10 ms·

> Did Photoshop kill graphic artists? No, but AI did.

tptacek 1y ago
This, as the article makes clear, is a concern I am alert and receptive to. Ban production of anything visual from an LLM; I'll vote for it. Just make sure they can still generate Mermaid charts and Graphviz diagrams, so they still apply to developers.
- hatefulmoron 1y ago
  What is unique about graphic design that warrants such extraordinary care? Should we just ban technology that approaches "replacement" territory? What about the people, real or imagined, that earn a living making Graphviz diagrams?
  - tptacek 1y ago
    The article discusses this.
    - hatefulmoron 1y ago
      Does it? It admits at the top that art is special for no given reason, then it claims that programmers don't care about copyright and they deserve what's coming to them, or something.. "Artificial intelligence is profoundly — and probably unfairly — threatening to visual artists" This feels asserted without any real evidence
      - tptacek 1y ago
        LLMs immediately and completely displace the bread-and-butter replacement-tier illustration and design work that makes up much of that profession, and does so by effectively counterfeiting creative expression. An coding agent writes a SQL join or a tree traversal. The two things are not the same. Far more importantly, though, artists haven't spent the last quarter century working to eliminate protections for IPR. Software developers have. Finally, though I'm not stuck on this: I simply don't agree with the case being made for LLMs violating IPR. I have had the pleasure, many times over the last 16 years, of expressing my discomfort with nerd piracy culture and the coercive might-makes-right arguments underpinning it. I know how the argument goes over here (like a lead balloon). You can agree with me or disagree. But I've earned my bona fides here. The search bar will avail.
        hatefulmoron 1y ago
        > LLMs immediately and completely displace the bread-and-butter replacement-tier illustration and design work that makes up much of that profession And so what? Tell it to the Graphviz diagram creators, entry level Javascript programmers, horse carriage drivers, etc. What's special? > .. and does so by effectively counterfeiting creative expression What does this actually mean, though? ChatGPT isn't claiming to have "creative expression" in this sense. Everybody knows that it's generating an image using mathematics executed on a GPU. It's creating images. Like an LLM creates text. It creates artwork in the same sense that it creates novels. > Far more importantly, though, artists haven't spent the last quarter century working to eliminate protections for IPR. Software developers have. Programmers are very particular about licenses in opposition to your theory. Copyleft licensing leans heavily on enforcing copyright. Besides, I hear artists complain about the duration of copyright frequently. Pointing to some subset of programmers that are against IPR is just nutpicking in any case.
        tptacek 1y ago
        Oh, for sure. Programmers are very particular about licenses. For code.
        hatefulmoron 1y ago
        I get it, you have an axe to grind against some subset of programmers who are "nerds" in a "piracy culture". Artists don't deserve special protections. It sucks for your family members, I really mean that, but they will have to adapt with everybody else.
        mwcampbell 1y ago
        I disagree with you on this. Artists, writers, and programmers deserve equal protection, and this means that tptacek is right to criticize nerd piracy culture. In other words, we programmers should respect artists and writers too.
        1y ago
      - palmfacehn 1y ago
        >This feels asserted without any real evidence Things like this are expressions of preference. The discussion will typically devolve into restatements of the original preference and appeals to special circumstances.
  - omnimus 1y ago
    It’s more question of how it does what it does. By making statistical model out of work of humans that it now aims to replace. I think graphic designers would be a lot less angry if AIs were trained on licensed work… thats how the system worked up until now after all.
    - hatefulmoron 1y ago
      I get where you're coming from, but given that LLMs are trained on every available written word regardless of license, there's no meaningful distinction. Companies training LLMs for programming and writing show the same disregard for copyright as they do for graphic design. Therefore, graphic designers aren't owed special consideration that the author is unwilling to extend to anybody else.
      - omnimus 1y ago
        Of course i think the same about text, code, sound or any other LLMs output. The author is wrong if they are unwilling to give same measure to everything. The fact this is new normal now for everything does not make it right.
    - fennecfoxy 1y ago
      I don't think most artists would be any less angry & scared if AI was trained on licensed work. The rhetoric would just shift from mostly "they're breashing copyright!" to more of the "machine art is soulless and lacks true human creativity!" line. I have a lot of artist friends but I still appreciate that diffusion models are (and will be with further refinement) incredibly useful tools. What we're seeing is just the commoditisation of an industry in the same way that we have many, many times before through the industrial era, etc.
      - omnimus 1y ago
        It actually doesn't matter how would they feel. In currently accepted copyright framework if the works were licensed they couldn't do much about it. But right now they can be upset because suddenly new normal is massive copyright violation. It's very clear that without the massive amount of unlicensed work the LLMs simply wouldn't work well. The AI industry is just trying to run with it hoping nobody will notice.
- throw310822 1y ago
  > Ban production of anything visual from an LLM That's a bit beside the point, which is that AI will not be just another tool, it will take ALL the jobs, one after another. I do agree it's absolutely great though, and being against it is dumb, unless you want to actually ban it- which is impossible.
- speleding 1y ago
  Hasn't that ship sailed? How would any type of ban work when the user can just redirect the banned query to a model in a different jurisdiction, for example, Deepseek? I don't think this genie is going back into the bottle, we're going to have to learn to live with it.
- victorbjorklund 1y ago
  Why not the same for texts? Why are shitty visual art more worth than the best texts from beloved authors? And what about cooking robots? Should we not protect the culinary arts?
- GoblinSlayer 1y ago
  On the other hand it can revive dead artists. How about AI generated content going gpl in 100 days after release?
ttyyzz 1y ago
AI didn't kill creativity nor intuition. It much rather lack's those things completely. Artists can make use of AI but they can't make themselves obsolete just yet.
- throw310822 1y ago
  > AI didn't kill creativity nor intuition. It much rather lack's those things completely Quite the opposite, I'd say that it's what it has most. What are "hallucinations" if not just a display of immense creativity and intuition? "Here, I'll make up this API call that's I haven't read about anywhere but sounds right".
  - ttyyzz 1y ago
    I disagree. AI is good at pattern recognition, but still struggles to grasp causual relationships. These Made-up api calls are just a pattern in the large data set. Dont confuse it with creativity.
    - throw310822 1y ago
      I would definitely confuse that with "intuition"- which I would describe it as seeing and using weak, unstated relationships, aka patterns. That's my intuition, at least. As to creativity, that's something I know too little about to define it, but it seems reasonable that it's even more "fuzzy" than intuition. On the opposite, causal relationships are closer to hard logic, which is what LLMs struggle with- as humans do, too.
    - MrScruff 1y ago
      A lot of art is about pattern recognition. We represent or infer objects or ideas through some indirection or abstraction. The viewer or listener's brain (depending on their level of sophistication) fills in the gaps, and the greater the level of indirection (or complexity of pattern recognition required) the greater the emotional payoff. This also applies to humour.
- rvnx 1y ago
Hoasi 1y ago
Well, this is only partially true. My optimistic take is that it will redefine the field. There is still a future for resourceful, attentive, and prepared graphic artists.
ZaoLahma 1y ago
It will not. I'm an engineer through and through. I can ask an LLM to generate images just fine, but for a given target audience for a certain purpose? I would have no clue. None what so ever. Ask me to generate an image to use in advertisement for Nuka Cola, targeting tired parents? I genuinely have no idea of where to even start. I have absolutely no understanding of the advertisement domain, and I don't know what tired parents find visually pleasing, or what they would "vibe" with. My feeble attempts would be absolute trash compared to a professional artist who uses AI to express their vision. The artist would be able to prompt so much more effectively and correct the things that they know from experience will not work. It's the exact same as with coding with an AI - it will be trash unless you understand the hows and the whys.
- fennecbutt 1y ago
  Have you seen modern advertisements lmao? Most of the time the ad has nothing to do with the actual product, it's an absolute shitshow. Although I've seen a little American TV ads before, that shit's basically radioactively coloured, same as your fizzy drinks.
- throw310822 1y ago
  > Ask me to generate an image to use in advertisement for Nuka Cola, targeting tired parents? I genuinely have no idea of where to even start. I believe you, did you try asking ChatGPT or Claude though? You can ask them a list of highest-level themes and requirements and further refine from there.
rerdavies 1y ago
In actual fact, photoshop did kill graphic arts. There was an entire industry filled with people who had highly-developed skillsets that suddenly became obsolete. Painters for example. Before photoshop, I had to go out of house to get artwork done; now I just do it myself.
- hiddenfinance 1y ago
  Even worse!!! What is consider art work now days are whatever that can be made on some vector based program. This really also stifles creativities, pigeonholing what is consider creative or art work into something can be used for machine learning. Whatever can be replaced by AI will, cause it is easier for business people to deal with than real people.
  - hmcq6 1y ago
    Most of the vector art I see is minimalism. I can’t see this as anything but an argument that minimalism “stifles creativity” > vector art pigeonholes art into something that can be used for machine learning Look around, AI companies are doing just fine with raster art. The only thing we agree on is that this will hurt workers
- hmcq6 1y ago
  No, it didn’t. It changed the skill set but it didn’t “kill the graphic arts” Rotoscoping in photoshop is rotoscoping. Superimposing an image on another in photoshop is the same as with film, it’s just faster and cheaper to try again. Digital painting is painting. AI doesn’t require an artist to make “art”. It doesn’t require skill. It’s different than other tools

This, as the article makes clear, is a concern I am alert and receptive to. Ban production of anything visual from an LLM; I'll vote for it. Just make sure they can still generate Mermaid charts and Graphviz diagrams, so they still apply to developers.

hatefulmoron 1y ago
What is unique about graphic design that warrants such extraordinary care? Should we just ban technology that approaches "replacement" territory? What about the people, real or imagined, that earn a living making Graphviz diagrams?
- tptacek 1y ago
  The article discusses this.
  - hatefulmoron 1y ago
    Does it? It admits at the top that art is special for no given reason, then it claims that programmers don't care about copyright and they deserve what's coming to them, or something.. "Artificial intelligence is profoundly — and probably unfairly — threatening to visual artists" This feels asserted without any real evidence
    - tptacek 1y ago
      LLMs immediately and completely displace the bread-and-butter replacement-tier illustration and design work that makes up much of that profession, and does so by effectively counterfeiting creative expression. An coding agent writes a SQL join or a tree traversal. The two things are not the same. Far more importantly, though, artists haven't spent the last quarter century working to eliminate protections for IPR. Software developers have. Finally, though I'm not stuck on this: I simply don't agree with the case being made for LLMs violating IPR. I have had the pleasure, many times over the last 16 years, of expressing my discomfort with nerd piracy culture and the coercive might-makes-right arguments underpinning it. I know how the argument goes over here (like a lead balloon). You can agree with me or disagree. But I've earned my bona fides here. The search bar will avail.
      - hatefulmoron 1y ago
        > LLMs immediately and completely displace the bread-and-butter replacement-tier illustration and design work that makes up much of that profession And so what? Tell it to the Graphviz diagram creators, entry level Javascript programmers, horse carriage drivers, etc. What's special? > .. and does so by effectively counterfeiting creative expression What does this actually mean, though? ChatGPT isn't claiming to have "creative expression" in this sense. Everybody knows that it's generating an image using mathematics executed on a GPU. It's creating images. Like an LLM creates text. It creates artwork in the same sense that it creates novels. > Far more importantly, though, artists haven't spent the last quarter century working to eliminate protections for IPR. Software developers have. Programmers are very particular about licenses in opposition to your theory. Copyleft licensing leans heavily on enforcing copyright. Besides, I hear artists complain about the duration of copyright frequently. Pointing to some subset of programmers that are against IPR is just nutpicking in any case.
        tptacek 1y ago
        Oh, for sure. Programmers are very particular about licenses. For code.
        hatefulmoron 1y ago
        I get it, you have an axe to grind against some subset of programmers who are "nerds" in a "piracy culture". Artists don't deserve special protections. It sucks for your family members, I really mean that, but they will have to adapt with everybody else.
        mwcampbell 1y ago
        I disagree with you on this. Artists, writers, and programmers deserve equal protection, and this means that tptacek is right to criticize nerd piracy culture. In other words, we programmers should respect artists and writers too.
        1y ago
    - palmfacehn 1y ago
      >This feels asserted without any real evidence Things like this are expressions of preference. The discussion will typically devolve into restatements of the original preference and appeals to special circumstances.
- omnimus 1y ago
  It’s more question of how it does what it does. By making statistical model out of work of humans that it now aims to replace. I think graphic designers would be a lot less angry if AIs were trained on licensed work… thats how the system worked up until now after all.
  - hatefulmoron 1y ago
    I get where you're coming from, but given that LLMs are trained on every available written word regardless of license, there's no meaningful distinction. Companies training LLMs for programming and writing show the same disregard for copyright as they do for graphic design. Therefore, graphic designers aren't owed special consideration that the author is unwilling to extend to anybody else.
    - omnimus 1y ago
      Of course i think the same about text, code, sound or any other LLMs output. The author is wrong if they are unwilling to give same measure to everything. The fact this is new normal now for everything does not make it right.
  - fennecfoxy 1y ago
    I don't think most artists would be any less angry & scared if AI was trained on licensed work. The rhetoric would just shift from mostly "they're breashing copyright!" to more of the "machine art is soulless and lacks true human creativity!" line. I have a lot of artist friends but I still appreciate that diffusion models are (and will be with further refinement) incredibly useful tools. What we're seeing is just the commoditisation of an industry in the same way that we have many, many times before through the industrial era, etc.
    - omnimus 1y ago
      It actually doesn't matter how would they feel. In currently accepted copyright framework if the works were licensed they couldn't do much about it. But right now they can be upset because suddenly new normal is massive copyright violation. It's very clear that without the massive amount of unlicensed work the LLMs simply wouldn't work well. The AI industry is just trying to run with it hoping nobody will notice.
throw310822 1y ago
> Ban production of anything visual from an LLM That's a bit beside the point, which is that AI will not be just another tool, it will take ALL the jobs, one after another. I do agree it's absolutely great though, and being against it is dumb, unless you want to actually ban it- which is impossible.
speleding 1y ago
Hasn't that ship sailed? How would any type of ban work when the user can just redirect the banned query to a model in a different jurisdiction, for example, Deepseek? I don't think this genie is going back into the bottle, we're going to have to learn to live with it.
victorbjorklund 1y ago
Why not the same for texts? Why are shitty visual art more worth than the best texts from beloved authors? And what about cooking robots? Should we not protect the culinary arts?
GoblinSlayer 1y ago
On the other hand it can revive dead artists. How about AI generated content going gpl in 100 days after release?

ttyyzz 1y ago

AI didn't kill creativity nor intuition. It much rather lack's those things completely. Artists can make use of AI but they can't make themselves obsolete just yet.

throw310822 1y ago
> AI didn't kill creativity nor intuition. It much rather lack's those things completely Quite the opposite, I'd say that it's what it has most. What are "hallucinations" if not just a display of immense creativity and intuition? "Here, I'll make up this API call that's I haven't read about anywhere but sounds right".
- ttyyzz 1y ago
  I disagree. AI is good at pattern recognition, but still struggles to grasp causual relationships. These Made-up api calls are just a pattern in the large data set. Dont confuse it with creativity.
  - throw310822 1y ago
    I would definitely confuse that with "intuition"- which I would describe it as seeing and using weak, unstated relationships, aka patterns. That's my intuition, at least. As to creativity, that's something I know too little about to define it, but it seems reasonable that it's even more "fuzzy" than intuition. On the opposite, causal relationships are closer to hard logic, which is what LLMs struggle with- as humans do, too.
  - MrScruff 1y ago
    A lot of art is about pattern recognition. We represent or infer objects or ideas through some indirection or abstraction. The viewer or listener's brain (depending on their level of sophistication) fills in the gaps, and the greater the level of indirection (or complexity of pattern recognition required) the greater the emotional payoff. This also applies to humour.
rvnx 1y ago

Hoasi 1y ago

Well, this is only partially true. My optimistic take is that it will redefine the field. There is still a future for resourceful, attentive, and prepared graphic artists.

ZaoLahma 1y ago

It will not. I'm an engineer through and through. I can ask an LLM to generate images just fine, but for a given target audience for a certain purpose? I would have no clue. None what so ever. Ask me to generate an image to use in advertisement for Nuka Cola, targeting tired parents? I genuinely have no idea of where to even start. I have absolutely no understanding of the advertisement domain, and I don't know what tired parents find visually pleasing, or what they would "vibe" with. My feeble attempts would be absolute trash compared to a professional artist who uses AI to express their vision. The artist would be able to prompt so much more effectively and correct the things that they know from experience will not work. It's the exact same as with coding with an AI - it will be trash unless you understand the hows and the whys.

fennecbutt 1y ago
Have you seen modern advertisements lmao? Most of the time the ad has nothing to do with the actual product, it's an absolute shitshow. Although I've seen a little American TV ads before, that shit's basically radioactively coloured, same as your fizzy drinks.
throw310822 1y ago
> Ask me to generate an image to use in advertisement for Nuka Cola, targeting tired parents? I genuinely have no idea of where to even start. I believe you, did you try asking ChatGPT or Claude though? You can ask them a list of highest-level themes and requirements and further refine from there.

rerdavies 1y ago

In actual fact, photoshop did kill graphic arts. There was an entire industry filled with people who had highly-developed skillsets that suddenly became obsolete. Painters for example. Before photoshop, I had to go out of house to get artwork done; now I just do it myself.

hiddenfinance 1y ago
Even worse!!! What is consider art work now days are whatever that can be made on some vector based program. This really also stifles creativities, pigeonholing what is consider creative or art work into something can be used for machine learning. Whatever can be replaced by AI will, cause it is easier for business people to deal with than real people.
- hmcq6 1y ago
  Most of the vector art I see is minimalism. I can’t see this as anything but an argument that minimalism “stifles creativity” > vector art pigeonholes art into something that can be used for machine learning Look around, AI companies are doing just fine with raster art. The only thing we agree on is that this will hurt workers
hmcq6 1y ago
No, it didn’t. It changed the skill set but it didn’t “kill the graphic arts” Rotoscoping in photoshop is rotoscoping. Superimposing an image on another in photoshop is the same as with film, it’s just faster and cheaper to try again. Digital painting is painting. AI doesn’t require an artist to make “art”. It doesn’t require skill. It’s different than other tools