AI vs. ART

There is, alas, no way to copyright a style of painting, and there is nothing much anyone can do about any new technology other than trying to insulate himself. As it stands, Erin Hanson is, at least for the moment, thoroughly AI-proof, for the simple reason that she sells originals, painted in physical media. That is not something AI can do at all. The technology might wreak havoc in the print market, but then again, maybe not as much as we fear.
Not to rain on your parade but, combine AI with the technology of 3d printing, and it shouldn't be too long before "it" can render in any medium
 
I hear you, but it's not just art. e.g. Microsoft Copilot
I don't even know Microsoft Copilot, so not sure what you're referring to. However, we DO have copyright laws - outdated they may be again - to protect against expropriation of original works. Unfortunately, they don't yet cope with these AI advances and the burden falls on the starving artist, which is not fair at all. Not what the law really considers "fair use" at all either, but I"m not a lawyer.
 
I don't even know Microsoft Copilot, so not sure what you're referring to. However, we DO have copyright laws - outdated they may be again - to protect against expropriation of original works. Unfortunately, they don't yet cope with these AI advances and the burden falls on the starving artist, which is not fair at all. Not what the law really considers "fair use" at all either, but I"m not a lawyer.
Microsoft Copilot is an AI built to assist software developers in producing new solutions. It's 'source' is github.com: 400,000 repositories, 1 billion files, 14 terabytes of code, all used without asking for permission or giving credit to the original authors.
 
Not to rain on your parade but, combine AI with the technology of 3d printing, and it shouldn't be too long before "it" can render in any medium

Maybe, but I don't think it will make the market for original art go away any more than current printing technology does. An original work of art is a luxury item - the whole point is that it is expensive. I follow a bloke on Twitter who produces handmade knives for a living, despite the fact that machine-made ones are much cheaper. Potters were not run out of business by the advent of mass produced ceramics either.

But I have no doubt some art jobs will go away. And if AI and robot technology keeps on advancing, all jobs will go away. The last guy with a job at Twitter headquarters will not be Elon Musk, but the janitor - it turns out that is one of the most difficult jobs to get robots to do. :)
 
Incidentally, while getting Craiyon to produce some abstracts to post in this thread:


I once again noticed something about AI that gives me some hope for humans. There is much worry about AIs following us around the web and then using our web behavior to first understand and then manipulate us. No doubt a real issue, and in fact it already happens, but boy, are these AIs stupid sometimes. In my case, I constantly get bombarded with ads trying to sell me art. My OWN frickin' art, that is to say, which I post on a local version of e-bay. The only other art-for-sale ads I get bombarded with, are ones trying to entice me to participate in upmarket art auctions, like I have millions of dollars lying around the place.

I'm of course always glad for those ones, because it gives me a chance to expand my collection of digital reproductions. It's one thing about those auction houses: they put absolutely lovely high-res reproductions online! 😃
 
The only way for artists to get ahead of this is by passing laws that you can't copyright AI works.

No AI is "born" able to create art works. They train it on other people's creations. Arguably, that is how humans learn too.

The scary part is that corporations will try to copyright the AI creations and then sue the artists whose original works were used for training. In the same manner that Getty Images sued someone for posting their own photographs. What a better money maker than suing poor artists because something they made looks like one of your AI creations. Sting each artist for $50K (per violation) and you have a perpetual money machine, plus a choke hold on creativity.

Just my opinion.
 
I have received notices before, not from Getty Images themself, but from some "affiliate" that I should pay them for posting one of their images of a monkey on my blog once. I took it down, but the letter said I had to pay them even if I took it down. Since it wasn't Getty Images who wrote the letter, I just ignored it. I don't do that sort of thing anymore, but I thought it was odd. I post images of other artist's work all the time and it's always seemed fine. Sometimes I ask permission, if I know them personally I guess, but I can't exactly ask famous artists to post their work if I talking about them and showing some examples. And what about the dead ones? We do that here all the time.
 
I have received notices before, not from Getty Images themself, but from some "affiliate" that I should pay them for posting one of their images of a monkey on my blog once. I took it down, but the letter said I had to pay them even if I took it down. Since it wasn't Getty Images who wrote the letter, I just ignored it. I don't do that sort of thing anymore, but I thought it was odd. I post images of other artist's work all the time and it's always seemed fine. Sometimes I ask permission, if I know them personally I guess, but I can't exactly ask famous artists to post their work if I talking about them and showing some examples. And what about the dead ones? We do that here all the time.
Don't know for sure - not a lawyer - but it strikes me as "fair use".
 
On with the scary AI saga. Twitter is abuzz with discussions of the new OpenAI thing that generates text. You can give it any prompt, and it writes up a piece or comes up with an idea. In some ways, pretty scary stuff! E.g. I saw a piece generated by the prompt "Write instructions on how to remove a peanut butter sandwich from a VCR, in the style of the KJV bible." It was actually quite hilarious, and perhaps as good as anything a human stand-up comedian could come up with.

Well, you can go join the fun at https://beta.openai.com/ - it's easy (and free) to sign up and start playing around.

The good news is that if current trends continue, you need not worry that artists are going to be out of jobs while everyone else comfortably coasts along. No, EVERYONE will be out of a job, except some classes of artisans and manual laborers. So at least we won't be alone. :)

In any event, the software, while scary impressive, is not as miraculous as it appears at first sight. I thought out of the box, and gave the AI the same prompt over and over: "Tell me about the first time you tasted ice cream." Here are its responses:

OpenAI Ice cream.jpg


You can see what's going on here: it's essentially the same response over and over. And it's a "stock response" - I would imagine that the most common actual human response to the question would be the same as my own, personal response: I honestly don't remember.

As amateur cartoonist I worry of course that AI cartoon ideas will quickly put me out of a hobby. So I asked it to come up with ideas for single-panel cartoons. Many of these fell flat, and I don't think any were as funny as my own best ones, but the scary thing here is that the AI can generate unlimited numbers of them, and beat a human by sheer brute force. On the other hand, here too there is a somewhat "stock response" quality to the ideas:

OpenAI cartoon ideas.jpg


Still, scary stuff, considering this is but the beginning. Oh, and you will be particularly disturbed to learn that when I set up a hypothetical legal trouble scenario and asked the AI for legal advice, it told me to go to a lawyer, so I fear that while AI might free us of artists, we're never going to be rid of lawyers!

There's a deep irony here. In the 1980s naïve technomaniacs like Carl Sagan promised us that robot technology would "free us of backbreaking labor." It now turns out that the very last jobs remaining to people will in fact be the backbreaking ones. Everything that we thought of as too creative or original or soulful for computers to do, turned out to be the low-hanging fruit! We were promised Star Trek; instead we're getting Terminator.

But of course, one doesn't really know. No one can predict the future.
 
On with the scary AI saga. Twitter is abuzz with discussions of the new OpenAI thing that generates text. You can give it any prompt, and it writes up a piece or comes up with an idea. In some ways, pretty scary stuff! E.g. I saw a piece generated by the prompt "Write instructions on how to remove a peanut butter sandwich from a VCR, in the style of the KJV bible." It was actually quite hilarious, and perhaps as good as anything a human stand-up comedian could come up with.

Well, you can go join the fun at https://beta.openai.com/ - it's easy (and free) to sign up and start playing around.

The good news is that if current trends continue, you need not worry that artists are going to be out of jobs while everyone else comfortably coasts along. No, EVERYONE will be out of a job, except some classes of artisans and manual laborers. So at least we won't be alone. :)

In any event, the software, while scary impressive, is not as miraculous as it appears at first sight. I thought out of the box, and gave the AI the same prompt over and over: "Tell me about the first time you tasted ice cream." Here are its responses:

View attachment 26673

You can see what's going on here: it's essentially the same response over and over. And it's a "stock response" - I would imagine that the most common actual human response to the question would be the same as my own, personal response: I honestly don't remember.

As amateur cartoonist I worry of course that AI cartoon ideas will quickly put me out of a hobby. So I asked it to come up with ideas for single-panel cartoons. Many of these fell flat, and I don't think any were as funny as my own best ones, but the scary thing here is that the AI can generate unlimited numbers of them, and beat a human by sheer brute force. On the other hand, here too there is a somewhat "stock response" quality to the ideas:

View attachment 26674

Still, scary stuff, considering this is but the beginning. Oh, and you will be particularly disturbed to learn that when I set up a hypothetical legal trouble scenario and asked the AI for legal advice, it told me to go to a lawyer, so I fear that while AI might free us of artists, we're never going to be rid of lawyers!

There's a deep irony here. In the 1980s naïve technomaniacs like Carl Sagan promised us that robot technology would "free us of backbreaking labor." It now turns out that the very last jobs remaining to people will in fact be the backbreaking ones. Everything that we thought of as too creative or original or soulful for computers to do, turned out to be the low-hanging fruit! We were promised Star Trek; instead we're getting Terminator.

But of course, one doesn't really know. No one can predict the future.
It's that promise of Star Trek while delivering Terminator that you should fear most - and that one comes repeatedly from HUMANS!
 
San Francisco supervisors have walked back their approval of a controversial policy that would have allowed police to kill suspects with robots in extreme cases. Instead of granting final authorization to the policy Tuesday in its second of two required votes, the Board of Supervisors reversed course and voted 8-3 to explicitly prohibit police from using remote-controlled robots with lethal force.
 
San Francisco supervisors have walked back their approval of a controversial policy that would have allowed police to kill suspects with robots in extreme cases. Instead of granting final authorization to the policy Tuesday in its second of two required votes, the Board of Supervisors reversed course and voted 8-3 to explicitly prohibit police from using remote-controlled robots with lethal force.
Good call. Now those gun-toting doggy-bots will just chase down the perps until they collapse from exhaustion. :ROFLMAO:
 
was undecided whether to have my say, because I'm very pessimistic and against artificial intelligence in art, I'm sorry, it seems to me that the only ones who earn are those who want something immediately and paying as little as possible, not caring about the quality but the quality what will come out of artificial intelligence is always better, and will always be made better, it can take from the best and without copyright rules it seems ..
rules that are in place for humans, a beginner risks jail for making a fan art, in Europe they made a good law 3 years ago whereby making a fan art or taking a selfie in front of the effeil tower is forbidden, no joking with millionaire fines or prisons, but they can make a business with Ai because a human life does not seem to have a very high price, so if AI can save ..

that is, drawing is already little sponsored as something useful and positive on a mental level, at least in my school it was not done or very little, something that can also help to express oneself, to feel a little better is considered little and now you press a button that it can dissuade many from doing so and will cause economic damage to many. I think it is sad and unfair, to train the program you use the work of those who have given you consent, who is alive therefore, whether they give it for free or for a fee but take from who gives consent, otherwise and stealing, it would take a millionaire class action because the rules for mere mortals are there.
I specify that what I don't like is training without consent and also the fact that I don't think it makes sense to give art to a machine that it uses without human intervention, because it has no purpose other than saving because it is possible do it, now the results improve but it started years ago when a newspaper fired top-level artists for a program that created drawing from photos. maybe AI
it's just progress but I don't know at what price I think human capital is the only capital that nobody cares about.
I wrote my thoughts here, days ago, on my instagram page,

 

As the article hints at, those illustrations are hideous. Have people actually looked at them?

Still, he managed to sell more copies of a single book than I have sold in total, after years, and publishing more than twenty. :)

But in the long run, much will depend on what people want, or will be satisfied with. I think for many self-published authors of children's books this technology is a godsend, because human illustrators are expensive, and most authors quite simply cannot afford them. Perhaps, as the software becomes more sophisticated, all those uncanny valley issues will be resolved too. Many buyers will also be perfectly happy, particularly if the books are significantly cheaper.

On the other hand (and a hopeful note for artists), people do not necessarily want the dirt-cheap product. There are entire industries of luxury products, that do exactly the same thing as cheap ones, that people nevertheless buy simply because they are perceived as "elite" in some way.

I do not foresee that original paintings will ever be entirely outcompeted by AI products, no matter how sophisticated they become. People buy an original painting because it is an original, and therefore has scarcity value built into it. Whether you are Van Gogh or some obscure art blogger, you can produce only so many original paintings bearing your signature in your lifetime, and that is partly where their value lies. The very fact that AI can produce infinite amounts of art is precisely what makes AI art valueless.

No doubt some people will buy it, in the same way that some people buy prints rather than original paintings for their homes. But there is something vaguely tacky about a house full of prints and without any originals, and I suspect the same will go for AI art. In all civilizations, there has always been a market for luxury goods, and they are considered such precisely because they are scarce and expensive.

The market for reproduction art, such as prints and book illustrations, may be a different issue, but here too lots of buyers may well prefer a more expensive book but one known to have been produced by humans, for the same reason that people dress their kids in branded clothes and send them to private schools and buy them the latest smart phones.

Alas for most of us, lower end illustration jobs may well soon go away. And it is of course possible that a new generation, growing up with AI art, will simply want something pretty for their home, that goes nicely with the curtains, and will not care at all whether it is scarce or hand painted, in which case we're screwed.

But you can console yourself with this thought: those who think only artists and psychologists and such are going to end up screwed are deeply naïve. Already, a good deal of computer programming is ALSO automated. We are creating a world in which literally no one will have a job anymore. It may turn out to be a decadent, hedonistic paradise of the sort described in Iain Banks' "Culture" novels, or it may be more akin to the horrific dystopia described in Paul Theroux's "O-Zone." We'll see soon enough.

Nassim Taleb correctly points out that the 20th century was the graveyard of socio-political utopias. He predicts the 21st century will be the graveyard of techno-utopias. But we probably won't learn this lesson until we have endured a great deal of suffering.
 
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