Popular board game doubles down on using AI art
September 18, 2023 6:39 AM Subscribe
Perhaps one should use AI to craft a game called "greening mars" loosely based on this IP and kickstart it. Sometimes it takes rubbing their noses in it to get people to understand.
posted by seanmpuckett at 6:57 AM on September 18, 2023 [24 favorites]
posted by seanmpuckett at 6:57 AM on September 18, 2023 [24 favorites]
>Still, the issue isn't entirely one-sided. Polygon ran an extensive Q&A with the president of Stronghold Games' partner, Indie Game Studios, and they suggest that there are benefits as well as pitfalls for the technology. Namely, they state that AI art can speed up development so fans get their hands on a project sooner. In addition, they think that it'll allow small companies to "go into spaces that weren’t profitable" before now.
"Sure, we're not compensating people, but on the up side, we're not compensating people!" And the people publishing the article thought that qualified as "not one-sided".
posted by Sing Or Swim at 7:07 AM on September 18, 2023 [33 favorites]
"Sure, we're not compensating people, but on the up side, we're not compensating people!" And the people publishing the article thought that qualified as "not one-sided".
posted by Sing Or Swim at 7:07 AM on September 18, 2023 [33 favorites]
> Perhaps one should use AI to craft a game called "greening mars" loosely based on this IP and kickstart it. Sometimes it takes rubbing their noses in it to get people to understand.
It is an interesting project to try.
When I've played with AI within my field of expertise, what you get is at best is an initial stream of brainstorming quality, but formatted as if it was final product. And that is usually after multiple iterations.
Using this to make a full game - rules and all - you'd almost certainly have to do copy-editing after the AI generated text and images, plus walk it through problems as it crafted the rules.
If you just left in the raw AI produced version, you'd probably not generate the story you want. The resulting game would be pretty incoherent. And it wouldn't show the same kind of iterative polishing I expect out of a good boardgame (like, where they find some idea sounded neat, but didn't play well, so they adapted it). OTOH, I see a lack of iterative polishing (rough rules that are either difficult to grasp or just don't play well) on many board games a lot, so maybe that is good enough.
And maybe AI has improved a pile since I last played with the GPT-era stuff.
posted by NotAYakk at 7:37 AM on September 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
It is an interesting project to try.
When I've played with AI within my field of expertise, what you get is at best is an initial stream of brainstorming quality, but formatted as if it was final product. And that is usually after multiple iterations.
Using this to make a full game - rules and all - you'd almost certainly have to do copy-editing after the AI generated text and images, plus walk it through problems as it crafted the rules.
If you just left in the raw AI produced version, you'd probably not generate the story you want. The resulting game would be pretty incoherent. And it wouldn't show the same kind of iterative polishing I expect out of a good boardgame (like, where they find some idea sounded neat, but didn't play well, so they adapted it). OTOH, I see a lack of iterative polishing (rough rules that are either difficult to grasp or just don't play well) on many board games a lot, so maybe that is good enough.
And maybe AI has improved a pile since I last played with the GPT-era stuff.
posted by NotAYakk at 7:37 AM on September 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
Has anyone told the developers that they won’t be able to copyright the art?
posted by Just the one swan, actually at 7:52 AM on September 18, 2023 [13 favorites]
posted by Just the one swan, actually at 7:52 AM on September 18, 2023 [13 favorites]
If you can’t copyright the art or the rules mechanics, you could produce fairly usable knock-off versions. Of course the profit on a knock-off of an expansion for a small press board game isn’t great, but would be amusing….
posted by GenjiandProust at 8:05 AM on September 18, 2023
posted by GenjiandProust at 8:05 AM on September 18, 2023
The copyright thing doesn't matter to a lot of people. One thing that came out several months ago was an AI app that would slightly modify images and remove the stock photo watermark and it advertised itself as "turn any image royalty-free! royalty free images for you to use!" Sooo yeah. I am also guessing a tabletop RPG doesn't necessarily care about if they can copyright the images since those tend to just be decorative and the meat of the game is its rules and lore. If they used AI for the text then yeah, they definitely did a bonehead move.
It is still BS to me--not just the uncompensated assets incorporated into AI, but why would you pay regular price for it? That's the thing is it's so cheap to mass produce an artistic experience with AI that even if AI had somehow been developed ethically I'd be willing to pay pennies at most for it. It's kind of a short grift that AI users are doing to try and pass off their stuff as being worth the same as something made with compensated artists.
posted by picklenickle at 8:20 AM on September 18, 2023 [5 favorites]
It is still BS to me--not just the uncompensated assets incorporated into AI, but why would you pay regular price for it? That's the thing is it's so cheap to mass produce an artistic experience with AI that even if AI had somehow been developed ethically I'd be willing to pay pennies at most for it. It's kind of a short grift that AI users are doing to try and pass off their stuff as being worth the same as something made with compensated artists.
posted by picklenickle at 8:20 AM on September 18, 2023 [5 favorites]
Furthermore, uncopyrightable things may still be trademarked, which if upheld would stop someone else from using a confusingly similar image in the same field of commerce. (I could get an AI image generator to make me a picture of an apple but I can't use that uncopyrightable image to sell computers.)
posted by xigxag at 8:24 AM on September 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by xigxag at 8:24 AM on September 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
The copyright situation is the same as if you had created a board game from public domain 18th century illustrations: you don't get any protection for the raw images themselves (which remain in public domain) but if you've done things like collage them together, incorporate them into cards, board layouts, etc. then those modifications and compositions are copyrightable.
So no, you wouldn't be able to wholesale copy this game merely because it incorporates AI generated images.
posted by Pyry at 8:27 AM on September 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
So no, you wouldn't be able to wholesale copy this game merely because it incorporates AI generated images.
posted by Pyry at 8:27 AM on September 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
Does this mean Steam is going to delist their game, since this is against their rules?
posted by I-Write-Essays at 8:43 AM on September 18, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by I-Write-Essays at 8:43 AM on September 18, 2023 [4 favorites]
It is still BS to me--not just the uncompensated assets incorporated into AI, but why would you pay regular price for it?
Worth noting that the original base game does not have good art either. It seems to have mostly pulled from public domain sources?
posted by pwnguin at 8:52 AM on September 18, 2023
Worth noting that the original base game does not have good art either. It seems to have mostly pulled from public domain sources?
posted by pwnguin at 8:52 AM on September 18, 2023
I’m not sure card layout would be trademarkable — there are only so many ways cards can go together and most of them have been used multiple times over the years. Icons and specific terms (“tap” is owned by MtG, if I recall, so other game use “turn” or “exhaust” or whatever), but the layout? It would be a court case.
posted by GenjiandProust at 8:58 AM on September 18, 2023
posted by GenjiandProust at 8:58 AM on September 18, 2023
generative AI proponents = ourobros
checking, I see the 'boros' is basically the root of our "-vore"
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 8:59 AM on September 18, 2023
checking, I see the 'boros' is basically the root of our "-vore"
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 8:59 AM on September 18, 2023
A few points of note.
Indie Game Studios imprint, Stronghold Games is the US licensor of Terraforming Mars. FryxGames is the original Swedish team that created Terraforming Mars, and is a small family org that is co-owned by the family members, including 2 illustrators who created the artwork for the game and expansions. Stronghold and FryxGames are working together on the kickstarter for further expansion.
What has changed is that instead of just using stock photos and free sources, FryxGames and Stronghold have turned to using AI tools to dramatically speed up production of the number of images they can create in a given timeframe. These include things such as editors in photoshop, generating themes and approaches, as well as things like backgrounds through direct generation. There is still substantial human effort in creating and editing the illustrations, where AI-work is only part of the final product, and the same family members that were doing illustrations before are still doing that job. It's not e.g. just chucking a couple of words at Midjourney and calling it a day, so likely would still qualify for copyright status given the significant human creativity still involved. People were already copying their existing artwork anyway, so that's nothing new.
Obviously, the AI tools they're using are the usual ones, and were trained on a large body of work scraped from the open internet. So they're not directly putting their existing illustrators out of work because of AI (if anything, they're giving them more), but if you believe the way current image AI models are trained is unethical, a breach of the copyright on the artwork they were trained on, and rips off artists more generally, then yes, FryxGames and Stronghold use of AI tools for the illustrations and artwork also falls under that, and they acknowledge that is problematic and would prefer a consent-based/compensation model for such tools.
One of their arguments is that contracting with outside artists there's no way they could guarantee no AI tools were used as part of the work, and that the development of them is so rapid and impactful that most if not all commercial illustrators are going to have to do so to continue in the field. They recognise there will likely be lower numbers of paid illustrators needed in the industry as AI makes generating artwork for boardgames faster and cheaper; and this is likely happening in other industries also.
Computerization and spreadsheet software wiped out vast numbers of paper-pushing jobs, yet we're not still chasing everyone who e.g. uses Excel with pitchforks. Technology destroys some jobs, and creates some new ones, same as it ever did, and it's down to us as a society how we respond to that. I wish I had faith we'd be able to look after people better whose careers are destroyed by new tech (ethically trained AI would still have a similar impact), but the broader questions of how not to make capitalism grind people up like paste is probably a bit out of scope for a kickstarter.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 9:25 AM on September 18, 2023 [10 favorites]
Indie Game Studios imprint, Stronghold Games is the US licensor of Terraforming Mars. FryxGames is the original Swedish team that created Terraforming Mars, and is a small family org that is co-owned by the family members, including 2 illustrators who created the artwork for the game and expansions. Stronghold and FryxGames are working together on the kickstarter for further expansion.
What has changed is that instead of just using stock photos and free sources, FryxGames and Stronghold have turned to using AI tools to dramatically speed up production of the number of images they can create in a given timeframe. These include things such as editors in photoshop, generating themes and approaches, as well as things like backgrounds through direct generation. There is still substantial human effort in creating and editing the illustrations, where AI-work is only part of the final product, and the same family members that were doing illustrations before are still doing that job. It's not e.g. just chucking a couple of words at Midjourney and calling it a day, so likely would still qualify for copyright status given the significant human creativity still involved. People were already copying their existing artwork anyway, so that's nothing new.
Obviously, the AI tools they're using are the usual ones, and were trained on a large body of work scraped from the open internet. So they're not directly putting their existing illustrators out of work because of AI (if anything, they're giving them more), but if you believe the way current image AI models are trained is unethical, a breach of the copyright on the artwork they were trained on, and rips off artists more generally, then yes, FryxGames and Stronghold use of AI tools for the illustrations and artwork also falls under that, and they acknowledge that is problematic and would prefer a consent-based/compensation model for such tools.
One of their arguments is that contracting with outside artists there's no way they could guarantee no AI tools were used as part of the work, and that the development of them is so rapid and impactful that most if not all commercial illustrators are going to have to do so to continue in the field. They recognise there will likely be lower numbers of paid illustrators needed in the industry as AI makes generating artwork for boardgames faster and cheaper; and this is likely happening in other industries also.
Computerization and spreadsheet software wiped out vast numbers of paper-pushing jobs, yet we're not still chasing everyone who e.g. uses Excel with pitchforks. Technology destroys some jobs, and creates some new ones, same as it ever did, and it's down to us as a society how we respond to that. I wish I had faith we'd be able to look after people better whose careers are destroyed by new tech (ethically trained AI would still have a similar impact), but the broader questions of how not to make capitalism grind people up like paste is probably a bit out of scope for a kickstarter.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 9:25 AM on September 18, 2023 [10 favorites]
Travis Worthington, the CEO of Indie Games Studios, talked to Polygon about this. Dan Thurot did a summary of the interview on Bluesky.
#4 Travis is quick to note that FryxGames has not personally plagiarized the artwork of any other artists. Rather, FryxGames used a machine to plagiarize the artwork of other artists.posted by sgranade at 9:34 AM on September 18, 2023 [15 favorites]
#5 Travis is aware that there are more ethical models of generative AI that could be trained on the work of consenting artists. For this project, FryxGames opted for the unethical option.
…
#8 Travis notes that prohibitions on generative AI will be impossible to enforce in the future. Like all norms and rules will be impossible to enforce in the future, FryxGames and Stronghold have decided to get ahead of the curve by breaking them as soon as possible.
From the article: after noting that compensation is "a real issue [that they would] love to see a solution for," they say that they'd "be eager to look at that and join up with that solution when it’s available."
One solution is for people to avoid products that use machine generated art. Another solution is to encourage piracy of products that use machine generated art. Machine generation undermines the the "piracy hurts artists" argument for those products that use it, and if we are going to have fully automated luxury gay space communism, we might as well have it for everyone.
Just don't get caught, mateys.
posted by surlyben at 9:36 AM on September 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
One solution is for people to avoid products that use machine generated art. Another solution is to encourage piracy of products that use machine generated art. Machine generation undermines the the "piracy hurts artists" argument for those products that use it, and if we are going to have fully automated luxury gay space communism, we might as well have it for everyone.
Just don't get caught, mateys.
posted by surlyben at 9:36 AM on September 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
An anti-AI argument built on "but stolen art!" is living on borrowed time when companies like Adobe and NVIDIA are actively developing systems trained entirely on licensed image databases.
Personally, I'd rather live in a world where anyone can generate free-use imagery than one where it can only be done through proprietary tools owned by the handful of companies big enough to leverage their own content libraries. If artificial visual imagination can't be banned or un-invented, might as well make it public domain rather than lock it under corporate copyright.
posted by Rhaomi at 9:37 AM on September 18, 2023 [15 favorites]
Personally, I'd rather live in a world where anyone can generate free-use imagery than one where it can only be done through proprietary tools owned by the handful of companies big enough to leverage their own content libraries. If artificial visual imagination can't be banned or un-invented, might as well make it public domain rather than lock it under corporate copyright.
posted by Rhaomi at 9:37 AM on September 18, 2023 [15 favorites]
Computerization and spreadsheet software wiped out vast numbers of paper-pushing jobs, yet we're not still chasing everyone who e.g. uses Excel with pitchforks.
Equating data entry with highly skilled creative output is... well, it is something.
posted by grumpybear69 at 9:50 AM on September 18, 2023 [14 favorites]
Equating data entry with highly skilled creative output is... well, it is something.
posted by grumpybear69 at 9:50 AM on September 18, 2023 [14 favorites]
If only the livelihoods being mooted were those of capitalists instead of already starving artists. Fuck all justifications of this. We do not need to optimize for profit. People need to make a living and to do so with dignity. If capitalism makes this hard then the solution isn’t to steal from the poorest workers but the richest.
God damn it people listen to yourselves.
posted by seanmpuckett at 9:51 AM on September 18, 2023 [12 favorites]
God damn it people listen to yourselves.
posted by seanmpuckett at 9:51 AM on September 18, 2023 [12 favorites]
>Technology destroys some jobs, and creates some new ones, same as it ever did,
I eagerly wait upon the list of jobs created by generative AI. In the meantime, just say "I don't think I'm affected so I don't care," which at least sounds honest.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 9:57 AM on September 18, 2023 [18 favorites]
I eagerly wait upon the list of jobs created by generative AI. In the meantime, just say "I don't think I'm affected so I don't care," which at least sounds honest.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 9:57 AM on September 18, 2023 [18 favorites]
The problem here isn’t that computers can make art, depriving human artists of money. The problem is that we have a world set up where art is required to make money for somebody to dedicate themselves to it.
That’s bad, and that’s the problem we should be trying to fix, not the fairly inexorable progress of technology. Which is even harder to fix than capitalism, and couldn’t ever be fixed without fixing capitalism first.
posted by mellow seas at 10:00 AM on September 18, 2023 [7 favorites]
That’s bad, and that’s the problem we should be trying to fix, not the fairly inexorable progress of technology. Which is even harder to fix than capitalism, and couldn’t ever be fixed without fixing capitalism first.
posted by mellow seas at 10:00 AM on September 18, 2023 [7 favorites]
In other words, AI output is the product of the work of our entire society, and the fruits of its productivity should likewise be shared among our entire society. The alternative is further entrenching the copyright system, which in practice mostly exists to be abused by the five giant media companies.
Now is the time to make that case politically, before corporations reaping all the benefits of AI, at the expense of workers, is a locked-in dynamic.
posted by mellow seas at 10:06 AM on September 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
Now is the time to make that case politically, before corporations reaping all the benefits of AI, at the expense of workers, is a locked-in dynamic.
posted by mellow seas at 10:06 AM on September 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
they acknowledge that is problematic and would prefer a consent-based/compensation model for such tools
Someone states a preference for X, but does Y, which directly discourages or even prevents X from happening. This official position, the way you describe it, seems neither honest nor ethical. Issues about AI or technology seem like an aside, here.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 10:15 AM on September 18, 2023
Someone states a preference for X, but does Y, which directly discourages or even prevents X from happening. This official position, the way you describe it, seems neither honest nor ethical. Issues about AI or technology seem like an aside, here.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 10:15 AM on September 18, 2023
We are totally Terraforming Mars addicts, and absolutely backed the last Kickstarter for silly things like 3D cities and actual metal resource blocks, and were fully intending to back this one, too, but we dropped it like a hot rock when we heard about the AI art thing. So disappointing.
posted by BrashTech at 10:39 AM on September 18, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by BrashTech at 10:39 AM on September 18, 2023 [8 favorites]
Genuine question - where are the ethical publically accessible image generation AI tools? It should be possible to have one based purely on public domain and appropriate creative-commons licenced art, but of the big ones I know of, they don't disclose exactly what's in their 'curated' training data. There's firefly by adobe which supposedly is only trained from privately licenced images, but it's a beta that can't be used for commercial work AFAIK, and last I checked needed a CC sub to get the version that didn't suck (plus did Adobe Stock artists expect their work to be used for Adobe AI training?)
My own experiments with image generation have been limited to creating custom character card artwork for Heroquest 3rd party models, but i'd definitely prefer to use one personally thats based on e.g. public domain work.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 10:42 AM on September 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
My own experiments with image generation have been limited to creating custom character card artwork for Heroquest 3rd party models, but i'd definitely prefer to use one personally thats based on e.g. public domain work.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 10:42 AM on September 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
It's not e.g. just chucking a couple of words at Midjourney and calling it a day, so likely would still qualify for copyright status given the significant human creativity still involved.
I wouldn't be so sure about that: https://www.wired.com/story/ai-art-copyright-matthew-allen/
One of their arguments is that contracting with outside artists there's no way they could guarantee no AI tools were used as part of the work
"We can't be sure our contractors won't commit crimes, so we'll just have to commit the crimes ourselves."
...it's down to us as a society how we respond to that.
Yes, it is, and I suspect the way society responds is not going to be to the game developers' liking in this case.
posted by overglow at 10:46 AM on September 18, 2023 [3 favorites]
I wouldn't be so sure about that: https://www.wired.com/story/ai-art-copyright-matthew-allen/
One of their arguments is that contracting with outside artists there's no way they could guarantee no AI tools were used as part of the work
"We can't be sure our contractors won't commit crimes, so we'll just have to commit the crimes ourselves."
...it's down to us as a society how we respond to that.
Yes, it is, and I suspect the way society responds is not going to be to the game developers' liking in this case.
posted by overglow at 10:46 AM on September 18, 2023 [3 favorites]
Equating data entry with highly skilled creative output is... well, it is something.
Believe me, I have seen some highly skilled and VERY creative use of Excel. Glad to know that us tech workers are all soulless husks though.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 10:48 AM on September 18, 2023 [7 favorites]
Believe me, I have seen some highly skilled and VERY creative use of Excel. Glad to know that us tech workers are all soulless husks though.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 10:48 AM on September 18, 2023 [7 favorites]
LOL, I'm a tech worker too, I don't think tech workers are soulless husks. But moving from paper spreadsheets to electronic spreadsheets is just not the same thing as AI aping everyone's art, anymore than using calculators or going from typewriters to word processors.
posted by grumpybear69 at 10:50 AM on September 18, 2023 [10 favorites]
posted by grumpybear69 at 10:50 AM on September 18, 2023 [10 favorites]
Perhaps one should use AI to craft a game called "greening mars" loosely based on this IP and kickstart it. Sometimes it takes rubbing their noses in it to get people to understand.
Pretty much this already exists. Board game developers are already very familiar with having their IP stolen, cloned, repurposed, etc. Most popular board games already have clone versions put up online. [I don't think AI is going to help (yet?) with the hard parts of producing a physical game.]
posted by mrgoldenbrown at 10:51 AM on September 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
Pretty much this already exists. Board game developers are already very familiar with having their IP stolen, cloned, repurposed, etc. Most popular board games already have clone versions put up online. [I don't think AI is going to help (yet?) with the hard parts of producing a physical game.]
posted by mrgoldenbrown at 10:51 AM on September 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
AI generated content is toxic waste, smearing more sewage over everything is not the answer.
posted by Artw at 11:32 AM on September 18, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Artw at 11:32 AM on September 18, 2023 [3 favorites]
Perhaps one should use AI to craft a game called "greening mars" loosely based on this IP and kickstart it. Sometimes it takes rubbing their noses in it to get people to understand.
You can make a game that uses all of the mechanisms of the game. You could probably even make your own ripoff game that uses the same rules, since rules aren't really copyrightable. "Greening Mars" would be an IP law issue. That said, opolygames.com says hello.
Separately from that, the hobbyist industry tends to police itself in regard to this kind of play. So even if it were legal, it would be crapped on six ways to Sunday and be massively unprofitable.
posted by parliboy at 11:35 AM on September 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
You can make a game that uses all of the mechanisms of the game. You could probably even make your own ripoff game that uses the same rules, since rules aren't really copyrightable. "Greening Mars" would be an IP law issue. That said, opolygames.com says hello.
Separately from that, the hobbyist industry tends to police itself in regard to this kind of play. So even if it were legal, it would be crapped on six ways to Sunday and be massively unprofitable.
posted by parliboy at 11:35 AM on September 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
You can make a game that uses all of the mechanisms of the game. You could probably even make your own ripoff game that uses the same rules, since rules aren't really copyrightable.
Yeah, nothing can be done to stop someone who wants to play a game from creating their own (art-asset-less) version of it. I don't own a copy of Can't Stop, but if I want to play it, all I really need is four dice, a sheet of paper, a pen, and a pocketful of mixed change.
The main impediment to a roll-your-own Terraforming Mars is that it just has a lot of fairly purpose-specific widgets. Decks, tokens, chips, maps, resource tracks, etc. By the time you're done sourcing all that, you might as well have bought a copy of the game.
posted by jackbishop at 11:45 AM on September 18, 2023
Yeah, nothing can be done to stop someone who wants to play a game from creating their own (art-asset-less) version of it. I don't own a copy of Can't Stop, but if I want to play it, all I really need is four dice, a sheet of paper, a pen, and a pocketful of mixed change.
The main impediment to a roll-your-own Terraforming Mars is that it just has a lot of fairly purpose-specific widgets. Decks, tokens, chips, maps, resource tracks, etc. By the time you're done sourcing all that, you might as well have bought a copy of the game.
posted by jackbishop at 11:45 AM on September 18, 2023
What do artists do?
See lots of other art, modify/mix/create the style/poses/content etc.... the artist's brain has absolutely been trained using other artwork, and those artists didn't get compensated.
"AI" generated content is pushing that concept to its limits and with unhuman efficiency, and we should be honest, what really is pissing us off is that suddenly it's a corporate entity that reaping the benefits of this creative effort instead of another artist, it feels unfair.
And also the fact that so far, the "AI" isn't really creating or adding, it's leeching all this creativity, it's not really contributing back.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 11:55 AM on September 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
See lots of other art, modify/mix/create the style/poses/content etc.... the artist's brain has absolutely been trained using other artwork, and those artists didn't get compensated.
"AI" generated content is pushing that concept to its limits and with unhuman efficiency, and we should be honest, what really is pissing us off is that suddenly it's a corporate entity that reaping the benefits of this creative effort instead of another artist, it feels unfair.
And also the fact that so far, the "AI" isn't really creating or adding, it's leeching all this creativity, it's not really contributing back.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 11:55 AM on September 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
Computerization and spreadsheet software wiped out vast numbers of paper-pushing jobs, yet we're not still chasing everyone who e.g. uses Excel with pitchforks.
You aren't even remotely comparing similar things, this is a ridiculous statement.
posted by Dark Messiah at 12:18 PM on September 18, 2023 [5 favorites]
You aren't even remotely comparing similar things, this is a ridiculous statement.
posted by Dark Messiah at 12:18 PM on September 18, 2023 [5 favorites]
Generative AI's use of training data is more similar to a human artists learning from existing art than it is to plagiarism.
And the usual suspects here, who are still playing the old ethical piracy tune among other stale ideas will continue to blow against the wind.
posted by Wood at 12:40 PM on September 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
And the usual suspects here, who are still playing the old ethical piracy tune among other stale ideas will continue to blow against the wind.
posted by Wood at 12:40 PM on September 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
Generative AI's use of training data is more similar to a human artists learning from existing art than it is to plagiarism.
No the fuck it isn’t. You can trick it into exactly reproducing its original sources for a start. And everything else is apples statistics based on those sources, not even remotely like anything a human would do.
posted by Artw at 12:46 PM on September 18, 2023 [12 favorites]
No the fuck it isn’t. You can trick it into exactly reproducing its original sources for a start. And everything else is apples statistics based on those sources, not even remotely like anything a human would do.
posted by Artw at 12:46 PM on September 18, 2023 [12 favorites]
waterandpixels > What do artists do? See lots of other art, modify/mix/create the style/poses/content etc.... the artist's brain has absolutely been trained using other artwork, and those artists didn't get compensated.
We also have social norms about how closely we should clone another artist's style.
We have a tendency to say "I was strongly influenced by this other artist" when being interviewed. We gush about the new work that we just bought from an influence, and tell our fans that they should go buy a copy of it too. We say hello to our influences at a con and thank them effusively for the things we learnt from their work. When we end up in positions like "director" then we leap at a chance to offer some work to an influence, ranging from "make some awesome concept art" to "come work at the studio and spend as much of your time as you like passing on your hard-earned craft and skill to the next generation". All of these things are some form of compensation for the influence's work.
We are by no means required to do any of these things, but in general we are absolutely delighted to do these things. AI does none of these things.
posted by egypturnash at 12:54 PM on September 18, 2023 [15 favorites]
We also have social norms about how closely we should clone another artist's style.
We have a tendency to say "I was strongly influenced by this other artist" when being interviewed. We gush about the new work that we just bought from an influence, and tell our fans that they should go buy a copy of it too. We say hello to our influences at a con and thank them effusively for the things we learnt from their work. When we end up in positions like "director" then we leap at a chance to offer some work to an influence, ranging from "make some awesome concept art" to "come work at the studio and spend as much of your time as you like passing on your hard-earned craft and skill to the next generation". All of these things are some form of compensation for the influence's work.
We are by no means required to do any of these things, but in general we are absolutely delighted to do these things. AI does none of these things.
posted by egypturnash at 12:54 PM on September 18, 2023 [15 favorites]
You can trick it into exactly reproducing its original sources for a start.
So can humans? Humans can produce novel works and they can plagiarize. Your theory that because gen AI can plagiarize everything it does is plagiarism is "the fuck".
And everything else is apples statistics based on those sources, not even remotely like anything a human would do.
Applied statistics is getting really good lately. I believe the fairly broad comparision to learning is more apt than the even wilder and broader comparison to plagiarism. At least one corresponds to what we're seeing in reality. There are literally millions of examples of gen AI that are obviously not plagiarism. Plagiarism had a meaning. The extension of the word to everything gen AI is "the fuck"ing reach.
The proof is in the pudding. The results speak for themselves.
posted by Wood at 12:55 PM on September 18, 2023 [3 favorites]
So can humans? Humans can produce novel works and they can plagiarize. Your theory that because gen AI can plagiarize everything it does is plagiarism is "the fuck".
And everything else is apples statistics based on those sources, not even remotely like anything a human would do.
Applied statistics is getting really good lately. I believe the fairly broad comparision to learning is more apt than the even wilder and broader comparison to plagiarism. At least one corresponds to what we're seeing in reality. There are literally millions of examples of gen AI that are obviously not plagiarism. Plagiarism had a meaning. The extension of the word to everything gen AI is "the fuck"ing reach.
The proof is in the pudding. The results speak for themselves.
posted by Wood at 12:55 PM on September 18, 2023 [3 favorites]
Social norms about how closely we should clone another artist's style have a place. As do appearance/likeness rights. Broadly speaking neither of their things fall under the rubrics of either copyright or plagiarism.
We will certainly have the opportunity to craft new laws and new IP regimes. God help us. I certainly don't think anyone muddying the water with confusion will help.
posted by Wood at 12:58 PM on September 18, 2023
We will certainly have the opportunity to craft new laws and new IP regimes. God help us. I certainly don't think anyone muddying the water with confusion will help.
posted by Wood at 12:58 PM on September 18, 2023
No the fuck it isn’t. You can trick it into exactly reproducing its original sources for a start. And everything else is apples statistics based on those sources, not even remotely like anything a human would do.
I feel we're mostly talking degrees of efficiency and how it happens, I don't think we know how the brain organizes/recalls/combines that information.
I'd really really really like to see some kind of reverse search for generative art. You feed it a picture it generated, and then it fetch back source images that share high similarity. Could be really interesting.
Corporation hijacking the sum total of human creativity of profits is tons of red flags and we'll need to figure this out, but the process is not that different from what we do, it's just that it's too good at some parts of it.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 1:11 PM on September 18, 2023
I feel we're mostly talking degrees of efficiency and how it happens, I don't think we know how the brain organizes/recalls/combines that information.
I'd really really really like to see some kind of reverse search for generative art. You feed it a picture it generated, and then it fetch back source images that share high similarity. Could be really interesting.
Corporation hijacking the sum total of human creativity of profits is tons of red flags and we'll need to figure this out, but the process is not that different from what we do, it's just that it's too good at some parts of it.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 1:11 PM on September 18, 2023
All of this cements my intention to form the BLP (Butlerian Luddite Party). Who wants to be treasurer?
posted by signal at 1:16 PM on September 18, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by signal at 1:16 PM on September 18, 2023 [4 favorites]
On the "ethical AI" front, I believe Adobe's Firefly was only trained on "Adobe Stock images, openly licensed content, and public domain content".
There's also a completely open online version of Terraforming Mars where they re-did the art but use the rules intact. Plays just like the tabletop version in my experience.
I loved this excerpt from the Polygon interview (questions in bold):
Sure. What specifically have you used AI to generate in this campaign?
A number of the images. AI is used as the basis of the image.
Again, going through the disclosure, what ideas have been generated by AI?
That I couldn’t tell you, because I’m not actually working on the game development side of the house.
Do you know which concepts that AI was used to generate?
No, because again, I’m not on the game development side of things.
Do you know which graphic design elements AI was used to generate?
Not specifically, but if you look at any kind of background texture, any of the formatting on this could have AI elements in it. And, you know, the statement that I think people are looking at is written very broadly so that it’s applicable to potential uses of AI, both as it is now and in the future of this project.
Kickstarter’s requested disclosure is asking, quite pointedly, for specificity. A lot of folks don’t believe that enough specificity has been given, so I’m directly asking you to tell me which ideas, concepts, illustrations, graphic design elements, and marketing materials that are currently on that Kickstarter page AI has been used to generate? Can we circle anything there on that page?
I think we’ve answered that question.
posted by caphector at 1:49 PM on September 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
There's also a completely open online version of Terraforming Mars where they re-did the art but use the rules intact. Plays just like the tabletop version in my experience.
I loved this excerpt from the Polygon interview (questions in bold):
Sure. What specifically have you used AI to generate in this campaign?
A number of the images. AI is used as the basis of the image.
Again, going through the disclosure, what ideas have been generated by AI?
That I couldn’t tell you, because I’m not actually working on the game development side of the house.
Do you know which concepts that AI was used to generate?
No, because again, I’m not on the game development side of things.
Do you know which graphic design elements AI was used to generate?
Not specifically, but if you look at any kind of background texture, any of the formatting on this could have AI elements in it. And, you know, the statement that I think people are looking at is written very broadly so that it’s applicable to potential uses of AI, both as it is now and in the future of this project.
Kickstarter’s requested disclosure is asking, quite pointedly, for specificity. A lot of folks don’t believe that enough specificity has been given, so I’m directly asking you to tell me which ideas, concepts, illustrations, graphic design elements, and marketing materials that are currently on that Kickstarter page AI has been used to generate? Can we circle anything there on that page?
I think we’ve answered that question.
posted by caphector at 1:49 PM on September 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
That we allow AI generated things to be trademarked or even copyrighted is a DANGEROUS thing. Imagine patent mills but for art and culture. Develop a brilliant, nuanced, surprising, original idea? Sorry, it matches something in bank F32-64Z a t value 85% or greater. Cease and desist.
posted by es_de_bah at 1:55 PM on September 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by es_de_bah at 1:55 PM on September 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
Corporation hijacking the sum total of human creativity of profits is tons of red flags and we'll need to figure this out...
Who exactly is we here? I know for a fact that I'm not going to have any meaningful input into these decisions. Are you?
posted by thatwhichfalls at 1:59 PM on September 18, 2023
Who exactly is we here? I know for a fact that I'm not going to have any meaningful input into these decisions. Are you?
posted by thatwhichfalls at 1:59 PM on September 18, 2023
All of this cements my intention to form the BLP (Butlerian Luddite Party). Who wants to be treasurer?
Certainly the Butlerian Jihad is now completely understandable and, honestly, desirable.
posted by Artw at 2:03 PM on September 18, 2023 [5 favorites]
Certainly the Butlerian Jihad is now completely understandable and, honestly, desirable.
posted by Artw at 2:03 PM on September 18, 2023 [5 favorites]
Generative AI's use of training data is more similar to a human artists learning from existing art than it is to plagiarism.
A human artist can and typically does mimic another artist's style using physical properties of media. So, for instance, if you want a copy of an oil painting, the artist can execute the work in oil, and the laws of physics will get them in the oil painting ballpark. Machine generated art typically looks at actual paintings and makes copies which are then algorithmically mediated and obfuscated to produce the finished work. A machine will have looked at scans of things tagged "oil painting" and made copies.
The approach is not the same, and that basic idea holds true, even as the quality of copies becomes more exact. If I'm copying art, I'm mostly using my knowledge of media gained through many hours of playing around and *not making copies of anything* combined with a final overlay of making the copy.
posted by surlyben at 2:09 PM on September 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
A human artist can and typically does mimic another artist's style using physical properties of media. So, for instance, if you want a copy of an oil painting, the artist can execute the work in oil, and the laws of physics will get them in the oil painting ballpark. Machine generated art typically looks at actual paintings and makes copies which are then algorithmically mediated and obfuscated to produce the finished work. A machine will have looked at scans of things tagged "oil painting" and made copies.
The approach is not the same, and that basic idea holds true, even as the quality of copies becomes more exact. If I'm copying art, I'm mostly using my knowledge of media gained through many hours of playing around and *not making copies of anything* combined with a final overlay of making the copy.
posted by surlyben at 2:09 PM on September 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
The "fuss" is that all of this AI art is built on the backs of people who remain uncompensated.There are AI art libraries that were built solely using public domain images.
Beyond that, though, I've never been convinced by this argument even in the case of stuff trained by studying copyrighted images. Human artists have been doing that since there was such a thing as copyright in the first place. Computers are just studying faster.
If the counterargument to that is something along the lines of "they're not really thinking", I don't think it will be very many (human) lifetimes until they are, or at least they act in a way that makes the whole "I know what it actually means to say that we are sentient and
they are not, I am not simply making an assertion confidently but vaguely" thing a crackpot position. And what happens to the argument then? Will they not have the same rights that human artists do, just because... what? Because they'll be incomparably better at it than we are?
Honestly, I tend to think that this argument is just grasping at straws in kneejerk reaction to a fear of being replaced. And I sympathize with that. But they're coming for all of our jobs, not just the jobs of artists, and I think the sooner we come to terms with that, the better off society will be in the long run.
posted by Flunkie at 2:15 PM on September 18, 2023 [3 favorites]
Computerization and spreadsheet software wiped out vast numbers of paper-pushing jobs, yet we're not still chasing everyone who e.g. uses Excel with pitchforks
The early computer jobs (when "computer" was a title) were mostly held by women, especially black women. That's why "nobody" cared when the jobs were cut.
Aside from that, I'm just saying as someone with both an art job and a laboratory science job, that I'm fine with one of these things being automated but not the other. Maybe you can guess which one?
I am seeing shades of thinking this is an inevitable future and everything is automated, and oh, isn't capitalism bad anyway?
Well, the journey there is not going to be pretty. It's easy to automate digital stuff and with the internet it's also easy to outsource the digital Mechanical Turk part of training. It's hard and expensive to automate physical stuff, especially things that need to be local (farming, food, haircuts, building repair, etc). So there will be a giant chasm of time where our jobs will become more and more physical labor. Anecdotally, there exists a partially automated version if my job (Ambr bioreactors from Sartorius) but my company decided against purchasing it because it's too expensive. It was cheaper to hire me to build bioreactors by hand. 🙃
Actually the cheapest thing is slavery, and although ideally we could automate their work, the giant profits that come from slavery means it can only curbed by legislation. The fact that capitalists are salivating at the idea of rolling back child labor tells me this is something we will need to contend with at some point.
posted by picklenickle at 2:17 PM on September 18, 2023
The early computer jobs (when "computer" was a title) were mostly held by women, especially black women. That's why "nobody" cared when the jobs were cut.
Aside from that, I'm just saying as someone with both an art job and a laboratory science job, that I'm fine with one of these things being automated but not the other. Maybe you can guess which one?
I am seeing shades of thinking this is an inevitable future and everything is automated, and oh, isn't capitalism bad anyway?
Well, the journey there is not going to be pretty. It's easy to automate digital stuff and with the internet it's also easy to outsource the digital Mechanical Turk part of training. It's hard and expensive to automate physical stuff, especially things that need to be local (farming, food, haircuts, building repair, etc). So there will be a giant chasm of time where our jobs will become more and more physical labor. Anecdotally, there exists a partially automated version if my job (Ambr bioreactors from Sartorius) but my company decided against purchasing it because it's too expensive. It was cheaper to hire me to build bioreactors by hand. 🙃
Actually the cheapest thing is slavery, and although ideally we could automate their work, the giant profits that come from slavery means it can only curbed by legislation. The fact that capitalists are salivating at the idea of rolling back child labor tells me this is something we will need to contend with at some point.
posted by picklenickle at 2:17 PM on September 18, 2023
Anyone who wants ANYTHING to be replaced by a fascist billionaire’s crappy replacement for it is a fool who’ll end up on the mulch pile as soon as the billionaire gets around to throwing them there.
posted by Artw at 2:19 PM on September 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Artw at 2:19 PM on September 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
The "fuss" is that all of this AI art is built on the backs of people who remain uncompensated.
this is sort of true and sort of false - everything I write is based on all the uncompensated work that I've read, seen and heard over the years.
it's also a lot further from copyright infringement that the copy and paste I just did of the comment above, which was uncompensated reproduction of another's work. The web is built on routine copyright ignoring, and it's kind of bizarre how hard the anti-AI zeitgeist is ignoring that.
posted by Sebmojo at 2:32 PM on September 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
this is sort of true and sort of false - everything I write is based on all the uncompensated work that I've read, seen and heard over the years.
it's also a lot further from copyright infringement that the copy and paste I just did of the comment above, which was uncompensated reproduction of another's work. The web is built on routine copyright ignoring, and it's kind of bizarre how hard the anti-AI zeitgeist is ignoring that.
posted by Sebmojo at 2:32 PM on September 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
BTW, since the discussion is looping back to the tired argument of "AI is inspired like humans are inspired" or "actually we don't need to credit everything!"
No it isn't. It is like saying a graph trendline is "inspired" by the data. And I don't want to hear this kind of stuff from people who don't make art. There are artists whose careers have been ended due to referencing art too heavily (eg linda bergkvist), comedians get blasted for stealing jokes, people hate knockoff games and stories, etc. so people do indeed get skewered for this. On a boarder level, it also fits into the discussion of things like artwork that gets denigrated and stolen simultaneously (e.g. fanfiction is seen as low-brow and yet AO3 fics got funneled into text AI for writing stories).
Also people want credit for the things they do, even in times where money is not relevant. Cultural appropriation, for example. Or uncredited scientific endeavors. It is just shitty to pour hours of your time, effort and feelings into something and then have it ripped out and shoved into a database without your consent, by people who really do not give a shit about you or your work beyond "can I make thing for $$$?"
posted by picklenickle at 2:55 PM on September 18, 2023 [13 favorites]
No it isn't. It is like saying a graph trendline is "inspired" by the data. And I don't want to hear this kind of stuff from people who don't make art. There are artists whose careers have been ended due to referencing art too heavily (eg linda bergkvist), comedians get blasted for stealing jokes, people hate knockoff games and stories, etc. so people do indeed get skewered for this. On a boarder level, it also fits into the discussion of things like artwork that gets denigrated and stolen simultaneously (e.g. fanfiction is seen as low-brow and yet AO3 fics got funneled into text AI for writing stories).
Also people want credit for the things they do, even in times where money is not relevant. Cultural appropriation, for example. Or uncredited scientific endeavors. It is just shitty to pour hours of your time, effort and feelings into something and then have it ripped out and shoved into a database without your consent, by people who really do not give a shit about you or your work beyond "can I make thing for $$$?"
posted by picklenickle at 2:55 PM on September 18, 2023 [13 favorites]
The main problem with training entirely on public domain works is this: AI image generation needs an absolutely enormous dataset to train on, and there just isn't enough good (and readily sorted) art and photography for this to work. You could use every famous public domain photograph and painting in the Smithsonian and it still wouldn't be enough to get good results with current AI training methods. You can use AI to tag uncategorized images reasonably well, but the lack of good quality works is hard to fix. There are other things you could do, like taking individual frames out of public domain films and stock footage, but this could potentially bias the image in different ways. Even if that worked, if you couldn't secure a huge repository of good, recent public domain works, the AI would struggle to make anything good in a modern style.
Advancements in AI training could make this problem obsolete eventually. In the short term, public domain training that leapfrog off of existing AI models without using much of them directly could minimize the issues with using copyrighted images, but wouldn't get rid of them entirely.
posted by ThisIsAThrowaway at 3:09 PM on September 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
Advancements in AI training could make this problem obsolete eventually. In the short term, public domain training that leapfrog off of existing AI models without using much of them directly could minimize the issues with using copyrighted images, but wouldn't get rid of them entirely.
posted by ThisIsAThrowaway at 3:09 PM on September 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
> not even remotely like anything a human would do.
I'm not pro-AI "art" at all, but I wouldn't be so sure about that. This is not the first time a super popular board game has used something similar to traced art and, well, unfortunately nothing came from the blowback then and nothing will now.
posted by The Bishop of Turkey at 3:11 PM on September 18, 2023
I'm not pro-AI "art" at all, but I wouldn't be so sure about that. This is not the first time a super popular board game has used something similar to traced art and, well, unfortunately nothing came from the blowback then and nothing will now.
posted by The Bishop of Turkey at 3:11 PM on September 18, 2023
Because it’s a tedious try-hard irrelevant point?
it's legally accurate and factually relevant; you are incorrect.
posted by Sebmojo at 3:24 PM on September 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
it's legally accurate and factually relevant; you are incorrect.
posted by Sebmojo at 3:24 PM on September 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
The US Copyright Office says it can only protect web work created by a human being, which "contains a sufficient amount of creative expression".
This, at least presently, rules out AI-produced work, as it is not created or authored by a legally-recognized person and is not considered creative expression, although WIPO predicts that future laws might grant a legal fiction of "personality" or personhood to AIs to that end.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 3:49 PM on September 18, 2023
This, at least presently, rules out AI-produced work, as it is not created or authored by a legally-recognized person and is not considered creative expression, although WIPO predicts that future laws might grant a legal fiction of "personality" or personhood to AIs to that end.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 3:49 PM on September 18, 2023
This is going well
posted by aspersioncast at 3:52 PM on September 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by aspersioncast at 3:52 PM on September 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
Mod note: Folks, let's keep the conversation productive and relevant. Please refrain from getting into a back and forth with other users. Thanks!
posted by travelingthyme (staff) at 3:55 PM on September 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by travelingthyme (staff) at 3:55 PM on September 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
That we allow AI generated things to be trademarked or even copyrighted is a DANGEROUS thing. Imagine patent mills but for art and culture. Develop a brilliant, nuanced, surprising, original idea? Sorry, it matches something in bank F32-64Z a t value 85% or greater. Cease and desist.
this is an interesting point, for all that it's theoretical and I agree. I'm not sure how you'd get round it though. Most of the obvious proposals for regulation of AI works have a strong whiff of 'man with flag walking in front of car' feeling to them.
I'm broadly optimistic because sampling raised a bunch of the same issues in a much more legally complicated way, at least on the face of it, and hey what do you know it's produced a vibrant set of artforms.
It's inarguable that AI LLM created stuff is going to get better, but so is our ability to pick it up and identify it as a cheap and fairly lazy route to creativity, if not used sensitively.
posted by Sebmojo at 4:36 PM on September 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
this is an interesting point, for all that it's theoretical and I agree. I'm not sure how you'd get round it though. Most of the obvious proposals for regulation of AI works have a strong whiff of 'man with flag walking in front of car' feeling to them.
I'm broadly optimistic because sampling raised a bunch of the same issues in a much more legally complicated way, at least on the face of it, and hey what do you know it's produced a vibrant set of artforms.
It's inarguable that AI LLM created stuff is going to get better, but so is our ability to pick it up and identify it as a cheap and fairly lazy route to creativity, if not used sensitively.
posted by Sebmojo at 4:36 PM on September 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
Has anyone told the developers that they won’t be able to copyright the art?
The don't want to misinform them with the hope-fueled fantasies of disaffected artists?
I am really looking forward to getting some settled case law around this so we can put this whole "stolen" art thing to bed and get on with dealing with the real issue.
And that issue is that an industry full of *important* people is being completely upended by automation. It's not like yet another manufacturing speciality getting wiped out, or McDonald's employees getting replaced. This time it's serious.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 6:34 PM on September 18, 2023
The don't want to misinform them with the hope-fueled fantasies of disaffected artists?
I am really looking forward to getting some settled case law around this so we can put this whole "stolen" art thing to bed and get on with dealing with the real issue.
And that issue is that an industry full of *important* people is being completely upended by automation. It's not like yet another manufacturing speciality getting wiped out, or McDonald's employees getting replaced. This time it's serious.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 6:34 PM on September 18, 2023
I'm broadly optimistic because sampling raised a bunch of the same issues in a much more legally complicated way, at least on the face of it, and hey what do you know it's produced a vibrant set of artforms.
I don't know how much it'd hold up under deeper scrutiny, but I *would* be curious about the outcomes of a compromise where gen-AI stuff exists in a similar legal space as mashups & fanfic, where you can't openly sell it for profit but if you're just putting weird stuff out there for free there's some safe harbor.
i.e. keep it toxic to corporations & parasitic startups
(doesn't solve for deepfake porn, but that'll require its own response one way or another)
posted by CrystalDave at 7:52 PM on September 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
I don't know how much it'd hold up under deeper scrutiny, but I *would* be curious about the outcomes of a compromise where gen-AI stuff exists in a similar legal space as mashups & fanfic, where you can't openly sell it for profit but if you're just putting weird stuff out there for free there's some safe harbor.
i.e. keep it toxic to corporations & parasitic startups
(doesn't solve for deepfake porn, but that'll require its own response one way or another)
posted by CrystalDave at 7:52 PM on September 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
There's a lot of unexamined Capitalist Realism here and elsewhere this topic is being discussed.
For the record, Capitalism is not a natural or inevitable end-state. It takes money, guns, and lawyers to impose and maintain, lots of them. The cheapening of human labor as it's chewed up by billionaires' shiny new AIs is also not a given, and acting like it is is playing into their money-grubbing little hands. Please, at the very least don't perpuate their lies.
posted by signal at 7:59 PM on September 18, 2023 [6 favorites]
For the record, Capitalism is not a natural or inevitable end-state. It takes money, guns, and lawyers to impose and maintain, lots of them. The cheapening of human labor as it's chewed up by billionaires' shiny new AIs is also not a given, and acting like it is is playing into their money-grubbing little hands. Please, at the very least don't perpuate their lies.
posted by signal at 7:59 PM on September 18, 2023 [6 favorites]
I don't know if that "capitalist realism" stuff is in part based on what I wrote earlier, but in any case I could see how what I wrote might lead one to think I was writing along those lines. However, I wasn't. I wasn't really saying anything much about capitalism at all, at least not directly.
Just like it should be noted that "the cheapening of human labor as it's chewed up by billionaires' shiny new AIs is also not a given", I think it should be noted that progress -- likely increasingly rapid progress -- in the development of AIs does not have evil billionaire robber barons as a necessary precondition.
AIs going to get better and better regardless, and better and better than us. At all sorts of things, evil billionaires or no. And when I said "they're coming for all of our jobs, not just the jobs of artists, and I think the sooner we come to terms with that, the better off society will be in the long run", what I meant was that we should start preparing ourselves and our society for a profound, fundamental shift to Star Trek-ish fully automated luxury communism.
Because the longer we keep operating on the base assumption that AI is our enemy, the worse off society will be due to the actual enemy - evil billionaire robber barons, who will treat it as a tool to use to exploit us rather than a tool to enrich our lives.
posted by Flunkie at 8:21 PM on September 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
Just like it should be noted that "the cheapening of human labor as it's chewed up by billionaires' shiny new AIs is also not a given", I think it should be noted that progress -- likely increasingly rapid progress -- in the development of AIs does not have evil billionaire robber barons as a necessary precondition.
AIs going to get better and better regardless, and better and better than us. At all sorts of things, evil billionaires or no. And when I said "they're coming for all of our jobs, not just the jobs of artists, and I think the sooner we come to terms with that, the better off society will be in the long run", what I meant was that we should start preparing ourselves and our society for a profound, fundamental shift to Star Trek-ish fully automated luxury communism.
Because the longer we keep operating on the base assumption that AI is our enemy, the worse off society will be due to the actual enemy - evil billionaire robber barons, who will treat it as a tool to use to exploit us rather than a tool to enrich our lives.
posted by Flunkie at 8:21 PM on September 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
Genuine, none snarky question
Are any of the people who are making the "AI copying is the same as human artists's process" artists?
Because I think you might not know much about how artists create art?
Working in any medium, even digital, has so many inputs quite outside of inspiration by other artworks.
For example:
1) The accidental things that the medium you're working in does, that suggests a new direction. Paint bleeds, paper absorbs unpredictaby, your own hand twitches a line in an unexpected direction etc
2) the world surrounding us. Shapes, colours and textures in nature, in buildings, in human bodies, in garbage, in clothing etc
In my own work, I'd say this kind of "raw" input is easily the majority of what goes into a work.
Inspiration from other artists is definitely there, but thoroughly processed through both of the above in an iterative process.
posted by Zumbador at 8:45 PM on September 18, 2023 [6 favorites]
Are any of the people who are making the "AI copying is the same as human artists's process" artists?
Because I think you might not know much about how artists create art?
Working in any medium, even digital, has so many inputs quite outside of inspiration by other artworks.
For example:
1) The accidental things that the medium you're working in does, that suggests a new direction. Paint bleeds, paper absorbs unpredictaby, your own hand twitches a line in an unexpected direction etc
2) the world surrounding us. Shapes, colours and textures in nature, in buildings, in human bodies, in garbage, in clothing etc
In my own work, I'd say this kind of "raw" input is easily the majority of what goes into a work.
Inspiration from other artists is definitely there, but thoroughly processed through both of the above in an iterative process.
posted by Zumbador at 8:45 PM on September 18, 2023 [6 favorites]
I'm not an artist, but honestly I see that as special pleading. I am in a profession where the prevailing opinion of its members mostly have long thought of themselves as immune to AI replacement -- at least for the initial phases of it, in the foreseeable future. But AI is coming for us, too. As I said, it's coming for everybody, regardless of the perceived special qualities of any particular profession.
And please keep in mind that we are in the very early days of AI. There is no reason why AIs would be inherently incapable of noticing the things you say consist of the majority of what goes into your artwork.
None of us are as special as we think we are.
posted by Flunkie at 9:00 PM on September 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
And please keep in mind that we are in the very early days of AI. There is no reason why AIs would be inherently incapable of noticing the things you say consist of the majority of what goes into your artwork.
None of us are as special as we think we are.
posted by Flunkie at 9:00 PM on September 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
I have drawings that appeared in at least one AI training dataset and that I never opted in to. It's not a use I approved of, and it's not a use I would approve of. Opting out at this point feels about as useful as the copyright notice that got ignored, though I gave it a try anyway. Finding my images isn't easy, unless they happen to have be on a domain I control, and I can't search proprietary training sets at all. Looking through the images, I'd say the vast majority of images in the LAION 5B training set are copyrighted and their use as training data for AI is just wild. What a rights-grab!
It feels bad, man. It feels like saying "stolen" with scare quotes, as if people are whining over nothing is kind of an asshole thing to do. It feels like I should maybe not break bread with AI researchers because I think they might be scum (in spite of the fact that my feelings for programmers and comp-sci types are generally warm.)
Whatever. If it's to be a brave new post-scarcity AI world, I suppose I'd say there's a moral obligation to behave accordingly and stop paying for post-scarcity AI things.
(Also, Am I correct in my impression that the only reason the Terraforming Mars people disclosed the use of AI is because Kickstarter policy required it? If so, that Kickstarter policy is the kind of good thing I would like to see more of.)
posted by surlyben at 9:53 PM on September 18, 2023 [8 favorites]
It feels bad, man. It feels like saying "stolen" with scare quotes, as if people are whining over nothing is kind of an asshole thing to do. It feels like I should maybe not break bread with AI researchers because I think they might be scum (in spite of the fact that my feelings for programmers and comp-sci types are generally warm.)
Whatever. If it's to be a brave new post-scarcity AI world, I suppose I'd say there's a moral obligation to behave accordingly and stop paying for post-scarcity AI things.
(Also, Am I correct in my impression that the only reason the Terraforming Mars people disclosed the use of AI is because Kickstarter policy required it? If so, that Kickstarter policy is the kind of good thing I would like to see more of.)
posted by surlyben at 9:53 PM on September 18, 2023 [8 favorites]
Flunkie: " we should start preparing ourselves and our society for a profound, fundamental shift to Star Trek-ish fully automated luxury communism."
What in the history of humanity or, more specifically, capitalism makes you believe this?
posted by signal at 8:59 AM on September 19, 2023 [4 favorites]
What in the history of humanity or, more specifically, capitalism makes you believe this?
posted by signal at 8:59 AM on September 19, 2023 [4 favorites]
Are any of the people who are making the "AI copying is the same as human artists's process" artists?
FWIW, I do make art, though (like most people who make art) not in a professional capacity. Mostly music, though at some point I dropped out of a visual arts program. I am mainly interested in generative AI for extending my own abilities to make cool shit, in new and interesting ways. I also make ML models for mostly-non-art applications.
We live in a massive soup of influences, explicit and implicit. Deprived of all of those influences, you simply wouldn't be making the kind of art that you do - at best you'd make the occasional bloody-handprint turkey painting on the wall of a cave, right?
Sometimes my own iteration on influences is very explicit: Let's spend a day trying to figure out how this artist got a particular effect, and then have that in my toolbox moving forward. Or let's just cover this song end-to-end, and see how it goes, what I can figure out and adapt, and what comes out really different. And sometimes influences are more implicit: Looking at stills from the Mandalorian, and picking up a new sci-fi western vibe, color palette, sonic palette, which seep into how I'm using paint or music right now.
IMO, visual artists, and especially fine artists, lean a lot more into the viewpoint that the medium defines the art, but I believe that's mostly the result of specific discourse in 20th century fine art which arose in response to the rise of photography. Portraiture - which really funded painters for centuries - was suddenly supplanted by photography, and artists had to justify themselves. This lead to discussion of the special role of pushing brushes over canvases and the rise of more formalist, less representational art. And this kind of discussion barely happened before photography was big: Impressionism was mocked when photography was small fry, and came into real widespread recognition as photography became widely available.
That sort of discussion happens a lot less in music (where folks are either lifers on a single instrument, or so immersed in production that the digital tools are really the medium), or commercial visual art.
So yes, I deeply believe that we are, as artists, mostly products of our environment. There are trends and fads in art, music, and even mathematics, which emerge and pass with time. That's culture, and that's the dominating force of influences on creation. New fads emerge and directions change, sometimes as a result of individuals with drastically new vision, and sometimes as a result of a lot of small course-corrections coming together into something new.
posted by kaibutsu at 11:21 AM on September 19, 2023 [2 favorites]
FWIW, I do make art, though (like most people who make art) not in a professional capacity. Mostly music, though at some point I dropped out of a visual arts program. I am mainly interested in generative AI for extending my own abilities to make cool shit, in new and interesting ways. I also make ML models for mostly-non-art applications.
We live in a massive soup of influences, explicit and implicit. Deprived of all of those influences, you simply wouldn't be making the kind of art that you do - at best you'd make the occasional bloody-handprint turkey painting on the wall of a cave, right?
Sometimes my own iteration on influences is very explicit: Let's spend a day trying to figure out how this artist got a particular effect, and then have that in my toolbox moving forward. Or let's just cover this song end-to-end, and see how it goes, what I can figure out and adapt, and what comes out really different. And sometimes influences are more implicit: Looking at stills from the Mandalorian, and picking up a new sci-fi western vibe, color palette, sonic palette, which seep into how I'm using paint or music right now.
IMO, visual artists, and especially fine artists, lean a lot more into the viewpoint that the medium defines the art, but I believe that's mostly the result of specific discourse in 20th century fine art which arose in response to the rise of photography. Portraiture - which really funded painters for centuries - was suddenly supplanted by photography, and artists had to justify themselves. This lead to discussion of the special role of pushing brushes over canvases and the rise of more formalist, less representational art. And this kind of discussion barely happened before photography was big: Impressionism was mocked when photography was small fry, and came into real widespread recognition as photography became widely available.
That sort of discussion happens a lot less in music (where folks are either lifers on a single instrument, or so immersed in production that the digital tools are really the medium), or commercial visual art.
So yes, I deeply believe that we are, as artists, mostly products of our environment. There are trends and fads in art, music, and even mathematics, which emerge and pass with time. That's culture, and that's the dominating force of influences on creation. New fads emerge and directions change, sometimes as a result of individuals with drastically new vision, and sometimes as a result of a lot of small course-corrections coming together into something new.
posted by kaibutsu at 11:21 AM on September 19, 2023 [2 favorites]
What in the history of humanity or, more specifically, capitalism makes you believe this?As I've tried to make clear, I suspect that it won't be long (in historical terms, at least) until computers are better than us at, essentially, everything. And what's the point of capitalism then? I think there will be a transitionary period, the length of which, and quite possibly the violence or peacefulness of which, depends on how quickly the capitalists realize their time is up.
And just to double-check: You're the one who just invoked "unexamined capitalist realism" as a behavior of others in this thread, and who countered it with "For the record, Capitalism is not a natural or inevitable end-state", right?
posted by Flunkie at 1:28 PM on September 19, 2023
Working in any medium, even digital, has so many inputs quite outside of inspiration by other artworks.This sounds kind of like what diffusion models do. The difference is that the diffusion model is completely free to choose which accidents it will "fix", and which it will keep for now, in a way that isn't as convenient for an analog artist.
For example:
1) The accidental things that the medium you're working in does, that suggests a new direction. Paint bleeds, paper absorbs unpredictaby, your own hand twitches a line in an unexpected direction etc
2) the world surrounding us. Shapes, colours and textures in nature, in buildings, in human bodies, in garbage, in clothing etc
posted by a faded photo of their beloved at 3:22 PM on September 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
I have drawings that appeared in at least one AI training dataset and that I never opted in to. It's not a use I approved of, and it's not a use I would approve of. Opting out at this point feels about as useful as the copyright notice that got ignored, though I gave it a try anyway. Finding my images isn't easy, unless they happen to have be on a domain I control, and I can't search proprietary training sets at all. Looking through the images, I'd say the vast majority of images in the LAION 5B training set are copyrighted and their use as training data for AI is just wild. What a rights-grab!Most mainstream models just have a soup of parameters and each parameter's value is influenced a tiny bit by basically every training example. To say "remove my data from your model" is, for now, essentially equivalent to "retrain your model on a dataset that does not include my data", which is so cost-prohibitive that companies will pretend that it is simply impossible. It's a setup that's incredibly irresponsible, but ignoring ethical questions has worked pretty well so far for them.
However, there are advanced methods not yet in mainstream use that allow models to isolate the influence of different sources of data (the example at the link is for language models, but it's not hard to imagine workable solutions for other media). I hope that companies providing AI services on the backs of data they could not legally license for this use will learn (with the help of punishing lawsuits) that those more advanced methods are a wiser approach.
posted by a faded photo of their beloved at 3:43 PM on September 19, 2023
I’m an artist and art teacher, and a good one, thank you. So don’t think I don’t notice when some dweeb shoots a poison arrow at my heart.
But I’m not going to give them the satisfaction of crying foul.
Technology changes and will keep changing. Boo hoo.
Every time some new innovation disrupts established practices and floods the market with a fresh strain of glossy commercial pablum, art regroups and re-defines itself. It repurposes the tools. It redraws the boundaries. It demands something new from its audience. Because artistic creation is an irrational, desperate, tragic gesture of love, made by flawed, suffering fools who care way too much and are gonna do it anyway, even if it doesn’t pay.
And that is why art will continue to outlive its executioners.
You say resistance is futile? I say great. Bring it on, Clippy.
posted by ducky l'orange at 4:56 PM on September 19, 2023 [2 favorites]
But I’m not going to give them the satisfaction of crying foul.
Technology changes and will keep changing. Boo hoo.
Every time some new innovation disrupts established practices and floods the market with a fresh strain of glossy commercial pablum, art regroups and re-defines itself. It repurposes the tools. It redraws the boundaries. It demands something new from its audience. Because artistic creation is an irrational, desperate, tragic gesture of love, made by flawed, suffering fools who care way too much and are gonna do it anyway, even if it doesn’t pay.
And that is why art will continue to outlive its executioners.
You say resistance is futile? I say great. Bring it on, Clippy.
posted by ducky l'orange at 4:56 PM on September 19, 2023 [2 favorites]
Who do you think is saying art won't continue to live? What I, for one, am saying that art as a uniquely human exercise won't.
I mean, if you want to define the word "art" as necessarily referring to something that is human-created, fine; I'd disagree, thinking such a definition is shortsighted (and in the current environment, reactionary, frankly). But even if we do take that as a definition, I'm not even saying that art as a human exercise won't survive. Just art as a uniquely human exercise.
posted by Flunkie at 5:07 PM on September 19, 2023
I mean, if you want to define the word "art" as necessarily referring to something that is human-created, fine; I'd disagree, thinking such a definition is shortsighted (and in the current environment, reactionary, frankly). But even if we do take that as a definition, I'm not even saying that art as a human exercise won't survive. Just art as a uniquely human exercise.
posted by Flunkie at 5:07 PM on September 19, 2023
I’ve seen seen plenty of new-genre computing art, some of it very good.
When i see something that enriches my understanding of the human experience, my inclination will be to praise the human being who wrote the prompt or the code, or trained the AI on a specific diet of well-researched reference material, or otherwise cared deeply about the output.
I wont argue the definition of art, but do think the kind of art i care about, as distinct from vat-grown graphic content, requires a level of intentionality that i simply will not grant Clippy at this time.
posted by ducky l'orange at 5:46 PM on September 19, 2023
When i see something that enriches my understanding of the human experience, my inclination will be to praise the human being who wrote the prompt or the code, or trained the AI on a specific diet of well-researched reference material, or otherwise cared deeply about the output.
I wont argue the definition of art, but do think the kind of art i care about, as distinct from vat-grown graphic content, requires a level of intentionality that i simply will not grant Clippy at this time.
posted by ducky l'orange at 5:46 PM on September 19, 2023
I'll also point to the 'Unlearning Challenge' that a friend of mine is a coordinator for. It's owned around privacy and classification, but the extensions to generative models are pretty obvious: to support training data pruning without model retraining.
Of course, this leads to fun thought experiments: one can imagine starting with some real data, train a generative model, and then slowly unlearn all of the real data while gradually swapping in high quality generated data into the training set. Eventually you get a model of Theseus, where all human data has been removed from the training set, though the model still behaves as though it were trained on a massive corpus.
posted by kaibutsu at 6:10 PM on September 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
Of course, this leads to fun thought experiments: one can imagine starting with some real data, train a generative model, and then slowly unlearn all of the real data while gradually swapping in high quality generated data into the training set. Eventually you get a model of Theseus, where all human data has been removed from the training set, though the model still behaves as though it were trained on a massive corpus.
posted by kaibutsu at 6:10 PM on September 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
The thing about AI art I find to be most central to the discussion is the psychology. Current AI models fundamentally lacks sensory experience as an input, which is the foundation of everything humans experience. Visual art evokes all of the other senses, and it’s built on a corpus of knowledge that the AI lacks. The AI knows that we, for example, associate the color red with heat, but it does not know why because it does not have the sensory history a human has. This fundamentally alters the message being conveyed in ways I don’t often see talked about.
Does that mean it isn’t art? I don’t know and am not really interested in the semantics of it. But it is part of what makes AI art fundamentally different from what human artists do. Even artists without one or more senses are drawing from some other sense that connects them; you may never have seen the color red but you know the patter of music that references it, or the feeling of “red cheeks.”
For me, when I am seeking out art, I am looking for messages that communicate with me along that sensory reality. The message conveyed by an intelligence (however well that term fits) without a sensory experience is interesting intellectually but not for the reasons I seek out art. Of course, this doesn’t mean I can’t relate to art made by an AI, as often it is mimicking the messages of human artists, and that bleeds through. But on a fundamental level, the AI is not communicating to me an experience that is compatible with mine. The human prompt engineer may be, but it will always be filtered through the sensoryless lens of the AI.
posted by brook horse at 7:15 PM on September 19, 2023 [2 favorites]
Does that mean it isn’t art? I don’t know and am not really interested in the semantics of it. But it is part of what makes AI art fundamentally different from what human artists do. Even artists without one or more senses are drawing from some other sense that connects them; you may never have seen the color red but you know the patter of music that references it, or the feeling of “red cheeks.”
For me, when I am seeking out art, I am looking for messages that communicate with me along that sensory reality. The message conveyed by an intelligence (however well that term fits) without a sensory experience is interesting intellectually but not for the reasons I seek out art. Of course, this doesn’t mean I can’t relate to art made by an AI, as often it is mimicking the messages of human artists, and that bleeds through. But on a fundamental level, the AI is not communicating to me an experience that is compatible with mine. The human prompt engineer may be, but it will always be filtered through the sensoryless lens of the AI.
posted by brook horse at 7:15 PM on September 19, 2023 [2 favorites]
First Google Search Result for Tiananmen Square “Tank Man” Is AI Generated Selfie
The future is here and it is horrible.
posted by Artw at 7:06 AM on September 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
The future is here and it is horrible.
posted by Artw at 7:06 AM on September 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
First Google Search Result for Tiananmen Square “Tank Man” Is AI Generated Selfie
YMMV on that one. My first result, for any version of that search phrase, was Wikipedia. I got zero results with that AI image. The thing about Google is that it curates your search results for you. So if you're always searching for AI imagery, it is going to prioritize AI image results when you search for something like "tank man." Or at least that's my impression of what Google is doing, because my wife and I get different results when searching the exact same phrases.
posted by grumpybear69 at 7:29 AM on September 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
YMMV on that one. My first result, for any version of that search phrase, was Wikipedia. I got zero results with that AI image. The thing about Google is that it curates your search results for you. So if you're always searching for AI imagery, it is going to prioritize AI image results when you search for something like "tank man." Or at least that's my impression of what Google is doing, because my wife and I get different results when searching the exact same phrases.
posted by grumpybear69 at 7:29 AM on September 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
Setting aside everything else about AI, I don't care as much about the false information stuff because that has already existed on the internet--anyone can write anything and publish it on a website, and anyone can photoshop photos into something very believable and dangerous. I only dislike that google (which keeps pestering me to try Bard) and bing have lost sight of what a search engine is for. So instead of giving me information or a source, it gives me some AI spam. If all I wanted was "a picture of what this thing would look like" or "words about this thing" then I don't need a search engine for that, I would just go directly to MJ/ChatGPT (also, I have never wanted this in the first place so... basically I just don't want it).
posted by picklenickle at 8:35 AM on September 20, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by picklenickle at 8:35 AM on September 20, 2023 [2 favorites]
From what it sounds like, the two person graphic design team at FryxGames is using generative AI to supplement or replace their use of public domain clip art in game assets. A lot of board game artwork is very low effort, so that seems plausibly true.
If it is accurate, then it sounds like AI image generators are not putting any artists out of work here, they are just being used to create low effort visual assets in a different way.
If you think all AI image generation are plagiarism then it's still bad. If I am wrong at it's replacing commissioned work from artists than it's also still bad. But if it's just replacing clip art then, I dunno, neutral
posted by 3j0hn at 4:09 PM on September 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
If it is accurate, then it sounds like AI image generators are not putting any artists out of work here, they are just being used to create low effort visual assets in a different way.
If you think all AI image generation are plagiarism then it's still bad. If I am wrong at it's replacing commissioned work from artists than it's also still bad. But if it's just replacing clip art then, I dunno, neutral
posted by 3j0hn at 4:09 PM on September 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
If it is accurate, then it sounds like AI image generators are not putting any artists out of work here, they are just being used to create low effort visual assets in a different way.
The Kickstarter is currently funded at $1.8M. Sure seems like they could have put some effort into the visual assets.
posted by Etrigan at 4:37 PM on September 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
The Kickstarter is currently funded at $1.8M. Sure seems like they could have put some effort into the visual assets.
posted by Etrigan at 4:37 PM on September 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
Flunkie: As I've tried to make clear, I suspect that it won't be long (in historical terms, at least) until computers are better than us at, essentially, everything. And what's the point of capitalism then?
The exact same point as now: to concentrate wealth in the hands of a few people.
And just to double-check: You're the one who just invoked "unexamined capitalist realism" as a behavior of others in this thread, and who countered it with "For the record, Capitalism is not a natural or inevitable end-state", right?"
Yes. I don't think it's inevtiable. I just don't see anything in what you said that will make capitalists spontaneously cede their power once they "realize their time is up" because something-something-AI.
Sorry to break it to you, but that's not how things work.
posted by signal at 4:53 PM on September 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
The exact same point as now: to concentrate wealth in the hands of a few people.
And just to double-check: You're the one who just invoked "unexamined capitalist realism" as a behavior of others in this thread, and who countered it with "For the record, Capitalism is not a natural or inevitable end-state", right?"
Yes. I don't think it's inevtiable. I just don't see anything in what you said that will make capitalists spontaneously cede their power once they "realize their time is up" because something-something-AI.
Sorry to break it to you, but that's not how things work.
posted by signal at 4:53 PM on September 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
Honestly, I bet there are whole communities of people who collect hand-crafted or limited edition artisanal board games, and we could all be supporting them if we really wanted to.
Meanwhile, the contemporary art world continues to be a market for unique or limited edition objects since their scarcity, along with the prestige conferred on individual artists by cultural gatekeepers, forms the basis of such objects’ value. Since AI art is neither scarce nor prestigious, it’s hard to see it putting much pressure on studio artists.
Digital artists do need to get used to the idea that anything they put on the web is going to get scraped and there’s very little they can do about it. It’s wrong and deeply unfair, but there literally are not enough lawyers in the world to address the sheer volume of digital plagiarism that’s going down.
Digital artists in the commercial realm should probably focus on developing their own IP and/or doing something so deeply personal and conceptually sophisticated that the schlock-meisters would never bother to imitate it. If you’re a ninja in the area of hyper-realistic rendering, something AI does very well, it’s probably a good idea to have your own branded product too since simply having those hard earned chops isn’t as rare as it used to be. Or, like the designers who made this game, an illustrator can reimagine themself as an art director and let the AI be your team of illustrators. “Go meta” as the assholes say.
posted by ducky l'orange at 4:56 PM on September 20, 2023
Meanwhile, the contemporary art world continues to be a market for unique or limited edition objects since their scarcity, along with the prestige conferred on individual artists by cultural gatekeepers, forms the basis of such objects’ value. Since AI art is neither scarce nor prestigious, it’s hard to see it putting much pressure on studio artists.
Digital artists do need to get used to the idea that anything they put on the web is going to get scraped and there’s very little they can do about it. It’s wrong and deeply unfair, but there literally are not enough lawyers in the world to address the sheer volume of digital plagiarism that’s going down.
Digital artists in the commercial realm should probably focus on developing their own IP and/or doing something so deeply personal and conceptually sophisticated that the schlock-meisters would never bother to imitate it. If you’re a ninja in the area of hyper-realistic rendering, something AI does very well, it’s probably a good idea to have your own branded product too since simply having those hard earned chops isn’t as rare as it used to be. Or, like the designers who made this game, an illustrator can reimagine themself as an art director and let the AI be your team of illustrators. “Go meta” as the assholes say.
posted by ducky l'orange at 4:56 PM on September 20, 2023
One more thought then I’ll stop.
We inoculate ourselves against AI pestilence by becoming more selective and sophisticated patrons. We don’t have to boycott all AI art, just stupid, lazy AI art.
posted by ducky l'orange at 5:13 PM on September 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
We inoculate ourselves against AI pestilence by becoming more selective and sophisticated patrons. We don’t have to boycott all AI art, just stupid, lazy AI art.
posted by ducky l'orange at 5:13 PM on September 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
signal, I was implicitly assuming not just AI, but also continuing advances in power technology (not just generation and storage, but also usability-without-destroying-the-environment-ness). Sorry I was not explicit. In the long run in such a scenario, there's no (or relatively very little) need for anyone to work, at least from the point of view of the employers: computers and other machines are both better at the job and cheaper.
So how do the masses survive? I see at least the following possibilities:
(1) Nastily brutishly and shortly;
(2) Capitalists try to thread the needle between "(A)artificially limited post-scarcity luxury confers great benefits on everyone, but somehow things still need buying and selling, and somehow the essentially 100% unemployed masses still have the ability to buy things" and (B) "post-scarcity luxury implies a massively reduced need to sell or buy things";
(3) Hardcore socialism (or something effectively along those lines).
I was trying to do this several times throughout my comments here, using phrases like "won't be very many human generations", "won't be long (at least not on a historical scale)", and explicitly saying that the length of the transition will depend (in part) on how quickly the capitalists get on board. They want to "spontaneously cede their power"? Great! No? They'd rather cede it in dribs and drabs as pressed, but eventually leading to their own irrelevance regardless of their intention or lack thereof? Not as great, not as quickly. But OK. Want to hold onto it kicking and screaming forever, in spite of the eventually clearness of post-scarcity? Well then...
... well then this seems like a good point to go back to what you asked for what I saw in the history of humanity and more specifically capitalism to make me tend towards these suspicions of mine:
Anti-capitialist (and more broadly anti-heirarchical) revolutions.
I'm sure that's at least in part due to my lack of skills sufficient to fully convey what I mean, but it still seems weird coming as a first reaction from the person who thought we all needed to be told that "capitalism is not a natural or inevitable end-state".
Anyway, to attempt to add a little more explicitness to what I was attempting to say, please remember that this was within the context of my original comment in the thread, where I said we should start preparing for the future now, because the longer we wait, the worse the transition will be for society.
That is, for example (and just an example; please don't misinterpret one given example of what I think we should do about this situation to be the sum total of what I think we should do about this situation), we should start pressing (or start pressing harder, as the case may be) for things like universal basic income, in part because AIs will be coming for all of our jobs... as opposed to just angrily blustering about how "Clippy" is and always will be inherently somehow inferior to us in some undefined quasi-religious sense, in an attempt to convince ourselves that we're not concerned with the possibility that "Clippy" will come for our jobs.
posted by Flunkie at 6:14 PM on September 20, 2023
So how do the masses survive? I see at least the following possibilities:
(1) Nastily brutishly and shortly;
(2) Capitalists try to thread the needle between "(A)artificially limited post-scarcity luxury confers great benefits on everyone, but somehow things still need buying and selling, and somehow the essentially 100% unemployed masses still have the ability to buy things" and (B) "post-scarcity luxury implies a massively reduced need to sell or buy things";
(3) Hardcore socialism (or something effectively along those lines).
I just don't see anything in what you said that will make capitalists spontaneously cede their power once they "realize their time is up" because something-something-AI.First of all, I guess that means that I should explicitly say that I was trying to be very clear that I was not saying that this would be a spontaneous, or even quick, thing.
I was trying to do this several times throughout my comments here, using phrases like "won't be very many human generations", "won't be long (at least not on a historical scale)", and explicitly saying that the length of the transition will depend (in part) on how quickly the capitalists get on board. They want to "spontaneously cede their power"? Great! No? They'd rather cede it in dribs and drabs as pressed, but eventually leading to their own irrelevance regardless of their intention or lack thereof? Not as great, not as quickly. But OK. Want to hold onto it kicking and screaming forever, in spite of the eventually clearness of post-scarcity? Well then...
... well then this seems like a good point to go back to what you asked for what I saw in the history of humanity and more specifically capitalism to make me tend towards these suspicions of mine:
Anti-capitialist (and more broadly anti-heirarchical) revolutions.
Yes. I don't think it's inevtiable.Maybe I'm just dumb, but I still see the basis of you arguing with me here as (what I understand to be) unexamined capitalist realism. Like, you seem to have seen an opinion about the future and had a gut reaction that's like "But the capitalists!"... and then when it was (at least attempted to be) explicitly explained to you that I think the capitalism will eventually in some long term be out of the picture, whether that's due to gradual change or not, and peaceful cooperative change or not, your modified reaction is adding "Why do you assume the capitalists will suddenly and cooperatively cede all power?!"
I'm sure that's at least in part due to my lack of skills sufficient to fully convey what I mean, but it still seems weird coming as a first reaction from the person who thought we all needed to be told that "capitalism is not a natural or inevitable end-state".
Anyway, to attempt to add a little more explicitness to what I was attempting to say, please remember that this was within the context of my original comment in the thread, where I said we should start preparing for the future now, because the longer we wait, the worse the transition will be for society.
That is, for example (and just an example; please don't misinterpret one given example of what I think we should do about this situation to be the sum total of what I think we should do about this situation), we should start pressing (or start pressing harder, as the case may be) for things like universal basic income, in part because AIs will be coming for all of our jobs... as opposed to just angrily blustering about how "Clippy" is and always will be inherently somehow inferior to us in some undefined quasi-religious sense, in an attempt to convince ourselves that we're not concerned with the possibility that "Clippy" will come for our jobs.
Sorry to break it to you, but that's not how things work.Yeah... uh... I don't know if you're intending to be condescending or if it's just my poor reading inappropriately causing me to suspect so, but in any case, between this sort of thing and the various (not from you personally) "I AM ANGRY AND SCARED AND THEREFORE I AM RIGHT AND ANYONE WHO SAYS ANYTHING OTHER THAN OR MORE THAN AN EXPLICIT ACKNOWLEDGEMENT THAT I AM RIGHT IS MY A HORRIBLE PERSON WHO DESERVES WHAT THEY'LL GET FROM THE VERY CAPITALISTS THAT THEY'RE OBVIOUSLY CHEERING ON" stuff, I think I'm done with this thread.
posted by Flunkie at 6:14 PM on September 20, 2023
Flunkie, I’d like to extend an olive branch. I actually didn’t mean to get into a scuffle over this. I guess I count myself as moderately hopeful that AI could lead to some sort better future, but that hope definitely rubs up against some deeply held convictions. Maybe those convictions are quasi-religious, but I actually think they’re more… limbic.
As for my angry bluster, my experience is that automation and corporate consolidation has already hollowed out commercial illustration as a field to such a degree that I wonder how much more damage AI can actually do to the profession. I would love to grow the audience for the kind of art I care about, and am fairly confident that the ubiquity of AI art will spark a small but significant movement in that direction before we’re either all incinerated by Sky Net or entombed in a waking simulation.
All these thoughts seem perfectly on-topic for this thread. But I didn’t mean to imply that anyone in this here is a bad person, so please accept my apology.
posted by ducky l'orange at 8:18 PM on September 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
As for my angry bluster, my experience is that automation and corporate consolidation has already hollowed out commercial illustration as a field to such a degree that I wonder how much more damage AI can actually do to the profession. I would love to grow the audience for the kind of art I care about, and am fairly confident that the ubiquity of AI art will spark a small but significant movement in that direction before we’re either all incinerated by Sky Net or entombed in a waking simulation.
All these thoughts seem perfectly on-topic for this thread. But I didn’t mean to imply that anyone in this here is a bad person, so please accept my apology.
posted by ducky l'orange at 8:18 PM on September 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
I didn’t mean to imply that anyone in this here is a bad person, so please accept my apology.For what it's worth, the "bad person" stuff was not prompted by you; it was prompted (mostly but not entirely) by an apparently now-deleted comment.
Anyway, thank you for the apology, and I appreciate it, but I don't feel there's a need for one.
posted by Flunkie at 8:33 PM on September 20, 2023
I think it may be possible for an AI model, developed and used with ethics in mind, to be comparable in power and/or utility to the AIs currently under capitalistic control.
Research into federated AI systems, which pool the computing resources of disparate voluntary actors and their devices, is pretty hot right now. While federated AI currently faces certain inefficiencies, if a federated network could span the globe, that would enable the most important efficiency: training the models when electricity is cheap. It's always night somewhere.
It also seems likely that federation and coops / other democratic control structures could go very well together.
posted by a faded photo of their beloved at 8:49 PM on September 20, 2023
Research into federated AI systems, which pool the computing resources of disparate voluntary actors and their devices, is pretty hot right now. While federated AI currently faces certain inefficiencies, if a federated network could span the globe, that would enable the most important efficiency: training the models when electricity is cheap. It's always night somewhere.
It also seems likely that federation and coops / other democratic control structures could go very well together.
posted by a faded photo of their beloved at 8:49 PM on September 20, 2023
You’re welcome, Flunkie. For what it’s worth, my venting wasn’t even actually directed at you either.
I want to make sure I understand something, though.
Am i correct in thinking that when people like me take a defiant or dismissive posture towards AI, you see it as not just naive or sentimental but actually counterproductive given that we’ll only have a short window of time to leverage public concern about AI into the implementation of UBI or other policy solutions that some have half-jokingly classified under the banner of Automated Luxury Communism?
That instead we should be cautiously welcoming AI for the future of abundance that it promises rather than cursing it for dislocating us (professionally, culturally, ontologically) within the old economy of scarcity?
Because I can understand those positions, even if I can’t really cheer for them.
posted by ducky l'orange at 8:33 AM on September 21, 2023
I want to make sure I understand something, though.
Am i correct in thinking that when people like me take a defiant or dismissive posture towards AI, you see it as not just naive or sentimental but actually counterproductive given that we’ll only have a short window of time to leverage public concern about AI into the implementation of UBI or other policy solutions that some have half-jokingly classified under the banner of Automated Luxury Communism?
That instead we should be cautiously welcoming AI for the future of abundance that it promises rather than cursing it for dislocating us (professionally, culturally, ontologically) within the old economy of scarcity?
Because I can understand those positions, even if I can’t really cheer for them.
posted by ducky l'orange at 8:33 AM on September 21, 2023
As someone who might be described as an artist who is upset about AI, I'd like to register a mild complaint about the characterization as an all-caps angry-shouty-person.
Also, the idea that computers will one day be better than humans at everything is very much a [citation needed] kind of prediction. How exactly will a LLM or automated stock-art generator be generalized to a better at everything machine?
These AI threads remind me of the scene in the Tempest where Miranda responds to the New with unalloyed enthusiasm:
"O, wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in't."
But then we get Prospero's "Tis new to thee!" which I read as a sort of cynical-but-true rebuttal to all that.
posted by surlyben at 9:44 AM on September 21, 2023 [1 favorite]
Also, the idea that computers will one day be better than humans at everything is very much a [citation needed] kind of prediction. How exactly will a LLM or automated stock-art generator be generalized to a better at everything machine?
These AI threads remind me of the scene in the Tempest where Miranda responds to the New with unalloyed enthusiasm:
"O, wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in't."
But then we get Prospero's "Tis new to thee!" which I read as a sort of cynical-but-true rebuttal to all that.
posted by surlyben at 9:44 AM on September 21, 2023 [1 favorite]
Surlyben, I very much agree. There’s really plenty to be justifiably irritated about. I realize it’s a topic that overlaps with other people’s interests, values and expertise, but in this particular area I’m not just a bozo doing a hot take.
posted by ducky l'orange at 10:52 AM on September 21, 2023
posted by ducky l'orange at 10:52 AM on September 21, 2023
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