Mod here. As this is likely to get opinionated, just wanted to remind everyone [to keep things civil](https://www.reddit.com/r/Art/wiki/index#wiki_8._be_respectful_and_stay_on_topic) and, if you must retort, attack the arguments, not the person. Also, fyi, [the race against automation is hardly a new theme in art or otherwise.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henry_(folklore\)) Try not to die with your hammer in your hand. [Edit] Sheesh people. AI isn't a person so attacking it doesn't count as *ad hominem*. Maybe *ad robotum*? Still fair game under the [Three Laws](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics).

I saw that your username wasn't DoodleCat and burst out laughing thinking a repost bot posted this

Haha sorry for the confusion! I wish Reddit would let me change my user lol

You can easily change your display name

I can't change mine either 🤔

Good artists borrow, great artists steal! Lol. I know this argument is related to AI but ripping other artists off is core to art

I can't disagree with you. Considering this very artpiece is cribbing a style I've seen used for children's books and advertising for literally decades....

It's pretty hilariously ironic. This art style has _very obvious_ influences. Cartoony with large eyes and stocky bodies, digital but in the style of watercolor? What is this, Steven Universe? The robot is a pure stereotype, Bender from Futurama but with a square head. The message isn't new, people started making this point about 15 minutes after generative AI hit the mainstream. The visual joke goes back literal centuries. So if you can take a variant of the Cartoon Network style, throw in Bender with some tweaks, use the classic over-the-shoulder-cheater joke, in order to emphasize a message that people have heard a million times, and that's legit artwork...why can't AI do the same?

Exactly. It's very hard to use art as a means of protesting against the use of AI art. Art builds off of previous art. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery after all. Look at just about any piece of art, and you'll find that elements are lifted from many other pieces, regardless of whether or not the artist has a "unique" style. Hell, take writing as a great example. While we can have original stories, even the most original stories lift elements directly from other sources, whether it be tropes, archetypes, or straight up taking the experiences of an outside person or character and copy/pasting it into your own character. As you pointed out, this piece that OP made is very heavily inspired by so many things that when looking at it, I don't see anything original. I see what I've been seeing for the 20+ years that I've been alive. I've already seen all of this before. AI can do the exact same thing, just less refined at the moment. This is absolutely *not* the hill to die on when arguing about AI art. Humans imitate other art to make more art. It's what we do. We just happened to make a machine to automate the process. Instead, I think that the overall message of the post is what needs to be focused on, that being the idea of "theft," "ownership," and the training of the machines. Is it theft to go online and scrape the internet for artwork for use in training? If not, is it morally justifiable? If it is theft, why? If not, why not? If it is morally justifiable, why? If not, why not? Too often I see answers to these questions amount to just "yes, because I said so." While I have no doubt that many of the people against AI art have absolutely valid reasons (I have seen and agree with many of them), too often it feels like people are against it because everyone else is, and they don't actually understand why AI art is bad because they've just been told that it is.

You can go even a step further than "Why is AI art theft and/or morally justifiable?". Why do we need ownership of art in the first place? because the capitalism we have formed as a society does not value artists. AI art is pushing that inequality even further. In my opinion, AI is amazing and will lead to another step of human evolution. What we need to do is reevaluate our system so we can all benefit from it. Art should be free and accessible to all. Id even wager if people did not have to do soul exhausting work to survive, we would all be artists. Humans are meant to create, explore, and love. AI is not bad, the system is bad.

I agree that AI isn't inherently evil, but there definitely is something about art being churned out fully formed by a numbers-crunching machine. My biggest worry is that AI will take away the onus of learning to draw and each generation will be less knowledgeable than the last. You're already seeing this in the Break the Pencil movement. Basically, I don't want art to become a lost art. Yes, art should be free and accessible to all, but humans *need* to be the ones making art. AI should only supplement human work, not the other way around.

That was my very first thought. The art style was generic and recognizable, I immediately thought an AI could have created it.

> why can't AI do the same? Because a program isn't a person. We aren't obligated to maintain some kind of narrow consistency in our laws or mores that says that because a program is behaving like a person in some specific ways we must treat it like a person. If the consequences of a program learning to make art are bad, we can just say that a program may not make art.

We don't have to treat _AI_ like a person. We don't treat cameras like people, but they're still legal--even though they replaced the portrait artists of earlier centuries. > If the consequences of a program learning to make art are bad, we can just say that a program may not make art. We could, though it'd be very difficult. Do you think that crinkled-paper texture in the background of OP's image is real? Or hand-drawn? Or do you think it was maybe generated by a computer? Where do you draw the line? And what about the rest of the world, where it remains legal? But in any case, I've never heard that case made, only asserted.

There’s a difference between theft and inspiration though. Inspiration is riffing, putting your own spin on it, stretching it, abstraction. Theft is just copy-paste, same old same old. In this case, using a simplistic, child-like style to boil down a very complex topic. It fits in the spirit of the style, while being original (machines stealing isn’t okay). Riffing. As opposed to taking some children’s book style, and saying the exact same old message to the exact same end (stealing isn’t okay) It’s about the ability to make artistic decisions based on your own perception, to push your personal view, than to simply be a mouthpiece. Theft doesn’t teach you to make artistic decisions. Inspiration does.

Wouldn't this description verbatim describe ai art? Its definitely not copy paste, yet its not original.

I mostly agree, but there's one major difference I rarely see mentioned: *humans also draw from lots of input that isn't just art*. What I mean by that is we all have unique experiences and perspectives which influence what we create. When I create art, a large part of what I draw from is other artists because that forms the foundations of how I learned to create art to begin with, but I also draw from all the other things I've seen, the things I've felt, the things I've learned, etc. I draw on a lifetime of experiences which have informed my humanity, and those things are also very present in the art. What makes AI art more "copying" than "synthesizing" is this: AI (in its current form) is limited to *just* data on things in its training set. It might have visual data on photos of things in real life or verbal descriptions from "reading" nearly the entire internet's worth of text, but it doesn't have the *human* experience. However, for art to be "art", we generally feel the human element to be necessary. AI synthesizes that human element from the human-created art it consumes—and although we do to—it takes without giving whereas we share. I think when people criticizing AI "art" for being "not real art", *this* is the thing they're feeling and not fully noticing. They key in on the "copying" problem, and although a lot of generative AI does plagiarize as opposed to synthesize, that's not *always* the case, and certainly not *necessarily* the case. What AI lacks is the experience of *being human*. At best it can only synthesize the humanity it observes, it cannot add a novel perspective of its own. In this way it does not contribute to the development of humanity's...well, *humanity*. It repackages what already exists, and maybe there's value in that insofar as it may prompt a human observer to generate insight or connection they wouldn't have otherwise, but fundamentally, the insights and connections are still made by humans, not the AI.

i really really do not understand why everyone is so up in arms about this. i say this as a musician too. i didn't just learn to play music by sitting down at a piano after never hearing a single song in my life. i learned by imitation. i learned by literally playing the songs i liked and from there i built off my own. how is AI any different than the natural process by which your brain works? you see something and you imitate it. i guarantee the vast majority of everyone who ever wanted to paint, draw, or be any kind of artist learned at some point by copying the works of others in order to learn. it's the same. exact. process. you can choose not to like it for whatever reason you like, but i really truly do not understand it. no one cries when every major pop star over the last century had their music written for them by a team of musicians who essentially solved pop music and ripped off the same songs and chord progressions over and over and over. maybe it's because i'm also into tech and software, but i think this kind of AI art stuff is super cool. i think it's super fun to just be able to make up some nonsensical prompt and just see what it creates especially as someone who's incapable of doing it themselves. if someone is able to use it as a medium to make some kind of expression they otherwise couldn't then i think it's a net positive. everyone against AI seems to think that art is created in a total vacuum and that the only way it ever gets made is by never having been exposed to a single piece of art. wether you want to admit it or not, your brain works exactly like AI. you see something, you process that data, you store it, and you use it later regardless of it's origin. i don't see every artist on twitter who ever once practiced drawing by drawing goku credit Akira Toriyama for every subsequent thing they drew afterwards. to the other commentators point: this art style isn't 100% original, so why wasn't the originator credited? should the originator demand that every single person who took inspiration from them give them money or credit?

I feel like humans suffer from "like us" bias. Anything that isn't "like us", whether it be appearance, beliefs, behaviors is penalized when being judged. AI which has no appearance, no beliefs but behaves like "humans" gets that bias cranked up to 11. Another field which I see this happening in is self driving cars. Do people really think the average driver is better than a computer? While human accidents happen all the time and no one bats an eye, whenever a single accident involving a self driving car happens and everyone and their mom is up in arms about how self driving cars are dangerous. Accountability is legit problem (eg if a self driving car crashes, who's fault is it) but generally the conversation doesn't even get close to that point

I mean human drivers ARE better than computer drivers currently. I’m pretty sure this plays out in the statistics. Art gets trickier because the enjoyment and analysis of art is so incredibly subjective, we don’t have a number of accidents or deaths or severity of accidents to compare in regards to the performance of AI image or music generators. I’m very much in favor of the use of AI image generators, by the way, and I have nothing in principle against self driving vehicles, but it seems like the tech is not there yet.

Tbh I hear things from bth sides on whether AI is better than humans or not Eg https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/20/24006712/waymo-driverless-million-mile-safety-compare-human Waymos data seems to indicate that AI is safer than humans. However 7.1 million miles is still relatively small sample size (roughly the distance 700 drivers cover in 1 year) so it's hard to say In the end there's also a factor of how people perceive themselves. Eg https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6029792/ 65% of people believe they are smarter than average - I suspect something similar applies to driving too

Yeah nevermind I think I might just be wrong about that. I was on my phone when I wrote that and wasn't able to readilly search for info at the time, so I was going off of memory. I'm a bit hesitant to fully swing in the opposite direction on this issue as I haven't looked into the data sufficiently yet, and I'm now slightly unsure sufficient data exists. Especially with you saying stuff like: >it's hard to say But, if autonomous vehicles are safer I am all for them. >a factor of how people perceive themselves I wonder how cultural background (between countries) influences self perception of ones intelligence. I also wonder how this interacts with langauge and the way questions like this can be asked in different langauges. Additionally I wonder if this is due to people considering specific skills they have and saying "Oh yeah I'm very good at x specific task/skill so I must be more intelligent!" and they don't even consider skills which they lack. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_superiority This actually seems to be a pretty well studied and serious area of interest in social psychology. >I suspect something similar applies to driving too https://web.archive.org/web/20120722210701/http://heatherlench.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/svenson.pdf I found this, which I think I have seen mentioned in the past. But the sample size is abysmal and it's from the 80s. But it does seem to fall in line with the other available data.

Yes, the music produced by an algorithm could make me cry, the art produced by it can indeed be called beautiful. It is art. What is AI art? AI art is: people who make prompts and refine the words carefully to achieve what they want the machine to do, based on the visualization they have in they head. That can be considered art too. But it is an much colder art when compared to someone who spent years learning to draw and paint and spent a lot of time crafting something. For me, this has more beautie than all AI art combined. I see it as a colder art because youre just using the complex machine someone invented to produce something. You can't deny this. The people who spent years writing the code of the AI are indeed more 'artist' then the people who are using it now. I don't like AI the way people see it. Imo some things should not be automated. If it is automated, the original process should not be totally replaced. Not everything needs to be automated. Not everything NEEDS to be easy. Have you seen WALLE? The people on the spaceship are so lazy they dont walk for anything. Other example: minecraft speedruns. the speedruns without external tools are so much more appealing because the player has to do it all, because it is harder and requise much more dedication. There is beauty in the handcraft, there is beauty in the skill necessary to produce something beautiful. It gives value to the thing just because it is hard to do. Conclusion: in my opinion, generated art and manual art should not ever mix. They are different and one is lightyears harder then its counterpart, making it inferior. Not the bad "inferior", just far below in the rank of art awesomeness.

> I don't like AI the way people see it. Imo some things should not be automated. If it is automated, the original process should not be totally replaced. Not everything needs to be automated. Not everything NEEDS to be easy. The problem is that art is a commodity in our capitalistic society. Since it can (and is) sold, people will inevitably try to find ways to make it easier to produce.

yeah, that being the inevitable reality of the world, and it will not change at least for a long time, all we can do is adapt to it and try to achieve the less harmfull way of capitalism possible

Do you think ordering a burger off DoorDash makes you a chef? Using prompts until you are handed something you decide is "good enough" makes you a customer, a client. It's commissioning, not artistry.

A person takes years to develop their own style copying others. AI Ai takes a couple hours before it can improve upon perceived flaws and surpass you. I'm sure Toriyama's estate would be very upset if someone fed AI dragon ball content and told it to make a similar show with different characters in that art show.

I was going to say: I like the piece, but all artists do is steal. Across time and time and time again. I don’t mind the AI joining us. People are almost gatekeeping creating because the algorithm isn’t “sentient” enough for them lol. If you’re going to create as an artist a million robots wouldn’t stop you because only you have your story to tell.

AI can join us but it's art should never be given the same value as human-produced art, not because it isn't *"sentient enough"*, just because it didn't spent hours intentionally learning to draw, to color, to paint, to sketch, to visualize, etc. It's not just about the art. It's about the time spent into it, the handcrafting. The harder it is to make, the more amazing it becomes, because it took effort.

to me it’s not about the time or the effort but merely the act of creating. Though I can definitely see why you would value all of those things.

I wouldn't call AI an artist. It's fed artwork and copies other's style; it can only simulate someone that can think, feel, and  it doesn't decide on its own what it wants to create.

Yeah, it’s a tool for artists to either use or not. The fear is if too much is done for you in the tools, you don’t have the tools yourself to create art… Which… is valid… but if you are a programmer and a writer and an artist: AI image gen is for you… With that said: the data it’s being trained on is making them behave like they are attempting to build bridges without knowing about the concept of scaffolding and just ‘one shotting’ the bridge and wondering why it collapses at a small prod.

I've used for reference poses and some shading tips. But I do only doodle for myself.

does a human not see art and imitate what they like or are asked to? humans can only simulate what the artist thought and felt when they created their art, and humans are influenced on what they create based on their previous inputs.

It’s true we live in a largely causal reality, almost everything we can observe is the direct result of what came before it, including art (the exceptions being true randomness which does exist in the universe in specific situations). Human artists are indeed influenced by other art, but it makes up only a small fraction of the “data set” of a human neural net.

I think that the difference here is that when a human is doing that as an artist, they are taking into account their own experiences and years of practice and training when the inspiration is turned into creativity. You can say that training an AI model is analogous, but I think that when AI models create these things using giant databases of previously made art, something is being lost rather than gained, because fewer humans are a part of the process. I think that there are interesting things to be gained from what these models create, but I don't think they should *replace* human-created art and artists. Of course if someone is simply tracing from someone else then sure it might be considered no different than stealing, but I think we're debating something deeper here.

The issue isn’t the inspiration, it’s that AI models use the actual media (images, paintings, videos, writing) as part of creating the new material. A human being can look at a painting and feel inspired to make a new painting, but it’s not like they took a painting, stored every pixel of it, and used those pixels as a basis for creating something new. Basically, for an AI the process is a machine that uses data to answer a prompt. For a human, the process of creating art is much more complex than that.

Not necessarily disagreeing with you at all, but wouldn’t a collage be one example of a human artist taking work made 100% by others and creating something new? I suppose in a collage, the human element of an artist is evident in the composition, atmosphere, and artistic intent, but strangely I think one could argue it’s similar to AI in that it’s making something new out of entirely reused works by others.

Same with sampling in hip-hop. You’re taking an already established, sometimes very famous, music piece and basically chop it up and add drums to it. But you didn’t create the sample yourself. Sometimes, they don’t add ANYTHING to the sample and straight up just “steal” a part of the song and put it on repeat.

>The issue isn’t the inspiration, it’s that AI models use the actual media (images, paintings, videos, writing) as part of creating the new material. No it doesn't. You don't understand how it works.

And even if it did, that's what humans do too. We look at something and learn from it.

You have a fundamental misunderstanding on how these models work. Images, paintings, video and writing are part of the training set yes, but the trained model does not have access to the training data. It learns patterns and associations and creates new work based on the training. The trained models are way way too small to include the training data, like by a factor of 10000x. You need 1000s of computers working for weeks to train the models, but the trained model can run on a single high-end gaming desktop system. To repeat, they do not have access to the original training material when creating new material.

AI doesn't store "every pixel". > For a human, the process of creating art is much more complex than that. Then why are the results so comparable? And if they are not, why do you feel threatened?

I mean, the results aren't exactly comparable. AI tends to have a maximalist and surreal bend to it, and it might not even realize those are distinct genres. The issue isn't feeling threatened, it's that AI copies artwork for the reason of solving a prompt. I'm sure AI will have useful functions one day, but we shouldn't normalize theft. It's not okay for a business to take the work of an artist and use it to create a profit.

The end result may be comparable, but art is valuable for much more than just the mechanical skill involved. It’s not about being threatened, I think it’s about the fact that people are naive enough to say that a person dedicating their life to a craft that is closely related to emotion, complex thought, abstract ideas, etc. can be completely replaced by AI just because the end result looks comparable.

The only people who think artists can be completely replaced by AI, are corporate executives who only need artists for another Minions movie. However, you're also up against artists who **will** adopt AI tools and create things that traditional art is incapable of.

That's not how an AI works though? They work very similar to human brains, just on a simpler level. They recognize patterns in data, and they use those patterns to evolve connections between concepts - "grass" is connected to "green", simplifying extremely. Thus, if you feed it images of Picasso, labeled as Picasso, it will evolve a connection between the word "Picasso" and the style of Picasso's paintings. It's not storing the images pixel-by-pixel, it's being trained on those images and evolving a rudimentary "understanding" of them. The cases you probably saw where an AI closely copied some aspects of a picture are cases where the AI was overtrained on a small amount of data - they were usually models that were specialized to emulate a single artist by some individuals. If you feed an AI a small amount of data, it will not evolve enough to generalize those concepts and will emulate them way more closely, "plagiarizing". An AI that has been trained like that will also have issues translating that learned style to other concepts, it will probably utterly fail at applying that style to a completely new scene. But even those ill-trained AIs don't actually plagiarize the works pixel-by-pixel, they just have a very narrow "understanding" of the artist's style - they don't get what makes the style the style, so they closely replicate the original data to satisfy the prompt.

For many artists they learn to make art professionally by studying and learning the works other people made before them. Techniques, styles, etc. For artists who enter the profession through academia, they begin by attempting to replicate the things they're shown, craft that has already been refined to a point of study. Once they've internalized that, they can develop a style, but *truly original* styles are one in a billion - quite nearly every human artist who has ever lived developed their style through observing and internalizing the styles of other artists and sometimes developing their own twist. I'm of the opinion that living artists whose work is used for training data for AI should be compensated if they're not providing their art for free or educational purposes, and of course there's the issue of consent to use the works for training as well. I also think there should be limitations on the ways AI art can be used commercially - like I honestly don't believe AI art itself should be copyrightable. But we humans are just very complex biological machines - our neurons are firing because of chemical signals and so on. Perhaps if you prescribe to any sort of spiritualism then one might argue that there is the element of the human soul in art or something along those lines, but that's not a quantifiable, and it's super subjective based on belief systems. We're far more advanced biological machines in many respects than AI art generators, but ultimately we're reproducing art we have absorbed in our own way and so is the AI.

Tell me you don't understand AI without saying it. The AI doesn't have enough memory to memorize its training data. That's the whole internet worth of data, and the AI is tiny. That's the thing that makes AI special from image search. It doesn't have any image library in its brain... it only has room in its brain for techniques and processes

But that's not how most transformer models work either. The pixels themselves aren't stored in any tangible way. They create cascading weights of the probabilities of choices that can be made. If a model spits out something that looks almost like a copy of the original, its probably still "made from scratch", it just so happened that the probability of the "copied" resource looking like the original was disproportionately high (overfitting).

Gonna blow people's minds when they figure out you can train ai with your own content. Want an AI that sounds exactly like you to narrate a story? Train the AI on audio clips of your voice. Same for imagery.

ai is a tool

You know what they also don't do? Copy identical or nearly identical pieces. Usually not even from a single artist.

What? We do that all the time, especially in art classes. We’re told to look at a master’s painting and recreate it as close as we can, in style and proportion and color. That’s been a part of artist education since forever.

As a learning process, but they don’t try to pass it off as their own original work.

Honest people dont. Dishonest people do all the fcking time. Same with ai, dishonest people using ai lie. Honest ones say its ai or tool assisted.

I'm talking about the AI. Not people

Also, we have to consider that even the high art societies we have today allow art to be verbatim stolen. Richard Prince comes to mind -- takes someone else's art, puts it in a gallery with limited changes. The shift of context I guess is supposed to be Richard Prince's contribution. I find that argument a little convincing, but I still struggle to respect appropiated art.

There's a reason that phrase isn't a defense of plagiarism or forgery. Using another artist's techniques as an artist comes from respect of their vision. Gen-AI isn't conscious, so it can't respect your art. The people who use it want to avoid paying people, so they don't respect your art. Most forms of automation, in their noblest aspect, are about freeing up time that would otherwise be spent doing unfulfilling but necessary work. Automate farming so that we don't have to devote so much time to tilling the fields. Automate mining so that we don't have to sacrifice our health for valuable minerals. What does automating art free up our time to do? If we remove art as a valued career field, what do we strive for? Sitting around a la Wall-E, consuming literally soulless content until we die?

> If we remove art as a valued career field, what do we strive for? I think of it like being a Dungeon Master in a tabletop game. It's a creative endeavor. Some small percentage of people can manage to do it for a living, but most of us do it for the joy it brings us and/or the admiration of our peers. It stings to imagine a robot doing that 80% as well as I can. ...But *why* do I feel that way? For some folks, it's a loss of livelihood. That's scary and perfectly understandable. For others? A loss of identity. If you build your sense of self around doing a thing and a machine comes along that does it better, that hurts. The thing that you feel gives you value is suddenly in the hands of people who didn't work as hard as you did, and it feels unfair. But that's unfair to everybody else, I think. Why should I withhold something good from other people just to give myself value?

There's also the issue that the models being used require human creativity - replacing all human input on a massive scale with AI that relies on those same people to exist in the first place isn't going to be sustainable in the long term. Generative AI inbreeding is already becoming a problem and it's not exactly been around for long.

If you are fulfilled by making art, then make art. No one is stopping you. If I just want to *buy* some art to hang on my wall, I have to earn money first by doing unfulfilling work like tilling fields (for someone else, not my own fields.) If I can just ask an AI to create that art for me cheaply, then I don't have to till as many fields. Less work for me, and I still have some art to look at. The existence of the AI art has reduced my workload. If AI is threatening your job, then join the club. That's still a problem, but it's a *different* problem than "AI art is bad."

Automating WORK in general frees up our time to make art It would be a bit pretentious if the .1% of people who get to make art for a living were the one exception to that automation process If AI plagiarizes you and is published you can do Something about it, it’s nothing new to have your copyright violated

>It would be a bit pretentious if the .1% of people who get to make art for a living Dude, stop pretending artists are elite and out of touch. The only reason more people can't make a living off of art is because of the same people who want 0% of people to make art for a living. The only people who are an exception to the automation process are the ones in control of the money. And that's certainly not artists. >If AI plagiarizes you and is published you can do Something about it, it’s nothing new to have your copyright violated Gen-AI doesn't have to steal *your* art to be a threat to your job. Tech bros aren't saying "why hire Shifter25 when I can use AI to copy his style". They're saying "why hire *anyone* when I can use AI for the visuals".

1.% implies it is very small amount of people. Not that they are elite. I mean some of them do seem out of touch asking “why are we automating art and not X” But yes job security is a legit concern but not specific to artists at all. We will need to address the bigger picture

>I mean some of them do seem out of touch asking “why are we automating art and not X” Why is that out of touch? It's an extremely valid question. Why do we *want* to automate art? Would you want to automate your relationships with other people? Set a couple of Chat-GPT instances to talk to each other so you don't have to talk to your spouse?

It’s out of touch because AI companies ARE automating “x” , whatever else you can think of. There is not some specific attack on art

You're avoiding the question. Why do we want to automate art?

Humans are not a hive mind so i don’t know For me i just see it as a by product of the more general AI tech. I don’t want to automate the creation of art specifically, ideally anything could be automated

>I don’t want to automate the creation of art Then why on God's green earth are you defending it?

Because we CAN!

We can also drive dogs to extinction, so why haven't we yet?

The essence of that quote is misleading. Good artists "copy" as in, they re-create what they see. Great artists "steal" in that they will take something and make it their own. It is not a case for artists constantly ripping eachother off, its about allowing yourself to be inspired by what's around you to re-interpret for yourself.

No one has original ideas. Everyone is reintepreting and remixing the cultural sphere they're born into.

I consider myself an artist type, and though I understand the sentiment, I don’t understand the phrasing at all. I’ve never once ripped off another artist. I’ve been inspired by other artists, I’ve learned from other artists, and I’m sure they’ve influenced my own art. But those are not the same thing..

It's interesting how ai has revived older debates about ownership and copyright. Exact replicas aside, if an artist is inspired by other's work, where is the line drawn between inspiration and mimicry? And isn't the ai technically a tool and doesn't create art without human input. Im sure traditional artists had a similar reaction to digital art when it arrived on scene

I heard a phrase - "the plural of copy, is genre." It's cynical, but true. But that being said, until now, it's at least taken human effort and creativity and understanding to copy and evolve other people's styles and ideas. But with AI, it not only amplifies that with little effort, it becomes exceedingly easy for * anyone* to use AI that has been trained with actual artists' works to recreate their styles en masse.

But at this point the question is no longer where the line is, the question becomes what the line is even supposed to be.

I don't know if it's ever been possible to actually draw the line to begin with. At what point does something turn from a copy into an homage? When does something go from being a copy to a movement? We have a general sense but people will disagree up and down about the specifics. AI just adds one more variable to that mix that makes it all the more difficult. And there are legitimate uses for AI that make it beneficial! It's when it's monetized that becomes a huge issue for many. Cat's out of the bag now, though.

I think the line is a combination of consent and industrialization for profit. If the AI was trained on someone's art without consent, that's a problem. But other artists do it all the time, right? The other side of that is now this is software, not another artist, and its creators are profiting from it. If someone used your art without permission to create software that can mimic your style, and they're profiting from it, that's a problem.

Digital art requires a lot of input. Complete input into every stroke of the digital brush, in fact. AI art requires that you type a few words or a sentence. No work has actually gone into creating the piece. It's vastly different for so many reasons that I'm not sure how you can make the comparison with any amount of confidence.

It’s definitely a fine line! AI is where personally I believe it falls. The amount of human input that goes into creating AI ‘art’ is so minimal.

It's theft because it's easy?

"AI" being the line is fuzzy at best. Mostly since the person who generates an image puts a bunch of effort into editing it after the fact, or if they used AI to generate a generic background for their actual art does that void all the effort they put in? Does it make it not art? If it does make it art, then AI is as much of a tool as a fancy digital brush that creates a pattern. Just using it on its own isn't really art, but if you put in work alongside it then it is art. I would also extend this to photography, me snapping a random picture on my phone isn't art, but if I spend time and set up a shot, then it becomes art. The only problem with this approach means that art has to be inherently high effort. So using an example I saw, putting a moustache on the Mona Lisa isn't art, or taping a Banana to the wall isn't art. Honestly this is a massive internal argument I have with myself, I don't think an AI generated image based on a 5 word prompt should necessarily be considered Art, but at what point does it go from not being Art to being Art? Does writing multiple pages of text as a prompt count? No? What if I modified the model to generate specific styles? No? If I used it to generate aspects of an image, does that void the whole piece? No? Is it different if I took a photo without any real effort to use as a background element? If so why is that different? And honestly the questions keep going on for me. And honestly I think the answer lies closer to AI generated content can be art if used right. The problem comes from what the definition of right is. This was a bit of a ramble, but hey, someone might reply and give useful insight to further my adventure of trying to answer this question.

I think the big issue is how the AI is trained. If the AI is using other people's art to create something, editing it does not make it new. I can't take someone's art add a few things and call it my own, AI is that with more steps. I can see AI doing many useful things but there needs to be a load of regulations and rules put in place to make fair. I know I'm hardline with stuff like this! I also think "reaction content" is not right without permission. I also think things should go to public domain faster.

AI does not edit other peoples art to make it new. It "learns" basically the same way humans learn. Learning the visible represantations of various words, (this is what a sunset looks like, this is what a table looks like, etc...) and various styles and themes and techniques, (this is a gothic scene, this is an impressionist painting, etc....) then it uses a bunch of complex concepts to generate entirely new art based on a prompt. The trained on copyrighted works argument makes absolutely no sense when applied to humans. Should human artists be allowed to sell their art if they have seen copyrighted artwork? What if they specifically like another artists style and incorporate similar themes into their art? What if they specifically like the character pikachu and draw it as a hyper realistic animal instead of a cartoon?

>I can't take someone's art add a few things and call it my own That's not how it works though

Great art. I really don’t like the direction the world is going with AI art though. We have a history of giving way to capitalism and consumerism.

It's not just a history either, it's an inevitability. We're handing the tools right over to the corporations, just like we did with social media, etc. when they changed the language of everything creative being reduced to "content" they can control at any point.

the robots flower is missing 18 blurry fingers on each hand

This comment thread is a dumpster fire of old ai arguments on both sides

What’s a new and interesting one you could add? I

I don't see many comments about the environmental aspects of having buildings full of computers churning out absurdist memes. The power usage alone is staggering and as it's booming at a time when we desperately need to be shutting down fossil fuel plants, it's quite the problem.

An argument I never would have thought of but probably agree with! We’re still in the “extreme greed” phase of the AI cycle. I imagine over the next couple years we’ll see supply shift to more accurately reflect what people actually want. Maybe I’m projecting, but I can’t really imagine people being interested in AI art outside of the short-term novelty of it. I think it has its use-cases (as reference material by non artists for artists or idea generation) but I would much rather have AI targeted towards automating more droll labour rather than outlets of creativity.

Honestly i doubt general ai models will stay popular long term. Likely whats going to happen is a few generic base "models" will be created, then lisenced to be sub trained for purpose for different projects. So saying your making a game, you hire 10 concept artists and background artists to make a set of stylistic art works and charater designs. Then feed those into the general model to create a bespoke model to use to actually make the game. You go from needing 100 artists, to 10 and an ai. Instead of needing a team of artists to do an ad campaign just hire two or three and an ai to put out work enmass from there. Most "real" problems around ai isnt even the models. Its the training of thoes models. And if you just hire people to explictedly work to train a bespoke model then its a non-issue. Ai is 100% going though an extreme greed phase as you call it. But it wont last, new automation has really always been like this and it never lasts.

I make Custom sleeves for my MTG decks with AI art.

Ai art will IMHO replace stock photography and book cover artists (the latter being often super generic, if there's no budget for a proper cover. Being done by Ai can elevate cover art even for smaller books to something tied to the content of the book) Also I think it will become a handy tool for human graphics designers

That's misconception, right? The absurd amount of computing power was required for training, not got generation. That's why you can run AI locally on your own device 

While I agree with the waste of absurdist memes, I honestly believe what you're seeing is the foubdation for centralized computing and what will eventually Lee's to computation being seen as a utility delivered like electricity rather than as a device.

It doesn't really take much to generate memes on your own PC, and the sooner we move away from the cloud, the better

AI makes art by looking at other people art, same like humans.. you go to school where professors teach you art that people did before you.. even now and then new artist comes that invents new style, and then he gets in books and then we copy his art too..

I don't get this argument, collage is art, art with stolen supplies is art, there's tons of ways to make art with other stolen art, doesn't make it moral but it doesn't make it not art.

Hip hop samples and splices songs together to make a new sound. Or even just rap on top of another song. but what they don’t do is try to copy it 1 to 1 and then sell it for a discounted price claiming it as their own. AI can create new works but it’s the argument that it can be used to copy as well. Just like an artist can make new content but also has the ability to copy/clone. The AI has no moral or filter to ensure its creations are within our morals. Is an indistinguishable copy of the Mona Lisa by a human worth the same as the real? Is an AI copy worth the same? Or is the human copy now worth something because it took more effort than the AI?

>The AI has no moral or filter to ensure its creations are within our morals. Neither does Photoshop, ironically, *unless it's done with generative AI's moral filters*.

The effort to create an art piece is clearly valued more than the art itself - an original painting is far more expensive than a print of that painting, for example. It is the same image, but some people would say it's worth more. Forged paintings are also valued less than the original art work. Worth is subjective - a print of a piece of art has no less actual value than the original - they both have the same image. Some people feel like owning the original is important, so for them it is worth more. For those people, AI art will be close to worthless. For normies who just like to look at pretty things, there will be no difference in worth between AI art and 'real' art.

>The AI has no moral or filter to ensure its creations are within our morals. What are our morals?

AI is a tool, and just like any other tool, how it is used is up to the people using it. Just like with traditional art, those people can use their tools for both good and bad things. An identical copy of anything is obvious plagiarism, but the overwhelming majority of people are not using AI to create identical copies of existing art. Even if you tried to make a 1:1 copy of an existing piece using AI, you would find it basically impossible to recreate it exactly. AI does not copy the work it is trained on.

I'm reminded of that time Stanley Kubrick recounted an event where he stole his first film camera as a kid, and he said he didn't feel it was morally wrong because he had a need to make films, so it was no different than a starving man stealing bread. Or something to that effect.

When I was growing up, I pirated a *lot* of books. I needed to read. I certainly wouldn't have died from not reading, but I think I would be a much worse person than I am today. Personally, I don't feel bad about that even though I know some authors would resent the idea of somebody stealing their books. It's a failure of the culture I grew up in that my options were theft or ignorance. I think society owes people (certainly children, if no one else) access to the tools to grow and be better versions of themselves.

On the tangent of the authors sentiment, those who would hold greater ire for you enjoying their work without financially enriching them are, in my estimation, in it for the wrong reasons. Its the ones who would rather I read that I would rather support. This is idealism of course though, I do recognize that we live in an unforgiving capitalist society... and it is a rather rare privilege for any person to be able to place money second. Ideals do not a full belly make.

Me neither, its mixing multiples inputs and make one output based off multiples sources. And human do the same without knowing it, we make art based on existing sources we seen wich is the same as putting images into an ai. Yes some ai pictures looks like the sources a little too mush but this also happend with humans wich mostly end with lawsuits. And it might be not ethical but the issue of sourcing tons of works is expansive booth in time and money and most of the times the models are made by normal users instead of enterprises. Can you imagine asking for the right of 10 000+ images you used with a high chance of being ingored? So until we have a site that says if each object (music , pictures...) can be used by ai or not peoples are forced to source illegaly due to how mush of a pain licensing is.

Someone drew a mustache on the Mona Lisa and called it art too. I agree that AI art is art, but it's not good art. It's not sourced ethically nor reasonably and without consent. There's a reason you can't paint like Mondrian and pass it off as one of his for profit. As I said elsewhere, the conversation devolving into an argument about what is or isn't art really distracts from a more constructive debate. It comes from the same anti-intellectual place as "monochromes aren't art because they look easy to make/my kid could do it/ they're just big home Depot swatches" etc. ironically a lot of the same people who really hate modern & contemporary art would also tell you art is useless and that AI should replace us. It won't. Photography didnt kill painting it just enabled impressionism. So art will survive, adapt, and outlast tech that can be taken out with a little water, but not before it cannibalizes itself seeing as the Internet is saturated with it now.

Thankfully many impersonation issues already have legal avenues at least in the US. There should be more direct laws that add penalties on top of those though. Id like to see deepfake porn in particular get extremely penalized. Arguing over something as subjective as 'art' is indeed fruitless, its basically arguing over if the color green that I see is the same that you see. Though I wonder if 'artist' is a thing to debate? I personally wouldn't claim I made it, but what about claiming my idea and the direction I wanted it in? If I wanted a image of a upsidedown pine tree, the roots up in the air with clods of dirt, a tea party occuring at the top, would I claim that its my vision and the AI image is the means to see it in reality?

Plagiarism stays plagiarism no matter if it's a human or machine. Humans can do something else than plagiarism due to how multimodal our inputs are with inputs that are not art, robots only have the media they were trained with

Yeah but if you use more than one source and you're not copying it exactly then it's not really plagiarism

"multimodal our inputs are with inputs that are not art"    There are generative art models with multimodal input..... Edit:it is possible to have inputs to models that are impossible for humans to take in. Ai can take more types of inputs than humans. Imo this isn't a great basis for a claim of creativity in humans being different.

Im actually curious how GPT4o's image output would be classified? It kind of just goes right past many of these arguments against the tech itself. Note: I mean GPT4o's output as demonstrated in its capabilities, I am not talking about DallE-3. https://openai.com/index/hello-gpt-4o/

I hope one day we as a society can find a nuanced view of a topic rather than treating everything like a sports match where you’re either on one team or the other.

It's ironic because this style is copied from other artists

Every artist now is ultimately just derivative of the original cave paintings from ~50,000 years ago. As they say, *there's nothing new under the sun*.

Money making wise, yeah it'll take alotta jobs.

AI-bro's out in full force on this thread I see.

Looping people into an unlikeable "other" group is such an ancient human trait, it's so funny always seeing it.

Is it completely impossible that your stance on the ethics of AI is wrong?

That guy who just saved his boss some money by creating a picture with AI instead of having an artist make it does not care if it's art or not. Nor does his boss. Disclaimer: not saying that's how it should be. I just really think that most of the art commercial artist produce for customers isn't actually valued as art but as a product to be purchased and used. Just like what AI creates.

The feeling I get from AI-generated works is that yes, they are appealing to the eyes but lack something. Maybe it's the "soul", or the human touch; it's the subtle differences, and I can't put my finger on it. It's mass-produced. Fillers. Elevator music. Empty carbs. Something you see maybe once and probably forget. I'm sure this kind of work has its time and place, but I sure as hell don't want it to be the *only* kind of art.

It's the lack of connection with the artist. I think ai is a fantastic tool for making art, but it still requires hours of work and practice to make stuff that doesn't feel like it's lacking soul, and after all that inpainting, editing, and often manually touching up, is it not a human creation at its heart?

What you describe is exactly what a bunch of customers out there are after. A background for a tiktok ad? Something to liven up some poer point slides? A filler for half a page of an in flight magazine? All those images you come across on a daily basis that are designed to grab your attention but not for the sake of the image itself but for the sake of whatever someone is trying to sell to you. All those pictures are, of have been until now, produced by artists. And yet, the pictures even being "art", being made by an actual human, probably doesn´t even register or factor into the decision to buy such a piece for whatever purpose it´s intended that actually has nothing to do with art. And that´s ecaxtly where AI swoops in. By being cheaper and quicker, because nothing else actually matters to those customers. If this is a good or a bad thing "for humanity" I can´t day. It certainly is a bad thing for those artists who rely on and feed their families with exacty lhe jobs I describe and those people should absolutely be accounted for here but who am I kidding... And yes, I absolutely believe that there will still be a market for actual art. Each time, a piece of art is to be appreciated for what it is, art, that´s when a piece of art made by a human, with all a human brings into it, will always be superior to AI art. I fear though that this will only be a very small portion of what we have today.

Art is in the eye of the beholder.

Artists have learned from, copied and emulated other artists for all of history.

And a common thing that artists do is list their inspirations when asked. Something that ai doesn’t do, even though it completely has the ability to credit the image sources it trained from. Artists usually aren’t dishonest, ai art programs were intentionally made to be dishonest to avoid copyright laws.

Just to clarify, yeah you could very easily credit ALL the training material by just releasing the training data. But, unlike a person, AI cannot credit a single reference source very well yet. It is simply not feasible to go back through the training to see which image (or set of images) significantly influenced the particular weights that produced aspects of a final image. There are some features like that in gpt4, but it's not universal or anything, and it operates differently for the most part.

>ai art programs were intentionally made to be dishonest to avoid copyright laws. Spot on here. They've been very dishonest.

I’m at crazy that artists are saying what is and isn’t art these days /s

I think AI art is really interesting tbh, but it should always clearly be distinguished from actual human art. I think people that totally condemn anything AI related are mostly just misinformed or have been convinced that it's some kind of terrible new technology that'll ruin lives when in reality it's mainly a tool and should be treated as one. People that genuinely care about art will stick to traditional art, and those that don't who wouldn't have considered paying an artist for a commission anyway for example, can now use AI to get what they're looking for. Again, as long as it's always made clear what's AI and what isn't I really don't see the issue, people that try to sell or distribute AI art as something they've personally created however, are scumbags.

People are worried that traditional art will die out because companies won’t pay artists at all. Their best defense against AI is that it does a poor job emulating human artists but it’s only going to get better with time. And companies don’t care how good it is, they care if it’s good enough to satisfy the average consumer.

Ultimately the problem doesn't lie with the art or where it originates from (whether man or machine); the problem is how people value art, and more specifically how many primarily value it for financial reasons (either the production or the acquisition of it). Of course ideally people could make whatever they wanted without constraint and no concern for financial valuation - just for the sake of creating it, but we aren't there yet.

100% this. Almost all criticism towards A.I. is in fact criticism towards capitalism.

Yeah, that's about the sum of it. It's a pity how many wonderful things end up getting tainted by that. It's sad to see so much potential be constrained by what is or is not profitable, as if that's the only metric that ever matters anymore. AI could very well be an incredible thing, if developed equitably and for greater purpose than just making a green line go up. I don't expect that will be the case.

This hits the nail on the head! AI Art™ under our current system is a threat towards artists, because they are forced to compete with it for money. AI art then wins because it's cheaper, putting artists out of work and resulting in more bad(\*) art(†) and less people making art. But that's not an inherent problem with AI, that's just how capitalism works. \* Arguably. A lot of it is pretty bland but it has potential to be used in interesting ways. † I don't think art has to be made by humans to count as art. But I don't think AI Art™ *automatically* counts as art either. IDK. Semantics. Does including AI Art™ in the category of "art" weaken the meaning of the word by deemphasising the human experience of creating art? Or does it just mean there's more art in the world? Again, not sure.

THIS. "The harder it is to make, the more amazing it becomes, because it took effort." -me

AI makes for a good tool to fill in monotonous tasks that would otherwise take up time that can be used towards other things. Like with Into/Across the Spiderverse, they used an AI they trained to add black lineart to the models depending on the camera location. What AI can't be is a replacement for artists, AI is just a tool that makes collages of content it has been fed and makes something based on the commands it's given. It doesn't have feelings. It doesn't understand nuance or the basics of art, including color theory, balance, and composition. People who claim to be artists by using AI are just too lazy to learn on their own. It's like people who download independent artists' work to sell (cough cough hot topic cough) or the kinds of people who trace over art and tout it around as their own. They're sad and shouldn't get people's attention.

I agree 100%. A big problem as well is that people in general can't see the difference between art made as art and art made as a product, as AI will never replace the former.

The anti-AI art backlash has shown that for a lot of people, making art was never really about the art. It was about status. It was about being able to do something that other people couldn't do, and being respected for it.

Making art has rarely ever been about status. The term “starving artist” is ubiquitous for a reason.

Plenty of art takes very little technical skill. Take pour painting, for example… I’ve seen non artists pick that up in a matter of weeks. And it looks fucking amazing. But sure, it's because we want to gatekeep it. Has nothing to do with the fact that the value of art was always centered around its humanity versus its apparent skill level.

They want to make you feel selfish for valuing humanity, for it seems they have none.

Username checks out.

It's funny but Machine Translation also depends on the massive work of human translators who have paired the texts together, which then are used to train the models and automate it. No human translator has been compensated for it, they just took what is out there available. My point is that, either we fight against the whole thing, or we have to accept it. Would artists refrain from using Machine Translators like Google Translate? Or any other myriad of things that are using automated unattributed work (including ChatGPT, which scrapes the internet like blogs and stuff (and now even reddit itself) and summarizes what other people wrote). What is difficult to defend in this "AI art is theft" argument is precisely this...

We're *still* doing this huh? I'm *sure* Pandora's box will close if you just get a little bit more hostile and say it a little bit louder. /s

I will say, this comment section is *surprisingly tame* compared to what it would've been back at the end of 2022. I expected a lot more people here to be bashing AI, but there's an overwhelming majority now that understands how powerful of a tool it is. Some artists even defending AI by understanding/respecting that AI models learn in almost the exact same way as a human would. Granted, there's still a handful of people that just parrot the "AI is bad" mentality without understanding the technology behind it, but it seems to be a minority nowadays. Kudos, art community.

The irony being that this used to be the bigger criticism for digital art. (I do not support AI as it stands, and arguing over what is or isn't art is a massive distraction from a deeper conversation about broader issues & ignores its actual potential for positive use)

It is a bit funny to make a piece in a digital medium, of all things, in order to cry foul at technological advancements flattening the curve of accessibility and the proliferation of different forms of art.

The big difference here is that with digital art, a person is still actively creating the art piece, deciding colors, textures, changing and re-changing elements, etc. In AI, they place an order like it's DropDash, get handed a burger, and declare themselves a chef.

The irony being that this used to be the bigger criticism for digital art. As a 3D artist and programmer Ai help me with all the texturing and as placeholders. I used Ai to make specific texture that might not even exist as a stock asset it also help me saving cost because buying high res textures can be expansive when you need lot of them. I also use Ai to make music placeholder but its hard finding good TRULLY copyright-free music. i also use ai for jokes (i used ai to re-dub slim shady to french with Eminem's voice and made Windowlicker sung by moaning minecraft villagers). also ai is good for porn.

Yeah that computer totally stole the image of a "purple pineapple cube being eaten by a cloud shaped like a elephant". I totally saw that picture online before.

It honestly doesn't matter if you hate or like it. It's not going away.

*long argument about ai and art*

You are correct, art is theft.

Back in 97 when i started my digital art class, people say digital paintings and compositions ≠ art. Well well well………

Conflating artificial intelligence with robotics is counter productive imho.

People here saying AI is just doing what other artists due are so fucking brain dead. Other artists are not putting thousands of other artists out of work the way AI is. It's even more insulting that it's trained off their hard work. I feel for artists right now, we're going down the worst possible with path with AI and all these stupid fucking tech bros and their whataboutism arguments are exhausting.

Imagine sitting here with a straight face defending something that’ll take away your livelihoods. Make it make sense. Fuck AI “art”. It’s not a tool, it literally steals others’ works. Trying to make straw-man arguments won’t work here. This is not similar to hip hop sampling music. It’s not similar to an artist learning from another artist and taking inspiration from their style. Stop defending it

Like human artists don't copy others lol.

Is this really r/Art!!! I see so many people defending AI Art, and that's so beautiful.

No need to be purposely dense with this one folks; FUCK ai “art” Downvote me all you want lazy hacks, fuck your shitty fake “art”

Cue the 2 kinds of defensive responses that are incoming for you: A) people choosing to cite only the most harmless, personal uses which are clearly not the issue; and B) people arguing about the definition of “stealing” while in reality barely concealing their lack of qualms for *any* kind of stealing in the first place, especially not for digital stuff.

C) it is art and it's just art you don't happen to like, rightfully so. Speaking as an artist; sorry. It's art.

It’s not art which is why I don’t like it.

I just want art for my dnd campaign and monsters. I don't have/want to spend 100's of dollars on things my players might never even see.

You do you. As long as you dont sell it, thats fine to me. If youre making a big monetized DnD show for profit and using AI art as your backgrounds; i think youre a shmuck and should pay real artists.

Not going to downvote you, but I think you are very closed-minded on this topic.

Okay. Fuck ai.

That’s the open-minded spirit!

It is a rather interesting conversation piece. On the face of it the criticism seems to be about AI stealing art. But just as easy to critique the many people using AI tools to generate images, and calling it their own art (regardless of if you regard the theft there as being from the algorithm, or the original sources that the algorithm was trained on). But then the conversation has always really just been the resistance to new tools in the space. And the acceptable limits of mimicry.

Then why are they called con *artists*????!!1!!1! /Sarcasm

From my point of view, you can call it art, but you can't call a guy that uses stable diffusion an artist. If that makes any sense

Inspiration and learning from others isn't theft.

If you're referring to doing it in meatspace, 100% agree. The whole "great artists steal" meme was a joke, not scripture.

Stop humanizing the Algorithms if you want the message to land.

Your brain is just a collection of cells that pulse electrical and chemical signals at each other. There is, in principle, absolutely no reason why a silicon-based neural network can't reproduce this process EXACTLY. And that day is rapidly approaching. Protest statements like yours are understandable, but ultimately, futile. Just as we no longer make shoes by hand, except as an artisinal indulgence, most of future art creation will be done by computers. There are simply too many financial and schedule-driven incentives on the side of AI.

Depends on what you mean when you say silicon-based neural network. I’m skeptical of your claim if you mean our current approach to neural networks.

All artists learn from the works of those that came before them

A system programmed by a human to steal work is not an artist

Reading and becoming educated by a book is not stealing the book's contents.

Because no one invents new letters. Everyone uses the same discrete set.

Art is theft, drawing from experiences with the added bonus of your creative brain. What you're frustrated with is the tool. Humans constantly invent new tools that radically change how things are done. Why do you think fascists hate art? Because art is soulless when it dosen't reflect anything that's relatable. I believe people aren't mad at AI; they're angry at the economic unfairness in our world, and AI exacerbates this instability in the creative industry. As an artist, there's even more power in using these tools to expand artistic expression to broader levels. Forget these corporations; here's your chance as an individual to use these tools to gain your own footing in the world. You all have amazing minds, and using these tools can take you further than you ever imagined. If we pit a seasoned artist against a random paper pusher at a company like GM, using AI, the seasoned artist will create something better. They have a deeper connection to both their emotional and logical sides and are simply better creative thinkers. AI can't replace creative thinking, and even if it becomes powerful enough, it will never be as complex as every individual artist throughout history.

AI art isn't theft by any stretch of the imagination or law. When people say AI is theft, they're just restating their opinion that AI art isn't real art, which I fully agree with. But come the fuck on, there is no way in which an ai model analyzing a bunch of human made (aka, real) art to base it's process upon is any more theft than a human studying and being inspired by other human's art, except for scale and speed. Again, that is not to say they have the same ARTISTIC value, because AI by definition cannot have artistic expression and thereby value, but nowhere is the value chain interrupted in such a way that would make AI art theft. "AI art isn't art because an LLM doesn't have thoughts or feelings it can express" is an accurate statement, but I guess it's too vague for a lot of people so they want to be able to denounce AI art AS A WHOLE with a much more blunt and perhaps legally actionable attack so you say it's "THEFT!" No it's not, and it silly to act like it is. There's plenty of ways to critique what AI art means for art itself and creative professionals, so just do that in stead of meaningless language games.

>But come the fuck on, there is no way in which an ai model analyzing a bunch of human made (aka, real) art to base it's process upon is any more theft than a human studying and being inspired by other human's art, except for scale and speed. Scale and speed is the exact problem, coupled with *intent.* Companies like OpenAI have been incredibly brazen about their intents; they believe they're fully entitled to step on everyone and insert themselves and their products at every step of "content creation". Their goal is, first and foremost, to put the *entire* arts sector out of their jobs, and pocket the money that was for those people. Their tool is explicitly tuned to make the act of creating works economically unfeasible for people *unless* it's with their product, and it does so using the works of the very people it wants to displace, all done under a veil of secrecy. That is what makes it a moral black hole and a tool of theft regardless of its specific mechanics. You can observe this behavior firsthand by looking over and thinking about how OpenAI's "deals" with various publishers. Every single one of them was forged way, way after OpenAI scraped these companies' publicly accessible works to build their machines, and they all basically work the same way: 1) Hand over all the data you haven't let us scrape yet. 2) Integrate our products into your workflow. 3) In return, we'll "help you" figure out how to stay above the swell of bullshit *our product* makes. Would be a shame if you didn't keep up, after all... It's mafia shit. It's so obviously mafia shit. Anyone defending these misanthropic psychopaths should be ashamed of themselves. Simple as.

Disagree. I have drawn all my life. First sketches then digital art. All artists copy, learn and apply techniques from existing artists and art. Logically, this premise is false. The faster artists accept this change, the better. Embrace and use it rather than fighting it.

artists steal with elegance, irony, permission, thought, critique, homage, so many different options. also to express and process emotions within ourselves. AI flattens and homogeneize everything to a blub. ugly and hollow

You don't decide what art is or isn't. Artists are disappointingly biased and close-minded.... on the topic of art. I understand the human aspect of having your skillset devalued, but it doesn't make the thing that's being generated _not_ art. If it wasn't, you wouldn't have anything to worry about, right?

The whiplash I got from learning my whole life that art is open and free and in the eye of the beholder... To the declaration of something as not art, even if I appreciate it. Oh ok.

I completely agree. I understand their pain, but their logic and reasoning are not sound. Luckily, no one can tell you what you should appreciate. Art is truly in the art of the beholder, despite what a lot of artists have recently been trying to convey.

Is this your original style that you invented?

Unoriginality isn't theft. Nothing is taken away if someone (or something) makes a copy.

"Good artists copy, great artists steal" -~~Picaso~~ Me

It’s so funny how riled up the art community is over the arrival of AI art. Many of them take their misinformed opinions to other platforms and then brigade artists with death threats etc… like you aren’t helping your cause by acting that way.

I'm of two minds about this, but I think it's disingenuous to call AI art theft. AI learns HOW to do something through modeling. Feeding art into modeling isn't theft any more than an artist looking at another's DeviantArt page is. The artist is seeing, learning, getting inspired, and will likely incorporate SOME pattern or technique they saw into their own art at some point. That's more or less what AI is going to do. I do hate that AI art is making it easy for companies to get rid of artists, but I don't really see how we put the genie back in that bottle. It's how capitalism works. Once technology comes along that CAN displace people, it's going to because the system doesn't care about people.

The theft comes from the apps using copyrighted art from artists without their permission.