Ai is making Artists QUIT !!!

[@jameshughes3014]

I think you're right, people have to keep pushing the envelope expressing themselves. The machines have amazing technical quality, but no real heart. We still need artists, I think we always will. The long winded old guy rant after this isn't so important, but here it is for anyone who wants to read it anyway :) I'm old enough to remember when drum machines started to get popular. People said a lot of the same things about drum machines as they say about AI art.. that it would take all the human drummers jobs, that it would turn music into a soulless, lifeless thing. This wasn't a silly response, if you were a drummer, these machines were scary. They worked without break, they were cheap, they got the job done. And they were gaining popularity at incredible speeds. Then we got synthesizers that could sound like any instrument, and sampling music became popular.. so in this short bit of time from the late 70s to the early 80s, the world got this new collection of things that a lot of people saw as a threat to real music, and to copyright. Amongst musicians there was this popular dark joke.. how many drummers does it take to screw in a light bulb? None, you just get a machine to do it. it wasn't crazy to think this would bring an end to real instrument playing musicians, and eliminate variation in the world of music. And for a time , in the early 80s, it seemed it would. Synthesizers and drum machines were new and interesting, and so they were extremely popular for a few years. For a while all you would hear on commercials, tv shows, on the radio or see on mtv is synthetic music. And lots of it was just really, really bad lol. Look up the theme song for tales from the darkside, to see what I mean. it was the decade that really gave us Muzak, or what we think of as elevator music, similar to the AI slop being turned out now. I played real instruments, but I also took up synthesizers in the early 80s, and i loved them. So I heard lots of people telling me how terrible I was and how bad they were for real musicians. People really were angry, and afraid. But some people just ignored drum machines and synths and kept on creating the old fashioned way. They knew the threat was there, they just didn't care, they did what they loved. They just kept making real music with real instruments, and then in the 90s we got the grunge movement which was purely authentic and often acoustic, because people who consume music crave authenticity. Once the fad had passed, once the early 80s were over.. what we were left with was new world that had both high quality analog musicians like Tom Petty, and there were even some amazing musicians using samples and synths. Trent Reznor is my favorite example..no one can convince me that he isn't one of the most creative musicians of our day. There was, and is room for both. Real genuine analog musicians never disappeared. There are still people playing drums, playing guitar, etc. There will always be a need for regular artists who's fingers are stained with paint or ink or charcoal, and I think the popularity of AI art will start to fade a bit soon. I think it already has begun to. Some people have tried to tell me 'it's not the same' .. but in all the important ways I think it is. People love art for the same reason that they love music, because it's the expression of real human emotion, real experience. I don't think that will ever change. If you love art, don't let anything stop you because creating has value, and I think it always will even if right now we are in a short time where people are interested in the shiny new toys. That shine will wear off, and I think it already is. And if anyone made it this far in to my old guy rant, thanks for reading.

[@sabriel639]

It's worse than competing with China. It reminds me of drug addicts who glorify living off of candy and reveling in their unhealthy habits. There are people who say that art isn't worth the money because they can buy it for cheap. I know people who will go to the music store to try out an instrument only to buy it on Amazon cheaper. Musicians sabotaging the industries that create the instruments that they make music with. I don't know when or how people became so selfish and short-sighted but the art industry is no exception. People take for granted the subtleties in everyday life that excites us and it is absolutely not AI generated art

[@jameshughes3014]

@@sabriel639 I don't think the consumers are to blame for the most part. Our broken unfettered late capitalist system that encourages the exploitation of people and workers is the reason we have things like Walmart and Amazon. the blame in the case of music instruments is almost fully on Amazon. And the devaluation of music is the result of things like Spotify. Other heartless greedy things like stock photo sites are another problem. If we took anticompetitive behavior by companies seriously, and went after monopolistic and duopolistic companies to encourage fair competition, this wouldn't happen so much.

[@notnA51]

It would be interesting to know which artists exactly are quiting? As an artist myself who suffered a lot of burnout, the fact that generative ay eye exists is depressing. I don't want it, no matter how much big tech tries to sell it to me. I understand it's daunting, but all of the artists I follow on social media continue to post their art, by applying nightshade and glaze first. Me included. Another thing that still keeps me going, is that ay eye bros can't claim ownership over their generated slop, and I can. Also ay eye doesn't give you complete control over what is being generated.

[@thefirstuwu8874]

Well, you don't see the ones that had quit. Noticing absence is harder than noticing presence.

[@wej0w]

The whole thing about this AI is so backwards. People wanted to make AI so we could replace boring jobs with them. People do art to express themselfes and this expression is also a way to deal with mental stuff. Yet now we have AI to do creative work while the people using that AI that mostly dont even have the mental capacity what it means to express ones self in art. I do arts for hobby but would awesome to one day grouw it into a bussiness, but if it was my job I would be pretty sad with this whole developement as well.

[@Goodhello369]

AI can clone your own style. Meaning anyone can clone your work if they have a handful of examples.

[@jameshughes3014]

@@Goodhello369 that's true but how much is a fake Picasso worth? If people know it's a fake, not much.. Because they don't look at his work for it's technical skill.. They look at it for the expression he created. People generally don't like clones, even before AI existed, and look at how people react to things like that new coke commercial? I don't think AI is much of a real threat to artists, even if it feels really gross sometime. That feeling is real, and shouldn't be ignored but the truth of what a threat it is might be not so much. as an amateur musician, the first time I heard music made by SUNO I hated it almost instinctually. Something about it felt very gross and I had this feeling like.. Well, no point playing music anymore lol. But, those weird gut feelings, those emotional reactions aren't really a good indicator of threat, ya know? No matter how it feels to me personally... I know that the reason people who love music listen to it, is because it's made by people who have real feelings and real experience. And it's not like we don't already have stock music sites so.. what does the existence of something like that really change? Instead of worrying about it..I sometimes use the site as a way of getting ideas for my own music.

[@Goodhello369]

@ I wish you luck in your denialism. You clearly do not work in advertising. I do.

[@jameshughes3014]

@@Goodhello369 so?

[@Goodhello369]

@@jameshughes3014 I saw a study by FAEI, a week ago, that half of art is counterfeit. Slightly more than 50%.

[@ZeetyBeety]

it will be okay. AI is a tool, use it when it makes sense, and don't when it doesn't. its gonna be a transitionary period, and then art will settle in with the new changes. Just like it did with Photography, and digital workflows. People still paint. And there is still value in paintings if thats your thing. in fact, in time there will probably be more value in hand painted work than in the past. Art isn't the tools, its the message.

[@Goodhello369]

This is a tone deaf take given many make a living in commercial art world.

[@jameshughes3014]

@@ZeetyBeety well said.

[@jameshughes3014]

@@Goodhello369 how so? What he's saying is that people will always want art made by artists, even if the machines exist. so artists will always be able to find work

[@Goodhello369]

@@jameshughes3014 advertising is already knee deep in AI. Good luck with advertising career.

[@jameshughes3014]

@@Goodhello369 it has a bit of it, and there is a lot of push back about that. People don't like it.. And advertisers are allergic to things people don't like. The whole point of advertising is to please as many people as possible. They're experimenting with it, but they will learn. I think there's no reason to panic, at least not from AI. The world is big enough for both ai and real artists. It's not a one or the other proposition

[@xlnt2new]

if AI is making 'artists' quit - then just accept the evolution, they better quit if this is all it takes..

[@ruriva4931]

Ai is not an evolution, there’s no intentionality in it which is where the beauty of art is

[@thefirstuwu8874]

Where's the "evolution"? Like, let's say all art gets replaced, everything creative or inventive, even. What are you, as a human, going to do with your life? Fill all your time with dumb work? For hours watch mindless content that no one has put a thought or effort into? Would you be satisfied with your whole purpose being cleaning floors or consuming endlessly? And when your life will eventually end, no one will care. No one will see you as a once living breathing person, with their own character, worries, even thoughts because you haven't ever expressed them. Because you weren't even able to.

[@DJVARAO]

AI is not replacing anyone; some people are simply becoming more productive with it. The complaint about artists losing jobs or opportunities because of AI is similar to the rants from movie producers about piracy. In reality, most people who can't afford to buy a movie or a ticket end up watching it pirated. The same applies to art and AI: it's for those who want a quick, original waifu because they can't afford a Fiverr artist.

[@jameshughes3014]

I think your right mostly, but I do think there will be some who lose some work for a short time. No one wants AI coke commercials.. but coca cola and other companies will try their best to push it... Fortunately the pushback from consumers should put a stop to that. In time the companies will realize that they have been oversold on AI, and that they need real people

[@notnA51]

That's just flat out wrong. It's not the same as piracy at all. Art made by humans can be viewed by anynone on the internet for free, whereas movies and music from major corporations are hidden behind paywalls. Piracy did enable distribution of movies and anime that would normally be hard to get. But piracy doesn't hurt major corperations as badly as ai affecting the careers of individual artists. There are actually articles documenting that using ai causes more work, because they have to constantly fix the halucinations.

[@Goodhello369]

That is such a bad take. It’s already replacing many designers and artists. I work in the big agency world and it’s truly scary how it’s already being used.

[@jameshughes3014]

@@notnA51 I'm a little lost, and curious about your point of view..how does the human cost of training AI affect artists? Or are you saying piracy isn't a problem?