Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
Download as docx, pdf, or txt
You are on page 1of 2
Introduction
Artificial intelligence, or AI, is technology that enables computers and machines to
simulate human intelligence and problem-solving capabilities. This technology has the potential for a massively positive impact on the world. Tech is how we, as a species, grow and get better. But not all tech is created equal, and not all tech enjoys an equally positive reception. With the advent of accessible and free AI that can generate images on demand, people's vision of art has changed, unfortunately, not for the better. Many, especially those who actively use and promote AI-generated images, consider art to be something simple, easy to create, and consider the work to be good only because it “looks” good, completely forgetting and not paying attention to what is important in art the role is played by the feelings and meaning invested in the work. Below we will look at some aspects that show how people see art nowadays, under the influence of AI.
Devaluation of human work
It might be tempting to say that modern technology (like AI) just helps people get things done more efficiently. But AI art doesn’t work this way. AI art generators can’t fully replace human artists right now, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t still devaluing human art. This manifests itself in several aspects.
Time and effort
Everyone who’s interested in creating art has to spend time practicing, learning, studying, and working on their skills to reach a point where they can create pieces they’re proud of. But when art is available with a quick prompt instead of hours of hard work, the value of that hard work goes down.
Negative impact on income of artist
While not everyone who calls themselves an artist makes a living off of their work or aims to sell art online, plenty do. Business growth is difficult to achieve when losing clients and leads to cheap or free AI art generators. Of course, there will always be people who value human art above the works of AI. However, not every artist has access to these kinds of captive audiences, which means that AI art generators make it harder for them to earn enough to get by.
Unique styles and their value
Before AI art, an artist could spend years developing a unique and difficult-to-imitate style. People who loved that style would then be able to commission that artist for art piece, so they could enjoy the specific art style for themselves. However, AI art generators can now be taught to copy almost any kind of style. This might be less infuriating to artists if they were compensated every time their work was used in this way, but this is almost never the case.
Unethical data collection of AI
One of the biggest problems digital artists and other cite with AI art generators is the issue of how they got the data they use to create new works. The following points often influence people’s indignation and distrust about AI art. Questions of copyright for generated images Despite the fact that AI art doesn’t rely on breaking copyright laws, many artists feel cheated by the fact that that’s even true. An example of copyright infringement when generating images using AI would be plagiarism. Gary Marcus and Reid Southen drew attention to evidence that AI engages in plagiarism in their article “Generative AI Has a Visual Plagiarism Problem/Experiments with Midjourney and DALL-E 3 show a copyright minefield”. After a bit of experimentation, Southen found that it was in fact easy to generate many plagiaristic outputs, with brief prompts related to commercial films. How much of Midjourney’s source materials are copyrighted materials that are being used without license? We do not know, we suspect that at least some has not been licensed. Indeed, some of the company’s public comments have been dismissive of the question. When asked by a Forbes reporter, “Did you seek consent from living artists or work still under copyright?”, David Holz, Midjourney’s founder and CEO, expressed a certain lack of concern for the rights of copyright holders:
No. There isn’t really a way to get a hundred million images and know where they’re coming from. It would be cool if images had metadata embedded in them about the copyright owner or something. But that’s not a thing; there’s not a registry. There’s no way to find a picture on the Internet, and then automatically trace it to an owner and then have any way of doing anything to authenticate it. This reduces the value of visual art in the eyes of society.
AI has made art more “accessible”
A common argument from AI supporters and active users is that “art has become more accessible,” which is a lie. The AI has made it possible for people who don't have the desire to learn art on their own to call themselves "artists" by typing a prompt into an input line and getting back a drawing crumpled up and generated from thousands of works by other artists who most likely did not consent to it. This discredits artists and belittles their dignity and authority, presenting them in society as the same image generator, only less efficient and useful.
In Conclusion Decades ago, futurists dreamed of a time when computers would take over all the drudge work so that humans could be free to spend their lives doing what they most enjoyed. For many people, this vision included an idea of creativity: writing poetry, composing music … and making art. So it’s not surprising that many artists and others are a little disillusioned that the modern reality of AI seems to be making the opposite happen. We need to make sure that human artists are better respected – and compensated – for their work. After all, without them, the AI art models would have nothing to train on.
