Protecting creative jobs is extremely important, full stop. AI generation is a destabilizing development, I don’t want to see it locked up in walled gardens or thrown away though. What I hope to see is a new generation of artists pushing the boundaries with open source AI tools. Yeah a lot of that’s going to be bespoke porn… What am I even saying…?
We’re just apes with fancy tools afterall. The same things were said about photoshop and digital art. We’ll be fine, just get stocked up with some brain bleach.
Every non artist who doesn’t know shit about any creative workflow always regurgitates this “it’s a tool that will empower artists” line. Every working artist who understands what they’re talking about says this will lead to the elimination of 90% of jobs and just leave one underpaid guy churning out stolen artwork at a breakneck pace.
Artists had the exact same reaction when photography was invented. Simply taking what artists say as gospel isn’t any more rational because artists also have their own biases. Meanwhile, the problem with jobs doesn’t come from the technology but from the capitalist system of relations. Maybe we shouldn’t be structuring society in a way where people have to do work for the sake of doing work.
As the photographic industry was the refuge of every would-be painter, every painter too ill-endowed or too lazy to complete his studies, this universal infatuation bore not only the mark of a blindness, an imbecility, but had also the air of a vengeance. I do not believe, or at least I do not wish to believe, in the absolute success of such a brutish conspiracy, in which, as in all others, one finds both fools and knaves; but I am convinced that the ill-applied developments of photography, like all other purely material developments of progress, have contributed much to the impoverishment of the French artistic genius, which is already so scarce. It is nonetheless obvious that this industry, by invading the territories of art, has become art’s most mortal enemy, and that the confusion of their several functions prevents any of them from being properly fulfilled.
― Charles Baudelaire, On Photography, from The Salon of 1859
Similar things were also said abot CG in general particularly in 90’s and 2000’s when it spreaded from a niche to places like big cinema. And speaking of cinema…
The rise of CG did eliminate jobs in the SFX area. Make up, costumes, set dec, stop motion animation, animatronics, etc. But whereas someone in animatronics can retrain to use CG, there’s nowhere for an artist being replaced by a neural learning program to go. The program produces a finished end product. There is no pipeline for it to fit into. I feel like pro A.I. people are deliberately obtuse about this.
If you ever actually tried using these tools you’d realize that what you’re saying is complete and utter nonsense. The workflows for generating stuff with AI tools are already getting very complex. This technology isn’t magic, it’s just a different way to produce art where the tool takes care of the mechanical aspects. A human is still very much needed to direct what’s actually produced.
Couldn’t agree more! Capitalism sucks! Also to add on to that, artist haven’t come to many consensies about generative AI. The only one I think everyone can agree on is that it’ll be disruptive, and makes the future for people who earn a living creating art even more uncertain than it already was. Whether that future is good or bad is entirely up for debate, although I think it’ll land somewhere in the middle. Regardless of any of that, Pandora’s box is open and it can’t be closed.
Exactly, this is a disruptive technology that will change the way art is created going forward. There will be positive and negative aspects associated with it just like every new technology. One positive aspect I can definitely see is that it will allow a lot of people who lack technical skills for producing visual art to express themselves.
And it’s also worth noting that the workflows are already getting fairly sophisticated. It’s not just a matter of typing in a prompt and getting an image back. People are using stuff like control nets to pose the characters in the scene, inpaint specific details, etc. It’s a different set of skills from traditional art, but it still requires expertise to produce a particular result you’re looking for.
The way I look at it is that this tech will help automate a lot of tedious work involved in creating art, but it still takes a person with good taste to produce art that’s interesting and engaging. In this sense it’s quite similar to photography. Anybody can pick up a camera and start shooting pictures, but it takes an artists to create interesting pictures that people find meaningful. This is no different.
I have, and it’s pretty presumptuous of you to speak for an entire group of diverse people like that. Artist can’t agree on what art is let alone if any one method is superior to another. I will say I’ve perceived there is a lot more anxiety than excitement over Generative AI but it would be foolish to assume that there is a consensus.
Artist is probably the second most diverse term for a group of people I can think of, behind the word people. Off the top of my head Corridor Digital embrace AI. They’re pushing it’s boundaries and are acutely aware that AI is destabilizing. Unless you don’t consider them artists. I am not implying that they speak for all artists, or even that their opinion is aligned with the majority opinion. I’m merely providing an example of positive discourse on the subject.
Simply taking what artists say as gospel isn’t any more rational
How about knowing what you’re talking about, is that more rational? Making a painting and taking a photograph have separate and distinct end products, so of course they’re going to fall into separate niches. If a VFX artist working for 70k a year and an AI tool that costs a 2k yearly license produce identical results, than obviously the artist’s job is going to be eliminated to reduce overhead.
How is it a deflection? The technology exists, you can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube at this point. Might as well start engaging with reality. And not sure what pointing out that capitalism is the problem has to do with accelerationism. You’re being incoherent here.
AI tech bros don’t create anything and probably never will. The merchant who said “please paint a picture of my wife here’s some money” didn’t create the Mona Lisa. Da Vinci, the guy who actually painted it, created the Mona Lisa.
AI tech bros don’t create anything and probably never will.
Thanks for saying it. I am sick of people pretending otherwise. The only reason we are not yet fucked is because technology was not automated beyond production factories with a high death risk. We are going to be soon, though.
Human creativity is the price that will be paid by our species for the existence of garbage AI generation tools.
Somehow I doubt da Vinci and a modern digital artist toiling away in Photoshop would be able to agree on the definition of, or criteria for, what it means to be an artist…
Again, another thing that sounds good unless you know what you’re talking about. I paint digitally and with acrylic and oil, which isn’t that different from the methods Da Vinci would have utilized. If you wanted to paint the Mona Lisa in photoshop the expertise required is the same minus only color mixing and physical preparation and finishing. Regardless of method, saying “paint this picture for me” isn’t making art. The claim is on its face absurd. If I go to the hospital and say “heal this person” am I now a doctor?
Weird how all it takes to turn an ostensible leftist into a sneering lib condescending to an entire classification of worker is to insult their little toy.
I paint digitally and with acrylic and oil, which isn’t that different from the methods Da Vinci would have utilized. If you wanted to paint the Mona Lisa in photoshop the expertise required is the same minus only color mixing and physical preparation and finishing.
So, you’re really saying the expertise required is not the same, then?
Regardless of method, saying “paint this picture for me” isn’t making art. The claim is on its face absurd.
Who is claiming that? Not me. Anyone who has used a generative AI tool for more than 10 seconds knows this isn’t true.
If I go to the hospital and say “heal this person” am I now a doctor?
This is a bad analogy. If in some far off future we had some magical “auto-doc” device that could heal injuries, etc., but still required someone with sufficient knowledge to operate the device, I would call them a doctor, or perhaps a medical engineer. Yes.
Weird how all it takes to turn an ostensible leftist into a sneering lib condescending to an entire classification of worker is to insult their little toy.
What did you mean by this? The only one sneering and condescending here is you lol.
This is a bad analogy. If in some far off future we had some magical “auto-doc” device that could heal injuries, etc., but still required someone with sufficient knowledge to operate the device, I would call them a doctor, or perhaps a medical engineer. Yes.
“Text goes in images come out” is the central conceit of the entire technology, what the hell are you talking about. The entire thing is meant to be super easy. I have used it, it does not require any special expertise.
artists aren’t excused from technological proletarianization. Yes it hurts, you are going to get the value of your labor stolen by Disney and you will have to work in AI prompt generator mines. Billions of artisans, peasants and petty bourgeois in history have suffered the same indignity of being forced into wage labor. The bourgeoisie strips of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the writer, the scientist, into its paid wage labourers. Now it is the artist’s turn. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and humans are compelled to face with sober senses their real conditions of life, and their relations with their kind. So do not expect the bourgeoisie or their governments to provide you or or your occupation with special protections, they don’t care, they exist to make profit and they will crush you into dust as soon it’s profitable to do so.
The solution is and has always been class consciousness followed by proletarian revolution. If there is any upside to proletarianization it is that more people are introduced into the only revolutionary class. Put your artistic talents to use and create some agitprop, but don’t expect to be paid for it. Every reward we get has to be fought for.
Artists three years ago: Being an artist under capitalism sucks ass, I’m forced to make soulless corporate “art” for almost no money and I hate it.
Artists now: Hey! My corporate art gigs!
If AI can replace your job, you weren’t doing art, you were doing illustration. That’s like 19th century painters complaining about photographs replacing royal portraits. Sucks for the lost income (the same way it sucks for anyone whose job is automated, artists aren’t special there, almost none of the jobs from 200 years ago still exist). But let’s not pretend that what is being replaced had great creative or artistic value to begin with. If it did, AI couldn’t do it.
I’ll add to the group saying things got better by 30. In my case having kids has helped me get my shit together and take better care of myself both physically and mentally.
Echoing the other comments here. It was right about when I hit 30 that I really started trying to live the life that I want for myself. I still have mental health issues to work through, and sometimes it’s been two steps forward, one step back, but at 37 I can honestly say it’s been an overall positive trajectory.
No way. So far, my 30s are the best. I can actually afford to do all those things I wanted to do in my 20s now. Until my health takes a major hit, I suspect life will continue this trend.
Yeah I thought thirty was old when I was in high school. Adults of a given age have been getting healthier and healthier my entire life. Being childless in my early thirties is also a blessing. But come on. I had time and no money at twenty one. Now I have money and wisdom. And still healthy. Probably healthier than I was at 21.
Sure lots of people in their twenties are still poorly and may be unhealthy but there’s no magic age where life is over.
I’m older than you and still having a blast. I had a blast in my 20s, definitely moreso in the latter half of the 20s too. Being a teenager alternated between joy and misery too often due to hormonal disarray.
At this point I’m generally more content in life than I’ve ever been before.
Adults of a given age have been getting healthier and healthier my entire life
God, it’s easy to overlook how true this is. Looking at pictures of my parents and grandparents at my age is shocking. Less lead, asbestos, and cigarettes in your diet is good for you I guess. People drink alcohol less and wear more sunscreen too, which surely helps.
I hope the ChatGPT and its siblings bring about the end of copyright. Unfortunately it’s more likely we’ll pervert the idea of personhood yet again and claim these things are people same as was done with corporations.
Happily an anarchist but also an artist, and I’m wondering why a complete lack of copyright would be a good thing.
Scenario A: I make a cool thing, it catches on, corpos with gajillions of dollars legally make tons of money off of it and leave me unable to pay rent and taking zero credit despite me doing all the actual work.
Scenario B: I make a cool thing, it catches on. It gets ripped off by everyone freely, and I’m left unable to pay rent and taking zero credit despite doing all the hard work. In fact, everyone who feels like it claims it as their own. I have zero recourse. This is all legal.
Scenario C: I’m a scuzzbag, so I copy-paste everyone else’s hard work onto various merch without their permission, pirate their software, make lots of money, cheat them out of the fruits of their labor. Except it’s all legal woo!
Scenario D: ChatGPT and its ilk have front-loaded all the theft, so now ripping off artists is transparently accessible to anyone who wants to pop in some “prompts” and claim they’re so creative. Hard-working artists are mocked as obsolete because their efforts were scraped and stolen. They struggle to pay rent and take no credit.
I hate copyright abuse (i.e Disney) as much as everyone else, but I also feel like the champions of “abolish copyright” want everything for free because they don’t make anything themselves, and creative efforts are just that: effort.
Those things happen, and unfortunately the law as it stands is stacked against “the little guy”, but I still struggle to understand how “Just let everyone rip each other off and it’s not even wrong anymore” while forced to survive a hustle-or-die economy, would be a beneficial development.
Artistry predates the industrial revolution and industrialized commercial artmaking as well…so…? It’ll just be a hobby? But only a hobby reserved for the ultra rich because everyone else who would have otherwise done it are to busy working for someone else?
I’m serious here. I’m training really hard as an artist, and being completely unable to pursue ANY recourse against theft seems like it wouldn’t improve anyone’s lives at all…except maybe the fan communities of particularly-litigious entertainment giants…
If someone just starts mass producing “This thing in MonkeMischief’s style”, why the heck would anybody bother in the first place? As if alienation, depression, and struggle to find meaningful expression weren’t abundant enough these days already…
I’ve still yet to get a response that explains how it would all get better. Just “lol you’re wrong and should feel bad.”
I get it, using stuff unrestricted for free is lots of fun, but making profit from it when someone else made that thing feels pretty lame…
I don’t know what to tell you that could satisfy your internal struggle here. If you have a style worth stealing it will be stolen. Copyright doesn’t protect that.
For what copyright does protect, it is only enforceable if you have the funds to protect it.
The system wasn’t designed for people like you, it was literally designed during the same time in which only the wealthy were able to peruse art. It was created to protected monied interests, not the commoner.
If you expect to make a living on your art, you need to plan to collect earnings up front. Commissioned work is exactly that.
This idea that you’re going to create some initial idea and then coast on it for life does not align with any reality.
Sometimes, if you create something new and interesting, you’ll end up with a following and they will fund your endeavors but there will still be copycats and you either waste your life perusing that or spend your life perusing your art. You cannot do both. Paying someone else to peruse your “rights” doesn’t change this equation, you’d be creating to fund the protection. Enforce it too hard and your fans will turn on you, as the original post here illustrates.
There is no winning move via copyright that leads to the land of riches. That’s the problem. That’s what copyright is bullshit.
It’s not designed to protect us but so long as the monied interests can convince us otherwise, we’ll go along with it like temporarily embarrassed millionaires. Always convinced if we’d play the game too, we could win.
The system is rigged and it’s not in your favor. Whatever appears to favor you is a facade meant of not to keep you playing the game.
Sincerely, thank you for explaining this perspective. You make a lot of really good points!
You’re right that it’s a mess out there and stuff will always get stolen. And no, I never expect to coast on anything for a lifetime, but I still think if we were to abolish copyright as it stands, there should still be something enforceable that benefits creators of works.
One who publishes a book or a game should accept piracy as a reality, but having zero recourse for say, anybody uploading your exact work a dozen times on Steam under their own names would be pretty terrible wouldn’t it?
If it were abolished out in the open, yeah, we’d basically need to not have to earn money anymore. Otherwise, there would simply be no point to anybody making anything.
We’re already seeing such a threat from un-checked ML scraping everything in existence.
Thank you so much for the valuable discourse. I hope you have an awesome day :).
(P.S: I think you meant “pursue” rather than “peruse”)
Nah, childhood is so depressing. No money, no car, you’re not even allowed to make your own medical decisions. I’m not advocating for giving kids cars and jobs, of course, but it sucks to live through. In your 20s you’re finally allowed to leave toxic situations and maybe get some antidepressants.
lemmy.ml
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