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submitted 10 months ago by L4s@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

Pika Labs new generative AI video tool unveiled — and it looks like a big deal::The new Pika 1.0 tool comes after a $55 million funding round for the generative AI company and is a big step up in AI video production.

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[-] archomrade@midwest.social 98 points 10 months ago

There's a lot of "AI is theft" comments in this thread, and I'd just like to take a moment to bring up the Luddite movement at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution: the point isn't that 'machines are theft', or 'machines are just a fad', or even 'machines are bad' - the point was that machines were the new and highly efficient way capital owners were undermining the security and material conditions of the working class.

Let's not confuse problems that are created by capitalistic systems for problems created by new technologies - and maybe we can learn something about radical political action from the Luddites.

[-] Even_Adder@lemmy.dbzer0.com 30 points 10 months ago

I recommend reading this article by Kit Walsh, a senior staff attorney at the EFF if you haven't already. The EFF is a digital rights group who most recently won a historic case: border guards now need a warrant to search your phone.

AI training isn’t only for mega-corporations. We can already train open source models, and Mozilla and LAION have already commited to training AI anyone can use. We shouldn't put up barriers that only benefit the ultra-wealthy and hand corporations a monopoly of a public technology by making it prohibitively expensive to for regular people to keep up. Mega corporations already own datasets, and have the money to buy more. And that's before they make users sign predatory ToS allowing them exclusive access to user data, effectively selling our own data back to us. Regular people, who could have had access to a competitive, corporate-independent tool for creativity, education, entertainment, and social mobility, would instead be left worse off and with less than where they started.

[-] LWD@lemm.ee 9 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)
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[-] Sasha 63 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Cool, another step in the ruining art with AI saga

These are all short clips because they look like ass if you get enough time to actually look at them. But even still, can people just stop with this shit?

Let people do the one truely human thing ffs.

Edit: Let me be clear, AI has good uses. My only argument here is that generating art is not one, especially when the training data is stolen and used for profit.

[-] ElBarto@sh.itjust.works 41 points 10 months ago

No one is stopping people from making art, lazy people will use this to do things they want, but artists will make art because that's what they do.

[-] Sasha 49 points 10 months ago

I'm more concerned about the fact that shitty companies will use this sort of thing to put graphic designers out of a job.

This isn't good progress. Even soulless corporate bullshit puts food on the table for someone, soon it'll just make another company a bit richer.

[-] zazo@lemmy.world 22 points 10 months ago

Look I'm not supporting mega rich assholes extracting even more from working people, but would you use the same argument for textile weavers and the Jacquard loom? Sure a lot of people lost their jobs at the time, but most, if not all, respecialized and we got computers in the end so would you say it wasn't good progress? 🤷

[-] Sasha 20 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Except that this is entirely unecessary, and doesn't create a product we need, and it's certainly not one I want.

I want to support people, I want people to do beautiful incredible things. I don't want a higher production rate of souless art statistically generated by taking the work of thousands of people without their consent, for no good reason.

Replace CEOs with AI, that would be good progress.

I also mentioned in another comment that this technology has some very very good uses, I am convinced creating art is an evil use. I'm a big fan of projects like Talon Voice, you can donate voice samples to help improve their language model to help people who struggle to use a computer with their hands. It's amazing stuff and I love it.

[-] zazo@lemmy.world 21 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

See, that's the crux of the argument I feel. You can't have one without the other, you can't have voice generation for the mute without that technology also displacing voice actors in the process.

That's why I think the Luddite approach doesn't work, we can't forcefully break the machines that are capable of so much good because they're also capable of so much bad.

Instead we should focus on helping those that are most negatively impacted by their existence, while supporting everyone that is already being positively affected by them. (like the UBI mentioned in my other comment)

PS. Totes down for replacing CEOs with AI and distributing their salary among the workers

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[-] andros_rex@lemmy.world 12 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Textile weavers still exist, they just get paid even less and live in third world countries. “AI” is the same - a lot of the training is done by underpaid folks living in Kenya and Tanzania. They have to label the gore and CP so that the “AI” won’t use it. Post traumatic stress disorder is pretty common…

[-] BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world 6 points 10 months ago

Advancements like the loom usually just affect one industry (yes, there are ripples in the whole economy) and it's not like we got that, the printing press, the internal combustion engine, the computer, and the telephone all at once. AI, if properly trained, can do nearly any task so it's not just artists that are in danger of becoming obsolete.

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[-] echo64@lemmy.world 16 points 10 months ago

Capitalism optimizes for lazy over good. Who's going to be able to pay rent as an artist in your dystopia

[-] ElBarto@sh.itjust.works 14 points 10 months ago

What artists do you know that make money off their art? The starving artist not being able to make money to survive has been a thing since before Van Gogh's time.

We've automated the food making process, but people still make money off of preparation of food, there's always going to be a market for artists, but that market will be different.

These AI things are great tools to assist artists, but the fear mongering gets in the way.

[-] echo64@lemmy.world 17 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

What artists do you know that make money off their art?

this is such a bad take, I present to you, society. and the hundreds of thousands if not millions, tens or hundreds of millions of employed (either self or through businesses) artists.

and using the "starving artist" as a goal we should transition to just really sucks in concept. I'm not sure you would say the same if it was your profession.

I know ~~reddit~~ lemmy is full of techbros but geez have some compassion for other people. Oh wooweey i can type words and not have to have someone else do an art, I'm an artist now, everyone else can starve

[-] ElBarto@sh.itjust.works 10 points 10 months ago

I'm not sure you would say the same if it was your profession.

I am an artist, who uses AI to assist me...

I know reddit lemmy is full of techbros but geez have some compassion for other people.

So because I don't see AI as a big scary monster coming to devour our souls I'm a Tech Bro and don't have compassion?

But yeah, fear AI all you want, but artists will always be needed even if the bleep Boop machine can do it faster.

[-] OrganicMustard@lemmy.world 13 points 10 months ago

Writing prompts for an image generator doesn't make you an artist, lol

[-] ElBarto@sh.itjust.works 7 points 10 months ago

Well not in the sense of the word you're using, but there is an art to getting them to do what you want if your doing more than just dumb shit like I post on this account.

[-] OrganicMustard@lemmy.world 7 points 10 months ago

There is some technical skill involved in making it output something in the direction you want, but nothing exists until you hit enter, only a vague concept. The process is so detached from the artistic decision making that it is a complete outstrech to call it art. You can never have a personal style doing AI stuff. No vision, no nuances.

[-] Womble@lemmy.world 10 points 10 months ago

There is some technical skill involved in pointing the camera in the direction you want, but nothing exists until you hit the shutter, only a vague concept. The process is so detached from the artistic decision making that it is a complete outstrech to call it art. You can never have a personal style doing photography. No vision, no nuances.

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[-] PopOfAfrica@lemmy.world 8 points 10 months ago

I am also an artist, and I frankly think you are a shite artist if you need to steal other peoples work.

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[-] Sasha 14 points 10 months ago

No, this is a tool that does all of the work of an artist. It is absolutely not an assistant.

That's a bad faith argument, and it's actively harmful. Artists are struggling yes, and this just makes that worse, it won't be a separate market that somehow doesn't impact them.

If you think we should actually work to make it harder for artists to do things, that it's actually good that they struggle, then you have some messed up priorities, friend.

[-] CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social 7 points 10 months ago

It doesn't really do all the work of an artist though. It generates pictures, but consider that a camera also generates pictures of things, and yet photography is considered an art form these days, and one's results from doing that can vary quite a bit between someone who understands both artistic principles and how their tools function, versus someone who does not. Having an image generator does not also entail knowing what to ask the generator for, or how to make any adjustments to it's output if it gives you something that is close to what you envision but not quite there. If anything, I personally suspect a more mature version of the technology will get integrated into art tools in some way rather than looking like it currently does, because a text prompt is a somewhat vague and inexact way to describe an image. If you ask it for a spaceship, for example, it'll give you some sort of spaceship, and if you ask it for a specific spaceship from pop culture it may likely give you that, but if you're imagining a specific design for a spaceship, with specific details, that does not already exist in existing art, it would be very hard to completely describe that just through text, versus if you could start sketching out and have it sort of act as a kind of graphical autocomplete that you can steer in given directions.

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[-] PopOfAfrica@lemmy.world 14 points 10 months ago

All it means is that at art as a career is dead.

Guess we want everyone working in retail or something

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[-] mannycalavera@feddit.uk 7 points 10 months ago
[-] ElBarto@sh.itjust.works 6 points 10 months ago

DEEY DOOK DUR DOORBS

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[-] burliman@lemmy.world 27 points 10 months ago

This is not the way to look at this. Stop thinking this stuff will replace human art. Until we can simulate a human in the machine (not there yet), art will always be by humans because it is a human endeavor recognized and appreciated only by humans.

These things are tools for a human to use. And like any tool that is used in the hands of the casual or the lazy, it will become very banal indeed once the shininess wears off. With your same outlook you could tell Adobe to stop improving the digital brushes in Photoshop, because art is only for humans.

[-] bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 9 points 10 months ago

I think a good analogy is clipart, or those horrible corporate memphis/algeria graphics. They look awful, but they are just good enough at illustrating an idea that many companies will use them rather than hiring an artist. The thing is, corporations almost never want art. They want illustrations.

[-] bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 21 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

AI doesn't generate art. Art is about using media in order to convey a perspective on the world and to illicit emotions from the audience. What AI generates is simply the media itself. It isn't capable of having the point of view or life experiences needed to create actual art.

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[-] Lmaydev@programming.dev 19 points 10 months ago

I quite like AI art.

It's capable of generating things that we've not seen before because as hard as we try what we create always has a human filter on it.

If people don't like it it won't catch on anyway.

[-] Sasha 20 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I do not like theft laundering machines.

I like people.

AI actually has good uses when embedded within technology, a great example being natural language processing, it's capable of so much good especially for the disabled. But so much effort is being focused on creating junk, using stolen data. People are not being paid for their work which is then being used to replace their jobs.

[-] zazo@lemmy.world 6 points 10 months ago

Do you think the software engineers who are developing the AI models (which have been trained on freely given away code) are just stupid and are willingly creating a machine that will take away their jobs because they don't understand the impacts? Or could it be that they do understand the stakes, but continue on despite that because of (as you mention) the unfathomable good the technology can bring? I would hope most people would be willing to sacrifice their wellbeing now for the betterment of everyone else in the future.

If you're still understandably worried tho - just start a garden and begin building tightly knit communities now, since you never know when a solar flare will wipe all our technological progress away...

[-] Sasha 7 points 10 months ago

Do you understand that there's a choice about what purpose to make these for?

That yeah, you can just ignore all the harm you'll do? That people do just ignore all the harm they are doing?

No, I'm not one to call people stupid. I'm calling people and corporations greedy, there's an insanely long history of that and I'm sick of it ruining this world.

People do choose to make good AI, ones that will and currently are benefiting people. This is not one of them, I'm not calling all AI bad, I'm calling theft and soulless art generation bad.

What if a solar flare hits? What if the world was made of pudding?

[-] Lmaydev@programming.dev 6 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

You can say that about all software.

As a programmer my job is to automate tasks and make people obsolete.

You have to make your peace with it.

Should we ban excel and calculators and make everyone do calculations by hand? It would create a lot jobs Hehe

Also the solar flare thing is a very real thing that could happen. Not a random hypothetical like the pudding.

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[-] Custodian1623@lemmy.world 14 points 10 months ago

Have you ASKED artists to draw these things they're supposedly incapable of?

[-] zazo@lemmy.world 14 points 10 months ago

Ah yes, because the favorite part of the process for every artist is the hours spent going back and forth with their client touching up the most minor details instead of creating art they actually want to make..

Idk, I feel AI art only affects commercial artists who first and foremost care about making money off their art form. The ones that actually make art for the love of the craft (without expectation of getting anything in return) aren't really affected in any way.

TL;DR Let UBI free artists from the capitalistic yoke and let the oligarchs use AI to automate the soulless part of art creation that nobody enjoys anyways.

[-] Sasha 8 points 10 months ago

In what world is it a bad thing for someone to get paid for their skills? That's a bizarre spin to put on it.

And yes, UBI should definitely happen, but we shouldn't start painting the world with crap to do it.

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[-] Womble@lemmy.world 8 points 10 months ago

Exactly, personalised art should only be for those who can afford to pay for it. Expanding that privilege to more people is very bad.

[-] Catoblepas 9 points 10 months ago

It’s literally a luxury, and trying to yank the rug out from under the artists who actually made the art the plagiarism machine runs on isn’t going to change that. You don’t need personalized art, and if you REALLY REALLY want personalized art super bad then that just underlines the value that artists give to society.

[-] Womble@lemmy.world 13 points 10 months ago

It’s literally a luxury to have your own copy of a book, and trying to yank the rug out from under the scribes who actually made the books the plagiarism press runs on isn’t going to change that. You don’t need your own book and if you REALLY REALLY want one super bad then that just underlines the value that scribes give to society.

[-] Catoblepas 9 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

If I can’t have the plagiarism machine spit out 100 pics of my big tiddy anime gf kissing me that’s just like children not having access to books. Won’t someone think of how every generation before this lived under the oppression of artists who wouldn’t work for free? 😭

It’s also a crime to reprint anything without the original author or artist’s permission so you might not like where your analogy leads lmao.

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[-] glowie@h4x0r.host 14 points 10 months ago

We were only meant to be wage slaves /s

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[-] Catoblepas 29 points 10 months ago

Seeing people go gaga over all this AI trash kind of makes me convinced that most people just… do not see? Not that something is physically wrong with their vision but it’s like most of it doesn’t even register, even more so than what I thought was the normal baseline of inattention to details.

Are people just constantly distracted and not really engaging with media? Only watching or looking at things on small screens? The result of decades of cuts and devaluation of art education? Literally just being happy with whatever garbage is in front of them? It’s a mystery to me.

[-] KeenFlame@feddit.nu 28 points 10 months ago

The ooohs is mostly about how fucking far it has come so quickly. You must see how this technology is a pretty fucking big deal

[-] burliman@lemmy.world 18 points 10 months ago

They don’t see and don’t really want to see. Typical technophobe responses rooted in fear and insecurities.

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[-] Grimy@lemmy.world 23 points 10 months ago

What a condescending view point while bringing nothing to the table but insults.

I see a technology that will break the barriers necessary to get into animation and movie production, finally paving way for indie companies in the domain. It will elevate art in all domains, bringing us more interesting products and features.

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[-] Subverb@lemmy.world 28 points 10 months ago

I've been saying for a year now, generative AI is going to foster a resurgence in stage theater. When movies are all 100% AI with no humans in them, we'll want to see humans act. That and "organic" movie labels.

[-] hubobes@sh.itjust.works 12 points 10 months ago

This is not the death of artists but of studios. When creating movies will become cheap, movie studios will be the ones becoming unnecessary. But artists are the creatives who feed these tools and who now can create content on their own.

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this post was submitted on 02 Jan 2024
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