The lack of empathy is what is most disturbing. Non-artists have no problem with AI being in a position to overtake the art industry. What if someone made a program that rendered their livelihood and craft redundant, though?
This has been happening for decades at this point, now it's suddenly a massive problem because people that work in the comfort of an office are having their ''''''jobs'''''' threatened. This whole backlash just goes to show that blue collar workers are seen as worthless, where was the outrage when machinery replaced the physical labourers?
@@snail736 1. Dude, people have been talking about the danger automation represents for blue color jobs since this has been a thing. The Cyberpunk genre has critiqued this thing since it existed. 2. The reason people were ok with menial jobs being replaced is because most people did not like those, and instead hoped that automation would free them from bad working conditions. 3. Your authoritarian leanings can clearly be seen here with your hatred of artists. 4. Artistic jobs have not been forced on artist. They have been chosen, to allow people to express their creativity and passion.
@@snail736 The humanist ideal of automation was to replace dull labour so people can do something more fulfilling with their lives, but can't you see we're now devaluing the tasks that give meaning to human lives? And automation has been discussed for a centuries: the Luddites were in the early 1800s and they just wanted to retain their jobs; they didn't even mind using the new power looms, just about realizing some of the cost savings themselves.
@@snail736 I mean there have always been backlashes against automation, in case you haven't noticed. If you didn't notice the backlashes, that's your problem. I work in accounting, and psychopathic programmers salivate at the prospect of automating my job for over a decade. I do see the practicality of that, at least. But the thing is, with art it's entirely pointless and it serves to do nothing but devalue it and ruin it for artists. And it ruined online art galleries for me. Those that didn't ban it that is, but who knows how much it will advance and become indistinguishable from human art one day.
I'm a trained conceptual artist. That job has gone destroyed by AI. Will that stop me from making art? No it won't. I love making art. I love drawing and creating stuff. No AI will replace that itch, what's in my heart.
That is true, but it will stop people from being able to profit from their passion. Which is sad, because it makes sense to want to market what you are very passionate and, presumably, skilled/will be skilled at.
@@synrandcommunication5526 It is just a tool. AI art will become one of the various art mediums among the others. It would not replace "Art" because it can't emulate the physical experience of standing in front of a piece of art made of canvas, wood, paint, oil, marble. The materiality is important. By the way, photography did not kill painting, cinema didn't kill theater, electronic music didn't kill acoustic music, 3D printers didn't kill hand made sculpture... Everything will be fine.
@@synrandcommunication5526 I hope so... Can't be sure though. I just think people are always scared of technology. I also noticed that they tend to compare art with menial work. These jobs can be automated for various obvious reasons plus they are given a low social value. It is not the case for artistic jobs. And sadly, almost no one in this comment section seem to understand that applied art and visual art are not the same thing. perhaps some illustrator jobs in big video games companies or advertising compagnies can be partially automated for economical reasons. These "artworks" are juste technical documents with some artistic value that can be done by a human a being or an AI... There is some kind of confusion though... for instance "concept art" is not Art, it is a technical artistic skill.
@@alexandrekorobov4087 seems like many are excited to teach AI their art skills, and not just technical skills, in this respect becoming tools themselves. Will this make human artists abundant like many menial workers? Probably not. My initial comment concerns the basic purpose of AI. Financial incentive and curiosity would be drivers, but where does our obsession with replacing even what makes our lives worth living take us, ultimately?
Techno-utopians: in the future, soul-crushing menial labour will be automated so humans can focus instead on art and self-enrichment Techbros: we've automated all art and creativity so our wage drones won't be distracted from their soul-crushing menial labour
Honestly, this was one of my biggest shocks when seeing this thing originally. I used to be an actual tech utopian, so it was a massive shock how easily people accepted the exact opposite of what is meant to happen.
This point is under explored, even if posted as a half-meme. If I may spur on the conversation a step further: there are debates on whether or not some things that have been automated/industrialized are wholly good. For instance, agricultural development. Some disagree that GMOs are good and they have arguments against their long term health benefits. Others have described a nearly apocalyptic scenario regarding the abuse of farmland, and how it has been ransacked beyond sustainable repair (for instance, the Standard Process Inc.'s take regarding supplements and why we need whole food supplements versus manufactured supplements). Even more are pronouncing doomsday regarding the decline of the effectiveness of antibiotics, not due to modern medicine's prior whimsical measures against the common cold, but due to the overwhelming use in industrialized livestock. Do I personally subscribe to all of these alarm bells? I'm not sure, but what I can say is that sticking to primarily a whole-foods diet (not perfectly, but consistently) has granted my family good health, even if it has cost me a lot of convenience, budget constraints, eating out, or even less choice for food. Therefore, I am convinced that there is some truth to the naysayers of the modernity of agrarian practice. What I see for the future of art is going to be discouraging if it affects humanity even half as negatively as the psychological damage social media has already wrought.
I spent decades of my life learning foreign languages, only to see the translation industry destroyed by AI. The inferiority of the machine translations a few years back did not stop the destruction of the industry. The machine translation cost nothing, and so the price for all translation came crashing down, because the bottom feeders used machine translation. I found myself paid half price to 'just edit' (as if it was less work) a translation done by machine which was basically unintelligible so that I had to go back to the original and translate it myself. Most clients, the bottom of the pyramid that kept the industry going, did not care about the quality of the translation. If we expect that clients prizing human made products will save industries we are being very delusional. ... the vast majority of clients will go for the process that costs less.
„the vast majority of clients will go for the process that costs less.” While that is a claim that makes sense... There are several factors that make be doubtful of this. First and foremost, Vinyl sales are at an all time high, with no sign of stopping now, and they are even doing better in gen-Z then in millennials. Second, physical books still sale better then digital ones, and are actually doing even better in millennials and in gen-Z then most will expect. Third, translation is an utilitarian need most of the time. So that is a factor that needs to be taken into consideration.
@@laurentiuvladutmanea3622 Excellent point. Now is art more like a vinyl? or is it more like a translation service. Debatably.. I'm leaning towards art being a service akin to translation. I think it has been this way long before ai came to fruition btw. Client wants art... often for a purpose, a reason. Maybe its a company logo or a character design for a cartoon. The things that bring the client value is whether this suits their needs and less so how many drops of sweat went into the creation of the product. Art is oddly utilitarian in a sense.
@@cachauable I think that is to people who don't understand art. for artists who do art it's different. The work that goes into art is to make sure a particular message is communicated. It is communication a form of conversation through non verbal means. So I would not say it's completely utility based. Marxist argue that art acts as a superstructure so it tells a lot about our society that we see it as utility rather then communication. I guess fault is in art education, and AI art is taking off cause people are used to seeing art as just pretty pictures. It's said that architecture tells a lot about a civilization and it seems it's true. Everything is now minimal, low effort, maximizing utility and function over aesthetics it's logical and productive but it's also cold, lazy and uninspiring existing to serve a purpose of it's creation and nothing more.
Looking at A.I art is really a throwback. I rememebered when my industry became automated an artist friend told me at least her job will never be automated. But here we are right now. That being said, having survived the automation of my industry. Perhaps i could share something we did to save ourselves. In the late 2000s, as 3d printing became more prevalent there was a fear that one day these things could simply print out all the things we could make. People scoffed on it, no way could they ever get that precise. But they did, and they absolutely devalued and destroyed pottery. Any idea, any sculpture, any technique you knew could now be imitated functionally by a 3d printer, even worse there were random generators primitive as they may be that could create any kind of geometry for the machine. But we survived and we did for a few reasons. It turns out these companies mass producing pottery in china were trying their best to get their materials as cheap as possible. Perfect as they looked, they had bad smells, they were brittle and they were also not safe for health. Many of the chemicals they used to create their synthetic clays were highly hazardous for health and the chinese public took notice of it. They were everywhere and they still are. They flood 100s of pages of taobao in all aspects. But in a weird way this corporate greed, the greed of selling so much and using terrible materials made people desire real human handmade items. In China, artists created tags 手作 shouzuo became a tag used by artists to to signal to be public handmade goods, people banded together into studios and began to build public trust in human made products. Potters reached out on social media, with their own influence or made use of current cultural narratives to spread awareness of the importance and value of human made work. Fast forward to 2022 and even though a lot of us got wiped out, those that survived today are rebuilding from this apocalypse. Prices of pottery allow for a livable living, the public in china recognise the dangers of mass machine made pottery and always seek out human made goods if possible. But the battle is not over... Companies in china don't stay stagnant they too picked up that people like handmade goods, so they started to add 手作 into their tags too, they took amateur photos to pretend to be artists. And this is where we are now. Trying to figure out what to do, but for what is worth, these companies are also lazy, they will refresh every sale and it becomes clear a mass produced piece was sold. Once this happens word starts to spread to avoid the shop and people having been educated to do so, do just that in most cases. Its clear the public does not take kindly as these companies 'skinwalkers' as i call them actively delete comments from people confronting them. Long story short i don't think artists can expect governments to care and i don't think artists can stop A.I art. But what artists can do is to create and spread awareness on the importance of human made art and why they should buy from people instead of souless companies and machines. Companies will also do their best to produce at the cheapest possible ways they can if they were to get into fine art its highly likely they will use inferior canvases and frames etc. Hence in china, presentation is very important, artists don't just sell you a product, you are given it in a box with a letter of thanks and its good material and beautiful to look at. Something these companies can never be bothered to do.
But isn't the later half of gen z and gen alpha dumb as hell? , They already pouring boiling water on themselves for a tiktok trend and they are the people of future, the old people and the relatively young who would understand us are not going to stay for long , i remember my little sister cussing at me because i tried to help her with a math homework, she said she would get a failing grade than be tutored by me
"importance of human made art and why they should buy from people instead of souless companies a" Your wall of text fell apart here. No one will cares, and no one will care, ever.
23:12 is the most important section of this video. I've seen so many people making that exact argument in the comments of my own analysis. The people who are cheering the hardest for this, idea guys who think this is the magic key to finally unlocking the story they have bottled up inside them; artists and especially writers who think they can cut everyone else out of the process and tell the story they've always dreamed of, will doom every artist alive to algorithmic irrelevance through their lack of solidarity and short-sighted solipsism.
I dont think this is the whole story. There will certainly be chaos in a variety of artistic industries for a period, but i think ultimately 1.People will still want to draw/paint/etc. 2. We will still need artists to create works that either these AI utilize, or that utilize these AI. You can certainly do a lot with a prompt, but theres still something to be said for understanding composition and being able to rough out your ideas to get a proper start. 3. People didnt want the camera to become so ubiquitous because it would put the painters out of business, people didn't want the radio to become big because it would put the local musicians out of business. You are not going to get anywhere if you keep shaking your tiny fist at the tides of history, noone cares about you. if your art or ambition gets swept away by this, chances are it was never gonna change much beyond your life, which means nothing much has changed, just draw your drawings and die in obscurity like everyone else. Our whole world is dead, all these reasons to protest AI are not reasons to protest AI, they are reasons to protest rampant capitalism, corporatism, inequity, etc. I wanna be very clear, I'm an artist and most people close to me are artists, i have plenty of sympathy for those who will be displaced or suffer as things change, but 1: The toothpaste doesn't go back in the tube, and 2: its not the AI its the money. Art should not be the kind of commodity it is, it should not be made for money, it should be made for the love of art. When you take those 2 points together its real issue, because the capitalism toothpaste doesn't go back in the tube either. We need to build a post-capitalist society IMO that allows all of these paradigms to flourish outside concerns of money. Most of our dayjobs are pointless nonsense and should end, the stock market should be burnt to the ground, artists shouldnt be grinding day to day just to finish commissions and survive, they should only draw when they want to. Social media as it exists today should be crushed into lifelessness and replaced with free open source solutions that prioritize the choices of the individual and abandon algorithmic feeds almost entirely accept as an opt-in. We will have plenty of algorithms we can apply wherever we want, theres no good reason to sell us their bullshit built in algorithms when we could be accessing free open source ones that prioritize what we desire them to. We could all have access to everything, forever, already, if we just chopped up a few rich people, used their abundant resources to build and train robots and AI to replace the jobs we hate, and then lived our lives doing what we want. I'm not saying noone will work, but realistically, if we actually banded together as an entire race, it would take a very small amount of hours per person to oversee crews of AI robots, or in a few cases, do the jobs themselves. People don't do jobs because they love them, they do things because they love them, and if they are lucky, those things earn them money. We don't need it to be that way and its not better. Art under AI COULD be deeper, not less deep, but yes, under capitalism, it could get pretty fucked. Eat the rich.
It's really crazy to think in the not so distant future many artists may have to verify themselves as legit, by sending in some kind of private video or speedpaint to the website they upload on of their art process, to prove they're legit, and then once this is done, they can then get some kind of checkmark or something to prove they've been verified. But this looks like the future we're headed for. At least verification will give us a way to prove we're legit, so we don't get accused of using Ai.
@@diagorasofmelos4345 bruh the next step of human evolution is being dead while lines of code take over. sounds cool and here i thought i will get superpowers but i guess am dead and a program is pretending to be my grandson.
@@smail6865 Is it an actual speedpaint? I'm sure that if AI speedpaints start to surface, there will be other means of verification, even if it's going as far as sending physical artwork. Every digital artist is able to draw traditionally as well, even if we haven't picked up a pencil in ages in favor of tablet pen
the thing that steven gets that i think other videos don’t highlight enough is that it’s not about the ai. the ai is just the product. it’s about the developers, companies, businessmen, and capitalists behind it who will take a mile if you give them an inch. we’re being bogged down by technicalities and arguments but they’re just distractions. it’s never about the tool, it’s about the people behind the tool and what their agendas are.
It should be protected by copyright. I.e. you shouldn't be able to use someone's copyrighted works as tooling for your machine. It's literally using someone's hard work to replace them. Using these tools in this way is absolutely evil.
@@kenoctcercos4832 Absolute fucking propaganda. People like you make me start to think that Satan is literally real and at work in the world. That is my opinion of your choices and actions.
@@kenoctcercos4832 Do you know what conservatives and communists have in common? They're fucking selfish. When conservatives say that communists are just selfish, they're right AND they're also projecting their own selfishness onto communists. Hell is made up of conservatives and communists fighting each other. Become a liberal, and actually give a damn about someone other than yourself.
Problem is there is no real investment of time or emotion... A painting that would take days, weeks, months or even years is now done in minutes. The cost of failure removed. Instant gratification... No bleeding or sweating... It's so sterile...
I wouldn’t care too much. I prefer real, physical painting made by an artist than a compiled image. Actually the emptiness of AI generated images is that it would put more value on the real deal. If you master your craft strongly you will succeed for sure no matter how many AIs throw at you.
as a 77-year-old artist with limited time on this earth as a living organism, I can appreciate this talk in so many ways. First of all, my one and only desire was to be an artist (visual) since maybe 6 or 7. And, it has been a wonderful journey. My parents tried music-making and singing, but that didn't titillate my tingle-ees in the right chords. it always came back to visual two-dimensional art. I worked hard and made it. then watched, typesetting replaced, then board art, then inception to complication taken away from my creative work. i took and still take pride in my work. I can only imagine the next 80 years. After the war, the people that are left will be required to relearn the basics. The Neo-dark ages. Or, we the populace will be parasites sucking the tit of whatever machine we are attached to. The machine will be called "Mamatrix." And, when it figures out we are useless baggage we will be sucked dry of any information and discarded like Pampers. But in the long run, it won't matter because people will not be around to complain.
As a working artist and someone that cares immensely about human art, you just put put all my fears surrounding this on the plate and I hate you for it, but I also really appreciate you for it, if that makes any sense. Very important video and perspective more people needs to hear.
all these fears should be realised by everyone before theyre even created or come to fruition, We need to somehow create a large social wave that enforces lawmakers or politicians to fight against this... but how can we make them motivated to stop it?
@@gabudaichamuda2545 I see your point, but people have tried to "create a large social wave that enforces politicians to fight against this" for countless problems. Global warming, oil, democracy, guns, schools, it just never worked. And all of these issues are easy compared to AI, because at least we have some control over them. AI is digital, and owned by companies who have no interest in losing profit for the sake of art, supported by a government that will be more than happy to have less "artists" and more "workers" in their economy. I hate this. I want it to end, but it's been going on since before we were born. I'm not saying it's a lost cause, I just really want someone to come up with some concrete way of dealing with these things that isn't protesting and proposing new laws that are never gonna get pass anyways.
Same here! The way a knife craftsman cares about hand-made knives, we care about human-made art. The big question is: should we force other people to only enjoy human-mad art? We all buy cheaper manufactured knives that replaced a craftsperson-made product. I'm sure they're not thrilled about it, but it doesn't mean it's objectively wrong to manufacture objects? We can hope that, as for hand-made knifes, a part of the market still sufficiently appreciates human-made art to keep it going.
I like how fitting the drawn art piece is to the topic at hand. The conjoined mass of a creature with faint traces of humanity, merely displayed in recognizable shapes here and there. Faces, grimacing and laughing in hysteria, ignorant to the loss they incurred on themselves and others.
@@thealliedpowers I meant that this comment is very descriptive of something shown on screen... Does text bots know how to interpret what they "see" and comment about it?
@@AbraHaze84 interpretation and art commentary bots also take in data from the net so its about the same thing there. Just another artform being abused to make easy money.
Thank you. I find the arguments pro-AI people make for writing, for example, to be absolutely impossible to take seriously. These guys are telling me that just because half or more of their creative process was done and AI doesn't mean its any less creative. . . yeah right.
@@goldpeen2661 They wish they could have what we have worked for. I bet a lot of those people are trying to convince themselves more than anyone else that what they are doing is an equally valid form of creative expression. And besides making it yourself is the magical part, I wouldn't automate a single second of the process if I could.
what are u talking about? In the history of the earth 99.999999999999% of humans have NEVER created art. How on earth do u conclude it's essential to the human experience lol@@ineffablemars
Its hard to reason with most ai art bros bc the argument for human made art will always be an emotional one and some of these people have the emotional intelligence and human empathy of a potato.
U are so Damn on Point with that simple comment. They are so obliviously ignorant to the World that we are all in, social skills they don't seem to have!?!?!
I find rhetoric like this disingenuous. Nobody is arguing "against" human made art. It's you "anti-AI bros" who are arguing against other kinds of art.
@@WeAreCameron I’m fine with ppl making AI art for recreational use and uploading it to it’s contained communities, most people aren’t opposed to that. What human artists take issue with is the AI bros who mock and insult their process then brag about how AI (that trains and scans human art work) is going to replace their jobs.
My biggest surprise is just how little other people care about it and sometimes are even excited to replace artists even in fields that should understand the importance of artists. The programmers in the indie game dev space seem so eager to replace their fellow colleagues. It’s so disheartening.
There's definitely almost a feeling of glee and Schadenfreude at seeing artists replaced, as if, by virtue of having cultivated a skill, we deserve to get knocked down a peg. It's disgusting, especially considering how much artists struggle to be taken seriously as workers and receive fair wages.
Oh yeah? And where were you when digital art became industry standard? Were you campaigning for the people who would lose their jobs, or were you rejoicing in the opportunity for effectively resourceless art? Ethics are a farce. People only care about stuff that benefits them.
@@tahunuva4254 I don't feel as though you've watched the video. Digital art becoming industry standard being compared to what ai art is currently doing is a false equivalency. Some guy rolling up photoshop into the company office one day is a far cry from a robotic arm being rolled into a fords car factory. The similarities begin and end with the two being new tech. That's it. Especially when you consider industry veterans, who were there to witness the transition, have some history of traditional painting who now digitally paint. We're looking down a position where the artists simply ceases to exist as a job.
@@tahunuva4254 Digital art is a tool and requires mastery in it's own right. Photography had a similar backlash of artists worried but is of course now seen as it's own art form. This is fundamentally different; ai art is specifically made to undercut the labor of artists and is trained without proper compensation or credit to thousands of artists.
Indeed, ai is the perfect in between black box to launder your crimes. You could just point and blame the ai. "It's the ai, not me. I'm just researching the ai!". There's no better time to exploit this than now. Exploiting others directly is illegal. But through the black box of ai, it's legal! I could create a virus that steals data and says its the ai that creates it, not me. Got my hand completely squeaky clean. Use ai to exploit, now!
maybe if you don't understand the first thing about machine learning and contemporary models, and even then it's just a hollow phrase not explaining anything. this is just uninformed fear-mongering.
Thank you for sticking up for Artists. The biggest tragedy of this is discouraging young people from beginning the steep learning curve of illustration. Why start knowing that you never be better than AI and the work prospects are forever shrinking? Young people need hope not despair. I hope these companies get sued into oblivion.
Yea this is me right now. I just started my path to a graphic designer career after thinking through every other career option. I am doing a 1 year internship right now and don’t know if I should stop and pick something else or continue. The job I am aiming for will either not be in demand anymore or the field will evolve to something completely new and I could get a great job that doesn’t exist now
Lol, now they can do it instantly and have instant gratification. They can make art without need the muscle technique to do it. Just like how computers have allowed the JWTS to see farther and teach us more, the calculator didn't stop math.
@@narutobankai I worked for an old man who was known as ''the human calculator.'' He worked for a top accountancy firm straight out of school and had lots of money and even bought himself a plane. He was replaced by a calculator in the 50's and was never in demand again.
@@PlsSubscrib AI will ultimately make us all obsolete, first white collar jobs, then blue collar jobs as bots roll off the factory line in a decade or so. 20 years from now there will be little to no middle class, we will all be on some sort of UBI and society will undergo the biggest change in Human history.
@@PlsSubscrib I don't know man, you either are not an artist or you're just those guys who ignore the evidence. You said a lot of things that are outdated and nonsense, if i don't say "ai is better", that doesn't make ai not better than me. Easy as that. I know it won't be me, the work won't be mine, but we can't just live of self satisfaction, be honest with yourself, it looks like it's what you repeat yourself in the mirror to escape from reality, and i don't want to ruin it, but i want you to open your eyes. Yeah, nothing we can do, literally. But atleast we are prepared to loose our job. People won't care if it is not you, people are greedy just as those guru youtube videos oversaturating everything, comic books, kid books, color books for kids and all that sh1t man. The guy in the video made completely sense. Especially the part where he said that everything will become worthless. This is what i always said, having so many things on demand is completely ruining the beauty of art in it's purest form. Art is cool because it is made with dedication and brilliancy from the people who put all their lifetime work into it, willing and dedication. We are lost, and that is a damn fact. When i read people comparing AI to calculators i just want to punch myself in the face so hard i wake up and forget about it. It's literally retarded, like comparing a damn shaver to scissors, makes no sense. I could stay here and discuss all day about this... Ai is not a TOOL as is a REPLACEMENT and that my friend, is a fact. Prepare to get ruined.
I love the "looking into the mouth of the lion" analogy. I feel like a lot of artists are stuck in denial right now, trying to scrape together any reasons why AI art is good for the art community at large.
Actually, it seems the artistic community is united in being opposed to AI art. The ones who claim this is good are other industries(music most specifically). Animation is still opposed to AI art, and the writing and voice acting communities have started to also oppose AI generation.
@@laurentiuvladutmanea3622 And now writers and voice actors have joined the fight against AI, this is no longer a one-sided war. I was terrified we were going to get trampled and conquered one sector at a time but in a twist of irony, the speed at which AI can grow may be its own downfall in managing to unite almost every major creative sector at once.
Great video. One thing that is worth pointing out, is that music isn't being treated differently because of musicians, but because so many of these musicians are signed to huge record labels that have the resources to enforce their copyright. The AI companies foresaw the legal trouble this could cause and said "let's not". As I say this, I do wonder if these "capped profit" companies are being short-sighted about images, because their datasets include intellectual property from companies like Disney, and that seems like a lawsuit waiting to happen.
I think there’s also an inherent difference in the amount of effort it takes to consume visual art versus music. It takes a second or 2 to look at an image and have a strong impression about it. It takes at least 30 seconds if not more to get an impression from audio, and 2-5 minutes to experience the entire thing. The effort to get feedback from the ai-generated pieces is much smaller and way faster for images. But make no mistake, ai is coming for every industry. The underlying problem is the way capitalism embraces automation as a means to reduce labor costs. Long-term, I imagine a world where human-created art (or any good), will be prized simply for its novelty and our inherent connection to it. But the short-term outlook is pretty grim for all workers and the way we trade our labor in exchange for the necessities to live our lives. They are just coming for visual artists first for the reasons outlined in this video.
This is just plain not true. Plenty of corporations have their codebases uploaded to GitHub but were captured by co-pilot largely without incident. There is one lawsuit that will probably be a precedent setter for the entire industry. Frankly, I don't think anything is going to come of the lawsuit
Perhaps you should switch jobs and go for anything that is actually needed and paid. And perhaps other members of your family can start looking for those jobs too.
So on point. Thanks for this work. I'm an AI researcher and an artist (at the level of a hobbyist). I made a video last week about this exact thing... This feeling of, "What's the point anymore?" paired with the economic consequences of automating creative expression. Got a huge amount of backlash, spurred an 130-comment flame war on Reddit, and got doxxed. Spent a long week thinking about this and put out a new video basically saying that I believe in the resilience of artists. Artists are so resourceful and so creative that they can fold any technology into their process. But that adversity *can* be made a tool doesn't mean it was *made* to be a tool, and AI can far more easily just be used as automation.
This is the first anti AI video I’ve come across. Every single other I’ve come across just blindly calls this trend progress. Thanks for offering I different perspective.
Some fantastic food for thought, I very much appreciate your insight on this touchy subject I’m actually recording a podcast with Hardy Fowler tomorrow on AI and I’m going to surely be tapping into your perspective
Ok. What if they trained Ai based on stock and consented art? U know what, You would still be hating it. Ai won't replace real artists using canvas. It will only replace boring unoriginal clones of digital artists that just changed eyes and hair color of characters. Ai doesn't generate just by prompts. U can draw better stuff using img2img by improving your sketches and anatomy. Ai is here to stay. People who draw for fun don't earn money. People who draw for money don't enjoy it. It's like any other job. I'm a professional artist and used to draw for fun since childhood. I started posting some very good art online, but I hated it when I did it for money. But Ai is good. Yes. Cope with it. Stop hating ai. Read the free IMF book *Gen-Ai: Future of Work* and choose the jobs that won't be replaced by Ai.
Keep seeing same comments over and over again. "You can't stop progress, Steven!" None says anything about stopping AI technology. All he talks about is a thing that many adult people should kind of easily understand and practice - *CONSENT*
This comment is SO underrated. That's exactly what the problem is here. Millions of artists work and billions of hours work of blood sweat and tears have been taken in an instant to train AI. But "oh well, progress" ☠️ Um, no, literal theft and zero consent. And of course zero fcks given by the creators of AI. Recently saw "the father of AI" (whatever his name is) is having an existential crisis or something... Yeah. Um. No sympathy. 🙄
I feel like the biggest thing we have going against ai art is just the fact that people have an inclination and bias towards "real" art. This can be seen in sculpting, where hand sculpted artworks are valued more moulded factory line models. People follow their favourite artists similarly to how they follow their favourite bands. People use art as a means for interpersonal connection just as much as advertising or marketing in a corporate sphere. The community aspect of art and the respect to each other in the industry I hope will avoid the redundancy of artists.
Sadly, with our interactions with our favorite artists being limited to press releases and other digital social media, and the increased intelligence of automated chat bots, we may well experience in our lifetimes, not knowing if our favorite artists are real human beings doing original work, AI bots, or humans using AI bots as a way to exploit others, by offering the persona of being a human creation. Ironically enough, Philip K Dick, the famous sci-fi author, wrote about this sort of phenomena several decades ago. He was definitely tapped into something.
""The tactic of poisoning Linda Fox with small doses of mercury was an artful one. Long before she died (if she did die) she would be as mad as a hatter -- literally, since it had been mercury poisoning, mercury used to process felt hats, that had driven the English hatters of the nineteenth century into famous organic psychosis. I wish I had thought of that, Bulkowsky said to himself. Intelligence reports stated that the chanteuse had become hysterical when informed by a C.I.C. agent of what the cardinal intended if she did not decide for Jesus -- hysteria and then temporary hypothermia, followed by a refusal to sing "Rock of Ages" in her next concert, as had been scheduled. On the other hand, he reflected, cadmium would be better used than mercury because it would be more difficult to detect. The S.L. secret police had used trace amounts of cadmium on unpersons for some time, and to good effect. ...Galina said, "But if she's destroyed, the colonists will grumble. They're dependent on her." "Linda Fox is not a person. She is a class of persons, a type. She is a sound that electronic equipment, very sophisticated electronic equipment, makes. There are more of her. There will always be. She can be stamped out like tires." "I feel sorry for her," Bulkowsky said. How must it feel, he asked himself, not to exist? That's a contradiction. To feel is to exist. Then, he thought, probably she does not feel. Because it is a fact that she does not exist, not really. We ought to know. We were the first to imagine her. Or rather -- Big Noodle had first imagined the Fox. The A.I. system had invented her, told her what to sing and how to sing it; Big Noodle set up her arrangements...even down to the mixing. And the package was a complete success. Big Noodle had correctly analyzed the emotional needs of the colonists and had come up with a formula to meet those needs. The A.I. system maintained an ongoing survey, deriving feedback; when the needs changed, Linda Fox changed." - Philip K. Dick, The Divine Invasion (1981)
That bias is solely cultural though. You can see this by people changing their mind once a piece they previously enjoyed was revealed to them to be generated. Or if that information is simply not known, there are well liked musicians who are essentially produced with assembly line precision, with dozens of people working on the tracks.
@@reck0n3r Dude the covers on his books are SO MUCH BETTER than a lot of the current digital made book covers. They are on a style like the covers of old videogames and it is just phenomenal the level of draftsmanship that they present.
As a game developer myself, I hate to say it but I will use AI created background art for free, and hire less graphic artists because I am a one man studio. I know article authors who feel the same way about pictures for their articles etc... And we are just the tip of the iceburg. There will be less work for graphic artists overall as AI quality improves and surpasses those of humans.
Thanks for taking the time to make this video. I agree with more or less everything you said, but to be honest.. if I had any say in it I would want these 'tools' to be gone entirely. It's just another slippery slope into oblivion, whether they get your permission to participate or not, or whether they compensate you or not. To me the most disturbing thing about all this is the ongoing aggressive trend towards acceleration and devaluation of effort and time. Who actually wants this? Who has anything to gain from this on a long enough time line? Grifters, narcissists and corporations. It blows my mind how artists (the same ones who are upset by the capriciousness of social media algorithms) think this is somehow a good thing. We're already drowning in content oversaturation and the algorithms on twitter and IG reward constant activity. Now that these platforms are also being flooded by bright glittery and bizarre meaningless art ("created in collaboration with AI"), it's only going to get worse. If i had to force my thoughts in an optimistic direction, i'd say that maybe the complete oversaturation with this hollow visual drivel will make people hunger for art that actually has a voice behind it that you can feel. Maybe it will make people hungry to see something more human. I do feel like this is wishful thinking though, because if an image is distracting and bright enough, the eyes will go to it. It's easy to forget the value of humanity if you stop coming into contact with it. Especially when there's a million other things that could potentially be causing the depression and anxiety that it inevitably creates.
@Terrorists Win I am definitely planning too, I just have to properly organize my thoughts about it first (don't have the gift of Steven's eloquence lmao)
I will say that, while I may not represent the average person, AI art has made me fall in love with human made art all over again. I look at it with a level of wonder that I never have before. I am not a visual artist. I hope others feel this way too.
I'm a 15 year old high school student, after many years I have finally worked up the motivation and courage to try and improve myself and my art. I'm seriously considering giving up on art because of this... I still have time to change my life path, but somehow I'm still drawn back to art. The thing is, there seems to be no real solution or prevention in place, as much as I want to keep going I know it will bring me nothing but sadness to see AI art in museums while my art is still laying on the floor of my bedroom.. i am crying while typing this out. Is it true that I must give up my dreams? i am begging for someone to say its not, but everything i see is telling me this
I am 14 and literally in the exact same boat as you. Couldnt sleep last night, I had an existential crisis. Were so young and we have our whole lives ahead of us, its messed up.
U are just 15 my younger fellow Artist friend & I understand u want to b a successful artist in the future. One of The most important things u can do now is draw bc u love to & bc u just can't not create. Use those emotions u are feeling in a positive way & turn that Shit into making your Artistic Passion stronger & fight for that Art Dream u want. Doubt anything I have said will help or even matter to u & thats ok too. I just hate to hear a young artist give it up so quickly for a reason that is unknown for 1 thing. Keep it up !!
Never give up on your dreams, continue to draw. However, art is not a viable career path anymore (I'm sorry it's just the truth) so you will have to pursue a different career and make art as a hobby. If you can get good enough you might be able to break into the industry one day, but please don't fully pursue art as a career path because it is extremely volatile and I don't want to see you struggling to make ends meet.
Collective lawsuits is the answer. Artists should finally start to protect themselves legally. Creative AI's should get their databases open for public scrutiny and sued to hell for each and any copyright and plagiarism infringement that is found.
@@TheNeomaster15 The A.I copies 1:1, and the companies stole millions of copyrighted works from artists that they had no right to. Shut your mouth, and keep it that way.
@@gabudaichamuda2545 You don't know how the AIs work. They learn by scanning the noise of art and analyzing it pixel by pixel. Eventually learning an apple is red and an apple is round. No where is the works stored or re-used.
Just started taking art seriously this month and had a lot of enthusiasm. Now with all the news about AI art, I'm questioning whether this was/is worth anything or whether I should quit before being utterly disappointed. I wish I had more time to think about these things, but it's my senior year of high school, and time waits for no one Edit: Big thanks to everyone who's commented; your thoughts have provided fantastic insight! You all have reminded me of why I began my art journey in the first place: my burning desire to create. So, whether or not I pursue art as a career, I'll always be an artist. Thanks again everyone, much love!!
Of course it's worth pursuing,you will enrich your life in so many ways,you can achieve things you never thought possible and therein lies the reward,to hell what these programs can do, they're not you
If you want to be realistic going into the future, ask yourself why you want to learn art first. If it's because you want to make art exactly how you want it, or if you want to express yourself, or for a similar reason, go for it. It's absolutely worth it in that case. But if you plan on making a living on drawing and painting, I would contemplate reconsidering. Unless it's niche or taboo art, or you become a master artist, or you know you can secure a position in a company (which are usually slow to adopt new tech), drawing and painting is going to become increasingly compromised for artists to make a living on as these AI become better and their images increasingly flood the internet. I oust drawing and painting because there's so much easily available data to train AI on it's almost unfathomable (Stable Diffusion was trained on a couple billion images, with a b). Other fields like 3D art will be safe for the _near future,_ as there's significantly less training data available _for the time being._ These companies taking on the AI market are dealing in millions of dollars, at least. We're talking tens of thousands of dollars in electricity _just to train the models_ when it comes to processing that many images. So despite the uploader's wishes, I have the feeling not much is going to alter the path we're on.
Thank you so much for taking a strong stance. I see so many artists and people faking positivity, turning blind eye at catastrophe that is happening before our very eyes. Artists need to speak out. They need to show the world whats happening right now. Before its too late.
There's no way we'll see a perfect AI. It will look like it does now even in 10 years. They can't "steal" my silly cheap chibi animations I uploaded here, for example. I still think it's an amazing opportunity, not even faking positivity here - people like me struggle hard with backgrounds and inspiration, novelAI and Midjourney helped me to get back into trying harder to improve myself and using some of these pictures as reference. Big artists are pretty much safe. It can help a lot of people, but yeah, in the end all the "mid" commission artists out there who aren't insanely popular and big will be screwed. Even though I think it still is an opportunity. Of course it's pretty pointless nowadays to commission someone to draw a picture of a random autumn forest or a random anime character for a newspaper article. Concept artists might not be needed in the same way as before, a typical deviantArt artist with 10$ commissions will have problems finding clients because the 9$ novelAI sub is cheaper and you get better results. But overall? It's pretty hard to be a 100% doomer imo, completely ignoring the positive aspects. The world changes and so does art, sadly. It's almost impossible to stop it and there's no point in crying.
@@bighatastrea oh on ... don't look up meta Ai generated videos. they are in the first stage of making a ai that can create videos (including animation) Ai .
"When you prompt, you are shouting your inner heart into the next dataset" @19:31 As someone who studied writing in college, I got some intense chills the moment you said this: Because of the poetry in your phrasing; and that I knew deep down it makes absolute perfect sense. The data collection never really stops--working in the IT world has at least taught me that.
Cancelled my Midjourney subscription. I make music. So I don't really have the money to support artists. I was using pics for random songs. I decided to commission my first piece of digital art last week. Working with the artist on what I wanted was a really cool experience. He nailed it. That's the biggest difference for me. There is zero humanity in AI art. As where the artist was a real person living in Pittsburgh with a broken furnace. I'm 100% on board with most these arguments. Artists of all mediums should support each other in this. My only critique would be that they seem to be very supportive of the future capabilities of AI in support of their arguments. The ability to use prompts and data sets will improve vastly. But AI will certainly lack imagination for a very very long time. The human mind is just too complicated. That won't necessarily save your job though.
By that logic I could get AI images and say I made them myself (Assuming they look normal) and Id be praised, but if I say they are AI then people wouldnt care
@@michaelschemmel1984 BRO thats one of the easiest arguments I make for people who share the same line of thinking as OP here. They say its not art solely for the external negative stigma that generative art has. They aren't even judging the art for its compostion, tone, mood, perspective, shading, contrast, general creativity, etc. etc; Ya know, the things that make the art actually art. I find it so crazy that I could generate something that looks nice and that a human could draw or create and show it to people and they say it looks nice but then if I said that SAME piece of art was generative art they would immediately say it's sucks and isn't art... The cognitive dissonance fr...
he probably used ai art for inspiration for his own creation. you over estimate the human mind and under estimate ai. you had mj so you have seen the amazong things ai has created with 3 or 4 word prompts.
@@GoharioFTW The people you are arguing against are correct. If it was AI generated, it really does automatically suck and isn't art. You can step out into nature and see a sight that is breathtakingly beautiful, but it's not art because it's an accident. Intention and effort is what makes things art. A pile of rocks can look pretty, but only when a human shapes those rocks is it art. AI art is just an accident by a random algorithm. It's not art. That it's hard to tell the difference between AI and human art does nothing to change this fact.
@Magicwillnz ok can't wait to see how you're doing in a year when ai generated art can't be discerned from physicl and digital art and you're biting your fingernails at every single image you see online and end up accusing people of using ai generated art and shaming them when in reality they didn't do it and then praising someone for their art when in reality they did use ai generated models good luck Also your example with stepping out into nature made 0 sense. Are you saying people who do landscape photography or any still life photography of nature aren't artists?
@@therealOXOC I'm fully prepared haha. AI Art is inevitable at this point. Luckily I'm not too bad at maths so I've got something to fall back on. I just think people should know that we're being fucked over by shady business practices and stop naively viewing it as a "tool" for artists.
@@telepathicfish1489 what can i say. stable diffusion is already here like he mentions. there is no running back the model. it's a tool for artist as i can see many artist that are not that ego centered using it. even if they stop training on living artist it's a tool that is here to stay and seeing only the negatives makes yourself depressed. it is so much fun sitting around with my little niece a producing awesome images that she thinks of. She likes drawing aswell and i think that will never stop but i can't predict the future. looking at the positives makes much more sense to me than to put up a video where some guy is drawing a guy fisting an asshole and allover psycho shit he deals with in his art. it's pretty dark art he draws and i only want to see this one drawing of him and don't hear more negative stuff form him. i kinda understand him but i know many artist that would never put their stuff on the internet and make a good living out of it because they don't trust the web. if you use it as marketing tool be prepared to be used as a marketing tool. i'm always drunk on satrurdays so excuse the rambling...
Art is perhaps the oldest surviving form of human expression. Evidence of literature, politics, philosophy, religion, and language itself go back merely thousands of years. We have art that survives from tens of thousands of years ago. Art is a fundamental part of who we are as humans. I find it profoundly tragic to see art threatened by AI.
I see the "threatened by ai" as a very narrow minded and wrong aproach and thought. It actually makes me chuckle a bit because every time a new medium in art was invented people cried about the death of art and the work of artists being devalued. Photoraphy being a prime example. "No that everybody can make Portraits so quick and without skill, what are the portrait artists going to do!" What happened was, that yes, portraitry as an industry got thrown over, that is the progress. But out of that came whole new branches of art, so many new possibilitys. You people will be the horse breeders crying about the car, while other artists are already out there develing into the topic and discovering what actually can be done with AI. Its a new form of art, it will change the status quo, but its not going to end art. Its just going to be different.
@@theexchipmunk 1. This is not a new medium. It is a dehumanization of digital art. 2. The limits of what it can do are known. There is no self expression.
@@digitalcurrents I sense a tone of naivety in your random internet mutterings there, stranger. Ever heard the saying "Road to hell is paved with good intentions"? Like life on earth with its diverse creatures and thoughts and minds as we do in this discourse, progress too isn't a one way road. Not all progress is good, nor without its consequences. I for one, want the AI to thrive or even fall into the wrong hands so when bankrupts, the scream, the doom and gloom comes I can only laugh at these so called "progress", for the clueless to know that the knife may hurt them, they first need to cut themselves firsthand.
@@jimimased1894 I mean yeah it's not really threatened, but dumbest as it may be do we really have to deny artists from their thoughts and concerns? Like.. This video, topic & thread?
thanks for pointing out this part 19:20 , that all the people are training the AI to know what prompts are good, and interested in seeing. Not using AI programs, is the right move.
I’ve spent the past few months working on an AI generated graphic novel. I’ve had no desire to sell or make money off of it, just something for fun. I’ve been torn about the impacts of AI generated art on artists and I’ve admittedly been ignorant about the systems in place behind the programs I’ve used. I think my ignorance has been a willful blinder I’ve placed on myself to allow me to proceed with a passion project while feeling guilt free. This video has absolutely changed my mind about AI generated art, even a project like mine. This is difficult but I’m deleting the work I’ve created. Maybe I’ll take a crack at it in the future if there’s an opt in system for artist and especially if there’s a system for artist compensation but for now, I think the artist need to be heard and a stand needs to be made against AI generated art. Thanks for taking the time to put this essay together, it’s working.
It's great to read that Steven's video has had a positive impact on you. :) Regarding taking a crack at it in the future, you should draw the graphic novel yourself. You said yourself that it's for fun, so why not?
All artists have the experience of their skills not measuring up to their vision. This never goes away. The happy reality is you already have all you need to express yourself creatively.
I think it’s great that your passionate about comics, I am too. And if you still want to make a comic I think you should go for it, it takes a lot of work and you’re gonna doubt yourself along the way but it’ll be worth it in the end. As someone who was self taught before starting art school you can find a lot of helpful resources online. If you have any artist friends I’m sure they would be happy to help you bring your vision to life. 99% of artists are very supportive of each other and are always happy to offer help and advice when asked.
You might want to do a bit more research on this topic, than just take the word of fearmonger like this, spouting false or inflamatory statements. Look for yourself at how AI art is trained. Train YOUR OWN model. See how it's not copying, but rather learning rules of how things should look. Use your own concept art, and allow the AI to polish it uniquely, not copy-pasting any existing art into your work... but applying the rules of shading, color, and light, that it has gained from analyzing other works of art, just like any other artist...
you are by far ,literally the single and only artists that i 100% agree with on this topic , i kept looking up this topic and all i sawwas wishfull thinking artists repeating "it's just a too lto help artists" and i was like , no , it's not , it's not made for artists , no one said that exept artists and deep down everyone knew they kept sayign "it's just a way to look up refferences and ideas" , no , that's just one use you came up with the cope with the idea while altho it's possible this is not what the ai was made for , they didn't spend years and fortune just for you to get refferences from it , it's called ai "art" generators not ai refference generators or texture generators , it saddned me that most of the damage was done by artists themselves and not even by the ai users who can usually barely formulate two words together. i really hope artists come and bond together against this and not allow outsiders who are compleatly out of touch and care nothing about the craft to tramble it using artists work itself and let these corporations earn billions with artists own hard work.
For real, artists saying they use it for reference are admitting they didn't come up with their own compositions or ideas in their work. Its like having no faith in yourself. Giving up on thinking out of pure laziness. Its why I don't respect anyone using midjourney or painting over novelai, its like double plagiarism. It easy to see 'artists' becoming dependent on these companies. I as a viewer of the work have no idea where the AI stops and your contributions begin, off the bat the work isn't really theirs no matter how much they rationalize.
@@chinogambino9375 Isn't your argument just a rant on looking up references of any kind? Nothing you complained about is really related to AI models, so I can hardly agree. As much as I loathe the unethical and anti-humanist aspects of these models, they're effectively glorified Google Images (people just pretend they've created what they find). Whether references are real or generated, laziness comes when you settle for whatever you find and copy it, rather than looking for something specific that fills your own idea and using it to inform your own composition.
@@rikamayhem Having seen how midjourney is used, no its not the same. If you type in a scene you want to see into these image generators they tend to follow very effective artistic rules of composition since they are trained on human work. The results people want to see are ones they can lift and use. Its very hard to not be influenced by a finished composition made by a generator especially after a few iterations, I take issue with that mental heavy lifting being outsourced. I know for certain artists cannot be honest using these things. When a human absorbs photographs and paintings to use as reference its very unlikely its particular enough to their subject matter to be lifted. The skill is adapting your own visual library, problem solving and life experience to fill in the gaps. If we side step that by copying the composition of another work we usually call it a study and credit the original image, we'd feel dishonest otherwise since we owe too much of our work in that instance to the original. To me if you use an AI for reference it is your collaborator, you just are not the sole author. Think about it this way. Is a human author who has read a 100 books and then decides to write his own novel the same as a human author who lets an AI trained on 100 books write his draft? One chapter? Part of a chapter? Uses the AI draft as his 'inspiration' for a rewrite? The latter can still write his name on the novel but personally I can't take the attribution seriously.
@@chinogambino9375 Fair enough, your argument is much clearer now and I largely agree. I realise that AI-art platforms, specially Midjourney and "img2img" tools, encourage iterating on generated images repeatedly until you get a precise result, and I agree each iteration does hamper the user's share of the original thought put into their work. However, and while I don't even plan on using these models, I think that, as a user, you do have agency in how particular to your subject you choose to generate references, so this is just revealing how many artists would rather take the easy way when given the chance.
I gotta jump in here, chief. I'm not exactly the type of person who's eager to pay for a serious commission, not because I'm not willing to but because I don't want to waste my money or be the worst nitpicker imaginable. I am not skilled enough to create detailed works myself. Even if I did endure the countless hours of education and practice, there's no guarantee I'd know about or have access to the tools and techniques required to perfectly imprint a mental image onto canvas. If I would commission a work, the amount of back and forth would render any profit to the artist completely meaningless. The sheer amount of time wasted on revisions and attempting to understand precisely what I'm looking for when I myself don't have the ability to explain it. It's more of an "I'll know it when I see it" sort of thing. I lose money, the artist puts in more work than they've any reason to, I don't get what I wanted, they feel underappreciated. It's a bad situation all around. AI won't complain when I spend 10+hrs demanding revision after revision, telling it to scrap the whole thing and start over multiple times, and I wouldn't have to feel guilty about being problematic or cheated our of my money for something unusable. My primary motivation in AI generated art is to spend countless hours learning how to define specific instruction sets that yield precise results. I've no intention of harming anyone. Option 1 is AI. Option 2 is accepting the impossibility. There is no option 3 in this scenario. I'm sure the majority of personal use cases reflect mine. It's just interesting to tinker, and artists tend to get upset when you ask them to satisfy dozens if not hundreds of consecutive requests.
As an artist myself I embrace this as a tool for ideas . Traditional artists said the exact same thing about digital artists years ago . You have to face reality my friend this is where we're going if you can't keep up you're going to be finished . I'm sorry it sounds mean dude but this is the way how it's going . Either you adapt or become extinct
@@trajectoryunown *Then sit your ass down for 15 minutes a day, and learn to draw.* You want it? FIND THE DAMNED TIME. Just because you don't want to learn, and want to make an excuse to not pay for it, doesn't mean you get to steal from us. Is that clear?
I don't get why luddite is used as an insult. Luddites did not revolt because of machines, but because of bad payment and terrible working conditions coupled with a total lack of help if they got hurt in the factory. Now tell me, does that sound enjoyable to you?
I had a guy on my Facebook actually have the balls to defend using AI data sets bc “ it still takes a lot of work to type prompts into a computer and I’m doing most of the work still” To which I replied “ yeah I here you. I’m a master chef bc I am REALLY good at ordering a pizza. I don’t cook The pizza but damn can I place an order, painstakingly describing the pepperoni, extolling the virtues of thin crust! People don’t understand how much work goes into ordering a pizza!”
but some people want $5 pizza made by stoners. Cheap and easy is what makes the world go round. We all are guilty of machine made things that a person could have done. But no one wants to pay the prices of artisan items for every single thing you own.
@@hyleriangaming22143 Hopefully we'll one day realize, we cannot automate our way to prosperity forever. At some point, a critical mass of unemployment will cut corporate revenue, and we'll regret trying to make the human brain obsolete.
Technology doesn't have to do your job as good as you. It just has to do it good enough if it's some combination of faster and cheaper. The cheap part is important, because as more workers lose income to technological disruption, whether they like it or not they'll only be able to afford cheap things that aren't as good as when the same things were made by hand. Over time, the cheap machine-made stuff becomes the norm, and the majority of people forget what real quality used to be.
I've done a video (in french) saying somewhat the same as you, but in a softer way, because I didn't want to be "too dramatic". But now I'm just sad to not be able to saw your video sooner, because my video would have be totally different. I feel currently overwhelmed by all you said, it's a lot to process, especially knowing that my main dream is to make my comics books come true, just because I have a story to tell. I'll need time to process all you said, but I think i'll do an "add on" video about this subject. I've already add the link to your video on mine. So thank you for video. Really.
After following this technology unfold for months, this has by far been the most informative video I've seen in explaining it's true intentions. That double standard of the usage of visual art vs. music really said a lot about the companies behind this tech. They know big record labels would come after them if they used copyrighted music. Yet, individual artists are having their work used for training this tech unkowingly and without compensation. I now fully realise, we the artists, are the losers in all of this. All artists much watch this asap.
100%, they know what they're doing. Just as a thought experiment, imagine if the government skimmed this much data to train any software. I'd imagine the reaction would be way different.
Sadly artists are always the losers, hence the term "starving artist". But artist are also the best at adapting, and you're really not giving them enough credit. Examples - Camera ( didn't replace realism in art) - 3d printers(didn't replace sculptures) - Digital Art on Screens ( hasn't replaced real paintings in houses) - AI art will be it's own thing, but artists will always be around, and mostly starving as always.
there’s next to no work for sculpture and the painting market isn’t that big. There’s only just a small handful of people who do sculpture and it’s not consistent for most (sculptor/concept artist myself) Camera is a different medium. AIs a different threshold. supersedes basically all of it not on a canvas commercially. (Potentially photography in some respects too) and later on; animation, movie effects and so on. there will be a couple traditional painters around, but the vast majority are going to be displaced. We’ll never see a Kim jung gi again because there wouldn’t be enough work to support them drawing that much. Everyone was wondering what the vast amount of indiscriminate data collection was for; now we’re here. Should have been illegal, because it sure doesn’t feel ethical. Especially now that literally all someone has to do, (especially in mjv4) is upload a photo of themselves in a pose, then just type “painting by [insert artists name here]” and get a result almost immediately more than good enough for most standard clients.
@@stinkypete9070 As another thought experiment, imagine a single individual just asks you for a bunch of personal data. Are you likely to just hand it over to them? *We keep giving them permission!*
The way that government reclassified, extended, and perverted IP laws in the last 80 years is one of the largest thefts against culture to exist in history.
Something that's really bothering me is when I explain my worries of horrible realities "AI generater" pose, and people just tell me that won't happen. I'm telling its already happening and they say people will always want human made work. Unwitting downplaying the issues, talking to people who are not artists has only made me more convinced that the worst possible outcome is the most likely.
@@reinasayama8077 When I see people commenting that “huge amounts” of the population continue to prefer content made by individuals I see people committing the act of assuming that their ideas are representative of the majority when I see no evidence that this is correct. People see what they want, but in the end it’s companies like Google Facebook Twitter etc etc etc, that are driven by algorithms and increasingly autonomous code like AI, that have long ago in the history of modern Big tech swallowed the world and all the hopeful humanists with it. They’ve been laughing themselves to the bank for decades already by profiting off the vast majority of the world’s docile behavior in regards to their profiteering, predation, and control. This new turn tech is taking with AI is just beginning, and it’s already not looking so hopeful. I have the same issue as the original commenter. People I talk to tend to try to minimize the entire situation and end up appearing tragically ignorant. And everyone having this discussion now has already been alive long enough to even know what it was like before AI became a thing. Relatively soon there will be walking talking voting choosing humans who will have never known a world without ubiquitous and likely insidiously pervasive AI. I’m not a fortune teller, but I think it’s pretty likely that, just like every generation has done before them, they will grow up and grow into the tech of their time and be the fuel for its continued endless sprawling grasp on social structures, economies, governments, ART…
Remember vintage lace? That used to be handmade, too. They also believed that people would prefer handmade lace over those made by machines. Today, the majority of lace is machine-made.
@@danielawesome36 Good example. Indeed, how many previously hand-made things are no longer made by hand, but by machine or simply printed or coded? It would take too long to count.
@@reinasayama8077 i dont wanna be a boomer but i have already seen people (non artist normal people) not caring by both (human or ai) which it would lead to them to not care for whoever wins, at the end they dissmiss art in general, so if Ai at some point can do what is on their mind, they will be ok with the disappearance of artist and therefore allowing the path for Ai replacing other jobs
@@bitterbunn1831 If AI manages to draw what people have on their minds that would be a blessing, it would destroy the skill barrier to entry for making art. And AI should automate more jobs, all of them. The problem is the requirement of having a job to survive.
This is a serious matter for Artist and Content Creators alike. It's not difficult to imagine that AI will eventually be capable to produce short form and long form entertaining TikTok and RUclips content in such an abundance that human made content won't catch up to matter. With algorithm being increasingly better at understanding you intimately and the in the video mentioned potential of having content created specifically for your current mental state, ideas, or circumstances It's difficult to imagine a human content creator able to keep up with this for long or even at all.
I think a lot of people are still naive. A.I. is now here and it will not go away. It can only go up from here. No 7 fingers on one hand in the near future. It is just matter of time. What most peope dont understand is that A.I. will do more than enough for a lot of basic stuff. A 10 men company that need new a new text for his website can do it all with chatgtp. It will be all fine with some minor tweaks. No need for a writer. That is an 500$ job less for the human writer, and maaaaany of them will go to A.I. I dont see any reason why a business wont use an AI art tool for a cool background for an event. It will be used once and throw away after that. Goodbey 1200$ job for an artist. Etc. Etc. Etc. AI will take a huge part in this world. Text, image, graphic design, logo's, audio, video clips.. many jobs will be taken out. And you allready see a forrest of AI program's and website u can use in a minute. If you build the best AI machine, you can make tons of money in the near future. Still.. people are naive. I am not going to wait before this hous of cards wil crash. I am working on my plan B allready wich makes me sad. But i dont believe i can feed mouths as an illustrator in new years from now
@yoRRnl That is ultimately your call to make. However, despite menial jobs being offloaded to artificial intelligence it seems like a stretch that the skill of an illustrator will be completely useless in your lifetime. Artificial intelligence is still very much inspired by human input. It's ideas were referenced and it's motivations are prompts. AI will reduce work force, because it cuts cost. AI, however, isn't sentient. While that must not mean that it couldn't do plenty human quality work there are still these two aforementioned hindrances to it taking over the world on its own accord. As an illustrator you could use your skill to prompt better. Or you could feed an AI with your design tweaks. Chatgpt doesn't always give a great first response there is some iterating that happens to get to that perfect output. Your skills as an illustrator would afford you that judgment.
@@RIPxBlackHawk The video already addressed that point, particularly in the “AI is just a new tool” segment (15:26) and even more specifically at 18:29.
@@RIPxBlackHawk I mean everything you said in your second comment may be true now but won't be for long. The reasoning was detailed in the video so I just linked that part instead of retyping everything.
There are very good points in this video (elaborated on at the bottom of this comment), and its sentiment is correct, but as a computer scientist I think it's important to note a few things that are definitely not correct: - AI art is provably, and objectively not 'art'. It does not know how to create art without directly plagiarising from existing artworks - if there is a single way to define what art is, it is that an artwork can't be made purely by plagiarising existing artworks. Pastiche is art, parody is art, many forms of 'copying a style or referencing something' are art - but AI 'art' is none of those, as it adds absolutely nothing new of its own. It does not know how to, and it is not designed to - it is designed to copy and only copy. In terms of how it could be called art in future: it can only do this if the 'AI' learns the actual ability to 'draw' rather than merely 'copy'. This isn't anywhere near achievable, not in the next hundred years and likely much longer, because the data you would need to give to the AI to learn this is neither available nor plausibly recordable (imagine trying to teach an AI the entirety of the laws of physics, commonly known animals and all of their characteristics, anatomy, videos of their walking gait, just to name a few things - it's not plausible). Humans know these things, and learn fundamentals to inform their drawing decisions, drawing upon decades of experiences and learning. Training an AI with that much data is not going to be possible for a very long time, both in data and computing power terms. - Outside of the computer science field, it's probably true to suggest that people 'never imagined the advances in AI art in the last 10 years' - but inside computer science, it is well known that there are no such advances. The 'AI' powering Stable Diffusion, DALL-E, Midjourney etc are neither new or improved. There are two reasons they are possible now, when they were not before: firstly, that the data needed to train them is far more readily available due to the larger proliferation of professional art online on large websites such as ArtStation. Secondly, the necessary computing power to train these models was previously something that was only easy for researchers and large companies to get hold of, but in more recent times, online cloud computing services are much easier to access, even for smaller developers. There have been no breakthroughs in the models themselves, or the way they are generated, or anything else within the 'AI' algorithms themselves. Those points aside, you are absolutely correct about the dodgy legal nature of these 'AI' organisations, their effective theft of copyrighted artworks, and their lack of transparency. I also entirely agree that resisting these 'AI' tools is nothing to do with being a 'luddite' - innovations can be awful as well as great, and 'AI art' in its current form is one of the worst 'innovations' the art world could ever have. This is a well laid out video, expressed well, and here's to hoping that 'AI art' falls flat as it deserves to. Thank you for speaking out against it.
I was thinking about how to put this properly into words. I think we could say definitively that AIs in their current state are not drawing, painting, sculpting, or doing photography - charitably you could call it digital collaging which creates the illusion of something having been drawn or painted. That said, the process you describe could still be considered a form of art making - but it would be a mistake to say the AI made the art on its own. Rather, it would be the collective artistic input of the human race (and not just the artists in the data set, but their teachers and influences) that is responsible for whatever is generated and the AI is merely the process by which that generation occurs. Plagiarism as a concept is dependent on ownership. Ownership can be exchanged and bartered over. So plagiarism to me is not necessarily a strong pillar for a definition of what is and is not art. The ethical AI system Steven describes would do away with the issue of ownership. I think the images produced are indeed art. But I think we could say that AI is not yet an "Artist". Rather it is a collective project of all contributing artists and the flaw in the system is that it has been conducted without their consent or even knowledge. So in sum, I disagree for the most part with your first point on whether AI images are art but your computer science knowledge has added some nuance to this discussion that I hadn't considered.
@@nateg3962 It's not that 'plagiarism' is the pillar of deciding what is or is not art - but rather that to be considered art, there must have been some contribution by the artist to the artwork. The 'AI', in this case, makes zero contribution - it does not add any meaning or drawing technique, it gives no new take on the art it uses, nor does it have any purpose behind its actions. It has no agency, no reason for why it combines artworks in a particular manner or extracts specific features. This matters because when humans create art, it is done with a meaning (including artworks with a deliberate lack of meaning) - with an intent to express some view, or give some specific feeling or atmosphere. For example, an artist who e.g. paints a headless horse puts that headless horse in a background intended to give the viewer a reason for why the horse is headless, or to make a statement, or for some other purpose - even a vague or crappy purpose. The AI has no such concept because it does not understand - or attempt to understand - why the horse is there, or why it is headless. It has no idea what a horse is, or how a horse behaves, or why a horse is in the painting; all it knows is that it found image features that indicate the presence of a shape it knows to be a horse. Even with the most mundane objects - a simple painting of a tree - the AI does not know anything about trees, or how they work, or why. It is unable to "draw" a tree, because it does not know what a tree is - it is only able to copy features from things its model identified as similar objects in other artworks. A human who plagiarises a bunch of artworks and blends them together could still claim to be making art - unethical art, poor art, but art of a sort. Humans using 'AI art generators' would fall into that category. The same cannot be said for AI on its own. As a further example, a human who throws a bunch of ink up in the air, landing on paper below them, could be said to be making art - because the "artwork" in that case is less about the resulting mess of ink, and more about making a statement about the nature of randomness or some other concept. The AI, in such an example, has no understanding of concepts or statements, and cannot do the same thing.
@@Ant-le7hl I don’t think we actually disagree here. My contention was also that AI is not an “artist”, though I would argue this from a different perspective from you. However, in the process of compositing images from other artists, their legitimate works of art still contribute their voice to the image. Therefore the image generated by the AI is a work of art, but it is not the AI’s art. Does that make sense?
@@nateg3962 Yeah, that makes sense. It's just a question of definitions, as many 'AI artists' (I do not recognise them as artists, I don't think they deserve to be recognised as such) claim the AI on its own is capable of making art when it is not.
Exactly, it's like a sandwich machine, but where everything that the sandwich is made of is stolen from different stores, you can say that it doesn't look anything like the bread, meat and lettuce that they stole, because they are " sufficiently modified" to not be the same as the original, but that does not mean that they are made of stolen things
It feels like the perfect storm with this coming now, people are so addicted to constant distraction on their phones and AI art is perfect for this , a quick hit of entertainment and then on to the next thing. If you're an artist you already know how hard it is to get anyone to look at your work, even if you're lucky enough to get featured or tagged somewhere big most people won't ever bother to seek out your work. Now you also have to compete with AI. the world was already getting completely squeezed in the fight for attention 'look how big my ass is' ' look how ammaaazzing my art is' 'look how delicious my food is' etc. This feels like it could hasten breaking point whatever that is.
it is inevitable, and maybe that's the way it has to be. Let's strip the ego away from it and make art for the sake of making and creating and nothing else.
@@primtones and then put their expression on the internet, get stolen by ai while the developers or patent owner don't need to pay a dime of royalty? lol
@@Djoarhet001 It is not inevitable. Rights and permission are not synonymous with "innovation." This is a legal issue and it's finding its way to the courts now.
Thank you for this. If we allow artists to be robbed, it won’t be long before everyone, including these AI ‘researchers’ themselves to be robbed, in a future closer than we can imagine.
Trust me, japanese artists are more intolerant of ai before it even became this famous. It's super disappointing that from what I see from the west are mostly artists who are coping. Trying to be positive etc. It's not just visual arts , ai is also getting into writing and music composition. Sure, experts are the only ones who can see which is good or not but the common people wouldn't care. It's really frustrating to see the amount of people who are wayyyyy too agreeable for their own good. So darn short-sighted. I'm afraid of a time where artists can no longer prove it's their original work without being asked for the video process. Or unique artists whose works might lose value when people keep using their styles. There are even assholes who use a professional artist's name with an ai work with their style in it....and sell it. Even going as far as telling the specific artist "we will make sure you lose your job" is so darn hostile. But yeah, thank you very much for this video at least I know somebody is actually thinking this thoroughly. I hope it's never too late to do something with these pirates.
as someone who really wants to get into art as a career, this whole AI art craze has gotten me actually kind of worried. I am in the same boat as you. It blows my mind how people dont see big problems with this. the only people who seem to care are the artists themselves. we must fight back
As a writer, my artwork has always been easy to copy, but my particular verbosity and individual style will soon be obsolete, when AI is capable of manufacturing every imaginable configuration of words
Writing is the safest form of art that AI won't be able to make due to the fact that AI can't understand semantics(for now). And if they did, they would be sentient.
@@AddyLovestar AI can already spill words. The thing is that it wouldn't have meaning. AI is very good at making text that seems that was written by people. But fails when we go to specific semantics about comstructing a story like a human.
You touch important topic here. I think those who are now overexcited with digital art are those who lack the fantasy and inspiration to create something by themselves.
This is sad to know about. And I JUST KNOW that the argument is just going to boil down to "Suck it up artists! You should've gotten a real job!" While watching all my animated scenes on Hulu and Netflix.
More like: "Suck it up artists! You should try to find a way for your skills to remain relevant in a fast evolving sector, like all other manual professions had to since decades ago with the rise of automation!"
@@Danuxsy „While watching all the AI generated animations on Hulu and Netflix” That is not going to happen. Works generated by „AI” cannot be given copyright, so no company will use them for a significant part of their work flow.
@@laurentiuvladutmanea3622 companies won't exist because customers can generate their own content with a neural network just like they are with images using Stable Diffusion.
You have my deep appreciation for making this video. When this issue was first beginning to materialize, I saw a few videos from other artists commenting on it that I found largely unsatisfying, it wasn't until I started hearing you're on stream discussions that I began to feel as if I had my feet under me on the matter.
I am in my early teens, and I have been very passionate about art for a little while, so I practiced so much, day after day. It was all going good, and I thought I would eventually make a career, but then I find out about AI art and its horrors! AI art is something that will take joy and jobs from so many poor lives. It has already started to destroy hopes and dreams, and is ruining traditions from hundreds of years ago. The harder you work, the more you get... at least that's how it's supposed to be. AI is diminishing artists that worked so hard for their skill mastery. Why isn't this community taken seriously. Eventually, AI may expand similarly to other territories, and keep on taking different parts out of different people's lives. At this rate, life will be like the Sci-Fi movies where AI takes over the world, except it would be less direct. This madness must end!
The more u working hard, the more u get is true, but not always its the case. Working smart is also is a key toget even more Sometime smart is simple(not easy, but simple) Im against this all AI shit, but it seems that we artist need to get more smart about how we do art, if we wanna keep making a living.
As a foreigner, I would especially like to note your beautiful way of speaking. I listen to you and understand every last word, as if you were speaking my language.
Beautifully said. I have learned how heartless my own friends are, viewing my own artwork as meaningless. Hundreds of hours of work put into some pieces and just because I normally use digital tools my art has no value. He views himself typing for 30 seconds as making him as much of an artist as I am. People are so incredibly lazy that they just want the fruits without the labor, but how can that fruit carry any meaning? It would just be another product that you consume. We had this argument when I was actually going to say "if I had an ai that was able to generate my comic for me, it would ultimately be hollow. I would have the product I always dreamed of, but know I had no part of in its creation." Art is just not a valued skilled by most people, and that's tragic. There is so much value in actually putting effort and heart into something instead of just google searching your whims into existance. Google already makes collages and clips out of my pet photos for me, I don't want my whole life to just be generated content based on my habits. I think this is how the human spirit ultimately dies. Also, I doubt me friend would be okay with students handing in Ai essays and projects so they never have the need to actually learn. We'll have whole doctorates written in AI and have to accept we're a whole world of people who never took the trouble to learn anything since computers could do it all for them.
Honestly, if you still consider that person a friend, god bless your patience I could never. If you ever receive comments like that again, I recommend you may as well spoil the fruit and give them the whole artist experience. "What?! What do you mean this costs 10$ to buy?? It took you five minutes to make!" "I could do that in my spare time, there's no way this is worth ____$" "Is it okay if I pay you in exposure?"
"Do you build your own paintbrushes? If you don't, then you have no hand in the art's creation. " - some perfectly valid opinion. You see the problem is, you're drawing a completely arbitrary line - which you're well within your right to, don't get me wrong. But you can't then expect others to change their equally arbitrary standards to match yours. To them, it *is* just another product they consume, similar to how you don't give a shit that your paints are mass-produced machine products instead of hand-made woad - that is, if you even use paint at all.
@@tahunuva4254 Writing a sentence of what you want a picture of is how you request a commission, yet no one before would have claimed they were the artist of the finished piece. The computer is the artist, not the person who writes a prompt.
I hope this will bring back more interest to traditionnal art. Having artists more willing to draw on paper and canvas and having more people willing to buy them originals.
I think there will eventually be another return to Humanism (a new Renaissance). Specifically because humanity will end up thirsting for verifiable humanity again. Also, I believe that humanity will start to resent the increasing lordship of ai over our lives--- and will develop a natural distaste for ai-anything. The game may have to be raised, though. :Human artists who paint complex and meaningful compositions are poised to do well. Human artists who just want to make pictures of flowers or Spiderman, not so much.
The problem isn't AI art itself but the distribution of generated wealth by companys. AI will replace artists at least in digital art. There is no way to prevent that and it is useless to focus on that. It is far better to focus on the generell structure of our economic system.
People who use 3d are even worse! They've been around for 10 years - and not a single one of them picked up a pencil. I'm baffled we just let them be, we should take a hard stance against AI and 3D!
@@bbgun9076 You clearly dont understand the issue at all. 3D art is an artform. It is more similar to sculpting then with 2D art, but it is still art. Also, plently of 3D artist do use pencils, to paint over their creations.
The Kim Jung Gi AI was the nail on the coffin for me, this is not a tool this is a replacement for one of the greatest things humans have ever done in exchange for money of course. I hope artists get together against AI before it's too late.
@@DeadGuye1995 Just watch the video dude, he never mentioned Kim Jung Gi in it, my comment was based on my feelings it was not based in content of the video, and this feeling was a general consence in the art comunity. But also its not "worse" its very sad as well, be respectful pls.
@@leonardodomingues9010 At least one of the AI training sets also includes images scraped from art posted on ArtStation as portfolio pieces for artists. (which of course, Google Images brings up on a search as well, so it doesn't change your point...) :(
If they take away the ability and the incentive to create, we will only have the desire to consume. And deep down, it's just that, consumption and more consumption. This is a strong step towards a less "human" humanity. Not to mention that there will be fewer and fewer jobs in which one can learn and enjoy what they do. This is horrendous, almost straight out of a sci fi horror movie. Excellent video and beautiful illustration!
Except nobody is taking away your ability to create. And unless your incentive is to make money with it (which isn't the case for everyone), that too is untouched. So if anything, AI art will flush the people who are only doing it for the money down the toilet.
@@OzixiThrill noone does art "only for the money" If you think that you dont understand a key aspect of art. The people selling art are doing that to be able to both do something they love and make money with it. And you said it yourself; noone will make money anymore.
@@Parrotcat That's rather naive of you, thinking that nobody gets into art solely for the money. If you actually believe that, then you haven't witnessed humans being themselves. Also, AI art also won't make it completely impossible to earn money through art; Sure, it will make it more difficult for artists to support themselves off of art only; Maybe even make it impossible for some artists. But if that will be enough to get a supposedly passionate artist to stop doing art, well... That's all the evidence one would need to see the liars. PS - Ultimately, I don't think that any artists worth their salt will really see that much of a dip in their money due to AI artwork.
Great video essay, great piece of Art, as someone working his way towards Art coming from tech, I always felt incredibly split on this matter, and kept shifting opinion, never really knowing where to stand. Your video has convinced me that AI art in its current form with the companies and the data laundering is very harmful for artists. Thx for sharing!
@@discordantduck1808 I hope you do understand how long it takes to make and light one candle, and how long it tales to become a good artist and produce a salable piece of art, yeah? Quite a silly comparison
@@discordantduck1808 1) you can literally start a candle making business in a month, with materials, forms, casts, and others easily available materials. Hell, one huge shop for soap and candles makers is literally across from my apartment. Fun fact, my mom does exactly that. After getting retired, she started making soap and candles to pass the time. Yes, It was a mistake to "lump em all together" but on average I think artists spent a wee bit more time to get to a professional level 2) Yes, the art AI will get its data and training as many other models for different industries, nothing to be surprised about here. And its' soulless on the most basic of levels. On later levels, it's a legal nightmare waiting to happen. I'm not going to grand stand here. It's a reality, we made it. It's how we humans roll...still, kind of hope that at least people will stop protecting multimillion-dollar companies with millions more in investments. Will society benefit from AIs? Without a doubt, but at what cost? Also "of course it's harmful to artists, that doesn't mean it's bad" my dude, harm is usually bad.
art is beautiful because of the people behind it, the thought and effort that goes into it, the creative visuals, and the meaning behind the art. this is why I refuse to call “AI art” actual art. it only exists for convenience, the things that makes art ART are taken away when there is no soul in it. there is no real person making the AI “art”, there is no thought or effort, the visuals are only imitating other artist’s real creative works, and there is no actual meaning behind the art. this isn’t art, its laziness.
37:10 Oh yeah, I remember reading an article about that and feeling so mad. The double standard is unreal, the only reason they give a shit about copyright in that context, is because big music artists actually have the money to file some pretty nasty lawsuits against them, while meanwhile, most artists can barely manage to make minum wage with commissions. Absolutely sickening double standard.
An object can be seen from infinite angles and mixed with an infinite amount of objects from infinite angles. A song has one angle and little deviance from that, because music aesthetics are incredibly shallow compared to physical aesthetics. It's not a double standard at all, it's out of respect for musicians that they aren't training on copyrighted material(and because there would be court cases lol). And they aren't disrespecting artists teaching a computer to draw, artists are just taking disrespect for various reasons. Mainly because the computer can learn and draw REALLY fast. It's like the guy said, if you learn to trace a master painter, You've Earned It! But when a computer does it you should be MAD lol. THAT is a double standard and it's driven by some inane logic about egotistical humanism. There are still people alive today that won't use circular tires because they think going too fast cheapens their lives. It's a silly opinion just like these stances against AI's drawing.
@@DemWaifus The issue is that the ai is taking very specific angles and very specific objects from art that already exists, without people's permission. Art that some random person posts online is not automatically public domain either. No matter how advanced the ai get's, it's not a person, it's a product, and it has already used countless copyrighted material in order to form its network. There's no reason why musicians should have respect while artist shouldn't. Also, there are infinite configurations of potential sounds and melodies.
@@chompompcharly That is not a real issue though because all those billions of images are being bounced off of one another to produce an image in seconds. It is IMPOSSIBLE to take this issue of yours into a court, it's like suing a painter because he visited a museum in his youth and got inspired. Except even sillier than that lol. I understand why artists are upset but they have to deal with it, they can't stop what's already released, they won't stop the likes of Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and the UN from developing this either. Just be glad that StabilityAI is friendly to open source. And please take note that videos like this weren't being made when the closed source bodies were doing the same thing. This is a reaction to this technology being open. People against this are fundamentally coming at it from the angle of greed.
@@chompompcharly Like think about it, a 512x512 image has 262144 pixels in it right? How many pixels belong to you if you type "anime woman with big breasts in the style of picasso and greg rutowski :)" Are you trying to be funny? No one owns the artwork that comes out except you because it didn't exist before you prompted. Why do you think someone should get paid because computers can draw funny pictures now? Greedy as fuck.
@@digitasoul1389 Dunno, maybe they're friends? Maybe this is educational research? And don't get me wrong, closed source AI is terrifying, I'm just calling artists greedy when they're trying to burn down Stable Diffusion, because they're evidently afraid of free art from and for everyone.
I'm happy to have come across this video, really happy. I'm just a normal artist who wants to make books for children, graphic novels, and become an art teacher. I'm always complaining about back pain, art programs being slow on my computer, having to buy materials, staying up until late, etc, but i really am in love with my craft. People saying that AI was "just a new tool" felt like a half assed answer to me. Much of your concerns you mentioned here were also things I've thought myself. Why, would i want the world's most beautiful picture if i knew that it was an amalgamation of unconsented sets of information processed by a program with no soul. Yes, it may be better than anything i might amount to do in my life, but it not only feels empty, it feels disgusting. Not everyone will be sensible, or will care enough to notice this of course, some people are so numb that they will only care to see "new and cool content" and that's it. I could ramble on an on because this is a topic i think about a lot, but i'll stop here.
because it costs less :) ? because they are pretty pictures ? because it is quicker, more available art for everybody? If I'm a refugee from Afghanistan and I wanna picture the horror I felt while fleeing I simply use a program to create a beautiful and moving picture quickly and easily, instead of paying someone to do it. Adapt to the new environment, how many more children can be taught art with these new tools? This is fantastic for art, stop complaining
the problem with trying to convince people that argue that artists use reference too is that people like this are usually unskilled (in general, not just at art) and believe that you can't work towards improving at something, just born with the skill, etc. and don't understand the work required or the fulfillment gained from it
I just want to say that the art piece you made in this video is beautiful, poignant, and expressive, and that's something that AI art will never be able to replicate. As for the 'tool' argument, it should be said that there's nothing new under the sun. AI is just taking what people already made and rearranging so that it looks original. It's basically virtual plagarism, which we've been told since grade school is something we should never do. I feel that copyright law, more often than not, is used to control creators rather than protect them, especially nowadays. The only people copyright protects are those are already in charge of the industry. So of course, AI is going to steal from the unknown, everyman artist to cater to its wealthy and talentless users. They're essentially profitting off of people's insecurities and laziness, people who aren't willing to try to build their skills or hire professionals/amateurs to help them. Really, when you think about it, a lot of modern technological "innovations" are doing this. They know that they've already made things too convenient for people, so now there they're trying to generate inconvenience artificially. Honestly, with everything I've heard about how art and artists are treated, copyright infringement, theft, cancel culture, forced cancelation of passion projects, censorship, poor compensation, AI replacement, and so much more, considering that art and expression are unique to us as humans, we've really shown that we don't deserve it, especially if our choice is to not use it or let it be shown.
Thank you for finding the strength and dedication to make this video! I have been furious for exactly the same reasons as you and felt so frustrated that so many artists are willing to look the other way. I will share this in the hopes that more people wake up to the exploitative nature of these companies and the erroneous desire to see themselves benefitting as artists from it. I am truly relieved to see someone tackle these common arguments so fiercely and intelligently
I liked that metaphor about "tools" and "replacements": factory workers were not against wrenches, but they saw that robotic arms were going to replace them. But that's in a repetitive, unpleasant and dangerous job, that worth to be done by someone else. But with art is totally different. Artists love to create, and just want tools that allow to materialize out what is in their minds and souls. But these AI systems just turn a command into a collage of parts of images, there is nothing creative there, and who does that does not deserve to be called "AI artist". It's as if someone photocopied a book from a library and then claiming to be an author.
It's really interesting that for years and years non-artists have been saying "digital art isn't real art, the computer did it for you!", but now that the computers _are_ making the art the overwhelming sentiment is "AI art is real art!". Honestly, I think people just want to jump on the bandwagon of whatever next big thing comes out, like with NFTs. They don't care about artists, they just want the same attention good artists get, and when it eventually dies out they'll move onto the next thing
Perhaps people just care about the result - the part they see at the end. Why should they be concerned about the process that created it, if the art has the same impact?
@@vylbird8014 And that's exactly my point. Who cares about all the effort the artist put in if a computer can just do it in the blink of an eye, right? But that mindset is exactly what's so annoying about treating AI art as real art and the people who make them (as in the people who just type some words in and call it a day) as real artists: as an artist myself, the most important part is the process, NOT the end result. It's where you get to put your skills and everything you've learned to use, where you try out new techniques, and how you learn to be better, because even if it doesn't turn out how you wanted, there's ALWAYS something to be learned. You take away that process and there's no more growth, there's no more feeling, it's just an empty picture that has no effort and no soul. If every single image produced by an AI is absolutely perfect on the first try then theres no value in that; even the great artists of our time like Monet, Raphael, Degas, Van Gogh, etc. don't have absolutely perfect works, and also have a lot of pieces where they were studying various objects and forms, because THEY were always striving to learn and improve too! Put simply, AI art is just a cheap imitation in comparison. Art is a discipline in any form it takes, if you take out the process, you're just left with nothing
@@A_keo I can see historical parallels. There was a similar anger among musicians when the first commercially viable music machines came out - first player pianos, then wax cylinders. They were seen as devaluing music by taking out all the skill - why would anyone spend years practicing their craft any more, when a machine can reproduce it so easily? The process might be the most important part for the artist, but it does not matter at all to the audience. All they care for is the finished piece.
@@vylbird8014 It's a tale as old as time isn't it? Unfortunately, because things made by machines can be mass produced, the way the world is now it's far more profitable than paying people to do the same thing, cause people are slower and more prone to making mistakes that a machine wouldn't. Not to mention that when it comes to art people don't really give a shit about the artists like you said, they just want the art itself, and music is a big one for that. If only we lived in a world that wasn't so focused on shoving product upon product down peoples throats where everything has to be instant to be profitable. The world slowing down for a sec would do us all some good I think, but unfortunately I don't see it happening anytime soon 😕
Nobody ever cared about artists until artists will prove their worth. Our job was always to create beauty to uplift peoples souls. Nothing changed really for artists. Only craftsmanship is death. but then, how many of us can draw from a figure? How many of us can mix paints?
"It's a replacement, not a tool." After making a good-faith effort to learn about it (my initial opinion wasn't negative), I've come to the same conclusion. I also like that you pointed out how it takes all the fun away. I got some good results but felt a little sad that I didn't just come up with them myself.
I'll admit, there's a small dopamine rush when you type a prompt and make AI art, but ultimately it's desensitizing because I can just make more art of that caliber in seconds. It's like a kid who can eat anything in the candy story for free. There's no toil, no effort, no journey. Just the final result, which is boring and soulless.
You’re right I felt the same I managed to creat a professional looking art way much better then I could ever draw or paint my self , but it didn’t felt mine it’s just felt I’m googling. nothing compared to the act and journey of creating art by your self
Try applying this logic to written communication: are you sad you are not writing this comment using pen and ink? Handwriting used to be a form of art thousands of years ago. WE EVOLVED. EMBRACE IT.
@@gukes-3dx „Try applying this logic to written communication: are you sad you are not writing this comment using pen and ink?” Written communication is an utilitarian tool of communication, not a passion.
It's messed up, artists already have a shitty path with the harsh competition and especially harder for a starving artist Now with the A.I. tech its like adding salt to a mutilated stump of a limb
@@TechenZz The thing is that many donkeys out there call artists as drawslaves. As if all of us ain't living as slaves on that wage itself. The reality is that actual artists will be more preferable for work instead of some random dude copying top 10 prompts from some forum. That reality sucks, since this whole process and unique visualisation skill developed under years of actual studies will be replaced with some automated process of fixing some mumbo jumbo of AI generation with photoshop. Plus, any subcategory of the creative industry will get degraded with the oversaturated generative style of works, and there will be less and less new "executions" of ideas or experimentation on them. I'd recommend everyone to support the concept art fundraiser, since it's getting close already to its goal. Even as little as 5-10$ is good. Plus, we got already regulations coming from a law standpoint in different countries ( UK, Canada in progress, EU general regulation plan of AI on 2023 ). Also, nathanfowkesart on IG posted about a software being developed to protect artists from getting their work scrapped and used in AI in mass. It's from a university of Chicago ( if im correct, the post has it in detail ). Plus, the whole AI thing is already going wild with sound generation & deepfakes, propaganda and biased articles in journalism, and general blackmail. If it's left unchecked for more than a few months, it's going to be a wild west worldwide. But some hyperconsuming idiots will still be okay since the tech itself is cool.
@@warrenpeas Sure. But perhaps, no one should not have to fear for their hard earned place and right to make a living, fear to be undermined. Its deeply unsettling and it will not stop here. Its not about doing the job you love. Its about your job. Its a complete erosion of the entire middle class. So many useless office jobs are iust as likely to be hollowed out. Not to mention programming. There is the potential, that only lots of poor and a few very wealthy will remain, unless we talk about a fundamental shift in societies’ philosophy. Ofcourse, AI offers of the benefit of providing the collective best of us, on demand and on a silver platter. And we can use it to benefit us all.
I have been posting hundreds of selfies with keywords as "sexy man" on the internet so AI starts to put my face everywhere. Time to change beauty standards of society.
keep it together man, in the face of peril, we should strive and band against it rather than wither and die. It is when you do that will grant yourself the possibility you have not if you did not try.
I think you will find a lot of support for human made art. These feelings is something that often plagues the creative, but lets try to empower eachother and have solidarity. You can do it 🙏🏼
I didn't want to "like" your post, so I am just saying: I'm in the same boat and this whole thing has given me such a sense of dread for the future it's hard to even get through a single day without being bombarded with it. Find joy where you can get it.
@@natehorsfall8379 Honestly we just have to adapt. I have already dealt with being replaced by a cheaper faster option for years because I have worked in traditional crafts since childhood and watched the industrialization and outsourcing to China slowly make it harder to sell to stores who can get things cheaper from China. There are a lot of customers who want what I or my employers offer, but unfortunately it is becoming only acessible to wealthier people, which could also happen with human made art. I think a lot of people who are laughing at our concerns haven't actually experienced it because they aren't in the same industry or weren't taught to be aware from a young age.
Thank you for this comprehensive video. The whole AI art issue fills me with existential dread as I know in theory it could be a fantastic tool, but under our current consumptive and exploitative systems it's just going to be used to not pay people while using their work to train their replacement. Especially since there seems to be so little fear of recourse. Sidenote: I was so mad when I learned that one of the key learning tools for AI is descriptive text -- something that is primarily an accessibility tool. Because of this, I have seen artists advocating for inaccurate descriptions of media to mess with the system, which in turn will also hurt those who rely on descriptive text and accurate tagging to engage with media online. Guess it's time to flood these AI with Disney IPs and see what happens? :')
AI really seems to me like a way for Capitalists to cut out actual artists so they can have guarenteed content that's cheap to create without any human input at all. Corporations at the end of the day only care about profit and will do anyhting to try to mitigate the tendancy of the rate of profit to fall.
The weird thing is - these Ai prompters are saying it is "faster" to make Ai art, but then say it took them a week to create the prompt to make exactly what they wanted? If it took you the length of this stream to produce this beauty and then took them a week to prompt a computer enough times to get the result they wanted, I wouldn't call that efficient? Sorting through thousands of images sounds like a pain in the ass when you can already see your own work unfold before you exactly the way you wanted ONE time sounds a lot less like a pain to me lol
They're avoiding the tens of thousands of hours of training and practice that it would take for them to match his skill, and to create a piece of similar quality in a comparible amount of time. So from their perspective, it is certainly faster.
@@ajp2206 people are inspired by the idea more than by the method and techniques. If you arent the student of an artist, you aren't "copying" the art because you don't know the "technique". And the main problem is, AI samples other arts to make a picture, but humans sample experiences. They can even sample music, they can sample memories into images. AI can't do it. Having said that, a lot of people have pathetic imaginations, the 99 percentile won't make it, but there's a world of difference between 99 and 99.9
I think one of the largest issues, which the video touches upon, is that discussing this situation is very difficult due to a combination of factors. Many people's gut reaction is "Human made is better than automated". This doesn't help the discussion. This is akin to saying hand crafted food is better than frozen food. Sure, but that doesn't mean frozen food isn't allowed to exist. Some people's argument is "we're losing jobs". This also distracts from the argument. Any new technology has the potential to diminish jobs. Just because the person enjoys the process, doesn't mean the people they are working for wouldn't rather expedite it. This would be akin to championing outdated medical practices, such as leeches, because the doctor enjoys using them. I think the argument we need to laser focus on, in order to get to non-artists, is what was mentioned in the video: Using Datasets collected under the privileges of non-profit research, cannot be used for commercial purposes under any circumstance, no matter how many steps it goes through. This is the logic used for the music industry (as the video informed me) and should be applied to the visual art industry as well. I'm afraid everything else distracts from the main argument and gives ammunition to the opposition. I hate to say this but; fellow artists, please control your emotions. I completely agree with you, but we aren't trying to convince other artists here, we are trying to inform mostly non-artists.
“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.” Frank Herbert, Dune
I thinks that's starting to chage. I feel like, many Artist were in denial for some time. Fighting for your rights is scary and exhausting. But I have already seen people starting to change their tune.
The thing is there are not many true artists out there. Those very few who are will see their work raise in value. The ton of "artists" who aren't so will finally be where they belong - oblivion.
What makes it worse is that AI was trained on artist work without their permission... It literally stole billions of hours our hard work in an instant....
@@robertmarmaduke186 pinterest _has_ been stealing artists' work, and we _have_ been trying desperately to get art off that platform, with poor success because the reuploaders are shameless and don't get punished for their actions. 'pinterest did it for 15 years' doesn't suddenly excuse AI art, it makes the situation that was already awful even worse. pinterest is bad because images posted without credit or permission from the artists crush the artist's sentiments and makes it 'easier' for people to use/trace them directly and then claim ignorance. AI art is bad because it gets trained on an artist's artstyle and then spits out new iterations of it- which takes away the reason why people pay commissions to get artists to draw a new piece for them. It's stealing livelihoods.
Well all of this art has been posted on Internet, and when you accept the terms and conditions, that means that every image you upload can be used freely unless it's highly protected, so it didn't really steal, it used
@@roxtorlediable Alright let’s just forget copyright laws exist… and that you can’t use peoples work freely….without permission…just because it’s on the internet…
This is an age old problem and it’s very much linked to the ‘Art should be free’ argument. People have never valued artists. If you aren’t an artist yourself you will never…ever know the time, effort and absolute will that goes into creating and actually finishing an art piece itself. These people have been jealous of the skill for a very long time because they know artwork is, unbeknownst to most, one of the most profitable and widespread media that is consumed on earth.
Scientists have protested for years and decades to make research they create and spend months and a crap ton of money on, something tha twill benefit humanity, but artists complain a picture isnt selling
Yes, and far beyond just artists. Hardly anyone crying over truckers, manufacturing and other sectors out of a job due to AI or just the progress of technology.
@@oddinvestigator It's a fascinating debate, and it's coming to every industry and field of human endeavour. I suspect there will always be "workers", or at least, there will always be "work", but a lot of future work be unrecognisable to us. If you took a random high tech worker from today and transported them back to 1922 and asked them to describe their work to most people from 1922, they'd have a tough time making themselves understood. Send them back to 1722 and their difficulty world be even more profound. The process of change is definitely accelerating, no doubt about that, and the speed of change coming from AI presents its own challenges. But in some ways we've been here before, across many forms of work/human activity. I just don't see any way of stopping it. The AI training processes that are so expensive today (requiring large corporations and server farms etc) will be cheap in a decade or two. What then?
How do you keep yourself from going mad as a professional artist? I spent 2 years unemployed, and 99% of that time was trying to build an audience and attempt to achieve a freelance level of self employment through commissions. What I learned: If you're not someone who can learn to self promote, or can't spend just as much time self advertising as you are making art, you're going to do nothing but frustrate yourself. I gained a total of 180 followers, 0 comissions, after putting up over 600 finished pieces in hopes of following my passion. I hate, loathe social media, keyword culture. I cannot keep up with it. I just can't. So, I create more. Every art "community" I join seems like it's just a board to slap your self advertisements onto. SO much untrained, low effort stuff that if you don't LIVE on the platform and repost constantly, good luck being seen at -all-. So, I have gone back to office drone life, miserable, disillusioned, and worse for it. I still draw and paint...but only for myself, and it hurts, knowing there are people who do it purely for profit, with much lower skill in the art than their advertising, and achieve wild success, letting them create for a living. It's no wonder so many classical artists we praise now were drunks who killed themselves. I'm sad again.
I have the same frustrations with self advertising, i had bought the idea that as long as you're good at what you do work will come for you And well it doesn't help that most of the art sharing sites have become dull, artificial and sooo saturated, in the earlier days of the internet at least there was a sense of personal presence, where different artists interacted and shared ideas (Btw could you share your socials if you still have your art up?)
well may be is time to reevaluate what ART means to you ( in reality to most people ) , the greeks did art not for the money but for the pleasure it gave them and they created magnificent art , perhaps AI as it takes over mundane tasks and jobs will give us that possibility again , you should continue making art it should not be about what art gives you through others but what it gives to you directly
@@robotron07 check your history, there was plenty of Classical Greek work that was commissioned for government, temples, homes. They didn’t just create things out of “love for the work”- it was regular old work for hire. And saying to use AI as a way to free you to make art that’s there to fill some kind of niche inside you, well that’s just telling a working artist that he’s gonna lose his job to AI, but it’s okay- just go out and make yourself happy- you won’t care then that you’re out of a job and broke.
@@denises3727 that how evolution works ,better systems take over obsolete ones ,Humans have a choice to integrate with machines ( at the neocortex level) or be left obsolete .i will let you some food for thought find out what is the true concept of a cyborg and what is its relationshipo to cell phones "today" ,soon there will be the possibility of physical integration and that decision will come to play in the near future,this will be more a matter of being left with out a job because you want to
I highly recommend reading about the Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. AI endangers so many parts of it. The whole self-actualization part is currently being destroyed by AI (creativity, experience purpose, meaning and inner potential). The self-esteem part too (achievement, respect of others, the need to be an unique individual). Safety and security, which is extremely important is also in danger (employment, property). Other parts could also be threatened.
Honestly, the best discussion I´ve heard about AI art It´s so baffling, interesting and unsettling at the same time how the post-capitalism model perpetuate itself as the central nervous system o fall this chaos, "research" driven AI companies using art avoiding copyright law by using "academic research" excuses while "influencer" artists (Not talking about Steven, he´s actually making a beautiful essay about the bigger picture) and overall people promote or accept these "novelty" services on their social media platforms, of course it´s collectivley-incouncious but it´s so freaking macabre to the point where it´s almost like conspiracy lol
The lack of empathy is what is most disturbing. Non-artists have no problem with AI being in a position to overtake the art industry. What if someone made a program that rendered their livelihood and craft redundant, though?
I mean, they will go through the same thing sooner or later.
This has been happening for decades at this point, now it's suddenly a massive problem because people that work in the comfort of an office are having their ''''''jobs'''''' threatened. This whole backlash just goes to show that blue collar workers are seen as worthless, where was the outrage when machinery replaced the physical labourers?
@@snail736 1. Dude, people have been talking about the danger automation represents for blue color jobs since this has been a thing. The Cyberpunk genre has critiqued this thing since it existed.
2. The reason people were ok with menial jobs being replaced is because most people did not like those, and instead hoped that automation would free them from bad working conditions.
3. Your authoritarian leanings can clearly be seen here with your hatred of artists.
4. Artistic jobs have not been forced on artist. They have been chosen, to allow people to express their creativity and passion.
@@snail736 The humanist ideal of automation was to replace dull labour so people can do something more fulfilling with their lives, but can't you see we're now devaluing the tasks that give meaning to human lives? And automation has been discussed for a centuries: the Luddites were in the early 1800s and they just wanted to retain their jobs; they didn't even mind using the new power looms, just about realizing some of the cost savings themselves.
@@snail736 I mean there have always been backlashes against automation, in case you haven't noticed. If you didn't notice the backlashes, that's your problem. I work in accounting, and psychopathic programmers salivate at the prospect of automating my job for over a decade. I do see the practicality of that, at least. But the thing is, with art it's entirely pointless and it serves to do nothing but devalue it and ruin it for artists. And it ruined online art galleries for me. Those that didn't ban it that is, but who knows how much it will advance and become indistinguishable from human art one day.
I'm a trained conceptual artist. That job has gone destroyed by AI. Will that stop me from making art? No it won't. I love making art. I love drawing and creating stuff. No AI will replace that itch, what's in my heart.
That is true, but it will stop people from being able to profit from their passion. Which is sad, because it makes sense to want to market what you are very passionate and, presumably, skilled/will be skilled at.
@@cameronschyuder9034 This is true, very true. The more art is overtaken bu automation the more I want to make art by hand.
IMO the worst thing anyone can do is give up, especially on something they really enjoy doing.
If your whole industry can be replaced by a technology barely a year old your industry clearly wasn't very important.
@@DanieleGiorginoyou're foolish if you believe this battle started merely a year ago.
Before ai art, making a living as an artist felt hopeless, now it feels pointless
When in fact perhaps, fundamentally what’s pointless is AI.
@@synrandcommunication5526 It is just a tool. AI art will become one of the various art mediums among the others. It would not replace "Art" because it can't emulate the physical experience of standing in front of a piece of art made of canvas, wood, paint, oil, marble. The materiality is important.
By the way, photography did not kill painting, cinema didn't kill theater, electronic music didn't kill acoustic music, 3D printers didn't kill hand made sculpture... Everything will be fine.
@@alexandrekorobov4087 True. I hope you are right.
@@synrandcommunication5526 I hope so... Can't be sure though. I just think people are always scared of technology.
I also noticed that they tend to compare art with menial work. These jobs can be automated for various obvious reasons plus they are given a low social value. It is not the case for artistic jobs.
And sadly, almost no one in this comment section seem to understand that applied art and visual art are not the same thing. perhaps some illustrator jobs in big video games companies or advertising compagnies can be partially automated for economical reasons. These "artworks" are juste technical documents with some artistic value that can be done by a human a being or an AI... There is some kind of confusion though... for instance "concept art" is not Art, it is a technical artistic skill.
@@alexandrekorobov4087 seems like many are excited to teach AI their art skills, and not just technical skills, in this respect becoming tools themselves. Will this make human artists abundant like many menial workers? Probably not. My initial comment concerns the basic purpose of AI. Financial incentive and curiosity would be drivers, but where does our obsession with replacing even what makes our lives worth living take us, ultimately?
Techno-utopians: in the future, soul-crushing menial labour will be automated so humans can focus instead on art and self-enrichment
Techbros: we've automated all art and creativity so our wage drones won't be distracted from their soul-crushing menial labour
Honestly, this was one of my biggest shocks when seeing this thing originally.
I used to be an actual tech utopian, so it was a massive shock how easily people accepted the exact opposite of what is meant to happen.
This point is under explored, even if posted as a half-meme. If I may spur on the conversation a step further: there are debates on whether or not some things that have been automated/industrialized are wholly good. For instance, agricultural development. Some disagree that GMOs are good and they have arguments against their long term health benefits. Others have described a nearly apocalyptic scenario regarding the abuse of farmland, and how it has been ransacked beyond sustainable repair (for instance, the Standard Process Inc.'s take regarding supplements and why we need whole food supplements versus manufactured supplements). Even more are pronouncing doomsday regarding the decline of the effectiveness of antibiotics, not due to modern medicine's prior whimsical measures against the common cold, but due to the overwhelming use in industrialized livestock. Do I personally subscribe to all of these alarm bells? I'm not sure, but what I can say is that sticking to primarily a whole-foods diet (not perfectly, but consistently) has granted my family good health, even if it has cost me a lot of convenience, budget constraints, eating out, or even less choice for food. Therefore, I am convinced that there is some truth to the naysayers of the modernity of agrarian practice.
What I see for the future of art is going to be discouraging if it affects humanity even half as negatively as the psychological damage social media has already wrought.
Misconception once again. AI doesn't replace all art, just the 99% commercial filler "art".
@@ussassujust all entertainment will be replaced
@@ussassu What a pathetic and elitist claim.
I spent decades of my life learning foreign languages, only to see the translation industry destroyed by AI. The inferiority of the machine translations a few years back did not stop the destruction of the industry. The machine translation cost nothing, and so the price for all translation came crashing down, because the bottom feeders used machine translation. I found myself paid half price to 'just edit' (as if it was less work) a translation done by machine which was basically unintelligible so that I had to go back to the original and translate it myself. Most clients, the bottom of the pyramid that kept the industry going, did not care about the quality of the translation. If we expect that clients prizing human made products will save industries we are being very delusional. ... the vast majority of clients will go for the process that costs less.
L
a very good example of what's coming for every field.
„the vast majority of clients will go for the process that costs less.”
While that is a claim that makes sense... There are several factors that make be doubtful of this. First and foremost, Vinyl sales are at an all time high, with no sign of stopping now, and they are even doing better in gen-Z then in millennials. Second, physical books still sale better then digital ones, and are actually doing even better in millennials and in gen-Z then most will expect. Third, translation is an utilitarian need most of the time. So that is a factor that needs to be taken into consideration.
@@laurentiuvladutmanea3622 Excellent point. Now is art more like a vinyl? or is it more like a translation service.
Debatably.. I'm leaning towards art being a service akin to translation. I think it has been this way long before ai came to fruition btw.
Client wants art... often for a purpose, a reason. Maybe its a company logo or a character design for a cartoon. The things that bring the client value is whether this suits their needs and less so how many drops of sweat went into the creation of the product. Art is oddly utilitarian in a sense.
@@cachauable I think that is to people who don't understand art. for artists who do art it's different. The work that goes into art is to make sure a particular message is communicated. It is communication a form of conversation through non verbal means. So I would not say it's completely utility based. Marxist argue that art acts as a superstructure so it tells a lot about our society that we see it as utility rather then communication. I guess fault is in art education, and AI art is taking off cause people are used to seeing art as just pretty pictures. It's said that architecture tells a lot about a civilization and it seems it's true. Everything is now minimal, low effort, maximizing utility and function over aesthetics it's logical and productive but it's also cold, lazy and uninspiring existing to serve a purpose of it's creation and nothing more.
Looking at A.I art is really a throwback. I rememebered when my industry became automated an artist friend told me at least her job will never be automated. But here we are right now. That being said, having survived the automation of my industry. Perhaps i could share something we did to save ourselves. In the late 2000s, as 3d printing became more prevalent there was a fear that one day these things could simply print out all the things we could make. People scoffed on it, no way could they ever get that precise. But they did, and they absolutely devalued and destroyed pottery. Any idea, any sculpture, any technique you knew could now be imitated functionally by a 3d printer, even worse there were random generators primitive as they may be that could create any kind of geometry for the machine. But we survived and we did for a few reasons. It turns out these companies mass producing pottery in china were trying their best to get their materials as cheap as possible.
Perfect as they looked, they had bad smells, they were brittle and they were also not safe for health. Many of the chemicals they used to create their synthetic clays were highly hazardous for health and the chinese public took notice of it. They were everywhere and they still are. They flood 100s of pages of taobao in all aspects. But in a weird way this corporate greed, the greed of selling so much and using terrible materials made people desire real human handmade items. In China, artists created tags 手作 shouzuo became a tag used by artists to to signal to be public handmade goods, people banded together into studios and began to build public trust in human made products. Potters reached out on social media, with their own influence or made use of current cultural narratives to spread awareness of the importance and value of human made work. Fast forward to 2022 and even though a lot of us got wiped out, those that survived today are rebuilding from this apocalypse. Prices of pottery allow for a livable living, the public in china recognise the dangers of mass machine made pottery and always seek out human made goods if possible. But the battle is not over...
Companies in china don't stay stagnant they too picked up that people like handmade goods, so they started to add 手作 into their tags too, they took amateur photos to pretend to be artists. And this is where we are now. Trying to figure out what to do, but for what is worth, these companies are also lazy, they will refresh every sale and it becomes clear a mass produced piece was sold. Once this happens word starts to spread to avoid the shop and people having been educated to do so, do just that in most cases. Its clear the public does not take kindly as these companies 'skinwalkers' as i call them actively delete comments from people confronting them.
Long story short i don't think artists can expect governments to care and i don't think artists can stop A.I art. But what artists can do is to create and spread awareness on the importance of human made art and why they should buy from people instead of souless companies and machines. Companies will also do their best to produce at the cheapest possible ways they can if they were to get into fine art its highly likely they will use inferior canvases and frames etc. Hence in china, presentation is very important, artists don't just sell you a product, you are given it in a box with a letter of thanks and its good material and beautiful to look at. Something these companies can never be bothered to do.
China's new politburo will definitely solve this problem and save the people
This comment gives me hope.
But isn't the later half of gen z and gen alpha dumb as hell? , They already pouring boiling water on themselves for a tiktok trend and they are the people of future, the old people and the relatively young who would understand us are not going to stay for long , i remember my little sister cussing at me because i tried to help her with a math homework, she said she would get a failing grade than be tutored by me
Goodness. Thank you so much for such a weigh in!
"importance of human made art and why they should buy from people instead of souless companies a"
Your wall of text fell apart here.
No one will cares, and no one will care, ever.
23:12 is the most important section of this video. I've seen so many people making that exact argument in the comments of my own analysis. The people who are cheering the hardest for this, idea guys who think this is the magic key to finally unlocking the story they have bottled up inside them; artists and especially writers who think they can cut everyone else out of the process and tell the story they've always dreamed of, will doom every artist alive to algorithmic irrelevance through their lack of solidarity and short-sighted solipsism.
Creativity will find a way even under AI.
Many people dont realise that attention is a limited resource. 😓
@@spectercd4357 And the world will be worse for it
Oh hey, the RUclipsr who sent me here commented
I dont think this is the whole story. There will certainly be chaos in a variety of artistic industries for a period, but i think ultimately 1.People will still want to draw/paint/etc. 2. We will still need artists to create works that either these AI utilize, or that utilize these AI. You can certainly do a lot with a prompt, but theres still something to be said for understanding composition and being able to rough out your ideas to get a proper start. 3. People didnt want the camera to become so ubiquitous because it would put the painters out of business, people didn't want the radio to become big because it would put the local musicians out of business. You are not going to get anywhere if you keep shaking your tiny fist at the tides of history, noone cares about you. if your art or ambition gets swept away by this, chances are it was never gonna change much beyond your life, which means nothing much has changed, just draw your drawings and die in obscurity like everyone else. Our whole world is dead, all these reasons to protest AI are not reasons to protest AI, they are reasons to protest rampant capitalism, corporatism, inequity, etc. I wanna be very clear, I'm an artist and most people close to me are artists, i have plenty of sympathy for those who will be displaced or suffer as things change, but 1: The toothpaste doesn't go back in the tube, and 2: its not the AI its the money. Art should not be the kind of commodity it is, it should not be made for money, it should be made for the love of art. When you take those 2 points together its real issue, because the capitalism toothpaste doesn't go back in the tube either. We need to build a post-capitalist society IMO that allows all of these paradigms to flourish outside concerns of money. Most of our dayjobs are pointless nonsense and should end, the stock market should be burnt to the ground, artists shouldnt be grinding day to day just to finish commissions and survive, they should only draw when they want to. Social media as it exists today should be crushed into lifelessness and replaced with free open source solutions that prioritize the choices of the individual and abandon algorithmic feeds almost entirely accept as an opt-in. We will have plenty of algorithms we can apply wherever we want, theres no good reason to sell us their bullshit built in algorithms when we could be accessing free open source ones that prioritize what we desire them to. We could all have access to everything, forever, already, if we just chopped up a few rich people, used their abundant resources to build and train robots and AI to replace the jobs we hate, and then lived our lives doing what we want. I'm not saying noone will work, but realistically, if we actually banded together as an entire race, it would take a very small amount of hours per person to oversee crews of AI robots, or in a few cases, do the jobs themselves. People don't do jobs because they love them, they do things because they love them, and if they are lucky, those things earn them money. We don't need it to be that way and its not better. Art under AI COULD be deeper, not less deep, but yes, under capitalism, it could get pretty fucked. Eat the rich.
No matter what happens, I want you to know that your art is beautiful. I hope you never stop making it, even if you no longer upload it
It's really crazy to think in the not so distant future many artists may have to verify themselves as legit, by sending in some kind of private video or speedpaint to the website they upload on of their art process, to prove they're legit, and then once this is done, they can then get some kind of checkmark or something to prove they've been verified.
But this looks like the future we're headed for. At least verification will give us a way to prove we're legit, so we don't get accused of using Ai.
There is a video AI too, made by Meta, so i don't think that way of verification is going to help at all sadly.
The probable future is humanity being replaced by AI, which is not a bad thing, per se. One could consider it as the next evolutionary step.
@@diagorasofmelos4345
bruh the next step of human evolution is being dead while lines of code take over.
sounds cool and here i thought i will get superpowers but i guess am dead and a program is pretending to be my grandson.
@@diagorasofmelos4345 Evolution is one thing evolving, not being replaced. So no, one could not consider it an evolution.
@@smail6865 Is it an actual speedpaint? I'm sure that if AI speedpaints start to surface, there will be other means of verification, even if it's going as far as sending physical artwork. Every digital artist is able to draw traditionally as well, even if we haven't picked up a pencil in ages in favor of tablet pen
the thing that steven gets that i think other videos don’t highlight enough is that it’s not about the ai. the ai is just the product. it’s about the developers, companies, businessmen, and capitalists behind it who will take a mile if you give them an inch. we’re being bogged down by technicalities and arguments but they’re just distractions. it’s never about the tool, it’s about the people behind the tool and what their agendas are.
It should be protected by copyright. I.e. you shouldn't be able to use someone's copyrighted works as tooling for your machine.
It's literally using someone's hard work to replace them. Using these tools in this way is absolutely evil.
@@hellomate639 ruclips.net/video/4xKjHHzLUQQ/видео.html
@@kenoctcercos4832 Absolute fucking propaganda.
People like you make me start to think that Satan is literally real and at work in the world.
That is my opinion of your choices and actions.
@@kenoctcercos4832 Do you know what conservatives and communists have in common?
They're fucking selfish. When conservatives say that communists are just selfish, they're right AND they're also projecting their own selfishness onto communists.
Hell is made up of conservatives and communists fighting each other.
Become a liberal, and actually give a damn about someone other than yourself.
@@hellomate639 This seems to be a set of arguments and not propaganda. If those arguments are valid and sound that would be another discussion.
So amazing plot twist when he said "it turns out that it's you are the tool to train the A.I"
Problem is there is no real investment of time or emotion... A painting that would take days, weeks, months or even years is now done in minutes. The cost of failure removed. Instant gratification... No bleeding or sweating... It's so sterile...
@@DMDvideo10 modern society’s culture of instant gratification and rapid consumerism will be the death of humanity’s dignity
@@crowfoot8059 Pretty much!
I wouldn’t care too much. I prefer real, physical painting made by an artist than a compiled image. Actually the emptiness of AI generated images is that it would put more value on the real deal.
If you master your craft strongly you will succeed for sure no matter how many AIs throw at you.
@@crowfoot8059… it already is
as a 77-year-old artist with limited time on this earth as a living organism, I can appreciate this talk in so many ways. First of all, my one and only desire was to be an artist (visual) since maybe 6 or 7. And, it has been a wonderful journey. My parents tried music-making and singing, but that didn't titillate my tingle-ees in the right chords. it always came back to visual two-dimensional art. I worked hard and made it. then watched, typesetting replaced, then board art, then inception to complication taken away from my creative work. i took and still take pride in my work. I can only imagine the next 80 years. After the war, the people that are left will be required to relearn the basics. The Neo-dark ages. Or, we the populace will be parasites sucking the tit of whatever machine we are attached to. The machine will be called "Mamatrix." And, when it figures out we are useless baggage we will be sucked dry of any information and discarded like Pampers. But in the long run, it won't matter because people will not be around to complain.
As a working artist and someone that cares immensely about human art, you just put put all my fears surrounding this on the plate and I hate you for it, but I also really appreciate you for it, if that makes any sense. Very important video and perspective more people needs to hear.
all these fears should be realised by everyone before theyre even created or come to fruition, We need to somehow create a large social wave that enforces lawmakers or politicians to fight against this... but how can we make them motivated to stop it?
@@Davidgopaint we can't. They gain nothing by fighting it. Just wait till this happens with literature, cinema, music and politics.
@@basswitch525 If you're going to just roll over, then shut up and get out of the way. You can either be useful, or stay out of this.
@@gabudaichamuda2545 I see your point, but people have tried to "create a large social wave that enforces politicians to fight against this" for countless problems. Global warming, oil, democracy, guns, schools, it just never worked. And all of these issues are easy compared to AI, because at least we have some control over them. AI is digital, and owned by companies who have no interest in losing profit for the sake of art, supported by a government that will be more than happy to have less "artists" and more "workers" in their economy.
I hate this. I want it to end, but it's been going on since before we were born. I'm not saying it's a lost cause, I just really want someone to come up with some concrete way of dealing with these things that isn't protesting and proposing new laws that are never gonna get pass anyways.
Same here! The way a knife craftsman cares about hand-made knives, we care about human-made art. The big question is: should we force other people to only enjoy human-mad art? We all buy cheaper manufactured knives that replaced a craftsperson-made product. I'm sure they're not thrilled about it, but it doesn't mean it's objectively wrong to manufacture objects? We can hope that, as for hand-made knifes, a part of the market still sufficiently appreciates human-made art to keep it going.
I like how fitting the drawn art piece is to the topic at hand. The conjoined mass of a creature with faint traces of humanity, merely displayed in recognizable shapes here and there. Faces, grimacing and laughing in hysteria, ignorant to the loss they incurred on themselves and others.
20 years from now this kind of comment could be AI generated...
Yeah looks like stable diffusion multiplayer on huggingface
@@AbraHaze84 text bots have already existed and far longer than image AI, 1997, Cleverbot, is probably the earliest example.
@@thealliedpowers I meant that this comment is very descriptive of something shown on screen... Does text bots know how to interpret what they "see" and comment about it?
@@AbraHaze84 interpretation and art commentary bots also take in data from the net so its about the same thing there. Just another artform being abused to make easy money.
The best thing about art is, always has been, and always will be getting to make it. The process does things to our brains that are profound.
Excellent Comment. This is absolutely true!
Yes. Creating Art is essential to the human experience and it will not die as long as we don't.
Thank you. I find the arguments pro-AI people make for writing, for example, to be absolutely impossible to take seriously.
These guys are telling me that just because half or more of their creative process was done and AI doesn't mean its any less creative. . . yeah right.
@@goldpeen2661 They wish they could have what we have worked for. I bet a lot of those people are trying to convince themselves more than anyone else that what they are doing is an equally valid form of creative expression. And besides making it yourself is the magical part, I wouldn't automate a single second of the process if I could.
what are u talking about? In the history of the earth 99.999999999999% of humans have NEVER created art. How on earth do u conclude it's essential to the human experience lol@@ineffablemars
Its hard to reason with most ai art bros bc the argument for human made art will always be an emotional one and some of these people have the emotional intelligence and human empathy of a potato.
U are so Damn on Point with that simple comment. They are so obliviously ignorant to the World that we are all in, social skills they don't seem to have!?!?!
@@50YrOldSK8R that is true I am a pro A.I. art but this is but a needed step to get true A.I.
I find rhetoric like this disingenuous. Nobody is arguing "against" human made art. It's you "anti-AI bros" who are arguing against other kinds of art.
@@WeAreCameron I’m fine with ppl making AI art for recreational use and uploading it to it’s contained communities, most people aren’t opposed to that. What human artists take issue with is the AI bros who mock and insult their process then brag about how AI (that trains and scans human art work) is going to replace their jobs.
@@rainqu "AI bros" is a non-issue
My biggest surprise is just how little other people care about it and sometimes are even excited to replace artists even in fields that should understand the importance of artists.
The programmers in the indie game dev space seem so eager to replace their fellow colleagues. It’s so disheartening.
There's definitely almost a feeling of glee and Schadenfreude at seeing artists replaced, as if, by virtue of having cultivated a skill, we deserve to get knocked down a peg.
It's disgusting, especially considering how much artists struggle to be taken seriously as workers and receive fair wages.
Oh yeah? And where were you when digital art became industry standard? Were you campaigning for the people who would lose their jobs, or were you rejoicing in the opportunity for effectively resourceless art?
Ethics are a farce. People only care about stuff that benefits them.
@@tahunuva4254 I don't feel as though you've watched the video. Digital art becoming industry standard being compared to what ai art is currently doing is a false equivalency. Some guy rolling up photoshop into the company office one day is a far cry from a robotic arm being rolled into a fords car factory. The similarities begin and end with the two being new tech. That's it. Especially when you consider industry veterans, who were there to witness the transition, have some history of traditional painting who now digitally paint. We're looking down a position where the artists simply ceases to exist as a job.
@@tahunuva4254 Digital art is a tool and requires mastery in it's own right. Photography had a similar backlash of artists worried but is of course now seen as it's own art form. This is fundamentally different; ai art is specifically made to undercut the labor of artists and is trained without proper compensation or credit to thousands of artists.
@@tahunuva4254 do you have mental retãrdation
Data-laundering has got to be the most accurate keyword for this discussion. Very well spoken
Indeed, ai is the perfect in between black box to launder your crimes. You could just point and blame the ai. "It's the ai, not me. I'm just researching the ai!".
There's no better time to exploit this than now. Exploiting others directly is illegal. But through the black box of ai, it's legal!
I could create a virus that steals data and says its the ai that creates it, not me. Got my hand completely squeaky clean.
Use ai to exploit, now!
maybe if you don't understand the first thing about machine learning and contemporary models, and even then it's just a hollow phrase not explaining anything. this is just uninformed fear-mongering.
@@minhuang8848 ah yes, fear mongering, its more scary than people losing their jobs.
oh no, all the people whinging and whining about how machines will take away their jobs they never had in the first place
yeah right, as if.
@@minhuang8848 Don't whine when you lose your job to AI.
Thank you for sticking up for Artists. The biggest tragedy of this is discouraging young people from beginning the steep learning curve of illustration. Why start knowing that you never be better than AI and the work prospects are forever shrinking? Young people need hope not despair. I hope these companies get sued into oblivion.
Yea this is me right now. I just started my path to a graphic designer career after thinking through every other career option. I am doing a 1 year internship right now and don’t know if I should stop and pick something else or continue.
The job I am aiming for will either not be in demand anymore or the field will evolve to something completely new and I could get a great job that doesn’t exist now
Lol, now they can do it instantly and have instant gratification. They can make art without need the muscle technique to do it. Just like how computers have allowed the JWTS to see farther and teach us more, the calculator didn't stop math.
@@narutobankai I worked for an old man who was known as ''the human calculator.'' He worked for a top accountancy firm straight out of school and had lots of money and even bought himself a plane. He was replaced by a calculator in the 50's and was never in demand again.
@@PlsSubscrib AI will ultimately make us all obsolete, first white collar jobs, then blue collar jobs as bots roll off the factory line in a decade or so. 20 years from now there will be little to no middle class, we will all be on some sort of UBI and society will undergo the biggest change in Human history.
@@PlsSubscrib I don't know man, you either are not an artist or you're just those guys who ignore the evidence. You said a lot of things that are outdated and nonsense, if i don't say "ai is better", that doesn't make ai not better than me. Easy as that. I know it won't be me, the work won't be mine, but we can't just live of self satisfaction, be honest with yourself, it looks like it's what you repeat yourself in the mirror to escape from reality, and i don't want to ruin it, but i want you to open your eyes. Yeah, nothing we can do, literally. But atleast we are prepared to loose our job. People won't care if it is not you, people are greedy just as those guru youtube videos oversaturating everything, comic books, kid books, color books for kids and all that sh1t man. The guy in the video made completely sense. Especially the part where he said that everything will become worthless. This is what i always said, having so many things on demand is completely ruining the beauty of art in it's purest form. Art is cool because it is made with dedication and brilliancy from the people who put all their lifetime work into it, willing and dedication. We are lost, and that is a damn fact. When i read people comparing AI to calculators i just want to punch myself in the face so hard i wake up and forget about it. It's literally retarded, like comparing a damn shaver to scissors, makes no sense. I could stay here and discuss all day about this... Ai is not a TOOL as is a REPLACEMENT and that my friend, is a fact. Prepare to get ruined.
I love the "looking into the mouth of the lion" analogy. I feel like a lot of artists are stuck in denial right now, trying to scrape together any reasons why AI art is good for the art community at large.
Actually, it seems the artistic community is united in being opposed to AI art. The ones who claim this is good are other industries(music most specifically). Animation is still opposed to AI art, and the writing and voice acting communities have started to also oppose AI generation.
@@laurentiuvladutmanea3622 And now writers and voice actors have joined the fight against AI, this is no longer a one-sided war. I was terrified we were going to get trampled and conquered one sector at a time but in a twist of irony, the speed at which AI can grow may be its own downfall in managing to unite almost every major creative sector at once.
It's contrarianism. It's why they're is so many RUclips videos defending the worst of every media series
Great video.
One thing that is worth pointing out, is that music isn't being treated differently because of musicians, but because so many of these musicians are signed to huge record labels that have the resources to enforce their copyright. The AI companies foresaw the legal trouble this could cause and said "let's not".
As I say this, I do wonder if these "capped profit" companies are being short-sighted about images, because their datasets include intellectual property from companies like Disney, and that seems like a lawsuit waiting to happen.
I think there’s also an inherent difference in the amount of effort it takes to consume visual art versus music. It takes a second or 2 to look at an image and have a strong impression about it. It takes at least 30 seconds if not more to get an impression from audio, and 2-5 minutes to experience the entire thing.
The effort to get feedback from the ai-generated pieces is much smaller and way faster for images.
But make no mistake, ai is coming for every industry. The underlying problem is the way capitalism embraces automation as a means to reduce labor costs.
Long-term, I imagine a world where human-created art (or any good), will be prized simply for its novelty and our inherent connection to it. But the short-term outlook is pretty grim for all workers and the way we trade our labor in exchange for the necessities to live our lives. They are just coming for visual artists first for the reasons outlined in this video.
record companies cant do much since style cannot be copyrighted.
@@CapApollo The music industry has established precedent with sampling.
AI models essentially take sampling to a new extreme.
I hope they get sued into the fucking stone age.
This is just plain not true. Plenty of corporations have their codebases uploaded to GitHub but were captured by co-pilot largely without incident.
There is one lawsuit that will probably be a precedent setter for the entire industry. Frankly, I don't think anything is going to come of the lawsuit
As a full time working artist and the sole earner for my family, thank you for putting into words everything I've been feeling recently.
Perhaps you should switch jobs and go for anything that is actually needed and paid. And perhaps other members of your family can start looking for those jobs too.
@@haitaelpastor976 perhaps you shouldn't give unasked career advises to people you know nothing about.
@@nobody-nk8pd Perhaps you should already know that being on the internet risks getting exactly that.
@@haitaelpastor976 Perhaps I just hate assholes.
@@nobody-nk8pd Perhaps you put the asshole label on anyone who's speaking the truth.
So on point. Thanks for this work. I'm an AI researcher and an artist (at the level of a hobbyist). I made a video last week about this exact thing... This feeling of, "What's the point anymore?" paired with the economic consequences of automating creative expression. Got a huge amount of backlash, spurred an 130-comment flame war on Reddit, and got doxxed. Spent a long week thinking about this and put out a new video basically saying that I believe in the resilience of artists. Artists are so resourceful and so creative that they can fold any technology into their process. But that adversity *can* be made a tool doesn't mean it was *made* to be a tool, and AI can far more easily just be used as automation.
This is the first anti AI video I’ve come across. Every single other I’ve come across just blindly calls this trend progress. Thanks for offering I different perspective.
Some fantastic food for thought, I very much appreciate your insight on this touchy subject
I’m actually recording a podcast with Hardy Fowler tomorrow on AI and I’m going to surely be tapping into your perspective
I will keep my eye out for it Adam! Will be very interested to hear your discussion, good luck with it.
Ah yes, opt out, "I stole your stuff tell me if you don't like it", the best type of copyright protection. Should do that in the supermarket.
Ok. What if they trained Ai based on stock and consented art? U know what, You would still be hating it.
Ai won't replace real artists using canvas. It will only replace boring unoriginal clones of digital artists that just changed eyes and hair color of characters. Ai doesn't generate just by prompts. U can draw better stuff using img2img by improving your sketches and anatomy.
Ai is here to stay. People who draw for fun don't earn money. People who draw for money don't enjoy it. It's like any other job.
I'm a professional artist and used to draw for fun since childhood. I started posting some very good art online, but I hated it when I did it for money. But Ai is good. Yes. Cope with it. Stop hating ai. Read the free IMF book *Gen-Ai: Future of Work* and choose the jobs that won't be replaced by Ai.
This is ageing like wine and will continue to do so.
Keep seeing same comments over and over again.
"You can't stop progress, Steven!"
None says anything about stopping AI technology. All he talks about is a thing that many adult people should kind of easily understand and practice - *CONSENT*
No means yes 🤣
This comment is SO underrated. That's exactly what the problem is here. Millions of artists work and billions of hours work of blood sweat and tears have been taken in an instant to train AI. But "oh well, progress" ☠️ Um, no, literal theft and zero consent. And of course zero fcks given by the creators of AI. Recently saw "the father of AI" (whatever his name is) is having an existential crisis or something... Yeah. Um. No sympathy. 🙄
You seem to be confusing progress with 'devolution' Agiranto. Catch up!
You consented to your art being looked at and downloaded the moment you posted it on the internet, so cry about it.
I feel like the biggest thing we have going against ai art is just the fact that people have an inclination and bias towards "real" art. This can be seen in sculpting, where hand sculpted artworks are valued more moulded factory line models. People follow their favourite artists similarly to how they follow their favourite bands. People use art as a means for interpersonal connection just as much as advertising or marketing in a corporate sphere. The community aspect of art and the respect to each other in the industry I hope will avoid the redundancy of artists.
Sadly, with our interactions with our favorite artists being limited to press releases and other digital social media, and the increased intelligence of automated chat bots, we may well experience in our lifetimes, not knowing if our favorite artists are real human beings doing original work, AI bots, or humans using AI bots as a way to exploit others, by offering the persona of being a human creation.
Ironically enough, Philip K Dick, the famous sci-fi author, wrote about this sort of phenomena several decades ago. He was definitely tapped into something.
""The tactic of poisoning Linda Fox with small doses of mercury was an artful one. Long before she died (if she did die) she would be as mad as a hatter -- literally, since it had been mercury poisoning, mercury used to process felt hats, that had driven the English hatters of the nineteenth century into famous organic psychosis.
I wish I had thought of that, Bulkowsky said to himself. Intelligence reports stated that the chanteuse had become hysterical when informed by a C.I.C. agent of what the cardinal intended if she did not decide for Jesus -- hysteria and then temporary hypothermia, followed by a refusal to sing "Rock of Ages" in her next concert, as had been scheduled.
On the other hand, he reflected, cadmium would be better used than mercury because it would be more difficult to detect. The S.L. secret police had used trace amounts of cadmium on unpersons for some time, and to good effect.
...Galina said, "But if she's destroyed, the colonists will grumble. They're dependent on her."
"Linda Fox is not a person. She is a class of persons, a type. She is a sound that electronic equipment, very sophisticated electronic equipment, makes. There are more of her. There will always be. She can be stamped out like tires."
"I feel sorry for her," Bulkowsky said. How must it feel, he asked himself, not to exist? That's a contradiction. To feel is to exist. Then, he thought, probably she does not feel. Because it is a fact that she does not exist, not really. We ought to know. We were the first to imagine her.
Or rather -- Big Noodle had first imagined the Fox. The A.I. system had invented her, told her what to sing and how to sing it; Big Noodle set up her arrangements...even down to the mixing. And the package was a complete success.
Big Noodle had correctly analyzed the emotional needs of the colonists and had come up with a formula to meet those needs. The A.I. system maintained an ongoing survey, deriving feedback; when the needs changed, Linda Fox changed."
- Philip K. Dick, The Divine Invasion (1981)
That bias is solely cultural though. You can see this by people changing their mind once a piece they previously enjoyed was revealed to them to be generated. Or if that information is simply not known, there are well liked musicians who are essentially produced with assembly line precision, with dozens of people working on the tracks.
@@reck0n3r Dude the covers on his books are SO MUCH BETTER than a lot of the current digital made book covers. They are on a style like the covers of old videogames and it is just phenomenal the level of draftsmanship that they present.
As a game developer myself, I hate to say it but I will use AI created background art for free, and hire less graphic artists because I am a one man studio. I know article authors who feel the same way about pictures for their articles etc... And we are just the tip of the iceburg. There will be less work for graphic artists overall as AI quality improves and surpasses those of humans.
Thanks for taking the time to make this video. I agree with more or less everything you said, but to be honest.. if I had any say in it I would want these 'tools' to be gone entirely. It's just another slippery slope into oblivion, whether they get your permission to participate or not, or whether they compensate you or not. To me the most disturbing thing about all this is the ongoing aggressive trend towards acceleration and devaluation of effort and time. Who actually wants this? Who has anything to gain from this on a long enough time line? Grifters, narcissists and corporations.
It blows my mind how artists (the same ones who are upset by the capriciousness of social media algorithms) think this is somehow a good thing. We're already drowning in content oversaturation and the algorithms on twitter and IG reward constant activity. Now that these platforms are also being flooded by bright glittery and bizarre meaningless art ("created in collaboration with AI"), it's only going to get worse. If i had to force my thoughts in an optimistic direction, i'd say that maybe the complete oversaturation with this hollow visual drivel will make people hunger for art that actually has a voice behind it that you can feel. Maybe it will make people hungry to see something more human. I do feel like this is wishful thinking though, because if an image is distracting and bright enough, the eyes will go to it. It's easy to forget the value of humanity if you stop coming into contact with it. Especially when there's a million other things that could potentially be causing the depression and anxiety that it inevitably creates.
@Terrorists Win I am definitely planning too, I just have to properly organize my thoughts about it first (don't have the gift of Steven's eloquence lmao)
I will say that, while I may not represent the average person, AI art has made me fall in love with human made art all over again. I look at it with a level of wonder that I never have before. I am not a visual artist. I hope others feel this way too.
The pure eye candy nature of it will create a mini renaissance.
@@geraldtoaster8541 That's really excellent to know! 😂reassuring
@@CosmicSpectrumArt You could start with Steven's transcript and strip the valuable info from it.
I'm a 15 year old high school student, after many years I have finally worked up the motivation and courage to try and improve myself and my art. I'm seriously considering giving up on art because of this... I still have time to change my life path, but somehow I'm still drawn back to art. The thing is, there seems to be no real solution or prevention in place, as much as I want to keep going I know it will bring me nothing but sadness to see AI art in museums while my art is still laying on the floor of my bedroom.. i am crying while typing this out. Is it true that I must give up my dreams? i am begging for someone to say its not, but everything i see is telling me this
I am 14 and literally in the exact same boat as you. Couldnt sleep last night, I had an existential crisis. Were so young and we have our whole lives ahead of us, its messed up.
U are just 15 my younger fellow Artist friend & I understand u want to b a successful artist in the future. One of The most important things u can do now is draw bc u love to & bc u just can't not create. Use those emotions u are feeling in a positive way & turn that Shit into making your Artistic Passion stronger & fight for that Art Dream u want. Doubt anything I have said will help or even matter to u & thats ok too. I just hate to hear a young artist give it up so quickly for a reason that is unknown for 1 thing. Keep it up !!
Never give up on your dreams, continue to draw. However, art is not a viable career path anymore (I'm sorry it's just the truth) so you will have to pursue a different career and make art as a hobby. If you can get good enough you might be able to break into the industry one day, but please don't fully pursue art as a career path because it is extremely volatile and I don't want to see you struggling to make ends meet.
Exact same position. Best thing to do is to accept it and keep it as a hobby.
Welp quit and give up. You must not really want to be a artist. Stop making excuses and whining. Be a artist or give up.
Collective lawsuits is the answer. Artists should finally start to protect themselves legally. Creative AI's should get their databases open for public scrutiny and sued to hell for each and any copyright and plagiarism infringement that is found.
Learning from others is not plagiarism.
@@TheNeomaster15 The A.I copies 1:1, and the companies stole millions of copyrighted works from artists that they had no right to. Shut your mouth, and keep it that way.
@@gabudaichamuda2545 You don't know how the AIs work. They learn by scanning the noise of art and analyzing it pixel by pixel. Eventually learning an apple is red and an apple is round. No where is the works stored or re-used.
@@TheNeomaster15 you're lying.
@@cynxmanga Search up "noise map" and ai art. I would post a link but youtube doesn't like that.
Just started taking art seriously this month and had a lot of enthusiasm. Now with all the news about AI art, I'm questioning whether this was/is worth anything or whether I should quit before being utterly disappointed. I wish I had more time to think about these things, but it's my senior year of high school, and time waits for no one
Edit: Big thanks to everyone who's commented; your thoughts have provided fantastic insight! You all have reminded me of why I began my art journey in the first place: my burning desire to create. So, whether or not I pursue art as a career, I'll always be an artist. Thanks again everyone, much love!!
Keep your chin up, and summon your inner steel. Now is a time for vigor, not despair.
Of course it's worth pursuing,you will enrich your life in so many ways,you can achieve things you never thought possible and therein lies the reward,to hell what these programs can do, they're not you
Keep it up, you can do this!
Godspeed Snerg! Whatever your passion came out to be.
If you want to be realistic going into the future, ask yourself why you want to learn art first. If it's because you want to make art exactly how you want it, or if you want to express yourself, or for a similar reason, go for it. It's absolutely worth it in that case. But if you plan on making a living on drawing and painting, I would contemplate reconsidering.
Unless it's niche or taboo art, or you become a master artist, or you know you can secure a position in a company (which are usually slow to adopt new tech), drawing and painting is going to become increasingly compromised for artists to make a living on as these AI become better and their images increasingly flood the internet.
I oust drawing and painting because there's so much easily available data to train AI on it's almost unfathomable (Stable Diffusion was trained on a couple billion images, with a b). Other fields like 3D art will be safe for the _near future,_ as there's significantly less training data available _for the time being._
These companies taking on the AI market are dealing in millions of dollars, at least. We're talking tens of thousands of dollars in electricity _just to train the models_ when it comes to processing that many images. So despite the uploader's wishes, I have the feeling not much is going to alter the path we're on.
Thank you so much for taking a strong stance. I see so many artists and people faking positivity, turning blind eye at catastrophe that is happening before our very eyes.
Artists need to speak out. They need to show the world whats happening right now. Before its too late.
@@NiloNova
for a Ai you don't really know how to create good text .
@@NiloNova
will you are not an artist 💀or skilled in any way you cant replace something useless because it is doing nothing to begin with .
@@NiloNova You are psychotic. Plain and simple.
There's no way we'll see a perfect AI. It will look like it does now even in 10 years. They can't "steal" my silly cheap chibi animations I uploaded here, for example. I still think it's an amazing opportunity, not even faking positivity here - people like me struggle hard with backgrounds and inspiration, novelAI and Midjourney helped me to get back into trying harder to improve myself and using some of these pictures as reference. Big artists are pretty much safe. It can help a lot of people, but yeah, in the end all the "mid" commission artists out there who aren't insanely popular and big will be screwed. Even though I think it still is an opportunity.
Of course it's pretty pointless nowadays to commission someone to draw a picture of a random autumn forest or a random anime character for a newspaper article. Concept artists might not be needed in the same way as before, a typical deviantArt artist with 10$ commissions will have problems finding clients because the 9$ novelAI sub is cheaper and you get better results.
But overall? It's pretty hard to be a 100% doomer imo, completely ignoring the positive aspects. The world changes and so does art, sadly. It's almost impossible to stop it and there's no point in crying.
@@bighatastrea
oh on ... don't look up meta Ai generated videos.
they are in the first stage of making a ai that can create videos (including animation) Ai .
"When you prompt, you are shouting your inner heart into the next dataset" @19:31
As someone who studied writing in college, I got some intense chills the moment you said this: Because of the poetry in your phrasing; and that I knew deep down it makes absolute perfect sense. The data collection never really stops--working in the IT world has at least taught me that.
Cancelled my Midjourney subscription. I make music. So I don't really have the money to support artists. I was using pics for random songs. I decided to commission my first piece of digital art last week. Working with the artist on what I wanted was a really cool experience. He nailed it. That's the biggest difference for me. There is zero humanity in AI art. As where the artist was a real person living in Pittsburgh with a broken furnace. I'm 100% on board with most these arguments. Artists of all mediums should support each other in this.
My only critique would be that they seem to be very supportive of the future capabilities of AI in support of their arguments. The ability to use prompts and data sets will improve vastly. But AI will certainly lack imagination for a very very long time. The human mind is just too complicated. That won't necessarily save your job though.
By that logic I could get AI images and say I made them myself (Assuming they look normal) and Id be praised, but if I say they are AI then people wouldnt care
@@michaelschemmel1984 BRO thats one of the easiest arguments I make for people who share the same line of thinking as OP here.
They say its not art solely for the external negative stigma that generative art has. They aren't even judging the art for its compostion, tone, mood, perspective, shading, contrast, general creativity, etc. etc; Ya know, the things that make the art actually art.
I find it so crazy that I could generate something that looks nice and that a human could draw or create and show it to people and they say it looks nice but then if I said that SAME piece of art was generative art they would immediately say it's sucks and isn't art...
The cognitive dissonance fr...
he probably used ai art for inspiration for his own creation. you over estimate the human mind and under estimate ai. you had mj so you have seen the amazong things ai has created with 3 or 4 word prompts.
@@GoharioFTW The people you are arguing against are correct. If it was AI generated, it really does automatically suck and isn't art. You can step out into nature and see a sight that is breathtakingly beautiful, but it's not art because it's an accident. Intention and effort is what makes things art. A pile of rocks can look pretty, but only when a human shapes those rocks is it art.
AI art is just an accident by a random algorithm. It's not art. That it's hard to tell the difference between AI and human art does nothing to change this fact.
@Magicwillnz ok can't wait to see how you're doing in a year when ai generated art can't be discerned from physicl and digital art and you're biting your fingernails at every single image you see online and end up accusing people of using ai generated art and shaming them when in reality they didn't do it and then praising someone for their art when in reality they did use ai generated models good luck
Also your example with stepping out into nature made 0 sense. Are you saying people who do landscape photography or any still life photography of nature aren't artists?
I hope people in the community share this around. Everyone needs to see it.
true.
yes
old man yells at cloud. yeah everyone needs to see this lol. prepare for egodeath...
@@therealOXOC I'm fully prepared haha. AI Art is inevitable at this point. Luckily I'm not too bad at maths so I've got something to fall back on. I just think people should know that we're being fucked over by shady business practices and stop naively viewing it as a "tool" for artists.
@@telepathicfish1489 what can i say. stable diffusion is already here like he mentions. there is no running back the model. it's a tool for artist as i can see many artist that are not that ego centered using it. even if they stop training on living artist it's a tool that is here to stay and seeing only the negatives makes yourself depressed. it is so much fun sitting around with my little niece a producing awesome images that she thinks of. She likes drawing aswell and i think that will never stop but i can't predict the future. looking at the positives makes much more sense to me than to put up a video where some guy is drawing a guy fisting an asshole and allover psycho shit he deals with in his art. it's pretty dark art he draws and i only want to see this one drawing of him and don't hear more negative stuff form him. i kinda understand him but i know many artist that would never put their stuff on the internet and make a good living out of it because they don't trust the web. if you use it as marketing tool be prepared to be used as a marketing tool. i'm always drunk on satrurdays so excuse the rambling...
Art is perhaps the oldest surviving form of human expression. Evidence of literature, politics, philosophy, religion, and language itself go back merely thousands of years. We have art that survives from tens of thousands of years ago. Art is a fundamental part of who we are as humans. I find it profoundly tragic to see art threatened by AI.
I see the "threatened by ai" as a very narrow minded and wrong aproach and thought. It actually makes me chuckle a bit because every time a new medium in art was invented people cried about the death of art and the work of artists being devalued. Photoraphy being a prime example. "No that everybody can make Portraits so quick and without skill, what are the portrait artists going to do!" What happened was, that yes, portraitry as an industry got thrown over, that is the progress. But out of that came whole new branches of art, so many new possibilitys. You people will be the horse breeders crying about the car, while other artists are already out there develing into the topic and discovering what actually can be done with AI. Its a new form of art, it will change the status quo, but its not going to end art. Its just going to be different.
@@theexchipmunk 1. This is not a new medium. It is a dehumanization of digital art.
2. The limits of what it can do are known. There is no self expression.
@@digitalcurrents I sense a tone of naivety in your random internet mutterings there, stranger. Ever heard the saying "Road to hell is paved with good intentions"? Like life on earth with its diverse creatures and thoughts and minds as we do in this discourse, progress too isn't a one way road. Not all progress is good, nor without its consequences.
I for one, want the AI to thrive or even fall into the wrong hands so when bankrupts, the scream, the doom and gloom comes I can only laugh at these so called "progress", for the clueless to know that the knife may hurt them, they first need to cut themselves firsthand.
its not threatened art has always been technological with humans involved still is always will be. the is is the dumbest thread on the topic online.
@@jimimased1894 I mean yeah it's not really threatened, but dumbest as it may be do we really have to deny artists from their thoughts and concerns? Like.. This video, topic & thread?
thanks for pointing out this part 19:20 , that all the people are training the AI to know what prompts are good, and interested in seeing.
Not using AI programs, is the right move.
I’ve spent the past few months working on an AI generated graphic novel. I’ve had no desire to sell or make money off of it, just something for fun. I’ve been torn about the impacts of AI generated art on artists and I’ve admittedly been ignorant about the systems in place behind the programs I’ve used. I think my ignorance has been a willful blinder I’ve placed on myself to allow me to proceed with a passion project while feeling guilt free. This video has absolutely changed my mind about AI generated art, even a project like mine. This is difficult but I’m deleting the work I’ve created. Maybe I’ll take a crack at it in the future if there’s an opt in system for artist and especially if there’s a system for artist compensation but for now, I think the artist need to be heard and a stand needs to be made against AI generated art. Thanks for taking the time to put this essay together, it’s working.
It's great to read that Steven's video has had a positive impact on you. :) Regarding taking a crack at it in the future, you should draw the graphic novel yourself. You said yourself that it's for fun, so why not?
All artists have the experience of their skills not measuring up to their vision. This never goes away. The happy reality is you already have all you need to express yourself creatively.
Good. You changed your mind for the better.
I think it’s great that your passionate about comics, I am too. And if you still want to make a comic I think you should go for it, it takes a lot of work and you’re gonna doubt yourself along the way but it’ll be worth it in the end. As someone who was self taught before starting art school you can find a lot of helpful resources online. If you have any artist friends I’m sure they would be happy to help you bring your vision to life. 99% of artists are very supportive of each other and are always happy to offer help and advice when asked.
You might want to do a bit more research on this topic, than just take the word of fearmonger like this, spouting false or inflamatory statements. Look for yourself at how AI art is trained. Train YOUR OWN model. See how it's not copying, but rather learning rules of how things should look. Use your own concept art, and allow the AI to polish it uniquely, not copy-pasting any existing art into your work... but applying the rules of shading, color, and light, that it has gained from analyzing other works of art, just like any other artist...
you are by far ,literally the single and only artists that i 100% agree with on this topic , i kept looking up this topic and all i sawwas wishfull thinking artists repeating "it's just a too lto help artists" and i was like , no , it's not , it's not made for artists , no one said that exept artists and deep down everyone knew
they kept sayign "it's just a way to look up refferences and ideas" , no , that's just one use you came up with the cope with the idea while altho it's possible this is not what the ai was made for , they didn't spend years and fortune just for you to get refferences from it , it's called ai "art" generators not ai refference generators or texture generators , it saddned me that most of the damage was done by artists themselves and not even by the ai users who can usually barely formulate two words together.
i really hope artists come and bond together against this and not allow outsiders who are compleatly out of touch and care nothing about the craft to tramble it using artists work itself and let these corporations earn billions with artists own hard work.
For real, artists saying they use it for reference are admitting they didn't come up with their own compositions or ideas in their work. Its like having no faith in yourself. Giving up on thinking out of pure laziness. Its why I don't respect anyone using midjourney or painting over novelai, its like double plagiarism. It easy to see 'artists' becoming dependent on these companies. I as a viewer of the work have no idea where the AI stops and your contributions begin, off the bat the work isn't really theirs no matter how much they rationalize.
@@chinogambino9375 Isn't your argument just a rant on looking up references of any kind? Nothing you complained about is really related to AI models, so I can hardly agree.
As much as I loathe the unethical and anti-humanist aspects of these models, they're effectively glorified Google Images (people just pretend they've created what they find). Whether references are real or generated, laziness comes when you settle for whatever you find and copy it, rather than looking for something specific that fills your own idea and using it to inform your own composition.
@@rikamayhem Having seen how midjourney is used, no its not the same. If you type in a scene you want to see into these image generators they tend to follow very effective artistic rules of composition since they are trained on human work. The results people want to see are ones they can lift and use. Its very hard to not be influenced by a finished composition made by a generator especially after a few iterations, I take issue with that mental heavy lifting being outsourced. I know for certain artists cannot be honest using these things.
When a human absorbs photographs and paintings to use as reference its very unlikely its particular enough to their subject matter to be lifted. The skill is adapting your own visual library, problem solving and life experience to fill in the gaps. If we side step that by copying the composition of another work we usually call it a study and credit the original image, we'd feel dishonest otherwise since we owe too much of our work in that instance to the original. To me if you use an AI for reference it is your collaborator, you just are not the sole author.
Think about it this way. Is a human author who has read a 100 books and then decides to write his own novel the same as a human author who lets an AI trained on 100 books write his draft? One chapter? Part of a chapter? Uses the AI draft as his 'inspiration' for a rewrite? The latter can still write his name on the novel but personally I can't take the attribution seriously.
@@chinogambino9375 Fair enough, your argument is much clearer now and I largely agree.
I realise that AI-art platforms, specially Midjourney and "img2img" tools, encourage iterating on generated images repeatedly until you get a precise result, and I agree each iteration does hamper the user's share of the original thought put into their work.
However, and while I don't even plan on using these models, I think that, as a user, you do have agency in how particular to your subject you choose to generate references, so this is just revealing how many artists would rather take the easy way when given the chance.
@SHAHNMONO Then please elucidate me, because otherwise I'm getting the impression you just have awful reading comprehension.
I love your way with words. Great essay.
Glad you liked it! Thanks Sinix
it's the og himself !
@@StevenZapataArt Your art is quite the Bondage fantasy (no slam, just saying)
It's sad how people who lack the skill to produce art themselves are the most eager to jump on the opportunity and "dethrone" the artists.
I dont think theyre doing it to dethrone anyone, theyre probably just enjoying to see cool things get created
I gotta jump in here, chief.
I'm not exactly the type of person who's eager to pay for a serious commission, not because I'm not willing to but because I don't want to waste my money or be the worst nitpicker imaginable. I am not skilled enough to create detailed works myself. Even if I did endure the countless hours of education and practice, there's no guarantee I'd know about or have access to the tools and techniques required to perfectly imprint a mental image onto canvas.
If I would commission a work, the amount of back and forth would render any profit to the artist completely meaningless. The sheer amount of time wasted on revisions and attempting to understand precisely what I'm looking for when I myself don't have the ability to explain it. It's more of an "I'll know it when I see it" sort of thing. I lose money, the artist puts in more work than they've any reason to, I don't get what I wanted, they feel underappreciated. It's a bad situation all around.
AI won't complain when I spend 10+hrs demanding revision after revision, telling it to scrap the whole thing and start over multiple times, and I wouldn't have to feel guilty about being problematic or cheated our of my money for something unusable.
My primary motivation in AI generated art is to spend countless hours learning how to define specific instruction sets that yield precise results. I've no intention of harming anyone. Option 1 is AI. Option 2 is accepting the impossibility. There is no option 3 in this scenario. I'm sure the majority of personal use cases reflect mine. It's just interesting to tinker, and artists tend to get upset when you ask them to satisfy dozens if not hundreds of consecutive requests.
As an artist myself I embrace this as a tool for ideas . Traditional artists said the exact same thing about digital artists years ago . You have to face reality my friend this is where we're going if you can't keep up you're going to be finished . I'm sorry it sounds mean dude but this is the way how it's going . Either you adapt or become extinct
They aren't doing it to spite you, it isn't personal, they just want art made cheaply and quickly
@@trajectoryunown *Then sit your ass down for 15 minutes a day, and learn to draw.* You want it? FIND THE DAMNED TIME. Just because you don't want to learn, and want to make an excuse to not pay for it, doesn't mean you get to steal from us.
Is that clear?
I don't get why luddite is used as an insult. Luddites did not revolt because of machines, but because of bad payment and terrible working conditions coupled with a total lack of help if they got hurt in the factory.
Now tell me, does that sound enjoyable to you?
I had a guy on my Facebook actually have the balls to defend using AI data sets bc “ it still takes a lot of work to type prompts into a computer and I’m doing most of the work still”
To which I replied
“ yeah I here you. I’m a master chef bc I am REALLY good at ordering a pizza. I don’t cook
The pizza but damn can I place an order, painstakingly describing the pepperoni, extolling the virtues of thin crust! People don’t understand how much work goes into ordering a pizza!”
That is a very good analogy.
Yeah, and as Ai Art improves Ai "Artists" will become obsolet quicky themselves.
@@IvellScarlett wont that be funny. XD
How is that an analogy?
but some people want $5 pizza made by stoners. Cheap and easy is what makes the world go round. We all are guilty of machine made things that a person could have done. But no one wants to pay the prices of artisan items for every single thing you own.
"Better technology does not mean more, better jobs for horses" ~CGP Grey
The terrifying thing is, humans are the new horses.
@@carultch ive been saying this for years
@@hyleriangaming22143 Hopefully we'll one day realize, we cannot automate our way to prosperity forever. At some point, a critical mass of unemployment will cut corporate revenue, and we'll regret trying to make the human brain obsolete.
Technology doesn't have to do your job as good as you. It just has to do it good enough if it's some combination of faster and cheaper. The cheap part is important, because as more workers lose income to technological disruption, whether they like it or not they'll only be able to afford cheap things that aren't as good as when the same things were made by hand. Over time, the cheap machine-made stuff becomes the norm, and the majority of people forget what real quality used to be.
I've done a video (in french) saying somewhat the same as you, but in a softer way, because I didn't want to be "too dramatic". But now I'm just sad to not be able to saw your video sooner, because my video would have be totally different. I feel currently overwhelmed by all you said, it's a lot to process, especially knowing that my main dream is to make my comics books come true, just because I have a story to tell. I'll need time to process all you said, but I think i'll do an "add on" video about this subject.
I've already add the link to your video on mine. So thank you for video. Really.
After following this technology unfold for months, this has by far been the most informative video I've seen in explaining it's true intentions. That double standard of the usage of visual art vs. music really said a lot about the companies behind this tech. They know big record labels would come after them if they used copyrighted music. Yet, individual artists are having their work used for training this tech unkowingly and without compensation.
I now fully realise, we the artists, are the losers in all of this. All artists much watch this asap.
100%, they know what they're doing.
Just as a thought experiment, imagine if the government skimmed this much data to train any software. I'd imagine the reaction would be way different.
Sadly artists are always the losers, hence the term "starving artist". But artist are also the best at adapting, and you're really not giving them enough credit. Examples - Camera ( didn't replace realism in art) - 3d printers(didn't replace sculptures) - Digital Art on Screens ( hasn't replaced real paintings in houses) - AI art will be it's own thing, but artists will always be around, and mostly starving as always.
there’s next to no work for sculpture and the painting market isn’t that big. There’s only just a small handful of people who do sculpture and it’s not consistent for most (sculptor/concept artist myself)
Camera is a different medium. AIs a different threshold. supersedes basically all of it not on a canvas commercially. (Potentially photography in some respects too) and later on; animation, movie effects and so on. there will be a couple traditional painters around, but the vast majority are going to be displaced. We’ll never see a Kim jung gi again because there wouldn’t be enough work to support them drawing that much.
Everyone was wondering what the vast amount of indiscriminate data collection was for; now we’re here. Should have been illegal, because it sure doesn’t feel ethical. Especially now that literally all someone has to do, (especially in mjv4) is upload a photo of themselves in a pose, then just type “painting by [insert artists name here]” and get a result almost immediately more than good enough for most standard clients.
@@stinkypete9070 As another thought experiment, imagine a single individual just asks you for a bunch of personal data. Are you likely to just hand it over to them? *We keep giving them permission!*
The way that government reclassified, extended, and perverted IP laws in the last 80 years is one of the largest thefts against culture to exist in history.
Something that's really bothering me is when I explain my worries of horrible realities "AI generater" pose, and people just tell me that won't happen. I'm telling its already happening and they say people will always want human made work. Unwitting downplaying the issues, talking to people who are not artists has only made me more convinced that the worst possible outcome is the most likely.
@@reinasayama8077 When I see people commenting that “huge amounts” of the population continue to prefer content made by individuals I see people committing the act of assuming that their ideas are representative of the majority when I see no evidence that this is correct. People see what they want, but in the end it’s companies like Google Facebook Twitter etc etc etc, that are driven by algorithms and increasingly autonomous code like AI, that have long ago in the history of modern Big tech swallowed the world and all the hopeful humanists with it. They’ve been laughing themselves to the bank for decades already by profiting off the vast majority of the world’s docile behavior in regards to their profiteering, predation, and control. This new turn tech is taking with AI is just beginning, and it’s already not looking so hopeful. I have the same issue as the original commenter. People I talk to tend to try to minimize the entire situation and end up appearing tragically ignorant. And everyone having this discussion now has already been alive long enough to even know what it was like before AI became a thing. Relatively soon there will be walking talking voting choosing humans who will have never known a world without ubiquitous and likely insidiously pervasive AI. I’m not a fortune teller, but I think it’s pretty likely that, just like every generation has done before them, they will grow up and grow into the tech of their time and be the fuel for its continued endless sprawling grasp on social structures, economies, governments, ART…
Remember vintage lace? That used to be handmade, too.
They also believed that people would prefer handmade lace over those made by machines.
Today, the majority of lace is machine-made.
@@danielawesome36 Good example. Indeed, how many previously hand-made things are no longer made by hand, but by machine or simply printed or coded? It would take too long to count.
@@reinasayama8077 i dont wanna be a boomer but i have already seen people (non artist normal people) not caring by both (human or ai) which it would lead to them to not care for whoever wins, at the end they dissmiss art in general, so if Ai at some point can do what is on their mind, they will be ok with the disappearance of artist and therefore allowing the path for Ai replacing other jobs
@@bitterbunn1831 If AI manages to draw what people have on their minds that would be a blessing, it would destroy the skill barrier to entry for making art. And AI should automate more jobs, all of them. The problem is the requirement of having a job to survive.
This is a serious matter for Artist and Content Creators alike. It's not difficult to imagine that AI will eventually be capable to produce short form and long form entertaining TikTok and RUclips content in such an abundance that human made content won't catch up to matter.
With algorithm being increasingly better at understanding you intimately and the in the video mentioned potential of having content created specifically for your current mental state, ideas, or circumstances It's difficult to imagine a human content creator able to keep up with this for long or even at all.
I think a lot of people are still naive. A.I. is now here and it will not go away. It can only go up from here. No 7 fingers on one hand in the near future. It is just matter of time. What most peope dont understand is that A.I. will do more than enough for a lot of basic stuff. A 10 men company that need new a new text for his website can do it all with chatgtp. It will be all fine with some minor tweaks. No need for a writer. That is an 500$ job less for the human writer, and maaaaany of them will go to A.I.
I dont see any reason why a business wont use an AI art tool for a cool background for an event. It will be used once and throw away after that. Goodbey 1200$ job for an artist. Etc. Etc. Etc. AI will take a huge part in this world. Text, image, graphic design, logo's, audio, video clips.. many jobs will be taken out. And you allready see a forrest of AI program's and website u can use in a minute. If you build the best AI machine, you can make tons of money in the near future.
Still.. people are naive. I am not going to wait before this hous of cards wil crash. I am working on my plan B allready wich makes me sad. But i dont believe i can feed mouths as an illustrator in new years from now
@yoRRnl That is ultimately your call to make. However, despite menial jobs being offloaded to artificial intelligence it seems like a stretch that the skill of an illustrator will be completely useless in your lifetime. Artificial intelligence is still very much inspired by human input. It's ideas were referenced and it's motivations are prompts. AI will reduce work force, because it cuts cost. AI, however, isn't sentient. While that must not mean that it couldn't do plenty human quality work there are still these two aforementioned hindrances to it taking over the world on its own accord. As an illustrator you could use your skill to prompt better. Or you could feed an AI with your design tweaks. Chatgpt doesn't always give a great first response there is some iterating that happens to get to that perfect output. Your skills as an illustrator would afford you that judgment.
@@RIPxBlackHawk The video already addressed that point, particularly in the “AI is just a new tool” segment (15:26) and even more specifically at 18:29.
@Khanh Duong Phan What is the reason for this comment ?
@@RIPxBlackHawk I mean everything you said in your second comment may be true now but won't be for long. The reasoning was detailed in the video so I just linked that part instead of retyping everything.
this is exactly why ai needs to be SEVERELY regulated.
thievery cant be "regulatet", it must be forbidden.
@@Dagaz_artIt must be banned
@@Dagaz_artNeither will happen because it gives massive advantages to countries with no such laws. Cry.
There are very good points in this video (elaborated on at the bottom of this comment), and its sentiment is correct, but as a computer scientist I think it's important to note a few things that are definitely not correct:
- AI art is provably, and objectively not 'art'. It does not know how to create art without directly plagiarising from existing artworks - if there is a single way to define what art is, it is that an artwork can't be made purely by plagiarising existing artworks. Pastiche is art, parody is art, many forms of 'copying a style or referencing something' are art - but AI 'art' is none of those, as it adds absolutely nothing new of its own. It does not know how to, and it is not designed to - it is designed to copy and only copy. In terms of how it could be called art in future: it can only do this if the 'AI' learns the actual ability to 'draw' rather than merely 'copy'. This isn't anywhere near achievable, not in the next hundred years and likely much longer, because the data you would need to give to the AI to learn this is neither available nor plausibly recordable (imagine trying to teach an AI the entirety of the laws of physics, commonly known animals and all of their characteristics, anatomy, videos of their walking gait, just to name a few things - it's not plausible). Humans know these things, and learn fundamentals to inform their drawing decisions, drawing upon decades of experiences and learning. Training an AI with that much data is not going to be possible for a very long time, both in data and computing power terms.
- Outside of the computer science field, it's probably true to suggest that people 'never imagined the advances in AI art in the last 10 years' - but inside computer science, it is well known that there are no such advances. The 'AI' powering Stable Diffusion, DALL-E, Midjourney etc are neither new or improved. There are two reasons they are possible now, when they were not before: firstly, that the data needed to train them is far more readily available due to the larger proliferation of professional art online on large websites such as ArtStation. Secondly, the necessary computing power to train these models was previously something that was only easy for researchers and large companies to get hold of, but in more recent times, online cloud computing services are much easier to access, even for smaller developers. There have been no breakthroughs in the models themselves, or the way they are generated, or anything else within the 'AI' algorithms themselves.
Those points aside, you are absolutely correct about the dodgy legal nature of these 'AI' organisations, their effective theft of copyrighted artworks, and their lack of transparency. I also entirely agree that resisting these 'AI' tools is nothing to do with being a 'luddite' - innovations can be awful as well as great, and 'AI art' in its current form is one of the worst 'innovations' the art world could ever have.
This is a well laid out video, expressed well, and here's to hoping that 'AI art' falls flat as it deserves to. Thank you for speaking out against it.
I was thinking about how to put this properly into words. I think we could say definitively that AIs in their current state are not drawing, painting, sculpting, or doing photography - charitably you could call it digital collaging which creates the illusion of something having been drawn or painted. That said, the process you describe could still be considered a form of art making - but it would be a mistake to say the AI made the art on its own. Rather, it would be the collective artistic input of the human race (and not just the artists in the data set, but their teachers and influences) that is responsible for whatever is generated and the AI is merely the process by which that generation occurs.
Plagiarism as a concept is dependent on ownership. Ownership can be exchanged and bartered over. So plagiarism to me is not necessarily a strong pillar for a definition of what is and is not art. The ethical AI system Steven describes would do away with the issue of ownership. I think the images produced are indeed art. But I think we could say that AI is not yet an "Artist". Rather it is a collective project of all contributing artists and the flaw in the system is that it has been conducted without their consent or even knowledge.
So in sum, I disagree for the most part with your first point on whether AI images are art but your computer science knowledge has added some nuance to this discussion that I hadn't considered.
@@nateg3962 It's not that 'plagiarism' is the pillar of deciding what is or is not art - but rather that to be considered art, there must have been some contribution by the artist to the artwork. The 'AI', in this case, makes zero contribution - it does not add any meaning or drawing technique, it gives no new take on the art it uses, nor does it have any purpose behind its actions. It has no agency, no reason for why it combines artworks in a particular manner or extracts specific features. This matters because when humans create art, it is done with a meaning (including artworks with a deliberate lack of meaning) - with an intent to express some view, or give some specific feeling or atmosphere.
For example, an artist who e.g. paints a headless horse puts that headless horse in a background intended to give the viewer a reason for why the horse is headless, or to make a statement, or for some other purpose - even a vague or crappy purpose. The AI has no such concept because it does not understand - or attempt to understand - why the horse is there, or why it is headless. It has no idea what a horse is, or how a horse behaves, or why a horse is in the painting; all it knows is that it found image features that indicate the presence of a shape it knows to be a horse.
Even with the most mundane objects - a simple painting of a tree - the AI does not know anything about trees, or how they work, or why. It is unable to "draw" a tree, because it does not know what a tree is - it is only able to copy features from things its model identified as similar objects in other artworks.
A human who plagiarises a bunch of artworks and blends them together could still claim to be making art - unethical art, poor art, but art of a sort. Humans using 'AI art generators' would fall into that category.
The same cannot be said for AI on its own. As a further example, a human who throws a bunch of ink up in the air, landing on paper below them, could be said to be making art - because the "artwork" in that case is less about the resulting mess of ink, and more about making a statement about the nature of randomness or some other concept. The AI, in such an example, has no understanding of concepts or statements, and cannot do the same thing.
@@Ant-le7hl I don’t think we actually disagree here. My contention was also that AI is not an “artist”, though I would argue this from a different perspective from you. However, in the process of compositing images from other artists, their legitimate works of art still contribute their voice to the image. Therefore the image generated by the AI is a work of art, but it is not the AI’s art. Does that make sense?
@@nateg3962 Yeah, that makes sense. It's just a question of definitions, as many 'AI artists' (I do not recognise them as artists, I don't think they deserve to be recognised as such) claim the AI on its own is capable of making art when it is not.
Exactly, it's like a sandwich machine, but where everything that the sandwich is made of is stolen from different stores, you can say that it doesn't look anything like the bread, meat and lettuce that they stole, because they are " sufficiently modified" to not be the same as the original, but that does not mean that they are made of stolen things
It feels like the perfect storm with this coming now, people are so addicted to constant distraction on their phones and AI art is perfect for this , a quick hit of entertainment and then on to the next thing.
If you're an artist you already know how hard it is to get anyone to look at your work, even if you're lucky enough to get featured or tagged somewhere big most people won't ever bother to seek out your work. Now you also have to compete with AI.
the world was already getting completely squeezed in the fight for attention 'look how big my ass is' ' look how ammaaazzing my art is' 'look how delicious my food is' etc. This feels like it could hasten breaking point whatever that is.
well said
It's like when figurative painting died with photography. Artists and their art will just evolve to a new expression once again.
it is inevitable, and maybe that's the way it has to be. Let's strip the ego away from it and make art for the sake of making and creating and nothing else.
@@primtones and then put their expression on the internet, get stolen by ai while the developers or patent owner don't need to pay a dime of royalty? lol
@@Djoarhet001 It is not inevitable. Rights and permission are not synonymous with "innovation." This is a legal issue and it's finding its way to the courts now.
As a (non ai) dev, I appreciated this video. Well said, and I support you.
Thank you for this. If we allow artists to be robbed, it won’t be long before everyone, including these AI ‘researchers’ themselves to be robbed, in a future closer than we can imagine.
yeah artists income is the wall between order and caos....😝
Everyone is going to be replaced.
Copyright law is the real robbery.
Trust me, japanese artists are more intolerant of ai before it even became this famous. It's super disappointing that from what I see from the west are mostly artists who are coping. Trying to be positive etc.
It's not just visual arts , ai is also getting into writing and music composition. Sure, experts are the only ones who can see which is good or not but the common people wouldn't care.
It's really frustrating to see the amount of people who are wayyyyy too agreeable for their own good. So darn short-sighted.
I'm afraid of a time where artists can no longer prove it's their original work without being asked for the video process. Or unique artists whose works might lose value when people keep using their styles.
There are even assholes who use a professional artist's name with an ai work with their style in it....and sell it. Even going as far as telling the specific artist "we will make sure you lose your job" is so darn hostile.
But yeah, thank you very much for this video at least I know somebody is actually thinking this thoroughly.
I hope it's never too late to do something with these pirates.
True, a lot of japanese artist sre pissed this as well.
as someone who really wants to get into art as a career, this whole AI art craze has gotten me actually kind of worried. I am in the same boat as you. It blows my mind how people dont see big problems with this. the only people who seem to care are the artists themselves. we must fight back
As a writer, my artwork has always been easy to copy, but my particular verbosity and individual style will soon be obsolete, when AI is capable of manufacturing every imaginable configuration of words
Writing is the safest form of art that AI won't be able to make due to the fact that AI can't understand semantics(for now). And if they did, they would be sentient.
@@AddyLovestar AI can already spill words. The thing is that it wouldn't have meaning.
AI is very good at making text that seems that was written by people. But fails when we go to specific semantics about comstructing a story like a human.
Maybe it's time for all artists to come together and talk about this until some big changes are made
You touch important topic here. I think those who are now overexcited with digital art are those who lack the fantasy and inspiration to create something by themselves.
This is sad to know about. And I JUST KNOW that the argument is just going to boil down to "Suck it up artists! You should've gotten a real job!" While watching all my animated scenes on Hulu and Netflix.
This is just the logical conclusion of all sentiments such as 'art is not important', 'art isn't as necessary as engineering' and 'art is subjective'
More like: "Suck it up artists! You should try to find a way for your skills to remain relevant in a fast evolving sector, like all other manual professions had to since decades ago with the rise of automation!"
"While watching all the AI generated animations on Hulu and Netflix" there fixed it for you!
@@Danuxsy „While watching all the AI generated animations on Hulu and Netflix”
That is not going to happen. Works generated by „AI” cannot be given copyright, so no company will use them for a significant part of their work flow.
@@laurentiuvladutmanea3622 companies won't exist because customers can generate their own content with a neural network just like they are with images using Stable Diffusion.
You have my deep appreciation for making this video. When this issue was first beginning to materialize, I saw a few videos from other artists commenting on it that I found largely unsatisfying, it wasn't until I started hearing you're on stream discussions that I began to feel as if I had my feet under me on the matter.
I am in my early teens, and I have been very passionate about art for a little while, so I practiced so much, day after day. It was all going good, and I thought I would eventually make a career, but then I find out about AI art and its horrors! AI art is something that will take joy and jobs from so many poor lives. It has already started to destroy hopes and dreams, and is ruining traditions from hundreds of years ago. The harder you work, the more you get... at least that's how it's supposed to be. AI is diminishing artists that worked so hard for their skill mastery. Why isn't this community taken seriously.
Eventually, AI may expand similarly to other territories, and keep on taking different parts out of different people's lives. At this rate, life will be like the Sci-Fi movies where AI takes over the world, except it would be less direct. This madness must end!
The more u working hard, the more u get is true, but not always its the case. Working smart is also is a key toget even more Sometime smart is simple(not easy, but simple)
Im against this all AI shit, but it seems that we artist need to get more smart about how we do art, if we wanna keep making a living.
As a foreigner, I would especially like to note your beautiful way of speaking. I listen to you and understand every last word, as if you were speaking my language.
Beautifully said. I have learned how heartless my own friends are, viewing my own artwork as meaningless. Hundreds of hours of work put into some pieces and just because I normally use digital tools my art has no value. He views himself typing for 30 seconds as making him as much of an artist as I am. People are so incredibly lazy that they just want the fruits without the labor, but how can that fruit carry any meaning? It would just be another product that you consume. We had this argument when I was actually going to say "if I had an ai that was able to generate my comic for me, it would ultimately be hollow. I would have the product I always dreamed of, but know I had no part of in its creation."
Art is just not a valued skilled by most people, and that's tragic. There is so much value in actually putting effort and heart into something instead of just google searching your whims into existance. Google already makes collages and clips out of my pet photos for me, I don't want my whole life to just be generated content based on my habits. I think this is how the human spirit ultimately dies.
Also, I doubt me friend would be okay with students handing in Ai essays and projects so they never have the need to actually learn. We'll have whole doctorates written in AI and have to accept we're a whole world of people who never took the trouble to learn anything since computers could do it all for them.
That sounds awful. But I can see that happening so often, and spiteful even, that is not even funny.
Honestly, if you still consider that person a friend, god bless your patience I could never. If you ever receive comments like that again, I recommend you may as well spoil the fruit and give them the whole artist experience.
"What?! What do you mean this costs 10$ to buy?? It took you five minutes to make!"
"I could do that in my spare time, there's no way this is worth ____$"
"Is it okay if I pay you in exposure?"
Well, not doctorates. You still need to actually defend that stuff and show that you know what you're doing.
"Do you build your own paintbrushes? If you don't, then you have no hand in the art's creation. " - some perfectly valid opinion.
You see the problem is, you're drawing a completely arbitrary line - which you're well within your right to, don't get me wrong. But you can't then expect others to change their equally arbitrary standards to match yours. To them, it *is* just another product they consume, similar to how you don't give a shit that your paints are mass-produced machine products instead of hand-made woad - that is, if you even use paint at all.
@@tahunuva4254 Writing a sentence of what you want a picture of is how you request a commission, yet no one before would have claimed they were the artist of the finished piece. The computer is the artist, not the person who writes a prompt.
I hope this will bring back more interest to traditionnal art. Having artists more willing to draw on paper and canvas and having more people willing to buy them originals.
Sad part is that robots can draw and paint too😓
I think there will eventually be another return to Humanism (a new Renaissance). Specifically because humanity will end up thirsting for verifiable humanity again. Also, I believe that humanity will start to resent the increasing lordship of ai over our lives--- and will develop a natural distaste for ai-anything.
The game may have to be raised, though. :Human artists who paint complex and meaningful compositions are poised to do well. Human artists who just want to make pictures of flowers or Spiderman, not so much.
@@heavenseek Oh well, at that time the standard are also much higher.
@@rockintennis nah, they can "print". If robots and AI ever reach enough maturity to draw watercolour, I'd say we'd have a far bigger trouble
@@rockintennis Well until they start mass producing androids and robot wives/husbands, we still have some time.
I couldn't agree more. Those artist who are oblivious to this threat are just beyond words to describe.
@@discordantduck1808 This is not about artists getting paid, it is about living, and about supporting human creativity. Stop projecting.
The problem isn't AI art itself but the distribution of generated wealth by companys. AI will replace artists at least in digital art. There is no way to prevent that and it is useless to focus on that. It is far better to focus on the generell structure of our economic system.
@@laurentiuvladutmanea3622 no no
Its about money
@@seedex6730 Did you watch the video
People who use AI always try to use weaponized incompetence as an excuse not to take the incentive to learn how to create.
People who use 3d are even worse! They've been around for 10 years - and not a single one of them picked up a pencil. I'm baffled we just let them be, we should take a hard stance against AI and 3D!
@@bbgun9076 You clearly dont understand the issue at all.
3D art is an artform. It is more similar to sculpting then with 2D art, but it is still art. Also, plently of 3D artist do use pencils, to paint over their creations.
@@laurentiuvladutmanea3622 If you think i know nothing - than you know even less than that.
@@bbgun9076 Cute claim. Do you have an argument?
😅😂😂😂 Weaponised incompetence. Well... that's new.
The Kim Jung Gi AI was the nail on the coffin for me, this is not a tool this is a replacement for one of the greatest things humans have ever done in exchange for money of course.
I hope artists get together against AI before it's too late.
@@DeadGuye1995 Just watch the video dude, he never mentioned Kim Jung Gi in it, my comment was based on my feelings it was not based in content of the video, and this feeling was a general consence in the art comunity. But also its not "worse" its very sad as well, be respectful pls.
Yah those google imgs are made by people, that get no compensation for their work being "scraped" and used in commercial ways.
@@leonardodomingues9010 At least one of the AI training sets also includes images scraped from art posted on ArtStation as portfolio pieces for artists. (which of course, Google Images brings up on a search as well, so it doesn't change your point...)
:(
@@DeadGuye1995 His first point is addressing this very argument. You should give it a listen, 07:35
@@101Linkisawesome No, that’s not the argument addressed in that section of the video.
If they take away the ability and the incentive to create, we will only have the desire to consume. And deep down, it's just that, consumption and more consumption. This is a strong step towards a less "human" humanity. Not to mention that there will be fewer and fewer jobs in which one can learn and enjoy what they do. This is horrendous, almost straight out of a sci fi horror movie. Excellent video and beautiful illustration!
The ultimate capitalistic dystopia
The incentive part is so important in creativity. I am going to remember this comment it is perfectly worded.
Except nobody is taking away your ability to create.
And unless your incentive is to make money with it (which isn't the case for everyone), that too is untouched.
So if anything, AI art will flush the people who are only doing it for the money down the toilet.
@@OzixiThrill noone does art "only for the money"
If you think that you dont understand a key aspect of art. The people selling art are doing that to be able to both do something they love and make money with it. And you said it yourself; noone will make money anymore.
@@Parrotcat That's rather naive of you, thinking that nobody gets into art solely for the money. If you actually believe that, then you haven't witnessed humans being themselves.
Also, AI art also won't make it completely impossible to earn money through art; Sure, it will make it more difficult for artists to support themselves off of art only; Maybe even make it impossible for some artists. But if that will be enough to get a supposedly passionate artist to stop doing art, well... That's all the evidence one would need to see the liars.
PS - Ultimately, I don't think that any artists worth their salt will really see that much of a dip in their money due to AI artwork.
Great video essay, great piece of Art, as someone working his way towards Art coming from tech, I always felt incredibly split on this matter, and kept shifting opinion, never really knowing where to stand. Your video has convinced me that AI art in its current form with the companies and the data laundering is very harmful for artists. Thx for sharing!
@@discordantduck1808 I hope you do understand how long it takes to make and light one candle, and how long it tales to become a good artist and produce a salable piece of art, yeah? Quite a silly comparison
@@discordantduck1808 1) you can literally start a candle making business in a month, with materials, forms, casts, and others easily available materials. Hell, one huge shop for soap and candles makers is literally across from my apartment. Fun fact, my mom does exactly that. After getting retired, she started making soap and candles to pass the time. Yes, It was a mistake to "lump em all together" but on average I think artists spent a wee bit more time to get to a professional level
2) Yes, the art AI will get its data and training as many other models for different industries, nothing to be surprised about here. And its' soulless on the most basic of levels. On later levels, it's a legal nightmare waiting to happen. I'm not going to grand stand here. It's a reality, we made it. It's how we humans roll...still, kind of hope that at least people will stop protecting multimillion-dollar companies with millions more in investments. Will society benefit from AIs? Without a doubt, but at what cost?
Also "of course it's harmful to artists, that doesn't mean it's bad" my dude, harm is usually bad.
art is beautiful because of the people behind it, the thought and effort that goes into it, the creative visuals, and the meaning behind the art. this is why I refuse to call “AI art” actual art. it only exists for convenience, the things that makes art ART are taken away when there is no soul in it. there is no real person making the AI “art”, there is no thought or effort, the visuals are only imitating other artist’s real creative works, and there is no actual meaning behind the art. this isn’t art, its laziness.
37:10 Oh yeah, I remember reading an article about that and feeling so mad. The double standard is unreal, the only reason they give a shit about copyright in that context, is because big music artists actually have the money to file some pretty nasty lawsuits against them, while meanwhile, most artists can barely manage to make minum wage with commissions.
Absolutely sickening double standard.
An object can be seen from infinite angles and mixed with an infinite amount of objects from infinite angles. A song has one angle and little deviance from that, because music aesthetics are incredibly shallow compared to physical aesthetics. It's not a double standard at all, it's out of respect for musicians that they aren't training on copyrighted material(and because there would be court cases lol). And they aren't disrespecting artists teaching a computer to draw, artists are just taking disrespect for various reasons. Mainly because the computer can learn and draw REALLY fast. It's like the guy said, if you learn to trace a master painter, You've Earned It! But when a computer does it you should be MAD lol. THAT is a double standard and it's driven by some inane logic about egotistical humanism. There are still people alive today that won't use circular tires because they think going too fast cheapens their lives. It's a silly opinion just like these stances against AI's drawing.
@@DemWaifus The issue is that the ai is taking very specific angles and very specific objects from art that already exists, without people's permission. Art that some random person posts online is not automatically public domain either. No matter how advanced the ai get's, it's not a person, it's a product, and it has already used countless copyrighted material in order to form its network. There's no reason why musicians should have respect while artist shouldn't. Also, there are infinite configurations of potential sounds and melodies.
@@chompompcharly That is not a real issue though because all those billions of images are being bounced off of one another to produce an image in seconds. It is IMPOSSIBLE to take this issue of yours into a court, it's like suing a painter because he visited a museum in his youth and got inspired. Except even sillier than that lol. I understand why artists are upset but they have to deal with it, they can't stop what's already released, they won't stop the likes of Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and the UN from developing this either. Just be glad that StabilityAI is friendly to open source.
And please take note that videos like this weren't being made when the closed source bodies were doing the same thing. This is a reaction to this technology being open. People against this are fundamentally coming at it from the angle of greed.
@@chompompcharly Like think about it, a 512x512 image has 262144 pixels in it right? How many pixels belong to you if you type "anime woman with big breasts in the style of picasso and greg rutowski :)" Are you trying to be funny? No one owns the artwork that comes out except you because it didn't exist before you prompted. Why do you think someone should get paid because computers can draw funny pictures now? Greedy as fuck.
@@digitasoul1389 Dunno, maybe they're friends? Maybe this is educational research? And don't get me wrong, closed source AI is terrifying, I'm just calling artists greedy when they're trying to burn down Stable Diffusion, because they're evidently afraid of free art from and for everyone.
I'm happy to have come across this video, really happy. I'm just a normal artist who wants to make books for children, graphic novels, and become an art teacher. I'm always complaining about back pain, art programs being slow on my computer, having to buy materials, staying up until late, etc, but i really am in love with my craft. People saying that AI was "just a new tool" felt like a half assed answer to me. Much of your concerns you mentioned here were also things I've thought myself. Why, would i want the world's most beautiful picture if i knew that it was an amalgamation of unconsented sets of information processed by a program with no soul. Yes, it may be better than anything i might amount to do in my life, but it not only feels empty, it feels disgusting. Not everyone will be sensible, or will care enough to notice this of course, some people are so numb that they will only care to see "new and cool content" and that's it.
I could ramble on an on because this is a topic i think about a lot, but i'll stop here.
because it costs less :) ? because they are pretty pictures ? because it is quicker, more available art for everybody? If I'm a refugee from Afghanistan and I wanna picture the horror I felt while fleeing I simply use a program to create a beautiful and moving picture quickly and easily, instead of paying someone to do it. Adapt to the new environment, how many more children can be taught art with these new tools? This is fantastic for art, stop complaining
artist elitist versus the gigachad people's ai
I'm curious, what does "soul" mean to you?
get replaced or get with the times
the problem with trying to convince people that argue that artists use reference too is that people like this are usually unskilled (in general, not just at art) and believe that you can't work towards improving at something, just born with the skill, etc. and don't understand the work required or the fulfillment gained from it
I just want to say that the art piece you made in this video is beautiful, poignant, and expressive, and that's something that AI art will never be able to replicate.
As for the 'tool' argument, it should be said that there's nothing new under the sun. AI is just taking what people already made and rearranging so that it looks original. It's basically virtual plagarism, which we've been told since grade school is something we should never do. I feel that copyright law, more often than not, is used to control creators rather than protect them, especially nowadays. The only people copyright protects are those are already in charge of the industry. So of course, AI is going to steal from the unknown, everyman artist to cater to its wealthy and talentless users. They're essentially profitting off of people's insecurities and laziness, people who aren't willing to try to build their skills or hire professionals/amateurs to help them. Really, when you think about it, a lot of modern technological "innovations" are doing this. They know that they've already made things too convenient for people, so now there they're trying to generate inconvenience artificially.
Honestly, with everything I've heard about how art and artists are treated, copyright infringement, theft, cancel culture, forced cancelation of passion projects, censorship, poor compensation, AI replacement, and so much more, considering that art and expression are unique to us as humans, we've really shown that we don't deserve it, especially if our choice is to not use it or let it be shown.
This needs to be shared EXTENSIVELY.
Thank you for finding the strength and dedication to make this video! I have been furious for exactly the same reasons as you and felt so frustrated that so many artists are willing to look the other way. I will share this in the hopes that more people wake up to the exploitative nature of these companies and the erroneous desire to see themselves benefitting as artists from it. I am truly relieved to see someone tackle these common arguments so fiercely and intelligently
I liked that metaphor about "tools" and "replacements": factory workers were not against wrenches, but they saw that robotic arms were going to replace them. But that's in a repetitive, unpleasant and dangerous job, that worth to be done by someone else.
But with art is totally different. Artists love to create, and just want tools that allow to materialize out what is in their minds and souls.
But these AI systems just turn a command into a collage of parts of images, there is nothing creative there, and who does that does not deserve to be called "AI artist". It's as if someone photocopied a book from a library and then claiming to be an author.
this surely sounds like a dark black mirror episode
It's really interesting that for years and years non-artists have been saying "digital art isn't real art, the computer did it for you!", but now that the computers _are_ making the art the overwhelming sentiment is "AI art is real art!". Honestly, I think people just want to jump on the bandwagon of whatever next big thing comes out, like with NFTs. They don't care about artists, they just want the same attention good artists get, and when it eventually dies out they'll move onto the next thing
Perhaps people just care about the result - the part they see at the end. Why should they be concerned about the process that created it, if the art has the same impact?
@@vylbird8014 And that's exactly my point. Who cares about all the effort the artist put in if a computer can just do it in the blink of an eye, right? But that mindset is exactly what's so annoying about treating AI art as real art and the people who make them (as in the people who just type some words in and call it a day) as real artists: as an artist myself, the most important part is the process, NOT the end result. It's where you get to put your skills and everything you've learned to use, where you try out new techniques, and how you learn to be better, because even if it doesn't turn out how you wanted, there's ALWAYS something to be learned. You take away that process and there's no more growth, there's no more feeling, it's just an empty picture that has no effort and no soul. If every single image produced by an AI is absolutely perfect on the first try then theres no value in that; even the great artists of our time like Monet, Raphael, Degas, Van Gogh, etc. don't have absolutely perfect works, and also have a lot of pieces where they were studying various objects and forms, because THEY were always striving to learn and improve too! Put simply, AI art is just a cheap imitation in comparison. Art is a discipline in any form it takes, if you take out the process, you're just left with nothing
@@A_keo I can see historical parallels. There was a similar anger among musicians when the first commercially viable music machines came out - first player pianos, then wax cylinders. They were seen as devaluing music by taking out all the skill - why would anyone spend years practicing their craft any more, when a machine can reproduce it so easily?
The process might be the most important part for the artist, but it does not matter at all to the audience. All they care for is the finished piece.
@@vylbird8014 It's a tale as old as time isn't it? Unfortunately, because things made by machines can be mass produced, the way the world is now it's far more profitable than paying people to do the same thing, cause people are slower and more prone to making mistakes that a machine wouldn't. Not to mention that when it comes to art people don't really give a shit about the artists like you said, they just want the art itself, and music is a big one for that. If only we lived in a world that wasn't so focused on shoving product upon product down peoples throats where everything has to be instant to be profitable. The world slowing down for a sec would do us all some good I think, but unfortunately I don't see it happening anytime soon 😕
Nobody ever cared about artists until artists will prove their worth. Our job was always to create beauty to uplift peoples souls. Nothing changed really for artists. Only craftsmanship is death. but then, how many of us can draw from a figure? How many of us can mix paints?
"It's a replacement, not a tool." After making a good-faith effort to learn about it (my initial opinion wasn't negative), I've come to the same conclusion. I also like that you pointed out how it takes all the fun away. I got some good results but felt a little sad that I didn't just come up with them myself.
I'll admit, there's a small dopamine rush when you type a prompt and make AI art, but ultimately it's desensitizing because I can just make more art of that caliber in seconds. It's like a kid who can eat anything in the candy story for free. There's no toil, no effort, no journey. Just the final result, which is boring and soulless.
You’re right I felt the same I managed to creat a professional looking art way much better then I could ever draw or paint my self , but it didn’t felt mine it’s just felt I’m googling. nothing compared to the act and journey of creating art by your self
@@Gogglesofkrome Well said.
Try applying this logic to written communication: are you sad you are not writing this comment using pen and ink?
Handwriting used to be a form of art thousands of years ago. WE EVOLVED. EMBRACE IT.
@@gukes-3dx „Try applying this logic to written communication: are you sad you are not writing this comment using pen and ink?”
Written communication is an utilitarian tool of communication, not a passion.
It's messed up, artists already have a shitty path with the harsh competition and especially harder for a starving artist
Now with the A.I. tech its like adding salt to a mutilated stump of a limb
Not to mention most artists love their jobs, unlike many other careers.
@@TechenZz The thing is that many donkeys out there call artists as drawslaves. As if all of us ain't living as slaves on that wage itself.
The reality is that actual artists will be more preferable for work instead of some random dude copying top 10 prompts from some forum. That reality sucks, since this whole process and unique visualisation skill developed under years of actual studies will be replaced with some automated process of fixing some mumbo jumbo of AI generation with photoshop. Plus, any subcategory of the creative industry will get degraded with the oversaturated generative style of works, and there will be less and less new "executions" of ideas or experimentation on them.
I'd recommend everyone to support the concept art fundraiser, since it's getting close already to its goal. Even as little as 5-10$ is good. Plus, we got already regulations coming from a law standpoint in different countries ( UK, Canada in progress, EU general regulation plan of AI on 2023 ). Also, nathanfowkesart on IG posted about a software being developed to protect artists from getting their work scrapped and used in AI in mass. It's from a university of Chicago ( if im correct, the post has it in detail ). Plus, the whole AI thing is already going wild with sound generation & deepfakes, propaganda and biased articles in journalism, and general blackmail. If it's left unchecked for more than a few months, it's going to be a wild west worldwide. But some hyperconsuming idiots will still be okay since the tech itself is cool.
maybe doing art never should have been a job? maybe artists have been lucky to have been able to be creative and be paid for it.
@@warrenpeas Sure. But perhaps, no one should not have to fear for their hard earned place and right to make a living, fear to be undermined. Its deeply unsettling and it will not stop here. Its not about doing the job you love. Its about your job.
Its a complete erosion of the entire middle class. So many useless office jobs are iust as likely to be hollowed out. Not to mention programming.
There is the potential, that only lots of poor and a few very wealthy will remain, unless we talk about a fundamental shift in societies’ philosophy.
Ofcourse, AI offers of the benefit of providing the collective best of us, on demand and on a silver platter. And we can use it to benefit us all.
more like stabbing it more
I have been posting hundreds of selfies with keywords as "sexy man" on the internet so AI starts to put my face everywhere. Time to change beauty standards of society.
The recent prevalence of AI art has made me feel more hopeless and suicidal than I have in years
keep it together man, in the face of peril, we should strive and band against it rather than wither and die. It is when you do that will grant yourself the possibility you have not if you did not try.
I think you will find a lot of support for human made art. These feelings is something that often plagues the creative, but lets try to empower eachother and have solidarity. You can do it 🙏🏼
Me too. Been days without leaving my bed.
I didn't want to "like" your post, so I am just saying: I'm in the same boat and this whole thing has given me such a sense of dread for the future it's hard to even get through a single day without being bombarded with it.
Find joy where you can get it.
@@natehorsfall8379 Honestly we just have to adapt. I have already dealt with being replaced by a cheaper faster option for years because I have worked in traditional crafts since childhood and watched the industrialization and outsourcing to China slowly make it harder to sell to stores who can get things cheaper from China. There are a lot of customers who want what I or my employers offer, but unfortunately it is becoming only acessible to wealthier people, which could also happen with human made art.
I think a lot of people who are laughing at our concerns haven't actually experienced it because they aren't in the same industry or weren't taught to be aware from a young age.
Thank you for this comprehensive video. The whole AI art issue fills me with existential dread as I know in theory it could be a fantastic tool, but under our current consumptive and exploitative systems it's just going to be used to not pay people while using their work to train their replacement. Especially since there seems to be so little fear of recourse. Sidenote: I was so mad when I learned that one of the key learning tools for AI is descriptive text -- something that is primarily an accessibility tool. Because of this, I have seen artists advocating for inaccurate descriptions of media to mess with the system, which in turn will also hurt those who rely on descriptive text and accurate tagging to engage with media online.
Guess it's time to flood these AI with Disney IPs and see what happens? :')
AI really seems to me like a way for Capitalists to cut out actual artists so they can have guarenteed content that's cheap to create without any human input at all. Corporations at the end of the day only care about profit and will do anyhting to try to mitigate the tendancy of the rate of profit to fall.
Oh man that was intense. You changed my view on AI art and AI programs REAL quick. Thank you for putting together these arguments.
The weird thing is - these Ai prompters are saying it is "faster" to make Ai art, but then say it took them a week to create the prompt to make exactly what they wanted? If it took you the length of this stream to produce this beauty and then took them a week to prompt a computer enough times to get the result they wanted, I wouldn't call that efficient? Sorting through thousands of images sounds like a pain in the ass when you can already see your own work unfold before you exactly the way you wanted ONE time sounds a lot less like a pain to me lol
They're avoiding the tens of thousands of hours of training and practice that it would take for them to match his skill, and to create a piece of similar quality in a comparible amount of time. So from their perspective, it is certainly faster.
imo the satisfaction of finally making that one drawing you couldnt quite get a few months ago will always be greater than uh… whatever ai gives
@@ARCHIVED9610 I mean duh, but most people like me only want pictures, if I want meaning Ill make it myself or hire a good artist
@@michaelschemmel1984 oh shoot i gotta stop commenting late at night-
true
Last time I commissioned an artist it took a month to get a result I wasn't perfectly happy with.
This is why I can't call these "AI" - it is not creating art it is sampling art made by human artists and assembling them via complex algorithms.
You, as a human, do the same in the form of “inspiration”. Nothing different.
@@ajp2206 people are inspired by the idea more than by the method and techniques. If you arent the student of an artist, you aren't "copying" the art because you don't know the "technique". And the main problem is, AI samples other arts to make a picture, but humans sample experiences. They can even sample music, they can sample memories into images. AI can't do it. Having said that, a lot of people have pathetic imaginations, the 99 percentile won't make it, but there's a world of difference between 99 and 99.9
I think one of the largest issues, which the video touches upon, is that discussing this situation is very difficult due to a combination of factors.
Many people's gut reaction is "Human made is better than automated". This doesn't help the discussion. This is akin to saying hand crafted food is better than frozen food. Sure, but that doesn't mean frozen food isn't allowed to exist.
Some people's argument is "we're losing jobs". This also distracts from the argument. Any new technology has the potential to diminish jobs. Just because the person enjoys the process, doesn't mean the people they are working for wouldn't rather expedite it. This would be akin to championing outdated medical practices, such as leeches, because the doctor enjoys using them.
I think the argument we need to laser focus on, in order to get to non-artists, is what was mentioned in the video: Using Datasets collected under the privileges of non-profit research, cannot be used for commercial purposes under any circumstance, no matter how many steps it goes through. This is the logic used for the music industry (as the video informed me) and should be applied to the visual art industry as well. I'm afraid everything else distracts from the main argument and gives ammunition to the opposition. I hate to say this but; fellow artists, please control your emotions. I completely agree with you, but we aren't trying to convince other artists here, we are trying to inform mostly non-artists.
I'm glad I've never ever tried that so called AI Art, and will never will.
“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.”
Frank Herbert, Dune
It's sad because it's seems like there aren't as many artist these days that are willing to come together to discuss these topics.
I thinks that's starting to chage.
I feel like, many Artist were in denial for some time. Fighting for your rights is scary and exhausting.
But I have already seen people starting to change their tune.
The thing is there are not many true artists out there.
Those very few who are will see their work raise in value. The ton of "artists" who aren't so will finally be where they belong - oblivion.
What makes it worse is that AI was trained on artist work without their permission... It literally stole billions of hours our hard work in an instant....
Pinterest has been doing that for 15 years and you said NOTHING.
@@robertmarmaduke186 pinterest _has_ been stealing artists' work, and we _have_ been trying desperately to get art off that platform, with poor success because the reuploaders are shameless and don't get punished for their actions. 'pinterest did it for 15 years' doesn't suddenly excuse AI art, it makes the situation that was already awful even worse.
pinterest is bad because images posted without credit or permission from the artists crush the artist's sentiments and makes it 'easier' for people to use/trace them directly and then claim ignorance. AI art is bad because it gets trained on an artist's artstyle and then spits out new iterations of it- which takes away the reason why people pay commissions to get artists to draw a new piece for them. It's stealing livelihoods.
Well all of this art has been posted on Internet, and when you accept the terms and conditions, that means that every image you upload can be used freely unless it's highly protected, so it didn't really steal, it used
@@roxtorlediable Alright let’s just forget copyright laws exist… and that you can’t use peoples work freely….without permission…just because it’s on the internet…
@@roxtorlediable I guess copyright doesn't exist then, that means your face is also freely to be used by anyone right? makes no sense
This is an age old problem and it’s very much linked to the ‘Art should be free’ argument. People have never valued artists. If you aren’t an artist yourself you will never…ever know the time, effort and absolute will that goes into creating and actually finishing an art piece itself. These people have been jealous of the skill for a very long time because they know artwork is, unbeknownst to most, one of the most profitable and widespread media that is consumed on earth.
Scientists have protested for years and decades to make research they create and spend months and a crap ton of money on, something tha twill benefit humanity, but artists complain a picture isnt selling
@@michaelschemmel1984 because we don't want to destroy our bodies working in a factory when we have the skill to make art
The Universe doesn't care about you Homo Sapien, you are mistaken to believe otherwise.@@ineffablemars
This whole situation is truly heartbreaking. AI has the potencial of completely dismantling the work structure of society.
Yes, and far beyond just artists. Hardly anyone crying over truckers, manufacturing and other sectors out of a job due to AI or just the progress of technology.
This time around I think the question is what jobs will survive, instead of which ones will be replaced.
@@oddinvestigator Politician, salesman, therapist, priest? Might be a tad a safer from AI than most.
@@misterogers9423 Yeah, these ones seem reasonable. But I wonder how would the economy of a world with few workers work.
@@oddinvestigator It's a fascinating debate, and it's coming to every industry and field of human endeavour. I suspect there will always be "workers", or at least, there will always be "work", but a lot of future work be unrecognisable to us. If you took a random high tech worker from today and transported them back to 1922 and asked them to describe their work to most people from 1922, they'd have a tough time making themselves understood. Send them back to 1722 and their difficulty world be even more profound.
The process of change is definitely accelerating, no doubt about that, and the speed of change coming from AI presents its own challenges. But in some ways we've been here before, across many forms of work/human activity. I just don't see any way of stopping it. The AI training processes that are so expensive today (requiring large corporations and server farms etc) will be cheap in a decade or two. What then?
How do you keep yourself from going mad as a professional artist? I spent 2 years unemployed, and 99% of that time was trying to build an audience and attempt to achieve a freelance level of self employment through commissions.
What I learned: If you're not someone who can learn to self promote, or can't spend just as much time self advertising as you are making art, you're going to do nothing but frustrate yourself.
I gained a total of 180 followers, 0 comissions, after putting up over 600 finished pieces in hopes of following my passion. I hate, loathe social media, keyword culture. I cannot keep up with it. I just can't. So, I create more. Every art "community" I join seems like it's just a board to slap your self advertisements onto. SO much untrained, low effort stuff that if you don't LIVE on the platform and repost constantly, good luck being seen at -all-.
So, I have gone back to office drone life, miserable, disillusioned, and worse for it.
I still draw and paint...but only for myself, and it hurts, knowing there are people who do it purely for profit, with much lower skill in the art than their advertising, and achieve wild success, letting them create for a living.
It's no wonder so many classical artists we praise now were drunks who killed themselves. I'm sad again.
don't drink yourself to death
I have the same frustrations with self advertising, i had bought the idea that as long as you're good at what you do work will come for you
And well it doesn't help that most of the art sharing sites have become dull, artificial and sooo saturated, in the earlier days of the internet at least there was a sense of personal presence, where different artists interacted and shared ideas
(Btw could you share your socials if you still have your art up?)
well may be is time to reevaluate what ART means to you ( in reality to most people ) , the greeks did art not for the money but for the pleasure it gave them and they created magnificent art , perhaps AI as it takes over mundane tasks and jobs will give us that possibility again , you should continue making art it should not be about what art gives you through others but what it gives to you directly
@@robotron07 check your history, there was plenty of Classical Greek work that was commissioned for government, temples, homes. They didn’t just create things out of “love for the work”- it was regular old work for hire. And saying to use AI as a way to free you to make art that’s there to fill some kind of niche inside you, well that’s just telling a working artist that he’s gonna lose his job to AI, but it’s okay- just go out and make yourself happy- you won’t care then that you’re out of a job and broke.
@@denises3727 that how evolution works ,better systems take over obsolete ones ,Humans have a choice to integrate with machines ( at the neocortex level) or be left obsolete .i will let you some food for thought find out what is the true concept of a cyborg and what is its relationshipo to cell phones "today" ,soon there will be the possibility of physical integration and that decision will come to play in the near future,this will be more a matter of being left with out a job because you want to
"Your art already does not get attention." - This is the most important and self aware observation. 😊❤
I highly recommend reading about the Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. AI endangers so many parts of it. The whole self-actualization part is currently being destroyed by AI (creativity, experience purpose, meaning and inner potential). The self-esteem part too (achievement, respect of others, the need to be an unique individual). Safety and security, which is extremely important is also in danger (employment, property). Other parts could also be threatened.
Honestly, the best discussion I´ve heard about AI art
It´s so baffling, interesting and unsettling at the same time how the post-capitalism model perpetuate itself as the central nervous system o fall this chaos, "research" driven AI companies using art avoiding copyright law by using "academic research" excuses while "influencer" artists (Not talking about Steven, he´s actually making a beautiful essay about the bigger picture) and overall people promote or accept these "novelty" services on their social media platforms, of course it´s collectivley-incouncious but it´s so freaking macabre to the point where it´s almost like conspiracy lol