8 ms·

In the past year my illustration business has dropped more half

88 points by cebert 1y ago

ivape 1y ago
Anyone that has ever done spec work has already faced just how demoralizing this will all be. When you do spec work for design, it's basically everyone just submitting their designs for the buyer to decide which one to pick. All the designers copy the designs that are getting the "this is going in the right direction" feedback. The average person will now be able to just say "make me something just like that" for free. It's basically the end, and only a world war will reset things. Best of luck all. I'll add one other thing about war: Humans are not exactly a peaceful bunch. A bunch of people with nothing to do start gang wars, often on a national scale, country versus country, or country-men versus counter-men. It's a hot-take for sure, but, we're trending towards war and that's especially true if AI can easily be used to rile each other up with ease.
- mlinhares 1y ago
  Yeah, this is dead now, never do any "show me your work and we'll think about it" ever again. People will just steal with LLMs and there's not much that can be done.
sneak 1y ago
AI didn’t take his job, the commodification of a low-effort task did. AI might be the proximate cause but it isn’t the source of why his illustration side hustle got undercut. Tons of boiler room illustrators in low income countries would have happily undercut him, too.
- tsunamifury 1y ago
  This is cope. Ai took his job.
  - brookst 1y ago
    AI did his job, equally or better, and cheaper. Better to say AI took his market.
  - sneak 1y ago
    No, a large scale popular website where one can pay to get tasks done quickly took his job. The fact that it was done by AI is actually immaterial to the economic claim.
    - tsunamifury 1y ago
      I think you need to re read economics 101
ninetyninenine 1y ago
[flagged]
- DontchaKnowit 1y ago
  It still cannot reason, which is the only thing useful a dev actually does. So, sorry, but I still dont feel threatened
  - Waterluvian 1y ago
    Depends what kind of dev we’re talking about. Millions of coders are just doing automaton work.
    - coolcase 1y ago
      Yeah "dev" is as informative as "sales guy" which can be anything from a used car salesman to head of sales for a large corp.
  - hackyhacky 1y ago
    What is coding, if not applied reasoning?
    - andsoitis 1y ago
      there are at least two levels of reasoning. the reasoning that makes logical decisions that do not benefit from lateral thinking. and then higher-order reasoning that is fueled by lateral thinking and motivation to achieve. this higher-order reasoning seems to require inputs that human biology provides.
  - ninetyninenine 1y ago
    If you can’t follow the trendline then you can’t reason yourself. Not even joking here. If that’s the bar for “reasoning” AI has already beat it.
    - 1y ago
Waterluvian 1y ago
I think that transformation is difficult to appraise from within. In the future we’ll have a much more clear sense of how we feel about the invention of the automobile. I think that the calm, more disciplined take of “the sky is always falling, it’s never falling. There’s other, probably better ways to be creative” is the one. Today my eight year old sat at the PC for hours using Scratch to make what was essentially a Flash animation. He had PS5 access, Switch access, iPad access. Nope. Wanted to bash his head against loops and timers for hours. The craving to be creative is insatiable. It’ll continue to take on new forms. With apologies to the farriers of today.
- brookst 1y ago
  The tool is not the art. It never was. People who mistake the two always suffer. I empathize, but there is no way to change that reality.
- polio 1y ago
  Yes, but how much of a market will there be for this kind of creation?
  - Waterluvian 1y ago
    How much of a market has there ever been for this kind of creation?
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
SchemaLoad 1y ago
[flagged]
- pfdietz 1y ago
  So, how well does generative AI work on furry art?
  - SchemaLoad 1y ago
    Mixed results. It can produce a generic piece of art, but people don't want a generic piece of art, they want their exact character with all markings and colors exactly correct. It also produces a very distinct style that everyone will pick up on and call you out on. You also won't be allowed to share your AI generated piece on most furry websites or group chats.
strogonoff 1y ago
It’s interesting how in music the same application of ML swamps companies like Suno in trillion dollar lawsuits, yet in graphics and text no one cares, even though graphics and text fall victim to the same sleight of hand. It feels like a big tech company can just ignore the law, unless another big company stands up against it (and hopefully helps the average Joe as a side-effect).
- conception 1y ago
  It’s not big tech. Money can ignore the law.
  - itsanaccount 1y ago
    power can ignore the law, for which money is the most often proxy. we need to get back to talking about who has power and who doesn't as this pretending that we're outside of the nature of such things increasingly has no clothes.
  - viraptor 1y ago
    Also, the low cost illustration business was already not amazing with the copyright law. Try ordering a few icons on Fiverr for example and see how many are repurposed from other sites. On the lower end it's not as much whether the assets are in part or fully stolen, but who does it.
    - strogonoff 1y ago
      Intuitively, there’s quite a big difference between a situation where some ‘artist’ may be sneakily repurposing preexisting work (I don’t think you’ll find a reputable artist doing that, and even a not-so-reputable repurposing artist would at least check that the license allows it), and a situation where a household name corporation only repurposes preexisting work without any regard for licensing.
    - RestartKernel 1y ago
      > Try ordering a few icons on Fiverr for example and see how many are repurposed from other sites. In which case would you order icons if they're not custom enough to be unrepurposable? Just curious, Iconify and some basic composition have been good enough for me so far.
__loam 1y ago
This is not a very substantial analysis of the industry and I'd be interested in a more comprehensive diagnosis. I believe there are coincidental factors in industries that typically employ illustrators and other artists that are affecting the market that are not AI, namely the market conditions since late 2022. To give the games industry as an example, the industry grew unnaturally during Covid, everyone thought that trend would continue and there was a lot of money and hiring thrown into it. The industry is returning to the normal trend line and it's still highly profitable, but layoffs are happening because executives are not hitting financial forecasts. Similarly, marketing budgets have been slashed across industries as the economy slowed down, and design work dried up in tech because nobody is raising money except the people who think they can replace creative labor with AI. One thing that I'm not seeing in this thread is the reputational risk of using AI, especially in artistic works like games. AI imagery is generic, lazy, and is seeing a backlash from the public. It's a negative quality marker even if it's trendy in tech spaces. There's definitely a lot of people in executive leadership and management who think they can replace all kinds of labor with AI right now, but from what I've seen, that has not played out as expected in the real workforce. The actual reason this guy is losing half his business is probably more due to people cutting back on discretionary spending more than AI taking jobs.
Papazsazsa 1y ago
Professions die in the face of competition, that's nothing new. What's more perilous is that the internet will soon cease to be a useful way to access and distribute knowledge, and has been transformed from a resource for learning and sharing into a clear-cut forest which nobody will replant. But hey, at least sama got a new gruebel forsey.
Nition 1y ago
Tangentially related: Recently I was thinking of commissioning an artist to do some album art for me. I had a specific concept in mind and it needed to have a certain look to it but I didn't mind if the actual art was physically painted or digital. What struck me is there's no website for hiring an artist. ArtStation has a Shop section (pre-made art for sale) but no Commissions section. Fiverr has some artists taking commissions but none I could find of really good quality, and there's AI art spam now as well (takes commissions but just sends you an AI prompt result). Reddit has two art commission subreddits but there aren't really many artists there. And both Fiverr and Reddit's main selling point is cheap art commissions, but I was happy to pay more for something good. Unless you know an artist already that suits the style you're after, and they're currently taking commissions, it seems quite hard to find anyone. I kinda thought I'd be able to go to, like, CommissionArt.com and filter by Traditional -> Oils -> Landscapes or whatever to find someone perfect. To everyone who says hire a real artist instead of using AI - where do you go to find them?
- yablak 1y ago
  Etsy
- kaikai 1y ago
  I’ve messaged people directly, after seeing their work on social media. I’m always ready to hear “no” but so far they’ve been willing. I’m also an artist, and I go out of my way to make art for acquaintances who ask.
- gilleain 1y ago
  Cara.app?
- mediumsmart 1y ago
  You could go to a spec work treadmill like 99designs and look for one. Browse the design categories and from there the portfolios of those artists whose work appeals to you and fit the style you are looking for and then go to their website because real artists have a website. deviant art, behance, dribble, art station …
- chneu 1y ago
sheepscreek 1y ago
TL;DR Love the tech. Hate losing business.

88 points by cebert 1y ago

Anyone that has ever done spec work has already faced just how demoralizing this will all be. When you do spec work for design, it's basically everyone just submitting their designs for the buyer to decide which one to pick. All the designers copy the designs that are getting the "this is going in the right direction" feedback. The average person will now be able to just say "make me something just like that" for free. It's basically the end, and only a world war will reset things. Best of luck all. I'll add one other thing about war: Humans are not exactly a peaceful bunch. A bunch of people with nothing to do start gang wars, often on a national scale, country versus country, or country-men versus counter-men. It's a hot-take for sure, but, we're trending towards war and that's especially true if AI can easily be used to rile each other up with ease.

mlinhares 1y ago
Yeah, this is dead now, never do any "show me your work and we'll think about it" ever again. People will just steal with LLMs and there's not much that can be done.

sneak 1y ago

AI didn’t take his job, the commodification of a low-effort task did. AI might be the proximate cause but it isn’t the source of why his illustration side hustle got undercut. Tons of boiler room illustrators in low income countries would have happily undercut him, too.

tsunamifury 1y ago
This is cope. Ai took his job.
- brookst 1y ago
  AI did his job, equally or better, and cheaper. Better to say AI took his market.
- sneak 1y ago
  No, a large scale popular website where one can pay to get tasks done quickly took his job. The fact that it was done by AI is actually immaterial to the economic claim.
  - tsunamifury 1y ago
    I think you need to re read economics 101

ninetyninenine 1y ago

[flagged]

DontchaKnowit 1y ago
It still cannot reason, which is the only thing useful a dev actually does. So, sorry, but I still dont feel threatened
- Waterluvian 1y ago
  Depends what kind of dev we’re talking about. Millions of coders are just doing automaton work.
  - coolcase 1y ago
    Yeah "dev" is as informative as "sales guy" which can be anything from a used car salesman to head of sales for a large corp.
- hackyhacky 1y ago
  What is coding, if not applied reasoning?
  - andsoitis 1y ago
    there are at least two levels of reasoning. the reasoning that makes logical decisions that do not benefit from lateral thinking. and then higher-order reasoning that is fueled by lateral thinking and motivation to achieve. this higher-order reasoning seems to require inputs that human biology provides.
- ninetyninenine 1y ago
  If you can’t follow the trendline then you can’t reason yourself. Not even joking here. If that’s the bar for “reasoning” AI has already beat it.
  - 1y ago

Waterluvian 1y ago

I think that transformation is difficult to appraise from within. In the future we’ll have a much more clear sense of how we feel about the invention of the automobile. I think that the calm, more disciplined take of “the sky is always falling, it’s never falling. There’s other, probably better ways to be creative” is the one. Today my eight year old sat at the PC for hours using Scratch to make what was essentially a Flash animation. He had PS5 access, Switch access, iPad access. Nope. Wanted to bash his head against loops and timers for hours. The craving to be creative is insatiable. It’ll continue to take on new forms. With apologies to the farriers of today.

brookst 1y ago
The tool is not the art. It never was. People who mistake the two always suffer. I empathize, but there is no way to change that reality.
polio 1y ago
Yes, but how much of a market will there be for this kind of creation?
- Waterluvian 1y ago
  How much of a market has there ever been for this kind of creation?
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]

SchemaLoad 1y ago

[flagged]

pfdietz 1y ago
So, how well does generative AI work on furry art?
- SchemaLoad 1y ago
  Mixed results. It can produce a generic piece of art, but people don't want a generic piece of art, they want their exact character with all markings and colors exactly correct. It also produces a very distinct style that everyone will pick up on and call you out on. You also won't be allowed to share your AI generated piece on most furry websites or group chats.

strogonoff 1y ago

It’s interesting how in music the same application of ML swamps companies like Suno in trillion dollar lawsuits, yet in graphics and text no one cares, even though graphics and text fall victim to the same sleight of hand. It feels like a big tech company can just ignore the law, unless another big company stands up against it (and hopefully helps the average Joe as a side-effect).

conception 1y ago
It’s not big tech. Money can ignore the law.
- itsanaccount 1y ago
  power can ignore the law, for which money is the most often proxy. we need to get back to talking about who has power and who doesn't as this pretending that we're outside of the nature of such things increasingly has no clothes.
- viraptor 1y ago
  Also, the low cost illustration business was already not amazing with the copyright law. Try ordering a few icons on Fiverr for example and see how many are repurposed from other sites. On the lower end it's not as much whether the assets are in part or fully stolen, but who does it.
  - strogonoff 1y ago
    Intuitively, there’s quite a big difference between a situation where some ‘artist’ may be sneakily repurposing preexisting work (I don’t think you’ll find a reputable artist doing that, and even a not-so-reputable repurposing artist would at least check that the license allows it), and a situation where a household name corporation only repurposes preexisting work without any regard for licensing.
  - RestartKernel 1y ago
    > Try ordering a few icons on Fiverr for example and see how many are repurposed from other sites. In which case would you order icons if they're not custom enough to be unrepurposable? Just curious, Iconify and some basic composition have been good enough for me so far.

__loam 1y ago

This is not a very substantial analysis of the industry and I'd be interested in a more comprehensive diagnosis. I believe there are coincidental factors in industries that typically employ illustrators and other artists that are affecting the market that are not AI, namely the market conditions since late 2022. To give the games industry as an example, the industry grew unnaturally during Covid, everyone thought that trend would continue and there was a lot of money and hiring thrown into it. The industry is returning to the normal trend line and it's still highly profitable, but layoffs are happening because executives are not hitting financial forecasts. Similarly, marketing budgets have been slashed across industries as the economy slowed down, and design work dried up in tech because nobody is raising money except the people who think they can replace creative labor with AI. One thing that I'm not seeing in this thread is the reputational risk of using AI, especially in artistic works like games. AI imagery is generic, lazy, and is seeing a backlash from the public. It's a negative quality marker even if it's trendy in tech spaces. There's definitely a lot of people in executive leadership and management who think they can replace all kinds of labor with AI right now, but from what I've seen, that has not played out as expected in the real workforce. The actual reason this guy is losing half his business is probably more due to people cutting back on discretionary spending more than AI taking jobs.

Papazsazsa 1y ago

Professions die in the face of competition, that's nothing new. What's more perilous is that the internet will soon cease to be a useful way to access and distribute knowledge, and has been transformed from a resource for learning and sharing into a clear-cut forest which nobody will replant. But hey, at least sama got a new gruebel forsey.

Nition 1y ago

Tangentially related: Recently I was thinking of commissioning an artist to do some album art for me. I had a specific concept in mind and it needed to have a certain look to it but I didn't mind if the actual art was physically painted or digital. What struck me is there's no website for hiring an artist. ArtStation has a Shop section (pre-made art for sale) but no Commissions section. Fiverr has some artists taking commissions but none I could find of really good quality, and there's AI art spam now as well (takes commissions but just sends you an AI prompt result). Reddit has two art commission subreddits but there aren't really many artists there. And both Fiverr and Reddit's main selling point is cheap art commissions, but I was happy to pay more for something good. Unless you know an artist already that suits the style you're after, and they're currently taking commissions, it seems quite hard to find anyone. I kinda thought I'd be able to go to, like, CommissionArt.com and filter by Traditional -> Oils -> Landscapes or whatever to find someone perfect. To everyone who says hire a real artist instead of using AI - where do you go to find them?

yablak 1y ago
Etsy
kaikai 1y ago
I’ve messaged people directly, after seeing their work on social media. I’m always ready to hear “no” but so far they’ve been willing. I’m also an artist, and I go out of my way to make art for acquaintances who ask.
gilleain 1y ago
Cara.app?
mediumsmart 1y ago
You could go to a spec work treadmill like 99designs and look for one. Browse the design categories and from there the portfolios of those artists whose work appeals to you and fit the style you are looking for and then go to their website because real artists have a website. deviant art, behance, dribble, art station …
chneu 1y ago

sheepscreek 1y ago

TL;DR Love the tech. Hate losing business.