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

[pawsplay]

There are different kinds of taste leaders. There are people out there who have strong opinions about the McDonald's menu.
If you think there's no such thing as a good generic elf ranger illustration versus a bad one, perhaps that argument holds. But, while people might have different preferences, for any given set of preferences, there are pieces of art that are going to be more or less successful at generating an aesthetic response.

 

[Justice and Rule]

This sort of reminds me of the argument a friend of mine used to make...a professor of history and political science...that it is important for political parties to have strong influence over elections because they serve the role of vetting candidates to make sure that qualified people get into office.

This was from about 2013.

Oops.

I mean, as a guy who has a degree in political science, he wasn't wrong. We're just sort of living in the failure of that sort of gatekeeping. And that's all I'll say on that to avoid becoming more political.

In fact, the more I think about this, the more non-sensical that argument is, and the more I'm surprised that anybody "liked" it. (Except that often we click 'like' on things that agree with our general stance, without necessarily interrogating the logic itself.)

The phrase "but that's why taste leaders exist" suggests intentionality, as if people have gotten together to agree that this is an important rheostat, and therefore appoint certain people to be taste leaders. As far as I'm aware, authoritarian societies that have attempted to do exactly that have not produced great art.

Rather, taste leaders emerge because there is a market for them, and they emerge through market forces, I suspect because people are afraid of making poor choices and want a trusted source, or they don't even realize they are being influenced by taste leaders. But it's all market driven; there's no guarantee that the people get in that position actually have good, you know, taste. Surely we don't have to argue about whether the historical landscape is littered with "bad taste" that nevertheless became exceedingly popular.

Taste leaders are absolutely no guarantee that good taste prevails.

I'm not sure that's really what @pawsplay is saying as people come to the fore as taste leaders. The idea that it's somehow done with "intentionality" feels like you putting something in that isn't there, and only for the purpose of making it mutually exclusive to having market forces. It feels like their statement perfectly blends with the idea of market forces creating taste leaders because there is a desire for people to help come to decisions, to prejudge whether something is worth their time, or help them understand why they might connect with a piece of art.

At the same time, while you might say this could create taste leaders who have bad taste, but that also exists: there are plenty of blocks that will disagree as to what makes a good movie or a bad one, a good show or a bad one, a good book or a bad one. There will always be niches that want representation and go to people who like, I dunno, Zack Snyder films (just to use an example beyond AI art boosters), where a lot of people seem to disagree with them. Ultimately tastes shift and we can reappraise certain things, but living in the here and now we probably can accept why certain things are popular versus unpopular. We can also see where critics can differ with audiences, and how that might play out over time.

But at this point, it feels like we are really stretching things to try and fit AI into the idea of "art", saying stuff like "most art is purely commercial" which is basically trying to dismiss anything that might get funded by a studio. Like, Netflix might not be the most artistic studio, but I think telling everyone that their art is purely commercial misses what the creatives put into their work. But I also feel like that idea links up with the serious disdain for creatives that seems to be an undercurrent of this whole debate, as though they were somehow gatekeeping artistic skills by pointing out the problems with AI art and why it shouldn't be used.

 

[Bill Zebub]

But I also feel like that idea links up with the serious disdain for creatives that seems to be an undercurrent of this whole debate, as though they were somehow gatekeeping artistic skills by pointing out the problems with AI art and why it shouldn't be used.

To a large extent I agree with, or at least sympathize with, what the creatives are saying, But my experience so far is that to not agree 100.0% is interpreted as loathing for creatives combined with stupidity.

 

[Morrus]

I'm bored of this now, I will disengage.

That’s how it works.