The War between Artists and AI
"Good artists copy, great artists steal" - Pablo 'AI mastermind' Picasso
Introduction 0:00
Part One - Art 9:10
Part Two - Theft 14:16
Part three - War 25:47
Conclusion - 33:51
If you just want to use an image generator to see what they are like, I'd recommend playgroundai.com/
It uses stable diffusion, is free, has no download, and has a relatively easy to use interface.
Steven Zapata - The End of Art • The End of Art: An Arg...
Patreon - / neverknowsbestyoutube
Other channel - / @neverknowsbest
Music in order of appearance:
Georges Bizet - Carmen
Rachmaninoff - Italian polka
Liszt - liebestraum no 3
Tchaikovsky - swan lake op 20 scene by a lake
Tchaikovsky - dance of the sugar plum fairy
Rossini - the thieving magpie
Mozart - rondo alla turca
Franz Gordon - the french library
Mozart - lacrimosa
Georges Bizet - Carmen
Schubert - serenade
Liszt - liebestraum no 3
"I'm going to explain it to you like you're an idiot, not because you are, but because you might be" Boy, you hit the nail on the head with that one 😂
If only everyone were so considerate 🙏
omg XDD yeah
I'm within the camp of "I don't give a shit about AI generated images, I myself as an artist have my own journey based in building skills and techniques that matter to me, exploring subjects and topics I care about." -- I get annoyed when it feels like AI is being pushed onto me, when I (or others around me) are being scolded to be relegated to obsolescence "unless we adapt" -- completely ignoring the entire aspect of the personal journey that many artists take as the reason for everything they do. AI taking the workload off out hands is completely antithetical to the reason we do what we do, and is why we'll never adopt it into our art. I don't care if someone who has never drawn before in their lives uses AI to make some pretty images -- but I have deep, long-established reasons why I would never touch it myself, reasons that have existed long before AI was ever a thing. Also just clarifying, while a lot of people playing with AI generators are just doing it for fun, there is definitely a good size chunk that are doing it for popularity and money. A lot of the general public have no idea what AI images are, and just like seeing pretty pictures. There are a number of AI artists on instagram, DA etc who have gotten good size followings and are selling prints etc. Not saying that people who like this stuff are wrong, but just pointing out that there IS money in it from people who don't care.
I wonder why people would even buy AI images when they could just do them themself xD
I get that.. personally as an artist who has joined in using Ai.. i also understand the needless hate by artist towards people who have actually grown to appreciate them and art in general from the inspiration gleaned from using ai.. which really has served as a medium for self expression. Either way it shouldnt be hate on either side
@@globalwealthsociety Based Peace Maker
That was a very beautifully expressed opinion and I agree with you, up to a point. You point to the beauty in the actual EFFORT that goes into creation. However, if someone is looking to be a creative artist, photographer, designer, etc., as a career, then all bets are off. In that case, it would be advisable to learn this advancement. Example. I love darkroom work. I love developing analog film. At the same time, I would never hire a photographer who has not mastered PS. It will be the same with AI. We can argue and go to court over how that initial model was made, but that is already far in the distance. AI is here to stay. Not just in Art but in science, medicine, engineering, etc. There is no reason not to embrace the steps and methods and process we use in a creative process. Just understand that is now just for our personal enjoyment. Within five years, any working artist will have to have some working and training experience with AI.
@@GreenSabre187 Because they can't.
Trying to learn how to draw really shifted my perspective on this topic. Before I had this same childlike sense of wonder at all the things I could create in an instant Now after a few weeks of trying to learn how to draw, realizing learning *just* proper anatomy and perspective might take me ages, gave me a lot of newfound respect for artists, and now watching these clips of people creating images that would probably take me a few more years of actively practicing every other day in just seconds really feels like a gut punch. I can't imagine how some of these people feel that have spent their entire lives perfecting their art feel, with their lives work being reduced to a name you prompt an AI with
Thank you for understanding and for trying it. I feel many tech bros and AI supporters just don’t understand artists because they’ve never tried to actually make art. I drew every singly day for 3 hours for months in high school just to be decent, now I watch a machine make better art than me in seconds, piggy backing off of mine and others work for corporations to feast on, and I’m just filled with disgust. People believe they can never be good artists, that somehow we hoard all the art skills to ourselves, when in reality it is one of the most accessible skills out there. Anyway, thank you.
@@lumenx7499 something like a third of Midjourney AI users according to internal polls are professional creatives, artists, designers, photographers etc, so a pretty large number of those using AI do understand because they are artists themselves. Like myself. Its a weird experience using AI for many of us. Scary and oddly humbling when it does it better than we can, laughable when it cant even draw something basic or tries to create hands. It has strengths and deficiencies, and I think unless and until they crack some core problems in AI such as the common sense problem (AI doesnt have it and will do some really freakishly weird things) and has lifelong learning (it has to be trained and cant correct its own mistakes over time once its been trained - you have to keep creating new models) its going to need skilled artists to use it. We cant be as fast - but we do the things it cant - apply common sense, a real understanding of things, and we keep on learning and improving all the time. Its not just a case of AI learning from us (or stealing as some prefer to call it) - we can also learn from it. We can also learn better than it can because of those two things we have it doesn't. My own take on AI art is that it can be a great benefit to us rather than just a threat - it all depends what people do with it. Thats actually always the case with art itself - we can use it inspire, heal, educate, enchant and so on - but we can also use to make propaganda for hateful ends, belittle and attack people with it, indulge our darkest fantasies and commit abuses. Most of the artists Im talking with online using AI are keen to use it ethically and to improve our artistic practice and works. Ive never seen so many artists coming together to try and shape the use of something before in my life - its taken me from be being a solitary artist to being part of an active supportive community exploring a new creative frontier. Its going to be as good or as bad as we human artists make it.
As a professional artist (over 2 decades) I find this tool incredibly exciting and relieving much like the transition between traditional to digital (there was a huge backlash back then). Given a good amount of time, using the AI saves me a few hours per work. There are different ways to use it, (thumbnail ideas, concepting and active editing, splicing, etc) really help. There's alot I want to draw in a given day, and this new tool just helps me get more stuff out at a rate of 30-60% faster. It's still takes work, it still takes a good eye and use of other tools to correct if using active editing, and in concepting it helps for placeholders/lighting. The bad part: it's more boring sorting through many words, going through hundreds of iterations for the same picture. Sometimes it's more fun to just sketch and start from there. Ai has limitations, so I balance between them knowing if my vision will be helped by ai or I'm just wasting my time with it and get straight to drawing instead.
I tried drawing and my pov is exactly the opposite lol. Realising how wasteful the effort and the time it takes for just a dumb art to come out is annoying to say the least. Either that or I just throw paint on the wall and call myself Picasso. If there's a robot gonna do it for free then I'm more than happy to use. Why walk 10 miles to work when I can use car.. Quite frankly, I'm a little astonished by artists reaction over AI considering the advantages. This could speed up their work for mere minutes instead of hours if not days. Plus this could be another mean of income by licensing their arts for subs on AI platform etc. The only way forward is to figure out how they can monetize it. Join & adapt.
@@PeterHollinghurst I agree with your viewpoint. Any tool can be used for good or bad, but right now, it is clearly not being used for good. My belief is that we need to have laws to protect artists from being overrun by AI, at least for now. Yes, of course artists would want to use it ethically, but artists aren’t the people who make laws, and most of the time they don’t have the money to either. We need this backlash to be strong, super strong, not just to be correct, but to show we will fight for our rights. Until we get laws in place, it is important that we keep being loud so that we can get this issue into the court of public opinion.
Dude, doesn't matter what kind of videos you make, gaming, culture, politics, in the hell that is modern day algorithm-optimized, advertiser friendly youtube you're one of the last channels remaining still putting out quality content. I obviously hope to see you return to gaming content eventually, but if you're feeling a bit burnt out and frustrated I totally get that.
@Dimitri Yakushev deserves more likes
@@PraiseJesusChrist2024 than other comments
Video essays are a creative work that require a lot of passion. I feel NKB wants to make videos about topics that are relevant (to him). I enjoy both his video games essays as well as these with a focus on society. I hope he will continue to do both when he finds interesting topics in both areas.
@KnowsBestNever I am deeply saddened by news in your main channel, and grateful to you for sharing it with us, in such an honest, accurate and insightful way. You are right in your analysis, which goes beyond KZhead and monetization, and can be applied to the current bloody dystopian society we live in, where the fake is preferred over the authentic, trash is rewarded over valuable, and valuable is punished and buried by the algorithm into anonymity. I'll let you know that since your suberb Gothic and Dragon Age vids, and now again since your recent heartbreaking farewell, I've taken the time and work to share this and many other of your best videos on all my servers (including the damn Adult Videogame vid, which I shared in both my porn and gaming servers, and everywhere I could). I was deeply offended that your excellent Adult Videogames video, despite the fact of being superbly written and made with tact, good taste, insightfulness and a good sense of humor (and that it also complies with KZhead policies and is completely safe and vanilla, pre-censored by yourself) would have been immediately demonetized and censored by KZhead, and that on top of that KZhead screwed up other of your videos and harmed your visibility, and automatically rejected your appeal in less than a minute. gosh it suuuuucks that you've taken a lasting hit from it! Things have gotten way more draconian recently with changes that are being enforced *retroactively as well. Content creators now need to account for all *future sensitivities with any video they make! Absolutely dystopian. The injustice of it all!!! I'm glad you have copies of your channel on Bitchute and Odysee, 'cause your work should be known and appreciated. Neverforget you are an excellent content creator and videogame essayist. You fill a niche that traditional gaming media always has neglected; your videos are insightful, objective, intelligent and tasteful; you challenge the average mainstream idiotic opinion, and your critiques and retrospectives are detailed, beautiful, argumentative, personal, authentic. You talk about aspects of the games that most reviews don't touch and, above all, you're a great creator precisely because you don't just popout whatever content like most youtubers!❣ Your work is one of love and passion. Your recollections of Dragon Age, Gothic and The Witcher series are perhaps the best ones I've seen. It is a pity and a disgrace that the damn algorithm has dragged you into clinical depression, to having doubts about yourself, to burnout, to doubting your own worth and your excellent format and content, which has always been unique and authentic, because it has soul 💖✨. Watching your confession video I could absolutely feel you, and you made me recall a quote by Robert E. Howard: "And just as I have struggled for a maximum amount of freedom in my own life, I look back with envy at the greater freedom known by my ancestors on the frontier. Hard work? Certainly they worked hard. But they were building something; making the most of opportunities; working for themselves, not merely cogs grinding in a soulless machine, as is the modern working man, whose life is a constant round of barren toil infinitely more monotonous and crushing than the toil on the frontier. He’s not building anything. He’s simply making a bare living..." -- Robert E. Howard to H. P. Lovecraft, January 1934 But, despite that overwhelming sentiment that you've explained so well, and with which we can relate deeply, please don't faint. Do not give up on what you really love! Videogame vids like yours will be sorely missed by all of us who don't consume the brainless garbage and obnoxious youtubers that the algorithm loves. I understand that monetization, the dystopian algorithm, and the alienated society we live in are daunting. But continue your labor of love on your main channel, just how you've always been: authentic, and if needed continue uploading stuff that the Lovecraftian algorithm approves and can make you money and traction on this secondary channel. P.S. this vid was good.
Until you realize his position isn’t “neutral” as he claims, and he sounds like a psychopathic ai dev by saying “it’s here to stay 🤩” He has quite a good manner of speaking but overall not impressed
Game Dev Programming student with multiple Game Dev Art Student friends and some industry professional acquaintances, and I wanted to provide some feedback on things mentioned. First of that Concept art is not directly at risk immediately. While Stable Diffusion can very rapidly create artworks and could very well be used in some part of the process, this idea comes more from seeing what gets posted as "concept art" in published art books or on platforms like Art Station. The actual work of a Concept artist looks very different, as it is all about specificity and the intent of the entire collection of the game or movie as well as taking into account the rest of the production pipeline, other team members and so on. With its rapid iteration, AI art could be used in a sketching phase or by non artists to communicate a picture from their head and as a Programer I believe some forms of AI assistant tools will become standard as well, but out of the 10 or so industry professional illustrators and artists we explicitly asked about AI art at this year's Sweden Game Conference (think a smaller Game Developers Conference but Sweden) not a single one believed AI art was a threat to their careers, as the systems are not designed for production/pipeline art. This is because while AI art is designed to provide beautiful illustrations and illustration / splash art style work is only one tiny part of video game artworks. And even for that market, the iterative control of a skilled professional is likely to provide a better result that can fully take into account the details of your world and characters. Example: a fantasy/science fiction setting with very distinct flora and fauna and details on characters' designs that need to be correct across all artworks. Add to this that Splash art / illustrations are not the same as the making of in-game assets. Even drawing backgrounds/play spaces in a 2d game could be more trouble than its worth as the AI model was once again designed with beautiful art in mind, not fun to play level design (and that is once again before we consider Performance, interactivity and modularity and other considerations that need to be made for the interactive medium). Secondly, I want to talk about your mention of Indi game developers potentially using AI art more than larger companies when it gets adopted, as companies can afford to hire artists to do the work instead. I think this could become a reality, in specific cases like a small team with 0 or 1 artist that wants mass artwork for something like a card game. However, I personally find it more likely that large companies get some AI art involved in the pipeline first, specifically because they can higher more people. A large studio and the large games they tend to make has a lot of "grunt work" that needs to be done and it is common to hire programmers whose entire job is it make tools that can do that grunt work for us. This is because 3 programmers / tech artist working on a procedural generation tool for the world's base topology, the placement of trees and other first passes is far more cost-effective than having 10 to 20 to even more individual artists doing that by hand for every game the company is making. Because of this president, I find if far more likely that a large company would hire a team to work on tools that prosses the output of a stable diffusion model into some game-ready art or textures in a way that is tailored to their games than an indie team using AI art, as turning raw AI art into production-ready art/in-game assets is a lot of work. The larger companies, especially those that have multiple games developed under them at the same time, can spend the money and developer time on RnD to make a tool that can be used for all of their games. They can justify that because in the long run it cuts down on grunt work and saves money, while the small team can not spare that time as whatever programmers they have likely need to be working on the games core systems instead. On to non-gaming-specific stuff that I thought of during the video. Here I am less informed and primarily going of discussions with artist friends and more talking about my options on the topic rater than providing any feedback. The key market that I believe is under threat first is that of one-off commissions and illustrations. If I need an individual artwork to use as a token for my D&D character, the cover art for my book or some other similar artwork where I just need one good-looking piece, turning to AI art for that is likely to be way cheaper and faster to get something good or even great than commissioning an artist. The reason this is very scary for a lot of artists is that that market is often what you rely on in between larger gigs as a freelancer, when trying to build up a portfolio for applying for more stable employment and/or as a supplemental or even primary income with making art for merchandise and similar if you can get the audience for it. Think of how Unity/Unreal and Steam/Itch made the barrier to making and publishing any game lower, resulting in more of them being made and as a result sometimes drowning out each outer. Overall this is a great thing because of how many more great games we now get but it did also drastically increase the number of not so great games being made that the good games need to compete with. I fear that is what will happen to the market for individual artworks. If you are competing with the volume, speed and ability to jump on a trend of AI art I can see it becoming incredibly difficult to establish any initial audience for someone just trying to break into the scene and it is this impact on smaller individual creators that I am worried about first. As a separate thing, if or even when we get to AI being able to make larger pieces of entertainment, like full comics, animations and eventually even games there are even more things to consider. The results might be incredible, the best comics we have ever seen, especially if it is used by someone who wants to convey a great story. But I fear that this work could not only be drowned out by the volume of work now being made with these tools but I also worry about these tools in the hands of large companies. AI Tools could easily allow for the creation of design by committee/design by investors style works at a very low cost, as they could now further remove/reduce the power of anyone with artistic aspirations from the production pipeline. Imagine Marvel, DC or Shonen Jump generating 10 runs of a comic or a couple chapters ahead in the current run, having someone go in for a bit of clean-up, AB testing the results and releasing the best preforming one. Once again the results could be great, but there is something there that rubs me the wrong way, likely influenced by my personal opinions about the creation of art. There are a bunch of other ethical considerations that I think will need to be considered as AI gets better (what happens if/when AI art gets better and a company could fire an artist but train a model on the work they did while employed and how would this affect job security for artists?) but I have been typing for a while and need to get back to work. Overall, a really good video on the current state of AI art other than some of what I mentioned in the first part and one other thing about conflating different art sub-communities' opinions and arguments around Modern art that I saw already addressed by another comment. Keep up the good work and sorry if there is any large grammar and spelling mistakes, Dyslexia + second language is a pain.
On your last bit of paragraph, funnily enough there was a Judge Dredd comic from the 80s (yes 40 years ago) that predicted comic publisher hiring Artists only to steal their portfolio and feed it to an Art Machine I'm not quite sure what the comic issue was, but it was so eerie how the dialogue between the artist and the corporate had such similar arguments being made in the current landscape. So much so you can see parallels between the author's prediction and present day Edit: the Judge Dredd character in question is Kenny Who? (Yes, the ? Is part of his name)
@@otapic who's the writer?
Iam not an artist but your point about professionals sounds logical to me. AI stuff is more about interesting combinations than about details. Maybe “real artists” could use AI to get inspired from. But I don’t thing this will ever replace people. At least not the real good artists. Simply because really good artists create new stuff. AI just mixes up old stuff. There is no vision in it.
Great commentary. Thank you! Especially for explaining about the concept art! Honestly, I'm so tired of hearing from people (who clearly don't understand what it really is) that with AI concept art goes first 😮💨
@@Polypal3D i agree it wont replace people; but i do not think the explenation feats reality well; it is because, whatever art job you do, like for the concept art exemple, your job do not consist of just making "pretty looking pictures" (it may sometime but that - isn't - your job) and it has nothing to do with being "good" the way you seem to suggest it. Also, every artist, "good" or not, always - mix up old stuff, no one create anything new from scractch... I think the main reason people may focus on concept art and other illustration specific work is because the AI visuals are impressive to them; our work when not famous, in many jobs, is not.
As someone in the start of their third year learning how to draw I can say this, AI Art is not an artistic tool because the person using it does not develop artistic skills. I use digital art programs, but I can still translate my skills to other physical media. AI users won't be able to do that, if they are not able to use an AI they have nothing. No understanding of anatomy, color theory, perspective, line weight, or any technique really. My fear is that we will see an entire generation nearly devoid of true artists and only pretenders that must bend the knee to "terms of service" in order to create.
in a more optimistic note i think that there will alway be some people who love drawing and painting for the sake and beauty of it. And it will only truly value them more. You can already tell who is and isn't an artist based on AI render anyway. Because like you said, color theory, composition etc... are fundamentals of art and even if the AI does the render the choice of prompt is heavily impacted by your artistic background and your general knowledge of artist from the past and old masters.
@@BrgArt I don't think that's true at all, the ai does all t he color theory composition etc for you. I think it's ridicilous to call this a tool like people do, and it was literally not designed to be a tool it was designed to erase humans from the process altogether. The end goal of it is to not even require a prompter altogether but to have the ai be completely automated.
All I hope for is that I still have about 5 years of being able to earn money doing commissions so I have time to find a new job XD I still will continue drawing after that even if it's not profitable anymore just for the fun of it though
@@user-wl4yt1dn6z The trick is to create something to go with your art, an IP.
@@moonchild2190 Almost all of the "pop crap produced today" involves many wildly talented people. Bob Dylan is without a doubt a great artist, but if you're going to insinuate that there is no human effort or thought put into audio production, vocals, instrumentation, or songwriting, then you're on some real elitist nonsense. Of course, there are institutions built around sucking as much money out of the process as possible and that does influence the outcome, but that has always been the case to varying degrees. Most if not all art becomes a product somewhere along the line, including Bob Dylan. That is inescapable under our current model of consumption. Before you say it: - Audio production is very difficult. Getting stuff to sound good is very difficult. This feels like it should be a no-brainer. It's like digital artistry/photo editing. They are functionally the same things in their respective fields. If you don't believe me, look up some videos of producers doing their thing, maybe Andrew Huang or Beardyman. You don't even have to like it, if you mute it and watch them work you can tell. It's as much an artform as anything else. - Autotune is not a substitute for talent. Most people can tell these days if a vocalist isn't really doing much on the track regardless of pitch-correction. Look for videos of T-Pain singing without it, it's anecdotal sure but it's a great example of how artists still need to train to get their voices to sound good. It's not omnipotent, and it's definitely not comparable to the impact that AI is having on art (though there are some interesting theories and studies around its impact on the motivation of young singers-to-be), this time it's actually just a tool. - Songwriting requires a depth of knowledge in music theory, history, and convention. Songwriters need to have their finger on the pulse, they need to have a strong aesthetic sensibility, or at the very least they need to know how to appeal to the largest possible audience. Even if you aren't in that audience, you can't discount the effort it takes to build a model in your head of what "the people" want. Adam Neely has a lot of fantastic content covering songwriting in pop music, there's a shocking amount of nuance hiding in plain sight in the mainstream. All this isn't to say folks like Bob Dylan aren't all that. If anything, it should only go to show that he's a cut above, a bonafide once-in-a-lifetime talent. But if everybody's Bob Dylan, then nobody's Bob Dylan. Dumping on someone else's hustle because they aren't literally Jesus Christ is kind of ridiculous. It's fine to not really like it or listen to it, and it's even fine if you find it a bit synthetic, contrived, or unstimulating. You must at the very least respect the real human + effort + thought that went into its creation, and you must call it by its name. It is art. Sorry, music elitism really gets my blood boiling. I used to be the same way.
if you see this as a division of labor issue, it's pretty obvious that a majority of the work done in producing the art is done by the programmers and the artists in the data set. So claiming that an AI art piece is "your art" is kind of dubious, it's really a massive collaboration between an untenable amount of human beings. The prompter just gets the satisfaction of seeing the final product first.
Common moderndayjames W. Also a big fan. Thank you for all the tutorials, they have really helped me :3
You could pretty much make this claim for any art produced using computer software. By this logic any art produced using Photoshop is owned by Adobe?
@@krisfraser6181 bruhhh.. what! the mental gymnastics 💀
@@tinyrobot6813 not at all. Just a bit confused that programmers of Ai get a claim on works due to division of labour, but if you carry the same logic to any other software, there is no division of labour argument allowed because bruhh mental gymnastics. Anyway, this video reflects my own position on Ai pretty well, and is very rare due to the polarisation of the debate. I'll leave it there, have a nice day.
@@tinyrobot6813 there were no mental gymnastics here. Dude is 100% correct.
that last part of the video has made me realize that we're heading into a scenario where *any* and I do mean ANY profession that requires any level of skill and experience will be reduced into levels of mere tedium and humanity as a whole will become beholden to the very few who owns a few acres of servers because our ability to thrive from STRIVING has been deeply compromised
Not true you can run SD locally for free without any need to pay a dime to anyone. Unless the artists get their way that is and get it shut down. Imagine if artists are responsible for destroying the biggest free art revolution in living memory. Then it will end up in the hands f the rich cause it isn't going away the rich will still have their toys. Imagine if this flourishes those with severe physical disabilities will be free to produce art alongside those who are able bodied with text to speech programs. But gatekeeper artists want it banned. Shame on them
@jeffbull8781 ah yes, the "think of the children" excuse to ignore ethical boundaries and the zeitgeistian costs But hey, let's think of the disabled.... it's not like quadriplegic artists exist or that time a man with Alzheimers painted his deterioration 🤷♂️... but i guess if you've got a disability, you can't express yourself or make impactful images We never gatekept anything beyond the value of the effort to express yourself. But hey, let's talk accessibility as long a you can afford a rig to render with a free bot
@@RagPen01 Ah yes the smug internet deliberately obtuse response, shall we count disabled artists through history vs abled bodied? How many disabled people have access to art (its criminally underfunded). Yes there are some I wager 10000s more never entertain the medium. The ones who make it are an exception rather than a rule. Or how about the neurodiverse who sometimes struggle to output what is in their heads onto paper/canvas/etc. Besides which that was not the crux of my point, the point is it is YOU and people like you ringing your pearls screaming 'think of the children' with your gatekeeping of art and what art even means/is. I never suggested those with disabilities cannot express themselves but the barrier for them doing so is much larger than for an able bodied person, perhaps a tool to make those barriers less severe might be cool huh, oh wait no some rich artists have decided they don't want that happening... oh well And I am happily creating art for free with SD on a cheap laptop, you clearly know nothing about the subject, which is odd for someone who started off being so facetious. The pushback from artists is sad tbh. Wait a year or two until AI is only in the hands of rich corporations and governments, cause if you think the likes of Disney, Paramount etc won't be using this to produce content behind closed doors you are dreaming. When that happens and we are all banned from using it, we can all thank the progressive art world for helping destroy an emerging free form expression GJ !! You are like the people 100s of years ago when cameras where invented who said it wasn't art to take pictures... very sad
@@jeffbull8781 man, using the "accessibilty" excuse is the lowest common denominator in defending AI BS and using it as a means to use "but ThE CORpoRaTIoNs WiLl USE it" is weak. because big corporations WILL use the cheapest available means to squeeze the final iota of profit out of anything and they WILL turn the entire stairwell into a wheelchair ramp if it means they can save a buck. get the cripples out of your argument, they already get enough unsolicited pity. If they want to create, they'll find a way, I've seen more talent oozing out of a blind man's sculpture and an amputee's scribbles than from some rando on the internet clicking "upscale" five times on MJ. but hey, it's not like surmounting barriers hasn't been the human experience since forever. Besides ,you bring up photography when at LEAST photographers actually physically take the effort to line up a good shot. They can CLAIM artistry. look man, I'm not against AI as a whole, and I feel like we're technically on the same side. But I'm not gonna mask my feelings about how the tech cheapens the concept of art the same way cars cheapen the act and pride of running. I'm against AI being used as a means to take away the human experience and as an excuse to just enthusiastically throw away what it's supposedly replacing. Last we did that, we punched a whole on the sky and poisoned an entire generation's IQ. I am HYPED that AI exists... I am INCENSED that it's used not to help people stand on top of those that came before, but to subsume and relegate them to "make art" buttons again, we're not gatekeeping access, we're gatekeeping art's value beyond it being just pretty pictures
@jeffbull8781 The issue is that its models were trained on individual artists works without their permission and that people use their name as prompts. That can be regulated in cloud based AI, but much harder with localy run SD. I personaly think it would be shame if SD was shut down, but its newer versions should respect artists wish to be left out of its system. Profesional illustrators, painters, concept artists were already hurt and there is nothing we can do about it, only do better in the future.
I wouldn’t want to live in a world where you have to always second guess wether a piece of art is AI generated or not. There needs to be some kind of disclaimer for things created by AI. Also I like the idea where people who are using an artist as a prompt in their AI art, need a permission from the original artist if they want to use it for profit. Similar to music sampling, you need to clear the samples before you can use them in your commercial projects. I’m personally not a fan of AI art but I have to say that the technology itself is quite impressive and I can see it being valuable in someway. The art itself is just not as impressive when you know it came from randomly generated pictures from the internet. To me it’s people’s ability and imagination that is impressive about art.
Hopefully it gets people offline. Maybe instead of DeviantArt we should go back to meeting in public with artists drawing right there in front of you.
'' need a permission from the original artist if they want to use it for profit. '' The thing is, you don't own the copyright to what you generate to begin with so you're not even supposed to be allowed to make money off of it. Even if some ai devs tell you that you own it, you just don't. Legally speaking the ai is regarded as the owner. There have already been cases of people generating comics and having it be taken down due to copyright issues, anyone who sells you ai generated art are doing so illegaly.
@@jag764 that’s weird. I know of a game that used some AI generated art and is a full priced game.
If people can't guess wether the art has been created by someone with an AI, or by someone with practically anything else, there really isn't a claim to wether it's art or not. Also there are a lot of artists nowadays using tricks and techniques that others would call "cheating"; if you really care for art, then you don't need to know how it was created, just that it exists. As much as artists love to stick to one style and call it their own, there is no copyright claim to your own style and that's what the artists prompt does when creating art with an AI , they try to get as close to the style as possible, maybe most of the time just simmilar, but sometimes very close, as no artists cam claim copyright over another artist using their style, there is no reason why they should over AI using their style, except for trying to give AI and people who use it an illegal disadvantage for creating art.
@@kurbisfurst5194 AI art is souless and I don’t like it. I care about people’s expression over some machine generated bullshit that may or may not look nice.
Great video ! I would just argue that concept art seems less likely to be replaced than many other disciplines. Being a good concept artist is first having a great ability at bringing new ideas to life, being able to build an IP while giving it a strong identity. It's about asking questions about the universe you're trying to create, and answering them in a cool and interesting way. Most of this work isn't spent painting nice illustrations, but sketching ideas and making important choices.
To be fair most artistical jobs are more about ideas than pretty pictures. That's why I heavily doubt that AI 'art" will threat any real artist, only people with a narrow vision of art will fall into the trick.
As an artist, this whole thing has shaken me up more than I expected. The possible ramifications of this are so ugly. Already we've seen people at conventions selling AI generated art. And it seems rife for dishonest people to make a name for themselves, while honest artists get the short end of the stick. I think there's inherent worth in the difficulty of attaining art skills. The more work you put into bettering your skills, the more it reflects on the appeal of the work you create. It takes a long time before you can make decent art, and it gives you a big appreciation for how artists manage to make such beautiful art. I find it's not dissimilar to sports athletes and other kinds of physical performers. Speaking of athletes, it brings to mind speedrunning and tool assisted speedruns. It's always a big scandal in the community when it's discovered that players achieved respectable or even world record times using tools. I think the issue becomes even more pronounced in art because while speedrunning is largely about optimization, art has a great deal of stylistic quality to it.
First off love the name. And it's a bit more different than say something like furniture. Mass produced versus hand crafted. While I prefer hand made furniture, I have both. Depending on what I need and what it used for. On one hand you have skill, ability, and quality that a machine cannot always replicate in mass production. Which takes time. And can end up being one of a kind. On the other hand you have cheap, replaceable products that are made in a high quantity. They can be easily replaced with little to no effort. But it is different for artist. They spend a lot of time crafting their skills and abilities to reach a point that they can market themselves can be hard. Plus there can be set backs and sometimes you might not be in the mind space to even make some art. It can be a struggle. But for there AI generated images. It can make near endless images with some text prompts. Plus many artists online will actually show the process and how they do things. They are willing to teach others. Many people, that do profit of this, using these generators won't share how they use them to make their images. It's most likely because they realize that anyone can use these programs easily to replicate what they have made, with very little effort or time.
I'm in agreement, while it's neat to see what a savvy set of words can weave in A.I art, it shouldn't be compared to what a human can craft with a pen and paper or a digital artist with photoshop for example. Creating 'Art' takes practice and skill attained from the effort, time and talent put in. It's like comparing a good table, with unique stencils and sanded shapes to something soulless like IKEA.
Yeah for me it's not just that it's so powerful it can replace jobs of some artists. It's that it competes with technically skilled art. So when we look at art we get an uncanny feeling of it might be fake. Even if you make it all yourself, they'll say you were performance enhanced. Even though we've used templates and techniques for a long time this will be seen as paint by numbers. I think anything that takes real craft will be derided. Ironically this is how the alegria/corporate memphis art styles that are eating every wall space in our cities, and the tax loophole art in the galleries will solidify their dominance further. "At least my bad art was done by a hu-man"
Bringing the topics of "skill", "invested time", and "hard work" implies that if the amount of time, effort, or skill invovled is low... that what is produced is illigetimate. Comaprison to sports is not ideal. I would compare it to mining or construction work: You can bring a great deal of effort, skill, and expeirence to the effort. And that can certainly help you be more efficient and produce better yields/results than unskilled and unmotivated folks. But AI is like someone bringing in a bull dozer, power drill, jackhammers, tunnel borers to the site. Comparitively, someone who couldn't wield a pick axe or shovel properly, can operate a construction/mining vehicle with comparatively less effort, less time learning, and less experience. Does that make their efforts less legitimate? No, I don't think so. I think the truly scary thing, for people who have a strong investment and love of their craft, is that AI is like those diesel/steam/electric/gas powered machines: able to accomplish similar tasks without the years or decades of experience honing their skills to work with a set of tools. What might take a week for a team of miners might take half a week for a machine... or less, depending on the job. At the end of the day, artists' livelihoods ARE at risk. Just as news camera crews got wiped out or greatly reduced in recent memory in favor of more compact and essentially either programmatically enhanced control systems or AI controlled systems requiring only a tripod and the smarter camera and the news reporter. Not ideal, but also much fewer head count. I think artists at large who believes that AI is stealing their work will be disappointed with legal rulings going forward, because I think that it will become a matter of case-by-case rulings on whether a specific art piece or art set produced is violating copyrights of a specific artist. And with people moving away from using living artist names, the overlap in style will be more a matter of coincidence or commonality vs outright attempts to take a style and use it for one's own profit. Which would give an artist no recourse because it would not be a violation except in cases where the potential violator is specifically targetting a speific artists' style.
@@WingWong Ah yes, because reading a Dictionary for more accurate photo's is the same as years of actual work. AI art can look neat but it's not art someone took time to make. It's generated by an algorithm that goes off a simple input. That's like saying a Mr.Coffee makes the same Coffee as a French Press. It makes coffee in the end and while the mr.coffee does a decent job it's just not the same as pour over or french press.
As an artist myself, AI is as you said a very complicated topic, and one that seems to have very little nuance among the artist community. Personally I think AI is incredibly interesting and a very cool tool to play around with, as the technology is very impressive and admittedly quite fun to see what it comes up with (especially when it messes up). From my perspective, I agree that those in the most amount of danger are industry artists, like concept artists. Big corporations rarely see the value in hand-crafted art and would more likely just hire an AI wrangler than an artist to get the vague concepts that they want for their projects. As a freelancer who works directly with clients, I consider myself and the peers in my field very unlikely to be replaced. People who get commissions don't generally do so because they just want their visions put to paper in the style of an artist they like, but because they want to support said artist directly, and to be able to work with them. There's certainly a number of people who use AI as an alternative to commissions, but those likely weren't people in the market for commissions in the first place due to not being able to afford them, or not caring enough to go through the process of a commission. Either way, AI is definitely going to be here to stay-- that Pandora's box has already been opened and there's really no way to undo it. I hope there ends up being some way to protect artists who don't want their works being used as data, but it seems like a Herculean task to try and undo what has already been done.
This is the most sober perspective I've read from an artist.
In other words: This technology could be Walt Disney’s wet dream. He wanted to cut costs of animation, by mistreating his artists, which triggered the animator’s strike of 1941. I think big companies would like to defend the use of AI, by bidding lawmakers to not engage further regulations against it.
@@lumirairazbyte9697 big companies also would want to protect their IP, so they'll side with artists to push for regulations, like Disney would want other people to not train AI on their own artwork while having an in house AI of their own generating their stuff.
Capitalist software dev win win with Capitalist big corps. and artist being sacrificed. bravo ai " tech bros"
@@Yue4me Yet most of the software artists rage against are free and open-source. None of these artists are ragining against the capitalist software like midjourney...makes you think who's really behind the outrage.
A topic that I'm not seeing mentioned in a lot of these articles, videos, and social media opinion pieces is the types of artists that this effects specifically. By and large, it effects digital artists the most. For art fans, traditional, original, pieces of artwork is valued a lot more than prints or copies of digitally produced art. It still effects traditional artists that produce reproduction prints of their work, as they're essentially sending a JPG of that original work to a printer for reproduction. As a traditional AND digital artist that's very concerned with the precedent of AI, I've started to set down my stylus and pick up my real brushes and pens more and more these days. Because I feel that although it might not be as profitable for most people, at least I know that AI cannot reproduce what I create with real paint, and real tools. At least for the time being. And a side effect to AI is it might increase the value of traditional art even more, much like anything "Artisanally hand crafted" fetches a higher price tag than factory and machine produced equivalents.
I might have to start picking up my pencil again
My favorite new find on KZhead, keep at it bud, your content and commentary is amazing.
Easily one of the best videos I’ve seen discussing this topic & I’ve seen MANY thus far trying to gain an opinion, well done my friend. Please keep up the great work, you earned a subscriber for sure. 💪🏼🙏🏼
Gotta point out one thing I disagree with. It's not the fact that the LAION dataset etc. are non-profit org. and are used for profit, the issue is that in order to actually build that AI model or train the base model, you eventually have to download the copyrighted images and feed it into the AI. LAION's loophole is rather in that aspect that it licenses the datapairs of image & captions with a Creative Commons license, but don't hold the rights to the copyrighted images themselves. So that's where the laws have a tiny but important hole. Can copyrighted images be used to train a diffusion model? That's what the judges have to decide. But to be fair. It's such a new technology and may take some time to do that. In comparison, there is also a Music AI, but that was trained only on music that is public domain. So it is totally possible. That's what they should've done with Stable Diffusion.
Just a point of being pedantic, in countries where copyright is automatic (like in the US), Creative Commons =/= "not copyrighted." I wish people would stop using "copyrighted" as a synonym for "bad to use," when in of itself this isn't necessarily the case - and more nuance is needed - but I guess my gripe is with the dipsticks at the music, movie, and software industries who fed people this idea.
"y have to download the copyrighted images and feed it into the AI" No you don't. Or more accurately you don't have to "download" them more then a browser does by going to the page. It's pretty easy to effectively have the system use browsing software to view the image and then move on. Now that would likely make it harder to adjust for repeated images (since you would need to curate the urls first by doing the same at a factor like n^(n-1) over a connection instead of ram or storage), but it wouldn't be exceptionally hard to do (assuming they aren't already doing it that way).
@@malcire well ok, but that doesn't change anything. I'm not focused on wether it's has to be downloaded or cached like when browsing a site. They have to be stored somewhere albeit temporarily. The important part is the usage of copyrighted images. That's like using stock photos from a stock photo site without buying the usage license. The problem is that the law has to catch up and define new rules for this. It wasn't a problem until now because the AIs weren't able to very closely re-draw the training data until now.
@@YVZSTUDIOS the difference is that one is defendable as intended use. For instance, I can watch Netflix, but extracting the stream into long term usage is likely a violation of copyright. Also redrawing an image from the training set is still likely currently copyright infringement (same as a forgery would be). No the laws haven't been made with this in mind (though it's questionable what laws will be created and how long they will be effective (copyright eventually expires, and once that happens we are likely back to where we are)).
i kind of disagree while i understand the concerns about losing jobs and losing money, i think it's in the general interest of humanity and culture to make all productions available for all, copyrighted music was defended only because music publishers where the one who was defending it, and getting the most money out of it, not the actual artists, in the end i think jaron lanier proposal (which is not directly about these stuff) would have to be thought about, meaning there should be a payment of the percentage of the money being made going to the actual artists who were participating in making the pieces used in the database, and maybe even another a.i. judging how much of the generated piece is influenced by who and they can be paid respectively, but anyways, there's a lot to figure out, and the wealthy CEO's won't budge so easily
I need to watch this a few more times, cause this might be the most exacting look at the discource I've yet seen. Great research, if all this checks out you really must have the gift
I'VE BEEN EXPECTING THIS, FRIEND
Okay so over all I like this video, it does a good job clarifying a lot and communicates both sides of the issue pretty clearly, so I don’t have too much to add on that front since many of my gripes were addressed. So instead I wanna talk about two take aways I’ve had while looking at this discourse. 1st is I realized how little people care about artists, the industry is already hard enough and artists are already taken advantage of and our work isn’t valued as much as it should be, but AI art has revealed a lot of the disrespect and contempt people have towards artists, either outright not caring about our jobs, writing off the necessity of artists or it societal importance, or just blatant resentment towards artists and their work and downplaying the skill involved. I’ve seen people saying it’d be fine if art only existed as a hobby and that you can’t make a living as an artist anyways, when those are things the art community has been trying to dispel for decades. It hurts to see and it’s made me reconsider my decision to give up engineering to pursue art since I found more value in it and found it to be a viable career. The second thing is that I believe AI art could be used as an incredible tool for artists and art, but the way it’s being developed and used is actually counter productive, I think of the new styles that come out constantly from new artists, art has been evolving at a more rapid pace than ever thanks to the internet and social media and I believe in a world where AI art “Wins” we’d lose that innovation. As a 3D artist it’ll be a while before I have AI fighting for my job BUT I’ve seen early prototypes (which to be fair look like shit) but it just made me think, why develop AI to try to replace 3D modelers when the technology is much better suited towards replacing the things artists hate, like UVs, Topology, Rigging. You could develop Ai tools to handle the tedious parts 100x faster than it’d take an artist and it’d free up artists to use that time to create more awesome stuff. It is my belief that the current trajectory of Ai art isn’t one of innovation but stagnation, recycling from the same pool of assets without adequate ability to develop new styles or ideas. It’s a cool technology and if not for the way it was built and the way it’s being utilized I think a lot more artists could be on board.
" I realized how little people care about artists, the industry is already hard enough and artists are already taken advantage of and our work isn’t valued as much as it should be" That isn't really any different than any other field. For the most part, the only people who are largely concerned with a group of workers being replaced via automation are members of that group, or those who are very prolabor and anti-automation.
@@malcire That's absolutely not the case and you know it, lmao. I'm more concerned than some artists it seems and I'm not even an artist myself.
@@Erik-vf9yn Why would I assume that's not the case? Do you care about them more than other workers? Are you not pro-labor?
@@malcire "For the most part, the only people who are largely concerned with a group of workers being replaced via automation are members of that group, or those who are very prolabor and anti-automation." I know plenty of people who are more interested in how this affects people who want to express themselves. While this is the case in a lot of fields, it's especially big in what we're discussing. Art / music / writing, perhaps even journalism and a few others is for me in that sense more important than most other fields, yes. And, no, I do not work in any of those fields.
If art has been so innovative because of the net then why is 90% of it furries and anime? If anything things have been stagnant for over a decade.
A great summary of this really, really confusing topic. The point about AI originally "meaning" to stop us from wasting time on dull jobs and give more time to work with art was really intriguing - and terrifying.
I view this as a public service, honestly. It's great to have somebody give an overview like this.
*yeah, draw it for free to get exposure...posthumously after you have starved to death an your corpse is discovered surrounded by all of your brilliant work...no thanks*
God it feels good to get your fix of never
People in 2015: We'd like for the more repetitive, boring jobs to be left to the machines so we can focus on more interesting, human tasks like art. A.I Programmers in 2015: Hmm.....interesting and human, you say?
To be fair as an artist myself I longed for a tool like this to make labor easier. Ofc we haven't reached the greatest make art button yet of having a image in the brain sent to the screen but this AI imagery is pretty exciting. I hope that they can move it to 3D modeling, where it's very tedious to model even though latest tools have helped as tech advances.
@@WhiteWolfos That would be pretty cool. 3D Is harder for people than drawing. I'd like to be able to draw something and have an A.I figure out how to 3D-ify it. XD
There are a lot of industries and jobs getting automated outside of art. Some of them that come to mind: - robotic bartenders on cruise ships to make your cocktails - robot chip fryer in fast food places that makes the chips/fries - robot that makes burgers - robot that makes pizzas - small delivery robots to deliver the takeaway in cities - robot brick layer (but still needs people to load in the bricks for now) - 3d printed houses - all the machines we have built over the last century to improve mining, construction, woodwork, chopping down trees, manufacturing plants that put pills, liquids into bottles - the new amazon grocery stores where you don't need to scan your items before you leave. It just knows what you bought using cameras etc. the list is honestly so long when you start thinking about it and read up on it and watch videos about the topic.
If Art feels repetitive for an artist then why are they even an artist to begin with? I chose to do art because I find it fun, And I haven't felt that it was repetitive even once.
@@rynsart A lot of people are in it for the money. It's not their passion. I really feel bad for people who do that, seems like they're guaranteeing their own misery. =P Art is not for everyone, but if you're like me and genuinely enjoy it, you'll at least be happy the rest of your life. ^^
making art is not about furthering my financial status in life, it is about creating something that has esthetic value. not doing it to get fame or riches, like many artists just do it for that exact same reason. and besides....what is an "artist"? what i noticed is that the opponents are often the people that churn out images and visual esthetics in the commercial sector. the graphic designers, the 9 to 5 illustrators, the social media doodlers that need to generate ad revenue, etc, etc. and yes this would be affecting their jobs, as it is the same as the mechanic in a car factory, generic laborer which is interchangeable for a robot or a new automated module in the assembly line. but the independent "autonomous" working artists just sees an interesting tool, a useful tool that can help workflow and even creativity! i love it, like picking up a pen when you always painted with acrylic, or start sculpting when you only ever etched. prompting is an art on its own, it never led me to an exact copy of what i previsualized, it's just as much developing skill as the hand eye coordination and mastering technique with a pencil.... i remember the same bs when photoshop became a thing, the first digital art.....all the boohoohoo and coping that went on way back with opposing artists was not different than now. it made your sector! wouldn't be without graphical compute power. virtual art, fake art, fast food of art, etc....a lot of dismissive reactions towards the first digital artists. i dare to argue that without the technology most would never had the opportunity to work in this sector. and that it is not the tool that make an artist but his mind. through pencil or through prompts, it doesn't matter. what you are scared of, is that you, as "tool", are becoming irrelevant. and that is true, there will be no need for people that are proficient in generating images on i.e. Photoshop. i dont see graphic designers per se as artists, as they basically offer there skill to create something that adheres to someone's wishes. sure, those generic anime drawing people on artstation or deviant will not all survive on their output, as this generic image creating is far more efficient with ai. but artists will embrace it and make wicked shit that wouldn't be possible otherwise. a way for the very creative and talented people to express themselves. people that don't have the luxury of doing art school or having the environment that gives them time to hone tool skills . the privileged road that most travelled in this sector will shift towards true creativity without preq of spoiled and supported years to master techniques. don't be a scared lil bitch, do research how it truly works, work with it, embrace it in your workflow. and then judge it.
Loved this channel from the get go. Your first video already showed that you can way more than game critiques. You are amazing at long form video content, no matter the topic. Keep it up and good luck.
Computers have been replacing jobs once done by humans for a while now. People tend to only worry when their own job is at risk. Artists are now facing the same situation, and although it may be difficult, they will need to adapt and keep going.
@The Hermit Good. Then artists can concetrate on making art instead of ads.
@The Hermit What about all the other people who have lost their jobs to technology throughout history? There's nothing new under the sun.
This was very comprehensive and covered the issue from a lot of angles that I didnt know existed. Great job! I think you hit your goal of being neutral and nuanced. Great video!
I really enjoy the topics you choose for your new channel. It's like you're making those videos specifically to fit my interests.
Tbh automatization will come for all of us. And judging by modern trends and how very much corporate our world is we won't even get a basic universal income out of it all. THAT'S what scares me to no end, even as an artist. Well, no matter what happens with neural nets and AIs, see ya in twenty years at weekly battles for the last drinkable water on earth
Easy solution. Add categories. You already do it with "No-digital" clause.
I don't think AI generated art is going to take over the industry. At least not for another decade or two. With the ethical and legal battles regarding copyright law, I expect there is going to be some major hurdles that will have to be dealt with before companies and individuals fully jump into using it for profit. As it stands now, it's a lawsuit just waiting to happen. With that said, I do expect it will be a major tool used in conceptual design and brainstorming workflow. A starting point in the process that artists will build on top of. It is an excellent tool for MANY industries to use for various purposes. Instead of an individual trying to explain what it is they are trying to create, they can generate an image that describes what it is they are trying to say. There will no longer be a disconnect between author and artist; director and dp; etc. Those who work well through words are now going to be able to communicate better with those who communicate with images. That is where AI is going to REALLY shine. But no, it's not going to take over the art industry. Even in conceptual art work, there will still be a need to build upon what has been generated. That is where the artist comes in. This isn't going to destroy jobs. It's a tool that when implemented properly, will improve the work of the artist.
Even if it's not about RPGs, your stuff is good. Glad to still see you around.
One of the most mature and sane take on this controversy
My admiration for all this work you´ve done organizing the info and the reflexive perspectives. Thank you
This Channel is one of the bets out there so excited you decided to make it
Game over for humanity.
I totally love your new content! You have a great analytical eye and a very coherent way of presenting your findings. Additionally, I've noticed the comments on this comment section being far, far longer, more balanced and more eloquent than on any other channel I have visited. Congratulations. This channel was already a success. No matter viewer numbers or if it ends after this video again.
I don't want to live in a world where art is automatically being ai generated by an algorithm for my desires, where all human input and expression is removed, such a world is bleak.
So your desires arent a human input or expression???
@@stef9906 it's a representation of human expressions bases upon a generalised search. It could fool you completely...but it's still worrying to think of its actual origin. Not human, not learn skill, no development of the creative mind. How does that look in a few generations?
go extinct then
@@MaxHeadshroom1 it's a pretty limited view of things to assume that human creativity won't ramp up right alongside the technology. like human creative artists are just gonna give up and lay down because o wel ai does it now we might as well not even try. no... in the real world creatives aren't sheep. history proves that every new advance in tech we creatives just use the tools to find new levels
This is why I love your video essays. Everything you said resonates.
I find myself surprised by how low the view count is on this video - i personally don't see any difference between this and some of the big, millions of views videos - but I enjoy the content and look forward to your future videos just remember, based on your NeverKnowsBest last video, it takes time to grow - and for what it's worth, I absolutely love the content you create
excited to see what you post on this channel!
This is the most rational, logical video regarding AI I've seen so far. My hat's off to you, good sir!
Yep, heartless indeed. Of course the A.I. wins in this.
Excellent video glad to see you uploading here!
I appreciate your more level-handed handling of the subject. In light of recent events with ChatGPT and your comment about using AI-generated images as inspiration of writing, well, it seems AI has set its sights on writing as well. I can't help but wonder what all these developers see as the "end game" for their technology. Where do humans fit into the equation beyond being the "meat bots" for AI?
So glad to see you back! Amazing video.
This is kind of wild. I was going to recommend this as a topic yesterday but I didn't want to seem pushy. Obviously you had already been working on it for a while. Great video, enjoyed the information and hearing your take.
Solid info, I would've preferred more class analysis. Corporations will wait until the legal dust settles, but profit motive dictates cutting costs wherever possible to ensure the greatest possible profit, meaning working artists will absolutely be cut out of the equation if the stars align on copyright. Your framing implies progress is a binary: we are either making progress (good) or not (status quo, stagnation) and that the feeling of "moving forward" is a net good for society. SURE, I would love if we lived in a Star Trek utopia where everyone is guaranteed housing, utilities, food and healthcare, where you can say "Computer, make me a Sherlock Holmes videogame" and it wouldn't matter that that task (make a videogame) at one point would have been performed by hundreds of people toiling for years on end, reliant on the income they are given for their labor, because in Star Trek everyone's needs are accounted for. But that's not the future we're barreling towards, and there are absolutely no regulatory bodies in place for the society wide job displacement and poverty we're staring down as AI threatens to make any and all office jobs, let alone creative jobs, irrelevant. When youtube is flooded with high quality video essays generated from a couple prompts and tweaks, perhaps established creators with large followings will still eek out a living, but the market will become impenetrable to the majority of individuals as the medium becomes thoroughly devalued, as it will with all markets where an independent creator may have found purchase at some point. I think the questions of copyright legality and philosophical "what is art?" conversations are largely superfluous--fun thought exercises maybe--when compared to the very real societal upheaval these developers are poised to inflict without anyone involved in development taking that disruption seriously. This is not simply the "boring old timey jobs go away, exciting new ones are introduced" narrative history books tell us about the past, this is the end of all development, administrative, creative and managerial work as we know it. Behemoth automated systems running flawlessly will exist solely to transfer what little wealth remains amongst the working class upwards. The Luddites did not rail against progress, they railed against their callous disposal at the hands of the bosses, who jumped at the opportunity to replace workers for the sake of profit with no thought at all given to their workers' fates. Since the Luddite movement was violently put down, wealth inequality in Europe and the US has skyrocketed (with a brief dip around the New Deal) as the single greatest drive for technological "progress" has always been to extract wealth from the lower classes in order to line the pockets of a shockingly small minority who comprise the ruling class.
An interesting topic that I hope you would cover is Analog Horror. There's something about it's rise in popularity and format that makes me so intrigued. Anyways, solid work as always man. Keep up the good content.
Great video! Its nice to see you bring up both sides of the discussion about AI art.
Please keep making videos and don't think these are any less entertaining or worthwhile than your video game videos
Artists already need so much strength when fighting to get paid Ask any artist and they will have been told “draw it for free, you’ll get exposure” It saddens me to think that artists will have to fight even harder for their livelihoods
Maybe we could just give everyone access to free food and healthcare instead of making creative people fight and struggle to dominate others in a culture of competition that doesn't support them.
@Colr Gren then don't even bother trying to commission an artist if you don't have the money, just like any other person on earth, they need to make a living too
Get over it
@@user-uv8hp4jh7kokay but I don't want to see you crying when your job inevitably goes under
@Colr Gren then learn how to draw
I liked your video, many good points, even when I am mostly in the Anti-AI side I can still see it's just normal for users to love this new technology, like you said, the joy of creation they experience is something to take in consideration. In my opinion peace could potentially be achieved by both sides if there is a clear distinction between AI art and Digital art even for people who don´t know about the topic, and also if they stop copying styles of living artists, whether you believe it's fair or not to copy a style, I still believe is a necessary step to achieve peace between both sides, obviously it will still take a lot of jobs, but in one hand artists would still have the selling point of something created by skills and their art style, and on the other hand AI artists would be able to create good or amazing images even without imitating art made by humans, as long as they belong to separate categories, like in the case of Art (painting, drawing, etc) and Photography, I think there might be a balance between those 2 things.
We should've just stopped clicking on the trafficlight 10 years ago.
I loved your input on this. I think, that it's mostly a matter of acknowledgement in all regards. Be it that people need to understand the relationship between human and ai artwork to crediting the product correctly, and well, pretty much what you touched on in the video.
Wish you the best man, super great video as always :D
This is what the music industry did to real musicians. Simon Cowell, auto-tune, boy/girl bands, lip syncing…. Artists, welcome to the hell that musicians have been living in since before the millennium.
Where are people when Phones replaced photographers.
Phenomenal video. As someone with zero artistic talent I can't help but be fascinated by the technology. I haven't actually dived into any of these systems but the idea of being able to create personalized content from words I select is undeniably enthralling as I've had no means of creating such a thing on my own. But I also understand artists disgust, and even outright hatred for something is quite frankly an unstoppable machine. The output turnaround between clicking a few buttons on your keyboard VS. the painstaking process that some genuinely gorgeous pieces of art takes would make me infuriated if I had dedicated great amounts of time to learning those skills.
I play a lot of tabletop RPGs and as a game master I use these AIs a lot to create "mood pictures" to give my players a good impression of the current scene/environment.
Also good for creating tokens for monsters and familiars/extra npc(s).
Dude I did not even knoiw this channel existed! You deserve more views and subs!
Thank you. This is the best and well researched video about AI that I've seen so far. Hats off to you.
I think AI art won't sell like art made by real artist. That'll probably be a thing where traditional artists will get more praise and money.
This needs an update after the lawsuits settle. I'll be looking forward to that.
Should be noted that while AI image generation still involved humans, the goal is to cut humans out entirely. Data is collected as to which pictures are picked, to determine what broad masses like, so that image generators can run autonomously to provide pictures for what you want similar to how advertisement gathers your browsing and search data to suggest ads for your interests specifically. So you should not get too hung up on "there's still a human involved".
Generative art drastically narrows the gap between imagination and reality, but it doesn’t replace imagination.
@@eyoo369 For the time being.
Nice breakdown of the recent developments and I appreciate the in my opinion grounded overview. May be worth to give a shout out or link to your video on text based AI, although I guess this topic was more on the serious side, which seems appropriate considering the immediate impact it's already having and is going to have. Still, it might please the algorithm overlords
I watch your never knows best channel religiously didn't even know this was a channel until this morning
excellent essay, as an artist myself I feel both destroyed and amazed by AI
The art that won the competition was understood to be made using AI. It won for 2 reason, it is a good image and they understood it would raise a debate. You know its good art if it raises a debate. That is why a lot of modern art is considered art because of the debates it raises. The artist spent months making it, so we can't argue time as a factor for creating art. Photography is often fractions of a second so claiming time for creation is a nonsense. I feel if artists really had issues with machines taking jobs why have they been so quiet about it until now? Is it because they didn't care about others losing their jobs to progress? I doubt any of them only use handmade products. AI is only able to make digital art. That is only a small area of art. I know a lot of artists that don't view digital art in any form real art, they say the computer makes the art. It's not the same as mixing your own paints, because all you do is click a button. I disagree with that too. I see all these things as tools for creativity, it is up to people how we use these tools, be it a brush, camera, clay, wood, or a computer. There is more to the art world than digital art. You won't find much digital art in galleries anyway. The only people it could replace are the advert and marketing art, that most wouldn't call real art anyway.
Words can't possibly express in full detail and scale the sheer existential dread I have when it comes to AI. The loss of creative jobs is actually the least of my worries -- I'm far more distraught by the idea of the complete and utter destruction of the meaningfulness and value of human creativity as a whole. I think about the world's greatest creative endeavors, the most astounding feats of human creativity throughout history, about our absolute most beloved pieces of art and media, in the form of books, comics, games, movies, TV shows... and I think about how little we would have cared about them if AI had existed in their time. I think about how each of those magnificent works could have been effortlessly dethroned by a work of "art" created by AI, spectacular yet soulless... Created in a matter of hours, minutes, or even seconds, through the research and analysis of the works of real human beings who put years & decades worth of life experience and deep thought into creating. I've been inspired by so many of those works, those pieces of art... For years I've wanted to create a "final" work of art of my own, a humble masterpiece comprised of every great idea I've ever had, every moving life experience, every little spark of imagination, carefully crafted and refined over a period of years to create something truly spectacular, something moving, something life-changing... but... how impactful would it really be in a world where one can simply generate such a story at the press of a button...? To all of those great artists who have inspired not only me but countless other people in this world, and have solidified themselves in history long before the advent of this daunting new technology: I envy you not, but please never forget that from here on out, you were the lucky ones. I know not what AI has in store for us in the future, but if my worst fear comes true and AI is widely accepted and not heavily regulated, then I have only one thing to say: goodbye to a bygone era. But, to those of you reading this, always remember... "Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened." - Dr. Seuss
The way I see it: nobody owns the output of stable diffusion. It's a force of nature.
I had to change and learn a new whole style because now when you do something like realastic or semi-releastic or semi-stylazation art people think that you cheat and you just used an AI app, that's not all some of the biggest art sites started banning artists if they think they used AI apps
This is the best breakdown I've seen of this debate.
This channel is an amazingly wholesome place!
Thank you.
Phenomenal work as always mate, really enjoyed listening to your thoughts on this
10:38 THANK YOU!
On point!
Gees you are good at this. Great video.
I appreciate the neutral perspective and analysis. I feel that's what's missing most from any of the "discussions" more like "social wars" going on today. Very much appreciated and subscribed!
35:34 is the single most important thing about this debate There are tons of people who abide by the concept of selfless building together, even if it means some of us also get to profit. I can't draw much, but I consider myself to be exceptional at music, and even music is being generated artificially, and that's wonderful. I would love to contribute to a model that can dissect my own style in a hard numbers factual median. I love that shit to death, and so do a lot of others. So once this misguided, ever conflicting, spaghetti of laws and loopholes is over, we still get what we want.
Majority of art is expired copyright / creative commons. Stable diffusion is a software company not a publisher. No-one ever prosecuted Photoshop for its software users. OpenRail licence has some user restrictions.
Thanks Never, interesting topic as always
Man you can't even imagine how happy i was to see this notification pop up. Ive been like really thinking about this AI art debacle and have had so much trouble really knowing where I stand on it but thats not why i was so happy. I was happy because I literally remember how blown away I was to see that an ugly truth video a while back and man... this is just so excited to see. When I saw that ugly truth video it was before i saw any of the following updates you gave that shed light on you situation as a content creator. I have no idea what the hell is going to end up working for you but i lowkey hope you transition to making content like this.
I like the subtle references to Interstellar.
you Sir! Deserve 100x more subscribers on your channel! This is one of the most well researched videos on AI vs Art i've watched...and I have watched quite plenty!
37:32 'consolidation'?? you mean 'consolation'. How embarrassing for you! I'm doing the thing were I'm making fun of you because I secretly have a crush on you. These videos are great, man. You did a great job of providing historical context and providing an unbiased overview. I hadn't even considered that robots were never thought to be able to take away artists' jobs, and how insanely fast AI's artistic capabilities have improved. I really feel like the Twitter and Artstation activists are just embarrassing themselves though.
Art is visible, but (as an artist) the real impact is on almost all knowledge work. This ai can probably produce pretty good youtube videos on any topic, or diagnose almost any disease, or prepare a court strategy, or trade commodities on trade exchanges.
I see the use of online copyrighted images as the same as watching a tutorial. Bob Ross showed you how to paint the mountain and owns his painting, but he doesn't own the painting i drew as I followed along, even if i happened to make one very similar
I'm more interested is the fact this technology is less then a decade away from making video and photographic evidence less reliable then eye witness testimony.
some people already can deepfake people into 🅿️orn because they think it's funny it will only get worse.
We live in truly interesting times, my friend. For better and for worse. Someone once told me that upcoming technologies are like a train--you're either going to get on the train, you're going to get left behind, or you're gonna get run over by it. Not a perfect simile, but I feel there's some truth to it. I don't think we'll be able to shove AI back into Pandora's Box. It's here now, and we're gonna have to learn how to live with it or work around it.
All my childhood I was told to do what I wanted to do in life. And I did that. And the same year that I joined an art school this happened. You say adapt, adapt to what? There is nothing to adapt to, what I wanted to do in my life was stolen by people whose only goal was to make money. And for what ? How does this advance humanity? Have they cured cancer? Solve the hunger issue? No, they just decided to take what I chose in life.
@@PilouPilou1212 I'm not indicating that I believe A.I. will be a good thing for humanity. In fact, I feel the more conveniences and the more of the human experience we outsource to machines, the worse off humanity will be in the long run. This wasn't something humanity needed, but it was created in spite of that. Progress and innovation for the sake of it. There was a market for it, so it now exists. Other professions have been damaged by technology and cultural 'advancements.' Blue collar workers have been being displaced by tech for a while. Factory workers replaced by assembly lines of mechanical arms, cashiers being replaced by self-checkout aisles, etc. Even local farmers in the modern day have to compete with industrial feed lots that churn out huge numbers of lower quality food to the public. We have to adapt in the sense that we 'have to' adapt. We don't really get a choice. Driven by intellectual curiosity without bound, humanity will push itself as far as it can go, even to its own detriment. I don't think the arts are dead, but I don't know what's fully going to happen. You may need to think about things humans can do in the arts that AI simply can't do because of inherent limitations. Find a new angle. Maybe you could find ways to use AI yourself to enhance your workflow or yield inspiration. Or maybe you'll need to branch out in a new direction where you can still apply your love of art, but in a way that the AI can't compete with. At most extreme, this could involve career shifts. The optimist in me wonders whether that in the same way that people still seek out local farmers that actually care about what they're doing, maybe there will still be a market for human-made art that has real soul, hardwork, and passion behind it. I, unfortunately, don't have all of the answers. My own profession may be heavily damaged by this kind of technology, and will 100% be impacted in some form. It's normal to feel frustrated when something like this happens. How can you not feel like that? But, know that a lot of people are grappling with this right now. You're not alone. A lot of us paying attention are thinking about what our careers might look like before much longer and wondering where we'll fit in.
@@JellyWraith Yes you are an optimist for not being blunt with that person.
@@PilouPilou1212 you took this way personal, I understand why tho. I also wanted to be an artist when I was a kid, but when it came time I choose programing because I also liked computers and most artist I knew were living out of scraps, I didn't want to be poor. This technology is basically stealing your job, a job that was already a bad gamble all things consider, and that gotta suck. On the other hand I actually think this is good for humanity in the long run, I wish all jobs to go extinct really soon (don't worry, programing is already reaching obsolescence, you can ask AI to make code to solve many issues as of now, give it 5 years and I will be out of work too). In the not so long future maybe people will be able to actually do "just because", to be an artist without having to pay the bills, with UBI and some other factors involved.
@@PilouPilou1212 i agree, i hate people that say this will save humanity, from what? Death? Working? Human greed? No, this is for control and money, always has been, and people who think otherwise are fools, why is medicine not fully public? Why is pharmacy only based on profit to decide which medication will be worked on? Greed, only greed, and i say that as a doctor, not as a dumb guy who was born yesterday. Humans are corrupt, so it will always be part of their creation, hang on friend, let's hope some laws will be put in place.
Very interesting, well told and soothing voice.. great video ^^
I'm amazed that your video have not been downvoted to oblivion for portraying a neutral viewpoint in this topic, I'm happy about that.
Excellent work as always.
I really like these non gaming videos. You should keep going they are great.
Well done video. Thank you for helping condense all the current information on the subject into a very good, neat package. You are correct, we cannot put the jinni back in the bottle. However, this particular new technology is similar to the creation of nuclear energy. Is the creation and use worth the cost?
Beautiful essay about this topic! Well done
As soon as AI learns how to draw hands, the next step is the Singularity.
and feet, i've seen just as many night mare fueled feet/legs/toes as I have hands :P
You haven't seen AI dicc!🤮
@@Bjorick 😳
Midjourney v5 is as good with hands now as it is with everything else. V5.1 is even better.
Thank you for that perspective, as an artist it’s so crucial to hear the benefits before taking such a stark and maybe even ignorant claim. I wanted to ignore the benefits even though they were impossible to ignore. I think the part that had me worried is that Ai is making things increasingly easier and are keeping people from wanting to really put forth a lot of effort and then blame it on laziness. And I’m saying that as someone who is particularly susceptible to that statement. I think because I know how I personally am, it’s a hard pill to swallow that there are indeed people worse than I am, and it makes me wonder where we will all be in 50 years.
Hopefully world will be better after 50 years. AI is a tool and technology is advancing fast. Overall it should make our lives better. I mean this art thing is not even worst one. Like how about those who drive for living? AI might replace those jobs in the future. Also AI might do better diagnostics and surgeons than doctors. How about market workers that get replaced by self serve automatic registers? World is changing and it might be scary sometimes, but overall it usually go for better. It's good thing that we don't have to visit blacksmith every time we need new knife or wood worker to make us new table. Those jobs can still make good living even today and they use modern tools to make their craft much faster than before. AI will not replace Artis anytime soon. It will be more of a tool for artist. To make more art piece using AI and then do manual corrections/changes. It might even be possible to single artist to do full animation films and series to sell to someone like Netflix in decent timeframe (not spending decade to make art for it). AI voice changer will help artists to do all the voice acting for all the characters too (voice actors might not like this one lol). Something that might have not been possible to do alone before, might be possible soon..
There seems to be some confusion here about copyright infringement. It isn't a question of whether it's legal or not. As a graphic designer, I see people who openly get away with blatant copyright infringement every day by the sheer volume that access / abundance has allowed in this new era. Whether it's legal or not won't matter unfortunately when the entire world has access to producing these images. The same as with illegally streaming films. The same as with dodging music purchase. (Obviously major streaming services have guided this somewhat now, but are cannibalizing and their days are probably numbered as they generally aren't even profitable companies and the artists get pretty much nothing out of it)
Also, about it 'enhancing creativity' ... the premise of this idea dismisses the atrophy of only 1-2 generations removed from a grounded development in the act of creating at all. The path of least resistance. This isn't just another age-old step of expression like photography. This is a departure from creating altogether.
AI image generators can be considered as image stock creators... it is never the end product and if it is the value goes down alot since it is digital but... it opens the door for each and everyone of us to make their own movie cartoon or artwork. it will stimulate creativity on a level which we have never seen.... it puts you right in the creative directors seat.. so instead of this only being possible for elites to share their views on the big screen or youtube ;-) that door has now opened for every person that wants it. don't worry most people just want to watch tiktok so enough oppertunities for the people that understand this tech and it's proper use
Such a good idea for a topic!