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I have to agree and to be honest, I was having an objective go of Mid Journey today, honestly, I think it's kind of underwhelming. I know I'm not supposed to sa

I have to agree and to be honest, I was having an objective go of Mid Journey today, honestly, I think it's kind of underwhelming. I know I'm not supposed to say that but it was mixed feelings for me, kind of amazing, but also a lot of regurgitation. The model seems to have it's own style it has trouble escaping for a lot of the images requested. I mean it's amazing that image can be generated from text but honestly, you have to take what you can get, it has it's own "style" you need to just accept what it gives you, even if you prompt it for a long time. There seem to be certain cases where it really excels and others where it just fails really hard. It was interesting to see the way people were trying to use it and how far off the mark it was. However, what really struck me though is how it's such a blatant rip off factory. I asked it to generate some images of musicians I like as sketches, and in some cases it was reproducing famous posters etc and in styles and with similar outlines to those I've seen before. Then the way it takes "styles" of say Ghibli studio and rips it off is just, trash. Most artists just wouldn't do that, they might imitate a style for study, borrow ideas for inspiration (of course) but a professional / respectful artist would develop their own style not to rip someone off so hard. It's quite ridiculous the thing is legal. IMO MS PR must be going into over time convincing us this is all ok. I can't wait till people start ripping off MS product with it and see how they feel. Those who make the argument not allowing this to continue because it's holding back "AI" have really drunk the cool aid. It's fine people research, but to charge money for using other peoples work like that, it's disgusting. I'd say most artists would be ok to lend their art to AI to actually improve and push the boundaries of art itself, but this whole "draw me a scene from x movie, or copy blah's style so I can use it for anything, including commercial purposes", what a load of crap, ha.

ModernMech 4y ago
I went through the same exercise recently, and came to a different conclusion. I’m blown away, and I can see how this is the future, and it’s a good thing. While I agree the current state of affairs isn’t great, we have to look past today to where things are going. As far as I can tell tools like Midjourney do enable an iterative creative process. It’s more like painting with a pinball machine than directly with brushes. You have control over the process but only very tenuously. Things can go very wrong with generation that are out of your control, but the control you do have is magical. I used Midjourney to try and generate a character for a project. I started with a source image and a description, and through hours of refining and regeneration, I finally got a character I liked. - Did I steal the character from someone else? No, the character as far as I can tell is a unique one that I arrived at after sifting through thousands of variations. - Did I copy a style? Well no it really, I made a character. I can then apply any style I want to it. The style is orthogonal to my goals of character generation. - Did I get the result through no work of my own? Well I certainly lack the skill to draw the image I landed on. The only technical skill I used was clicking a button and entering text. But that’s the best part! Anyone can do this! The skill I was actually using was my mind’s eye in guiding the iterative prompts, choosing when to blend images, choosing the words and the seed images, etc. That’s a higher-level creative process than moving the brush in the canvas. And you know who will be best at this? Artists! The way I see it, this is a case of the punch card writer being replaced by the compiler. The punch card writer has all the skills necessary to use the compiler to continue producing programs as they were before, but faster. Yes, artists are threatened by this. But they shouldn’t be because they are the most qualified to leverage these tools and to wield them competently. The game used to be to start from a blank canvas and to use an iterative creative process to build a scene that you picture in your head. Nothing has changed about that except now the canvas starts filled. But it still needs to be molded and pushed toward what’s in the kind of the artist. That’s where the artistry comes in.
- ChatGTP 4y ago
  You're conflating the two concepts sorry, there is using new technologies to make art, I totally see the merit and value in this. Then there is making money from other peoples work, making a knock off machine. A service exists which allows people to rip off other artists work and pass it off as their own and hide that fact in the fact it's "generated". Some artists styles are so prolific, so great that if you're just lazily having ChatGPT generate that for you then using it for commercial gain, or not crediting them, that's theft in my view. I'm not talking about new technologies that enable new types of art, I'm talking about a platform that enables mass scale rips offs. I'd feel completely different about it if artists were able to lend their art works to the training model voluntarily for training and even receive some royalties overtime. In fact, I think that's a pretty cool business idea.
  - ModernMech 4y ago
    I don’t think I’m conflating anything. What I’m saying is that the tool is there now, and while it can be used to blatantly rip off other people’s work, the tool can also be used creatively, and in a way that doesn’t rip anyone off. So while the ripping off isn’t great, that’s something which can be fixed, and you’ve given a great suggestion on how to do so. But in the meantime, the tech is advancing, and digging in our heels isn’t an option. The upside is far too great to society imo. The legal and social environment will normalize around it, but it isn’t going away.

ModernMech 4y ago

I went through the same exercise recently, and came to a different conclusion. I’m blown away, and I can see how this is the future, and it’s a good thing. While I agree the current state of affairs isn’t great, we have to look past today to where things are going. As far as I can tell tools like Midjourney do enable an iterative creative process. It’s more like painting with a pinball machine than directly with brushes. You have control over the process but only very tenuously. Things can go very wrong with generation that are out of your control, but the control you do have is magical. I used Midjourney to try and generate a character for a project. I started with a source image and a description, and through hours of refining and regeneration, I finally got a character I liked. - Did I steal the character from someone else? No, the character as far as I can tell is a unique one that I arrived at after sifting through thousands of variations. - Did I copy a style? Well no it really, I made a character. I can then apply any style I want to it. The style is orthogonal to my goals of character generation. - Did I get the result through no work of my own? Well I certainly lack the skill to draw the image I landed on. The only technical skill I used was clicking a button and entering text. But that’s the best part! Anyone can do this! The skill I was actually using was my mind’s eye in guiding the iterative prompts, choosing when to blend images, choosing the words and the seed images, etc. That’s a higher-level creative process than moving the brush in the canvas. And you know who will be best at this? Artists! The way I see it, this is a case of the punch card writer being replaced by the compiler. The punch card writer has all the skills necessary to use the compiler to continue producing programs as they were before, but faster. Yes, artists are threatened by this. But they shouldn’t be because they are the most qualified to leverage these tools and to wield them competently. The game used to be to start from a blank canvas and to use an iterative creative process to build a scene that you picture in your head. Nothing has changed about that except now the canvas starts filled. But it still needs to be molded and pushed toward what’s in the kind of the artist. That’s where the artistry comes in.

ChatGTP 4y ago
You're conflating the two concepts sorry, there is using new technologies to make art, I totally see the merit and value in this. Then there is making money from other peoples work, making a knock off machine. A service exists which allows people to rip off other artists work and pass it off as their own and hide that fact in the fact it's "generated". Some artists styles are so prolific, so great that if you're just lazily having ChatGPT generate that for you then using it for commercial gain, or not crediting them, that's theft in my view. I'm not talking about new technologies that enable new types of art, I'm talking about a platform that enables mass scale rips offs. I'd feel completely different about it if artists were able to lend their art works to the training model voluntarily for training and even receive some royalties overtime. In fact, I think that's a pretty cool business idea.
- ModernMech 4y ago
  I don’t think I’m conflating anything. What I’m saying is that the tool is there now, and while it can be used to blatantly rip off other people’s work, the tool can also be used creatively, and in a way that doesn’t rip anyone off. So while the ripping off isn’t great, that’s something which can be fixed, and you’ve given a great suggestion on how to do so. But in the meantime, the tech is advancing, and digging in our heels isn’t an option. The upside is far too great to society imo. The legal and social environment will normalize around it, but it isn’t going away.