"I'm going to explain it to you like you're an idiot, not because you are, but because you might be" Boy, you hit the nail on the head with that one 😂

Trying to learn how to draw really shifted my perspective on this topic. Before I had this same childlike sense of wonder at all the things I could create in an instant Now after a few weeks of trying to learn how to draw, realizing learning *just* proper anatomy and perspective might take me ages, gave me a lot of newfound respect for artists, and now watching these clips of people creating images that would probably take me a few more years of actively practicing every other day in just seconds really feels like a gut punch. I can't imagine how some of these people feel that have spent their entire lives perfecting their art feel, with their lives work being reduced to a name you prompt an AI with

I'm within the camp of "I don't give a shit about AI generated images, I myself as an artist have my own journey based in building skills and techniques that matter to me, exploring subjects and topics I care about." -- I get annoyed when it feels like AI is being pushed onto me, when I (or others around me) are being scolded to be relegated to obsolescence "unless we adapt" -- completely ignoring the entire aspect of the personal journey that many artists take as the reason for everything they do. AI taking the workload off out hands is completely antithetical to the reason we do what we do, and is why we'll never adopt it into our art. I don't care if someone who has never drawn before in their lives uses AI to make some pretty images -- but I have deep, long-established reasons why I would never touch it myself, reasons that have existed long before AI was ever a thing. Also just clarifying, while a lot of people playing with AI generators are just doing it for fun, there is definitely a good size chunk that are doing it for popularity and money. A lot of the general public have no idea what AI images are, and just like seeing pretty pictures. There are a number of AI artists on instagram, DA etc who have gotten good size followings and are selling prints etc. Not saying that people who like this stuff are wrong, but just pointing out that there IS money in it from people who don't care.

Game Dev Programming student with multiple Game Dev Art Student friends and some industry professional acquaintances, and I wanted to provide some feedback on things mentioned. First of that Concept art is not directly at risk immediately. While Stable Diffusion can very rapidly create artworks and could very well be used in some part of the process, this idea comes more from seeing what gets posted as "concept art" in published art books or on platforms like Art Station. The actual work of a Concept artist looks very different, as it is all about specificity and the intent of the entire collection of the game or movie as well as taking into account the rest of the production pipeline, other team members and so on. With its rapid iteration, AI art could be used in a sketching phase or by non artists to communicate a picture from their head and as a Programer I believe some forms of AI assistant tools will become standard as well, but out of the 10 or so industry professional illustrators and artists we explicitly asked about AI art at this year's Sweden Game Conference (think a smaller Game Developers Conference but Sweden) not a single one believed AI art was a threat to their careers, as the systems are not designed for production/pipeline art. This is because while AI art is designed to provide beautiful illustrations and illustration / splash art style work is only one tiny part of video game artworks. And even for that market, the iterative control of a skilled professional is likely to provide a better result that can fully take into account the details of your world and characters. Example: a fantasy/science fiction setting with very distinct flora and fauna and details on characters' designs that need to be correct across all artworks. Add to this that Splash art / illustrations are not the same as the making of in-game assets. Even drawing backgrounds/play spaces in a 2d game could be more trouble than its worth as the AI model was once again designed with beautiful art in mind, not fun to play level design (and that is once again before we consider Performance, interactivity and modularity and other considerations that need to be made for the interactive medium). Secondly, I want to talk about your mention of Indi game developers potentially using AI art more than larger companies when it gets adopted, as companies can afford to hire artists to do the work instead. I think this could become a reality, in specific cases like a small team with 0 or 1 artist that wants mass artwork for something like a card game. However, I personally find it more likely that large companies get some AI art involved in the pipeline first, specifically because they can higher more people. A large studio and the large games they tend to make has a lot of "grunt work" that needs to be done and it is common to hire programmers whose entire job is it make tools that can do that grunt work for us. This is because 3 programmers / tech artist working on a procedural generation tool for the world's base topology, the placement of trees and other first passes is far more cost-effective than having 10 to 20 to even more individual artists doing that by hand for every game the company is making. Because of this president, I find if far more likely that a large company would hire a team to work on tools that prosses the output of a stable diffusion model into some game-ready art or textures in a way that is tailored to their games than an indie team using AI art, as turning raw AI art into production-ready art/in-game assets is a lot of work. The larger companies, especially those that have multiple games developed under them at the same time, can spend the money and developer time on RnD to make a tool that can be used for all of their games. They can justify that because in the long run it cuts down on grunt work and saves money, while the small team can not spare that time as whatever programmers they have likely need to be working on the games core systems instead. On to non-gaming-specific stuff that I thought of during the video. Here I am less informed and primarily going of discussions with artist friends and more talking about my options on the topic rater than providing any feedback. The key market that I believe is under threat first is that of one-off commissions and illustrations. If I need an individual artwork to use as a token for my D&D character, the cover art for my book or some other similar artwork where I just need one good-looking piece, turning to AI art for that is likely to be way cheaper and faster to get something good or even great than commissioning an artist. The reason this is very scary for a lot of artists is that that market is often what you rely on in between larger gigs as a freelancer, when trying to build up a portfolio for applying for more stable employment and/or as a supplemental or even primary income with making art for merchandise and similar if you can get the audience for it. Think of how Unity/Unreal and Steam/Itch made the barrier to making and publishing any game lower, resulting in more of them being made and as a result sometimes drowning out each outer. Overall this is a great thing because of how many more great games we now get but it did also drastically increase the number of not so great games being made that the good games need to compete with. I fear that is what will happen to the market for individual artworks. If you are competing with the volume, speed and ability to jump on a trend of AI art I can see it becoming incredibly difficult to establish any initial audience for someone just trying to break into the scene and it is this impact on smaller individual creators that I am worried about first. As a separate thing, if or even when we get to AI being able to make larger pieces of entertainment, like full comics, animations and eventually even games there are even more things to consider. The results might be incredible, the best comics we have ever seen, especially if it is used by someone who wants to convey a great story. But I fear that this work could not only be drowned out by the volume of work now being made with these tools but I also worry about these tools in the hands of large companies. AI Tools could easily allow for the creation of design by committee/design by investors style works at a very low cost, as they could now further remove/reduce the power of anyone with artistic aspirations from the production pipeline. Imagine Marvel, DC or Shonen Jump generating 10 runs of a comic or a couple chapters ahead in the current run, having someone go in for a bit of clean-up, AB testing the results and releasing the best preforming one. Once again the results could be great, but there is something there that rubs me the wrong way, likely influenced by my personal opinions about the creation of art. There are a bunch of other ethical considerations that I think will need to be considered as AI gets better (what happens if/when AI art gets better and a company could fire an artist but train a model on the work they did while employed and how would this affect job security for artists?) but I have been typing for a while and need to get back to work. Overall, a really good video on the current state of AI art other than some of what I mentioned in the first part and one other thing about conflating different art sub-communities' opinions and arguments around Modern art that I saw already addressed by another comment. Keep up the good work and sorry if there is any large grammar and spelling mistakes, Dyslexia + second language is a pain.

Dude, doesn't matter what kind of videos you make, gaming, culture, politics, in the hell that is modern day algorithm-optimized, advertiser friendly youtube you're one of the last channels remaining still putting out quality content. I obviously hope to see you return to gaming content eventually, but if you're feeling a bit burnt out and frustrated I totally get that.

My favorite new find on KZfaq, keep at it bud, your content and commentary is amazing.

As an artist, this whole thing has shaken me up more than I expected. The possible ramifications of this are so ugly. Already we've seen people at conventions selling AI generated art. And it seems rife for dishonest people to make a name for themselves, while honest artists get the short end of the stick. I think there's inherent worth in the difficulty of attaining art skills. The more work you put into bettering your skills, the more it reflects on the appeal of the work you create. It takes a long time before you can make decent art, and it gives you a big appreciation for how artists manage to make such beautiful art. I find it's not dissimilar to sports athletes and other kinds of physical performers. Speaking of athletes, it brings to mind speedrunning and tool assisted speedruns. It's always a big scandal in the community when it's discovered that players achieved respectable or even world record times using tools. I think the issue becomes even more pronounced in art because while speedrunning is largely about optimization, art has a great deal of stylistic quality to it.

that last part of the video has made me realize that we're heading into a scenario where *any* and I do mean ANY profession that requires any level of skill and experience will be reduced into levels of mere tedium and humanity as a whole will become beholden to the very few who owns a few acres of servers because our ability to thrive from STRIVING has been deeply compromised

Great video ! I would just argue that concept art seems less likely to be replaced than many other disciplines. Being a good concept artist is first having a great ability at bringing new ideas to life, being able to build an IP while giving it a strong identity. It's about asking questions about the universe you're trying to create, and answering them in a cool and interesting way. Most of this work isn't spent painting nice illustrations, but sketching ideas and making important choices.

I wouldn’t want to live in a world where you have to always second guess wether a piece of art is AI generated or not. There needs to be some kind of disclaimer for things created by AI. Also I like the idea where people who are using an artist as a prompt in their AI art, need a permission from the original artist if they want to use it for profit. Similar to music sampling, you need to clear the samples before you can use them in your commercial projects. I’m personally not a fan of AI art but I have to say that the technology itself is quite impressive and I can see it being valuable in someway. The art itself is just not as impressive when you know it came from randomly generated pictures from the internet. To me it’s people’s ability and imagination that is impressive about art.

Gotta point out one thing I disagree with. It's not the fact that the LAION dataset etc. are non-profit org. and are used for profit, the issue is that in order to actually build that AI model or train the base model, you eventually have to download the copyrighted images and feed it into the AI. LAION's loophole is rather in that aspect that it licenses the datapairs of image & captions with a Creative Commons license, but don't hold the rights to the copyrighted images themselves. So that's where the laws have a tiny but important hole. Can copyrighted images be used to train a diffusion model? That's what the judges have to decide. But to be fair. It's such a new technology and may take some time to do that. In comparison, there is also a Music AI, but that was trained only on music that is public domain. So it is totally possible. That's what they should've done with Stable Diffusion.

Easily one of the best videos I’ve seen discussing this topic & I’ve seen MANY thus far trying to gain an opinion, well done my friend. Please keep up the great work, you earned a subscriber for sure. 💪🏼🙏🏼

We should've just stopped clicking on the trafficlight 10 years ago.

A topic that I'm not seeing mentioned in a lot of these articles, videos, and social media opinion pieces is the types of artists that this effects specifically. By and large, it effects digital artists the most. For art fans, traditional, original, pieces of artwork is valued a lot more than prints or copies of digitally produced art. It still effects traditional artists that produce reproduction prints of their work, as they're essentially sending a JPG of that original work to a printer for reproduction. As a traditional AND digital artist that's very concerned with the precedent of AI, I've started to set down my stylus and pick up my real brushes and pens more and more these days. Because I feel that although it might not be as profitable for most people, at least I know that AI cannot reproduce what I create with real paint, and real tools. At least for the time being. And a side effect to AI is it might increase the value of traditional art even more, much like anything "Artisanally hand crafted" fetches a higher price tag than factory and machine produced equivalents.

A great summary of this really, really confusing topic. The point about AI originally "meaning" to stop us from wasting time on dull jobs and give more time to work with art was really intriguing - and terrifying.

I really enjoy the topics you choose for your new channel. It's like you're making those videos specifically to fit my interests.

Loved this channel from the get go. Your first video already showed that you can way more than game critiques. You are amazing at long form video content, no matter the topic. Keep it up and good luck.

This Channel is one of the bets out there so excited you decided to make it

My admiration for all this work you´ve done organizing the info and the reflexive perspectives. Thank you

This is why I love your video essays. Everything you said resonates.

So glad to see you back! Amazing video.

excited to see what you post on this channel!

I need to watch this a few more times, cause this might be the most exacting look at the discource I've yet seen. Great research, if all this checks out you really must have the gift

Excellent video glad to see you uploading here!

I'VE BEEN EXPECTING THIS, FRIEND

I totally love your new content! You have a great analytical eye and a very coherent way of presenting your findings. Additionally, I've noticed the comments on this comment section being far, far longer, more balanced and more eloquent than on any other channel I have visited. Congratulations. This channel was already a success. No matter viewer numbers or if it ends after this video again.

This was very comprehensive and covered the issue from a lot of angles that I didnt know existed. Great job! I think you hit your goal of being neutral and nuanced. Great video!

Great video! Its nice to see you bring up both sides of the discussion about AI art.

God it feels good to get your fix of never

I view this as a public service, honestly. It's great to have somebody give an overview like this.

Wish you the best man, super great video as always :D

As an artist myself, AI is as you said a very complicated topic, and one that seems to have very little nuance among the artist community. Personally I think AI is incredibly interesting and a very cool tool to play around with, as the technology is very impressive and admittedly quite fun to see what it comes up with (especially when it messes up). From my perspective, I agree that those in the most amount of danger are industry artists, like concept artists. Big corporations rarely see the value in hand-crafted art and would more likely just hire an AI wrangler than an artist to get the vague concepts that they want for their projects. As a freelancer who works directly with clients, I consider myself and the peers in my field very unlikely to be replaced. People who get commissions don't generally do so because they just want their visions put to paper in the style of an artist they like, but because they want to support said artist directly, and to be able to work with them. There's certainly a number of people who use AI as an alternative to commissions, but those likely weren't people in the market for commissions in the first place due to not being able to afford them, or not caring enough to go through the process of a commission. Either way, AI is definitely going to be here to stay-- that Pandora's box has already been opened and there's really no way to undo it. I hope there ends up being some way to protect artists who don't want their works being used as data, but it seems like a Herculean task to try and undo what has already been done.

This is kind of wild. I was going to recommend this as a topic yesterday but I didn't want to seem pushy. Obviously you had already been working on it for a while. Great video, enjoyed the information and hearing your take.

Very interesting, well told and soothing voice.. great video ^^

This channel is an amazingly wholesome place!

People in 2015: We'd like for the more repetitive, boring jobs to be left to the machines so we can focus on more interesting, human tasks like art. A.I Programmers in 2015: Hmm.....interesting and human, you say?

Tbh automatization will come for all of us. And judging by modern trends and how very much corporate our world is we won't even get a basic universal income out of it all. THAT'S what scares me to no end, even as an artist. Well, no matter what happens with neural nets and AIs, see ya in twenty years at weekly battles for the last drinkable water on earth

As someone in the start of their third year learning how to draw I can say this, AI Art is not an artistic tool because the person using it does not develop artistic skills. I use digital art programs, but I can still translate my skills to other physical media. AI users won't be able to do that, if they are not able to use an AI they have nothing. No understanding of anatomy, color theory, perspective, line weight, or any technique really. My fear is that we will see an entire generation nearly devoid of true artists and only pretenders that must bend the knee to "terms of service" in order to create.

I appreciate your more level-handed handling of the subject. In light of recent events with ChatGPT and your comment about using AI-generated images as inspiration of writing, well, it seems AI has set its sights on writing as well. I can't help but wonder what all these developers see as the "end game" for their technology. Where do humans fit into the equation beyond being the "meat bots" for AI?

Beautiful essay about this topic! Well done

Thank you. This is the best and well researched video about AI that I've seen so far. Hats off to you.

Thanks Never, interesting topic as always

Okay so over all I like this video, it does a good job clarifying a lot and communicates both sides of the issue pretty clearly, so I don’t have too much to add on that front since many of my gripes were addressed. So instead I wanna talk about two take aways I’ve had while looking at this discourse. 1st is I realized how little people care about artists, the industry is already hard enough and artists are already taken advantage of and our work isn’t valued as much as it should be, but AI art has revealed a lot of the disrespect and contempt people have towards artists, either outright not caring about our jobs, writing off the necessity of artists or it societal importance, or just blatant resentment towards artists and their work and downplaying the skill involved. I’ve seen people saying it’d be fine if art only existed as a hobby and that you can’t make a living as an artist anyways, when those are things the art community has been trying to dispel for decades. It hurts to see and it’s made me reconsider my decision to give up engineering to pursue art since I found more value in it and found it to be a viable career. The second thing is that I believe AI art could be used as an incredible tool for artists and art, but the way it’s being developed and used is actually counter productive, I think of the new styles that come out constantly from new artists, art has been evolving at a more rapid pace than ever thanks to the internet and social media and I believe in a world where AI art “Wins” we’d lose that innovation. As a 3D artist it’ll be a while before I have AI fighting for my job BUT I’ve seen early prototypes (which to be fair look like shit) but it just made me think, why develop AI to try to replace 3D modelers when the technology is much better suited towards replacing the things artists hate, like UVs, Topology, Rigging. You could develop Ai tools to handle the tedious parts 100x faster than it’d take an artist and it’d free up artists to use that time to create more awesome stuff. It is my belief that the current trajectory of Ai art isn’t one of innovation but stagnation, recycling from the same pool of assets without adequate ability to develop new styles or ideas. It’s a cool technology and if not for the way it was built and the way it’s being utilized I think a lot more artists could be on board.

Excellent work as always.

I loved your input on this. I think, that it's mostly a matter of acknowledgement in all regards. Be it that people need to understand the relationship between human and ai artwork to crediting the product correctly, and well, pretty much what you touched on in the video.

Computers have been replacing jobs once done by humans for a while now. People tend to only worry when their own job is at risk. Artists are now facing the same situation, and although it may be difficult, they will need to adapt and keep going.

An interesting topic that I hope you would cover is Analog Horror. There's something about it's rise in popularity and format that makes me so intrigued. Anyways, solid work as always man. Keep up the good content.

Dude I did not even knoiw this channel existed! You deserve more views and subs!

Such a good idea for a topic!

Flushing a toilet doesn't make you a plumber. Pushing a button doesn't make you an artist.

I'm really glad I discovered your second channel

One of the most mature and sane take on this controversy

Phenomenal work as always mate, really enjoyed listening to your thoughts on this

Good background information... well balanced presentation...

you Sir! Deserve 100x more subscribers on your channel! This is one of the most well researched videos on AI vs Art i've watched...and I have watched quite plenty!

Please keep making videos and don't think these are any less entertaining or worthwhile than your video game videos

Gees you are good at this. Great video.

I watch your never knows best channel religiously didn't even know this was a channel until this morning

excellent essay, as an artist myself I feel both destroyed and amazed by AI

Nice breakdown of the recent developments and I appreciate the in my opinion grounded overview. May be worth to give a shout out or link to your video on text based AI, although I guess this topic was more on the serious side, which seems appropriate considering the immediate impact it's already having and is going to have. Still, it might please the algorithm overlords

I don't want to live in a world where art is automatically being ai generated by an algorithm for my desires, where all human input and expression is removed, such a world is bleak.

This is the most rational, logical video regarding AI I've seen so far. My hat's off to you, good sir!

I find myself surprised by how low the view count is on this video - i personally don't see any difference between this and some of the big, millions of views videos - but I enjoy the content and look forward to your future videos just remember, based on your NeverKnowsBest last video, it takes time to grow - and for what it's worth, I absolutely love the content you create

Easy solution. Add categories. You already do it with "No-digital" clause.

Game over for humanity.

if you see this as a division of labor issue, it's pretty obvious that a majority of the work done in producing the art is done by the programmers and the artists in the data set. So claiming that an AI art piece is "your art" is kind of dubious, it's really a massive collaboration between an untenable amount of human beings. The prompter just gets the satisfaction of seeing the final product first.

Great work, i love the conclusion.

Beautifully made. Well done 👍🏾

As soon as AI learns how to draw hands, the next step is the Singularity.

this channel is such a gem

Thanks, bud! Very informative!!

This needs an update after the lawsuits settle. I'll be looking forward to that.

making art is not about furthering my financial status in life, it is about creating something that has esthetic value. not doing it to get fame or riches, like many artists just do it for that exact same reason. and besides....what is an "artist"? what i noticed is that the opponents are often the people that churn out images and visual esthetics in the commercial sector. the graphic designers, the 9 to 5 illustrators, the social media doodlers that need to generate ad revenue, etc, etc. and yes this would be affecting their jobs, as it is the same as the mechanic in a car factory, generic laborer which is interchangeable for a robot or a new automated module in the assembly line. but the independent "autonomous" working artists just sees an interesting tool, a useful tool that can help workflow and even creativity! i love it, like picking up a pen when you always painted with acrylic, or start sculpting when you only ever etched. prompting is an art on its own, it never led me to an exact copy of what i previsualized, it's just as much developing skill as the hand eye coordination and mastering technique with a pencil.... i remember the same bs when photoshop became a thing, the first digital art.....all the boohoohoo and coping that went on way back with opposing artists was not different than now. it made your sector! wouldn't be without graphical compute power. virtual art, fake art, fast food of art, etc....a lot of dismissive reactions towards the first digital artists. i dare to argue that without the technology most would never had the opportunity to work in this sector. and that it is not the tool that make an artist but his mind. through pencil or through prompts, it doesn't matter. what you are scared of, is that you, as "tool", are becoming irrelevant. and that is true, there will be no need for people that are proficient in generating images on i.e. Photoshop. i dont see graphic designers per se as artists, as they basically offer there skill to create something that adheres to someone's wishes. sure, those generic anime drawing people on artstation or deviant will not all survive on their output, as this generic image creating is far more efficient with ai. but artists will embrace it and make wicked shit that wouldn't be possible otherwise. a way for the very creative and talented people to express themselves. people that don't have the luxury of doing art school or having the environment that gives them time to hone tool skills . the privileged road that most travelled in this sector will shift towards true creativity without preq of spoiled and supported years to master techniques. don't be a scared lil bitch, do research how it truly works, work with it, embrace it in your workflow. and then judge it.

Even if it's not about RPGs, your stuff is good. Glad to still see you around.

Always so great to see one of your videos on my feed, hi from Chile latin america ☀️☀️

I play a lot of tabletop RPGs and as a game master I use these AIs a lot to create "mood pictures" to give my players a good impression of the current scene/environment.

Well done. Thank you.

I really like these non gaming videos. You should keep going they are great.

The way I see it: nobody owns the output of stable diffusion. It's a force of nature.

I had to change and learn a new whole style because now when you do something like realastic or semi-releastic or semi-stylazation art people think that you cheat and you just used an AI app, that's not all some of the biggest art sites started banning artists if they think they used AI apps

Video was great as always

wait until the google video AI is made accessible. You'll see that all over KZfaq for intros and such. And, to be fair, it does look very impressive

This is the best breakdown I've seen of this debate.

Same person, same type of content, but different (non-videogame) topics to make me feel like I'm using my time more wisely. Love it.

Good video as always.

I'm more interested is the fact this technology is less then a decade away from making video and photographic evidence less reliable then eye witness testimony.

I think AI art won't sell like art made by real artist. That'll probably be a thing where traditional artists will get more praise and money.

Good video. Glad you're branching out. Can't wait for the next one. Any idea as to when? Weeks, a month, ect? It'd be cool to know because the algorithm is... Something else, I guess. It'd help to be able to keep an eye out

A new Never video, yay!

An amazing analysis. Bravo!

Artists already need so much strength when fighting to get paid Ask any artist and they will have been told “draw it for free, you’ll get exposure” It saddens me to think that artists will have to fight even harder for their livelihoods

Dynamite as ever my guy 🙏

Art is visible, but (as an artist) the real impact is on almost all knowledge work. This ai can probably produce pretty good youtube videos on any topic, or diagnose almost any disease, or prepare a court strategy, or trade commodities on trade exchanges.

Really hope the second channel takes off because your videos are so interesting, well researched and put together. I appreciate that you presented a very balanced view here, as someone who is pro-artist, it's refreshing to get a fair look at the other side of the argument.

Very interesting!

As someone who does paleoart and horror, I'm fine. No known generator could even make a T.rex, let alone the numerous obscure species out there.

Excellent video!

Awesome video

Man you can't even imagine how happy i was to see this notification pop up. Ive been like really thinking about this AI art debacle and have had so much trouble really knowing where I stand on it but thats not why i was so happy. I was happy because I literally remember how blown away I was to see that an ugly truth video a while back and man... this is just so excited to see. When I saw that ugly truth video it was before i saw any of the following updates you gave that shed light on you situation as a content creator. I have no idea what the hell is going to end up working for you but i lowkey hope you transition to making content like this.

Good stuff m8