AI doesn’t threaten art as a medium. It threatens art as a job.
Comment on this one goes out to the arts & humanities
nednobbins@lemm.ee 2 months ago
I’d love to see some data on the people who believe that AI fundamentally can’t do art and the people who believe that AI is an existential threat to artists.
Anecdotally, there seems to be a large overlap between the adherents of what seem to be mutually exclusive positions and I wish I understood that better.
ProgrammingSocks@pawb.social 2 months ago
nednobbins@lemm.ee 2 months ago
I can live with that.
I’d support a UBI so that anyone who wants to can just make art for their own fulfillment. If someone wants AI art though they should be allowed to use that.
Honytawk@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
And in your opinion, would that be so bad?
Doubt it is going to stop humans from creating art.
ProgrammingSocks@pawb.social 2 months ago
I’m talking inside the context of capitalism. Yes it would be nice if we had a UBI to support people but we don’t. I agree that art is fundamentally human.
Outside of the context of capitalism I’m not sure AI art would be found very useful at all because its main point at the moment is remixing the same shit everyone’s seen before for profit. To make mass produced lowest-common-denominator slop.
istanbullu@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
People used to pay lots of money to digital artists for various tasks. Now generative models like stable diffusion can do many of those things, just as graphic design. This is resulting in people paying less to artists.
nednobbins@lemm.ee 2 months ago
I get that and there are a lot of jobs that people used to pay for and no longer do.
The entire horse industry has mostly collapsed. I couldn’t get a job as scribe. With any luck, all the industries around fossil fuel will go away. We’re going to pay less to most people in those industries too.
Harbinger01173430@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Well yes, since the economy is in shambles, us normal people will try to spend as little money as possible to make sure we are safe
MBM@lemmings.world 2 months ago
The trick is that there are companies/people that would commission an artist but go for AI instead because they don’t want/need actual art if it’s more expensive
nednobbins@lemm.ee 2 months ago
I’m going to try to paraphrase that position to make sure I understand it. Please correct me if I got it wrong.
AI produces something not-actual-art. Some people want stuff that’s not-actual-art. Before AI they had no choice but to pay a premium to a talented artist even though they didn’t actually need it. Now they can get what they actually need but we should remove that so they have to continue paying artists because we had been paying artists for this in the past?
Is that correct or did I miss or mangle something?
exocrinous@startrek.website 2 months ago
Your description contains a mistake. You mixed up wants and needs. You said some people want fake art, and then you changed your wording and said those people need fake art. Sneaky.
Wants and needs are not the same thing. For example, many people want a modded truck that rolls coal and produces an engine sound louder than a helicopter, but nobody needs one. Many people want to build an LNG plant to process natural gas, but nobody needs one. Many people want a reason to discriminate against trans people and kick them out of sports, but nobody needs one.
nednobbins@lemm.ee 2 months ago
That wasn’t intentional.
Would it be more accurate for me to change “want” to “need” or the other way around?
vzq@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
“(Not) Actual art” is a bit loaded. I call it “illustration” in this context.
AI can do illustration. Right now it needs a lot of hand holding but it will get better.
nednobbins@lemm.ee 2 months ago
It’s an awkward phrase but I was trying to stay as close to the original vocabulary as possible. I think the point still stands if you replace “not-actual-art” with illustration. People couldn’t get what they were looking for so they paid more for the next best thing. Now they can get something closer to what they’re looking for at a lower price.