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Exactly. In the 1990s there was a lot of grumbling by older artists used to pen and paper about how Photoshop and Illustrator and the like were evil and were on

Exactly. In the 1990s there was a lot of grumbling by older artists used to pen and paper about how Photoshop and Illustrator and the like were evil and were only capable of creating cookie-cutter art with no "soul" (and going back even farther I remember reading articles by old journalists who decried the advent of the word processor and claimed that the limitations of typewriters made them better writers because they had to think what they wanted to write before typing it rather than endlessly edit what they wrote afterwards).

__loam 3y ago
I think the arguments of "well people didn't like photoshop/cameras/the printing press/etc" is kind of a lazy excuse that ignores the actual criticism being leveled at generative AI systems. AI has removed basically all effort required to just create an image or generate some text. It does take effort to either discern the good from the bad or edit the output using some expertise enough for the content to reach a "professional" level, but that's kind of beside the point. These systems break the creative economy and have a really negative effect on online communities dedicated to these skills. There's a lot of spam in these online spaces that's being put there by low effort amateurs that don't even realize how shit they are. It increases the signal to noise and requires more effort on the part of community members in discerning truth from fiction. The maintainers of curl just discussed this problem with respect to their bug bounty program. Bad reports are still bad reports, but it takes more effort to tell them apart now. Add that to the fact that these systems are built by scraping work without permission and these turn into headwinds that push people away from creative pursuit. Rather than bringing new people into these communities, the people who actually know what they're doing just get trampled by the uninformed. None of these dynamics really exist with photoshop. While photoshop has tools that can speed up the artistic process, you need a base understanding of how to illustrate to actually use it effectively. It's truly a tool, as opposed to a slot machine you just give a prompt to.
- jhbadger 3y ago
  But Photoshop itself is adding generative AI tools, because the simple fact is just typing in a prompt into Midjourney or whatever isn't going to result in a professional quality image. You'll get weird hands, too many arms, etc. So Adobe has the idea that you use generative AI as a starting point after which someone with artistic skills will need to improve it. Just like with any other tool in Photoshop. As for the "scraping" issue -- that is a boring sideshow that will be decided by lawyers -- is it fair use or not? Your or my opinion on that whether it "should be" is irrelevant. But even if the courts decide that training generative AI on data the trainer doesn't have permission to is illegal, this wouldn't "stop generative AI" as many seem to think. For example, Adobe is training its models only on public domain works and works it has the rights to.
  - felurx 3y ago
    > Your or my opinion on that whether it "should be" is irrelevant. No it isn't, because many folks live in democracies, and this is a decision that should actually be made and implemented into new law, instead of leaving it to courts to try to apply some outdated laws to a situation they could not possibly have been written for.
JR1427 3y ago
I wasn't passing judgement on the merit of AI-generated content, but rather asking how we might reliably show and tell that content was not generated by AI. Oh wait, I did call it "AI-generated crap", but I am open to the idea that not all AI content is crap.

__loam 3y ago

I think the arguments of "well people didn't like photoshop/cameras/the printing press/etc" is kind of a lazy excuse that ignores the actual criticism being leveled at generative AI systems. AI has removed basically all effort required to just create an image or generate some text. It does take effort to either discern the good from the bad or edit the output using some expertise enough for the content to reach a "professional" level, but that's kind of beside the point. These systems break the creative economy and have a really negative effect on online communities dedicated to these skills. There's a lot of spam in these online spaces that's being put there by low effort amateurs that don't even realize how shit they are. It increases the signal to noise and requires more effort on the part of community members in discerning truth from fiction. The maintainers of curl just discussed this problem with respect to their bug bounty program. Bad reports are still bad reports, but it takes more effort to tell them apart now. Add that to the fact that these systems are built by scraping work without permission and these turn into headwinds that push people away from creative pursuit. Rather than bringing new people into these communities, the people who actually know what they're doing just get trampled by the uninformed. None of these dynamics really exist with photoshop. While photoshop has tools that can speed up the artistic process, you need a base understanding of how to illustrate to actually use it effectively. It's truly a tool, as opposed to a slot machine you just give a prompt to.

jhbadger 3y ago
But Photoshop itself is adding generative AI tools, because the simple fact is just typing in a prompt into Midjourney or whatever isn't going to result in a professional quality image. You'll get weird hands, too many arms, etc. So Adobe has the idea that you use generative AI as a starting point after which someone with artistic skills will need to improve it. Just like with any other tool in Photoshop. As for the "scraping" issue -- that is a boring sideshow that will be decided by lawyers -- is it fair use or not? Your or my opinion on that whether it "should be" is irrelevant. But even if the courts decide that training generative AI on data the trainer doesn't have permission to is illegal, this wouldn't "stop generative AI" as many seem to think. For example, Adobe is training its models only on public domain works and works it has the rights to.
- felurx 3y ago
  > Your or my opinion on that whether it "should be" is irrelevant. No it isn't, because many folks live in democracies, and this is a decision that should actually be made and implemented into new law, instead of leaving it to courts to try to apply some outdated laws to a situation they could not possibly have been written for.

JR1427 3y ago

I wasn't passing judgement on the merit of AI-generated content, but rather asking how we might reliably show and tell that content was not generated by AI. Oh wait, I did call it "AI-generated crap", but I am open to the idea that not all AI content is crap.