Universal basic income.

EDIT: I feel I need to clarify this stance. I’m a game developer, and I’m also sometimes an artist. I’ve been in discussions with my artist friends and they’re of the belief that AI is the enemy. I don’t believe that, but I also don’t blame them; artists’ careers are being displaced by AI, so of course they are justified in directing their anger at the immediate threat to their livelihoods. As for the ethical/legal quandary about AI art models being trained on publicly-available copyrighted images, well, I think that’s more of a grey area that I should not delve into right now.

AI art is inevitable, and there is no feasible way to slow it down, let alone stop it; even if the developed Western world decide unanimously to ban AI art, black markets for AI art models would still exist, and it would give Eastern countries (okay, mainly just China) the opportunity to really corner the market and further develop that technology for (nef)various purposes.

Every industry succumbs to automation sooner or later. I mean, it makes perfect economic sense to adopt automation to replace the existing workforce; robots don’t need to get paid. However, normally, when automation is introduced into an industry, the pace at which that technology is developed and implemented is slow enough for displaced workers to be able to learn new trades and pick up new careers before they, well, go broke.

The issue is that in this era of information, this AI technology is developing far too fast for that to happen, and couple that with the ever-increasing greed in today’s capitalism that ensures workers (including artists) are working long hours and are being paid barely enough to survive; they don’t have the time, energy, or funds to learn new trades or adapt to other creative endeavours that haven’t been taken over by AI yet.

We need a return to an era where art is not a method of livelihood, but rather an admired craft, simply for the purposes of art; that also comes with the extra bonus of lowering the worth of AI art. For all that to be possible, artists first need a way to stop worrying about having to make money to be able to afford food and housing.

That’s where UBI comes in. Again, capitalism, the richest 1% hoarding 50% of the world’s wealth, yada yada, just tax those rich fucks and give that money to everyone; boom, UBI. Once artists (and workers in general) no longer have that threat of starvation, 1. they can take all the time they need/want to learn new crafts and careers, 2. they can force corporations to offer workers better treatment and pay, especially when they can afford to quit toxic work environments.

I think if capitalism wasn’t involved in how AI evolves, we would be in a much better place. The fact that the first question about any tech is “how can we make money with it?” Already starts down a different path.

Seems like since we can’t solve that fundamental issue, best next bet is to learn to welcome AI into our lives in ways that enrich it. Use it to augment your work - alternatively, maybe start learning and specializing in things that are (for the time being) out of reach for AI. Human services that require another human or hand made high quality items where the purchaser is specifically interested in the hand made aspect.

Can’t say I have a perfect solution, other than to stay curious and adaptable to change.

I’m an artist - I tattoo, do freelance illustration and produce handmade pottery. My husband is also a tattoo artist. My entire income is made through art.

I have stopped attempting to draw coloring books - AI “prompt artists” have taken over and are pumping out grayscale coloring books at extremely low prices. Not a high income producer for me in the first place, but the entire field is falling apart.

Tattooing is a different story - I use AI to produce references regularly. Not full drawings, just references I can use to create my own drawings. Pottery remains unchanged.

The obvious difference is the type of art. The further it moves from a drawing, the better the outcome when AI is involved from my POV.

To be honest though - how many of you actually have real artwork in your house? Not prints - actual handmade art. Art has been struggling for a long time now - it has little value to the average consumer. Mass production has made it a throwaway product. Most ceramics are made by machines now - vases and “paintings” and dishes are all isles in a home goods store, stamped out and inked by a machine. Most professional artists are employed by companies, not off selling their art. I don’t really need to spell out what will happen when the company gets a hold of a free program to replace their artists.

There isn’t a good outcome for artists here - consumers want cheap art. Companies want cheap artists. Artists want living wages and for a lot of us that means not making a living off of art already, because the wealthy class that has luxury money to spend on handmade and original art is shrinking as we speak.

At least - it is here in America.

AI needs data to train up on. It can’t create art without first consuming existing art and spitting out parts of the originals. There’s a reasonable claim to be made that AI synthesis of prior art is itself original enough to count as having intrinsic worth, but if the only way to get it is stealing other people’s work to train up your model, the whole value proposition of AI art is probably net negative, entirely at the expense of artists whose work was used to feed the model.

Yes, there’s the argument that automation of new things is inevitable, but we do have choices about whether the automated violation of copyright to feed the model is tolerable or not. Sure, it’s a cool sexy technology and who doesn’t love getting on the bandwagon of the future and all, but the ethics of modern AI development are trash and despite promises that automated AI labor will save the owner class money by doing for free what the plebes demand to be paid for, it’s really as much a ponzi scheme as all those crypto currencies that don’t have intrinsic value unless enough suckers can be convinced to feed the scheme.

And yet, it’s a powerful technology that has potential to be a legitimate boon to humanity. I’d like to see it used to do things (like picking crops that are hard to automate with dumb machines, or cleaning trash off of beaches or out of the ocean, or refactoring boilerplate code to not use deprecated packages or to review boilerplate contract text for errors) that aren’t just ways for owners to cut labor out of the economy and pocket the differences.

Perhaps, if we are going to allow AI to be a great big machine that steals inputs (like art, or writing, or code) from others and uses them to do for-profit work for their owners, the proceeds attributable to AI ought to be taxed at a 90%+ rate and used to fund a Universal Basic Income as payment for the original work that went into the AI model.

The same debate happened when photography was invented. Photography led to some of the most iconic art movements of the 20th century and the deliberate departure from more realistic paintings, because nobody needed to hire a painter or sketch artist just to remember what someone looked like anymore.

My expectation is that AI will continue to be used to generate what has already been identified as particular styles. And these styles will go out of fashion with overuse, much like the 50’s was oversaturated with mass produced designs. Which led to pop art.

Tl;dr It’s all just part of the creative development of humans and our adaptation to automation. If we want to address why artists starve, AI in art is only a symptom of a much larger issue around human worth.

Focus on physical art. Sculpture, screen prints, paintings on canvas, mixed media, etc.

Trying to stop progress has never worked. Sure, there are regulations that should be put in place, but putting the genie back in the bottle isn’t going to happen.

I had 85+ images of my art used to train AI. I think the best solution is for the current AI image training sets to be cleared and rebuilt on copyright free and opt in only content. Similar to stock photography where artists can decide for themselves if they want minimal compensation to contribute their art to the training set. This would be necessary because once the systems have been trained on an image it’s in the memory. So the only way to respect the rights of the artists after the fact is to wipe the computers and start image generation all over again but ethically. I have linked on my Mastodon https://www.youtube.com/live/uoCJun7gkbA?feature=share a senate hearing on the issue in which the lawyer from Universal Music perfectly pointed out “it’d be hard to opt out if you don’t know what has been opted in” . Additionally, this isn’t just an artist issue the training set includes photos from medical records, schools, and personal photos. Basically if you’ve ever posted a photo on the internet there’s a chance it’s in the training set. “have I been trained” is a website where you can see what is included and opt out (though as mentioned earlier that’s not a good solution) I spoke to a prominent IP lawyer in Chicago (before the class action lawsuits were public) and he pointed out that they didn’t have the right to reproduce my artwork into their training set. Their actions have been likened to a smoothie shop. They have the storefront and the blenders but they stole all the ingredients. After it’s blended you may not ALWAYS be able to recognize the strawberries BUT we know they didn’t pay for the fruit. It was stolen for their profit. Why should I be forced to provide the core product of my business to develop the core product of another (for-profit) business?? The senate hearing linked above includes many other important and valid points. Myself and many other artists I know aren’t against AI. I love tech and think it’s really fun and can be helpful, it just needs to be done ethically. I have a lot more I could add to this, hahahaha

I think ensuring growing funding for arts should be less directly connected to the work they create. One side of this is abolishing interleectual property rights. The other side would be a proper UBI + probably art/culture endowments and alternative revenue structures.

How to get there without a bit of civil war I’m not so sure.

It’s a very difficult topic, and I don’t see any satisfying real-world solutions. Two big issues:

1. Obvious solutions are impossible. Generative AI are impossible to “undo”. Much of the basic tech, and many simpler models, are spread far and wide. Research, likewise, is spread out both globally and on varying levels from large Megacorps down to small groups of researchers. Even severe attempts at restricting it would, at most, punish the small guys.

I don’t want a world, where corporations like Adobe or Microsoft hold sole control over legal “ethically trained” generative AI. However, that is where insistence on copyright for training sets, or insistence on censored “safe” LLMs would lead us.

1. Many of the ethical and practical concerns are on sliding scales. They are also on the edge of these scales. When does machine assistance become unethical? When does imitating the specific style of an artist become wrong? Where does inspiration end and intellectual rights infringement begin? At what point does reducing racial and other biases from LLMs switch over to turning them into biased propaganda machines?

There are dozens of questions like these, and I have found no satisfying answers to any of them. Yet the answers to some of them are required in order to produce reasonable solutions.

I mean there is an actor and writer strike for this reason and more. AI is not art. While it’s true that art is subjective its also supposed to invoke emotion and get a person to think. Not that AI art can’t do that, but it’s not the same.

I think AI art is great for first concepts, practice, really anything but the end result.

As another user pointed out, as long as capitalism has control, there will be no good solution.

I think about it this way: does knowing art is AI generated take away from the experience?

• If the answer is yes, then it simply will never take over. As long as we have some sort of law that requires art to be tagged as AI if it’s AI generated, then I think that would be enough. No need to tag original (human) art with anything, no need for that kind of surveillance, just tag AI art or make companies legally required to divulge if it is so.

• If the answer is no, then I think this is just the natural progression of things. There will always be artists, and there will always be people that want their art to be made by a person. But if most people really don’t care if there’s a person behind the brush, then it doesn’t matter if it’s AI or not.

I don’t think anyone has a right to what they do. If you’re an artist, that’s all good, but if your art isn’t appreciated, if people prefer AI over your art, then why should we block AI? Just so you can keep making money off your drawings? There’s other things you could be doing… Once again capitalism makes it so that hobbies can’t just be hobbies, “if you’re not making money you’re failing”, so this isn’t a very satisfying perspective, but the reality is that you don’t need to be just an artist, you can have a job and draw for fun, post things online, etc.

Ideally, we tell capitalism to fuck off. We already produce enough to feed, clothe, house, and heal all of the world, we don’t do it only because the oligarchs choose not to, as it’s not profitable. If we set up a system that actually makes use of the value generated by labour, instead of letting the 1% hoard it, then AI would not be threatening any job security, and it wouldn’t be stifling creativity or anything, it would just be a tool.

There is the issue of copyright though, since original works are used to train AI. That whole debacle is a can of worms that I will not open.

So what do you think would be the best way to satisfy everyone?

Your barrel of thoughts is not wrong: current AI is just a tool, if people were already satisfied in their life they wouldn’t be bitching about it but unfortunately everyone is struggling and competing to pay rent or make a living or worst to stack money to compensate to their dissatisfactions.

These artists can try and try, but they will always fail. They will never beat AI. As these technologies get better and better every passing day, they WILL displace artists. The economy is changing and they have to adapt. They’re not the first ones who tried to fight automation and they’re not going to be the last. But if history is to teach us anything it’s that technology and economics will always win.

Maybe training images should only come from consenting artists and photographers