My Opinion on AI Art
Since it seems like there’s some confusion about this (people talk like you can only be either categorically for or against AI art), here are my opinions so y’all can decide whether to block/unfollow me or not.
(Warning: This is so fucking long. Sorry. It's a complicated issue and I wanted to make it clear what I do and don't support. If any of it is too confusing, feel free to ask for clarification. Anon is off, though, so you’ll have to ask me face to face.)
Legally:
AI artwork should not be protected by copyright unless the artist can demonstrate that they put a significant amount of labor into it (ie, editing it in CSP, proof of detailed work with seeds and careful prompt refinement in excess of three hours for a single image, etc). [NOTE: This is already the case under US law, although I’m not versed in any other country’s rulings on the matter.)
All AI training datasets should be subject to review. If any work by an artist who has opted out of data collection is found within, the company should have to compensate the artist involved fairly. I would say that the amount depends on how much profit is being generated, what percent of the data the art makes up, etc, but also a flat fee to cover emotional damages and stress. Instinct says $1000 minimum per image to deter companies from just treating it as a better-to-ask-forgiveness-than-permission tax.
If the dataset contains AI artwork, the source of that artwork should also be researched. If the dataset that produced the art was also AI-generated, I think those images should be researched one step further. If no trace of copyrighted material appears in there, either, I think it’s sufficiently far removed from the current generator to be considered clean, since otherwise a lot of legal resources could be wasted chasing endless image chains as this becomes more common. (Which I hope it does, since it reduces the odds that an AI will specifically reproduce an artist’s style, especially without consent.)
Any images generated from stolen datasets may not be protected by copyright law unless the artist uses the art as inspiration—not just editing it, but wholly redrawing it from scratch. (AI-inspired versus AI-assisted.)
I think it should require the consent of the artist AND the IP holder to include work in training sets. This is because I can’t imagine our legal system saying the artist can give approval to use something they drew for, say, Disney’s IP without also seeking Disney’s approval. HOWEVER, I think that AI-training rights should be regarded as a new and separate kind of right that is not automatically granted to the IP holders so artists can have some say in what is done with their artwork—or sell those rights to make more money. (ie, Hasbro can’t just take all the existing Transformers comics and put them in a blender without asking the artists (sketches, lines, color, lettering, etc) for permission and duly compensating them.)
I don’t think it’s reasonable to try to legislate what prompts are used to generate a piece of AI artwork. That metadata can be tampered with or stripped too easily, and it’s also too easy for people to create workarounds for banned terms. It’s simpler to try to legislate data sets.
Personal, not for profit AI art use should be permitted UNLESS the art is being used in a slanderous or dangerous way. (Like free speech is protected but it doesn’t include shouting FIRE in a crowded theater or lying about other people in harmful ways.)
If possible, I would like any posted AI-generated images to be legally required to add 'AI-generated/AI-assisted/AI-inspired' to the alt-text, by-line, etc. Something to clear up confusion. This would be harder to enforce, of course, but I can dream.
Finally, but perhaps most importantly, I think that it should be impossible to copyright a character design, world design, etc invented wholesale by an AI. If Disney made their own AI and told it to design a new princess, or if Hasbro make one to design a new Transformer, that design should not be protected by any trademarks or copyrights until they pay a human artist to recreate it properly. This is an extension of the first point (requiring human editing to make it copyrightable) but making things more explicit.
Practically:
Artists will never be replaced by AI. Ever. The people trying to say otherwise are trying to sell you something or being manipulated by people trying to sell them something. You can't make good art without a clear vision of what you're trying to create, which requires an artist. Maybe not someone who can physically draw the thing they're envisioning, but someone who wants to create something. That feeling of creation is the same. I know because I used to make art the 'real' way before my hands crapped out on me, and AI serves as a tool to get some of that creativity back into my life. (I use MidJourney, which trains on art generated by previous iterations. It's on version 5 now, which means it's five generations removed from any human artwork--ie, it’s trained on art that was generated by v4, which was trained on art that was generated by v3, which was trained on art that was generated by v2, which was trained on art that was generated by v1. V1 used a proprietary dataset that may or may not have included stolen art, but we’re so far removed from that dataset that, in a practical sense, I don’t believe it matters anymore because of the next bullet point. And, no, it didn't use the LAION dataset; it couldn't. It predated LAION by like a year.)
AI doesn't keep any of the art it references while learning. It just learns what colors and shapes tend to go together with a given word or phrase. It isn't assembling mosaics or averaging pictures with matching tags. There's no physical trace of the referenced artwork in the images. (I saw someone try really, really hard to get an AI to reproduce a specific painting by an artist by using them as a tag and telling it to draw exactly the same image by describing it at length...and it still didn't look much of anything like the original, despite the deliberate copying attempt.)
AI can't do what people are claiming it can do. If you try using some of these services, you'll get a more realistic impression of their capabilities. Looking at the stuff posted online is like looking at Instagram to get an idea of how ordinary lives are lived. Why would people post anything but their best work, especially when trying to hype up new technology?
I think it's a terrible idea to lean on our horrendous copyright law system to 'defeat' AI artwork. Doing so will come back to bite everyone except for megacorps. Some of the proposals I've seen would decimate fanfic and fanart as well as AI art. Don't cut off your nose to spite your face! There are better ways to accomplish the things that you want and to guard against the things that frighten you.
I've seen a lot of people claiming that this is going to lead to the annihilation of artistic jobs. I can't find any tangible evidence for this in the USA. Big companies aren't using AI art because they can't copyright or profit off of AI artwork, so they're not using it. I've checked, and I have yet to find any corporation replacing artists with AI. As long as the laws remain as they are, that's not going to change. (The articles mentioning AI art taking jobs are all referencing jobs in China, which has different legislation. I don’t want to dismiss the problems that difference is causing, but I’m also not qualified to comment on their politics, especially since new legislation seems to be in the works that might change things soon. Also, the article includes a quote that reinforces point 3: “At least for our company, it couldn’t replace any human worker. It’s just a tool that assists us.”)
On a smaller scale, for folks worrying about commissions... I promise that the AI isn't going to take commission jobs away from you. If you experimented with the technology, you'd get a better idea of why, but... It is very difficult to get the AI to draw a particular character consistently. Even if you make a Dreambooth or a LORA or what-have-you specifically intended to teach the AI your favorite character! Even if you extensively write out max-length prompts that you agonize over for months. It just can't do it properly. You can get, like, 'close enough, I guess' on a boring solo picture with the wrong outfit if the character's design is super simple. I've tested about a dozen of these programs to check, and you simply cannot produce a complicated character--or a simple one with 'unusual' combinations of features--in full detail consistently. It's not possible. For that, you still need to commission art. (They've been working very hard on this problem without much success since I started following AI art. Mostly writers who want to generate art of their own characters--sometimes as references so they can get commissions, actually! If no artist will draw your character without a reference, it can be very difficult to get a reference. AI can't get a character right consistently, but sometimes you can get a simple image to serve as a reference.)
I always hear the same handful of bad actors being used as examples of why this tech is inherently bad. The one person who screenshotted a stream, finished the art, and then demanded credit for it (what a shithead). The one person who made a model based on the art of an artist who had passed away the day before (I don't care that they meant it as an homage and a way of keeping his work alive, it was a dick move). The first was laughed off Twitter within a day; the second got downvoted by the rest of the subreddit in disgust. These are not the prevailing views in the circles I've passed through; it's a handful of obnoxious assholes who are often despised by everyone else. (And...in the first case, it's possible to do that with Photoshop, too. It takes longer, but if you already don't care about quality...I mean, Photoshop can color things for you.)
"What about the people making thousands a month off AI artwork stolen from REAL artists?" They don't exist. They're no more real than the "How to make $300 a day playing solitaire!" people exist. I scrolled through YouTube as directed by someone who'd been misled this way, and these are... They're ads. They're just people trying to sell you a product, people trying to get clicks. It's fake. This is a scam setup that no one would fall for if it weren't using the hot-button AI art issue.
Morally:
1.Morally, opt-in is obviously better than opt-out. Opt-out is the bare minimum ethical standard, in my opinion.
2. You shouldn't try to replicate a living artist's style with AI without explicit permission. Or any artist who lived and made art in the last like...fifty years. I don't think this can be legislated because I don’t want to copyright styles (it would more likely result in banning art of characters in ‘Disney’ style or ‘from x anime’ or ‘in y cartoon’ than in a freelancer managing to protect their own style), but I know it hurts the artists and their families to see it, and that's reason enough for me to believe that it's wrong.
3. You shouldn't harass people for making art you don't like or using a tool you don't like. If they're pulling shit like the bad actors above, report them, sure. But if they're just making art for themselves and having fun, don't tell them that their efforts are worthless and lazy, that they should just learn to draw with free resources, etc. I did learn to draw. I started art classes in preschool and I used to color for just...hours at a time. And now I can't even pick up a stylus long enough to warm up. I thought I'd lost art forever. I thought I would never be able to create like that again. But now I can bring my ideas to life, albeit in very different ways. (It's more like pruning a tree to try to get it to grow in the shape you want than just setting your idea down. In a lot of ways, it's harder than just drawing what you want to see. Or at least hard in a different way. I've seen a lot of mockery about 'promptcraft' and stuff, but...it actually can be a serious, meaningful thing. Like sculpting. (Fuck, I miss sculpting. I miss sculpting so so much.))
4. The people making AI artwork aren't stealing. (Unless they're like that singular dipshit who stole from a stream--I can only find records of it happening the once, though.) If they make an AI art model with stolen artwork, that's different. But people who put their own drawings in img2img or writers who try to get the AI to draw characters from their own books--people who aren't profiting off these images, people who are just making art in a world where capitalism actively prevents people from having hobbies they can't monetize? FFS, just let people have this. Who are they hurting, making things for themselves? Tangibly. Like--no, seriously, who is hurt by Jo Schmo having a computer draw her OC when she gets out of work for the day? This isn't someone who would ever commission an artist--might not even know that's a thing you can do. (If you think that's impossible, uh, I have offline friends who were shocked to learn that I knew how to commission original artwork and had never even heard of DeviantArt, let alone ArtStation or anything. They've never touched fandom. Their only social media is dating apps. They're not potential clients because they don't know commissions exist.) To them, this is the first opportunity they've ever had to bring their ideas to life.
5. 'Just use free resources and learn--' Not everyone can, okay? Not everyone can, whether because they're too tired and drained after work, because they never learned resources like those exist, because their parents told them over and over that art was a talent that they didn't have, because they're physically disabled, etc. Or maybe they just don't want to! This doesn't make them worse people than you. Someone can prioritize other things and still want to enjoy the act of creating art on occasion. We live in a world where if your art isn't good enough to monetize, you're often told to give it up. Making things for the joy of making them is the most human thing there is. Also, side note, “Look at all the disabled people who figured out how to work within their limitations! It’s no excuse!” is an ableist trope so please just...as a disabled person... Don’t. Please.
6. Honestly--this might be where I fully lose people--copyright is modern bullshit. Historically everyone stole each others' ideas, their techniques, and it wasn't theft. I know in my head that this is something that bothers people--that they have a personal connection to their Original Characters Do Not Steal and that they can't bear the thought of anyone else touching them. No one can draw in their style or it's theft, no one can use their colors (Pantone and Photoshop, I’m looking at you) or it's theft, no one can write or draw about their characters or it's theft, etc. I know it, but I don't understand it. Like...if somebody rewrote my books and did it better than me, I personally think they should be allowed to sell those without filing off the serial numbers. Now, if they took my book verbatim and sold it--or turned it into a comic that used my words and descriptions exactly, with no adaptation or changes or anything--I would want credit. But that's not relevant to the AI art discussion because that's not even close to how AI works. That being said, that's my moral position on the topic, not my legal position. Sure, I'm morally in favor of basically completely scrapping current copyright laws--but that's not going to happen.
7. If you've ever made fanart or fanfic, you've used someone else's IP. Many folks will even profit off those things. Since artists need to make money where they can, it's fine from a moral perspective, imo, if not a legal one. But it's not AI art that's threatening that livelihood--it's copyright holders who hate the idea of Fair Use. If you give them more and more power to take out this imaginary foe, you're only hurting yourself. Please, for the love of fuck, think about who really benefits from some of these proposals. Don't fall for the Shirley Principle ("Well, surely they would only use it on Bad AI Art and not Good Real Art")--to them, you're both Bad IP Thieves in equal measure. I know using the Legolas "How about side by side with a friend?" Gimli "Fuck you" meme and the "I can't, but he can" Thor Ragnarok meme can be funny, but...it doesn't work like that. Unlike Ragnarok, the planet doesn't go down in the fight and take the big dangerous guy with it; the big guy comes out on top and then crushes you next. Basically, be mindful of what you'll tolerate in the name of destroying AI art; once they realize anything can get you to agree to give up protections that keep fandom and fan profits and stuff safe, it's a very short step for these EXTREMELY wealthy people to move on to setting up a scenario that drives you into a corner. Encourages you to call your representatives in order to Destroy The Enemy, even if it's against your own interests. Remember that people already cannot copyright AI artwork unless they put significant labor into it. It's not the looming specter that greedy corporations want you to think. Since they can't use the AIs, they can't profit off these people who are spending their time making things for fun instead of filling that capitalist voice with good capitalist buying habits. They can't profit off the art, and the server costs mean that the AI art engines themselves make less profit than you think. I mean, Stable Diffusion is free and can be run locally. Yes, it has stolen art, but...again, it's 100% free, they're not profiting off of it. I mean, some apps are charging for it, but the original is free. I don't...like...that it has stolen artwork, but they specifically made an entire website for easily removing yourself and your artwork from their training data, so at least it's opt-out now.
8. And from a moral perspective, it feels weird to object to non-profit IP use as training data while being in favor of for-profit IP use in the form of fanart and fanfic. I still don't...like it, which is why I don't use it. (I use MidJourney, which had a proprietary dataset to start with and has for five version updates trained on AI artwork with the deliberate intention not to copy an artist's artstyle.) But I find it hard to justify my objection without at least a little hypocrisy, so my official opinion is using SD is okay if you don't profit of it.
9. Personally...I feel weird about the idea of profiting off of AI artwork. I did a KickStarter to make some cards with AI artwork, but I edited all of those in CSP (since the edits could be done within my five-minute joint ache time limit) and I still didn't put prices higher than at cost for printing. (ie, no profits)
10. It feels hypocritical to say, ‘Netflix doesn’t understand that the people sharing passwords aren’t potential sales they’re missing out on,’ or, ‘People pirating things aren’t actual customers who would be buying the product if torrents disappeared,’ while also saying, ‘Using an AI that looked at artwork without permission is theft even if you don’t profit off of it.’ I see people unironically holding all three beliefs simultaneously, but I, personally, can’t reconcile them.
***
Anyway, that's my stance. Please feel free to ask questions. Or block me. Please don't take quotes out of context to trash talk me...but who am I kidding, the follower who specifically watches all my social media because they hate me is going to have a field day with this. I don't know what you're doing here or why you like sending anon messages to me...and to other people ABOUT me...but I would rather you just leave. Please. I'm tired of worst-faith interpretations of my posts and stuff. Like deliberate misreadings in the most malicious way you can frame them. Isn't it exhausting? It can't be healthy. If you need me to block you because you can't help yourself, just send an ask, and I'll block you without identifying you publicly or anything. For all I know, maybe it's literally a compulsion or something. I know I have some weird compulsions with my OCD.
Side Note: This post is about AI artwork, specifically, but I hold a similar position on AI writing. The only difference is that I whole-heartedly believe that any AI chat-type services should be REQUIRED BY LAW to state that they don't give truthful answers or advice and everything they say is made up. Like, that is a disclaimer I want posted EVERYWHERE.
Side Note 2: In light of this, all of my books, my artwork (that I hold rights to), etc can be freely used to train AIs. You're also welcome to take my stories and remake them for your own profit. Hell, you can train an AI off my work and profit off the AI if you think that's possible. (I tried, actually. It sucked. I was so disappointed.) I'm not a hypocrite, so I'll put my money where my mouth is.
Conclusion: Please unfollow and/or block me if you think any of this makes me a bad person. Maybe tell me first so that I can block you, as well? That way you’re even less likely to see my posts around, since tumblr blocking is super weird.
I’m not really interested in having an argument about any of this. I’ve done...a lot of research, a lot of experimenting with AI art, a lot of lurking in communities. I’ve seen most of the relevant arguments and tried to address them all above. If you think you have a gotcha argument for me, try rereading one more time before sending it. It’s a long post! Tumblr’s formatting sucks! I wouldn’t be surprised it people missed whole chunks of this just because I couldn’t figure out a better formatting schema. Especially since it took eight attempts to get Tumblr to post it because it kept eating bullet points and garbling paragraphs and stuff. Hopefully THIS time I fixed everything...
