Depends on where you look, really. Most of the interesting new developments (and the bulk of what's available only for open source models and not commercial ones because commercial models can't possibly adapt these things and make them user friendly fast enough) have been a bunch of conditioning models, whose only purpose is adding another layer of human input. And they're usually extremely useful, because there's far more that can be expressed spatially that you can't express with text.
Yeah, the instant art button is what gets the most attention (usually in the form of anime girls with anatomically impossible proportions since straight people are boring), but you can also definitely make things more complicated and gain far more control in the process, and I see plenty of people who came for the instant art ending up doing this down the line. Plenty even going as far as picking up a pen tablet and developing conventional drawing skills to use alongside it. At some point along that process, I think it's clear that it starts being used as a tool.
I mean, you can say what you want, but I think there's going to be a devaluation of "real" art and I think that's sad
Regardless of how many knobs we put on the thing in open source communities, corporations will push and likely exclusively use the "instant art button", because that's what employers want and what appeals the most to the general public. It's what sells, something that's purposely "worse"/more complicated is always going to sell less except as niche stuff redditors do.
Even the art done with "complicated" AI with knobs will be devalued as the general public sees the labor put into it as worthless. Most of the arguments I have seen against this fact are basically just cope. The "anti-AI" art movement isn't just Luddism, it's a movement for the continued perception of labor-intensive art as valuable. It is a movement against the algorithimification of visual art, against the full commodification of art as a concept. Dismissing or being against the movement as a whole is... disgusting, given this, honestly. The only reason to is to encourage the algorithimification of art... something only random executives want. I understand critical support but outright opposition is absurd. It would be like "opposing" the Luddites: You can point out that they're wrong with their goals and strategies, but outright opposing the ENTIRE movement is just a basic anti-labor attitude.
I am sure that there are plenty of people in the movement who are only looking for that, and I support things like the Writers Guild wanting protections in their contracts. That is not the dominant theme in the anti-AI movement. By far the most prominent voices are large corporations and a handful of fairly successful independent artists who are interested in strengthening copyright, which will be of little benefit to anyone who is not already wealthy enough to pursue a copyright infringement case. There's also plenty of people who do actually want to ban the technology outright or who fantasize about sabotaging it somehow, I don't know how anyone could follow anti-AI discourse and not see any of that. The likely outcome of strengthening copyright as part of this, though, is that large media companies will then continue to displace workers using AI tools while also making a larger share of money from the development from either selling access to datasets built from their internal libraries or by leveraging their exclusive access to said data, none of which actually benefits artists. IP law is not there to protect small artists, it is only capable of protecting those who can afford to go to court over it, everyone else will get fucked over as usual. But I'm sure that the Copyright Alliance and the handful of independent artists that they want to present as a human face will be pretty happy about it.
The one thing that this could restrict is open-source development of said models, which will make them harder to access for any independent artist who wishes to use them (if we assume that use of AI tools becomes a prevailing standard this will be necessary, if we assume that independent artists will be fine without them then presumably it follows that we don't need to do anything at all) by making sure that they are reliably behind a paywall and generating profits for either an AI company or a media company. At best, this leaves independent artists slightly worse off when accounting for the effort spent on putting this plan into action, at worst it would make it far more profitable for tech companies and media companies alike.
If a movement is claiming to do something in the name of labor, but material analysis shows that the plan is very obviously DOA and if anything will make the issue worse, I'm going to oppose that, and I am going to have heavy disagreements with the anti-AI movement as long as its dominant messaging is clinging to IP law in the hopes that it will somehow magically transform into something that benefits workers without comparable effort to what it would take to overthrow capitalism outright.
Clinging to IP law is of course stupid and I agree with opposing that
However, I never really think of those people when I think of the "anti-AI" art movement- I think of random furries online who just dislike AI art or artists who are pissed about having their labor exploited specifically to exploit them more efficiently.
I think of random furries online who just dislike AI art
A few people I know are actually getting harassment, up to and including death threats from this group. Unfortunately those are also part of that movement and tend to be some of the ones freshest in my mind at any given time.
Depends on where you look, really. Most of the interesting new developments (and the bulk of what's available only for open source models and not commercial ones because commercial models can't possibly adapt these things and make them user friendly fast enough) have been a bunch of conditioning models, whose only purpose is adding another layer of human input. And they're usually extremely useful, because there's far more that can be expressed spatially that you can't express with text.
Yeah, the instant art button is what gets the most attention (usually in the form of anime girls with anatomically impossible proportions since straight people are boring), but you can also definitely make things more complicated and gain far more control in the process, and I see plenty of people who came for the instant art ending up doing this down the line. Plenty even going as far as picking up a pen tablet and developing conventional drawing skills to use alongside it. At some point along that process, I think it's clear that it starts being used as a tool.
I mean, you can say what you want, but I think there's going to be a devaluation of "real" art and I think that's sad
Regardless of how many knobs we put on the thing in open source communities, corporations will push and likely exclusively use the "instant art button", because that's what employers want and what appeals the most to the general public. It's what sells, something that's purposely "worse"/more complicated is always going to sell less except as niche stuff redditors do.
Even the art done with "complicated" AI with knobs will be devalued as the general public sees the labor put into it as worthless. Most of the arguments I have seen against this fact are basically just cope. The "anti-AI" art movement isn't just Luddism, it's a movement for the continued perception of labor-intensive art as valuable. It is a movement against the algorithimification of visual art, against the full commodification of art as a concept. Dismissing or being against the movement as a whole is... disgusting, given this, honestly. The only reason to is to encourage the algorithimification of art... something only random executives want. I understand critical support but outright opposition is absurd. It would be like "opposing" the Luddites: You can point out that they're wrong with their goals and strategies, but outright opposing the ENTIRE movement is just a basic anti-labor attitude.
That sounds like a very bad faith reading.
I am sure that there are plenty of people in the movement who are only looking for that, and I support things like the Writers Guild wanting protections in their contracts. That is not the dominant theme in the anti-AI movement. By far the most prominent voices are large corporations and a handful of fairly successful independent artists who are interested in strengthening copyright, which will be of little benefit to anyone who is not already wealthy enough to pursue a copyright infringement case. There's also plenty of people who do actually want to ban the technology outright or who fantasize about sabotaging it somehow, I don't know how anyone could follow anti-AI discourse and not see any of that. The likely outcome of strengthening copyright as part of this, though, is that large media companies will then continue to displace workers using AI tools while also making a larger share of money from the development from either selling access to datasets built from their internal libraries or by leveraging their exclusive access to said data, none of which actually benefits artists. IP law is not there to protect small artists, it is only capable of protecting those who can afford to go to court over it, everyone else will get fucked over as usual. But I'm sure that the Copyright Alliance and the handful of independent artists that they want to present as a human face will be pretty happy about it.
The one thing that this could restrict is open-source development of said models, which will make them harder to access for any independent artist who wishes to use them (if we assume that use of AI tools becomes a prevailing standard this will be necessary, if we assume that independent artists will be fine without them then presumably it follows that we don't need to do anything at all) by making sure that they are reliably behind a paywall and generating profits for either an AI company or a media company. At best, this leaves independent artists slightly worse off when accounting for the effort spent on putting this plan into action, at worst it would make it far more profitable for tech companies and media companies alike.
If a movement is claiming to do something in the name of labor, but material analysis shows that the plan is very obviously DOA and if anything will make the issue worse, I'm going to oppose that, and I am going to have heavy disagreements with the anti-AI movement as long as its dominant messaging is clinging to IP law in the hopes that it will somehow magically transform into something that benefits workers without comparable effort to what it would take to overthrow capitalism outright.
Clinging to IP law is of course stupid and I agree with opposing that
However, I never really think of those people when I think of the "anti-AI" art movement- I think of random furries online who just dislike AI art or artists who are pissed about having their labor exploited specifically to exploit them more efficiently.
A few people I know are actually getting harassment, up to and including death threats from this group. Unfortunately those are also part of that movement and tend to be some of the ones freshest in my mind at any given time.
Ok, well, who are these people you know? That sounds like it's missing context.
Someone back me up here.