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

[see]

That’s a very different claim than “cameras were purpose-built to extract value from the products of painters’ labor without compensating the painters.”

And that's a very different claim than the actual quote you responded to with a " what???", which was "Photography's built in purpose is to take the livelihoods of people who paint pictures."

If you're actually expecting people to be able to intuit "my argument is about the theft of work product, not the unemployment from substitution" from " what???", you might need to thoroughly re-evaluate your discussion strategies.

 

[Jadeite]

But AI art improves the quality of life for many, many people. It grants access to the creation of images without needing to consult an artist. It somewhat diminishes the artists' privilege of creating art, but I would argue that humans are still able to create superior art. Stable Diffusion can create pretty interesting results, though, especially when the results are vetted by humans:
The greatest issue of AI generated art is copyright, but you should get pretty good results while restricting the training data to public domain. And human artists tracing pictures face similar problems, though.
Once that is settled, all those NIMBY luddites will have very little argument aide from "I have a right to be paid for what I want to do, not for what others are willing to pay me".

 

[Mecheon]

Once that is settled, all those NIMBY luddites will have very little argument aide from "I have a right to be paid for what I want to do, not for what others are willing to pay me".

What about 'people are just going to go with the cheapest solution rather than support people who know what they're doing'?

Outside of the D&D-sphere, I'm into the paleontology sphere. Just last week were having a bit of a discussion on this particular little ad


Here's the thing. I know its awful. You all know its awful. I'm pretty sure every person here could draw a better T-rex. But despite being awful, it was good enough for the marketting department to go 'Yeah just slap that in an ad'. Welcome to AI art's targets. Not the high end, but instead the medium.

AI art is going to lead to companies moving away from these passionate artists and just, getting whatever's cheap. Do you like art from excellent artists like Brom or DiTerlizzi, who's distinctive styles downright defined two settings? Sorry, that isn't a thing with AI art any more. Because getting artists who care, who put passion and drive into work? That costs money. And 90% of the drive to this AI art is 'who cares about that, just pay whatever's cheap and get schlock like a two headed unicorn rider with no hands or a 3 legged t-rex with a fractal hand'.

That video doesn't mean nothing, its just images slapped together with no soul in them. Tribute to Anomalocaris has more meaning to it, and that's a cruncy, decade old Youtube video. AI art is just people settling for mediocre 'art' because they'd rather go the cheap option rather than pay people what their time and effort is worth

 

[Jadeite]

@Mecheon
I guess AI art really crushes the dreams of aspiring artists to be chosen not because their skill and talent but because they are cheap.
Their are lot of pretty bad illustrations with wrong proportions in RPG books, all done by actual human beings. There are also lifeless CGI illustrations and at least one case of weird photos of dolls in Cyerpunk. Extra limbs were a thing before AI, especially in animation. But I'm hopeful that the quality of AI generated images will improve.
You see artists losing their job, I see RPG publishers being able to have easier access to illustrations. It's usually not about the cheapest option but the best one at a certain price point. Otherwise Broms and DiTerlizzis would have been replaced with inferior artists a long time ago. Paizo is already outsourcing their art to eastern Europe if I recall correctly. AI art doesn't really hurt established artists but aspiring ones, but c'est la vie.

 

[Charlaquin]

And that's a very different claim than the actual quote you responded to with a " what???", which was "Photography's built in purpose is to take the livelihoods of people who paint pictures."

It’s an absurd claim that disrupting painters’ livelihoods was the purpose of photography, especially when presented as a counter-argument to my assertion that image generation algorithms were purpose-built to extract value from artists’ labor without having to compensate them. I laughed because of the absurdity of the argument.

If you're actually expecting people to be able to intuit "my argument is about the theft of work product, not the unemployment from substitution" from " what???", you might need to thoroughly re-evaluate your discussion strategies.

I’ve been pretty explicit about my position, I don’t think it’s necessary to intuit it.

 

[Charlaquin]

But AI art improves the quality of life for many, many people. It grants access to the creation of images without needing to consult an artist.

And it does so by taking the fruits of labor those artists did and giving them nothing in return. You’re literally describing theft.

It somewhat diminishes the artists' privilege of creating art, but I would argue that humans are still able to create superior art.

For now.

The greatest issue of AI generated art is copyright, but you should get pretty good results while restricting the training data to public domain.

No, the greatest issue is that it’s a tool designed to cut the artists out of art.

And human artists tracing pictures face similar problems, though.

Yes, that is also an act of art theft, and is also immoral.

Once that is settled, all those NIMBY luddites will have very little argument aide from "I have a right to be paid for what I want to do, not for what others are willing to pay me".

This is what I meant about the contempt for artists being shocking. No, artists don’t have a right to be paid for what they want to do, but by the same token neither do you have a right to benefit from their labor without paying them for it. Artists are not your slaves, if you want the product they’re offering, you’ve got to pay them for it. That’s how free market systems are supposed to work.

 

[Jadeite]

@Charlaquin
If AI can create art without infringing on an artists copyright, I don't take an artist's product without paying. I'm taking a product comparable to what an artist is offering without paying the artist. As long as the training data doesn't infringe on artists' copyright (which is currently a severe issue), the artists haven't done any work in creating that art and therefore don't deserve any compensation.
If AI manages to create superior art, people should use it. I don't see why artists should deserve more protection than lamplighters.

 

[Mecheon]

If AI can create art without infringing on an artists copyright, I don't take an artist's product without paying. I'm taking a product comparable to what an artist is offering without paying the artist.

It isn't, though. It never can be. An AI's art will inevitable be souless, other images mashed together into a single form. Art makes up RPG products as much as anything. Consider Gith's current popularity and how much if that may be due to them striking while the iron was hot, being THE face of the Fiend Folio back in the day. If you're skimping on the art, well, why don't we just, give all the text to an AI? Who cares about wanting a good product, its just filling space, so just make an AI write up the lore. It'll be contractradictory and it'll suck, sure, but now we don't have to pay writers or bookkeepers or people who have to pay attention to things. But its vaguely comparable to what they'd do!

Art is an important part of the book. If you're skimping on it (because, that's what using AI art is), then you're basically cheating out on making a product worth what it should be. Then, where does the level of care stop? Scrapped the care for art, why not just, do the same to text, to stats, to everything else. Just suck all the flavour and character of something being written and pass it off to a computer regurgitating words it cannot comprehend

If AI manages to create superior art, people should use it. I don't see why artists should deserve more protection than lamplighters.

No AI art will ever be superior. It can't be simply due to how its made. There's no meaning behind anything the AI generates. The earnest, heart-felt strangeness of any comic of Tails Gets Trolled (uh, google at your own risk, kinda NSFW) has infinitely more value than anything an AI has ever. Its classic image of Tails, the go to absolute meme of it, isn't the most technically drawn thing out there. But its sheer meaning has made it a classic. You probably know the image even if you haven't seen the comic

 

[Dausuul]

The greatest issue of AI generated art is copyright, but you should get pretty good results while restricting the training data to public domain.

I very much doubt it. These models require mountains of data to train; public domain art is a miniscule set to work from. At least, it is if you're verifying ownership, instead of just harvesting anything on the Internet that some yahoo uploaded and tagged "public."

If someone built a Stable Diffusion-type model trained exclusively -- from the ground up -- on public domain art, or art for which the artist was properly paid, I'd have no objection to it. But I'm not aware of any such thing.

 

[Charlaquin]

@Charlaquin
If AI can create art without infringing on an artists copyright, I don't take an artist's product without paying. I'm taking a product comparable to what an artist is offering without paying the artist.

No, the algorithm is taking the artist’s work without paying for it. Just because you aren’t directly receiving a direct copy of any individual artist’s work doesn’t mean they haven’t done uncompensated labor. That algorithm could not have created whatever image it gave you without countless artists having worked to produce the images it’s creating a composite of.

As long as the training data doesn't infringe on artists' copyright (which is currently a severe issue), the artists haven't done any work in creating that art and therefore don't deserve any compensation.

We don’t yet know how this technology is going to impact copyright law, so “as long as it doesn’t infringe on copyright” isn’t an effective defense. Moreover, what some judge decides is or isn’t an infringement of copyright doesn’t ultimately change the underlying fact that by training these algorithms on artists’ works, those artists’ labor is going into the product that algorithm produces. They are being made to work in order to enable the algorithm to function, more often than not unknowingly, unwillingly, and without compensation. It’s slavery with extra steps.

If AI manages to create superior art, people should use it. I don't see why artists should deserve more protection than lamplighters.

Everyone deserves fair compensation for their labor. Artists, lamplighters, everyone. If algorithms manage to make art (of any quality), it is only because artists’ labor was exploited to “teach” them how to do that. They deserve fair compensation for that work, and currently? They aren’t getting that.