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this post was submitted on 26 Oct 2023
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Showerthoughts
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Because I disagree on whether or not it is theft. I watch the program generate the images from blots and then add more details. The images are made from scratch with techniques learned from the things it trained on. Its not a 1-1 comparison to how a human learns, but its closer than anything before it has been. Most artists have traced or done other taboo forms of learning in the process of acquiring their skills before they have the skillset to charge money for their work, and they CERTAINLY have benefited from thousands of years of art history and culture. Its not as black and white as artists want to make it out to be, its not squeeky fucking clean either, as more ethical options arise, I will use those. But this tech is amazing and has the potential to dramatically change the art scene for the better once those with skills start adopting it more. It will allow more artists to break free from corporate sponsors, to take on bigger solo projects than they were able to before. At the end of the day, its Capitalism stealing work from artists, not the machine. This whole debacle has reminded me that what stopped me from entering the arts as a child was the elitism.
Fully agree on this.. but since we live in a capitalist system and until we don't anymore, it's still wrong.
With no input (in the almost totality of cases) from the artist. None of the artists agreed to have their work being used to train the machine and if their work is being used for that they deserve to be compensated.
The fact that you are talking to me right now means you are using a computer chip in some way, it is literally IMPOSSIBLE to participate in Capatalist society and live an ethicly clean life. We all have different lines on which ways we'll opt out in order to sleep better at night. At the end of the day, fair compensation is an impossible task considering its not 10's of artists that got used, its quite literally all of the available images on the internet, Thousands if not hundreds of thousands of artists work, living and dead. Thats like asking a human artist to create their art in a vacuum, to forget all of the artists that inspire them, forget their culture, forget their muses that they dont even know inspired them. Even if you could assign a $ value and somehow contact that many people, their fair value would be less than a penny. For the core tech? Low numbers of art wouldnt work, the machines would need examples innumerable in order to start learning what the hell an apple is in 70 different art styles. I've stopped using artists styles as prompts, because yeah, there there is a specific artist I am grabbing from, and I'm not doing it with their permission, and so I stopped.
You can't just use Capitalism to wash your hands of every amoral action. I mean... clearly you can, but you shouldn't. The fact that fair compensation is impossible is literally the reason why ai is getting (rightfully) shit on by so many people. The fact that huge vc funded corporations went "yeah we needed a lot of data, but it would have cost us way too much to get it ethically so we just swiped it" is disgusting and the reason ai should be shut down. It's so weird to me that so many anticapitalists have been enthralled by ai when they are made by huge companies that are profiting from work they stole... literally the capitalist wet dream. How exactly is that fighting against Capitalism?
1: Stable Diffusion is free my dude, no capitalist profits off of my using it
2: Literally ALL of modern society is built off progress made by disgusting methodology. Look up Unit 731 and the Tuskegee Experiments for a small sample of things that have benefitted our knowledge of biology and vaccines
3: It wasnt hard and expensive to track down the permission to use the data needed to start the process of machine image learning, it was IMPOSSIBLE, and fair compensation in regards to image importance would have been significantly less than a penny for an artists entire library of work. I havent seen this much backlash towards Pinterest, which also just hosts whatever images someone uploads, regardless if they are the owner of said image
5: To reiterate, for once, this powerful too is free to use. It is not only benefitting the capitalist class. Any artist is fully capable of using this tech as well without giving any capitalists a penny.
6: Should we start asking humans to list literally every piece of artwork they have ever looked at when they post an image they made? Because its similar levels of influence. The images the machines learned on are not stored in the code, the lessons learned are. All works produced are derivatives, and not rips or traced
7: The arguement the pro artist side makes is never 'lets make this tech ethically cleaner', its 'lets kill this tech in its cradle because we dont like its origin. Which is elitist and privileged, OF COURSE artists dont need this tech or see immediate use for it, they already have the skills to acces their creative freedom. Others like me arent as privileged, hence why there are a LOT of people celebrating having a tool that gives us access such freedom. So no, I dont owe these artists any more than those artists owe disney for the movies they watched growing up that inspired them to start creating. They dont have a monopoly on creative imagery anymore, and their reaction to that has made me lose a lot of empathy towards them. Because they are not entitled to my money, not entitled to my empathy, and I'm not the one taking their jobs away, nor am I enriching any of the ones who are by using a free piece of software. I'm not even adding to their competition, as I'm not selling anything that I make, I'm only making it for myself and my friends.
8: Again, why is the line being drawn now, when this arguement applies to literally EVERY advancement in tech. Yes, we should aim for better, but why isnt that ideal being applied equally to all fields?
TL:DR edit: Work with us to make and transition to an more ethically clear tool, and a lot of us will agree and follow. Continue to call us theives and entitled and try and just kill the tech in its cradle, and we'll call you out on your hypocrisy, and ignore you, as well as eventually replace you as the workfield adapts and integrates, only for the cycle to repeat when new tech replaces AI Tech