Ethical Art AI

don’t have time to learn how to draw

You know, it’s not hard if you don’t think art = anime girls or hyper realism. That’s what it seems like all AI bros think art is, though, so that’s why we so often hear this strange non sequitur.

I like how you characterize broke people who can make things as “elitists” against the venture capitalist fantasy that works on plagiarism, and will be yanked from your hands once they stop pretending it can be profitable.

But the whole point is someone has an idea in their head that they want to actualise into reality. They can even spend years learning an artform to be able to produce it themselves, pay for someone else to do it, or they can get a computer to do it. No matter if that's an anime girl or a Cubist landscape or surrealist self portrait. So if someone doesn't have the time to spend learning or the money to pay someone, then either they use a computer or they can express their creativity at all.
I like how you characterize broke people who can make things as “elitists” against
No, you are purposefully misrepresenting what I'm saying. Artists are not elitists. It's people who want to restrict what tools people are allowed to use to create art because they view it as not real or lesser are the elitists.
And no I'm not singing the praises of venture capitalists either, but I can see how imagining that would make it easier to dismiss what I'm saying.
works on plagiarism, and will be yanked from your hands once they stop pretending it can be profitable.
That's the great thing about AI is once it's trained you can just download a local copy of the model and run it yourself and then they can't take it away from you. I have a deepseek model on a raspberry pi to work like an echo, but without giving Bezos all my information.
- The fundamental problem is that your AI model was trained on the art of those that did not consent for it to be used for that purpose. In the most charitable sense, AI art can be understood as a type of college or sampling style, and I don’t think I’ve seen many examples of appropriately ethically trained models.
  I find it hard to be empathetic to the plight of “I have an idea, and it’s hard to bring into fruition!” That cycle of frustration/desire and occasional hopeful release is part of the eros that gives art its purpose.
  Here’s a shitty sketch of a chicken in the backyard of a place I used to live:
  I’m not a good sketch artist. That picture is not what I would make if I had the magic art machine that printed the depictional[1] image I want to see. But to me, the sketch’s purpose is more an attempt to capture a quiet morning where the world felt timeless. The chicken is dead, the way I sketch now is maybe better in some ways and worse in others, but there’s a dialogue and growth and process that does not come from downloading a model.
  You are trying to weave something from the electric sheep - human creativity tokenized and quantified in a way that is fundamentally at odds with the beauty and purpose of “art” in the way I see “AI art” being used. The reality is the porn spam and the generic fantasy - phantasms that have no use beyond the brief moment they are looked at.
  [1] If you are looking for abstract - water marbling and collage don’t really have the same kinds of immediate “barriers” to entry in terms of technical precision. Paint flow techniques are fun and mesmerizing, regardless of whether you “know what you are doing” or not.
  
  The consent thing is pretty much a myth.
  Most people don't bother to think what licence they are publishing their art under when they upload it to the internet. It's almost always a creative commons licence or something similar that allows anyone or at lead the company that owns the website you are uploading it to, to use that image for whatever purpose they fit. Which includes training AI models.
  And I'm sure you'll disagree with this point, but when a human uses an image as a reference or inspiration, or even just views an image and subconsciously recollect it when creating their own art, do they ask for permission to do so?
  I don't really like to engage in esoteric arguments like these because the "purpose" of art is entirely subjective. So to you that cycle might be the purpose of cresting, to others it won't be.
  I'm not trying to weave electric sheep or anything that effect. I'm using tools that are available to turn the product of my creativity and imagination into a material thing in the real world. Sometimes that's with a pen and paper, sometimes it's a camera and editing software, sometimes it's cloth and stich and sometimes it's with a bit of software and a mouse, and sometimes it's with a more advanced piece of software and a keyboard.
  Drawing a line in front of that last one and saying it's not valid or immoral or not real art is very much arbitrary and I remember many years ago people making similar arguments to draw the line in front of using any computer program. AI is simply a tool that you can use to create art just like any other, it makes art widely more accessible and easier to produce than ever before, yes that means some people will use it to make slop, just like digital art and photoshop and cameras allowed more people to make slop and things that don't have "use" beyond advertising or spam or whatever (frankly the idea of art needing a "use" is a bit antithetical to what I think the point of art is)
  So basically I think there's no real argument to why people are drawing a hard line in the sand here and decaying anyone and everyone that uses AI as inferior or lazy or something to that effect other than those people being scared of change and wanting see themselves and the thing they like as superior.
  
  Can you show something you have produced? If you feel that what you are doing is a good example, then please, I’d love to see someone do AI art right.
  Unfortunately, I take consent as a pretty axiomatic principle. When someone uploaded pictures of their art 20+ years ago, they did not know that this type of technology existed. There are ample examples of AI art reproducing things like signatures, which also indicate something that’s a bit more than “looking at an image for inspiration.”
  I’ll believe AI is a tool for art just like any other when I see it I guess. Most of what I see is that kind of generic guff - the equivalent of those mall t-shirts with gangster SpongeBob or like that kind of lion/wolf thing on them. I’m not seeing evidence of any of the ideas of the author. I can’t see a prompt like I can see a brush stroke - I can’t try to imagine what the process was like other than stringing a bunch of words together until some permutation looks “acceptable” enough.

What's the end game here for the poor person who is too busy to have hobbies? They should work more to afford Generative AI art? Make it make sense.

Probably to find the small joys in life.
You can get a free library card and use their computers to access plenty of free AI image generators. So they do not have to pay for anything if they don't want to.
Is your alternative that they should shun AI art and either go without it all together or work more to afford a commission?
- At our library we teach people how to do art, including crochet. If the person is able to go to the library then they aren't being gatekeeped from learning art.
  My alternative? AI art isn't even art so at this point we're just debating what is a better skill: crafting or prompting.

I can guarantee you can buy art for less than food if you really want to.

But your problem isn't with elitism, it's with capitalism that prevented you from learning a basic human skill.

Yeah and a lot of people can't really afford food right now, do they not deserve an easy and free way to produce the art they want?
- If they can't afford food they can sell their gaming computer they're using for a local model. Or they can pick up real art as it's a cheaper hobby than AI art.
  
  You can access chat GPT from a public library computer.
  
  And that access comes with a cost higher than food and prevents millions from accessing food in the future.
  
  Library cards are free.
- Yeah, it's called 'go buy fucking art supplies and learn yourself.'
  Why are you entitled to 'art?'
  If you want something, learn to make it yourself, or better yet, find a way to pay someone to make it for you.
  
  Because art is a fundamental part of the human experience. No matter how you want to produce it.
  And people that want to limit how you create things or what you're allowed to create are just elitists.

Who exactly do you think is selling commissions? It's not the wealthy conspiring to keep down the working man, it is the working man. It's starving artists who are one bad life event away from financial ruin. If you want art and can't afford $50 (sometimes much less), then maybe go without it. You don't exactly need it to live.

$50 is a LOT for any of the local art I've seen.
I often buy already finished pieces instead of commissions but still... Most artists hardcore undercharge... Me included
Yeah I know, and I do infact comission artist myself semi-regularly. But this is still just justification for gatekeeping art away from poor people.
- This is such a bad faith argument, AI does nothing but enrich the wealthy, as has been pointed out elsewhere in this thread. Everyone should have the opportunity to learn to create, you're intentionally ignoring the root cause here.
  
  I'm not, believe me I'm a card carrying member of my countries communist party.
  But unfortunately capitalism isn't going away anytime soon (hence why artist ask to be paid comission instead of just producing art for arts sake) so we have to live with it and do the best we can with the situation we have. And part of that is not trying to make art less accessible because of kneejerk reactions to something new.
  
  because of kneejerk reactions to something new.
  You have drunk the koolaid, my friend.
  
  I'd have a lot more respect for you if you just owned up to that you don't care and you just want to use it instead of whining about reactivity and some nebulous concept of accessibility.
  
  But it's both.
  People should be free to create art however they want with whatever tools they want without people harassing them for it.
  And it's also made art objectively more accessible.
  I volunteer once a month to teach a computer science class at an after school club for kids with disabilities. And when I showed them AI generation and let them play with it on their own, they are ecstatic and I've never seen them happier the whole time I've been going there. Some of those kids can barely hold a pencil and can't even draw a stick man, then suddenly they're making comic strips, or there own Marvel OCs in a high fidelity that they would be physically incapable of reaching on their own. Those kids have vast wells of creativity and this technology allows them to express that, and I will defend it against anyone for that reason alone.
  I get the arguments against it. I hate the spam of AI slop too, but being staunchly against the technology itself is nothing but eleitsm.
  
  The technology is used to separate art from artist. How it is being used is inherently problematic. The tool is problematic. Refusing to acknowledge that doesn't make it any less true.
  There are myriad ways for children to create and enjoy art. Punching a text string into a machine that vomits out stolen work is not art.
  
  Let me get this straight: you're a "communist", but you want working class people to suffer so that you can have a luxury? Okay...
  
  No.
  For one art is not a luxury. That is a capitalist myth that tried to keep culture and basic pleasure away from the working class.
  For second I want working class people to be able to produce whatever art they want however they want, without houlier-than-thou elitists telling them they can't.
  If turning a a picture of you cat into studio ghibli style brings you even a brief modicum of joy, then you go do that and you shouldn't have people harassing you for doing so.
  
  For one art is not a luxury. That is a capitalist myth that tried to keep culture and basic pleasure away from the working class.
  See definition 2a. Art is a luxury.
  If turning a a picture of you cat into studio ghibli style brings you even a brief modicum of joy, then you go do that and you shouldn't have people harassing you for doing so.
  Except to achieve that joy, you have to steal from people who have to actually work. Gen AI is designed to plagiarize the work of artists for the sake of replacing them. You aren't siding with the workers, you're siding with the parasite class.
  Edit: screenshot with less clutter.

Art should ~~not~~ be enjoyed by everyone, not just the wealthy, but devaluing the skilled labour and creativity of artists isn't how we get to that. My beef with generative AI isn't just the impacts on artists, but also the fact that these systems are reinforcing the same upwards flow of wealth to the ultra-rich. That is to say that AI enriches those who are profiting from depriving many of basic enrichment.

Whilst I disagree with the sentiment of your comment, I appreciate your acknowledgement of access to art as "basic enrichment". That much we can agree on.

Edit: struck through a mistake

Art should not be enjoyed by everyone,
Blatant elitism.
- That was a mistake. I rewrote that first sentence a few times and accidentally wrote the opposite of my intended meaning. I have edited it now, but thank you for highlighting the error

Survival takes priority over enrichment. There's nothing elitist about survival.