Here's some relevant links: Art Station Protest: www.artstation.com/search?sort_by=date&query=NO%20to%20AI%20Art That Article on the the AI Lawsuit: www.theverge.com/2023/1/16/23557098/generative-ai-art-copyright-legal-lawsuit-stable-diffusion-midjourney-deviantart Pinterest's Earnings Report: investor.pinterestinc.com/press-releases/press-releases-details/2023/Pinterest-Announces-Fourth-Quarter-and-Full-Year-2022-Results/default.aspx#:~:text=SAN%20FRANCISCO%2D%2D(BUSINESS%20WIRE,over%20year%20to%20%242%2C803%20million. Seth Godin's Podcast: play.acast.com/s/akimbo/industries And buy my book! shop.mrjakeparker.com/

Something like 80% of the art on social media has the same "kinda disney" "kinda anime" "precious moments" "glamour portrait" look to it, and AI art does that look almost perfectly, especially in portrait form.

Thank you for talking about this. The problem is how hyper commercialized & how the industry standards have actually ruined art & process of making art. The technology is good because we always need to advance our methods & learn, but I always feel the need to have art done within the day even at my own expense. It's frustrating that big industry wants me to be a machine when I'm just a person. And I'm happy to create 💖

Artists are very open-minded people. AI art could've been welcomed with open arms if the people pushing AI tech had any respect for artists at all. They wanted to fight us, they hate us. It's a shame, it didn't have to be like this. Oh well.

I can only repeat myself over and over: Kater to the people that value your work and the effort you put into it. Not the ones that would replace you with a cheaper version any time

Agreed. I am an artist as well. I did study for a Bsc Computer Science an built websites right out of college and when SquareSpace came about it was the best thing. Because I didn’t have to do simple websites anymore or customise them fast for high margins. But the real kicker is that the amount of people interested in customized sites with fancy stuff increase - because they wanted something different - which costs way more because of time to develop. When I see these AI works, I see the same thing happening, a rise in demand of people wanting illustrations, paintings on canvas and sculptures and such because they want something diff, which ultimately drives up prices too

Yep. _All_ of this. I've had debates with artists who don't truly understand the threat of industrialized art, which actually predates the Internet (I'm old). We need to fight back. The points you outlined are very good, but the masses won't be able effect change with this without a collective driver. To that end, my company is developing a creator-driven OS/platform to combat this problem. We're scheduled for release ~Q3 of this year. Because you have a great handle on this issue and the remedies which fall directly in line with our goals, I'll contact you privately with details when our platform is complete, just to get your feedback. Talk to you then 👍

I had this exact thought that completely changed my view on ai art and mad me less apprehensive. When you think of who is benefits and who will be replaced, everything becomes clearer

When art become a content no wonder it gets industrialized and automated for mass production

I've been so annoyed by the discourse around AI art, it's been so reductive. I'm glad we finally got a nuanced take from someone with influence in this space

This is the best “take” on AI art I’ve yet heard, but of course that’s because I completely agree. 😎 That excellent Godin quote makes me think of the great french sociologist Jaques Ellul, who called industrialization’s pursuit of efficiency above all else “technique” and “the technical society.” “It is easy to boast of victory over ancient oppression, but what if victory has been gained at the price of an even greater subjection to the forces of the artificial necessity of the technical society which has come to dominate our lives?” ― Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society I think humanity is in more desperate need of hospitality and human connection than ever before, due to the effects “technique” has had on our lives. This is an opportunity for artists and other creatives to imagine environments to facilitate such! 😊

What I get from the video is embrace the change without giving up art and "your art", I agree with. Art has changed a lot during the years, think watch a Tom and Jerry cartoon, there's many artists involved, the musing was made by classic music bands, the cartoons were drawn and the backgrounds where like paintings, the character animations were very smart and powerful, filled with emotion. Now you see any modern cartoon and it is made with a digital software by making some frames and let software do the in-betweens, music? if there's any at all is pure simple, software generated crap, everything looks the same. Why? Because nowadays industry demands quick batches of comics to be released together quickly and that is what is consumed, so this kind of change already happened, just not as huge as with AI. As you say, I think the best people can do is to educate, know how the technology works, there are many artist that think their images are downloaded and stored in some hard drive and used in a kind of composition or mash-up and that is not the way it works. The technology is accessible kind of easily to anyone, and hence anyone can grab any images from the internet and process them to produce similar images using AI. So the problem is not the technology, but the people who use the technology incorrectly. Banning AI doesn´t solve anything, anyone can still study an artist and learn to produce something similar, it has being done for years but requires more art knowledge, AI does it faster and without requiring the art knowledge and that is the biggest change. Artists still can produce something new, new styles, new concepts, AI cannot do that, AI's only produce on what they were trained on and the input from whoever wants to use it. One thing I agree should be done sooner than better is a way to specify which images can be used by AI training or not besides the current intellectual property laws.

I really like the timing of the music and the "flips" used to tell the video essay! That is really great and makes the video a lot more fun to look at.

Lots of much-needed encouragement AND practical, actionable advice to be found here. Great video Jake!

I learn the AI bot have been using photo on medical records and mugshots. I admit I don't like the AI bot, but people want to put rules and restrictions on it. I think there should be a watermark of the name of the program when it a generates artwork and list of reference on the work/photo in the description. I also think artist should get paid per work if they uploaded their artwork to the AI bot, so it would level out the fairness. As a mix media artist, I will keep making art and not give up! 🖒

as a small time animator myself i have problem with flash/puppet animation. i usually draw my animation by hand using a cheap viekk tablet. but a lot of people now using puppet animation where they draw the characters once. and then to animate they just have to drag the body, head, arms etc using the mouse. while i draw everything from body to feet each frame and color it again each frame which is time consuming. :( but i now have an idea how to compete with the puppet animator. it was experimental but still.

Great video! The food industry analogy at the end is impactful. I question the "adapt or die" scenario. I believe in "negative inspiration" - "if thou, knowing good, behold evil, how great is that evil" and the like. Accordingly I avoid gore, traumatizing , grotesque, and imagery that makes a mockery of life. The use of image generators requires the suffering through of so many BAD outputs - I think it's okay to take the Miyazaki and Del Toro road and avoid it altogether.

Great takes, and I also see how industrialization has created this insane hype over AI that it can’t deliver on. Let’s not forget why and for whom we make art 👍

Just ordered your spaceship book. Really looking forward to cracking it open.

Your video reminded me of a phrase from the movie world: First learn to make $1 cakes, make hundreds of them and sell them. When you master the technique, then make a fancy $50 cake, which will go to a more specialized market. The problem is, when we start doing art, we want to make the $50 cake, instead of starting simple and making money from there.

Yep, it's not the tech but the people behind it and the fact that the whole point that many use the tool is for quick cheap art with put care to the artist nor the fact that it will continue to scan our art (even with education, just look at fashion) and flood our feeds which defeats the purpose of posting for exposure

Great video Jake! I really dig your take on this.

Jake, this was fantastic. The thoughts expressed, the cut of the scenes, and the comics/illustrations. Such a great video!

Thank you for having an actual discussion about this. Sadly some industry professionals have been brushing it off as “it’s just a toy, don’t worry about it”.

Great message Jake! I love the idea that culture may eventually be able to use automation to free up enough time to start refocusing on mastery. There will be a lot of growing pains along the way. Keep making great content and great art!

This is one of the few truly insightful videos I've seen on this hot topic. A couple things: 1) I'm really hoping the AI art boom revitalizes interest and value in actual physical art...paintings, photographic prints, etc. Happily, those things haven't ever really disappeared, but I've watched over the past few decades, a subtle shift in perception as things have moved onto screens, where we naturally talk about "images" rather than paintings, prints, etc....i.e., the image contained in and embodied by the physical artwork (if that even exists) gets the most attention (and consequent value)...not the art object itself, which a lot of times is kinda thought of as secondary, or even to some degree, as a leftover byproduct of its mass-distributed "real life". Seeing this flip even just a little bit would really make my world. The real value of a painting is only partly the "image" it depicts...it's also because there's only and will ever only be ONE. 2) Seth Godin consistently rocks HARD...highly recommended for all creatives.

The advice at the end will only hurt the smaller companies making it free and open. That is a terrible idea.

Thank you for doing this, I think it's a realistic BUT optimistic take on the whole situation.

Instant gratification is what AI art is feeding. Everyone can draw but some draw better than others. AI allows those with lofty aspirations to get the results they want with minimal effort.

Awesome video and thoughts as always, Jake! Thank you for posting this!

This was so clearly explained. Thank you so much for putting this one together. This really helps me understand the whole machine.

Awesome insights, Jake! Thanks for putting this together.

This is a great video, Jake. Well thought out, well executed, and I like the music you've started adding to videos. In the last 3PP episode you mentioned not being great at video (in reference to kickstarter), but I think you're actually quite good and getting better. Thanks for addressing this issue, I think it's really important for folks to be educated on this because like you said, it isn't going away.

Great video! Your thoughts on AI art and Industrialized art were awesome, but I also enjoyed the handmade notes and drawings you filmed to accompany them. It added a really neat, creative, and personal touch! ^_^

This gave me some much needed hope as a struggling artist. Thank you.

It's quite a complex subject that I can see from both that of a company and also an artist myself. If course, as a company, you want to pay out as little as you possibly can but also by getting the best work possible. If you don't produce good results then people won't use your company and often good results cost, unless you allow such companies to take advantage if you. One reason why you need to know both your good points and bad so that you can improve. That only comes with being honest with yourself. Companies will however still need people to use these tools and those who can get the best out of them, although they will require fewer people to do so. If you watch the making of Jurassic Park, you see that Phil Tippett, who was more of a stop motion animator, was afraid in some ways of what computers were able to do, fearing it would put him out of a job. However, he learned that both could be combined because he could pose the model in different positions and tge computer could interpolate between each one, even adding motion blur if needed. Not to mention of course adding the CG skin etc. A movie director, the owners of a magazine or book are each going to imagine in their minds what they want to see in their product and a computer isn't going to produce the right one right away, just as we artists often don't. Yes, there are already A.I tools that can change specific things that you point out to it but it still needs a human to tell it what it needs to do or create, the prompt. As an artist, you can use it to spark an idea, to take whatever it gives and add to it, change things. It might create a beautiful scene but not look as you wish it to in your mind. That's what makes you different and special. You have a unique ability, you have your own style and if you look at A.I, even though they can in a sense, mimic many styles, they still tend to have their own. Just look at A.I images and you will see that if you really look, they still have a style to them, no matter tge subject or styles they incorporate. A difference between you and them is and always will be only ever one of you. Your unique style and personality is something they don't have.

Thank you Jake for caring for your fellow artists and educating us.

I like to put my two cent on every video I watch. So Hope this help you on the alg. Industrialized comes in diferent form. When they come for clothes, they where shops about doing suit that fit you perfectly. Then Industrial comes an offer a cheaper experiences for a not so fit suit. On comic art, there is this "manga" where they industrialized how the character develop goes (a group of people with a distintive tic lets say). Reason why many mangas do not get an anime version of them (goes from paper to tv).

awesome video! love the ending with the food analogy !!!

Perfection! You got to the real bottom line. Thank you so much!! This is so encouraging and educational.

The last line, Jake. Wow. You always hit the mark. Great work! This is one of the best take out there regarding this AI art issue.

This is probably the most objective video I've ever seen on the subject. Thanks Jake! I share this opinion, because when an artist paints on, say, canvas, he just can't make production cheaper, because paints, his time, it all affects the cost, but in CG these boundaries are blurred. CG artists themselves have devalued their work over the last 20 years to the point of impossibility. I'm horrified when a client comes to me and asks me to do an illustration for $200, it's a whole illustration, I'll work on it for a week or maybe more, and for him it could be a few cab rides. That's why I left this field and am doing other things, I only draw with natural materials now because it's not depreciated as much as I think it is. When you paint with your hands and paints - people understand what they're paying for, they understand that they're the only ones who have this work. But the stock industry devalued it all a long time ago and I honestly don't understand why people get so upset about AI, but have completely ignored the unhealthy competition between similar artists all along.

thanks for the video! I agree on most points and I would like to try AI myself, to implement it in my workflow! My question at the moment is: can we do it without supporting companies who have trained their models on non ethically acquired images? I don't want to use midjourney or stable diffusion, because I simply don't want to support the way they have been developed. Any other options out there?

"The devices themselves condition the users to employ each other the way they employ machines.” ― Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune.

Awesome video! I needed this! Thanks!!! (I can't help thinking bout Frank Herbert's ingenious take on the subject of "thinking machines"...)😁

Your section showcasing the pros and cons are pretty much what resonates with the viewpoints from many viewpoints of artists who have been vocal and my views too. On a theoretical level, we can see its benefits, but we know that when it is applied to our current situation with the creatives industry, it falls flat because it isn't human driven anymore, it's machine driven and one that has zero safety net for many industries with extreme potential to collapse them.

Brilliantly put Jake, thanks for this video. I have had so many artist friends/colleagues distance themselves from me and others over this issue. It's kind of saddening to watch creative people turn on each other over a philosophical difference i think. Like you say there is no stopping technological progress. But that doesn't mean technology is ruling the dominion of art ethically either. i know artists that are using this technology alongside more traditional artistic/image making skills, to good effect. It's like the apex of the "selling out" discourse of the arts. I'm glad i focused on the hand skills the way i did, but it's entirely plausible I over looked technological assistance when it was under my nose too. Best of luck with the new book. Thanks again

Hey Jake, im a writer and an artist L, but when I am working there are some odd habits that I do such as sir with my legs up on a post by my desk and prefer to hand write everything (the same for art) are there any odd habits you do when working?

The coolest idea that I heard in relation to this is a law people in Europe have talked about. That is to make art made by the usage of AI uncopyrightable. So if for example a game company fires all their artists and replaces them with AI it's ok but all the assets that AI creates will be free to be used by anyone for any reason. I think this is the direction people should take this issue. Make AI something that you can't make money from. To that goal I think people should support FLOSS AI tools and discourage corporate ones. Make it so the tech is available to all people so that no one can charge for access to it. This way the tech will at least be used for the benefit of people rather than for profit.

I supported the Kickstarter, and I love my copy of Kepler's Spaceships!

I love the Mickey D's comparison. That's the best analogy I've heard and you got me excited to go make art!

A well thought out and balanced look at this issue, thanks for putting this together.

reminds me of casey neistat's stuff! love that style with the topic of art, keep going!

It was an awesome video Jake! You analyzed this new AI trend in the best way possible. Thanks!

I do not admire traditional methods so much for the human signs of weakness, but rather because I can have the freedom to walk directly towards my destination, without the need to coax reluctant and limited machines to take me even to the right direction.

Everything I do I make sure to be in the top ten percent. That keeps me worry free. Excellent video Jake, like always

I love whenever you post new videos about AI art. You seemed to be one of the first people to not only take this topic seriously, but actually give constructive guidance. I really appreciate it!! Thank you

Really enjoyed this video a lot! Thank you

Thanks for educating me on this topic. I am a fan of art and it is good to know the challenges IA poses. I checked out Sarah Webb and her webcomic Kochab.

Thanks for this - I was trying to explain this to a friend the other day but this video explains it better.

Before AI ARt, my dream was to become a digital art tutor. However, it seems that AI ART will be commercialized before I work as a tutor. I don't know if this is something to be happy about. It becomes clear that things have become easier, and technological advances may deprive others of their right to pursue happiness. Developers need to know. Just like their intellectual curiosity, there are many people who started with motivation in other jobs. I hope that AI will replace developers in the distant future. Everyone will lose their jobs and eat government snacks. Or we could end up with a world where only a few rich people get married and only a few survive. Some people shed tears and the world changes.

Really good assessment here. 😊

Excellent pointers, thank you!

This is an awesome video congrats! And love the intriguing music (probably from a stock market place lol)

I agree with several things you said regarding AI, especially that now the technology is now here it isn't going away. I'm not a fan of text to image, but there are more options being added to the technology that I do think are useful, such as it coloring your line art, or further developing a rough sketch you've made. I use prefer using those features since it's building off something I've created and speeding up some part of the process for me, like exploring different color schemes/lighting.

Sincerely, this is the best take on AI imagery I’ve found thus far. Thanks for creating such an intelligent and nuanced piece.

It was a great video. We cannot stop these innovations. Better is to corporate with the new age innovations and on the other hand try to better understand ourselves because that is what society needs from us.

thank you so much for the video!! this has been so good to hear, a great take on the whole debate!! fast food or slow food... great comparison^^

Thanks for sharing, truly something worth discussing here and now.

Now imagine that burgerking also offered the most nutritional food, served beautifully, nourished your body and you ate in a beautiful setting, like a restaurant. The only 'humanity' missing is the server (which will likely be the promt-specialist in this scenario). I think we're a little fooked... 😓

Love your video and your reflexion on that subject. I though of one invention that I think public reaction stop in our recent past... I'm thinking about the Google glasses. Maybe I don't see any but they exist in some form somewhere. Nevertheless, great subject on your part as usual. Thanks!

You really put this situation into perspective. Not a lot of people have been successful at that. Makes me a bit less worried about my future creative endeavors.

Finally, a reasonable take on this issue. I definitely agree with you on the 'adapt or die' thing. Artists always have new tools coming out for them to use and learn about and nothing's wrong with that. What -is- a problem is what you said: big companies taking art without consent to make product via AI generators. Corporate America's been ripping creatives off since forever; how many things can you think of that a fan has made that's become popular and that ends up being ripped off and made by the copyright-holding company? An example would be Disney-themed hair bows. Those were huge on Etsy and then Disney straight copied those to mass-produce and sell. How many times have big companies gotten free work from artists through holding contests for t-shirt designs or prints, and the fine print says even if you lose, the submission you sent is theirs to keep? Hot Topic runs contests like that all the time. With AI generators now existing, Corporate America now gets a new way of exploiting artists. That's what we need to be vigilant about. We needn't fight other artists if they use AI generators and/or support them existing.

This is an amazing video, but I also want to say that the book is amazing. I really enjoyed reading it, and it also inspires me when I am working on my own art.

Excellent points and perspective thanks!!

this is actually pretty hopeful!. thanks for putting up a great video

Thank you for such a rational discussion on this!

Jake absolutely love your art! It would be great to see you do an adventure with a character like Jack Kirby's KAMANDI THE LAST BOY ON EARTH. Your imagination and art style are absolutely perfect for that character. In your hands, Kamandi and the cast of characters you would create for him to encounter would be very cool and exciting.

Thank you for the nuanced take! These things are worth saying and repeating. I wonder what's your opinion, though, on the copyright term and the ethics of it? I feel that if copyright hasn't been misused and the term remained around 14-28 years, there wouldn't be a conflict: the accumulated public domain would be enough to train competent AIs without legal trickery. I feel this always needs to be said when talking about ethical datasets, otherwise the argument is one-sided.

Fantastic take on things.

So well said: art is always about personal expression of who we are, plus how well we can produce and deliver meaningful results! In today’s technology we are bombarded with images that overload our receptors both sight and intuitive systems! When I see an image that moves me and pleases my senses I am satisfied in ways I can’t really describe: the artist has met a human need, conveyed a special priceless message! From cave drawings to our times it is best served human to human!

Love you, brother. Keep fighting the good fight.

Thank you so much! We need more people talk about it. I have similar thoughts, the whole week. I really like the clear and awesome points and suggestions you did here! GREAT STUFF!

Jake, thanks for this set of observations.

Solid. Video. Feeds the brain and eases the anxiety. Burger analogy is 👌

great vid!

Good video. But here's the thing: IP law is...a *very* poisoned well, in my opinion. Insulin copyright hoarding is the biggest example, but Disney continuing to extend the copyright on Mickey Mouse, the horrible IP-squatting widow who went after a car building channel for making an "Eleanor" build, the RIAA in all its vileness, etc. Someone being able to make a "me too" derivative work might mean that the original has a little less value. But an IP troll might mean that the very act of creating something might be worse than having done nothing at all. IP law has vastly overstepped any well-intentioned original purposes, in my opinion, and is probably responsible for a tremendous deal of suffering at this point. As for AI: An AI model isn't trying to take someone's art to resell it without their consent. The AI doesn't care about Little Jimmy's picture of a stuffed pony. The AI simply wants to know what a pony is, and what a stuffed animal is. If Little Jimmy calls his drawing a picture of a stuffed pony, well, the AI will say "okay, I see your example of a stuffed pony. Thank you for better helping me understand what a stuffed pony is". And of course, the AI doesn't even see it as a picture--it sees it as RGB 0-255 layers, if I'm not mistaken. So, I believe the Thanos meme applies: "You took everything from me." "I don't even know who you are..." Even beyond that, it just means that image-generating firms need to take one more step to hire imitation artists if the original doesn't want his or her work vacuumed up by AI. Say someone like SamDoesArt would have a legal claim to remove all his images from every AI generator. Those companies might then hire Bob to draw images in the style of SamDoesArt, and then train their AI on Bob's images, maybe even associating the SamDoesArt tag to them as well. It'd just be a case of IP laundering more than anything else, since ultimately, what is it being copyrighted? Brush strokes? Pixels? A piece of music can have discrete sequences of notes copyrighted. A picture? Much more nebulous IMO. Furthermore, regarding compensation: Does Google compensate everyone on the web for having listed their websites? Of course not. Does KZfaq compensate every creator? Of course not. Etc. And I'm not even sure that an image-generating AI would even know which of its images get more use than another. That is, the mathematical expression that fits a straight line through some data has no knowledge of the data used to estimate its coefficients, once the coefficients are estimated. That is, say you regressed SAT math scores on age, parental income, student GPA, etc.--a prediction wouldn't say "well, these five points were closest" (though there *are* some non-parametric algorithms that might remember all of their data, such as K-nearest-neighbors). So while the idea of compensating individual artists might sound good at first, it just may not be logistically feasible.

nice breakdown, thanks for this!

A brilliant take on this issue. More than ever I've been recalling Walter Benjamin's work, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, the industrialization of the art process has been going on since the Industrial Revolution, AI, is one more symptom of this process that wants the process to be faster, cheaper and bigger. With AI in it's pure form, the artist is removed from the creation of the final product, deciding if it can be or not be considered art is up for debate. But does it matter for the industrial need of this products if the final object is art or not? It most definitely doesn't. But it will definitely matter to other public and institutions. In the end, AI is not just an attack on art creators, but to a lot of service provider jobs. The machines taking our jobs would be good news if we didn't live in a capitalist system, but that's not the case. In the end the only option is to adapt, and keep doing art, keep creating, because industrialization cannot substitute what only you can provide.

I have the book and it came with stickers!

Dude. This is great. Spot on.

I love Seth Godin. Great quote at the end. (And everything else you said)

7:20 done done and done.

There’s a company whose motto is faster, cheaper, better. Those 3 don’t usually happen together.

I am prone to agree with you that the increased need in production and pipeline (combined with money people kinda limiting actual free creativity in designs), there was clear demand for a tool to increase the output.

Idk I'm still stuck on this issue, I probably won't stop doing art, and I understand the issue with industrialized art, but Idk is it weird or wrong for me to still want a job in what I enjoy. For me, it comes to legislation or legal matters of raising pay for the work people do to make AI not as a problem for some. But I still want to either make my own comic because I want to make my own story not just for money. I see it the same way with animators. For me, I don't see wanting to make some money on the side while doing what I enjoy a problem cause, cause why not, I can support myself a bit and still be doing something I like doing. Idk, maybe it's a bad take, but that's just how I feel about it. At the end of the day, I wish artists were just treated better in the industry.

This is the most optimistic video I’ve seen about AI.

Great video! Also tip for artists to keep going: It is really important to remember that initial feeling or sentiment who inspired us to learn painting, music, writing etc.. That wonder of putting ideas to a creative use and experimentation. Something as that child-like curiosity that we remember but struggle to take back. We started for pure will of creation and the pleasure of it, and it kinda kills the experience minding about a finished product as fast and easy as possible. Where's the pleasure in that? It will prevent and limit the artist from having the cool triggering of ideas amidst process that can further inspire them to modify or create even more material in the future. It will be tricky to make a living in a industrialised art world that outsources as much as it can, but i'm hopeful we'll figure out ways to do so.

Can you do a video of you redrawing one of your old pieces of art from school. So that we can see how you’ve advanced etc? And can you talk about things that have inspired you and what made you get better. Thanks. (BTW, big fan and I love your books!)

We , as artists, also need to remember that art is not synonymous with pretty pictures. Art is when a person takes a medium and makes something with it that expands on the boundaries of that dimension. I have a video on my website called "what is art" if that interests anyone.