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How can I reconcile this?
a year ago
General
N'dthihsh, wooh s'kur?
I'm stuck in my own mind, and I dunno how to reconcile my thoughts and feelings about something, that something being the advancement of AI artwork.
I know it's a touchy subject, with a lot of detractors, and I understand their arguments against it, I really do; as an artist, I don't like the idea of my stuff being stolen and recycled into something else without my permission. I want regular art to thrive and will support normal artists, whenever I can. The issue I have, though, is in the details.
Every argument I've heard and seen against AI artwork, I manage to think of a logical counterargument for it; "It's stealing without permission", yeah, plagiarism and forgeries have existed long before AI happened. "It'll rob artists of jobs". Yeah, that's what people said about Photoshop and CGI, yet we adapted and now consider them integral parts to modern artwork."It looks uncanny and shiny and soulless!" And yet Funko Pops are all the rage. Y'see my point? While I can see and understand the arguments being made to detract from the method, I can see the mirror image of those arguments to counter them. As such, I'm stuck in the middle, without any real leanings one way or another on the subject, and it makes me feel like a hypocrite and too wishy-washy to be a good judge of this.
One thing that I use to compare AI to is my old hobby job of KM headhacking. I see it as being no different: you put a bunch of other people's assets together, slap a half-assed texture on them to make it look "different", and even program in something (or use someone else's program) to make it work the way you want it to. That's it. It looks like I'm creating a new character for someone, and it looks like I'm putting in real effort to do so, but... it's really just frankensteining together parts from other people's works and putting in programming to make it look and act the way I want it to. If you break the model down to its constituent parts, you can even point out which parts come from what models, and from whom they were made by. What is the difference between what I did, in those cases, and what people who do AI artwork do? Hell, most of the time, I don't really ask for permission directly to use the assets, I get them from public releases on Deviantart and Steam's SFM Workshop, so the parallels are further cemented.
Another thing that I'm struggling with is that, when done right, and with some care put into how it's formed, I can see the aesthetic pleasantness of some AI artwork. I can acknowledge that, when done well, it can look decent enough to be pretty and likeable as a casual art lover. I've found 2 AI artists, one furry and one Japanese-based, that do it well enough that I can see myself fapping to their porn. But, thanks to the stigma people have on it, whether it's justified or not, it makes me guilty for doing so, because it makes me feel like a hypocrite, something that is one of the biggest things that I don't like feeling about myself.
I had a long 2-hour talk with my roommate about it, and while I tried to remain neutral and see both sides of the situation, it felt like he was harshly judging me, and he even said that it sounded like I was advocating for it instead of against it. And after a while... it made me wonder if I was. I did call him out on his bit of hypocrisy, pointing out that he had friends who dabbled in AI artwork, and as part of his job as an organizer in a big VR game show group, he does occasionally use ChatGP to come up with certain dialogue for the shows. But I still understand his concerns about it, and want to acknowledge that, as well...
I'm not sure what to do with this, honestly. I don't want to engage in trying out AI artwork, myself (partially because of the stigma, partially because I fear the programming part would be too technical for me to follow), but I don't see it with as harsh an eye as my friends do. Even some of them acknowledge that it has its uses as a tool... but I can't seem to get them to understand that, in my opinion, we can and have adapted to other such tools that had the same accusations that AI artwork does, and I don't see any difference, mechanically, between the two, so why can't we find ways of adapting that tech to our own uses and make it work for our benefit? I admit, I don't get some people's hatred for even using references to help make an artwork look better. Is this any different from that? I dunno. Am I the asshole for being on the fence about this? Please let me know. Thanks.
I know it's a touchy subject, with a lot of detractors, and I understand their arguments against it, I really do; as an artist, I don't like the idea of my stuff being stolen and recycled into something else without my permission. I want regular art to thrive and will support normal artists, whenever I can. The issue I have, though, is in the details.
Every argument I've heard and seen against AI artwork, I manage to think of a logical counterargument for it; "It's stealing without permission", yeah, plagiarism and forgeries have existed long before AI happened. "It'll rob artists of jobs". Yeah, that's what people said about Photoshop and CGI, yet we adapted and now consider them integral parts to modern artwork."It looks uncanny and shiny and soulless!" And yet Funko Pops are all the rage. Y'see my point? While I can see and understand the arguments being made to detract from the method, I can see the mirror image of those arguments to counter them. As such, I'm stuck in the middle, without any real leanings one way or another on the subject, and it makes me feel like a hypocrite and too wishy-washy to be a good judge of this.
One thing that I use to compare AI to is my old hobby job of KM headhacking. I see it as being no different: you put a bunch of other people's assets together, slap a half-assed texture on them to make it look "different", and even program in something (or use someone else's program) to make it work the way you want it to. That's it. It looks like I'm creating a new character for someone, and it looks like I'm putting in real effort to do so, but... it's really just frankensteining together parts from other people's works and putting in programming to make it look and act the way I want it to. If you break the model down to its constituent parts, you can even point out which parts come from what models, and from whom they were made by. What is the difference between what I did, in those cases, and what people who do AI artwork do? Hell, most of the time, I don't really ask for permission directly to use the assets, I get them from public releases on Deviantart and Steam's SFM Workshop, so the parallels are further cemented.
Another thing that I'm struggling with is that, when done right, and with some care put into how it's formed, I can see the aesthetic pleasantness of some AI artwork. I can acknowledge that, when done well, it can look decent enough to be pretty and likeable as a casual art lover. I've found 2 AI artists, one furry and one Japanese-based, that do it well enough that I can see myself fapping to their porn. But, thanks to the stigma people have on it, whether it's justified or not, it makes me guilty for doing so, because it makes me feel like a hypocrite, something that is one of the biggest things that I don't like feeling about myself.
I had a long 2-hour talk with my roommate about it, and while I tried to remain neutral and see both sides of the situation, it felt like he was harshly judging me, and he even said that it sounded like I was advocating for it instead of against it. And after a while... it made me wonder if I was. I did call him out on his bit of hypocrisy, pointing out that he had friends who dabbled in AI artwork, and as part of his job as an organizer in a big VR game show group, he does occasionally use ChatGP to come up with certain dialogue for the shows. But I still understand his concerns about it, and want to acknowledge that, as well...
I'm not sure what to do with this, honestly. I don't want to engage in trying out AI artwork, myself (partially because of the stigma, partially because I fear the programming part would be too technical for me to follow), but I don't see it with as harsh an eye as my friends do. Even some of them acknowledge that it has its uses as a tool... but I can't seem to get them to understand that, in my opinion, we can and have adapted to other such tools that had the same accusations that AI artwork does, and I don't see any difference, mechanically, between the two, so why can't we find ways of adapting that tech to our own uses and make it work for our benefit? I admit, I don't get some people's hatred for even using references to help make an artwork look better. Is this any different from that? I dunno. Am I the asshole for being on the fence about this? Please let me know. Thanks.
So no, you're not wrong about being against AI as it directly conflicts with the survivability of a job market many people strive to be a part of. But to say AI art is inherently bad is the equivalent of you blaming the wrench the plumber used that f'ed up the piping, versus the plumber who used it to f the job up. Inherently, AI art is an innovation that CAN be positive to artists overall, but the majority of the people using it are using it in a way that negatively affects the view of it, thus marking it for negative reactions. You don't have to feel sorry about how you feel towards AI art, because at the end of the day, the people who typically don't like something are the ones who are negatively affected by it and that's fine. The same old song and dance will be done when AI threatens another job market and it will end up being the exact same situation of the people hurt by it bitching and crying, while everyone else calls it positive and tries to capitalize off it.
Regardless of intention or the morality of how it's made, Statistical Aggregate Generated spoofs and Large Language Models are the kind of thing that are MASSIVELY and MALICIOUSLY misused, and it's practically for those purposes that any of it was funded to be developed in the first place. We're still DECADES out from genuine Artificial Intelligence, if it can even ever be achieved.
But with what we have now, it's increasingly possible to make things that fool your average person, being hyped up as far, far more than it is by people trying to cash in and take advantage of people's ignorance and FOMO. They didn't need AI, they needed something they could scam people with.
SAG spoofs are being used to spread disinformation faster than ever. ChatGPT isn't programmed to give you correct information- it's programmed to cobble something together that it's calculated will LOOK correct.
And automation is not the same as SAG spoofs and LLMs. Neither are modern art, or mass-produced commodities. It's just not.