New blog-post: "When online commenters 'detect' my art as AI"

→ https://www.davidrevoy.com/article1164/when-online-commenters-detect-my-art-as-ai

@davidrevoy Speaks a lot about "anti-AI" hysteria.
These people don't need art. They need an enemy to vent their frustration on.

If only we could simply appreciate art based on whether we like it, no matter who created it.

@skobkin @davidrevoy oh no the AI hatred is TOTALLY justified.

GenAI is lazy and ruining our livelihoods - I stopped creating my watercolours because I thought what is the point? I am feeding a machine without payment, I am not getitng royalties for the folks who created stuff on Midjourney and Stable Diffusion trained off my landscapes.

And it does matter how it's created. If it's created by stealing all our work - and yes my work like David's is in the training models, then it's bad and parasitic.

And terrible for the planet...all that water in a drought for the data centres...ugh.

@radioclash
> GenAI is lazy

Do you know how artists using models are working or are you basing that opinion just on your own experience of trying to generate images?
Because I know people who use models when working on their art and I can't call them or their art lazy. They can spend hours or dozens of hours depending on the image.

> ruining our livelyhood

Sure. Making art and software development accessible for everyone instead of keeping only for expensive chosen elite is ruining livelyhood.

I as a software developer was very inspired though, because now I can tell people that they can do some stuff themselves instead of paying me a lot of money. Or because I was able to find time to work on projects for local community thanks to GenAI. I guess happy people from local community are also shouldn't be happy because they're stealing my code... Oh, my code was free anyway, I just didn't have enough time. Well, maybe they're stealing from someone else. Anyway, bad people. Me being even worse.

> I stopped creating my watercolours because what's the point

Sure. When photography was invented, some artists stopped drawing because what's the point. Others just invented new styles and started a new era in history of art 🤷

> I'm feeding a machine without payment

Just as lot of other artists fed your biological neural network with their art without payment. They should've sued you, I guess.

> I'm not getting royalties

Like people who created art you were inspired by, but didn't even notice.

> it does matter how it's created

To you? Maybe. That's the point of art. Each one one sees what they want to see in the art. Someone will look at the picture and wouldn't care about the context around it. Someone else would not like the painting itself, but appreciate the history and what author lived through while drawing it.

> created by stealing all our work

Then be consistent to the end and be against anyone who didn't pay you looking at your art. Because they may get some ideas for free. Cover all your paintings with a fabric and show only when transaction is complete. I'm sure it'll be a good PR move.

> terrible for the planet

That's debatable.

It depends on the angle you look at it. What if I need a picture for some not very important presentation?
I can draw it myself. It's be awful, but still. I can order it from an artist. And I can ask a model to generate it.

Then what if I ask myself who'd make more CO2 while producing such an image (wasting water too, but let's focus on a single parameter).
I doubt wasting so much resources as biological artist would waste to produce an image which is short-lived is an efficient consumption.
But I also doubt that you'll be able to look at this from a different angle since you've already made your mind.

The water is also an old and debatable story. Check out something more interesting. Like sound pollution disturbing people living nearby (see Benn Jordan's YouTube for example).
But both water and sound are mostly a problem of building datacenters in cheaper locations. That's not an "AI" problem. That's bad regulation and corruption 🤷

@skobkin @radioclash This is what happens when people see art as a product to be consumed and not something human with a piece of the artist's soul put into every brush stroke.

I can buy a soulless $2 press-formed plate from a Chinese factory at Walmart and chuck it in the trash when it serves its purpose, but I'd much rather buy a hand-thrown piece where I can see the artist's fingerprints in the stoneware and talk to him about the nature of his glazes, and then pass it on as an heirloom.

@ToonLink

This is what happens when people see art as a product to be consumed and not something human with a piece of the artist's soul put into every brush stroke.

This is a false dichotomy.
You don't know how much effort and time people who use models in their art put into it.

If you see "AI"-assisted art as "they just write a prompt and get an image to post", then you don't know how the process works.

If we're talking only about simple pictures people like me can use, then yes. I'm no artist. And I don't really care how would you classify it. Although even I can spend several hours to work on a preview for my podcast episode. So if you're thinking that every generated image is effortless and thoughtless, then you're also wrong. But in this case it your loss.

@radioclash

@skobkin @radioclash You know, I see that being said all the time: that art is an ivory tower guarded by Elites from the public who are incapable of spending hours of blood and sweat on making art... but that making AI output takes hours of blood and sweat which should be respected. It doesn't mesh.

It just sounds to me like an ad hoc justification. It's easier to stand tall on the backs of others and dump the fast-fashion of art onto the landscape when it's spun as an act of defiance.

@ToonLink
Well, you wouldn't know until you try doing something more complicated than asking ChatGPT to draw you a picture. But then you'll probably feel an urge to rationalize something like "those hours of work are not worthy" or "using AI makes it lose it's value", or something else.
It'd be very close to any other "you're doing it wrong" debate in the field where there's no objective "right" or "wrong", but people still cling to their old ways and ostracize anyone who does something else.
At this stage it makes no sense to argue with such a person because it's already not just a thought, but a defensive mechanism.
Well, almost no sense. I usually still do that to some extent because I don't want people around to think that it's the only one possible opinion.
@radioclash

@skobkin @radioclash Well, no. I'd rather spend the effort making something that's actually mine. It gives me no joy to have a machine output the artwork for me. And then I have an image that isn't any different from the rest of the machine-made stuff.

I'm actually not worried about my livelihood, because people see value in my work. What I worry about are people losing contracts because they have to prove that they actually made it. Clients won't work with AI because it's uncopyrightable.

@ToonLink

Well, no. I'd rather spend the effort making something that's actually mine. It gives me no joy to have a machine output the artwork for me. And then I have an image that isn't any different from the rest of the machine-made stuff.

Figures. Because if you had tried, you would've understood how much of what you wrote is wrong.

Can you honestly say (at least to yourself) that you understand a modern artist pipeline and how models could be integrated into it? Do you know what inpainting is? Do you know that models are often used to draw a draft over a pose sketches drawn by the artist manually? Do you know how exactly models are applied on different stages of production?

Just in case, I'm not an artist myself, I just happen to know a couple of people who draw and use "AI" models in their work. So you shouldn't take my words as being completely accurate.
I usually use simplest options like ChatGPT or locally hosted Invoke with Flux/StableDiffusion to do something non-complex for myself and don't really care if someone would call that an art or not.

What I worry about are people losing contracts because they have to prove that they actually made it.

This is a good point, but for me it's again a human problem, not an "AI" problem. It's basically an "ad hominem". If I saw a good work I like, I wouldn't think if the author used a model or not. I'd pay them anyway (if price was in my budget).
Making an author do everything manually on every stage just for the sake of my ego is a strange concept to me. Unless I pay them an enormous amount of money, of course.

I'm actually not worried about my livelihood, because people see value in my work.

That's good. And I honestly wish you having reasonable people around you who won't be questioning your work for strange reasons regardless of how exactly you do it.

Clients won't work with AI because it's uncopyrightable.

That's debatable and yet another thing that we as a humanity should work on. And mass hysteria and misunderstanding doesn't help here at all.
Unfortunately, knowing people, I don't think the problem would be solved soon. Such problems should be approached with a cool head and currently isn't a time when people can do that.

@radioclash

@skobkin (Adding in, because my character limit is very small and I didn't feel satisfied with the promptness of my response, because your specific question deserved more attention: I know about photo-bashing, and I know about using models as an base to paint over. David has a video where he teaches people to do exactly that, where he explains the basics of Blender and shows people how to build a setting and props to paint over. The difference is that he does it all himself.)

@skobkin Here's an unfinished painting I did, where the table and dishware were done in Blender. I built the models, I rigged the lighting, I tweaked the arrangement to fit a mistake I made in the characters' perspective, in a way my client preferred. It sticks out like a sore thumb, at this stage. I could run it into AI so that the models are integrated smoothly with the hand-laid brush strokes, but I won't. I would learn nothing, and it would destroy the legitimacy of the rest of the painting.

@ToonLink

Here's an unfinished painting I did

Nice painting. Not ideal, yes, but nothing is.

I can't agree almost on everything except that delegating such tasks to the model will not help you learn to so that yourself. Which is objectively true.
That's a very good, legitimate and respectable reason not to use models in your work now.

To me this "it would destroy" argument makes no sense though. But it's your art and I have no right (and I see no point) to say how to do it.

I'm an artist. Yes, I understand the concept of making art.

That's not what I asked, but ok.

It's not debatable, it's already legal fact in the US.

Yes, it is. Not all the world is US. US isn't always right.

Also this is another matter. There are a lot of dumb laws in the US. And in other countries too. This doesn't mean that anyone should just agree with it and behave like it's the law of physics. And even more, it doesn't mean that laws should not be debatable.

For example there's a famous section 1201 of DMCA which basically tells you that in some cases when you want to keep owning what you have bought, you may go to jail. Something tells me that you'll probably agree that this law should be reformed or abolished entirely.

So yes, I think that some laws regarding models usage that are appearing now are being made by populists and harmful to the humanity. Like section 1201 of DMCA.

And just in case, I wasn't saying anything about legality of the matter or about business decisions of clients. Those are completely different parts of the topic and came not from "AI" itself, but from how people are reacting to it. And I won't overstate if I say that people often overreact to things (someone wished me death in this thread 🤷).

Also your arguments are much closer to me that of anyone else who I saw in such discussions. Because they're basically not "anti-AI, go die techbro", but "I won't use AI because X, Y and Z". And it's completely fine with me. I can relate to that, respect and support that.

@skobkin Yeah, in all truth, I don't care if people want to use AI for their stuff. I understand the dopamine spike of visually seeing your idea, and I think people creating images for their own use is relatively harmless.

I don't think it will destroy the art industry. I think people who want to make money on AI will fill the recesses of Fiverr, and the rest of us will thrive elsewhere.

The problem is mostly in the commercial field, and artists dealing with having to defend their reputation.

@ToonLink Agreed 🤝

My initial reply was about that too. Although I could've expressed it better (not sure if I wanted to). People are losing their minds around this topic in a way that even David receives such comments.
I can't agree with David on everything, but I don't think the situation in OP is OK. But I also don't think that anything but time and civil discussions can help with that.

@skobkin Yeah, there is indeed a panic that is understandable but I don't find realistic. It would have been in the early days, when people were literally losing their jobs as their bosses replaced them with AI, and no one knew where it would lead. But the hype is starting to settle, and there is an overall backlash that's opening up, and commercial clients are seeing the reality of the marketability of their choices. We'll find our niches, as we always have.

(Second post incoming.)