10 ms·

Another AI company wrote us and here’s our response

152 points by askl 2y ago

namanyayg 2y ago
That was just cold email, so the authors could have probably ignored it I doubt anyone on the other end will read their reply Even if they do, it is unlikely that they will stop sending their AI spam outreach This is just the normal state of the web now ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- dylan604 2y ago
  yes, but then they couldn't have blogged about it
  - namanyayg 2y ago
    exactly
- Pingk 2y ago
  I think you're missing the point, it doesn't matter if it was spam or not - The point is that automating creativity is not a useful way of facilitating content creation. We should be automating the tedious behind-the-scenes stuff.
  - tayo42 2y ago
    There is still tedious stuff when your doing content creation. Like if your hacking a website together and need something that doesn't look bad as your favicon. maybe your making a 2d game and need a bunch of tree pictures
    - HumanOstrich 2y ago
      It's "you're" x 3.
      - tayo42 2y ago
        R u OK?
  - nox101 2y ago
    lots of artists are using generative AI to help them make art.
  - namanyayg 2y ago
    While what you're saying is morally and ethically correct, unfortunately we have entered times where the capitalistic machine doesn't find this to be true.
- wwweston 2y ago
  Maybe some people will be shamed that they’re not only spammers but spammers whose product may as well be a machine that automates the consumption and enjoyment of ice cream?
- pavel_lishin 2y ago
  > I doubt anyone on the other end will read their reply Hell, I doubt anyone on the other end even wrote the original email.
  - namanyayg 2y ago
    yup, it's probably an automated system end to end. and it's definitely getting the spammers a lot of leads and sales.
    - pavel_lishin 2y ago
      Probably not as many as they wish, or as you think.
ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
> most artists love their work and do not want to outsource their passion to a machine that does this for them. This was the money quote. I love what I do (which tends to be programming, but I approach it as a craft), and often do things by hand, that others automate, because I love my work, and also the people that use it.
- voidfunc 2y ago
  Most artists, like most programmers are working in a commercial capacity. I see no reason why "their passion" should overrule profit-seeking. Do art for the sake of art on your own time. But expecting companies to not embrace AI to do their jobs is foolish just like it's foolish to think corporate programmers will be a thing at some point in the future.
  - buttercraft 2y ago
    > I see no reason why "their passion" should overrule profit-seeking. This viewpoint is what fucked up the world.
    - throwawaysleep 2y ago
      No, this viewpoint is the only reason a shirt doesn't cost a month's wages. Weavers once had similar arguments, decrying machinery that made cloth. Imagine how many more video games and movies can be made when we don't need anywhere near as many artists as before. How many more diagrams in textbooks. How many extra illustrations for Wikipedia. There are tremendous benefits to making art something anyone can get for dirt cheap.
      - temporarely 2y ago
        But Cotton is not Culture.
        throwawaysleep 2y ago
woah 2y ago
Looks like the AI company already helped them create some content to get clicks on social media
Havoc 2y ago
Also on todays news - in the github copilot (and OpenAI) case about stolen content the judge dismissed majority of it: https://www.theregister.com/AMP/2024/07/08/github_copilot_dmca/ https://www.theregister.com/AMP/2024/07/08/github_copilot_dm... I do sympathise with the creatives on an emotional level but it’s looking like the laws won’t
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- xivzgrev 2y ago
  These plaintiffs need a new lawyer, one experienced with going up against big corporations you can’t be amateur hour in these cases. things like not requesting emails in the right way, or offering arguments the judge easily swats away. The thrust of their case is important but if they’re fumbling the ball they’re going to get destroyed on procedure.
- falcolas 2y ago
  Always worth remembering as we watch these cases go through the system that "legal" and "moral" (or even "benefits society") are not the same thing. They are usually intended to be the same thing, but the rule of law will never fully capture the intent, especially as time passes.
- tim333 2y ago
  It would be tricky do stop AI looking at content and making something inspired by it as humans have been doing that as a basic occupation for centuries. You'd have to differentiate between a human looking at stuff and then producing art and a machine doing it but what if a machine and human work together? I'm not sure how you'd differentiate legally.
timcobb 2y ago
> Artists’ work has been harvested in order to train large language models The idea of publishing something these days has become quite unappealing. For me, there's something dehumanizing about being used as LLM training data. Not that my thoughts are unique or interesting or special. But, man...
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
dtertman 2y ago
Years ago I went to a BBQ cooking class run by the owner of a small, one-location restaurant in Chicago. He said that Sysco and US Foods reps called him every single day to talk about outsourcing his pulled pork and brisket to them. This feels oddly similar, except there's only a couple Sysco's and US Foods' and probably thousands of AI Content Farm startups at this point.
pavel_lishin 2y ago
They were significantly more polite in their response than I would have been.
agrippanux 2y ago
I got hit up over several emails by a startup doing AI recruiting. I never replied back because it was hard to tell if it was actually the CEO reaching out to me because of my experience, or his AI system reaching out to me. I thought, if I’m having this sort of issue figuring out if the contact is genuine, how will I feel working on this product? Even if it is genuine, is it ethical to have been recruited by a real person to work on a product that fools people into thinking they’ve been contacted by a real person?
- victor9000 2y ago
  A couple of years back I got a message on LinkedIn from Andrew Ng and I was blown away, then I quickly realized that this account was probably managed by a team of recruiters. I responded positively but mentioned some ML 101 concepts that could be applied to the problem, and the inability to engage confirmed my suspicion. So to some degree, deception has always been part of the game.
indoordin0saur 2y ago
I really cannot fathom enjoying any "art" produced by an AI, excepting art that uses it as an assistant for boring tasks like texturing a video game.
- Liquix 2y ago
  but what will happen when "enjoyable art" and "AI art" are virtually impossible to differentiate between without tools? https://i.imgur.com/XSCN9Aj.png https://i.imgur.com/XSCN9Aj.png
  - indoordin0saur 2y ago
    A very big part of art (probably the biggest part) is the meaning behind it. AIs have no internal "experience" or novel ideas so the art is ultimately meaningless, or only as meaningful as the idea behind the prompt the person put into it. This is why you can have an incredibly slick, high budget movie that is universally considered bad because it's soulless. If AIs become "conscious" or something and we actually have an interest in how they see the world I think their art could be interesting. Even without the consciousness I think that we can have interesting "art" that comes out of them based on how they see the world, which brings to mind things like the old Google AI Image generator hallucination/dream images from a few years back.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- chrisBob 2y ago
  There are different kinds of "art" with different use cases. Sometimes I want to look at something thoughtful and meaningful by an artist making a profound statement about humanity where I can see the emotion and motivation. Sometimes I want something that adds a bit of color to the office. One of those may never be the domain of AI, but if I just want something with a flower and a bird that matches the colors of the rest of the room....? It is ok if you don't see any value in the second use case. Different people like different "art".
- bloopernova 2y ago
swayvil 2y ago
"Muse". Lol. Good irony in that name. Like marrying your realgirl.
low_tech_punk 2y ago
I'm curious how developers' sentiment towards code generation tools like Copilot compares to artists' sentiment towards art generation tools like MJ/SD/DallE. As a developer myself, I want to see coding as a creative act and feel uneasy about the idea of relying on a tool that makes the code one tab away. But I also recognize most of the coding we do is in a commercial context where artistic expression is less relevant.
- Perz1val 2y ago
  Imo it's suggestions are either: - hot garbage - something generic; I'm glad not having to write that
- low_tech_punk 2y ago
  p.s. The Muse in that email is not even a art generation tool. It's a just a rent-seeking business that profits off of other people's work.
- not2b 2y ago
  My main concern about Copilot use is that, unless you're in a race to quickly produce a minimum viable product, it doesn't optimize the hard part. The initial coding is a very small piece of the work. Code has to be designed, maintained, and extended, and for supportable code we want to have someone on the team that understands it well. If we want the code to be flexible, we want design decisions to appear in as few places as possible, ideally one. Copilot as an auto-complete, where it just helps fill in function names and the like, is fine and helpful (but IDEs do most of that already). But if it's used to write larger code chunks we quickly have the problem that there are code sequences no one on the team understands (it passed the tests though, yay!?) and we wind up with bloat from a lot of copy-paste like code.
  - ecjhdnc2025 2y ago
    > it doesn't optimize the hard part This is universally true of Generative AI's impact on all art and craft. It's a Dunning-Kruger thing. It makes the stuff that a novice thinks is hard apparently easier, but does not ever tackle the difficult stuff. So that novice is actively disadvantaged compared to how they would be if they worked with an actual artist to make what they wanted.
delusional 2y ago
It's fucking NFTs again. The vague promise that it somehow creates value for your audience. The promise of "community". The completely empty platitudes about a new and exciting world. And of course the FOMO of "early leg up" on some inevitable future.
- floren 2y ago
  It's the same guys, pretty often.
tracker1 2y ago
When are we going to automate things like handyman or plumbing work? WTF are we automating artistic creation?
Mistletoe 2y ago
I probably live under a rock but I had never seen these comics before. Some of them are pretty funny. Can't imagine AI needing raunchy comics though, maybe I'm thinking too small for AI.
japhyr 2y ago
> Storytelling is personal. It is a connection between the writer and the reader. Without this personal connection, storytelling loses its purpose. I read a book many years ago called If this is your land, where are your stories? One of the sections described how a group of native people from western Canada successfully reclaimed some of their land by telling stories in court. They lost their case in a lower court, because the court ruled that they were just telling stories. A higher court ruled that their people's stories, while not always factually correct, do lay claim to the land they lived on. Everyone has a story. It's a confusing world where machine-generated stories can be indistinguishable from actual human stories. Trust in authenticity is going to be a valuable asset going forward; I appreciate people sharing responses like this. It's easy to be cynical and say this response won't change anything, but if the people at Muse and companies like it keep getting these responses, some of them will realize the emptiness of what they're doing and move on to more meaningful work. https://www.amazon.com/Where-Stories-Finding-Common-Ground/dp/0676974929/ https://www.amazon.com/Where-Stories-Finding-Common-Ground/d...
- mrweasel 2y ago
  The suggestion you can do "storytelling without the need for personal content creation." says a lot about how that company views content. Content is a means to make money, it's not about telling a meaningful story or conveying information, it's about eyeballs and revenue. It's all rather terrible.
skiexperte 2y ago
If you struggle online selling your art because of AI, your Art is not good enough and AI was not the problem to begin with. A lot of friends around me are really good in drawing. They do not sell anything. A friend can draw really really good like photoreal, he also can barley life from this. All of this was before AI. I want to use AI for customization and not because i don't appreciate art. If an artist gets frustrated because of some AI companies, sry to say but i don't think you are honest to yourself. I also still hate this 'companies grabed our art and now we hate it'. Everyone looked at art from others to learn from art. There is very little unique art styles and just because someone else did it, doesn't mean that someone else can't come up with it. Btw. i do photography for 20 years. No one wants to buy my prints either. But i still don't mind AI training on all my pictures. Why? I really really believe that AI will enable us to do a lot more and is necessary to achieve a Star Trek like system were we will have time again to actually persue art because all the capitalism bullshit like ads ads ads and ads (don't forget ads) will be less relevant to us.
- neontomo 2y ago
  i'm a dev and a semi-successful artist and agree with you. the way you sell art is not usually about skill, it's about how you market the art so that people will feel connected to it. it can be a story behind it, the people who are promoting it etc. a lot of artists make art, don't sell anything and get angry at their audience for not buying it. now some of the blame is shifted to ai instead. i'm still not ok with ai being trained on artists work without permission, but it's not the only reason you're not able to sell art.
jedberg 2y ago
This feels like back in the day when photo editing and publishing software started getting big. "True artists" would shun anyone using those tools as amateurs. And for the most part they were right. It was mostly used by amateurs to create stuff that didn't look very good. That is where we are with AI art right now. Most of it is garbage created by people who don't know what good art is. But just like back in the day, a few professionals decided to adopt the new tools instead of complain about them. And all of a sudden they were creating good art much faster than their competitors. And then those tools simply became the tools of the trade. This is where AI art is going. It will be a tool in the artists toolbox, just like Photoshop is. A great artist will use AI to do most of the work, and then add their professional taste and talent to make it great. The smart artist is learning how to integrate AI into their workflows. * And I'm including software engineers here as well. The smart engineer is incorporating copilots into their software development workflows.
- marban 2y ago
  The difference is that everyone thinks they're an artist now, skipping pesky things like talent or effort. GenAI is the ultimate tool for people who have the creativity of a potato.
  - jedberg 2y ago
    People with early versions of photoshop thought that too. Most were wrong, some were right.
    - marban 2y ago
      Photoshop was a DTP accelerator and low-cost retouching alternative for Scitex. Your example would be Andy Warhol (an actual artist) using Graphicraft.
  - BiteCode_dev 2y ago
    Painters said that about photographs. Artists are petty.
- 2y ago
metabagel 2y ago
(Deleted)
- throwaway71271 2y ago
  you are replying in the wrong thread
hpen 2y ago
The problem isn't that people are luddites and hate technology, it's that it has been built on the backs of peoples artistic work, and they haven't been asked or compensated for it.
- rickydroll 2y ago
  The artists complaining about this have built their careers and revenue streams on the backs of thousands of years of artistic creation. Where's the compensation for those earlier artists? Did you get their permission to use their content to train yourself? In almost every creative field, you learn by example. You watch what the Masters have done before you. You know their techniques, tools, and ways of expressing things, then mix those tools and techniques into something you think is original. It's almost guaranteed that somebody else had the same thought you did. Maybe they expressed it, maybe they didn't, maybe they rejected it, maybe it's not been published, but somebody else had the same thought that you did. An individual is not unique, and people are not unique in feeling offended that they are not unique. People felt offended whenever animals did something previously thought to be uniquely human. People were offended when it was understood that humans and apes evolved from a common ancestor. People felt offended when it was discovered that the Earth was not the center of the universe. Like Galileo, the current state of AI tells us, "And yet it moves."
  - hpen 2y ago
    Such bullshit. We have copyright protections to keep people compensated for their artistic work. Tech has changed, the copyright law didn't have foresight to protect against this. But that is definitely the intention of such law.
    - rickydroll 2y ago
      Copyright has nothing to do with compensation. It is a monopoly over the reproduction of an expression of a "creative" thought that the copyright holder may not even have created. Enforcing copyright is a way to extract rent.
bjornlouser 2y ago
"[Artists] would much rather be properly compensated for their work..." 'Properly compensated'... determined by the market, right? That's being driven close to $0, just like with software (and was headed that direction before the recent AI craze). "Artists would much rather... focus more on fulfilling creative tasks." Like the two penis jokes shown on that site? Incredible.
- caconym_ 2y ago
  > Properly compensated'... determined by the market, right? That's being driven close to $0, just like with software (and was headed that direction before the recent AI craze). This is just completely false, and there are so many obvious counterexamples I don't know where to begin, so let's just start with artists working in the film and video game industries. These are real working, earning people who do art and design as a career.
  - bjornlouser 2y ago
    "film and video game industries..." Oh I thought they were talking about silly web comics and random art on the internet that was 'stolen'. Film and game industries of course embrace all types of tech to make money (didn't Disney use generative AI for the opening sequence of a Marvel series last year?)
    - caconym_ 2y ago
      > Oh I thought they were talking about silly web comics and random art on the internet that was 'stolen'. It is extremely common for "silly web comics and random art on the internet" to be meaningfully monetized by their creators, whether or not they make a living that way. > Film and game industries of course embrace all types of tech to make money (didn't Disney use generative AI for the opening sequence of a Marvel series last year?) Yes, and they also employ legions of human artists. --- edit: I checked out the OP artists' Patreon and they are, at a minimum, making over $2500/mo that way. That's a lot more than $0!
      - deleted 2y ago
a_c 2y ago
I generate stories for my children, based on topics they learn in school, with visual and music, you guessed it, also generated. I’m the opposite end of an artist. But the generative AI is perfect for my use case. I wouldn’t be able to make “book” for my young without the help of genAI
laserlight 2y ago
I can't tell whether the email is poorly formatted because they used AI or because they didn't.
throwaway55533 2y ago
> Social Media platforms cannot grow without engaging and original content, made by people. This is the basis for any user to join. Creators have – in large part – not been privy to the rewards that these platforms have generated over the years even though they are the reason for platform growth. Disagree. People use social media for plenty of other reasons than to consume artists' content. Sharing news with family and friends, arguing with strangers on the Internet -- HN itself is the obvious counterexample.
- relaxing 2y ago
  Since you apparently weren’t around for the rise of social media (ca. 2000-2020 C.E.), let me fill you in: user posts are content, too.
  - throwaway55533 2y ago
    Ok, but the author referred specifically to "Creators", which usually means the minority of users who post things other than text. If you read more of the author's post: > We are a webcomic duo that has been creating original comics since 2011 and sharing them on various platforms on the web > Any business model that does not acknowledge this and does not seek proper compensation for artists is not of interest to us. My point is, while I agree with their sentiment, I believe they are mistaken that artists are the core driver of social media growth. (And by their assertion, the reason people use social media.)
    - relaxing 2y ago
      I think you’re connecting two separate facts that need not necessarily be linked. Regardless, users posting only life update-style text posts are also uncompensated for their contributions to the network (and their works too are feeding AI.)
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - 2y ago
chokma 2y ago
Looks like the screenshot and the text are different. "Any business model that does not acknowledge this and does not seek proper compensation for artists is not of interest to us." -> screenshot of their reply is missing the first two "not"s.
jkhanlar 2y ago
[dead]
- jokethrowaway 2y ago
  No, that's not someone reaching out to random websites Also the initials are RD from the screenshot
buzzardbait 2y ago
I'm confused. The top reason for declining is this: > The surge in AI has been built on the backs of creative people like us. Artists’ work has been harvested in order to train large language models and they have not been informed or compensated. The AI company is literally informing them that they want a partnership, which obviously involves discussing compensation. That is the polar opposite of harvesting all their comics to create a language model. So how is this relevant? Thing is, AI is happening to creatives whether you like it or not, so you might as well play a part in directing its trajectory. Apple hired world class drummers for the new AI drummer feature in their flagship music production software. Dreamtonics hired a lot of vocalists for its flagship vocal synthesis software, which happens to be quite brilliant. The last reason says: > Artists would much rather have an AI that actually helps with grunt chores, such as writing invoices, or helping with taxes in order to focus more on fulfilling creative tasks. Such an AI-tool would be of much more value to the artist community. Such AI tools already exist in large numbers. It just so happens that the current frontier of AI is the creative arts. This is all rather similar to how people resisted personal computers in the 70s and 80s.
exsomet 2y ago
> Artists would much rather have an AI that actually helps with grunt chores, such as writing invoices, or helping with taxes in order to focus more on fulfilling creative tasks. As wild as it may seem, there are people who love accounting and tax work for the mental stimulation it gives them to find those little places to save money (I am not one of them, but I know several). So at some point the argument breaks down into “don’t automate MY job, just somebody else’s that I value less”. This concept that there are things we like/are good at and things we dislike/suck at is why specialization and trade exists. AI breaks that model in ways that most people (in this case, the author) don’t consider or understand.

152 points by askl 2y ago

That was just cold email, so the authors could have probably ignored it I doubt anyone on the other end will read their reply Even if they do, it is unlikely that they will stop sending their AI spam outreach This is just the normal state of the web now ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

dylan604 2y ago
yes, but then they couldn't have blogged about it
- namanyayg 2y ago
  exactly
Pingk 2y ago
I think you're missing the point, it doesn't matter if it was spam or not - The point is that automating creativity is not a useful way of facilitating content creation. We should be automating the tedious behind-the-scenes stuff.
- tayo42 2y ago
  There is still tedious stuff when your doing content creation. Like if your hacking a website together and need something that doesn't look bad as your favicon. maybe your making a 2d game and need a bunch of tree pictures
  - HumanOstrich 2y ago
    It's "you're" x 3.
    - tayo42 2y ago
      R u OK?
- nox101 2y ago
  lots of artists are using generative AI to help them make art.
- namanyayg 2y ago
  While what you're saying is morally and ethically correct, unfortunately we have entered times where the capitalistic machine doesn't find this to be true.
wwweston 2y ago
Maybe some people will be shamed that they’re not only spammers but spammers whose product may as well be a machine that automates the consumption and enjoyment of ice cream?
pavel_lishin 2y ago
> I doubt anyone on the other end will read their reply Hell, I doubt anyone on the other end even wrote the original email.
- namanyayg 2y ago
  yup, it's probably an automated system end to end. and it's definitely getting the spammers a lot of leads and sales.
  - pavel_lishin 2y ago
    Probably not as many as they wish, or as you think.

ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago

> most artists love their work and do not want to outsource their passion to a machine that does this for them. This was the money quote. I love what I do (which tends to be programming, but I approach it as a craft), and often do things by hand, that others automate, because I love my work, and also the people that use it.

voidfunc 2y ago
Most artists, like most programmers are working in a commercial capacity. I see no reason why "their passion" should overrule profit-seeking. Do art for the sake of art on your own time. But expecting companies to not embrace AI to do their jobs is foolish just like it's foolish to think corporate programmers will be a thing at some point in the future.
- buttercraft 2y ago
  > I see no reason why "their passion" should overrule profit-seeking. This viewpoint is what fucked up the world.
  - throwawaysleep 2y ago
    No, this viewpoint is the only reason a shirt doesn't cost a month's wages. Weavers once had similar arguments, decrying machinery that made cloth. Imagine how many more video games and movies can be made when we don't need anywhere near as many artists as before. How many more diagrams in textbooks. How many extra illustrations for Wikipedia. There are tremendous benefits to making art something anyone can get for dirt cheap.
    - temporarely 2y ago
      But Cotton is not Culture.
      - throwawaysleep 2y ago

woah 2y ago

Looks like the AI company already helped them create some content to get clicks on social media

Havoc 2y ago

Also on todays news - in the github copilot (and OpenAI) case about stolen content the judge dismissed majority of it: https://www.theregister.com/AMP/2024/07/08/github_copilot_dmca/ https://www.theregister.com/AMP/2024/07/08/github_copilot_dm... I do sympathise with the creatives on an emotional level but it’s looking like the laws won’t

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
xivzgrev 2y ago
These plaintiffs need a new lawyer, one experienced with going up against big corporations you can’t be amateur hour in these cases. things like not requesting emails in the right way, or offering arguments the judge easily swats away. The thrust of their case is important but if they’re fumbling the ball they’re going to get destroyed on procedure.
falcolas 2y ago
Always worth remembering as we watch these cases go through the system that "legal" and "moral" (or even "benefits society") are not the same thing. They are usually intended to be the same thing, but the rule of law will never fully capture the intent, especially as time passes.
tim333 2y ago
It would be tricky do stop AI looking at content and making something inspired by it as humans have been doing that as a basic occupation for centuries. You'd have to differentiate between a human looking at stuff and then producing art and a machine doing it but what if a machine and human work together? I'm not sure how you'd differentiate legally.

timcobb 2y ago

> Artists’ work has been harvested in order to train large language models The idea of publishing something these days has become quite unappealing. For me, there's something dehumanizing about being used as LLM training data. Not that my thoughts are unique or interesting or special. But, man...

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

dtertman 2y ago

Years ago I went to a BBQ cooking class run by the owner of a small, one-location restaurant in Chicago. He said that Sysco and US Foods reps called him every single day to talk about outsourcing his pulled pork and brisket to them. This feels oddly similar, except there's only a couple Sysco's and US Foods' and probably thousands of AI Content Farm startups at this point.

pavel_lishin 2y ago

They were significantly more polite in their response than I would have been.

agrippanux 2y ago

I got hit up over several emails by a startup doing AI recruiting. I never replied back because it was hard to tell if it was actually the CEO reaching out to me because of my experience, or his AI system reaching out to me. I thought, if I’m having this sort of issue figuring out if the contact is genuine, how will I feel working on this product? Even if it is genuine, is it ethical to have been recruited by a real person to work on a product that fools people into thinking they’ve been contacted by a real person?

victor9000 2y ago
A couple of years back I got a message on LinkedIn from Andrew Ng and I was blown away, then I quickly realized that this account was probably managed by a team of recruiters. I responded positively but mentioned some ML 101 concepts that could be applied to the problem, and the inability to engage confirmed my suspicion. So to some degree, deception has always been part of the game.

indoordin0saur 2y ago

I really cannot fathom enjoying any "art" produced by an AI, excepting art that uses it as an assistant for boring tasks like texturing a video game.

Liquix 2y ago
but what will happen when "enjoyable art" and "AI art" are virtually impossible to differentiate between without tools? https://i.imgur.com/XSCN9Aj.png https://i.imgur.com/XSCN9Aj.png
- indoordin0saur 2y ago
  A very big part of art (probably the biggest part) is the meaning behind it. AIs have no internal "experience" or novel ideas so the art is ultimately meaningless, or only as meaningful as the idea behind the prompt the person put into it. This is why you can have an incredibly slick, high budget movie that is universally considered bad because it's soulless. If AIs become "conscious" or something and we actually have an interest in how they see the world I think their art could be interesting. Even without the consciousness I think that we can have interesting "art" that comes out of them based on how they see the world, which brings to mind things like the old Google AI Image generator hallucination/dream images from a few years back.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
chrisBob 2y ago
There are different kinds of "art" with different use cases. Sometimes I want to look at something thoughtful and meaningful by an artist making a profound statement about humanity where I can see the emotion and motivation. Sometimes I want something that adds a bit of color to the office. One of those may never be the domain of AI, but if I just want something with a flower and a bird that matches the colors of the rest of the room....? It is ok if you don't see any value in the second use case. Different people like different "art".
bloopernova 2y ago

swayvil 2y ago

"Muse". Lol. Good irony in that name. Like marrying your realgirl.

low_tech_punk 2y ago

I'm curious how developers' sentiment towards code generation tools like Copilot compares to artists' sentiment towards art generation tools like MJ/SD/DallE. As a developer myself, I want to see coding as a creative act and feel uneasy about the idea of relying on a tool that makes the code one tab away. But I also recognize most of the coding we do is in a commercial context where artistic expression is less relevant.

Perz1val 2y ago
Imo it's suggestions are either: - hot garbage - something generic; I'm glad not having to write that
low_tech_punk 2y ago
p.s. The Muse in that email is not even a art generation tool. It's a just a rent-seeking business that profits off of other people's work.
not2b 2y ago
My main concern about Copilot use is that, unless you're in a race to quickly produce a minimum viable product, it doesn't optimize the hard part. The initial coding is a very small piece of the work. Code has to be designed, maintained, and extended, and for supportable code we want to have someone on the team that understands it well. If we want the code to be flexible, we want design decisions to appear in as few places as possible, ideally one. Copilot as an auto-complete, where it just helps fill in function names and the like, is fine and helpful (but IDEs do most of that already). But if it's used to write larger code chunks we quickly have the problem that there are code sequences no one on the team understands (it passed the tests though, yay!?) and we wind up with bloat from a lot of copy-paste like code.
- ecjhdnc2025 2y ago
  > it doesn't optimize the hard part This is universally true of Generative AI's impact on all art and craft. It's a Dunning-Kruger thing. It makes the stuff that a novice thinks is hard apparently easier, but does not ever tackle the difficult stuff. So that novice is actively disadvantaged compared to how they would be if they worked with an actual artist to make what they wanted.

delusional 2y ago

It's fucking NFTs again. The vague promise that it somehow creates value for your audience. The promise of "community". The completely empty platitudes about a new and exciting world. And of course the FOMO of "early leg up" on some inevitable future.

floren 2y ago
It's the same guys, pretty often.

tracker1 2y ago

When are we going to automate things like handyman or plumbing work? WTF are we automating artistic creation?

Mistletoe 2y ago

I probably live under a rock but I had never seen these comics before. Some of them are pretty funny. Can't imagine AI needing raunchy comics though, maybe I'm thinking too small for AI.

japhyr 2y ago

> Storytelling is personal. It is a connection between the writer and the reader. Without this personal connection, storytelling loses its purpose. I read a book many years ago called If this is your land, where are your stories? One of the sections described how a group of native people from western Canada successfully reclaimed some of their land by telling stories in court. They lost their case in a lower court, because the court ruled that they were just telling stories. A higher court ruled that their people's stories, while not always factually correct, do lay claim to the land they lived on. Everyone has a story. It's a confusing world where machine-generated stories can be indistinguishable from actual human stories. Trust in authenticity is going to be a valuable asset going forward; I appreciate people sharing responses like this. It's easy to be cynical and say this response won't change anything, but if the people at Muse and companies like it keep getting these responses, some of them will realize the emptiness of what they're doing and move on to more meaningful work. https://www.amazon.com/Where-Stories-Finding-Common-Ground/dp/0676974929/ https://www.amazon.com/Where-Stories-Finding-Common-Ground/d...

mrweasel 2y ago
The suggestion you can do "storytelling without the need for personal content creation." says a lot about how that company views content. Content is a means to make money, it's not about telling a meaningful story or conveying information, it's about eyeballs and revenue. It's all rather terrible.

skiexperte 2y ago

If you struggle online selling your art because of AI, your Art is not good enough and AI was not the problem to begin with. A lot of friends around me are really good in drawing. They do not sell anything. A friend can draw really really good like photoreal, he also can barley life from this. All of this was before AI. I want to use AI for customization and not because i don't appreciate art. If an artist gets frustrated because of some AI companies, sry to say but i don't think you are honest to yourself. I also still hate this 'companies grabed our art and now we hate it'. Everyone looked at art from others to learn from art. There is very little unique art styles and just because someone else did it, doesn't mean that someone else can't come up with it. Btw. i do photography for 20 years. No one wants to buy my prints either. But i still don't mind AI training on all my pictures. Why? I really really believe that AI will enable us to do a lot more and is necessary to achieve a Star Trek like system were we will have time again to actually persue art because all the capitalism bullshit like ads ads ads and ads (don't forget ads) will be less relevant to us.

neontomo 2y ago
i'm a dev and a semi-successful artist and agree with you. the way you sell art is not usually about skill, it's about how you market the art so that people will feel connected to it. it can be a story behind it, the people who are promoting it etc. a lot of artists make art, don't sell anything and get angry at their audience for not buying it. now some of the blame is shifted to ai instead. i'm still not ok with ai being trained on artists work without permission, but it's not the only reason you're not able to sell art.

jedberg 2y ago

This feels like back in the day when photo editing and publishing software started getting big. "True artists" would shun anyone using those tools as amateurs. And for the most part they were right. It was mostly used by amateurs to create stuff that didn't look very good. That is where we are with AI art right now. Most of it is garbage created by people who don't know what good art is. But just like back in the day, a few professionals decided to adopt the new tools instead of complain about them. And all of a sudden they were creating good art much faster than their competitors. And then those tools simply became the tools of the trade. This is where AI art is going. It will be a tool in the artists toolbox, just like Photoshop is. A great artist will use AI to do most of the work, and then add their professional taste and talent to make it great. The smart artist is learning how to integrate AI into their workflows. * And I'm including software engineers here as well. The smart engineer is incorporating copilots into their software development workflows.

marban 2y ago
The difference is that everyone thinks they're an artist now, skipping pesky things like talent or effort. GenAI is the ultimate tool for people who have the creativity of a potato.
- jedberg 2y ago
  People with early versions of photoshop thought that too. Most were wrong, some were right.
  - marban 2y ago
    Photoshop was a DTP accelerator and low-cost retouching alternative for Scitex. Your example would be Andy Warhol (an actual artist) using Graphicraft.
- BiteCode_dev 2y ago
  Painters said that about photographs. Artists are petty.
2y ago

metabagel 2y ago

(Deleted)

throwaway71271 2y ago
you are replying in the wrong thread

hpen 2y ago

The problem isn't that people are luddites and hate technology, it's that it has been built on the backs of peoples artistic work, and they haven't been asked or compensated for it.

rickydroll 2y ago
The artists complaining about this have built their careers and revenue streams on the backs of thousands of years of artistic creation. Where's the compensation for those earlier artists? Did you get their permission to use their content to train yourself? In almost every creative field, you learn by example. You watch what the Masters have done before you. You know their techniques, tools, and ways of expressing things, then mix those tools and techniques into something you think is original. It's almost guaranteed that somebody else had the same thought you did. Maybe they expressed it, maybe they didn't, maybe they rejected it, maybe it's not been published, but somebody else had the same thought that you did. An individual is not unique, and people are not unique in feeling offended that they are not unique. People felt offended whenever animals did something previously thought to be uniquely human. People were offended when it was understood that humans and apes evolved from a common ancestor. People felt offended when it was discovered that the Earth was not the center of the universe. Like Galileo, the current state of AI tells us, "And yet it moves."
- hpen 2y ago
  Such bullshit. We have copyright protections to keep people compensated for their artistic work. Tech has changed, the copyright law didn't have foresight to protect against this. But that is definitely the intention of such law.
  - rickydroll 2y ago
    Copyright has nothing to do with compensation. It is a monopoly over the reproduction of an expression of a "creative" thought that the copyright holder may not even have created. Enforcing copyright is a way to extract rent.

bjornlouser 2y ago

"[Artists] would much rather be properly compensated for their work..." 'Properly compensated'... determined by the market, right? That's being driven close to $0, just like with software (and was headed that direction before the recent AI craze). "Artists would much rather... focus more on fulfilling creative tasks." Like the two penis jokes shown on that site? Incredible.

caconym_ 2y ago
> Properly compensated'... determined by the market, right? That's being driven close to $0, just like with software (and was headed that direction before the recent AI craze). This is just completely false, and there are so many obvious counterexamples I don't know where to begin, so let's just start with artists working in the film and video game industries. These are real working, earning people who do art and design as a career.
- bjornlouser 2y ago
  "film and video game industries..." Oh I thought they were talking about silly web comics and random art on the internet that was 'stolen'. Film and game industries of course embrace all types of tech to make money (didn't Disney use generative AI for the opening sequence of a Marvel series last year?)
  - caconym_ 2y ago
    > Oh I thought they were talking about silly web comics and random art on the internet that was 'stolen'. It is extremely common for "silly web comics and random art on the internet" to be meaningfully monetized by their creators, whether or not they make a living that way. > Film and game industries of course embrace all types of tech to make money (didn't Disney use generative AI for the opening sequence of a Marvel series last year?) Yes, and they also employ legions of human artists. --- edit: I checked out the OP artists' Patreon and they are, at a minimum, making over $2500/mo that way. That's a lot more than $0!
    - deleted 2y ago

a_c 2y ago

I generate stories for my children, based on topics they learn in school, with visual and music, you guessed it, also generated. I’m the opposite end of an artist. But the generative AI is perfect for my use case. I wouldn’t be able to make “book” for my young without the help of genAI

laserlight 2y ago

I can't tell whether the email is poorly formatted because they used AI or because they didn't.

throwaway55533 2y ago

> Social Media platforms cannot grow without engaging and original content, made by people. This is the basis for any user to join. Creators have – in large part – not been privy to the rewards that these platforms have generated over the years even though they are the reason for platform growth. Disagree. People use social media for plenty of other reasons than to consume artists' content. Sharing news with family and friends, arguing with strangers on the Internet -- HN itself is the obvious counterexample.

relaxing 2y ago
Since you apparently weren’t around for the rise of social media (ca. 2000-2020 C.E.), let me fill you in: user posts are content, too.
- throwaway55533 2y ago
  Ok, but the author referred specifically to "Creators", which usually means the minority of users who post things other than text. If you read more of the author's post: > We are a webcomic duo that has been creating original comics since 2011 and sharing them on various platforms on the web > Any business model that does not acknowledge this and does not seek proper compensation for artists is not of interest to us. My point is, while I agree with their sentiment, I believe they are mistaken that artists are the core driver of social media growth. (And by their assertion, the reason people use social media.)
  - relaxing 2y ago
    I think you’re connecting two separate facts that need not necessarily be linked. Regardless, users posting only life update-style text posts are also uncompensated for their contributions to the network (and their works too are feeding AI.)
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - 2y ago

chokma 2y ago

Looks like the screenshot and the text are different. "Any business model that does not acknowledge this and does not seek proper compensation for artists is not of interest to us." -> screenshot of their reply is missing the first two "not"s.

jkhanlar 2y ago

[dead]

jokethrowaway 2y ago
No, that's not someone reaching out to random websites Also the initials are RD from the screenshot

buzzardbait 2y ago

I'm confused. The top reason for declining is this: > The surge in AI has been built on the backs of creative people like us. Artists’ work has been harvested in order to train large language models and they have not been informed or compensated. The AI company is literally informing them that they want a partnership, which obviously involves discussing compensation. That is the polar opposite of harvesting all their comics to create a language model. So how is this relevant? Thing is, AI is happening to creatives whether you like it or not, so you might as well play a part in directing its trajectory. Apple hired world class drummers for the new AI drummer feature in their flagship music production software. Dreamtonics hired a lot of vocalists for its flagship vocal synthesis software, which happens to be quite brilliant. The last reason says: > Artists would much rather have an AI that actually helps with grunt chores, such as writing invoices, or helping with taxes in order to focus more on fulfilling creative tasks. Such an AI-tool would be of much more value to the artist community. Such AI tools already exist in large numbers. It just so happens that the current frontier of AI is the creative arts. This is all rather similar to how people resisted personal computers in the 70s and 80s.

exsomet 2y ago

> Artists would much rather have an AI that actually helps with grunt chores, such as writing invoices, or helping with taxes in order to focus more on fulfilling creative tasks. As wild as it may seem, there are people who love accounting and tax work for the mental stimulation it gives them to find those little places to save money (I am not one of them, but I know several). So at some point the argument breaks down into “don’t automate MY job, just somebody else’s that I value less”. This concept that there are things we like/are good at and things we dislike/suck at is why specialization and trade exists. AI breaks that model in ways that most people (in this case, the author) don’t consider or understand.