My Beefs With AI “Art”
Look, I’m a writer, and I see my craft being devastated in real time. Here are my reasons for being against it, why it’s a bad thing, and why you shouldn’t use it.
Hello, friends,
Last week, we talked about the bizarre standoff in Texas between Federal agents and the state’s National Guard. To the best of my knowledge, that situation is still in place, even if it’s kind of just simmering at this point. Biden has not Federalized the guard, essentially ceding the issue to Republicans other than to say he would “shut down the border” if Congress passed a new law he wants.
On to other matters: Hey, did you know AI “Art” is a thing?
That’s right! We’ve ‘taught’ computers how to create all sorts of art, a form of manufacture known as “Generative AI.” We’ve got ChatGPT to do the heavy lifting of text generation, programs like Midjourney for art, and those are just two of many that exist for numerous purposes.
All you have to do to get a painting or a book chapter is input a prompt into a website. “Draw me a picture of a goat!” will get you a goat, although it’ll be whatever goat the AI decides to ‘make.’
Today, we’re going to go through a rough sketch of what it is, then we’re going to talk about why it’s a bad thing and it shouldn’t be used by, well, really by anyone, but definitely not for anything you plan to do professionally.
How Does AI ‘Art’ Get Made?
Now, I’m not a computer expert, so I defer to people who know far better. Leave a comment! Clear things up for me.
CGPGrey once made a pretty interesting video about how AI bots in general are created, as well as a supplemental video about another style of ‘learning.’ They’re both short, so they’re easy watches.
This learning style is a little bit similar to how Humans learn. Both Humans and bots learn from, say, seeing numerous pictures and learning what a given thing in the picture is. Let’s say you’re training an art bot. Got a picture of a hand? How many fingers does it have? If a bot sees enough hands, it can learn the basics of how to draw what a hand is.
The problem is that AI bots don’t really understand what fingers are for, just how to draw a finger. That’s why they are notoriously bad at drawing hands.
The same kind of goes for writing. The leading way that AI writing bots work is by figuring out what the next word or punctuation in a given sentence should be. If it sees certain linguistic structures happening as a pattern, it learns that those structures should be used - even if it can’t understand what, exactly, they are used for.
Now! You might be wondering the obvious: How does an AI bot ‘learn’ all of this vital information? Glad you asked!
AI Programmers shove millions of pieces of data - books, paintings, etc - down its throat. Each of these pieces of data are tagged with various bits of information (Say, an artist’s name), and with enough data the AI machine can essentially copy what it’s seen.
This sounds like how Humans learn. If I wanted to draw like Yusuke Murata (One Punch Man), I’d practice drawing some of his old work in his style and see how I did. I’d do awful because I have a fine motor skill impairment! But I’d approximate his style somehow. My brain would process the various iterations of work I did, each time finding little things to improve upon.
Generative AI does this by scanning every picture uploaded with the “Yusuke Murata” tag, then essentially figure out what it’s being asked to make and spit out a brand new Yusuke Murata panel.
But wait a minute!
What do artist’s think about this?
Generative AI Is About Consent - In That It Never Asked For It.
Let’s run through a list of different types of artists:
Voice Actor Nick Landis (Dragonball Z Abridged) had some choice words for the Screen Actors Guild being open to allowing generative AI to create voice patterns of voice actors.
Visual artists kinda hate it. After all, like I mentioned earlier, individual artists’ work was labeled as “styles” for their art to be impersonated.
In the face of a recent attempt to create an AI version of a George Carlin comedy special, Kelly Carlin - George’s daughter - definitely disapproved.
As a written artist, I hate it too - and so do many others among us.
The bottom line here, the common thread of all of these lawsuits, is that these millions of bits of data that were inputted into the machines were skimmed without the consent of the creators. There’s no compensation for each time someone says, “Write me a book in Jesse Pohlman’s style.”
(To be fair, my books probably aren’t in these bots, I’m too small-scale)
Consent is kind of, sort of, maybe a little bit really fucking important. I know that when Humans study other artists, they influence our future work on a subconscious level because that information has been absorbed into our inner psyche and inner world - more on that later! AI bots do a similar thing when not prompted to make things in a similar style…
…But AI bots lack an inner world, hence they tend to do one-to-one ripoffs and other bullshit. Here’s an example of an AI bot ripping off various actual artists, alive or dead. Notice how that last one, that Monet, is pretty much a one-to-one ripoff? That might be because of the prompt it was told to fulfill, but it also might not be.
So what we have here is work made by artists of all types - copied almost one-to-one - being usurped without their consent and without compensation.
I really have a hard time buying into the counter-argument for the whole, “They did not consent” thing. They didn’t consent, why are they being ripped off by a machine? Why do you feel entitled to use their work without paying them for it? Hell, even Midjourney’s creators admit to it being a problem - they just don’t care.
Ahhh, but what about the “Human artists learn by copying other artists, too!”argument? Let’s address that!
What does an AI ‘artist’ feel when they create art?
These Machines Have No Feelings.
No, I’m serious: What does an AI ‘artist’ feel?
See, I’m a sci-fi author by trade. I totally recognize that there will, if we don’t nuke or climate change ourselves into oblivion, undoubtedly be an artificially intelligent, Sapient entity that has feelings. I’ve written them into fiction, in fact!
But this ain’t that.
This is slop. Midjourney and ChatGPT don’t feel anything when they create ‘art.’ They don’t draw a tragic scene from Kentaro Miura’s Berserk with any grasp of what the characters in the painting are feeling. They just…Reproduce. They have no feelings about it.
They lack an inner world.
Humans do not. We absorb art, think about it, consider it, see what we’d do to make it differently, and - perhaps most crucially - we convey information when we draw. This is why so many of us say “All art is political,” because all art conveys some kind of feeling, emotion, or information.
When we write a sad scene in a book, we reflect on our own inner sadness as a necessary part of that creation.
AI ‘artists’ are powered by algorithms, not emotions.
So they are in effect stealing the emotionality from certain artwork and getting the vaguest concept of “sad” from the labels on that artwork, then turning around and spitting out something that looks like it kind of fits, only it has no emotion backing its generation.
It is an empty vessel. It conveys nothing.
So don’t use it.
How Can We Make It Better?
This is a situation where there are many forces at play. There’s the usual solutions of, say, contacting Congresspeople and requesting legislative changes. For example, here’s a Change.Org petition I’m in the process of signing as I write this article. There! Signed!
But there are other dynamics I’ve mentioned in previous links, such as publishers taking AI ‘art’ manufacturers to court. For example, there’s a new little video game called Palworld that came out that, well, let’s just say it’s very close in art style to Pokemon. It comes from a company known for making AI ’art.’ Nintendo, the backers of Pokemon who are known for strictly policing its intellectual property, might take action. Already, “The Pokemon Company” - a subsidiary of Nintendo - has made statements that it’s investigating the issue.
So legal action is being taken which might essentially elicit compensation and/or shut down AI ‘art’ for good. And that would be a great thing. But AI companies are often backed by large players, as well. The fight won’t be easy.
And, look, I’ll be honest: On a Human level, as an artist, when I see someone decide, “That machine is going to make me art rather than a Human making me art,” I feel bad. Why do you need that shitty machine to make a soulless copy of someone else’s art? What is it for?
If it’s for roleplaying characters, I mean…You can probably commission someone to draw your character for pretty cheap. But at least that’s for personal use, and it isn’t corporate. It’s still icky to me, but I get it. It’s “just for fun,” even if you could get
the same thing with a little bit of soul for a little bit of cash. It’s important to you, so do it right, right?
But…Why would you ever want that in a commercial product, other than that you wanted assets you didn’t have to pay as much for? I don’t get it.
Oh, well. Hopefully this shit continues to nosedive in the stock market.
In Other News…
President Biden has retaliated against Iranian assets for the killing of three U.S. troops (and wounding of ten times that) stationed in Jordan. Here’s hoping this doesn’t become a cycle of retaliations that gets increasingly closer to homes. GOP lawmakers have, of course, said this isn’t good enough. They want Judgment Day, I guess.
Polling indicates that Biden is slowly recovering his political strength, though polls this far out are far from the most accurate we will get. The best we can do is look at trends, which Beau Of The Fifth Column so helpful did.
A man from Pennsylvania allegedly (on Youtube?) beheaded his father for working for the Federal Government, all while ranting about an invasion at the southern border. Gee, it’s almost like Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s language that we discussed last week is having its intended effect.
In some good news: The UAW has announced (as More Perfect Union has reported) that a lot of auto workers in various plans throughout the U.S. are opting to unionize.
Thank you for reading The Progressive Cafe. If this article has helped you, please consider signing up for our mailing list. This article is by Jesse Pohlman, a former hyperlocal journalist and sci-fi/fantasy author from Long Island, New York, whose website you can check out here.