DeviantArt released a controversial update DreamUp where third parties are allowed to works shared on the platform to train their AI. TL:DR: the conclusion of the drama.
This tweet sums up my sentiment of the issue.
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When I read the announcement, damn, we really have to struggle to get nice things and keep the nice things huh?
I most likely wouldn’t be able to recognize my work’s input if the AI used it and comes up with a mixed and mashed up version for another prompt but hey, part of the output came from my input which I didn’t specifically consent to be used. Someone else may make money off the venture though. One could just be an artist solely building their career around AI art but using the works of several countless and unnamed artists to raise their name sounds like an easy route.
The harsh reality is that even with good skills, that’s no guarantee you’ll get the spotlight or be able to live off from your art skills. That’s why it’s not so foreign to have other part time jobs on top of being a freelance artist. Not only artists have to compete for attention online with other artists, now they have to compete against tools like AI art.
DeviantArt is one the top sites for Arts and Entertainment. Almost everyone I know that has started their art journey had encountered this site since the early 2000’s. I think of the place as a social media site specifically suited for artists. As an aspiring artist, setting up an account here felt like a prerequisite to get anywhere. It had several art groups to connect, art resources handed out for free by other community members, and became an information highway for digital art.
And DeviantArt’s response to the complaints:
The comments under the tweet are also their own content and it gave me more insights on the issue.
Probably the closest thing to a compromise. The only ones that can’t opt out now are artists that are locked out of their accounts or dead. So they released another announcement that marks all works by default not cool for scraping by AI. Also clarified their official stance on the issue after hearing community feedback.
Just my opinion but 3rd party developers that try to teach their AI’s to create digital art would seek out more pools of data. And investors of the tech may put more incentives to allow art sites to do these practices at the expense of the artists.
Taken from their latest ToS number 24
Users acknowledge that by uploading Content to DeviantArt, third-parties may scrape or otherwise use their works without permission. DeviantArt provides no guarantees that third parties will not include certain Content in external data sources, or otherwise use a creator's work for Artificial Intelligence Purposes, even when such directives are present. By prohibiting such conduct, DeviantArt makes no guarantees that it will pursue each unauthorized use of the Service, and the owners of the works are responsible for policing their own works to the extent permitted by law.
There’s no stopping AI art. It’s a tech that once released, it would create a shift in the landscape in ways unforeseen much like when the typeset printing was introduced. It made the process of publishing more copies of the same books efficient at the expense of losing scribes and other personnel living off the industry. There’s another lengthy post about AI art I have in mind saved for the future.
When I first learned about the concept of AI art after seeing some users on Hive share their works here, I thought it was amazing that AI could conjure up the images and then it’s going to be easy for NFT artists to produce more content because of the tech. One thing that screamed at the back of my head was resistance to what the tech could do. I spent some hours trying to learn how to draw then get shown by someone that they can produce amazing visual works in a matter of seconds based on typing some prompts.
No doubt that AI art will have its own category and most likely out do traditional and digital works by artists in terms of efficiency for content production and style. But understanding this magic meant killing the magic. No matter how great the visuals an AI generated art looks, it’s just an output without a soul built upon the works of artists in learned from.
The fact that some people who aren’t into the art scene claim this is the tech that would replace artist just proves ignorance over the subject. AI art needs artists to be what it is because it requires the machine to learn from existing works.
If you made it this far reading, thank you for your time.
People are sooo afraid of any new tech that comes. First they were so mad at NFTs but slowly they understood and even tho many still hate it, the hate will for sure die down once we are able to use it somewhere else and see the value.
I see the same reaction with AI. Just cos it’s new and we haven’t even seen how this tool can be used in its full potential everyone went nuts.
This is why I’m really not concerned about AI as a competition. It is powerful as a tool, some results look amazing.. but I don’t think clients would be replacing the artists for AI. AI still is not capable of thinking on its own, even when you put a specific prompt it’s not 100% gonna be able to visualize what you want. I get that it may be the struggle of artists to earn that they’re over reacting to the existence of AI but I really don’t think they’ll be replaced lol.
I don’t mind my works used for training it either. We all draw what already exists, we mimic all the time. No point not allowing tools when we do it all the time anyway.
I view the resistance from a perspective of people unaware about blockchain tech works and other applications. NFTs are like digital signatures made by the artists in unique strings of codes but their vision is limited to the PNG/JPEG/SVG file. We know it's more than that. I think what they often see as bad NFTs are those that do pollute the space and marketed more focused on profit than memorabilia in digital form. We have electronic signatures on official documents in scribble forms but those can be forged, with NFTs, the signature of the artists can be verified.
It's still on discovery mode until things settle down and new types of artists emerge. When I tried doing some prompts for an idea, I see some versions I wanted to trace first and then make some additional tweaks but more than half of the job was rendered by AI. I didn't think about this at first but it really makes things convenient like having the AI be on autocorrect for your canvas yet you still compose the rest of the paragraph that way you want.
It's unlikely going to replace artists but it's going to demand more specialized artists in the seen. AI artist specialists will be in demand and its going to be a new niche on its own under the digital art category. But to be even correcting AI, one must know already be an expert on what they are trying to correct.
The part where AI art crosses the line is permission from the works used for its training. I don't mine my works being used for AI training, generally, but I'd like to know the 3rd parties that are going to use it and what for. Some part of the issue is money, could artists be compensated with royalties if the AI art generates income because it used the artists' works?
This is the part where DeviantArt triggered the drama, they should have surveyed the crowd sentiment and by default make the opting in voluntary because some artists really just don't want to support AI art for different reasons than blanket implement a feature and expect everyone to be ok with it.
AI art is improving all the time. It will soon become impossible to tell the difference between art produced by a human and art produced by a computer. I have used a few AI apps and have been impressed by the results. The problem is I have loads of Images on my hard drive and nothing to do with them. So there seems little point in creating a lot of images. As you know, finding a market for art is difficult anyway. There are so many good traditional artists competing to get noticed.
No doubt about this part, it's only been a few years since the tech started. I have no doubt about its wonders within the decade. I can think of industry applications like concept art, the part where the AI does several reiterations of a character until the artists picks one suited for further development in gaming. Or just a way to get out of an art block by refining whatever the AI conjures up.
It's more of a clash between intellectual property where artists' works get scrape without permission and artists already have plenty of problems protecting their works and other parties profiting from their input.
A future I see here is where the art scene is divided into AI and not. I don't think people would be as entertained with AI art compared to real time live painting shows anytime soon. I'm not fully against it seeing the possibilities of its applications but I wouldn't support AI art programs that just sample works that have no consent from the artists that made them.
Exactly this!!
Once started it's quite impossible to stop it... like you said "It made the process of publishing more copies of the same books efficient at the expense of losing scribes and other personnel living off the industry."
But on the other side, i 100000% agree with you on this: "No matter how great the visuals an AI generated art looks, it’s just an output without a soul built upon the works of artists in learned from."
That's sad, with the time humans are losing skills while machines are improving theirs, and we are doing this actively. We can't complain if one day the world will be controlled by machines.
Thanks for this post!! Have a good day :)
!discovery 42
Some parts of our daily lives are already controlled by AI, it's just that these impacts have been normalized to a point where they are invisible. Those automated market makers during trading aren't all just preprogrammed X and Y, they got machine learned AI to train and no longer require apes to press buttons as an example.
There's no stopping machine learning from being implemented in ways we can't overtly see but we'll get used to it. Thanks for stopping by :>
DeviantArt is doing a quite amazing job with it comes to protecting the artists :D
They have been until the recent drama. In the end, they are still a company that wants to make money but it's in their best interest to please their content creators and sponsors.
Ye true, but I feel like they are doing a better job than most other companies
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