What is your opinion on ‘AI Generating Tools’ (AIGTs)?
I mean that’s rather broad. Tldr: I see them as useful tools.
But the people who created these programs stole content to train them on without the creator’s permission.
Yes, and consider for a moment that the people who developed Midjourney put out a call and got artists to opt in with their art. Since we’re daydreaming, let’s even say Midjourney’s developers even paid! those artists.
It took longer to develop the program, cost a bit more, but Midjourney now exists! Would that change the argument against people generating pictures/stories and selling them? Would there no longer be an outcry against these tools?
I mean actors were/are signing over the rights to their likeness and being paid for it. But the argument was never about how much they were being paid, it was about how those likenesses will be used. Same thing with these tools. The method of their creation is a travesty, but it’s not the nearly the main argument.
And it’s creating tons of pollution. Like a ton.
Yes, that sucks, and I’m tired of being made to feel guilty about my individual contribution to pollution. Reducing pollution has to be done by the companies making that pollution, which requires government oversight. All I can do is try to vote for people who intend to require this kind of oversight.
So you’re using AIGTs?
Yes. To make pictures of characters, scenes. And to give me ideas; names of characters, personality ideas, or place names. My stories and my characters are my own, and I’m not using it to create anything I am then putting out whole cloth and/or charging for it.
And your Patreon?
I’ve been pretty open about that, here’s the link to that position.
So you don’t care about the artists losing their jobs?
Of course I do, but as much as it sucks, this is what happens with new technology. Every tool ever created has both improved productivity, and cost humans jobs. You wanna talk about computers themselves? Doesn’t mean it’s not painful and that people don’t suffer, but technological advancement is not something we can stop, or should.
But why should we let it replace humans?
It won’t. Maybe in the short term it will seem like it will. Greedy companies will try to save money by doing it. Non-creatives will generate pictures and words and sell them, and people will buy them.
But like I said before, this generated content is just a tool’s output. Like a camera can take the picture, but it is only art because of the human perspective.
Maybe this type of generated content will become it’s own form of art, a collaboration between a human and a computer. Maybe it won’t. But while AIGTs can recreate everything a person, and artist did, recreate the beats of it, the feel of it, it will NEVER be able to create on its own, because there is no self. It can’t predict what a person will create tomorrow because there’s no way to predict who a person will be tomorrow. Because these tools, however many of them there are, will never be more than a snapshot of what the world was up until the moment the most recent picture, song, video was input, and it will never go past that. It will never actually CREATE anything, it will only repeat, rehash, regurgitate.
So my fellow artists, keep creating, keep living, and loving, and experiencing, and struggling to share yourself with others. Because that’s what art is, and all it will ever be, because computers will never be able to predict the insanity that is humanity.
In conclusion:
Even if there were lawsuits that shut down each of the myriad AIGTs that exist now, the can of worms has been opened. It’s not going away. I understand the ’don’t use it’ argument of Chuck Wendig (and plenty of others) but it is a tool and I’m going to use it for idea generation and coming up with the f—ing SEO key-phrases and meta descriptions that are the bane of my existence. And I won’t say I’ll never change my position, nor am I saying that my conclusion is ‘right’ even now, but it is what I’m doing. Go forth, gather evidence, and make your own choice.
But please, never stop creating.
<><><>
PS: Just for funsies, the header picture of this article was generated in Midjourney v6 using the phrase “art made as a collaboration between a human and a computer” then iterated, chosen, and edited by me. You can click here for the full image. Use it however you like.
