I'm not an artist, but I respect artists and I was already keeping track on the issues this technology can affect artists lives, but I didn't realise how expansive AI could be in industries or jobs I thought would be untouchable until I saw your examples. I now realise that as an Engineer or a Programmer the evolution of this technology in these fields isn't that far. Thanks for broadening my view on this issue.
Fascism has always sought to replace all they deem "inferior" in "technological prowess". They are not just "scientific racists" due to how they see non-western cultures as "lesser in technology and thus intelligence", but also seek to annihilated all other industries, just as their italian futurist predecessors envisioned, the end of self-expression in favour of consumerism and the commodification of art and the romanticisation of the machine and organicism, the new-man myth, etc.
This is certainly not the death of Art. But I believe now that this is the death of commercial artists and it might be the bankruptcy of creativity in general. AI image generation, is not just merely a tool like some digital program. They are primarily designed to actually replace artists and creatives. The whole work process that goes behind creating art is automated and delegated to an algorithm. And I think a lot of people, particularly those that use it to get content, do not realise yet what it actually means. You can see this by the overwhelming number of people that see them self as content creators while the actual creator is the machine, those that type the text and create the "prompt" are at the most curators. And even this I believe will be automated at some point. Probably sooner than later once there are algorithms for prompts and there have been enough out to "teach" some algorithm what people like and what works. And then it's really just a few clicks. And I believe even those that now seem very happy about the Ai, will sing a very different tune once it comes for their profession and they might see the automatition happening in their jobs. Because if automatition does one thing - and that is what Ai is at it's core - then it is devaluing labour. And in our current society the reality is that as far as the job market goes, pretty much everyone is replacable to a company or business. I was a big supporter of AI in the past. But now as I see what it's actually doing, how it is missused and what this means potentially for the future? It changed my opinion and I am a lot more cynical about it. Techbros and programmers which don't give a shit about what's done with it, companies which aim at monopolies for image generation exploiting millions of artists and users flying to those algorithms seeking instant gratification without actually puting the skill in to it. All together with this toxic social media dopamine manipulation of catching "likes". This is really not going to lead to a better future I am afraid. I would love to be wrong here. But somehow I doubt that I will.
Most media is just going to become even more soulless than it already is. Much like ads are. Which is a shame. Personally, I am not THAT affected, since I am just a hobbiest and I do art because I like doing art, not as a profession. But it sure sucks.
Regarding the art competition: I feel like people forget that the judges 100% thought that the winning piece was created by a person, and *in that context* declared it the best piece. The appreciation goes straight out the window, in terms of skill level and perceived intention, for example, when you know it's diffused by a program.
Yes, I agree, if you know in advance that this is AI art it would impact your assessment, but the fact that they couldn't tell and therefore in a "blind" test declared it the winner says a lot. Then again, I don't tend to hold Art critics/judges in particularly high esteem, so maybe more easily fooled perhaps?
@@BasementPicasso agreed, though who's to say they even knew that something other than a person could generate the piece in the first place? If you don't actually know about these image synthesis models at all, then perhaps they weren't looking with that in mind at all.
The judges didn't know it wasn't created by a person but the organizers of the competition were aware it was AI generated and they allowed it into the competition to spur discussion. Telling the judges would have tainted the judging process. There wasn't really deception going on in this case, the art was being judged on its own merits not on who made it. It's like if a really famous artist submitted something to an art competition should the judges know that piece was done by that artist before judging the piece itself? That would be equally unfair as the prestige of that artist would sway the judgement.
As an artist whos relatively small, and I dont even sell it (I want to, just unsure how). Im not a fan of AI art. At all. That itself just stems from whats happened already with every production of an AI that makes any type of it. Every single one was made and based off of images Artist were never able to say "Yes you can use this". Their art was just automatically used without permission nor care. DeviantArt showed us recently how little they care about Traditional Artists. Yes, I am using Traditional in the sense of those who create art by hand, stylus or computer; not AI. Another commenter mentioned we know people won't care about ethics, citing the DeviantArt incident as well... Its intriguing watching how everything has become digital art, or is digitally out on display. But the way AI has pushed its way into art, I hate saying this. Reminds me of the way MAPs tried so hard to push themselves into the LGBT community a couple years ago. They pushing and saying "This is us, like it or not". Yet, most of us DONT like it. AI art is gorgeous and wonderful, but it's supposed to be. Its supposed to be perfect. Its supposed to be easy. Art isnt easy. Art takes time, and practice to be decent or good at, and yes even natural born artist still have to practice and take time. To me personally AI throws all that out the window, especially with using Artists work who never allowed it. AI feels like a cheap shot at something someone took hours to create...It feels as though you have 2 people selling 1 product. Person A: Has its product at a higher price, better quality, more time put into said product. Person B: Literally stole the idea from Person A, used cheap materials, product breaks withing 5 minutes. Thats what that feels to me. Its not a "good thing", it feels cheap and fake.
Yeah, I know what you are saying … the idea that it is just too easy devalues it in every sense. Pretty, but not deeply engaging, but sadly many people will be quite happy with superficial pretty images. I find it hard to argue, some images are really quite amazing at least at first glance
@@BasementPicasso Yeah!! Even I will admit, Im astonished by how beautiful AI art can be, but deep down it sets a fire ablaze that later makes me hate it; solely because its an AI image. It feels like your being cheated out of the work you payed for for something. I know alot of people feel different, and Im not trying to say "You need to feel how I feel". You dont, everyone has their own opinion. I just personally dont find AI art to be as...Thought inputing, or creative (trying to find the right word) in a sense as a Traditional Artist. Its nice to find someone to talk about said opinion without immediately being thrown into a "Your bad because your opinion is bad" hole.
@@deathberryjam907 Yeah I completely get that. I am genuinely torn between whether AI is, or will be a good thing, and just how awesome it can be, versus the potential long term impact and consequences. I completely understand why people could hold either opinion.
I am an artist too and I see it different. Look, a photography is also art but the photographer doesn't own the landscape or didn't created a sunset in mountains. He/she "only" clicked a button. Yes? It was common for artists in the past to think that it is not an art. I generated more than 11000 (eleven thousands) Ai pictures to realise that it is only a medium,like a camera, or a brush. In many cases it is not even ideal, there are many artefacts and mistakes. A good artists can use it correctly and paint a painting based on Ai. It is especially useful when you want to pain a face or a person. Nowadays there are difficulties to find a person, who will be a model for you, in right outfit, lighting, etc. Ai helps here. And moreover, Ai writes now books, blog posts and create music. So if it is in a common use why cannot Ai be used in art. Ai didn't do collages, it makes kind of hybrids like human's brain. So when you look thousands paintings in museums then your brain learns from it and your art is influenced by their art. It is not stealing. It is a biology. Brain cannot create things which didn't see before. In the beginning, few years ago I was angry on Ai. But now I completely changed my mind. Do you really think that nowadays artist can paint so many paintings to be able sell it with success in Internet? On Redbubble, Etsy you have to have at least 1000 or even 2000 graphics to earn whatever. So if it is like that then to be a analoge artist has no sense anymore... Well, what I don't like is that many people who are not artists at all can now produce graphics and sell it so the art market is overcrowded by all who wants to sell Art and "art". My experience showed me that not every Ai picture can be even considered Art. By the way I have master degree in Fine Arts. So I say it all as a specialist in a field. You know, more than 10 yrs ago I was angry that some not professional hobbyist started to paint so called abstract paintings because they could not even paint a proper realistic art and they started to sell while real artists with diploms often had problems to pay bills. It shouldn't be like that when someone studied art for more than 5 years. But it is our reality now.....So one day I thought why not to play with Ai. And I don't regret.
@Basement Picasso First of all, AI it's not a form of any self expression - for me it's not art then. You get a random image that you described with some words, it's not what you see in your imagination. If you have any and that is the problem. Only people that don't have any specific vision will be happy with creation in those tools - so not the majority of artists. Average people, yes - why ? Because for them painting it's hard work that they won't skip.
Everytime I had to argue AI against normal people it always went like this, same goes with art theft and tracing works : "As long as people didn't lie about using an AI or photobashing and compare them to handcraft artist works, it won't be a problem. "So, it is a problem."
I was watching the recent Jurassic park when this comment popped up! I believe this quote was used in the first film by good old Jeff ... and boy, does it feel relevant!!
I think the biggest problem with AI is that their data sets use stole artwork. In my opinion, if one thinks about the art as "stolen data," it becomes more obvious that this is blatant theft and not inspiration. It doesn't matter if the AIs are generating something completely original, they are still using stolen data. It's stealing many artists' accumulated skills and turning them into a machine. If the automation of art was inevitable, at least don't insult artists by stealing their hard earned final renders. I'm really worried about the art community almost entirely disappearing in the future. Our lives are already filled to the brim with work work work (unless you are a billionaire who doesn't work at all) that when real handmade art is no longer profitable, the community could fizzle away. Artists are so connected by our skills and ability to create something with pure imagination and a couple of tools. What will happen when AI art that is "just good enough" takes over?
I think the initial research was "fair use" for me - helping to advance science and understanding. the moment that was simply commercialised it loses any claim to "fair use" as far as I am concerned. I agree on the potential impact of all this - it was what drove me to try and contribute to the discussion.
This is one of the greatest videos on this topic I've ever watch yet. It is not trying to be on any side, and it is clearly felt that you enjoyed generating images and was excited, but also the amount of respect you put towards artists in this video is exceptional. This is truly how "non-biased" thing should look like, also being filled with a lot of examples and ideas - this Gutenberg case was really interesting insight on how AI can be used for "customised content" (though in the future, this may go overboard to achieve self-drawing covers for self-written books). This is also the only thing I've missed in this video, but I understand lack of it, as philosophical nature of the debate is crazily missed out - that the market value is one thing, the mindset corruption is another. I've talked this on my Twitter thread, but in short, I'm afraid that AI will lessen our interest in not only process of creating art, but also at processing them, thus, will make our lives way harsher to go through, as art is - I'd be brave enough to say - the most important part of our lives, no matter if it is conscious thing for all of us. And "content noise" making art as overfeeding our lives as ads may be what can be very difficult to fix, especially given capitalistic nature of our "Brave New World". Thank you for this video. It speaks a lot for me, seeing any individual giving such brilliant insight into this so disturbing issue.
Thanks, Tom, very much appreciated. Yes, it was important to me to try and keep a middle-of-the-road approach to try and help the conversation, because I appreciate how emotive and polarising the subject is. You are right, I didn't want to go too far into the future and broader impact of AI, simply because of the volume of content and how many people don't even get the basics of this discussion yet. I will be doing a video on the impact of AI on traditional artists which will go a little deeper into things. It will speak more on things like "content noise" and the challenge to traditional art markets.
This was a great video and breakdown of the current dilemma. I hope everyone that is losing sleep over this change in art culture is also shedding a tear for all the truckers who will be unemployed when the self driving cars come to pass, or for the cashiers/clerks already in the unemployment line as they have been eliminated by self checkout.
They aren't because "the art community" seem to think the entire world revolves around them and any tiny impact is a cataclysmic blow to the artist community that will never be recovered from. When the tumblr exodus happened "the art community" cried out about their entire careers being destroyed meanwhile nowadays on twitter their art is seeing 10x - 100x the traffic it saw on tumblr. Note: Artists =/= "The art community" I'm specifically referring to terminally online artists that barely even have a stake in it as a career as they just draw and publish free art. Real industry artists use and abuse every single tool available to them. There isn't an industry artist out there that doesn't use quick 3d modeling to plot out perspectives and storyboards. Not to mention the amount of industry artists that photobash, which is arguable more stealing than AI art since the "stolen" artwork is DIRECTLY incorporated into the final piece, where AI literally makes up an image from scratch and references it against its library. Note: Photobashing totally legitimate and this isn't meant to be a take against photobashing.
@@Sammysapphira I feel for all professions affected by AI, hence why I never use self checkout but comparing artists who have spent years learning anatomy, perspective composition, lighting, texturing and everything else that goes into creating art to working at a cash register or driving a truck is laughable.
I always see proponents for AI art as another tool to extend and express themselves. They would justify the AI that generates these images from other artists work to create that unique piece which is no different than artist copying the ideas from other artists that has been done for centuries. But that is the difference, people still have to be an artist to create or replicate that work and learn from it. For the proponents, you didn't need to study composition, colours, human anatomy, paint patterns, textures and milliard of other techniques to get to the final products that we see today. To be creative is already a unique human feat unto itself. What I see are text prompts, that is not creative, that is merely a detailed description of what you want to see. You have no control over the final outcome and it is a generative gamble and what looks best. You are not creative, you are merely doing a Google search 2.0.
Yes, indeed. It is more like being an art director than an artist. In some ways, there are parallels with art schools becoming very focused on conceptual art - you had to be good at coming up with concepts and ideas, and yet people could leave art school after 4 years unable to draw, hence a resurgence in interest in traditional atelier art skills. AI could be seen as concept rather than skill, taken to the next level.
Great video. Thank you for taking the time to make it, I'm 4/5 of the way through at the moment, and I felt the need to stop and acknowledge that I agree that James Gurney's take on AI is confusing, and I would continue that it borders on mildly infuriating. James is one of the reasons I started taking art seriously, and I love both of his books and respect his style of teaching so immensely, so to hear him have that opinion on specific styles as well as the video he put out earlier this year that only paints AI image generation as a fun novelty that will only be used altruistically as a tool for artists is embarrassingly myopic.
Thank you! Yeah, likewise - huge respect for JG, but I think he is maybe in a position where he is so well established it is of little direct threat to him perhaps, and he is very generous with the sharing of training and inspiration so I get some of the sentiment. But, hey, who knew the internet could throw up different opinions ...
How do you copyright a style? That's frankly absurd and the fact that you even entertain the idea of copyrighting a style is disgustingly narrow-minded and greedy. Saying that you should be able to copyright a style is like saying you should be able to copyright a vocal range, or a music genre. It DESTROYS the creative marketplace of ideas and iteration and improvement. Not to mention even the idea of copyrighting a style in legal paper being a complete and utter nightmare because of how loosely defined a "style" is. If styles could be copyrighted, you wouldn't be drawing. Nobody would ever be able to draw a cartoon character because Disney would have copyrighted the concept of cartoon characters.
@@SammysapphiraI agree that trying to prevent copying of style seems impossible or would be creatively oppressive, even if possible. However, think of the analogous concerns in the music world where copyright protects music artists against outright theft, derivative works & even sampling of subtracks. First, we could agree that AI art databases be opt-in for living artists. Separately, artists should be able to opt-out of prompts i.e. Michael Whelon could choose to be represented in a database but stipulate that nobody be able to prompt explicitly for images "in the style of Michael Whelon." Third, artists could stipulate that no image be produced predominately based on one artist or very few images of one artist. That would make it harder to hack a prompt that singles out one artist's work to to be mimicked even if the artist isn't named explicitly. Those measures could preserve artists' visual identity w/out squelching re-mix creativity or foolishly attempting outright prohibition of AI tools. Lastly, think of another solution from audio tapes. When cassettes became ubiquitous, artists (ok, mostly greedy studios) feared rampant piracy. So, they brokered an agreement that X cents from every blank tape sold would be paid into pool to compensate artists. Likewise, we could mandate a surcharge on every generated AI image that would be paid as royalties back to artists. This is fair because of the thousands of images that might be generated from someone's work as drafts, for fun, for personal use, very, very few will ever be "sold" in a way that would've taken revenue away from living artists, yet artists would get paid from that volume.
Effort should be protected and compensated, art should not be private property. Capitalism is cancer, and AI ideology is a product of the parasitical consumerism and debasement of the working classes.
Great video! I appreciate the time it took you to put this together. More than anything I hope this technology does not discourage artists from trying to develop and refine their craft. I have been personally feeling the existential crisis for the last few months.
I spend alot of time thinking how something is going to come out along with my procrastination and not having time to experiment. No time to waste. This is just another tool in your tool box. Get your take off then start rollin.
@@santiagopino2407 Really good point! I am going to do a video specifically on traditional artists incorporating AI into the workflow - as you say, anything to help get momentum is good!
An extremely well rounded and well considered overview. Well done. I found your commentary on "style as a brand" and the associated issues around having a recognised style of art, and that being referenced/ripped off particularly compelling. These are the considerations that should have had frameworks put around them well before the Genie got out of the bottle. And this is the inherent and fundamental problem with AI.
Thanks, much appreciated. I think the problem is that AI Art is part of bigger research, so they never really stopped to try and work out the implications of how it might be used. Hopefully, the more people become aware of the implications the more pressure can be exerted and we can improve things retrospectively.
The problem i have with this is that style is simply not copyrightable and for good reason. There are simply only so many styles in existence. Many who claim uniqueness can find another artist somewhere else with a very similar style. If we started to copyright styles, then art would die faster that way than from AI takeover. New artists would almost never be able to go commercial bc again, almost every style can be seen as similar to another style out there. That said, I think putting a brand behind your style is smart and simple business wisdom. Pixar for example has a very clear style and whenever their brand is mentioned that style follows suit. That however doesn’t mean other 3D animations cannot exist with similar styles, because we all know they do. The only thing that similar style can’t do is call itself Pixar bc that brand and it’s name is copyrighted. Nonetheless, these are just my thoughts. And none of this is to advocate for AI art. Just me disagreeing with that specific point made in the video.
I will chime in as someone who both Has spent eleven years learning how to draw And Has invested hundreds of hours into the study and application of A.I. I think people who say "A.i. will COMPLETELY replace artists " have their head up their bum People who say "nothing will change" are in the same position A.I. is a fantastic drafting tool. You can make an absurd number of things quickly and cheaply...but it is, really bad, at making something specific and deliberately A friend of mine runs a small-time online comic. He wanted to create some promotional artwork , and so me and my friends sat down to do that. There were four of us. Our goal was essentially to make a pinup with his comics main character I was using novel a.i., my comic friend was using anything v-3, and another person was using midjourney. After about two hours, between the three of us, we made hundreds of images. I can say with confidence we made some beautiful art. I was the most meticulous of the bunch, I "only" made 43- 47 images (a few were essentially identical to eachother so I'm not sure if I should count them or not tbh). I am very deliberate when working with a.i. scientifically taking notes as I work, recording prompts, editing as little as I could get away with. I can say with pride the judge said I made the best looking pieces But Not once did I make my friends character None of us did And the thing is I'm a digital speed painter, so is my comic friend. Either of us could have just painted the damn thing woth two hours. I think a major key to artists surviving this is : you are still an artist. You know how to draw and color and paint. I think many direct drawing jobs will be converted to editing jobs. Taking a a.i. piece and redrawing /editing it to meet standards Don't charge less when you do that! It took knowledge and expertise to turn the a.i. thing into what's actually wanted, don't charge less because someone changes your title
Great thoughts, thank you! Having listened to many more comments/videos since I made this I would agree with you that AI will "COMPLETELY replace (ALL) Artists (in all circumstances)" is an extreme. At the risk of having my head up my bum (not the first time I have been accused of that :-) ) I would say now "that in the next few years, as AI Art continues to develop, AI will replace A LOT of ARTIST ROLES, in some (but not all) situations". I agree with you that directing, editing, and retouching is likely to become a bigger role going forward
@BasementPicasso yeah, it's probably worth noting the difference between free Lance commission work and company work The response by companies seems largely to have been " we won't replace you but we expect you to learn how to use this" Vs free Lance comms Where the response has been a borderline violent rejection of a.i.
Very well made video about this topic! And well spoken. I have already seen album covers using AI instead of an artist and I feel dread actually. I see my jobs in certain areas that I want to push on into, being possibly denied due to a couple strikes with the keyboard. And that is just a drop in the vast sea of trouble this will create in the future for working artists.
Not every musician can afford an artist and licensing and distribution rights to sell their music. It's a tool for the poor. Imagine being a nearly homeless 19 year old musician struggling to put out your fist album.
@@Sammysapphira That's not an excuse. I was that musician not long ago who couldn't afford a producer. Slowly earned how to produce and got better in time. Alternatively, there are social media. Reach out to people and build real connections. Distribution? There are various platforms totally free to promote and sell music. But knowing that AI is affecting artists in a negative light and not caring, makes me wonder why should artists care for those in need too 🤔
I believe that in the future copyrights of creative works should include Data Intelligence. You would own the art that you create and all of the data intelligence contained in it.
Unfortunately, the evolution of AI is along every conceivable dimension. The singularity will entirely subsume our reality, and all concomitant systems. Essentially, there is nothing left for us to do. It's like meeting an extraterrestrial race that is billions of years ahead. They would leave us nothing left to question, and the only hope we would have of continuing in any worthwhile way would be through total communion. That is, assuming the capacity for rapid ascension to their level even existed (and they felt like sharing) we could then join them in whatever they had left to explore.
I’m a bit late to this video but you have a new subscriber, this was the best breakdown I’ve seen on the situation coming from an artist’s perspective. I’ve followed machine learning for 6 years, worked with it back in the day, but also my Mom was an artist. I see the grim posts in comments sections on artist UA-cam videos, and honestly while I mess around with AI art for my own enjoyment, because I can’t draw a damn stick figure but would like to see my imagination, I don’t think I’m an artist and would never sell what I make, just show it to friends and family. The thing I’m trying to tell artists though, as someone who knows machine learning, the genie is out of the bottle, the cat’s out of the bag. Stable Diffusion is open source, can be run locally, and is literally improving every day. No amount of copyright lawsuits (which would grind through the courts for years), no laws, no international agreements can stop this. The number of AI images already created is in the billions, by the end of next year, more images will have been created by AI then on the internet made by humans, then AI can be trained by images made by AI, how the hell would you determine that copyright? With love to the artists, so art for art’s sake. My Mom was a painter, which I guess will be safe for a bit, but there is no way to stop what’s coming.
Thanks, and well said. I am planning a follow on video about the impact of AI specifically on traditional artists, which as you say is safe(r) for now ...
@@BasementPicasso The ‘for now’ part is important. When I used machine learning it was at a 3D printing company, that was ages ago but even at that time I realized sculpters weren’t safe. Hell I was in high end tech sales and explained to my boss how even the people selling the AI could be replaced by AI. I’ve been trying to warn artists about this for years, they never listened, thought it’d be truck drivers first, etc. I usually don’t post on UA-cam, but this is important to me, people need to understand what is, and what’s coming.
This is far and away the most thoughtful video on the topic, besides Dave McKean's video, and it is because your perspective is situated right at the intersection where these topics are presenting the most significant disruption - really appreciate the video, nice work.
Thanks for the support & huge thanks for pointing me to the Dave McKean video - it is brilliant. Took me back to "Stray Toasters" by Bill Siekiewicz which was part of the era that got me into comic art in the first place!
Thank you for this interesting essay and all the time you invested in it! This happened in part because there is no Artist Union that could combat the unfair use. This was already apparent many years ago, because of the general attitude of this industry. Very few individual artists know how to work with licensing, and they are just glad to have a job, in my experience. In this regard, I totally agree with your statement. The music industry is a very interesting field to observe because of the resources of the big publishers. On the other side of the spectrum, you have the apparel industry which is devoid of any copyright (aside from Germany, but only for materials and not for patterns). AFAIK, it's seen as a compliment to the original designer if your product gets copied without changes. But that pushes the designers to be constantly at the forefront of any trend. One point I would question is the copyright of "style". I tend to side with Gurney. I'd feel restricted, not able to explore other styles, if this means that I can't establish a copyrightable style. And I also pick many different stylistic devices from other artists to recombine them to my own style. Where would you draw the line between infringement and inspiration, since this is a natural progression for any artist in my opinion. There is currently a precedent case going on about the use of copyrighted code for training an AI. Microsoft, Open AI and Github are being sued. This could be a basis for the proper handling of this technology in the future (not sure if you mentioned that). www.theverge.com/2022/11/8/23446821/microsoft-openai-github-copilot-class-action-lawsuit-ai-copyright-violation-training-data Personally, I always dreamed to have AI as an assistant. I'd love to have the options to train it to produce artworks in my own style and take away as much mundane work as possible. I hope to lift bigger projects as a "bedroom art director". Furthermore, I feel that AI works very similarly to an organic artistic approach in terms of method as well as perception, hence why it is so effective. That's also a point you described in an interesting anecdote. At the same time, I am deeply unhappy how the treatment of training data has been handled so far and who gained money from it. Last words: I understand artists that have spent decades developing their craft and now being confronted with this machine, I am one of them. Psychologically, that is highly irritating. It depends on whether you positioned yourself as a service provider or an artist with a brand. In the latter, that might work for you as an advantage, since it's a multiplier and you can attach your name/brand to the output. As a service provider, you have constantly to be ready for new technology and adapt it into your workflow, or shift your expertise.
Hey, thanks for sharing so many thoughts. In terms of the copyright of style, I have no problem whatsoever with learning from someone, doing master copies, or incorporating bits of what you learn from their style as you develop your own. The line for me is clear - putting another artist's name in a generator and then passing that subsequent picture off as your own is, to me, theft of style. The computer code is interesting because AI trained on code can generate code that is almost identical (byte for byte). Amazon tries to deal with that using suggested attribution which is a big step in an ethical direction. Maybe if AI generators watermarked an image with "generated after {ARTIST NAME}" when a specific name is used, like a master copy, that might be a step in the right direction.
@@BasementPicasso Got your Point concerning the stlye-coypright now! I really appreciate your suggestions for a more fair use, and it seems really reasonable to me. A little bit in line of the CC BY License. The same goes for the suggestions you made in the video, very good direction, and I hope at least some of them get implemented. Thanks for your Answer!
This vid is 4 months old and yet the best one i've seen so far about AI. Also the predictions are so actual! I wonder if you would add some new consideration regarding last months updates. Like Stability AI take on music and their controversal decision not to train on copyrighted music "to respect artists" while they didn't care disrupting visual art. Or the USCO positions about AI being not-employable and not copyrightable being not a human and the prompts being considered as art direction and "UI elements" instead of being "human creativity elements". I wonder if there's really a way to change that last statement "then you win", in a sense that commercial artists will still be able to build a solid career without being decimated, coexisting with this new technology instead of being eaten by it. Can rights win over money? But even in the best scenario, our job is gonna change forever and we might dislike at least a part of it. If i look at the bigger picture, considering all kind of AI being developed and distributed in the world, i have the disheartening feeling we're gonna face an era with new levels of false, constructed and carefully manufactured "reality" without a "take me out of this" button. Like having a fancy plastic bag over our heads.
Well said. Yes, I think we are in an era of very rapid change, and more questions than answers. The recent data on the likely job types and level of impact is quite eye-opening
great video, I hope more people see it. as for Art, I made art to make myself feel good. I've had depression all my life, Since I was little I kept saying I will never grow old because I don't want to be alive and it got worse once I lost the ability to draw because of the medication which made my hands shake. In the past few years I got back to art and I really can't say how much hope it gave me, for the first time in forever I could see a purpose in my life. Making people happy with my art. Then I saw the Midjourney discord and now all that pain is back. I feel like nothing. My life has no meaning. I have noting I can offer to the world. I don't know what the last words I'll writte will be or when, but it's harder and harder to hold on. I hate AI generators, not for me, I don't matter because I fundemantally hate myself, but I hate it because it's taking away so many people's love for art, it's stealing young artist's dreams.
Hi Anabel, thank you for sharing such an honest and open thought. As someone that has suffered from anxiety, on and off, for all of my adult life I can relate to everything you are saying. I often hoped that art would be an escape from the stress of the real world, but it is so hard to make it a release and a viable lifestyle/income. AI feels like another level that makes an escape even more challenging. What has helped me recently is just focusing on making art for myself. As the skills improve and I create more pieces that I actually like, I have gotten back to enjoying making art for the sake of it, and just enjoying the process, the peace and the satisfaction when something does work out well. Others have wisely commented, and something I myself now accept more is that nobody can steal the enjoyment of creating something simply for the pleasure of creating it. There have always been better artists, quicker artists etc - AI just seems to amplify that, but I have always encouraged people to be inspired by those that are better than us, and only compare ourselves to our previous work, and over time see our own improvement. I hope that these few words can offer you a tiny bit of comfort. Be kind to yourself, my thoughts are with you.
I use it as I would a photo library for creating covers and designs from multiple images. It is a wonderful a tool that randomly produces strange, often dazzling but mostly sterile imagery. The creative part comes in trying to adapt them, to give them some soul.
@djjjk Thanks. It is interesting to see how people who choose to use it are incorporating it into their workflows. I have been following Invoke AI for a while and the level of control it offers is extremely impressive. So much more than a text prompt and a random roll of the dice. But still just a tool. Like you say, finding something meaningful remains the challenge ...
Finally. this is the first nuanced take I've seen on this. Every other video I've seen on this topic has just been wildly showing only 1 side of the story
I really wished this had more views, you deliver the information clearly without taking any points with gut feelings. I see AI art as both incredible at results and as terrifying at creating because with unbound image generation a lot of fraud and malicious images can be resulted without any major image editing skill required. It's quite similar to what happened to disney animators when 3d movies started to go out, why would they spend so much making every drawing frame individually if you can reuse the 3d asset multiple times in multiple angles in a faster way
Thank you, most kind. Yes, a good example of the previous disruption. I think so many people don't appreciate just how quickly this is developing, and how transformative it will be ...
I think it goes beyond being more than a tool, it goes beyond being a worker, for the end consumer it is a whole product. So many things that would rely on an industry to produce will be able to be produced by the consumer themselves for free.
Yes indeed, the next 10-20 years are likely to see some significant shifts to what capitalism is and how people earn or pay for things, and what essentially becomes free
Thank you for posting this outstanding overview on AI and how it will impact people in creative fields like art and music. This primer on creative AI was a real eye opener to say the least! I have forwarded the link to this video to many of my artist friends who seem oblivious to the impact that this tech will have on society in general. You really did a great job of walking us through the history of automation in the publishing industry and how AI/automation has reached a tipping point. Tools and labor have now converged. That maybe the bigest take away from your report. That revelation really sank in. This scenario is fundamentally different from automation break throughs in the past. Thank you again so much for posting this marvelous work of investigative journalism!
Thanks Keith, that is very much appreciated, genuinely. Given how quickly AI (in all forms) is moving I think it is really important that people are aware and involved in the conversation as much as possible.
44:00 In addition to personalized book covers, you could offer full book illustrations to look at wile you read and maybe even custom voice narration. What's next, book to full movie?
Yes, inserting illustrations throughout - hadn't thought of that. And given the text-to-video progress being made, then book-to-video isn't too hard to imagine
Wonderful video, I'm constantly looking for discussion about this topic because I find it so fascinating. I'm glad this isn't another "NO AI" video because the amount of videos I've seen where people reject it and basically flat-out deny the impact (that it 100% guaranteed will have) on our society is astonishing. I definitely have concerns about how ethical it is and how it can be used for harmful purposes but losing jobs to me is the least of those worries. Jobs are always lost to automation and that's basically a constant in our modern world. So many people demonize it like it's a sin to use because artists are losing jobs. But my small anecdotal experience is that I have become way more interested in creating art with AI due to the barrier of entry being so low now. Also my editing skills in photoshop have improved immensely in only a short few months. I'm not making a profit from anything I do because I'm using the Art for my online Dungeons & Dragons games. It lets me realize a fictional world for a few bucks with hundreds of custom images where if I were to pay an artist for it I would have had to spend THOUSANDS of dollars. I don't get paid to play D&D with my friends and I think there are use-cases like that which are completely benign.
Thank you. I think your D&D use case is brilliant - that sort of non-commercial use seems perfectly fair to me. It becomes interesting when you take a step up and think of new-entry indie game developers, that might use it for icons, characters, card art etc, helping a game to get off the ground (that might never have been made otherwise) - good for the games industry and consumers maybe, but at the cost of artists that don't get the work. Personally, I can see the argument both ways for that.
I've been using it for my D&D games as well - if I wasn't, I'd be drawing the images myself (poorly). That said, commissions for character art are quite common. Players typically do it - they have one Character they're highly invested in, and often pay low to middling skilled digital artists anywhere from 20-100$ for a character portrait depending on skill. It's already a very saturated market, with more artists than are wanted and a race to the bottom in prices. I can imagine AI absolutely tanking that market- it already seems to be slowing down. As a dungeon master, I have hundreds of characters and relatively low investment in any of them - they're there to add color and facilitate the story only. I'd never pay for art, unless I were releasing a printed product.
I agree this is a threat to many jobs. However, I don't think the technology is the problem. I think the system is the problem, since while there are people and companies willing to put money first (instead of people's lives), this will keep happening no matter which new tools are created. The problem is capitalism, not the technology.
Yes, I think that is fair, it is driven by the relentless pursuit to improve, which means better and quicker processes, better use of labour, time-saving tools etc. In general, I am a free-market capitalist, as I think it does do a lot to drive our general standard forward, but it is always at a cost to some (or many) and I believe that there needs to be really strong (government) regulation to counterbalance the potential damage of rampant capitalism.
Thanks for the feedback. Yeah, I go through peaks and troughs with it as well. I hope facing it head-on, with eyes open, is better in the long run. I am still getting to grips with what it all means!
@@BasementPicasso I think artists do go through ups and downs about this, but at the end of the day I have to believe in what my wife keeps on telling me, that humans have a history of regulating things and that art has met many challenges through the decades but is still here.
I'd tried my best to completely ignore AI, because of all the boosterism, which seemed aimed more towards venture capital than for the likes of me. But I saw the artwork used by some small UA-camrs, who explained they couldn't have afforded regular artists, and the images looked great. I'd always wondered what sort of instructions they gave the AI, and your image at 1:24 explains it perfectly! AI taking over from artists and designers is only possible because the companies involved are allowed to break long-established rules regarding copyright. Tech companies always get a pass, no matter if they are providing taxis, or short stay accommodation, or many other business ventures. They are judged, and taxed, as being a *tech* company, and not a hotelier or taxi provider, which is extremely unfair on more established players.
Thank you! I totally agree - there is a lot of intrinsic value that has been appropriated if not directly stolen. I am very much for AI because the images and technology are amazing, but fair compensation going forward will be essential.
If Ai starts infiltrating creativity too much, then people will lose the wow factor. Artists are devalued so much already, you constantly hear people talking about digital effects artistry negatively, which is astonishing enough (I just watched war for the planet of the apes which was amazing craftsmanship), but in ten year's time the assumption will be that almost all digital content is completely Ai generated. No one will want to look at or listen to anything. Mabe it will repopularise galleries and live music? You might even get a decent price for your paintings! Let's hope so. Love your judge Dredd pages btw, Zarjaz! :) You should have used a book by AI rather than Moby Dick, I wonder who wants to read it no matter how ' good' it may technically be, people will become suspicious of all creative work, it's the death of all art perhaps.
I think you might well be right about galleries and live music - original art of all kinds, crafted by real people may become more sought after - will be interesting to see how it develops
I’m an aspiring traditional painter. I’ve been freaked out by AI image generators over the past few months. I wonder if it’d be legitimate to use it as a way to gather inspiration, or as part of one’s creative process. For instance using some to help make mock up images, in a sense supplying references for things . Although I’d still intend to mix and mash things and then paint them physically. Also, for me, it’s still important to have an aspect of technical skill when making art. Part of why I enjoy art is the pursuit of it and the physical engagement. I do think that AI will probably destroy my career before it even had a chance to start though, which is a bummer. Although, AI in general needs to be heavily regulated as it is an existential threat to all jobs. This is more than mere automation such as in a manufacturing environment.
Hi Preston, very good points. Yes, I think there are a lot of opportunities to use AI in the workflow (in an ethical way) and those with good technical skills will still tend to stand out. I will do a video on this soon
Amazing video. I watched the whole thing and have had similar experience. Thanks for making such a clear and balanced overview. I'm a professional artist working on high budget entertainment for 20 years, and had been at the "laugh at it" or amused by it, stage for a while. Then I saw things pop up that puzzled me in their execution, was it photobash? 3d render? It was labelled as AI generated an highly consistent, but I could not understand how an artist had not been heavily evolved, to get such a consistent and impressive result, and how that would not have been a massive amount of work. So I got into Midjourney myself, and initially thought of it as a tool I could implement as the v3 of MJ would create interesting things, but not something I would consider ready to present as a final piece by a long shot. Then I tried v4 which was recently released... It was no longer a tool, its a replacement. And yes its not only coming for artists. If it continues exponential into other fields, it seems to me it can decimate the working class, pushing them into a position of no jobs available, only manual labour that robotics either haven't caught up to, or humans will just be cheaper. I feel like an alarmist wearing a tinfoilhat typing this out, but its the only logical conclusion I can reach at this stage. My conclusion is that it is the greatest art theft in history. The double standard for the music industry speaks volumes. Things like overfitting highlight the problematic foundation of the tech, and the companies (LAION) business practice, using their non-profit research status to scrape ANY data they wanted, then pass it on to for-profit ai art generators, made any "for the greater good, we can't stop progress" statements pointless. The Concept Art Association in the US has launched a GoFundMe to fight the legal battle, and lawsuits are already happening against microsoft co-pilot ai. Will it be in time?
Great comment, thank you. I hadn't heard about the Concept Art association - I was aware of other potential legal battles so it will be really interesting to see what develops. Thanks again for the thoughts and input.
Very interesting video and I watched it all the way, it was very engaging. Certainly new information for me somewhat, I have heard about AI and done a few experiments of the free versions and had varying results. It is concerning and I don't think we can stop the train unfortunately. It was interesting to hear the views, as a fellow engineer, I started life as a firmware coder to now mainly do large site electrical infrastructure design etc. Athough I don't see it taking away the physical aspects of that job it certainly could be utilsed for the upfront design work eventually, all it really needs is enough data to learn from. I think that is where the art industry and the non-label music industry will suffer as the deviant arts, art stations, soundclouds etc. will all be used as big data. The data on construction and electrical engineering design just doesn't have the same bulk of information and obviously the consequences of getting these things wrong is not good. I do have a hope of "retiring" early and pursuing art/youtube to cover the bills, but this tech. does make me think twice, or how could I incorporate that into this path. Anyway I need to get back to engineering stuff now, thank you very much for this video, it clearly took a long time to put together along with a lot of research.
I agree - the data sets are a big part of the requirement. I had similar discussions in (IT) architecture recently - I can see AI doing architecture design in the future. Where you don't have the data sets you can potentially make up for it with simulation. An interesting space. thanks for the comments. good luck with your own art/youtube journey :-)
Wonderful job. I loved your brake-downs of the job flow for comic books and the book cover examples were fantastic! I have been fortunate enough to have done just about every type of job a professional artists can do over the span of my career - I am looking at all of them about to dissolve because of the lack of regulation of the outright theft of the worlds collective visual art. Humans will continue to make art of all kinds, but competition and pay have always been a driving force, and this will surely change the kinds of visual art we create. We still use horses for transportation but not like they did in the late 1800's. Thank you so much for all the hard work you put into this video, I am adding it to my favorites.
Thanks for the encouragement. Like the horse analogy. Ai is making me think about what it is I actually want to produce - an image, an object - so many questions, but I agree the human need to create remains constant, at least with me anyway
Thank you for making this video it help me to understand the difference between digital art that an artist used to make a picture and one that is AI-generated. I have seen art work generated by an AI program and some are awesome, but strange at the same time. It all depends on which date bases it pulls it date from, or what the tech person wants. I noticed that some of the images of male or female characters start to look the same or have the same pose, even when the characters are from different countries or ethnic backgrounds. My experience with digital and AI-generated art is through coloring books for adults. At the time I did not know they were generated art I just did not like the pictures for the people, animals, or buildings did not look right most seem to blend into the background, the sea life had fish with no tails, or more tails, oceans filled with junk/garbage, images were cut and just placed, rabbits with three ears, lambs with paws, animals with the wrong legs. people with odd looking hands less/more fingers. Which is why I am a bit concern in looking at your whale images, is it just me? or do the whale images look off?
I think you are absolutely right. At the point that I did the videos AI had a lot of "deformities", sausage fingers etc. Yes, absolutely, the whale covers do not stand up to close scrutiny indeed. What amazed me at the time though was what AI was doing in minutes, compared to what I could do in minutes! Like you say, some people are just taking AI art & bashing out colouring books on Amazon etc, making a fast buck and swamping the market, but I think quality will win through in the long run. AI is getting steadily better and artists are rapidly incorporating it to make a lot of incredible new work. It's not perfect, it's fraught with issues, but it is fascinating to see how it evolves.
I see the future jobs evolve, hiring art directors in the future, no longer the job title of "artists". Basically hiring people who already possess the skills of anatomy, language, perspective, color and light, creativity to correct and validate accuracy and styles required (possibly live drawing tests during job interview). These AI platforms will be used as tools just like photoshop or illustrator, or as plugins to stimulate inspirational starting points.
Very, very good video about AI art and its problems. I definitely think that artists should be compensated when their work is being incorporated into the AI art generation. The only way you could feasibly do this is to create an international artist register where you could register your art and also opt-in or -out into your art data (and that's really what is being used, not your actual pictures) being used for AI training. However, I'm not sure how this could be done. Think of just how many artists there are *worldwide*! And each and everyone would have to opt in or out. Even people that just post a regular photo on Facebook or Insta would have to register and opt in or out. Or you would have to write an algorithm that asks you every time that you upload a piece of visual data (photo, painting, drawing, photoshop concept... basically anything that is visual) whether you would be willing to allow an AI to scrape your data or not. Basically, we're already doing this by accepting cookies whenever we visit a website. We opt in or out to the use of our data by accepting or rejecting the cookies. The other aspect is the compensation for the use of your visual data. If it is done via some kind of data marker which marks your data as soon as it is uploaded, or through an international register, then there will still need to be some kind of value assigned to your data. Is my photo of my cat worth more, less or as much as an uploaded image of a painting by you? If that data gets scraped and then used in generating AI art, how much should one receive for each use? O.OOO1 $ per use? More? Less? I think it's not just the basic copyright problem that will need to be adressed. By the way, if you upload your art on some artist website, you often agree to let them use your data (and art) for all sorts of things. For example, DeviantArt has as part of its Terms and Services the following sentences: "DeviantArt does not claim ownership rights in Your Content. For the sole purpose of enabling us to make your Content available through the Service, you grant to DeviantArt a non-exclusive, royalty-free license to reproduce, distribute, re-format, store, prepare derivative works based on, and publicly display and perform Your Content." So... already, the moment you upload something to DA, you have given DA certain rights to use your work. Is that stopping people from posting on DA? No. Do they expect to be compensated on DA? Probably not. The only way to truly opt out of your data being used is by no longer supplying that data. What I do think should be possible is that certain prompts (like an artist's name) should either be blocked or should automatically generate revenue for that artist. You do something in the style of Banksy? Then Banksy automatically gets 0.0001 $ deposited into his/her/their PayPal account/bank account for each image created with that prompt. Is this doable? I have no idea, since I'm not an IT person. What I am is someone who is finally finding an artistic outlet for all those ideas that she hasn't been able to create over the last 60 years... And it's wonderful...
Fabulous comment - thank you. I think you have articulated the complexities and challenges of all this very nicely - it is technically feasible and equally hugely complex!
In a perfect world, but it's too late to untrained the AI models. They would have to delete and start from scratch and that's something I don't think they will do.
Agree, the cost of retraining is not insignificant, which then obviously makes opting out very hard. That is a strong argument for copyright free or opt-in only. But as you rightly say - whether they will do that is to be seen. At least the moral and ethical questions are gaining traction through discussions like this. If we don't raise it then they will definitely not do anything.
I found somewhat interesting how far from the prompt/briefing the result is in some cases, despite the graphical quality. In a way it's a little bit as if the AI was a miraculous virtuoso artist that wasn't quite fluent in the language of someone requesting a commission. Not that's like AI's Achilles' heel or something, it's not anything more than barely a temporary inconvenience. Interesting analogy of "do a picture such and such in the stile of Drew Struzan," with "do a music so and so as if it were sung by Madonna, Taylor Swift, and Beyoncé." I can only hope that somehow music artist industry could set some sort of case-law that would apply to graphic arts as well. Maybe graphic artists should find some way to come up with some AI that would assess the style of pieces and that could be used to aid in disputes against AI-made art that incurs in this stylistic/identity theft. Although it could be interesting to have a different standard for human "style copycats," not that's totally okay and not to be frowned upon to some degree, maybe even to a larger degree than is usually done (which often has some lee-way for beginners and legitimate influence/homage, and, to a lesser degree, clients' requests), but at least the individual human output is something to which the true original artist can compete, besides more likely possibly having the reputation of being the true owner of a style or set of ideas, even if in a broader sense not strictly protected by copyrights (maybe not even truly possible to define in terms of law), but really more a thing of etiquette and honor of good principles. Whereas with AI, I could well be an unpublished artist today, come up with some style and thematic choice, produce some pieces, publish, and before I know it, before barely anyone sees my work, someone sees it and "trains" an AI in the same style and prompts for dozens of similar vaguely-related thematic choices, that could otherwise be associated as "my thing." A similar kind of copy-catting can even happen without AI, but at lest the true original artist stands a chance, even in this short-attention-span world of tweeter and quick "likes."
I agree - the potential speed of copycatting is alarming. One of my suggestions would be automatic protection of new work for say 5 to 10 years to prevent AI from being trained on it & allow the artist time to benefit from their new IP. Whether that could ever be feasible or not is a tricky question though!
@@BasementPicasso But what if the artist themselves train the AI with their Art in various styles(there are already models that are trained by artists themselves btw). What if that style resembles other artist styles?
I was shooting some photographs with my film camera, but when I went to get the film developed I noticed that I couldn't find many around. It looks like the convenience of digital, and camera phones helped them disappear. It made me depend more on digital cameras. Did it get me angry. No. It's easier. I don't have to wait for the pictures. Just upload them into the laptop, and that's all. I use every tool for creating my art. AI is one of them.
Thank you. I am an emerging artist, a recent art school graduate trying to find my first job in 3D Modeling and Animation. I am truly scared. Between what I've been leaning about AI filters in HR to now this, the future isn't so bright. Your video did give me some hope though so thank you. I haven't tried any AI (outside content aware fill in Photoshop) just because of the pure ethical implications. I guess I'll have to find a way to adapt because ultimately AI doesn't care about feelings or ethics. I'm just curious, do you think or know if AI generated images are copyright protected by their generators or by the AI if no artist name or style is included in a prompt? Will artists ever be copyright protected again unless it is an actual physical piece of art? Everyone should be signing their Metadata for all their images.
Hello, I’m an aspiring traditional painter. I graduated in 2018, but I empathize with your fears. This freaks me out too. I’m not keen on the digital side of things. But I agree, I think we artists are probably going to find a way to incorporate this stuff into our work-flow whilst still being creative ourselves. Also, I’ve heard some people mention that artists should utilize the Block-Chain to authenticate their digital stuff in the future. But I’m not sure exactly what that means or how it would be done. For instance, how does one sign their metadata? If make a physical painting and then post a photo of it online, how do I very I’m the creator online?
Who owns the copyright of an image generated by AI will be an interesting debate. Can you copyright the text prompt used? etc. many questions. Next 6-18 months will be testing this in court. I think artists can and will still own the copyright of their original creations, but protecting that right may be more challenging.
That is what "Minting" NFTs is all about - making a verifiable digital asset that proves ownership. That is more robust than any form of image meta-data I believe, and I think artists will need to seriously think about minting images before they make them public, even if they don't plan to sell the digital asset.
@@BasementPicasso that could also be a good topic for you to post on. I know how to assign copyright in the Metadata in photoshop but I don't think many people do and I don't know how to "mint". Could you share that with the community? I'm starting to think of ways to approach AI ethically ie not using other artist's styles and only feeding it my own work using image to image. I'm wondering if that is viable. I think that is the biggest conundrum for me - even though styles are not protected under copyright law, style is the fingerprint of the artist's identity. Artist's explore other artist's styles all the time but this feels more to me like theft - derivative rather than transformative - but it's happening at the most minute pixel level so it appears like there is substantial transformation happening. I wish there was an easier answer for this moral dilemma. Thank you
@@prestonowens4594 you access your Metadata in your images in photoshop. I just asked @basementpicasso how to "mint" your work similarly to NFT's and hopefully he'll show us how that is done. I would love to see your work - keep painting
As a consumer I'd rather have a blank book cover than a cover that has what appears to be a human expression of how Moby Dick made them feel but is not actually that at all. To take things a step further, why pay for an editor or someone to write a new book? At that point why does the potential consumer need a book publisher? You could have an ai write you your own book on demand complete with a book cover.
As an retired software engineer and now trying to be an computerize artist, I find AI to be offensive to Artists and also software industry. I believe in later part of review, industry needs some type of rules to protect users. This video starts highlighted in one industry that is serious concern is the music industry. The biggest concern is that is not real and should have some kind of watermark stating that AI generatred. Nano pixel technology in Rebelle Pro maybe key so that watermark stating that it was produced by AI.
@stewarthyde5111 yes, watermarking could be a big help - but it will depend on how easily it can be removed or tampered with - it's an interesting area that is developing so I will be keeping an eye on that sort of technology.
Having spent over 30 years trying to learn my craft, I don't think I have ever felt "chosen" in that sense, other than being lucky enough to be gifted with a passion for art. But I completely agree, it is here to stay and it will fascinating to see how it develops and what people can create with it
@@BasementPicasso you aren’t chosen one then. I was talking about those who are well known. Now many can create. Power to all people. Imagination can run wild. This is imagination on steroids.
Hopefully, you know my comment was tongue-in-cheek! As someone that still does traditional art as well, I do take art material health and safety seriously!
The way you explained it as not just another tool made so much sense. Personally, human art shows way more than AI...AI just skips the creative process, imagination, skill, makes it boring to look at, why follow an artist if they are uncreative, unskilled or too lazy to do the work and rely solely on AI? It's really not something I enjoy looking at...just like I don't enjoy Jackson Pollock or Andy Warhol either. Commercially though...after they settle the fair-use and copyright thing, I guess we'll have to wait? Can't imagine Disney, or other big companies being happy with their own IPs being used to train AI though. When we all can steal from anyone, and when everyone can do it, it feels like it's going to become a nightmare if they just allow it willy nilly? Also the idea of protecting peope and their style/personal brand/identity is something that can be mentioned more often, usually didn't really think about it. Regardless, you absolutely deserve way more views than you have! Might I recommend a video and maybe several artists that can help? The Concept Art Association made two town hall videos about it, and several people are allowed to join in and ask questions. The latest video with two lawyers and an AI engineer was really insightful. Alongside opinions from artists like Greg Rutkowski, Craig Mullins and Karla Ortiz. Made me glad AI ethics institutes are paying attention actually. Thank you for the level headed and insightful views!
Thanks for the feedback, and also for the suggestions - I will have a look - I am very interested to see how this develops and get other people's thoughts on it.
all those images are recreations of previous work. It is like drawing something from memory, but is it really original art? I guess one thing which would consist of original art is training your own model on your own art work.
I have some good examples on UA-cam of people demonstrating the uniqueness (e.g. Motorbike - bull) where the images look like nothing created before, so I am convinced it can genuinely create. I think you are right about potentially training your own model on your own work - that is a really interesting space that some people are already exploring!
@@BasementPicasso all the images are not created by AI, they are created through settings you input into the AI. It is possible for 2 people to use AI, and "create" the same image, if they use the same prompt and settings. I will be using AI to create my album art though. But I will be doing a rough sketch and then placing that sketch into the algorithm for the AI to finish.
@@BasementPicasso A lot, depending on what I'm doing. Sometimes I'll use it just for design and just draw a cover anyway, but I've also done some things that look great as they are (I just did a video about one the other day), but I still have to go in and correct things like fingers and extra limbs and such when they occur, I love working with AI and it's kind of addictive. Also I can ask the programs replicate my style and it seems the two programs I use recognizes it (I have stuff on DA and other places so I'm assuming it's grabbing info from those sources) which makes things easy for matching up.
Ai could change the entire structure of society to the point where 90% of the people don't have to work and those who do work want to live in luxury. Making money as an artist might be impossible in the future, But it might also not even matter since everyones able to live comfortably and do what they love. I can see some sort of tax being implemented so companies pay a tax instead of payroll. Then we get universal income and everyone can afford to live in a apartment and actually save up money over a couple years to move into a house. Robots will be building houses 100 times faster than humans.
Yes, completely agree - these are the broader challenges that AI, robotics and automation, in general, are going to cause. I tried not to go too far into the broader societal impact as I think the art debate is effectively a bit of a microcosm of that debate, which is why it is so important to be discussing it.
Completely agree their eventually going to introduce UBI universal basic income. Eventually nobody will have to work. We can just do whatever we want. There won't be any people to work anymore. When machines can just do it faster, cheaper and more safely
the problem with tools is not that the threaten jobs it is that they change where the money goes if I have a tool that cost 1 milion $ to make and I need to have one worker the productivity is not going to the worker it is going to the owner of the tool. To conclude creative destruction doesn't get rid of jobs (because there is always something to do) it just makes it so that people with money make money faster and less goes to the workers. other than that they can also have sort term effect because of education.
Yeah, that is a fair point. i think in some ways there is always a "business opportunity" to insert something between an existing business and it's customers - JustEat for example, making profit whilst producing no food ...
I honestly don't think people will work in the future. I think AI will do everything for us and maybe like 1% of the population will actually have a job
We should understand the different between creat art or generated an artwork. I will never call the artwork which I generated by AI as artwork creat by me.
I think that is a very honest and ethical position to take, however, the challenge is that if you post that work (e.g. Instagram), and even if you carefully label it (as many are doing) as "generated by AI" or the like, many viewers scrolling by may not see that, or really not take it in, so they will still (in their mind) attribute the work to you. As feeds fill up with AI-generated images, people will simply judge each of them as to whether they "like" it or not.
What i love with AI art an AI in general is that people just stop at "will it replace artists ?" but dont understand what consequences it has for all, espcially its own creators. Indeed, unemployment problem aside, if one AI artist can do the job of 1000 like you said, then you'd need to buy just one pc for him, compared to 1000 like before. So CPUs, GPUs etc. market will drop by 1000 because of the AI they created themselves lol... what the best way to gain trust from your investors. Its just basic ecnomy. The less human time needed to work on a pc, the less demand there will be, and the more the AI market will drop. So AI can't replace us without destroying its own market basically. So I think AI has no future.
Yes, I think there are interesting consequences like AI ingesting more and more AI-generated articles and AI-generated images in a weird reinforcing loop!
Great vid, unfortunately I don't think there's any aspect of style that can be distinguished as unique ,when consulting billions of images. And even if there was , an artist would be constrained to incorporate this signature element. Even now , some person unable to draw a string can develop a book cover using the ai, and there's no certainty, that the product wouldn't be most appealing. Moreover ,the huge difference in speed and price for ai art , may render ones stylistic quirks entirely moot. Odds are, the public discernment of quality is not going to be appreciative enough to choose handmade over generated material. Fact is, I don't care if the jelly jar is glass or plastic. The issue of replacement is going to hit us all. Imagine a reader selecting a title ,after which an AI inserts a story and monitors pupil size to determine which elements would be most appealing, in real-time, at the speed of light. The ai won't have to steal from Melville , and the basis of common culture will go out the window.
If a style isn't (in some way) unique, then I don't think people would need to add an artist's name to the prompt. There is a concern that better results are generated when the prompt contains the name of established top-tier artists, so the result isn't based on a simple mash-up of all the 5 billion images, but is instead heavily leveraging that particular artist's work. I completely agree with your thoughts about public-perspective though - will people care & does it matter
Well, in the US anyway, you can't copyright AI art, so it will be less attractive to comicbook companies than human art. Afterall, can you imagine Marvel not being able to do anything about sites making their comics available for free or even selling them for less?
Yeah, I am watching all the unfolding copyright battles play out. The US decision is very interesting (and generally good news), but I am sure there is a lot more to come ...
@@BasementPicasso Yeah, I really think artists aren't going to lose their shirts over this in the long run. They will get less work from vanity/non-commercial projects though.
I clicked this video because I've been clicking art channels on UA-cam to watch them ABSOLUTELY PANIC about how good AI has gotten so quickly. MOST are very, very against it, calling for regulation and government intervention. I was pleased to find a level-headed, realistic analysis of what AI image generation could mean in the near future instead, as well as a very apt comparison to how traditional art was effected by the rise of digital art in the past 30 years or so. My own opinion is that the time for objection is long since past. Pandora's box is open. Our AI powered future is already here, and people are going to have to adapt, and quickly.
Thanks Ryan, yes, I really wanted to avoid the doom and gloom approach and try to keep it balanced. Like you say there is little chance of going back, so we need sensible conversation about how to go forward.
Just what is the alternative? If AI actually gives better results than human work, should we consciously agree to a lower quality of services to protect jobs? Consciously take a step back into the early years of the industrial revolution? Introduce protectionism for handicrafts to protect artists? And why only artists, why didn't we protect workers, typesetters, representatives of hundreds of professions that technology has wiped out? It happened every time, from the printing press, the steam engine, photography, computers... All these inventions (now tame) to a section of society seemed at first to be evil incarnate, while others saw them as useful tools. AI is a logical consequence of earlier choices, it only closes the process of the industrial revolution. Maybe it's time to remember what it was supposed to be used for...
Yes, that is very much the bigger question with AI. My role as an Enterprise Architect didn't exist 100 years ago - barely 50 years ago. technical, scientific & industrial revolution and progress have tended to go hand in hand with the creation of new job types (not just job vacancies). For a long time, manual labour was replaced increasingly by some form of knowledge work. The big question with AI is when robotics & automation (largely) replace all the manual jobs & AI can (largely) replace all the knowledge worker & creative jobs, what does society, work & money etc. start to look like. I don't have any issues with AI development in general or in the long term. My main concern just now is that within art, the data sets (images) were not obtained with permission. If they had been - I would have no issues. The coming years will be very interesting as this develops
the moby dick experiment was stunning my friend. thanks for posting this, i didnt even blink while watching, i forgot to roll a ciggy, and forgot it was 6am and time to go to work, i took a day off, i said im sick, and i was, still am :))))) (confused asbestos simple remover here, living in thamesmead, working in newham for newham :) but trying to play with art - now - your video discouraged me for the next 50 years to try and make art -))) the impact makes me go out look for some strong painkillers and the strongest whysky i can find - probably triple distilled irish . )))) thanks for the video. happy holidays
Thanks for the feedback. AI art has really changed how I think about the art that I do and what I want to do. It has made me more focussed on the process of creating and making rather than the end product, but for full time artists it really is having a big impact
My head must have been truly buried in the sand for the last few years. I had heard about AI Art but never looked into it because basically all digital art that I have ever done is Computer Aided art, even if we compose art in imaging programs and then use the constructed images for reference in traditional painting techniques. There are no hard and fast lines, though, between computer aided art painted in Corel Painter, Rebelle, Procreat or whatever becasue we, as artists, are still making decisions about what we intend to do in a painting. So I had to have a fiddle with some of the AI art programs you mentioned in this video and found many of them somewhat daunting until I realized there are many more artist friendly options recommended by AI ART reviewers. I was mostly attracted to NightCafe as a starting point. I wanted a service that would use my original images as starting points for stylized paintings I would then attempt in Rebelle, but quickly found some of the results of my inexperienced efforts resulted in "painted" imagery I would struggle to create as well as the AI service and certainly done so much more quickly.. That said, I still enjoy brushing paint onto a canvas or board, but I am still more likely to paint digitally for self satisfaction (undo's are my best friend). In my opinion AI Art tends to look something like over-saturated and manipulted Photoshop sunsets, or like filtered images that are just too perfect to be real. I will continue to play with some of the AI Art services, but quite frankly I would rather watch you paint in your videos and see if I can get some of your knowledge and experience to stick to me. Since I am only a hobby artist, I don't worry about the changes taking place in the art world. I am sure AI Art will become more sophisticated and popular with time, but unlike the demise of film cameras I don't think it is time to give up on the joy of slopping paint onto a canvas or scratching madly away on a Wacom tablet. What I really need now is a lesson in editing the verbosity out of my comments. Thank you for your great Rebelle tutorials. I am thoroughly enjoying them.👍👍
Thanks Wardie for the encouragement and support, much appreciated, and yes i completely agree, while Ai is doing some amazing stuff I still simply enjoy and prefer hand-painted work & the process of creating it. I may well incorporate some AI into the workflow, but my videos going forward will mainly be "hand" painted digital work. PS I really like reading the comments - the longer the better !! :-)
@@BasementPicasso __I am slowly getting my head wrapped around the "threat" of AI-generated art. A quote that I read recently: " AI will not replace artists. Artists with AI will." For me personally, the ability to generate imagery that I may then want to commit to canvas, whether it be traditional or digital in execution, is exciting. I'll take a few courses on AI in SkillShare and see how I feel about things in a week or two, and then come back to revisit your videos for real inspiration in Rebelle.
The ai imaging is not creative even if it may appear to be so to humans. Chat bot algorithms from several years ago that were kind of bad had the ability to fool humans into personifying the chat bot in its early and rather limited days. Those type of creative assumptions brought on by the sci-fi we’ve consumed in the past, to me that proves that the human mind is much more creative than any machine for better and for worse. All of these things are large language models that average the training data and try to match the output to the words you’ve typed in. Algorithms have been doing this sort of thing for a while with numbers or other things, it just seems a lot crazier when it’s images or videos.
At the moment they're banning the use of AI in a lot of game development like the big video game companies. Same thing with steam. They don't want anything that's AI on their store. I'm sure because of all the legal implications and copyright stuff. But once things aren't so murky anymore, I'm pretty sure that a lot of industries will start using AI more and they'll replace a lot of their staff. They'll probably keep a couple employees but I'm sure their teams will be cut in half because they just won't need that many people. I think AI has only been in development for like less than 10 years and it's already incredibly good. One of the reasons that they don't use it in concept art in games is because they need to get consistent results like for it to draw the same thing over and over like with character model sheets and every time it tries to draw them they're slightly different so it's not very useful for game development. Ai has already started to replace entry level positions at animation studios.
@williammclean6594 Yes, absolutely. I saw something recently that over 40% of people surveyed in game studios said that AI generative tools are already being used in some form - it is only a matter of time. And consistency is rapidly being solved with latent consistent models that can generate the same character or keeps large parts of an image the same etc.
@@waterisaneurotoxin7788 Thanks - yes, I think you are right - royalty rates tend to be pretty low, but they can build up significantly over time. I remember Cam Kennedy being (pleasantly) surprised at the royalties of the star wars comic I think it was
I was thinking too that this was a well done presentation and how many hours you must have thought about it and put it together and since then only a few weeks ago ChatGPT came out how it would have probably organized your ideas, give you suggestions, and let it present it logically etc and cut your time probably 2/3s, and to take your system and tweak it and update etc and it for you in a few minutes. Such is the time we live in. I have a question though is what about multi artist prompts? Who gets compensated, and when many artists end up in a AI generated work so that their style is diluted is it yours to claim compensation because your style is not explicitly visible?. So is the case now. AI companies are going to be making billions and the legal teams they can afford, not to mention the momentum of AI as opposed to the probably years it would take to even bring this to some kinda legal bearing. Probably 40 years ago Playboy had no idea what was about to hit them with internet porn which (don’t quote me) is 70% of the internet and just a free for all, Wild West. It will I believe be, similar. That’s what scares me about AI. It will unleash thousand of genies out of a bottles as soon it’s released and then trying to herd cats legally (forgive my overuse of metaphors). Your solution also brings another problem if you exclude yourself from AI isn’t there a danger of you becoming irrelevant? If you have four people and one leaves it’s noticeable if you have a thousand people and one leaves it’s not noticeable. I can go on Artstation and see thousands of works of art, most look similar, but most of them won’t make any money. If you exclude yourself “who cares”. The Beatles make a ton of money from Spotify but Joes garage band is irrelevant, and if he quits Spotify will anybody notice? Won’t art be the same? I don’t want to be depressing but I have a sceptical nature that seems to look at solutions and poke holes in them which may be valuable. You don’t go to war without considering costs.
Thank you. Yes, the fact that ChatGPT came out so soon after just shows how quickly this is moving and advancing. It is why the arguments along the lines of - "it can't draw hands" (and is therefore no good) are severely short-sighted. So I completely agree with your point - how do artists stay relevant, get noticed, or ever make money in the future. These are some of the critical questions that need to be looked at from every direction.
Every average Joe will become an artist. The Key Is in what the ai does It makes an image based on words. If we look at writers poets they would use words as a tool and the reader would create an image in its mind so when they will realize that they dont need an average Joe Just a short phrase from a poem even these self proclaimed artists will loose their job. The fact Is that poetry or even writting Is a creative exercise for the reader that will bring out different unique styles in different readers . When you feed that into a machine you get a shallow world made of people who dont use their imagination and Just accept everything that Is sold to them. Ai Will create a mindless generation or perhaps a Revolution in thinking.
Metadata will become the artists best friend. You can store who created the digital art within its Metadata which can be used to validate authenticity. Human made art has intrinsic value which is what’s made it so valuable throughout history. AI art has no value.
Yes, I agree. I think there will be a trend back towards human made art by an artist you have some sort of connection with. It will hold more value. Images will become increasingly worthless
If the tools to create AI-generated music are open-sourced, then there isn't much that big companies can do to shut down development. The new music that uses copyrighted music will be driven underground, and people will seek it out out of curiosity. It's too late to go back now. All industries are threatened. Today it's the art world, then movies, then music, and lastly, the physical. First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out- Because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out- Because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out- Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me-and there was no one left to speak for me.
Yes, agree, the potential for disruption across almost every industry is quite significant. It's why I think people need to be aware of what is happening and get involved in the discussion
There are problems with style: Usually, people don't have 1 distinct style. It often evolves and usually many people try different styles as well. does that mean that you own all the styles and intermediate steps? I'm also afraid that regulating AI art will do more harm to artists than good. Large companies can just use the vast array of their own art to churn out cash grab after cash grab.
I agree that most styles are not unique and derive from other works. But the combination of the styles that an artist adopts plus their unique perspective etc. does represent something individual - so it's not a case of that person owning every contributing style - the concern for me is when you use that particular artist's name in a prompt, you are directly leveraging their particular style, and potentially producing a work that could be misinterpreted as being painted by them. That can be reinforced by the sharing of prompts, which then adds another image directly associated with their name, impacting search engine priority & diluting the pool of their actual real artwork. The concept art association legal discussion on the challenges of copyrighting style (you can't) was enlightening.
@@BasementPicasso I also found it interesting that you're an SA! I was also an SE/SA for 7 years in the areas of "big data" and ML, so I found your presentation very engaging. We shall see what the world of AI Art plays out in the art vs commerce areas. Personally I use AI art for commercial work, but still enjoy learning how to draw and paint. That is how I found your channel, through the Rebelle videos. I also think when it comes to "tools" it also comes down to the level of control. Right now, the output of AI can be very unpredictable. The same prompt will not repeat the same output. Maybe that type of control will be fixed in the future.
@@markanthonyart a fellow SA, nice :-) One of the things that kept me going in IT was the level of creativity to be found in solutions and designs - I do like a good diagram! Yes, it will be interesting to see how the interface & capabilities of the tool aspect develops. I will probably have a play with Stable Diffusion sometime soon. They really are developing at an incredible rate …
@Basement Picasso I just got SD installed this week. Pretty good. I didn't realize they censor certain keywords and can't generate certain content. I know midjourney and dalle censor certain prompts like celebrity names and such. But running open source on my own machine should not have those limitations! Lol. So it's not like a tool like photoshop where you can make anything you want. There is an aspect of censorship and lack of complete control.
The potential disruption from AI (not just for art specifically) will be significant - like millions of jobs displaced & major changes to society as we go forward. The intelligent, peaceful discussion about what we should do with AI is completely compatible with his moral and ethical framework and approach.
I think this year we will see lots of amazing AI tools that will make our lives easier. Those who can use these AI tools smartly will be the gainers. Recently I created amazing images with Blue Willow
And history repeats itself. Suffering is both the curse and the blessing of humanity. We naturally cannot appreciate what is granted to us, that's why we are born: to die. AI "art", like any revolution, is the death of tradition. It makes some aspects of life easier at the cost of misery. The funny thing about being human is, if we are constantly fed happiness and joy, our natural balance craves suffering. And if suffering doesn't come from outside, it will come from within. AI "art" is, again (you will see with time), the bifurcation of the same branch. - Some precursor branch gave birth to cave paintings. - Cave paintings became Symbols, which gave birth to Mathematics and Language. - Mathematics became Science, while Language became Culture. - Science diversified (losing some unfruitful branches) into Knowledge, while Culture grew stronger (also losing a couple branches along the way). Now these branches are taking over each other and sucking the life out of it (again, you'll see). Who am I to tell which branch should live and which should die, I simply know that sooner or later we'll have to pay for it. [My personal opinion is against AI "art", for Science has already achieved significant advancements and, for now, neither it can or should try to advance. A decade is not nearly enough time to explore any technological revolution, but one year is all it takes for everything to go wrong. Just saying...]
Companies companies companies.... laws laws laws.... You all forgot the pirates!!! Stable diffusion fits in 4GB. It can be run on a local normallish computer and it's open source( there's an asterix on that, but it doesn't matter here). And of course can set up a site with it. The generic model can be retrained for a specific purpose. They already did that for anime images( millions of images), that retraining cost a wopping.... 3000$. You can do your own limited retraining at home for a specific art style, a face, a specific object for a cup of coffee. To train the general model it cost them 600.000$. As long as you don't fundamentally change your strategy, you can keep training on top of it( you gradually overwrite the older training). So you can incrementally improve it, that price tag is misleading because it can be spread over many training sessions. So, you don't need a company to fully retrain it. Pirates could take dance diffusion (stable diffusion but for music) that is trained on free music and start training it on copyrighted music. It's just a matter of time. This is like bittorrent. The pirates will simply ignore all the laws and generate a gigantic torrent of pirate stuff for free. Attempting to ban this is as stupid as zero-covid in china. You can't just make stupid laws, they have to be enforceable too. And the pirate stuff will be superior to the legal stuff. All a pirate has to do, is snatch something, make some improvements, then dump it back in the internet. The cumulative effect and the variety is what will make them superior. 1)This is the end of copyright, and good riddance. 2)Additionally, images will stop been proof of anything. The pope will be in gay porn movies and the wealthiest man will be robbing banks... so no one will care if you are in a porn movie. 3)Probably the hardest part for society to swallow will be the virtual child porn torrent that will cause the decriminalization of simple possession of real child porn. How are you supposed to enforce current laws under this new environment. You are going to put some one in jail for years under these conditions? The supreme court will find it unconstitutional (violates proportionality). I'm surprised no one is seeing this coming.
Very good point - yes you are right I hadn't considered piracy & illegal use - I can see what you are saying. I do think new laws will come through, but they are notoriously far behind the technology & problem, and whether they prove useful in the long term will be the key question I think. Thanks for the thoughts.
@@BasementPicasso Well.... this subject goes far deeper then you realize. The real problem here, is how you see your self. AI were build by copying the animal brain. AI understands like humans or animals. Humans are biological "AI" made by natural selection. But this collides with most peoples ideology.
At the 10 minute mark when you mentioned tools . No One going to hire you to to use a e to prompt for them and there won't be any jobs to make more AI either because AI can just write more AI. Basically AI is just automation. They won't need anybody to run it for them. Like you said, it's a worker not a tool
@williammclean6594 Yes indeed. It is amazing and scary how things are moving forward even since I did that video. Collaborative AI bots working together (and AI swarms) will push that even further
@@BasementPicasso yeah it's scary. Not just with art but like it looks like AI is going to be the future where they want to automate most everything. We're going to be living in the future where people don't really need to work anymore and then they'll have to figure out a system. If people don't need to work, you'll have to change the whole economic. Ubi reversal. Basic income and more importantly is if nobody needs to work anymore, people will have to figure out what they want to do with their time. I mean I like to draw but there's a lot of people out there that don't know what they want to do. Some people don't have hobbies and they just want to work. That will really affect some people like some people get bored just being retired because they don't have hobbies.
AI is still a tool in some way, it is just developing way faster. Technology has always "replaced people" doing stuff, and making decisions, but then, the people start doing new stuff they could not do before. It was just slower than what we see now so people get confused and scared. All modern machinery and tools did replace the slaves used to build pyramids, but employed others to build thousands of skyscrapers a year. There was no market for skyscrapers 4000 years ago, as there was no market for creating your AI avatars a few weeks ago. This is not taking jobs, just transforming them much faster than ever before. And when you mentioned the music industry... Copyright is obsolete, just let that zombie die already. The music tries to keep it alive because it is easy money for them (and not the artists). Musicians are finding other ways, most musicians I do not make any significant income from copyright anymore, it only makes rich overrated reggeaton stars. If AI could destroy that industry? That would be awesome! Finally something new. But I don't think overly complicated reward systems in any way similar to copyright are a good idea, that is all just money for lawyers, not for artists.
I agree with you in the sense that I don't think copyright law will really be the saviour for artists. I agree with the comment that this will transform jobs much more quickly, but I am not so sure that we will replace them with as many new jobs. When you replace 3000 call centre workers with Voice AI, you do not need 3000 IT developers and support staff to install and manage the system to do that. My concern is that AI will rapidly replace many more jobs than can naturally evolve to replace them. But then I am generally a pessimist, so hopefully, I will be wrong :-)
It would need a combination of factors in the whole economy. The increase in productivity should translate to less work hours in many branches for similar pay (like the four day week trend). As long there is no complete economy crash, demand would just shift, so we will experience job changes, not only in arts. Ideally we will shift towards less working hours for all, or to a super productive economy. But the way there will be shaky, and some will try to take it all.
nice talk, there's a lot to this topic, i don't worry for the kids they'll have a different concept of art altogether, beyond anything that's come before, we humans are great at using things from the past and making new things from those resources, from that energy.. all the way down to fossil fuels, you might say we're the great recyclers.. fear limits, i'd guide against the old western concepts of "they took our jobs!!" a lot of change is afoot, people will become more aware of themselves as directors of their own experience rather than manual executors, if u will.. in the short term there will be many copyright wars and skirmishes, but we don't need to create the wheel to enjoy the ride, not to get too woo woo but you probably aware of the idea that many different people through out history have the same ideas at the same time, and maybe one guy commercially capitalizes on it (and whose to say we own ideas and they don't own us).... it's too much to say here, but i feel there's a seminal connection, collective unconscious if you will which all artists and creatives draw from to share with the world, and this will happen at a greater scale than ever as creativity and sharing is magnified.. some will win or be seen to lose while the power struggle for ownership continues, but it will also allow those who want to create for the sake of creating to enjoy that feeling of doing so, which lest you forget is its own reward, beyond any bottom line, and as they focus on that instead of whose stealing from who, and whose benefitting and whose getting shafted.. ways for those who choose to focus on the simple joy of creating art for art sake will have avenues which they can benefit from revealed to them in ways they may have never expected.. anyhoo thanx again for the talk and yes your style is urs it carries a lineage and is part of you from piece to piece, but maybe there's another plane from which you draw it, from which you were 1st inspired to it, and it allows you to become more of who you are... and that look is just a look and you are far more than that, as any great artist has their own pattern which they beautifully attune to, but they are far more than the sum of their pieces or creations.. and maybe these changes will help to reveal we are far more than the physical aspects we identify ourselves with.. any hoo i hope to see more of your art and that you continue to enjoy making it whether it seems financially viable or not..
Thank you, truly, for sharing such well considered thoughts. What you say resonates with me, particularly about the simple need to create, purely for the enjoyment of creating. That is what is most likely to drive me to continue irrespective of what is going on. I very much agree that this is significant, if not pivotal time of change, and I like your comment about fear being limiting. I do find this all equally fascinating and scary at the same time, and did try my best to keep as balanced an approach as I could manage. Fear not, there will be more to come!! Thank you for the encouragement and support.
AI art is good. Flexible artists will embrace it, exceptionally good traditional artists will survive (the % was always small) and some will have fewer job prospects. But Art and Artists are not the same thing. There are so many whining youtube videos on this subject.
Thanks for your thoughts. AI is incredible, and not just in Art generation. We have only just scratched the surface, and therefore the disruption, that is coming. Most people react instinctively to what the tools can do today. The "... but it can't draw hands!" brigade is rapidly running out of teardowns with Midjourney 5 etc. But this is what it can do now. I also look at what do all these AI tools mean in 2,3,4 or 5 years. That my job as a technical architect - how will it impact systems, organisations, processes and society. There are amazing things to come, but they will be HIGHLY disruptive, more so than the internet, or industrial mechanisation, photography etc. BTW - I was trying to go for balanced, rather than whining
@@BasementPicasso Your views expressed are very well balanced. I have to admit my comments about whining were ill informed based on the many other youtube clips I have seen not yours. I must have watched about 10 on this subject so far so I did not spend 1 hour 14 on watching yours. Will do now. My apologies.
@@alanrobertson9790 No apologies needed Sir, it is a complex, emotive and fast moving topic. I have watched many other AI videos since I did this, and my views continue to develop & shift. What is important is that people are made aware of what's happening and get a chance to join the debate - I honestly believe it is such an important topic
@@BasementPicasso I watched your well reasoned video in its entirety. The joke was that the AI Moby Dick covers were not only done quickly but were of a very high quality. I liked them far better than the original cover. When it came to the politics unsurprisingly we disagree because you make a living out of it and I'm a hobbyist. I have put 1800 images out on the internet but I did it for free. The point I would like to make is 1) Todays artists don't own all the art out there, it belongs to everybody. 2) No other worker group has been granted compensation when automation came in. Why do artists think they are a special case? 3) Copyrighting of a style would need a very tight definition. There maybe more artists out there than styles which could severely restrict any future art. Could lead to Artist A making a picture but Artist B claiming copyright because he could have made it. This would be absurd. 4) Maybe instead of trying to get a monopoly on the art you have already done you should expect to get paid for new work. Example when PCs first came along you could buy Microsoft office and use it forever. Now they expect to get paid every year for the same thing whether or not they improve it. Same goes for photoshop. Don't expect to get paid for life! which is where copyrighting a style would put you.
@@alanrobertson9790 Great comment, thank you!! I was watching a history program recently and there were some interesting parallels with William Hogarth's satirical prints getting "ripped off" and the introduction of (I think the first) copyright laws to give an artist 14 years to benefit from the new work they created. I think my view has changed since I did that video - copyrighting a style _IS_ a step too far, but I think you are right about there needing to be some form of income stream. It will be very interesting to see the outcome of the multiple copyright suits in action (Getty etc) and what the implications are - it is fascinating times ... :-) Thank you for contributing to the discussion!!
every day people get a worse understanding ai than the day before they think it's sentient they think it should pay taxes they think it threats their jobs (WHICH IS HAPPENING EVERY DAY) many people make digital art nowadays instead of using pencil and paper a couple years ago people started to use ai as a tool because a calculator is also a tool which has an input, it calculates stuff and then you get an output ai ALSO has an input and output like a calculator in this case for images
I think you are right in the sense that I think a huge % of people don't even begin to realise what AI is doing, or is going to be capable of, so they aren't even part of the conversation yet. I don't think there are bad questions to ask about AI and what to do with it, or in response to it. I think we need a lot more discussion about it.
Copyrighting styles? Imagine Disney copyrighting every style remotely similar to their artworks they own. Sooner or later every single time some artist draws you'll have to pay royalty to the mouse.. Not a good idea.
That would be tragic indeed. It will be interesting to see how the inverse is tolerated when larger companies can have their (latest) style emulated at the press of a button, particularly as we transition from generating single images (with ease) to creating entire films/animations with equal speed and ease.
i think you should have agthered you thougths more beforehand. i was out after 6:44. didnt seem that you have made a statement or anything. you jsut talk and tlak and talk. .whats the point?
Sorry it didn't engage you. It was a longer talk because there is so much to discuss about AI art, and I wanted to share a different perspective. I take your point though and newer videos I try to make more concise. thanks for the feedback.
@@BasementPicasso i think a script would have done wonders to get your thoughts more boiled down. i sound maybe a little rude bcs im german and english isnt my main language.. gj anyway.. interesting and dense topic..
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![Chris Langan - The Interview THEY Didn't Want You To See - CTMU [Full Version; Timestamps]](/img/n.gif)
I'm not an artist, but I respect artists and I was already keeping track on the issues this technology can affect artists lives, but I didn't realise how expansive AI could be in industries or jobs I thought would be untouchable until I saw your examples. I now realise that as an Engineer or a Programmer the evolution of this technology in these fields isn't that far.
Thanks for broadening my view on this issue.
You are welcome, thanks for watching. Yeah, I was genuinely shocked when I realised how quickly this is advancing.
Fascism has always sought to replace all they deem "inferior" in "technological prowess". They are not just "scientific racists" due to how they see non-western cultures as "lesser in technology and thus intelligence", but also seek to annihilated all other industries, just as their italian futurist predecessors envisioned, the end of self-expression in favour of consumerism and the commodification of art and the romanticisation of the machine and organicism, the new-man myth, etc.
This is certainly not the death of Art. But I believe now that this is the death of commercial artists and it might be the bankruptcy of creativity in general. AI image generation, is not just merely a tool like some digital program. They are primarily designed to actually replace artists and creatives. The whole work process that goes behind creating art is automated and delegated to an algorithm. And I think a lot of people, particularly those that use it to get content, do not realise yet what it actually means. You can see this by the overwhelming number of people that see them self as content creators while the actual creator is the machine, those that type the text and create the "prompt" are at the most curators. And even this I believe will be automated at some point. Probably sooner than later once there are algorithms for prompts and there have been enough out to "teach" some algorithm what people like and what works. And then it's really just a few clicks.
And I believe even those that now seem very happy about the Ai, will sing a very different tune once it comes for their profession and they might see the automatition happening in their jobs. Because if automatition does one thing - and that is what Ai is at it's core - then it is devaluing labour. And in our current society the reality is that as far as the job market goes, pretty much everyone is replacable to a company or business.
I was a big supporter of AI in the past. But now as I see what it's actually doing, how it is missused and what this means potentially for the future? It changed my opinion and I am a lot more cynical about it. Techbros and programmers which don't give a shit about what's done with it, companies which aim at monopolies for image generation exploiting millions of artists and users flying to those algorithms seeking instant gratification without actually puting the skill in to it. All together with this toxic social media dopamine manipulation of catching "likes".
This is really not going to lead to a better future I am afraid. I would love to be wrong here. But somehow I doubt that I will.
Yup, I think you nailed it. It's why I wanted to try and share a slightly broader perspective - lots of people don't quite get that!
It doesn't have to be the death of all that if we refuse to roll over.
@@kevinh.9939 Agree - but it will take a significant and coordinated effort to do that.
Most media is just going to become even more soulless than it already is. Much like ads are. Which is a shame. Personally, I am not THAT affected, since I am just a hobbiest and I do art because I like doing art, not as a profession. But it sure sucks.
@@thrumugnyr All of humanity will be negatively affected if we don’t do something.
ua-cam.com/video/tjSxFAGP9Ss/v-deo.html
Regarding the art competition: I feel like people forget that the judges 100% thought that the winning piece was created by a person, and *in that context* declared it the best piece. The appreciation goes straight out the window, in terms of skill level and perceived intention, for example, when you know it's diffused by a program.
Yes, I agree, if you know in advance that this is AI art it would impact your assessment, but the fact that they couldn't tell and therefore in a "blind" test declared it the winner says a lot. Then again, I don't tend to hold Art critics/judges in particularly high esteem, so maybe more easily fooled perhaps?
@@BasementPicasso agreed, though who's to say they even knew that something other than a person could generate the piece in the first place? If you don't actually know about these image synthesis models at all, then perhaps they weren't looking with that in mind at all.
The judges didn't know it wasn't created by a person but the organizers of the competition were aware it was AI generated and they allowed it into the competition to spur discussion. Telling the judges would have tainted the judging process. There wasn't really deception going on in this case, the art was being judged on its own merits not on who made it. It's like if a really famous artist submitted something to an art competition should the judges know that piece was done by that artist before judging the piece itself? That would be equally unfair as the prestige of that artist would sway the judgement.
Unless it turns out the judges themselves were AI algorithms using holographic human images as avatars.
As an artist whos relatively small, and I dont even sell it (I want to, just unsure how). Im not a fan of AI art. At all.
That itself just stems from whats happened already with every production of an AI that makes any type of it. Every single one was made and based off of images Artist were never able to say "Yes you can use this". Their art was just automatically used without permission nor care. DeviantArt showed us recently how little they care about Traditional Artists. Yes, I am using Traditional in the sense of those who create art by hand, stylus or computer; not AI.
Another commenter mentioned we know people won't care about ethics, citing the DeviantArt incident as well... Its intriguing watching how everything has become digital art, or is digitally out on display. But the way AI has pushed its way into art, I hate saying this. Reminds me of the way MAPs tried so hard to push themselves into the LGBT community a couple years ago. They pushing and saying "This is us, like it or not". Yet, most of us DONT like it.
AI art is gorgeous and wonderful, but it's supposed to be. Its supposed to be perfect. Its supposed to be easy.
Art isnt easy. Art takes time, and practice to be decent or good at, and yes even natural born artist still have to practice and take time. To me personally AI throws all that out the window, especially with using Artists work who never allowed it. AI feels like a cheap shot at something someone took hours to create...It feels as though you have 2 people selling 1 product.
Person A: Has its product at a higher price, better quality, more time put into said product.
Person B: Literally stole the idea from Person A, used cheap materials, product breaks withing 5 minutes.
Thats what that feels to me. Its not a "good thing", it feels cheap and fake.
Yeah, I know what you are saying … the idea that it is just too easy devalues it in every sense. Pretty, but not deeply engaging, but sadly many people will be quite happy with superficial pretty images. I find it hard to argue, some images are really quite amazing at least at first glance
@@BasementPicasso Yeah!! Even I will admit, Im astonished by how beautiful AI art can be, but deep down it sets a fire ablaze that later makes me hate it; solely because its an AI image.
It feels like your being cheated out of the work you payed for for something. I know alot of people feel different, and Im not trying to say "You need to feel how I feel". You dont, everyone has their own opinion. I just personally dont find AI art to be as...Thought inputing, or creative (trying to find the right word) in a sense as a Traditional Artist.
Its nice to find someone to talk about said opinion without immediately being thrown into a "Your bad because your opinion is bad" hole.
@@deathberryjam907 Yeah I completely get that. I am genuinely torn between whether AI is, or will be a good thing, and just how awesome it can be, versus the potential long term impact and consequences. I completely understand why people could hold either opinion.
I am an artist too and I see it different. Look, a photography is also art but the photographer doesn't own the landscape or didn't created a sunset in mountains. He/she "only" clicked a button. Yes? It was common for artists in the past to think that it is not an art. I generated more than 11000 (eleven thousands) Ai pictures to realise that it is only a medium,like a camera, or a brush. In many cases it is not even ideal, there are many artefacts and mistakes. A good artists can use it correctly and paint a painting based on Ai. It is especially useful when you want to pain a face or a person. Nowadays there are difficulties to find a person, who will be a model for you, in right outfit, lighting, etc. Ai helps here. And moreover, Ai writes now books, blog posts and create music. So if it is in a common use why cannot Ai be used in art. Ai didn't do collages, it makes kind of hybrids like human's brain. So when you look thousands paintings in museums then your brain learns from it and your art is influenced by their art. It is not stealing. It is a biology. Brain cannot create things which didn't see before. In the beginning, few years ago I was angry on Ai. But now I completely changed my mind. Do you really think that nowadays artist can paint so many paintings to be able sell it with success in Internet? On Redbubble, Etsy you have to have at least 1000 or even 2000 graphics to earn whatever. So if it is like that then to be a analoge artist has no sense anymore... Well, what I don't like is that many people who are not artists at all can now produce graphics and sell it so the art market is overcrowded by all who wants to sell Art and "art". My experience showed me that not every Ai picture can be even considered Art. By the way I have master degree in Fine Arts. So I say it all as a specialist in a field. You know, more than 10 yrs ago I was angry that some not professional hobbyist started to paint so called abstract paintings because they could not even paint a proper realistic art and they started to sell while real artists with diploms often had problems to pay bills. It shouldn't be like that when someone studied art for more than 5 years. But it is our reality now.....So one day I thought why not to play with Ai. And I don't regret.
@Basement Picasso First of all, AI it's not a form of any self expression - for me it's not art then. You get a random image that you described with some words, it's not what you see in your imagination. If you have any and that is the problem. Only people that don't have any specific vision will be happy with creation in those tools - so not the majority of artists. Average people, yes - why ? Because for them painting it's hard work that they won't skip.
Everytime I had to argue AI against normal people it always went like this, same goes with art theft and tracing works :
"As long as people didn't lie about using an AI or photobashing and compare them to handcraft artist works, it won't be a problem.
"So, it is a problem."
well said
What are "normal people"? 🤔
@@ChristopherHemsworthCreative A category I exclude myself from 😄
"We were so busy with if it could it be done, we didn't stop to ask if it should be"
I was watching the recent Jurassic park when this comment popped up! I believe this quote was used in the first film by good old Jeff ... and boy, does it feel relevant!!
I think the biggest problem with AI is that their data sets use stole artwork. In my opinion, if one thinks about the art as "stolen data," it becomes more obvious that this is blatant theft and not inspiration. It doesn't matter if the AIs are generating something completely original, they are still using stolen data. It's stealing many artists' accumulated skills and turning them into a machine. If the automation of art was inevitable, at least don't insult artists by stealing their hard earned final renders.
I'm really worried about the art community almost entirely disappearing in the future. Our lives are already filled to the brim with work work work (unless you are a billionaire who doesn't work at all) that when real handmade art is no longer profitable, the community could fizzle away. Artists are so connected by our skills and ability to create something with pure imagination and a couple of tools. What will happen when AI art that is "just good enough" takes over?
I think the initial research was "fair use" for me - helping to advance science and understanding. the moment that was simply commercialised it loses any claim to "fair use" as far as I am concerned. I agree on the potential impact of all this - it was what drove me to try and contribute to the discussion.
This is one of the greatest videos on this topic I've ever watch yet. It is not trying to be on any side, and it is clearly felt that you enjoyed generating images and was excited, but also the amount of respect you put towards artists in this video is exceptional. This is truly how "non-biased" thing should look like, also being filled with a lot of examples and ideas - this Gutenberg case was really interesting insight on how AI can be used for "customised content" (though in the future, this may go overboard to achieve self-drawing covers for self-written books).
This is also the only thing I've missed in this video, but I understand lack of it, as philosophical nature of the debate is crazily missed out - that the market value is one thing, the mindset corruption is another. I've talked this on my Twitter thread, but in short, I'm afraid that AI will lessen our interest in not only process of creating art, but also at processing them, thus, will make our lives way harsher to go through, as art is - I'd be brave enough to say - the most important part of our lives, no matter if it is conscious thing for all of us.
And "content noise" making art as overfeeding our lives as ads may be what can be very difficult to fix, especially given capitalistic nature of our "Brave New World".
Thank you for this video. It speaks a lot for me, seeing any individual giving such brilliant insight into this so disturbing issue.
Thanks, Tom, very much appreciated. Yes, it was important to me to try and keep a middle-of-the-road approach to try and help the conversation, because I appreciate how emotive and polarising the subject is. You are right, I didn't want to go too far into the future and broader impact of AI, simply because of the volume of content and how many people don't even get the basics of this discussion yet. I will be doing a video on the impact of AI on traditional artists which will go a little deeper into things. It will speak more on things like "content noise" and the challenge to traditional art markets.
This was a great video and breakdown of the current dilemma. I hope everyone that is losing sleep over this change in art culture is also shedding a tear for all the truckers who will be unemployed when the self driving cars come to pass, or for the cashiers/clerks already in the unemployment line as they have been eliminated by self checkout.
Yes indeed, AI, automation and robotics are having and will continue to have a very big impact
They aren't because "the art community" seem to think the entire world revolves around them and any tiny impact is a cataclysmic blow to the artist community that will never be recovered from. When the tumblr exodus happened "the art community" cried out about their entire careers being destroyed meanwhile nowadays on twitter their art is seeing 10x - 100x the traffic it saw on tumblr.
Note: Artists =/= "The art community"
I'm specifically referring to terminally online artists that barely even have a stake in it as a career as they just draw and publish free art.
Real industry artists use and abuse every single tool available to them. There isn't an industry artist out there that doesn't use quick 3d modeling to plot out perspectives and storyboards. Not to mention the amount of industry artists that photobash, which is arguable more stealing than AI art since the "stolen" artwork is DIRECTLY incorporated into the final piece, where AI literally makes up an image from scratch and references it against its library. Note: Photobashing totally legitimate and this isn't meant to be a take against photobashing.
@@Sammysapphira I feel for all professions affected by AI, hence why I never use self checkout but comparing artists who have spent years learning anatomy, perspective composition, lighting, texturing and everything else that goes into creating art to working at a cash register or driving a truck is laughable.
I always see proponents for AI art as another tool to extend and express themselves. They would justify the AI that generates these images from other artists work to create that unique piece which is no different than artist copying the ideas from other artists that has been done for centuries. But that is the difference, people still have to be an artist to create or replicate that work and learn from it. For the proponents, you didn't need to study composition, colours, human anatomy, paint patterns, textures and milliard of other techniques to get to the final products that we see today. To be creative is already a unique human feat unto itself. What I see are text prompts, that is not creative, that is merely a detailed description of what you want to see. You have no control over the final outcome and it is a generative gamble and what looks best. You are not creative, you are merely doing a Google search 2.0.
Yes, indeed. It is more like being an art director than an artist. In some ways, there are parallels with art schools becoming very focused on conceptual art - you had to be good at coming up with concepts and ideas, and yet people could leave art school after 4 years unable to draw, hence a resurgence in interest in traditional atelier art skills. AI could be seen as concept rather than skill, taken to the next level.
Great video. Thank you for taking the time to make it, I'm 4/5 of the way through at the moment, and I felt the need to stop and acknowledge that I agree that James Gurney's take on AI is confusing, and I would continue that it borders on mildly infuriating. James is one of the reasons I started taking art seriously, and I love both of his books and respect his style of teaching so immensely, so to hear him have that opinion on specific styles as well as the video he put out earlier this year that only paints AI image generation as a fun novelty that will only be used altruistically as a tool for artists is embarrassingly myopic.
Thank you! Yeah, likewise - huge respect for JG, but I think he is maybe in a position where he is so well established it is of little direct threat to him perhaps, and he is very generous with the sharing of training and inspiration so I get some of the sentiment. But, hey, who knew the internet could throw up different opinions ...
How do you copyright a style? That's frankly absurd and the fact that you even entertain the idea of copyrighting a style is disgustingly narrow-minded and greedy.
Saying that you should be able to copyright a style is like saying you should be able to copyright a vocal range, or a music genre. It DESTROYS the creative marketplace of ideas and iteration and improvement. Not to mention even the idea of copyrighting a style in legal paper being a complete and utter nightmare because of how loosely defined a "style" is.
If styles could be copyrighted, you wouldn't be drawing. Nobody would ever be able to draw a cartoon character because Disney would have copyrighted the concept of cartoon characters.
@@SammysapphiraI agree that trying to prevent copying of style seems impossible or would be creatively oppressive, even if possible. However, think of the analogous concerns in the music world where copyright protects music artists against outright theft, derivative works & even sampling of subtracks.
First, we could agree that AI art databases be opt-in for living artists. Separately, artists should be able to opt-out of prompts i.e. Michael Whelon could choose to be represented in a database but stipulate that nobody be able to prompt explicitly for images "in the style of Michael Whelon." Third, artists could stipulate that no image be produced predominately based on one artist or very few images of one artist. That would make it harder to hack a prompt that singles out one artist's work to to be mimicked even if the artist isn't named explicitly.
Those measures could preserve artists' visual identity w/out squelching re-mix creativity or foolishly attempting outright prohibition of AI tools.
Lastly, think of another solution from audio tapes. When cassettes became ubiquitous, artists (ok, mostly greedy studios) feared rampant piracy. So, they brokered an agreement that X cents from every blank tape sold would be paid into pool to compensate artists. Likewise, we could mandate a surcharge on every generated AI image that would be paid as royalties back to artists. This is fair because of the thousands of images that might be generated from someone's work as drafts, for fun, for personal use, very, very few will ever be "sold" in a way that would've taken revenue away from living artists, yet artists would get paid from that volume.
Effort should be protected and compensated, art should not be private property. Capitalism is cancer, and AI ideology is a product of the parasitical consumerism and debasement of the working classes.
Great video! I appreciate the time it took you to put this together. More than anything I hope this technology does not discourage artists from trying to develop and refine their craft. I have been personally feeling the existential crisis for the last few months.
Thanks Dominic, appreciated. I hope you can find some inspiration and a way to continue to develop
I spend alot of time thinking how something is going to come out along with my procrastination and not having time to experiment. No time to waste. This is just another tool in your tool box. Get your take off then start rollin.
@@santiagopino2407 Really good point! I am going to do a video specifically on traditional artists incorporating AI into the workflow - as you say, anything to help get momentum is good!
@@BasementPicasso please do. And how to do that as ethically as possible
An extremely well rounded and well considered overview. Well done. I found your commentary on "style as a brand" and the associated issues around having a recognised style of art, and that being referenced/ripped off particularly compelling. These are the considerations that should have had frameworks put around them well before the Genie got out of the bottle. And this is the inherent and fundamental problem with AI.
Thanks, much appreciated. I think the problem is that AI Art is part of bigger research, so they never really stopped to try and work out the implications of how it might be used. Hopefully, the more people become aware of the implications the more pressure can be exerted and we can improve things retrospectively.
The problem i have with this is that style is simply not copyrightable and for good reason. There are simply only so many styles in existence. Many who claim uniqueness can find another artist somewhere else with a very similar style. If we started to copyright styles, then art would die faster that way than from AI takeover. New artists would almost never be able to go commercial bc again, almost every style can be seen as similar to another style out there.
That said, I think putting a brand behind your style is smart and simple business wisdom. Pixar for example has a very clear style and whenever their brand is mentioned that style follows suit. That however doesn’t mean other 3D animations cannot exist with similar styles, because we all know they do. The only thing that similar style can’t do is call itself Pixar bc that brand and it’s name is copyrighted.
Nonetheless, these are just my thoughts. And none of this is to advocate for AI art. Just me disagreeing with that specific point made in the video.
I will chime in as someone who both
Has spent eleven years learning how to draw
And
Has invested hundreds of hours into the study and application of A.I.
I think people who say "A.i. will COMPLETELY replace artists " have their head up their bum
People who say "nothing will change" are in the same position
A.I. is a fantastic drafting tool. You can make an absurd number of things quickly and cheaply...but it is, really bad, at making something specific and deliberately
A friend of mine runs a small-time online comic. He wanted to create some promotional artwork , and so me and my friends sat down to do that. There were four of us. Our goal was essentially to make a pinup with his comics main character
I was using novel a.i., my comic friend was using anything v-3, and another person was using midjourney. After about two hours, between the three of us, we made hundreds of images.
I can say with confidence we made some beautiful art. I was the most meticulous of the bunch, I "only" made 43- 47 images (a few were essentially identical to eachother so I'm not sure if I should count them or not tbh). I am very deliberate when working with a.i. scientifically taking notes as I work, recording prompts, editing as little as I could get away with. I can say with pride the judge said I made the best looking pieces
But
Not once did I make my friends character
None of us did
And the thing is
I'm a digital speed painter, so is my comic friend. Either of us could have just painted the damn thing woth two hours.
I think a major key to artists surviving this is : you are still an artist. You know how to draw and color and paint.
I think many direct drawing jobs will be converted to editing jobs. Taking a a.i. piece and redrawing /editing it to meet standards
Don't charge less when you do that!
It took knowledge and expertise to turn the a.i. thing into what's actually wanted, don't charge less because someone changes your title
Great thoughts, thank you! Having listened to many more comments/videos since I made this I would agree with you that AI will "COMPLETELY replace (ALL) Artists (in all circumstances)" is an extreme. At the risk of having my head up my bum (not the first time I have been accused of that :-) ) I would say now "that in the next few years, as AI Art continues to develop, AI will replace A LOT of ARTIST ROLES, in some (but not all) situations". I agree with you that directing, editing, and retouching is likely to become a bigger role going forward
@BasementPicasso yeah, it's probably worth noting the difference between free Lance commission work and company work
The response by companies seems largely to have been " we won't replace you but we expect you to learn how to use this"
Vs free Lance comms
Where the response has been a borderline violent rejection of a.i.
@@ddd09ish1 That makes sense. Be interesting to see how companies adapt over the next few years.
Very well made video about this topic! And well spoken. I have already seen album covers using AI instead of an artist and I feel dread actually. I see my jobs in certain areas that I want to push on into, being possibly denied due to a couple strikes with the keyboard. And that is just a drop in the vast sea of trouble this will create in the future for working artists.
Thank you, much appreciated. Yes, completely agree, it just adds another layer to an already incredibly challenging field.
Not every musician can afford an artist and licensing and distribution rights to sell their music. It's a tool for the poor. Imagine being a nearly homeless 19 year old musician struggling to put out your fist album.
@@Sammysapphira That's not an excuse. I was that musician not long ago who couldn't afford a producer. Slowly earned how to produce and got better in time. Alternatively, there are social media. Reach out to people and build real connections. Distribution? There are various platforms totally free to promote and sell music. But knowing that AI is affecting artists in a negative light and not caring, makes me wonder why should artists care for those in need too 🤔
I believe that in the future copyrights of creative works should include Data Intelligence. You would own the art that you create and all of the data intelligence contained in it.
Yes, I agree - but I think that needs something beyond simple copyright laws. Hope things can evolve in that direction
Unfortunately, the evolution of AI is along every conceivable dimension. The singularity will entirely subsume our reality, and all concomitant systems. Essentially, there is nothing left for us to do. It's like meeting an extraterrestrial race that is billions of years ahead. They would leave us nothing left to question, and the only hope we would have of continuing in any worthwhile way would be through total communion. That is, assuming the capacity for rapid ascension to their level even existed (and they felt like sharing) we could then join them in whatever they had left to explore.
I’m a bit late to this video but you have a new subscriber, this was the best breakdown I’ve seen on the situation coming from an artist’s perspective.
I’ve followed machine learning for 6 years, worked with it back in the day, but also my Mom was an artist. I see the grim posts in comments sections on artist UA-cam videos, and honestly while I mess around with AI art for my own enjoyment, because I can’t draw a damn stick figure but would like to see my imagination, I don’t think I’m an artist and would never sell what I make, just show it to friends and family.
The thing I’m trying to tell artists though, as someone who knows machine learning, the genie is out of the bottle, the cat’s out of the bag. Stable Diffusion is open source, can be run locally, and is literally improving every day. No amount of copyright lawsuits (which would grind through the courts for years), no laws, no international agreements can stop this. The number of AI images already created is in the billions, by the end of next year, more images will have been created by AI then on the internet made by humans, then AI can be trained by images made by AI, how the hell would you determine that copyright? With love to the artists, so art for art’s sake. My Mom was a painter, which I guess will be safe for a bit, but there is no way to stop what’s coming.
Thanks, and well said. I am planning a follow on video about the impact of AI specifically on traditional artists, which as you say is safe(r) for now ...
@@BasementPicasso The ‘for now’ part is important. When I used machine learning it was at a 3D printing company, that was ages ago but even at that time I realized sculpters weren’t safe. Hell I was in high end tech sales and explained to my boss how even the people selling the AI could be replaced by AI. I’ve been trying to warn artists about this for years, they never listened, thought it’d be truck drivers first, etc. I usually don’t post on UA-cam, but this is important to me, people need to understand what is, and what’s coming.
@@TheJesterHead9 Completely agree - more people need to be made aware. It is what drove me to do the initial video in the first place.
Wow one of the best presentations on the AI art debate I've seen
Thanks Jeff, much appreciated
This is far and away the most thoughtful video on the topic, besides Dave McKean's video, and it is because your perspective is situated right at the intersection where these topics are presenting the most significant disruption - really appreciate the video, nice work.
Thanks for the support & huge thanks for pointing me to the Dave McKean video - it is brilliant. Took me back to "Stray Toasters" by Bill Siekiewicz which was part of the era that got me into comic art in the first place!
Thank you for this interesting essay and all the time you invested in it! This happened in part because there is no Artist Union that could combat the unfair use. This was already apparent many years ago, because of the general attitude of this industry. Very few individual artists know how to work with licensing, and they are just glad to have a job, in my experience. In this regard, I totally agree with your statement.
The music industry is a very interesting field to observe because of the resources of the big publishers. On the other side of the spectrum, you have the apparel industry which is devoid of any copyright (aside from Germany, but only for materials and not for patterns). AFAIK, it's seen as a compliment to the original designer if your product gets copied without changes. But that pushes the designers to be constantly at the forefront of any trend.
One point I would question is the copyright of "style". I tend to side with Gurney. I'd feel restricted, not able to explore other styles, if this means that I can't establish a copyrightable style. And I also pick many different stylistic devices from other artists to recombine them to my own style. Where would you draw the line between infringement and inspiration, since this is a natural progression for any artist in my opinion.
There is currently a precedent case going on about the use of copyrighted code for training an AI. Microsoft, Open AI and Github are being sued. This could be a basis for the proper handling of this technology in the future (not sure if you mentioned that). www.theverge.com/2022/11/8/23446821/microsoft-openai-github-copilot-class-action-lawsuit-ai-copyright-violation-training-data
Personally, I always dreamed to have AI as an assistant. I'd love to have the options to train it to produce artworks in my own style and take away as much mundane work as possible. I hope to lift bigger projects as a "bedroom art director". Furthermore, I feel that AI works very similarly to an organic artistic approach in terms of method as well as perception, hence why it is so effective. That's also a point you described in an interesting anecdote. At the same time, I am deeply unhappy how the treatment of training data has been handled so far and who gained money from it.
Last words: I understand artists that have spent decades developing their craft and now being confronted with this machine, I am one of them. Psychologically, that is highly irritating. It depends on whether you positioned yourself as a service provider or an artist with a brand. In the latter, that might work for you as an advantage, since it's a multiplier and you can attach your name/brand to the output. As a service provider, you have constantly to be ready for new technology and adapt it into your workflow, or shift your expertise.
Hey, thanks for sharing so many thoughts. In terms of the copyright of style, I have no problem whatsoever with learning from someone, doing master copies, or incorporating bits of what you learn from their style as you develop your own. The line for me is clear - putting another artist's name in a generator and then passing that subsequent picture off as your own is, to me, theft of style. The computer code is interesting because AI trained on code can generate code that is almost identical (byte for byte). Amazon tries to deal with that using suggested attribution which is a big step in an ethical direction. Maybe if AI generators watermarked an image with "generated after {ARTIST NAME}" when a specific name is used, like a master copy, that might be a step in the right direction.
@@BasementPicasso Got your Point concerning the stlye-coypright now! I really appreciate your suggestions for a more fair use, and it seems really reasonable to me. A little bit in line of the CC BY License. The same goes for the suggestions you made in the video, very good direction, and I hope at least some of them get implemented.
Thanks for your Answer!
This vid is 4 months old and yet the best one i've seen so far about AI. Also the predictions are so actual! I wonder if you would add some new consideration regarding last months updates. Like Stability AI take on music and their controversal decision not to train on copyrighted music "to respect artists" while they didn't care disrupting visual art. Or the USCO positions about AI being not-employable and not copyrightable being not a human and the prompts being considered as art direction and "UI elements" instead of being "human creativity elements". I wonder if there's really a way to change that last statement "then you win", in a sense that commercial artists will still be able to build a solid career without being decimated, coexisting with this new technology instead of being eaten by it. Can rights win over money? But even in the best scenario, our job is gonna change forever and we might dislike at least a part of it.
If i look at the bigger picture, considering all kind of AI being developed and distributed in the world, i have the disheartening feeling we're gonna face an era with new levels of false, constructed and carefully manufactured "reality" without a "take me out of this" button. Like having a fancy plastic bag over our heads.
Well said. Yes, I think we are in an era of very rapid change, and more questions than answers. The recent data on the likely job types and level of impact is quite eye-opening
great video, I hope more people see it. as for Art, I made art to make myself feel good. I've had depression all my life, Since I was little I kept saying I will never grow old because I don't want to be alive and it got worse once I lost the ability to draw because of the medication which made my hands shake. In the past few years I got back to art and I really can't say how much hope it gave me, for the first time in forever I could see a purpose in my life. Making people happy with my art. Then I saw the Midjourney discord and now all that pain is back. I feel like nothing. My life has no meaning. I have noting I can offer to the world. I don't know what the last words I'll writte will be or when, but it's harder and harder to hold on. I hate AI generators, not for me, I don't matter because I fundemantally hate myself, but I hate it because it's taking away so many people's love for art, it's stealing young artist's dreams.
Hi Anabel, thank you for sharing such an honest and open thought. As someone that has suffered from anxiety, on and off, for all of my adult life I can relate to everything you are saying. I often hoped that art would be an escape from the stress of the real world, but it is so hard to make it a release and a viable lifestyle/income. AI feels like another level that makes an escape even more challenging. What has helped me recently is just focusing on making art for myself. As the skills improve and I create more pieces that I actually like, I have gotten back to enjoying making art for the sake of it, and just enjoying the process, the peace and the satisfaction when something does work out well. Others have wisely commented, and something I myself now accept more is that nobody can steal the enjoyment of creating something simply for the pleasure of creating it. There have always been better artists, quicker artists etc - AI just seems to amplify that, but I have always encouraged people to be inspired by those that are better than us, and only compare ourselves to our previous work, and over time see our own improvement. I hope that these few words can offer you a tiny bit of comfort. Be kind to yourself, my thoughts are with you.
you can still make people happy with your art
I use it as I would a photo library for creating covers and designs from multiple images. It is a wonderful a tool that randomly produces strange, often dazzling but mostly sterile imagery. The creative part comes in trying to adapt them, to give them some soul.
@djjjk Thanks. It is interesting to see how people who choose to use it are incorporating it into their workflows. I have been following Invoke AI for a while and the level of control it offers is extremely impressive. So much more than a text prompt and a random roll of the dice. But still just a tool. Like you say, finding something meaningful remains the challenge ...
Finally. this is the first nuanced take I've seen on this. Every other video I've seen on this topic has just been wildly showing only 1 side of the story
Thank you. Yeah - I wanted to try and keep it as balanced as possible
I really wished this had more views, you deliver the information clearly without taking any points with gut feelings. I see AI art as both incredible at results and as terrifying at creating because with unbound image generation a lot of fraud and malicious images can be resulted without any major image editing skill required. It's quite similar to what happened to disney animators when 3d movies started to go out, why would they spend so much making every drawing frame individually if you can reuse the 3d asset multiple times in multiple angles in a faster way
Thank you, most kind. Yes, a good example of the previous disruption. I think so many people don't appreciate just how quickly this is developing, and how transformative it will be ...
Wow thanks for the video you have included so many illustrated examples and your years of art production work. A+
thanks for the support, always appreciated.
Wow, one of the most intelligent videos on the subject looking at both sides of the issue. Really enjoyed it.
Good to know - much appreciated, thanks
I think it goes beyond being more than a tool, it goes beyond being a worker, for the end consumer it is a whole product. So many things that would rely on an industry to produce will be able to be produced by the consumer themselves for free.
Yes indeed, the next 10-20 years are likely to see some significant shifts to what capitalism is and how people earn or pay for things, and what essentially becomes free
Thank you for posting this outstanding overview on AI and how it will impact people in creative fields like art and music. This primer on creative AI was a real eye opener to say the least! I have forwarded the link to this video to many of my artist friends who seem oblivious to the impact that this tech will have on society in general. You really did a great job of walking us through the history of automation in the publishing industry and how AI/automation has reached a tipping point. Tools and labor have now converged. That maybe the bigest take away from your report. That revelation really sank in. This scenario is fundamentally different from automation break throughs in the past.
Thank you again so much for posting this marvelous work of investigative journalism!
Thanks Keith, that is very much appreciated, genuinely. Given how quickly AI (in all forms) is moving I think it is really important that people are aware and involved in the conversation as much as possible.
Best balanced video on AI Art I have seen so far. Thanks
Much appreciated thank you !!!
44:00 In addition to personalized book covers, you could offer full book illustrations to look at wile you read and maybe even custom voice narration. What's next, book to full movie?
Yes, inserting illustrations throughout - hadn't thought of that. And given the text-to-video progress being made, then book-to-video isn't too hard to imagine
Excellent video, deserves lots more than 1,000 views. I like that eyeball in the mouth there, really sums up what AI art is indicative of
Thank you - much appreciated
Wonderful video, I'm constantly looking for discussion about this topic because I find it so fascinating. I'm glad this isn't another "NO AI" video because the amount of videos I've seen where people reject it and basically flat-out deny the impact (that it 100% guaranteed will have) on our society is astonishing. I definitely have concerns about how ethical it is and how it can be used for harmful purposes but losing jobs to me is the least of those worries. Jobs are always lost to automation and that's basically a constant in our modern world.
So many people demonize it like it's a sin to use because artists are losing jobs. But my small anecdotal experience is that I have become way more interested in creating art with AI due to the barrier of entry being so low now. Also my editing skills in photoshop have improved immensely in only a short few months. I'm not making a profit from anything I do because I'm using the Art for my online Dungeons & Dragons games. It lets me realize a fictional world for a few bucks with hundreds of custom images where if I were to pay an artist for it I would have had to spend THOUSANDS of dollars. I don't get paid to play D&D with my friends and I think there are use-cases like that which are completely benign.
Thank you. I think your D&D use case is brilliant - that sort of non-commercial use seems perfectly fair to me. It becomes interesting when you take a step up and think of new-entry indie game developers, that might use it for icons, characters, card art etc, helping a game to get off the ground (that might never have been made otherwise) - good for the games industry and consumers maybe, but at the cost of artists that don't get the work. Personally, I can see the argument both ways for that.
I've been using it for my D&D games as well - if I wasn't, I'd be drawing the images myself (poorly).
That said, commissions for character art are quite common. Players typically do it - they have one Character they're highly invested in, and often pay low to middling skilled digital artists anywhere from 20-100$ for a character portrait depending on skill. It's already a very saturated market, with more artists than are wanted and a race to the bottom in prices. I can imagine AI absolutely tanking that market- it already seems to be slowing down.
As a dungeon master, I have hundreds of characters and relatively low investment in any of them - they're there to add color and facilitate the story only. I'd never pay for art, unless I were releasing a printed product.
I agree this is a threat to many jobs. However, I don't think the technology is the problem. I think the system is the problem, since while there are people and companies willing to put money first (instead of people's lives), this will keep happening no matter which new tools are created. The problem is capitalism, not the technology.
Yes, I think that is fair, it is driven by the relentless pursuit to improve, which means better and quicker processes, better use of labour, time-saving tools etc. In general, I am a free-market capitalist, as I think it does do a lot to drive our general standard forward, but it is always at a cost to some (or many) and I believe that there needs to be really strong (government) regulation to counterbalance the potential damage of rampant capitalism.
Got to the end,, one of the best talks about this subject,, left it feeling very depressed.
Thanks for the feedback. Yeah, I go through peaks and troughs with it as well. I hope facing it head-on, with eyes open, is better in the long run. I am still getting to grips with what it all means!
@@BasementPicasso I think artists do go through ups and downs about this, but at the end of the day I have to believe in what my wife keeps on telling me, that humans have a history of regulating things and that art has met many challenges through the decades but is still here.
I'd tried my best to completely ignore AI, because of all the boosterism, which seemed aimed more towards venture capital than for the likes of me. But I saw the artwork used by some small UA-camrs, who explained they couldn't have afforded regular artists, and the images looked great. I'd always wondered what sort of instructions they gave the AI, and your image at 1:24 explains it perfectly!
AI taking over from artists and designers is only possible because the companies involved are allowed to break long-established rules regarding copyright. Tech companies always get a pass, no matter if they are providing taxis, or short stay accommodation, or many other business ventures. They are judged, and taxed, as being a *tech* company, and not a hotelier or taxi provider, which is extremely unfair on more established players.
Thank you! I totally agree - there is a lot of intrinsic value that has been appropriated if not directly stolen. I am very much for AI because the images and technology are amazing, but fair compensation going forward will be essential.
If Ai starts infiltrating creativity too much, then people will lose the wow factor.
Artists are devalued so much already, you constantly hear people talking about digital effects artistry negatively, which is astonishing enough (I just watched war for the planet of the apes which was amazing craftsmanship), but in ten year's time the assumption will be that almost all digital content is completely Ai generated. No one will want to look at or listen to anything.
Mabe it will repopularise galleries and live music? You might even get a decent price for your paintings! Let's hope so.
Love your judge Dredd pages btw, Zarjaz! :)
You should have used a book by AI rather than Moby Dick, I wonder who wants to read it no matter how ' good' it may technically be, people will become suspicious of all creative work, it's the death of all art perhaps.
I think you might well be right about galleries and live music - original art of all kinds, crafted by real people may become more sought after - will be interesting to see how it develops
I’m an aspiring traditional painter. I’ve been freaked out by AI image generators over the past few months. I wonder if it’d be legitimate to use it as a way to gather inspiration, or as part of one’s creative process. For instance using some to help make mock up images, in a sense supplying references for things . Although I’d still intend to mix and mash things and then paint them physically. Also, for me, it’s still important to have an aspect of technical skill when making art. Part of why I enjoy art is the pursuit of it and the physical engagement. I do think that AI will probably destroy my career before it even had a chance to start though, which is a bummer.
Although, AI in general needs to be heavily regulated as it is an existential threat to all jobs. This is more than mere automation such as in a manufacturing environment.
Hi Preston, very good points. Yes, I think there are a lot of opportunities to use AI in the workflow (in an ethical way) and those with good technical skills will still tend to stand out. I will do a video on this soon
Amazing video. I watched the whole thing and have had similar experience. Thanks for making such a clear and balanced overview.
I'm a professional artist working on high budget entertainment for 20 years, and had been at the "laugh at it" or amused by it, stage for a while. Then I saw things pop up that puzzled me in their execution, was it photobash? 3d render? It was labelled as AI generated an highly consistent, but I could not understand how an artist had not been heavily evolved, to get such a consistent and impressive result, and how that would not have been a massive amount of work. So I got into Midjourney myself, and initially thought of it as a tool I could implement as the v3 of MJ would create interesting things, but not something I would consider ready to present as a final piece by a long shot. Then I tried v4 which was recently released... It was no longer a tool, its a replacement. And yes its not only coming for artists. If it continues exponential into other fields, it seems to me it can decimate the working class, pushing them into a position of no jobs available, only manual labour that robotics either haven't caught up to, or humans will just be cheaper. I feel like an alarmist wearing a tinfoilhat typing this out, but its the only logical conclusion I can reach at this stage. My conclusion is that it is the greatest art theft in history. The double standard for the music industry speaks volumes.
Things like overfitting highlight the problematic foundation of the tech, and the companies (LAION) business practice, using their non-profit research status to scrape ANY data they wanted, then pass it on to for-profit ai art generators, made any "for the greater good, we can't stop progress" statements pointless. The Concept Art Association in the US has launched a GoFundMe to fight the legal battle, and lawsuits are already happening against microsoft co-pilot ai. Will it be in time?
Great comment, thank you. I hadn't heard about the Concept Art association - I was aware of other potential legal battles so it will be really interesting to see what develops. Thanks again for the thoughts and input.
Very interesting video and I watched it all the way, it was very engaging. Certainly new information for me somewhat, I have heard about AI and done a few experiments of the free versions and had varying results. It is concerning and I don't think we can stop the train unfortunately. It was interesting to hear the views, as a fellow engineer, I started life as a firmware coder to now mainly do large site electrical infrastructure design etc. Athough I don't see it taking away the physical aspects of that job it certainly could be utilsed for the upfront design work eventually, all it really needs is enough data to learn from. I think that is where the art industry and the non-label music industry will suffer as the deviant arts, art stations, soundclouds etc. will all be used as big data. The data on construction and electrical engineering design just doesn't have the same bulk of information and obviously the consequences of getting these things wrong is not good. I do have a hope of "retiring" early and pursuing art/youtube to cover the bills, but this tech. does make me think twice, or how could I incorporate that into this path. Anyway I need to get back to engineering stuff now, thank you very much for this video, it clearly took a long time to put together along with a lot of research.
I agree - the data sets are a big part of the requirement. I had similar discussions in (IT) architecture recently - I can see AI doing architecture design in the future. Where you don't have the data sets you can potentially make up for it with simulation. An interesting space. thanks for the comments. good luck with your own art/youtube journey :-)
Wonderful job. I loved your brake-downs of the job flow for comic books and the book cover examples were fantastic! I have been fortunate enough to have done just about every type of job a professional artists can do over the span of my career - I am looking at all of them about to dissolve because of the lack of regulation of the outright theft of the worlds collective visual art. Humans will continue to make art of all kinds, but competition and pay have always been a driving force, and this will surely change the kinds of visual art we create. We still use horses for transportation but not like they did in the late 1800's. Thank you so much for all the hard work you put into this video, I am adding it to my favorites.
Thanks for the encouragement. Like the horse analogy. Ai is making me think about what it is I actually want to produce - an image, an object - so many questions, but I agree the human need to create remains constant, at least with me anyway
Something I noticed in AI art is that almost all of them looks like this: 😶
And here I thought I had created something unique ... :-)
Thank you for making this video it help me to understand the difference between digital art that an artist used to make a picture and one that is AI-generated. I have seen art work generated by an AI program and some are awesome, but strange at the same time. It all depends on which date bases it pulls it date from, or what the tech person wants. I noticed that some of the images of male or female characters start to look the same or have the same pose, even when the characters are from different countries or ethnic backgrounds. My experience with digital and AI-generated art is through coloring books for adults. At the time I did not know they were generated art I just did not like the pictures for the people, animals, or buildings did not look right most seem to blend into the background, the sea life had fish with no tails, or more tails, oceans filled with junk/garbage, images were cut and just placed, rabbits with three ears, lambs with paws, animals with the wrong legs. people with odd looking hands less/more fingers. Which is why I am a bit concern in looking at your whale images, is it just me? or do the whale images look off?
I think you are absolutely right. At the point that I did the videos AI had a lot of "deformities", sausage fingers etc. Yes, absolutely, the whale covers do not stand up to close scrutiny indeed. What amazed me at the time though was what AI was doing in minutes, compared to what I could do in minutes! Like you say, some people are just taking AI art & bashing out colouring books on Amazon etc, making a fast buck and swamping the market, but I think quality will win through in the long run. AI is getting steadily better and artists are rapidly incorporating it to make a lot of incredible new work. It's not perfect, it's fraught with issues, but it is fascinating to see how it evolves.
I see the future jobs evolve, hiring art directors in the future, no longer the job title of "artists". Basically hiring people who already possess the skills of anatomy, language, perspective, color and light, creativity to correct and validate accuracy and styles required (possibly live drawing tests during job interview). These AI platforms will be used as tools just like photoshop or illustrator, or as plugins to stimulate inspirational starting points.
Yes, I agree, I think roles will change. People with artistic skills and vision will still shine, but in different ways going forward
Very, very good video about AI art and its problems.
I definitely think that artists should be compensated when their work is being incorporated into the AI art generation. The only way you could feasibly do this is to create an international artist register where you could register your art and also opt-in or -out into your art data (and that's really what is being used, not your actual pictures) being used for AI training. However, I'm not sure how this could be done. Think of just how many artists there are *worldwide*! And each and everyone would have to opt in or out. Even people that just post a regular photo on Facebook or Insta would have to register and opt in or out. Or you would have to write an algorithm that asks you every time that you upload a piece of visual data (photo, painting, drawing, photoshop concept... basically anything that is visual) whether you would be willing to allow an AI to scrape your data or not.
Basically, we're already doing this by accepting cookies whenever we visit a website. We opt in or out to the use of our data by accepting or rejecting the cookies.
The other aspect is the compensation for the use of your visual data. If it is done via some kind of data marker which marks your data as soon as it is uploaded, or through an international register, then there will still need to be some kind of value assigned to your data. Is my photo of my cat worth more, less or as much as an uploaded image of a painting by you? If that data gets scraped and then used in generating AI art, how much should one receive for each use? O.OOO1 $ per use? More? Less?
I think it's not just the basic copyright problem that will need to be adressed. By the way, if you upload your art on some artist website, you often agree to let them use your data (and art) for all sorts of things.
For example, DeviantArt has as part of its Terms and Services the following sentences: "DeviantArt does not claim ownership rights in Your Content. For the sole purpose of enabling us to make your Content available through the Service, you grant to DeviantArt a non-exclusive, royalty-free license to reproduce, distribute, re-format, store, prepare derivative works based on, and publicly display and perform Your Content."
So... already, the moment you upload something to DA, you have given DA certain rights to use your work. Is that stopping people from posting on DA? No. Do they expect to be compensated on DA? Probably not.
The only way to truly opt out of your data being used is by no longer supplying that data.
What I do think should be possible is that certain prompts (like an artist's name) should either be blocked or should automatically generate revenue for that artist. You do something in the style of Banksy? Then Banksy automatically gets 0.0001 $ deposited into his/her/their PayPal account/bank account for each image created with that prompt.
Is this doable? I have no idea, since I'm not an IT person.
What I am is someone who is finally finding an artistic outlet for all those ideas that she hasn't been able to create over the last 60 years... And it's wonderful...
Fabulous comment - thank you. I think you have articulated the complexities and challenges of all this very nicely - it is technically feasible and equally hugely complex!
In a perfect world, but it's too late to untrained the AI models. They would have to delete and start from scratch and that's something I don't think they will do.
Agree, the cost of retraining is not insignificant, which then obviously makes opting out very hard. That is a strong argument for copyright free or opt-in only. But as you rightly say - whether they will do that is to be seen. At least the moral and ethical questions are gaining traction through discussions like this. If we don't raise it then they will definitely not do anything.
Absolutely amazing video, captivating and really profound, this is great!
Thank you so much!
I found somewhat interesting how far from the prompt/briefing the result is in some cases, despite the graphical quality. In a way it's a little bit as if the AI was a miraculous virtuoso artist that wasn't quite fluent in the language of someone requesting a commission. Not that's like AI's Achilles' heel or something, it's not anything more than barely a temporary inconvenience.
Interesting analogy of "do a picture such and such in the stile of Drew Struzan," with "do a music so and so as if it were sung by Madonna, Taylor Swift, and Beyoncé." I can only hope that somehow music artist industry could set some sort of case-law that would apply to graphic arts as well. Maybe graphic artists should find some way to come up with some AI that would assess the style of pieces and that could be used to aid in disputes against AI-made art that incurs in this stylistic/identity theft.
Although it could be interesting to have a different standard for human "style copycats," not that's totally okay and not to be frowned upon to some degree, maybe even to a larger degree than is usually done (which often has some lee-way for beginners and legitimate influence/homage, and, to a lesser degree, clients' requests), but at least the individual human output is something to which the true original artist can compete, besides more likely possibly having the reputation of being the true owner of a style or set of ideas, even if in a broader sense not strictly protected by copyrights (maybe not even truly possible to define in terms of law), but really more a thing of etiquette and honor of good principles.
Whereas with AI, I could well be an unpublished artist today, come up with some style and thematic choice, produce some pieces, publish, and before I know it, before barely anyone sees my work, someone sees it and "trains" an AI in the same style and prompts for dozens of similar vaguely-related thematic choices, that could otherwise be associated as "my thing." A similar kind of copy-catting can even happen without AI, but at lest the true original artist stands a chance, even in this short-attention-span world of tweeter and quick "likes."
I agree - the potential speed of copycatting is alarming. One of my suggestions would be automatic protection of new work for say 5 to 10 years to prevent AI from being trained on it & allow the artist time to benefit from their new IP. Whether that could ever be feasible or not is a tricky question though!
@@BasementPicasso But what if the artist themselves train the AI with their Art in various styles(there are already models that are trained by artists themselves btw).
What if that style resembles other artist styles?
I was shooting some photographs with my film camera, but when I went to get the film developed I noticed that I couldn't find many around. It looks like the convenience of digital, and camera phones helped them disappear. It made me depend more on digital cameras. Did it get me angry. No. It's easier. I don't have to wait for the pictures. Just upload them into the laptop, and that's all. I use every tool for creating my art. AI is one of them.
I think that's the way a lot of people see it. I am using AI in a number of ways now as well
It feels like all of your dreams are ripped from you.
I think many in the community share similar feelings and my heart goes out to each and every one ...
@@BasementPicasso Yep. Nevertheless, I won't give up because of some stupid AI algorithm.
Thank you. I am an emerging artist, a recent art school graduate trying to find my first job in 3D Modeling and Animation. I am truly scared. Between what I've been leaning about AI filters in HR to now this, the future isn't so bright. Your video did give me some hope though so thank you. I haven't tried any AI (outside content aware fill in Photoshop) just because of the pure ethical implications. I guess I'll have to find a way to adapt because ultimately AI doesn't care about feelings or ethics. I'm just curious, do you think or know if AI generated images are copyright protected by their generators or by the AI if no artist name or style is included in a prompt? Will artists ever be copyright protected again unless it is an actual physical piece of art? Everyone should be signing their Metadata for all their images.
Hello, I’m an aspiring traditional painter. I graduated in 2018, but I empathize with your fears. This freaks me out too.
I’m not keen on the digital side of things. But I agree, I think we artists are probably going to find a way to incorporate this stuff into our work-flow whilst still being creative ourselves. Also, I’ve heard some people mention that artists should utilize the Block-Chain to authenticate their digital stuff in the future. But I’m not sure exactly what that means or how it would be done. For instance, how does one sign their metadata? If make a physical painting and then post a photo of it online, how do I very I’m the creator online?
Who owns the copyright of an image generated by AI will be an interesting debate. Can you copyright the text prompt used? etc. many questions. Next 6-18 months will be testing this in court. I think artists can and will still own the copyright of their original creations, but protecting that right may be more challenging.
That is what "Minting" NFTs is all about - making a verifiable digital asset that proves ownership. That is more robust than any form of image meta-data I believe, and I think artists will need to seriously think about minting images before they make them public, even if they don't plan to sell the digital asset.
@@BasementPicasso that could also be a good topic for you to post on. I know how to assign copyright in the Metadata in photoshop but I don't think many people do and I don't know how to "mint". Could you share that with the community? I'm starting to think of ways to approach AI ethically ie not using other artist's styles and only feeding it my own work using image to image. I'm wondering if that is viable. I think that is the biggest conundrum for me - even though styles are not protected under copyright law, style is the fingerprint of the artist's identity. Artist's explore other artist's styles all the time but this feels more to me like theft - derivative rather than transformative - but it's happening at the most minute pixel level so it appears like there is substantial transformation happening. I wish there was an easier answer for this moral dilemma. Thank you
@@prestonowens4594 you access your Metadata in your images in photoshop. I just asked @basementpicasso how to "mint" your work similarly to NFT's and hopefully he'll show us how that is done. I would love to see your work - keep painting
We are slowly turning into the people from wall-e
Not sure it is slowly! :-)
As a consumer I'd rather have a blank book cover than a cover that has what appears to be a human expression of how Moby Dick made them feel but is not actually that at all.
To take things a step further, why pay for an editor or someone to write a new book? At that point why does the potential consumer need a book publisher? You could have an ai write you your own book on demand complete with a book cover.
We are basically there already with ChatGPT. Individual personalised content will be increasingly possible
As an retired software engineer and now trying to be an computerize artist, I find AI to be offensive to Artists and also software industry. I believe in later part of review, industry needs some type of rules to protect users. This video starts highlighted in one industry that is serious concern is the music industry. The biggest concern is that is not real and should have some kind of watermark stating that AI generatred. Nano pixel technology in Rebelle Pro maybe key so that watermark stating that it was produced by AI.
@stewarthyde5111 yes, watermarking could be a big help - but it will depend on how easily it can be removed or tampered with - it's an interesting area that is developing so I will be keeping an eye on that sort of technology.
It’s here to stay. This AI is a tool for many people to create instead of few chosen ones.
Having spent over 30 years trying to learn my craft, I don't think I have ever felt "chosen" in that sense, other than being lucky enough to be gifted with a passion for art. But I completely agree, it is here to stay and it will fascinating to see how it develops and what people can create with it
@@BasementPicasso you aren’t chosen one then. I was talking about those who are well known. Now many can create. Power to all people. Imagination can run wild. This is imagination on steroids.
Van Gogh cut his ear off because he had brain damage from the fumes of paint. This information came from a university chemistry class.
Hopefully, you know my comment was tongue-in-cheek! As someone that still does traditional art as well, I do take art material health and safety seriously!
Excellent presentation, thank you.
You're very welcome! Thanks for letting me know!
The way you explained it as not just another tool made so much sense.
Personally, human art shows way more than AI...AI just skips the creative process, imagination, skill, makes it boring to look at, why follow an artist if they are uncreative, unskilled or too lazy to do the work and rely solely on AI? It's really not something I enjoy looking at...just like I don't enjoy Jackson Pollock or Andy Warhol either.
Commercially though...after they settle the fair-use and copyright thing, I guess we'll have to wait? Can't imagine Disney, or other big companies being happy with their own IPs being used to train AI though. When we all can steal from anyone, and when everyone can do it, it feels like it's going to become a nightmare if they just allow it willy nilly? Also the idea of protecting peope and their style/personal brand/identity is something that can be mentioned more often, usually didn't really think about it.
Regardless, you absolutely deserve way more views than you have! Might I recommend a video and maybe several artists that can help? The Concept Art Association made two town hall videos about it, and several people are allowed to join in and ask questions. The latest video with two lawyers and an AI engineer was really insightful. Alongside opinions from artists like Greg Rutkowski, Craig Mullins and Karla Ortiz. Made me glad AI ethics institutes are paying attention actually. Thank you for the level headed and insightful views!
Thanks for the feedback, and also for the suggestions - I will have a look - I am very interested to see how this develops and get other people's thoughts on it.
the best video on the topic so far. Thanks!
most kind, thank you
all those images are recreations of previous work. It is like drawing something from memory, but is it really original art? I guess one thing which would consist of original art is training your own model on your own art work.
I have some good examples on UA-cam of people demonstrating the uniqueness (e.g. Motorbike - bull) where the images look like nothing created before, so I am convinced it can genuinely create. I think you are right about potentially training your own model on your own work - that is a really interesting space that some people are already exploring!
@@BasementPicasso all the images are not created by AI, they are created through settings you input into the AI. It is possible for 2 people to use AI, and "create" the same image, if they use the same prompt and settings.
I will be using AI to create my album art though. But I will be doing a rough sketch and then placing that sketch into the algorithm for the AI to finish.
Book covers are usually what I use AI art for.
Nice. How much of a difference has it made to your workflow?
@@BasementPicasso A lot, depending on what I'm doing. Sometimes I'll use it just for design and just draw a cover anyway, but I've also done some things that look great as they are (I just did a video about one the other day), but I still have to go in and correct things like fingers and extra limbs and such when they occur, I love working with AI and it's kind of addictive. Also I can ask the programs replicate my style and it seems the two programs I use recognizes it (I have stuff on DA and other places so I'm assuming it's grabbing info from those sources) which makes things easy for matching up.
Ai could change the entire structure of society to the point where 90% of the people don't have to work and those who do work want to live in luxury.
Making money as an artist might be impossible in the future, But it might also not even matter since everyones able to live comfortably and do what they love.
I can see some sort of tax being implemented so companies pay a tax instead of payroll. Then we get universal income and everyone can afford to live in a apartment and actually save up money over a couple years to move into a house. Robots will be building houses 100 times faster than humans.
Yes, completely agree - these are the broader challenges that AI, robotics and automation, in general, are going to cause. I tried not to go too far into the broader societal impact as I think the art debate is effectively a bit of a microcosm of that debate, which is why it is so important to be discussing it.
Completely agree their eventually going to introduce UBI universal basic income. Eventually nobody will have to work. We can just do whatever we want. There won't be any people to work anymore. When machines can just do it faster, cheaper and more safely
Thank you for this existential crisis fuel 😂😭
I aim to inform, inspire, and terrify, in about equal measures ... 😄
the problem with tools is not that the threaten jobs it is that they change where the money goes if I have a tool that cost 1 milion $ to make and I need to have one worker the productivity is not going to the worker it is going to the owner of the tool. To conclude creative destruction doesn't get rid of jobs (because there is always something to do) it just makes it so that people with money make money faster and less goes to the workers. other than that they can also have sort term effect because of education.
Yeah, that is a fair point. i think in some ways there is always a "business opportunity" to insert something between an existing business and it's customers - JustEat for example, making profit whilst producing no food ...
I honestly don't think people will work in the future. I think AI will do everything for us and maybe like 1% of the population will actually have a job
We should understand the different between creat art or generated an artwork. I will never call the artwork which I generated by AI as artwork creat by me.
I think that is a very honest and ethical position to take, however, the challenge is that if you post that work (e.g. Instagram), and even if you carefully label it (as many are doing) as "generated by AI" or the like, many viewers scrolling by may not see that, or really not take it in, so they will still (in their mind) attribute the work to you. As feeds fill up with AI-generated images, people will simply judge each of them as to whether they "like" it or not.
AI Art is pure accelerationism.
Not a word I was familiar with previously. Thanks for sharing - this could be an interesting path to investigate for me
@@BasementPicasso glad to inform, gotta stay up to date
What i love with AI art an AI in general is that people just stop at "will it replace artists ?" but dont understand what consequences it has for all, espcially its own creators.
Indeed, unemployment problem aside, if one AI artist can do the job of 1000 like you said, then you'd need to buy just one pc for him, compared to 1000 like before. So CPUs, GPUs etc. market will drop by 1000 because of the AI they created themselves lol... what the best way to gain trust from your investors.
Its just basic ecnomy. The less human time needed to work on a pc, the less demand there will be, and the more the AI market will drop. So AI can't replace us without destroying its own market basically.
So I think AI has no future.
Yes, I think there are interesting consequences like AI ingesting more and more AI-generated articles and AI-generated images in a weird reinforcing loop!
Great vid, unfortunately I don't think there's any aspect of style that can be distinguished as unique ,when consulting billions of images. And even if there was , an artist would be constrained to incorporate this signature element.
Even now , some person unable to draw a string can develop a book cover using the ai, and there's no certainty, that the product wouldn't be most appealing.
Moreover ,the huge difference in speed and price for ai art , may render ones stylistic quirks entirely moot. Odds are, the public discernment of quality is not going to be appreciative enough to choose handmade over generated material.
Fact is, I don't care if the jelly jar is glass or plastic. The issue of replacement is going to hit us all. Imagine a reader selecting a title ,after which an AI inserts a story and monitors pupil size to determine which elements would be most appealing, in real-time, at the speed of light. The ai won't have to steal from Melville , and the basis of common culture will go out the window.
If a style isn't (in some way) unique, then I don't think people would need to add an artist's name to the prompt. There is a concern that better results are generated when the prompt contains the name of established top-tier artists, so the result isn't based on a simple mash-up of all the 5 billion images, but is instead heavily leveraging that particular artist's work. I completely agree with your thoughts about public-perspective though - will people care & does it matter
Well, in the US anyway, you can't copyright AI art, so it will be less attractive to comicbook companies than human art. Afterall, can you imagine Marvel not being able to do anything about sites making their comics available for free or even selling them for less?
Yeah, I am watching all the unfolding copyright battles play out. The US decision is very interesting (and generally good news), but I am sure there is a lot more to come ...
@@BasementPicasso Yeah, I really think artists aren't going to lose their shirts over this in the long run. They will get less work from vanity/non-commercial projects though.
I clicked this video because I've been clicking art channels on UA-cam to watch them ABSOLUTELY PANIC about how good AI has gotten so quickly. MOST are very, very against it, calling for regulation and government intervention.
I was pleased to find a level-headed, realistic analysis of what AI image generation could mean in the near future instead, as well as a very apt comparison to how traditional art was effected by the rise of digital art in the past 30 years or so.
My own opinion is that the time for objection is long since past. Pandora's box is open. Our AI powered future is already here, and people are going to have to adapt, and quickly.
Thanks Ryan, yes, I really wanted to avoid the doom and gloom approach and try to keep it balanced. Like you say there is little chance of going back, so we need sensible conversation about how to go forward.
Just what is the alternative? If AI actually gives better results than human work, should we consciously agree to a lower quality of services to protect jobs? Consciously take a step back into the early years of the industrial revolution? Introduce protectionism for handicrafts to protect artists? And why only artists, why didn't we protect workers, typesetters, representatives of hundreds of professions that technology has wiped out? It happened every time, from the printing press, the steam engine, photography, computers... All these inventions (now tame) to a section of society seemed at first to be evil incarnate, while others saw them as useful tools. AI is a logical consequence of earlier choices, it only closes the process of the industrial revolution. Maybe it's time to remember what it was supposed to be used for...
Yes, that is very much the bigger question with AI. My role as an Enterprise Architect didn't exist 100 years ago - barely 50 years ago. technical, scientific & industrial revolution and progress have tended to go hand in hand with the creation of new job types (not just job vacancies). For a long time, manual labour was replaced increasingly by some form of knowledge work.
The big question with AI is when robotics & automation (largely) replace all the manual jobs & AI can (largely) replace all the knowledge worker & creative jobs, what does society, work & money etc. start to look like. I don't have any issues with AI development in general or in the long term. My main concern just now is that within art, the data sets (images) were not obtained with permission. If they had been - I would have no issues. The coming years will be very interesting as this develops
the moby dick experiment was stunning my friend. thanks for posting this, i didnt even blink while watching, i forgot to roll a ciggy, and forgot it was 6am and time to go to work, i took a day off, i said im sick, and i was, still am :))))) (confused asbestos simple remover here, living in thamesmead, working in newham for newham :) but trying to play with art - now - your video discouraged me for the next 50 years to try and make art -))) the impact makes me go out look for some strong painkillers and the strongest whysky i can find - probably triple distilled irish . )))) thanks for the video. happy holidays
Thanks for the feedback. AI art has really changed how I think about the art that I do and what I want to do. It has made me more focussed on the process of creating and making rather than the end product, but for full time artists it really is having a big impact
My head must have been truly buried in the sand for the last few years. I had heard about AI Art but never looked into it because basically all digital art that I have ever done is Computer Aided art, even if we compose art in imaging programs and then use the constructed images for reference in traditional painting techniques. There are no hard and fast lines, though, between computer aided art painted in Corel Painter, Rebelle, Procreat or whatever becasue we, as artists, are still making decisions about what we intend to do in a painting.
So I had to have a fiddle with some of the AI art programs you mentioned in this video and found many of them somewhat daunting until I realized there are many more artist friendly options recommended by AI ART reviewers. I was mostly attracted to NightCafe as a starting point. I wanted a service that would use my original images as starting points for stylized paintings I would then attempt in Rebelle, but quickly found some of the results of my inexperienced efforts resulted in "painted" imagery I would struggle to create as well as the AI service and certainly done so much more quickly.. That said, I still enjoy brushing paint onto a canvas or board, but I am still more likely to paint digitally for self satisfaction (undo's are my best friend).
In my opinion AI Art tends to look something like over-saturated and manipulted Photoshop sunsets, or like filtered images that are just too perfect to be real.
I will continue to play with some of the AI Art services, but quite frankly I would rather watch you paint in your videos and see if I can get some of your knowledge and experience to stick to me. Since I am only a hobby artist, I don't worry about the changes taking place in the art world. I am sure AI Art will become more sophisticated and popular with time, but unlike the demise of film cameras I don't think it is time to give up on the joy of slopping paint onto a canvas or scratching madly away on a Wacom tablet.
What I really need now is a lesson in editing the verbosity out of my comments.
Thank you for your great Rebelle tutorials. I am thoroughly enjoying them.👍👍
Thanks Wardie for the encouragement and support, much appreciated, and yes i completely agree, while Ai is doing some amazing stuff I still simply enjoy and prefer hand-painted work & the process of creating it. I may well incorporate some AI into the workflow, but my videos going forward will mainly be "hand" painted digital work. PS I really like reading the comments - the longer the better !! :-)
@@BasementPicasso __I am slowly getting my head wrapped around the "threat" of AI-generated art. A quote that I read recently: " AI will not replace artists. Artists with AI will."
For me personally, the ability to generate imagery that I may then want to commit to canvas, whether it be traditional or digital in execution, is exciting.
I'll take a few courses on AI in SkillShare and see how I feel about things in a week or two, and then come back to revisit your videos for real inspiration in Rebelle.
The ai imaging is not creative even if it may appear to be so to humans. Chat bot algorithms from several years ago that were kind of bad had the ability to fool humans into personifying the chat bot in its early and rather limited days. Those type of creative assumptions brought on by the sci-fi we’ve consumed in the past, to me that proves that the human mind is much more creative than any machine for better and for worse. All of these things are large language models that average the training data and try to match the output to the words you’ve typed in. Algorithms have been doing this sort of thing for a while with numbers or other things, it just seems a lot crazier when it’s images or videos.
@Foxfire-chan yeah I agree - I see it as interesting rather than genuinely creative at a human level (yet!)
At the moment they're banning the use of AI in a lot of game development like the big video game companies. Same thing with steam. They don't want anything that's AI on their store. I'm sure because of all the legal implications and copyright stuff.
But once things aren't so murky anymore, I'm pretty sure that a lot of industries will start using AI more and they'll replace a lot of their staff. They'll probably keep a couple employees but I'm sure their teams will be cut in half because they just won't need that many people.
I think AI has only been in development for like less than 10 years and it's already incredibly good. One of the reasons that they don't use it in concept art in games is because they need to get consistent results like for it to draw the same thing over and over like with character model sheets and every time it tries to draw them they're slightly different so it's not very useful for game development.
Ai has already started to replace entry level positions at animation studios.
@williammclean6594 Yes, absolutely. I saw something recently that over 40% of people surveyed in game studios said that AI generative tools are already being used in some form - it is only a matter of time. And consistency is rapidly being solved with latent consistent models that can generate the same character or keeps large parts of an image the same etc.
If I remember correctly they would only get around 4 pennies due to how much art there is and how it is applied.
apologies - I am not sure of the context here - is this in relation to royalties?
@@BasementPicasso Yes, if I remember correctly.
@@waterisaneurotoxin7788 Thanks - yes, I think you are right - royalty rates tend to be pretty low, but they can build up significantly over time. I remember Cam Kennedy being (pleasantly) surprised at the royalties of the star wars comic I think it was
I was thinking too that this was a well done presentation and how many hours you must have thought about it and put it together and since then only a few weeks ago ChatGPT came out how it would have probably organized your ideas, give you suggestions, and let it present it logically etc and cut your time probably 2/3s, and to take your system and tweak it and update etc and it for you in a few minutes. Such is the time we live in. I have a question though is what about multi artist prompts? Who gets compensated, and when many artists end up in a AI generated work so that their style is diluted is it yours to claim compensation because your style is not explicitly visible?. So is the case now. AI companies are going to be making billions and the legal teams they can afford, not to mention the momentum of AI as opposed to the probably years it would take to even bring this to some kinda legal bearing. Probably 40 years ago Playboy had no idea what was about to hit them with internet porn which (don’t quote me) is 70% of the internet and just a free for all, Wild West. It will I believe be, similar. That’s what scares me about AI. It will unleash thousand of genies out of a bottles as soon it’s released and then trying to herd cats legally (forgive my overuse of metaphors). Your solution also brings another problem if you exclude yourself from AI isn’t there a danger of you becoming irrelevant? If you have four people and one leaves it’s noticeable if you have a thousand people and one leaves it’s not noticeable. I can go on Artstation and see thousands of works of art, most look similar, but most of them won’t make any money. If you exclude yourself “who cares”. The Beatles make a ton of money from Spotify but Joes garage band is irrelevant, and if he quits Spotify will anybody notice? Won’t art be the same? I don’t want to be depressing but I have a sceptical nature that seems to look at solutions and poke holes in them which may be valuable. You don’t go to war without considering costs.
Thank you. Yes, the fact that ChatGPT came out so soon after just shows how quickly this is moving and advancing. It is why the arguments along the lines of - "it can't draw hands" (and is therefore no good) are severely short-sighted. So I completely agree with your point - how do artists stay relevant, get noticed, or ever make money in the future. These are some of the critical questions that need to be looked at from every direction.
Every average Joe will become an artist. The Key Is in what the ai does It makes an image based on words. If we look at writers poets they would use words as a tool and the reader would create an image in its mind so when they will realize that they dont need an average Joe Just a short phrase from a poem even these self proclaimed artists will loose their job. The fact Is that poetry or even writting Is a creative exercise for the reader that will bring out different unique styles in different readers . When you feed that into a machine you get a shallow world made of people who dont use their imagination and Just accept everything that Is sold to them. Ai Will create a mindless generation or perhaps a Revolution in thinking.
As someone else commented, see accelerationism ...
Thanks for sharing 😃🙏🥰🤩
You are so welcome!
Metadata will become the artists best friend. You can store who created the digital art within its Metadata which can be used to validate authenticity. Human made art has intrinsic value which is what’s made it so valuable throughout history. AI art has no value.
Yes, I agree. I think there will be a trend back towards human made art by an artist you have some sort of connection with. It will hold more value. Images will become increasingly worthless
If the tools to create AI-generated music are open-sourced, then there isn't much that big companies can do to shut down development. The new music that uses copyrighted music will be driven underground, and people will seek it out out of curiosity. It's too late to go back now. All industries are threatened. Today it's the art world, then movies, then music, and lastly, the physical.
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out-
Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out-
Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out-
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me-and there was no one left to speak for me.
Yes, agree, the potential for disruption across almost every industry is quite significant. It's why I think people need to be aware of what is happening and get involved in the discussion
There are problems with style: Usually, people don't have 1 distinct style. It often evolves and usually many people try different styles as well. does that mean that you own all the styles and intermediate steps?
I'm also afraid that regulating AI art will do more harm to artists than good. Large companies can just use the vast array of their own art to churn out cash grab after cash grab.
I agree that most styles are not unique and derive from other works. But the combination of the styles that an artist adopts plus their unique perspective etc. does represent something individual - so it's not a case of that person owning every contributing style - the concern for me is when you use that particular artist's name in a prompt, you are directly leveraging their particular style, and potentially producing a work that could be misinterpreted as being painted by them. That can be reinforced by the sharing of prompts, which then adds another image directly associated with their name, impacting search engine priority & diluting the pool of their actual real artwork. The concept art association legal discussion on the challenges of copyrighting style (you can't) was enlightening.
Will people value art as much in the world where everyone produces millions of great pictures per day? Rhetorical question.
Great question!! Time will tell
No
Very good.
Thank you, much appreciated.
@@BasementPicasso I also found it interesting that you're an SA! I was also an SE/SA for 7 years in the areas of "big data" and ML, so I found your presentation very engaging. We shall see what the world of AI Art plays out in the art vs commerce areas. Personally I use AI art for commercial work, but still enjoy learning how to draw and paint. That is how I found your channel, through the Rebelle videos. I also think when it comes to "tools" it also comes down to the level of control. Right now, the output of AI can be very unpredictable. The same prompt will not repeat the same output. Maybe that type of control will be fixed in the future.
@@markanthonyart a fellow SA, nice :-) One of the things that kept me going in IT was the level of creativity to be found in solutions and designs - I do like a good diagram! Yes, it will be interesting to see how the interface & capabilities of the tool aspect develops. I will probably have a play with Stable Diffusion sometime soon. They really are developing at an incredible rate …
@Basement Picasso I just got SD installed this week. Pretty good. I didn't realize they censor certain keywords and can't generate certain content. I know midjourney and dalle censor certain prompts like celebrity names and such. But running open source on my own machine should not have those limitations! Lol. So it's not like a tool like photoshop where you can make anything you want. There is an aspect of censorship and lack of complete control.
Mahatma Gadhi would never say this quote about such an unethical thing like AI "art". It's a shame even mention his name about this topic.
The potential disruption from AI (not just for art specifically) will be significant - like millions of jobs displaced & major changes to society as we go forward. The intelligent, peaceful discussion about what we should do with AI is completely compatible with his moral and ethical framework and approach.
I think this year we will see lots of amazing AI tools that will make our lives easier. Those who can use these AI tools smartly will be the gainers. Recently I created amazing images with Blue Willow
I Agree, the rate of development of new AI tools is quite incredible
And history repeats itself.
Suffering is both the curse and the blessing of humanity.
We naturally cannot appreciate what is granted to us, that's why we are born: to die.
AI "art", like any revolution, is the death of tradition. It makes some aspects of life easier at the cost of misery.
The funny thing about being human is, if we are constantly fed happiness and joy, our natural balance craves suffering. And if suffering doesn't come from outside, it will come from within.
AI "art" is, again (you will see with time), the bifurcation of the same branch.
- Some precursor branch gave birth to cave paintings.
- Cave paintings became Symbols, which gave birth to Mathematics and Language.
- Mathematics became Science, while Language became Culture.
- Science diversified (losing some unfruitful branches) into Knowledge, while Culture grew stronger (also losing a couple branches along the way).
Now these branches are taking over each other and sucking the life out of it (again, you'll see).
Who am I to tell which branch should live and which should die, I simply know that sooner or later we'll have to pay for it.
[My personal opinion is against AI "art", for Science has already achieved significant advancements and, for now, neither it can or should try to advance.
A decade is not nearly enough time to explore any technological revolution, but one year is all it takes for everything to go wrong.
Just saying...]
Wise words! (And also sounds like my last game of Civilization!)
Companies companies companies....
laws laws laws....
You all forgot the pirates!!!
Stable diffusion fits in 4GB. It can be run on a local normallish computer and it's open source( there's an asterix on that, but it doesn't matter here). And of course can set up a site with it. The generic model can be retrained for a specific purpose. They already did that for anime images( millions of images), that retraining cost a wopping.... 3000$. You can do your own limited retraining at home for a specific art style, a face, a specific object for a cup of coffee.
To train the general model it cost them 600.000$. As long as you don't fundamentally change your strategy, you can keep training on top of it( you gradually overwrite the older training). So you can incrementally improve it, that price tag is misleading because it can be spread over many training sessions. So, you don't need a company to fully retrain it. Pirates could take dance diffusion (stable diffusion but for music) that is trained on free music and start training it on copyrighted music. It's just a matter of time.
This is like bittorrent. The pirates will simply ignore all the laws and generate a gigantic torrent of pirate stuff for free. Attempting to ban this is as stupid as zero-covid in china. You can't just make stupid laws, they have to be enforceable too. And the pirate stuff will be superior to the legal stuff. All a pirate has to do, is snatch something, make some improvements, then dump it back in the internet. The cumulative effect and the variety is what will make them superior.
1)This is the end of copyright, and good riddance.
2)Additionally, images will stop been proof of anything. The pope will be in gay porn movies and the wealthiest man will be robbing banks... so no one will care if you are in a porn movie.
3)Probably the hardest part for society to swallow will be the virtual child porn torrent that will cause the decriminalization of simple possession of real child porn. How are you supposed to enforce current laws under this new environment. You are going to put some one in jail for years under these conditions? The supreme court will find it unconstitutional (violates proportionality). I'm surprised no one is seeing this coming.
Very good point - yes you are right I hadn't considered piracy & illegal use - I can see what you are saying. I do think new laws will come through, but they are notoriously far behind the technology & problem, and whether they prove useful in the long term will be the key question I think. Thanks for the thoughts.
@@BasementPicasso
Well.... this subject goes far deeper then you realize.
The real problem here, is how you see your self. AI were build by copying the animal brain. AI understands like humans or animals. Humans are biological "AI" made by natural selection. But this collides with most peoples ideology.
At the 10 minute mark when you mentioned tools . No One going to hire you to to use a e to prompt for them and there won't be any jobs to make more AI either because AI can just write more AI. Basically AI is just automation. They won't need anybody to run it for them. Like you said, it's a worker not a tool
@williammclean6594 Yes indeed. It is amazing and scary how things are moving forward even since I did that video. Collaborative AI bots working together (and AI swarms) will push that even further
@@BasementPicasso yeah it's scary. Not just with art but like it looks like AI is going to be the future where they want to automate most everything. We're going to be living in the future where people don't really need to work anymore and then they'll have to figure out a system. If people don't need to work, you'll have to change the whole economic. Ubi reversal. Basic income and more importantly is if nobody needs to work anymore, people will have to figure out what they want to do with their time. I mean I like to draw but there's a lot of people out there that don't know what they want to do. Some people don't have hobbies and they just want to work. That will really affect some people like some people get bored just being retired because they don't have hobbies.
AI is still a tool in some way, it is just developing way faster. Technology has always "replaced people" doing stuff, and making decisions, but then, the people start doing new stuff they could not do before. It was just slower than what we see now so people get confused and scared. All modern machinery and tools did replace the slaves used to build pyramids, but employed others to build thousands of skyscrapers a year. There was no market for skyscrapers 4000 years ago, as there was no market for creating your AI avatars a few weeks ago. This is not taking jobs, just transforming them much faster than ever before.
And when you mentioned the music industry...
Copyright is obsolete, just let that zombie die already. The music tries to keep it alive because it is easy money for them (and not the artists). Musicians are finding other ways, most musicians I do not make any significant income from copyright anymore, it only makes rich overrated reggeaton stars.
If AI could destroy that industry? That would be awesome! Finally something new. But I don't think overly complicated reward systems in any way similar to copyright are a good idea, that is all just money for lawyers, not for artists.
I agree with you in the sense that I don't think copyright law will really be the saviour for artists. I agree with the comment that this will transform jobs much more quickly, but I am not so sure that we will replace them with as many new jobs. When you replace 3000 call centre workers with Voice AI, you do not need 3000 IT developers and support staff to install and manage the system to do that. My concern is that AI will rapidly replace many more jobs than can naturally evolve to replace them. But then I am generally a pessimist, so hopefully, I will be wrong :-)
It would need a combination of factors in the whole economy. The increase in productivity should translate to less work hours in many branches for similar pay (like the four day week trend). As long there is no complete economy crash, demand would just shift, so we will experience job changes, not only in arts. Ideally we will shift towards less working hours for all, or to a super productive economy. But the way there will be shaky, and some will try to take it all.
nice talk, there's a lot to this topic, i don't worry for the kids they'll have a different concept of art altogether, beyond anything that's come before, we humans are great at using things from the past and making new things from those resources, from that energy.. all the way down to fossil fuels, you might say we're the great recyclers.. fear limits, i'd guide against the old western concepts of "they took our jobs!!" a lot of change is afoot, people will become more aware of themselves as directors of their own experience rather than manual executors, if u will.. in the short term there will be many copyright wars and skirmishes, but we don't need to create the wheel to enjoy the ride, not to get too woo woo but you probably aware of the idea that many different people through out history have the same ideas at the same time, and maybe one guy commercially capitalizes on it (and whose to say we own ideas and they don't own us).... it's too much to say here, but i feel there's a seminal connection, collective unconscious if you will which all artists and creatives draw from to share with the world, and this will happen at a greater scale than ever as creativity and sharing is magnified.. some will win or be seen to lose while the power struggle for ownership continues, but it will also allow those who want to create for the sake of creating to enjoy that feeling of doing so, which lest you forget is its own reward, beyond any bottom line, and as they focus on that instead of whose stealing from who, and whose benefitting and whose getting shafted.. ways for those who choose to focus on the simple joy of creating art for art sake will have avenues which they can benefit from revealed to them in ways they may have never expected.. anyhoo thanx again for the talk and yes your style is urs it carries a lineage and is part of you from piece to piece, but maybe there's another plane from which you draw it, from which you were 1st inspired to it, and it allows you to become more of who you are... and that look is just a look and you are far more than that, as any great artist has their own pattern which they beautifully attune to, but they are far more than the sum of their pieces or creations.. and maybe these changes will help to reveal we are far more than the physical aspects we identify ourselves with.. any hoo i hope to see more of your art and that you continue to enjoy making it whether it seems financially viable or not..
Thank you, truly, for sharing such well considered thoughts. What you say resonates with me, particularly about the simple need to create, purely for the enjoyment of creating. That is what is most likely to drive me to continue irrespective of what is going on. I very much agree that this is significant, if not pivotal time of change, and I like your comment about fear being limiting. I do find this all equally fascinating and scary at the same time, and did try my best to keep as balanced an approach as I could manage. Fear not, there will be more to come!! Thank you for the encouragement and support.
@@BasementPicasso tx, u inspire me..
this is quietly the best comment on the AI art discussion.
machines cannot claim copyright
Indeed - only humans can claim copyright.
The greatest art theft the humanity had ever seen.
I see it as both - it is an amazing advance, but I agree, simultaneously I do think it is the greatest theft of individual IP ever witnessed.
AI art is good. Flexible artists will embrace it, exceptionally good traditional artists will survive (the % was always small) and some will have fewer job prospects. But Art and Artists are not the same thing. There are so many whining youtube videos on this subject.
Thanks for your thoughts. AI is incredible, and not just in Art generation. We have only just scratched the surface, and therefore the disruption, that is coming. Most people react instinctively to what the tools can do today. The "... but it can't draw hands!" brigade is rapidly running out of teardowns with Midjourney 5 etc. But this is what it can do now. I also look at what do all these AI tools mean in 2,3,4 or 5 years. That my job as a technical architect - how will it impact systems, organisations, processes and society. There are amazing things to come, but they will be HIGHLY disruptive, more so than the internet, or industrial mechanisation, photography etc. BTW - I was trying to go for balanced, rather than whining
@@BasementPicasso Your views expressed are very well balanced. I have to admit my comments about whining were ill informed based on the many other youtube clips I have seen not yours. I must have watched about 10 on this subject so far so I did not spend 1 hour 14 on watching yours. Will do now. My apologies.
@@alanrobertson9790 No apologies needed Sir, it is a complex, emotive and fast moving topic. I have watched many other AI videos since I did this, and my views continue to develop & shift. What is important is that people are made aware of what's happening and get a chance to join the debate - I honestly believe it is such an important topic
@@BasementPicasso I watched your well reasoned video in its entirety. The joke was that the AI Moby Dick covers were not only done quickly but were of a very high quality. I liked them far better than the original cover. When it came to the politics unsurprisingly we disagree because you make a living out of it and I'm a hobbyist. I have put 1800 images out on the internet but I did it for free. The point I would like to make is 1) Todays artists don't own all the art out there, it belongs to everybody. 2) No other worker group has been granted compensation when automation came in. Why do artists think they are a special case? 3) Copyrighting of a style would need a very tight definition. There maybe more artists out there than styles which could severely restrict any future art. Could lead to Artist A making a picture but Artist B claiming copyright because he could have made it. This would be absurd. 4) Maybe instead of trying to get a monopoly on the art you have already done you should expect to get paid for new work. Example when PCs first came along you could buy Microsoft office and use it forever. Now they expect to get paid every year for the same thing whether or not they improve it. Same goes for photoshop. Don't expect to get paid for life! which is where copyrighting a style would put you.
@@alanrobertson9790 Great comment, thank you!! I was watching a history program recently and there were some interesting parallels with William Hogarth's satirical prints getting "ripped off" and the introduction of (I think the first) copyright laws to give an artist 14 years to benefit from the new work they created. I think my view has changed since I did that video - copyrighting a style _IS_ a step too far, but I think you are right about there needing to be some form of income stream. It will be very interesting to see the outcome of the multiple copyright suits in action (Getty etc) and what the implications are - it is fascinating times ... :-) Thank you for contributing to the discussion!!
every day people get a worse understanding ai than the day before
they think it's sentient
they think it should pay taxes
they think it threats their jobs (WHICH IS HAPPENING EVERY DAY)
many people make digital art nowadays instead of using pencil and paper
a couple years ago people started to use ai as a tool
because a calculator is also a tool which has an input, it calculates stuff and then you get an output
ai ALSO has an input and output like a calculator in this case for images
I think you are right in the sense that I think a huge % of people don't even begin to realise what AI is doing, or is going to be capable of, so they aren't even part of the conversation yet. I don't think there are bad questions to ask about AI and what to do with it, or in response to it. I think we need a lot more discussion about it.
It's not a threat.
Is that because you see it as an opportunity, or that it just won't make a difference?
Its kinda scummy and prone to exploitation
I share your concern about exploitation
Copyrighting styles? Imagine Disney copyrighting every style remotely similar to their artworks they own. Sooner or later every single time some artist draws you'll have to pay royalty to the mouse..
Not a good idea.
That would be tragic indeed. It will be interesting to see how the inverse is tolerated when larger companies can have their (latest) style emulated at the press of a button, particularly as we transition from generating single images (with ease) to creating entire films/animations with equal speed and ease.
i think you should have agthered you thougths more beforehand. i was out after 6:44. didnt seem that you have made a statement or anything. you jsut talk and tlak and talk. .whats the point?
Sorry it didn't engage you. It was a longer talk because there is so much to discuss about AI art, and I wanted to share a different perspective. I take your point though and newer videos I try to make more concise. thanks for the feedback.
@@BasementPicasso i think a script would have done wonders to get your thoughts more boiled down. i sound maybe a little rude bcs im german and english isnt my main language.. gj anyway.. interesting and dense topic..
MEANWHILLE IN ANOTHER TIME :
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Suddenly I want to watch Indiana Jones again ...