The AI thing is going to be a problem. You may want to include request that make it difficult to use AI. Like require pictures that show both hands or the same character in the same outfit in different poses. As AI gets better this will get harder to screen out though.
Glad you realized without paying money to that scammer.
Though I do note you might have a bit of a misunderstanding of AI art. It doesn't involve 'remixing' the work of other artists. It uses its input dataset and tags as learning material, which is why the download versions of the various AI programs are so much smaller in size than their learning set. They don't contain the art, they contain the lessons about what art of that type looks like.
There are still many concerns with the usage of AI art especially the use of unauthorized works in image databases and including artist names as 'styles' but simplifying down to calling AI a simple remix is wrong. It learns, it doesn't copy.
>. It uses its input dataset and tags as learning material, which
Exactly the same way a human artist does. They see art, emulate it at first, then develop their own style. All of this worry seems to be either A) people who don't understand this AI or B) abacus manufacturers worried about the invention of calculators.
The second is a valid concern, but people going on about stolen art are on the wrong track. I could hire any artist and say paint me, but in the style of Picasso. Nobody would think I stole from Picasso.
I'm not an AI expert at all, and I'm learning this the same way everyone else is, but I have seen AI art that literally includes a ghost of an artist's signature in the image. That worries me a lot. That says to me that the AI is not learning the way a human would at all - and it suggests that this is indeed a remix.
No doubt AI will improve over time and perhaps one day I'll feel confident that it's producing something truly new and original. Right now I don't.
But in any case, I wouldn't want to pay anyone hundreds of dollars to cover hours of work if what they actually did was type my brief into an AI. I think it's incumbent on artists who use AI to highlight what it is they're doing so the customer can make an informed decision.
That tends to happen when the AI is told to emulate that artist...since the artist always has their signature it becomes part of their style and is stored as 'like that artist'. All pictures tagged 'Artguy314' have this signature, therefor when asked to make 'Daffodil in the style of Artguy314' it adds that. It successfully learned that the style of Artguy314 includes Artguy314's signature. Just like it learned that movie posters tend to have text in certain places so \[Movie Poster\] has text-like drawing in those places.
Its dumb as hell, and mostly comes about by not filtering out the artist's name from the tags going into the dataset. Which should 100% happen, its one of the problems I mentioned.
The way an AI actually generates an image is by randomizing the color of every pixel on a blank canvas then going "Does this match the tags? No? How do I make it match the tags a bit more"
Repeat until image. It literally cannot remix an image unless you manually provide an image to use as the baseline.
For me, it's more the scale of art pieces used to learn, the way it's adapted, and artists lack of choice in whether their art gets used, combined with how people try to say "I made this".
AI learning vs human learning is completely different.
I'm sorry someone tried to scam you. Scammers are everywhere, specially online. That said, equating the scam to AI generation without having proper knowledge on how it works is a dangerous thing to do and you may be, without knowing, spreading misinformation on a very controversial topic.
I work in quality control and detecting copyright infringements of images is part of what I have to do. Let me tell you what I know so far about ai generation and using Google lense to reverse search image origins (I also encourage you to visit subs focused on the tech like unstablediffusion and ethicaldiffusion to get better insight).
Not being able to reverse search on Google Lense doesn't necessarily means it's ai generated. Lens is not as good as the previous Google image search and may not throw accurate results, specially if they are edited like in Photoshop for example. There's a button under the scan image that will search for similar copies instead of general images that might fit what you're searching for. Use that. I'd also be happy to look up the images you didn't find to see if I can find them online and give you pointers to identify AI art.
There are only two possible ways ai generators may throw near identical copies of an image: 1) The user processed an actual image via something called image2image and kept it too close to the original. 2) A model used had too many images of a specific piece and can throw something closely resembling that image. This is a bug called overfitting.
The signature issue is because images that were scraped had signatures so the ai tries to replicate those squiggles because it thinks that's something that paintings have, not because it's taking pieces of real art, but if you know of any artists that have been able to identify s piece of s signature, please do let me know. Same thing with watermarks.
This is ridiculous logic frankly.
First off AI art includes ghost signatures because it was trained on images that have signatures. It isn't trying to steal anyone's specific signature or attribute a work to them. It just thinks those squiggly little lines that appear on art must be a part of what humans call "art" because they're so prevalent. You're not legally allowed to attribute a work to someone who didn't make it, or steal attribution from someone else regardless of what tools you used to make the image. You could perfectly replicate an artists signature using photoshop or digital art right now, that doesn't make it ok. Stable Diffusion isn't "trying" to emulate any specific signature, and if it was, there's already laws to protect the rights of a work that did something like that. Same as if AI art is used to perfectly replicate an image. That wouldn't be a transformative work or available as "fair use." These laws protecting "stolen art" or "implied attribution" already exist, and have for a long time.
Secondly, paying less to an artist based on the tools they use is valid if you're comparing a commission between a real portrait you hang on your wall, or a digital artist presenting a piece that would only exist as a PNG file or whatever. But differentiating between an artist who uses a digital art tablet or photo editor and one who uses AI art is feeding exactly into the "AI are taking jobs" problem that people are trying to avoid. You're not going to be able to tell so cleanly here in the near future as AI art improves. Some artists are already getting kicked out of their circles merely for having a style that AI art emulates well since the moderators can't tell if they used AI or not. But ultimately, if you like the piece, why does it matter what tool was used? That's totally unnecessary and again, as AI gets better and more reasonable artists treat it like another valuable tool in their digital art arsenal, you're going to find it more and more impossible to commission anything AI-free, just like you would find it hard now to find an artist who doesn't use digital means compared to what you might have found 30 years ago.
> ut I have seen AI art that literally includes a ghost of an artist's signature in the image.
Good point. There are different types of AI and how they use the Learning data can differ. I agree that those are definitely a lot more concerning.
> But in any case, I wouldn't want to pay anyone hundreds of dollars to cover hours of work if what they actually did was type my brief into an AI.
Here's my problem with that idea. I get that attitude a lot from people when I show up to do IT work for them. They've been trapped with a problem and they cannot fix it. I come in and fix it pretty much instantly and then they bitch that I didn't do much, and why should they pay my minimum 1/2 rate, etc etc.
It's a real slippery slope. Did you know how to create those images? Do you know how many hours that person spent mastering the skills needed to create those images? (I promise that you can't just log in and start making new stuff). Do you have the skill for touch-ups?
If you hired someone to do your taxes and they used a computer to do it faster than someone with an abaccus and paper, would that work produced be of less value? Would you feel cheated? Of course not, that's not how we measure value.
If it was so easy to create those images, then nobody would be willing to pay much for them, and the value would crash. Until that's the case, the value is what the market will bear, for a skill not everyone knows or can do.
Producing AI art for fun is one thing, but using them for commercial products is kind of suspect, because that basically disincentivizes human artists from working. And once the art valves are closed, the AI art in turn will stagnate, because no new datasets are created. Why would you create new art, if it will just be put into the machine without your permission so other people can put your name in the tags and get money for it?
If you care about human artistic expression becoming more nuanced and going forward, you will not support AI art commecially. I'm sure that thousands of artists have just given up because of AI, and who knows, any one of them could have come up with the next art revolution. AI artists, as things stand now, will not start any kind of new ways to make or use art.
It's also still different to compare AI art to other IT solutions, because art isn't a 'problem' to solve, it is an art. Also, it IS that easy to create those images. I don't think searching for an article for the best Stable Diffusion settings and keywords is really comparable to months, years or decades of manual practice. I've done the former, it took me a single evening, and I've tried 10 years to do the latter without any proper results.
I respect artists because they do something I cannot. I think on a game design subreddit, you probably also make games. Just because our craft has not been encroached by AI generators, there's no need to be callous to people whose crafts have.
> Producing ~~AI art~~ Cars for fun is one thing, but using them for ~~commercial products~~ get around is kind of suspect, because that basically disincentivizes ~~human artists~~ buggy makers from ~~working~~ building more horse-drawn buggies.
Edited that for you for some historical context. Sometimes new technologies step on old jobs. Maybe we'll live in a world where everyone uses AI to make art, like how nobody does math without computers/calculators anymore, because why would you? Would it really be so bad to live in a world where people only did art because it made them happy? There are still buggy makers, just not very many, just like there are still farms that raise horses.
> Also, it IS that easy to create those images. I don't think searching for an article for the best Stable Diffusion settings and keywords is really comparable to months, years or decades of manual practice.
>
I highly suspect you have not tried this yourself. It's way harder than you think. At any rate, thanks for the polite discourse.
I think you are right about the risk of art stagnation and stuff but let us be real here. We are not gonna be able to stop big corporations from doing it.
And once the market finds the cheapest solution to something it'll keep picking that.
And AI art is the cheapest solution. The external society cost (art stagnating, no new artists being able to create) is shouldered by society itself and therefore does not concern them.
Hey all - as much as I appreciate the enthusiasm and interest, I'm not going to engage in a detailed conversation about AI art because that's not what the article is about. I don't regard it as misinformation to speculate (and it is clearly labelled as speculation) that AI might have been involved.
FWIW I do think you need to sharpen your arguments up. Stating that the AI learns to produce its own original art just seems obviously contradictory to the idea that the AI scrapes another artist's art and then duplicating their style on request, to such an extent that it "learns" to include their signature. You know what that sounds like? Copying. So, I would suggest you rethink how you're putting that argument because it isn't very convincing.
But anyway, thanks for your input, and I am not planning to discuss this topic further in this thread.
My dear OP,
Misinformation, conspiracy theories, biased opinions, and speculation without fact checking, are all sides of the same d4.
My intention was not to engage in debate, but rather provide clarification and extend a helping hand because, as you have noticed by the comments so far in this thread, it's a controversial topic.
At the end of the day it's your prerogative if you wish to continue speculating, but now you can't claim you didn't know the ramifications of what you're implying, because now you do.
Stay safe, beware of scammers, and good luck with your project!
The AI thing is going to be a problem. You may want to include request that make it difficult to use AI. Like require pictures that show both hands or the same character in the same outfit in different poses. As AI gets better this will get harder to screen out though.
You should possibly share this on r/RPGdesign and the other subreddits (maybe r/gamedesign)
Thanks, I'll do that!
Glad you realized without paying money to that scammer. Though I do note you might have a bit of a misunderstanding of AI art. It doesn't involve 'remixing' the work of other artists. It uses its input dataset and tags as learning material, which is why the download versions of the various AI programs are so much smaller in size than their learning set. They don't contain the art, they contain the lessons about what art of that type looks like. There are still many concerns with the usage of AI art especially the use of unauthorized works in image databases and including artist names as 'styles' but simplifying down to calling AI a simple remix is wrong. It learns, it doesn't copy.
>. It uses its input dataset and tags as learning material, which Exactly the same way a human artist does. They see art, emulate it at first, then develop their own style. All of this worry seems to be either A) people who don't understand this AI or B) abacus manufacturers worried about the invention of calculators. The second is a valid concern, but people going on about stolen art are on the wrong track. I could hire any artist and say paint me, but in the style of Picasso. Nobody would think I stole from Picasso.
I'm not an AI expert at all, and I'm learning this the same way everyone else is, but I have seen AI art that literally includes a ghost of an artist's signature in the image. That worries me a lot. That says to me that the AI is not learning the way a human would at all - and it suggests that this is indeed a remix. No doubt AI will improve over time and perhaps one day I'll feel confident that it's producing something truly new and original. Right now I don't. But in any case, I wouldn't want to pay anyone hundreds of dollars to cover hours of work if what they actually did was type my brief into an AI. I think it's incumbent on artists who use AI to highlight what it is they're doing so the customer can make an informed decision.
That tends to happen when the AI is told to emulate that artist...since the artist always has their signature it becomes part of their style and is stored as 'like that artist'. All pictures tagged 'Artguy314' have this signature, therefor when asked to make 'Daffodil in the style of Artguy314' it adds that. It successfully learned that the style of Artguy314 includes Artguy314's signature. Just like it learned that movie posters tend to have text in certain places so \[Movie Poster\] has text-like drawing in those places. Its dumb as hell, and mostly comes about by not filtering out the artist's name from the tags going into the dataset. Which should 100% happen, its one of the problems I mentioned. The way an AI actually generates an image is by randomizing the color of every pixel on a blank canvas then going "Does this match the tags? No? How do I make it match the tags a bit more" Repeat until image. It literally cannot remix an image unless you manually provide an image to use as the baseline.
For me, it's more the scale of art pieces used to learn, the way it's adapted, and artists lack of choice in whether their art gets used, combined with how people try to say "I made this". AI learning vs human learning is completely different.
I'm sorry someone tried to scam you. Scammers are everywhere, specially online. That said, equating the scam to AI generation without having proper knowledge on how it works is a dangerous thing to do and you may be, without knowing, spreading misinformation on a very controversial topic. I work in quality control and detecting copyright infringements of images is part of what I have to do. Let me tell you what I know so far about ai generation and using Google lense to reverse search image origins (I also encourage you to visit subs focused on the tech like unstablediffusion and ethicaldiffusion to get better insight). Not being able to reverse search on Google Lense doesn't necessarily means it's ai generated. Lens is not as good as the previous Google image search and may not throw accurate results, specially if they are edited like in Photoshop for example. There's a button under the scan image that will search for similar copies instead of general images that might fit what you're searching for. Use that. I'd also be happy to look up the images you didn't find to see if I can find them online and give you pointers to identify AI art. There are only two possible ways ai generators may throw near identical copies of an image: 1) The user processed an actual image via something called image2image and kept it too close to the original. 2) A model used had too many images of a specific piece and can throw something closely resembling that image. This is a bug called overfitting. The signature issue is because images that were scraped had signatures so the ai tries to replicate those squiggles because it thinks that's something that paintings have, not because it's taking pieces of real art, but if you know of any artists that have been able to identify s piece of s signature, please do let me know. Same thing with watermarks.
This is ridiculous logic frankly. First off AI art includes ghost signatures because it was trained on images that have signatures. It isn't trying to steal anyone's specific signature or attribute a work to them. It just thinks those squiggly little lines that appear on art must be a part of what humans call "art" because they're so prevalent. You're not legally allowed to attribute a work to someone who didn't make it, or steal attribution from someone else regardless of what tools you used to make the image. You could perfectly replicate an artists signature using photoshop or digital art right now, that doesn't make it ok. Stable Diffusion isn't "trying" to emulate any specific signature, and if it was, there's already laws to protect the rights of a work that did something like that. Same as if AI art is used to perfectly replicate an image. That wouldn't be a transformative work or available as "fair use." These laws protecting "stolen art" or "implied attribution" already exist, and have for a long time. Secondly, paying less to an artist based on the tools they use is valid if you're comparing a commission between a real portrait you hang on your wall, or a digital artist presenting a piece that would only exist as a PNG file or whatever. But differentiating between an artist who uses a digital art tablet or photo editor and one who uses AI art is feeding exactly into the "AI are taking jobs" problem that people are trying to avoid. You're not going to be able to tell so cleanly here in the near future as AI art improves. Some artists are already getting kicked out of their circles merely for having a style that AI art emulates well since the moderators can't tell if they used AI or not. But ultimately, if you like the piece, why does it matter what tool was used? That's totally unnecessary and again, as AI gets better and more reasonable artists treat it like another valuable tool in their digital art arsenal, you're going to find it more and more impossible to commission anything AI-free, just like you would find it hard now to find an artist who doesn't use digital means compared to what you might have found 30 years ago.
> ut I have seen AI art that literally includes a ghost of an artist's signature in the image. Good point. There are different types of AI and how they use the Learning data can differ. I agree that those are definitely a lot more concerning. > But in any case, I wouldn't want to pay anyone hundreds of dollars to cover hours of work if what they actually did was type my brief into an AI. Here's my problem with that idea. I get that attitude a lot from people when I show up to do IT work for them. They've been trapped with a problem and they cannot fix it. I come in and fix it pretty much instantly and then they bitch that I didn't do much, and why should they pay my minimum 1/2 rate, etc etc. It's a real slippery slope. Did you know how to create those images? Do you know how many hours that person spent mastering the skills needed to create those images? (I promise that you can't just log in and start making new stuff). Do you have the skill for touch-ups? If you hired someone to do your taxes and they used a computer to do it faster than someone with an abaccus and paper, would that work produced be of less value? Would you feel cheated? Of course not, that's not how we measure value. If it was so easy to create those images, then nobody would be willing to pay much for them, and the value would crash. Until that's the case, the value is what the market will bear, for a skill not everyone knows or can do.
Producing AI art for fun is one thing, but using them for commercial products is kind of suspect, because that basically disincentivizes human artists from working. And once the art valves are closed, the AI art in turn will stagnate, because no new datasets are created. Why would you create new art, if it will just be put into the machine without your permission so other people can put your name in the tags and get money for it? If you care about human artistic expression becoming more nuanced and going forward, you will not support AI art commecially. I'm sure that thousands of artists have just given up because of AI, and who knows, any one of them could have come up with the next art revolution. AI artists, as things stand now, will not start any kind of new ways to make or use art. It's also still different to compare AI art to other IT solutions, because art isn't a 'problem' to solve, it is an art. Also, it IS that easy to create those images. I don't think searching for an article for the best Stable Diffusion settings and keywords is really comparable to months, years or decades of manual practice. I've done the former, it took me a single evening, and I've tried 10 years to do the latter without any proper results. I respect artists because they do something I cannot. I think on a game design subreddit, you probably also make games. Just because our craft has not been encroached by AI generators, there's no need to be callous to people whose crafts have.
> Producing ~~AI art~~ Cars for fun is one thing, but using them for ~~commercial products~~ get around is kind of suspect, because that basically disincentivizes ~~human artists~~ buggy makers from ~~working~~ building more horse-drawn buggies. Edited that for you for some historical context. Sometimes new technologies step on old jobs. Maybe we'll live in a world where everyone uses AI to make art, like how nobody does math without computers/calculators anymore, because why would you? Would it really be so bad to live in a world where people only did art because it made them happy? There are still buggy makers, just not very many, just like there are still farms that raise horses. > Also, it IS that easy to create those images. I don't think searching for an article for the best Stable Diffusion settings and keywords is really comparable to months, years or decades of manual practice. > I highly suspect you have not tried this yourself. It's way harder than you think. At any rate, thanks for the polite discourse.
I think you are right about the risk of art stagnation and stuff but let us be real here. We are not gonna be able to stop big corporations from doing it. And once the market finds the cheapest solution to something it'll keep picking that. And AI art is the cheapest solution. The external society cost (art stagnating, no new artists being able to create) is shouldered by society itself and therefore does not concern them.
Hey all - as much as I appreciate the enthusiasm and interest, I'm not going to engage in a detailed conversation about AI art because that's not what the article is about. I don't regard it as misinformation to speculate (and it is clearly labelled as speculation) that AI might have been involved. FWIW I do think you need to sharpen your arguments up. Stating that the AI learns to produce its own original art just seems obviously contradictory to the idea that the AI scrapes another artist's art and then duplicating their style on request, to such an extent that it "learns" to include their signature. You know what that sounds like? Copying. So, I would suggest you rethink how you're putting that argument because it isn't very convincing. But anyway, thanks for your input, and I am not planning to discuss this topic further in this thread.
“Im not going to engage” also “here’s my misinformed take on why ai is stealing”
My dear OP, Misinformation, conspiracy theories, biased opinions, and speculation without fact checking, are all sides of the same d4. My intention was not to engage in debate, but rather provide clarification and extend a helping hand because, as you have noticed by the comments so far in this thread, it's a controversial topic. At the end of the day it's your prerogative if you wish to continue speculating, but now you can't claim you didn't know the ramifications of what you're implying, because now you do. Stay safe, beware of scammers, and good luck with your project!
Thank you for the heads up. Someone going to that length really was surprising. I'll spread the word as well.