> Ideally no one's art would be hindered by having to track down and pay someone for creating something in another "artist's style".
After "you" tracked them down, slurped up their art and spent a lot of electricity to garble it, it's oddly convenient to suddenly get lazy when it comes to giving credit.
And being able to understand, even SEE (or hear etc.) something well enough you can re-create it, that's one thing. That at least implies some common experience between artist and copycat, even in the case of just straight copying the style. Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, right? But copying and then garbling it with algorithms, forever and ever and ever, is something else entirely. Different enough that artists should opt-in.
It's like what killer robots are what to soldiers, too, and I'm not joking. At least until now, to create a lot of propaganda in text and image you would have to at least convince or force a proportional amount of humans to do it, which is harder the more atrocities and people they know and love are involved. No such qualms with machines, and no scaling issues.
And hey, the constant drowning out of intelligent and still applicable things that already have been made, in favor of some product, some content, some "take", produced by something someone who happens to live right now (which makes it important I see their thing, and not something made in the past that would do more for me) is already a problem without any machines involved. So I want to be able to opt-in as consumer, too. I don't want to restrict the choice of others, but it just allowing to mingle and drown out everything else by being infinitely cheap to produce predictably will destroy my choice.
If it's so great for creativity, and the results so great, neither should be an issue. I mean, the way you make it sound artists should be pushing for it -- where are they? And if barely any artists want to give away their art for it, and only computer people want them to, well, then the people who want their machines to make art will have to learn making art themselves, first. That is not too much to ask.
No lover of language looks at the output of LLM and thinks "I want to write like that". People who can't write (or "don't have the time" for the thought process while still oddly feeling entitled to the appearance of it) see that, want it for themselves, because it's better than what they can make. Same or even worse with music.
> But copying and then garbling it with algorithms, forever and ever and ever, is something else entirely. Different enough that artists should opt-in.
I'm more sympathetic when when it comes to arguments against corporate controlled AI using the work of artists to extract value and reproduce their work (in whole or part) using algorithms, but I just can't see how granting artists special rights to monetary compensation for AI training or for output that is being done in "their" style won't eventually (or even immediately) result in harmful impacts to human artists including those human artists using AI tools (like photoshop). The result will certainly have a massive chilling effect on artistic output and our freedom of expression.
Copyright in general has become a perversion of its original purpose which was to promote the creation and dissemination of works for the benefit of the public, and it needs to be scaled back substantially from what we have today. Any attempt to use copyright to further restrict what artists can do beyond what our current extremely abusive laws burden them with should be heavily scrutinized and avoided wherever possible because history shows us that even with the best intentions in mind the result of those laws will be further abuse and exploitation.
> it just allowing to mingle and drown out everything else by being infinitely cheap to produce predictably will destroy my choice.
There's no doubt that AI will flood the market of currently available things, but there's zero evidence that it would make it impossible for people to access older works. As far I as can tell, AI output will only become increasingly homogenized and uninteresting. You seem to feel that already AI does not deliver the same quality as human artists. AI generated art might come to dominate advertising, or furry art on deviantart or pixiv, but it's not likely to kick renaissance painters out of museums.
> People who can't write (or "don't have the time" for the thought process while still oddly feeling entitled to the appearance of it) see that, want it for themselves, because it's better than what they can make.
This is probably the weakest of all the arguments against AI art. Some artists are threatened by the idea of AI making it possible for more people to create even inferior looking artistic works.
Rather than being excited by the idea that more people will be able to express themselves and their ideas in ways they otherwise wouldn't be able to artists seem angry that they'll no longer have exclusive control over what art gets created and that the people they look down on for not having the ability that draw or paint will suddenly no longer need to come to them to see something close to their vision materialized. As if the person with parkinson's disease, or arthritis who finds it hard to even hold a pencil or draw a straight line is undeserving of creating art. As if it's unfair that bad artists might be enabled to create something above their station. I'm not suggesting that you personally feel that way, but comments like "People who can't write (or "don't have the time" for the thought process while still oddly feeling entitled to the appearance of it)..." strongly echo that position.
We'd all be better off if technology allows more people to express themselves through art. It doesn't devalue the people who are more talented. It doesn't devalue art made when making art was more difficult. It does increase the pool of art, perspectives, and ideas being exchanged, but that is always a good thing.
> I just can't see how granting artists special rights to monetary compensation for AI training or for output that is being done in "their" style won't eventually (or even immediately) result in harmful impacts to human artists including those human artists using AI tools (like photoshop).
By opt-in I simply mean that artists get to decide whether their art is used for training.
The chilling effect of someone not being able to express "themselves" because they need who I am for that, does not exist. If I don't opt-in, nobody's the wiser, nobody lost anything. There may however be a chilling effect of knowing whatever you draw or sing can be garbled and used to promote fascism or laxatives, and when you utter too many words, you can now be impersonated for all eternity.
And I am not arguing "against AI art", I say artists need to opt-in, and the output needs to be labeled. If you think I'll then go around and sneer at people who are happy and proud of how some ideas they had came together, you are mistaken. Some people might, so what. If the solution is to lie, then there is something else going on other than "self-expression".
I'm really just for artists opting in, and labeling the output. Do you have direct arguments against either?
After "you" tracked them down, slurped up their art and spent a lot of electricity to garble it, it's oddly convenient to suddenly get lazy when it comes to giving credit.
And being able to understand, even SEE (or hear etc.) something well enough you can re-create it, that's one thing. That at least implies some common experience between artist and copycat, even in the case of just straight copying the style. Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, right? But copying and then garbling it with algorithms, forever and ever and ever, is something else entirely. Different enough that artists should opt-in.
It's like what killer robots are what to soldiers, too, and I'm not joking. At least until now, to create a lot of propaganda in text and image you would have to at least convince or force a proportional amount of humans to do it, which is harder the more atrocities and people they know and love are involved. No such qualms with machines, and no scaling issues.
And hey, the constant drowning out of intelligent and still applicable things that already have been made, in favor of some product, some content, some "take", produced by something someone who happens to live right now (which makes it important I see their thing, and not something made in the past that would do more for me) is already a problem without any machines involved. So I want to be able to opt-in as consumer, too. I don't want to restrict the choice of others, but it just allowing to mingle and drown out everything else by being infinitely cheap to produce predictably will destroy my choice.
If it's so great for creativity, and the results so great, neither should be an issue. I mean, the way you make it sound artists should be pushing for it -- where are they? And if barely any artists want to give away their art for it, and only computer people want them to, well, then the people who want their machines to make art will have to learn making art themselves, first. That is not too much to ask.
No lover of language looks at the output of LLM and thinks "I want to write like that". People who can't write (or "don't have the time" for the thought process while still oddly feeling entitled to the appearance of it) see that, want it for themselves, because it's better than what they can make. Same or even worse with music.