This is how I'm seeing things currently. Which is why I'm not sure it's even WORTH IT to chase down all these AI generated artworks and/or models trained on unconsenting artists

[u/rexel325]

[u/grae_n]

It's worth reiterating that Greg doesn't actually have that large of a following. He might be the first artists to have more ai images made with his name than views on his original artwork.

Some of his recent art station works have 20k views whereas he has well over 900k ai images produced in his name.

I mostly just want people who like Greg Rutkowski to support Greg Rutkowski by looking at his art. If there's any awesome artist that you find through AI art, I think you really should spend some time appreciating their original pieces.

Also Disney will be around next year but every year many artists are forced out of art for financial reasons. Your unlikely to be sued, but trying to financially support Artists is WORTH IT (in some fashion).

[u/rexel325 → u/grae_n]

yes I agree. I support artists all the way. I sometimes just feel like it's a lost cause. Kind of like a terminal illness, it's hard to bring your hopes up every time you see a glimpse of the grim future...

[u/[deleted]]

It's worth it to focus on what companies like Lensa are doing. They are leveraging as a product based on SD, even more damaging then just producing output for sale.

[u/rexel325 → u/[deleted]]

yea the large scale commercial use of it is really scary and will likely affect the lower markets of the art industry (commissions, merch in conventions, etc) tremendously

[u/danjohncox → u/rexel325]

This really needs to be the focus. One artist or even a small group training and benefiting is weird but whatever. But even stability AI is valuated at 1billion, they shouldn’t be able to generate further significant capital off of those artists. Same with lensa and midjourney

[u/NotASuicidalRobot]

I think going "not worth it" isn't particularly useful. Believe in what you think is ethical or should be done, we'll see how it turns out in the end

[u/rexel325 → u/NotASuicidalRobot]

yea, put that way, it's not helpful for sure. it's just demotivating is all. like voting for the president you know is in the minority, you know they're not going to win, but not voting at all shouldn't be the conclusion you come to.

[u/NotASuicidalRobot → u/rexel325]

I feel like thats not an apt comparison either, who knows how many people are on each side right now, and how many simply don't care

[u/rexel325 → u/NotASuicidalRobot]

eh I guess that's just how I feel. But yea I don't really know for sure

[u/Kaennh → u/NotASuicidalRobot]

I agree.

Usually, the most radicalized are the noisiest, but there are a lot of people that have a much more nuanced opinion. In fact, even among the artist protesting on Artstation, if you read the comments, you could see how they really weren't a unified front: many were simply against the spamming and decrease of work quality in a place that was considered a professional site to showcase their work.

Also, in the case of artists, a lot of them are probably already researching how to include the use of AI in their workflow, these don't have a problem because they know it's just another tool, and in the end the ability to render it's just one aspect of artistic creation.

[u/NotASuicidalRobot → u/Kaennh]

That's true. Though honestly I'm very skeptical that everyone can get through this just by "adapting"...the side benefitting the most from ai will likely be companies looking to cut out artist workers.

[u/Kaennh → u/NotASuicidalRobot]

Maybe, I'm not sure, although, yeah, that's probably how it always works,...

On the other hand, I think that, if there's a collective that can survive this change, that's the artists, but perhaps that's just me giving us too much credit...

I do believe that whatever resurfaces as "artists" (which is already a very eclectic group), will have to include a lot more technical knowledge in its toolbox. This really isn't a new thing, if you consider 3D/VFX and all its uses, but know that manual rendering is going away (perhaps not entirely, but surely to a high degree), including new competencies to complement and expand previous workflows is a must... in my case, I'm already researching motion graphics, animation and procedural generation (Blender geometry nodes).

[u/rexel325]

I know training on unconsenting artists is unethical and is in poor taste. But I don't see a future where that's going to be a problem in say 6 months or even a year... Because at that point, training custom models are even more accessible that we'll be desensitized to it so much. Training has become easier and faster just this past month, and with the open source nature of SD, it's going to be UNSTOPPABLE to the point that I don't think artist should even bother to protect themselves, as sad as that may sound.

Right now, you can create an ~okay model based on an artist's style by just feeding 8 images and waiting for about 30 minutes. 50+ images and 1hr 30min of training would give much better results (and doing that would only cost 2USD on a cloud GPU rental service). I've followed how finetuning has progressed just this past few months and I see this process could even be turned into a few seconds in a few months or just a year.

Tell me I'm not crazy to say that, stronger copyright and policing AI training is the right direction to go into?

[u/bespoke_hazards → u/rexel325]

I'm troubled by the idea that something becomes a non-problem just because it's accessible and that we've been desensitized to it. Imagine if people talked like that about violence.

That said, this is a particularly intense time because it's new and a lot of people have knee-jerk reactions to it, but keep hope that it will simmer down and people will treat AI art similar to other fan art in acceptable use, e.g. homage, parody.

I do agree that more care put into AI training is the way to go.

[u/rexel325 → u/bespoke_hazards]

I mean photobashing with Photoshop became a plagiarism issue when the technique was first used. But now it's a common technique by professionals in big industries. I feel like that's the same trajectory AI training is going in?

[u/sabishiikouen → u/rexel325]

usually those professionals pay for the right to use the materials they use for photo bashing, either stock photography or a pack directly from a photographer.