AI/LLMs AI art bans are going to ruin small 3rd party creators

[soviet]

So, honest question, no snark. If I don't like any of those options and don't want to collaborate with anyone, don't want to pay for art if I don't have to and in the case of many indies, can't afford, I don't like stock art and I fail to raise money through a Kickstarter... you feel option 8 is best for me and others?

Yes.

You're telling me this would-be creator has no ability to be creative, no ability to problem solve, no ability to collaborate, no ability to make others interested in their work, and no money.

I'm not clear what value a work by such a person could possibly have.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Just one thing I do want to point out, since I've seen it mentioned a few times now: AI art isn't actually free. The companies making these services are currently loss-leading the heck out of them to try to get enough market saturation that they can then start charging subscription fees to theoretically recoup their investment.

The "loss-leading" is because they (well, at least Anthropic, but I bet the numbers are similar from the other frontier models) are scaling at about 10x/year. Each generation of the LLMs is profitable, if treated as its own balance sheet. But while those models generate revenue the companies are spending/raising even more money to train and pay to host the next generation of models.

Dwarkesh Patel interviewed Dario Amodei (CEO of Anthropic) on his podcast recently (although just before the Pentagon dustup) and from a business model perspective it's really pretty interesting.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Yes.

You're telling me this would-be creator has no ability to be creative, no ability to problem solve, no ability to collaborate, no ability to make others interested in their work, and no money.

I'm not clear what value a work by such a person could possibly have.

I cannot imagine a person with no creative ability even wanting to make art tbh. If they arent creative, what would drive them to try to create?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Stock art, stock art, get stock art. I keep seeing this.

The question hasn't been raised: what if I, as a creator don't want or like stock art?

The question is without merit. Too bad.

You're basically saying I should get stock art even if I don't like it because it's better than AI, and if I do get AI because I prefer it to stock art, I'm a bad creative at best, a bad person at worst.

Yes, yes, and yes.

Do y'all read this stuff back to yourselves sometimes?

Yes.

Mod Note: watch the language, please

 

[Scribe]

The question hasn't been raised: what if I, as a creator don't want or like stock art?

Then you commission the art or create it yourself. Its not a difficult question to answer, since its been done for hundreds if not thousands of years.

 

[Umbran]

What if Andy Warhol used an AI art prompt to describe and tweak his vision for how he could alter soup cans to make a statement and the output ended up exactly the same which he then transferred to canvas via a printer? Would that then make it not art?

The technical question of "Is it art?" really doesn't interest me - which is why I didn't raise it. I am especially uninterested in it in the hypothetical, so don't expect me to engage with that.

But, let's consider other things Andy Warhol might do that could influence my thoughts on his work...

What if Andy Warhol used brushes made with poached elephant ivory and rhino horn for handles, and got lion's mane bristles from big game hunters?

What if Andy Warhol used pigments that were strip-mined out of river banks in the Amazon watershed, or inks harvested from endangered and highly intelligent octopi?

What if, for his studio, Andy Warhol purchased a large block of affordable housing, evicted the residents, razed the building, and replaced it with a single luxury building requiring rainforest-level water use in the Nevada desert?

If, in the process of the work, the worker knowingly makes extensive use of unethically-produced tools, it seems fair to look less positively upon those works thus produced. Being an ethical consumer is hard, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't make good choices when I can.

If the work (art or not) in its production tells us, "I, the maker, am not interested in the harm I am doing," why should I be interested in the work?

 

[Umbran]

The question hasn't been raised: what if I, as a creator don't want or like stock art?

To quote a creator who was working without AI - "You can't always get what you want. But if you try sometimes, you might find, you get what you need."

 

[Sacrosanct]

Every time this topic comes up, someone always brings up Andy Warhol as some sort of justification or analogy of using anothers' work and it being OK. But every keeps forgetting that Andy isn't exactly the best example to use for your (general you) argument because the Supreme Court actually ruled against him for doing that.

On a side note, am I the only bothered when people who use AI for everything keep calling themselves "creators"? No, you are not. Stop doing it. As a creator myself (both writer and artist), I find it kinda insulting. You're no more a creator than I am a chef when I order a meal.

 

[Gus L]

Now we have exactly this coming to pass. Foundary recently banned AI art on its Marketplace. As a result, most of the small mom and pop 3rd party creators will need to remove their products or remove the art in their products.

This makes me happy honestly. There is so so much AI slop and AI art being published for the hobby and I've never seen AI art used in a product that was especially good.

Maybe you can't afford fancy artists, so illustrate yourself. I do it, and it's fine. It might mean you publish once a year instead of once a month, but that just means you'll actually have time to play test and edit. We don't need more small creators as much as well need more good small creators. Reliance on AI art, let alone writing, doesn't help a creator get better and it tends to drown the people who actually take the time to make something with care.

 

[SkidAce]

I cannot imagine a person with no creative ability even wanting to make art tbh. If they arent creative, what would drive them to try to create?

Money.