Another argument I keep hearing (most recently from pg), is that we'll always need non-AI training data. That, too, doesn't follow. Training new models on synthetic data does not mean we get stuck in a particular mode or style. We'll continue moving, improving, and trying wildly new things. Bootstrapping with synthetic data doesn't block evolution - it enables faster evolution, even. (I'm using synthetic data to train new models to great effect.)
People are angry that we've lowered the opportunity cost barriers and so they're expressing their frustration.
It's a good thing that life's choices no longer fence us in as much. Everyone should get a chance to learn how to express themselves through art with the new regime of tools. Despite changing economics, there will still be a top 1% that do better than the rest of us.
Artists, by and large, don't do art because they enjoy having art--they do art because they like /the process/ of producing art. If that process can be done faster and better by AI, then yeah, sure, they /might/ be able to still do art for a living (some artists will be able to leverage their experience to maintain an advantage; other, less flexible ones will lose work)--but the work they do will likely not be commensurate to the work they were doing before, and will likely be less enjoyable to them.
The thing that worries people about AI is that it'll make all creatives into middle-managers.
Then I spend 95% of my hobby time tediously sanding boards and applying finish and this is NOT the fun part of my hobby.
I will say the only time I've gotten compensation directly as been for the latter because nobody likes doing that stuff.
I'd say AI will make creatives into micromanaging middle managers, the type that gets way too involved in a critique of your every decision is still going to micromanage, they'll just be harassing an AI instead of humans.
Fundamentally the creative act of making book cover art has always been specification. You can say to an artist "make me a book cover looking like ..." or you can hire a guy and give him no direction and trust him to decide what to do. But the creative act was the specifying, not the mechanics of turning that idea into printing ready art.
Another problem you run into is AI is as currently produced, a groupthink enforcement technology, and most people will be turned off by that. The blandest least offensive corporate dining experience is likely McDonalds. How much do hipster foodies prefer going to McDonalds over ... anywhere else on the planet? AI can only create the ideal big mac, and you can make money shipping big macs, but only selling to poor people, everyone else wants something else, even if in a strict corporate inhuman sense its inferior in every way to a big mac.
I think it's a great thing.
Beyond that, if you think AI algorithms will replace art, you don't understand art. It replaces much of the commercial utility of many artists and creating many types of images, but the idea that it threatens art, generally, is preposterous. People who think art school is only about learning to physically make art are like people who think computer science degrees are only about coding. Most of what you learn in art school is conceptual thinking, communication, really deeply seeing things in a way that most people don't, and stuff like that.
Factories didn't replace potters when they started making pots and dishes or sculptors when they started making cheap home decorations-- it just meant the artisans no longer made money creating a commodity because most people were satisfied buying chintzy shit cheap. Many potters who lived through that change probably died in poverty because of it. Talk big numbers about the way industry shifts all you want, but not everybody can switch to an entirely different category of employment just because someone taught a computer to do it.
There was never anything stopping anyone from picking up a pencil and learning to draw. The idea there's some inborn "talent" for art is absurd. There is only people who practice and people who don't.
What you are actually "democratizing" is the ability to produce finished products without ever putting in any kind of work.
Which means you are absolutely devaluing the people who actually did put in the work.
It is a terrible thing. A miserable race to the bottom of human expression.
Note: I don't really care if people use AI to generate anything but they should be forthright about doing so.
IMHO this is absolutely the case, and has always been the case. Being paid as an artist, on the other hand, is something entirely different, or having one's art recognized as good by other people. But I am sure everyone remembers other more popular artists telling them they're "doing it wrong" in art class, on forums, or even all the way back to preschool coloring books if someone would deign to color outside the lines.
There have always been those who seek to gatekeep what art is and who they view as legitimate participants in it. I suppose everyone does in some sense. But I am very excited by the prospect of art as a personal developmental journey becoming more open to everyone.
This is all explained well by "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain". People apply their childhood drawing symbols to realistic art in their teenage years and get frustrated. They never learn to see with an artistic eye and quit.
I was skeptical at first but after going through a couple of the drawing exercises I was convinced. They are so cleverly constructed to make you step outside of your normal brain and just draw, it's kind of amazing the results.
I'm never going to be an artist professionally but I do actually draw as a pastime now and I have improved substantially.
I think if I had practiced more as a kid and teen I may have pursued art professionally.
Part of the problem is that adults see a kid upset that their drawing isn't very good and say things like "That's ok, you're just not an artist. Not everyone can draw" and people internalize that. It's supposed to make the kid feel better and it might cheer them up in the moment, but it also convinces them that they cannot learn to be better at things they are not immediately good at.
Toxic Feel-Good shit.
It’s about expressing and finding yourself and developing a soul through creative action, not just a squirting out a picture that looks “correct”.
You only shortchange your own soul’s development by trying to skip the hard steps that it takes to develop a skill like that.
Because you can make an image on a computer that looks like it was drawn does not mean you can draw. Hell, I’m not even sure it means you can express yourself. The inputs you contribute when using an AI prompt are so minimal compared to the informational input required to create something in the physical space.
Don’t let anyone convince you that it’s an exclusive act. Find a pencil and get at it.
Ultimately though, I realize that trying to get everything what you want from a single prompt won't work. Tokens have implications, and they influence each other too much. Long term, one needs more than just single prompts, and the tools are still evolving to support that.
Still, you'd be surprised at how much you can express even now.
Drawing was for anybody who put in the work.
You may as well say football wasn't democratized until the release of FIFA International Soccer in '94.
Hence I disagree. Even of the training data curators are perfect, there is a risk of "model inbreeding."
And the curators are not perfect. In fact, they seem to prioritize (by necessity) volume and speed over quality and curation when training these LLMs and diffusion models.
