Picasso once said “good artists borrow, great artists steal.” With the AI art debate raging the question I got the most on my previous video about the looming legal fight between copyright holders and AI companies was how is it any different if an AI finds inspiration in an artists work if human artists have worked this way for centuries.
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The problem is that people asking the question never drew anything in their life. And then they claim the process is same as AI doing it. It's quite insane.
And they do that while they use an automatic tool, with very diminishing returns that needs to be constantly fed work by real artists in order to create anything different. How is this not a plagiarism machine?
I wouldn’t have much of a problem with ai if it only was fed with public domain images. Like… they’re right there… for the public, they’re free to use! But even before AI came along there were people who took someone else’s art and tried to pass it off as theirs. Now ai makes it easier for them to be sleazier, with the justification that they “made” it themselves. I guess it could be used ethically to use it as a tool for unique and specific references, but there’s no guarantee that it will. Now people want products on the go, they have no patience for deadlines or respect for the people who make their art.
Something that angers me about AI image generators is that the people who use them tend to mistakenly believe that art is some talent you come out of the womb magically knowing, not a craft you put years of blood, sweat, and tears into. The problem with it for me comes with how it was built off stolen art and is quite obviously, intent on replacing us instead of solving the problems in the industry. No living wages, no more crunch time, no artists either.
dude, people who spent time to Code the AI not even admitting it's their art.
Coach builders probably thought the same when robots were employed in car manufacturing, or weavers when automatic looms were invented for fabric manufacturing. Mass production and consumption invariably leads to automation.
Yeah, sweaty tech bros are incredibly annoying, however the AI models aren't the ones to blame here, it's the sweaty tech bros who are to blame
You can make AI generators without stolen assets
How is it stolen if it is fair use transformative?
Being an artist is more than just creating beautiful images, creativity transcends technical skill and cannot be replaced by AI. We should all take a step back and ask more profound questions about the nature of creativity. Time and time again, people conflate craftsmanship and artistry, failing to recognize the distinction between mere technical proficiency and the imaginative process of creating something truly unique and innovative.
How do we know for certain that AI can not accomplish artistry, or at the very least something that *seems* to be? I mean, it's all subjective right?
@@1234macro For the same reason why some consider that AI is commiting a crime in this case. Because it's a machine. It's nothing like we ever saw before.
"Being an artist is more than just creating beautiful images, creativity transcends technical skill and cannot be replaced by AI." How does your mystical bullshit translate into improved value for someone purchasing artwork? If you can't explain that then you are offering nothing an AI can't do.
@@1234macro You say that as social media becomes flooded by the most boring derivative AI made work. I just block AI art on sight out of boredom and how much spam content it is.
@@salmadys People spam low effort content all the time, it's the same with this.
" good artists borrow, great artists steal." it might sounds catchy and marketable but as an artist I never like that quote, it has an immediate negative insinuation, and glorifying stealing. the word steal means there is a victim someone or something out there are being harmed in any shapes of form for our gain. I prefer the word inspired. it shows gratification respect and love.
Well said!
Stealing this comment
Yea you don’t steal you learn how it’s made just like architecture students learn how a building can be put together in different ways/materials but no one says they are stealing
This quote was never supposed to be taken seriously.
By stealing you make it yours. When you borrow, you're just using something that isn't yours. That's the meaning of the metaphor. In this context stealing implies integration, understanding and in some cases evolving/improving. When you borrow something you never make it a part of your toolkit. When it still belongs to someone else you're not motivated to do any of the above.
One of the biggest things that makes me upset with the whole AI art thing is not the fact that our jobs will be replaced but rather how non artists will view us. Artists already have a lot of prejudice and stigma and how people think you start off talented and skilled at a young age and how "easy" art is. All they need is to press a few buttons and prompts and can say "I just did what you made but faster" as if Ai generation is in anyway as valuable as human effort. A human being copying another's style takes so much effort a lot of sketching, drawing, studying and even then, the styles will not be a 1 - 1 copy as the artist will develop new skills and ideas along the way. Also my take on this as a beginning animator is that I can understand the usefulness of Ai generation to help smoothen and make the animation processes easier, but IMO that kind of takes away a lot of the beauty and value of animation. Even with just simple interpolation, the general audience are already praising and are impressed with the 60fps mushy animation that makes me nauseous. This may really be just my biased take with the "you kids have it better than we did" kind of situation but still. I'm sure it can help animators and make the animation production cheaper but that's also part of the problem. Digital art will be seen by the general public as cheaper or less valuable because of these auto generations, the market will be oversaturated and living as an artist will become even harder without forming a proper law around using AI art for profit. This holds strongly for the struggling and abused artists in the animation industry's corporate web. I still do think that artists won't go away as long as there is a group of people who love and support their art. But man, Does it leave a terrible taste in my mouth when I see people already devaluing artist, and the possible implications of people profiting and claiming themselves to be artists using AI.
Definitely will move human artists down the society ladder
@@ElinWinblad It's more of a economic ladder.
people have become less impressed with my art, and some even asking if it was generated using AI. It makes me very sad.
Your rhethoric is based on the romanticization of art-making process and the perception of elitism you want artistry to project on society, which is fair enough but this same rhetoric has been used countless of times in the past when technology changed the way we make or perceive art. Everytime we get over it and a new thing comes along, people who dont want the change will find a semantic reason to suggest "its not the same as last time, we must keep things how they are new tech= over-saturation, laziness, make current artists poor etc". Art isnt an essential economic neccessity for society like food or water or clothes, in other for it to be economically viable you have to find a way to package it and sell it like any-other non-essential product out there, it isnt about how many butterflies you get from the process of making art, that is subjective and for you alone. Digital software levelled the playing field for many ppl who probably had an eye for art but couldnt afford all the things you had to have to be a professional traditional artist. Ai is doing the samet today, probably in 3 years animators wont need the corporate jobs when they can easily create the project they've been dieing to create while making off of it. Like i said art is about packaging and selling ideas, the ai future we're entering will give anyone with an idea the power to easily build and deploy that idea without needing to slave for anyone and thats good for EVERYBODY not just people who are priviledge enough to have a laptop to learn animation in the first place. i dont see why a kid in africa cant be a high level concept artist or animator just using a phone or a shitty 50 dollar tablet.
@@afrosymphony8207 nahh i dont think they were doing some "elitist" thing or whatever you're talking about. Most of the expensive "fine art" is physical and worth a lot more than anything on the digital side. That's not something we decided on because of some hierarchy lmao - or "laziness". You can make copies of anything digital. Sire NFTs are a thing, but that market is more or less dead. But anyway, you're argument isn't all that different in terms of romanticization - you romanticize the idea of everyone being able to create something with minimal effort. That's great - wonderful in fact. But when you apply that to all fields, you end up in a society where no one requires anything from anyone, other than some forms of blue collar labor (assembly lines have been getting automated since the 90s). So it's a nice gesture, but it would require that everyone either do nothing but monitor processes all day (which we can use AI for too btw) or learn sciences that help us run maintenance on a process that may or may not need maintenance - or we can all become laborers in the fields tech can't touch (...yet). Yours is one that sounds like a nice argument until faced with the reality it presents: the perfect world where universal convenience is the norm is a disturbed world. A perfect world isn't perfect because no passion exists for a human to strive toward. But by that point (if it reaches fruition) we won't care anymore. It will be much like those sci-fi books about futuristic civilizations -- or maybe it will just be like Wall-E.
My concern with AI is the same problem I have whenever a new tool is introduced: I'm not afraid of the product, I'm afraid of how people will use it. People that don't understand anything about art, design, or any creative field, and therefore can't and don't appreciate creative work. People that will think of and use the tool as a 1:1 replacement for an artist and do their best to convince others of that opinion, intentionally devaluing creativity for their own gain. My fundamental issue is still with the greed, the pride, and the lack of appreciation for others AI will be used to perpetuate. Great video, I appreciate your input on the topic!
No matter how good AI gets, I will still continue working on my art and skills.
why ? you not worried ?
@@feardieshogun8153 I agree, we do this because we love doing it, the process is important as much as the results. I'm afraid for the industry, my job, making money out of it but not for my art skills and the learning of those skills because I will never stop it, doing it makes me happy (sometimes angry too), it gives me a sense of acomplishment no AI prompter will have. But I fear those knowledges will get so scarce over time, skills will be lost, people will have less and less incentive to learn the process, everything will be more and more derivative, depending too much on algorithms and art/fashion/culture/society etc will be shaped more easily by the few people that owns these AI companies.
@@feardieshogun8153 cause even to professionals, art isnt just about making money
Great analysis! Fuel vs inspiration is a great way to look at it.
That was my favorite line in the video. So glad you picked that out 😁
I agree. I think Brad really nailed the comparison there
Pre-AI, the limits of copying someone elses work was your time. Researching, studying, practicing. Taking inspiration is often part of creating, but for me, the human interaction and putting your own spin on the work is what set influence apart from a copy with text prompts then pressing generate. Still not sure how I feel about AI, but it's not going anywhere and only going to get better from here. Great question and explaination!
Well said Keith!
i think there is too many romanticization of the "human" process of making art is sorta blinding y'all from the truth. Just recently before ai there was this rhetoric that digital art isn't "real art" cause there is nothing like "interacting" with "real" paint and a brush on a canvas. Many digital artists feel inferior to traditional artist because of that fucking nonsense and now it feels like they're almost relieved to not be at the bottom of the art elitism. it doesnt matter how its made, art is about the results, whatever butterflies you get smacking a paintbrush on a canvas is subjective and shouldn't factor in on what constitutes as good art. collage is an artform that exists solely because ppl found a way to use technology to transform art, its a valid artistic process and so is "writing texts". As a programmer its the absolute beauty of math and code.
This. All of this. I love the feel of putting pencil to paper. The idea of studying one particular art style and practicing until I can put my own spin on things. They can call me a "horse and buggy salesmen" or whatever outdated jobs they want. Fine then, I will be their " horse and buggy salesmen" til the day my hands cease to function. I hope this made sense and I hope the first draft of this comment didn't come off terribly.
@@afrosymphony8207 "it doesnt matter how its made, art is about the results," No, no it's not. Literally no artist believes that nonsense. In everything in life, not just art, you're told to "focus on the process;" It's about the journey, not the destination. If you believe that the results are what matters, then you've missed an integral part of any process. It's like hacking a level 100 character in a video game with perfect stats, perfect gear, and maxed out skills. Your character is OP. But you didn't get the character there yourself, so you enjoyed no part of playing the game and got nothing out of it. You didn't learn to overcome the obstacles that were presented. Or it's like climbing Mt. Everest. Do you want to actually CLIMB the mountain with all it's hazards, or do you want to be air lifted to the top by helicopter? Cuz only one of them makes you a real climber, and nobody will acknowledged the other. That's not "elitism," that's called life. You can enjoy the view all you want from the top, but it's the struggles that make the view memorable and therefore worth it. Or to put it another way, "A victory won cheaply is not worth celebrating."
@@xavier_sb2952 some people enjoy the results. They don't need to enjoy the process to enjoy the results. Enjoying the results also doesn't make someone a better person inherently. I would find it elitist if that was implied. Not everything is a competition, nor should they be. If someone wants to have climbing skills, good for them. If someone truly enjoys the view of the mountain top without getting there with considerable manual labor climbing efforts, that should also be fine. And I'm saying this as someone who has been drawing, painting, and making art for 16 years. I think your argument was based on the assumption that it has to be a skills competition, and that skills competitions are inherently needed, or good for everyone. If something works for you, that's great. But that doesn't mean that everyone else has to follow suit. I really hope you consider those viewpoints and conditions - not everyone shares the same values as you do, and that should be fine, I think. Good luck with whatever you're doing.
Your argument about the effort and process is the most compelling to me, and the parallels between now and the printing-press revolution are striking. Thanks as always, sir!
Thank you Eric!
Your critical thinking skills are lacking severely.
Except the "printing-press revolution" is a completely wrong analogy. Another false analogy is photography. AI is beyond any analogy from the past. Moving beyond just art AI, general purpose AIs like ChatGPT and others will make most humans redundant. AI won't complain, will work 24/7, doesn't need vacation or sick time, and will never demand any pay. Can we do it ethically? No. These AI developers are doing it to commercialize and make $$$ off of $$$ valuations of their companies, using data sets off of stolen artwork, scraping the Internet. These are the same people who stole people's data under perverse user agreements and monetized it with no ethical concern. Why would anyone believe they would do it any differently? It's up the courts, but I have little faith in courts as they are on their payroll. Is it any different? Sure, there are similarities. When an AI can create endless iterations in seconds, why would anyone use a real artist? For amateur artists who don't make any money and do it for themselves, it won't have much impact other than the AI will draw and render better than you ever will. For professional artists it's an existential threat. And AI in general is an existential threat for most white collar professions. ChatGPT can already diagnose illnesses better than 99% of doctors. It can write better than 99% of people. And so on.
The learning process argument is mostly about intellectual property I think. I do not think the amount of effort (on its own) is relevant in the conversation about intellectual property, though. If you pay a lot of effort making something, and it ends up being exactly similar to something else, it should be a copyright violation. Vice versa.
@@asimian8500 I think you have a bit of a narrative there and it's good to check on it a bit and gain more perspective on this matter. Not impugning your points, though. Just a thought.
A complex and complicated topic. Issue: Ai is not a person, and I think you basically covered part of this but there are further implications (Ai can not originate an idea, it can only "generate" based on prior ideas, so they are emulative). Issue: the datasets the Ai was trained on includes copyrighted work that no permission was granted for - a civil case would probably be stronger as the legalities are not clear and with a few cases moving through the system; the question of copying anothers work is accepted in all art and one can argue Ai is transformative. Issue: Ai systems are not actually Intelligent, so when discussing them this should be pointed out, they are not autonamous, lack agency, awareness, nuance, etc. Issue: ownership. If everyone uses the exact prompts on the same system, who owns the image generated - is it the first person logged with that combination or is it no one? Would "prompts" then be the copyrighted property within a particular system? Issue: growth and progression - If there are less artists to train the Ai on, how does the Ai system improve (outside of improvements using a now static dataset), one can argue Public Domain works are ripe for using but, if every artist creating work includes a "may not be used to train an Ai system" attached, which I think is already happening, where would future iterations of the Ai draw its "inspiration" from? Issue: regression - If new artists rely on Ai systems, then what is the potential lost to humanity in terms of knowledge, skill, art, etc.? Art is not a problem to be solved. However, in my view, new tools should be used ethically. Human agency will always trump Machine generated but, businesses may not want to pay someone with artistic skill, so are there jobs which may be eliminated? Probably; this is not a positive development. Art is already poorly compensated in the economic systems of many parts of the world, now a young artist may not even be able to get a job. I don't see Ai systems being able to replace certain types of art - as all of the systems have an artificial look at this point - but, within Product Advertising, Digital Illustration, Mobile Game Design, UI Design, I can see this really taking off. There should probably be a descriptor: Human Generated Art vs Machine Generated Art - so the average viewer knows and eventually can learn the subtle differences, because they are there. Of course, a trained artist who uses an Ai System will probably create better Ai Art than someone who is not trained because he/she will have a larger knowledge base and skills which can be transfered into this new area.
AI wouldn't exist without us Artists, without our work, without our style, without our inspirations. I too have accepted that AI is here to stay.. but as u said that the way it's being used/developed today by stealing other artist's work without consent or compensation is purely unethical.. n it must be highly regulated by law.
The time argument is one of the reasons I'm so angry about AI. If another human is an artist, they are competition, yes, but fair competition. If your competition is AI, then it can churn out tons of art for a cheaper price and you cannot compete with that.
Well you’re not competing with AI. You’re competing with other artists who use AI (integrating it into existing pipelines & such). If you aren’t skilled with the latest technology, you’re not as desirable a hire. I like what Aaron Blaize said. “AI won’t cost jobs. Bad management will.”
I'm writing my final thesis in Digital Design & Interactive Technologies on this topic specifically. It's such an interesting topic with both massive implications and opportunities. I think you summed up certain parts of it really well. If you happen to have access to Adobe Firefly, would you mind doing a video on it?
YES! I am dying to get access to Firefly. hopefully this week!
Thats the thing if its unethical to build a company on top of artists’ work, then why shouldn’t it be heavily regulated? If the judges have hindsight when making this ruling then they should be able to stop this, but then again judges are money hungry and easy to buy by these companies. I hope this doesnt come to be.
I can’t believe you managed to some up EXACTLY what I was talking about with my mom, your fuel vs inspiration analogy was more concise than what I came up with, and I think you nailed describing the origin/“spirit” of copyright law. I think this is more than just automating an industry, but instead calling into question what is creativity, and the value of humans vs AI in general. I mean if the finished result mimics creativity does that actually make it creative, or is creativity defined by the process? Is art defined by creativity? What’s the difference between humans and AI? Can only humans ( and/or animals ) be creative? Edit: I’d also like to add that, I agree with you ( Brad ) about the legality of AI “art”, but I think in the spirit ( the intension/purpose ) of copyright law AI would break it. It’s also worth noting that nonhumans cannot hold a copyright, thus AI “art” shouldn’t be able to have a copyright.
I think as generative AI gets more popular, ultimately, there will be a push for training data to be ethically sourced IE the images, songs, videos, you train on must be public domain or licensed from the artists. Even now, big companies are kinda antsy using AI because the copyright thing could flare up at any point. All that being said, I think even if this AI was ethically sourced, it would still be a risk for jobs. Like, I'm more than certain that even on licensed and public domain works, it'll be able to generate masterpieces little differently than today.
Well-worded! I've had a few very unpleasant encounters with some hardcore pro-AI group of people and they arguing that AI and artists are the same because they both "steal" other artists' works enrages me to no end because they just don't want to admit that AI isn't human therefore they shouldn't be treated with human standards and they just bring out this totally out of scifi conjectures about AI having sentience as if the AI as depicted in scifi series is remotely close to image-generating AI in terms of complexity.
You only steal how lines or layers look the ideas and practice combined with human thoughts/emotions create your unique style. Even if a human suddenly created a brand new art process AI would take it over
truth is that both can't create art without seeing existing images first. Humans are just better at realizing when they're ripping someone else off so they change it more. It's also really dumb to base the criteria of whether something was stolen on anything other than the final image.
All this situation reminds me when the AI "Alpha Star" at the beginning playing Starcraft 2 vs humans. It was able to see the whole map, while a human only could see what was on screen. And they had to change the parameter to make the matches more fair. And I think that's whats happening now, the AI have all the leverage to their side and it feels kinda like unfair competition. And that's why there are parameters that has to be established in order to make AI a tool at the service for creators and not the creators killer.
I think a point you hit on ( likely unintentionally) is that it is unsustainable resource (fuel). If the ai's must continuously be fed new images to grow and evolve, but overtime artists and creators are disinsentivised to create. At some point art will stagnate and we will be limited by the latent space of the ai's rather and are abilities and imagination.
What will be interesting will be if people continue to post high quality original images online for AI to copy. The laws may not protect artists from what AI is doing - the only people will be the artists themselves. We might start seeing more and more artwork photographed at angles with depth of field effects to prevent AI simply copying the work. I also think and hope more analogue work starts being produced - thick paint / bas relief / embroidery / constructed art - all things that can't be reduced to a MidJourney duplicate of popular digital art.
The problem is that the AI needs that human input (in the form of "rapidly analysing thousands of" (stealing) current/past human made artwork) to "create" but doesn't add anything in itself. It's not just a moral and/or a philosophical problem, it's also a practical one. A human by creating a mood-board and "stealing" other art is invariably going to inject some of their own creative process into the mix. That process is what pushes the media forward. The AI without that human input of countless actual creations made by humans will start to self-reference and continuously remix it's own output. That's accelerated Flanderization. In the same way that the movie creating process has been parasited by capital/greed and have started to flanderize itself ad-infinitum (remake, remake of the remake, etc...) but in a matter of months instead of decades. "Well it's fine if we continue to feed the AI with human art right ?" Yeah but the economic/time pressure of creating art from scratch will render said process rarer and rarer. Why going through the pains of creating art when anything slightly original is going to be re-hashed for financial gain almost instantly ? Right now we are just feeding it the totality of our present and past library of pictures so it looks good, but there is going to come a point when we literally have nothing left to give it except it's own product. Hell it's already happening with AI generated images having that weird distinctly homogeneous look at midpoint between Sakimichan and Loish. "Democratization of the means for creating video didn't lead to that for movies" That's because a movie is magnitudes more complex than one picture. You can be sure if get to the point we create an AI that starts leeching every movie and outputting an infinity of remixed/re-hashed movies, it's also going to flanderize in a matter of months and everyone is going to be sick of it real fast. "Digital art tools didn't lead to that" It kinda did actually with scandals after scandals of people trying to be sneaky and recycling others art by bashing it into their own creation and not crediting. Again, digital toolsets made that flanderization process a bit faster but it's still order of magnitudes less invasive than what we are going to have now. TL;DR : Think of it as this one artist that had a good idea 30 years ago and coasted on it way past it's expiration date. Except it's a robot now... and it does that times a bazillion.
It would be nice to develop a distinction between the human-created and the machine-created in all relevant fields. Also maybe a token can be attached to all online art, music, and literary works so that every time that work is used the creator would receive some appropriate compensation. Appreciate your analysis, Brad. Excellent food for thought.
The tools that exists for this purpose currently all suck, for lack of better words.
I have a feeling this is going to come to a head when AI starts getting really good at not just Art (stable diffusion) or story telling (GPT4) or voice acting (various online AI voice generators) but also animation, editing etc. Then the whole world of copyright will start getting challenged, as it would mean that ANYONE with a computer could make literally anything with just their thought process. What would happen then? I'm not sure how good that would end up. Right now, ChatGPT has plugins in their beta that would allow people to tell it what to do, and one of the plugins allows ChatGPT to edit your videos. Like this is just the beginning, it will eventually get better at it. Honestly, I think we as humanity are progressing way to fast to understand the consquences of what we are doing.
It’ll be writing/recording it’s own pop songs
Its certainly something that's being discussed in many fields. Many voiceover artists feel that their voices are being used without their consent. Some of the older ones feel that public presentations of AI using their voice could hurt their hireability due to themes being used by the creator that used the voice. Mike Pollock comes to mind
There are already ai tools for architecture, generally people don't care about artists right or needs, but when it starts to get into orther areas I hope everyone starts to press for more regulation, maybe it is too late already
I used to work in print advertising. I started by working in the department with copyrighters and content designers. There was literally nothing that came out of these agencies that wasn't stolen from another printed media. It's just tweaked and slightly redesigned and put out there. Another industry that steals: fashion. Here's another one: beauty.
Brad, just gotta say I love that you tackled this issue with logic. Also, love your videos
It sounds like we have a similar opinion on this! Awesome to hear your take! If the AI is doing all of the work a regular artist may do (although through very different means), then why are the humans that put in prompts getting the credit? The AI is obviously the "artist" in this scenario.
I actually disagree with that, an AI is not creating anything (it simply has no will of it's on), it's simply manufacturing what a human being came up with.
@@adventurousdrake4071 Than the prompter would not be using ai. The ai is still being the artist. Just as someone who writes me a creative brief is not the artist - I am. so too here. The human is now writing the creative brief. The manufacturing of that is still the art.
@@ithurtsbecauseitstrue1922 I guess all those robots in the car factories should get all the credit for designing the cars then, as the people who programmed them only entered "prompts" into a computer on how to do it. I guess the true artists are the robots :)
@@ithurtsbecauseitstrue1922 It's still just a blueprint (prompts) telling the robots (AI) what materials, dimensions and properties the car has. But you still have to manufacture it from said materials etc. you can do the same with AI and it does it for you to spec. Right now people are not that picky about what they type into the AI's prompt so all kinds of stuff comes out, but in the future that won't be good enough and people will have to create much more detailed descriptions of what they want, aka blueprints. In the end, without a vision(which an AI doesn't have) the AI doesn't /cannot do anything, it's an inanimate object/software. So to compare yourself to AI as a tool, is truly tragic.
Gonna ignore the two arguing about….cars or something….and answer you. Lol When it comes to just purely generating an image from a prompt, Humans get credit for the idea, not the work. No serious person (keyword: serious) will say otherwise. This is why frankly, the best pieces that have been driven by AI did not begin & end with whatever was generated by a prompt. In those scenarios, massive amounts of post work is done because here, AI is integrated into an existing pipeline. It’s not THE pipeline. So there, a human would get credit for the effort. So that’s the difference.
I wish AI art vendors would be interested in developing mutually beneficial relationships with artists, like what happened for writers and the printing press people (that we now call publishers). But businesses really don't like to share the money they are making (even if it would be beneficial for them in the long run) and often have to be strong-armed into it by some law, and I don't feel like the AI art situation will be any different.
as a former musician i had the impression artist believe, that copyright as a concept and that them and there ideas were "secured" would be fundamental for their existence as an artist but the more you look into it the more it seems that it's the publisher who is getting irrelevant... and the "algorithmic artists" of Corse :) for artist it's more important that they find "fans" (/let the right fans find them) who can differentiate between value and price - "pay to support what is of value to you" must get more important then "how to get a peace of art cheap to show my taste and 'inner artist' "
You raise some very good points. One thing though: if an AI accepts a command such as "in the style of XX artist", then a court may well regard that as evidence that the AI has been trained on images by that specific artist. And if that artist's works are still under copyright, that means there may well be copyright infringement. Because saying "in the style of so-and-so" is very specific to the (copyrighted) works of that artist. It's not a general "in the style of late seventies punk graffiti". I think these AI databases are going to expose their owners to big lawsuits, unless they generalise their commands and only rely on non-copyrighted material.
Before watching your video, I want to say I got 2 issues with AI art in general: 1. AI software is a product. Not a person. Your files, digital products, are being consumed without compensation or consent to power another digital product's quality. 2. I'm okay with Adobe Firefly's method of creating AI art. They have their own database of stock art to draw upon. Other AI softwares just grab whatever they can find and do not disclose sources. I'm also worried about references. AI Artwork have spit out direct copies of original artwork and doesn't state what references was used, and can land AI artists in legal trouble. After video: Cool. Seems like we both have similar opinions. Neat!
That was the most amazing video you had! Nice work!
There are many ways one can think about this issue, but in my opinion it’s very simple. The difference between what we artists do and what the AI does comes down to this: consent. There’s always been an unspoken rule between us artists. It’s okay to copy ourselves to improve, to practice, to learn skills. We shall not copy and post an existing piece of artwork without at least mentioning the original author, we shall not take credit for someone else’s work, and equally established and professional artists shouldn’t get on their high horses when beginner artist’s copy their work to practice. We avoid gate-keeping, we share our secrets and tips, we inspire and influence each other, the same way our teachers did, and their teachers did, and so on and so forth: that’s how our skills have been passed down generations after generations, each generation adding its own stone to an ever-growing edifice. Practice makes perfect or, as we say in French, a blacksmith learns by blacksmithing (c’est en forgeant qu’on devient forgeron). We rest assured that our knowledge and skills will be passed down to future generations and that after we’re gone our style, in a way, will be adopted/copied/transformed by future artists that will share our love for the craft. AI gets rid of all of that. It’s simply the end of the line, it's being used to blow up our not-so-much-anymore-ever-growing edifice. It’s not copying to improve or to inspire, to create new generations of artists, nor to pass down our knowledge to future generations of artists: it’s a replacement. It’s putting an end to us and what we’ve been doing for generations, and all of that without our consent while parading under the pretext of “making art available to anyone”. Here lies the gate-keeping in my opinion: once you replace artists and masters, once less and less people learn the tools of the trade, the knowledge is lost. Only a handful of people remain with those skills, while automation dumbs down everything else and it’s hard for artists to get noticed in sea of generated artwork. I’m the pessimistic type who sees a bleak future, where kids will be raised with smartphone that come with “Midjourney 5.0” and will look at us artists almost as if we were cave-men finger-painting on stone walls... Also, if techbros keep insisting that AI is simply a tool that will make life easier to artists, why are they cheering at the same time at the thought of us being replaced?
Personally, I'm excited to see what real artists come up with in the days ahead. I anticipate a 'Punk Rock' kind of rebellion in visual art, music, literature; supported by other disrupted professionals of all walks.
appreciate this view, the fuel vs inspiration point was really insightful, thank u
The problem with requiring that AIs be trained on data that the developers own, is that it gives a massive amount of power to the companies that own those IPs (Disney, Google, Microsoft, Adobe). Said companies would be able to develop AIs that still replace artists, but now they have say over how that AI is to be used, they can demand money/rights/compensation. All it would do is make proprietary AIs have an edge, over Open Source ones. If we keep extending copyright law, it would become so Draconian, it would hurt creatives more than it would help.
Only Human can have Copyright. in my opinion the Good Ending is: anything made by non-human (AI) can't be copyrighted, so the stolen models or asset to create AI art is replace by commission Artist to create as much Models as possible. so no more stolen art and AI Arts can be consistent with the Artist Art (because there's no other artstyle in the model) or people can do more creative things using AI without using stolen art but made the model themselves.
What about Adobe Firefly? Im sure such big company is going to allow copyright everything you going to do there. Your "good ending" is impossible dream.
@@patrykmajewski1906 i heard the models or image use is from Adobe own stock photos. so you not wrong there.
Intelligent, articulate summation of the exact issue facing professional artists right now and that's exactly what I needed. Many thanks Brad.
Spot on analysis, that is my understanding of the law here in the UK too .... new laws would be required to protect artists ... sadly many will go similar to the way other industries have been automated and deskilled.
I think that AI would be useful if artists just use it as a tool like Photoshop or Procreate, but using a database of your own work. It would be useful when we get stuck on an idea or a project. It's like brainstorming, but on a different level. The same goes for writers. The AI program can serve as a mirror and reflect your work back at you so you see it with different eyes. If you want to collaborate with another artist, then you add that artist's work to your database and then delete that after the project has been completed. I think the issue we are facing now is that AIs cast a large net and randomly pull from works that are floating around the world wide web. So these were uploaded for a portfolio, an ad, an exhibit, and they were suddenly taken without permission to create something new. At the end of the day, it's all about consent.
great cover art on this video! which is not in the video?
Man, I love this video. I feel this really summed up my own thoughts and opinions on the ethics of AI really well, and its nice to see other people who feel the same way about it.
That's the thing with AI. Humans are never able to 100% replicate another person's style, it's why it's possible to find out if something is a forgery. Each artist has their own nuances, their own signature or fingerprint on their style that bleeds into other styles. It's how in animation there's off-model animation scenes as opposed to just off-model frames. Because animation is made in a team, each team member has their own little nuances of animating stuff, no matter how hard they try to keep on-model. Computers don't have those nuances. Ask one computer running a model to generate a picture in one particular style, and another computer running that model will be able to generate the same style without any variants, without nuance, heck, if you use the same model, the same seed, the same prompt and the same variables, you'll 100% be able to replicate the image. Ask a human to draw a circle and ask that same human to draw that same circle, no way in hell they'll be able to 100% replicate that.
I used to be a painter in NYC and all of my income came from selling my art in shows... I have transitioned into new realms professionally but what i learned from my stint as a show artist was quality didn't really push sales it was more about marketing and promotion... Where i see with AI someone can churn out 100s of pieces in a day and if they have better marketing skills they will be deemed as a better artist... I feel at the end of the day being creative should really just be an aspect of life and not a business... Most people in the art world dont get involved thinking it will be outright profitable... I am not opposed to or agree to AI's ethics... I feel besides the fact it could possibly saturate a market and make future creatives more impulsive and slightly lazier it will also open up a creative high for people that typically would never pursue any creativity because it was too difficult for them to fathom... I want to stay positive either way... Will AI make most career paths obsolete... Yes... when? I don't know... 5 years? 10 years? I feel there is no stopping it so we all just have to embrace it and understand no one is special... hahaha... Great videos as always... I love your unbias views on AI especially coming from the Illustrative side... I work in tech and still in several creative realms so i see both sides of it constantly and most people lean highly towards one way or the other... Usually people with minimal creative abilities are pro AI and the long time artists are anti-AI... it is a breath of fresh air to see someone with an open mind about it...
I refuse. I can see this destroying the anime industry. The artists who draw anime are working for peanuts and with AI Art on the horizon, I can see them replacing the artists outright or waiting until they ask for better work environments. Sony already has a monopoly on the anime industry, so if they were the embrace it, it could be over. And I don’t want that to happen. I hope some law comes into existence to hold the floodgates.
@@1Deep43VA or AI can help to create frame so the animators only need to "fix" instead of create from scratch. just like when people though CGi going to replace animators.
@@1Deep43VA i work in film visual effects and animation and I already see my long term career and independent business as finite due to AI... more because of the inevitable saturation which will lead to more wage abuse and as always larger entities like to abuse creatives anyway they can... the worst part is it will probably happen either way... I don't think it can be stopped unfortunately... I have been in the game over 20 years now but if I was just starting out my career I would probably look into something else because of AI... but I feel AI will eventually be involved in all realms of humanity... Will we become obsolete or is the question when will we become obsolete? I am trying to stay positive about it all but it is hard... If i was younger I would be much more nervous about it all
@@FaizalKuntz It could. Depends on what companies like Sony want to do. Seeing as they’re in the business of making money, I don’t have much hope. I wouldn’t bet on those odds, myself. One can only hope.
When digital art and photoshop came around 2000, fine art artists were worried it will destroy their job and accused digital artists not to be "real artist". This division still exist in some place ie. Discord were people infight with that. Digital art beeing see as "easy" because you can fake and correct nearly everything, including the texture effect (oil, watercolor, etc) in 1 click. Also, fine artists were saying that too much people that do not know art will kill the market by flooding it with poor quality pieces done fast and make the rate lower for everyone, while having no materials (paper, pencil, ...) to pay. Digital artists replied they may not know how to paint with oil or carcoal but still need to know color theory, composition etc... and that fiddling with sliders and filters was requiring technical art knowledge. That's also around this period manga became a thing and bad anatomy was excused with the "it's my style" line. Fast forward, digital artists see computer generated picture and are worried it will destroy their job. They accuse "ai artist" not to be real artist and see this as easy because the ai artist can create a solid picture in a impossible-to-match speed. Even the artist using photo mashup or 3d render for matte painting are now outpaced. Digital artist say that too much people that do not know art... (etc etc etc you get where I'm going) So, a few decade ago clothes were handcrafted, when industry machine learned how to sew, was that bad or good ? Cars were also manually assembled, same for food processing. Art isn't handcrafted since 2000, digital allow for an infinite amount of reproduction for a drawing, which killed the art rarity. Everyone has a printer at home and can get whatever they want without paying. This is just the final industrialisation of it, like for sewing and other craftmanship. It's just that, the current digital art is actually an industry tool used for creating a product. Concept art isn't standing for itself, it's fast and often rough stuff destined for another team to use and build on top. Illustration either isn't "standing" on itself, it need an underlying story/product/text to exist, somehow it's clother to commercial.. IA is just putting everyone in front of the single question : why do you use art for ? By removing the technical part altogether, only the meaning behind will differenciate now. If you use art to convay a story, IA won't put you out of job. If it's only to gain follower on internet, then sure, now the pretty picture won't be enough...
I went to art school and I have no problem using AI for brainstorming, inspiration, references, or quick illustrations for POD, although I never use any specific artist style or name in my prompts. I think the question we really have to ask is why our work became so devalued. Sites that sell illustration stock, really, really low wages for freelancers who haven't made a name have been around for quite a while. I have seen work proposals for 10 USD for 30 illustrations and 20, 30 proposals in Upwork, really low pay seems to be a norm in freelance sites. Is it what the market became? I have sold patterns as stock for 25p. Well, I have to make a living so, what am I to do? Therefore I use AI art in some situations with no guilt because it is my knowledge that makes curating it better, it is my hand that will take my Huion pen and edit it. My question is how did we get here?
English is not my first language. Please forgive me for any grammar mistakes.
I totally agree with your assessment. I’m also pretty sure that courts will probably decide the models are fair use. But I also agree they don’t feel ‘fair’. Emphasis on feel. I really like that you point out the one of the big problems is that this is software, built by companies, with the work of illustrators, artists, and photographers, to make a profit. It’s one of the reasons that I think that open training data might be the best option we have. It might take away the profit motive from scraping so much art.
From the perspektive of a calligrapher that worked in book production the printing press does not looked fair either. 😅😅
If a company wants to use my work in order to create a product that replaces me then they're gonna have to pay me so much money that I never have to work again. It's that simple. If they're not willing to do that then I'll fight them tooth and nail for the sake of myself and other artists. Also, on your point about fair use - while it wouldn't surprise me if the courts come down in favour of these companies (because money talks) one of the most important deciding factors on whether something is fair use or not, is whether it impacts the market of the existing work. Considering AI is threatening to replace the livelihoods of living artists I'd say that it is an immeasurable impact. Governments might still come down in favour of the companies, because like I said before, money talks, but there is a very strong case for artists. There's also the fact that AI will eventually roll out into other fields. We're having this discussion about AI now but eventually it will be able to do office work, social media management, SEO, we'll have self driving trucks etc. The amount of industries and jobs this will impact is astronomical. Hopefully someone in power is smart enough to see that this might start with art but it will set a precedent for everything else to come. Personally, I think the most ethical thing to do would be to mandate that all AI must be non-profit. That way you pretty much protect every human that could be replaced. You want to replace your social media manager with an AI? Too bad, can't use it for profit. Want to replace your art team with a single art director and a laptop? Too bad, can't use it for profit. Want to replace your fleet of truck drivers with self driving trucks? Too damn bad.
Well, this sounds like the perfect solution. We would still have the opportunity to use AI for more scientific work while protecting the creative jobs.
Brad, this is one of the most important and perhaps insightful videos you’ve done. The issue of copyright are going to have to shake out as conflicts over things like the role of the human prompt and the AI image that it generates are bound to generate questions as to exactly what is the intellectual property. I’m pretty sure that Adobe will have the AI also doing calculations on what the user will pay to license the generated art and probably what restrictions there are on modifying the generated art etc. It’s gonna be a brave new world. Suffice it to say that if I were a Sci-Fi or fantasy art illustrator, well start thinking about a new career.
Excellent video Brad! :D ... I think that AI image/"art" models will not stop in fact we see almost in a weekly basis how this programs are better, more accurate and so on... nevertheless, nowadays we can still recognize if an image was AI generetade or crafted by an artist... I think (as many others) that the situation is very clear, and this is one of the things that worry me the most... that in near future is very probable that this AIs will reach a high level of accuracy, making the results indistinguishable from a Human piece of art even for the "trained eye"... and then? "No, nowadays artists must share their creative process with the community" I heared that plenty of times, I agree with that in part, but still don't see clearly that even by doin' the situation will improve in the future... A later side thought: Photography did not put an end to painting as was thought at the time, that is true, but it did put an end to the need to resort to a painter if one wished to immortalize a scene: - Oh, this park is beautiful... wait I'll paint it so we can see it and remember the moments as much as we want - Are you crazy? just take a pic and go... - Yeah, you're right Meantime, in the weird 2050s: - ready for the christmas portrait? - yeah! let's do it! - well... at the count of 3... 2... 1... "taken!" - wow this is great... lets see the "stylized" versions... - oh look! that in "Dali's style" looks awesome... or the Picasso one - I want the pop art version... - have your device the comic generating option? - Yeah sure... wait... done, I'll send to you...
Another interesting question regarding AI and copyright is going to be "can you copyright AI images"? The current answer has been "no" (and yes, it's been to the courts). AI images do not have "enough human input" to be considered copyrightable. So you can churn out images to sell via AI, but if anybody else can just take them and do the same, well I can see the that not being the magic solution companies were hoping for.
@@comicsandmanga9971 id just search for the AI "artists" with the most followers on twitters and swipe their "art" to sell it on t-shirts and stickers, perfectly legal.
Brad, thank you for taking the "theoretical" question I sent and running with it. Your exploration was interesting, as will the way this plays out in the long run.
Thanks for asking it David! Also sorry I didn't get your name in there, I had it uploaded and scheduled to go live when I got your email.
Today I talked about a commission I had to drop because I couldn't finish it on time with my hairdresser, and they said "why don't you use AI?" And I felt a little offended, because the way they said it sounded like those AI bro dudes. I explained that it was a waste of time to use AI for that since Ai is not a good tool for finishing a work, and then they explained to me, they meant to get a base so I could paint over it I like Ai, I trully do, if is used correctly. It bothers me when they use AI to end the career of millions of people. AI is just a base, that a human uses to finish their work... a ideia generator even... not a commission fabric
Currently offline AI portals are best at churning simple concept art variations for photobash fodder and late stage rendering/editing. The rendering portion is based on masking and working on smaller parts of your image. AI is good at creating textures, "unnecessary" small details, lighting based effects etc. Far as i know none of the non commercial AI tools have even tried incorporating most fundamentals in their code. Composition is something they struggle with. Flawed anatomy is something that a mediocre artist can fix in few minutes. Humans still have an edge in creating dynamic/interesting/emotional images. Most artists are faster/better at creating usable sketches. Rough line art and flats. Then you can start working on rendering with AI. Currently AI can reproduce 90% of IG portraits from start to finish. Irrelevant background and 1 character with mild variation in poses. Nice thing is that no one is interested in commissioning those images.
once again you pro why you're one of my favorite art tubers.
Impressed, this is very well said
You alway seem to get the main point of this across so well!
I'm glad you're talking about AI, and appreciate your format. You cover the important aspects while getting right to the heart of it. I largely agree with your sentiments. You bring up good points - specifically on how tech influences copyright laws.The way the courts respond to this will shape many aspects of society. Even though you accept this as probably legal, but ethically dubious, I think it's both unethical and illegal. It violates fair-use in critical ways - 1) the portion of the work used (all of it) and 2) the effect on the market. You cannot use a copyrighted image if it will have a material impact on the creator. Many artists will testify that these tools have had a negative impact on the number of commissions they're getting. Feeding complete works into an LLM where they are virtually replicated in whole and at scale, simply cannot fall under fair use. I just don't see how any judge would come to the conclusion that work used in that way falls under fair use.
Thank you very much Brad for voicing out your honest opinion. I agree 100%, people should know when to draw the line on what is unethical and not and sadly, things somehow aren't going into a better direction.
I'm only an amateur artist, photographer, and guitar player / songwriter, but I'm a professional data analyst. I know almost as a certainty that by 2028 or 2029 my skills as a human will be completely obsolete. In fact I've known this for about four years now and have been planning around it with my wife. I'll work as long as I can, but the writing is on the wall. We've already downsized, foregone lots of luxuries, done local vacations instead of trips, etc. Luckily her career is as a medical massage therapist which I think will have much longer legs as a profession. My point is, the next 5 to 10 years will see a LOT of us out of work, displaced by AI, not just illustrators. I would argue my job is much more replaceable by AI than some types of illustrators as well. Turbulent times.
I'm one of those who believe that no matter how powerful artificial intelligence is in producing beautiful paintings and wonderful designs, it will remain unable to produce specific requirments and detailed requests that customers may request. On the other hand, the issue of copyrights and intellectual property is till a big dilemma. I think professional designers and artists should be assured that no one else can take their place. Don't you think so Brad?
Just wait another decade
Do a review of galaxybook 3 ultra👍🏼
Ethically sourced art (Adobe Firefly) sounds good, but that still doesn't stop AI from taking our jobs!! It also doesn't stop the oversaturation of high quality art on the internet, resulting in an overall devaluing of the importance and effort of being an artist. Overall, I still have a love-hate relationship with AI art. I've been using it as a tool to enhance my own art and workflow, but I can't stop thinking in the back of my mind "why am I bothering when I can just type some prompts" "it's not inspiration, it's fuel" is a VERY good analogy. I love it!
not even Firefly is that ethical. Everything now is cloudbased, when people started storing their data on cloud services they didnt know it would be used to create this. The only ethical way through this is to ASK people to opt in their work to be trained beforehand and pay them.
It'll be interesting to see how this changes people's jobs in the future. For example in 3d simulations have become so much easier to achieve due to computational systems. I think this will affect coders first before artists.. for real creative work you need to be extremely specific. Although the day will come where you'll be able to generate anything and then type in the client amends to precisely change what they ask for. You will no longer need say 10 employees.. you'll only need one for the same amount of work.
This might even be an advantage for people who are freelance/ their own business over studios. Why hire a high end studio when you can higher a freelancer for half the price and get the same amount of work.
I see AI art generation as a double edged sword. I don’t care for it as an algorithm used to create characters from “scratch”. I do however see it also being used as a tool for efficiency such as someone creating their own comic or novel. Example ; I’ve seen where manga artists would cheat doing backgrounds by either taking pictures and running it through filters to get the actual photo to fit with the style of their characters or simply tracing over those images. I tried the Wombo AI app and used my own quick painting (not super neat, but detailed enough) as the reference picture and typed in a few prompts and selected the art style output and got a pretty spot on look I was aiming for primarily because of my image that I created was used as the reference to get that result. At the same time I hate AI because if somebody just wanted a simple picture of nature, then ANYONE without the skills or knowledge of art can just type in a few words and make the picture or worse, that person makes their own picture and the artist can’t make money.
The US Copyright office has officially determined a few things and as of two weeks ago released policy stating: 1. AI generated images are not protected by copyright. 2. Prompt creating is not sufficient enough to constitute human authorship. 3. A result of human-authored photobashing can be subject to copyright, but the pieces used to make that result can not be. 4. The extent to which an alteration to an ai generated image is protected will be determined on a case by case basis. 5. The decision on whether training AI on copyright images is a copyright violation or not, has not been decided yet.
Well, read the fine print in the Adobe agreement my friend. Remember the “work for hire” clause? There will be gotchas in that vain if they are not already there.
@@stevenamartin The difference being that their Ai is trained on royalty free images they already own the rights to.
@@JMulvy “They” being Adobe?
@@stevenamartin Yes. It is trained using the stock image catalog from Adobe's Stock Image service.
I think the issue is coming from the idea that you can democratise art so that 'anyone can do it' so long as they know the prompts. then that art is flooding the spaces occupied by human artists meaning that the human artists can't easily be found. Also, there needs to be a way of proving it was not AI generated so that those people who want to work with human artists can do so. There's going to be a lot of smaller jobs that go - fiverr artists who aren't very good. I think that the value placed on human generated art, especially analogue art will increase. where you may well find worlds collide is NFT art as virtual spaces build, and wealthy people want to build their space online in a 3d environment, populated with unique art.
If an Artist with an established style and is already long dead, then no one should confuse a newer work in that style with "the real thing" (if they do, it's Art Forgery). But living, commercial artists may consider something similar to the Musician's Union, to protect their profession and offerings from automation.
Judges should rule against the illegal scraping software. Copyright law currently states that the works are infringing if they act as a replacement for their original creator. Seems straight forward to me. Also, consider the harm to the ecosystem of artists when machines are allowed to infringe. It's about jobs but more importantly it's about humanity.
Part of the point about asking “isn’t that what humans do?” Is to assert that the bar for justifying some sort of restriction on usage that applies to AI but not humans is quite high. Personally, while I’m not a great fan of how all the images for some of these models were collected, I’ve generally found the solutions proposed to be heavy-handed or otherwise problematic. For example, given that art produced within the same time/geographic area/by individuals with a similar educational background will invariably share certain style elements, giving styles some sort of protection seems infeasible. Requiring art still under copyright to be opted into training would likely hurt satire and “what-if” content (which I sometimes use to frame discussions). Additionally, I think that a lot of the proposed solutions come across as “artists vs. non-artists”, which is likely to hurt rather than help them win over the general public.
Thank you that’s what I’ve been saying all this time. if other artist take inspiration for my work that’s fine too. I’m happy to oblige.. again thank you for this video. I was about to do something like this myself.
Well said.
If a Taylor Swift song is ever scraped…. All hell is gonna break loose.
lol. it's funny because it's true
One thing to note is that in the time since you posted this video, Google has posted several research papers on extracting training set data from AI model weights. This means that the AI has memorized at least part of the training set. This makes the infringement cases a lot more viable IMO.
It doesn't matter whether the AI can produce transformative works that are considered original works of art. The AI is not a person, it is a tool, like hammer or a car or a robot. It is a tool that requires artwork in order to perform its function. It might not copy these works of art, but they are nonetheless essential to its function if the AI is meant to replicate that kind of artwork. If you build a tool out of stolen parts, the materials don't suddenly become yours.
Ok, one more: I asked ChatGPT, "Was the image scraping done to create the Laion dataset legal?" And it said: "The legality of image scraping to create the Laion dataset depends on the specific circumstances surrounding how the images were obtained. In general, if the images were obtained without permission from the copyright holders or without respecting any applicable terms of service or use agreements, then the image scraping would likely be considered illegal. Additionally, some websites may have terms of service or use agreements that prohibit or restrict the use of their content, including images. If the image scraping violated these agreements, then it could be considered illegal or a breach of contract." It's interesting that even the AI seems to know that what is going on is wrong.
Based on your analogy of Jimmy, and the kid. (A comic right there 😂) that kid wants to play like Jimmy, etc. etc. that kid then discovers their style, through development, through experimentation, through failure. I feel the AI route doesn't, its closer to the printer analogy. Taking artist work and mass producing it, much like stock libraries (😬 as I shudder), But at least there's a revenue for the use of images sourced from the artist, and based on their publication platform, run, and even visits/clicks has a charge (still not a very fair balance to the artist). AI is a tool to mass produce an end product, as you mentioned using reference. So like the printer analogy in 1700's, profiting from publication of others art, the source material, has a worthy cost. Any stock library would charge a publisher who would use their images they hold the ©️. It would be interesting to see if what the guidelines on using a stock library img, run a filter over it and call that AI generated 😅 Another thought based on this episode Brad, (which is great thank you). Where's the next Jimmy going to come from. If all we have is generated art forms, who will pick up the guitar (or brush, pencil, stylus), if all we produce is generated art forms based on profit not art. Where will that kid be inspired to play like Jimmy, are we stumping future creatives to take those leaps who gave us the greats.... One thing I feel is always needed through this topical discussion is imagination. AI can copy, generate a render based on its input, which I can only hope will still need the soul and imagination from our artist. Otherwise a fear for our future Jimmys 🎸 Thanks Brad 👍
The problem is everything made by AI is almost free , so it lowers the value of that particular object, there could be a different future where the products made by humans will have High value and it's not AI what wants to replace us, it's us humans and the companies not only about AI, all the companies they just want to satisfy their ego.
Aren't we in that era now. Many items are mass produced cheaply, but independent craftsmen still exist and create similar, bespoke or hand crafted items at higher value - whether its cars, pottery, furniture, clothing etc Art is simply going to follow in the same footsteps. Mass produced art for magazine splash pages, advertising, websites, children's books etc will likely be created by AI, but hand crafted bespoke art will always have it's place.
@@eljay5009 you seemn to also ignore the fact that there ARE artist that will use AI to inprove their art faster that only traditional art making! Thatnwill creat hybrid artists that can cut corner on part of their art, corners that will had taken too much time
@@RavenL1337 I didn't "ignore" anything - it's only possible to explore a topic in so much detail in two short sentences. Did you really expect me to list every possible nuanced application of AI in art?
pretty well said.
Man, in the metaphor of using examples as fuel-- changing the copyright laws on that could change the internet* forever, in locking it down or having everything behind paywalls. Imagine setting the benchmark for user data and creation behind laws meant to obstruct the access of something that uses all of everything in a moment at the behest of any one individual. This AI is a Flashflooder
Great video. I hate this talking point they always use. I see it all the time in defense of AI “Art”. They always fall back on, “Well, how is this different from what actual artists do.” And half the time, I don’t even believe they believe what they’re saying, but rather would like to argue for arguments sake. I wonder if they realize they are helping to forge the very chains that will bind future artists. It could very well destroy a lot of industries. Including anime. Now, if they want to argue from a legal standpoint. Well, that’s silly also. AI is relatively new and so there are no laws in place to address the issues that are forthcoming. For example, Deepfake technology. They’ve got the faces of people doing and saying all kinds of things. I don’t know if that’s legal or not, but it sure as f*ck shouldn’t be. And this is just one aspect of the this multi-variable problem. It’s just the tip of the iceberg, unfortunately.
@@BoredInNW6 No, that is NOT what I meant. Thanks. I’ll try rewording it. I was trying to say it shouldn’t be, even if it were the case that it was somehow legal.
@@1Deep43VA thanks. I'll delete my comment now!
I am not sure how it would destroy anime, i can definately see studios having more time and resources to make better storylines and better animations because of the new tools avaliable.
I think you may be too inclined to your perspectives and not be open to others. I hope you consider others' arguments so you gain a better understanding of this issue, whether you agree with them or not. You can even dive into machine learning and AI research yourself to verify the points. But simply shutting out contradictory opinion is not going to help you with echo chambers, I think. I personally think machine learning algorithms are, in some ways, quite analogous to humans learning. You don't have to agree with me, but I hope you would do your own research. There are good papers that you can start with on Arxiv. Again, I hope you learn something interesting. All the best, I hope you do well in life.
@@absolutezippo7542 I don’t have to understand the inner working of AI and machine algorithms to see how much destruction it will cause. It’s simple logic. You have an AI that can make “art”. You have the anime industry where animators get paid the bare minimum and work ungodly hours. You have Sony that has a monopoly on the anime industry. Let’s say the animators want to strike for a more livable wage and less hours. Sony could just invest in AI technology and replace entire teams in one fell swoop. You have the Deepfake technology that can make porn out of peoples likeness. You have the music industry and podcast industry with AI coping peoples voices. You can ask Chat GPT to write a song in Eminem’s style, record it in his voice and get hundreds of thousands of views. And this is all just the beginning. Will they’re be benefits to this technology? Yes. But don’t tell me I shouldn’t worry when you don’t know the repercussions. When Social Media companies came into fruition, it seemed harmless. I could argue it’s helped further divide us, has destroyed social interactions and hijacked the dopamine receptors to encourage more posts. Not to mentions the privacy we’ve lost. All our data being collected and sold. No one knows the consequences, but I can assure you, there will be many unforeseen ones. And I daresay, some will be dire to certain industries.
I loved your comparisons, especially the fuel one :D . One small thing, though, I do not believe that an artist copying the style of another artist and marketing it for example on Fiverr is ethical. It is legal, but not ethical, to me at least. Yes, I understand it takes a lot of work to imitate a style and it probably will not be 100% identical, but still doesn't seem ok to me.
They already grasped every image existing on the internet, going back and redoing it ethically it's just not possible.
In Question #1 there's also the point that the artist is not representing the work to be by Wyeth (or whatever artist is being emulated). As far as AI is concerned it's most accurate to think of it as a filter where you can put in the parameters. The biggest objection to be brought up is to use it to replace someone rather than using them to do the work. In the Wyeth example, if Wyeth were still alive and someone could afford to pay Wyeth to paint something for them but were cheapskates and wanted to claim that the AI generated work came from Wyeth then there's a huge problem. As far as how well AI is good at actual creativity, look up "Will Smith eating spaghetti", definite nightmare fuel.
Please try hi paint on android please
Iasked ChatGPT, "Is Ai image generation considered fair use?" And this is what it replied: AI image generation is not automatically considered fair use under copyright law. Fair use is a legal doctrine that allows for limited use of copyrighted materials without permission for certain purposes, such as criticism, commentary, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research. However, whether a particular use of copyrighted material qualifies as fair use depends on a case-by-case analysis of several factors, such as the purpose and character of the use, the nature of the copyrighted work, the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the whole, and the effect of the use on the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. While AI image generation may be used for research or artistic purposes, it is important to consider whether the images being generated are based on copyrighted works and how much of those works are being used. If the generated images are too similar to the original copyrighted works and are being used for commercial purposes, it may not be considered fair use. Moreover, the use of AI-generated images could be subject to other intellectual property laws, such as trademark or publicity rights, which also require permission from the owner for commercial use. In summary, AI image generation cannot be considered fair use automatically. Whether the use of AI-generated images is considered fair use will depend on the specific circumstances of each case and requires careful analysis of the relevant legal factors. I asked it a bunch of other things about the ethics of AI image generation, and it had some pretty interesting answers. Let me know if you're interested in reading more.
1:00 I’m pretty sure that some multimedia is already hacking a spray painter thing with a wall-walking thingie to do graffiti. I don’t know who or where. But, really, artists emerge, always innovating. We can’t help it. It‘s what we do. And, the rest of us?
There was a tailor who made beautiful suits, years and years of experience mastered by generations of his family until he perfected his way. Everyone knew him and paid dearly for his suits. Then came the chinese suit factories. Everything was done faster, cheaper, the workers quickly learned to use the machines. The tailor did not stop selling, he lost customers, but his exceptional quality meant that his product was valued and his work price was higher than bedore. That's what AI art is all about, and with laws and regulations, the world of artists can be even better;
Great summary. The problem is not, what AI delivers, but. what it was trained on /fueled by. AI is just a tool and because of that, the stuff people are allowed to do with it needs to be regulated. You know there are videos out there of the American President talking about "Pokemon", or the Pope Puffer Coat Picture. If it were not for the pure ridiculousness of that, people would be way more terrified. We live in a world, where the fragile Ego of one person can wreck the world's economy. Where a company's worth can plummet thanks to a message with less than 256 characters. A world, where one sentence or picture, regardless of its truth is enough to ruin lives. Imagine, what someone putting in effort could do with a tool, that can nearly perfect replicate someones voice, face or work.
Milli Vanilli. That’s why we should be a bit more cautious.
Think of it this way: A taxi company owns the vehicles (machines) and they have built the company to offer taxi services to the public, but the machines can't drive themselves. A human driver, who has spent time effort and money to become a skilled driver, must drive the machine. A deal is made between the taxi company and the human drivers where both parties are compensated for their efforts. Without the drivers, there is no company. Human artists are driving these large AI models and some compensation must be arranged for this technology to move forward. Even participating in a focus group pays something. A bigger question is if a machine that has no idea what 'fair use' is or what a law is or what a human is or what anything outside the data-set is can use work in a way that is 'fair-use'.
How about if it's free? For example, Unreal Engine 5 with their metahumans and Quixel assets could potentially kill a lot of jobs, like modelers, animators and so on. But at the same time it offers a true shift that is revolutionary, indie developers could potentially create games and movies with a quality close to big studios. I know Unreal doesn't work scrapping the web like Midjourney does, but what if a free and open source openIA project came that offered a similar service? Would that be unethical too? It would cause the same damage to artists, that's for sure.
When AI does come for the entire itunes library RIAA will have the biggest field day since Napster and Limewire.
It will be be fun to watch 🤣
I'd love to see that.
What bugs me the most about AI art on a daily basis is how people try to blend it in with actual art that was made by hand, that took time. Hours, days, weeks of work. I used to love opening up DeviantArt just to browse the front page and find new artists that inspired me, but now everytime I open it, everything I see is the same AI generated bullcrap, and very often I try to play a "real art hunt" game with myself where I try to click the first actual painted piece I see. Sometimes I find a new artist I like, but usually it's also AI and I was fooled by its style or texture from the thumbnail image... Takes the fun away from digging through new art, feels like a minefield of fakeness
AI art has completely ruined online art browsing, whether its DeviantArt, Instagram or groups on Facebook where people share their work. Playing the 'spot the real art' game sucks.
@@ZachBobBob yea i really wish something could be done by this. Even worse it's when people who don't know much about AI art and can't recognize it share those pieces thinking it was handmade. Sure, the lighting looks impressive to someone who's untrained, but it makes me so damn mad that they favor those pieces over beautiful artists who took time and effort to LEARN to do art
On a daily basis? I cannot imagine allowing something that isn't even human to live rent-free in my head, all the time...
AI plus Traditional is a good way to stay ahead.
Okay , you're an artist who's developed a style that becomes commercially successful. Even granting you've learned from the styles of others. Then , a stock art company trains their AI's to perfectly mimic your style , using machines that can out - produce you by perhaps thousands of images per day at a fraction of the what it costs to hire you. Who do you think the budget - conscious art director will choose to hire? Just because Picasso said something cute doesn't make it right.
Ive tinkered some with the likes of Stable diffusion so i can at least give some thoughts here for people. Some of the push back in regards to AI generated images comes from a lack of understanding of how the technology works. One thing to keep in mind is that the images themselves are not in fact in the AI models is one thing that people should be aware of, i see many thinking the images themselves are in the models and they arent. Next is that generation of "good" images in things like Stable diffusion isnt exactly just a single button click. While you can in fact get good results form little input when you do that youre effectively generating things at random and hoping to get something, this could take minutes to hours. Theres also the fact that the AI generators have a very hard time with nuance and understanding intent unless you give a very clear idea of what you intend the image to be the AI wont understand so you can get some very weird results. If your intent is to get specific results It takes either you or someone else training a Model on a set of data that narrows the model to a certain genre, I.E Anime. You then require some sort of textual inversions and other embedding to allow you to do things like remove what you dont want in images, narrow the AIs results to your intent, etc. You will also need to know keywords, phrasing, etc. that will lead the model prompt wise. You will then need likely some sort of reference to run through something like control net or try your luck at img2img to make sure that the AI is able to get as close to your intended outcome in as few a trys as possible. There is even more to it to get genuinely good results but thats a short run down and my week or 2 playing with it. The images you see from AI generators that are made to look like another artists work dont come about at random, that stuff is done with intent by a person to do so, much like any plagiarism would be usually using some specific model trained on an artist or a lora for the same purpose. This isnt inherently the AIs fault as even many specific models arent trained on a specific artist as much as an entire genre like Anime, photo realism, etc....AI img generation in itself is a fantastic tool when used properly and Adobe has even included it in their latest Photoshop to much praise, but like any tool when used in the wrong hands can cause problems, Photoshop has caused no shortage of problems but its not inherent to the technology as much as it is an issue of the hands its used by.
The art was not licensed to be used in the database is different to referencing
My take is that, if we can equate an image generated by, say, Midjourney, based on a prompt to a client saying what they want to an artist, then we should start applying the same principle of authorship: you, the person who wrote the prompt, are not the author of the piece the same way the person who hired the artist is not the author of the piece, Midjourney (not even its creators, although they could be considered its representatives) is, and it should be mandatory to disclose it was made with (by?) an AI model. And, IMO, because the "prompter" is not the author, they shouldn't be allowed to sell or profit from said pieces as they don't own the piece's copyright. That being said, #I'mSoNotALawyerEither.
thanks for sharing your perspective, i found it very fair and leveled rather than the usual exaggerated fear mongering other anti-ai people have
Yes a distinction between ethics and legality