I’ve been caught out in a recent post I made of a Youtube DJ mix that used AI art in the video (I didn’t actually watch the video: that’s on me). I’ve also seen some comments about album artwork being AI in some posts.
From a personal standpoint: I don’t want to hear/see generative AI stuff, and I don’t want to intentionally promote it. However, it’s impossible to determine with 100% accuracy if something uses gen AI, so any kind of approach to monitoring it is going to be best-effort.
I’d like to hear this community’s thoughts. Would you like there to be a community policy for the exclusion of gen AI content?
I also feel the use of artists’ creative works in the training data for the major models is unethical. I doubt all those artists consented to their work being used that way.
Well. Future generations train on the creations of the past. The unethicality is more the intent of those that use it. To devalue and displace those that created the things for a machine that can spit out scrambled up facsimiles of the thing. It’s the Luddites vs the looms. Luddites didn’t hate them. The Luddites rose up to destroy them because the textile shop owners intended to use them to take away the workers means of supporting themselves.
There are AI tools that are ethically trained as well. Though they aren’t the majority of what’s being used for sure. But adobe for instance has done that for photoshop’s AI tools.
Absolutely no to labels manufacturing AI artist etc to undercut or push out real artists to increase their profits. But AI as a tool for better or worse it’s not going anywhere. I can at least respect those that are honest with their audience.
I always thought using the term Luddite as an insult completely missed the point 😉
I think that’s a nuanced difference, or at least, I see it that way. Artists are inspired and influenced by what came before them, but they are also awarded both rights to and responsibility for what they create. If an artist plagiarises someone else’s work, they can be held accountable.
Gen AI muddies that. An artist using a gen AI model has no knowledge of what that model was trained on. The organisation that provides the model does, but they are at a remove from any process that results in an output, and the major AI platforms are openly hostile to being held accountable for the output of their models. What about the model itself? if we accept it’s using a creative process to produce output, should it be afforded rights and responsibilities to what it produces? that opens up a whole ethical debate too.
Those organizations absolutely should be held responsible. But the lack of “their” responsibility is what will keep them from really being a success long term. No smart business or individual would use them. Especially if they’re to be the ones held responsible for the AI companies plagiarism.
And I’ve seen some small signs that we might be hopeful about. There are reports that Spotify who has a massive AI music and AI artists problem along with botted listeners. From people trying to make a quick buck with AI. Apparently Spotify has said that of verified real listeners less than even 1% are listening to known AI artists or AI music. This may ultimately be a problem mostly for these big media companies. Or those of us such as the DJs constantly on the lookout for new music and new artists. To be clear, I have found far more basic or unoriginal artists than I’ve ever found confirmed AI artist.
Ironically, I think industrial music would be one of the few areas AI-generated music would actually be good at LOL. But I think industrial, like goth, post-punk, or many of the other niche genres related to this community. Are some of the least likely to be targeted by such groups. There isn’t a lot of money to be made or cred to be gained long term.
An example of a small unrelated anecdote I recently ended up working on a 3D model of slop origin as a commission. They, like AI music, fall apart under the slightest scrutiny. Because the program is focused on loosely replicating patterns, rather than actually making something. Truly some lovecraftian body horror. Extra digits, strangely warped limbs. Honestly by the time I sculpted out the worst of it. I could have blocked in a completely new mesh and largely finished the detail of it in the same amount of time. Even more egregious, the simple mesh would still need to retopologizing as it was over 3 million polygons for something so simple. Completely unusable for anything but really basic static renders or garten of ban ban character models.