I don't mind the technology, but I have gripes about the people who use this technology with little to no effort while claiming they have created such content. I don't mind people posting AI art on Twitter either,saying it is AI generated content. What specific AI artists I hate are those who threaten to undermine existing artist because it isn't good enough, or their art style is too "AI-like". Even going as far as to ask "what prompt did you generate this with" is just sad. I hate people who claim they used the AI to make art, without touching the model itself and generating content that I could make by doing an hour or two of research. I hate people submitting portfolios and job letters claiming they are professionals with months of experience working with AI. There was a COVER LETTER for a CONCEPT ARTIST position claiming they can make lots of content within hours, far more than an average artist. I hate people who specifically go about their way to join an art stream, screenshot the art, only to run it through AI and post it before the artist even can finish the work and post it, claiming it is the original artist who stole from them and demand credit. I hate it when an artist who passed away has his entirety of work converted to a model for a "tribute" when the family is still in the process of mourning, telling people to credit not the artist but himself when people use this particular model to replicate the arts of the dead artist. I hate that we live in a world where art will inevitably be replaced simply because it's fast and efficient, and that people insult artists for thinking they are some luxury-inclined, millionaires who are too stingy about the prices when in reality, some of the commission prices they earn do pay their living expenses, and they write up the prices believing their work is worth just that much money. Most of the time, it's actually lower than the minimum wage unless you are asking from someone who works on a professional environment. I hate it that some AI artists believe artists are gatekeeping art from regular people when all they could do is pick up a pencil and learn through the nothing but practice.

Strictly speaking, putting images online doesn't make them "public domain" in a legal sense, as the legal term "public domain" means "no longer subject to copyright". A thing can be put online for viewing and still be copyrighted - copyrighting is a legal protection where people are _ordered_ not to copy it, not a physical protection to make it unable to be copied. So claiming that things put online are "public domain" is poor phrasing - they're publicly accessible. That difference is important. When Google web-crawls your art to make it searchable, that is not them getting the right to infinitely reproduce your work, nor to monetise it, they are in turn creating their own unique creative circumstances that is deemed to be its own thing (they actually have been sued over exactly this issue, and that was how it was ruled). _But_ the argument against non-consensual use of people's images to train AI still doesn't work because there is no real difference between an AI looking at an image to learn from it and a human looking at an image to learn from it - in both cases, the subject observes the art, finds patterns, stores those patterns away, and attempts to practice and reapply them later for some creative work. The legal theory of the lawsuits would imply that anyone who retains memory of other peoples' works cannot make an original work, and instead are simply generating an analogue collage. Unfortunately this is not how the originality or transformative nature of a work is legally assessed. It's the final product that is what gets judged - by its differences in both content and context - not the method by which the art was made (with one exception, I'm about to get to). And going back to the point in the first paragraph that Google doesn't get the right to infinitely reproduce your work or to monetise it just because you put it online, that is also a distinction that can be made with AI art - the one difference that method causes is that works created through predominantly automated processes cannot be held in copyright (so while legally Google search results _are_ their own creative work independent of the creative works they might display, they are not a copyrightable one). Copyright is a thing held by a person for their own creative work. So the person putting the text input doesn't hold the copyright because their idea is not directly translated by them into art (they got a non-human actor to generate one or more responses to their idea, and just picked the one they liked from that set), the AI itself doesn't hold the copyright because it is not a person to be able to hold a copyright, and the people who created the AI but had no involvement in the specific piece of art cannot say that they contributed to its creative vision. But art that is created by a person can be copyrighted. That legal protection to have sole control over how art you hold the copyright over is monetised is a valuable commodity in and of itself. If you hire an artist to create something for you based off a creative vision you give them, you can own the copyright to that image - and attempts to reproduce it (even via AI) can be ruled to be infringement against that unique creative work, and banned from use (you can even be monetarily compensated for people trying to do that). You don't get that protection with AI-created art. But, while AI-created art cannot be copyrighted, as stated earlier it can infringe copyright. And legally that's a judgement call made per piece of art, not overall by what the AI was trained on.

This discussion is so nuanced and polarizing. Irregardless of whether this is the precursor to an idealistic, high tech nirvana or a doom and gloom dystopian hell scape, I can’t say I currently care one way or the other. It could be one. It could be the other. It could be neither, or a combination of the two. I’ve spent the last few months mulling over the options, and I’ve come to realize that It doesn’t matter to me which narrative “prevails”. My biggest problem, and my only real gripe, is the inevitable relinquishing of human agency. I feel like, even five years ago, if asked to perform an effortless or arduous task, most people would choose the easier option-so long as the easier option gave immediate results. In this instance, the “Ai” debate is just another extension of the same pervasive issue. Call me fatalistic, but it seem to me that we’re slowly drifting towards a place where the choice to remain unchanged-mentality wise, physically or emotionally-is easier than ever. And mental health seems to be suffering for that lack of resistance, almost across the board. One of the most valuable aspects, in my opinion, that comes with learning a skill-of doing something difficult for an extended period of time-is the personal growth that’s intrinsically tied to that journey. You can’t start on one side of the Dunning-Kruger graph and then years later find yourself somewhere in the middle, without fundamentally changing as a person in order to get there-most often, as far as I’ve noticed, for the better. By learning to be proficient at something, you inevitably learn to sleep better, eat more healthily, exercise enough so that you brain functions properly, etc. You improve a myriad number of seemingly inconsequential flaws in your character, that’ve suddenly become integral if you have any hope of becoming the person that can do the things you dream of doing. *You* grow, as your *skill* grows. I’m more empathetic for having done difficult things. And more appreciative of people’s efforts in all fields, because I know how hard it can be to stick with something for years. The heights of human excellence is not as limitless as more technological means, but it can be pretty damned impressive if you give it room to flourish. It saddens me to see some of the pinnacles of individual human merit, torn down so callously-almost gleefully-as opposed to being appreciated for what they were somehow able to achieve in their relatively short life span. It breaks my heart to know that the era self made specialists, experts, and professionals is coming to an end-to be replaced by tool assistance and ease of excellence. I don’t know, call me what you will, but I’d always been under the impression that difficulty informs value-not commercial value, but intrinsic value. Maybe I was wrong. I just don’t see how this makes for a better world in the end, is my opinion. A more efficient world, most definitely. I just worry over what we’re losing when we streamline like this.

That is ultimately the problem I have with this whole debate. I feel sympathetic towards artists, I don't even like AI creations, I hate how they all look the same, but my conscience does not allow me to accept the faulty arguments. I can not honestly defend someone who has no ground to stand on in terms of reasoning, just because I feel bad for them.

One of the main issues I have with the way anti-ai point of view presents itself is the issue of framing. Artists very often frame the issue as "technology bad vs human good", or "corporations bad vs human good" at best, instead of doing the technology justice and framing it as "we want more financial security and cultural protection in this system, which as it is now, doesn't do enough to grant such protection, and we're frustrated because of that" Instead of this, most of the things I personally see online is "ai bad/technology bad/im blaming technology for the systemic issues of capitalism". If I let myself be a bit more biased for a second, I actually think that some artists just don't have "balls" to say it outloud, especially in the US, which has a history of smearing anti-capitalist movements as "commies".

I see your point but i agree with Matthew, these ai data scrapers weren't public knowledge and these artists put it up for the purpose of other humans, not AI and machine learning. I think we should see where it goes but we should not let it de-value the beauty of human activity and self expression

I'm hoping for a future where you can't use AI art to make money/financial gain, but rather just for personal use. I mean yeah, AI art is cool and interesting as a tech, but it's sad and depressing to think how it feels like art is devalued now that it's easier to make. Literally anyone can do it now and it's bittersweet. Sure as a non-artist, it's a really really exciting and fun tech. If you're a writer but been stuck not being able to visualize your world, then AI art is a dream come true. But it's sad for artists. And creating unique prompts is not an equal effort of actually having the skill to create those artworks. It's not a skill. Am I only sad/mad because it's directly affecting me? Sure. To others, 'it's just pictures bro'. People who already think visual art and artists are a joke, now surely find all this amusing.

I think the problem is by no means whether or not it violates copyright law, the main concern is that AI will become superior in every employable way so that making any form of art, whether it is traditional visual art, filmmaking, music, or whatever it may be, manually is invalidated and "inefficient". Not to mention that now it makes the use of audio/video evidence for or against someone too easy to fake, meaning that if someone disagrees with me, they can deepfake me saying things I didn't say or doing things I didn't do, and even if that technology is pretty detectable now, it will *inevitably* get better, simply because it exists. It will get to the point where if someone were to manually create any form of art, there will be no way to prove they did it themselves and not via AI. Therefore, as much as I love other people being able to express themselves through art much easier, I still believe it will do more harm than good, despite it being technically legal.

Everything people hate about AI is more about the difficult relationship between creative fields and a capitalist market. People are concerned with their work getting devalued by everyone who wants to pay the least amount possible to generate art assets. I mean, AI outside of creative fields is concerning for it's potential to generate misinformation, and people abusing it, which is an obvious inevitability. Idk, I'm in graphic design, a field that will be heavily phased out by this technology, but even so I'm sure adaptations will happen. I DO think a real annoyance comes from the pretentious tech bro douchebags acting like they've broken into the field of high art; people who have never valued or appreciated the efforts and passions of the creatives who have always been underpaid and under-respected even before this shift started. I think the "learning" angle of AI is a stretch though. You can't say AI functions just like a human so it's fine. AI is a man made tool with calculable results. AI can't own a copyright or be given human rights. AI cannot be considered a creative generator of it's own ideas. It's a tool, and one that requires everyone else's work in order to function and exist. Saying it might be legal doesn't mean much, lots of things are legal that probably shouldn't be. Lots of things are under-regulated, and new technology always takes time before people decide on laws to govern it. Every piece of tech and social media farms data on user habits, and that data goes into AI and advertisers and giant caches of big data to sell to the highest bidder. Yes, this is legal, currently, but laws change, and lots of people have propositioned legal change to data collection, and the profits made out of the labor of all the people who contribute to that data collection. Saying "it's legal so it's fine" to people talking about what should or shouldn't be legal is just circular reasoning.

I strongly think that artists will loose these lawsuits, at least the ones going on right now. If you read the arguments, it shows a gross misunderstanding about how generative models work, and the comparisons and analogies used are extremely poorly reasoned and don't hold much meaning.

Traditional art, in my opinion, will be making a huge come back in the next few years. I have nothing against AI art, but it will become so massed produced that it will lose it's value. When you can actually make something with your own hands, that literally is a once off piece, will be more valuable than something everyone can do. I say bring on the challenge.

Much thanks for your level headed presentation. No drama, no slogan shouting, no mud slinging.

The lawsuits started now prove that artists crying about AI are not seeing the whole picture: the lawsuits are distribution sites like getty against fair use, not artists against AI. It is the distribution industry trying to keep or extend the benefit copyright laws give them. There is no, and will be no lawsuit to defend any interest of artists, because they do not understand what is happening. If you want to play a game, know the rules, know what you can win, know what you can lose, and know who is playing before you run in whining like a baby, or you will lose, guaranteed.

This time around isn't going to be artists... It's going to be most of us.

Sorry. I do not act as if corporations are human. Period.

Putting something on the internet does not make it public domain by default. Nor does it suddenly make it ok to take it. I can take all the Disney pictures from the internet that I want. Disney will still sue me if I change 1 pixel and put it for sale.

It doesn't matter what arguments you make in favour of ai. It ALL boils down to wanting to make a quick buck. All these "ai artists" had no interest in art until now. When technology does all the work for you you have achieved nothing and the vast majority will lose interest when the next trend comes along. The art is in the endeavour. It's why people say Micheal Jordan made basketball an art form, why Messi made football an art form. Real people appreciate seeing the fruits of endeavour and dedication Art made by humans won't die, it'll fall through the cracks where it will thrive.

The old Lumberjack vs the machine story.

The true argument against ai is that it makes shitty art

It is dangerous to use ideas conceived before a new paradigm to judge the world after. The rules of the world before were not convinced adjusted to the existence of AI Artist. A piece of Art may be perceived and studied by anyone to inform their own Art. Never before was there an Artist to perfectly remember all the art available to be perceived, all at once and to instantly study all to mastery. Only limited by the compute resources. This is not where AI is today but seemingly where it could end up. In such a case, an excellent Artist's work may find recognition on its own, but its main function will be to inspire the machine Artist who consumes all perceivable art to inform its own imagination. The only thing that is making AI a tool is its need for a prompt. An AI that prompts itself on the details of the art based on the feeling or idea it wants to promote is no longer a tool but an Artist. It becomes the solution to the main need. The need that brings about the Artist in the first place. *This is not the death of Art but of the Artist*

14:43 Arguably excellence springs out of mediocrity. And the fact that anyone can scribble doesn't take away the engaging qualities of the paintings in this video. A digital artist may lean on various computer programs while the stillness of his hand to draw a fine line atrophies but why should his creativity suffer? In a world where an artist could instantly manifest their imagination onto paper or a screen, there is no reason to think they'd lose their ability to be creative. AI however is like using the imagination of someone else to complement one's own. Taste becomes the new skill and creativity atrophies

Art is no longer art if it is made by an unconscious machine with no true knowledge and experience of the human condition. What makes art beautiful is that it was made by a _person_ . For example, when I look at the School of Athens, or the Pietá, or the statue of David, they are all beautiful in their own individual ways, and they all have meaning within them. Aswell as that, I myself cannot do anything other than gape at the sheer effort these pieces of art must have took to be made, it is hard to believe that a human made that with his hands and mind. Another example is the Sistine Chapel. That required Michelangelo to lie on his back for 4 YEARS painting that. Are you really going to tell me that this nonsense slapped together by a machine could ever be of equal value to that? Give me an example of an unconscious machine giving its art meaning. I will wait. AI Art will only be true art if AI were sentient and were able to make paintings, sculptures and other pieces of art by imbuing it with their own meaning. Don't even get me started on the generators revolving around prompts for stories and poetry. No machine, lest it be sentient, will ever come close to the likes of Shakespeare or Dante or Oscar Wilde or Homer or Emily Dickinson.

"Neither of these arguments will actually stop this technology." - You assume the goal of lawsuit is to stop the technology? Who said that?

We look at art to amire another human's technique, skill, effort and perseverance. We look to see what another living being has to say about love or suffering. We look to see through another's eyes. Another that is like us. In this respect it's impossible for 'AI art' to ever be of much value or interest. For rapid commercial image generation of course it will be useful. Maybe this provides a solution to the old question of whether commercial illustration is art?

Suggest using politics for UBI - Universal Basic Income. It could be paid for by removing the corporate welfare we have now.

Amazing video, the points that you give against the arguments of copyright that artists have brought up on the internet regarding AI art, especially bringing up court cases before AI art was a thing where artists who did transformative work with other artists' work was deemed legal by the justice system. You're the first youtuber I have seen that has talked about this topic in a mature way, also bringing about the dangers of what will happen to the art sphere if the normal man or artist themselves lean too much on it, that is the thing however, as pro-AI and someone working on advancements with training AI I have seen the potential it has every single day and the aid it can give to those with creative minds and easing the work flow for professional artists with tedious tasks like so many technological advancements has done for many art forms. My only concern is AI art becoming a monopoly for major corporations and said corporations put a strangle-hold on the current open-source nature that is available to the public, which said public has used to lead to many amazing advancements every day, but knowing the internet, nothing can truly be locked away so my fears might be unjustified and the only thing that would happen is that getting free-open source AI art programs would just require a little more work for the average joe who is interested.

I find AI Work to be "fine". I see its positives and negatives, I just feel like it is extremely easy for it to be used negatively. When people use AI work they arent just spewing an idea like "person" and instead spew something like "person in the style of Artist1" or even "KnownPerson doing explicit". We have already seen the negative aspects of such AI with deepfakes of youtubers/streamers doing things they would not do. Aliternatively, more relating to this topic, the "Afghan girl" photo, (which I have a lot of gripes about in general), ends up being replicated by AI work when the prompt Afghan girl is given. Further on not all work out available in the public is not necessarily supposed to be public. We see this with the recent case of the airport no fly list being leaked. We can also see this in news articles, films, medical records, and etc. You mentioned how AI uses mathematical representation to create art similar to human. I disagree with this. the way AI creates art is inherently different than how a living organism does. I also can see some arguments that AI Generators arent really transformative. But of course I might be wrong. I personally can find something transformative while another person may not, and the opposite. Of course there are some positive to AI works. As AI evolves it will be much easier for a normal person with no art skills to create works he wants. As art becomes more accessible hopefully other forms of creative mediums can become easier to produce and hence enjoyed like video games, animation, film, etc. On another topic different than AI, I think the copyright and fair use system we have today is quite flawed in general. Like there is no reason at all for copyright to be able to be held for more than 70 years plus.

on my philosophical end of things, AI art vindicates my materialism, my mental attitude that humans are far too arrogant to allow the truth out that what we do isn’t that special. im sad that this belief of mine is vindicated, because it doesn’t leave us much. I bet there’s a better lens to look at things for this going forwards though.

People don't realize that artists are not the ones who are at risk from AI But all people. People should call for regulation of artificial intelligence before it's too late Because artificial intelligence can destroy people's lives,

I’ve heard a lot of rumors about copyright issues and AI, I believe you did good on elaborating the problem. My argument was always based with America isn’t the only one with AI and the internet, and the countries who are advancing them have a history to not adhere copyright laws.

These are all points I've made in the past. If any of these lawsuits actually win against these companies, it will be bad for artists, mark my words. Why? Simple. The internet, a thing which artists benefit from the existence of, operates off of a lot of the same legal principles that these A.I do. Lose one, lose the other. =\

Great arguments! I think AI is actually good for ART (but bad for some artisis). Real artists with real skill and talant will always stay. A bunch of generic mediocre "artists" with no distinct style and personality - they will be replaced, because they're no different from AI. Yes, AI art is mediocre so it will replace mediocre artists (those who complain the most) So it will be in good ol' days - only the most talalnted and skillful people will be able to call themselves ARTISTS. Quality over quantity. I am wrighting this as a musician that discovered Udio and absolutely LOVING it! If I had a band now, I would use some Udio generated riffs as the base for new songs, but now I'm just creating songs that I enjoy. In the end - the result is the only thing that matters.

It doesn't create mediocre work anymore...

AI isn't going to scrape my brain anytime soon. Until then your vison and your talent still belongs to you as an individual. It cant take your voice.

The AI is a machine built on the patterns of human artist. These patterns are an integral part of AI machine. They are its nuts and bolts. Is it fair use to build a machine based on the nuts and bolts of others? While our minds also store patterns, it is not a machine for the public to use. It is our most private sphere. You cannot just extrapolate copyrights applicable to private humans to a public machine.

This is a great vid and the comments equally so. Trying to find sensible argument on ai is hard, good stuff .

I hear the argument that it hurts the ability for an artist to make a living, but what of other past advances? Modern agriculture equipment transformed us from a world where >70% of people were working on farms to one where the needs of the many are met by a few. You can use the argument to shutdown anything that increases a persons efficiency to produce value. Think of all the artisan paint and ink makers who were displaced by other digital art tools. To take things to their logical conclusion, we're steadily moving towards a world where there won't be enough jobs for everyone. We need to figure out how to handle it as that future inevitably draws closer. The problem isn't the tool increasing our efficiency, no ones arguing we need to go back to ice boxes because refrigerators replaced an entire profession, its the hoarding of resources and wealth that are generated by all this efficiency. Instead of improving the lives of everyone, or setting up safety nets for people like those who are displaced, its funneled upwards into the musks and bezos of the world, creating classes of wealth that were once impossible and serve no beneficial purpose. Not advocating for any political ideology here, though it may sound socialist. But what's wrong with the idea of a world where everyones most basic needs are met while still allowing for those who desire more to work and compete for it. AI may lessen the value of art as a means to make money in some fields, but it will never destroy the individual value of traditional art. As you said, it's just a tool. Some will make great use of it to do things that no one has seen before, others will abuse it while the laws take time to catch up.

Putting something online is not consent to use it. If anyone wants an intelligent discourse on this subject check out video The end of Art.

the discussion is not about the art per-se ... is about the data hoarding goddammit and how the data is handled by big corps ... in exchange for monthly signature ...

I can foresee a future where artists block their work from public view and put it behind a login form and possibly paid subscriptions to prevent ai from using their work free.

They screwed up releasing Ai image generation to the public so early. Think about it. Ai was originally trained on image information scraped from the internet but what is it trained on now? Image database now are filled with Ai generated images corrupting Ai's ability to advance beyond its own flaws. How is it supposed to learn how hands look when its database is filled with Ai generated images with incorrect hand rendering. It is basically feeding back into the training model all of the flaws it needs to fix. They should have kept it private but now they have tainted the internet with junk data that it can't ues.

Exit Through the Gift Shop

This was a reallly nice video on the subject. I believe we will have to find new avenues to define the value of creative work that doesnt soley rely on producing financial gain.

NIce,.. good to hear someone talking some logic. Well done

Excellent video and valuable contribution. Whether one loves or hates AI generated art, the copyright infringement issue is a distracting non starter. The broader points and question you raise are the ones we really should be discussing.

I'm just going to keep doing art anyway.

I as a painter look at a flower, i get inspired and turn to the canvas, then i recall the image i've seen, but the imsge is not there, for my brain stores not images but patterns, and i understand long oval shapes coming out of a circular center, each oval has a slight downward curve to it, specially the upper oval, and upon defining the image, i recall the art i've seen in my life, how shapes can be portrayed by strokes, and how i define my own specifications of such information. And i paint, and i finish it. I am a human, yet the process was no different from that of an AI. This is how AI works, it stores not images, but specifications, if you're gonna ban it for stealing, then ban all art museums as well!

"Transformative use of other artwork" The Koons case also doesn't hold up here. He was using ordinary images of women's feet in a transformative way to make a commentary on that very imagery. AI artwork doesn't use existing art to make a commentary. If you take fifty images of women's feet and train an AI image generator, it will generate an image of women's feet. It is not transformative, and it is not a commentary; it is just reproducing those images as competing artwork.

This is the cutting edge video. It’s arguing the legal battle. talk all we want about the ethics, the legality is the bar. you made a good case for how it will likely play out in favour of AI. thats a sub from me for the explanation.

I was a anti-AI art conservative back 2 years ago. but through thinking it through and seeing how it can not replace artists since artist can adapt to its, since it is a tool. I can say the goals matter more than consent, since companies never asked my consent when blocking Art from use due to Copyright. I am sure that progressives can you use more to give impressions on a post capitalist ruled earth.

No human ever consents to being born. But here we are. Visual art, like music, and like all creative expression, is just one of the many methods we utilize to cope with being alive. It’s an attempt to make sense of, and to find meaning in-our suffering as well as in our joys-within the confines of our brief lives. Maybe what we need to do is to stop looking to the economists to tell us how to value lives. Maybe that’s what it would take for us to gradually become a healthier species and maybe only then would we find a better balance with the rest of nature. Should we start by decoupling art and commerce? It might work for some but how would that work out for the materialists? Thanks for your excellent content! Please keep at it! 🤝

That whole quote by the poet was just dumb. He only points out amateur vs professional instead of pointing out the novice vs the experienced He also attempts to coin both terms as either "love" and "work" when neither is the reality in how you can also love to make art and grow in experience (professional) in it. He just really wanted to point out the difference between the street artist and the mass produced artist which neither affect each other as they are both means of creating art. Is the street artist just upset that a factory prints more? Then why not triumph the industry by being a professional /expert?

The point of the matter with "flooding the market" is because it speaks to the damage these Ais will have on the value of the artist's work that they are trained upon which is one of the hurdles in arguing fair use. The more damage it does to the value of a copyrighted work, the less likely it is pass that hurdle. Sorry, but you are just flat-out wrong about public images. Just because you put things out in the public view (which is not the "public domain", that is a very different definition and the two should not be used interchangeably because it causes confusion and misinformation) does not make it fair use. That is a cut and dry rule of copyright. If that were the case then anyone could claim ownership over anything that was publicly displayed and that is precisely why copyright law does not allow it. You do not have legal ownership over my art that I post to social media anymore than I do to your vacation photos that you post. For the record when you post something on Deviant Art it does come with a license that you as the artist can determine. For example I tend to use a creative commons, non-derivative, non-commercial works license 5.0 license. Meaning I like sharing my art and I believe that it can't really be considered art until it is shared, you can download my art for personal use like wallpapers, or prints to hang on your wall. At no point are you allowed to alter it (non-derivative) such as; crop, collage, photo-bash, add a filter, add text, layer a texture over it, use it in a meme, etc. Nor are you allowed to use it in any commercial setting or product without an expressed license from me. I even had to send a cease and desist order to a person who used it as their album cover and that was in 2012. So there is licensing when you post images online many people just do not know about it until they find them selves in litigation. Likewise social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram both are required by law to recognize copyright ownership over images that are uploaded however in their terms of service they reserve the right to license your images you upload from you for their own use, NOT for everyone else to use. Which is why you have to agree to it in order to use that service. Even then, as the copyright owners we can still reserve the right to stipulate the conditions of that license. Which is why in the description of my original pieces I mention the same terms of the license I described above. Even if it is not done in an official capacity, the intent of the license is made known and THAT is what the courts care about. Now, against Meta I may likely lose any litigation I pull them into over the rights of my art but that still doesn't give anyone else permission to use my art without licensing. I will say this, the ninth district court that these lawsuits are being filed in is very tech savvy and more lenient when it comes to technology benefiting the public at large so it is possible that these artists will lose their case however, the ninth district is also extremely arts and humanities-centered too with a firm stance on the precedence of copyright law. Which is why the lawsuits were filed there in the first place. The idea that this being decided upon as "fair use" in general is extremely unlikely due to the precedence it would set for all forms of media. It could be applied to movies, music, video games, etc. It is far more likely that it will be decided upon as copyright infringement and then individual future cases can argue certain use cases for fair use. That is another thing, a plaintiff can not bring fair use as their argument, only a defendant can use it as a defense for copyright infringement. It was designed that way to begin with. I agree that it will not END human-made art. It is going to make it much more valuable, less accessible, less prolific, and much much more expensive. I am not gonna stop creating, one way or the other, but all my stuff will be plastered with various watermarks moving forward though. You want to see it without watermark? You gonna have to pay for it and you have text to image Ais to thank for it. No more free wallpapers. You also have a fundamental misunderstanding of how the diffusion process works as well as what exactly gets stored on the data set and Ai models that are trained. I suggest Corridor Crew's "Lawyer Explains Stable Diffusion Lawsuit" video as well as the Corridor Cast Ep# 163 (both on YT). Just know that going into it they are all very pro-Ai tech people and even they are coming to terms with the implications of it all.

While an artistic style and identity takes a human artist decades to create and foster, AI can rip it in a matter of second. While humans can get inspired by other artist style and identity, AI should not be able to do so. It is true that our minds also store patterns, but it is not a machine for the public to use. It is our most private sphere. You cannot just extrapolate copyrights applicable to private humans to a public machine. The machine does not process work like our mind does. It process it in a perfect and mechanical way in matters of second enabling to rip an artists unique style in a matter of second. Is there now any incentives, for artist to create new styles and identity? Shouldn't artist creating new styles and identity be protected? isn't this a valuable commodity?New copyrights laws need to be put in place to protect artists style and identity.

The way I look at the ethical issue of data sets is from a somewhat simplified view of a company creating a product. One defining feature of this product is that it’s digital, but let’s remove that element and simply look at it on that base level of product creation. Any time a product is created the components of that product need to be purchased for that use. Let’s say a company is building a machine. This machine is held together with nuts and bolts. Those nuts and bolts are an essential part of the machine; it cannot function without them. The company creating this machine cannot just take the nuts and bolts they need, they have to purchase them or the materials to fabricate their own. And this goes for every crucial element of a product from parts to labor to marketing. All of these essential components of that product have to be purchased. Now, I don’t think any AI engineer would argue that a large data set is a crucial component to an AI programs ability to function at a high level. The art taken is a crucial piece of their product, so why would we not expect them to have to purchase their parts, as we do in every other case?

I think of art as a resource in the context of this argument, like oil. Art is the fuel for these tools. The artists probably should have some say over how their resource is used. Nice deep dive on this issue.

I subbe'd a while back, I like your channel. I guess we won't need photographers anymore. I don;t know but with A.I. art the possibilities are endless.

The tech ought to be free.

In all AI isn't bad It's just being used in a wrong way And there is this youtuber who like proposed some kind of solution to all this that might actually work Like I don't know all that shit about copyright, law or whatever but from the way he explains it seems possible Anyway here is the link to the video if you wish to know more about it. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/ntZyibiJvs-WiHU.html

Idc anyomore honestly. People still go in the wild and/or have farms while there’s this very convenient life in cities. I’ll just continually do it until AI make up law stopping to make them art lol idk

The only argument that's valid is that it's soulless.

ChatGPT generated the script of this video.

I have used AI to create around 10 thousand images in the last year. I've tested and experimented with the prompts and setting and styles, etc. What have I lost? absolutely nothing, but I have gained a new way of being creative. Have I created some masterpieces, maybe, but most likely not, but it was fun. Before getting a job and "enjoying" the "benefits" of adulthood I used to spend countless hours making 3d models, modest ones to be sure, but it was a joy to create things and share and get feedback. Once I had a job, most of the energy I used to create things vanished. If I spent too much time on modeling I would be frustrated I didn't relax enough, see a movie, make a better meal etc but if I didn't spend time on creating I would also become frustrated. In the end doing creative stuff became a chore and I stopped doing it. I collected a huge a mount of pictures as reference material for someday using it to model new things, but realistically I never will or will in a very limited capacity. With AI I can now enjoy the creative process in very short time frame. I know instant gratification isn't necessarily good, but as an average Joe that can't travel the world on a whim or spend months on some pleasant task what joys do we really have in life? Most of our time is spent at work and then on doing mundane stuff at home. What exactly is my purpose in that context? I honestly kind of hope AI will disrupt absolutely everything soon and force society to fundamentally change because as it is right now it does not feel rewarding or satisfying to just live. Even if I had more money and stuff, I'd just have to waste more time on dealing with it, maintain and clean, pay more taxes etc. Advanced technology is irrelevant if our mentality and society is stuck in the past. In my opinion the entire concept of copyright is a relic and is only useful for corporations and rich people as normal people would not have the resources to fight those who infringe or steal their work, especially across borders as is often the case. I'd be lying if I didn;t also feel some slight feeling of loss or sadness. Now is basically the last time period when most things we see and interact will have been made and decided on by mostly humans, but at the same time that is also a good thing because there is so much crap design and ugliness in this world.....

We'll just be inundated with AI art that looks AI art. So in twenty/thirty years no one but machine's will be making images for other images to scrape.

You can't say that AI is transformative by itself, because that's not true. Person is not changing anything visual, it's the algorithm that transformed 1s and 0s from original image to another format of 1s and 0s and then generates according to them. What can it do without the images? Or images made in "one room" scenario like same chair or table, then it wouldn't give much results. That's just another example of grow as fast as possible and worry about consequences later, companies make it seem like computers (conveyor belts) are just like people (magic black box) so need to have the same rights. The era of "slop" is coming

Destroying gatekeep in any field or subject is ultimately a good thing.

Interesting

This aged like milk lmao

when you say other people don't understand what legal terms mean, you should look it up yourself. Public domain does not mean on social media or the internet, it means long after you die. Look up public domain day, Mickey Mouse for example isn't public domain yet, but soon will be. Also look up fair use and the four factors. Extent of use matters. Fair use derives from our 1st amendment, ie no law can infringe speech even copyright, so fair use codifies that exception. Artists, as in painters do single paintings or limited prints, extent of use is why partly why Prince can use art of just about anything, fine art is pure 1st amendment protected expression. This is how artists during comic con can paint superheroes. It can transform it 100% and that is one factor. The style of Dr Seuss has been ruled infringing copyright. Their tech is able to copy just the style, thats still copying regardless if human artists might do that. Ask any artist and they will say they have their own style, its literally the only thing that makes our work have value. AI is a black box, it is rhetoric to say its working in a given way, nobody knows. How its creators describe it, its pretending its intelligent, its actually just big data storage, copying weights and statistics enough so it can recreate something good enough, much like video codecs do with video. The burden is on the AI companies to prove what looks the same isn't a copy, when it sure looks like it. AI should be thought to stand for Artificial Information processing, using big data language models. The black box must store a copy in memory, if its adding the getty logo to images, or the distorted signatures, its much like what coreldraw does to vector art when you shrink it down too small, it distorts the vectors. When you accidentally have a distorted getty logo, that evidence is in gettys case of infringement. Claims you copied via memory or learning isn't material, if it looks the same, that means its copied. Take away the top illustrators who are obviously being used to make these artworks so amazing, and its bleh. Transformative technically does not mean redrawing, it means an artist is saying something different than the original. An old joke is if you are a better painter you can copy. If you are just saying the same thing as the artist, its not YOUR expression. For example I did a superman painting at a dreamer fund raiser, noting he is literally an illegal alien, that political message is transformative, not the fact I painted him from memory. Further I just did a painting in a gallery, it did not affect DC's market, DC isn't in the fine art market. That two of the four factors. Further to use fair use as a defense requires admitting willful infringement, DC has a right to sue. Note that AI is limiting your ability to use the likeness of Tom Cruise, and its not doing this with music, its only infringing individuals and avoiding labels and actors known to sue. They should have avoided stock photo sites. Getty spent years putting in keywords and descriptions, using the Getty site, a pay to use the photos, thats clearly dumb, they are known to sue. Their case is also going to be strong.

The argument is pretty simple, why does a regular artist gets hit with shame and lawsuits if they try to copy an artwork, while AI gets a freepass. That is were a lot of artist are pissed right now. its not a matter of getting left behind or anything, if a regular artist gets hit with it, then so as AI art for that equal treatment and PROPER rules on where they can join, its the reason you don't see photographers are joining a drawing contest or a poet joining a cook off and claims words are food for the mind.

What about ai art which use artist's name in their generation. They basically use their name, identity and style to produce artwork that looks like the original owner. I know style is not copyright, but if it's to the instance where ai art disrupting the artist's livelihood and identity where massive corporation/individual can just analyze artist artwork and claim as theirs, then that just devalue the reason of making art in the first place. Imagine if somebody take your videos, name and your voices to create another channel that looks like you but its not you. Is that even fair at this point ? Plus, we all know this company is able to produce a more ethical ai art generation. I mean just look at dance diffusion.

We’re no longer safe unless if laywers can be more stricted for destroying the A.I generated and make them illegal since bad actors can abuse it very easily. I’m actually studying quickly and defend artists how to stop this mess. I don’t want to see a bad future because of an A.I generated.

This is definitely the best video I've seen on the topic of AI generated art. You articulated a lot of my thoughts much more eloquently than I could

"Entering the public domain IS consent." Right off the bat, you are using this term incorrectly. "Public domain" does not mean "artwork that is visible to the public." You can find images of Mickey Mouse online, but the character of Mickey Mouse is copyrighted. It is not in the public domain, and you can and will be sued for using Mickey Mouse as your own character. Publicly visible artwork does not make it public domain.

no , they are all good arguements

You just make an assumption at the beginning of the video and then run with it with no effort to prove that assumption. That assumption is that the process by which humans gain inspiration from other artists and then create and iterate is essentially the same or similar enough to how AI procceses art as data points to be used in an image generator. At this point the argument is made without evidence just based on a very naive understanding of the general similarity of seeing, recreating, and iterating. The issue at play with Fair Use and Transformative Use is asking whether the thing that used the source material did in fact meaningfully transform it or not, and more specifically if the thing that used the material added anything of worth, and we have these laws to protect people endeavoring to be creative, and the laws are created specifically to foster human creativity rather than hinder it. So the actual question is, does AI deserve Fair Use protection, and do people who use AI fall under the umbrella of creative individuals that Fair Use laws are trying to protect, or is AI not tranformative and does it hinder or harm rather than protect creators.

"This idea of consent is raising people's hackles when we've been consenting to have our personal data used by posting to social media" I don't even know where to start with this one. You're comparing apples to oranges here. Copyrighted artwork is not the same thing as personal identifiable information. If I post my picture online and Google uses that information for their own purposes, fine. That doesn't give them the right to steal my artwork. You're saying that sharing data online means we can't complain about copyrighted artwork being stolen, which is absolutely not the case.

Check Steven Zapata's video he puts the best arguments dk how you didn't find his video.

My argument is that if someone has enough of A presence on the internet to have pictures On google images or Some website who wouldn't Type In their name and go For a little NSFW spin?! Does no one see how violating This technology is?

You can have all the arguments you want, but I'm off to generating my game assets in style of Leonardo da Vinci oil-painting. Can artist do 3000 assets per month for $20 in the same quality? If so, tell me and I will gladly use your services. I'll pay $30 😉

On the one hand, you advocate for a nuanced assessment, but at the same time you use terms like "public domain" imprecisely. You claim that innovation will now make artists unemployed. What artists exactly are we talking about? All artists? Most of them? How is art actually defined in the first place? What does that mean to the debate about artificial intelligence? How can this definition of art change in society? These are questions that the news articles generally don't cover. Art is about achievement, the story and the person behind it. You say in one of your comments the meaning of the image is basically a projection of the viewer but this is not nuanced enough to do justice to your own desire for a nuanced take on the matter. You are also comparing human inspiration to the AI learning process, although there are significant differences. Humans don't decipher data, they consciously experience a work of art and see meaning in it. Humans have their own sensory impressions and memories that interact with the art work, while computers draw their so-called "inspiration" exclusively from other works of art. Moreover, memory significantly distorts what is seen. Human perception is based on meaning, but a computer analysis is based on content like color data etc. By actually making the artwork the ideas transform again and by using your own hands you reach an individual result that can not easily be compared to the linear inspiration and creation process of A.I. Copyright has the pragmatic function of protecting artists economically so that they can sell their works. The basic idea of copyright is therefore violated when the works of artists can be used for ai training. Previous transformative artworks have never been as epidemic as transformation through artificial intelligence. This must be included in the evaluation. The law is not designed for systemic transformation of artworks, therefore a consideration according to current standards is insufficient.

what a beautiful video. the quote at the end is beautiful as well. I think your message here extends far beyond the realm of art. I truly hope AI lets people re-imagine all technological abstractions in there life as a trade of creative freedom and knowledge gained for more time and consistency. There will be times when you reject technological abstractions for manual work and creation because spending your time, your life doing that feels better.

As an AI art enthusiast, I think this video is dead on. The typical arguments against AI art are terrible. They are ridiculous double standards, and often want to actually increase copyright protections, which almost always benefits big media corps like Disney and Nintendo. I agree that AI art (and AI in general) will have huge consequences on our society. And we need to prepare for that. But these bogus lawsuits just aren’t the way.

You cant stop the technology, you can however stop the people using them, with various blunt objects if possible.

Great video.

USA has a law that if an artwork was created by an non human then it cannot be copyrighted. So any image or any creative works generated by anything other than a human is worthless.

I believe that the latest version of Stable Diffusion took out many copyrighted images, yet I've heard some people want to sue them, not because they think they can win, but just to cause the company to lose money. Although I haven't seen any evidence of either with my own eyes, I believe both of them, and that also makes me think about a point I haven't seen anybody talk about. If artists sue all the AI companies they can, and either somehow win the lawsuits or cause the companies to go bankrupt, then somebody in a country that doesn't care about copyright will see a chance to make money, and will simply use any art they can, without a care for who has copyright for that art. I think it's unlikely that will happen, but artists might be able to negotiate something like allowing artists to opt in to having their art used to train AIs, if they are willing to talk. If they don't then there isn't really anything they can do.

this are very Bad Arguments

I think it pushes for more tactile art. AI art is confined to the digital space and so the artists will persist in our nomadic state elsewhere

AI = Neuron network + Data Neuron network is pure code. Data comes from artwork used to make AI to learn. Learning is about adjusting neuron coefficients. So Art generators are not really generators, they are machines of plagiarism, derivative work from input images. If you teach AI to draw squares, it can only draw squares. Use Van Gogh art paintings and it can only draw Vang Gogh squares. The concept of "scratch" is relative. How similar two images are is what determines the boundary of copyright violation. AI is not a matemathical representation, it is actually the data converted to coefficient format. It is like saying that if I zip a software, it is no longer the software, even if unzipping brings the software back. Try not using the paintings of that author and you will see how AI is unable to make arts like that author does.

I agree with everything but the premise that AI art will always be marred by mediocrity. If that were the case, wouldn’t the same hold true for photography? Given that every photo captures something that already is, and not something new? I think the best art will be a marriage of both man and machine, if you ask me. There’s something about bouncing that ball back and fourth with an AI, between me drawing something poorly to set the stage for a composition, the AI improving it so it better comes together, me coming in and changing the details while AI swoops in to perfect those details. It feels like a conversation is happening, not with anything natural but with something interesting, nevertheless. As these models keep getting better, I’m expecting the conversations to get more interesting, for that AI to get better and better at seeing the images in my head and putting them on the paper. I’ve done my own art, I’ve drawn from my heart, and I can say that Switching to AI hasn’t really changed much. When I drew, my arm didn’t always translate the image in my head to the screen/canvas well, nerve damage made that difficult. Bringing AI into the equation has gotten me closer to the image in my head, not further away. I see that as a great thing. I’m still honing my skill for drawing too, but now I do so while getting to see an image I like a lot more by the end, I feel encouraged.

ai will lead humanity toward mediation, it is the shiva trident that cuts the Brahma 5th head...who is chasing his own daughter satarupa (100 forms) artist must explore the source of all art within self only then real art will sprout again out of the bliss

Yup. What we've learned most over the course of the last year is that artists are, by and large, incredibly dumb.

Your argument is wrong. How many times have you seen the AI learn... uhhh steal from other works and even included the water mark from what it stole. Its a slam dunk copyright infringement case that Getty images is going to win over stability AI and shut this crap down faster than you can say Napster.

"The arguments against AI art generators are bad arguments" Somehow I expected your argument to be something better than: Putting your art online puts it into the public domain[?], and a couple of postmodern artists got away with copying photos. People are suing and winning court cases for so many wild stretches of the imagination, but illustrators don't have a case against the companies that scraped their intellectual property for profit? OK.

Brilliantly argued . Nice work

The bottom line is. AI art generators is essentially the outsourcing of art to machines. No artist can legitimately claim that these machine creations are a tool. When I prompt midjourney with a bunch of words, I have no idea what's going to come out of the Black box. No one does. All humans can do is say yes I like this one. No I don't like this one. There is zero creativity, skill, knowledge, or discipline that goes into the process. At the end of the day, AI makes human beings dumber. It makes human thinking itself obsolete. AI image generators are a hideous, toxic virus and should be treated as such.

excellent. I saw the protest on Artstation and thought... that will never work. All of humanity is going to have to figure out how its going to live with AI. I think the genie is out of the bottle.

Art is not simply technical skill, but a vision which creates a meaningful experience. Image generators are a tool, like photoshop. They make the process easier but they lack the vision and intentionality to create something meaningful of their own accord. Humans will always be necessary to create things that are meaningful to other humans.

You cannot put side to side AI and the human mind. The time it takes the human mind to learn is much longer and harduous. And Copyright laws were written under that premise. AI, which can rip art styles and patterns in seconds, is a new process which require a revamping of the copyright laws. My point is that it takes decades for human artist to create new and original styles. This new styles becomes associated with their names and are what makes art expand and innovate. AI art would not exist without the works of humans. And These new styles created by humans are associated with their identity, where they lived, and the state of the world and what they felt during their lives. It runs much deeper than a probabilistic algorithm.. Now with AI their is no new incentive to create new styles, as everyone can emulate it by filling a prompt on an AI machine. This will dumb down humanity, and in the end, stall the process of Art innovation, as people will be stuck in the box of a machine prompt, instead of drawing from real life experience, and feelings that goes not only through your mind, but through your body too, through the drawing hand. To protect human generated artistic inovative style, is to protect the expansion of art, and the development of the human mind, and of humanity iself. It gives an incentive to human artist to continue to search and create great art. This is worth all the money in the world.