Technology
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It's probably related to the fact that it seems a lot of Lemmy users are in tech, rather than art.
I think generative AI is a great tool, but a lot of people who don't understand how it works either overestimate (it can do everything and it's so smart!!) or underestimate it (all it does is steal my work!!)
Personally, I'm a comp sci graduate who did several courses exploring AI, but I actually started out in fine arts and continue to paint, write, and play music to this day. I'm sure I'll be blending these studies in some way when I move on to my master's.
I agree that automation is scary. It's unregulated. But it's not the tech so much that's evil, but rather the employers who see it as a reason to get rid of employees. And before, it'd be manual labour that we replaced with machines. People doing mental labour thought they were immune, until now they're not. Our economic system's going to need to change in some way.
But generative AI can be very good even for artists. For example, sometimes I suffer from writer's block (who doesn't?). Now, I can feed what I'm working on into chatGPT and have it spit out an example of the next paragraph. Sometimes that's enough to spur me on so I can write the next page.
Artist movements in general are pretty conservative. When digital painting first became a thing, allowing people use layers and filters so easily, the kneejerk reaction by artists was to consider it cheating.
My hope is that in an ideal world, human-made art becomes valuable in the future precisely because it has the human touch. Live music played on real instruments, paintings on canvas, the sorts of things with quirks and imperfections and a human element that can't be mass produced. Let the corporations have their algorithmic, soulless advertisements, and let the people focus on true self expression.
But then for people without artistic talent, say those who want to make indie games but can't hire an artist or a musician because they're just some kid with a dream and little experience? Hell, why not let them generate some assets with AI?
But we need to make sure that people aren't afraid of becoming homeless, starving on the streets. I think, we're not getting rid of AI at this point, it's too powerful, and I don't have an answer to our societal problems. For better or worse, we'll adapt.
I appreciate this point of view! My BA is in visual arts, but I’ve also leaned heavily into tech, programming as a hobby, etc.
I think there’s a lot of different topical threads at play when it comes to AI art (classism and fine art, what average viewers vs trained viewers find appealing in a visual medium, etc) – but the economic issue that you point out are really key. Many artists rely on their craft for their literal bodily survival, so AI art is very much a real threat to them.
But, when I first interacted with Midjourney, and seeing my mom (just an average lady) being excited about AI generated art, I can’t help but see it like photography – all of a sudden the average person gets access to a way of visually capturing things that make them happy, that they think look cool, something they saw in a dream but didn’t have the skill to create visually... and that doesn’t sound like an inherently bad thing to me.