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Coda Coda is offline
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Default AI art generators   #1  
I know in a community like this, this is going to be a bit of a controversial topic, but I've seen the vibe going around the Internet and I really don't agree with it.

You guys already know I'm a software engineer. It says "developer" right there under my name. But beyond just being a coder, I've got machine learning experience under my belt -- and an early start at it, too; my first attempts at dabbling in it were circa 1996. I say this not to try to claim any particular authority, but to be honest about my background and my opinions.

There are so many things in human society where good ideas get used by bad people, and it makes the subject poisonous to approach. For example, there's nothing inherently wrong with the concepts underlying blockchain technology or NFTs (even if there are issues with well-known implementations of them), but because of all of the NFT scams and the cryptocurrency speculation bubble, it's PR suicide to try to say that out loud.

And now it's happening again with "AI art".



Machine-learning image generators are very misunderstood. I think most people don't really get how they work. And while I'd be happy to dive into a technical explanation, it's kind of beside the point. People seem think that these tools are unethical. People think they're inherently tools of copyright infringement.

But an image generator is no more unethical and no more a tool of copyright infringement than a camera is.

Yes, you can use it in unethical ways. You can choose to use it for copyright infringement. But you can also use it for original creative work to make something you couldn't have done any other way.

Everyone is freaking out about the big companies with big models ripping off their artwork. Truth be told, those are the ones you should be fearing the LEAST. The bigger the model, the more original it can be. The examples of models trivially churning out near-duplicates of someone's work are mostly the result of an individual with a small model that's trained it specifically to try to copy one person's stuff. No amount of opting out or shaming corporations is going to stop some random guy from downloading your gallery from your website and feeding it to an AI.

All the fearmongering is going to accomplish is to create a pointless, stupid, emotional divide between people and deny a useful tool to people who would be best positioned to use it right.

And that's a big problem: Machine-learning image generators are the most powerful when they're used by artists. Just like a kid and a professional photographer will have different results even when they're using the same camera, someone with artistic skill is going to be able to make use of an image generator for much better results than the average person. Because it's not just tweaking text prompts -- the tools give you the ability to go back and forth between the AI and something like Photoshop so you can guide the generator to the perfect result.

Machine learning can't come up with new styles on its own. It can't come up with new ideas on its own. It isn't going to replace artistic skill -- it's going to augment it. People didn't stop painting just because cameras became popular. Drawing in Photoshop isn't cheating compared to drawing on paper.



None of this, of course, is to defend the people who DO choose to use the tools in an unethical way. But the anger and opposition should be directed towards the people who behave unethically, not towards the tools they're using. You don't blame graffiti on the paint!

I also acknowledge that there are other things to be worried about. I don't want to dismiss those uncaringly. And there's a lot more I could say, but this post is pretty long already. I'm more than happy to discuss anything.
Games by Coda (updated 10/1/2023 - New game: Adrift)
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Mega Man: The Light of Will (Mega Man / Green Lantern crossover: In the lead-up to the events of Mega Man 2, Dr. Wily has discovered emotional light technology. How will his creations change how humankind thinks about artificial intelligence? Sadly abandoned. Sufficient Velocity x-post)
Old Posted 01-05-2023, 01:30 AM Reply With Quote  
Default   #2   Stabbsworth Stabbsworth is offline
Pixelist
aye, yeah, that's a fair point to have. i also reckon that it can be used to ultimately get past the block of having no ideas whatsoever for an artist, provided you go into the image and touch up some of the latent bugs that will be there, because the technology is still a bit finicky at points.

most of my concern as an artist, though, comes from people making datasets out of stolen artwork. hence why most people are decrying the bloody thing. while my art isn't exactly known and thus stolen, i still don't want people chucking it into an ai generator because they can't be arsed to request something or commission me.
percival is busy being queer as hell. he was also here.
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a reckoning will not be postponed indefinitely.
Old Posted 01-05-2023, 12:31 PM Reply With Quote  
Coda Coda is offline
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Default   #3  
Quote:
Originally Posted by Stabbsworth View Post
most of my concern as an artist, though, comes from people making datasets out of stolen artwork. hence why most people are decrying the bloody thing. while my art isn't exactly known and thus stolen, i still don't want people chucking it into an ai generator because they can't be arsed to request something or commission me.
(Just to be clear -- I'm using "you" in this post as a general non-specific person. I'm not referring to any specific person in any specific situation. So I'm absolutely not intending to step on any toes here!)


There are two different things to mention here.

First is the idea of stolen artwork. Downloading art that's being freely offered to view online isn't stealing -- it's the only way to view the art in the first place. You can't see it if you can't download it. It's only stealing if you then reupload it so that people don't have to get the artwork from the original creator. That's why the large, big-name models aren't stealing even though they've collected millions (if not billions) of images: It's no different than a human artist learning by browsing art galleries. The skills the model learns from this aren't a reproduction of any of the original pieces, but rather a built-up understanding of the way art is created. But a small home-trained model won't be able to learn enough to do anything but copy what it was trained on.

Second is the issue of commissions... That's one of the things I was thinking of as something that's valid to be worried about. Personally, my concern isn't that AI art generators are going to replace commissioning artists for their particular styles. Yeah, obviously that's an issue, but you can already try to commission someone to draw in someone else's style. (Whether or not they're good at it is another matter entirely, but it's not illegal, and it's not unethical as long as you aren't trying to pass it off as being from the original artist.) I think the bigger issue is the double-edged sword that these tools provide: it makes it to where anyone can create artwork with reasonably good rendering quality, for free. That's a great thing for most people! But it makes it harder to make money as an artist, because you have to provide something that makes the customer feel like it's worth the expense. And that definitely sucks... but it also feels like something I don't know if anyone can do anything about. The genie is out of the bottle already. The best solution might be for artists to get good at using the AI-powered tools to improve their own workflows. Fight fire with fire, as it were.



As a related side note: One thing I learned since I wrote that previous message? The most egregious AI-art ripoffs are the result of someone using an image-to-image generator (instead of purely a text-to-image generator) and feeding it a single image of someone's artwork to ask the AI to redraw it. This is the AI equivalent of tracing someone's art and calling it your own.
Games by Coda (updated 10/1/2023 - New game: Adrift)
Art by Coda (updated 8/25/2022 - beatBitten and All-Nighter Simulator)

Mega Man: The Light of Will (Mega Man / Green Lantern crossover: In the lead-up to the events of Mega Man 2, Dr. Wily has discovered emotional light technology. How will his creations change how humankind thinks about artificial intelligence? Sadly abandoned. Sufficient Velocity x-post)
Old Posted 01-05-2023, 03:40 PM Reply With Quote  
Default   #4   Stabbsworth Stabbsworth is offline
Pixelist
also this will put people out of jobs. why hire 500 artists when you can hire ten techbros and get similar enough results in terms of artwork? why hire people that know how to use 3d modelling software (particularly blender, as that one's notorious for being an absolute fucking bitch to learn) when you can feed some models through an ai and have the same result? why hire a concept artist that knows how to do their job, when you can just use ai?

this is going to result in even more artists going freelance, bloating up a market that's already bloated with millions of fucking artists. i already have a hell of a time getting commissions that aren't from this site (even if my commissions thread is massively inactive on here, i can pretty much make a new one or revivew the old one at any point if need be). people do not want art that is sketchy or has guidelines on it, and that's the style that i stick with because i personally find it more charming. i do not get commissions.

if you want to become an indie artist because you spent all your points in learning the fundamentals of art? tough fucking luck, disney isn't going to hire you when they can just use an ai, and nobody will fucking commission you because they can just use an ai. or they can go to someone with pretty linework and expert colouring, that's holding a sale on their art, because they have an emergency they need to take care of, thus getting artwork for even cheaper than you sell yours for.

i feel as though you're looking at it from a point of view that doesn't take into account late-stage capitalism. companies will do anything to save a few cents, including stealing artwork and using a damn ai on it to generate conceptual works, then copyright claiming it because someone gently edited it. they can lay off their entire art department and just have a few ideas guys feeding works through ai until they get the desired result.

even if we didn't exist in late-stage capitalism, people would still use ai art to claim that they were the ones to truly create it and not just feed thousands upon thousands of works through an ai. people would still steal artworks and feed them through an ai, even in-progress artworks, and demand credit from everyone they've stolen from.

i've seen at least one case where someone was banned off of an art-based subreddit, because their style (realistic) looked too similar to something that was generated by ai. have you got any way to fix that? have you truly got some way of distinguishing between ai art and art produced by someone with the necessary tools and experience?

additionally, i am aware of how browsers work. images are downloaded, they get stored in a cache, which then get displayed on your client. at least, that's what i think happens?

if you suggest that we start using ai artwork for trisphee's items, i will fuck off and make my own site. i have no experience in making a site.

my last point that i can make is that ais are not humans. they don't have the same process of learning, they don't have the same process of creating. until we create a fully sentient ai, they are not the same. do not treat them as though they're the same.
percival is busy being queer as hell. he was also here.
somewhat busy working for trisphee.

a reckoning will not be postponed indefinitely.
Old Posted 01-05-2023, 05:03 PM Reply With Quote  
Coda Coda is offline
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Default   #5  
I hope you don't mind if I reply to your points a little bit out of order, because I agree with you a lot more than it might seem.

Quote:
my last point that i can make is that ais are not humans. they don't have the same process of learning, they don't have the same process of creating. until we create a fully sentient ai, they are not the same. do not treat them as though they're the same.
My apologies, I wasn't at all trying to treat AI and humans as the same. Indeed, they don't have the same process of creating, and even if they were sentient they wouldn't be the same.

But observing what similarities there are really is a useful way to try to understand something that's new. It's easy to get hung up on what's different, but it's the similarities that make it possible to reason about the comparison. Mechanically speaking, we don't learn the same way as an AI, it's true, and we don't learn the same kinds of skills or use them in the same way. But for both humans and AIs, we generally don't build up our skills by memorizing specific information -- we build up our skills by practicing with lots of examples to get an understanding of what we have to do in order to make something similar.

So the point I was trying to make with that comparison is that, ethically speaking, if it's okay for a human to do something, then that's at least an argument in favor of it being okay for a human to use a tool to do it. And the point of that observation is merely to try to focus people's attention on the parts that are the real problems with real impacts instead of getting caught up in an emotional reaction to the parts that aren't actually what's causing trouble.

Quote:
i feel as though you're looking at it from a point of view that doesn't take into account late-stage capitalism.
No, I am -- I'm just saying it's too late. Late-stage capitalism is unhealthy, and the only way to succeed is to compete in the market, so fighting against a technology that isn't going to go away is only going to result in being out-competed by the people who choose to embrace it.

Quote:
also this will put people out of jobs. why hire 500 artists when you can hire ten techbros and get similar enough results in terms of artwork? why hire people that know how to use 3d modelling software (particularly blender, as that one's notorious for being an absolute fucking bitch to learn) when you can feed some models through an ai and have the same result? why hire a concept artist that knows how to do their job, when you can just use ai?
It will, and that sucks, although I think your particular description doesn't really describe it accurately.

AI image generators are a tool that lets artists be more productive. It lets them get more done in less time. And the better of an artist you are, the more you can do with an AI image generator.

But being able to get more done in less time also means that you don't need as many people. That much is absolutely true, and that sucks. Robots replaced humans in manufacturing by being able to do better work faster and more reliably, with less risk of personal injury. People made the same complaints about automation when that happened, and industrialization shook the world up for a while before we as a society figured out how to deal with it.

So I think we're kind of at the point where we need to figure out how to deal with it. That's where we should be focusing our attention.

Quote:
i've seen at least one case where someone was banned off of an art-based subreddit, because their style (realistic) looked too similar to something that was generated by ai. have you got any way to fix that? have you truly got some way of distinguishing between ai art and art produced by someone with the necessary tools and experience?
No, I don't have a way to do it, but I also think that's trying to solve the wrong problem. It ties in directly to the point I'm trying to make. Honest, hardworking people are getting hurt because of the bias against AI art. That person wouldn't have gotten banned if people weren't freaking out over new technology, and that attitude also pushes people away from the legitimate uses of it. The fear isn't helpful. The fear makes the problem worse.

Quote:
people would still use ai art to claim that they were the ones to truly create it and not just feed thousands upon thousands of works through an ai. people would still steal artworks and feed them through an ai, even in-progress artworks, and demand credit from everyone they've stolen from.
That's no different from bots that scrape deviantArt to make t-shirts that I can go buy at the mall. It's no different from people who slap some Photoshop filters on someone's artwork and claim it's theirs. That's not a problem with AI art. That's a problem with humans being awful, and that's kind of one of the points I was trying to make -- it's not the tool's fault.

And what that says to me is that human society is really bad at dealing with this problem in general. Even if community outrage is somehow able to put the cat back in the bag and AI art generators become a dead-end technology that nobody ever uses, it wouldn't actually solve it. People would just find another way to unfairly enrich themselves using of the work of others. That's what we really need to figure out how to fight back against.

Quote:
additionally, i am aware of how browsers work. images are downloaded, they get stored in a cache, which then get displayed on your client. at least, that's what i think happens?
I know you're aware; that's why I put in the disclaimer that I meant "you" as a general non-specific person. The only point I was making is that downloading someone's art isn't what makes it stealing. It's subsequently benefiting from giving away copies of it that makes it stealing.

Quote:
if you suggest that we start using ai artwork for trisphee's items, i will fuck off and make my own site. i have no experience in making a site.
I suggest no such thing whatsoever. Even if I wanted to (and I don't), it's actually a perfect example for why the current state of technology can't replace human artists -- AI image generators are terrible at consistency! We have tens of thousands of items that all have to fit pixel-perfect on our bases, and we've put a lot of work into trying to keep stuff working with a very specific color palette so that items match as well as possible. Most items have multiple poses that need to line up exactly.

And even if you could train an AI image generator to match our style, it would still require a comparable amount of effort from our art team to clean it up and make it usable. It wouldn't end up helping us at all.
Games by Coda (updated 10/1/2023 - New game: Adrift)
Art by Coda (updated 8/25/2022 - beatBitten and All-Nighter Simulator)

Mega Man: The Light of Will (Mega Man / Green Lantern crossover: In the lead-up to the events of Mega Man 2, Dr. Wily has discovered emotional light technology. How will his creations change how humankind thinks about artificial intelligence? Sadly abandoned. Sufficient Velocity x-post)
Old Posted 01-06-2023, 12:19 AM Reply With Quote  
Default   #6   KittyBeary KittyBeary is offline
A*DIC*TED
Believe me when I say I hate "AI art", the main reason being is that people are feeding it actual art from actual artists, thus they steal from actual artists with no consent what so ever and people are eating it up like it's super cool.

Please just support REAL artists instead of using AI. >:(

(And I really want to get back to doing art but with this AI trend my art is likely to get even more ignored than it has in the past, but then again I just do art for my own enjoyment anyway)

If these AI machines were making art from scratch I would find it more interesting.

ty bluebird for the art! :D
Last edited by KittyBeary; 01-17-2023 at 12:41 AM.
Old Posted 01-17-2023, 12:34 AM Reply With Quote  
Coda Coda is offline
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Default   #7  
Quote:
Originally Posted by KittyBeary View Post
Believe me when I say I hate "AI art", the main reason being is that people are feeding it actual art from actual artists, thus they steal from actual artists with no consent what so ever and people are eating it up like it's super cool.

Please just support REAL artists instead of using AI. >:(

(And I really want to get back to doing art but with this AI trend my art is likely to get even more ignored than it has in the past, but then again I just do art for my own enjoyment anyway)

If these AI machines were making art from scratch I would find it more interesting.
The thing is, that's what I'm trying to say.

It's certainly possible to abuse a generator by intentionally TRYING to copy a specific artist's art. This is pretty blatantly unethical, and I'll stand right beside you in fighting against it.

But the big pretrained models DO make art from scratch, at least as much as any artist makes art from scratch. The fact that you can ask the model to create something in different styles and yet it's still clearly illustrating the same ideas is a pretty solid demonstration that it isn't just copy-pasting stuff. It's actually learned what, for example, a "dog" looks like, and it uses the skills it's learned by studying and practicing to be able to make something that looks like a dog.

(It's also learned that artists sign and/or watermark their works, so it tries to imitate that, too. This isn't evidence it's copying anyone's artwork -- it's evidence that it's learned how artists approach the process.)

So really, that's the distinction I'm trying to make. People use AI art in bad ways, but those fascinating, interesting, legitimate applications are there, and they're the reason the tools were created in the first place. People who are trying to rip off human artists are missing the point for their own selfish ends.
Games by Coda (updated 10/1/2023 - New game: Adrift)
Art by Coda (updated 8/25/2022 - beatBitten and All-Nighter Simulator)

Mega Man: The Light of Will (Mega Man / Green Lantern crossover: In the lead-up to the events of Mega Man 2, Dr. Wily has discovered emotional light technology. How will his creations change how humankind thinks about artificial intelligence? Sadly abandoned. Sufficient Velocity x-post)
Old Posted 01-17-2023, 04:24 PM Reply With Quote  
Default   #8   Espy Espy is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by KittyBeary View Post
If these AI machines were making art from scratch I would find it more interesting.
Quick question — what do you have in mind when you say, “making art from scratch”?
STONEWALL WAS A RIOT

Old Posted 01-18-2023, 10:15 AM Reply With Quote  
Dalhanahue Dalhanahue is offline
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Default   #9  
What I find interesting about the topic is how it's absolutely exploded over the last couple/few years.

I was poking around the interwebs one day and happened to stumble on a site that was selling AI art, which at the time I didn't even realize that that was a thing. So it seemed really cool to me. What's more is this particular site only ever sold one piece once. So if you purchased it, no on else would ever have that piece of art. Even cooler imo. I was really blown away with the art I was seeing and I then on top if it, the idea of owning an original.

This was about maybe 2, possibly 3 years ago. Hubs I went a little nuts with it and we wound up buying 6 different pieces. Three for home and two for the office. We absolutely love them and always enjoy discussing them when people ask where we got them. They are all abstract pieces that we never get tired of looking at even to this we'll occasionally see something in them we didn't notice before or a different way part of it could be interpreted and ect.

After we bought those, I'd occasionally look at the site again just to see what else they had to offer around holidays and special occasions for a time but then it kind of just fell of my grid. Jump to now when this topic made me remember, I go back to the site. WOW.

So, first, I had trouble finding it because it used to be there were only like maybe two or three similar sites that offered AI art like this when I had first stumbled upon it (also partly I was pretty sure of the name but not 100% lol). Now though, I had to scroll a good ways down to find it because there are so many different sites offering all types of AI art and different generators and ect.

I finally found it though and even that site had changed quite a bit. There's so much more art available and you can tell the quality and styles have just exploded and improved in just that short time.

Not to mention price. I don't remember us spending more than $100.00 a piece for any of the ones we bought and they came on canvas, framed, and are at least 2' by 2'. Now however, the site looks like all works are $600.00 a piece for a 14" by 14" framed canvas. But you also get the high resolution digital file of the artwork along with a certificate of authenticity. I'm not sure if we got the digital file when we got ours (hubs was the one to actually purchase.) Also, before you could select different sized for different prices and that no longer seems to be an option.

I've only recently done a little more poking around to see what is out there now. I know the price of everything has gone up. On one hand I mean, if it was a piece I really really loved I might pay an artist that much today so I don't see why it'd be different for digital AI art either. However, at that price it doesn't seem as accessible to everyone anymore which was a large appeal at the time. So many people could have the opportunity to own something unique and original. Needless to say I'm glad that we found it and got the pieces we did before things really took off and sky rocketed.

I'm sure to if I looked around enough I could find other similar sites with cheaper prices.

At anyrate, I kind of just wanted to chime in a little on the subject.

I can see artists worry for sure. There are always ethics in question with anything honestly. However, I think really the thing that appealed to me when I first was introduced to it was just, well I mean really, how cool is it that they fed AI all of these works from amazing artists throughout history and then it's like, "Omnomnom ARRTTZZZ delicious. Oh hai. You want see something cool? Look what I can do. Here ya go." *poops out some bitch'n orignal art* that you have the opportunity to collect and with the site I was using in particular, no on else would have own that besides you. That all seems really neat to me.
Old Posted 01-18-2023, 11:45 AM Reply With Quote  
Default   #10   Den Den is offline
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the problem is that the unethical people are the ones being the loudest about this, thus drawing more attention to their practices than the people who use it ethically. Though I will say, there is strong evidence that Adobe (The Photoshop company) has been training their AI on their users' art without consent, so, if it's true, it's not just small-time players, and that's a big problem.

It'd be great if the unethical people actually got punished for their unethical practices, but as long as those practices churn out money for the capitalism machine, nobody really has the power to put a stop to them.
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Old Posted 03-27-2023, 04:49 PM Reply With Quote  
Coda Coda is offline
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Default   #11  
I suspect that isn't true, although it may only be untrue based on a technicality -- Adobe's terms of service for their cloud offerings almost certainly include blanket permission to store, process, and analyze anything you have in your account. This is obviously necessary for them to be able to store your data for you and show you thumbnails, but it would also grant them permission to use your files in training their AIs.

But on the other hand, I'm not even sure that's unethical. That same agreement limits the manner in which they're allowed to share that data. I don't expect that Adobe's lawyers would be happy with the idea that the company might be redistributing data that their users believed was being securely and privately stored. If their AI models aren't capable of reproducing their users' original creations, then there's not really a problem, especially not a problem that one could reasonably claim damages about.



I'm also not sure that the unethical users are in fact the loudest -- I think they're just the ones being amplified the most. That is, they'd probably not seem like such a big deal if they weren't being called out. This is, of course, working as intended: the whole point is to draw attention to the problem.



It's hard to say that this is a "capitalist" thing, though. Stable Diffusion is an open-source model, so it's not making money in and of itself. The problem with stopping the unethical practices isn't a matter of there being too much money involved -- on the contrary, the big attention and the big money are more interested in PREVENTING the unethical uses. It's a matter of there not being any way to actually enforce it. Most unethical users are going to fly under the radar, just like how most software pirates (and for that matter, art thieves that don't use AI) get away with their crimes because it's impossible to track and impractical to punish.
Games by Coda (updated 10/1/2023 - New game: Adrift)
Art by Coda (updated 8/25/2022 - beatBitten and All-Nighter Simulator)

Mega Man: The Light of Will (Mega Man / Green Lantern crossover: In the lead-up to the events of Mega Man 2, Dr. Wily has discovered emotional light technology. How will his creations change how humankind thinks about artificial intelligence? Sadly abandoned. Sufficient Velocity x-post)
Old Posted 03-27-2023, 06:51 PM Reply With Quote  
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