this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2024
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Every non artist who doesn’t know shit about any creative workflow always regurgitates this “it’s a tool that will empower artists” line. Every working artist who understands what they’re talking about says this will lead to the elimination of 90% of jobs and just leave one underpaid guy churning out stolen artwork at a breakneck pace.
Artists had the exact same reaction when photography was invented. Simply taking what artists say as gospel isn't any more rational because artists also have their own biases. Meanwhile, the problem with jobs doesn't come from the technology but from the capitalist system of relations. Maybe we shouldn't be structuring society in a way where people have to do work for the sake of doing work.
― Charles Baudelaire, On Photography, from The Salon of 1859
Similar things were also said about CG in general particularly in 90's and 2000's when it spreaded from a niche to places like big cinema. And speaking of cinema...
The rise of CG did eliminate jobs in the SFX area. Make up, costumes, set dec, stop motion animation, animatronics, etc. But whereas someone in animatronics can retrain to use CG, there’s nowhere for an artist being replaced by a neural learning program to go. The program produces a finished end product. There is no pipeline for it to fit into. I feel like pro A.I. people are deliberately obtuse about this.
If you ever actually tried using these tools you'd realize that what you're saying is complete and utter nonsense. The workflows for generating stuff with AI tools are already getting very complex. This technology isn't magic, it's just a different way to produce art where the tool takes care of the mechanical aspects. A human is still very much needed to direct what's actually produced.
Couldn't agree more! Capitalism sucks! Also to add on to that, artist haven't come to many consensies about generative AI. The only one I think everyone can agree on is that it'll be disruptive, and makes the future for people who earn a living creating art even more uncertain than it already was. Whether that future is good or bad is entirely up for debate, although I think it'll land somewhere in the middle. Regardless of any of that, Pandora's box is open and it can't be closed.
Exactly, this is a disruptive technology that will change the way art is created going forward. There will be positive and negative aspects associated with it just like every new technology. One positive aspect I can definitely see is that it will allow a lot of people who lack technical skills for producing visual art to express themselves.
And it's also worth noting that the workflows are already getting fairly sophisticated. It's not just a matter of typing in a prompt and getting an image back. People are using stuff like control nets to pose the characters in the scene, inpaint specific details, etc. It's a different set of skills from traditional art, but it still requires expertise to produce a particular result you're looking for.
The way I look at it is that this tech will help automate a lot of tedious work involved in creating art, but it still takes a person with good taste to produce art that's interesting and engaging. In this sense it's quite similar to photography. Anybody can pick up a camera and start shooting pictures, but it takes an artists to create interesting pictures that people find meaningful. This is no different.
If you posted or read anything in any artist spaces whatsoever you would know this is untrue
I have, and it's pretty presumptuous of you to speak for an entire group of diverse people like that. Artist can't agree on what art is let alone if any one method is superior to another. I will say I've perceived there is a lot more anxiety than excitement over Generative AI but it would be foolish to assume that there is a consensus.
Artist is probably the second most diverse term for a group of people I can think of, behind the word people. Off the top of my head Corridor Digital embrace AI. They're pushing it's boundaries and are acutely aware that AI is destabilizing. Unless you don't consider them artists. I am not implying that they speak for all artists, or even that their opinion is aligned with the majority opinion. I'm merely providing an example of positive discourse on the subject.
How about knowing what you’re talking about, is that more rational? Making a painting and taking a photograph have separate and distinct end products, so of course they’re going to fall into separate niches. If a VFX artist working for 70k a year and an AI tool that costs a 2k yearly license produce identical results, than obviously the artist’s job is going to be eliminated to reduce overhead.
Again, the problem here is with the economic system as opposed to technology. Surely you can understand this yes?
I understand it and while it’s true, it’s also a deflection. Unless you’re an accelerationist.
How is it a deflection? The technology exists, you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube at this point. Might as well start engaging with reality. And not sure what pointing out that capitalism is the problem has to do with accelerationism. You're being incoherent here.