Too many people are willfully misunderstanding why artists are protesting AI art right now.
All they hear is "Artists are mad at fun new tool and scared it will replace them, so they're trying to take it away from us!!"
Artists are not protesting the tool itself. Many even like the concept of the AI tools, believe it or not.
We are protesting that it takes and uses our work without our consent and without any compensation, all while the companies behind the tool are making loads of money off this practice.
We're fighting for regulation of the tool. Not only does it scrape work created by artists into it's database without the artist's permission, private medical photos have also been found in these datasets. None of that is ok.
From the start this tool should have only been fed images in the public domain, and any artist work fed to it should have come from artists who have consented to it and who were then also compensated whenever their work was used by the AI tool.
There's also other issues like:
Sites like ArtStation and DeviantArt refusing to place AI in it's own category to separate it from human made art. Just like traditional and digital art get separate categories, so should AI generated art. (Also some are trying to hide when they generated something from AI and try to pass it off as done by their own hand??? If you believe it's 'just another tool,' why are you trying to hide it???);
How DA tried to pull a fast one and first made AI scraping an opt-out function and said that dead artists work would be scraped because they weren't alive to tell them no;
How the companies behind the tools are knowingly making money off the AI scraping artist work without artist consent;
People are selling AI art with no regard that their generated image likely contains work that another artist created;
"But humans take inspiration from other artists all the time! The AI is just doing the same thing!"
First off, it's not. And I don't even mean that in a "AI art is soulless and can never be the same as Human Art!" way or anything.
I just mean these "AI" tools aren't 'true AI' like how you're thinking. They're no Hal3000 that actually make decisions on their own. They're algorithms programed by humans to search the acquired database and photomash together a product based on a prompt. They're not actually becoming 'inspired' by anything.
(And it's not insulting the tool to say this either!)
And that's not even the point, but let's pretend for a just minute that what AI Art programs do is the same as a human taking inspiration- Even humans are not allowed to take too much of another artists idea/work with the intent to profit without getting in trouble. Even if that 'profit' is just internet clicks, people very much still do get mad at other humans for copying another artist's work and trying to pass it off as their own.
And that is what's happening with a lot of generated art. It will spit out pieces very similar or nearly identical to another artist's work and will often even include artist's signatures or watermarks in the product. Because it just photomashes, essentially. (Again, not a dig!)
And I'm not knocking photomashing, it is used in the industry. And I bet most artists are actually fine with the concept of a photomashing tool. However, even when humans in the industry use photomashing, they have to use their own photos, public domain photos, or have permission of the owner to use the photos they intend to photomash with. And we sure as hell are not allowed to use someone's private medical photos in our work either.
We're only asking that the work generated by AI Art programs follow these same standards. Again, we're only fighting for regulation, not to take this "new fun tool" from you.
But unfortunately that's all some who are already enamored with the idea of AI Art are willing to hear from our arguments.
It's easier to just believe that artists are simply "afraid of change" or "afraid of being obsolete" and are trying to rain on your fun than to look at our arguments and concede that, "Hey, maybe this tool was implemented in a bad way. Maybe artists do deserve the basic respect of being allowed to consent to their work being used to train AI, and to being compensated by the company behind the tool if their work is used. Maybe we should look into more ethical ways of implementing this new tool."
No one seems to realize that artists would not be fighting this tool if it was done right from the start and didn't just outright take our work to train the AI without our permission.
Hell, artists release stuff to help teach/'train' other human artists all the time! We release full tutorials, stock images, even post finished art for people to use for free sometimes!
The difference is that when we do, we consented to do so. It wasn't just ripped from our hands by people who felt entitled to our labor for their own gain.
We're not trying to take away your fun new tools! We're only asking that your new tool does not come at the expense of abusing us!
I really don't think that's a hard ask.
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