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Description

There's an uproar amongst artists against AI generated art and AI models. DeviantArt, Clip Studio, Artstation, and a lot of other big players are implementing AI features and have been met with a lot of backlash. If you're interested, here are my thoughts on the matter.

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Part 1: Artists.

Personally, I thoroughly enjoy the process of creating. The frustration of not getting it right. The pride when, after years of training, you suddenly do.

I love the fact that I get the opportunity to hone my craft, and that someone's willing to pay for it.

It's a privilege.

As is any form of art, any self-expression. Any use of any skill, frankly. It's hard work, and it's nice to be rewarded for it, but the work is also a reward in itself.

The crux is - we still have to eat.

Artists who are paid to make art, can make art BECAUSE they're paid for it. If they weren't, they couldn't just "make art for free". They'd have no time to make it.

Nobody can live on exposure, no matter how prevailing a myth that seems to be. It's not a great incentive to create art for art's sake if nobody actually values it enough to pay you for it. Why make art for others at all, then? You could argue we could just make art for ourselves if that's the case. And we do. But that would mean LESS ART. Less time spent honing the skills necessary to actually produce Great Art.

There would, consequently, be less of it in the world.

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Part 2: It's not yours to take just because you want it!

There is a sacrifice in choosing to create, instead of spending time on other things. Like getting a degree, working longer hours at our day job to make more money, connecting with other people.

All those sacrifices add up to our creations of love - our art.

To have that stolen, and fed into a machine, to churn out replicas of our labor by people who'd rather laugh at our choices than appreciate our sacrifice BUT STILL WANT OUR ART, is an insult.

Not all AI artists are like this, and the AI in itself has no moral quality. A machine is just a machine. It is, as always, the way we use it that determines if it's used for the betterment or the detriment of humanity. I see great potential in all our technical advancements, and this is no exception. AI could be a great tool, a fine thing indeed, to be used BY artists, alongside with all creatives, to let us make even more, even better art.

In it's current form, though, this is not the case. But, the way it's built, the laws around it, how it's used and what for. All these things can be changed. Can be better, or worse.

So let's make them better instead of worse.

---

Part 3: To the defenders.

In "so-and-so"s style would be meaningless if there wasn't a "so-and-so" who had time and opportunity to develop their own art style.

If all the artists who made the training data are out of a job, there will be no more new training data.

All art will be, is regurgitation of the art that was made before.

You could feed back AI art into the machine, yes, but will it be new?

Does it have the ability to actually learn, to find a beautiful mistake and run with it, to take a hidden feature nobody saw and make it glaring?

Would you be able to make the Starry Night without van Gogh's brushstrokes already fed into it?

More importantly, can YOU wield it like a brush, and make YOUR visions? Or will it be the machine, and you just a curator, picking the closest one?

Will that be enough to satiate the ever-present human urge to create, to express ourselves through art?

Imagination is greatly influenced by what we see. We learn a lot as artists by incorporating other's artistic choices into our own works, but an AI can't do that.

It can only mimic. And so it falls to YOU to mimic in a way a human does - with intent, with purpose, and all the while making it new, making it yours.

Can you?

If the answer is yes, then there's no need to steal other people's art. If you can create something new from using freely available images as training data, then go do it. Feed the AI the bare minimum, and make the art yourself, by programming, by prompting, by trial and error. Like the rest of us.

There's no need for you to use copyrighted art in ways the artist never intended.

Respect the #NoAI movement. Make art if you wish the way you wish, but let others do the same.

Otherwise, it won't be "art for all".

There will be no ART:

All we will have is a beautiful stagnation.

**Disclaimer: I did not create the image. It is distributed with permission by and for users on Artstation, protesting the use of AI on the platform there. I do not know who the original creator is.**

Description

There's an uproar amongst artists against AI generated art and AI models. DeviantArt, Clip Studio, Artstation, and a lot of other big players are implementing AI features and have been met with a lot of backlash. If you're interested, here are my thoughts on the matter.

---

Part 1: Artists.

Personally, I thoroughly enjoy the process of creating. The frustration of not getting it right. The pride when, after years of training, you suddenly do.

I love the fact that I get the opportunity to hone my craft, and that someone's willing to pay for it.

It's a privilege.

As is any form of art, any self-expression. Any use of any skill, frankly. It's hard work, and it's nice to be rewarded for it, but the work is also a reward in itself.

The crux is - we still have to eat.

Artists who are paid to make art, can make art BECAUSE they're paid for it. If they weren't, they couldn't just "make art for free". They'd have no time to make it.

Nobody can live on exposure, no matter how prevailing a myth that seems to be. It's not a great incentive to create art for art's sake if nobody actually values it enough to pay you for it. Why make art for others at all, then? You could argue we could just make art for ourselves if that's the case. And we do. But that would mean LESS ART. Less time spent honing the skills necessary to actually produce Great Art.

There would, consequently, be less of it in the world.

---

Part 2: It's not yours to take just because you want it!

There is a sacrifice in choosing to create, instead of spending time on other things. Like getting a degree, working longer hours at our day job to make more money, connecting with other people.

All those sacrifices add up to our creations of love - our art.

To have that stolen, and fed into a machine, to churn out replicas of our labor by people who'd rather laugh at our choices than appreciate our sacrifice BUT STILL WANT OUR ART, is an insult.

Not all AI artists are like this, and the AI in itself has no moral quality. A machine is just a machine. It is, as always, the way we use it that determines if it's used for the betterment or the detriment of humanity. I see great potential in all our technical advancements, and this is no exception. AI could be a great tool, a fine thing indeed, to be used BY artists, alongside with all creatives, to let us make even more, even better art.

In it's current form, though, this is not the case. But, the way it's built, the laws around it, how it's used and what for. All these things can be changed. Can be better, or worse.

So let's make them better instead of worse.

---

Part 3: To the defenders.

In "so-and-so"s style would be meaningless if there wasn't a "so-and-so" who had time and opportunity to develop their own art style.

If all the artists who made the training data are out of a job, there will be no more new training data.

All art will be, is regurgitation of the art that was made before.

You could feed back AI art into the machine, yes, but will it be new?

Does it have the ability to actually learn, to find a beautiful mistake and run with it, to take a hidden feature nobody saw and make it glaring?

Would you be able to make the Starry Night without van Gogh's brushstrokes already fed into it?

More importantly, can YOU wield it like a brush, and make YOUR visions? Or will it be the machine, and you just a curator, picking the closest one?

Will that be enough to satiate the ever-present human urge to create, to express ourselves through art?

Imagination is greatly influenced by what we see. We learn a lot as artists by incorporating other's artistic choices into our own works, but an AI can't do that.

It can only mimic. And so it falls to YOU to mimic in a way a human does - with intent, with purpose, and all the while making it new, making it yours.

Can you?

If the answer is yes, then there's no need to steal other people's art. If you can create something new from using freely available images as training data, then go do it. Feed the AI the bare minimum, and make the art yourself, by programming, by prompting, by trial and error. Like the rest of us.

There's no need for you to use copyrighted art in ways the artist never intended.

Respect the #NoAI movement. Make art if you wish the way you wish, but let others do the same.

Otherwise, it won't be "art for all".

There will be no ART:

All we will have is a beautiful stagnation.

**Disclaimer: I did not create the image. It is distributed with permission by and for users on Artstation, protesting the use of AI on the platform there. I do not know who the original creator is.**