this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2024
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I don't think it's like that.
The worst of AI is how is being pushed by big corporations in every product to "sell better" and "collect more data".
But there are plenty of legitimate uses for both AI as a concept and in particular generative LLMs.
Are you telling me that the people who use AI to spice up their RPG sessions with images and text are the devil??
Sometimes I feel like anti-AI is reaching religion levels of dogmatism. It's too early for a butlerian jihad.
Issues with those usecases are normalization or such technologies on a larger scale, and the eventual reduction of the artistic process to having a single idea.
If we were in a post-capitalistic world, I wouldn't be as concerned about the normalization part. However, one of my biggest fears is that the anti-AI movement gets tired out, and then with better AI technologies and sneakier uses, it gets normalized even more.
When I'm creating, I also interested in the implementation of the idea, not just the idea itself. Generative AI simply reduces the creative process to "coming up with ideas". And a "good idea" does not guarantee "good outcomes". I cannot count the number of good ideas wasted in bad execution, including AI generated stuff. In that case, many good ideas were just put into a generator instead of actually going through the creative process.
Sure, AI could become better, and many "AI promters" could graduate into "AI art directors". There's one problem with that: That could also kill AI art, as its biggest selling point towards its customers and fans is its reduction of the artistic process to coming up with ideas.
You'll know how much the means of creating art have changed over the centuries. Different or more time efficient does not mean worse.
Also if you have been an artist for a few decades now you'd been alive while digital art was introduced and the complains it raised to traditional artists.
Complains here are very similar to those. It's just a new tool. It can be used to do good of bad art same as a Photoshop brush. And Adobe is as bad and big corporations (probably bigger and worse) than openAI.
And no, making AI art is not instant. Neither just writing "make me a nice bunnie" and enjoy. It also have a process, with many steps, iterations and that if what you aim to do is something good a lot of times it needs to be complete with traditional digital art. Once again, it's just a tool, how it's used is up to the artist.
I perfectly know that this is not about the "integrity of art". This is mostly about "commission art" or "industrial filling art"(like videogame not important assets, backgrounds, etc) that it was paying the bills for many people and it has been incredibly threatened by generative AI as for the people paying for that type of art the results of an AI model are good enough for a fraction of the price.
But again, it's the same that happened before with digital art. Before there were a need for way more traditional artists jobs for the same result as fewer digital artists.
Progress has always killed jobs, and people have need to learn new skills. That's why we need social protection systems so people can keep employed despite that.
Oh yes, the evergreen argument of "but previous technologies"...
Digital art did not intent to replace the artist, but instead give them a new kind of canvas, instrument, etc. AI art does. And seeing patterns in the tech industry, AI companies are absolutely trying to drive people out of the creative industry by undercutting them, then to raise prices back again.
The backlash was much more mild, and often those were real elitists. Artist that berated e.g. drawing as a "lesser medium" to watercolors, not just digital art.
Well digital art did not, but photography surely did. And eventually it was for the better for everybody.
AI does not aim to replace the artist. That is beyond the reach of the technology.
Generative AI aims to make one artist produce more art in less time. Same as digital art or photography with respect to portraits.
What capitalist companies do with a technology is always bad. That's why I do not like capitalism. But primitivism and halting progress is not the solution. If capitalism is causing issues maybe the solution is ending capitalism.
The anti-ai luddites are about as intractable as trump cultists, and their arguments just as asinine