It's not the end of the world, but the world as we know it now, is going to be absolutely gone within 3-5 years. AI is going to change everything. I did a post earlier this week in OCA talking a bit about AI art. Basically reiterating that it is not allowed in OCA and saying a bit about how I feel about it. One thing I mentioned is that I HAVE been experimenting with it though. Up until the time I wrote that post I'd created some pretty amazing stuff. Stuff that definitely convinced me that this tech was a total game changer, but since then it's gone from impressive to damn new magic. That's what this post will be littered with. A series of images I've created over the last 3 days, with Midjourney. In total, just down this one rabbit hole of subject matter, I've created over 600 images...in three days.
The Good
As you'll see from the images in this post, this technology is amazing. I don't think it's an understatement to say it's totally revolutionary. It has far reaching implications and use cases for artists and non artists. After using it for a while I can tell an artist would definitely have the edge over a normal person in producing images. A big help is knowledge of art history. Being able to invoke art styles, movements, mediums, and artists gives you a lot of flexibility in controlling the style of the image and the subject matter included. It's not as straight forward as one might hope figuring out how to get specific results. It's incredibly easy to get GOOD results, but it's pretty challenging to get results that you can control and reproduce with some predictability.
Also something I consider a plus is actually that becoming a prompt whisperer does actually take some practice, and artists will be the ones that put in the time and work to get really good at it. This is where, even with all the negatives I'm going to point out, I do think artists should familiarize themselves with these tools. If a new weapon that you think is immoral gets dropped on the battlefield, if it can easily change the course of the war, you have to use it or expect to lose. Of course, you can still advocate that the weapon be taken out of the fight, like chemical weapons, but this isn't chemical weapons something everyone agrees is abhorrent. For a lot of people this is going to be a God send.
The Bad
There's a lot of bad that I can think of that comes with this. Not just the fact that it threatens artists jobs. It also cheapens art to the viewer. You might be in awe at the images in this post right now. Why? It's because you haven't really ever seen any of this before and it looks really good, but the more important part is you haven't seen a TON of stuff like this before, but let's say 50 people saw this, liked it, went over to MJ and create 500 new images in the same style. Suddenly you're sick of it, it's all over the place. We're going to a world where that's going to be the new norm. Someone figures something cool out. A million people all go copy it and within a few days, it's tiring to look at. Not to mention when this happens it will totally drown out actual artists work and it will be harder and harder for them to get any eyeballs on their work because this is now what they're competing against.
Of course the obvious bad is for artists making a living creating art. Zero chance this isn't going to totally change the landscape. I guess some good news is like I said, it's pretty difficult to get results that are predictable. It will be good, but it's all over the place. Usually when someone is in the market for some production art, they need something very specific and at least right now, AI sucks at very specific.
I'm seeing a world where someone is going to look at one of my paintings and say to me as a compliment "Wow! this looks like it was painted with AI!" and I'm going to die inside a little. I am a realist. I'm not one to pretend things aren't what they are. These paintings are amazing. The thing that makes me die inside, is that WILL be a complement. People thinking there is some woo woo special thing about human art that will make it stand out, I just think the AI needs more time, and more data. It will figure out hands. Processing will get cheaper and faster, ugghhh. Yea, it's not the end of the world. It's a huge change to the world, and I'm not sure it's for the better.
The Ugly
And now we get into what's worst of all about this. It took me a decent amount of research to learn how all this actually works and in the end, it's all about the data baby. The data is the oil, it's the gold, it's the fucking unobtanium in this new world, and the way all these current text to image generators acquired their data is shady and immoral as all hell. There are artist initiatives going on to lobby Congress to check this, but to say I have little faith in Congress is the understatement of the century. There is also going to undoubtedly be litigation coming, because they are IP infringement machines but the tech is moving at light speed and laws and governments move a sloth speed.
Here's the condensed version
The main dataset these apps are using is called LAION-5B. It's opensource and contains 5.8 Billion images. Among these images are a ton of copyrighted material. Art, tv shows, movies, porn, everything. The for-profit companies like Midjourney and Stability AI would not be able to just haphazardly take a bunch of copyrighted materials, but via the legal loophole of accessing an opensource resource they were able to. That's all good until you learn that Stability AI is one of the funders and creators of the non-profit that created the dataset that they use in for-profit products.
So basically these companies stole a bunch of artists work, then used it to create a tool to put them out of work. It's pretty messed up. Individual artists have been targeted and had models built to exclusively replicate their style and some of them are actually really good at doing just that.
So yea, I don't know. Part of me thinks this thing is a runaway train, good luck putting the brakes on now. I'd also be lying if I said a part of me wasn't enjoying essentially creating what feels like a whole alternate reality in realtime, so even I'm still conflicted, but this is a rant after all. We're living in some crazy times. Let me know your thoughts in the comments. I'll leave you with a few more pieces to enjoy, but I hope you feel bad while you enjoy them haha.
I kind of have the same attitude towards AI art like I have towards DAZ. It will make a relentless flood of extremely boring and mediocre stuff because it's nice and easy to use, and some people will be able to do some amazing things with it. And I'll be the loser being left behind and ignoring it all as while I can see a lot that can be done with it and it does look like an incrtedibly useful tool, it's not one I personally have a use for.
I would most likely take the "compliment" (of one of your paintings looking like it was done by AI) as a sign of ignorance, which may have been coded in from when I saw a discussion on the dA forums (a hundred million years ago when I used to actually pay attention to more of dA than my inbox/message centre) where someone in all seriousness claimed that "no human would be able to make anything that good" on the models that are available in DAZ (there was dead silence when someone else pointed out that humans made the models that are available in DAZ).
Where AI will be cool is in some aspects what it's doing already (coming up with stuff that may not have occurred to a human because we're all limited/biased by our own sensibilities/preferences) and when it starts being able to learn and develop its own style (then there will be some actual AI artists and the current "AI artists" will probably have to rename themselves to AI directors or something, assuming the AI is willing to take direction at that point and then is it still artificial? That might need a rename too XD)
As much as I like the images created by AI they're not art in my opinion, art is an expression of the soul, of the experiences and skills of a person. AI only ransoms the experiences and skills of every artist that exists on a database, of course, the result is amazing but also very dangerous. If this isn't addressed we will die a bit as civilization, the next will be the doctors, the teachers and so on.
There must be a line where we stop this before humans forget how to do anything because AI makes it for them, cheaper, faster, better.
That's a very scary scenario.
It's either artists start to adapt by incorporating these tools to their skill set or get wiped out from the competition. Unfortunately, it gets more steep to get any respect for your craft due to how convenient these things can come with a type of a prompt. But I don't think artists who invested in their skills would be at a total disadvantage, live demonstrations and process shots, no matter how wonderful AI art seems, it isn't a substitute for showmanship and seeing an artist livestream their art process.
The invention is fascinating and contemplating it, but it is depressing that the machines are already killing the artists who put a world on it to progress in their expression.
what kind of renaissance is coming...
Ahh, you gave me a great idea for a post title, "The AI Renaissance".
Well said. I think just like any other tool, it can be used for good or bad and everything in between. But just imagining the good it can do is mind-bending!!
With the emergence of AI generated art and images, artists have to evolve if they want to stay relevant and not have their businesses taken away from them. One thing we know is that AI is online. That means AI can not do any of the physical stuff we do.
Art like Mona Lisa still remain relevant because we know for sure it was made by human hands. The fact that a human from ages ago physically made it is what makes it relevant and appreciated. So I think artists will have to focus more on putting their art out in more physical forms.
I saw some guy on Twitter a few days ago painting art on jeans and selling them for extraordinary prices. He isn’t creating his art as digital. That’s the mistake he didn’t make. AI is coming for everything digital and the sooner people realize and make their stuff more in-real-life, the farther they’ll get from having their livelihoods and jobs stolen from them.
I did enjoy them btw. And instead of feeling bad, I was wowed! (And maybe a little bad)
Imma just leave this here
Oh come the fuck on💀
I'm not sure I agree with the immorality aspect of using other artists' images as part of a set of billions. After all, what is the fundamental difference between a human artist being influenced by seeing such images and being influenced by them and an AI artist doing the same?
I talked about this in a different post so just gonna copy/paste that answer here
I don't think that is an entirely accurate description of what AI is though. The whole point of AI is to model human thinking with some techniques very literally doing so (neural nets to mimic neuron activity for example).
On the other side of it, what distinguishes a software "brain" from a biological one, conceptually speaking? Couldn't you argue that the brain is simply biological hardware and software executing its own biological algorithms? Just because we don't fully understand the processing of the brain doesn't mean it isn't happening. While you can come up with all kinds of technical differences as far as what is happening in the brain vs. in software/hardware, conceptually I don't see that the difference is significant. Both take inputs, learn from them in some way, and produce outputs based on that learning. It seems like it would be hard to come up with a meaningful legal distinction. Copyright protects a work of art. It does not protect someone (or something) from deriving information (style, etc.) from that art. At least I don't see how it would.
A baby doesn't come out of the womb knowing how to draw a circle. That's learned through observation and experience. AI does the same thing even if the methodology isn't exactly the same. If I like a particular artist and decide I want to draw something in the same style (or combine styles from multiple artists based on paintings I've seen), is that IP infringement? If not, then why should it be for AI? We aren't (typically) talking about literally copying a painting or photo (though I'm sure an AI could be made to do that but why bother? If you want a copy you would just make a copy). I just don't see how there is some sort of blanket IP infringement here.
Quite frankly, I think it's all rather moot. Whether or not an AI data set has copyrighted material or not isn't going to have much of an impact on what it is capable of. There's virtually unlimited non-copyrighted data to chose from. It just seems analogous to banning human artists from looking at copyrighted material because it will influence their output. The data sets used probably have a lot more to do with convenience than with some strong desire to use copyrighted material. For opponents of AI art, forcing out copyrighted IP won't really change anything. It isn't going anywhere either way.
I can look past the fakery of AI in milliseconds. Where I do think it's useful is when it's used in the right way, to make a point...
For example Kyle Dunnigan uses AI in his impersonations, some call it "deepface" software if I'm not mistaken.
The difference between Kyle and anyone else I've seen trying this, is Kyle is an experienced comedian who knows the vitality of his first amendment right to free speach, and he uses it believe me, he uses it, to the point of being offensive. But that is what the first amendment was meant to be used for mostly, to offend when neccessary.
So what Kyle does is studies modern day pop culture and politics and then applies his talents to make points and open eyes.
So that is pretty clever to me. He re-weaponized the technology.
Even at hive I am seeing a lot of AI generated images. Most are spectacular. Obviously as per current law of copyright no sourcing is required and they are mostly free to use. While the technology is amazing it begs the question in future why humans will generate art as a commodity? Surely they can and will generate art as a personal satisfaction but as a product where will be the market?
There won't be, and it's not just art. It's weird that art ended up being one of the first when people assumed it would be one of the last, but in the end AI is coming for everything. I think the useful thing with art being first is that it might get it into people's heads that if AI can out art artists, it can out (*insert whatever it is you do) me. Then at least people can start to try to make some preparations, because I feel like the world is NOT ready for what's coming.
IT BOILS DOWN TO BUSINESS
Almost everything created nowadays has the main purpose of making money. Business people would always ride the train (they would create one if there were none), set the motion, and invite others to tag along. When the train derails, they will be the first to bail out with their hefty loot and leave everyone behind to save the train.
I hope that things will get better though.
This AI, makes everyone an AIrtist! The product is so cool to look at, but the way it is produced is totally a destruction to a lot of us who started from scratch. Like, the heck!
I agree with you that when this becomes a norm, no one will look at our works. And who will think of Leonardo Da Vinci and Picasso anymore? NO ONE!
BRILLIANT post.
@azircon just turned me onto it and it's too late to give a 100% upvote to - so I'll just drop one on one of your more recent posts that you hopefully have hehehe
I seriously love this post for everythign you said - everything you researched - everything you've experienced and shared.
It's going to be very interesting times... but we are here now. lol
ahhh. sad - you've stopped posting!
well - do please tag me if you come back :)