since there were a few cases already where the tools were used to cause some trouble for genuine artists, like that one individual who sniped the artist's drawing stream and put the tool-generated "end version" of this screenshot on their own twitter account, followed by torpedoing the actual original artist for seemingly stealing their art. It's utterly disgusting and breaks my heart to see that hostility. I'm aware that this won't be the majority of people who make use of those tools, but the potential to cause a stir is there, and it's easy and cheap to cause such troubles on the expenses of the other artists's energy and mental health. We mostly want to share our joy and passion with others, and if possible make a living of our work, some of us still earn less than a minimum wage, not because we wanted to but because of our strong urge for expressing ourselves/something and telling a story through our visuals which is the dominating drive above anything else, and we naturally hope and work for a better prospect and future while staying true to our artistic vision and beliefs. Therefore, it will remain alien to me and many other fellow artists where the hostility and twisted image of arrogance is coming from.
I'm not an art purist who think art and creating art is something exclusive. If anything I learned during my studies and art history seminars is that you can actually determine a lot of things as art since every group, institution or collectives define art individually on different legitimate objective and subjective basics. My big takeaway from many discussions was that for me, art can be anything, as soon as it has a certain reception, as soon as people are committed to discuss it if it can be considered art or not.
Another thing is that the perception of things that can be considered art can change over time. Take the content of a museum, for example: Some exhibitions feature historic art pieces and relics that were initially nothing more than working tools for daily life needs and purposes from ancient times. That alone shows how variable and dynamic our perception of art can be. It is not the first and will not be the last time that new technology and production mechanisms lead to a new discussion about what is considered art and what is not.
What is often forgotten or dismissed is that for some artists it is also about the vision and the process, and that of course it is discouraging to see a potential development where imagination takes shape at the push of a button in a wink and the process of creation and craft becomes maybe obsolete and insignificant. But I would like to hope and believe that there will be no future where this appreciation for craft is dead.
A short off-topic anecdote that comes into mind regarding automatized media generators:
There was an interesting situation where my former roommate felt the urge to try out music software and some randomized melody generators, so he bought a good chunk of tools, played around with it for a few days and quickly lost interest in it. He wasn't into music before, he was an established, well-paid software engineer, whose lifestyle couldn't be more different from mine - and one day he shared his rambles about how he guessed that it couldn't be that hard to create compelling music he is listening to by himself and just felt like giving those generating tools a try for once (which was totally legitimate to try out), and concluded after getting bored with it that he expected composing and creating music would be way more fun. It was a moment where I became more aware of the fact that the experience of the whole creation process as a whole, the process of creating itself was an essential part of the whole artistic drive and motivation, "part of the whole fun", and skipping those steps by generating some automatically randomized content would not give you the same fulfilling joy imo. That's what I genuinely think when people are enthusiastic about being able to skip the creation process in the future, I never consider that creation process an issue that needed to be fixed by any AI, it is the one most defining part that impacts the rewarding feeling for getting the final result done and the recognition for the hard work by other peoples for me.
"Therefore, it will remain alien to me and many other fellow artists where the hostility and twisted image of arrogance is coming from."
I've honestly thought a lot about this point because you see it come up a lot when tech-bros, AI enthusiasts, and trolls defend these AI programs. They think that now with the existence of these programs, the "monopoly" that artists have on art will crumble and be given the regular people. But I have a hard time finding what monopoly we as artists have when it pertains to art as a whole because if such a monopoly exists, then why are so many artists willing to share what they have learned? Why can I google how to draw X and find hundreds of tutorials on how to draw X? Surely if you are at the top of the pyramid, sharing how you got there goes against your best interest, right?
My best guess is that these people think drawing is not a skill that one can learn but some sort of blessing from a divine being or an anomaly within one's dna or brain. Talent is a word that comes up a lot in their arguments and it's used with such distain. Like they hate the fact that they weren't born with it despite the fact that talent doesn't exist the way they think it does (I personally use affinity but that's just me).
@@Lamonticus Many art seniors made it clear pretty often that they have a strong interest in teaching younger generations the craft and creation of art; not to "raise the fierce competition" but instead in the hope that more people will understand the effort behind it and appreciate its strong value and worth. Especially the concept artists veterans among them believe that such a mindset would lead to a general raise of quality and especially variety (due to individuality and different tastes of the aspiring artists) which would benefit the industry and the art field as whole due to more art influences. But also to create a future where most clients will understand the hard work and also the value in the craft itself more.
They often get questions why they would give their tricks and workflow tutorials for free and if they wouldn't be afraid of competitors, and they feel like those questions often comes from people who aren't really that familiar with art, because the industry and community is much about socializing and interaction, and pushing, inspiring and motivating each other, since many of them weren't supposed to be active in this field in the first place without the help of other fellow artists, while an ego trip mindset won't get you that far.
“When the generator copies almost the exact same silhouette, pose and even sometimes the signature from other artist’s work, would you really consider it an 'inspiration'? Surely not.”
Would you mind providing the examples in question please?
Haha prompt go brrrr
@@noobatredstone3001 hard to attach an image on youtube comments lol but look up Karla Ortiz's post on "afghan girl", seems like certain prompts just have the AI straightup plagerize verbatim, and since there's no button saying "don't plagerize" so it could happen at anytime
My pet peeve with the art community is that we're not as solid and stern as the music industry
Yeah probably because you all are pirating other artist's courses, brushes, etc., half the time.
@@139-b7j what lol that is unrelated
With regards to the portion about prompting as a skill: As Steven mentions in his video and elsewhere, AI prompting as a "skill" is likely going to top out very quickly. I had a logic teacher in high school who lamented that Google had streamlined boolean operators out of the search engine (basically the logical language and syntax for refining searches). This meant that his skill in formal logic no longer benefitted him as a Google user - and unskilled users no longer needed to learn anything to pull up what they wanted. I think that is where AI image and art generation will go - increasingly automating the prompting process to refine results with minimal input. In other words the goal of these products will be to lower the skill ceiling and reduce the barrier of entry. You could imagine that rather than specific prompts, you might only need to offer a few general prompts and just get a slider tool to adjust how stylized a piece is along a number of spectrums.
I think anyone who has delusions of being a 'prompt writer' will quickly get out-prompted by A.I once it learns what the most tasteful prompts are and can iterate on itself infinitely faster with access to all the data about what people find appealing.
Exactly. You can look at photoshop, blender, even music production software like logic and ableton live in their previous and current form and see how people could spin that into earning a living simply via their learning curve and potential.
But search prompts? If even some programmers say theyre eventually coding their replacements. I dont see a real future for prompt engineering. I can see a future for logistical support with A.I. in law enforcement, emergency svcs and military etc. A human of course would be needed as first response or to provide context to the machine to minimize error and keep it in a support role etc.
It's literally just typing words lol. A 4 year old can do that. If the techbros think they can make jobs out of it, they're actually delusional.
@@tcg2717 I don't think it is the tech bros who think they can make a job out of it (preferring to simply own the algorithms as products or shill for them), but the point still stands. Its like, sure, you might be a little better at coaxing what you want out of an image generator, but who would buy that skill from you when they could actually just do it themselves and the results would be pretty close. Or Adobe/Microsoft will have built in AI tools to provide stock images on the fly.
It's even worse with how AI is being utilized to control people by checking facial recognition, emotion recognition, and AI drones in the military. The future is bleak
I think that all A.I. products (not only art) sould have a watermark of sorts that says "This product was made with A.I." This watermark should be included in the source code of the A.I. like Azimov's Laws.
Stable diffusion has an invisible watermark on every image. But it's not used as a "caution, this is made by AI" for users
YES. It should need to be disclosed. Like there should be some law that you can pretend it was made my a human. And potentially you would need to pay something to the artists the work was based on. However that gets extremely messy very fast.
@@bloop6111 What's infuriating is that people are already attempting to sell A.I imagery as their own handmade work. Or, they are trying to sell images generated based on famous artists' work as "originals."
this won't do anything, consumers don't care who or what made their product, only that it's good.
I don’t think erasing watermarks will be very difficult in a time where A.I.’s generate Rembrandt paintings in milliseconds
The most dangerous thing with Ai is to call it a tool. This thing isn’t designed or developed to be a tool, its being developed to be our replacement. Sure it can currently be used as a tool and that is what the ai COMPANIES are telling us the artists but look at what they are telling to the genera public, they don’t mention artists or mention how great of a tool it will be for us.
This is basically the machine arm replacing most of the human workers in the auto mobile industry to just automate processes for quantity over quality.
As Proko and Marshal also brought up this wont only affect art it will affect EVERYTHING we know of in the world.
That's funny because in its current state that's all it is, a tool 🗿
@@_xymi Currently only, but give it 5-10 more years and it will start replacing a lot of jobs.
@@Cheerfuljochan uhm this will happen in 2023.
You could use the same rhetoric for a plethora of technical inventions over the years. We're still here and adapting, not too fussed that calculators have cost accountants their jobs, because they never did.
Calculators were designed to be an extra tool for the accountant to speed up their jobs. The Ai Devs aren't designing Ai and more notably marketing it as a tool for the general public. They are marketing it as a straight up replacement.
The same thing happened to the Auto mobile industry where they first gave you better screw drivers and tools but eventually they brought in a robotic machine arm that made you obsolete to that company.
The Ai Companies will tell artists that its a tool but that's not what they want it to become eventually, they want to make the process and people obsolete.
I can only hope that we can add rules to this thing quickly so that it stops stealing from artists and only uses royalty free art.
I think the NFT craze pointed out an issue that has been growing in the art world, being the industrialization of art. Creating art just for it to exist or to be sold. And I think AI might lead people to long for the story behind the art and not necessarily the art itself. Because now if you don’t care about the story, the art that you’re looking for will be easy to create (maybe not right now). But if it’s meaning or story, something deeper, that you’re wanting then it might be harder to find.
Let's be honest, this is a centuries-long issue. "Creating art just for it to exist or to be sold." Who do you think commissioned art during most of history? Noble families and people with money, the relationship between art and money will never change and only tends to scale. You can see this on the film industry with Marvel or the music industry with most of mainstream music.
AI is somehow more soulless than that.
@@20xxcomedy You are absolutely correct...you either do art for yourself or for your patron. I tell my staff how lucky we are that we have our clients...our patrons to pay us to do what we love so that we can also take that earning and do other art that satisfies us personally. On another note, people buy the story of the artist or of the art itself..it's that and the provenance is important. If you choose to create AI art and make it have some type of meaning, it has to have purpose...or a story or a particular niche market that is underserved....that is the only way, I believe, it will have value. Otherwise, it's like you said...it's just art that exists.
I've recently gone around UA-cam subscribing to every single art channel that is still producing art with traditional methods and not just AI. I've found so much great material for my self development and creative projects. Great content, guys! 👊
I think the idea of the 'art of the prompt' is short term thinking at best. Future versions of this will be a closed loop, where the AI is writing its own prompts based on the training data currently being provided by every user entering prompts.
Precisely. These prompters are nothing more than just another easy data set to be exploited.
This is correct. Like Steven Zapata pointed out, at this point the machine is gathering all the prompts used to generate the best images, but there will come a point where there is no need for human input anymore and the AI can literally generate an infinite amount of images with all the prompt data it has gathered.
@@tcg2717 What is the point of an infinite amount of images? This, to some extent, already exists with the 'Babel Image' archive. If you're looking for a cover for your book say, how do you go about that?
I disagree about not eventually needing humans. AI will be used commercially, and for commercial art use you need certain image with certain subject. For example a book cover, you want it to depict the events/ideas/plot you have in the book.... not just any book cover will do. However, it's not "art of the prompt", because 8-year old can make prompts. Drop the art part. However, prompts need to still be written, there's just nothing skilled about it
@@tcg2717 Zapata doesn't even understand how the tech works lol.
People who mostly love AI are also the people who are not familiar with creative industry. I agree that part when people who are not in the industry said it improves life, but for those who are in it, heavily affected. This conversation really refresh my mind to see both sides from artists themselves. Quite scary because it's like playing with lion cub. We never knew how it grows bcs it's wild.
Ai will kill a lot of dreams and artists before they have a chance to flourish, it could keep future artists from entering the field and we may be robbed of our chance to see certain giants . But creating art is like mediating it’s an escape those who use Ai will have missed out on that by creating push button images and putting their names to it. It could be utilised as reference or springboard for some artists so it may have merits. What about art schools surely they too will feel the affects of this technology. More bad than good I feel, but I do prefer old fashion methods of creating art , always have and I hope I always will.
I wonder how many future masters we have lost due to this.
@@Dookie_Blaster Indeed, if we lost many masters to war and hunger in the past, and in the present we are losing many masters to economic issues and war also, if AI can offset this by resolving world conflict and hunger, however, would AI level out what it is preventing from developing? I feel that if we can secure the knowledge of learning and art history for prosperity, and ensure access to such knowledge we may yet save human expression through art. But who will care to become a movie director, when you can have AI render an entire movie that is "perfect" in 30 seconds in the future, for example? We do make choices that are completely unpredictable, though, since humans are also emotional and not just logical. There are two hemispheres that allow for our contradictions and such, to put it simple, but at that point what can happen is a whole iRobot case where you get two separate AIs to fight each other over one robot body to produce a semblance of what contradictory emotional flawed beings we are...
hmm but if you think about it, it could have opposite effect, when AI becomes ubiquitous and common, then human art will have a very high value, don't you think that could be like a tipping point in the future?
@@a.krishna3924 I don’t see that in all honesty. For example say I work hard and spent decade’s learning and developing my art. To make a calendars worth of art would take me many many months of sweat and toil. Now a person (or even a child )with no art training or schooling can hit a button and generate very cool and apt 12 images in under 12 minutes. The calendar company owner doesn’t need to pay that person much at all as anyone can do the same but my income is my only source of income and opportunities to earn are greatly diminished. The jobs that are left are going to chased after by many artist and the patron can pay less and less as each artist undercuts the other to get that gig. My art has less value than it used to.
@@a.krishna3924 yes , what you say also has some possibilities, maybe traditional hand made art garners greater following but a majority of people won’t care about the art only how pleasing the image is to them.
I have a visceral hatred for Ai, not because it doesn't look good because some of it does but it's profoundly anti-human in it's totality. A lot of artists have dedicated their lives to this and will soon be completely disregarded and essentially depersoned.
I agree with you, but I also think this argument Stan made makes sence: that when we think of Ai advancement in fields other than our own, we tend to see how our quality of life will be better. But, of course there is the question of how I will pay for that improved life when my job gets buried...
A year later and AI art is completely dead. The fad has faded. Their superficial community unsurprisingly did not stand the test of time.
@@user-ch8wp4zs7s says who? I see it all over twitter/X
Has it really?! I wish you were right but I'm not so sure. I see it everywhere.
@@TheVexingLion quick question can you see my comment?
it is already used for profit tho. By the company that makes the AI. It's cool you don't sell the paintings - the company is making crazy money out of the works of artists they did not pay to.
Not every artist wants to be a celebrity or an internet personality. Some of us just want a job that doesn't make us wanna die.
Marshall’s body language is so interesting. When they are talking about something he’s open to he outstretches both of his arms as if he’s letting the idea in. When he’s unsure one arm is open, one is closed, and when he doesn’t like something they’re both closed. Really cool way to interact and communicate.
@stenobro I agree but I feel like Marshall is very exaggerated with it. At one point it looked like he was practically meditating 🧘♂️ 😂
@@theamericanaromantic if hes a teacher he may have a habit of coherent and clear body language with his speech...that would be typical
I'm honestly concerned for the Concept art industry because AI Art will and most likely already HAS replaced Freelance Artists. I've heard how for many people commissions are running dry and it's because their clients are using AI and openly promoting it as well. Feel like the Starving Artist is gonna become a more prevalent issue pretty soon.
@@buttcube6085 Until they get fully sentient and decides to complot against us...
concept art is boring anyways
@@buttcube6085 there's this thing called feedback that you can do to the artists
@@buttcube6085 Bro, I'm 23 and feel old reading this shit. Wdym that person has feelings? Bruh, I don't wanna see that shit in my life. Artists open for commissions often tell you if they change the image if you don't like it before you pay for it. Next time maybe find someone like that? What am I saying, next time? No shot you ever paid an artist anyway.
@Erik Artists paint in layers so specific parts can be changed easily when the client wants.
I dont think the tech bro knows anything at all cuz clients in every industry always want to revise the results, including software engineering.
WHAT i thought Draftsmen ended so i was spacing out what i thought were the last episodes. So happy it continues! This is my favorite podcast ever 😭
same here... I miss hearing their latest insights...
They mentioned that they would make episodes after the ending one but it’s not going to be frequent
I make art by hand because I enjoy it and I really have no choice, it is a deep urge....AI may change the perception of art but won't change my basic need to create by hand simply because I love doing it.
Doesn't stop it from cheapening what you dedicate your soul to
Sorry if this violates the general tone of cautious optimism but rather than sitting on the fence I would actually come down and see AI as a generally negative development. Ideally and if we really care about Art we would in my view go a little bit Luddite and actually restrict it's use. The problem as I see it is that what we're really talking about is by-passing human effort (which however you look at it is convenient but never a positive, e.g the car rather than walking, TV rather than reading etc. ) and raising the prospect of a glut of mediocre content,( even more than we already have). Nature doesn't make mistakes and there is an absolute limit to the amount of art we can consume, so wouldn't it be better to restrict the number of producers to actual artists ? . Is a dramatic increase in supply really all that desirable ?
Did an inktober challenge this year and there was a guy using AI to generate the prompts. I swear, every time his posts would pop out I thought I'd discovered an interesting new artist until I read the descriptions declaring that it was an AI. I've been drawing for 25+ years and I don't make art for a living, so I'm not that threatened by it, but it must've been devastating for all those beginner cartoonists who can barely scrape together a functional Wolverine to see this thing just crush them in both technique and generating ideas.
What’s his account?
At the end of the day, that person is not getting the same satisfaction from executing a piece.
@@arknark No but it felt also pretty good to show something and people being impressed. Now nobody cares that you’re able to draw a pretty ok wolverine
@@IvoKlerk Good for you, I'll stick with the skills I taught myself. Seems like you're in it for the likes anyways
@@arknark It's ok to draw just for your own satisfaction. But for those who really want to make a living by being an artists, satisfaction is not enough, the likes/ the audience must be there.
The boys are back in town! 🎸 so happy to have more draftsmen!
1:14:35
The idea of trying to be the most human you can be in the art that you put out seems really nice to me. The best way to fight AI is just being true to yourself.
Im a bit gutted by all of it. My kids are really into drawing as I was as a child. The only differences is that I have been fostering thier interest by taking them out in the world and drawing as much as possible. But its a sad thought that there just may not opportunities for them to do it professionally and they will also end up having careers in something they dont love.
they can love few things and have drawing as a passion
@@11lvr11 lol Not very reassuring, Mr. Russian demon cat.
*Just because a robot could speak doesn't mean we should stop speaking*
SURE, but no business is gonna pay people to speak because the robot does it cheaper, more efficiently, and without the nasty bullshit of human interaction and human error.
I think the next industries to be hit by AI after art and design will be software engineers, engineers, architects, interior designers, 3D artists, filmmakers, and writers.
I am illustrator/animator and filmmaker and I can say that it is already happening. Just watch the last video of *The Corridor*... Or maybe the sht like Synthesia, actors are threatened too.
"Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them."
3D Ai already start developing, theres ai that can generate 3d model
I don’t care. Because why should people be overworked and underpaid due to capitalism?
Capitalism is the problem, not AI.
@Umlilo Artworks
And what about spending quality time with our families and friends without worrying about paying bills? How about people who wake up every day to do physical activities like swimming, hiking, jogging, exercising, playing sports, fishing, playing video game or other activities, etc.
People do that for a living, that’s their career, how they pay bills and put food on the table.
Except, if you’re not doing it for a career, then ultimately, it’s a privilege because All those things that we cannot do because of capitalism. Should we make an argument that you can get to do these things if you work and if you don’t work and contribute to society, you don’t get this privilege?
Capitalism is the problem. Not AI or automation.
"Outdated" is a understatement. "People want work made by other humans", also, is a blind affirmation. Nobody is seeing clearly how the majority of people (specially not artists) will access and use these AIs, and, I must say it, Marshall and Stan are pros. You have to go down, with the people in formation, and see things from that point. A pro can, indeed, use an AI as a tool. A begginer, is in direct competition with it.
99.9% of businesses want the best bang for their buck. They don’t give a rats ass about work made by other humans if an A.I. version does the trick. Aspiring artists who just want to create beautiful pictures and sell that are definitely screwed big time!
@@IvoKlerk Aspiring artists could probably use AI and still make beautiful pictures after transferring those ideas to a physical medium, especially since I think there will be an uptick in physical art after all this. The AI arena will soon become saturated and considered boring. I predict physical art will have a bigger comeback in the same way Vinyl did.
@@bladechild2449 It’s still only a fraction of the artists who get to make money that way. Most of them are digital artists nowadays btw. If 90% of the concept artists, graphic designers, 3d visual artists etc get replaced then how should they make a living? They have to adapt to something else. Staying on the frontline of the developments and only working on the stuff the A.I. doesn’t know how to do yet. For instance doing the more technical side of game development.. instead of the artistic side
As a person with severe A.I. art anxiety, this is an episode I've been waiting for. I'm more relaxed coming out of it and have a lot to meditate on. I'm not as concerned about it in regard to making money, just more stressed over what it does to the "spirit," and process of making art. I feel like a line has to be drawn at some point in how little effort there should be in creating a piece. I'm also upset by the idea of every brush stroke and thoughtful decision in a piece made by an artist could be used to make something else without the same years of study and effort without their consent. I'm very sentimental and probably overly passionate about art pre-A.I., but I might come around to A.I. art once I've calmed down enough one of these days.
Shouldn't we give everyone the opportunity to be creative and enjoy art? AI does exactly this for millions of people already, there are many AI art communities creating wonderful art pieces everyday!
Look up Steven Zapata he has a video about this
Why not concerned about the money aspect? Most people won’t pay anyone anymore to create images. It’s just not worth it most of the time
@@IvoKlerk Oh no, definitely concerned about the money aspect as well. Just not ONLY concerned about the money. I hear lots of conversations about the money, but not as much about some other concerns I've had.
@@abel5333 Definitely planned on checking out his take after this podcast. 👍🏼
I was counting on my art skills to earn enough money for myself and my mother, so AI possibly taking this opportunity from me is devastating. I really wanted a secure money source in art industry...
Me too
@xuntrezz That is not how it works. Once everyone knows "art", no one knows art.
@@gnomefuel It is simply not true, artists earn well if they are good and they know what they are doing.
There will still be great value of owning something that is hand crafted or hand painted.(it will cost a lot to the buyer, but many want to pay for that)
@xuntrezz sure adapt to a meaningless industry and generation huh?
So disappointing hearing you guys tell kids they need to learn how to prompt. I don’t think anyone gets into art to become a “ master prompter” and I’d argue you definitely violate someone’s rights by using their name in a prompt bc there is copyrighted arts in these data sets
So true, i want to draw damn it not be a glorified editor.
This is an excellent podcast that takes a thoughtful approach to discussing a very hot topic. As a copywriter who works closely with designers and artists, we need to stick together as creatives. Writers are getting just as screwed over and plagiarized by AI.
What’s even more detrimental than your writer-uses-AI-for-art example is the majority of CEOs who won’t hesitate to replace human creatives with AI to save a buck-quality, integrity, and originality be damned. All hail the almighty bottom line, right? Looks like it’s time for us creatives to buckle up and brace ourselves for what’s ahead…this phase of late-stage capitalism is turning out to be quite wild and as soulless as ever.
Sure, there’s potential for good with AI. But there’s also a lot of potential for harm-and actual harm is already happening to writers and artists alike due to this technology. We need regulations and penalties ASAP to set better boundaries on this ever-evolving beast of technology.
Marshall really thinks about things deeply and considers the nuances. An absolute joy to listen to!
(First time watcher here.)
Being a famw programmer, artist and currently also a machine learning Uni. student, the recent developments in AI have been extremely depressing.
I fear there might be a lot of suicides or severe depression that this dramatic paradigm shift will cause in the coming year. Normies don't even know how crazy it will get this year, and haven't even realized half the stuff that have come out in the past weeks
ChatGPT is even crazier than these art AIs
I want to try to be more open and talkative as an artist, but I’m very shy online. And I’m also very scared because people can be so mean and really bully you. I have a lot of experience, and many people actually told me that they like my thought process when I talk about art, but I do think that people really attack you for your opinion and the whole cancel culture is so scary. There were a few artists that came out to ask people to not use their names in AI print, and in return, everyone uses their names. It’s just so toxic.
We should try to stop it and its not "a waste of time" AI music won't dare touch copyrighted music for fear of lawsuits from the record labels. They need to fear lawsuits from visual artists just as much! After all, AI would have NOTHING if they hadn't STOLEN everything from us!
> *We should try to stop it and its not "a waste of time" AI music won't dare touch copyrighted music for fear of lawsuits from the record labels*
Considering that they lobbied the crap out of copyright laws to get them in a way that serves them, abuse copyright, abuse artists, definitely not the role model I'd look towards IMO.
@@DanknDerpyGamer better than not doing anything like today.
As a young artist about to enter art school things are going to get wild and Im all there for the ride.
Why I am a artist is because I love drawing and writing my own. Plus I respect a person passion and creativity. I grew up around my parents, aunts and uncles. Especially my uncle George taught us boys the value of hard work. And my mom gave me the patience and strong spirit. I been drawing since I was young and still draw. This year I have been also learning guitar and keyboard. I tried A.I. art and I felt guilty about it. Never doing again. It was not fun. I like drawing and learning myself.
I think the best point was about humans wanting content made by other humans. I agree. I went through the wow this is so cool! Ai art phase with midjourney and dall-e for a few weeks and none of the thousands of images I generated mean anything at all to me. Likewise, I don't care at all about someones AI art. But I think even an "inferior" drawing by a real artist is worthy of my admiration because the time and experience that someone put into it has value.
You mentioned that people are using the phrase "democratizing art." I personally think that phrase is really stupid. Art is democratized. The tools to create art are free or dirt cheap these days. Anyone that has access to a device they can use for generating AI art could learn and create their own art. People are just lazy or they don't have the passion to actually put in the effort but want the results. This is why I don't really care for someones AI art. Real artists cared enough to prioritize it. People will make all kinds of excuses about not having the time because of other obligations etc. Everyone has obligations, if people didn't make the time, it wasn't a priority. If it wasn't a priority, they didn't have a strong enough passion for it.
I think applications like you mentioned, generating stuff in texts similar to emojis make sense, among other potential applications. But people generating art and posting it online as their artwork, will never mean anything to me.
an art piece can speak to you and then you become a fan of the artists because they are truly a limited edition with a rich story, but I feel this is kind of AI art is more threatening for concept artists, CAD renderers and illustrators rather than fine art students because there's a lot of value on the story behind the art rather than just endlessly producing things for the sake of consumption and "cool" factor. I definitely feel the average person would choose AI art products as its much quicker and cheaper. Elites who can afford quality art and have taste and care about meaning and value could invest in human art in the future. if anything, I think artists will simply be safe just for that if they can market themselves well.
I can see AI being used like stock photos for the constant need for social media images..... the bottom end where people don't want to pay much for anything. I kind of agree with a comment re digital artists might be effected more then traditional artists, I mean why buy a print when you might be able to generate your own for nothing. Perhaps traditional artists doing great work will become more revered (like they used to be) as they will be authentic?
❤
To me AI making the art takes the personality out of the art piece and i think it mainly hurts digital artists than traditional artirts who work with Oil,acrylic and etc
Yeah, I think that trad artists will be mostly fine since a big part of the appeal is that it is an actual physical thing which had it's creation process in said physical object; digital artists however I think they'll get the short end of the stick
@@vanillabatcave5677 Traditional artists that work in fine arts won't worry until a sophisticated printer hooked up to ai comes to be. But traditonal artists that work in commercial are in the same position as digital artists.
Soon Boston Dynamics will change this. Some few years and their robots are painting in oil.
@@hepzibahhez9965 but the thing is the brush strokes and thickness of the layers wont be visible so i think some fine printers cant replicate that i guess we will have to wait
@@williamkuroki7683 i hope not lol
You were the ones I needed to listen to their podcast about this issue.
Absolutely fantastic perspectives. Marshall, this was my introduction to you and your channel and I really enjoyed getting your points of view. You are an amazing artist and teacher and a great pleasure to listen to. From one artist and teacher to another - thank you!
being a traditional artist and your final words during the podcast are the only thing that gives me hope. there will not be so many of us left i guess at some point and it will be valuable . great start of the new season
That's selfish and narrow-thinking. You're still getting rawdogged and saying "oh but they left me some crumbs so it's not that bad."
We need mass pushes against this, it's enraging and soulless.
@@20xxcomedy He has a point though. I get it, I'm concerned as well. However like Proko said, it is inevitable. Now, its just a matter of how to adapt. I think Proko has probably the best pulse on this because he is a successful businessman, with roots in traditional art with knowledge of AI.
@@Chessbox09 I work in Machine Learning and do art on the side, if we have a push for regulation we can mitigate the damage to a minimum. Conformity will destroy us.
AI can create "art" in other mediums too. Pencil, charcoal, watercolor, acrylic etc. And with 3D printing it can be replicated perfectly. This affects all kinds of artists, not just digital art.
thanks for mentioning Steven Zapata on this problem at 27:08 - 35
Outside of the topic of AI art, but I am so stoked for a draftsmen episode again. There were so many great take-aways before, and this podcast discussing art, teaching, current trends is always something to look forward to. Thank you Stan and Marshall. Don't hold yourself to a schedule on this if it stresses you out. I think we all enjoy just the play you two have in sharing your thoughts back and forth. Whatever allows you to keep coming back, no matter how long the wait in between :)
I took a course from Marshall senpai 10 years ago, and that changed my journey forever for better, to this day I'm so grateful. Such a rare gem he is. Big respect.
I’ve listened to Dave Mckean on this and I’m 100% with him. I absolutely know it can’t be halted but I absolutely also hate everything about it and believe we are going to be far worse off because of it.
So many people have opinions on this subject, but you two are actually qualified to talk about it
It's comparable to
A hiker vs a bus passenger going to the same destination.
The hiker walks and experiences the world. When they arrive their destination, they have the unique experience of the journey. They find the destination fulfilling.
The passenger sits and looks forward to going to the destination. They can go to a hundred destinations, but will never get the fulfillment of the hiker.
That's true. But the point is that art as a profession will no longer be viable. Nobody is going to pay artists money to do art anymore once AI is advanced enough. Sure artists can feel as much fulfillment as they want, but they will no longer be able to put food on the table by doing art.
@@chester7769 that is a painful fact, not gonna lie. It really will kill jobs.
But maybe it is for the best to separate art from what it is today; an exploited culture.
Jobs will never be completely gone though. Art, while the process can be automated, our soul will want to throw the machine away. There will always be people who will go to proko, cubebrush and everyone else to learn how to free themselves from this heresy and start to use their hands properly.
Every time the generate button is pressed on the AI, the thought of doing the process manually may knock on the door. The process is so automated, so boring, that they will start wondering about walking the mile instead.
@@enniusdrusus867 I see art AI as bread-making machine, art as bread, and human artists as breadmakers. Once the machine is here, human breadmakers will be completely outclassed in terms of efficiency. Hand-made bread will always be around, and there will always be people who want to learn the process, but that's just a small minority. Like you said, maybe there are other qualities associated with human art, like the art-making process or the artist behind the artwork, that makes it more than just bread produced by a machine, but I doubt most people actually care
@@chester7769 I doubt that people wouldn't care. But that's just me having faith in the religion that is making art.
Maybe the people who seek ready to consume art, the consumerists, wouldn't care. But then again, they tend to be those that see artists as product making machines that require no support at all. If their "support" will go away, nothing would really change. Which is better? A thousand viewers who do not care and only look your work for 3 seconds and move on? Or fifty viewers that see it, care for it and talk about it?
If we're talking about bread, then there's artisanal bread. As expected, the bread is more expensive. Buying artisanal bread makes a statement. People are far more inclined to share their experiences with the artisanal bread than the white bread they buy at the groceries. I am confident that the same thing will happen with art.
Rather, it makes the numbers more consistent. People join patreons because of the artist-artwork connection and their willingness to support it. The thought of joining an AI >USER
@@enniusdrusus867 Yeah. I guess I was just focusing more on the commercial side of art. If money isn't a concern then what you said is indeed where we are heading towards
Like, it legit took me a whole minute, having moved on to uploading comic pages...for my brain to connect what was happening at the very end of the podcast. I was just in the peripheral of my brain thinking "why does he keep saying that?" But when it finally triggered, the force with which the laughter leapt from the depth of my chest thundered off the walls and bounced from my screen.
That is pompous write for "me think joke funny." Lots of food for thought in this one. Most enjoyable.
I make art because the process of making it is everything to me. I start with a vision yes, but it's a journey and I cannot predict where it takes me. I discover things that I didn't know I had in me, I learn things about myself and the world around me. Can AI provide that experience? I will always make art, it keeps me alive.
And there will always be people very interested in all of those things. Your reasons, your journey, your struggles. We aren't giving other humans enough credit imho.
Same. It’s so much fun. Perhaps it should stay that way.
If you making art for living, people only care about finished product. Your clients don't care about your journey.
@@bunnyfreakz not true in the fine art space. Comercial -- well you have to take detailed direction so more so. your process needs to be adjustable. Some hybrid process of human and ai will be the future of comercial art
@@bunnyfreakz now why would you go and assume we don't make art for a living?
NO WAY, my favourite series is back!!!!! I love watching both of you but... I have to be honest... Marshall holds a special place in my heart ♥
26:45 What's the difference between art parents and AI combining art
The problem is because we think of art as simply a 'visualization'. But it's not.
The more important question is: 'What is the difference between art created by AI vs. art by humans?'
To put it simply, Art as we have known it (excluding AI art), is any kind of action (or result of such actions, ie visual art creation) that are made by conscious life forms using mostly non-conscious means and conscious skills, and taking inspiration from a 'mysterious source' beyond ourselves. The results are usually non-functional, but often have aesthetic qualities.
Art has a 'fuzzy' definition to begin with. Add to that that we can't even define what 'beauty' means. But art has these qualities. So it is a mysterious activity that has mysterious qualities (esthetics).
So it asks a very fundamental question we still do not have an answer to: What is life? How does the minds of life forms work? Where do they get these inspirations from? What is beauty? Until we know the answers to these, we won't have a clear cut answer what difference between AI and human art are.
HOWEVER we can have a fuzzy answer: As far as we can understand, art (not visualization) is a very strange and mysterious stuff made by life forms/conscious beings. It also has mysterious qualities (beauty).
So the fact the AI is not a life form and not conscious (intelligence is not consciousness), it will never make true Art. It will only visualize and use human data to simulate esthetics.
So we can predict that industrial artists (visualizers, concept artists, etc) will lose their jobs in the not-so-far future, but true artists (fine artists who create art for art sake) will continue to have their work in demand.
Sorry, Industrial artists will lose their art industry jobs, BUT will become fine artists themselves. There. :)
AND, since AI obviously cant make art using traditional media, traditional art will have a come back.
Off topic : the older dude has extremely good voice for narration and voiceover,it's top tier 🤩
Please do a pod cast with Steven Zapata and Adam Duff (Lucidpixel, he created a video regarding Identity theft with AI ) please!!!
I'd like to hear that.
That's a fantastic idea!
stephen zapata pls!!
''Digital artists killed a lot of traditional jobs, so give and take.'' - this makes NO SENSE. Photoshop might have killed some traditional jobs, but those people were more than free to trasnfer their exact skillset to digital. The traditional artists were still relevant. The only effort it took was to go out and buy a wacom. also, if you think traditional is somehow safe from ai, wait till they hook up ai to sophisticated printers.
AI affects traditional EXACTLY the same way it affects digital. Even fine artists are affected because now anybody can make an image in ai and just copy it to paper using oils and its a new artwork.
I definitely see lots of non artists complaining about the flood of AI "art" on art websites, some sites like Pixiv are implementing a tag for them before the upload to help sort the AI from the human works.
I tried Midjourney in beta and almost all prompts had a name of an artist whose style people wanted to generate art from - namely artists like Craig Mullins.
Steven Zapata for a podcast or Livestream talk would be something we would enjoy especially with potentially a newer perspective
Omg! Another video, is it my birthday 🤩
I love you two, you’re both so great. Thanks for having this conversation ❤
This is such an interesting topic because a lot of what technology provides speeds up tasks we want done quicker and better, say household appliances, searching for anything you need on the internet etc. But it becomes such a sensitive topic for artists now it's affecting their livelihood and reason to create in the first place. Years of study and practice now seem meaningless and some dishonest people are lapping up compliments for something a computer generated rather than the time they put into it themselves. But I do agree that dwelling in what we could lose is pointless so we might as well just embrace what makes us human and keep moving forward as best as we can.
One of my favorite podcasts has returned!! I’m very happy
I heard "Hi there Stan" in Marshall's voice, a tear built up in my tear duct and I proceeded to give the video a like.
I've been watching many videos on this topic, and this one is by far the best and most useful, thank you both!
There is silver lining in that the US just recently denied copyright protection for AI generated art.
Augh yes I've missed you guys! ❤️ ❤️ I'm so glad you're back!
There’s definitely ways to stop
It. It’s called class action lawsuits.
Man, I missed both of you, and I missed that studio! Welcome back guys! Good to have you for two more episodes!
The way people are using it right now is akin to identity theft and plagiarism. There needs to be regulations on this so that it's a tool in the hands of artists, not a tool to replace artists.
Sure, commie. Keep begging for the government to destroy everybody's freedom.
@@xingyuzhou1891 You don't have the freedom to plagiarize peoples work and profit on it without compensation to the artist. *Unless it's in the public domain.
OMG WELCOME BACK YOU TWO. I'm now present in your comeback ❤️
Relating to the end of the talk, I imagine Marshal's reaction hearing Zapata's version of the "Perfect Metaphore" for AI and instead of "collaborator", having to swallow a "replacement" sticking right into the soul
What a great way to put it, don’t stop visually communicating
Sometimes the Draftsmen get a little too lost in the weeds, but there was some great clarity there at the end. Our humanity and stories help our work connect in a way AI might never be able to replicate. The most successful artists I know may not have the greatest technical ability, but they're work has found an audience with those who respond emotionally and intellectually with the intent behind the work.
Finally, a topic I wanted you two to talk about since Marshall and the ai tried drawing boxes
Another future concern is faceless corporate entities who own the ai shaping culture and human interest exclusively through curation, controlling what gets output and thus human interest over time. As avg artists are cut out of the commerical process entirely.
Potentially no more grassroots born sensations. We become even more so data guinea pigs than we already are.
So glad you guys are back, had listened to your episodes several times while drawing. Even if we end up getting only two episodes, i'm happy to hear you two again
Even though I'm no longer able enough to make art, I still forgot how much I missed this podcast
what's stopping you?
@@lemonextract1325 hand issues 😔
@@InauguralAgate6 ah I'm sorry, I hope your hand recovers soon
@@lemonextract1325 thank you ♥️
A lot of people have tried to make the claim that writing the prompt is the art itself but 21:20 proves to me that it isn't. All he did is type in 'a cover illustration of a podcast with two hosts at a table with microphones by Dave McKean'; the 'art of the prompt' at least in the context that it will be used by most people is a banal one. The distinction between an artist and a person using an ai to generate imagery is the thought that goes into the composition. When an artist creates an image every aspect of that image is curated to form an overall cohesive narrative that reflects whatever meaning they're trying to portray, whereas a person creating an ai image isn't actually influencing the composition down to the most minute aspect in the same way that an artist does.
Important and thought provoking conversation! We hear many artists worried about how AI could affect the market share for human-created imagery, and we've been thinking a lot about how other technologies have disrupted art. Photography is probably the closest analog, because it not only affected how everyone sees reality, it also made it possible for any human to create realistic, documentary images without being a trained artist. We also thought about lithography- when it emerged as an artist's process, it would have been hard to imagine using 4-color lithographs to wrap stocking stuffers or advertise a car wash! Neither of those technologies stopped people from creating art, though, and we don't think people will stop responding in a special way to images and objects made by artists, with the eye, mind, and hand.
Legal stuff is simple. Nobody can copyright a style. And AI was developed on that law. It's not going to change because some people want to cry about it.
It would be like Elvis trying to copyright rock.
I loved every second of this podcast. Leaves me hopeful.
Prompt generating is the same skill as how to search for information on Google.
You're also going to get interactive AI art where a final product can be modified through a UI. Many different prompts will exist within a single piece/world and all of them will be modifiable like objects in Blender.
@@RandomPlaceHolderName still the same
I knew when you gentlemen decided to stop the podcast that there was perhaps more interesting topics to explore together and glad to see it. Even if its not weekly I think Stan and Marshal have a lot left to discuss
I am glad to see the Draftsmen Podcast back, thank you! I am not a fan of AI and believe that the ethical question of using peoples names and images needs to be addressed ASAP. It is still early enough in the game to set a standard that needs to be written in the code of all these programs. The longer we wait the harder it will be to enable. Think about how much money can be gained to help museums with preservation if, for instance $0.01 went to the Prado museum overtime some uses the prompt "in the style of Bosch".
Neat idea
Thanks Stan and marshal. You guys are awesome
I decided recently to become an artist, and i will not let a machine step over me, i am a human being and i will stand up for hunan made art
Good luck on your journey, friend!
"Well, then I have opinions, about your opinions, about MY opinions!" --Stan Prokopenski
LMAO! Perfectly said!
We value humanity, if we can show it through our art then we can give others a reason to choose us artists over AI generated art.
thing is a lot of these ai 'artists' already have followings. People are willing to accept ai art as human made pieces, just like photography.
@@hepzibahhez9965 redditors
@@hepzibahhez9965 Don't compare photography to Ai art.
Photographers have to learn about a lot of things like lightning etc.
I think comparing both of them isn't the best thing since "Ai artists" have to just type a few words without learning about any fundamentals.
A good discussion - even after a year when so much more has happened.
Of course speaking up about it, especially if you're influential, is important. it does matter and it will help. Make AI art frowned upon and it will lead to companies changing their behavior. It can also lead to legistlation being passed, etc