Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kannik" data-source="post: 9653534" data-attributes="member: 984">Here's a few of the things that bounce around in my mind when I muse on the impacts of these new generative models:a) Though movies didn't fully take out theatre, and TV didn't fully take out movies, or how photography didn't fully take out painting, and etc, neither will generative models take out all work by artists/illustrators/etc.  However, just like those precedents, they will make the market for those works smaller.  Perhaps much smaller and more extreme than those precedents as both:b) The speed of generation of these new techs is much faster than the precedents.  Even photography... you still need to wait for or set up the best light, hike to the right location, pose the people, whatever.  Sure, that might be faster than dragging out an easel and painting something, but compared to being able to bang out 12 iterations in 60 seconds it is still a long time.  Sure, you still might need to go in there and inpaint and all that, but on the whole I think it's still much quicker, plus many companies might not care for that level of quality.  We see bad photoshops today in professional situations, bad AI Art for pennies will be even more enticing.c) The speed of adoption of these new techs is astronomical compared to the precedents.  Whether we're talking iceboxes to fridges, or TVs from movies, it took time for the infrastructure to be built or for people to be able to purchase one / get one.  Within the past 12 months anyone right now has access to a handful of different generative models.  It's almost instantaneous.  And, again, bad AI Art for pennies will be very enticing for many companies in cultures where money is the de facto "state religion".  Thousands of illustrators and artists and photographers will find their "bread and butter" work eliminated almost overnight.  Even if they get some great commissions from a patron now and again, that isn't living wage amounts of work.  This could be economically devastating for many people.  (While also impacting many other aspects including climate policies, infrastructure inequity, and more.)d) Another big difference between these generative models and the precedents is that this work is not "creative."  Movies were a new medium, but it still had creative humans behind them.  Same with TV.  Or photography.  But generative models just put out stuff based on patterns it has seen in existing work.  Sure, it will juxtapose some things some times that sparks something in our minds that we find cool and unexpected.  But that's random happenstance, and the model itself doesn't recognize it.  It may not spit that out again.  And instead it will continue to generate variations on that which has been before (ie that it was trained on).  e) To which, thanks especially to the internet but it has always existed to some degree, there is a lot of aesthetic concentration that happens.  Fantasy art that looks a certain way, expressions of form and bodies and etc that look a certain way, types of stories and the people who are in them that happen a certain way, and etc.  Throw in a commercial aspect (as above with the de facto bit) and we get more and more of that as people try to follow the trend to ensure their product sells as much as it can.  But it's a two way street -- if we are surrounded with the same type of imagery/work, we only grow to like that kind of thing (because it's all we've seen, or it's what we were first introduced to) plus we think that's 'normal' and even become socially concerned that others will mock us if we don't like it so we all get locked into that one aesthetic.  Now throw in there that anyone and their dog can generate 100s of works in shorter time, and are also chasing the same aesthetic, and the models themselves are trained in that aesthetic and we start to get into a spiral/loop of limiting creativity and new expressions while also we as the viewers/readers get numb to the work.  (It's a bit like doomscrolling -- we are seeing a lot but we are not getting anything out of it, we're making no connections.)(Contextual disclosure:  I am an Architect designing buildings for a living and therefore work in a creative field, and due to the communities I am involved in I have many artist friends.)</blockquote>

Verification