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

[Charlaquin]

Fundamentally, everything you've said here (and, AFAICT, previously in this thread) are exactly the same thing a painter would say about a photograph. A photograph doesn't make art, it only takes an image of what's already there. A photograph of a building or dancer extracts value from the existing artist's labor without compensating those artists.

That’s just not accurate. For one thing, you can photograph things that aren’t art. Moreover, photography itself is an art form. A camera does nothing on its own, a photographer must manipulate the camera, the lighting, the environment, etc. to produce an entirely new piece of art, which may or may nod include another artist’s work. Certainly that raised questions about copyright, but it would be silly to suggest that photography is inherently unethical. In contrast, with image generation algorithms, the image cannot be anything other than a recombination of existing artwork, and the algorithm does all the work of combining those works on its own. The human provides nothing but a prompt.

Photography's built in purpose is to take the livelihoods of people who paint pictures.

what???

Camera's aren't people, painters are people.

But photographers are people, and they don’t even compete directly with other visual artists.

Heck, you could even claim that cyanide is inherently unethical if you wanted to.

Cyanide is a chemical…

Photography significantly changed the way we deal with copyright law (and we're still dealing with the details today). But it also created a new field of art. So will AI. And AI also brings it's own set of copyright and other questions. But this absolutism about ethics is simply an appeal to emotion that addresses only the smallest reality of how AI will inevitably effect the real world. Trying to paint AI as black and white can only serve to stifle conversation about important issues.

Not at all. I think those conversations are important to have, and I would not stop anyone from having them. Algorithmically generated images can be unethical and be important to discuss, because of the tremendous effect they will have on the world. Hopefully by discussing it, we can meep the harm they will do to a minimum.

 

[Charlaquin]

No I do not feel there is an ethical question of the tool itself. Speaking as an IT guy who has implemented systems that directly led to later staffing reductions, the unethical part is society's failure to catch the humans impacted by these kinds of things rather than blaming the humans for not reskilling fast or luckily enough. That failure is a matter far outside the tech or use of it. the outrage for Artists are simply reeling from being suddenly thrown into an ice cold pool of reality when previously they were poolside enjoying the sun of hearing "we will grow into a creative economy" for decades.

No industry or trade is safe. it was generally assumed that self driving trucks would be the first time we really need to start taking it seriously & talking about the kinds of things being discussed when the recent crop of image & text generation AI tools exploded into the spotlight. Innovation is funny like that though & by chance it wasn't.

Wow, the contempt for artists and deflection of responsibility for the effects that the technology you help produce has on people are pretty shocking.

 

[Charlaquin]

Wait.

Why can we not see Warhol as unethical if he profited off others without compensation?

Also, people consistently fail to understand how AI makes art. It isn't 'learning' like we do. AI isn't alive or smart. It's taking an image, dicing it up into data points and then spitting out amalgamations of those pieces that match the data. It is a toddler finding the blue block only really, really fast in succession.

You get it.

 

[Charlaquin]

Do you feel that way about any invention that has destroyed people's livelihood or on only when it affects people you care about? The Neolithic Revolution put many hunters and most gatherers out of their job. Once people figured out how to work with copper and bronze, stonechipping became far less sought after. And it only got worse from then.

I feel the same about many inventions, but not all. It isn’t meaningful to say that the Neolithic revolution “put hunters and gatherers out of their job” because hunter gatherer societies weren’t structured in such a way that being “put out of a job” would lead to their suffering and possible death. Technology should improve livelihoods by reducing the need for labor. In modern society however, because we have a system which forces people to do labor in order to acquire the means of sustaining themselves, so reduction in the demand for labor ends up reducing the quality of laborers’ living rather than increasing it.

But it's not about purposely taking people's livelihood, that's just a side effect.

Enlighten me, what purpose do image generation algorithms serve other than generating value at the expense of human artists?

And making such statements what constitutes art and what not is gatekeeping at best.

I haven’t been making statements about what constitutes art. My argument is that algorithmically generated images are art theft, not that they aren’t art.

 

[tetrasodium]

Wow, the contempt for artists and deflection of responsibility for the effects that the technology you help produce has on people are pretty shocking.

Think of the children type positions likre your ethical one rarely produce desired results from those who originally disagreed with the one making it. The "contempt" over ai generation is stealing & theft hasn't gone over well either, why would a barely different phrasing of "unethical" do otherwise?

 

[Charlaquin]

Think of the children type positions likre your ethical one rarely produce desired results from those who originally disagreed with the one making it.

I have said nothing about children…?

The "contempt" over ai generation is stealing & theft hasn't gone over well either, why would a barely different phrasing of "unethical" do otherwise?

I don’t know what you’re trying to link to but it doesn’t seem to be working. Regardless, I’m not really bothered if you’re not swayed by my argument. I am well aware that I’m unlikely to change your mind.

 

[see]

what???

The primary employment of painters at the time of the invention of photography was as portraitists, and that work was utterly devastated by the photograph. The reason photographers "don’t even compete directly with other visual artists" now is that the painters were competed entirely out of the portrait business.

 

[Charlaquin]

The primary employment of painters at the time of the invention of photography was as portraitists, and that work was utterly devastated by the photograph. The reason photographers "don’t even compete directly with other visual artists" now is that the painters were competed entirely out of the portrait business.

That’s a very different claim than “cameras were purpose-built to extract value from the products of painters’ labor without compensating the painters.” Was painters losing jobs to photographers an issue? Presumably, just as workers losing jobs to automation is in manufacturing. But in both cases the problem is with the economic system that demands people perform labor to earn the means of living, which makes labor-saving inventions harm the standard of living for the working class, rather than improve it as such inventions should do. Image generation algorithms, on the other hand, are not a labor-saving invention, they are a labor stealing invention. They don’t do the work of an artist more cheaply and efficiently, they break down and reassemble the works of many artists and give those artists nothing in return, not even credit. Cameras made it possible to produce portraits without skill at painting, they didn’t take portraits human painters had produced and make collages out of them.

 

[Mecheon]

All of these require input by humans, built on technological development. AI art is just another paintbrush.

There isn't any input, though. I guess theoretically if you've trained the AI up on certain images, but, here's where we get that whole theft problem because, hey, you got permission to use those images in that?

If I stole some D&D content you'd created, be it an adventure or anything, mushed it together with a bunch of other similar stuff, and made a computer spit out a new adventure based on the raw skeleton of it all (Which is what AI generation is and this very subject I've mentioned is not only very possible, but probably happening right now), then I'm pretty sure you wouldn't be happy and would be upset. And yet, that's basically what these 'AI Art' programs are doing. Just for art rather than the written world. But, trust me, give it a few months and someone's going to release a "D&D adventure simulator" and I bet you'll easily find the bones of both official adventures and fanmades in there, grabbed wholepiece

Think of the children type positions likre your ethical one rarely produce desired results from those who originally disagreed with the one making it. The "contempt" over ai generation is stealing & theft hasn't gone over well either, why would a barely different phrasing of "unethical" do otherwise?

Tetra. How is this 'child-like', which is what I figure you're trying to say here? Is it child like to not want people's things stolen? Childish to not want people mass-generating low effort stories to flood magazines? Childish to assume good faith in people and they won't steal everything about you, even the words you've written, to squeeze a bit of data from?

Plenty of the contempt over it being stealing and theft has gone well, and every time it comes up people are rightfully dunking on AI generated art every time. The discourse is a hot mess, sure, but everyone in the art side of things is against it for a reason and with most of the people supporting it claiming its "democratising" which, aside from being a crypto/NFT-bro buzzword, seems to mean "pushing people out of jobs", is an easy write-off lie.

 

[Charlaquin]

There isn't any input, though. I guess theoretically if you've trained the AI up on certain images, but, here's where we get that whole theft problem because, hey, you got permission to use those images in that?

If I stole some D&D content you'd created, be it an adventure or anything, mushed it together with a bunch of other similar stuff, and made a computer spit out a new adventure based on the raw skeleton of it all (Which is what AI generation is and this very subject I've mentioned is not only very possible, but probably happening right now), then I'm pretty sure you wouldn't be happy and would be upset. And yet, that's basically what these 'AI Art' programs are doing. Just for art rather than the written world. But, trust me, give it a few months and someone's going to release a "D&D adventure simulator" and I bet you'll easily find the bones of both official adventures and fanmades in there, grabbed wholepiece

And there are written word versions too. People asking ChatGPT to write them a premise for a D&D adventure, and… Where do they think that text is coming from? The computer can’t make it up itself.

Tetra. How is this 'child-like', which is what I figure you're trying to say here? Is it child like to not want people's things stolen? Childish to not want people mass-generating low effort stories to flood magazines? Childish to assume good faith in people and they won't steal everything about you, even the words you've written, to squeeze a bit of data from?

I believe they were using the phrase Think of the Children to insinuate that my position is based in moral panic rather than actually substantive.