Discussing AI art with Jon Lam

I asked Jon Lam to explore some of the latest things happening with AI art with me:
- Lensa
- ethics
- the future
- it's effects to the art community

Concept Art Association GoFundMe

Create Don't Scrape shirts

Also for unifying the movement
#CreateDontScrape

[driptaa]

Thank you so so much for standing up for us, Jon! Many generations of younger artists shall be grateful to you guys. When junior artists like us started to feel lost, the entire community banded together!

[AntaresValdemar]

"Art has always been democratised. You get what you put in. Theft should not be democratised"
- summed it up perfectly 🔥

[alzamonart]

21:08 "People do care. They just don't know what's happening" For the average non-artist layperson a picture is a picture is a picture, and they may be more concerned with whether it matches the rug in the living room. But once they realize most artists aren't rich and that AI is affecting their livelihoods directly, most can empathize with what's happening. Thus spreading awareness over the importance of preserving humanity in art in terms everyone can understand is necessary to bring in more supporters to the cause, and to question why AI bros are so hellbent on ”solving" something that doesn't need to be solved.

[kyletwebster]

Thanks, guys - we need billions of these conversations to be HEARD and turn the tide in the artists’ favor and make sure we keep our copyright protected work free from data scraping.

[Yueme]

Jon, steven, karla, and all other people who work hard behind the scene is truly a help for humanity. may your family, generation, live peacefully n your work is blessed abundantly..

[digitalbrinjen]

When I hear the whole "the algorithm is learning off other people's works like you did" line, I always think about the human experience. For example, I grew up being taught most fantasy based imagery was inspired by demons. That affected my perspective and interpretation of those images. I've since gotten past all that and again, my perspective and interpretation of those images is affected the alterations of my view as well as fragmentations of what I was taught. No one learns by just examining other's works, we bring ourselves and our experiences into our work from the very beginning.

[shadowseer]

I think the discussion about art needs to change. Many people still believe that art is all about talent you are born with and not a skill you work years to improve. I think if more people understood that they would see that they aren’t exempt from the art community and can learn to express themselves artistically as much as anyone else. Also we as artists have to start advocating for ourselves because the ai tech in Silicon Valley don’t care about us, all they care about is bringing about the Singularity and making our society a supposed utopia and they’re not above throwing a whole generation of artists under the bus to get there.

[SeaSerpentLevi]

i read somewhere that "you start to see how pathetic artstation's stance on AI is when you realize that even pornhub understood the harm it could do to their platform and prohibited it years ago" and well i dont think i need to add anything to that lol

[pathologicaldoubt]

Machines don’t have the same rights as Humans. Machines can ‘outperform’ humans in speed and capacity and with machine learning can be exponentially disruptive to human industry incomparable to prior technological development. Human art is copyrighted. Machine art isn’t. Legislation always lags behind technology but it’s essential that regulation catches up to it

[tlilmiztli]

I read "DISGUSTING AI art" and although it was erorr, I do agree with my mistake. Hate everything about it- Its dehumanizing, making people even more lazy then they already are staring at their phones all the damn time. Now lets take away that little bit of brain activity we had and people will become brainless meat puppets. Ugh.

[arvinduane]

A frequent discussion in our circle, I think the more worrying part is the implications this thing would bring if it doesn't get regulated. No job is safe, in the future there would be AIs capable of producing any Architectural, Landscaping, Engineering designs for the pittance of the price.

Creatives was the last thing people thought machines would be capable of (I'm still convinced the AI cannot do something from scratch; each work would be a Frankenstein of images with an artist "style" filter sprinkled on top to stitch the thing together cohesively) but to think it's advanced this far this fast is very alarming.

[Sketchblopp]

Thank you very much for spreading the message and taking a stand, both of you! It means a lot to me. :) What I would consider important for spreading awareness is also something Jon mentioned briefly in the beginning: This is not an art only thing when it comes to scraped material. However, imo by calling it AI Art and prompters AI Artists, it might look like an art exclusive, maybe even art industry exclusive issue. I don't think many people have contact to this topic. But they scraped pinterest among others. Medical files? In there. The embarassing photograph from the company christmas party five years ago? Could be in there. The photograph of your newborn child, your wedding dress, your diploma? If anyone uploaded it, with or without consent, there is a chance it's in these databases. And I could imagine many non-artists would care about this, too. Maybe raising attention to this as well might help?

[avaranabraham]

Jon is the Moses of concept art and now will be hero a national hero

[volgg]

even if there's a "ethical" way of using A.I for art, I'm still against it because of the very nature of using machine to generate an image. It's anti-humanistic to its core.

[bunnyfreakz]

So about time Boby chiu talk about AI. Copyright issue is its own problem but the real problem is how huge number of people use AI and AI pretty much already commercially success . Mid journey alone have 6, 2 million active members.

I chat to people there and majority of people don't give a damn about copyright violation or unethical practice as long they can get a nice images. They think Ai is cool. So unless you convince them otherwise, this is just losing battle.

Which why Japan reject AI. Japanese always embrace tech but they also reject it if it displace their fellow man. Hence why you always can find Japan society is rather unique where they are high tech but on the other part they are old fashioned at the same time.

[Hadar]

It’s crazy because something told me to remove all my art from the internet a few years ago… I’m so glad I did

[hellodelightfulrando]

Thank you guys so much for this video. I made the mistake of watching the Proko interview he did with the person who made Midjourney and I was close to tears… the complete disregard these devs have for artists in pursuit of lining their own pockets and then encouraging their little goons to harass us and vilify us artists is breaking my heart… I know I’ll never stop creating but I’m now afraid of uploading my art anywhere. Of course theft has always been a risk but this AI stuff is on different level of complete unethical disregard spearheaded by people who only care about themselves and are happy to lie to their fans if it means they get money out of it

[Alexis-hnyw]

Thank you Jon! And evryone we know are guiding artist's voices. Thanks <3

[konraddobson]

Very refreshing to hear people standing up against this apparant inevitability. Thanks for the glimmer of hope!

[ollietheartist]

Jon has not only been standing up for their API community for so long but the art community. They’ve really taken this seriously. Thank you to them for truly putting in so much time. ❤ artists need to take ourselves seriously. We need to put our worth WAY above what it is now. Let’s bring back the era of being able to buy a HOUSE with a single piece made. The ennui and the struggle and the disrespect needs to end! We are valuable. We deserve to have our best lives and get income and get respect ❤