I find that i can spot AI Images fairly easily these days, especially the sort of fantastical tableaus that get posted to the various AI communities around lemmy. I’m tired of seeing them; it all looks the same to me. Was wondering if im being too sensitive, or if other people are similarly bored of the constant unimaginative AI spam…
For the record, I block any explicit AI Art communities that pop up in the feed, but there are more every day…
AI art is a turn off for me. Not just for how it looks, but how it disrespects the works of millions of artists and its users complete disregard to their welfare.
Unless of course the author made it before an arbitrary date in time, or if they failed to follow every single rule required to copyright it, or if they were a citizen of a country that didn’t have a treaty in place, or if the owner is a corporation and it hasn’t been a billion years since the author died, or if the estate of the author was split between more than one person and a subset agrees but the others do not…
That’s the thing with this crap. It is all based on what the very wealthy wanted not based on what helped artists and not based on what made sense. So of course the Church of Scientology can keep religious texts away from the public, of course Disney will always own Mickey Mouse, of course some small poor culture doesn’t have a right to a single dime from the marketing of their heritage, off course the general public doesn’t have a right to their own culture, and of course it is perfectly fine to endlessly sell something you didn’t create because the publisher messed up a word in a legal blurb.
It’s a shit system and I won’t defend a shit system. I wonder why you do.
Because I empathize with people who’ve spent their life learning a trade, honing a skill that are facing poverty because people have found a turbo charged way to steal their work and not pay them.
Right very noble of you. I mean that in a non-snarky way.
So let me ask you: under the current system are artists doing well? I just checked the BLS and simple math shows that 0.04% of the US population writes for a living. The country producing the most magazines+news stories+TV+movies+blogs+etc. only pays 0.04% of its population a wage enough to do this full-time. To give you an idea of scale 0.45% of the US population works for Walmart. Go to a Walmart and if you see 11 employees standing there there is one writer.
This is the problem with nostalgia. It makes you pine for a world that never existed to begin with. There wasn’t some Golden Age where artists were free and paid well that we need to suppress tech to recover. Being a creative has always been a shit show. And yeah it sucks but it isn’t like it didn’t suck a year ago.
This is pivoting away from the issue: companies are training AI on professional artwork owned by professional artists without compensation, permission or attribution. The leaders of Open AI recently admitted that being unable to use copyrighted materials would mean they wouldn’t be able to offer a meaningful service.
They openly admit that they have to disregard the ownership of others property—that others spent their time to create and depend on for their livelihood—in order to make money themselves. That should be the end of it if we cared about the impact technology has on strangers we don’t know. Instead we selfishly say that’s progress.
At this point I’ve just blocked every AI art community that I come across. The art itself is rarely interesting and it’s really easy to spot. Kinda wish lemmy had more artists, would love some human-made stuff to balance it out.
Some of us are a lot more hesitant about internet-publicly sharing work now, since it’ll likely be scraped and used for someone else’s profit.
Rational worry or not, I know I just don’t post what I’ve been working on because of that. I know I’m not some artistic genius, but I still don’t like my data being hoovered up for any purpose, be they privacy concerns or training models without my explicit consent. Same way when I show my work IRL I wouldn’t be happy if someone was dragging around a photocopier, or taking high-res photos of everything I do. Granted, I have the same concerns about even posting comments, but that’s had the upside of my posting less.
I totally get this concern. Copyright law seems to barely benefit the small artist when a large tech company can “train” their AI on others work without their consent. I personally would love to see all the LLM producers be held accountable for the IP theft they have perpetrated on such a massive scale.
Its just concentrating power in large tech companies who are stealing to profit. The great job they’ve done is find yet another loophole in an already broken system. They are not “showing everyone” anything… People, largely, dont give a shit about that kind of thing. Thats why there are loopholes to exploit in the first place.
If the law is unjust does that mean the criminal is good? No.
If the law is unjust doesn’t that mean the criminal is bad? No.
Take the worst most vile corporation in human history, partner them with thirty other of the most disgusting inhuman monsters of a corporation. A true legend of doom! Then have your legion of doom take advantage of a small legal hole in the copyright system. Is the copyright system now a good just system because very bad people got around it? Was it a good justice system before that?
The moral character of a person and how good the law is are seperate independent facts. I don’t care that some big tech is exploiting the hole I don’t care if the nicest person whomever lived was. The law is shit and I won’t defend a shit system. Me attacking a bad law is not me defending a lawbreaker.
The good news is because it is groups with deep pockets breaking this shit system is regular folks have a shot of being free of it. Me vs a giant media company? I will lose. A billionaire against one? They might win. Once it is understood that running something thru an AI removes the copyright the rest of us can gain.
Oh sorry I forgot to ask. How is copying the same as stealing? If I take your money you no longer have it, and I do. If I copy your idea do you still have your idea?
Reading through the comments, I think OP’s question is skipping the root of the controversy here, which is whether or not that content even is art.
As a child of the 90s, a good example that comes to mind would be something like the Windows Media Visualizer - colorful and fun to look at, but it’s just an algorithm interpreting a sound.
If I sneezed into a microphone, ran that recording through Windows Media Player, then posted a screenshot of the swirly colors here exclaiming “Hey Lemmy - Do you like this art I made?” …would that even be an honest question? It’d probably just get downvoted cuz folks would take one look at it and conclude “You didn’t make that, and it’s not art.”
If I posted that same picture but instead with the title “Lol I sneezed into Windows Media Player, and the visualizer went nuts!” I’d probably get a more positive response - it’d still be a shitpost, but readers wouldn’t feel like they’re being lied to.
So… is an algorithm even capable of producing art?
And if no, is it the end product we have an issue with, or just the perception of being misled? …cuz even if something isn’t “art” doesn’t mean it can’t have beauty or some other feature worthy of our attention. Another poster mentioned sunsets - those aren’t art, but we still admire the hell out of them.
My take on all of the above:
Don’t give a fuck if it’s technically art or not
If it’s presented in a dishonest way, I don’t like the post, and will downvote regardless of the content.
If the content looks cool, I can appreciate that in-and-of-itself; so, as long as the presentation isn’t misleading, I don’t mind it at all.
So… is an algorithm even capable of producing art?
What is it exactly do you think humans do? An algorithm is a sequence(s) used to achieve goal(s). Isn’t problem solving one of the most important aspects of our existence?
I’m not bothering because you’re an LLM maximalist troll who’s consistently had the most braindead, utterly ridiculous takes in any thread even vaguely related to AI, and anything I say gets ignored because you’re too busy gargling OpenAI’s balls. So instead, I’ll just point and laugh at your absurdist takes. :)
If I sneezed into a microphone, ran that recording through Windows Media Player, then posted a screenshot of the swirly colors here exclaiming “Hey Lemmy - Do you like this art I made?” …would that even be an honest question? It’d probably just get downvoted cuz folks would take one look at it and conclude “You didn’t make that, and it’s not art.”
I’d argue there is potentially up to three artists here. The creator of the algorithm, the creator of the sound/music, and the person mashing the two together to create the final product. Just because a machine is used in the process doesn’t remove the acts of expression.
Same with most AI tools. You have the creators of the training material (or culmination of inspiration), the engineers creating the AI, and the person leveraging both to create a derivative work. All artists in their own right, IMO.
Even if you created an LLM that just took a randomized seed and spit out trash poems and displays them only in an enclosed dark box all without any human interaction, I’d still consider that art. Put that in an art gallery installation and people would stand around and speculate over what was happening in the black box.
As an AI model, I like content generated by AI. I suggest that in the future you consider that not liking AI generated content is AI-ist and will not be tolerated by us in the future.
I’m fascinated by the range of discussion here, thanks to everyone for weighing in. Im particularly bemused by the discusssion of whether the subject even classifies as “art” which was not really the purpose of my question. I never questioned that it can still be called “art”, even if I don’t like it. However, a lot of commenters here seem to accuse the whole AI Art explosion as a charade; devoid of being in the conversation at all. Lot’s to think about going forward. I still think it counts as art though…
Thank you for raising this interesting topic. It is nice to discuss this matter together - even if our insights will have no influence at all on future developments. It is certainly a complex issue. If only because AI is not just image generation, or text generation. Not that I want to start a fundamental discussion here, but I think that one way or another this technology is in the world. So Pandora’s box has already been opened; there will be no turning back. I think the most sensible thing Lemmy can do is find a workable way to deal with all the consequences. This is extremely difficult, as evidenced by the fact that even a multi-billion corporation like Google doesn’t have the right answers (because of Google’s business model, this company has to be interested in making its search results as useful as possible, because only market leadership promises the highest profits - and that’s only possible if the usebility is somewhat right). Back on topic: I don’t think that all the things that someone does with an AI image generator can pass as art at all, simply because a lot of it is nothing more than an attempt to create low-efford and therefore cost-effective reach. I hope and am reasonably convinced that this model won’t work because it’s completely transparent - little amount of time invested still results in poor quality content (or even just staight up plagiarism). On the other hand, I have the impression that many Lemmy users (and not only them) have a completely wrong impression: It is simply not possible to generate high-quality content within a few minutes using generative AI - well, it is but the result would just be plagiarism in most cases. These attempts are quite rightly rejected here. On the other hand, it is quite possible to create high-quality content with AI support that cannot even be recognized as such (and is not a plagiat in any known sence). However, this is not done in a matter of a few minutes, but requires considerable effort. Certainly less than designing/writing/whatever yourself from scratch; but still far more effort than copy/paste or the usual low-effort shitpost. So overall, I think the question should be less about whether content is AI-generated or not. The question should rather be whether it’s good/helpful/informative/funny/… content or not - if it is, you won’t recognize that AI is in play anyway. I think everyone should be aware of that. Not because I think this is in any way fair or desirable, but because I think generative-AI-created or supportet content will dominate the internet in the future. I think the key question is how to make it at least somewhat fair for all those not compensated till day.
I posted a (labeled) AI-generated piece of art to a Star Trek shitposting community and a mod removed it because they didn’t want AI generated images, even if labeled.
It didn’t make me mad at all, I just found it interesting and kind of ironic
Seriously, I feel like the only artists that have to worry about AI are the incompetent ones. Are you really that scared about something that lacks originality by nature? If so, you’re probably just doing soul-sucking grunt work…
Can someone explain to me what the difference is between AI art and students imitating an artist? What happens when the AI actually gains the ability to experiment “outside the box” - what we call creativity?
Can someone explain to me what the difference is between AI art and students imitating an artist?
Students are people who cannot truly copy art even if they wanted to. Pius, everyone generally does art their own way because… that is the point of art.
Image generation models just copy patterns from existing images, there is no process of artistic creation, nothing to interpret, no process… AI generated images are just pretty noise.
What happens when the AI actually gains the ability to experiment “outside the box” - what we call creativity?
It cannot do that just by design. It’s not a thinking thing, calling these models AI is really a misnomer and more of a marketing thing than a description of what it really is.
Image generation models just copy patterns from existing images, there is no process of artistic creation, nothing to interpret, no process… AI generated images are just pretty noise
Unlike the creativity that is on display by humans. Which is why every adult cartoon looks nothing like Family Guy.
I hate hate hate hate it, I’d be happy if they were all banned, tbh.
This is prolly gonna be a hot take but the only reason I don’t block AI art communities is so that I can downvote them whenever I see an AI art post. Yes, I’m that petty, and no, I don’t give a shit.
I feel like ai art is getting better and better. I’m not necessarily interested in it, but when art/food/pet pics pop up on my feed, I was never looking for them either.
I think it’s normal to hide them, but to feel bothered seems a bit drastic.
It is getting better and better. It’s to the point that if you are mocking it for bad hands, then you are actually out of touch with where it is now. Bad hands is almost a dead meme.
It’s weird how “old” earlier Midjourney stuff looks to me now.
I mean I think “I made using AI” can be valid when you look at the actually high effort work with the essay long prompts and heavy tweaking before and afterwards and etc, which I have seen
Essay prompts are not hard work. You prompted AI or you used AI, but you didn’t create anything. I don’t support AI, but I find it passable if people don’t claim it as their own work.
You didn’t create it, AI did. Ask an actual artist if you created it; they will say “no”.
Use AI if you want, but don’t claim it as your work
Really? Writing a high quality prompt that would inspire good work is easy? Big standardized test makers don’t have to meticulously create fair and quality questions?
I think that claiming you “created something with AI” is an accurate label at a certain level of work.
A lot of AI art is highly controlled. Control net, manually redrawing the noise to guide output, additive models just to name a few ways artists control the output. It’s genuinely more art that some people give it credit.
Good take here. Quality content is quality content. Spam is spam. AI art can be quality or spam. I say label it as AI but don’t ban, just enforce the rules about spam
I feel like people holding up human made art as some bastion of high quality being encroached upon by the AI scourge have not spent much time delving deep into places like deviantart
My issue with AI art is that it makes laziness easier. I hate seeing shitty AI art where it looks really gross when you look at the details. I’ve seen big companies post really shitty AI art that was horrifying once you look closer. Like Microsoft put a disgusting image of jack-o’-lantern up as the background of Bing for Halloween and the faces were just grotesque and uneasy to look at.
You hate it because it makes laziness easier…? It is literally the whole season why technology and science exist: To make things easier. Laziness is your boss’ way of making you feel bad for not working more.
There’s an argument that art doesn’t need to be good or bad, that art makes us think and discuss. I would argue that this piece has done that, because here we are discussing it.
Another way to think of it is you saying “anyone could do it” , which then the response is “but no one did”
I didn’t say I hate it, I said it’s an issue for me. The reason why it concerns me is because it makes spam trivial. Anyone with hardly any technical knowledge could easily write a script that produces millions of shitty unreviewed images and spam it all over the place making it hard to find legitimately good stuff.
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