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I'm still very glad FA banned AI "art"
2 years ago
I was looking some posts on Deviantart yesterday, beholding the sea of sewage it has become that site at least in terms of posts, everyone and their mother is using AI and spammig that shit like there was not tommorrow, even if you see it in a charitable lens it still shit because it is taking space that could be filled by real artist and real art,if this was allowed here, the front page and the search engine would be constantly flooded.
"But Danadriel, what if they created a special category just for AI stuff?" do you think people who use this shit would follow the rules? do you think these worms care? no they don't, some are even trying to profit from ai generated images using the subscription system,I think the worst part of it is that it is completely free of consequence, there's no developing story or reason to attachment, they can create an account now, spam 500 shitty posts, get banned in the next day and yet nothing of value was lost for them,what ties in my next point, for now the ai is only capable of creating generic and simple characters, but probably in the next year or two it will be already capable of stealing complex characters, in other words any brain dead anon will be able to take your beloved ocs and use the ai to make horible things with it, and it will look like something done by a professional...this WILL happen and will be hell.
Don't even come with the usual arguments in the comments, especially the "AI aRt Is SouLlEss" this is stupid and means nothing, most people cant tell the difference between an ia generated image and real art and it will be progressively harder as this shit evolves,Yes I know it may become a useful tool for artists in the future and blablabla, but I highly doubt since the AI can already do the WHOLE piece by itself and any other form of visual art that evolve from it , the ai will inevitably catch up with it eventually.
Some people even told me that you must fight against it and I agree, by all means nescessary in fact...but how? in a fight you must hurt the enemy in some form, how do you hurt an immaterial enemy like this? maybe trough law, but still Im not sure how to make lawmakers care about, I dont think the mumified boomers who fill most governaments would even understand it let alot care about it, specially the right wing pigs who seem to only care for profits at all costs anyway,as I said before we will only see anti-ai legislation when it affect a sector of the economy with significant political leverage.
"Why are you doomering about it again?" believe or not, Im not doomering about it, I'm not stopping with my art, and in fact I'm getting way more jobs lately and even more motivated to improve (spite is a potent fuel), I just wanted to vent about it a little, and also congratulate clients everywhere who bankroll artists in general and continue to do so even with the AI on the scene....thats very based.
Oh yes I forgot another silver lining, Programmer AI's are already here and also evolving fast, and they will be even more coveted and invested upon than art, making anyone but the most genius of coders completely obsolete, I personally think this is bad , but as I was told by these same people that I need to accept the future and inovation, so I'm fine with it. c:
"But Danadriel, what if they created a special category just for AI stuff?" do you think people who use this shit would follow the rules? do you think these worms care? no they don't, some are even trying to profit from ai generated images using the subscription system,I think the worst part of it is that it is completely free of consequence, there's no developing story or reason to attachment, they can create an account now, spam 500 shitty posts, get banned in the next day and yet nothing of value was lost for them,what ties in my next point, for now the ai is only capable of creating generic and simple characters, but probably in the next year or two it will be already capable of stealing complex characters, in other words any brain dead anon will be able to take your beloved ocs and use the ai to make horible things with it, and it will look like something done by a professional...this WILL happen and will be hell.
Don't even come with the usual arguments in the comments, especially the "AI aRt Is SouLlEss" this is stupid and means nothing, most people cant tell the difference between an ia generated image and real art and it will be progressively harder as this shit evolves,Yes I know it may become a useful tool for artists in the future and blablabla, but I highly doubt since the AI can already do the WHOLE piece by itself and any other form of visual art that evolve from it , the ai will inevitably catch up with it eventually.
Some people even told me that you must fight against it and I agree, by all means nescessary in fact...but how? in a fight you must hurt the enemy in some form, how do you hurt an immaterial enemy like this? maybe trough law, but still Im not sure how to make lawmakers care about, I dont think the mumified boomers who fill most governaments would even understand it let alot care about it, specially the right wing pigs who seem to only care for profits at all costs anyway,as I said before we will only see anti-ai legislation when it affect a sector of the economy with significant political leverage.
"Why are you doomering about it again?" believe or not, Im not doomering about it, I'm not stopping with my art, and in fact I'm getting way more jobs lately and even more motivated to improve (spite is a potent fuel), I just wanted to vent about it a little, and also congratulate clients everywhere who bankroll artists in general and continue to do so even with the AI on the scene....thats very based.
Oh yes I forgot another silver lining, Programmer AI's are already here and also evolving fast, and they will be even more coveted and invested upon than art, making anyone but the most genius of coders completely obsolete, I personally think this is bad , but as I was told by these same people that I need to accept the future and inovation, so I'm fine with it. c:
One of the key things I can find solace with when it comes to AI art and writing is that AIs can't look at what they make and understand its flaws. You still need human input to deal with it, and if those humans also don't know what they need to do to really fix it, as would be the case with a techno-bro who has no idea how artistic theory works, then they'll forever stay in a stuck uncanny valley of work quality in the same way that someone who only every draws or writes "in the style" of someone else's work does.
My problem with AI "art" isn't necessarily that it comes from AI, but from the way the people use it, and abuse it. Starting from the fact that AI art is a new form of art thievery, since it relies on copying human created artwork to function, but also the sheer volume of instantly generated garbage that people post. It seems that for every one AI piece that makes you go "okay, that looks pretty nice", there's thousands more low-res, poor quality images that you can tell are just a bunch of pics thrown in a digital blender and coming out with janky anatomy, creepypasta-quality faces and abnormal hands, to name a few low points. And a single AI bro can post HUNDREDS of these every day, often drowning out the work of actual artists.
Judging by the fact that some of the accounts posting these flood of mass produced garbage have 3k+ viewers in DA, and most of them are to some degree either NSFW or fetish accounts, I can assume that people, as always, are more interested with jacking it to their favorite type of porn than they are about the quality of the artwork.
It is uncertain how AI artwork will, if ever, be regulated, but I think for the time being human artists are still capable of more involved, nuanced artwork than the AI bros are capable of achieving. Art is in the end a work of passion, something that requires a love of the craft to do. And when it starts to be churned out by a machine in the thousands, (like many other things have in the past), it eventually becomes sterile and unimpressive. Just look, for example, at the perception people have of fast food vs. homemade/restaurant food.
I think all we can do as artists is, well, keep doing art. Don't let ourselves be intimidated by the idea that we will be replaced by machines, and instead continue devoting ourselves to our craft. Support each other as a community, appreciate all the people who enjoy our work and commission us, and in general I guess we just gotta keep on keeping on.
It just needs to be honestly credited and tagged. People are going to make use of it anyway, and in many cases it will be impossible to prove. This just encourages dishonesty. Blanket bans will just ultimately prove regressive and ineffective.
And even if it has a single benefit, it still will not worth it , the flood of ai sewage would ruin a small site like this, to prove my point take a look at this account: https://www.deviantart.com/cheeky-briki
it was created 17 hours ago and already has 49 watchers 11 posts, and even worse, its selling adopts from what is essentially stolen art reprocesed,these people don't give a fuck for honesty,even if they are willing tag their stuff as AI it's a utterly unfair competition.
I very aware it cannot be stopped, but until somehow the benefits outweigh the negatives I will be admant in the position that this shit need to be banned from any serious art site.
And really, how much worse is this stuff than much of the low quality and low effort art that you see swamping the front page here at any given time? And I wouldn't discourage that, everybody should do art, as far as I'm concerned, and this is ultimately just another way to democratize that.
Of course there'll be crap, but us humans put out mountains of crap already, and one man's crap is another man's gold. Art is subjective.
Machine learning based art systems are based on mathematics and pattern recognition. There is no creativity there. No matter what, it's never going to replace that, although we will no doubt be able to use it for many purposes in generating art, much of which will be legitimate and of high quality.
I think that there are many potential benefits. I've played with it myself, and there are countless ways it can be useful, and no doubt many more will be discovered.
I'd say that if people like it, it's up to them to judge. It's pointless to impose one's views onto others, as much as you might disagree with them. Art is subjective. That's not to say that everybody has a discerning eye where it comes to the nuances of it.
No doubt that there are people who will be dishonest and try to profit from this, but that's unfortunately just human nature.
And no doubt that with the rise of such systems it becomes ever more crucial to educate people in the principles of critical media literacy. "Don't believe everything you read" can now be extended to "Don't believe everything you see".
Such phrases as "There's a sucker born every minute", "Caveat Emptor", and "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public" (Or really any public) were never more pertinent.
Yes a bad artist can flood the place but its not even near the literal automated escale AI can do, a bad artist will not get money or endless praise for his shit, and if he really put in the effort and the grind he can get good like many of us did, while an Ai poster will keep getting praise and even money without any meaningful effort.
Machine learning based systems are, by default, generic. Humans alone can exceed that. "Good" or "Acceptable" don't equal the creativity of real, human made art.
And popufurs don't necessarily equate to real quality either, in spite of the numbers they may generate due to their popularity. Just look at how many of them count on the cookie-cutter repetition of a rather mediocre formula, however decent it might have once been? (MDF, anyone? I mean, good for him, but seriously, how long has he been coasting on his fame and some ultimately rather repetitive and generic work?)
I took almost 10 years to reach 1500 watchers on dA grinding my skills everyday, while this worm made 5000 in a year spam posting ai shit, to find its fair with real artists it's utterly insultful.
PS, i tried that experimental auto colour tool that CSP added a while back, and the results were awful!
The quality of the work that I CAN see is at least half way decent, if rather mediocre, and at least they're honest about using "AI" to assist in producing what they do, although I'd have to guess that this is "AI" assisted as opposed to "AI" generated.
Once again, It's up to people to decide for themselves what they like. There's no point in beating your head against a wall about that.
I can totally understand your being frustrated with someone getting so many views or watches based on mediocre art compared to all of the real work you put into what you do, but that's always the case with popular art forms. Popularity clearly doesn't ever equate to quality, and one could drive oneself crazy comparing oneself to others based on numbers. Those numbers ultimately don't equate to quality, or mean shit.
Just look at how piss-poor so much popular media such as art, film, and music is. Don't fall into the trap of judging yourself on the basis of such things, or letting them discourage you from doing what you love. 1500 followers who follow and love you for what YOU do are worth far more than 5000 following somebody else creating mediocre crap. There's just no point in second guessing the myriad of reasons that someone gains popularity, there are far too many random elements involved.
This is not about stroking my cock with big audience numbers, its a question of being able or not to pay medical bills and shit in the end of the month .
Social media just reinforce number driven outcomes. It sucks.
But under no circumstance do AI "artists" deserve money, not only that, they shouldn't even be allowed to get notoriety. Someone who posts AI art for money or notoriety are the same as reposters. They are not even the ones who made or even commissioned the art, so why do they deserve anything for it?
Change is inevitable. Change can be painful, but I think being stuck in the past is worse.
Things will change but I think there's 0% chance that human-made art stops being a thing, or that programming stops being a thing.
Let's not be overtaken by conservative instincts.
AI can copy styles, AI can copy concepts but the one thing AI is really good at is modifying styles into a style that isant even known so you wont be able to tell the difference, its a tool, not a threat