3 ms·

Nobody is necessarily owed money for creating art, regardless of whether it was done by hand or with machines (unless they were specifically commissioned to cre

by cwkoss 3y ago

Nobody is necessarily owed money for creating art, regardless of whether it was done by hand or with machines (unless they were specifically commissioned to create the work). The economics of art are subject to market forces, and they always have been - long before AI became an additional factor (among many others) in why an artist may not earn a living from their art. Deviantart in the 00s was a huge repository of art people were mostly making for free. Some people got lucky and turned that into a full time occupation, but the vast majority didn't.

chefandy 3y ago
Great non-answer. None of the people whose art was sucked up by these machines had any idea that this would be integrated into for-profit tools and used against them in the market place, and almost certainly would not have consented if they had known that. The ones with copyrighted images didn't even give legal consent. The fact that Getty's logo showed up in red carpet images is a symptom of a problem that obviously went well beyond Getty, but there's no way an independent artist could prove it. Furthermore, if you think artists + luck = commercial art you're completely 100% wrong. Most art school graduates don't go into fine art for self-expression with some lucky individuals matriculating into careers-- they go for job training. Go look at the degree programs for any art school-- almost all of them translate into a full-time commercial career immediately out of school the same way a STEM degree does. Concept artists, illustrators, character artists, environmental artists, graphic desginers, VFX artists, animators, cinematographers, choreographers, commercial musicians and composers, photographers... these people don't just spring up out of the fine art world. That is their career. I know because I am one. Your ethics-dodging free market tech libertarian garbage holds no sway with me, so you might as well just save yourself the keystrokes.
- cwkoss 3y ago
  The vast majority of the world's population doesn't have the privilege of going to art schools and training for years to render their ideas. AI allows more people to be artists without the skill barrier, and that is a social good. I'm sorry that the mechanistic portions of your art career are rapidly losing economic value, but I think free tools like StableDiffusion (and the better tools that are coming in the future) should be available to every child (and adult) in the world. And the world will be a better place as a result.
  - chefandy 3y ago
    Haha... Nice ham-fisted non-sequiturial attempt to make the artists the privileged ones here. Who can and can't go to at school is irrelevant. My example clearly showed that you're understanding of the "economy of art" is not even close to representative. Commercial artists operate at all levels of society, all over the world, and have for a really long time. Nobody making beautiful hand-carved and painted signs for local businesses started out as an independent fine artist using signs as a medium, hoping to get their big break. They learned the arts of carvin, painting, lettering, illustration, and so forth, and the craft of making and finishing durable outdoor wooden structures, and started a career. The utilitarian argument is only philosophically defensible in the street car scenario; when people are deliberately pulling the levers unprompted and it could have been done ethically but it wasn't because it was just to darned inconvenient and/or expensive, the greater good argument doesn't work. It's the same argument people used to defend the Tuskegee experiment and its ilk... And roman public slaves. If we're willingly throwing people into the spinning wheels of progress because it will be wonderfully convenient and neat for non-artists to use other people's skills instead, there is just no ethical defense. Knocking the stool of from under someone using a tool they built and you didn't even have permission to use is just not ethical. You and many others end up falling back on right-wing platitudes about the free market. I'm actually a technical artist— my skills are now dramatically more valuable. That doesn't make it any more ethical even if it works on my favor. I was a developer for 10 years, and have seen this unadulterated hubris in nearly every group of developers I've ever encountered— when you find yourself explaining someone's job and industry to them, you might want to stop and ask yourself... "Am I pulling a Dunning-Krueger right now?"
    - cwkoss 3y ago
      > non-artists to use other people's skills instead Here is where I think you're wrong: Everyone is a potential artist. Many never have the opportunity because of economic reasons: some people don't have the time to cultivate the mechanical skills necessary to render their vision. All artists pull from the work of others constantly. That is 'using other people's skills'. It is absolutely privileged to have the opportunity to devote time cultivating art production skills (which is usually done by studying and replicating the process of the artists that came before them). If someone is born to a single mother, grows up having to raise their siblings, then has to immediately start working to help support their family, they don't have the privilege or time to explore art production skills. Technology has been making art production more accessible for hundreds of years, and that's a clear net good. I want everyone to be able to make art if they want to. It up to the artist if they want to manifest their vision without creating the pigments and brushes themselves, or using a drawing tablet, or using generative AI tools - it all can be art that is meaningful to the person who creates it and more art in the world is a good thing. Commercial art isn't a very good representation of the artists soul: they are constrained by market forces or their patron rather than producing what their own heart desires. We should all be happy to sacrifice commercial art jobs if it means that every person in the world gains the ability to render the art that comes from their soul.

by cwkoss 3y ago

chefandy 3y ago

Great non-answer. None of the people whose art was sucked up by these machines had any idea that this would be integrated into for-profit tools and used against them in the market place, and almost certainly would not have consented if they had known that. The ones with copyrighted images didn't even give legal consent. The fact that Getty's logo showed up in red carpet images is a symptom of a problem that obviously went well beyond Getty, but there's no way an independent artist could prove it. Furthermore, if you think artists + luck = commercial art you're completely 100% wrong. Most art school graduates don't go into fine art for self-expression with some lucky individuals matriculating into careers-- they go for job training. Go look at the degree programs for any art school-- almost all of them translate into a full-time commercial career immediately out of school the same way a STEM degree does. Concept artists, illustrators, character artists, environmental artists, graphic desginers, VFX artists, animators, cinematographers, choreographers, commercial musicians and composers, photographers... these people don't just spring up out of the fine art world. That is their career. I know because I am one. Your ethics-dodging free market tech libertarian garbage holds no sway with me, so you might as well just save yourself the keystrokes.

cwkoss 3y ago
The vast majority of the world's population doesn't have the privilege of going to art schools and training for years to render their ideas. AI allows more people to be artists without the skill barrier, and that is a social good. I'm sorry that the mechanistic portions of your art career are rapidly losing economic value, but I think free tools like StableDiffusion (and the better tools that are coming in the future) should be available to every child (and adult) in the world. And the world will be a better place as a result.
- chefandy 3y ago
  Haha... Nice ham-fisted non-sequiturial attempt to make the artists the privileged ones here. Who can and can't go to at school is irrelevant. My example clearly showed that you're understanding of the "economy of art" is not even close to representative. Commercial artists operate at all levels of society, all over the world, and have for a really long time. Nobody making beautiful hand-carved and painted signs for local businesses started out as an independent fine artist using signs as a medium, hoping to get their big break. They learned the arts of carvin, painting, lettering, illustration, and so forth, and the craft of making and finishing durable outdoor wooden structures, and started a career. The utilitarian argument is only philosophically defensible in the street car scenario; when people are deliberately pulling the levers unprompted and it could have been done ethically but it wasn't because it was just to darned inconvenient and/or expensive, the greater good argument doesn't work. It's the same argument people used to defend the Tuskegee experiment and its ilk... And roman public slaves. If we're willingly throwing people into the spinning wheels of progress because it will be wonderfully convenient and neat for non-artists to use other people's skills instead, there is just no ethical defense. Knocking the stool of from under someone using a tool they built and you didn't even have permission to use is just not ethical. You and many others end up falling back on right-wing platitudes about the free market. I'm actually a technical artist— my skills are now dramatically more valuable. That doesn't make it any more ethical even if it works on my favor. I was a developer for 10 years, and have seen this unadulterated hubris in nearly every group of developers I've ever encountered— when you find yourself explaining someone's job and industry to them, you might want to stop and ask yourself... "Am I pulling a Dunning-Krueger right now?"
  - cwkoss 3y ago
    > non-artists to use other people's skills instead Here is where I think you're wrong: Everyone is a potential artist. Many never have the opportunity because of economic reasons: some people don't have the time to cultivate the mechanical skills necessary to render their vision. All artists pull from the work of others constantly. That is 'using other people's skills'. It is absolutely privileged to have the opportunity to devote time cultivating art production skills (which is usually done by studying and replicating the process of the artists that came before them). If someone is born to a single mother, grows up having to raise their siblings, then has to immediately start working to help support their family, they don't have the privilege or time to explore art production skills. Technology has been making art production more accessible for hundreds of years, and that's a clear net good. I want everyone to be able to make art if they want to. It up to the artist if they want to manifest their vision without creating the pigments and brushes themselves, or using a drawing tablet, or using generative AI tools - it all can be art that is meaningful to the person who creates it and more art in the world is a good thing. Commercial art isn't a very good representation of the artists soul: they are constrained by market forces or their patron rather than producing what their own heart desires. We should all be happy to sacrifice commercial art jobs if it means that every person in the world gains the ability to render the art that comes from their soul.