this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2024
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I'm glad you've found value in it. I've played around with a similar workflow you describe in step 3 and 4, but I just find that it always produces the blandest version. Sometimes you get a surprising iteration, but I think being used to seeing visual patterns makes it much more obvious just how predictable the image details get. It just ends up looking like a compilation of techniques.
I'm sure it won't bring the same results for everyone, and that's fine. I'm glad it's that way and not just so easy it would consume all other ways of making things, as it would cease to be a tool at that point and just become the entire process. I really just try to make what I am already imagining since before I even put anything to paper, and so I know what I want the AI to help me with ahead of time. I get surprisingly close to the idea in my mind because of that. Much closer than I reasonably could get in other ways with the finite time I have.
That sounds like a good tool for you then. I do art as my day to day, and there are definitely aspects of my work that I would love to have a bit of AI injection to help speed the process up, but that is much more as a tool directly integrated into the softwares I already use, like a beefed up content aware transform tool that allows me to move parts of a finished image around just a little bit, and having the AI fill in the small gaps that creates.
I see so many small ways to make the art process less painful or introduce more non-destructive editing tools, if only the AI was built into the software and actively training on the art you were doing, as you did it, rather than having it take over whole parts of the process as it is currently used.
Yes, I want it to go that way too. But that does take time. Which is why I think it's a shame some people are really hostile to it indiscriminately. I get that the big corporations are absolutely wielding the worst aspects of it, and I hate that too. But once you go to grassroots and small corporations, suddenly there is a whole different view of it. AI is a product of humanity's collective efforts, and as such all of humanity should be it's benefactor, not a small group of people that just happened to have the most money and influence at the time. Especially if they had nothing to do with actually creating the technology behind it. And by making the story about them rather than the people using it as it should, it will inevitably lead to people falling behind to corporations, and widening the gap even further. Making artists even less valued than they already are. Which is something I've always fought against even before AI.
I mean, the hostility is entirely understandable. The current form of generative art is meant to replace artists. It is part of what is currently devastating peoples livelihoods, although I think some companies and clients are already learning that it currently leads to lower overall quality, due to how much harder it is to implement changes based on feedback. It lowers the overall quality bar, although it does have the potential to raise the floor a little. The larger models that are causing this hype are quite literally trained on the work of unwilling artists.
It is the most disrespectful and clearly ethically wrong basis to build it on, and it really begs the question of whether the ends justify the means. Beyond that, art is just not an area where we need AI. It largely hurts artists, is super energy demanding so it actively hurts the environment for no real benefit.
The energy would be so much better used solving actual problems, so more people could spend time doing things they enjoy. If some people enjoy AI generation, then that's fine but I think it shouldn't replace a passionate, skill-based workforce.
It is understandable. But what is not understandable is turning a blind eye to the nuance and choosing hate over understanding. I'm glad you have not done so and done your own research, and I happily applaud you for that. But I meet plenty of people that blindly take some art social media influencer's misguided (sometimes suspiciously conveniently so) ideas on how AI works. Big companies aren't all that exists, and they are not the only ones making advancements. Or the majority of it, really. It just looks that way because they get all the attention and have all the means.
Pretending it is so is gives them far more unwarranted power than is healthy, as it creates a situation where people think they're destroying the big corporations, but in fact are destroying the means for smaller creatives that operate in the shadows to keep up and compete. AI technology will never be restricted in a way that will just harm the corporations as it currently is. Stricter copyright laws are a common proposal but I'm sure Disney et al are just downright content if that what ends up with it, as they have enough data to their own to easily train their own AI. And banning the technology as a whole would open up cans of worms that it won't be banned everywhere, leading to economic losses to the countries that do ban it.
I'm working day to day with professional artists from smaller companies that are using it for the right jobs to speed up their work. But their voices are unheard because if they speak up they get showered with hate and people calling them fake or frauds. Again, people that have created wonderful things without AI and deserve the title of artist multiple times over. They don't have millions of followers to back them up, so they just don't bother with and do what artists do, which is to create. Ironically, it's also in part artists that are silencing other artists over AI, not the big corporations.
While I agree with that, it should be mentioned that it's mostly LLMs that require massively out of proportion energy. Generating images is about as expensive as playing a video game on high settings. Modeling software and 3D software also drain energy and producing art is just generally more expensive than consuming it. I think just saying 'it hurts the environment' is slightly misguided, since you can say that about literally everything. Humans existing at all is bad for the environment, but the balance of it is what matters. I do think LLMs go over the edge and big company's insistence to shove it into literally everything is despicable, and not proportional to the benefit.
So one thing I want to mention there is that AI is downright revolutionary in medicine. You can't look at technology as something that takes linear paths from improvement to improvements. The lessons learned in one area can also become applicable to other areas. AI can be used to detect cancers early, solve protein folding, find tumors on medical scans. And that's from just the relatively little knowledge I have of it. So yes, image generation doesn't solve such issue, but the technology that allowed them to exist does solve real tangible issues, and it's popularity and spread is inherently linked.
100% agree. No AI should ever replace humans. I would rather see people get excited to make something because of AI, and once they have some success and secure funding, switch over to competent human artists. That's how humans should replace AI in my eyes, not the other way around.