Enormous future potential for derivative work gets created. Enormous future potential for original work gets erased.
Why would anyone in their right mind choose to put effort into creating original art if there is "one easy trick" to get around copyright by simply turning their art into a model that can be used to churn out things they could have produced?
>Why would anyone in their right mind choose to put effort into creating original art if there is "one easy trick" to get around copyright by simply turning their art into a model that can be used to churn out things they could have produced?
Why do some artists still paint on canvas instead of using photoshop or krita, where you can easily ctrl+z any mistake, never need to mix any paint, can move layers up and down, etc. etc. etc.?
Why do some photographers still shoot anything smaller than large format with film when medium format and full frame digital cameras exist?
Why do some people still use analog synths when Native Instrument's Komplete exists?
Why do some guitarists still use amplifiers when they could use an AxeFx/Kemper/Neural DSP?
Most of those options are also more expensive, on top of being more inefficient/difficult/generally burdensome, yet people still do them.
People do a lot of things that are not necessarily the most efficient way to do something. They like the minor differences, or enjoy the process, or many other things.
I also don't see how SD and similar get around copyright. Even if training these models on copyrighted images is legal, that doesn't mean that the output they produce necessarily is. It doesn't matter how I create a depiction of Iron Man, be it SD or a paintbrush and canvas, I do not have the rights to reproduce him. And for things that can't be protected by copyright, such as style, I am not hindered by it no matter if it is created with SD or colored pencils on a sketchpad.
If you think about future business cases, my guess is if I'm in the content creation business I'd hire some artist to create inputs for my ML model to train. And I'd be the only one with access to these inputs (in the beginning). Or think about it the other way around. If I'm an artist I buy a commodity AI-art-generation-engine and feed it with my work and I can create infinite items in my own style for (digital) sale.
It'll all be about time to market and brand building. I could even see a world where the originals of the input creator would sell quite well as classic modern artworks. Imagine for a second a world where 3D assets get created this way. I'm pretty sure fans of popular games would shell out good money for originals from "the artist behind the Witcher 7 asset engine" if the trajectory of human development goes as I see it going.
Also...artists are going to create art no matter if it makes financial sense or not. In fact I'd argue that's the difference between art and design :P
> if I'm in the content creation business I'd hire some artist to create inputs for my ML model to train
That's a reasonable way to go about things. The problem is that right now the status quo is that you just take artists' work without their consent and use it to train your model.
Because they want to do it? The motivation for creating art isn't purely financial.
Plus, we humans all built our skills and works on the shoulder of giants. Artworks and cultural artifacts are never created in a vacuum. Maybe it's time to acknowledge that.
> The motivation for creating art isn't purely financial.
Yeah, but getting financial compensation can certainly help.
The opportunity cost of putting bread on the table means that the output of most professional artists today would drop significantly, if they needed to pick up another profession (especially full time).
> Plus, we humans all built our skills and works on the shoulder of giants. Artworks and cultural artifacts are never created in a vacuum. Maybe it's time to acknowledge that.
Financial compensation does help. But certain industries become marginalised or relegated to history given enough time. People then keep them alive because they choose to.
Where are the tears for horseback couriers? Or blacksmiths? Or thatchers?
I guess you didn't get my point which was: those industries died apart from specialists keeping them alive today and that's just the nature of the world.
The same thing will happen to human generated creative content whereby it becomes something that people are involved in because they want to be, not because it's a necessity/it's the only way to do it.
Yes the potential for future art work done by a human today will be erased in the future when it can be performed by a machine, but that has always happened & yet somehow it's surprising to people.
An artist being indignant towards machine generated art yet using mass produced tools, eating food farmed by mechanised equipment, wearing clothing woven by automatic looms, taking a digital photo themselves instead of hiring a portrait painter, owning a car instead of a horse that supports many sub-industries, sending emails instead of letters is just hypocrisy.
Technology has always brought us forward and these new AI powered tools will assist us as the tools we produce have always assisted our species. And as always those who refuse to change will eventually be left behind.
And yes, if this was happening to the industry I'm in I would currently be going through the 5 stages of grief about it, too. But then I'd just have to change up what I'm doing to reflect the changing times. As she herself said, it still doesn't capture what she puts into her art & so there is still that avenue to pursue.
That's begging the question. I don't agree that a model is one easy trick to get around copyright, any more than paying another animator to draw in the same style would be.
In terms of creating original art, I think that in ten to twenty years artists will see models as another tool for creative expression; one that lets an individual artist be more productive but can produce a generic feel, like thin-line animation or sticking difference clouds everywhere or using a palette of pre-made drag and drop body parts.
Why would anyone in their right mind choose to put effort into creating original art if there is "one easy trick" to get around copyright by simply turning their art into a model that can be used to churn out things they could have produced?