Gaming

This is definitely a time when it’s important to capitalize the first letters in the name of proper nouns.

Wow that name is so bad, it’s just a description. No wonder these uncreative twats need AI to make art. They can’t even think of a cool name for their studio.

they want to leverage a mind-like thing (either a human brain or a trained AI) that has internalized a ton off content that it can use to generate new content from, but they don’t ever want to pay them or treat them like a living being.

That's anybody, really. Everything you've ever accomplished has depended upon the insights and knowledge of countless other people who never saw a dime from you for it. That's part of living in a society and it's a crucial part of how it advances.

Or maybe it’s simply a false equivalence we all need to accept. Maybe creativity can exist independent from a conscious brain, or maybe it’s just a vulnerability in human consciousness to look at these stochastic arrangements of data and say “that looks inspired”.

I think that most of the value we get from creativity isn't from the mechanics of creating something. And I think that by removing the mechanical barrier, we unlock that value much more widely across humanity. Art is a form of communication. Will we ever feel the same connection when that communication comes wholesale from an AI? I don't know. But we're certainly not there yet.

A bit of a quibble, but I think it's a stretch to say that current-gen AI is mind-like. I'm of the opinion that, given the way current AI works, there isn't any "creativity" in how midjourney/etc. generates images. Though you could make a solid argument for a detailed prompt being creative, or for a functional/algorithmic AI being a creative tool of the coder, in neither case would I say that the source of the creativity is the computer.

Then again, legal definitions would only allow creativity to come from humans, but I think other animal species are currently capable of creativity/art, in the sense of "do they do actions for purposes other than survival or reproduction."

this assumes that there will still be human produced art to train on to improve the genAI model when there isnt any incentive for humans to learn to make art when it can be used for training

Fears like this never pan out. People don't stop doing things just because of AI existing, and we still have people doing things like making vinyl records even though CDs exist or whatever, or taking old-fashioned photographs.

Artists are going to still exist and they're going to still be drawing art and they're going to continue to share it. It may take a chunk out of the number of people who want to learn art, but that's life and the people training these AI will adapt to it.

And even if they somehow totally disappear, people will find plenty of new and exciting ways to continue to push the boundaries of what AI can do, because at that point being able to do that will be what gives you a competitive advantage in the world.

OpenAI’s Terms of Use

Open AI is a shitty unethical company. Never use them as a litmus test.

And unfortunately despite what is right or wrong, lawsuits still managed to determine how behavior happens in our modern system, and groups like the MAFIAA (the music and film industry association of America) are happily willing to abuse the law to get their way so that they can make as much money as possible as well.

AI art of any reasonable quality still requires significant human input. I don't just mean prompt engineering, I mean actually having an artist using more traditional techniques to make adjustments or provide a base for the AI work. The output of raw AI art on its own can be impressive at times, but it's not consistent enough to maintain a style for any sizeable piece of work.

If you want to be able to create a bunch of assets that look like they were designed for the same project with AI, somebody still needs to do some art.

What AI does do, though, is give those artists the ability to exponentially increase their productivity independently, with no particular need for the sort of labor-hour organization that a corporation provides.

It should be telling that the corporate media spin on this is to attack it and to publicize voices that criticize it, but never those that express nuance. That's because it terrifies every useless corporate lackey who understands its actual potential to empower independent artists of all kinds.

Understand that this is not an IP right that OpenAI is defining and promising enforcement of, but simply a contracted obligation. As it currently stands in the US, there is no property right in the outputs of a generative model (like a gpt or sd).

Note that ToS are not legally binding in any way, it just means they reserve the right to deny you use of their service for doing so. They probably cannot (and have not tried) to sue anyone for commercial training use of their models.

Artists aren't lawyers and don't want to be. Except for the ones that are. But that isn't most of us.

Artists make art. If you want to look for the people who like to make policy, look to the jackasses in suits who sit around having meetings about meetings all day to justify scalping the work made by actual artists. The same kinds of people who fund stories like this blatantly uninformed hit piece.

Fuck them and the horse they rode in on.

At some point the line will have to be discovered, because the use of AI for art isn't going away. Suits can whine about it all they want. Art doesn't really care.

Yup, the @ sign does it.