Could AI art have come about without theft?

[bomberfox]

The intellectual property issues are another matter and an important one. But you said your arist colleagues were mad because AI is "automating their jobs away." If you're right, they're in the same boat as were elevator operators, icemen, and bank tellers.

Technology marches on, and it both creates and destroys jobs along the way.

Was the iceman’s creative work stolen in order to automate it away?

 

[KevinKohler]

There are copyright issues and workers being displaced because their work is being copied by AI. I understand why a lot of artists are seriously upset.

The problem, as i see it, is the vague nature of copyright laws as it applies to visual arts.

Take Edward Munchs "The Scream". I believe this painting has been parodied and satire more than any other, which is fine...any copy for the purpose of satire is legally OK. Okay, then what do we mean when we say satire? How much do i need to change it? Legally, I need to change at least 25% of it.

But what does that even mean? Can I just change the face? Well, that depends. Is it for a joke? By all means. But what if the joke isn't funny? How about i put a print of trumps face there? All is fair in love, war....and apparently political satire, even though you're changing less than 25% of the painting.

 

[BitterPill]

View attachment 67582373

I now regret my earlier post demeaning the 'artist-being-a-cannibal metaphor' and humbly ask for NatMorton's forgiveness.

MAGA.

 

[bomberfox]

The problem, as i see it, is the vague nature of copyright laws as it applies to visual arts.

Take Edward Munchs "The Scream". I believe this painting has been parodied and satire more than any other, which is fine...any copy for the purpose of satire is legally OK. Okay, then what do we mean when we say satire? How much do i need to change it? Legally, I need to change at least 25% of it.

But what does that even mean? Can I just change the face? Well, that depends. Is it for a joke? By all means. But what if the joke isn't funny? How about i put a print of trumps face there? All is fair in love, war....and apparently political satire, even though you're changing less than 25% of the painting.

I mean im seeing scam artists use AI art to try to charge me 1-200 dollars for art they use a generator to automatically produce an image.

 

[Visbek]

I rag on AI art a lot mostly because they took a ton of art to train their models without asking any of the original artists but was this even necessary?

No.

AI needs training data.

They could have hired a ton of artists, or paid to use stock images for training, or stuck to using public domain images. All of that would have been legal and ethical.

They didn't. They made a choice to violate the copyright of untold numbers of artists.

 

[bomberfox]

No.

AI needs training data.

They could have hired a ton of artists, or paid to use stock images for training, or stuck to using public domain images. All of that would have been legal and ethical.

They didn't. They made a choice to violate the copyright of untold numbers of artists.

Yeah. Thats the rub. Its really typical capitalists are automating jobs away in this extremely egregious way.

 

[Germinator]

No.

AI needs training data.

They could have hired a ton of artists, or paid to use stock images for training, or stuck to using public domain images. All of that would have been legal and ethical.

They didn't. They made a choice to violate the copyright of untold numbers of artists.

'Good artists copy; great artists steal'​

What Steve Jobs really meant when he said 'Good artists copy; great artists steal'

Apple's Bud Tribble: "If you take something and make it your own ... it's your design and that is the dividing line between copying and stealing. That is part of Apple's DNA."

www.cnet.com

 

[KevinKohler]

I mean im seeing scam artists use AI art to try to charge me 1-200 dollars for art they use a generator to automatically produce an image.

And that will get worse. My heart goes out to working artists.


The only silver lining I see, will be, possibly, the decomodification of "fine" art. A banana glue to the wall isn't worth millions.

As properly talented artists stear away from the pursuit of using their skill to make money, and doing what THEY want only because they want to, I think we'll see a boom in the field.

It sucks they (you?) will have to learn a new way to earn a living, and resort to making their art a hobby...but i think the result will be a second Renaissance for fine art.

 

[bomberfox]

And that will get worse. My heart goes out to working artists.


The only silver lining I see, will be, possibly, the decomodification of "fine" art. A banana glue to the wall isn't worth millions.

As properly talented artists stear away from the pursuit of using their skill to make money, and doing what THEY want only because they want to, I think we'll see a boom in the field.

It sucks they (you?) will have to learn a new way to earn a living, and resort to making their art a hobby...but i think the result will be a second Renaissance for fine art.

Im not a professional artist myself but i know a lot of people who do art for a living.

the internet itself made art available to the masses long before AI.

 

[KevinKohler]

No.

AI needs training data.

They could have hired a ton of artists, or paid to use stock images for training, or stuck to using public domain images. All of that would have been legal and ethical.

They didn't. They made a choice to violate the copyright of untold numbers of artists.

Yep.

And they should be sued into obscurity.

My work is out there, in the internets, and was likely used, as was my wife's.

But internet companies have a history of just taking what they want.

 

[Germinator]

And that will get worse. My heart goes out to working artists.


The only silver lining I see, will be, possibly, the decomodification of "fine" art. A banana glue to the wall isn't worth millions.

As properly talented artists stear away from the pursuit of using their skill to make money, and doing what THEY want only because they want to, I think we'll see a boom in the field.

It sucks they (you?) will have to learn a new way to earn a living, and resort to making their art a hobby...but i think the result will be a second Renaissance for fine art.

+1

there are lots of dumb ideas IMHO that aren't worth the hard earned money the market throws their way, but as they say "The market can remain irrational longer than you can stay solvent"

 

[Grizzly Adams]

Its the difference between art being a creative process that you learn the craft from and just taking all that to automate without asking anyone and that automation displacing actual artists that learned the craft.

But what if I'm an artist that learned nothing independently, but am just really good at fusing and copying the works of others?

AI is an idea in your head
Art is a process.

Is it? I started a thread in Tech Support a few days ago that laments a hardware failure that could have led to the loss of nearly 700 images. Even though I was able to salvage all but one image, 99% of them are throwaways no matter what. The images of value are those that were captured at just the right moment. No process was involved, just blind luck and a fast shutter release finger. One of them might be worth something someday. But there's no process.

 

[KevinKohler]

Im not a professional artist myself but i know a lot of people who do art for a living.

the internet itself made art available to the masses long before AI.

Consider blacksmithing.

Modern smelting and manufacturing took over that sector at the onset of the industrial era. And now it's made a comeback. Custom knives and other tools sell for hundreds and thousands of dollars, with many creators being able to survive just on the proceeds from their creations. Many dont, many have a fulltime gig, but it doesn't stop them from creating wonderful and unique things.

So too, I think, is what will happen with painting, drawing, designing. There will be less art put forth, as it'll being done during down time as a hobby...but the quality of work will improve. Just my opinion.

 

[phoenix2020]

I rag on AI art a lot mostly because they took a ton of art to train their models without asking any of the original artists but was this even necessary? Im curious.

I personally think it could have been done. Might have taken longer but there was no need to rush this in the first place.

I work on this as my day job and not only can it be done, but it is done. Companies can source properly licensed images by the hundreds of thousands or millions from companies like Shutterstock and Getty, and these kinds of above-the-board libraries exist all over the planet. There are many companies working in this space that take this issue seriously and do things the "right" way, and don't deserve to be villainized by your sweeping generalizations.

 

[bomberfox]

I work on this as my day job and not only can it be done, but it is done. Companies can source properly licensed images by the hundreds of thousands or millions from companies like Shutterstock and Getty, and these kinds of above-the-board libraries exist all over the planet. There are many companies working in this space that take this issue seriously and do things the "right" way, and don't deserve to be villainized by your sweeping generalizations.

The post you quoted did not make generalizations.

 

[KevinKohler]

But what if I'm an artist that learned nothing independently, but am just really good at fusing and copying the works of others?

Most artists learn by copying. I have copied many "old masters" when I was learning to paint with oils. The difference is, I developed my own style, unique to me, over time. AI, being an intelligence the inherently lacks creativity, simply can't do this. It's simply creating amalgamations of what has already been done. We have not learned how to code creativity, as we don't understand how it works.

Is it? I started a thread in Tech Support a few days ago that laments a hardware failure that could have led to the loss of nearly 700 images. Even though I was able to salvage all but one image, 99% of them are throwaways no matter what. The images of value are those that were captured at just the right moment. No process was involved, just blind luck and a fast shutter release finger. One of them might be worth something someday. But there's no process.

Unless you walked around with your eyes closed randomly hitting the shutter, this is incorrect. You may not understand the processes in your brain that compelled you to take a picture of whatever it is you did, when you did, how you did, cropped the way you did...but that doesn't mean there was zero process.

The difference between what you did, and what a pro does...is the problem understands the process, the what, when, and why of it.

 

[BitterPill]

And that will get worse. My heart goes out to working artists.


The only silver lining I see, will be, possibly, the decomodification of "fine" art. A banana glue to the wall isn't worth millions.

As properly talented artists stear away from the pursuit of using their skill to make money, and doing what THEY want only because they want to, I think we'll see a boom in the field.

It sucks they (you?) will have to learn a new way to earn a living, and resort to making their art a hobby...but i think the result will be a second Renaissance for fine art.

It is the human touch that AI can't quite mimic, or maybe it can, and when it does, that created by a human will be that much more valuable, or will it be?

Hard to know.

 

[phoenix2020]

Its the difference between art being a creative process that you learn the craft from and just taking all that to automate without asking anyone and that automation displacing actual artists that learned the craft.

AI is an idea in your head
Art is a process.

Nope.

What you call ideation and creativity, we in machine learning call inference temperature.

Remember, this isn't a program. This is a neural network modeled after the human brain's synaptic behavior, being trained a lot like a human brain is trained. That's why it's getting so good, so quickly.

 

[KevinKohler]

It is the human touch that AI can't quite mimic, or maybe it can, and when it does, that created by a human will be that much more valuable, or will it?

Hard to know.

Ask an AI to develop a new style of art never before seen, and compose a picture using it, and you will get nothing in return, or just a combination of existing styles (likely garish).

 

[phoenix2020]

The post you quoted did not make generalizations.

"they took a ton of art to train their models" is a generalization since in the context of your post "they" would be read to mean everybody. You claimed everybody working in this space "took a ton of art" from other people as theft.

 

[phoenix2020]

Ask an AI to develop a new style of art never before seen, and compose a picture using it, and you will get nothing in return, or just a combination of existing styles (likely garish).

Incorrect. To wit, I was reading an interesting paper last week about a diffusion model designed to create art using a much wider section of the electromagnetic spectrum than the human visual system is capable of processing, and true to form, it began generating types of what one might call "art" that have never existed before because our own visual system makes us completely blind to much of it. They started by training with known, human-visualizable images, but then switched to reinforcement learning to push the model off the initial training set based off a separate trainer model built on synthetic data. Very interesting stuff.

 

[Helix]

 

[phoenix2020]

View attachment 67582381

You better hide. Peter Dinklage is coming for your head.

 

[KevinKohler]

Incorrect. To wit, I was reading an interesting paper last week about a diffusion model designed to create art using a much wider section of the electromagnetic spectrum than the human visual system is capable of processing, and true to form, it began generating types of what one might call "art" that have never existed before because our own visual system makes us completely blind to much of it. They started by training with known, human-visualizable images, but then switched to reinforcement learning to push the model off the initial training set based off a separate trainer model built on synthetic data. Very interesting stuff.

Diffusion model disgned by who?

 

[phoenix2020]

Diffusion model disgned by who?

I'll have to find the paper, I think it was a European university. It was in a ML journal I was reading last week.