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Anti-AI Image Distortion
a week ago
Now, it is fully understandable and justifiable for every artist to want to protect their products from those heartless AI companies just gobbling up as much training data as physically possible. Especially artists who make a lot of money drawing but need to constantly work their asses off for it!
However
With a large chunk of artists going about this by applying image filters that either make their work look like it had oil thrown on it or like severe compression artifacts, I can't help but think this is a poor choice. Again, I understand the need and motivation, but this overall reduces the quality of their product. It adds distracting noise which also increases the image file size (that stuff adds up if you are aiming to archive lots of art!).
Many would say just live with it, and sure. But this reminds of another issue in another media industry.. DRM impacting the direct function of products, most notably games, for the sake of preventing theft. Reducing the enjoyment for their end consumer in order to have protection. For users that pirate, they not only get the product for free, they get it without DRM and thus it functions better too!
I see this happening with AI as well. It still makes plenty of regular mistakes but it has already gotten much better alarmingly fast. So now, instead of someone commissioning art that will have an ugly filter on it, they can have an AI make it for free and get it without the filter.
Is it worth giving your users a worse experience so an AI potentially can't use it, risking those users being more motivated to leave or even use AI to get cleaner results?
However
With a large chunk of artists going about this by applying image filters that either make their work look like it had oil thrown on it or like severe compression artifacts, I can't help but think this is a poor choice. Again, I understand the need and motivation, but this overall reduces the quality of their product. It adds distracting noise which also increases the image file size (that stuff adds up if you are aiming to archive lots of art!).
Many would say just live with it, and sure. But this reminds of another issue in another media industry.. DRM impacting the direct function of products, most notably games, for the sake of preventing theft. Reducing the enjoyment for their end consumer in order to have protection. For users that pirate, they not only get the product for free, they get it without DRM and thus it functions better too!
I see this happening with AI as well. It still makes plenty of regular mistakes but it has already gotten much better alarmingly fast. So now, instead of someone commissioning art that will have an ugly filter on it, they can have an AI make it for free and get it without the filter.
Is it worth giving your users a worse experience so an AI potentially can't use it, risking those users being more motivated to leave or even use AI to get cleaner results?
Piracy (of the digital kind) is about service. When people who legitimately buy a game can't play it because the DRM fails to contact home because the server is swamped, the pirate plays unaffected. When the studio shuts down the servers because it's no longer economically viable to maintain, the pirate plays unaffected.
What's the point of drawing something and then making it look worse?
And I'd be honored if my drawings were good enough for someone to choose them as training for AI heh
And filtering the glaze out is even relatively trivial. Not even in the "we can detect the glaze and remove the image from training" sense, I mean, you can literally un-glaze an image with relatively little effort. I never got the software to glaze working on my machine (I think I know why now, incidentally) so I couldn't investigate it too deeply, but I was able to show that I could take a glazed image and blur the glaze out enough without ruining the image as to make the glaze useless (but still visible).
So I'm not sure it ever worked to begin with, not to mention failing the "doesn't make your art look like ass" criteria.
been including it in some pics toned down a lot, but not sure if it's even worthwhile
I just dread that all my love and effort will be pilfered and destroyed
That even the fruits of this work, I cannot have without it being torn apart anymore
Had one artist deliver me a commission with that. Since then I pay attention to avoid...
Also, this isn't even getting into the fact these systems are isomorphic to gambling. They fool people into productivity and skillfulness when it's not there. And, more research is showing these tools are detrimental to you skills as an anything.
All in all, I expect to out live this AI mania and AI psychosis. I've kept drawing through some of the worst moments of my life, this doesn't even chart on that list.
So I just don't bother with the Anti AI filters since at best they just delay how long until they can use your art for training and at worst you piss off your followers. Maybe you can put the un-filtered image behind a paywall like Patreon but leak sites like exists so meh... more downsides
Honestly feel like this whole AI war is a symptom of bigger issues of the rich exploiting workers and the whole pay gap between them, but I don't know