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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Art Waring" data-source="post: 9079887" data-attributes="member: 7037141">As a working artist (for over 23 years), both in physical mediums & digital, this entire situation is heartbreaking. Largely due to the staggering amount of disinformation going around both about working artists and AI-generated images.1. ---> "AI Images aren't theft."The primary dataset for AI-image generators is the <a href="https://laion.ai/" target="_blank">LAION</a> dataset, which was created as a non-profit dataset (that means they scraped billions of images from all over the internet for the sake of non-commercial purposes). Using that same LAION dataset for commercial purposes without the consent of artists who were scraped from is absolutely theft (because using this data for commercial purposes has severe restrictions). If the training models were being used correctly & ethically, then we wouldn't be having this conversation.The fact that companies are concealing what is in their datasets should be concerning to anyone on either side of the argument. If they are in the right, then why are they hiding their datasets? Why is chatgpt currently in a lawsuit with writers for pirating their works entirely without consent?Why are writers and actors on strike in Hollywood right now? If none of this looks like damage done to several industries, already today, then perhaps its time to take a step back and consider just why are you defending something that is currently facing a torrent of lawsuits (& future litigation and new laws that will be coming into play as a result).Ai-generated content is currently in the wild-west phase. The laws are slowly trying to keep pace with technology, and until the law catches up, artists & creatives are the ones who are suffering for it. When the law does catch up, everyone saying the current ai models are doing nothing wrong may be in for a surprise.2. ----> AI-generation will only get worse without human input.<a href="https://venturebeat.com/ai/the-ai-feedback-loop-researchers-warn-of-model-collapse-as-ai-trains-on-ai-generated-content/" target="_blank">The AI feedback loop: Researchers warn of ‘model collapse’ as AI trains on AI-generated content</a><a href="https://cosmosmagazine.com/technology/ai/training-ai-models-on-machine-generated-data-leads-to-model-collapse/" target="_blank">Degenerative AI: Researchers say training artificial intelligence models on machine-generated data leads to model collapse</a>As more and more artists opt out of datasets and training models (I have already opted out myself), AI-gen tools will simply get worse. This is backed up by research into training ai models by the ai companies themselves (see links above).Without humans to scrape from, AI-gen images will drop significantly in quality. So long as companies are not compensating artists and not getting their consent (or giving credit where credit is due), there will come a time when artists have had enough (google search for class action lawsuits vs AI companies).3. ----> "If you don't want your work stolen, don't post it on the internet."So far this has to be the most ignorant statement regarding working artists. If you want to get work as a freelance artist, then clients need to see your portfolio of previous work. Sites like Artstation and Deviantart were originally created as portfolio platforms for artists to get freelance work. These platforms were never intended as a training tool for AI (look at how upset artists are that their work is now automatically opted in if you use Deviantart). Countless working artists are upset about these latest developments. Not only are they forced to take down their portfolios (& thus lose out on work), their art has been scraped without their consent to create massive datasets that use their work without credit or compensation. Artists lose either way, but folks are saying they just need to suck it up and find something better to do (despite having spent our lives perfecting our craft).ATM, ai-gen images are only as good as the artists it was trained from. When we as artists remove our collective lifetime of experience from future datasets, it will only degrade in perpetuity. Working Artists (including myself) have already been adversely affected by this. If you aren't a working artist, I would really appreciate it if you did a little bit of research into how we artists are being directly affected by these developments before making statements to the contrary.Thank you for your time & consideration.With Hope,Art</blockquote>

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