AI Art is the Symptom NOT the Problem

all right the discourse around AI art generation it's reached this fever pitch online that's culminated in this these online protests like the ones happening over on Art station and also this class action lawsuit where artists are suing these major AI companies and I've looked at all sides of this argument I've come to the conclusion that really the problem isn't AI the problem is IA and what do I mean by that AI stands for artificial intelligence and that's something that's relatively new but it stems from something deeper and and something that's really been a major problem for artists for a couple centuries now and that's industrialized art now in this video I want to unpack what that actually means and what you can do to combat it and what you can do as an artist to actually industrial art proof your career but before we get into that I personally am a working professional artist and I got a book to sell my new book spaceships or Kepler's Intergalactic guide to spaceships this is a completely self-published kickstart-funded book projects it's kind of like if you took one of those incredible cross-sections books the visual dictionary books some art book Sketchbook stuff and a comic put them in the blender hit pulverize on that and outpoured this book right here if you're a person who likes spaceships or you like cool sci-fi worlds and you want to like dig in deep to the Sci-Fi world that I'm creating then check out spaceships it's available in my online Shop link below all right what do I mean by industrialized art let's first talk about what industry is and what industry wants industry wants to spend the least amount of money possible on the products that it creates so how does it do that and what's a product that's easily replicated that's easily produced in the most efficient and consistent way possible it wants this because inconsistency and uniqueness things that are like really nice characteristics or features of art those inconsistencies and those uniquenesses that cost industry money in order for them to make the most profit possible industry wants to pay the smallest amount of money possible [Music] and one of the biggest expenses for industry is paying people for centuries they've been trying to industry has been trying to figure out how to eliminate people so they can reap the biggest amount of profit possible so industrialized art started long before machine learning technology technology showed up on the scene you had stuff like stock illustration websites or stock photography websites you have websites like Fiverr you even have social media platforms and they all Thrive because they've leveraged consistent and affordable art creation take Pinterest for example it scrapes the internet using you to do the uploading work for free it doesn't ask where the images came from it doesn't monitor who should get credit for what that responsibility is all sort of left to the Pinner Pinterest just files the images that you pin in categories so that when you want ideas for something it offers up a plate of inspiration that's algorithmically attuned to your needs and then advertisers pay good money for this attention Okay so using images that it doesn't own using labor that it hasn't paid for Pinterest is booming to a tune of 2.5 billion dollars in Revenue a year now stock photography and stock art websites they do pay their artists Fiverr pays their artists but these are platforms where it's erased to the bottom seeing who can offer the most amount of work for the least amount of money possible just to kind of edge out the competition and maybe the worst actors in the industrial Arts scene are the social media platforms I think places like Instagram Tick Tock Twitter Facebook what they do is they harvest attention and they sell it to advertisers how do they mine all this attention they offer to siphon off some of that attention that they're getting from people scrolling through and give it to artists in exchange for their art so every time an artist posts their art on one of these platforms they're essentially working for exposure artists do need exposure but you can't pay the rent with exposure bucks [Music] okay so that's what industrialized art has been up to this point but now we have ai art generators which completely remove the artist middleman altogether and I would say it's industrialized art in its purest form now I'm actually okay with Air Generation on a theater theoretical level um but I've got big problems with the way air generators have been created and how they're being used right now so here's what I'm cool with technology that helps people create more efficiently technology that is created ethically and honestly and I'm in favor of U.S companies investing in AI technology to secure a better future for Humanity and here's where I have problems number one air generators use data sets that have billions of images acquired without the consent of creators number two AI companies who use these data sets are making money off of these stolen images and have no system in place to compensate or credit the creators they've stolen from and number three it's really about the potential of how this technology can be misused and it's actually quite frightening if a if an AI company that has zero regulations that it has to worry about on regulations on where they can Source the images or who they pay for for images then imagine that they've somehow acquired your personal photos stuff that you've uploaded to Google Drive or to Apple's cloud or something like that who knows where they're getting these images but say they're able to acquire them those images are then available to be used for scams for false endorsements or even like blackmail someone could generate an image with your face on it that says look so-and-so supports this or so-and-so has done this that's just like one of the many ways that it can be misused all right so what can artists do about this first let's look at the big picture stuff I want you to realize that there's really no stopping technological progress like name one technology that's been invented and like adopted by the masses that has ceased to be in in use anymore or um if not has not evolved into something more efficient you know we had fax machines but now we use email right so like technology is here to stay and AI art generation or the use of AI it's here to stay it's not going away however historically the people have had to step in to keep industrialization from destroying everything in its path so here's three things that you can do to help rein in the industrialization of art action number one engage in or amplify the protests against companies or platforms who are working unethically all right action number two support efforts that regulate the AI industry through legal action or legislation all right in action number three it's up to you to educate people on the problems with AI companies the more people are informed the more likely the change can happen Okay so we've talked about the big picture stuff but now there's some personal stuff that you can do stuff that that really only affects you yourself since we now live in an AI art world the artist needs to adapt or die here's what you can do to thrive in this uh this new techno dystopia that we're in action number one keep making art action number two master your craft it's something I talk about all the time you have to know how to make really cool uh engaging imagery that get people to stop and look at what you're doing all right in order to do that two things you don't ignore technology and you do lean in and use traditional tools don't ignore technology learn to leverage AI for its strengths or you're going to be replaced by someone who knows how to do that and number two of this learn and use traditional tools because of their weaknesses because people are able to see the human hand inside of the work and lastly action number three Embrace human engagement and experience by building a community around your work now that might be building a fan base for some people other people it might be just finding an employer an art director a director who believes in what you're doing or a publisher someone who has a system in place for for amplifying and and sharing artists work and you becoming a member of their team okay I want to close with this in an industrialized art landscape the art that's made by humans for humans is going to stand out even more like look at it this way there's no shortage of food in the developed world like if you need calories the food industry has made sure food is accessible to everyone like if you need a burger quick and cheap there's a McDonald's on the corner over there now just because McDonald's industrialized hamburgers that doesn't mean that I stopped going to my favorite Indian food restaurant like recently I met with my with my friends at this restaurant and it was packed with people we didn't meet at a McDonald's where the food was cheaper where it was faster and where it was more consistent the reason we didn't it's because the Indian food restaurant that we went to offers a richer experience and I want to point out this this thing that Seth Godin said very succinctly in an episode of this podcast when he said was industry is about depersonalizing things in pursuit of efficiency hospitality is about personalizing things in pursuit of a richer experience people aren't looking for calories they're looking for Humanity okay so artists if your goal is to serve a billion hamburgers you're going to have to industrialize but if your goal is to serve Humanity you've already got everything it takes that's it for today see you next time

Channel: Jake Parker

Views: 42,798

Keywords:

Id: N2RnwTHH-gY

Length: 10min 51sec (651 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 07 2023