WotC So it seems D&D has picked a side on the AI art debate.

[Emberashh]

And you can tell that these words were all written by humans at some point. The algorithm looked through its database for arguments humans have written and did some math to see what arguments had were most likely to satisfy your request, and it took parts of those arguments it evaluated as most satisfactory to your request and reassembled them in this order.

Indeed. Ive been using GPT a lot and it actually does have a tone to how it writes when its "writing" versus compiling, and you can see it in that response. The last paragraph sounds very different tonally to the rest of it for a reason.

 

[Emberashh]

That’s what humans do as well.

No, it absolutely is not.

There’s nothing about an ai art algorithm that precludes it from doing any of those things. That said I don’t think the ones we have today are fully there yet, but it doesn’t seem to be a large step to implement such functionality as most already exists in other applications.

If your image generating algorithm cannot function without consuming an actual artists work, it is not producing original works.

Humans don't need to see another persons artwork to make art.

And more than that, an AI is incapable of improving upon itself using itself as a reference. Its products become increasingly unintelligible the more it reiterates on itself.

Humans aren't limited like that.

An ai art bot with feedback loops could do exactly that.

It couldn't. Its already been shown that the product degrades if it has nothing but its own art to derive data from.

The user filling in the ai art promo does have consciousness and intentionality though. The ai art generator can have preferences, learned or preprogrammed, they can have different image repositories and possibly even different algorithms.

You're reaching.

There seems to be a misconception here, an algorithm need not be unchanging - see evolutionary algorithms.

Increasing randomization =/= originality.

AI art can do all of that as meaning is determined by the viewer.

Which is a cop out that demonstrates an implicit contempt for what artists actually do, which isn't surprising given how hard you're trying to defend the false notion that image generating AIs are doing anything other than providing glorified and unethical images that don't even rise to the originality of stock photographs.

 

[Clint_L]

On the contrary, my position that AI art is theft comes from acknowledging the uncompensated human labor that goes into the creation of that art.

No, my issue is in how the algorithm functions. It does not imitate, it directly reproduces. It takes the products of artists labor, remixes them, and tries to pass it off as original work. If a human did the same, we would call it plagiarism.

Your thinking provides nothing but a prompt for the algorithm. You’re not meaningfully participating in a creative process, you’re just providing it with something to compare elements of the works in its database to and predict how likely those elements are to satisfy your criteria. You’re not making choices about what goes into the art, and you’re not doing work to bring the idea from concept to product; you’re offloading all of that to the algorithm. And the algorithm is offloading that work to the artists who created the works in its database, which it merely dices up and reassembles in whatever way the math predicts is most likely to satisfy your prompt.

It never existed in the world before, which means labor had to be done to make it exist in the world. Who did that labor? Not you, you just provided instructions. Not the algorithm, all it does is search its database for elements that satisfy your instructions and deliver them to you. The labor was done by artists, and the algorithm took that labor and handed it to you in a remixed form. Those words in that poem all came from human artists that the algorithm copied and pasted in a different order.

How can you say I'm not participating in the creative process? I had the idea of mashing up William Carlos Williams and Pokemon! How is that not creative? I'm not saying I should win an award or anything, but that is definitely creative. You know, at at least a grade 3 level.

You are defining "labour" in such abstract terms that it is hard to understand what you mean. I definitely did labour: I thought of an idea and wrote it down. William Carlos Williams did labour - he wrote the original poem. The algorithm did the bulk of the labour: it scanned a vast database to predict words that would best fulfill my request. The words in that poem came from English, and if that means they were stolen from artists then that's what WCW did, too. And of course, his words in that order are the core contribution here, and they are public domain. No artist was hurt.

Maybe you are discerning between labour as something done by humans and work as something done by machines?

You seem to be tying yourself in knots to try to deny what is self-evident: new art is being created by a combination of human ideas and AI execution. New knowledge of all kinds is being generated, at an accelerating pace. This is happening, and trying to deny it is like trying to hold back the tide with a bucket. It's far more productive to try to figure out how best to use it to improve lives and mitigate potential harms.

I'm in education. It's a vast industry, one of the largest in the world. Up there with health care. We have already recognized that AI writing is a thing and, with a few exceptions, understand that we have to be prepared for the massive changes that it is bringing. The battle is over. It was never even a battle.

In my Creative Writing class, I asked my students, working in a group, to create a play by starting with a simple prompt in ChatGPT and then iterating at least ten times until they had something hilariously unique to them. The results were fantastic. According to your arguments, that was wildly unethical and also not art. I don't buy it. Disagree completely. It's a new kind of art and we are just scratching the surface of the possibilities.

 

[Emberashh]

How can you say I'm not participating in the creative process? I had the idea of mashing up William Carlos Williams and Pokemon? How is that not creative? I'm not saying I should win an award or anything, but that is definitely creative. You know, at at least a grade 3 level.

Is it "creative" to take an actual chefs plate of food, and throw some crudely chopped parsley on it?

You had the AI directly and explicitly rip off a poem and replace some words. Thats not creative, and if you're claiming to be a Creative Writing teacher you should be well aware of that fact.

And its especially egregious because The Red Wheelbarrow has a lot of deliberate intent in how the sentence was split up to make a multi-line poem, that carry a lot of load in invoking the emotions that poem is conveying. Swapping words out actually degrades the poem significantly, so not only is it a blatant rip off but its actually just bad.

You are defining "labour" in such abstract terms that it is hard to understand what you mean. I definitely did labour: I thought of an idea and wrote it down.

Not all ideas are equal, and especially when its very literally "rip off this poem and lazily sub in Pokemon words".

. The words in that poem came from English, and if that means they were stolen from artists then that's what WCW did, too. And of course, his words in that order are the core contribution here, and they are public domain.

I struggle to believe you're a creative writing teacher and are posting such a bad faith response.

No artist was hurt.

Nobody cares about what people use these AIs to do privately.

Its the commercial sale of its products thats the primary issue, though there is also still one of honor and legitimacy.

Even if you don't sell AI generated images or writing for a profit, you're still being deeply unethical if you're attempting to pass them off as totally original to you, and especially so if you're doing so without any modification to what the AI produced, or are hiding that an AI was involved at all.

You seem to be tying yourself in knots to try to deny what is self-evident: new art is being created by a combination of human ideas and AI execution.

It is not new art.

I'm in education. It's a vast industry, one of the largest in the world. Up there with health care. We have already recognized that AI writing is a thing and, with a few exceptions, understand that we have to be prepared for the massive changes that it is bringing. The battle is over. It was never even a battle.

The fun part is that I am also in education, and this defeatist attitude never crossed mine or anyone I work withs mind.

In my Creative Writing class, I asked my students, working in a group, to create a play by starting with a simple prompt in ChatGPT and then iterating at least ten times until they had something hilariously unique to them. The results were fantastic. According to your arguments, that was wildly unethical and also not art. I don't buy it. Disagree completely. It's a new kind of art and we are just scratching the surface of the possibilities.

Yes, it was wildly unethical and not art. What you should have done is have them use the AI to start them off and then they iterate on it themselves, using the AI to bounce ideas off of.

Thats utilizing AI as a tool, and is what AIs should be used for. Not for doing all the work and then passing it off like you actually did anything.

Its no different than when Wikipedia came around. Its not what you use as a source, but what you can do with it is use it to not only get an initial list of sources to peruse, but also to develop your knowledge of the jargon related to whatever it is you're researching, which will help you delve deeper when seeking out appropriate sources.

Also: has to be said that regardless of how you feel about AI, you should be in total agreement that unethical sourcing for training data is unacceptable, and if you aren't, that demonstrates a clear bias in your thinking and implies a lot about what you want to be able to do.

 

[Clint_L]

I'm going to politely withdraw from this discussion because it is getting personal, and the response that I would like to give would not be appropriate.

 

[FrogReaver]

Also: has to be said that regardless of how you feel about AI, you should be in total agreement that unethical sourcing for training data is unacceptable, and if you aren't, that demonstrates a clear bias in your thinking and implies a lot about what you want to be able to do.

But that’s the crux of the dispute. What you are trying to label unethical I dont believe is.

I agree that an art ai that simply copied an image and provided that to you would be unethical.

I don’t believe it’s unethical to start with someone’s work and make significant changes to it such that the end result is distinctly different. That’s what most of the art ais seem to be doing IMO.

I do believe that too minor of changes to someone else’s work would be unethical.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

You had the AI directly and explicitly rip off a poem and replace some words. Thats not creative, and if you're claiming to be a Creative Writing teacher you should be well aware of that fact.

Your tone is denigrating, and your argument is ill-informed.

For example, I don't think that, inter alia, William S. Burroughs would much appreciate your nasty attacks on his creative process. Was The Soft Machine not a book, or an artistic endeavor, because he used a cut-up technique?

For that matter, this type of reductive argument has been repeatedly used to denigrate the new- this is exactly the same thing we heard in the 80s about hip hop and sampling- "Oh, that noise? That just uses other people's work? It's not ART! There is no creativity in it!"

These are difficult issues, and while I don't have the answers, I do know that approaching the topic with humility is probably a better idea than ... whatever that was.

 

[Emberashh]

But that’s the crux of the dispute. What you are trying to label unethical I dont believe is.

I agree that an art ai that simply copied an image and provided that to you would be unethical.

I don’t believe it’s unethical to start with someone’s work and make significant changes to it such that the end result is distinctly different. That’s what most of the art ais seem to be doing IMO.

I do believe that too minor of changes to someone else’s work would be unethical.

If the imagery or writing was taken and compiled without consent of the original authors and artists, its unethical regardless of how its used.

Consent matters, and frankly had AI developers approached this with a consent first attitude, this wouldn't even be a controversy, and more than that, I doubt they would have lost out on all that much data to train the AIs with. Theres obviously no shortage of artists who embrace the idea and would have happily consented to it.

Its very much akin to issues surrounding Personal Data. If approached with a consent first attitude, most people aren't likely to care how their data is used, because it isn't something an individual can actually do much of anything with.

But because companies go out of their way to get this data, and often while using highly unethical means to do so, it becomes a problem especially when they then turn around and cause indirect harm by selling that data to less than reputable entities.

As said earlier, nobody cares what these AIs are used for in private. Its when what they produce is taken commercial that it becomes an issue, as you're now providing using that data to inflict financial harm on the artists whose data you took without consent, and you don't have to directly state that whatever is comes from them for it to still be harm.

To suggest that there is no harm in selling content thats been generated using peoples data without consent is more or less stating that there is no intrinsic value in the connection between an artist and their art. Ie, that there is no value due to the artist.

That is incredibly wrong and in fact contradicts all other understandings of intellectual property. If we were to accept this idea as true, that there is no value due to the artist, then we are also saying that there is no value due to the engineer who invented an AI or some other widget. That a Chef is not due to any value attributed to their food. That a politician deserves no value from the law they wrote.

 

[Emberashh]

For example, I don't think that, inter alia, William S. Burroughs would much appreciate your nasty attacks on his creative process.

I don't recall attacking Burroughs writing process. Im quite certain you misunderstood what I said, given you seem to be implying that I said what Burroughs did was not creative, when I was very clearly referring to what the other user had done using the AI.

Was The Soft Machine not a book, or an artistic endeavor, because he used a cut-up technique?

Yeah, as said, you misunderstood me.

For that matter, this type of reductive argument has been repeatedly used to denigrate the new- this is exactly the same thing we heard in the 80s about hip hop and sampling- "Oh, that noise? That just uses other people's work? It's not ART! There is no creativity in it!"

And now you're talking about something entirely different, and actually undermining what you're trying to argue.

Sampling is a creative process because it isn't just copying and pasting; suggesting that that is all it is actually says you don't know much about it.

To keep with the music example, take Vanilla Ice's Ice Ice Baby. This song absolutely does violate the copywright on Queen's Under Pressure. The bass lines are identical and Ice Ice Baby adds basically nothing, insofar as that particular sample goes.

However, what Ice Ice Baby also does is not just blatantly rip off Under Pressure and sell itself on that basis. Ice actually has some fun, unique lyrics that he uses on the track and between them and the eventual music video, its arguable that the Queen bassline wasn't even necessary.

But, had they gotten consent to use the bassline, no one would have a problem with it. MC Hammer's U Can't Touch This has the same fundamental issue in taking Superfreak's bassline, but still making a fun unique song, making the fact that these songs were created without consent bittersweet.

On the flipside, however, artists can go farther than merely sampling, and thats where the beauty in it lies. Take Pumped Up Kicks by Foster the People, and this Synthwave cover on Youtube.

The Synth cover doesn't merely sample the original song. It remixes to it, and completely replaces the bassline with a new one that not only accomplishes the goal of mixing the song to a different era and genre of music, but also builds on the song and creates a much more newer and unique sound.

Sampling, whether its as simple as just dubbing in a track, or as complex as layering in and blending entirely new music to an old song, is not merely copy and pasting.

These are difficult issues, and while I don't have the answers, I do know that approaching the topic with humility is probably a better idea than ... whatever that wawas.

I think assuming someone doesn't actually know what they're talking about and is just being arrogant is a rather immature way of handling someone who speaks authoritatively.

Disagreement happens and we can go back and forth. I had very pointed reasons for saying the things Im sure you find problematic, and sorry, but if someone whose claiming to be in my literal field is saying things completely out of line from my understanding of it, I'm not going to chalk that up to a difference of opinion.

 

[Clint_L]

For that matter, this type of reductive argument has been repeatedly used to denigrate the new- this is exactly the same thing we heard in the 80s about hip hop and sampling- "Oh, that noise? That just uses other people's work? It's not ART! There is no creativity in it!"

I know I said I was opting out, but I have to add: not to mention every 3PP for 5e that we were just ready to die on a hill for during the OGL debacle!