Just trying to point out the obvious here.

I'm going to be engaging in a thought experiment of sorts here where I make a couple predictions about the future. I hope some people will read the whole post, but for those who wish to just get the gist, TLDR: AI will enable more art than ever before, but infinite competition, and near instant appropriation of novel stylistic innovation will harm small artists much more than large corporations. If Jevon's paradox fails to hold true it may render art economically infeasible for all but the largest actors.

First, I'll ask everyone regardless of position to set aside any and all moral quandaries about AI art. All I'll say on the matter is that I truly do get how exciting it is to have access to a tool that allows you to get your ideas into a visual medium, without having to go through the painstaking, expensive, time-consuming process of conventional art production. I do not think AI artists are bad people, or guilty of some terrible sin. The point of this thought experiment is purely to explore pragmatic concerns.

Secondly, lets be clear about two core assumptions. 1. I do not believe AI will not lead to an abundance utopia like the people on certain other subreddits seem to favor. This goes against all historical evidence of human nature. 2. Preserving art as an economic enterprise is worthwhile. This is because - regardless of how the requisite mechanical skill changes - art requires time invested in the creative conceptual parts, this is something I think both sides mostly agree on. Therefore, if artists don't have a way to make money from their work, we will see a decrease in the quality and diversity of art. This is not a good thing. If either of these two core assumptions are disagreeable to you, it's unlikely we'll find common ground.

So lets jump 20 years forward into the future and let me detail a couple of predictions about this hypothetical future. 1. AI will steadily become better (seems reasonable). 2. AI will become more lightweight, cheaper and access will generally trend up (we already see gradual improvement in local model capabilities, so this also seems reasonable). 3. Stigma around AI art will generally trend downwards, partially because (due to point 1) it will become much harder to recognize.

Finally, this scenario considers what might happen if copyright and IP law and AI regulations around art don't substantially change. Lets look at some predictions for 3 groups of artists:

Group 1. Small independent artists. Defined as just a single person or a very small team with no publisher. These artists will see a huge increase in ability to put out work, and the barrier to entry for this profession will drop considerably. While this seems good on it's face, this will essentially lead to infinite competition. Especially because a lot of people who would otherwise pay for commissions are going to find they can do many things themselves by querying AI - especially if precision and a highly specific vision is not required (corporate logos, restaurant menus). See group 3 later on for why this combined with my prediction of a loss of steady jobs threatens to end the already challenging career of independent art entirely.

Group 2. Mid-scale artists. These are the types of artists who work at small private companies. The example I'll use here is from a space I'm familiar with - table top roleplaying games. Lets say company A works and publishes a book detailing a new gaming system. They spend 2 years refining and working on their ideas for how to incorporate the feel of a beloved classic game from their childhood into a social TTRPG format. They make cool pixel art inspired illustrations of monsters and heroes and are proud of their work. Whether of not they use AI to assist them with this is irrelevant. They publish it, and wait to see what people think. Then along comes Jim. Jim likes their work, but he wishes it could be grittier and more deadly, and would feature more dragons. Jim decides he will take their work and feed it into AI, and ask it to produce new art in the same style and a new set of rules heavily inspired by company A's work.

This kind of derivative publication already happens. After all, you can't copyright a style. And you shouldn't be able to either! Some of the best products we've seen in the TTRPG space have been derivative improvements of another group's work - see just how many D&D hacks and/or heavily inspired games there have been (ever played the original Pathfinder?).

But the crucial difference between this and what Jim is doing is time. In the past Jim would have had to work for months or years to realize his new vision of company A's game. Company A would have all that time to profit while Jim makes his own book. Even if Jim's game is 10x better, the fact that company A originated those ideas came with a reward. In this future, innovative ideas can be appropriated nearly instantly which begs the question: why innovate at all? If Jim can have his new book out a week after company A releases their game, why would they bother?

Group 3. Corporate entities employing artists. Larger companies with increased resources can sidestep a lot of the issues we see for group 2. Not only do they have the marketing resources to push their products onto people, but as with essentially any technology, the people with money will have the best versions of it. They also might not need to hire quite so many artists. One person with an efficient model can do the work of 10 people. And contracting outside artists for commissions will be a thing of the past, making things even worse of group 1.

So in summary, AI may seem like it increase access and objectively it does, but the consequences may actually be quite dire for art as a profession. It's hard to get a summary of what the impact of AI on art has presently been so it's a bit hard to know how accurate these predictions are. This is especially because data lags quite far behind the capabilities of these constantly improving models. Jevon's paradox might render my entire argument moot, but there are also plenty of examples where Jevon's fails to hold true - just how elastic is demand for artwork?

The point of this post isn't to pretend I have a definitive knowledge of what the future will look like, but rather to provide an example of the worst case scenario. I also have no real clue what should be done about it. Changes to copyright law will be damn near impossible to enforce across borders, and risk negative down-steam effects limiting creative freedom. Nightshade and Glaze style technology has thus far proven fairly impotent as far as I am aware.

I think the assumptions often made by proponents of AI art on this subreddit is highly highly optimistic and it's at least a little irresponsible/foolish to dismiss valid concerns like these. This isn't advocating for AI art to be banned, or restricted out of existence, but a genuine conversation (with healthy nuance) about the pragmatic implications of having such quick accessible art generation is absolutely warranted and too many people on this subreddit fail to see that.

Like okay becky, it hasn't solved every math problem yet, we know

I agree 100% with him and this does not apply only to programming, but to everything.

So here's an argument that can be seen quite often in the discussions surrounding the use of AI: "AI did all the job, and you just told it what you want". I won't be arguing about the importance of the "idea guy" to the end product. Instead, I want to introduce you to the concept of Quality Assurance. Its a profession, that literally does the "complain to developers and make them do something aligned with the idea of the project" thing. And its an important one. Let me provide you with an example:

Lets imagine a game. It has beautiful graphics and lots of cool features. Lets even imagine that it also has a great core concept and great characters. BUT. It's littered with game-breaking bugs, the UI is counter-intuitive, half of the features are useless and/or boring, balance is nonexistent, artstyle doesn't match the tone of the game and there are more plot holes and nonsessical twists than actual plot developement in there. Why? Because either there was nobody to "complain to the developer/artist and tell them to do things differently" or there was someone, but they did a shitty job. Thats what QA is for. And without QA it doesn't matter how much effort developer/artist has put into their work, the result wil be, basically, SLOP. Unplayable, unenjoyable and unwanted by the general public, except for a close circle of the "yes, overall its shitty, but look at this cool art/feature" people.

So, my point is, in the AI-generated works, the one who "pushes the button" is actually the "idea guy", designer, director and the whole QA team, all in one. And this is enough involvement in the resulting product to be considered an integral part of it's creation.

P.S.: yeah, I know, there is [insert creator here], that does everything by themselves and the result is great. That doesn't mean that anyone who can't do all that is "lazy" and just need to learn everything at once. There are people in the world that can build a working nuclear powwerplant all by themselves, given they have the resources, but those projects have huge teams of different staff for a reason.

when somebody claims "i draw this watercolor myself manually", but uses ai to generate of video of progress/timelapse, and the picture is of course also ai made. Or asks a paid actor to do it.

when someone takes other person's work, and then (with or without modifications) posts it as their own without attribution. Bonus points for removing watermarks.

Do we all agree that those are just classic Lies and Theft, and ai has nothing to do with it?

Antis? Pros? What's your take?

Its how a lot of artists find out that they like drawing. A lot of times, a person is a introvert and just finds a hobby that they like.

Its no different than a introvert who likes to read.

And even if the artist wasn't a introvert, its still a hobby that they enjoy. Trust me, they aren't desperate to go outside

I think ai art is pretty ugly

But I use Claude everyday

Ai vocals on music is wack

But I like higgsfield genjutsu

Ai NSFW CONTENT is so trash

But I like to generate images for fun sometimes

Am I really unethical for this

Am I making my self “dumber” by asking ai how do the midterms work?

I just can’t with this moral panic

Ppl saying I’m waisting water

As if they don’t waste water too scrolling on Tik tok for 4 hours?

It’s to much I’m getting a headache

I'm not "pro" or "anti" but it's obvious people are just trying to bait the rage. I'm finding it pretty funny but just realize it's not worth getting pissed about.

https://WhichSideAreYouOn.io

I'm trying to understand the kind of future people want to see. A world without AI, human-made but slower to progress, or a world with AI, with faster cures and cleaner energy but many jobs transformed or gone

Would also be nice if y'all shared your thoughts here on why the choice

I have heard this rebuttal way too many times and every time it gets funnier. And don't forget saying you pointing out hypocrisy as "Whataboutism".

Current ai sceptic (part of pro-ai and antis) be like:

- proai: here is a technology that could be part of a method for a future utopia

- antis : So, what’s the method?

- pro-ai: AI is, in fact, part of the method!

- antis: come back when you’ve found the complete method

It is wrong approach....

"HURRR just have sex with a human"

Does a human have 9 vibrating super cocks?

Does a human have spinning holes with adjustable RPM?

Does a human have 20 extra long fingers on each hand?

Does a human have a 1ft prehensile tongue?

Does a human let you fist their butthole at noon on a random Tuesday?

Does a human dispense whiskey from their boobs?

Does a human judge you for your fetishes?

Does an AI robot?

The AI robot brothels will be awesome and I'm going to be the first in line.

Antis are going to die having only had lame human sex, if that.

I use AI as a Tool, not for completly automatizate something

Like, I ask for How to solve an error, I don't Just copy everything, I Just read, and try solving my way

As for AI generated images or vídeos, I rarely generate them, and when I use AI to generate It, its for something in a friend group, like a inside meme, never for posting It online to make profits

Btw Sorry for bad English or strange capitalizations, English is not my First language and my phone's autocorrector doesn't help either