[drewprops]

Here's something that I wrote for my friends a few days ago about AI - I was all wound up and winging it, but that's where I was:

I have definitely fallen on the 'dark side' of the AI debate, as I continue to probe the mechanics of the Midjourney engine instead of making the sign of the cross and swearing off AI-driven image production. This isn't the first sweeping technological wave that I have encountered, and I know that it isn't going away. Shunning it won't stop it. Tools WILL develop to allow ethical image scrapers to respect visual works that artists want to keep out of the spooky cauldrons of AI modeling subroutines, but those will take years to develop and standardize and implement, and they will only be respected by ethically-managed image scrapers - computer industry friends who are more learned that I say that unethical image scrapers are already being used to create imagery that is not safe to show in polite company. But, by the time NOFOLLOW tags for image scraping ethical AIs are developed, it will be too late - AIs will have progressed to a stage where they have created an internal library of pieces and parts that make up the human world, and they will be able to generate imagery without relying on stealing your photos and putting photographers out of business. Of course, the thing that most people don't understand is that a LOT of professional photographers were put out of business 10 years or more ago when iStockPhoto came along and empowered soccer moms to make big bucks in their spare time by uploading photos for use at far cheaper prices than the big stock photo houses were charging. The democratization of content generation swept through every corridor of creativity, from music production to graphic design to animation to stock video to writing. There are already AI generators that advertise right here on Facebook to provide affordable copy for people who would rather go to a machine than find a competent human. I have not seen an outcry about this theft, yet. Perhaps it is coming, but it won't stop the AIs. The majority of complaints that I have seen online about AI art theft is centered around real world artists finding their styles purloined by the AIs. I would be mad as hell too, to see my unique style turned into something akin to an image filter - to see something that was uniquely ME debased into just another option - devalued so that I would have difficulty ever using it again to earn an income, living in fear that the next style I develop will fall prey to the same ravenous engines. So, I really do GET IT when people are ready to set a torch to the AIs ranged in their obtuse and unimaginable hyperdimensional plane. But stealing art isn't the only thing that these AIs can do. They can also model reality in unimagined ways, since they're just slamming shit together and holding it up to say "is this what you asked for?" One of the avenues that I have been having fun with is exploring unusual situations at Renaissance festivals, since that community defines one of my peculiar affections. Asking an AI to create a photo of a pirate themed rollercoaster at a Renaissance festival is not exactly a common photograph you might find on the internet. In fact, the only one I've ever seen is one that I photoshopped together myself, several years ago, for fun. Yet, in less than 5 minutes the AI came bounding back to me with four perfectly remarkable options of a piratey-steampunky rollercoaster thundering past camera, filled with Renfest pirates. Absolutely REMARKABLE to see the camera angles that the AI selects, the expressions it creates, the eleventy-thousand fingers it puts on the left hand of a person on the edge of frame. The technology behind these AIs isn't just thievery, it is black magic. A few years ago computer scientists readily confessed that they didn't really understand everything that was happening under the hood when they set an AI out to solve a task. I am not sure if anything has changed in that regard, but it is my understanding that there are an ENORMOUS number of computations and permutations that an AI will go through when assembling an image based on nothing more than words. Unlike the Lensa app, which many people now have retrograde guilt for using (because of its thievish yoinking of artists' styles), the AIs that take written instructions and turn them into imagery are absolutely addictive. Yes, they DID gather that imagery from somewhere, or at least, they gathered the modeled CONCEPT of the imagery from somewhere. When they are set loose to create an image they are taking pieces and parts from a million places and fitting them together into something brand new. There IS another conversation happening outside of the stern admonishment of Facebook users, to discuss the difference between machines learning to draw from existing examples and humans learning to draw from existing examples. At what point is it acceptable? Fifteen years or so back a friend made a living painting still lifes of wine bottles and cigars and pocket watches. I learned that there was a community of local painters who worked in that medium, because the subjects were popular among people who had money. Who was copying who, in the community? I think there was some competition and some debate. That's common in the art world, it's common in the world of fashion too. Knock-offs. Tributes. Both are derivative. And so the conversation of derivative art, the sourcing of material, all of that is something that interests me on top of the technology and the dizzying power to rush back to the AI to find out if the magic spell of words that you composed resulted in something magical, or something ghastly - both options show up with great frequency. In a conversation in a Facebook group artists were discussing taking the unexpected results created by an AI and cleaning them up in Photoshop, and adding to them. THIS is going to happen, whether you like it or not. There ARE going to be branded AIs creating images for you from their approved stock image libraries. And those stock photographers who are going to get rich from this new technology? Well, they probably aren't. Remember, some of them are soccer moms who replaced professional photographers. There will always be something there to replace us, unless we are prepared to move to the new technology. And so I can't turn away like some of my friends. This is going to affect what I do for a living, and it is going to affect my colleagues. If I can't be there to experiment and understand the new technology on the block, shame on me for being so parochial - and once people understand the technology better they may adjust their opinions of it at some point in the future. Justice is always chasing after technology. Every invention that has come along has caused controversy, consternation, and chaos. Laws had to be crafted to address an issue that had never existed before the technology. Industry adapts to new technology. I never downloaded "free" digital music, but a lot of people traded in it wildly, justifying their reasons. That was always between them and their belief systems and the artists they stole from. It wasn't my job to judge them then. Once the music labels and movie studios caught up to the technology they were able to capture it and make it easy enough for people to pay a fee to use a service instead of spending time downloading ill gotten booty. Until then, it was the wild west. It never resulted in the destruction of the industries, only a change in how they worked. Many individual artists were absolutely destroyed by the uncontrolled marketplace, but the industry survived - especially those who adapted. Earlier this week a friend provided the perfect analogy when he said "I tell ya, these drum machines are going to put drummers out of business!" Pirates on a rollercoaster.