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People aren't looking at this from a business perspective. Right now a decent subset of artists hate AI, so it makes sense to try and target that market if it's

by ronsor 2y ago

People aren't looking at this from a business perspective. Right now a decent subset of artists hate AI, so it makes sense to try and target that market if it's large enough. If artists suddenly started loving AI tomorrow, this pledge would be out the window. It's just business and marketing - nothing more, nothing less.

kshmir 2y ago
Is that wrong?
- ronsor 2y ago
  I find it slightly annoying and dishonest to present it as a moral position, but overall it's nothing that other businesses haven't already been doing. It's just not a big deal.
  - camillomiller 2y ago
    But it IS a moral question. As it is IMMORAL to just go and steal content to train AI and then let the lawyers to take csre of it later
    - ronsor 2y ago
      AI is not "stealing content" and it is not immoral. This is literally the same line from record companies and Hollywood during the 80s and 90s, and they were rightfully mocked then. It is baffling how so many people are just repeating it now.
      - bugglebeetle 2y ago
        Yes, illustrators are notorious IP rentiers like the Hollywood studios and the RIAA. It’s the tech billionaires that are the victims of their vile, unjust monopoly tactics. These are coherent thoughts that demonstrate why it’s a good idea to argue from analogies.
        ronsor 2y ago
        I'm not praising tech billionaires, nor am I attacking RIAA/Hollywood or online artists as entities. Please don't start crafting strawmen. I'm criticizing the "stealing" argument because I don't find it logically sound; it doesn't matter who's saying it. I am still more than willing to have a civil debate around the argument itself. Why is it stealing to analyze images? I would be more convinced if AI used a fixed database during generation, or if it was considered a standard, acceptable practice to reproduce training data as "new" generations.
        bugglebeetle 2y ago
        You don’t find the stealing argument logically sound because you immediately frame the theft as “analyzing” to suit your own narrative and then demand people engage with it, while proceeding to make further spurious claims like… > I would be more convinced if AI used a fixed database during generation Wow, I didn’t know that model weights, an elaborately compressed form of their training data, rewrote themselves every time they were invoked. Or that it’s only theft if I stole data from a fixed database to build my own service.
        ronsor 2y ago
        AI training is literally analyzing. That is how it works. Properly trained models (i.e., ones that aren't overparameterized or overfit) do not just "elaborately compress" training data as this is not possible. For example, you cannot compress 1 billion images into 1 billion parameters, and expect to retrieve them later. If objective facts are "my own narrative", then no rational discussion can occur.
        bugglebeetle 2y ago
        Oh well, you should tell the folks at DeepMind and Meta about these objective facts then so they don’t waste any more time doing research: https://arxiv.org/html/2309.10668v2 https://arxiv.org/html/2309.10668v2 Maybe apply for a job there too, since you’re obviously so far ahead of everyone in understanding this problem space.
      - ben_w 2y ago
        I've noticed the same. I think the actual reason behind is similar in both cases, something like "this is theft because it means I won't get paid" — which isn't really how that works but also explains Musk's X advertising lawsuit. Like your respondant, I find the artists more sympathetic despite finding the argument itself bad.
        ronsor 2y ago
        In general, I think the coming replacement of many jobs is a serious issue for society and one that deserves serious attention. That said, the intellectually dishonest arguments irk me to no end and I'm simply tired of them. The artists upset over AI are more sympathetic than the RIAA (It's really quite hard not to be), but this stuff really wears at my sympathy. And, unfortunately, it's impossible to actually tackle any issues unless without moving past the bad arguments.
        ben_w 2y ago
        > That said, the intellectually dishonest arguments irk me to no end and I'm simply tired of them. I, too, get annoyed by People Who Are Wrong On The Internet; I'm trying to become more stoic, as I don't want to end up like my father. I don't know if this will pass, or if the pro/anti AI split is going to be as permanent as the economic left/right split, or the libertarian/authoratarian split.
        spondylosaurus 2y ago
        I don't know if "theft because I'm not getting paid" describes artists' sentiment so much as "theft because someone else is making money on a tool that's 'using' my work/labor". Which I still think is an argument that requires opening a Pandora's box of IP law that should not be opened (because in the long run it won't benefit non-corporate artists anyway), but...
      - YurgenJurgensen 2y ago
        It’s not baffling at all if you consider the point of copyright in the first place. That is, to promote the progress of useful arts and sciences. One does, and one does not.
        TeMPOraL 2y ago
        Yup. Generative AI is the useful part of "useful arts and sciences". 99%+ of content that goes into training those models is, on its own, useless and worthless, and the greatest value by far it can bring to society is to be part of the training dataset. That also applies to art that may have had some value when published, but now languishes in obscurity - AI is giving it a second life, a way to benefit society far more than originally did. So yeah, if we're going by the (idealized version of) intent of copyright, it stands strongly on the side of AI. EDIT: And before someone complains that SOTA models are trained and owned by private parties -- copyright is "promoting the progress of useful arts and sciences" by literally giving private parties a monopoly to make money off art as an incentive.
      - vouaobrasil 2y ago
        > This is literally the same line from record companies and Hollywood during the 80s and 90s, and they were rightfully mocked then. It is baffling how so many people are just repeating it now. The difference with AI is that AI takes a 100% bit for bit copy and uses it, rather than humans who just use their impression to be inspired.
  - eesmith 2y ago
    Bill Hicks, quoting https://www.quotes.net/mquote/978640 https://www.quotes.net/mquote/978640 with original video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaD8y-CGhMw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaD8y-CGhMw : > By the way, if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself. [audience laughs and claps] ... there's no rationalization for what you do and you are Satan's little helpers, okay? Kill yourself, seriously. You're the ruiner of all things good, seriously. ... > I know all the marketing people are going, "he's doing a joke..." there's no joke here whatsoever. ... I know what all the marketing people are thinking right now too, "Oh, you know what Bill's doing, he's going for that anti-marketing dollar. That's a good market, he's very smart." [audience laughs] Oh man, I am not doing that, you fucking evil scumbags. > "Ooh, you know what Bill's doing now, he's going for the righteous indignation dollar. That's a big dollar. A lot of people are feeling that indignation. We've done research. Huge market. He's doing a good thing." Goddammit, I'm not doing that, you scumbags. Quit putting a goddamn dollar sign on every fucking thing on this planet! > "Ooh, the anger dollar. Huge. Huge in times of recession. Giant market. Bill's very bright to do that." God, I'm just caught in a fucking web.
- unraveller 2y ago
  It's just not convincing. When your tools start moral posturing instead of building great software that gets out of the way it's all down hill.
  - dtn 2y ago
    Au contraire, when your tools add the Hot New Thing for the sake of it, rather than any coherent product strategy- that's when things go downhill.
    - ronsor 2y ago
      I don't think they disagree with not adding AI features. I think they disagree with the moral posturing. It would have been different if the devs simply said "We aren't adding AI features since we don't think it's actually that useful."
  - intended 2y ago
    Procreate is awesome though. I wish their redo and undo shortcuts were used everywhere
  - watwut 2y ago
    That is how we got open source in the first place. Just because you disagree with said moral stance does not mean it is against software development.
luigi23 2y ago
its quite cynical, dont you think. you can benefit in both - morally and in business.
- ffsm8 2y ago
  I'd say it's quiet naive to think otherwise, so I wouldnt call that cynical.
rpgwaiter 2y ago
A non-publicly traded company doesn't have to strictly adhere to the bottom line. If they have steady cash flow, and the people running the company have a strong stance on AI, why would they have to change? Their app is fantastic, and if someone wants to add AI slop to their Procreate workflow they can just import/export from/to an AI slop app. It’s a good rule of thumb that the profit motive will make everything worse, but it’s not like it happens 100% of the time with no exceptions (unless publicly traded)
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- ben_w 2y ago
  Broadly agree. But the people who use a tool like this aren't doing "slop" in the fist place, any more than they're importing the first stock art matching a keyword and calling it a day. The stuff that gets the flak — I've seen some on posters in the U-bahn here, with a man exiting an airport luggage scanner while a robot scans his belly to reveal he's pregnant with a cat — are done by people with IMO no artistic standards to understand why editing is needed.
  - TeMPOraL 2y ago
    > I've seen some on posters in the U-bahn here, with a man exiting an airport luggage scanner while a robot scans his belly to reveal he's pregnant with a cat The prompt here sounds like something a generative AI tool would struggle to make look poster-worthy, while also being something I'd expect flesh-and-blood artists in marketing to come up with, draw, and think it's a good idea. This is to say, I can tell (bad) AI art from human art by a type of technical mistakes made, but not by absurdity of the depicted concept.
    - ben_w 2y ago
      I'm just describing what it looks like, that probably wasn't the prompt.
jtriangle 2y ago
I don't know a single artist that's doing commercial work that isn't using AI to speed up their delivery times. They're all using AI tooling because it's useful. I know this because they've all reached out to me at one point or another and asked about tools/hardware/services/etc, and I've done my best to point them in the right direction. One that I'm particularly proud of bought himself a 3090 and is running his own models and doing inpainting stuff to great effect.
- Nullabillity 2y ago
  Or… you only know about the ones who are, because they're the ones who talked to you about it.
  - jtriangle 2y ago
    Or all my friends in that space are more technically minded than average. Sampling bias is implied. We're on hackernews afterall, normies don't really come here. That's why I was clear about "my" friends, which necessarily limits the scope of what I'm saying.
    - jjulius 2y ago
      So, put simply, your reply is essentially, "Yes".
    - jrflowers 2y ago
      > That's why I was clear about "my" friends, which necessarily limits the scope of what I'm saying. This post: >I don't know a single artist that's doing commercial work that isn't using AI to speed up their delivery times. They're all using AI tooling because it's useful. I know this because they've all reached out to me at one point or another and asked about tools/hardware/services/etc, and I've done my best to point them in the right direction. One that I'm particularly proud of bought himself a 3090 and is running his own models and doing inpainting stuff to great effect. Does not include the phrase “my friends”. The first sentence could be interpreted as a broad statement as well.
  - 2y ago
jatins 2y ago
If Procreate wanted to maximize revenue they'd have switched to a subscription model way back instead of one time payment. I know it's hard to believe but some people are not making all decisions from a business perspective
- pjerem 2y ago
  To be fair, I’m really, really impressed by the fact that such a nice software is still a one time purchase and also that it’s so cheap. I mean, it’s an app some people use to work with everyday and make money with and it only costs 15€.
barrell 2y ago
I think it's very possible for a CEO to have a strong stance on their technology and product roadmap without it being purely marketing.
vouaobrasil 2y ago
> If artists suddenly started loving AI tomorrow, this pledge would be out the window. It's just business and marketing - nothing more, nothing less. A vacuous conditional, because AI goes fundamentally against the basic ethic of most artistis.
- chpatrick 2y ago
  Is Photoshop against the basic ethic of most artists? Are only cave paintings real art?
  - vouaobrasil 2y ago
    As usual, the answer is complex and depends on degree, and the element of honesty in the artistic work. There were dishonest works before AI, but it makes it much easier.
    - chpatrick 2y ago
      I think dishonest is a weird way to put it. If you paint something with a reference image or are inspired by something you saw, is that dishonest? Image generating AI is a tool and like every tool you can be really creative with or just make crap. It's not inherently immoral or dishonest.
  - jwells89 2y ago
    Artists are increasingly souring on Photoshop and looking for alternatives in response to the increasing presence of generative AI in it, so in some capacity, yes it is.

by ronsor 2y ago

kshmir 2y ago

Is that wrong?

ronsor 2y ago
I find it slightly annoying and dishonest to present it as a moral position, but overall it's nothing that other businesses haven't already been doing. It's just not a big deal.
- camillomiller 2y ago
  But it IS a moral question. As it is IMMORAL to just go and steal content to train AI and then let the lawyers to take csre of it later
  - ronsor 2y ago
    AI is not "stealing content" and it is not immoral. This is literally the same line from record companies and Hollywood during the 80s and 90s, and they were rightfully mocked then. It is baffling how so many people are just repeating it now.
    - bugglebeetle 2y ago
      Yes, illustrators are notorious IP rentiers like the Hollywood studios and the RIAA. It’s the tech billionaires that are the victims of their vile, unjust monopoly tactics. These are coherent thoughts that demonstrate why it’s a good idea to argue from analogies.
      - ronsor 2y ago
        I'm not praising tech billionaires, nor am I attacking RIAA/Hollywood or online artists as entities. Please don't start crafting strawmen. I'm criticizing the "stealing" argument because I don't find it logically sound; it doesn't matter who's saying it. I am still more than willing to have a civil debate around the argument itself. Why is it stealing to analyze images? I would be more convinced if AI used a fixed database during generation, or if it was considered a standard, acceptable practice to reproduce training data as "new" generations.
        bugglebeetle 2y ago
        You don’t find the stealing argument logically sound because you immediately frame the theft as “analyzing” to suit your own narrative and then demand people engage with it, while proceeding to make further spurious claims like… > I would be more convinced if AI used a fixed database during generation Wow, I didn’t know that model weights, an elaborately compressed form of their training data, rewrote themselves every time they were invoked. Or that it’s only theft if I stole data from a fixed database to build my own service.
        ronsor 2y ago
        AI training is literally analyzing. That is how it works. Properly trained models (i.e., ones that aren't overparameterized or overfit) do not just "elaborately compress" training data as this is not possible. For example, you cannot compress 1 billion images into 1 billion parameters, and expect to retrieve them later. If objective facts are "my own narrative", then no rational discussion can occur.
        bugglebeetle 2y ago
        Oh well, you should tell the folks at DeepMind and Meta about these objective facts then so they don’t waste any more time doing research: https://arxiv.org/html/2309.10668v2 https://arxiv.org/html/2309.10668v2 Maybe apply for a job there too, since you’re obviously so far ahead of everyone in understanding this problem space.
    - ben_w 2y ago
      I've noticed the same. I think the actual reason behind is similar in both cases, something like "this is theft because it means I won't get paid" — which isn't really how that works but also explains Musk's X advertising lawsuit. Like your respondant, I find the artists more sympathetic despite finding the argument itself bad.
      - ronsor 2y ago
        In general, I think the coming replacement of many jobs is a serious issue for society and one that deserves serious attention. That said, the intellectually dishonest arguments irk me to no end and I'm simply tired of them. The artists upset over AI are more sympathetic than the RIAA (It's really quite hard not to be), but this stuff really wears at my sympathy. And, unfortunately, it's impossible to actually tackle any issues unless without moving past the bad arguments.
        ben_w 2y ago
        > That said, the intellectually dishonest arguments irk me to no end and I'm simply tired of them. I, too, get annoyed by People Who Are Wrong On The Internet; I'm trying to become more stoic, as I don't want to end up like my father. I don't know if this will pass, or if the pro/anti AI split is going to be as permanent as the economic left/right split, or the libertarian/authoratarian split.
      - spondylosaurus 2y ago
        I don't know if "theft because I'm not getting paid" describes artists' sentiment so much as "theft because someone else is making money on a tool that's 'using' my work/labor". Which I still think is an argument that requires opening a Pandora's box of IP law that should not be opened (because in the long run it won't benefit non-corporate artists anyway), but...
    - YurgenJurgensen 2y ago
      It’s not baffling at all if you consider the point of copyright in the first place. That is, to promote the progress of useful arts and sciences. One does, and one does not.
      - TeMPOraL 2y ago
        Yup. Generative AI is the useful part of "useful arts and sciences". 99%+ of content that goes into training those models is, on its own, useless and worthless, and the greatest value by far it can bring to society is to be part of the training dataset. That also applies to art that may have had some value when published, but now languishes in obscurity - AI is giving it a second life, a way to benefit society far more than originally did. So yeah, if we're going by the (idealized version of) intent of copyright, it stands strongly on the side of AI. EDIT: And before someone complains that SOTA models are trained and owned by private parties -- copyright is "promoting the progress of useful arts and sciences" by literally giving private parties a monopoly to make money off art as an incentive.
    - vouaobrasil 2y ago
      > This is literally the same line from record companies and Hollywood during the 80s and 90s, and they were rightfully mocked then. It is baffling how so many people are just repeating it now. The difference with AI is that AI takes a 100% bit for bit copy and uses it, rather than humans who just use their impression to be inspired.
- eesmith 2y ago
  Bill Hicks, quoting https://www.quotes.net/mquote/978640 https://www.quotes.net/mquote/978640 with original video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaD8y-CGhMw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaD8y-CGhMw : > By the way, if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself. [audience laughs and claps] ... there's no rationalization for what you do and you are Satan's little helpers, okay? Kill yourself, seriously. You're the ruiner of all things good, seriously. ... > I know all the marketing people are going, "he's doing a joke..." there's no joke here whatsoever. ... I know what all the marketing people are thinking right now too, "Oh, you know what Bill's doing, he's going for that anti-marketing dollar. That's a good market, he's very smart." [audience laughs] Oh man, I am not doing that, you fucking evil scumbags. > "Ooh, you know what Bill's doing now, he's going for the righteous indignation dollar. That's a big dollar. A lot of people are feeling that indignation. We've done research. Huge market. He's doing a good thing." Goddammit, I'm not doing that, you scumbags. Quit putting a goddamn dollar sign on every fucking thing on this planet! > "Ooh, the anger dollar. Huge. Huge in times of recession. Giant market. Bill's very bright to do that." God, I'm just caught in a fucking web.
unraveller 2y ago
It's just not convincing. When your tools start moral posturing instead of building great software that gets out of the way it's all down hill.
- dtn 2y ago
  Au contraire, when your tools add the Hot New Thing for the sake of it, rather than any coherent product strategy- that's when things go downhill.
  - ronsor 2y ago
    I don't think they disagree with not adding AI features. I think they disagree with the moral posturing. It would have been different if the devs simply said "We aren't adding AI features since we don't think it's actually that useful."
- intended 2y ago
  Procreate is awesome though. I wish their redo and undo shortcuts were used everywhere
- watwut 2y ago
  That is how we got open source in the first place. Just because you disagree with said moral stance does not mean it is against software development.

luigi23 2y ago

its quite cynical, dont you think. you can benefit in both - morally and in business.

ffsm8 2y ago
I'd say it's quiet naive to think otherwise, so I wouldnt call that cynical.

rpgwaiter 2y ago

A non-publicly traded company doesn't have to strictly adhere to the bottom line. If they have steady cash flow, and the people running the company have a strong stance on AI, why would they have to change? Their app is fantastic, and if someone wants to add AI slop to their Procreate workflow they can just import/export from/to an AI slop app. It’s a good rule of thumb that the profit motive will make everything worse, but it’s not like it happens 100% of the time with no exceptions (unless publicly traded)

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
ben_w 2y ago
Broadly agree. But the people who use a tool like this aren't doing "slop" in the fist place, any more than they're importing the first stock art matching a keyword and calling it a day. The stuff that gets the flak — I've seen some on posters in the U-bahn here, with a man exiting an airport luggage scanner while a robot scans his belly to reveal he's pregnant with a cat — are done by people with IMO no artistic standards to understand why editing is needed.
- TeMPOraL 2y ago
  > I've seen some on posters in the U-bahn here, with a man exiting an airport luggage scanner while a robot scans his belly to reveal he's pregnant with a cat The prompt here sounds like something a generative AI tool would struggle to make look poster-worthy, while also being something I'd expect flesh-and-blood artists in marketing to come up with, draw, and think it's a good idea. This is to say, I can tell (bad) AI art from human art by a type of technical mistakes made, but not by absurdity of the depicted concept.
  - ben_w 2y ago
    I'm just describing what it looks like, that probably wasn't the prompt.

jtriangle 2y ago

I don't know a single artist that's doing commercial work that isn't using AI to speed up their delivery times. They're all using AI tooling because it's useful. I know this because they've all reached out to me at one point or another and asked about tools/hardware/services/etc, and I've done my best to point them in the right direction. One that I'm particularly proud of bought himself a 3090 and is running his own models and doing inpainting stuff to great effect.

Nullabillity 2y ago
Or… you only know about the ones who are, because they're the ones who talked to you about it.
- jtriangle 2y ago
  Or all my friends in that space are more technically minded than average. Sampling bias is implied. We're on hackernews afterall, normies don't really come here. That's why I was clear about "my" friends, which necessarily limits the scope of what I'm saying.
  - jjulius 2y ago
    So, put simply, your reply is essentially, "Yes".
  - jrflowers 2y ago
    > That's why I was clear about "my" friends, which necessarily limits the scope of what I'm saying. This post: >I don't know a single artist that's doing commercial work that isn't using AI to speed up their delivery times. They're all using AI tooling because it's useful. I know this because they've all reached out to me at one point or another and asked about tools/hardware/services/etc, and I've done my best to point them in the right direction. One that I'm particularly proud of bought himself a 3090 and is running his own models and doing inpainting stuff to great effect. Does not include the phrase “my friends”. The first sentence could be interpreted as a broad statement as well.
- 2y ago

jatins 2y ago

If Procreate wanted to maximize revenue they'd have switched to a subscription model way back instead of one time payment. I know it's hard to believe but some people are not making all decisions from a business perspective

pjerem 2y ago
To be fair, I’m really, really impressed by the fact that such a nice software is still a one time purchase and also that it’s so cheap. I mean, it’s an app some people use to work with everyday and make money with and it only costs 15€.

barrell 2y ago

I think it's very possible for a CEO to have a strong stance on their technology and product roadmap without it being purely marketing.

vouaobrasil 2y ago

> If artists suddenly started loving AI tomorrow, this pledge would be out the window. It's just business and marketing - nothing more, nothing less. A vacuous conditional, because AI goes fundamentally against the basic ethic of most artistis.

chpatrick 2y ago
Is Photoshop against the basic ethic of most artists? Are only cave paintings real art?
- vouaobrasil 2y ago
  As usual, the answer is complex and depends on degree, and the element of honesty in the artistic work. There were dishonest works before AI, but it makes it much easier.
  - chpatrick 2y ago
    I think dishonest is a weird way to put it. If you paint something with a reference image or are inspired by something you saw, is that dishonest? Image generating AI is a tool and like every tool you can be really creative with or just make crap. It's not inherently immoral or dishonest.
- jwells89 2y ago
  Artists are increasingly souring on Photoshop and looking for alternatives in response to the increasing presence of generative AI in it, so in some capacity, yes it is.