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NightrunnerXM

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AI Art Part 2

4 min read

So, I’ve been doing some more thinking about this AI art thing since I posted my last journal on the subject, and I think I’ve finally come down on a definite side. Being conflicted about it was getting irritating.


The biggest argument--or at least the most common one I've seen--against AI art is that it’s theft. The arguments I’ve seen supporting that position aren’t very good, unfortunately. I’ve also seen it called fraudulent, too, but again, the arguments haven’t been all that great.


Part of that, I think, is that artists aren’t debaters. We’re observers and creators. We make something and put it out into the wild to live or die on the audience’s whims. We don’t usually craft carefully worded arguments meant to persuade someone to our way of thinking. Most of us, I think, would shy away from that as being a form of propaganda.


There is, however, a word that no one seems to have used to describe AI art. Not that I’ve seen, anyway.


Forgery.


AI art is a forgery. Why? Because it’s taking the end results of someone else’s labor and talent and reproducing it. It’s theft of the artist’s time and effort and skill—not necessarily of their actual art itself as we’d normally think of art theft.


I say that because we all learn from someone else’s art. We all have a morgue full of images that came at least partly from other artists. Clothing catalogues, travel brochures. Images of waterfalls and star fields and cityscapes, pose books. All sorts of stuff from all kinds of places we use as reference when creating.


Which is one of the reasons why I was conflicted about this whole thing, btw. AI is doing several of the same things the rest of us do, but I’ve had this nagging sense that it was doing it in a way that was fundamentally... Disrespectful, I think. I almost want to say “obscene,” but that’s maybe just a bit overblown.


But it’s not just learning from that art. It’s doing something fundamentally different to that process. It’s replicating the source artist. Not (just) the art, but the artist.


FORGERY.


Also, we artists tend to be a slightly narcissistic lot. Not in the “we’re so important” sense…though they do exist… No, more in the fact that we like being unique and getting attention for it. Having some machine copy our abilities in a fraction of the time it takes us to make our own work (never mind the time it took us to learn how in the first place) is profoundly, deeply insulting.


It's also more than a little fraudulent, too, though I’m not even entirely sure how to describe how it’s fraudulent. Machine reproduces artist skill, person who gave it the prompts claims it as their own. Person who didn’t want to spend the time to learn the skills the machine just effortlessly reproduced. That seems like fraud, in some sense. I don’t know if it is legally fraud, but at the very least it’s dishonest, in my view.


Also, this means that I’ve made a decision about my continued involvement with DA.


I will be migrating my original works over to Newgrounds.com and making Newgrounds my primary posting place. I’ll still post the occasional fanart piece here, so I’m not leaving completely, but I’m definitely drawing down my presence here (pardon the pun). Partly because, like it or not, DA is one of the largest art sites on the ‘net, so I can’t really completely divest myself of it…but I can stick to what works here. Which is, apparently…my fanart. :confused face: Wish I understood why that is, but… Oh, well.


Anyway, there’s a lot of it to get moved so it’ll take a while. Also, I’m not sure if I’ll just delete things from here, or replace them with something. Maybe something out of ClipArt’s stock photos, like that never-to-be-sufficiently damned purple orchid, or something equally as recognizably “stock” for DA’s new AI “art generator” to chew on.

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Thoughts on AI

11 min read

Okay, so...mostly this is just my two-cents worth (or your equivalent currency) on the issue of AI generated art.


TL;DR--I think it's dangerous and we need to be careful with it. AI isn't a tool in the classic sense, and with the way technology--programming specifically--advances, I can't see AI remaining a "tool" for very long. And I think the advocates of it are coming across the same way the scammers in the cryptocurrency space did/do.


Preface and caveats

I'm not well-versed on the subject as a whole, so I'm open to being wrong, and while I may sound like I'm drawing hard conclusions...I'm not. A lot of this is me drawing on historical examples (I'm an amateur historian, not just an artist), to suggest we should be cautious. The trouble is, though...there aren't any direct historical analogies until you get into the last four or five decades--when robotics replaced manual laborers in the manufacturing industries, when auto-pilots were introduced into aviation and planes get increasingly computerized and automated, and as automated systems replace low-wage workers in many other fields today.


I'm a fan of sci-fi--which has contended with subjects like this before and presented enough of a plethora of possibilities, good and bad, that I think we'd be wise to take these possibilities into account and really think this through before rushing headlong into it. One of the realities they present (and history has demonstrated) is that, as technology advances, previous skills are lost when they aren't assiduously and purposefully maintained. Technology can, and does, fail. When that happens, do you have the knowledge necessary to get out of trouble...or are you so dependent on technology to do the task for you that you can't do it for yourself? It's an important question, and one that new tech advocates tend to just blow off and dismiss out of hand. "Missiles make guns on fighters obsolete! Don't design them anymore!" "Sir, our fighters in Korea and Vietnam are regularly getting into close-range fights with enemy MiGs! The missiles can't lock!" "Fine, put guns back on the planes..." *disappointed USAF general, hands stuffed into his pockets and lower lip jutting in a pout kicks at the ground*


Otherwise, I'm in purely first-impression gut-response territory here. Which means that I'm not going to get into a debate over it. I'm going to say my piece and then leave it alone until and unless I get new information that changes my perspective. I don't know enough to effectively debate either position. If I can't make the other side's points (and I can't), then I don't understand the subject well enough. Plus, the tech is so new at this point that a full on debate isn't going to be helpful anyway. Also, since "debates" online end up being continual attempts to "win" instead of exploring the issue, they're just not interesting enough to offset the frustration of constantly feeling like you're not getting your erstwhile opponent to even acknowledge what you're saying. You both end up repeating yourselves, and the whole thing just devolves rapidly from there. So I'm not doing it.


What I know so far

Isn't much. I haven't actually used them myself, and I don't think I will at this stage. Maybe in a year or two...assuming the community around the things matures a bit... The various AI art generators utilize a series of prompts (text-based, would be my guess, but that's probably clunky and not terribly user-friendly, so it's probably a bunch of interface buttons, I dunno) and their machine learning code draws from millions of stored images to produce an end result that is far and away better, in terms of technical quality (because it's drawing on the works of, generally, the most accomplished and skillful artists) than what any human is going to accomplish themselves without massive talent or decades of experience. And that's where my gut goes "there's a problem here, be cautious."


What I think the issues are

Mostly, I think the most central issue is that AI generated art is both faster and--because of the works it uses as a basis for it's algorithms being from already extremely accomplished artists--far higher in terms of technical quality than most other dedicated artists can produce on their own without years of effort.


So, more people able to make art? Yay! Well...not so fast. See, the problem is that human nature dictates that when a thing becomes commonplace, it loses it's perceived value, even so far as to become worthless. And when a thing is worthless, it becomes disposable. That's already a problem for the arts as it is...I can't see AI making that better. And this is the facet of the issue where people start going "How can I make a living as an artist if I'm getting out-competed by some schmuck using an AI generator?" The arts aren't an easy field to work and thrive in as it is... And this is a question that has come up in many other industries in the last 40-50 years or so. In those other fields, it just caused a contraction in the number of people who could work in those industries. It left a lot of people with specialized skills out of work and unable to get into other fields and meet the same income standards they had been.


I honestly never thought such a prospect would occur in the arts. It always seemed like the one thing that was so intrinsic to the human condition and our need to express our own individuality that you couldn't automate it. And yet, here we are...discussing the effect of AI on the art world. A system with which to automate the creative process. With the speed with which technology evolves...how long do you think it'll be before AI won't need prompts at all to churn out one "masterpiece" after another? It'll just be one algorithmically determined hit product after another. A thing to be consumed and discarded instead of treasured. Art that serves as nothing more than visual white noise instead of a thing that speaks to the deepest, most primal aspects of the human soul--or lifts your spirits after a hard day--or brings you to empathize with a fictional character, no less! Or even just to express admiration for an otherwise transient thing of beauty.


We have seen this play out so often that it is reckless to assume that AI won't do this, or even to a degree yet unimagined. But I do know this, that when a thing becomes disposable, especially to something that required skill and time to master...those skills and the knowledge required to use them most effectively...vanish. At best, you might have some really determined enthusiasts who struggle to keep that knowledge alive, but... The thought of all the knowledge that goes into making anything artistic going "poof!" and being stored in some AI black box instead of passed along to future enthusiasts just seems...abhorrent. Granted, I'm biased in this regard, but I think it's still a valid concern.


Which raises the question of "Is that art?" That's hard for me to answer. I'm a digital illustrator. I use a computer and several programs to accomplish what I do. But I think there's a key difference, here. The one who's had to learn to do it was me, not my computer. The programs are there to assist me--they don't do the hard work for me. They didn't learn about composition and lighting and color balance and volume and anatomy and...all the other stuff. I did that. And it took me a long time to learn all of that and employ it effectively. Mostly. I still flub it. Sometimes I even try to do so intentionally and fail to flub! It's weird...but that's the fun of it.


But all of this is compounded by the attitudes and arguments of it's advocates. This is the next great thing, there are no downsides, get with the program. It's here to stay, loser. Crypto is the wave of the future! ...Yeah, they're sounding a lot like the (admittedly derisively named) Crypto-bros. Unfortunately, cryptocurrencies, while having been touted as the solution to all of our modern fiscal problems, are instead prey to all of them, and there have been a few fairly high-profile scams involving it. And a whole host of not-so-high-profile ones, in the bargain, too.


For myself, I just can't trust the AI advocates. They're trying too hard to make AI an accepted thing, and I can't help but think that what they're doing is attempting to force this into the artistic ecosystem in order to make a quick buck off of something that, on a purely gut level, seems to strike a lot of people as a form of theft and fraud. And it has to be on a gut level, because I think it's just too new for any actual theft/fraud to have occurred. Yet.


But this isn't a concern they're treating seriously. None of those concerns are something they treat seriously. They always come back with how easy and convenient it is, and how can you object when you use a computer for your artwork, too? It's just a tool!


Well, evolution doesn't always mean progress. Sometimes, evolution leads to an undesired outcome. For humans, that most often comes about as a result of failing to even think about the potential for negative consequences in the first place! The West is in the midst of--to use an already overused phrase--existential crisis of sorts. It's also described as a loss of meaning.


And for humans, meaning in life is found in the struggle, the hard work needed to accomplish great works. It takes time and effort to do things that actually mean anything. The arts are no different-except that they need a recipient to also comprehend it.


Moreover, AI isn't a tool. Fundamentally, it's related to the autopilot feature in some EVs (functionally, if not in actual software lineage). It's not assisting you. It's doing the job for you. You don't have to have any accumulated knowledge or personal skill in order to get a result out of it that will blow what you are capable of right out of the water. A tool helps me do the job myself. It doesn't do the job for me. AI? Robotics? The way they're being employed right now, they're replacing me, not assisting me. Too many things are presented as progress when they're actual effect is to make humans less and less relevant in their own lives. And that breeds despair and nihilism. The arts should be lifting people out of that...not shoving more people into it.


And we do that by understanding that there is value in doing things for yourself. To working with your hands and heart and mind on a project and seeing it through to completion over time--the truest definition of an artist. If all you have to do to attain the same level of "quality" as someone who spent large portions of their life learning to do a thing, and do it well, is hit a few buttons and get a near instantaneous result on par with their...is there really any value left to their effort? Or to yours? It seems to me that a lot of our modern problems are the result of making things too easy, too convenient. Humans need to be challenged. If they aren't, they go looking for challenges, and have a nasty habit of either finding them in places they didn't exist, or creating challenges out of whole cloth. Often with a great deal of accompanying misery and hardship for those around them.


Change is inevitable, it will happen whether we want it or not. But that doesn't mean that we should force it, or approach like a kid who's found a loaded gun and play with it thinking nothing bad could possibly happen. AI is a thing we've made, but barely understand. It may just have a price that's too high to pay if we're not careful with it now.

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Since DA has so helpfully decided to just delete my old Journal archive...gotta do this again! :roll: The old "Ways to support the Artist" Journal is just the title now, apparently...ugh...


Also, by the nature of it, this is going to be a wall of text, so there's your fair warning. :)


If you want to commission art from me, send me a PM! It's easier for all involved.


So, requests...I don't take them, usually. Sometimes a commenter will mention something and I'll go "Hey, that's an interesting idea" and riff off it. I try to make sure I give credit where credit's due on those. However, mostly I don't do requests because the few times I've opened it up as a possibility I've gotten swamped with them. And since it can take anywhere from 3-7 days on average to complete an image...having two dozen requests and the "where's my request" messages taking up time I could be getting paid for isn't really doing anyone any good. Least of all--me! I gotta eat too, y'know... :shrug:


Commissions, however, those I do. However, I'm more of a "do it right" kind of person, which is part of why these things can take a while, and while I try to stay affordable and flexible with people so they get what they want, this isn't always cheap.


Sketch - $25


B&W Linework - $50


Linework and Basic Color - $100


Linework, Color, Volume* - $150


Lines, color, volume*, SFX** - $200


Additional Character(s) over One - $15 per character added


B&W Comics: $250 per page


Full color comics w/ volume and SFX: $500 per page


Mid-project Modifications: $75 per modification.


*Volume=shading and highlighting to evoke the shape of an object.

**SFX=atmospheric effects, lens flares, water, fire, lightning, energy blasts, etc.


All right, on to the other important stuff! I always start with a bit of back and forth with a potential client so I can figure out what you want, if I'm a good fit for that project, and how long I expect the project to take. Possibly also how long it might be until I can get to it. I do these on a "first come, first served" basis, so if there's other people in the queue, their stuff gets done first. If I'm not the right artist for you, for any reason, no hard feelings. We shake hands and part ways. Figuratively speaking, of course--this is the internet, after all! :)


As I mentioned above in the bit about requests, this stuff takes time. I know it looks like it doesn't, but it does. I'm very much a "get it done right" kind of person, so I don't rush projects to completion. A full-color pic with volume and SFX will typically take anywhere from 3 to 7 days depending on things like number of characters, how complicated their costume is, multiple atmospheric or lighting effects....stuff like that can really eat up time.


Payment generally gets handled through PayPal, but I have a few other options available if that becomes necessary. Speaking of, I usually prefer to do half up front, the remainder on completion. If you can't do the larger amounts even then, I'm open to payment plans. And I don't charge interest, either! :D


On Adult (18+) material: PM me. Just...PM me. DA isn't usually the right place for it, especially if it's "explicit." DA does enforce their rules...just not always consistently. I'd rather not deal with that particular headache if I don't actually have to.


Last thing: While I'm open to doing fanart, I do try to stay away from Western material. The copyright laws over here tend to be just a little too grey for comfort on the subject of derivative works that make money. Unless you're the license or copyright holder, then I'll be all over it. :D

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So...I don't know it you've heard or not, but Patreon has begun a new round of purges. No, I wasn't one of them...I'm nowhere near that noteworthy. :) But the thing is...I am fundamentally against what they're doing.

Here's why: Creative people tend to be fundamentally transgressive. We push and cross boundaries in order to explore and present ideas...and sometimes mock them. That's really the job description, but it's not always a profitable one. So when something like Patreon comes along with the potential to make that part easier, it's really no wonder so many will jump at the opportunity. Myself included.

For myself, Patreon really hasn't ever been profitable for me, and their activities over the past two years have raised serious doubts for me about their continued viability. They were pretty much the only game in town, though. And, as the saying goes: I had to play. On one hand, that's no longer true. There are other crowdfunding sites...until someone Patreon booted switches to them, and then the payment processors go "Nope!" and Patreon's competition founders--which should look suspiciously like collusion to anybody paying attention to this. How did Mr. Conte put it? Oh, yes...it's "manifest observable behavior."

For the record: I'm not a big voice. Never have been (much to my ego's chagrin), but it seems to me that when organizations start to limit the big voices...there's a serious problem with those organizations, and it's time to withdraw your support (however minimal) from them. Also, that it's only a matter of time before they come after the small voices. So I've shuttered my Patreon account. Not a hard decision as it wasn't doing much for me, but it does pose a problem. Where to now?

Well, I'll figure it out, and rumor has it some folks with access to some actual resources are working on this problem from their end. So I'll be keeping an eye out.
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Well, since I apparently can't avoid politics...

Interesting thing happened. Found a deviation recently whose creator has decided to keep a running tally of deaths in mass shootings in the US. Now, they're also anti-gun, which I wouldn't mind so much if they and others like them didn't think they could dictate morality to everyone else. What's curious about this is that they made mention of how they could make their case, but only get the "standard" pro-gun arguments in response. Fair enough, but they didn't seem to realize that opened the possibility of the entire pattern of argument-counterargument being on the wrong track.

So I responded and said as much. I got a response...from a third party who then blocked me from responding after they put words in my mouth to make me out to be a bigot, and even after challenging me to provide citations for some of my argument. Now why does the term "NPC" seem so relevant here... :hmm: Anyway...if anybody decided to get into the subject with me here, rest assured I won't be blocking anyone from doing so. I'm a free speech and free ideas advocate, too. I'd link to this, but... :shrug: You all know how DA's comment system works... Hard to link to or get good screenshots after a couple of exchanges. Oh well.

So here's my stance, just so we're clear. First: On the issues of bigotry; It all has to go. However, you can't fight bigotry with bigotry. That doesn't work. It's only, and inevitable, result is a perpetuation of the societal structures and resultant resentment of the marginalized group(s), whoever they may be and however they've been defined. So the struggle continues. And yes, this general attitude means that I'm against anti-white racism just as much as I'm against any other form of it. That's not pro-white or nationalist, that's clear thinking. I'm also against various other forms of bigotry, misogyny and misandry, theological intolerance, anti-...do we have to have so many letters in that?! Anti-alternative lifestyle, maybe? Anti-LGBT is what I meant, but that's becoming more alphabet soup than the US Federal agency phonebook! :-x

Second, in regards to guns; I don't like them much, though they are an interesting bit of machinery. I think that owning one (or more) comes with several inherent responsibilities, all of which derive from the human right to self-defense. However, those all go with the choice to own any weapon. It's not just a right, it's a responsibility. Which means that if someone likes 'em and owns 'em and isn't hurting anybody...then leave 'em alone.

But that's the subject matter. Guns. The premise here is that removing guns from civilians reduces violent crime rates Unfortunately...this gets to be a sticking point. Mostly it's because you can find articles or studies that go both ways. Now, to me, that indicates there's something else going and it's not the guns that are at fault.

Doesn't stop anyone from assuming so, however. They then point at other countries and say "they're/we're better!" Well...as of 2016, the US was 99th on the list of violent crimes per capita. www.nationmaster.com/country-i… Top 100 isn't great, but on the other hand...our overall violent crime rate is on a downward trend, and has been for a while. You can see that in the associated chart. So something is going right. We've seen a recent spike, though, and that's mostly under the heading of "mass murder." Interesting term...but also poorly defined. The FBI defines it "...generally as a multiple homicide incident in which four or more victims are murdered, within one event, and in one or more locations in close geographical proximity." That might be just a touch vague, there. Congress, though, defined it as "..3 or more killings in a single incident." Which makes gangland shootings and drive-bys, or murder-suicides into such events. That..probably skews the numbers. fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R44126.pd…

But...y'know, again...there's something else. Every time something like this happens, the perpetrator's name and face are splashed all over the place for weeks. Right now, data is pretty sparse as to what kind of effect that's having, but the possibility exists that it's a contributing factor, particularly if, as I personally suspect, notoriety is a motivation. I further suspect that the perpetrators are seeking to exert a measure of control over their lives that they've been denied. Guess what response I got for raising that point. :/ Anyway, despite data being sparse, I did find this study that goes into it a bit more in depth, and does indicate that we may have a problem to consider. journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/… Along that note was that keeping a running kill tally was probably a bad idea, despite the emotional impact it no doubt carries for most people.

Sort of as a final note, I did bring up the fact disarming people is a good way to proceed to massacre them. People who can't defend themselves are easy targets. Probably the most obvious example of that is Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, but it fairly prevalent throughout history. The USSR, Maoist China, The Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, the gassing of the Kurds in Iraq, the forced relocation of native tribes by the US in the 1800s...just to name a few. This fact was regarded as a worthless historical footnote. Joy. No surface reading of history is sufficient to avoid it's errors, you have got to dig into it.

Anyway, putting this up in case anyone is that curious about how I really feel about these things.
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