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This entire article misses critical developments in the AI art space. Controlnet was just released last week. It allows for precise fine-tuning of the image wit

This entire article misses critical developments in the AI art space. Controlnet was just released last week. It allows for precise fine-tuning of the image with skeletal positions, depth maps, outline sketches, etc. It has been exceptionally received in the AI art community, because pure-text-prompting precisely runs into the issue described in the article. You can only convey so much information with text prompts. That being said, artists in general still don't want to touch controlnet. Because despite controlnet solving their complaints about how the AI isn't controllable precisely, it doesn't solve the real problem, that drawing skills are massive devalued. Artists will still exist, but most likely as hybrid 3d-modellers, AI modelers (Not full programmers, but able to fine-tune models with online guides and setups, can read basic python), and storytellers (like manga artists). It'll be a higher-pay, higher-prestige, higher-skill-requirement job than before. And all those artists who devoted their lives to draw better, find this to be an incredibly brutal adjustment. PS: Despite how people made fun of 'proompters', or predicted that prompting would be automated away. The skill ceiling to good AI art has radically increased. There's now 10 different fine-tuned models you need to learn the basics of, each with different strengths. There's thousands of LORAs to insert into prompts to precisely reproduce a subject that the base model has no information on. There's 20 parameters to tune, each with different effects. There's VAEs which affect coloring and fine-details. Now there's controlnet, and you'd better learn blender to rig basic skeletons to feed it. This likely suggests the future of an AI-augmented economy: People become AI wranglers. Wordpress was supposed to make blogging easier, instead it spawned an industry of WP wranglers.

LASR 4y ago
Yeah this post seems like it will not stand the rest of time. The fundamental conceptual shift is the emergent behaviors displayed by these models. And that is highly unforeseeable. We’re not working with machines that do what they’re built to do. They’re doing more. And every day we discover something new they’re capable of doing. Making any sort of statement about the limits of this technology is going to be shortsighted.
- mirsadm 4y ago
  The opposite is also true. People overestimate what is possible and underestimate how much more effort and time is required to start replacing industries.
ZephyrBlu 4y ago
> Because despite controlnet solving their complaints about how the AI isn't controllable precisely, it doesn't solve the real problem, that drawing skills are massive devalued At this point if I was an artist I'd probably be looking for a way to leverage my existing skills into AI art, because it seems like drawing skills will go the way of the horse and carriage. I feel bad because this has happened so quickly. Previously it seems like there was a longer transition period. This kind of transition has got me thinking the same about coding though. If AI programming does indeed take over, my programming skills will likely be massively devalued. If you believe this is going to happen, how should you prepare for it? Start learning prompting now? Get involved with building these AIs? Etc.
- oneeyedpigeon 4y ago
  > my programming skills will likely be massively devalued I see this in the context of the drawing vs. art analogy. Yes, your typing and maybe syntax skills will be devalued, but your higher level, creative programming skills are probably safe for a good long time yet.
  - sebzim4500 4y ago
    Depends what you mean by 'good long time'. I think at this point it's worth acting under the assumption that programming will not be a well compensated career in 5-10 years, and either be prepared to switch to something else or try to make a lot of money in the near term. Also, if I'm wrong then I get to be pleasantly surprised.
    - morby 4y ago
      AI has yet to completely replace people in any industry. I fail to see how it would replace an industry that creates massive, complicated code bases in 10 years. Let alone 5. All roads seem to point to AI assisted work. Programmers will move “higher level”. That doesn’t mean they become poorly compensated.
      - 4y ago
5350-uiop-1130 4y ago
thanks was looking for something like this. SD has been great at giving lots of new ideas but frustratingly difficult/impossible to iterate on anything.
brookst 4y ago
> that drawing skills are massive devalued. This is the critical insight. Human artists having nothing to worry about. Human drawers do. The decoupling of concept from execution is old news in most forms of art. Writing music and playing an instrument are two very different skills, and indeed any session musician will tell you that playing instruments well is not as valued as writing amazing music. In fact we went through a similar thing in pop music in the 70’s and 80’s, with the brief moral panic over electronic music and people who “just push a button and don’t even know know to play their instrument.” Turns out nobody cares, as long as the music is good. AI art decouples concept from execution for visual art. That’s all.
- Dzugaru 4y ago
  You're not taking into consideration how the actual artists actually feel. And, from the first hand - the feeling is horrible. Most artists love to draw, the process itself is incredibly satisfying. Just like a musician loves his instrument. This is destroying them, stealing the joy from the thing they devoted decades of life. My wife is extremely depressed by this, to the point I think she'll need serious therapy. She still has most of her job, but yeah recent developments like ControlNet? Well, shit.
  - sdiacom 4y ago
    Obviously I don't get to tell your wife, or anyone else, how to feel about this. And there is a very real and very impactful thing in that, if you enjoy and make a living out of hand-drawn art, AI art will make it harder to make a living out of something you enjoy. There's no way around that, and I don't mean to deny that feeling. It always sucks when the circumstances around your craft and your source of income change. But I don't think AI art can possibly take away from the beauty and enjoyment that can be found in drawing and making art. You mention how a musician loves playing their instrument. I can download a music edition software and summon a virtual orchestra out of my speakers in seconds. But does this take anything from the musician? Is their feeling any less true, their music any less meaningful to themselves and to those who listen? If I bring my laptop to a party and play Vivaldi's seasons on it, will that elicit the same reaction as if I play it in the living room's piano? If language models eventually get good enough at programming that I'm out of a job, I won't derive any less enjoyment out of programming. I'll be a lot poorer, sure, but I will still enjoy the process of coming up with a way to express constraints in code, even if a machine can do it for me in the blink of an eye. Just like I find it relaxing to do the dishes myself when I'm anxious, even if I have a perfectly good dishwasher. Just like how people who enjoy solving Sudokus don't find it less fun just because automatic Sudoku solvers exist. The journey is the destination. And for the record, I don't think human art will disappear because of AI art, or human programming will disappear because of AI programming. If there's one thing that's demonstrably true through the history of humanity, is that humans have a strong human-centric bias. The sooner we commodify something and remove the human element from it, the sooner we bring that human element back, now elevated to the status of luxury and catered to a niche. Let me explain what I mean: I can buy black garlic in a plastic container for cheap, but I can also go to the weekend farmer market and pay three times as much for black garlic from a lady who lives up the mountains and can tell me the shape of the jar she fermented it in. IKEA makes perfectly good furniture that you can use to play board games for less than a hundred, but board game enthusiasts pay hundreds or thousands for custom furniture with nooks and bezels to stop the tokens from sliding out. Glass blowing as a form of art continues to exist, regardless of the availability of perfectly fine, industrially-made glass appliances. It's just in artisanal fairs in Venice, not in your living room. And sure, you won't be able to make a living anymore out of cranking out uninspired corporate Memphis for bay-area startups, or drawing cartoon furries for Twitter randos on commission. And, in a way... thank fuck for that, right? The combinatorial space of drawing people with smooth curves in fantasy skin colors using technological appliances in collaborative settings can be exhausted by an AI, and you can actually focus on making art that breaks the mold, art that hasn't been made before, art that is meaningful to you. You can imbue art with meaning and use art to communicate with other humans, while the "art" that ticks out boxes and replaces placeholders in landing pages can be cranked out by AI. Yes, it will be harder to make a living out of that, but I'm sure it won't be impossible. Computers have been able to generate Mondrian paintings since the 80s, and that hasn't made Mondrian paintings any less valuable. An AI may be able to produce the exact same drawing that you do, but it can't imbue human meaning in it.
cmdialog 4y ago
At the end of the day, we are not going to see AI art in the Guggenheim, or any of those other museums where the finest art in the world resides. AI art is and will always be a novelty. Real art comes from the human spirit. It is not about technical execution, and not just about painting a pretty picture. In actual art we want to see humanity, something that AI will never, ever truly know about. Seems like a lot of people are missing this point, and it seems like a lot of people have a chip on their shoulder about being unable to create art, and believing they can express the deep recesses of their feelings and psyche and everything else that makes us human by proxy through AI, and thus completely missing the point of creating art in the first place.
- ohdannyboy 4y ago
  These are great platitudes, and as a fellow human I like the idea that only we can create "real" art, but I don't know how to justify that idea. I have no chip on my shoulder about art, it's not part of my identity at all. Computer programming is, though, and I fully expect it to affect my industry in the next decade. The current fine art market is extremely unmeritorious so I agree that AI art will never make it to the Guggenheim. That isn't a good metric since the human curators will never allow it to happen. The metric will be the industry. Will ai start composing scores for movies? Promotional posters? Art that's sold outside of expensive curated galleries (etsy, ect)? It's possible that humans will keep their stranglehold on these and I hope that's the case... But I wouldn't bet on it.
  - cmdialog 4y ago
    I don't know if this is a backhanded comment or not, and I also don't know how much modern fine art you have actually seen IRL, but there are people doing some pretty fascinating things that an AI could not really do, such as "leave a physical painting out in harsh weather for several months, or until you think it's "done", as a treatment." Yeah you can mimic the idea but all you get in the end is a JPG or whatever. Please look up the definition of platitude. It's not very nice.
    - ohdannyboy 4y ago
visarga 4y ago
> This likely suggests the future of an AI augmented economy: People become AI wranglers. Wordpress was supposed to make blogging easier, instead it spawned an industry of WP wranglers. Good counter for "AI will steal our jobs". When competition starts to use AI+human, you got to level up. And since everyone has the same base AIs, the differentiating factor is still human.
TomSwirly 4y ago
> Artists will still exist, but most likely as hybrid 3d-modellers, AI modelers (Not full programmers, but able to fine-tune models with online guides and setups, can read basic python) Why should artists have to learn fucking Python!? There are so few jobs open to people who don't want to "learn to code", this was one of the last, and that's going too. > This likely suggests the future of an AI-augmented economy: People become AI wranglers. So we don't get to create ourselves anymore. No drawing, no making music, no programming even. We just give prompts to AI programs. Which means we are worthless, because any bozo can do this. I hate this timeline so much. It's like all the worst and most mediocre parts from every SF future, with an extra dose of stupidity and greed on top. (And I'm a computer programmer.)
- CatWChainsaw 4y ago
  I wouldn't worry too much. We've pushed the biosphere past the point of repair. This "utopia" they dream of won't have a chance to come to fruition before we all go down in flames. And given this dichotomy as choice, I would choose the flames too.

LASR 4y ago

Yeah this post seems like it will not stand the rest of time. The fundamental conceptual shift is the emergent behaviors displayed by these models. And that is highly unforeseeable. We’re not working with machines that do what they’re built to do. They’re doing more. And every day we discover something new they’re capable of doing. Making any sort of statement about the limits of this technology is going to be shortsighted.

mirsadm 4y ago
The opposite is also true. People overestimate what is possible and underestimate how much more effort and time is required to start replacing industries.

ZephyrBlu 4y ago

> Because despite controlnet solving their complaints about how the AI isn't controllable precisely, it doesn't solve the real problem, that drawing skills are massive devalued At this point if I was an artist I'd probably be looking for a way to leverage my existing skills into AI art, because it seems like drawing skills will go the way of the horse and carriage. I feel bad because this has happened so quickly. Previously it seems like there was a longer transition period. This kind of transition has got me thinking the same about coding though. If AI programming does indeed take over, my programming skills will likely be massively devalued. If you believe this is going to happen, how should you prepare for it? Start learning prompting now? Get involved with building these AIs? Etc.

oneeyedpigeon 4y ago
> my programming skills will likely be massively devalued I see this in the context of the drawing vs. art analogy. Yes, your typing and maybe syntax skills will be devalued, but your higher level, creative programming skills are probably safe for a good long time yet.
- sebzim4500 4y ago
  Depends what you mean by 'good long time'. I think at this point it's worth acting under the assumption that programming will not be a well compensated career in 5-10 years, and either be prepared to switch to something else or try to make a lot of money in the near term. Also, if I'm wrong then I get to be pleasantly surprised.
  - morby 4y ago
    AI has yet to completely replace people in any industry. I fail to see how it would replace an industry that creates massive, complicated code bases in 10 years. Let alone 5. All roads seem to point to AI assisted work. Programmers will move “higher level”. That doesn’t mean they become poorly compensated.
    - 4y ago

5350-uiop-1130 4y ago

thanks was looking for something like this. SD has been great at giving lots of new ideas but frustratingly difficult/impossible to iterate on anything.

brookst 4y ago

> that drawing skills are massive devalued. This is the critical insight. Human artists having nothing to worry about. Human drawers do. The decoupling of concept from execution is old news in most forms of art. Writing music and playing an instrument are two very different skills, and indeed any session musician will tell you that playing instruments well is not as valued as writing amazing music. In fact we went through a similar thing in pop music in the 70’s and 80’s, with the brief moral panic over electronic music and people who “just push a button and don’t even know know to play their instrument.” Turns out nobody cares, as long as the music is good. AI art decouples concept from execution for visual art. That’s all.

Dzugaru 4y ago
You're not taking into consideration how the actual artists actually feel. And, from the first hand - the feeling is horrible. Most artists love to draw, the process itself is incredibly satisfying. Just like a musician loves his instrument. This is destroying them, stealing the joy from the thing they devoted decades of life. My wife is extremely depressed by this, to the point I think she'll need serious therapy. She still has most of her job, but yeah recent developments like ControlNet? Well, shit.
- sdiacom 4y ago
  Obviously I don't get to tell your wife, or anyone else, how to feel about this. And there is a very real and very impactful thing in that, if you enjoy and make a living out of hand-drawn art, AI art will make it harder to make a living out of something you enjoy. There's no way around that, and I don't mean to deny that feeling. It always sucks when the circumstances around your craft and your source of income change. But I don't think AI art can possibly take away from the beauty and enjoyment that can be found in drawing and making art. You mention how a musician loves playing their instrument. I can download a music edition software and summon a virtual orchestra out of my speakers in seconds. But does this take anything from the musician? Is their feeling any less true, their music any less meaningful to themselves and to those who listen? If I bring my laptop to a party and play Vivaldi's seasons on it, will that elicit the same reaction as if I play it in the living room's piano? If language models eventually get good enough at programming that I'm out of a job, I won't derive any less enjoyment out of programming. I'll be a lot poorer, sure, but I will still enjoy the process of coming up with a way to express constraints in code, even if a machine can do it for me in the blink of an eye. Just like I find it relaxing to do the dishes myself when I'm anxious, even if I have a perfectly good dishwasher. Just like how people who enjoy solving Sudokus don't find it less fun just because automatic Sudoku solvers exist. The journey is the destination. And for the record, I don't think human art will disappear because of AI art, or human programming will disappear because of AI programming. If there's one thing that's demonstrably true through the history of humanity, is that humans have a strong human-centric bias. The sooner we commodify something and remove the human element from it, the sooner we bring that human element back, now elevated to the status of luxury and catered to a niche. Let me explain what I mean: I can buy black garlic in a plastic container for cheap, but I can also go to the weekend farmer market and pay three times as much for black garlic from a lady who lives up the mountains and can tell me the shape of the jar she fermented it in. IKEA makes perfectly good furniture that you can use to play board games for less than a hundred, but board game enthusiasts pay hundreds or thousands for custom furniture with nooks and bezels to stop the tokens from sliding out. Glass blowing as a form of art continues to exist, regardless of the availability of perfectly fine, industrially-made glass appliances. It's just in artisanal fairs in Venice, not in your living room. And sure, you won't be able to make a living anymore out of cranking out uninspired corporate Memphis for bay-area startups, or drawing cartoon furries for Twitter randos on commission. And, in a way... thank fuck for that, right? The combinatorial space of drawing people with smooth curves in fantasy skin colors using technological appliances in collaborative settings can be exhausted by an AI, and you can actually focus on making art that breaks the mold, art that hasn't been made before, art that is meaningful to you. You can imbue art with meaning and use art to communicate with other humans, while the "art" that ticks out boxes and replaces placeholders in landing pages can be cranked out by AI. Yes, it will be harder to make a living out of that, but I'm sure it won't be impossible. Computers have been able to generate Mondrian paintings since the 80s, and that hasn't made Mondrian paintings any less valuable. An AI may be able to produce the exact same drawing that you do, but it can't imbue human meaning in it.

cmdialog 4y ago

At the end of the day, we are not going to see AI art in the Guggenheim, or any of those other museums where the finest art in the world resides. AI art is and will always be a novelty. Real art comes from the human spirit. It is not about technical execution, and not just about painting a pretty picture. In actual art we want to see humanity, something that AI will never, ever truly know about. Seems like a lot of people are missing this point, and it seems like a lot of people have a chip on their shoulder about being unable to create art, and believing they can express the deep recesses of their feelings and psyche and everything else that makes us human by proxy through AI, and thus completely missing the point of creating art in the first place.

ohdannyboy 4y ago
These are great platitudes, and as a fellow human I like the idea that only we can create "real" art, but I don't know how to justify that idea. I have no chip on my shoulder about art, it's not part of my identity at all. Computer programming is, though, and I fully expect it to affect my industry in the next decade. The current fine art market is extremely unmeritorious so I agree that AI art will never make it to the Guggenheim. That isn't a good metric since the human curators will never allow it to happen. The metric will be the industry. Will ai start composing scores for movies? Promotional posters? Art that's sold outside of expensive curated galleries (etsy, ect)? It's possible that humans will keep their stranglehold on these and I hope that's the case... But I wouldn't bet on it.
- cmdialog 4y ago
  I don't know if this is a backhanded comment or not, and I also don't know how much modern fine art you have actually seen IRL, but there are people doing some pretty fascinating things that an AI could not really do, such as "leave a physical painting out in harsh weather for several months, or until you think it's "done", as a treatment." Yeah you can mimic the idea but all you get in the end is a JPG or whatever. Please look up the definition of platitude. It's not very nice.
  - ohdannyboy 4y ago

visarga 4y ago

> This likely suggests the future of an AI augmented economy: People become AI wranglers. Wordpress was supposed to make blogging easier, instead it spawned an industry of WP wranglers. Good counter for "AI will steal our jobs". When competition starts to use AI+human, you got to level up. And since everyone has the same base AIs, the differentiating factor is still human.

TomSwirly 4y ago

> Artists will still exist, but most likely as hybrid 3d-modellers, AI modelers (Not full programmers, but able to fine-tune models with online guides and setups, can read basic python) Why should artists have to learn fucking Python!? There are so few jobs open to people who don't want to "learn to code", this was one of the last, and that's going too. > This likely suggests the future of an AI-augmented economy: People become AI wranglers. So we don't get to create ourselves anymore. No drawing, no making music, no programming even. We just give prompts to AI programs. Which means we are worthless, because any bozo can do this. I hate this timeline so much. It's like all the worst and most mediocre parts from every SF future, with an extra dose of stupidity and greed on top. (And I'm a computer programmer.)

CatWChainsaw 4y ago
I wouldn't worry too much. We've pushed the biosphere past the point of repair. This "utopia" they dream of won't have a chance to come to fruition before we all go down in flames. And given this dichotomy as choice, I would choose the flames too.