Is AI damaging to creators in artistic fields?
Contents
- Why I chose this issue
- Research into the issue
- Gathering opinions on the issue
- My Blog post on this issue
- Evidence of sharing and feedback
- My reflection on the feedback
Why I chose this issue:
I believe that the increasing prevalence of AI is a damning threat to artists and creators. I think this because to the naked eye it is nigh on impossible to distinguish between AI generated art and hand-made art types. This heavily damages creators because music and paintings created by AI can be so convincing it may limit potential job opportunities in the future which will not be a positive thing. AI cannot differentiate between stereotypes/bias and reality and therefore will impact art work and society in the future which could still impact creators as governments may use AI art as propaganda.
Research into this issue
Against AI – Guardian Article, January 2023
The implications of AI image generation are far-reaching and could impact everything from film to graphic novels and more. Children’s illustrators were quick to raise concerns about the technology on social media. Among them is author and illustrator Rob Biddulph, who says that AI-generated art “is the exact opposite of what I believe art to be. Fundamentally, I have always felt that art is all about translating something that you feel internally into something that exists externally. Whatever form it takes, be it a sculpture, a piece of music, a piece of writing, a performance, or an image, true art is about the creative process much more than it’s about the final piece. And simply pressing a button to generate an image is not a creative process.”
Anoosha Syed: “AI doesn’t look at art and create its own. It samples everyone’s then mashes it into something else.”
Harry Woodgate says: “These programs rely entirely on the pirated intellectual property of countless working artists, photographers, illustrators and other rights holders.”
Rob Biddulph says: “A human artist is also adding emotion and nuance into the mix, and memory – specifically, its failings.”
Anoosha Syed says, “another human will never look at an image the exact same way the original artist did. They will never move their hands the way the original artist did. AI doesn’t do the same – it can only copy.” When a human artist does “mimic a style, or pass off a piece of artwork as their own, it is incredibly frowned upon – and in some cases could be seen as copyright infringement. This is essentially what AI art is doing.”
Kaloyan Chernev admits that during the initial launch of Text 2 Dream, people tried to “generate images of nude children, despite the fact that no such images were present in the training dataset”.
He adds: “As AI continues to advance, there is a risk that it may be able to synthesise images of inappropriate or illegal subjects based on existing content. In response to this, we have swiftly adapted our tools to prohibit the generation of any inappropriate or illegal content, including nude images of children and NSFW material.
Pro AI – Make Use Of Article, July 2023
https://www.makeuseof.com/ai-art-generation-ethical-pros-cons
MakeUseOf (MUO) is one of the largest online technology publications.
You just enter a prompt, and the AI generator delivers images to the best of its capabilities. The clearer and more detailed the prompt, the more interesting the results. Start with these AI art prompt ideas and come up with concepts of your own. Anyone can produce art for their amusement or projects, from character art and surrealist paintings to AI background designs for portrait photography.If nothing else, you don’t have to depend on expensive and time-consuming professionals to get the job done. Levelling the artistic playing field is a significant ethical advantage.
Another major perk of being able to generate your own designs with AI generators is that they’re mostly free to use. To be precise, some providers like NightCafé give you five free credits each day. Keep collecting them to create all the artworks you want. What makes this ethically appealing is that a human artist can charge a lot for a single commission, so if you’re strapped for money or need more artwork than you can afford, a good AI image generator is an asset.
The biggest problem with generative AI is the unparalleled copyright violation it causes, a matter to be discussed shortly. On the plus side, Shutterstock’s ethical AI image generator, created in partnership with OpenAI, sets a positive example by compensating artists whose work the engine uses. As a Shutterstock executive explains about the principles driving the company and its new AI tools: Our attention should be laser-focused on developing technology which will not create unintended consequences, such as infringing human rights or fundamental freedom. Other services are taking notice and should follow suit, what with legal action underway to combat the illegal use of copyrighted art.
One of the most inspiring aspects of AI art generation is that the software can learn from old images and breathe new life into classics. You can ask for Van Gogh or Picasso-themed designs, and the generator will respond accordingly with varied results. The best AI text-to-art generators are those with the most advanced data sets and the ability to accurately interpret prompts, all thanks to their machine learning. These services produce the most impressive images that mimic old styles and, in a way, pay posthumous homage to classic artists that shaped the modern art world.
Pro AI – Tech Edvocate Article, June 2023
https://www.thetechedvocate.org/the-ethical-pros-and-cons-of-ai-art-generation/
Efficiency: AI art generation can create large amounts of art within a short period. This can save time and resources that would have been used in traditional manual art creation.
Innovation: AI art generation can help artists innovate by providing new tools and techniques for artistic expression. This can lead to the creation of unique pieces that were not possible before.
Facebook Post in the Artists Against Generative AI Group – 2024
I’m an art director and supervisor for a large studio. The studio heads had the bright idea to hire prompters. Several bros were brought onto the film project. I absolutely hated myself for not quitting on the spot but stuck with it because it’s mercenary out there. Have a family to feed etc. I decided to use this time wisely. Treat them as I would any artist I had hired. First round of pictures of a sweeping Ariel forest landscape comes through and it’s not bad. They submit a ton of work and one or two of the 40 are ok. Nearly on brief. So first round feedback goes through and I tell them about the perspective mistakes, colour changes I want, layers that any matte painting would be split into. Within a day I get 5 variants. Not changes to the ones I wanted but variations. Again. Benefit of the doubt I give them another round of feedback making it clear. Next day it’s worse. I sit there and patiently paint over, even explaining the steps I would take as a painter. They don’t do it, anomalies start appearing when I say I want to keep the exact image but with changes. They can’t. They simply don’t have the eye to see the basic mistakes so the AI starts to over compensate. We get people starting to appear in the images. These are obviously holiday snaps. “Remove the people” “What would you like them changed to?” “… grass. I just don’t want them there”. They can’t do it. The guy that can actually use photoshop hasn’t developed the eye to see his mistakes, ends up getting angry at me for not understanding he can’t make specific changes. The girl whose background was a little photography has given me 40 progressively worse images with wilder mistakes every time. This is 4 days into the project. I’m both pissed about the waste, but elated seeing AI fall at the first hurdle. It’s not even that the images are unusable, the people making them have no eye for what’s wrong, no thicker skin for constructive criticism and feedback, no basic artistic training in perspective and functionality in what they’re making. Yes, the hype is going to pump more money into this. They won’t go anywhere for a while. But this has been such a glowing perfect moment of watching the fundamental part fail in the face of the most simple tasks. All were fired and the company no longer accepts AI prompters as applicants. Your training as an artist will always be the most important part of this process and it is invaluable. I hope this post gives you a boost in a dark time.
Gathering Opinions about the issue
I have commissioned a small survey to teachers at my place of education, it has given us a small pool of data which I have extracted answers from, however, I recognise another survey with more/different questions and may be needed to increase the strength of my argument.
Here is the form I created:
Here is the report on the answers:
My blog post on this issue
AI has been a huge development in recent years with online features like ChatGPT being widely used, I firmly do not believe in AI and dislike its real existence where I believe it should be a sci-fi concept and nothing more. I believe we might get to the point where people outsource jobs to AI rather than other people, damaging the economy and people’s livelihood; there is more at stake than what is just at the surface. But Artificial Intelligence is only rising with global hype and seems to be becoming more and more abundant, we see films such as “Terminator” where Skynet eliminates the majority of the human population and Earth becomes a dystopian society fighting to survive. Whilst we may not have or ever have T-2000 Terminator robots, could this become a reality with a different twist from Terminator? Let’s dive deeper into this later!
My thesis is the following:
“I believe that the increasing prevalence of AI is a damning threat to artists and creators. I think this because, to the naked eye, it is nigh on impossible to distinguish between AI-generated art and hand-made art types. This heavily damages creators because music and paintings created by AI can be so convincing they could limit potential job opportunities in the future which will not be a positive thing. AI cannot differentiate between stereotypes/bias and reality and therefore will impact artwork and society in the future which could still impact creators as governments may use AI art as propaganda. “
Here we have a few claims that I made about AI highlighted in varying colours, some of which may be refuted with a poll I show, however despite the grain of evidence possibly going against me on certain claims I will make counter-arguments with my personal opinion and fears on AI.
When I sent out my survey, I found that the majority of voters/answers were worried about the direction of Artificial Intelligence. One response mentioned the possibility of companies using AI to limit expenses as a business which in turn would take away opportunities from real people.
Another answer to the question “how do you generally feel about AI” was that it does genuinely have positives but can be used in negative ways to harm people. The answer also doesn’t mention what type of harm which I feel is brilliant as it also echoes my point about economic harm in the long term.
Someone also just said The Terminator. I thought it was funny as this film is about a dystopian future society caused by the enhancement of AI taking over humans. While I hope/think this never happens, it can have an economic impact on society if creators do not get financially rewarded for their chosen career path.
Overall on the explanations, there was more on the side of AI potentially doing more harm than good.
The proof is in the pudding when 100% of the voters answered ‘Yes’ to the following questions:
‘Do you think that AI jeopardises the artistic industries such as music, literature, art and perhaps even performing arts?’
‘Do you think jobs will be at risk in the artistic industries such as music, literature, art and perhaps even performing arts?’
For me the fact that 100% of voters said ‘Yes’ to both questions is alarming; I do realise that they are very similar questions however, the latter is the far extreme of the same scale.
As a summary: In the questionnaire of mostly a teacher populus, almost all said they are worried about the general direction of AI also with one exception saying they simply do not know enough to be worried about it. I strongly disbelieve in any reason for AI to exist but I do recognise it can have so many benefits; the questionnaire has made me recognise that a lot of people feel the same and that it is dangerous for society and may take away opportunities from real people economically causing damage to us as a community in the long-term. It may also increase the disparity between the wealthy and less wealthy people.
The questionnaire has also brought to my attention the type of worry, with mine and a few responses being a science-fiction-like concern with a dystopian future as a possible eventuality, not as severe like The Terminator of course but a society separated by causes of machine learning. Also, another being that everyone unanimously agreed that the creative arts industries are jeopardised by the existence of AI where the corporate demand of creative skills can be outsourced by the organisations to the infinite supply of AI generated art as “infinite solutions” they can provide their clientele (us).
Therefore with everyone agreeing that jobs are at risk in the creative fields, all jobs in all fields will eventually become more competitive and scarce due to the forever worsening shift in the balance of “supply and demand” caused remotely by the existence of AI.
Evidence of sharing
My blogpost was shared on the school website here: https://treasuremedia.co.uk/is-ai-damaging-to-creators-in-artistic-fields/
I also sent the blog post to everyone at school and to the people who filled out the survey. I also tried to send the blog post to people who worked in programming but who also were interested in art and gaming.
Feedback from the wider community
I got feedback from two professional coders who are also artists:
I think it’s easy to conflate the harm people believe AI will have with the harm it will have. We should acknowledge that we don’t fully know the impact AI will have. Having said that exploring the potential harms of AI is an interesting and relevant subject. Your claims about their being a risk to creative jobs seem plausible. You could think about why you personally think it is ethically bad to replace people with AI. You mentioned it could be used as propaganda and to perpetuate bias. How AI would do this in a way that is worse than how humans do it? You mentioned it would take away job opportunities but you didn’t explain why this is a bad thing. As the counterargument is that whilst it might reduce some creative opportunities it would create others. I think there may be a deeper point about the right of creative people to be creators and to be able to live as creators in a society that could be explored.
Simon – Coder and Musician
One thing to think about is how do we protect things like the Arts given that AI is not going to go away. Do we need laws to make it clear when AI is used in the creation of Art, should the companies that create AI that can be used in the creation of Art pay a special tax -in the same way that when home recording of music became easy there was a special tax on blank tapes and blank writable CDs that goes to music artists.It’s also important to remember there is a lot of hype around AI, in a very similar way to the hype that existed when the Internet first started to be used by normal people. A lot of the predicted changes never happened, but a lot of things people didn’t even consider did. What laws and systems need to be considered to make sure AI goes in a direction that we as a society want it to, and who gets to decide?
PJ – Software Engineering Manager and Storyteller
My reflection on the feedback
I like Simon’s comments and felt they were neutral whilst making some very interesting points. One I liked and that drew my interest was about bias and propaganda, without knowing it was from non-sentient AI, you could probably not differentiate it from the work of a sentient human and won’t have any impact that is different to human agenda. It might only spark rage and outcries if people actually know if it’s AI, propaganda is all around us at all times with different purposes such as political or financial. I liked that Simon said although creative jobs might actually decrease, jobs involving AI will most definitely increase directly proportional to the growth of AI
I really like PJ’s proposal about special-taxes for the usage of AI within companies. I think there should be a real campaign to preserve jobs as much as possible especially within a cost of living crisis. Cashiers have been fazed out over time by self-checkouts (as an example) and that could happen with artists and instant AI generated art. PJ is also correct about the hype/concern around AI, i’m sure that the internet had similar concerns in that era and media attention only escalates fears. PJ rhetorically asks who should be in charge of the direction of growth, I feel if like society is in charge, they might aim to deliberately stunt AI growth whereas if government or large scale companies are, AI may be pushed too far and might cause a dis-balance in society.