Lit really should reconsider the AI image policy.

[000zing]

We needn't get too hung up on this concept of "art" and whether or not AI images are art or not. For me it's just a tool for those who are not artistically talented to generate a visual image of an idea in their head. I see no harm in having a space for that here on lit - have a separate place for it away from the visual arts corner to keep the "art" purists happy if need be.

Er... and just how happy do you think the mouse clickers would be to be segregated from those with genuine talent?

Their whole strategy lies in the ego trip of being seen as a creative artist, i.e. deceit.

 

[whitedudenj]

Here's one I made earlier. Norman Rockwell never dreamed.

Nice!
Got any more like that?

 

[Melody_Lightdraft2]

Using AI to generate images is just a major thing now whether we like it or not, this genie is not going back in the bottle and so Lit may as well just embrace it.

I'm not saying that it should be a complete free-for-all, rules could be put in place such as no overly explicit images if the images generated are photorealistic and no images of famous/well known/real people or copyrighted material.

The genie may not go back in the bottle, the case against copyright theft is yet to have its date in court. In the meantime generative AI is so hungry for images it is now scrapping AI images, this has the effect of poisoning the algorithm. Many graphics are being poisoned with Nightshade or Glaze software, more importantly the shareholders are getting tried of waiting for the wonder child AI to pay dividends.

 

[pixiemuledonkey]

I don't like AI, I'm going to say that first so hopefully I don't get as much hate. I also don't like how it is 'trained' though there is some misunderstanding about how it uses scraped data to 'create' new images.

I have prosopagnosia, face blindness. I am an artist but cannot create faces, nothing even partially realistic anyway. So when I needed a profile picture I used AI. My profile also clearly states that. I used ai once to create a basic concept for a shirt and gave that concept to an artist who did a stunning job making it perfect.

Anyone remember when digital art started becoming a thing in the early 90s? Do you also remember the fight between traditional and digital artists? We were convinced digital artists weren't real artists for a time but now we each have our place and no one is out of work because of it.

I'm not suggesting that AI is real art but I hope in a decade or less we can all settle into a comfortable place where AI art and real art live side by side. And that there are simple ways to determine if art is real or AI, just like there are ways to determine if a photo is shopped or not.

I'm interested to hear responses and I really hope it isn't attacks but I understand the anger, frustration and fear that is wrought by this new technology.

The introduction of digital art in the 90s was indeed met with resistance from some quarters of the traditional artists’ fields because it automated aspects of the work and required artists to purchase and learn to use the software and hardware in order to benefit. There was a perception that it would make it more difficult for wholly traditional artists to compete, or that it wasn’t true art because “the machine is doing all the work.”

Many of the arguments from that time do sound similar, I will admit. I think there are valid comparisons. For example, one can question whether the ability to automate aspects of the work reduces artists’ overall skillset because they may never learn to create those aspects on their own—I don’t know how to perform many photo techniques in an actual darkroom that I can do in Photoshop. There was also some legitimacy to asking what would ultimately be the cost to artists and art in general when tech corporations benefitted from the incorporation of their products into the creation of art as a perceived necessity. We’ve now arrived at a point decades later where digital art has made generative AI possible, allowing the tech industry to profit from the work of artists without compensation.

However, I dispute the notion that because digital art turned out to be “real art” after all that generative AI should be given the same benefit of the doubt. That conclusion strikes me as a relative of the proposition that generative AI does the same thing that human artists do when we look at the work of other artists and draw inspiration from them, adopting styles and techniques and incorporating them into their own work to create something new that is considered “original” despite being inspired by others.

Other people have detailed all of the flaws in this argument in far greater detail and more eloquently than I can—and have done so before U.S. Senate hearings—so instead of trying to reinvent the wheel here, what I want to challenge is the fundamental assumption underlying much of the pro-AI argument: that artificially generated stories and pictures are equal to human creativity and the works humans create. It’s a purely capitalist view of art as a commodity—“content”—for wealthy owners of AI to profit from without all of the messy consequences of dealing with human artists, such as having to compensate them for their labor or wait for said labors to be completed and made ready for sale. The entire purpose of genAI isn’t to make art more accessible to people, it’s to enrich and empower the already-rich owners of the technology. It doesn’t democratize art—art is already democratized, anyone can make it with any materials at hand—it further defines it as a product which can be bought and sold rather than an expression of humanity.

Furthermore, unlike digital art, the adoption of genAI by executives has already resulted in many artists being put out of work, worsening working conditions for artists because executives view “touching up” genAI results as a lesser service than providing original artwork and thus pay far less despite said “touch ups” often requiring an equal amount of labor. Executives thus feel justified and empowered to pay artists less for the same amount of work.

And we can all see how the ease and speed of getting genAI output has empowered scammers and made searching for erotica on sites like Amazon a hellish experience.

I think that conceptually there is a place for genAI as a tool for creatives. But in order for that to happen it has to be under conditions that don’t currently exist and strike me as unlikely to exist while genAI and American capitalism work the way they do now.