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Okay, I actually have some mixed feelings about AI based art.... first of all I've heard these arguments before leveled at Photomanipulation, CG based art, Manga\Anime art, even Digital Art itself when it first appeared. "Not Art", "Not Artists", "Art Theft" etc. Over time each one of these approaches have found a place in our community and other art communities. So why have I taken the Anti-AI side?

Let's get one thing straight... AI isn't going anywhere, and will be used as a tool in the art profession. My biggest objection really comes down to the concept of Art as a fundamental living organic process.... which AI isn't. I'm a self taught amateur artist, and it shows. But I've studied art and comic book art and learned how to draw simply by doing and doing and doing again. In time, I developed my own style and concepts.... again AI doesn't do that...and neither is the Prompter doing the typing.

My understanding of AI is this... it must "learn" using datasets culled from various art sites and communities... without knowledge or permission from the artists themselves...the Prompter feeds prompts to the software that will then generate an image based on datasets that draws its anatomy and style from. After trial and error, the AI spits out an acceptable image, that the Prompter agrees with and publishes.

This is not Art to me. Art is about developing skills and conceptualizations that you self generate on paper, or wood, or stone, or digital tablet. Prompting might be a skill, but what keeps that from being Art is that it's not tied to anything more than trial and error. In other words the Prompter is "guessing" what prompts will work and if it looks good, publishes it in a style that the AI never developed itself but copied from other (human) sources.

I might not have a problem with this if it were nothing more than a form of expression coming from someone with no developed skills, like photo-manipulation. That's not what's happening. Suddenly there are "Artists" who are popping up all over DA, Artstation claiming the generated images as not only "theirs" but as a proof of their "talents". Many talk about the "Democratization of Art" when there is nothing in the world to stop you from picking up a pen or pencil and doing it yourself (If Christopher Hart books didn't democratize the process of comic / manga art, nothing will). Finally, we have stories of Artists with years of study and experience being priced out and replaced by AI generators that produce generic images and visual cliches.

Technological progress is inevitable. I'm typing on my laptop doing this. But innovation shouldn't lead to the laziest outcome, nor should it always be determined by capitalism's lowest common denominator... better ways to get something for nothing and not pay anybody.

BTX

Description
Okay, I actually have some mixed feelings about AI based art.... first of all I've heard these arguments before leveled at Photomanipulation, CG based art, Manga\Anime art, even Digital Art itself when it first appeared. "Not Art", "Not Artists", "Art Theft" etc. Over time each one of these approaches have found a place in our community and other art communities. So why have I taken the Anti-AI side?

Let's get one thing straight... AI isn't going anywhere, and will be used as a tool in the art profession. My biggest objection really comes down to the concept of Art as a fundamental living organic process.... which AI isn't. I'm a self taught amateur artist, and it shows. But I've studied art and comic book art and learned how to draw simply by doing and doing and doing again. In time, I developed my own style and concepts.... again AI doesn't do that...and neither is the Prompter doing the typing.

My understanding of AI is this... it must "learn" using datasets culled from various art sites and communities... without knowledge or permission from the artists themselves...the Prompter feeds prompts to the software that will then generate an image based on datasets that draws its anatomy and style from. After trial and error, the AI spits out an acceptable image, that the Prompter agrees with and publishes.

This is not Art to me. Art is about developing skills and conceptualizations that you self generate on paper, or wood, or stone, or digital tablet. Prompting might be a skill, but what keeps that from being Art is that it's not tied to anything more than trial and error. In other words the Prompter is "guessing" what prompts will work and if it looks good, publishes it in a style that the AI never developed itself but copied from other (human) sources.

I might not have a problem with this if it were nothing more than a form of expression coming from someone with no developed skills, like photo-manipulation. That's not what's happening. Suddenly there are "Artists" who are popping up all over DA, Artstation claiming the generated images as not only "theirs" but as a proof of their "talents". Many talk about the "Democratization of Art" when there is nothing in the world to stop you from picking up a pen or pencil and doing it yourself (If Christopher Hart books didn't democratize the process of comic / manga art, nothing will). Finally, we have stories of Artists with years of study and experience being priced out and replaced by AI generators that produce generic images and visual cliches.

Technological progress is inevitable. I'm typing on my laptop doing this. But innovation shouldn't lead to the laziest outcome, nor should it always be determined by capitalism's lowest common denominator... better ways to get something for nothing and not pay anybody.

BTX