I just want to make funny Pictures.
what’s the point of a piece of (visual) media if the same thing can be expressed more concisely with words?
Because it makes it better.
My eyes like it, it brings me dopamine
So true bestie
I’ve gotten arguments that it’s theft, because technically the AI is utilizing other artist’s work as resources for the images it produces. I’ve pointed out that that’s more like copying another artist’s style than theft, which real artists do all the time, but it’s apparently different when a computer algorithm does it?
Look, I understand people’s fears that AI image generation is going to put regular artists out of work, I just don’t agree with them. Did photography put painters out of work? Did the printing press stop the use of writing utensils? Did cinema cause theatre to go extinct?
No. People need to calm down and stop freaking out about technology moving forward. You’re not going to stop it; so you might as well learn to live with it. If history is a reliable teacher, it really won’t be that bad.
Except it isn’t copying a style. It’s taking the actual images and turning them into statistical arrays and then combining them into an algorithmic output based on your prompt. It’s basically a pixel by pixel collage of thousands of pictures. Copying a style implies an understanding of the artistic intent behind that style. The why and how the artist does what they do. Image generators can do that exactly as well as the Gaussian Blur tool can.
The difference between the two is that you can understand why an artist made a line and copy that intent, but you’ll never make exactly the same line. You’re not copying and pasting that one line into your own work, while that’s exactly what the generator is doing. It just doesn’t look like it because it’s buried under hundreds of other lines taken from hundreds of other images (sometimes - sometimes it just gives you straight-up Darth Vader in the image).
It’s taking the actual images and turning them into statistical arrays and then combining them into an algorithmic output based on your prompt.
So looking at images to make a generalised understanding of them, and then reproduce based upon additional information isn’t exactly what our brain does to copy someones style?
You are arguing against your own point here. You don’t need to “understand the artistic intent” to copy. Most artists don’t.
and just about any artist can draw Darth Vader as well, almost all non “ethics” or intent based argument can be applied to artists or sufficiently convoluted machine models.
But just about any artist isn’t reproducing a still from The Mandalorian in the middle of a picture like right-clicking and hitting “save as” on a picture you got from a Google search. Which these generators have done multiple times. A “sufficiently convoluted machine model” would be a senient machine. At the level required for what you’re talking about, we’re getting into the philosophical area of what it means to be a sentient being, which is so far removed from these generators as to be irrelevant to the point. And at that point, you’re not creating anything anyway. You’ve hired a machine to create for you.
These models are tools that use an algorithm to collage pre-existing works into a derivative work. They can not create. If you tell a generator to draw a cat, but it hasn’t any pictures of cats in its data set, you won’t get anything. If you feed AI images back into these generators, they quickly degrade into garbage. Because they don’t have a concept of anything. They don’t understand color theory or two point perspective or anything. They simply are programmed to output their collection of vectorized arrays in an algorithmic format based upon certain keywords.
Why are you attaching all these convoluted characteristics to art? Is it because you are otherwise unable to claim computer art isn’t art?
Art does not need to have intent. It doesn’t need philosophy. It doesn’t need to be made by a sentient being. It doesn’t need to be 100% original, because no art ever is. So what if a computer created it?
If you encounter an artist who never saw a cat, they would also not be able to paint it. Just look at these medieval depictions of lions where it is clear the artist never saw one.
Also, Dürer’s Rhino.
But he tried. That’s the important thing.
Well said.
I’d like to add that the biggest problem, imo, is the closed source nature of the models. Corporations who used our collective knowledge, without permission, to create AI to sell back to us is unethical at best. All AI models should be open source for public access, sort of like libraries. Corpos are thrilled we’re fighting about copyright pennies instead, I’m sure.
If only there was a way to make funny pictures without AI…
Nice Strawman you got there.
The problem with Generative Neural Networks is not generally the people using them so much as the people who are creating them for profit using unethical methods.
As far as I’m concerned, if you’re using AI it’s no worse than grabbing a random image from the internet, which is a common and accepted practice for many situations that don’t involve a profit motive.
The “profit motive” is just the tip of the iceberg.
I’ve seen people stopping looking for random images from the web to grab them, and instead going full AI. With reverse image searches, it even doubled as an advertisement, nowadays you’re getting even less of that.
I’ve seen people stopping looking for random images from the web to grab them, and instead going full AI.
Okay. What’s your point?
Wee! Haha! Fun!!
sounds of a dozen methane gas generators humming away
Since Gen art became a thing i’ve been using it episodically to create images of a civilization of space-faring boars, representing the future of my glorious South-Western France civilization. They raise ducks and grow wine in space, and the lore is getting a lot deeper than i first thought. It’s so fucking fun man.
Okay now I’m hooked. What’s the Story of the Boar-men
It bothers me more than it should that his snout is sticking out through his helmet glass
how else would it smell the grapes?
I think they have adapted to life in hard vacuum they just wear those helmet cause they look pretty
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA WHY DO YOU TELL ME! Now I can’t unsee it q_q
I … I don’t know man !
I think some time around the year 10000 humanity solved most of their problem and the only remaining scarcity was “good living”. Like, cultures that had a sophisticated way of enjoying life through good food, good drink and good companionship suddenly came at a high premium. The people from SW France became insanely wealthy very quick, and a sort of federation was struck between the Gascony people, the Basque and the Brittons. It was really the only possible counter-power to the more colonialist and military minded Italians.
Boar religion could be described as Albigensian catharism, except in space. Their freedom-loving ways are despised by the Italian catholic church but the galaxy is so vast that religion wars never really break out, it’s just local skirmishes.
I haven’t yet determined what animal the italians have morphed into, really glad to hear any suggestion.
Oh and here’s a picture of the Assembly of the Perfecti, held annually at Baiona Station :
Hehe, dumb frog.
I agree.
I have all these images in my head and zero artistic skills to create them.
Thanks AI, if indeed that is your real name, for helping me with Visual aids for my teaching work!
We talk about freedom the same way we talk about art,” she said, to whoever was listening. “Like it is a statement of quality rather than a description. Art doesn’t mean good or bad. Art only means art. It can be terrible and still be art. Freedom can be good or bad too. There can be terrible freedom.
Joseph Fink, Alice Isn’t Dead
But does Art don’t need the intention to create it, or at least to declare it as Art? For example, the Meme I made, would it be considered Art even if it was not my intention to create art?
( Okay this is less about AI, more about philosophy at this point)
Art doesn’t need the intention to create art in order to be art. Everything is “Art.” From the beauty of the Empire State Building to the most mundane office building, all buildings fall under the category of art known as architecture. The same way that McDonalds technically falls under the category of the culinary arts.
Your argument that image generators are okay because you don’t intend to make art is like arguing that you don’t want to wear fashion and then you buy your clothes on Temu. From the most ridiculous runway outfit to that t-shirt you got at Walmart, all clothes are fashion, but that’s not the issue. The issue would be that you bought fast fashion - an industry built entirely on horrible working conditions and poor wages that is an ecological nightmare. And this is the issue with these generators: they sell you a product made using stolen work (wage theft basically) that uses more electricity than every renewable energy resource on the planet.
The issue isn’t the tech. It’s the companies making the tech and the ethics involved. Though there’s an entire other discussion to be had about the people who call themselves artists because they generate images, but that’s not relevant here.
Depends entirely on your definition of art.
To me art is playing with your senses. A painting plays with your sight. Music plays with your hearing. Statues play with your touch. Dancing plays with your sense of balance and proprioception. …
So anything that does that, like a nice sunset, is art to me.
I think art is as much in the eye of the viewer as it is the maker. You’ll never convince me that Jackson Pollock was an artist, I simply don’t see the art in his work, but you may have a life changing emotional experience viewing it. My opinion doesn’t devalue your experience any more than your experience devalues mine.
If there’s one thing artists don’t do, it’s try and build a picket fence around Art to separate it from Not Art. Duchamp was 100 years ago i think the point that “Art can be anything and everything” has been abundantly made during the 20th century.
Oooo an AI straw man
I was gonna go ahead and argue about this, but sadly I have been depicted as a soyjak. My lawyers told me that there is literally nothing I can do about this now
And that’s why you alway pack your Uno-Reverse-Card :P
Don’t worry, Mr. Mofu, I’ve got this argument covered for you. Ahem…
*always
NOOOOOOOOO
Using it for stupid shit is fine, especially if it fucks with the AI by making it turn out even more weird shit.
This happens a lot in music. It’s okay to listen to music that serves other purposes than art. Gatekeeping is ridiculous.
I’m a musician. I play more instruments than you can even name correctly. I can make a tritonus substitution without you even noticing. I don’t give a shit if German Schlager Music is worse than country. If I want to watch Eurovision and enjoy myself and pay to vote for songs in foreign languages, I will do so.
You cannot stop me from enjoying stupid music.
Yup. There was a commercial I saw for like, Amazon or something that had the Canon in D mixed with some more modern vocals. While trying to find it (because I liked it) someone on Reddit was bitching about how Pachelbel never meant his work to be used that way or something and that if you like it you don’t know good music.
Bitch, I sing with a symphony orchestra regularly and have done so for 15 years. I’ve played instruments my whole life. Don’t gatekeep music.
I honestly think it’s pretty weird that people don’t like AI art memes.
That’s its best case use, guys. Making a computer burn down an acre of Amazon to make a picture of Trump worshipping Putin’s cock.
Yes, a real artist could waste their skill doing it, but why tho?
Hey, as long as you don’t try to
- Sell it
- Claim it’s yours
- Use it instead of hiring professionals if you’re a business
not too fussed.
Use it instead of hiring professionals if you’re a business
Why wouldn’t you though?
Because that’s a harm to society and economy.
It’s gutting entire swaths of middle-class careers, and funneling that income into the pockets of the wealthy.
If you’re a single-person startup using your own money and you can’t afford to hire someone else, sure. That’s ok until you can afford to hire someone else.
If you’re just using it for your personal hobbies and for fun, that’s probably ok
But if you’re contributing to unemployment and suppressed wages just to avoid payroll expenses, there is a guillotine with your name on it.I think what matters if you would’ve otherwise hired someone. Otherwise I can’t see it making any impact.
And in a lot of cases you would’ve paid for stock photo company anyway
I don’t agree:
Before if you chose not to hire someone, you’d be competing against better products from people who did hire someone. Hiring someone gave them a competitive advantage.
By removing the competitive advantage of hiring someone, you’re destroying an entire career path, harming the economy and society in general.
A lot of AI use I’m personally seeing is shit most wouldn’t spend money on or stuff where instead of paying for a stock photo they just generate shit and be done with it. Would they have ever paid someone to do the work and especially would anyone have agreed to do such small work that’d never pay anything reasonable, most likely no.
Before if you chose not to hire someone, you’d be competing against better products from people who did hire someone. Hiring someone gave them a competitive advantage.
I guess I don’t believe in quite as much in the invisible hand of capitalism. I rather think it’s a race to the bottom with companies buying some cheap slop to use on their webpage or whatever from a stock photo company and now people pay AI companies for it, if anyone. Can’t see the big impact of that sort of shit being replaced.
I also think capitalism is a race to the bottom, but I believe it is so because it subverts the value of labor. It’s shit like AI that makes it a race to the bottom.
shit most wouldn’t spend money on or stuff where instead of paying for a stock photo they just generate shit and be done with it.
Then pay for the stock photo. There, an artist is being paid for their work. But realistically the little stuff you’re talking about is the occupation of entire departments in megacorps.
Paying a stock photo “artist” or some AI slop “artist”, I’m not sure it makes any difference. The stuff AI generates is already so sloppy generic corporate bs that it’s hard to think of anyone deserving to paid anything for it anyway. It’s mimicking a horrid generic art style and a horrid generic art style like that isn’t owned by a particular artist anyway.
Please don’t use the “but it creates jobs” argument.
Me shitting in the street also “creates jobs” because someone has to clean it.
It feels like you’re directing that at me, but I agree with you, so I’m not sure what tone that was written in
Because then artists aren’t getting paid but you’re still using their art. The AI isn’t making art for you just because you typed a prompt in. It got everything it needs to do that from artists.
So it’s more of an ethical “someone somewhere is probably being plagiarized and that’s bad” thing and not really a business or pragmatic decision. I guess I can get that but can’t see many people following through with that.
Some people got mad at a podcast I follow because they use AI generated episode covers. Which is funny because they absolutely wouldn’t be paying an artist for that work, it’d just be the same cover, so not like they switched from paying someone to not paying them.
The issue is similar to using other people’s data for profit. It’s easy to not feel that’s the case because “it’s the AI that does that, not me.”
There’s a lot of concerns around it. Mine is that we have longer periods of style with minimal variety because of artist stagnation due to lack of financial backing. Though, this is for all gen AI as it depends on humans for progression, else it stagnates. People are already getting AI art fatigue because it feels like that old 2005–2015 Adobe Illustrato vector art everyone was doing, because it is. It was an incredibly popular and overused style back then, so itt’ brimming with it in comparison to other art styles it got from the internet. It already looks dated, but acceptable because it’s familiar to most. It depends on more artists progressing our art to be able to do the same. But it won’t do that as fast if art culture is slowed due to lack of support.
Remember when corporations tried to claim that money you didn’t spend on their product was theft ? This way of thinking has been recycled by the anti-AI bros.
Turns out all the money you don’t spend on struggling artists is not only theft, but also class warfare. You stinking bougie you.
Also don’t call yourself an engineer. You’re a prompt monkey.
So because I use chatgpt for help coding data analysis scripts, I am no longer a mechanical engineer?
No, you are a mechanical engineer that uses AI.
“Prompt Engineer” is a “real” job title
Except it’s not used as a job title to describe people prompting Midjourney lol. A prompt engineer is a software engineer who specifically deals with LLM workflows.
So they’re a software engineer.
yeah and we all know there is only the one type of software engineer. It would be ridiculous to separate them into categories depending on whether they work on frontend, backend, embedded lmao
Sure, but those other things are skills. If they want me to respect their title they can have a respectable title.
I’d say that depends on how important data analysis is to the job of mechanical engineer, and the degree of help you get from chatgpt
As long, as you don’t proclaim your proficiency in utilising generative AI as your only claim to the term. It’s fine.
Why not sell it? Pet Rocks were sold.
Why not claim it’s yours? You wrote the prompt. See Pet Rocks above.
Not use it and instead hire a professional? That argument died with photography. Don’t take a photo, hire a painter!
So what if AI art is low quality. Not every product needs to be art.
Why not sell it? Pet Rocks were sold.
I didn’t know that pet rocks were made by breaking stolen statues and gluing googly eyes on them.
Why not sell it? Pet Rocks were sold.
Why not claim it’s yours? You wrote the prompt. See Pet Rocks above.
Because, unlike pet rocks, AI generated art is often based on the work of real people without attribution or permission, let alone compensation.
Not use it and instead hire a professional? That argument died with photography. Don’t take a photo, hire a painter!
So what if AI art is low quality. Not every product needs to be art.
Do you know what solidarity is? Any clue at all?
Seems like the concept is completely alien to you, so here you go:
Copyright and intellectual property is a lie cooked up by capitalists to edge indie creators out of the market.
True solidarity is making AI tools and freely sharing them with the world. Not all AIs are locked down by corporations.
Those capitalists support AI because it would allow them to further cut out all creators from the market. If you want solidarity, support artists against the AI being used to replace them.
Please explain to me how open source AI allows a corporation to cut creators out of the market.
Solidarity with you bourgeoisie fucks is like the solidarity of the turtle with the scorpion
Says the person supporting capitalist corporations pushing AI as a replacement for real human artwork?
When have I ever defended corporations, capitalism, or replacing human artwork?
You motherfuckers are as delusional as the great replacement people.
Frankly I don’t know who the fuck you support, you just seem like an asshole for the sake of making people not like you
I agree, except you’re the one showing solidarity with the bourgeoisie.
AI is a too of the bourgeoisie to suppress the working classNo, it is a tool of the commons to subvert the intellectual property regime of the petit bourgeoisie artists.
Do you think people are like, born with the ability to make art? Are they some kind of upper class? You can just go learn to draw you know, you don’t need to use AI
It’s a tool created and controlled by the bourgeoisie, primarily designed to and markered for replacing skilled labor.
The fact you think displaced artists are petite bourgeoisie instead of skilled labor is telling.
Yeah, nothing is more bougie than independent artists, most of whom are struggling to make ends meet even WITH a day job… 🙄
Boo-fucking-hoo they have a “day” job? Wow so do I! It’s called having a job and being working class. Newsflash - you don’t get paid for hobbies, be they drawing or lounging on a couch.
Yikes. A world without artists would be a dark, dark place. What an incredibly terrible take, unless you’re implying that the only art that counts as labor is when it’s for a corporation, in which case, even worse take, yikes again.
So you’re one of those “art is just a hobby for the indolent” idiots?
Posted in /r/pics by /u/the_color_burple
Whatever you believe I probably disagree.
art can be a profession, however the demand for art is way lower than the supply of artists leading to most of the artists being “underpaid” and not earning a livable wage.
Ah yes, how dare artists make $5 an hour instead of $0 while you pay a corporation a subscription fee instead. That’ll show those lazy artists that they’ve had it too good for too long.
I don’t pay subscription fees for anything, speak for yourself lol.
Do you know what solidarity is?
Do you know what a luddite is?
The simplest argument, supported by many painters and a section of the public, was that since photography was a mechanical device that involved physical and chemical procedures instead of human hand and spirit, it shouldn’t be considered an art form;
That a particular AI could have used copywrited work is a completely different argument than what was first stated.
Do you know what a false equivalence is? If not, just reread your own comment for a fucking perfect example.
I’m not wasting any more time and effort trying to explain the blindingly obvious to your willfully obtuse ass. Have the day you deserve.
Insults because you have no response.
Why not sell it? Because chances are the things it was trained off of were stolen in the first place and you have no right to claim them
Why not claim it’s yours? Because it is not, it is using the work of others, primarily without permission, to generate derivative work.
Not use it and hire a professional? If you use AI instead of an artist, you will never make anything new or compelling, AI cannot generate images without a stream of information to train off of. If we don’t have artists and replace them with AI, like dumbass investors and CEOs want, they will reach a point where it is AI training off AI and the well will be poisoned. Ai should be used simply as a tool to help with the creation of art if anything, using it to generate “new” artwork is a fundamentally doomed concept.
These articles feel like they aren’t really tied to my feelings about AI, frankly. I’m not really concerned about who is getting credited for the art that the AI creates, copyright laws just work to keep the companies trying to push for AI in power already. I am concerned that AI will be used to replace those who create the art and make it even harder for artists to succeed.
Copyright is being used more by companies to sue artists or even just individuals, than it is protecting your art.
It is an archaic grasp of control created by Disney to keep people from drawing a mouse with 2 round ears.
The help it supposedly provides you doesn’t come close to the amount of sacrifices you have to make to gain it.
They go over that, you should give them another read.
Could you please explain the point you’re making rather than expecting me to come to a conclusion reading the articles you linked?
I see nothing in them even after a re-read that would address the idea of AI being used to replace artists. If anything these articles are just confirming that those fears are well founded by reporting on examples such as corporations trying to get voice actors to sign away the rights to their own voices.
It should have been impossible to miss the first article linking to this companion blog post, and I meant to link this article instead of the second one.
To quote a funny meme: “I’m not doing homework for you. I have known you for 30 seconds and enjoyed none of them.”
You should make an argument and then back it up with sources, not cite sources, and expect them to make your point for you. Not everybody is going to come to the same conclusions as you, nor will they understand your intent.
This is a really complex subject and what I linked covers the issues thoroughly, better than I can.
If your AI was trained entirely off work you had the rights to, sure. But it was not.
Why is it valid for you to be trained off of art you didn’t have rights to but not for an open source program running locally on my PC?
It would not be a copyright violation if you created a completely original super hero in the art style of Jack Kirby.
What’s the equivalence you’re trying to make? The program itself may be open source, but the images the model’s been trained on are copywritten.
And if you personally hand made it, sure. By nature, nothing an LLM makes is “completely original”
The equivalence is that nothing human artists make is “original” either. Everyone is influenced by what they have seen.
You are arguing that if you created a completely original comic book character in the art style of Jack Kirby, you committed a copyright violation.
Computers do not get “inspiration” or “influence”, and that’s quite literally not what I’m arguing. Maybe I’m just talking to an AI lol
Your argument is that you can get a request for a commission perhaps for a mascot ( create a new comic hero in the style of Jack Kirby) and it’s perfectly fine for you Google examples of Kirby’s style to create the picture.
But if a computer does the same it’s a copyright violation.
I made my avatar with AI gen. Shit’s perfect for things like that.
Still would pay a real person to make something closer to what I imagine though. I mean … if I had money that is.
