Three visual artists are suing artificial intelligence image-generators to protect their copyrights and careers.
Visual artists fight back against AI companies for repurposing their work::Three visual artists are suing artificial intelligence image-generators to protect their copyrights and careers.
I’m talking from a perspective of understanding how machine learning networks work.
They cannot make something new. By nature, they can only mimic.
The randomness they use to combine different pieces of work, is not creativeness. It’s brute force. It’s doing the math a million times until it looks right.
Humans fundamentally do not work that way. When an engineer sees a design, and thinks “I can improve that” they are doing so because they understand the mechanism.
Modern AIs do not understand anything. They brute force their way to valid output, and in some cases, like with code, science, or an engineering problem, there might be one single best solution, which an AI can find faster than a human.
But art, DOES NOT HAVE a single correct “solution”.
I’ve tried to explain this to a lot of people on here and they just don’t seem to get it. Art fundamentally relies on human experience for meaning. AI does not replicate that.
Seems like people on this platform are very engineering focused, and many aren’t artists themselves and see it as a pure commodity instead of a reflection of the artist.
It’s so wierd to see artistic expression reduced to an engineering problem.
Yeah, you can generate images and sounds, but claiming that’s art is like claiming a thousand monkeys could write the works of Shakespeare. Yes, its possible, but what enables it is randomness. Not creativity.
And in that process, you created a lot more of something else, aside from the works of Shakespeare.
artist here. nobody is thinking about AI as a tool being used… by artists.
the pareidolia aspect of diffusion specifically does a great job of mimicking the way artists conceptualize an image. it’s not 1 to 1, but to say the models are stealing from the data they were trained on is definitely as silly as claiming an artist was stealing every time they admired or incorporated aspects of other people’s art into their own.
i’m also all for opensource and publicly available models. if independent artists lose that tool, they will be competing with large corps who can buy all the data they need, and hold exclusive proprietary models while independent artists get nothing.
ultimately this tech is leading to a holo-deck style of creation, where you can define you vision through direction and language rather than through hands that you’ve already destroyed practicing linework for decades. or through hunting down the right place for a photograph. or having a beach not wash your sandcastle away with the tide.
there are many aspects to art and creation. A.I. is one more avenue, and it’s a good one. as long as we don’t make it impossible to use without subscribing to the landlords of art tools.
I absolutely approve of AI tools as a way for artists to empower themselves. Because there is human input.
The “best” AI art I’ve seen is the type posted by people who were already drawing before, and are using it as a tool to realise their vision. But that’s the crux of the issue, in these pieces a human conceived the them, the tools used to realize them, don’t matter.
But a lot of people are presenting AI as a something that replaces the whole person of an artist. Not a new brush for them to wield in creatively intelligent ways.
I absolutely approve of AI tools as a way for artists to empower themselves. Because there is human input.
Why does that “fix it” for you? Earlier you stated that AI cannot create anything new by its very nature. Why does the status of the output change if an artist uses it? Why is it art when an artist does it, but not if a non-artist does it?
I’m not talking about “artists” who fiddle with prompts until they got something pretty and then treat the result as a finished piece.
I’m talking about people generate a nose, a hand, a set of abs, a piece of clothing, a texture for a set of clothing, and then combine these with their “traditional” digital art skills.
They are using the AI like a brush, not a printer.
And why is only that “art”? Why is it not art when I use in-painting to generate individual parts of the image? Where is the magical border where it turns from not-art to art?
The magical border is whether it originated in a human mind. What tools were used to get it out and into world don’t matter.
A lot of AI content out there right now, isn’t the result of that process. The AI generated something the artist liked, rather than the artist bending the AI into realising what they could already see in their mind.
AI is supposed to work with human input. AI is a tool for the artist, not a replacement of the artist. The human artist is the one calling the shots, deciding when the final result is good or when it needs improvement.
And the difference in results is clearly different. There are people who replaced artists with Photoshop, there are people who replaced artists with AI, and each new tool with firther empower people to try things on their own. If those results are good enough for them then they probably wouldn’t have paid for a good artist anyway.
They cannot make something new. By nature, they can only mimic.
Explain it to me from a mathematical point of view. How can I know based on the structure of GANs or Transformers that they, by nature, can only mimic? Please explain it mathematically, since you’re referring to their nature.
The randomness they use to combine different pieces of work, is not creativeness. It’s brute force. It’s doing the math a million times until it looks right.
This betrays a lack of understanding on your part. What is the difference between creativeness and brute force? The rate of acceptable navigations in the latent space. Transformers and GANs do not brute force in any capacity. Where do you get the idea that they generate millions of variations until they get it right?
Humans fundamentally do not work that way. When an engineer sees a design, and thinks “I can improve that” they are doing so because they understand the mechanism.
Define understanding for me. AI can, for example, automatically optimise algorithms (it’s a fascinating field, finding a more efficient implementation without changing results). This should be impossible if you’re correct. Why does it work? Why can they optimise without understanding, and why can’t this be used in other areas?
Modern AIs do not understand anything. They brute force their way to valid output, and in some cases, like with code, science, or an engineering problem, there might be one single best solution, which an AI can find faster than a human.
Again, define understanding. They provably build internal models depending on the task you’re training. How is that not a form of understanding?
But art, DOES NOT HAVE a single correct “solution”.
Then it seems great that an AI doesn’t always give the same result for the same input, no?
The brute forcing doesn’t happen when you generate the art. It happens when you train the model.
You fiddle with the numbers until it produces only results that “look right”. That doesn’t make it not brute forcing.
Human inspiration and creativity meanwhile is an intuitive process. And we understand why 2+2 is four.
Writing a piece of code that takes two values and sums them, does not mean the code comprehends math.
In the same way, training a model to generate sound or visuals, does not mean it understands the human experience.
As for current models generating different result for the same prompt… no. They don’t. They generate variations, but the same prompt won’t get you Dalí in one iteration, then Monet in the next.
The brute forcing doesn’t happen when you generate the art. It happens when you train the model.
So it’s the same as a human - they also generate art until they get something that “looks right” during training. How is it different when an AI does it?
But you’ll have to explain where this brute forcing happens. What are the inputs and outputs of the process? Because the NN doesn’t generate all possible outputs until the correct one is found, which is what brute forcing is. Maybe you could argue that GANs are kinda doing this, but it’s still a very much directed process, which is entirely different from real brute forcing.
Human inspiration and creativity meanwhile is an intuitive process. And we understand why 2+2 is four.
You’re using more words without defining them.
Writing a piece of code that takes two values and sums them, does not mean the code comprehends math.
But we’re not writing code to generate art. We’re writing code to train a model to generate art. As I’ve already mentioned, NNs provably can build an accurate model of whatever you’re training - how is this not a form of comprehension?
In the same way, training a model to generate sound or visuals, does not mean it understands the human experience.
Please prove you need to understand the human experience to be able to generate meaningful art.
As for current models generating different result for the same prompt… no. They don’t. They generate variations, but the same prompt won’t get you Dalí in one iteration, then Monet in the next.
Of course they can, depending on your prompt and temperature.
This is what it always comes down to - you have this fuzzy feeling that AI art is not real art, but the deeper you dig, the harder it gets to draw a real distinction. This is because your arguments aren’t rooted in actual definitions, so instead of clearly explaining the difference between A and B, you handwave it away due to C, which you also don’t explain.
I once held positions similar to yours, but after analysing the topic much much deeper I arrived at my current positions. I can clearly answer all the questions I posed to you. You should consider whether you not being able to means anything regarding your own position.
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I’m talking from a perspective of understanding how machine learning networks work.
They cannot make something new. By nature, they can only mimic.
The randomness they use to combine different pieces of work, is not creativeness. It’s brute force. It’s doing the math a million times until it looks right.
Humans fundamentally do not work that way. When an engineer sees a design, and thinks “I can improve that” they are doing so because they understand the mechanism.
Modern AIs do not understand anything. They brute force their way to valid output, and in some cases, like with code, science, or an engineering problem, there might be one single best solution, which an AI can find faster than a human.
But art, DOES NOT HAVE a single correct “solution”.
I’ve tried to explain this to a lot of people on here and they just don’t seem to get it. Art fundamentally relies on human experience for meaning. AI does not replicate that.
Seems like people on this platform are very engineering focused, and many aren’t artists themselves and see it as a pure commodity instead of a reflection of the artist.
It’s so wierd to see artistic expression reduced to an engineering problem.
Yeah, you can generate images and sounds, but claiming that’s art is like claiming a thousand monkeys could write the works of Shakespeare. Yes, its possible, but what enables it is randomness. Not creativity.
And in that process, you created a lot more of something else, aside from the works of Shakespeare.
artist here. nobody is thinking about AI as a tool being used… by artists.
the pareidolia aspect of diffusion specifically does a great job of mimicking the way artists conceptualize an image. it’s not 1 to 1, but to say the models are stealing from the data they were trained on is definitely as silly as claiming an artist was stealing every time they admired or incorporated aspects of other people’s art into their own.
i’m also all for opensource and publicly available models. if independent artists lose that tool, they will be competing with large corps who can buy all the data they need, and hold exclusive proprietary models while independent artists get nothing.
ultimately this tech is leading to a holo-deck style of creation, where you can define you vision through direction and language rather than through hands that you’ve already destroyed practicing linework for decades. or through hunting down the right place for a photograph. or having a beach not wash your sandcastle away with the tide.
there are many aspects to art and creation. A.I. is one more avenue, and it’s a good one. as long as we don’t make it impossible to use without subscribing to the landlords of art tools.
I absolutely approve of AI tools as a way for artists to empower themselves. Because there is human input.
The “best” AI art I’ve seen is the type posted by people who were already drawing before, and are using it as a tool to realise their vision. But that’s the crux of the issue, in these pieces a human conceived the them, the tools used to realize them, don’t matter.
But a lot of people are presenting AI as a something that replaces the whole person of an artist. Not a new brush for them to wield in creatively intelligent ways.
Why does that “fix it” for you? Earlier you stated that AI cannot create anything new by its very nature. Why does the status of the output change if an artist uses it? Why is it art when an artist does it, but not if a non-artist does it?
I’m not talking about “artists” who fiddle with prompts until they got something pretty and then treat the result as a finished piece.
I’m talking about people generate a nose, a hand, a set of abs, a piece of clothing, a texture for a set of clothing, and then combine these with their “traditional” digital art skills.
They are using the AI like a brush, not a printer.
And why is only that “art”? Why is it not art when I use in-painting to generate individual parts of the image? Where is the magical border where it turns from not-art to art?
The magical border is whether it originated in a human mind. What tools were used to get it out and into world don’t matter.
A lot of AI content out there right now, isn’t the result of that process. The AI generated something the artist liked, rather than the artist bending the AI into realising what they could already see in their mind.
So if I enter a prompt and click “generate” it clearly originated in my mind, and it’s art.
AI is supposed to work with human input. AI is a tool for the artist, not a replacement of the artist. The human artist is the one calling the shots, deciding when the final result is good or when it needs improvement.
Absolutely.
Yet a lot of people are sharpening their knives in preparation to cut the artist out of the process.
And the difference in results is clearly different. There are people who replaced artists with Photoshop, there are people who replaced artists with AI, and each new tool with firther empower people to try things on their own. If those results are good enough for them then they probably wouldn’t have paid for a good artist anyway.
Explain it to me from a mathematical point of view. How can I know based on the structure of GANs or Transformers that they, by nature, can only mimic? Please explain it mathematically, since you’re referring to their nature.
This betrays a lack of understanding on your part. What is the difference between creativeness and brute force? The rate of acceptable navigations in the latent space. Transformers and GANs do not brute force in any capacity. Where do you get the idea that they generate millions of variations until they get it right?
Define understanding for me. AI can, for example, automatically optimise algorithms (it’s a fascinating field, finding a more efficient implementation without changing results). This should be impossible if you’re correct. Why does it work? Why can they optimise without understanding, and why can’t this be used in other areas?
Again, define understanding. They provably build internal models depending on the task you’re training. How is that not a form of understanding?
Then it seems great that an AI doesn’t always give the same result for the same input, no?
The brute forcing doesn’t happen when you generate the art. It happens when you train the model.
You fiddle with the numbers until it produces only results that “look right”. That doesn’t make it not brute forcing.
Human inspiration and creativity meanwhile is an intuitive process. And we understand why 2+2 is four.
Writing a piece of code that takes two values and sums them, does not mean the code comprehends math.
In the same way, training a model to generate sound or visuals, does not mean it understands the human experience.
As for current models generating different result for the same prompt… no. They don’t. They generate variations, but the same prompt won’t get you Dalí in one iteration, then Monet in the next.
So it’s the same as a human - they also generate art until they get something that “looks right” during training. How is it different when an AI does it?
But you’ll have to explain where this brute forcing happens. What are the inputs and outputs of the process? Because the NN doesn’t generate all possible outputs until the correct one is found, which is what brute forcing is. Maybe you could argue that GANs are kinda doing this, but it’s still a very much directed process, which is entirely different from real brute forcing.
You’re using more words without defining them.
But we’re not writing code to generate art. We’re writing code to train a model to generate art. As I’ve already mentioned, NNs provably can build an accurate model of whatever you’re training - how is this not a form of comprehension?
Please prove you need to understand the human experience to be able to generate meaningful art.
Of course they can, depending on your prompt and temperature.
You are drawing parallels where I don’t think there are any, and are asking me to prove things I consider self-evident.
I’m no longer interested in elaborating, and I don’t think you’d understand me if I did.
This is what it always comes down to - you have this fuzzy feeling that AI art is not real art, but the deeper you dig, the harder it gets to draw a real distinction. This is because your arguments aren’t rooted in actual definitions, so instead of clearly explaining the difference between A and B, you handwave it away due to C, which you also don’t explain.
I once held positions similar to yours, but after analysing the topic much much deeper I arrived at my current positions. I can clearly answer all the questions I posed to you. You should consider whether you not being able to means anything regarding your own position.
I am able to answer your questions for myself. I have lost interest in doing so for you.
But can you do so from the ground up, without handwaving towards the next unexplained reason? That’s what you’ve done here so far.
Yes.
I once held a view similar to the one you present now. I would consider my current opinion further advanced, like you do yours.
You ask for elaboration and verbal definitions, I’ve been concise because I do not wish to spend time on this.
It is clear we cannot proceed further without me doing so. I have decided I won’t.