In my opinion, AI just feels like the logical next step for capitalist exploitation and destruction of culture. Generative AI is (in most cases) just a fancy way for cooperations to steal art on a scale, that hasn’t been possible before. And then they use AI to fill the internet with slop and misinformation and actual artists are getting fired from their jobs, because the company replaces them with an AI, that was trained on their original art. Because of these reasons and some others, it just feels wrong to me, to be using AI in such a manner, when this community should be about inclusion and kindness. Wouldn’t it be much cooler, if we commissioned an actual artist for the banner or find a nice existing artwork (where the licence fits, of course)? I would love to hear your thoughts!

  • jsomae@lemmy.ml
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    3 days ago

    Wouldn’t it be much cooler, if we commissioned an actual artist for the banner

    I hate it when AI is used to replace the work an artist would have been paid for. But uh, this is a random open-source forum; there’s no funding for artists to make banners. Rejecting AI art – which was voted for by the community – just seems like baseless virtue signalling. No artist is going to get paid if we remove it.

    But like if you want to commission an artist with your own money, by all means go ahead. You’ll still most likely need another community vote to approve it though.

    • SanguinePar@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      That doesn’t change that real artists who made real art will have had their work used without permission or payment to help generate the banner. I’m with OP.

      • jsomae@lemmy.ml
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        3 days ago

        If I drew something myself, those artists would also not be paid. I can understand a deontological argument against using AI trained on people’s art, but for me, the utilitarian argument is much stronger – don’t use AI if it puts an artist out of work.

        • BennyTheExplorer@lemmy.worldOP
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          3 days ago

          It’s not about anyone getting paid, it’s about affording basic respect and empathy to people and their work. Using AI sends a certain message of 'I don’t care about your consent or opinion towards me using your art", and I don’t think, that this is a good thing for anyone.

          • jsomae@lemmy.ml
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            3 days ago

            Well yeah, I don’t care about IP rights. Nothing has been materially stolen, and if AI improves, then the result could some day in theory be indistinguishable from a human who was merely “inspired” by an existing piece of art. At the end of the day, the artist is not harmed by AI plagiarism; the artist is harmed by AI taking what could have been their job.

            • Evotech@lemmy.world
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              2 days ago

              Thank you, you can’t both love piracy (which lemmy overwhelmingly does) and hate AI

              • dil@lemmy.zip
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                2 days ago

                plenty of examples where piracy harms no one devs get paid no matter what, ppl working on and making shows like south park that have 5 year deals, many devs get fired right after a game gets released they dont benefit if it does well, indie games i never pirate, I use the 2 hour steam window instead to see if I want it

                ai on the other hand lol, actively takes away jobs

          • GaMEChld@lemmy.world
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            3 days ago

            If I saw the artwork myself and it inspired my artwork, would it be any different? Everything is based on everything.

        • SanguinePar@lemmy.world
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          3 days ago

          Yeah, but if you drew it yourself then they wouldn’t expect to be paid. Unless you plagiarised them to the degree that would trigger a copyright claim, they would (at worst) just see it as a job that they could have had, but didn’t. Nothing of theirs was directly used, and at least something original of theirs was created. Whereas AI images are wholly based on other work and include no original ideas at all.

          • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.ml
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            2 days ago

            You haven’t explained how it would be different in any way. Human artists learn by emulating other artists, and vast majority of art is derivative in nature. Unless a specific style is specified by the user input, AI images are also not plagiarised to the degree that would trigger a copyright claim. The only actual difference here is in the fact that the process is automated and a machine is producing the image instead of a human drawing it by hand.

          • jsomae@lemmy.ml
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            3 days ago

            You’re posting on lemmy.ml; we don’t care much for intellectual property rights here. What we care about is that the working class not be deprived of their ability to make a living.

              • jsomae@lemmy.ml
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                3 days ago

                I agree that they are not mutually exclusive, which is why I usually side against AI. On this particular occasion however, there’s a palpable difference, since no artist is materially harmed.

      • rumba@lemmy.zip
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        3 days ago

        Real artists use uncited reference art all the time. That person that drew a picture of Catherine the Great for a video game certainly didn’t list the artist of the source art they were looking at when they drew it. No royalties went to that source artist. People stopped buying reference art books for the most part when Google image search became a thing.

        A hell, a lot of professional graphic artists right now use AI for inspiration.

        This isn’t to say that the problem isn’t real and a lot of artists stand to lose their livelihood over it, but nobody’s paying someone to draw a banner for this forum. The best you’re going to get is some artist doing out of the goodness of their heart when they could be spending their time and effort on a paying job.

        • SanguinePar@lemmy.world
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          3 days ago

          Real artists may be influenced, but they still put something of themselves into what they make. AI only borrows from others, it creates nothing.

          I realise no-one is paying someone to make a banner for this forum, it would need to be someone choosing to do it because they want there to be a banner. But the real artists whose work was used by the AI to make the banner had no choice in the matter, let alone any chance of recompense.

          • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
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            3 days ago

            AI only borrows from others, it creates nothing.

            This isn’t an argument, it’s pseudophilosophical nonsense.

            But the real artists whose work was used by the AI to make the banner had no choice in the matter, let alone any chance of recompense.

            In order to make such a statement you must:

            1. Know what model was used and;
            2. Know that it was trained on unlicensed work.

            So, what model did the OP use?

            I mean, unless you’re just ignorantly suggesting that all diffusion models are trained on unlicensed work. Something that is demonstratively untrue: https://helpx.adobe.com/firefly/get-set-up/learn-the-basics/adobe-firefly-faq.html

            Your arguments havent been true since the earliest days of diffusion models. AI training techniques are at the point where anybody with a few thousand images, a graphics card and a free weekend can train a high quality diffusion model.

            It’s simply ignorance to suggest that any generated image is using other artist’s work.

            • BennyTheExplorer@lemmy.worldOP
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              3 days ago

              Nope, you can’t train a good diffusion model from scratch with just a few thousand images, that is just delusion (I am open for examples though). Adobe Firefly is a black box, so we can’t verify their claims, obviously they wouldn’t admit, if they broke copyright to train their models. We do however have strong evidence, that google, openai and stability AI used tons of images, which they had no licence to use. Also, I still doubt that all of the people, who sold on Adobe Stock either knew, what their photos are gonna be used for or explicitly wanted that or just had to accept it to be able to sell their work.

              Great counterargument to my first argument by the way 👏

              • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
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                3 days ago

                So, what model did the OP use?

                Adobe has a massive company with a huge amount to lose if they’re lying to their customers. They have much more credibility than a random anti-AI troll account. Of course you’d want to dismiss them, it’s pretty devastating to your arguments if there are models which are built using artwork freely given by artists.

          • rumba@lemmy.zip
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            3 days ago

            So what’s the solution for this board, they should just put up a black image? Should they start a crowdfunding to pay an artist?

            It’s a really bothers an artist enough they could make a banner for the board and ask them to swap out the AI. But, they’ll have to make something that more people like than the AI.