Figured that since it's the new big thing sweeping the globe, and how it'll likely have a profound impact on media going forward, I decided to open up a thread specifically to discuss the topic of AI art generators like Dall-E, Midjourney, and the like.
It's a polarizing subject, but I think there's merit in debating the various issues surrounding it.
Such issues include "is it ethical for AI art generators to be trained on data scraped together from copyrighted works, and how is it different from humans getting inspiration from art?" and "what do you see as the future of commercial artistic endeavors going forward (comics, game asset creation, animation, etc)?"
EDIT: Expanding the topic to all forms of AI-generated art, including creative writing and music composition.
There's also a more general thread
Edited by Mrph1 on Jun 22nd 2024 at 11:56:23 AM
And yet painting is still alive and well. Sometimes technology comes along that renders an old craft seemingly obsolete, yet the old craft becomes its own style that persists alongside the new rather than an obsolete aay of the past. However AI is different in many ways, so I could be wrong. And sometimes it just renders an old method obsolete like photo development, or manually inking animation cels.
Edited by TheLivingDrawing on Nov 24th 2024 at 3:48:48 PM
Once Upon A Time.I don’t for a moment think AI image generation will replace drawn or painted art, at most it will transform it from a commercial activity to a leisure activity.
Good image generation tools will not be free to use ones online, they will be custom in-house tools used to generate a particular style. Hobbyist will still draw and paint both manually and digitally and some people will use both or use an AI tool themselves while paying others to draw things manually (look at the mix hand-draw D&D maps and Inkartnet pre-generated asset maps the online D&D community use). People commissioning work will still higher drawing/painting artists for the same reason people still get portraits done instead of hiring a photographer or taking a photo on their phone. The more accessible tool won’t replace the existing community of artists, it will bring a new generation of amature into the artistic community.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranI think AI-generated art won't replace hand-drawn due to what I'll call the "Hand-Made Quality".
I'm reminded of a time when I was checking out an art museum with my Dad. He looked at an insanely good painting and said "Can you imagine? Someone actually picked up a brush and made this!"
This, I think, is the essentialist quality that will keep hand-made art in circulation in perpetuity. These forms of art can be considered in part a celebration of human capability.
It's the same reason, in fact, that photography hasn't completely replaced hand-made art.
Leviticus 19:34I’d even put a small bit of money on cameras having been derided as a cheep imitation of the “real” art of painting.
These things all verifiably happened, so you'd have won three bets.
Interpolation is done primarily with machine learning, and is a major part of most animation, Digital art tools especially were loathed as recently as the early 2000s in many spaces, and portrait artists were whining about cameras for years before they faded into irrelevance and became primarily used for painting pictures of governors.
I'm pretty sure people thought cameras "stole" the talent of painters back when they were invented. Same with digital art tools. Its just not established and taken for granted yet. AI art tools are, admittedly, currently glorified plagiarism generators and incapable of genuinely recreating human creativity, but that may not be the case in the future.
Edited by TheLivingDrawing on Nov 29th 2024 at 6:09:25 AM
Once Upon A Time.
so if I understand this right, Funko has an AI software that scans for copyright infringement. It erroneously flagged itch.io as an offender and spammed their domain register with phishing reports automatically forcing the site into shutdown until actual people could get in and fix the issue?
Sounds like Youtube content moderation at it's finest, but Youtube is thankfully limited to just Youtube. This was all probably a mistake, but I do worry about larger companies using software like this to brute force smaller competitor sites into shutdowns by just spamming bogus copyright flagging until the smaller site just can't keep up any more. Y"know, just like Youtube content moderation, but beyond Youtube now.
The software in question scans for counterfeit items on e-commerce sites, and when it finds them the company that owns the software has their lawyers send a takedown notice. In this particular case, a takedown notice was only sent for a single item but due to policy at itch.io’s registrar the whole site was taken offline.
Well, OpenAI released their video maker, Sora
into the wild for the public to use. They're getting hammered with signups right now, so new accounts are disabled.
Now the general public will have an easy to use AI video maker. There's even a video released on their YouTube channel demonstrating its many features, including the ability to tweak an output or transition from one scene into another.
There was some controversy about the Animation Guild’s tentative agreement with the studios and its perceived lack of AI guardrails. The guild has released this statement.
Let's give it a try...
- The Animation Guild Executive Board Voted unanimously for the contract. They think it's the strongest contract yet. They think everyone benefits from it.
- There are misleading stories about a minority of dissenters in the media. Out of the 29 Negotiation Committee team members, More than 90% voted in favor. They recognize its strength.
- GenAI is complicated. They recognize that a bunch of people care a lot. They believe in protecting the industry, but do not believe it can be achieved through contracts only. They reference other contracts with bigger unions for this point. They believe real change requires more than the guardrails of the contract, such as legislative change of various kinds.
- Their job is to have members be protected and have a voice in shaping the future. They do this through AI safeguards, closing loopholes, and increasing wages.
- Their contract balances progress with leverage. It addresses challenges and delivers meaningful gains they've been working on for a long time. They trust their members like it and vote to ratify it.
- They want you to send your questions to "e-board@tag839.org"
Does this work?
Read Otr of the Flame (She/Her)TCL, the TV manufacturer, plans to make short films using AI.
Not only that, some are online to watch right now. I watched one of them, Sun Day, which is a ripoff of the Ray Bradbury short story All Summer in a Day.
It has the usual problems one might expect like the "AI look" and scenes that don't naturally transition into others. Like when the tunnel suddenly floods, or when she falls and is suddenly wearing a bungee cord. What the heck.
Edited by BonsaiForest on Dec 12th 2024 at 11:00:10 AM
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I've noticed that for the most part a lot of these pitches and promotional pieces are derivative of other, existing works, and, even if we discount the style similarities, these images, audio, and videos, are always made predominantly to look like "something else". In this case, it's obviously the Blade Runner reboot, but it's always something iconic and popular - Disney-esque, Pixar-esque, Ghibli-esque, and it is less an inspired pastiche, and more of "I wanted to make this thing remind someone of a better movie made by someone else".
Also the copious amonts of Show, Don't Tell throughout this piece really grinds my gears. That's another tendency of generative content I've noticed - its weird insistence on Narrating the Obvious.
You keep using the term "POV". I do not think it means what you think it means.I’ve enjoyed some Ai video that was made by actual amateurs who are enthusiastic about it. It’s often pretty creative. The main thing I notice is that they usually lean into it being AI— they are using this medium because they actually like it and have fun playing with it. This feels embarrassed to be AI, like it’s just jumping on a trend at best (and more likely, trying to see how Cheap they can make content)

I’d bet money there have been AI helping elements in image editing software/virtual drawing tools since before Chat GPT came on the scene. I’m also similarly sure that when image editing software and virtual drawing tools first came on the scene they were derided as not producing real art.
I’d even put a small bit of money on cameras having been derided as a cheep imitation of the “real” art of painting.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran