AI art is a very controversial topic in the world of popular art. In general, artists fucking hate AI. If you don’t think that is true, you live in a bubble. As an artist myself, I understand why they hate it, but as a software developer I can’t help but be fascinated by the insane potential of the recent advancements.
Artists don’t appreciate posers, and calling yourself an artist is not something many artists take lightly. This isn’t meant to be gatekeeping, it’s about respect for the craft and the effort that goes into creating things. Regardless of your medium, it’s super fucking hard to get good enough to create something that strangers genuinely enjoy. That is the standard I used to start calling myself an artist, and I think that is pretty common.
Calling yourself an AI Artist is effectively like commissioning an artist, telling them what to draw, then claiming you are an artist because you are good at telling people what to draw. Nobody would argue that that is art, but that is almost exactly what using tools like Stable Diffusion and Dall-e is like. The barrier to entry and the skill cap are just too low for it to be broadly respected as an artform.
When looking at twitter, it is hard not to see AI Art people as just a bunch of tech bros jerking each other off and thinking they are an amazing artist for typing “beautiful girl big boobs cyberpunk VR multiverse” into a text box.
Respect among artists is one thing, but when money gets involved, that’s when things really start to heat up. AI is trained off the work of real artists, without compensation, and the narrative around AI taking jobs of humans is where most of the resentment comes from.
I think the use of copyrighted works as training material without consent or licensing is a problem, but isn’t as much of a problem as AI companies trying to compete with, and dramatically undercutting human artists. This is not only ineffective (because despite the hype, people don’t actually want to look at purely AI Art, IMO) but they are also shooting themselves in the foot by antagonizing artists. For actual artists, using AI tools can be incredibly valuable for increasing productivity. AI companies are doing themselves a disservice by making it so cheap/free.
These companies could be making a lot more money a lot sooner if they focused on making tools for industry instead of generic prompt to complete artwork things like Stable Diffusion that create eye catching, flashy things, but don’t actually create any real value.
This is one of those weird cases where I think a company should just jack up their prices. They should charge what this amazing technology is worth, even if that means way fewer customers. I’m not sure why companies like Stable Diffusion and Midjourney have chosen this path, I suspect it is for the purpose of pleasing silicon valley VCs who are used to looking at figures like daily active users, or maybe it is just out of ignorance.
There is a lot more money to be made in accelerating artist than in replacing them. AIs don’t need to get smarter, they need to get more useful. That means APPLICATIONS. There are many things that AI could easily do right now to help artists work faster and more effectively, but it isn’t user friendly and quick enough for artists to bother.
By making tools and applications to solve problems, AI companies could charge a LOT more for their services and be a lot more profitable while not alienating the artist community. Losers on twitter trying to get rich off NFT projects won’t pay a small fraction of what an animation or game studio would pay for access to their AI if it could significantly speed up their workflows.
Instead of targeting industry, those companies have instead targeted the public in a way that has left the artist community feeling disrespected and in fear of being replaced by people who don’t understand the consequences of their actions.
I hope this trend turns around soon, I feel we are dangerously close the idea of AI being so toxic that there is no coming back. There have already been several cases about companies facing backlash for using AI from not only from artists, but from the audience as well.
