Pirate God

There's been a TON of writers and visual artists who are absolutely p!ssed at AI.

They call it stealing, but let's be honest here, most artists get their inspiration from somewhere/something/someone else too - most won't admit it. I think Steve Jobs was one of the few exceptions with his great "Good artists copy; great artists steal" line.

I guess it's because all that talent, work, sweat, and tears suddenly doesn't mean as much, and industry at large looks at the bleeding-edge AI art as 'good enough' now, making most commercial artists worth a lot less on the jobs market.

I understand the feeling - originality is harder to find these days.

But then again, consider...

Cubism, Impressionism, Brutalism, Atomic Age, art deco, manga, even stuff as old as the Renaissance, woodcuts, and the Dutch Masters... all of these have flocks of artists copying each others' style, enough so and exacting enough that seeing just one is instantly distinct and recognizable as part of a grouping. It's like seeing a political cartoon out of 18th-19th Century US papers - even though hordes of artists drew and printed them, they all looked rather alike - enough to instantly recognize them if you knew where they came from.

The only reason we don't look at these styles in the same light as AI is that these genres competed with each other, even across time as they shared space in the same museum, gallery, collection, or even book.

AI is just doing what all those artists did, except that you can tell the AI via prompt to use one of those styles...

I think the biggest professional complaints against it is that 1) it's not yet very good at it but in the pedestrian sense is 'good enough', and 2) what it can produce is almost good-enough, but doesn't really require any work to produce. Oh, and I forgot the most important: 3) companies don't have to hire good artists at high wages for gfx - just hire someone cheaper who knows prompts well and knows enough about Photoshop CS to tweak over the AI errors, and you're all set.

I've been trying hard not to get involved in this debate because it's really only a matter of opinion and which view one takes. You've tried AI yourself so you would know the randomness of it makes copying impossible. Perhaps with styles but the same would apply to music, painting, literature etc. Do not your own sculptures borrow "steal" the style of other artists? People who use AI don't do so to make copies of other people's artwork as that would be pointless.

You're way off the mark if you think producing images with generative AI requires no skill. In fact I find it harder than working with DS and other people's pre-made models. It comes down to how much work one wants to put into their art, and laziness isn't unique to AI... have a look through the Daz gallery with +50% of it complete junk IMO. The same with the Civiitai gallery.
We might have to agree to disagree because as I said art is, and has always been, just a matter of perception. The method one chooses to arrive at a result is irrelevant. IMO most of the opposition to AI comes from a luddite mentality.

Great points Adam and I totally agree, with most of them 🙂 .

Well it's certainly not manual skill nor physical dexterity but I suppose neither would that be the case with writing an opera or composing music. It's true that AI can reduce necessary talent to some degree if all one wants is a pretty and meaningless picture. The same would apply to DS. To say that anybody can learn AI suggests that there is no skill progression and I don't think that's true for either AI or DS.

@d0gg0d I guess that's a bit like the difference between someone that draws random shapesbwith random colors and the one that draws precisely what he wants.

Similarly, an AI artist could either use just a prompt, or use more involved techniques like controlnet, impainting, compositionimg, photoshopping, etc. to get what he wants.