AI Art Isn't Theft. Here's Why:

AI art seems problematic. Giant companies sweep the internet for billions of images, feed them to the all-consuming algorithm that then learns to produce art on its own. Depending on who you ask, this is either one of humanity’s greatest creations or nothing more than brazen theft. The AI can even reproduce artists’ individual styles, living or deceased, sometimes leaving the amalgamations of signatures from the artist’s it’s been trained on. AI art is quickly becoming an existential threat for the livelihoods of millions of artists who dedicate themselves to the craft. While the technology isn’t quite at the level of fully replacing artists, it’s advancing fast. Which makes this pretty serious. After all, what could you make as an individual, that a machine trained on the works of every human artist in history can’t do on its own? Especially when it can whip out an image in a couple minutes that would take you hours, day if not weeks. Just another case of big business screwing over creative workers… right? *ahem* Right?

The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall. -Che

[torres_asdf]

Appreciate all the comments, both the agreeing and disagreeing. Essentially what I'm seeing is that most arguments against AI art boil down to the material harm it does to artists, which is essentially the point reached in the video. So trust me when I say we're in agreement there. I'd like to unpack that in a video encompassing automation as a whole next so keep an eye out for that I suppose.

[jaredgreen]

This video is criminally under viewed.

[michalovesanime]

This is ridiculously long and I'm so so sorry😅

The reason why Dōjinshi works ( and is allowed) in Japan is that they have a strong culture of BUYING manga anime etc. We do not have the same with art.

Manga is such a huge market with commercial appeal, having these other stories made by fans just drives sales of the original more.

These publishers noticed that their characters were often "shipped" by mostly the female readers of manga that was made to appeal typically to young men( shounen). Thus allowing these women to make content with the CHARACTERS, in a different context, just added another market demographic for them without having to strictly cater to them or make more seperate works for them . This realization even changed the way male characters presented in the medium, it inspired a whole new wave of bishounen ( beautiful boy, often a more feminine coded guy ) in shows that you wouldn't see them in before. A bit of background.

In Japan Dōjinshi acts as an addition to the market and consumption while driving sales to the ORIGINAL works( basically acting as free marketing ), while AI art takes from one market and just creates another one( AI creators and their products), completely sidestepping the original artists of those works and those works. In a sense, devaluing it in the eye's of consumers even more, especially if they just want a cool artwork on their insta page. They don't really care about art or the person who made it and don't understand why artists cant live off of compliments and exposure alone( which is the exact opposite of the readers and creators of Dōjinshi, they care deeply about that stuff).

How would you do that for artists in general? Or for artists in places that don't have the same market impact as manga and anime?

Another thing about it is that we're also talking about PUBLISHERS that own or work with the actual artists, who often aren't compensated fairly or if they are, overworked. It's a business after all, and the business side makes the bulk of the cash. The mangaka's often are very passionate( like our artists or even more due to the work culture and high demands) about their work and since they are getting paid, obviously would have different feelings towards fan stories based on their characters ( most artists would feel differently if they didn't have to struggle for money obviously)

And one big other difference.
A story and a picture have different values. Someone can copy the characters and sets of a Manga but making an interesting story is harder to copy, thats why the original is so powerful in manga. It's about the mind of the author, where they will go with the story, who they will introduce. Besides we have fanart. Very good. And Yes Nintendo goes very far but most shows, cartoons etc have fanart. Most companies allow it, they understand it's value.

So as much as I understand the comparison or that you just wanted to convey a different way of approaching copyright, its just fundamentally different. In so many ways that muddy the point you're making, in my opinion.

As leftists we do believe in not having labor stolen and I feel ( very subjective) that AI creator is stealing the labor from these artists, especially since they've already started to monotize their services. You say you don't understand why people are caping for copyright all of a sudden but it makes sense. Copyright could have been a tool to protect the weak against the strong within this capalistic hellscape. Now It's a tool for the powerful to maintain that power. But it's also the only one. People are desperate.

And people can already ask for works that are in the style of a specific artists, that come looking like slightly different copies ( mixes) of original works with signature still on it. Cuz people don't care over here. Most people like art but purely as a product. Like the paintings you can buy at Ikea.

I personally don't care for how copyright seems treat Disney the same ( being very oversimplistic probably) as small artists. If an artist doesn't make art that can be used as an invested tool, they work on a completely different level. Their work functions differently. And that should be reflected in copyright law.

I don't know, I'm just worried for artists. Worried that it will become something, like in the past, for people who are rich enough or can find someone rich to sponsor them. And what that would do to communties with people who don't have good network or are marginalized or created art catered to marginalized communties I just see the few ways of making a living become smaller and smaller.

[WhatMakesBritainGreat]

It has nothing to do with 'machine vs humans' it is what humans are doing with machines: taking artist's works and using them for profit without asking, this is not anything to do with 'inspiration' either machines do not get inspired, but humans can feed billions of artworks into a machine and have the machine regurgitate the contents, that is simply taking the work of artists and reusing it no matter how you try to redefine it

[sevret]

If Disney hadn't killed the public domain by lobbying for unreasonable long times for copyright then maybe AI-image generators wouldn't need to use copyrightable material. But I feel the real reason people suggest one should only use the public domain for training is that people know that the public domain is mostly irrelevant.

[beetogarcia]

I just know those opposed to ai will have reasonable and logical counter arguments in the comments

[CCRUEnthusist]

Automation has been destroying the professions of people since it's existence. The only issue with AI is that this automation is affecting intellectual workers who thought they were above this process.

[ivancabrera]

i have seen a lot of ai stuff so much so that i grown tired of it should i peruse my artistic dream or should i quit is it how humanity is evolving just soulless being consuming tasteless entertainment massively produced by large corporations? idk man is so much to take it i really tried to keep myself positive but it seems imposible as for now I will never support any artistic project made by ai while not using it myself

[GnaReffotsirk]

What if you are given the mind of AI. You learn as it does, and you are given billions of images to look at.

After a few years, youve seen every image possible, and you are able to place pigments or pixels exactly where you think they should go.

Someone tells you to paint the mona lisa. No reference, just from what you know or remember about it. Give it a twist, where lisa would be stylized similar to van gough's style, and her features would be a hybrid of anime and disney princess designs.

[UhohGundam]

You cant copyright an art style so it doesn't matter. I can look at 100 pieces of copyrighted art draw something with inspiration from those photos. Ai does the same

[WhatsTherapy]

Strongly disagree with a lot of this video, but I can tell the creator is a nice person and cares about artists in a lot of ways. A few of the comments made it sound that the creator doesn't consider themself an artist, which I find interesting if I'm understanding correctly. Anyway I disagree with the video first because I think creating machines with the aim of profit means they are different and should be considered different from humans. Even if the humans are creating for profit, it can't be comparable to the resources of a company, and so the use of images in training a company's tech is not comparable in my mind to the process of an artist gaining experience and inspiration. And second, I thought the section about artist authorship was not convincing, I think connecting authorship to ownership actually makes a lot of intuitive sense, and personally (also, as an artist, I should say) I'd rather retain the concept of authorship than give it up with the hopes that I'm fighting for the decentralization of property ownership rather than shooting myself in the foot.

[ThatGreenSpy]

Abolish copyright. It was created by Queen Mary as thought control.

[TheRogueVocaloid]

hard disagree. while AI art does hurt bigger, more affluent artists since their art is what's most often copied (and they're the ones that can afford to hire lawyers), the ones this really hurts are the ones who are already struggling. I'm an artist myself and my commissions have completely dried up because other people have justified AI art TO MY FACE as just being cheaper and higher quality. people don't actually want to pay for the artist's or artisan's touch when they're already so badly pinched by the effects of rampant late-stage capitalism, they want the same pretty pictures but 'cleaner' and using less money.

since art was already an 'intellectual' field, it was one of the most accessible fields for people who were physically disabled, right up there with writing. both are still draining, but significantly less so if you're, say, working with half a lung and a skeleton as sturdy as a soggy pringle that's held together with rubber bands. with the advent of AI art, many of us disabled folk have lost our sole source of supplementary income during a time when we needed it the most, while we're still going to get scrutinized based on what we would have made previously even though we're no longer making it. every time someone who justifies all this says 'well AI art can't do this one thing but humans can', someone else just makes a more sophisticated algorithm to compensate and another artist gets replaced.

improving material conditions of people who are struggling to survive always needs to be a priority over idealistic end goals. with the way AI art is being used in the context of capitalism, this is a very 'guns don't hurt people, people hurt people' argument of tools vs. intent, when the tools themselves are - as of right now - fundamentally designed to be exploitative regardless of intent.

dying on this hill ain't praxis, man. and to shift the conversation in this direction in leftist circles? this is not where the overton window of this discussion needs to be, for any artist's sake. there are reasons why we're stereotyped as starving.

[FluxChanneler]

I think a thing you're kind of glossing over here is the difference between the ways these tools could be used in theory and the ways the ways they are and will be used in practice. I absolutely think there's an ethical way to use AI art tools, but that's not really what's happening here and now. The folks making and using these tools, by and large, have not only been dismissive of the preferences of the artists they're scraping from, but, in some cases, they've been actively antagonistic toward those artists.

You recognize, in your video, the need for safeguards to prevent abuse, but you handwave a solution. This is . . . pretty bad, man. I don't really know how else to say it. If you recognize that a thing will be massively harmful to a whole bunch of workers with little upside, you should oppose it. But you're defending it. You spend an awful lot of time defending these tools from a legal standpoint, but you dedicate, what, two minutes--a tenth of the video--to addressing the way workers get left behind? That's wack. Defending tools that will inevitably let capitalists futher exploit workers is wack.

[gofoucaultspendulumyoursel]

"Opt Out" should be the default.
If they want their art trained and scrapped by the AI, then they can Opt IN if they want.

[punksci]

Honestly it's that people still think humans are magic and "creativity" proves it. The idea that some maths can do basically the same thing breaks that viewpoint and makes it harder to deny that we are just a bag of chemicals that if you shake it right does some maths.

[lesbianesti]

Surprisingly, I actually agree with this video mostly (don't destroy me artists), the only thing I'd say is that, within a capitalist system, AI is always going to be used as a means by which to screw over workers. Within a socialist economy this would probably just be a funny joke thing that no one cared about, because artists have to sell their labor, they fear that a future, more advanced AI, which could make actually good art nearly instantly in whatever style you please, will push them out of their industry. The same goes for copyright: a lot of artists cling to copyright and defend it because they see it as a means by which to ensure them some kind of protections against blatant theft by bad actors (which in some way, it does), even though it has wider, more deleterious social outcomes, like textbooks costing 69 gorillion dollars, or Michael Mouse showing up at your local school board with a lawsuit because you thought it would be cute to paint Donald Duck on your school playground wall.

[Coldbird]

Honestly, it's about how to best ethically use AI. Personally I fear that people only see this as another "hustle" among the hundreds they could have, don't appreciate the effort in art, and that it has a very real chance of LIMITING creativity. At least creativity as we know it. In the next few years a creative person might just be someone who knows which buttons to press (since chat gpt can spit out both a prompt and settings to fine tune that prompt) to get the best result--which would be hell just imagine it: "1-2-done, there a picasso derivative-that would be 400 dollars, 20 for the physical labour, and 380 for knowing which buttons to press. NEXT!"

I mean the only people who honestly think this makes art more accessible are people whom have had that creativity beaten/trained/conditioned out of them since it really isn't all that useful in a society that values profit over everything. Supposedly, In Baltimore there is a museum dedicated to self-taught artist with no formal training, such as a a prisoner learning to knit and make impressive embroidery by using only the strings in his socks as material. Art being accessible has never been an issue, people will always find a way-remember macaroni art? The issue is people's not being able to use their creativity or being allowed the time to explore what they are capable of, and I fear AI will eliminate that the same we most people don't know their loved ones phone number, how to search for things, and how to get to certain area without google map.

Efficiency isn't always better, that's how you get Thano's thinking the best way to save everyone is by killing half the population--is it efficient? You betcha! Is it ethical? Sam Altman: "does it matter if it works?"

Also, I think you are looking at copyright the wrong way. Don't get me wrong, I think what you said about it is on point--especially with the doujinshi market, but look at your own use case for your OC or the knockoff films you talked about. These "lazy" creations were instantly caught by others who knew what the original was and who owns the copyright of that original. It forces people to be a bit more creative to stand out-which is actually to the benefit of people who take inspiration of the original. Take a look at Hotel Transylvania, it easily could have been another dracula knockoff...instead we got a coming of age tale where monsters learned that human's aren't so bad set in a hotel for monsters where the owner dealt with loss and react strongly to that loss, and it spun a few sequels. Also, copyright does expire and go into free domain after a given period, this addresses how people use these works such as myths that is in our collective knowledge. Could you imagine Greece trying to sue Rick Riordan?

And about your example of the doujinshi market, it actually is ILLEGAL in Japan-the difference is that the copyright owner and the License holders of that copyright CHOOSE not to sue because they see an inherit benefit to letting the market exist. It benefits the copyright holder because it keeps both their work AND NAME relevant in the eyes of the audience while also allowing the next generation of mangakas to practice and refine their crafts to eventually be able to sell an original manga of their own-so it's getting experience and making a small living doing so. A lot of mangakas got their start like this. Also, doujinshis allows people who browse these markets to find something that would lead them back to the original of which they would have never heard of. I actually got to experience this myself online, and enjoy the original work and learned more about the creators and other works they did--this is something AI doesn't do, and the inner conspiracist in me thinks this is by design.

So the culture behind copyright usage should be changed, like in that example of Disney going after a school for using Disney characters--if they allowed it they won't get any short term benefit but they would gain long term future customers who were exposed to those characters early on. Sadly with ai, I feel that there won't be a benefit to NOT using copyright in the manner Disney does if artists can't survive.

[edit] I forgot I already commented on this vid a month ago, weird it feels brand new to me.

[LaOwlett]

The algorithm "trains" it self the same way we do when we see art, and attempts to create a unique image from multiple images - and even if it did borrow the image, it's not a copyright infringement if the work is transformative. It also doesn't have to give credit to artists who inspire it, because I can paint an oil painting of Justin Beiber in the art style of Picasso, without naming Picasso as my inspiration, or Beiber as the one in the painting.

The AI may hurt some artists (digital artists) to some degree, but it does help entrepreneurs. People will still pay good money for custom and high quality hand made works of art.

[mordredoforkney]

Guy uses his phone to trace over an image, changing the characters actual appearance completely: "Fair use."
Guy looks at 1000 images and draws what he was inspired by, utilizing aspects of others style in his new word: "Fair use"

Guy uses a robot to do the same thing near-instantaneously: "STEALING!"