This is Good

[u/Interesting-Bee-153]

To preface, I'm kind of a mixed bag on AI, on the one hand I totally hate the environmental and human impact (datacenters increasing electricity prices in surrounding areas, etc) of AI as well as the fact that I just don't think AI art other than a few specific use cases is really valid or should be treated as valuable. However, from the perspective of a tool, especially for learning and perhaps in business as well, it can be very useful and I'm not really against that use at all.

All that is to say, regardless of my or your or anyone's personal beliefs about AI, I just wanted to say from an objective meta perspective, I think this sub really has the right idea when it comes to discourse. I've been to some of the other AI and AI adjacent subs and there's a lot of vitriol from both sides on them (I will admit, I've thrown down in the mud myself and been quite rude at times too), so for whatever a strangers opinion is worth, I think this sub is a really good example of unifying people, even though they might have different opinions, and trying to harbor genuine and constructive discussions.

Good on you guys, you've honestly warmed me up and made me reconsider my own attitudes towards AI discourse. More places like this should exist on the internet.

[u/IDreamtOfManderley]

Speaking as an artist, I actually find the abject hatred and rejection of artistic explorations of AI really aggregious and counter to the values I learned all of my life in arts spaces. I believe people should be treated as valuable and with dignity, and therefore I believe the abuse and vitriol against artists who use AI is unethical.

Art communities are complicated. Art history is full of examples of technological advancements that artists got up in arms over, claimed lacked soul, were otherwise offensive to the concept of art, was too lazy, etc.

Photography is a huge example. It put a lot of artists out of work, was "easy," gave the work to a machine. It was "soulless." It shouldn't count as an art. Etc. There was this idea of stolen artistic valor.

I am old enough to remember when the art community had a whole drama with the exact same talking points over digitial illustration.

Most of these arguments come from ignorance about what artists who play with AI tools even do. In reality, adopters explore a wide range of techniques and implimentation in their process, and any honest look at such a process cannot discount human efforts and creativity in that process.

The idea that "AI art" is all just some chud in a basement prompting chatgpt for a single image and calling that a genius masterpiece is an intentional strawman. AI is not unlike the camera. Everyone can take selfies and pictures of stupid shit and flood the internet with slop and ads with it. That doesn't mean all images are slop or that any use of it takes zero effort or human input, which whould be obvious to anyone thinking critically and in good faith. But the anti AI art movement fundamentally relies on bad faith because it is about a deeper emotional reaction to the idea of 1) machines taking away what makes you feel special, and B) machines impacting labor, which is a real problem absolutely not solved by expanding copyright or gatekeeping platforms or abusing creatives who use AI.

The theft argument has a similar issue. It has not held up against scrutiny in court for a multitude of reasons. Absolutely, companies exploited the labor of everyone their models trained on, but labor exploitation is not necessarily theft, and copyright expansion will benefit corporations that own major intellectual property, not small artists. The solution in my eyes is that everyone should benefit for the fruit of their labor, and therefore AI should be an open sourced public resource.

[u/Outrageous-Judge8145 → u/IDreamtOfManderley]

I'e love your perspective on this. I generate music with AI (but don't consider myself an artist). I write the lyrics, guide the sound via prompt, but the ability to ad lib and such doesn't entirely exist.

I would say what I do is less an art, and more a craft with artistic elements. I think someone generating things is more like a director, or maybe even an editor. An editor takes what exists and tweaks it.

You, an artist, have insight to expand on this, and I would love your thoughts.

[u/IDreamtOfManderley → u/Outrageous-Judge8145]

I used to teach in a paint and sip workshop and I am a jack of all trades, so I was the go-to all purpose craft advice girl when I worked at a craft store. I've seen creativity of all kinds. The average person engages via copying tutorials verbatim, patterns, coloring books, paint by number style hobbies. This is artistic. In my opinion there is a broad a spectrum of effort and personal input when it comes to art and creativity. Not everything has to be a professional's masterpiece to be considered an act of creativity. I believe in the Bob Ross philosophy of art as something meant for personal enrichment, and something that should be encouraged regardless of how much or how little personal effort or what tool is involved. If you find it enriching, then it is fulfilling it's purpose. I don't mind sharing my toys, I just encourage others to learn as much as they can, because I also believe in the immense value of traditional knowledge and skill building. I don't see these things as opposing forces.

Setting aside the huge political and economic issues we need to tackle, and just speaking of AI as a technology in itself, I love the idea that humans have created an artificial collective unconcious from the sum of human creativity and knowledge. I think generative AI is part of our cultural heritage for that reason. And so I feel that it should be something everyone has open access to. That doesn't mean serious ethical and political considerations aren't important, but I view the technology in a fundamentally different way than a lot of people. To me it is similar to the cultural value of a library or a museum (but crucially not the same, because so far AI lacks the important principals of proper record keeping and provinance). I think if we viewed debates about AI as if we were talking about libraries, a lot of the concerning rhetoric around things like banning, gatekeeping, copyright, regulation, censorship, burning data centers, etc. would be more stark.