I keep seeing this kind of argument, and I understand, but I disagree.
The comparison isn't between using an ai service and doing it yourself, but rather between using an ai service and commissioning an actual artist. I can afford $20/mo for infinite mediocrity. I cannot afford $20/image (or more depending on the artist).
Of course, there is a flaw in my argument, in that I was assuming that the techbro was being honest. People aggressively pushing dalle or midjourney or whatever aren't interested in "making art accessible". They hate art and artists, and want to force creative types to be miserable doing jobs they hate. I have to remind myself that this is the kind of person that the comic is complaining about.
As much as i hate AI generated art, this is a shit argument. You can run an AI on your phone (which you would have anyway) without a subscription. You can also doodle on your phone for free.
Also if you're not an idiot you can buy a workable smart phone for 100$ if you want
Yeah I feel it would be better if they they have shown the sheer cost of making these models and their upkeep instead.
It's perfectly fine price to use in cancer treatment. But when they mention AI girlfriends I want to scream.
It's not even the cost of training the AI. A better argument is that using AI for art is pure fucking laziness in 99.9% of cases.
Also, why have an AI waifu when you can have a real one and touch grass at the same time?
why are you assuming that someone who wants to make art would have a phone anyway? some people are poor
Hehe "borrowed"
Oh yeah, I forgot everyone is born with inmate talent, time and privilege.
I know what I want to draw, but there's something missing between that idea and the paper. I can imagine what I want it to look like, in a way, but only as a vague reification of a concept, not as something made of lines and colors, and it's useless for trying to get it down on paper. I inevitably end up with something so far from my original idea that it's massively discouraging.
I expect that I'd develop a better eye for this sort of thing if I was to practice it for years, but it's very difficult to feel motivated to do that when you can't produce anything remotely like what you were going for.
“innate talent” is a pervasive idea that undercuts years of work and practice. art is HARD and most people just don’t find the doing part to be fulfilling.
everyone wants to make a masterpiece, but no one is born with some kinda artist-gene that gives them the ability to do so as if by magic. outside of savants at least, but that’s a whole other thing lmao
Yes, talent is oversold and used as an excuse to often HOWEVER there ARE differences in people's skill level and rate of learning. Especially if learning disabilities are involved.
I really really wanna draw regularly. And i practice regularly have for years. Ive gotten much better than couple years ago me but overall my art still sucks (others confirm not just the usual artist hates own work) and it's mainly because i have a learning disability that affects my spacial reasoning and ability to visualize shapes.
This may come as a surprise to some people but that makes drawing very difficult, i can't get proportions correct and I struggle to find shapes. My best drawings are ones that i practically traced the initial outline to get the shapes. AI generated art absolutely makes getting an idea out of my head more accessible. And i can then trace the outline of the ai art and draw the rest myself.
I know people hate it but just blindly saying "anyone can draw just do it bro" is basically just as worthless of an argument that ignores reality
I forgot every artist had all of those things in spades
To be blunt, I think the powers behind project 2025 do believe the common man has inmate talent #modernamericanslavery
… but I suspect you meant "innate" talent
wrong, you're just too much of a coward to make shitty art and say it's yours. it's a hurdle that all of us had to get over
I have a pretty quick ~$500 phone (snapdragon 8 gen 3) and tried this local AI app once (just something on fdroid, you could probably find it) but the experience was pretty terrible. Like a minute per image on the small local models from 2022. I'm sure you could do better, but my conclusion is that an $800 phone is as useful as a $60 phone for generative ai because you're going to have to use some remote service anyways.
What does that phrase even mean? Asking something else to make something for you is not artistic, so it can't be that. People who commission other humans to make things aren't suddenly artists. If they literally just mean consumption of images, it's not as if web searching for images has been difficult for the last couple decades at this point. If you don't care about art at all and just want content, there are lifetimes of things you could look for readily available to indulge. Just start typing and away you go! Literally the only thing that has changed is that now you are accelerating dead internet theory and removing human interaction from what you consume. Of course, if you don't care about art that is a moot point, since human self-expression and communication never meant anything to you in the first place.
At best, the phrase should be specialized, on demand consumption of niche content is more accessible, not art.
Artists understand that art is primarily about self-expression. Non-artists often instead think art is about producing nice pictures. When all nice pictures come with self-expression baked in, the two groups seem to be on the same page, but when a computer makes nice pictures that are completely devoid of self-expression, we find out they're not on the same page at all.
I wholeheartedly agree with you, OOP is mocking the supposed barriers to art that AI users will bring up as an excuse to use AI.
i think they just want it to look impressive without the big effort to learn how to make it look impressive yourself. that kind of accessibility.
thats part of the reason why i doodle around with ai, but you can definetly make it into self expression if you know how to express yourself.
If what you need is a constant stream of ever-changing imagery that you don’t glance at for more than a second or two before moving on, I’m sure AI is great for that. So are jangling keys and those slime ASMR videos. But if that’s what you want from viewing or making art, you are an alien to me.
I wish we could start arguing about the ethics of compensation for training data and requiring a concrete way to both protect opt-out, as well as compensate those who contribute, rather than argue about a product that absolutely does have a user base (as is continually proven). I don't think there's a win against the demand, but you can win the ethics battle and force better regulations.
GenAI advocates would rather get rid of IP altogether, though. They claim they're all running ethical models already and it's perfect, but they also want artists' right to opt-out to not exist. Nevermind compensation, or the need for opt-in, we can't even agree on the importance of consent.
And robocallers/spam callers would rather get rid of bans on automated call systems and enforcement of Do Not Call lists. Doesn't mean we have to do what they want, and it would be an extremely ineffective argument to argue for a ban on phones or even just a ban on automated call systems connected to phones. Both are tools with extremely legitimate use cases that can and have been exploited for malicious and unethical means. Welcome to the complexity of modern living. I see you as an ally, but I warn that we'll need to be specific in our language and our desires in order to shape the discussion properly, else you'll just end up categorized with the "nutjobs wanting to ban phones" (embellished simile I'm using to give you an example in a different context) and you're going to lose a lot of momentum from the legitimately ethical people who are on your side.
I don't think there's really a "demand" per se. It seems to me like the vast vast majority of AI "art" and text is spam. Many of these users seem to be using cheap/free versions of whatever LLM or image generators.
OpenAI is by far the most popular, but also said that even on the most expensive $200/month plan, they are losing money.
Is this "demand" going to exist if and when they inevitably raise the price?
If and when Facebook makes changes to how they monetize posts, will the shrimp Jesus spammers move on to the next scheme?
Will the businesses using AI for customer service and data entry keep using it if it costs more than using human employees?
This whole "industry" is teetering on a knifes edge.
That viewpoint is extremely short sighted. You're missing the field for the trees. Open source models that people run on their local hardware with open weights absolutely do exist and function well. As an example of demand, I personally have a DnD group that uses it for token generation. It gives a far deeper sense of immersion for our custom campaigns where we would otherwise not be able to afford to commission custom imagery, and yes these are generated locally on an m1 mac mini. People viewing it as a replacement for custom commissioned art are, at least with its current and foreseeable capabilities, incorrect in their assumption. It's merely an augmentation and tool that fills niche low-cost low-"risk" voids. I assure you, for example, that there is absolutely some kid out there who has generated an image of either their imaginary friend or custom super hero. This has likely brought them great joy, especially if they're unable to otherwise embody their idea due to lack of skill or funding. You have to look at the tool from all angles. A car, in isolation, is a multi-ton inheritia machine capable of unspeakable atrocities, yet we cohabitate with them every single day because we understand life is complex, there are benefits to doing so, and a single view of a tool does not reflect it's reality.
I agree with the points about ethics and compensation, however.
So a couple of things. One, he's right and I agree with him on his first point. There is no such thing as a "ai artist" or a prompt director or whatever you'd like to call it. The machine is not complex enough in use to need a specialized person like that, and I wouldn't say they were an artist even if it were. Second, I literally follow artists who use ai just for finishing details on their work, sometimes it's as simple as fur renders that they don't want to add by hand so they involve an ai renderer to apply the finishing layer, and these are artists I've been following since before ai "art" (image generation) existed. So he's just straight up wrong about there not being a single real artist using ai. It's a tool, like any other. You can have your negative opinion on it, but it's honestly useless to be so hostile to something just because it scares you and you don't understand it, so I'm not going to watch the video past that.
You could run it on your own PC instead
Then instead of a subscription, you're paying for a gpu and power. Not everyone has the money for a computer, but pretty much anyone can afford a pencil and paper.
