User:PLMMJ/Sandbox
Before you read any further, I'd like to clarify my own stance on generative AI. I am vehemently against AI image generation, but not very against other forms of g-AI, e.g. LLMs, as long as it's being used for its original purpose: being a tool to assist humans.
AI image generation, also known deceptively as "AI art"[note 1] and pejoratively as "C.R.A.P." (which has various backronyms, e.g. "computer-rendered artificial pictures") is the main focus of this rant essay. It is a term for applications, most of which are made by big and greedy companies that absolutely do not need more money, that use generative AI (hereafter g-AI) to generate images.
Some of you may be asking what the dangers of AI image generators really are. The short version:
- 90% or more of artists losing their jobs, with money that would've gone to them further empowering the biggest companies there are.
- General downturn in the quality of anything that requires artistic input.
- The internet becoming clogged with scams, propaganda and conspiracy theories that utilize the new technology to make fake but convincing "evidence". (This part has already arrived.)
It's not the apocalypse, but you have to remember that AI image generation is just one of the more harmful tentacles of the corporate Kraken that is generative AI.
Going into more detail requires that you understand something that AI companies and AI defenders don't want you to: AI "art" is theft. This is for a variety of reasons:
- AI steals jobs and money from artists. AI is cheaper than commissioning most artists, so people who want to spend less money go with the robot. This means they get inferior, uninspired "art" and money that should be supporting struggling humans goes to greedy companies like OpenAI and their greedy oligarch owners that absolutely do not deserve more money but hunger for it anyway. By threatening the livelihoods of artists with a mass-produced version of their own content, AI image generation also puts its owners at risk of fair use lawsuits.
- AI has no restrictions on copyright, IP, etc. and can break laws related to them if used for profit, e.g. AI companies advertising with them. See Disney and Universal suing Midjourney over this exact thing: a battle of big corpos, but it could set an important precedent for regular artists.
The people who defend AI, whom I call botclowns because I couldn't decide on a term, tend to be some of the most immature people on the internet next to flat Earthers and NFT bros. They use ad hominem and psychological projection constantly (e.g. by calling artists lazy when they themselves are too lazy to learn how to draw, instead of trying to defend AI) because some of them know it's indefensible. Others do try to defend it, however, and their arguments are listed here.
General nonsense:
- Saying that AI prompting is a skill. I've used ChatGPT a lot, so I know how painful it is to wrestle with bots to get them to understand instructions. They're idiots. Telling idiots how to do things isn't a skill. This also proves that AI is not translating your thought into an image like art does: you have to type it into a computer and then fight with the bot until it spits out something similar to your mental image.
- Repeatedly talking about all the effort it took to get to a specified AI image. It does take a lot of effort to withstand AI's stupidity as underlined above, but AI users say this as if it excuses them being lazy art thieves. It doesn't. Additionally, a lot of these people use inefficient ways of refining an AI image, prolonging the process and taking more effort than the "ideal" AI user.
Arguments against AI being plagiarism/theft:
- Providing a definition of theft that requires that the original owner lose access to their property. Instead of splitting hairs over the definition, I point you to the definition of the word theft used by Google: "the action or crime of stealing." This leads to the definition of stealing, which also lists definitions of steal on that very same page, one of which is: "dishonestly pass off (another person's ideas) as one's own." Sounds like plagiarism to me.
- Claiming that AI takes inspiration from art that it scrapes just like humans take inspiration from art that they see. I can list a variety of reasons this is horse manure:
- AI is only able to replicate what it sees, so it's not able to create works inspired by, but not identical to, existing things. Humans obviously can. Bug Fables is not Paper Mario, but heavily inspired by it. Firefly is not Star Wars, but heavily inspired by it. etc.
- AI needs to crawl the internet constantly in search of more training data lest it degenerate, while humans form their own art style over time.
- Humans also tend to subconsciously apply other influences to their art while AI has no subconscious and just cobbles together different sources.
Arguments against AI being anti-artist:
- Saying that AI is a tool that artists can use. This is patently false. While some forms of g-AI can be used to help humans make art, this is most often used in defense of g-AI that generates images from scratch. AI image generation is to artists as Skynet is to soldiers: neither is a tool, they're trying to replace humans.
- Saying that AI is no different from photography when it comes to theft. This just shows that they don't know how professional photography works. Photographers generally don't claim to be artists, and setting up a good photo is very different when compared to both prompting AI and making real art.
- Saying that AI is more accessible towards disabled people. Disabled artists exist, and if you ask them, almost all would say that this is ableist. Because it's pretty scummy to use a minority group as a weapon against another group, especially when neither group is opposed to the other.
- A similar trick is sometimes pulled with poor people even though an AI subscription is far more expensive than a set of brushes, let alone a pencil and some paper.
- Saying that originality isn't real because artists take inspiration from each other. As far as I can tell, this is an anti-artist spin on "AI takes inspiration just like we do", which is covered above.
The saddest parts of the pro-AI movement are the artists who joined it. There are two types of these, and they can be hard to differentiate: one type fell for the tricks described above, the other type know that AI companies are trying to kill artists and have forsaken their art skills to push it.
Notes[edit]
- ↑ A term which I, PLMMJ, refuse to use without scare quotes to point out that AI images are not art.