this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2024
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You could say that about literally all art - no artist can name and attribute every single influence that played even the smallest effect on the work created. Say I commissioned an image of an anime man in a french maid uniform in a 4 panel pop art style. In creating it at some level you are going to draw on every anime image you've seen, every picture of a french maid uniform, every 4 panel pop art image and create something that's a synthesis of all those things. You can't name and attribute every single example of all of those things you have ever seen, as well as anything else that might have influenced you.
...and this is the crux of it - it's not anything related to the actual content of the image, it's simple protectionism for a class of worker. Basically creatives are seeing the possibility of some of their jobs being automated away and are freaking out because losing jobs to automation is something that's only supposed to effect manufacturing workers.
Again, the argument is it's nothing to do with the actual result, but with it being done by an actual human as opposed to a mere machine. A pixel for pixel identical image create by a human would be "art" by virtue of it being a human that put each pixel there?
Except I couldn't. Because a person being influenced by an artwork and then either intentionally or subconsciously reinterpreting that artwork into a new work of art is a fundamentally different thing from a power hungry machine learning algorithm digesting the near entirety of modern humanity's art output to churn out an image manufactured to best satisfy some random person's text prompt.
They're just not the same thing at all.
The whole purpose of art is to be an outlet for expressing ourselves as human beings. It exists out of this need for expression; part of what makes a work worth appreciating is the human person(s) behind that said work and the effort and skill they put into making it.
Yes it has nothing to do with the content of the image. I never claimed otherwise. In fact AI art sometimes being indistinguishable from human made art is part of the problem. But we're not just talking about automating someone's job. We're talking about automating someone's passion. Automating someone's dream career. In an ideal world we'd automate all the shitty jobs and pay everyone to play guitar, paint a portrait, write a book, or direct a film. Art being made by AI won't just take away jobs for creatives, it'll sap away the drive we have as humans to create. And when we create less our existence will be filled with even more bleakness than it already is.
I'm not certain I understand what you're asking. But If the human is the one making the decision on where to put the pixel then yeah that would be fine. But at no point am I arguing about whether or not AI art is "art". That would just be a dumb semantic argument that'd go nowhere. I'm merely discussing why I believe AI art to be unethical. And the taking away work from creatives point is only one facet as to why I do.
This is completely and utterly your own opinion, not a fact. I know several people who can't draw for shit, due to various reasons, but now AI allows them to create images they enjoy. One of them has aphantasia (They literally cannot imagine images).
This is basically trying to argue there's only 1 correct way to make "art", which is complete and utter bullshit. Imagine trying to say that a sculpture isn't art because it was 3D printed instead of chiseled. It makes 0 sense for the method of making the art to impact whether or not it is art. "Expression" can take many forms. Why is this form invalid?
Never claimed it wasn't an opinion. And I fully acknowledge that tools can make creating art easier. Hell, I even support the use of machine learning tools when making art. When used as tools and not as a means of creating art wholesale they can enable creativity. But, I'm sorry, writing a text prompt for an AI to produce an image is not making art (for the person writing the prompt). It's writing a prompt. In the same way that a project manager writing a brief for a contract artist to fullfil is also not creating the art. The AI is producing the art (and by extension the artists who created the works the AI was trained off of). Your friend with aphantasia is not.
Again, I never said any form of art was invalid. Not even AI art. Nor do I think AI art isn't art. AI art is perfectly capable of creating something worthwhile by means of its content. It's basing it's output on worthwhile works of art created by people after all. I'm merely arguing AI art is unethical. If you made a mural out of the blood of children you murdered it'd still be art. But it sure as shit wouldn't be ethical.