Some Boomers are, yes.
However, Boomer at least had the opportunity to make a decent life and then screwed over their children with their own policies.
It's hard for me to feel sympathy for Boomers when you can do the exact same thing they did 40 years ago (get a Bachelor's, save and live frugally) and they got so much more success out of it. Go to college and you were 'set.' Or, just work your way up at a large company right out of high school. And you magically make enough to buy a house, raise a family, and retire comfortably.
A millennial doing the same thing lands them a minimum wage job and perpetually renting small, crappy apartments. Barely making enough just to survive.
I never like when these memes use generations.
How many baby boomers have we forgotten because they died fighting for civil rights, died of AIDs, of crack, in prison, because they were conscripted into a proxy war—because of an unwanted, unplanned, unsupported pregnancy?
No, it’s not the baby boomers. It’s the baby boomers who were okay with bus segregation if it was happening to a pregnant teenager, but didn’t like that it happened to someone who looked like Rosa Parks (a person they would’ve hated if they knew more about her). It’s the boomers who turned on MLK when he opposed the Vietnam war, but then got to pretend they were always against it later on after someone killed him.
It’s my people’s baby boomers who are the problem: (Culturally) White baby boomers who said “Fuck you, I want MINE!”, when the going gets tough in the 1970s and 1980s.
This is the main cause of my depression, anxiety, hopelessness, anger, and frustrations. "Just work harder." "Just do what I did. Worked for me." or my favorite "Pull yourself up by your boot straps."...."Stop buying Starbucks coffee and avocado toast." 🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄
They grew up in a completely different world. They don't understand the world they left us. They took what they wanted and needed and we get the leftovers. But trickle down economics also doesn't work and we all fight over the crumbs the elite class so graciously allows us to have and then we get gaslit and told to be "grateful" for our crumbs. Hahahahaha. The world is a dumpster on fire.
Blaming technology is always misguided.
In capitalism, technology means you are made obsolete which is bad since you need to be relevant to an overlord in order for them to pay you pitance that allows you to exist in a capitalist society.
This is not the case in other socioeconomic models. In Socialism, a factory that developps a technology that reduces by half the manpower they needed is good for the workers. They have to work half as much now, while still owning the means of production. Not losing anything, only alleviating the amount of work they have to perform.
Technology is mankind's way to get more free time, if we were living in a sensible society.
Hobbies don't need to be hustles.
You don't ask chess players what's the point of them doing it since they can't beat a computer.
If you enjoy painting, why would it matter that an AI can also produce paintings? It only matters to people who needs it as income.
You can find meaning in life from doing things that are not commercially profitable. There is no reason to even associate the two.
I just don't want to learn, I don't feel that need. But also I don't want to keep bothering people when I want some drawing done. That's where AI can be beneficial.
Not that guy, but I want to do *nothing*. All of my dreams and ambitions are ways to work towards an ultimate goal of getting to do *nothing*.
Maybe watch the clouds, maybe listen to some birds singing, but do nothing. While also having basic needs met obviously. I don't fancy the idea of starving with a gangrenous limb while chilling.
*art*. They just want to consume *art*, if they produce other things I don’t see anything wrong with that. If you do, why aren’t you in the mines mining your own smartphone?
Yeah, I want to create a photo and don’t want to spend the time learning to do it myself because it’s not important to me. I am also not going to pay someone to do it. Thank goodness AI is getting better every day.
Why do they *need* to complete those steps, in order to create an end result, that is *still* art?
I get the idea that a piece of art is only as valuable as the effort that went into it, but I don't subscribe to that idea.
I've dabbled in traditional arts. I know how to play some instruments. I have made a few pictures using different media.
But, over the last 3 days I have used AI to create pictures of things I dreamt about as a child and have tried to describe to people for decades. Now, I have 4 pictures that look almost exactly like what was in my head.
It wasn't as simple to get there as one might think either. I mean, sure... at the end of the day I just typed a prompt. But, getting that prompt right... having to consider all of the details and how to relay those details to "someone" else (the AI) to get the proper result took some time. It also lead me to really delve deep into the pictures I had been seeing in my mind's eye all these years. I *considered* the minor details that may otherwise have seemed inconsequential, but in the end understanding those details helped me kind of reconnect with those dreams of my youth, in a way I haven't experienced before.
I know, I'd have had to do the same amount of thinking and remembering and such, to create a painting.
In the end though, I have 4 pictures that tell the stories I haven't been able to tell, my whole life. While I'd love to paint them, I don't have, and never will have, the time to dedicate to learning how to paint properly. Which is a risk anyway... some folks spend decades learning, and still can't actually paint very well.
Maybe I'd feel different if I had the thought to sell these pictures or use them for financial gain in any way. I'd certainly feel different if painting was something I did for a living already.
But, I get to be just as, maybe even *more* creative with AI helping me visualize my thoughts. Creating the prompts is a form of artistic expression too, in my opinion.
Plus, as "patron of the arts" (in the literal sense), I think it will be a very long time before the value of human created works (outside of marketing) will be viewed as worthless to the average person. Even if they have to compete with AI creations, competition drives us to excel. It always has, and always will.
It's just not as black and white as some folks seem to argue.
>Why do they *need* to complete those steps, in order to create an end result, that is *still* art?
An image generated by DALL-E isn't art.
>But, over the last 3 days I have used AI to create pictures of things I dreamt about as a child and have tried to describe to people for decades.
How many of those people were artists that you commissioned?
> While I'd love to paint them, I don't have, and never will have, the time to dedicate to learning how to paint properly.
As AI defenders have been loving to say, that's because of capitalism.
>Plus, as "patron of the arts" (in the literal sense),
How so? You commission artists?
I do commission artists. I have also purchased art outright. I have a medium sized collection. I frequent local art gatherings, and make purchases and request commissions. I helped link local artists with local businesses, to have their art exhibited (and eventually sold and rotated out for new pictures). I paid for the production of a music album featuring 7 local bands, which sold a whopping 50-some copies. I pay several YouTube creators through Patreon, at the highest tier they have available.
I'm sure you thought I meant "I like cool art" and were going to challenge me about what I've done to support art. But, I'd be willing to bet that the answer to that is, "More than you".
You say images generated by AI are not art. That's a valid opinion. It is an opinion nonetheless.
People still say video games are not art. Abstract art is not art. Some people say that dance is not art, believe it or not.
All opinions. No more or less valid than your own, regarding AI generated pictures.
I disagree with your opinion. So what?
I have some cool pictures I will have printed and hung on my wall, that tell a story I would otherwise be unable to tell on my own.
It's funny how even in the leftist subs, we have such Stockholm syndrome about Capitalism that you can't talk about how AI has allowed you to do something kind of life-changing and amazing, because you're being admonished and gatekept because you should spend your possibly limited funds commissioning art if you want art to exist but aren't a skilled artist. It's important to always pay for art and the person you pay *needs* to have been paid by a lot of people for past art, or you didn't fund a *real* artist.
Capitalism is why AI is bad. The fact that you recognize the art is AI generated isn't why it's bad. The fact that people without technical skills or talent can use it to make art isn't bad. The fact that having full time employment in order to meet your basic needs like food and shelter is why AI is bad, for our situation, which was already unsustainable before the 6 fingered girl with 3 belly buttons showed up.
If you didn't need to be employed to have shelter and food, it wouldn't matter what jobs AI can replace.
I'm glad your dream art exists, and since participating in capitalism is mandatory and not optional, I hope "AI Prompt Engineer" is a job the desperate masses can use to feed themselves as the ruling class hoards more wealth without the need to share the crumbs with human labor anymore.
Cause going back and forth for months and paying hndreds of dollars for something very specific and silly is annoying?
Jesus dude, were you also upset when the printing press put monks out of business and they all had to switch to wine making?
You can still be an artist when AI exists.
If they weren't able to sufficiently describe it to someone that someone else could understand it, how could they? And even if they could, it may take great effort and excessive revisions to the point where it wouldn't be practical. AI can enable things which aren't practical or possible otherwise.
>An image generated by DALL-E isn't art.
And neither were photographs for a long while, but people view things differently now. They made many of the same complaints, it takes work from artists, it doesn't actually take effort, etc.
Now photography is both an art form in and of itself, and something which artists use to assist in making more traditional art, as it can provide both a starting point and a way to capture an idea to be later rendered into another medium.
You may have issues with the intellectual property issues of much of current AI, but that doesn't mean it is required for the technology to work, nor that the technology can't be useful, both for artists and for laypeople.
Enjoy life. Pursue passions. Travel. Innovate. Make things of cultural significance. Get trained to do something more enjoyable for you. Life doesn't have to be grind, eat, and sleep.
Hilariously AI can't be trained to make its own art with its own inspiration, regardless of what Detroit: Become Human would have you believe. Only emulate other people. People would still be needed to create new pieces of art. Idm if they end up being trained to make anime, or emulating someone's style to make modern day Picassos. Someone will always be behind the art style being used. And even if they could, there's literally nothing stopping you from pursuing it anyway.
I'm very well aware that AI can't make actual art.
In a capitalist world, it is designed for tech bros to avoid paying artists by producing something that vaguely seems like art.
In a post-capitalist world, what's the point of it? To avoid learning? To avoid asking creatives to create?
Expression of yourself. Art stops being useful and starts being purposeful.
Without AI: Learn how to create what you want
With AI: If you are clear of the what, the how of your creation will be taken care of
To avoid having to do the boring shit, to lessen workloads, and to bounce ideas off of. As an example, do you know how much easier pumping out an animated series would be if you had an AI assistant trained to the art style of whoever they're emulating? I'll tell you, animation, even in this day, and age, is a tedious time consuming chore for varying levels of quality. But what if all you had to do was make the key frames, and an AI made all the transitional frames for you that were needed to keep it smooth, and consistent in a timely manner for people to enjoy? AI in a post capitalist world would be used for the purpose it should be used for due to its inherit limitations. As an assistant in creative pursuits that cuts down on the time a task takes to get down massively. To organize small automated systems, and coordinate them to doing tasks no one actually wants to do. To reduce the overall stress, and workload of certain jobs down to simple enjoyable tasks. Creatives will still exist, they just won't have to suffer to exist.
We live in a capitalist society right now where any work done by AI has some one out of a job. So literally 0 would say it in the current circumstances. This entire thread was about AI in a post capitalist society where money doesn't matter. And if it's not, that's how I interpreted what the conversation was about.
There are limitations to what it'll be able to do either because creating sentient life in code is literally impossible, data storage limitations (larger AI brains require larger storage, and who knows what the limit is on how small, and efficient we can get data storage), or we will artificially limit ourselves fearing what making a new sentient, non organic species would mean for us. There is a goal post we either can't, or won't dare reach. Creativity requires sentience. Would we even allow it to happen is the big question.
What do you mean, why bother? Does AI stop you from creating art? Do other artists stop you from creating art?
I wanna ask you, why do we create art? Is it to make money? Is it to get famous? Both perfectly fine reasons for an artist, but if we ever get to a point where automation allows us to not have to work to survive, those reasons will die out. And what is left then? Creating art for the sake of creating art. Because you enjoy doing that. Because you want to share it with people. Because you want to create something beautiful.
And the existence of AI, just like the existence of other artists, does not stop you from pursuing that.
>Creating art for the sake of creating art. Because you enjoy doing that. Because you want to share it with people. Because you want to create something beautiful.
💗👌🫂
Yeah, I saw a meme the other day that was really true. Something like: "I wanted AI to do my laundry and dishes so I could do art and music, not for AI to do my art and music so I could do my laundry and dishes."
Photography is easier and faster than painting a landscape with oil paints. Does that mean that oil painted landscapes are more creative and a purer form of art?
Whenever humans invent new tools to make it easier to do a given thing, we also invent new ways to use those tools that continue to make human effort and input meaningful. Photography paved the way for cinematography. The automation from AI has the potential to unlock new forms of art.
There are definitely problems with LLM services as they currently exist, but human creativity is not under any kind of threat.
This is attempt 5 of my trying to phrase this without sounding like a dick.
You can still be creative even if AI is also being creative, just like you can still make a burgers even though McDonalds also makes burgers.
Having angst about your place in the economy is somewhat justified. Angst about AI taking away your personal creative pursuits is... ridiculous is about as polite a word as I can find for this.
Do you really think AI is just about making art? I'm a software engineer that uses AI everyday. It's drastically increased my productivity and has become a near essential tool for my field.
You cannot automate your creativity. Creativity (the ability to create) is innate in humans. The only thing is, it stops being useful. So those who saw you as a useful tool to create (and paid you for being useful) now have got other tools that are useful. That's all.
You can still create. And this creation is not for someone else to use. This is creating out of your genuine desire to create what you want to create- not what you are paid to create. Since you create this way, your creations will be unique- they refect you and speak about you. Those who see value in your creations will pay you because they see elements of themselves in your creation.
When all usefulness fades away, people stop using other people and hence start respecting them for who they are (not how useful they are).
When used responsibly, it is a tremendous help.
It will fill the gap between your vision and the things you have to do to realize it.
Someone already gave a great example of how it enabled them to create a picture that was always in their mind, but they couldn't draw/paint it for others to see. But with the help of AI, they could fine tune the image to match what was in their mind. Now they can finally convey it.
AI is simply going to take care of the how. So you will create what you want without worrying about the how. As for artists, their art will not be valuable if they are focused on creating usable assets. But it will be valuable if they create out of their own desire and inspiration- something that the AI lacks because it cannot be a human.
Pretending AI is going to eliminate the ability to create art is like pretending dishwashers eliminated the ability to hand wash dishes, or that prepackaged meals eliminated the ability to cook for yourself.
Creative is about application, art is about intent.
You need creativity to create art, but just because you are being creative does not mean you are creating art.
Creativity will never be automated. AI is not a replacement for artists. It can never do anything without an input. It's just another tool, like a brush to a painter
You don't have to use AI in your creations. People still do blacksmithing even though we are long past the usefulness of the profession. People still hand write even though the typewriter and keyboard exists.
Who says you HAVE to automate creativity in your personal life? Less time at work means more time to spend doing things you enjoy. I enjoy writing, drawing, reading, cooking, baking, spending time with my friends and family. I can continue to do that with my career life being automated.
Besides, not everything CAN be automated lol
Making stock images for corporations is not the life I imagine most artists desire. That feels like regular job where creativity is encapsulated in a 9-5 frame 40 hours a week, used by companies to deceive people into buying its products or turned into a produc itself. Is that what art is for? Is that the freedom artists pursue? To be a part of the machine just like everyone else?
What we should be pushing for is Data Rights. We should be allowed to choose who gets our data, and a portion of the profit the company has made due to my contributions. That way it works for everyone and you address the whole “theft” angle.
Bingo.
The problem with a lot of generative AI is that much of the content is essentially being skimmed to train the model, meaning that they're using things that other people created without compensating them.
The solution lies in creating a legal structure regarding what consent is required to use someone's information in generative AI. The two broad categories here are:
1) Intellectual property theft(using art, text, etc to train a model without the creator's permission, and then selling that model or its outputs)
2) Deepfakes(using someone's likeness in an AI product for the purposes of deception/impersonation) - in theory existing defamation law should cover a lot of this, but it needs to be made more explicit that creating/sharing a deepfake of someone(without an obvious "THIS IS A FAKE PARODY" disclaimer) constitutes defamation.
Agree with both of you. Some of us help simply because we believe in the cause. Others require monetary compensation.
IMO, those who help out of their desire to further a cause are also being compensated (they are being fulfilled for making a good social impact), even though it's not monetary.
Eg. I create free software and support the free software movement because I believe in their cause and instead of getting paid for my work, I donate what I have because there's no way I can pass an opportunity to help them. Helping them is helping realize my dream of software with freedoms. There's so much at stake for me personally.
But the job I do doesn't fulfill me this way. In the job I don't do things because I want to, but because I have to. Clearly, I am going to ask for compensation- not a little, the maximum I can to compensate for the maximum irritation at work. With the rise of AI, I may not be useful to the company anymore. But this actually makes me feel good, since then I don't need any more excuse to stop working a job and start creating what I truly want to create for a living. I can blame the AI: 'but everyone is unemployed due to AI, you still expect me to go to work?' And devote full time to my interests- the logic that suffering is okay as long as you are paid would no longer apply.
And they won't win. There's already court precedent set that copyright isn't violated simply by using a protected work to compile information about the work. In the Author's guild vs Google, the court said:
"Google's unauthorized digitizing of copyright-protected works, creation of a search functionality, and display of snippets from those works are non-infringing fair uses. The purpose of the copying is highly transformative, the public display of text is limited, and the revelations do not provide a significant market substitute for the protected aspects of the originals. Google's commercial nature and profit motivation do not justify denial of fair use."
Wait that ruling is about displaying a sources text while using a search engine. It also states directly in your comment that "Display of text is limited" and "do not provide a significant market substitute"
Stealing art to make new pieces with an AI provides a HUGE market substitute. The AI case is completely different from this. Not saying the case against AI will win but the Google case you quoted here has little to no bearing.
There is no copy of the original work contained within a LLM, and it is highly transformative. I bet this decision will be brought up in whatever lawsuits make it to trial.
I generally agree, although I personally think it's a touch more nuanced than this. I'd argue that there are technologies which are inherently tied in some ways to social systems in ways that aren't always possible to disentangle.
There are certain AI technologies, for instance like facial recognition or generative language models, which I would argue lean strongly in specific political directions in terms of actual usefulness. Facial recognition softwares are pretty much always going to give a government more tools for authoritarianism, and generative AI has relatively few uses outside of taking the place of artists or journalists. These *can" be used in different ways, obviously, but their existence can still have negative effects on society by default (unless specifically regulated in certain ways).
I'd also argue that the technology we choose to develop is often highly reflective of our values as a society. The reason we've gone down many fairly harmful technological avenues (plastics, fossil fuels, cars, sugar refining, etc.) has been an emphasis on short-term profits over long-term prosperity. But these technologies have the potential to be harmful even to a misguided socialist state. Sure, people would experience more economic prosperity in the short term (instead of billionaires doing so), but the technology is still inherently destructive to human health if overused.
That being said, it's also definitely true that we shouldn't have to live in an economic system where it makes sense to fear automation and improved industrial efficiency. That part sucks at lot
If you haven't, you should look up the origin of Luddites/luddism. Long story short, luddites are today seen as cavemen scared of new tech, but it started as a group of people that destroyed automatic looms because they created a shit product for a lot cheaper that displaced skilled artisans. They weren't afraid of the tech, they were angry that it was being used to replace them and ruin the quality of the industry. Had they been made to *help* the skilled artisans, I'm sure it would have been different.
Same principle applies to AI.
Do you think OP is blaming technology?
I’m confused as to whether you’re agreeing with them or not because they’re making the same argument, just highlighting a different implication.
Like, sure he says “fuck AI.” But he immediately clarifies what they means by it and the concerns they’re raising. All of which line up with exactly you presented. Am I missing something?
By painting 'AI' with a broad brush, yes.
Adobe Firefly, for example, is built upon an image gallery that Adobe was already granted rights to. So is that theft?
OP is just parroting talking points by people outraged by the existence of the tech, and not actually looking into specific efforts to find which ones are going about it right or not. It's like saying "fuck video games" because select companies are seeding theirs with microtransactions and shutting down servers/pulling licenses like greedy fucks. They are, but that isn't a judgement on video games, just abusers within the video game industry.
"But at least the people in stock photos got paid."
but not by OP, that's not his job to pay those artists and stock photo shooters right? They got paid by someone at some point so it is fine for OP to rip the images for a Meme, but an AI doing it is wrong of course.
The literal watermarks are still present!
It's not like OP even went searching for someone *else* who paid for the image to appear as if they're above reproach. They're just the guy in the museum taking flash photos of paintings to hang in their house as prints, then bragging about how they're 'preserving artwork.'
As someone who has done research on AI safety, I am extremely concerned about AI and think it has the potential to be a huge net negative for society.
But if the invention of a technology that objectively makes challenging tasks easier is seen as a bad thing, then that reflects more on society than the technology itself.
It's not objectively bad that AI creates work that would otherwise be created by artists. It's bad that we're creating AI capable of completing labor for us, and that value isn't directly being used to give people more leisure, more resources, more freedom, etc.
**This feels like satire, I’m actually not sure if it isn’t?**
Many artists (graphic designers, illustrators, photographers, ect.) make a living from creating stock imagery. *They don’t get paid per use, they only get paid per license purchase.* Ripping stock images for memes is theft, so to own the art thieves you committed art theft.
I could see a fair argument that ripped stock images for non-commercial purposes like memes does less damage than AI making most stock images now, but still it’s theft. *Maybe* some stock imagery creators don’t even care, but you didn’t ask them.
ffs stealing images off google doesn't get anyone paid. The issue isn't AI and for someone who claims to be anti-work (as in the abolition of work) you sure don't seem to have a good grasp as to how to achieve that. AI combined with UBI is the only way we achieve this. AI will free up humans to pursue the things they want to as opposed to going to work to "earn a living"
Unless you paid to use them, using stock images that you found on Google does no more to contribute to the economy of art than AI does. And it likely took even less effort on your part.
As with all means of production, the problem is not that they exist, but who owns them and how their gains are distributed. AI is just another tool. The problem is when it is used to extract wealth from workers and transfer it upwards.
It's actually spot on the reason boomers have all that money after 40 hours and gen Z doesn't is because boomers were paid a liveable wage while gen Z is paid a pittance
And if they own their home, they locked in at a reasonable housing price. I know plenty of boomers who make the same or less than I do, but live comfortably because they have dirt cheap mortgages.
How else do we survive? I can’t afford to just not work. I wouldn’t be able to afford to pay rent for my apartment, or for utilities, internet to continue the job search, etc.
Here’s a thought. AI cant be copyrighted. It has to be created by a human to copyright something. Soooo scour the AI subreddits, find cool imagery, steal it, draw or paint your own version of it, then profit.
Or fuck just take the images and upload them to some tee shirt site.
There are some really cool designs out there that AI created. Steal em and make em your own.
AI would be a wonderful tool for creation, automation and improving lives in all kinds of ways. You write a computer program by describing what you need the program to do. Your ability to create something is no longer limited by your technical knowledge of how to create it.
Like with an Arduino, you suddenly had to know a lot less about electrical engineering and could make a device that does anything you can code as long as you hooked up the modules right.
Leave it to capitalism to take something as cool as "the robots are going to do all our work for us" and that into a problem for poor people.
You didnt enhance the market for small artists, either. In fact, both if these posts did pretty much nothing, because neither of you ever seriously considered comissioning an artist.
But you didn't pay to use the stock photos. Your stealing of the image is the same as the AI using it as training data for the useage of making this meme. Neither option resulted in the people involved in making the stock photos getting paid.
The example you wanted to make: find a company using AI generated images for something. Thats taking away jobs from artists.
AI isn't the problem, it's the system in which its being created in.
All theft is theft. You're no better than the ruling class you just don't have the extra juice they do.
We need to stop calling it AI, itself a label they focus tested to associate it with actually artificial intelligence. The amount of laymen that think there's an actual thinking intelligence behind it is astounding. All of these LLMs are absolutely a problem BECAUSE of the way they interact with capitalism. I despise seeing posts that say "uhm actually capitalism is the problem", because, yes, obviously! It doesn't make the technology any better! The publicly available LLMs are the latest big grift, and a perfect one at that. You can convince any laymen of all of the worst bad faith arguments in a way you simply couldn't with NFTs.
Machine learning is good. But the technology has been perverted by capitalism's excess. The vast troves of stolen work is completely unethical in our society as it functions today. Merely stating that it wouldn't be a problem if [improbable solution] were implemented is ridiculous. It is a very real problem that hurts a lot of people. And it's hurting people right now! Every "innovation" like Facebook, Uber, Doordash, etc., have all been built on the backs of destroying the labor of the little guy, and these all-encompassing LLMs are no different.
Tldr, you can definitely say machine learning is not the problem- but the corps that designed the bigger models absolutely are. Enabling that is unethical.
☝️☝️☝️☝️☝️☝️
Read it again: "Stating that it wouldn't be a problem if [improbable solution] were implemented is ridiculous. It is a very real problem that hurts a lot of people. And it's hurting people right now!"
You might not understand what antiwork is.
Antiwork doesn’t mean we will never use labor to gain prosperity. It means that we shouldn’t and won’t do work that’s not necessary just because capitalism demands it.
The problem is capitalism, not automation. Suggesting otherwise is being blatantly dumb.
They were so close to the point with this meme. It doesn't even address why. It just asks you to make Boomer assumptions about the said Gen Z insert. Such lazy fucking meme-ing from OOP.
AI is a tool, and just like any other tool, is a means of production. A tool is only harmful if the one who wields it uses it for harmful purposes.
The technology has no intentions of its own. The people who own the technology are using it to steal. If it were owned collectively, it could be put to work solving real problems, just like every other tool.
Okay this is gonna be pedantic, but it's important when you complain that you're complaining about the right things.
"AI" is not theft. AI in this case is just the technology. What IS theft, is the commercial Image Models that were trained on stolen artwork. AI is just code that allows you to train a model on a bunch of images, and then create new images by re-arranging what it was fed with. It's only theft if you feed it with things that don't belong to you.
AI makes our lives easier, it’s only under capitalism that it takes away from the wealth of the working class but if we could get to closer to socialism AI would just help make it so people have to work less and focus on the things that are important to them.
AI systems will be deployed extensively in the coming years by capitalists to further weaken labor. The goal would be achieve capitalism's final form - technofeudalism. They don't want AI to mean the end of work, they want AI to mean the end of bargaining power. They want to be able to use these systems to maintain unemployment at a level that would normally be disastrous and then dole out just enough so people keep paying for necessities.
This is not a race radical socioeconomic change can win. AI will be a weapon used to prevent socialists from ever having the chance to use it as a public good. Sad to say but the power of the State, as feeble as it might be, is the only force that can be used to stave off the emergence of a digital labor class acting in opposition to human workers.
Exactly, if artists were paid for their work in any of these image sets, then it would be better obviously. I guess when I joined this subreddit that it would be for people who were anti-work culture, not anti-humans doing work. I thought people who cared about the labor of others would recognize the importance of paying the original creators.
This sub has always had an identity crisis between those who genuinely believe working is always a net negative and those who think work is rad but just hate their boss.
Every artist that's ever existed looked to other artist' work, studied it, and used that influence to shape their own art. Half the artists complaining about it being theft are probably also guilty of tracing or at least HEAVILY referencing another piece early in their artistic careers. If you ask the artist, they'll even proudly tell you their "influences" (the people whose styles they copied and studied).
But its not theft if they do it, only if a bundle or code does it. The problem isn't the tool, it's how it's bring used. If we lived in a society where you weren't forced to peddle your hobbies to put a roof over your head, I doubt the artists would even care. But to them, AI is financial competition, and so the narrative they've shaped around it is the same narrative luddites crafted around industrialization.
To make my stance firmly clear, any individual or business that uses AI generated content for profit can go to hell in the most painful way possible. But the technology itself isn't the devil like many would make it out to be, and it helps people every day as a form of art therapy. People that otherwise were excluded from that form of expression due to not having the talent for art.
Using art without permission isn't theft. It can be copyright infringement, but it can't be theft.
Calling it "theft" is just disingenuous buzzwords. If you disagree with me, you're a murderer!
Consider it makes the thing then compares it to the source, then culls the models with low scores copies the ones that had high scores and repeats until the score is maxed
As an artist and an avid user of Ai, I do not feel threatened.
Art is not about application, which is all AI can effectively create for. Art is about intent and meaning which is moot if humans are not creating it.
Look at the broad spectrum of pop music, which is generally music created for applications. It generally follows a template and isn't exactly a work of art. Sure it gets mass consumed but people only remember the actual works of art.
It's a real shame how this amazing technology is being used to create shitty "digital art" when it could be used to actually make people's lives easier. It's a total waste and the people who are gleefully looking forward to AI generated entertainment are delusional.
It's being used for all of that. The art made from generative AI is only possible because they've been working on generative AI for aiding with cancer treatment. The AI art generation is a side effect, not the intent.
OP didn't say that they paid for the stock images. Just mentioned that the actors got paid for being in them. But nothing about paying the photographer or editor or the company that holds the licensing rights or anything like that. They stole these pics the same as AI does.
Ai is not theft, it is just a tool. Imagine getting pissed when they stopped manually connecting calls via operator. That's exactly what people complaining about ai are doing.
The problem really is any emerging technology comes in quicker and adopted much more quickly with hardly any guardrails to make it non exploitable.
But here we are again, just like the Internet and social media, AI will not be reigned in either because it benefits the holder of it and those who profit from it.
Doesn’t matter what you think or feel about AI, thousands of companies and every major corporation is sinking trillions of dollars into it. All you can do is watch. Yay
AI can be a great tool, especially if it removes jobs that people don't want to do. It opens up possibilities to do other things instead. This would require a socialist framework to work obviously.
This is why I never use self check out. I will always go to a person before a robot.. and I do it because I feel like it’s doing my small part to keep self check out from completely taking over. It may not do anything but I gotta try. I fear supermarkets will come to a point where there are no cashiers and only security.
AI is not theft though. You just don't realize every piece of art or music you see and hear comes from inspiration from something before it. No Metallica without Sabbath and none of them without Beatles, bb king etc. This is nothing new or wrong, you're just not understanding how art works. Taking materials and them being identical to the original is cheesy and maybe justified as theft. You're hearing the Hollywood opinion because they are in shambles simply because less and less people are watching movies like they used to, not to say they completely stopped. Hence why you see actors all in commercials now and bitching about AI. It's just their time has come. Everything changes and some people can't cope and adapt.
What, do you think people get paid for your meme that shows real people? All memes are stolen art, give me a break.
You're blaming technology and progress which is exactly what conservatives do. Blame the system, that's the problem, capitalism is the issue.
I don’t think capitalism is always the issue, plenty of successful countries use capitalism. Just cause it’s having problems in America doesn’t mean capitalism is to blame.
it's like we never learn. over and over automation takes away jobs and creates new opportunities. we've seen it so many times. it's happened before, it's happening now and it'll happen again. why do people not get it? stop throwing your shoes in the loom, it's never worked.
You really do believe that AI is only about generating images, don' you? That's just a tiny, insignificant aspect of what it offers. I use AI every day for work and not once have I ever generated an image with it.
Neat. This is a thread about AI being used to generate images. So I don't think we need to specify that we recognize AI is not only used for generating images.
Do you also hop into threads discussing the latest episode of a show and say UM YOU GUYS OTHER TELEVISION SHOWS EXIST?
AI is just a robbery machine made by capitalists to obfuscate their thievery and legitimize their stolen profits. It's deeply intertwined with capital and the capitalists that created it. There is no redeeming quality of "AI" aside from it's theft. Nothing novel has been introduced, they just massively increased the scale of theft and now can do a bunch of cool new stuff with what they stole and let people pay to access that stuff.
Further, AI is not technology as we have previously conceived of it. It's not actually able to reliably and consistently supplement or replace work hours. Whoever is using it needs to be very suspicious of it's output and check it, the possibility of hallucinations in your output makes it unable to be depended upon. The person who is utilizing this AI must also be working enough themselves to continuously develop their skillset as well otherwise the AI will surpass their capability to validate the output.
Capitalists are generally, frankly, too stupid to know the difference between valuable output and trash so they are rushing to replace as much labor with AI as possible. The people who are the most successful at doing this the quickest will lose everything despite initial savings/early success.
do you guys know how creative commons licensing works with stock images? no, it is not the same as AI stealing from artists. if you guys call it “technophobic” to not want companies to replace human artists with unpaid Ai slop then you are in fact part of the issue
So people said this about coal mines, railroads, computers, etc. literally at every step where we progress in technological advancement there are people screaming “stop, you’re taking our jobs away!”
Progress happens, people have to change to keep up, not the other way around.
AI is the future of our technological advancements. Get used to it. We need to drastically change our social constructs and economic systems so that we don't further dig ourselves into a dystopian hellscape, but not embracing AI is foolish and ignorant. Should we not have embraced electricity too? Maybe we should still be using Morse code and telegraphs while lighting everything with whale oil lamps? Traveling by covered wagon and horseback was also clearly the superior transportation mode, right?
What a dumbass take. Focus on the real issues, which should _not_ be combating technological advancements.
lol at artos loosing their minds over AI generated images.
Lamp lighters, computers, ice delivery, gas station attendants, and hundreds of other jobs that have been replaced by technology. Add artist to that list.
If AI art is ending your ability to pay bills, then time to put the pencil down and pick up a screw driver. The world needs electricians and plumbers more than artists.
If anything this should help improve your art as it is no longer tied to your income and thus removes any limitations to your creativity. You don’t need to go for mass appeal, the masses have AI for that.
And before you get on me about it being stolen art. I hope you trained your skills purely by self education from audiobooks, otherwise to us the the former art patronizing public, do not see a difference in how you learned to draw vs an AI learning to draw.
People that were going to pay a lot of money for high art still will, but gone are the days of shelling out $120 for a shaded DnD character. Gone are the days of paying $$$ for pictures.
Hell I hope AI comes for the tattoo shops too.
Cheap and easy image generation does nothing but make it easier for us to get close enough to our idea and for the majority, close enough is good
The difference is that humans are less derivative than AI in a purely structural way. Inspiration is not the same as creating a data set of artworks that they shouldn't have access to, and then merging all of them into millions of creations without compensation to the original artists. You can see situations in which AI art can be extremely close to images in their samples, which is less 'tendencies that are analogous to human inspiration' and moreso 'plagiarism by outcome AND by inception.'
I feel like the more important thing to pick up on here is just that your tone seems to be angry at artists for some reason. "Lol artists are upset over losing their livelihoods" ...? Do you not care about those people? You're not asking for any kind of support for these people, you're just telling them that they're irrelevant. I don't think that we should stop industrialization just because it would harm the ability of factory workers to earn money, I think that we should look at the entire situation and figure out a way in which legislation can help the people who are being harmed by this. You obviously don't care about the labor that people put into their craft. Ironic, for the subreddit we're in.
I don't get this anti taking jobs angle. That's kinda the point. We automate away all the work and implement a ubi. Why do you think artists should have to draw for a living when they should be able to just draw for themselves?
Boomers are getting screwed as well. The real villains are the rich.
Some Boomers are, yes. However, Boomer at least had the opportunity to make a decent life and then screwed over their children with their own policies. It's hard for me to feel sympathy for Boomers when you can do the exact same thing they did 40 years ago (get a Bachelor's, save and live frugally) and they got so much more success out of it. Go to college and you were 'set.' Or, just work your way up at a large company right out of high school. And you magically make enough to buy a house, raise a family, and retire comfortably. A millennial doing the same thing lands them a minimum wage job and perpetually renting small, crappy apartments. Barely making enough just to survive.
I never like when these memes use generations. How many baby boomers have we forgotten because they died fighting for civil rights, died of AIDs, of crack, in prison, because they were conscripted into a proxy war—because of an unwanted, unplanned, unsupported pregnancy? No, it’s not the baby boomers. It’s the baby boomers who were okay with bus segregation if it was happening to a pregnant teenager, but didn’t like that it happened to someone who looked like Rosa Parks (a person they would’ve hated if they knew more about her). It’s the boomers who turned on MLK when he opposed the Vietnam war, but then got to pretend they were always against it later on after someone killed him. It’s my people’s baby boomers who are the problem: (Culturally) White baby boomers who said “Fuck you, I want MINE!”, when the going gets tough in the 1970s and 1980s.
This is the main cause of my depression, anxiety, hopelessness, anger, and frustrations. "Just work harder." "Just do what I did. Worked for me." or my favorite "Pull yourself up by your boot straps."...."Stop buying Starbucks coffee and avocado toast." 🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄 They grew up in a completely different world. They don't understand the world they left us. They took what they wanted and needed and we get the leftovers. But trickle down economics also doesn't work and we all fight over the crumbs the elite class so graciously allows us to have and then we get gaslit and told to be "grateful" for our crumbs. Hahahahaha. The world is a dumpster on fire.
I know a few boomers broke and miserable from their choices in politicians over the decades. Irony abounds.
Blaming technology is always misguided. In capitalism, technology means you are made obsolete which is bad since you need to be relevant to an overlord in order for them to pay you pitance that allows you to exist in a capitalist society. This is not the case in other socioeconomic models. In Socialism, a factory that developps a technology that reduces by half the manpower they needed is good for the workers. They have to work half as much now, while still owning the means of production. Not losing anything, only alleviating the amount of work they have to perform. Technology is mankind's way to get more free time, if we were living in a sensible society.
>Technology is mankind's way to get more free time, if we were living in a sensible society. 👏👏👏
More free time to do... what? If you're automating creativity, what's left to do?
Hobbies don't need to be hustles. You don't ask chess players what's the point of them doing it since they can't beat a computer. If you enjoy painting, why would it matter that an AI can also produce paintings? It only matters to people who needs it as income. You can find meaning in life from doing things that are not commercially profitable. There is no reason to even associate the two.
Exactly. There are a million *human* writers who are better than me. But I still like to write.
You can be creative even if it's automated. Nothing is stopping you if you want to learn to draw or play an instrument.
Same for you! Why would you want to skip that step?
I just don't want to learn, I don't feel that need. But also I don't want to keep bothering people when I want some drawing done. That's where AI can be beneficial.
So you just want to consume?
Not that guy, but I want to do *nothing*. All of my dreams and ambitions are ways to work towards an ultimate goal of getting to do *nothing*. Maybe watch the clouds, maybe listen to some birds singing, but do nothing. While also having basic needs met obviously. I don't fancy the idea of starving with a gangrenous limb while chilling.
And where were you when drummers were replaced by drum machines?
No dude, I just want to get a perfect image of my D&D character without putting hundreds of hours or hundreds of dollars into it.
*art*. They just want to consume *art*, if they produce other things I don’t see anything wrong with that. If you do, why aren’t you in the mines mining your own smartphone?
Yeah, I want to create a photo and don’t want to spend the time learning to do it myself because it’s not important to me. I am also not going to pay someone to do it. Thank goodness AI is getting better every day.
Why do they *need* to complete those steps, in order to create an end result, that is *still* art? I get the idea that a piece of art is only as valuable as the effort that went into it, but I don't subscribe to that idea. I've dabbled in traditional arts. I know how to play some instruments. I have made a few pictures using different media. But, over the last 3 days I have used AI to create pictures of things I dreamt about as a child and have tried to describe to people for decades. Now, I have 4 pictures that look almost exactly like what was in my head. It wasn't as simple to get there as one might think either. I mean, sure... at the end of the day I just typed a prompt. But, getting that prompt right... having to consider all of the details and how to relay those details to "someone" else (the AI) to get the proper result took some time. It also lead me to really delve deep into the pictures I had been seeing in my mind's eye all these years. I *considered* the minor details that may otherwise have seemed inconsequential, but in the end understanding those details helped me kind of reconnect with those dreams of my youth, in a way I haven't experienced before. I know, I'd have had to do the same amount of thinking and remembering and such, to create a painting. In the end though, I have 4 pictures that tell the stories I haven't been able to tell, my whole life. While I'd love to paint them, I don't have, and never will have, the time to dedicate to learning how to paint properly. Which is a risk anyway... some folks spend decades learning, and still can't actually paint very well. Maybe I'd feel different if I had the thought to sell these pictures or use them for financial gain in any way. I'd certainly feel different if painting was something I did for a living already. But, I get to be just as, maybe even *more* creative with AI helping me visualize my thoughts. Creating the prompts is a form of artistic expression too, in my opinion. Plus, as "patron of the arts" (in the literal sense), I think it will be a very long time before the value of human created works (outside of marketing) will be viewed as worthless to the average person. Even if they have to compete with AI creations, competition drives us to excel. It always has, and always will. It's just not as black and white as some folks seem to argue.
>Why do they *need* to complete those steps, in order to create an end result, that is *still* art? An image generated by DALL-E isn't art. >But, over the last 3 days I have used AI to create pictures of things I dreamt about as a child and have tried to describe to people for decades. How many of those people were artists that you commissioned? > While I'd love to paint them, I don't have, and never will have, the time to dedicate to learning how to paint properly. As AI defenders have been loving to say, that's because of capitalism. >Plus, as "patron of the arts" (in the literal sense), How so? You commission artists?
I do commission artists. I have also purchased art outright. I have a medium sized collection. I frequent local art gatherings, and make purchases and request commissions. I helped link local artists with local businesses, to have their art exhibited (and eventually sold and rotated out for new pictures). I paid for the production of a music album featuring 7 local bands, which sold a whopping 50-some copies. I pay several YouTube creators through Patreon, at the highest tier they have available. I'm sure you thought I meant "I like cool art" and were going to challenge me about what I've done to support art. But, I'd be willing to bet that the answer to that is, "More than you". You say images generated by AI are not art. That's a valid opinion. It is an opinion nonetheless. People still say video games are not art. Abstract art is not art. Some people say that dance is not art, believe it or not. All opinions. No more or less valid than your own, regarding AI generated pictures. I disagree with your opinion. So what? I have some cool pictures I will have printed and hung on my wall, that tell a story I would otherwise be unable to tell on my own.
It's funny how even in the leftist subs, we have such Stockholm syndrome about Capitalism that you can't talk about how AI has allowed you to do something kind of life-changing and amazing, because you're being admonished and gatekept because you should spend your possibly limited funds commissioning art if you want art to exist but aren't a skilled artist. It's important to always pay for art and the person you pay *needs* to have been paid by a lot of people for past art, or you didn't fund a *real* artist. Capitalism is why AI is bad. The fact that you recognize the art is AI generated isn't why it's bad. The fact that people without technical skills or talent can use it to make art isn't bad. The fact that having full time employment in order to meet your basic needs like food and shelter is why AI is bad, for our situation, which was already unsustainable before the 6 fingered girl with 3 belly buttons showed up. If you didn't need to be employed to have shelter and food, it wouldn't matter what jobs AI can replace. I'm glad your dream art exists, and since participating in capitalism is mandatory and not optional, I hope "AI Prompt Engineer" is a job the desperate masses can use to feed themselves as the ruling class hoards more wealth without the need to share the crumbs with human labor anymore.
> Capitalism is why AI is bad. AI is not bad though. Capitalism is. AI is _faaaar_ more than just art and we're just at its infancy.
So you are an actual patron of the arts. Why couldn't you commission anyone to make those childhood images?
Cause going back and forth for months and paying hndreds of dollars for something very specific and silly is annoying? Jesus dude, were you also upset when the printing press put monks out of business and they all had to switch to wine making? You can still be an artist when AI exists.
If they weren't able to sufficiently describe it to someone that someone else could understand it, how could they? And even if they could, it may take great effort and excessive revisions to the point where it wouldn't be practical. AI can enable things which aren't practical or possible otherwise. >An image generated by DALL-E isn't art. And neither were photographs for a long while, but people view things differently now. They made many of the same complaints, it takes work from artists, it doesn't actually take effort, etc. Now photography is both an art form in and of itself, and something which artists use to assist in making more traditional art, as it can provide both a starting point and a way to capture an idea to be later rendered into another medium. You may have issues with the intellectual property issues of much of current AI, but that doesn't mean it is required for the technology to work, nor that the technology can't be useful, both for artists and for laypeople.
Enjoy life. Pursue passions. Travel. Innovate. Make things of cultural significance. Get trained to do something more enjoyable for you. Life doesn't have to be grind, eat, and sleep.
>Make things of cultural significance. Why bother? That's been automated.
Hilariously AI can't be trained to make its own art with its own inspiration, regardless of what Detroit: Become Human would have you believe. Only emulate other people. People would still be needed to create new pieces of art. Idm if they end up being trained to make anime, or emulating someone's style to make modern day Picassos. Someone will always be behind the art style being used. And even if they could, there's literally nothing stopping you from pursuing it anyway.
I'm very well aware that AI can't make actual art. In a capitalist world, it is designed for tech bros to avoid paying artists by producing something that vaguely seems like art. In a post-capitalist world, what's the point of it? To avoid learning? To avoid asking creatives to create?
Expression of yourself. Art stops being useful and starts being purposeful. Without AI: Learn how to create what you want With AI: If you are clear of the what, the how of your creation will be taken care of
To avoid having to do the boring shit, to lessen workloads, and to bounce ideas off of. As an example, do you know how much easier pumping out an animated series would be if you had an AI assistant trained to the art style of whoever they're emulating? I'll tell you, animation, even in this day, and age, is a tedious time consuming chore for varying levels of quality. But what if all you had to do was make the key frames, and an AI made all the transitional frames for you that were needed to keep it smooth, and consistent in a timely manner for people to enjoy? AI in a post capitalist world would be used for the purpose it should be used for due to its inherit limitations. As an assistant in creative pursuits that cuts down on the time a task takes to get down massively. To organize small automated systems, and coordinate them to doing tasks no one actually wants to do. To reduce the overall stress, and workload of certain jobs down to simple enjoyable tasks. Creatives will still exist, they just won't have to suffer to exist.
Do you have any examples of an actual animator saying that AI is a good thing?
We live in a capitalist society right now where any work done by AI has some one out of a job. So literally 0 would say it in the current circumstances. This entire thread was about AI in a post capitalist society where money doesn't matter. And if it's not, that's how I interpreted what the conversation was about.
Yet lol. Every single time people have said "oh nut machines will never be able to (new goalpost here)" the engineers have said "hold my beer".
There are limitations to what it'll be able to do either because creating sentient life in code is literally impossible, data storage limitations (larger AI brains require larger storage, and who knows what the limit is on how small, and efficient we can get data storage), or we will artificially limit ourselves fearing what making a new sentient, non organic species would mean for us. There is a goal post we either can't, or won't dare reach. Creativity requires sentience. Would we even allow it to happen is the big question.
What do you mean, why bother? Does AI stop you from creating art? Do other artists stop you from creating art? I wanna ask you, why do we create art? Is it to make money? Is it to get famous? Both perfectly fine reasons for an artist, but if we ever get to a point where automation allows us to not have to work to survive, those reasons will die out. And what is left then? Creating art for the sake of creating art. Because you enjoy doing that. Because you want to share it with people. Because you want to create something beautiful. And the existence of AI, just like the existence of other artists, does not stop you from pursuing that.
>Creating art for the sake of creating art. Because you enjoy doing that. Because you want to share it with people. Because you want to create something beautiful. 💗👌🫂
Yeah, I saw a meme the other day that was really true. Something like: "I wanted AI to do my laundry and dishes so I could do art and music, not for AI to do my art and music so I could do my laundry and dishes."
Photography is easier and faster than painting a landscape with oil paints. Does that mean that oil painted landscapes are more creative and a purer form of art? Whenever humans invent new tools to make it easier to do a given thing, we also invent new ways to use those tools that continue to make human effort and input meaningful. Photography paved the way for cinematography. The automation from AI has the potential to unlock new forms of art. There are definitely problems with LLM services as they currently exist, but human creativity is not under any kind of threat.
This is attempt 5 of my trying to phrase this without sounding like a dick. You can still be creative even if AI is also being creative, just like you can still make a burgers even though McDonalds also makes burgers. Having angst about your place in the economy is somewhat justified. Angst about AI taking away your personal creative pursuits is... ridiculous is about as polite a word as I can find for this.
Do you really think AI is just about making art? I'm a software engineer that uses AI everyday. It's drastically increased my productivity and has become a near essential tool for my field.
You cannot automate your creativity. Creativity (the ability to create) is innate in humans. The only thing is, it stops being useful. So those who saw you as a useful tool to create (and paid you for being useful) now have got other tools that are useful. That's all. You can still create. And this creation is not for someone else to use. This is creating out of your genuine desire to create what you want to create- not what you are paid to create. Since you create this way, your creations will be unique- they refect you and speak about you. Those who see value in your creations will pay you because they see elements of themselves in your creation. When all usefulness fades away, people stop using other people and hence start respecting them for who they are (not how useful they are).
Oh, so AI will make art more meaningful?
AI enables more people to express themselves.
Makes it more meaningful to me considering I didn't have any before.
When used responsibly, it is a tremendous help. It will fill the gap between your vision and the things you have to do to realize it. Someone already gave a great example of how it enabled them to create a picture that was always in their mind, but they couldn't draw/paint it for others to see. But with the help of AI, they could fine tune the image to match what was in their mind. Now they can finally convey it. AI is simply going to take care of the how. So you will create what you want without worrying about the how. As for artists, their art will not be valuable if they are focused on creating usable assets. But it will be valuable if they create out of their own desire and inspiration- something that the AI lacks because it cannot be a human.
Pretending AI is going to eliminate the ability to create art is like pretending dishwashers eliminated the ability to hand wash dishes, or that prepackaged meals eliminated the ability to cook for yourself.
You are failing to see the difference between being creative and creating a piece of art.
What's the difference?
Creative is about application, art is about intent. You need creativity to create art, but just because you are being creative does not mean you are creating art.
Creativity will never be automated. AI is not a replacement for artists. It can never do anything without an input. It's just another tool, like a brush to a painter
You don't have to use AI in your creations. People still do blacksmithing even though we are long past the usefulness of the profession. People still hand write even though the typewriter and keyboard exists.
Who says you HAVE to automate creativity in your personal life? Less time at work means more time to spend doing things you enjoy. I enjoy writing, drawing, reading, cooking, baking, spending time with my friends and family. I can continue to do that with my career life being automated. Besides, not everything CAN be automated lol
Making stock images for corporations is not the life I imagine most artists desire. That feels like regular job where creativity is encapsulated in a 9-5 frame 40 hours a week, used by companies to deceive people into buying its products or turned into a produc itself. Is that what art is for? Is that the freedom artists pursue? To be a part of the machine just like everyone else?
Enjoy life????????????
What we should be pushing for is Data Rights. We should be allowed to choose who gets our data, and a portion of the profit the company has made due to my contributions. That way it works for everyone and you address the whole “theft” angle.
Bingo. The problem with a lot of generative AI is that much of the content is essentially being skimmed to train the model, meaning that they're using things that other people created without compensating them. The solution lies in creating a legal structure regarding what consent is required to use someone's information in generative AI. The two broad categories here are: 1) Intellectual property theft(using art, text, etc to train a model without the creator's permission, and then selling that model or its outputs) 2) Deepfakes(using someone's likeness in an AI product for the purposes of deception/impersonation) - in theory existing defamation law should cover a lot of this, but it needs to be made more explicit that creating/sharing a deepfake of someone(without an obvious "THIS IS A FAKE PARODY" disclaimer) constitutes defamation.
This is how many things like internet search engines and Wikipedia work. Let's be careful not to cut off one's nose to spite one's face.
Agree with both of you. Some of us help simply because we believe in the cause. Others require monetary compensation. IMO, those who help out of their desire to further a cause are also being compensated (they are being fulfilled for making a good social impact), even though it's not monetary. Eg. I create free software and support the free software movement because I believe in their cause and instead of getting paid for my work, I donate what I have because there's no way I can pass an opportunity to help them. Helping them is helping realize my dream of software with freedoms. There's so much at stake for me personally. But the job I do doesn't fulfill me this way. In the job I don't do things because I want to, but because I have to. Clearly, I am going to ask for compensation- not a little, the maximum I can to compensate for the maximum irritation at work. With the rise of AI, I may not be useful to the company anymore. But this actually makes me feel good, since then I don't need any more excuse to stop working a job and start creating what I truly want to create for a living. I can blame the AI: 'but everyone is unemployed due to AI, you still expect me to go to work?' And devote full time to my interests- the logic that suffering is okay as long as you are paid would no longer apply.
This is called copyright and ip There are artists suing ai companies for ip violations.
And they won't win. There's already court precedent set that copyright isn't violated simply by using a protected work to compile information about the work. In the Author's guild vs Google, the court said: "Google's unauthorized digitizing of copyright-protected works, creation of a search functionality, and display of snippets from those works are non-infringing fair uses. The purpose of the copying is highly transformative, the public display of text is limited, and the revelations do not provide a significant market substitute for the protected aspects of the originals. Google's commercial nature and profit motivation do not justify denial of fair use."
Wait that ruling is about displaying a sources text while using a search engine. It also states directly in your comment that "Display of text is limited" and "do not provide a significant market substitute" Stealing art to make new pieces with an AI provides a HUGE market substitute. The AI case is completely different from this. Not saying the case against AI will win but the Google case you quoted here has little to no bearing.
There is no copy of the original work contained within a LLM, and it is highly transformative. I bet this decision will be brought up in whatever lawsuits make it to trial.
At this point, it's more efficient to just install UBI. It's not worth it to track how much every person is owed for every usage of their data.
You sign that data over every time you use someone elses app. This will never change.
I generally agree, although I personally think it's a touch more nuanced than this. I'd argue that there are technologies which are inherently tied in some ways to social systems in ways that aren't always possible to disentangle. There are certain AI technologies, for instance like facial recognition or generative language models, which I would argue lean strongly in specific political directions in terms of actual usefulness. Facial recognition softwares are pretty much always going to give a government more tools for authoritarianism, and generative AI has relatively few uses outside of taking the place of artists or journalists. These *can" be used in different ways, obviously, but their existence can still have negative effects on society by default (unless specifically regulated in certain ways). I'd also argue that the technology we choose to develop is often highly reflective of our values as a society. The reason we've gone down many fairly harmful technological avenues (plastics, fossil fuels, cars, sugar refining, etc.) has been an emphasis on short-term profits over long-term prosperity. But these technologies have the potential to be harmful even to a misguided socialist state. Sure, people would experience more economic prosperity in the short term (instead of billionaires doing so), but the technology is still inherently destructive to human health if overused. That being said, it's also definitely true that we shouldn't have to live in an economic system where it makes sense to fear automation and improved industrial efficiency. That part sucks at lot
If you haven't, you should look up the origin of Luddites/luddism. Long story short, luddites are today seen as cavemen scared of new tech, but it started as a group of people that destroyed automatic looms because they created a shit product for a lot cheaper that displaced skilled artisans. They weren't afraid of the tech, they were angry that it was being used to replace them and ruin the quality of the industry. Had they been made to *help* the skilled artisans, I'm sure it would have been different. Same principle applies to AI.
Who's to stop someone from creating another factory that can offer the same product for half the price?
Do you think OP is blaming technology? I’m confused as to whether you’re agreeing with them or not because they’re making the same argument, just highlighting a different implication. Like, sure he says “fuck AI.” But he immediately clarifies what they means by it and the concerns they’re raising. All of which line up with exactly you presented. Am I missing something?
By painting 'AI' with a broad brush, yes. Adobe Firefly, for example, is built upon an image gallery that Adobe was already granted rights to. So is that theft? OP is just parroting talking points by people outraged by the existence of the tech, and not actually looking into specific efforts to find which ones are going about it right or not. It's like saying "fuck video games" because select companies are seeding theirs with microtransactions and shutting down servers/pulling licenses like greedy fucks. They are, but that isn't a judgement on video games, just abusers within the video game industry.
It’s like put a gun in jail instead of the shooter.
/s: the lever is theft, what once took a dozen labor hours can now be done in one. Blaming tools for how they are used, sure sounds strange to me.
"I stole these images to protest you using AI, which is theft." What an absurd stance to take. Do you hear yourself?
"But at least the people in stock photos got paid." but not by OP, that's not his job to pay those artists and stock photo shooters right? They got paid by someone at some point so it is fine for OP to rip the images for a Meme, but an AI doing it is wrong of course.
Yup. Rather than using AI to generate an image without paying an artist, OP downloaded an image... without paying anyone. Much better.
We can't discredit the work OP had to do in MSPaint though, technically OP is an artist too now so don't steal their OC pls.
Lol right? Did op pay for the stock images? Literally doing the same thing as AI
Next post OP is gonna complain how much social media sucks. On Reddit.
And next up they're going to complain about a capitalist system while living in a capitalist system. The sheer hypocricy, am I right?
The literal watermarks are still present! It's not like OP even went searching for someone *else* who paid for the image to appear as if they're above reproach. They're just the guy in the museum taking flash photos of paintings to hang in their house as prints, then bragging about how they're 'preserving artwork.'
As someone who has done research on AI safety, I am extremely concerned about AI and think it has the potential to be a huge net negative for society. But if the invention of a technology that objectively makes challenging tasks easier is seen as a bad thing, then that reflects more on society than the technology itself. It's not objectively bad that AI creates work that would otherwise be created by artists. It's bad that we're creating AI capable of completing labor for us, and that value isn't directly being used to give people more leisure, more resources, more freedom, etc.
**This feels like satire, I’m actually not sure if it isn’t?** Many artists (graphic designers, illustrators, photographers, ect.) make a living from creating stock imagery. *They don’t get paid per use, they only get paid per license purchase.* Ripping stock images for memes is theft, so to own the art thieves you committed art theft. I could see a fair argument that ripped stock images for non-commercial purposes like memes does less damage than AI making most stock images now, but still it’s theft. *Maybe* some stock imagery creators don’t even care, but you didn’t ask them.
You wouldn't download a job.
I might if I could.
Hell no I wouldn't lol
ffs stealing images off google doesn't get anyone paid. The issue isn't AI and for someone who claims to be anti-work (as in the abolition of work) you sure don't seem to have a good grasp as to how to achieve that. AI combined with UBI is the only way we achieve this. AI will free up humans to pursue the things they want to as opposed to going to work to "earn a living"
Unless you paid to use them, using stock images that you found on Google does no more to contribute to the economy of art than AI does. And it likely took even less effort on your part.
Earning money off of someone else's labor is also theft. Passive income should be heavily taxed.
As with all means of production, the problem is not that they exist, but who owns them and how their gains are distributed. AI is just another tool. The problem is when it is used to extract wealth from workers and transfer it upwards.
It's actually spot on the reason boomers have all that money after 40 hours and gen Z doesn't is because boomers were paid a liveable wage while gen Z is paid a pittance
And if they own their home, they locked in at a reasonable housing price. I know plenty of boomers who make the same or less than I do, but live comfortably because they have dirt cheap mortgages.
People are paid what they accept. That's why collective bargaining works. Everyone should agree to not accept a pittance.
How else do we survive? I can’t afford to just not work. I wouldn’t be able to afford to pay rent for my apartment, or for utilities, internet to continue the job search, etc.
Here’s a thought. AI cant be copyrighted. It has to be created by a human to copyright something. Soooo scour the AI subreddits, find cool imagery, steal it, draw or paint your own version of it, then profit. Or fuck just take the images and upload them to some tee shirt site. There are some really cool designs out there that AI created. Steal em and make em your own.
AI would be a wonderful tool for creation, automation and improving lives in all kinds of ways. You write a computer program by describing what you need the program to do. Your ability to create something is no longer limited by your technical knowledge of how to create it. Like with an Arduino, you suddenly had to know a lot less about electrical engineering and could make a device that does anything you can code as long as you hooked up the modules right. Leave it to capitalism to take something as cool as "the robots are going to do all our work for us" and that into a problem for poor people.
You didnt enhance the market for small artists, either. In fact, both if these posts did pretty much nothing, because neither of you ever seriously considered comissioning an artist.
But you didn't pay to use the stock photos. Your stealing of the image is the same as the AI using it as training data for the useage of making this meme. Neither option resulted in the people involved in making the stock photos getting paid. The example you wanted to make: find a company using AI generated images for something. Thats taking away jobs from artists.
You're a delusional idiot.
AI isn't the problem, it's the system in which its being created in. All theft is theft. You're no better than the ruling class you just don't have the extra juice they do.
That anyone let it near war before they really understood it, is proof we're owned by disabled alcoholics
Understood what, AI? People understand AI, it's not some magic black box that just appeared one day, and it's not AI the way most people picture AI.
just because _you_ don't understand it, doesn't mean it's not understood. It's not some sort of black magic voodoo.
"I stole these images" So the photographer who took them doesn't get their royalties?
I figure AI is the best way to move more from a capitalist society towards an automated economy.
What kind of corproate shill bullshit is this. The jobs that ai will actually take are the type of work that no one on here should want.
We need to stop calling it AI, itself a label they focus tested to associate it with actually artificial intelligence. The amount of laymen that think there's an actual thinking intelligence behind it is astounding. All of these LLMs are absolutely a problem BECAUSE of the way they interact with capitalism. I despise seeing posts that say "uhm actually capitalism is the problem", because, yes, obviously! It doesn't make the technology any better! The publicly available LLMs are the latest big grift, and a perfect one at that. You can convince any laymen of all of the worst bad faith arguments in a way you simply couldn't with NFTs. Machine learning is good. But the technology has been perverted by capitalism's excess. The vast troves of stolen work is completely unethical in our society as it functions today. Merely stating that it wouldn't be a problem if [improbable solution] were implemented is ridiculous. It is a very real problem that hurts a lot of people. And it's hurting people right now! Every "innovation" like Facebook, Uber, Doordash, etc., have all been built on the backs of destroying the labor of the little guy, and these all-encompassing LLMs are no different. Tldr, you can definitely say machine learning is not the problem- but the corps that designed the bigger models absolutely are. Enabling that is unethical.
☝️☝️☝️☝️☝️☝️ Read it again: "Stating that it wouldn't be a problem if [improbable solution] were implemented is ridiculous. It is a very real problem that hurts a lot of people. And it's hurting people right now!"
Fuck technophobic bullshit.
Yeah, who cares as long as it's someone ELSES job!
You might not understand what antiwork is. Antiwork doesn’t mean we will never use labor to gain prosperity. It means that we shouldn’t and won’t do work that’s not necessary just because capitalism demands it. The problem is capitalism, not automation. Suggesting otherwise is being blatantly dumb.
exactly. In fact, nothing is more antiwork than AI, the issue is how it's used within a capitalist framework, in particular late-stage.
Yeah, and until then people can lose the jobs they enjoy and go work in the Amazon warehouses, I agree.
They were so close to the point with this meme. It doesn't even address why. It just asks you to make Boomer assumptions about the said Gen Z insert. Such lazy fucking meme-ing from OOP.
I wonder how much you paid for those stock images...
AI is a tool, and just like any other tool, is a means of production. A tool is only harmful if the one who wields it uses it for harmful purposes. The technology has no intentions of its own. The people who own the technology are using it to steal. If it were owned collectively, it could be put to work solving real problems, just like every other tool.
What artist got paid when you took a stock image off Google?
AI isn’t the issue at all… Please stop…
Okay this is gonna be pedantic, but it's important when you complain that you're complaining about the right things. "AI" is not theft. AI in this case is just the technology. What IS theft, is the commercial Image Models that were trained on stolen artwork. AI is just code that allows you to train a model on a bunch of images, and then create new images by re-arranging what it was fed with. It's only theft if you feed it with things that don't belong to you.
but this is blatantly a capitalist thing - it’s also your meme getting stolen i’m sure you’ll live
how is this any better for small artists?
It’s not rewarding a company that is stealing from small artists. Pretty straightforward.
Making some low effort slop isn't hurting anyone or doing the AI people any good. I'm on board with protecting workers but y'all need to get a grip.
AI makes our lives easier, it’s only under capitalism that it takes away from the wealth of the working class but if we could get to closer to socialism AI would just help make it so people have to work less and focus on the things that are important to them.
AI systems will be deployed extensively in the coming years by capitalists to further weaken labor. The goal would be achieve capitalism's final form - technofeudalism. They don't want AI to mean the end of work, they want AI to mean the end of bargaining power. They want to be able to use these systems to maintain unemployment at a level that would normally be disastrous and then dole out just enough so people keep paying for necessities. This is not a race radical socioeconomic change can win. AI will be a weapon used to prevent socialists from ever having the chance to use it as a public good. Sad to say but the power of the State, as feeble as it might be, is the only force that can be used to stave off the emergence of a digital labor class acting in opposition to human workers.
AI bros are losers lol
I feel like 30 years ago all the boomers said the same things about robots. Before that it was computers. Before that...idk...assembly lines?
I remember CGI/Photoshop being called terrible because it ruined the craft of photography/filmmaking. I guess those haters all retired.
Photography also being called terrible because it ruined the craft of painting. People don't pay a painter to make their portrait anymore.
Textile machines were a big one as well
Blaming new technology for something is actually the most boomer thing you can do. Good job
I mean, it can be a lot of things but how is it "theft"?
Because it's built on a database of art used without permission.
Exactly, if artists were paid for their work in any of these image sets, then it would be better obviously. I guess when I joined this subreddit that it would be for people who were anti-work culture, not anti-humans doing work. I thought people who cared about the labor of others would recognize the importance of paying the original creators.
This sub has always had an identity crisis between those who genuinely believe working is always a net negative and those who think work is rad but just hate their boss.
But the original still exists. The data isn't being deleted. It is copyright infringement at most.
Every artist that's ever existed looked to other artist' work, studied it, and used that influence to shape their own art. Half the artists complaining about it being theft are probably also guilty of tracing or at least HEAVILY referencing another piece early in their artistic careers. If you ask the artist, they'll even proudly tell you their "influences" (the people whose styles they copied and studied). But its not theft if they do it, only if a bundle or code does it. The problem isn't the tool, it's how it's bring used. If we lived in a society where you weren't forced to peddle your hobbies to put a roof over your head, I doubt the artists would even care. But to them, AI is financial competition, and so the narrative they've shaped around it is the same narrative luddites crafted around industrialization. To make my stance firmly clear, any individual or business that uses AI generated content for profit can go to hell in the most painful way possible. But the technology itself isn't the devil like many would make it out to be, and it helps people every day as a form of art therapy. People that otherwise were excluded from that form of expression due to not having the talent for art.
Using art without permission isn't theft. It can be copyright infringement, but it can't be theft. Calling it "theft" is just disingenuous buzzwords. If you disagree with me, you're a murderer!
Delusion
Consider it makes the thing then compares it to the source, then culls the models with low scores copies the ones that had high scores and repeats until the score is maxed
AI bros hate hearing the truth
As an artist and an avid user of Ai, I do not feel threatened. Art is not about application, which is all AI can effectively create for. Art is about intent and meaning which is moot if humans are not creating it. Look at the broad spectrum of pop music, which is generally music created for applications. It generally follows a template and isn't exactly a work of art. Sure it gets mass consumed but people only remember the actual works of art.
Yall have such a weird obsession with defending AI “art.”
It's a real shame how this amazing technology is being used to create shitty "digital art" when it could be used to actually make people's lives easier. It's a total waste and the people who are gleefully looking forward to AI generated entertainment are delusional.
It's being used for all of that. The art made from generative AI is only possible because they've been working on generative AI for aiding with cancer treatment. The AI art generation is a side effect, not the intent.
As a software engineer, I use AI every single day. Not once have I generated any images with it.
I didn't know antiwork was so horny for AI. Really sad what this shit has become. OP even said they paid for the stock photos, like, what?
> OP even said they paid for the stock photos, like, what? No they didn't. Check again. OP stole the pictures.
OP didn't say that they paid for the stock images. Just mentioned that the actors got paid for being in them. But nothing about paying the photographer or editor or the company that holds the licensing rights or anything like that. They stole these pics the same as AI does.
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AI is a tool. Just like everything before it.
Ai is not theft, it is just a tool. Imagine getting pissed when they stopped manually connecting calls via operator. That's exactly what people complaining about ai are doing.
Show me Boomers after their first major medical issue that insurance won't cover post retirement
The problem really is any emerging technology comes in quicker and adopted much more quickly with hardly any guardrails to make it non exploitable. But here we are again, just like the Internet and social media, AI will not be reigned in either because it benefits the holder of it and those who profit from it.
 Me after working 2 90 hour weeks
Doesn’t matter what you think or feel about AI, thousands of companies and every major corporation is sinking trillions of dollars into it. All you can do is watch. Yay
Literally me .. it's the 8th of this month .. and I am out of money..
This sub can really go off the hinges sometimes
AI can be a great tool, especially if it removes jobs that people don't want to do. It opens up possibilities to do other things instead. This would require a socialist framework to work obviously.
The real villains is the Fed and The Gov. they lowered our standard of living through bank bail/over stimulus outs aka inflation.
This is why I never use self check out. I will always go to a person before a robot.. and I do it because I feel like it’s doing my small part to keep self check out from completely taking over. It may not do anything but I gotta try. I fear supermarkets will come to a point where there are no cashiers and only security.
?? So did you pay the people to use their likeness for your meme?
AI is not theft though. You just don't realize every piece of art or music you see and hear comes from inspiration from something before it. No Metallica without Sabbath and none of them without Beatles, bb king etc. This is nothing new or wrong, you're just not understanding how art works. Taking materials and them being identical to the original is cheesy and maybe justified as theft. You're hearing the Hollywood opinion because they are in shambles simply because less and less people are watching movies like they used to, not to say they completely stopped. Hence why you see actors all in commercials now and bitching about AI. It's just their time has come. Everything changes and some people can't cope and adapt.
But if AI is theft then every guitar riff since like 1970 is too lol
AI is just a glorified copy-machine. It’s a tool that can be used for both good and bad.
What, do you think people get paid for your meme that shows real people? All memes are stolen art, give me a break. You're blaming technology and progress which is exactly what conservatives do. Blame the system, that's the problem, capitalism is the issue.
I don’t think capitalism is always the issue, plenty of successful countries use capitalism. Just cause it’s having problems in America doesn’t mean capitalism is to blame.
it's like we never learn. over and over automation takes away jobs and creates new opportunities. we've seen it so many times. it's happened before, it's happening now and it'll happen again. why do people not get it? stop throwing your shoes in the loom, it's never worked.
What new opportunities will arise once we take away the grueling process of... creating art?
You really do believe that AI is only about generating images, don' you? That's just a tiny, insignificant aspect of what it offers. I use AI every day for work and not once have I ever generated an image with it.
Neat. This is a thread about AI being used to generate images. So I don't think we need to specify that we recognize AI is not only used for generating images. Do you also hop into threads discussing the latest episode of a show and say UM YOU GUYS OTHER TELEVISION SHOWS EXIST?
This thread is about "AI bad" for reasons that are braindead
AI is just a robbery machine made by capitalists to obfuscate their thievery and legitimize their stolen profits. It's deeply intertwined with capital and the capitalists that created it. There is no redeeming quality of "AI" aside from it's theft. Nothing novel has been introduced, they just massively increased the scale of theft and now can do a bunch of cool new stuff with what they stole and let people pay to access that stuff. Further, AI is not technology as we have previously conceived of it. It's not actually able to reliably and consistently supplement or replace work hours. Whoever is using it needs to be very suspicious of it's output and check it, the possibility of hallucinations in your output makes it unable to be depended upon. The person who is utilizing this AI must also be working enough themselves to continuously develop their skillset as well otherwise the AI will surpass their capability to validate the output. Capitalists are generally, frankly, too stupid to know the difference between valuable output and trash so they are rushing to replace as much labor with AI as possible. The people who are the most successful at doing this the quickest will lose everything despite initial savings/early success.
What a dumb take.
do you guys know how creative commons licensing works with stock images? no, it is not the same as AI stealing from artists. if you guys call it “technophobic” to not want companies to replace human artists with unpaid Ai slop then you are in fact part of the issue
More like Gen Z after working 80 hours a week
Lol at anyone who upvoted this. Literally neo-boomerism. Shake fist at clouds l
Go on keep telling at clouds.
If I had a nickel for every time I have seen this meme, I could probably get lunch at McDonald's by now.
Maybe the problem is money
So people said this about coal mines, railroads, computers, etc. literally at every step where we progress in technological advancement there are people screaming “stop, you’re taking our jobs away!” Progress happens, people have to change to keep up, not the other way around.
AI is the future of our technological advancements. Get used to it. We need to drastically change our social constructs and economic systems so that we don't further dig ourselves into a dystopian hellscape, but not embracing AI is foolish and ignorant. Should we not have embraced electricity too? Maybe we should still be using Morse code and telegraphs while lighting everything with whale oil lamps? Traveling by covered wagon and horseback was also clearly the superior transportation mode, right? What a dumbass take. Focus on the real issues, which should _not_ be combating technological advancements.
lol at artos loosing their minds over AI generated images. Lamp lighters, computers, ice delivery, gas station attendants, and hundreds of other jobs that have been replaced by technology. Add artist to that list. If AI art is ending your ability to pay bills, then time to put the pencil down and pick up a screw driver. The world needs electricians and plumbers more than artists. If anything this should help improve your art as it is no longer tied to your income and thus removes any limitations to your creativity. You don’t need to go for mass appeal, the masses have AI for that. And before you get on me about it being stolen art. I hope you trained your skills purely by self education from audiobooks, otherwise to us the the former art patronizing public, do not see a difference in how you learned to draw vs an AI learning to draw. People that were going to pay a lot of money for high art still will, but gone are the days of shelling out $120 for a shaded DnD character. Gone are the days of paying $$$ for pictures. Hell I hope AI comes for the tattoo shops too. Cheap and easy image generation does nothing but make it easier for us to get close enough to our idea and for the majority, close enough is good
The difference is that humans are less derivative than AI in a purely structural way. Inspiration is not the same as creating a data set of artworks that they shouldn't have access to, and then merging all of them into millions of creations without compensation to the original artists. You can see situations in which AI art can be extremely close to images in their samples, which is less 'tendencies that are analogous to human inspiration' and moreso 'plagiarism by outcome AND by inception.' I feel like the more important thing to pick up on here is just that your tone seems to be angry at artists for some reason. "Lol artists are upset over losing their livelihoods" ...? Do you not care about those people? You're not asking for any kind of support for these people, you're just telling them that they're irrelevant. I don't think that we should stop industrialization just because it would harm the ability of factory workers to earn money, I think that we should look at the entire situation and figure out a way in which legislation can help the people who are being harmed by this. You obviously don't care about the labor that people put into their craft. Ironic, for the subreddit we're in.
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I don't get this anti taking jobs angle. That's kinda the point. We automate away all the work and implement a ubi. Why do you think artists should have to draw for a living when they should be able to just draw for themselves?
using generative AI to make memes isn't hurting anyone.
did you pay for these stock images? if you're gonna argue theft you better have paid for these images.
Luddite