It rages on and on and on: AI, and what to do about it? Can it be stopped? Can artists even survive, in the teeth of AI? And it's not just art: Neil DeGrasse Tyson spoke somewhere, recently, with his opinion that AI is going to kill the whole Internet because fake content (news, celebrity videos, politics, obituaries, whatever) are flooding the whole webosphere to the point where, even now, no one knows what to believe. Fast forward a few years, and nobody will believe anything at all ... and that's kaput to the www. So ... what about AI as it appertains to ART, which is where I live and breathe? Here goes. This is my position, for what it's worth.
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| A LOOK AT PURE AI PICTURES uploaded at A4/Letter size: please see |
Have I used it? Yes. Why? To find out what it was about -- if it had any merit, and if I hated AI, at least I know what I hate, and why I hate it, right? Right. So, what did I learn?
The argument is that AI steals images and just collages them together ... to a large extent, rather true. Or at least, absolutely true of many (most?) of the current engines. So, AI "stealing" images off the internet is real, and rife ... and I hate this, but I also believe it's way too late to stop it now: I'm pretty sure the damage is done, no matter how angry professional artists get --
I read a looooong analysis article about this, late in 2023 (don't have a link, sorry -- just my memory), and there was this one artist going utterly ape about how the work of artists like Boris, Frazetta, Foss and so forth is being (their word) bastardized ... and they showed examples, AND you could see exactly how works from 1950 or 1980 had been subsumed and adapted. No, this shouldn't be allowed to happen, and I'm sure that -- eventually -- some government body somewhere is going to issue a law that stops it, within their sphere of influence. But remember, a US law ain't worth the proverbial hill o' beans in Russia, Thailand, Philippians, Malaysia, Pakistan, whatever. AI engines only have to move offshore, and the only thing the lawmakers could do would be to block US users from getting onto those servers. That legislation would take another five years, by which time, there'll be a workaround to fool the system. In the end ... no, I don't see legislation based on or around copyright having much effect. So, what's next?
Well, how about we try getting real about this. People have been using tracing paper and cameras to copy and manipulate photos and other paintings since it first dawned on someone to do this. AI collage work is not very much different from what we've all done for more years than one cares to remember. So, for myself ... I don't see much real harm in AI art, so long as it's used as a hobby. But I have to believe it's only a matter of time before legions of artists who wouldn't know one end of a paintbrush from the other start to sell their pictures to unscrupulous (or simply ignorant!) publishers. In fact, what's already happening is that indie publishers are no longer commissioning cover art: they're going DIY, doing it themselves, with the result that people like self -- who used to earn a few bucks at the boot end of the industry -- don't earn the proverbial brass farthing anymore.
(Yes, I used to be a cover artist, circa 2012 -- paid US$80 per cover, ooooh, aaaah, LOL. The indie publisher I worked for is closed now ... she died. There's no answer to that.)
So, in fact I have two "beefs" with AI art:
1) small-time artists like self are losing the tiny bit of cash flow we used to have -- which means a lot when you're disabled, and the creation of intellectual property if pretty much all you have to work with. And --
2) ...I'm a wee bit miffed, because I worked hundreds of hours to learn digital painting. Each "doodle" in the learning process took ten or twelve hours of work, and left me with pain in the hand, neck and spine ... the learning process was months long, also tortuously slow. Along comes AI, and blows away anything I could hope to do even after 500 hours of learning and practise. So, yeah, I could be pretty miffed if I took myself too seriously. Since it's so damned hard to learn digital painting, and the results tend to be so iffy for so long ... why would anybody ever bother to learn? Why wouldn't they just say, "Stuff it, I'm using AI." So, AI is just becoming another way via which creativity, and raw talent, are being buried.
Now, having said all that ... I looked at numerous engines just for curiosity. Lexica, Night Cafe, Playground, Wombo, Dreamlike, Leonardo, a whole bunch more. By and large, the results I got on the FREE versions were far too poor to lure me in, and to get anything better -- they want big bucks in subscription fees. Noooo can do. You know what this means: small time artists are screwed on one side, and on the other, the owners of the AI engines are making megabucks. It could be said that they're getting rich off the backs of artists who're out of work now.
Bottom line: AI art is a great hobby, but it has a whole bunch of downsides. And that's my take on all this. If you have a different opinion -- that's fine and dandy. But I know how AI has already affected me, and my artistic future looks a little bit iffy, unless I turn this whole thing into a hobby. Which, I'll be totally honest, is all it is, anyway. Wasn't intended to be, just turned out that way, nudge, wink. So, what's all this digital painting about? Well, this:
