In a post-scarcity solarpunk future, I could imagine some reasonable uses, but that’s not the world we’re living in yet.

AI art has already poisoned the creative environment. I commissioned an artist for my latest solarpunk novel, and they used AI without telling me. I had to scrap that illustration. Then the next person I tried to hire claimed they could do the work without AI but in fact they could not.

All that is to say, fuck generative AI and fuck capitalism!

  • ClamDrinker@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    4 months ago

    Yeah I can’t look at artists with zero nuance for AI as anything but being hypocritical. Most artists I know from the industry understand that legally they have no case against these companies because they use the same fundamental freedoms and ideas extracted from the collective human creativity they themselves used to get where they are. And art and creative studies explicitly teach you this. You will spend a lot of time analyzing great works to see what makes them so special, and replicating those ideas as practice.

    It’s how it’s been since forever, and many great artists in history are on record as having directly studied, imitated, or producing homages of other great artists. The Mona Lisa is the best example, it has uncountable derivative works, but nobody questions the ethics of that because we accept even works directly based on another have room for creative input that can make it distinct. And nobody is claiming to have made the original, just their own version.

    Hiding or downplaying those facts about the creative industry so you can call AI theft without being a hypocrite is very questionable behaviour, especially since it’s often used to convince people that don’t know much about the creative process and can’t properly realize their ignorance is being taken advantage of to condition them these aren’t just a normal part of becoming a better artist. And if pressed on that, the response is usually “but it’s okay if a human does it.”, admitting that the point was intentionally misrepresented to not hint people in on the fact the AI is doing the same as the human, and not explicit copyright infringement akin to real theft.

    You can still not like AI or argue to provide better protections for people displaced by AI, I honestly partially agree. The technology needs to remain something in the hands of the working people that contribute to the collective, not gated behind proprietary services built to extort you. But arguing against AI on a level of theft or plagiarism (barring situations where the person using the AI intends to do exactly that) is just incredibly disingenuous and makes allies not want to associate with you because you’re just spouting falsehoods for personal gain. Even if I think you deserve all the help in the world, you’re asking me to accept and propagate a lie to support you, I will not do that.

    And there’s the flipside. Limiting those freedoms in a way that AI would be outlawed or constrained would most likely cause unintentional side effects that can blow up in artist’s faces, limiting not only their freedoms but also the freedoms of artists that embrace AI and use it as the tool it’s meant to be. And you bet your ass that companies like Disney are just salivating at the idea of amending copyright law once more.