2023/02/26: In Defense of AI Art

I do not agree with the people fearmongering about AI technology, especially that which is coming from artists, who I think should know better (and I say this as someone who has worked tirelessly on my own art for 15 years with less than $1,000 made total, so please don't act as if I don't understand the position of the "starving artist"; anyone who knows me will tell you that I'm as serious as cancer about my artistic output).

I remember that the same tired arguments were trotted out when digital art started taking over in the late 90s and early 00s. "Well, that's not real art, because they didn't have to buy the materials to make it... What do you mean they can just work on this painting infinitely? This is going to put me out of work, it's making art generation too easy!". People were terrified that it was going to displace their jobs, and to their credit, it did completely change the landscape. Technological process often shakes things up, even when it comes to things such as the Model T. Paradigm shifts occur often in many industries as new technology is introduced, and in the end, they represent an improvement.

The thing about new technology is that it is similar to Pandora's box. Once it's opened, it cannot be closed. You cannot put it back in the box. Eventually, things will settle down, and AI generation will be just another tool in the toolbox for creatives to use. There will be people who have success simply generating (and the act of creating prompts for generating good artwork, or getting a specific type of image out of the generator, will in and of itself become an artform), and there will also be people who use generation as a way to get started on a piece or to come up with ideas and take it from there.

What I recommend for people who are afraid of AI generation displacing them, would be that they sit down and get used to working with it. Make it something that's a part of your process rather than something that you avoid because it terrifies you. Ultimately, I think there is a human element in art that an AI cannot replicate (maybe it will one day in the future, but for now, it's far from it; these things still struggle with things like having the right amount of fingers on hands), and that's what will continue to make you, as an individual, irreplaceable.

As for the idea of an AI using other people's art to "learn" how to draw, please understand that we do this as humans all the time. As a kid, I remember tracing drawings on manga and magazine covers, and even video game boxes. I learned a lot about how to draw from that (though, I'll be real with you, I'm still pretty terrible, as my passion for drawing was replaced with a passion for songwriting and, later, the written word in general). Yes, you're contending with a computer that can whip up tens of thousands of these in a matter of minutes, but I don't think that means that an AI fed an artist's entire series of works and told to replicate their style does ANYTHING to take away from the artist's ability to continue creating. There might be a little bit of financial incentive shifting, but their ability to create NEVER goes away, and I think they will still find an audience if what they do is something people want to enjoy.

At worst, someone who might order a commission will generate something instead. That person and likely anyone who knows about the original artist is going to realize that it's a forgery, and that means it will never have the same *meaning* that a work from the original artist would have. When people pay for art from a particular artist, they aren't always doing so *just* because they want to see it drawn, but because they want *that person* to draw it. One can try to generate the same product, but it will never be the actual same thing. AI cannot reach into someone's head and create the same exact thing they would have. It can create something similar, sure, but it will *never* be the same.

If you want an angle to work from, this is it. Your time and energy and blood and sweat and tears is still worth something, and I think over time it will only become more and more valuable as people begin to get tired of all the AI art, which still has a pretty telling and obvious "look" to it.

I also think it's worth saying that someone who would rather type a prompt into a generator over commissioning artwork of something likely would not have been willing to pony up the money for it anyway. There probably ARE cases of people losing a couple sales, especially those who live and breathe on commissions, but I think the amount lost is probably overstated (especially since we are still in the period where things are chaotic and unsettled).

In the future, we'll see how things shake out, but I believe pretty strongly that the people who generate will be those without means or mostly generating an image out of a curiosity to see what it looks like, or artists themselves looking for inspiration or trying to see a rough mockup before they spend a lot of time drawing something up, whereas those who want actual high quality artwork of something will still turn to artists. Some of the people displaced by AI-generation will be rehired, and many will be inspired to differentiate their artwork in new and exciting ways in order to compete. New things are going to be created that had no reason to be before. The landscape has changed, yes, but that comes with interesting new ways to traverse it. The reality is, every field is going to face these innovations that upend everything from time to time.

What I find most intriguing about AI art, is the way it opens the door for many of us who do not have the financial backing to hire people or skills necessary to draw. Telling me, someone who currently lives off of ~$300 a month, that I should pay someone to draw for me is laughable. Buddy, I'm struggling trying to pay my phone bill every month. A lot of my creative ideas have always been completely hamstrung by the fact that I cannot generate productive visual images in the same way that others do, as unfortunately, those skills have just not turned out for me yet.

I have long wanted to work on, for example, a visual novel, but because I can't draw, I just had to put those ideas aside (and believe me, that's hundreds of hours of work on various projects that I just threw away because I realized that I couldn't make them come to fruition without additional help that I simply couldn't afford) unless I found an artist who is willing to passionately work on something with me for free, something that is considered an incredibly rude ask these days.

Now, I finally have a way to bring a lot of ambitious ideas I've had into existence despite the fact that I have not spent the last 15 years working on drawing and painting nearly as much as I have writing and creating music.

My point is, this technology opens doors for a LOT of people who otherwise would not have had the means to create. I think that's a really, really good thing, and we are going to eventually start to see a new group of artists putting exceptional things out into the world that otherwise wouldn't have been able to even get started. It isn't simply about generating things, it's about what you DO with that output.

There are plenty of projects out there that would have previously required the efforts of several people to even exist, and now there exist rudimentary tools (that will only develop further) that can make it so that an individual can still accomplish those things. Freeing the act of creation from the many, many years of practice to even become basically capable is priceless.

This technology is only going to make creation more accessible. Creating that access for people is going to be more important in the long term than making decisions to prevent the current displacement of artists while things shake up. Eventually, things are going to settle (as they always do) when the new status quo is assembled, so I see no reason to thrash against it.

I don't intend to downplay how scary it must be for those who are in the position of potentially losing a job working on a project because of AI generation, but now that the technology exists, it is NOT going anywhere. AI is here to stay and is likely to have effects on the rest of our lives that we haven't even contemplated yet. The best thing you can do is keep doing what you do, and, if you want to stay ahead of the curve, perhaps incorporate this new technology in your own workflow.

For those of us who envision a future in which automation runs most industries, with robots replacing manual labor and humanity freed up to pursue the things in life which they are passionate about, understand that this issue of "worker displaced by automation" is something we have to get used to. It is likely the primary way forward towards moving away from capitalism and into a brighter future.

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