AI Art Generation: Beneficial or Problematic?

[Zweit]

I went looking to see if a thread on this topic already existed. Please direct me appropriately if so.

AI Art Generation: Beneficial or Problematic?​

Everyone and their mama has heard about AI art generators and the various arguments and opinions folks have about them by now. Stable Diffusion, Dream, Craiyon, even applications like Lensa that use AI to augment existing images and countless others are arriving by the day. They've quickly become a mainstay in almost every artistic community I'm apart of or adjacent to. I've heard people argue both in favor and against their use, especially when it comes to collecting a profit off what people generate, and now I want to hear it from ya'll.

Which side of the spectrum do you fall? Is AI a legitimate tool for people to use in artistic "creation", or do you feel more strongly about how it borrows from the artists these various engines "sample"? Do you think it's ethical for people to make money using these programs? Do you feel similar about AI text generators? Would you play a game, read a book, or consume other media that was made entirely from AI? Do you feel that artists should disclose whether or not AI was used in their works?

Why or why not?

[Mixtape Ghost N]

Ai art killed my parents

[BrokenPromise]

I think everyone has more or less decided their stance on AI art. It's hard to find someone who's not all for it, dead against it, or apathetic to the entire thing. Myself, I was dead against it, but decided to start using Stable Diffusion so that I could understand how AI art even worked. What I discovered was that AI art is a horribly named tool that has the potential to be great but might be getting misused.

For the uninitiated, AI art generators work by filling an image with a "seed," which is just colored noise/static. It then looks at your prompt and uses the images it was trained on to shape the seed into the image you want. It's really just an art sorting algorithm.

The biggest grey area with AI art seems to be that they've all been trained on scraped images. People for AI art believe that shouldn't matter, as most artists learn by copying things they see. I'd say what AI does is a little different as it has the potential to perfectly replicate these images. Most artists will copy from life, other artists, etc, but will eventually come up with their own style. AI isn't capable of doing something like that. Due to it being an algorithm, it's kind of stuck piecing together images from its library. We could talk about the limitations of AI all day long, but it's been getting better at an exponential rate. It can generate beautiful faces, and will eventually get hands sorted out too. But it will never be able to create something truly original. Whatever it makes will always be an amalgamation of the images it was trained on.

And that's the one hurdle that AI art will never be able to jump. It needs tons of reference images for something to draw it accurately. By its very nature, AI art cannot make anything truly original. You need thousands of references for the AI to draw on before it can replicate it.

I don't have a strong opinion on "AI art artists" getting paid. It takes work to make an AI image look good. The art might be created in seconds, but then you need to regenerate the bad looking parts, or port it over to your favorite paint program for a touch up. I laugh when people submit art they made to art station and are too lazy to remove the extra leg their character was generated with. The AI may be stealing artwork, but there are a lot of "starving artists" that have no respect for copyright laws and have made careers out of drawing IP they don't own. Art is one of those things that how much it's worth is very much up to the person who is buying it. especially in the case of commissions.

I can see why less known artists are scared of AI. Especially places like Pixiv where most of the artists have made a living out of drawing "character X" in the only ten poses that ever get on the front page. Places like this where originality is dead are ripe for an AI takeover. Perhaps AI is the great equalizer we need to push artists away from tried and true methods for success and to start taking more chances with their art. Or maybe we'll sink deeper into a sea of unoriginal works and styles as everything becomes a single bland amalgamation of everything. Just like what the you tube algorithm did to most of its creators.

Also AI written works are hilarious.

[ERode]

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@Zweit

There was this thread, a while ago, if you wanna give that a look.

Anyways, the only issue I have with AI art is that its fundamentally just tracing on crack. I don't vibe with it, and it has a habit of making shit look generic af, which is pretty awk in the hyper-stylized world of weebshit. And if it's not generic? It was probably trained on a specific artist's work, which is an even shittier thing to do.

My bigger issue is with AI artists, especially the ones who go down the path of saying that AI art democratizes art. Fucking stupid first-world bullshit. You can get pencils and paper for free, and now you're saying that it's more democratic because you need access to the internet to do so? Ok, buddy.

And then there's these types.



That being said, I'm an anime RPer, so you know I have no actual morals regarding theft and piracy.

...

On the topic of education in general, ChatGPT exposes the general issue of schools failing to get kiddos interested in learning, while AI generation for 'creative' hijinks exposes the fact that a good amount of people lean towards the gratification of instant generation.

Anyways, gonna have a good laugh if, a decade or two down the line, Prompt Engineering becomes a real major or trade.

[Bugman]

<Snipped quote by Zweit>

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ERode

that twitter guy is a troll with some relatively funny bait

anyway my opinion is that ai art isn't bad but of course an expensive artist is probably better. the ethics are the exact same as for piracy. in both cases its technically theft of labour and intellectual property but a lot of people believe things like expense and indirectness of effect make it justifiable. I do both but only on occassion when I can't really make use of the real deal, not particularly gratuitously

[autumoon]

im okay with ai art as long as its not for monetary gain. Sometimes, it helps people gain inspiration for themselves- i know i do. But ai art, using it to make money- its shitty. Its the same morals as piracy in my opinion. Some people cant afford artists, but if you can you SHOULD. otherwise it'll kill the artist community. And.. its not YOUR work really, its just collating a bunch of different people's art into one!

[POOHEAD189]

I dislike it. Three out of four artists are losing their jobs for art that just looks bad to begin with, and almost every time it's because it's a big corporation not wanting to pay rather than a struggling writer who can't afford to hire someone for a cover.

It's gotten to the point where if I see AI art, I cringe.

[Tyler Night]

I am in the middle with AI art. When I want to find inspiration for game making or see what a certain car or vehicle looks in a certain color, I will use Midjourney. I think AI has it's place but you get these assholes that straight up plug-in existing artwork modify it and call it their own and sell it as their own. That is what I am dead set against.

I also create, legitimately create, AI art with NVIDIA Canvas. I use my own photography as a base to draw a new landscape from scratch, creating something that may or may not look anything like the original product.

[Lith]

I think there's plenty of potential to AI usage in general?

Really hate the polarized and silly reactions people give to it. "i hate all AI, all AI is theft, it disgusts me" when making a meme or on the flip side, the cult-like detachment from reality that is people who put in seven words in the positive prompting and go "This is sellable and I have made a product. I am an artist." Or the terminally online who harass artists for admitting to using AI art for references, which is just pathetic and I've seen it more than a few times.

So you know. Common critique that while it "lacks soul," it's as usual the people that ruin things funny enough.

That said.

It has allowed generation of some pretty cursed things and that makes it alright in my book.

My Hider

Alright indeed.

[Tyler Night]

@LithYou can also create beautiful images like this

[Lith]

@Tyler Night That is pretty neat.

The potential for making scenery images for major locations in an RP setting are definitely there.

[BangoSkank]

I mostly make funny little Halflings and big dumb Orcs

[Tyler Night]

@Tyler Night That is pretty neat.

The potential for making scenery images for major locations in an RP setting are definitely there.

@Lith

100%

I am a bit of an artist but most of what I like, I can't hardly find. Thanks to AI, I can find stuff that is hard to find.