So many artists styles could have gone viral and actually bring those artists some work from the people who tried the AI commercially and got results that weren't completely satisfactory. Now barely anyone will ever have any contact with their art (relatively speaking vs scenario of virality).
Basically the only people who win are the lawyers and handful of artists that were mislead by lawyers primitive argumentation. Everybody else looses. First and foremost artists and art lovers but also AI researchers and hardware manufacturers.
As a photographer, I can’t claim to have or require a fraction of the skills used by creators of hand-made art. And even I am not excited about some AI slurping up my best work and commoditizing it.
> So many artists styles could have gone viral and actually bring those artists some work
I’ve seen this sentiment, but it does not match the reality we see play out on the web every day.
The amount of literal content stealing and “creative reposting” that happens with absolutely zero attribution to the actual artist is quite extensive.
It makes no sense to me that the introduction of an AI tool would suddenly solve the problem of attribution instead of just make it far easier to steal content while making it harder to detect or take action against such theft.
I think I know that little better than lawyers do. Even if only because I had zero financial incentive when I formed my opinions.
> As a photographer, I can’t claim to have or require a fraction of the skills used by creators of hand-made art. And even I am not excited about some AI slurping up my best work and commoditizing it.
I know it doesn't feel great. But your art has already been commoditized. There are hundreds photographers perfectly capable of replicating your style and many of them do it completely accidentally. The value of your art is a personal element not the content itself. What's valuable is your service and the name you made for yourself.
AI gives an artist a ticket to a lottery that can strongly boost their name without doing any additional service.
> The amount of literal content stealing and “creative reposting” that happens with absolutely zero attribution to the actual artist is quite extensive.
I wonder how much money you've lost due to that. Besides, attribution is naturally built into those "plagiarist" prompts for AI.
As for prompts that don't mention specific authors ... you shouldn't kid yourself that AI won't be able to completely naturally recreate your style from styles similar to yours even it it never seen yours. After all that's what you did to create your style. You created a variation on similar styles you saw during your education as an artist.
> ... just make it far easier to steal content while making it harder to detect or take action against such theft.
steal, theft ... what do artists actually loose in those brazen robberies?
Copyright conglomerates created language that doesn't reflect reality. But it reflects most primitive human instincts evolved in the world of scarcity not abundance.
Fame has a very short half-life and unless you have all the licensing/contractual machinery in place beforehand, you probably won't be able to cash on that boost. The line of thinking you articulate here is extremely familiar to anyone who does creative work. It's the same argument that producers use to get people to work for free or cheap on films, that broadcast or streaming services use to justify very low payouts to content creators, that commercial commissioners use to try and get art for free etc. The creative field is absolutely full of promoters who offer to match artist to audience, with the promoters getting the first cut of ticket sales and the artist getting the last or none.
https://theoatmeal.com/comics/exposure
Besides, attribution is naturally built into those "plagiarist" prompts for AI.
Only if you are already kinda famous. Suppose you have a distinctive visual style that's a great fit with a genre, like ghost stories. I, an unscrupulous publisher, note that the market for ghost stories is currently booming and decide to buy, or perhaps generate from AI, and bunch of mediocre ghost stories, and then publish them with 'art in the style of scotty79.' I make a little app offering 'best new ghost stories every day!!' for $1, put it in app stores, and make $7 million before the ghost story fad runs its course. You get nothing, and consumers who got familiar with your style by paying $1 or looking at ads to use my app don't care about you because I never gave you credit and in their mind the style is associated with Best Daily Ghost Stories, not you.
Maybe a few of them will do the work of combing back through the history of the fad and to find which artists influenced the 'daily ghost story' aesthetic. Maybe this will lead to a revival of interest in your work even though the fad it was associated with has come and gone. Good luck with that.
The dirty secret of the creative industries is that if you don't get paid up front for your contribution, you will probably never get paid at all.
This still doesn't give you standing to speak on behalf of artists, and "because I know better than lawyers do" is generally a problematic form of argument. It continues to ignore the key people that matter: the individuals with the creativity and skills to create the content that started this whole IP conundrum in the first place.
> I know it doesn't feel great. But your art has already been commoditized. There are hundreds photographers perfectly capable of replicating your style and many of them do it completely accidentally. The value of your art is a personal element not the content itself. What's valuable is your service and the name you made for yourself.
This is a very one-dimensional view of what makes art, and how the broader community plays a role. I have no illusions about where I stand as an individual photographer among the multitude of photographers in terms of raw technical talent and capability. But I'd argue that you are deeply misinterpreting the implications of that reality, and imposing your own definition of value on a category of human expression that is by definition deeply subjective and far more complex than a simple formula of exposure and conversion rate with some resulting monetary return.
> I wonder how much money you've lost due to that. Besides, attribution is naturally built into those "plagiarist" prompts for AI.
This assumes the only reason I would be upset is because of lost sales. I take photos for the love of it. I don't currently sell them. If someone else starts making money on my work, it takes on a different meaning entirely. And even if I turned this into a business, "lost sales" is still only one of multiple factors.
Regarding prompts, how is attribution built in? Nothing requires an individual to reveal their prompts, currently. There are AI-art sharing communities emerging where prompts are held tight, because the authoring of the prompt is the only thing the "AI artist" brings to the table. Even if prompts were universally provided, that doesn't solve the issue of permission, or imply that this is automatically an acceptable form of attribution to all artists overnight.
When video game companies use stolen artwork, they are ridiculed and derided for blatantly profiting from the work of individuals. Even if it was an honest mistake, this kind of misuse is always a headline.
And yet, when we talk about a system that unlocks a seemingly limitless portal through which the life's work of every artist is made systematically available to the entire world without limit, with no consultation with the original creators, those worries about unattributed benefit just disappear.
I'm curious how you feel about the video game scenario?
I think it's quite presumptuous to unequivocally state that artists lose with this. Is it a complicated situation? Yes, of course, too complicated for such certainty. That's a wonderful thing to believe, but it's just as plausible (I'd argue far, far more plausible as the tech improves) that clients who would formerly pay for their work no longer have to.
With the volume of AI art generated was an even single actual case of that?
When you consider laws regarding organ donors you might appreciate how socially harmful might be wrong defaults.
I didn't know of any artist (except for long dead ones) that I saw the names of in prompts.
> And therefore people would abandon the AI to pay the artist individually?
If you have particular commercial needs you discovered through the use of AI you might want to go to the source, not for everything, but for some things. It might be easier to explain some of the stuff you need to a live human than to AI. AI images are still very imperfect and prompts are not easy to create.
But who knows how the numbers turn out in the long run. I don't think the artists is the group that's going to get the most annoyed in the next couple of years - copy writers and programmers, 3D artists, basically anybody who's doing grunt work..
I think the main problem with all of this is that it has entered our lives so fast, compared to other revolutions.
