How is an AI doing it any different?

Brad, just gotta say I love that you tackled this issue with logic. Also, love your videos

AI is not a person. Corporations are not people.

The problem with "can we do this ethicaly" is that it kinda solves nothing.
Current systems at work aka capitalism insentivises people to do things the least ethical way and the "utopian technology" is introduced into a broken system.
What I would like to see is the AI generators to be stemed back into what they were before the boom- research project, not a product.
Don't let the lies decieve you- generators are not endorsed by scientists who worked on their code, but mostly by companies without foresight and ekhm cocksucking techbors who don't know any better.

People might tell you that it's a "djinn that can't be put back in the bottle" , but it somewhat can- mainly through legislation and human movements, movements that are for people, not for speculative money. What the techbros don't get is that you can't live of speculation.

AS for artists- do your thing, draw and create, don't let the bitches on the internet tell you that you are a "dying breed". There are artist communities that will survive this, just as it always is when faulty systems are at work.

I don't think it's just an ethical problem. It's actually illegal. Violating someone's copyright for profit is illegal. I shared this comment on another video. These companies are violating artist copyright need to be paying the artist, a licensing fee or a leasing fee to use the work. Just look at stock agencies they have to pay Artists. The way you're putting all of this you're making it seem like the stock agencies don't need to pay Artists either or follow the copyright law. If AI companies are allowed to do this, and if this is going to be the case artists, are going to stop working, or at least not sharing their work to be sold. Because this is basically saying, Artists can produce work and not get paid for it. Artists are going to give the middle finger and stop Sharing their work. Also, the cost of original work is going to skyrocket!

Impressed, this is very well said

Today I talked about a commission I had to drop because I couldn't finish it on time with my hairdresser, and they said "why don't you use AI?"
And I felt a little offended, because the way they said it sounded like those AI bro dudes. I explained that it was a waste of time to use AI for that since Ai is not a good tool for finishing a work, and then they explained to me, they meant to get a base so I could paint over it
I like Ai, I trully do, if is used correctly.
It bothers me when they use AI to end the career of millions of people. AI is just a base, that a human uses to finish their work... a ideia generator even... not a commission fabric

It doesn't matter whether the AI can produce transformative works that are considered original works of art. The AI is not a person, it is a tool, like hammer or a car or a robot. It is a tool that requires artwork in order to perform its function. It might not copy these works of art, but they are nonetheless essential to its function if the AI is meant to replicate that kind of artwork. If you build a tool out of stolen parts, the materials don't suddenly become yours.

An AI learning and a human learning are fundamentally not the same. "Neural networks" use simulated "neurons" that are in no way close to the complexity of a human neuron, let alone the network it forms. I should know, having worked in a molecular neurobiology lab for two years. The difference between the human brain an neural networks are understood by both biologists and the designers of these systems. The only people who think AI learns like a human are the people who don't know a damn thing about the tool they exalt.

Well -- you're just a user. AI is product, and building product on copyrighted works requires license. That's not ethics, that's founding principles underpinning all intellectual property law in 193 countries since 1886, and that's how any other copying medium is regulated. Consent, credit and compensation. That's not a campaign for ethics, it's pointing to the reason copyright law even exists.

It's not that ai is an algorythm. It's the scale it's operate on. Yes people can copy other people style. It'll take them a lot of time & effort and the result aren't a even a guaranteed. But ai can do it pretty good instantly by outputting hundreds of images for anyone who asks. The scale & speed is the difference. Not the techicality of the process.
People can all sorts of questionable & unetical stuff. Doesnt' mean there shuld be a 10$ service to do it 1000 more effective than the average human can.

I went to art school and I have no problem using AI for brainstorming, inspiration, references, or quick illustrations for POD, although I never use any specific artist style or name in my prompts. I think the question we really have to ask is why our work became so devalued. Sites that sell illustration stock, really, really low wages for freelancers who haven't made a name have been around for quite a while. I have seen work proposals for 10 USD for 30 illustrations and 20, 30 proposals in Upwork, really low pay seems to be a norm in freelance sites. Is it what the market became? I have sold patterns as stock for 25p. Well, I have to make a living so, what am I to do? Therefore I use AI art in some situations with no guilt because it is my knowledge that makes curating it better, it is my hand that will take my Huion pen and edit it. My question is how did we get here?

Ive tinkered some with the likes of Stable diffusion so i can at least give some thoughts here for people. Some of the push back in regards to AI generated images comes from a lack of understanding of how the technology works. One thing to keep in mind is that the images themselves are not in fact in the AI models is one thing that people should be aware of, i see many thinking the images themselves are in the models and they arent. Next is that generation of "good" images in things like Stable diffusion isnt exactly just a single button click. While you can in fact get good results form little input when you do that youre effectively generating things at random and hoping to get something, this could take minutes to hours. Theres also the fact that the AI generators have a very hard time with nuance and understanding intent unless you give a very clear idea of what you intend the image to be the AI wont understand so you can get some very weird results. If your intent is to get specific results It takes either you or someone else training a Model on a set of data that narrows the model to a certain genre, I.E Anime. You then require some sort of textual inversions and other embedding to allow you to do things like remove what you dont want in images, narrow the AIs results to your intent, etc. You will also need to know keywords, phrasing, etc. that will lead the model prompt wise. You will then need likely some sort of reference to run through something like control net or try your luck at img2img to make sure that the AI is able to get as close to your intended outcome in as few a trys as possible. There is even more to it to get genuinely good results but thats a short run down and my week or 2 playing with it. The images you see from AI generators that are made to look like another artists work dont come about at random, that stuff is done with intent by a person to do so, much like any plagiarism would be usually using some specific model trained on an artist or a lora for the same purpose. This isnt inherently the AIs fault as even many specific models arent trained on a specific artist as much as an entire genre like Anime, photo realism, etc....AI img generation in itself is a fantastic tool when used properly and Adobe has even included it in their latest Photoshop to much praise, but like any tool when used in the wrong hands can cause problems, Photoshop has caused no shortage of problems but its not inherent to the technology as much as it is an issue of the hands its used by.

Hey the solution is typically traditional
Don't post on the e internet as simple as that

But there is the new problem comes in

Your customer uploaded on the internet 😅

It's easy; AI is a tool used by people. It's not a human being. And it has always been unethical to feed other's people's work into automatic tools. Also the output of these AI's has very diminishing returns, so it forces you to just keep feeding it over and over again to get a very limited output. That's not artmaking, it's instrumentalizing fellow workers.

Brad, this is one of the most important and perhaps insightful videos you’ve done.

The issue of copyright are going to have to shake out as conflicts over things like the role of the human prompt and the AI image that it generates are bound to generate questions as to exactly what is the intellectual property.

I’m pretty sure that Adobe will have the AI also doing calculations on what the user will pay to license the generated art and probably what restrictions there are on modifying the generated art etc.

It’s gonna be a brave new world. Suffice it to say that if I were a Sci-Fi or fantasy art illustrator, well start thinking about a new career.

People forget that when AI creates an image, nobody owns the rights. Its free for us all to use. Imagine a tshirt being made that you love but everyone has access to the same one and starts wearing it. Eventually you will want one that nobody else has. It wont be long until people using ai generated images get annoyed that others are just taking them without doing any of the prompting or work to even create these. This is why real artists will still have work in the long run as when they create art for someone it cant be used by anyone else.

Judges should rule against the illegal scraping software. Copyright law currently states that the works are infringing if they act as a replacement for their original creator. Seems straight forward to me.

Also, consider the harm to the ecosystem of artists when machines are allowed to infringe. It's about jobs but more importantly it's about humanity.

I once taught art at a college, and teaching a person to be an artist is likely not that different from teaching AI. The difference is AI likely catches on far faster. AI will use prior artists for inspiration or style just like current artists. And knowing other industries using AI, it will at some point, create its own styles. Humans will be surpassed in all things, why not art? Human art will have its own value in the future because people will want art created by actual humans. Like the old days of made of “Made in the USA”, it will be “Made by Humans”

The US Copyright office has officially determined a few things and as of two weeks ago released policy stating:
1. AI generated images are not protected by copyright.
2. Prompt creating is not sufficient enough to constitute human authorship.
3. A result of human-authored photobashing can be subject to copyright, but the pieces used to make that result can not be.
4. The extent to which an alteration to an ai generated image is protected will be determined on a case by case basis.
5. The decision on whether training AI on copyright images is a copyright violation or not, has not been decided yet.

What? Computers are doing what humans do, but faster and with less effort? Where have I heard this lament before? Countless skill sets from the past have been replaced by computers doing the same thing better and faster. Computers may not imbue their output with "soul" but I would argue that the marketplace largely doesn't care. The day computers were invented, a countdown began in which the "ding!" at the end signals the complete replacement of humans by computers in every productive endeavor. We are raging against the dying of the light folks, and while I sympathize with the struggle, I acknowledge what the inevitable end result will be. I think the sooner people realize this sort of thing is not going away, the sooner they figure out how to incorporate it into their lives rather than look in utter futility for ways to put the genie back into the bottle.

This again.

But typing into a keyboard hardly qualifies as art.

Except the "printing-press revolution" is a completely wrong analogy. Another false analogy is photography. AI is beyond any analogy from the past. Moving beyond just art AI, general purpose AIs like ChatGPT and others will make most humans redundant. AI won't complain, will work 24/7, doesn't need vacation or sick time, and will never demand any pay.

Can we do it ethically? No. These AI developers are doing it to commercialize and make $$$ off of $$$ valuations of their companies, using data sets off of stolen artwork, scraping the Internet. These are the same people who stole people's data under perverse user agreements and monetized it with no ethical concern. Why would anyone believe they would do it any differently? It's up the courts, but I have little faith in courts as they are on their payroll.

Is it any different? Sure, there are similarities. When an AI can create endless iterations in seconds, why would anyone use a real artist? For amateur artists who don't make any money and do it for themselves, it won't have much impact other than the AI will draw and render better than you ever will. For professional artists it's an existential threat. And AI in general is an existential threat for most white collar professions. ChatGPT can already diagnose illnesses better than 99% of doctors. It can write better than 99% of people. And so on.

A.I. in the creative space, is essentially giving EVERY half-assed wannabe a glorified Xerox machine that looks really clever. In the next 5 to 10 years (presuming the courts lean toward the big tech BIG MONEY) you're going to see the price and value of commercial art fall flat. Why pay an artist even a reasonable hourly when a machine can do it for less than a tenth of that??? AND for a short time, it's going to continue looking clever... BUT it's going to KILL "authentic creativity"... right along with the value of art as a whole.

Frankly, no... There is NO GOOD WAY to advance A.I. ethically. In order to be ethical, you require INFORMED CONSENT, and the reality is that even the gurus of Big Tech' don't really know "to what ends" they're working. If they don't know, how do you expect them to INFORM the artists who might even consider consenting to the inclusion of their works??? You can't.

The sad truth is, no artificially mechanic is going to generate authentically creative work. For a while, it's going to seem truly remarkable, and the Big Tech gurus are terrible about patting themselves on the shoulders for their accomplishments... BUT like ChatGPT and others at conversation... I can find the weakness in cognition in about a minute into the conversation, and the A.I. starts freaking out...

Sorry to piss on anyone's parade, but largely the folks truly pissed about their work being "stolen" are more "human xeroxes" themselves, than actually creative artists. That's NOT to say everyone is. Even among illustrators and animators and the like, there IS still creativity at work. It's just that a majority of those truly irked haven't built out their foundations enough to develop their own style so much as parroted off images in styles they like... Anime-style comes to mind as a big component of this.

SO for those of you who spent high school years resenting your Art Teachers for tossing those "Anime-style" projects you tried to hand in, and demanding you do something DIFFERENT, you can go back to that school and thank your Art Teachers for giving you an edge up from probably THE most prolifically STOLEN stylized art online right now... You literally can't get away from the "Anime-style". SO if you can move your own style away from it, you can still stand out... and as long as we (artists) can continue our own evolution, the A.I.'s going to have a hell of a time proving it can even keep up...

Besides, they've got a PRODUCT, which means YOU AND I can also BUY OUR OWN... Then it can get relegated to the TOOL it's intended to be, and we can dictate what it "feeds on"...

Frankly, I'm glad I've spent so much of my life doing art on every medium I can get my grubby hooks into OTHER than digital. I'm interested in the digital, too, but it's not that detrimental... AND this (post) is mostly just my observation. I'm no expert, especially on tech'... BUT I've looked through history. Nobody has really unlocked the core of actually creative flow, so I'm doubtful they've managed that yet with all their algorithms and dubious math or code. It's just going to take a bit longer for it to fall flat enough to be shown up as more "Pie in the sky BS"... ;o)

I wish AI art vendors would be interested in developing mutually beneficial relationships with artists, like what happened for writers and the printing press people (that we now call publishers). But businesses really don't like to share the money they are making (even if it would be beneficial for them in the long run) and often have to be strong-armed into it by some law, and I don't feel like the AI art situation will be any different.

The problem with requiring that AIs be trained on data that the developers own, is that it gives a massive amount of power to the companies that own those IPs (Disney, Google, Microsoft, Adobe).
Said companies would be able to develop AIs that still replace artists, but now they have say over how that AI is to be used, they can demand money/rights/compensation.
All it would do is make proprietary AIs have an edge, over Open Source ones.
If we keep extending copyright law, it would become so Draconian, it would hurt creatives more than it would help.

In Question #1 there's also the point that the artist is not representing the work to be by Wyeth (or whatever artist is being emulated). As far as AI is concerned it's most accurate to think of it as a filter where you can put in the parameters. The biggest objection to be brought up is to use it to replace someone rather than using them to do the work. In the Wyeth example, if Wyeth were still alive and someone could afford to pay Wyeth to paint something for them but were cheapskates and wanted to claim that the AI generated work came from Wyeth then there's a huge problem. As far as how well AI is good at actual creativity, look up "Will Smith eating spaghetti", definite nightmare fuel.

Before watching your video, I want to say I got 2 issues with AI art in general:

1. AI software is a product. Not a person. Your files, digital products, are being consumed without compensation or consent to power another digital product's quality.

2. I'm okay with Adobe Firefly's method of creating AI art. They have their own database of stock art to draw upon. Other AI softwares just grab whatever they can find and do not disclose sources. I'm also worried about references. AI Artwork have spit out direct copies of original artwork and doesn't state what references was used, and can land AI artists in legal trouble.

After video: Cool. Seems like we both have similar opinions. Neat!

That's the thing with AI. Humans are never able to 100% replicate another person's style, it's why it's possible to find out if something is a forgery. Each artist has their own nuances, their own signature or fingerprint on their style that bleeds into other styles. It's how in animation there's off-model animation scenes as opposed to just off-model frames. Because animation is made in a team, each team member has their own little nuances of animating stuff, no matter how hard they try to keep on-model.

Computers don't have those nuances. Ask one computer running a model to generate a picture in one particular style, and another computer running that model will be able to generate the same style without any variants, without nuance, heck, if you use the same model, the same seed, the same prompt and the same variables, you'll 100% be able to replicate the image. Ask a human to draw a circle and ask that same human to draw that same circle, no way in hell they'll be able to 100% replicate that.

You raise some very good points.
One thing though: if an AI accepts a command such as "in the style of XX artist", then a court may well regard that as evidence that the AI has been trained on images by that specific artist.
And if that artist's works are still under copyright, that means there may well be copyright infringement.
Because saying "in the style of so-and-so" is very specific to the (copyrighted) works of that artist. It's not a general "in the style of late seventies punk graffiti".
I think these AI databases are going to expose their owners to big lawsuits, unless they generalise their commands and only rely on non-copyrighted material.

Ok, one more: I asked ChatGPT, "Was the image scraping done to create the Laion dataset legal?" And it said:

"The legality of image scraping to create the Laion dataset depends on the specific circumstances surrounding how the images were obtained. In general, if the images were obtained without permission from the copyright holders or without respecting any applicable terms of service or use agreements, then the image scraping would likely be considered illegal.

Additionally, some websites may have terms of service or use agreements that prohibit or restrict the use of their content, including images. If the image scraping violated these agreements, then it could be considered illegal or a breach of contract."


It's interesting that even the AI seems to know that what is going on is wrong.

Iasked ChatGPT, "Is Ai image generation considered fair use?" And this is what it replied:

AI image generation is not automatically considered fair use under copyright law. Fair use is a legal doctrine that allows for limited use of copyrighted materials without permission for certain purposes, such as criticism, commentary, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research. However, whether a particular use of copyrighted material qualifies as fair use depends on a case-by-case analysis of several factors, such as the purpose and character of the use, the nature of the copyrighted work, the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the whole, and the effect of the use on the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

While AI image generation may be used for research or artistic purposes, it is important to consider whether the images being generated are based on copyrighted works and how much of those works are being used. If the generated images are too similar to the original copyrighted works and are being used for commercial purposes, it may not be considered fair use.

Moreover, the use of AI-generated images could be subject to other intellectual property laws, such as trademark or publicity rights, which also require permission from the owner for commercial use.

In summary, AI image generation cannot be considered fair use automatically. Whether the use of AI-generated images is considered fair use will depend on the specific circumstances of each case and requires careful analysis of the relevant legal factors.

I asked it a bunch of other things about the ethics of AI image generation, and it had some pretty interesting answers. Let me know if you're interested in reading more.

Why - uth. Not why-th.

Here is a question for you Brad. Will AI defend itself in court using Chat GPT to argue its case? What happens if the judge uses Chat GPT to decide on the case. Would it be unethical? ;)

If a company wants to use my work in order to create a product that replaces me then they're gonna have to pay me so much money that I never have to work again. It's that simple.

If they're not willing to do that then I'll fight them tooth and nail for the sake of myself and other artists. Also, on your point about fair use - while it wouldn't surprise me if the courts come down in favour of these companies (because money talks) one of the most important deciding factors on whether something is fair use or not, is whether it impacts the market of the existing work. Considering AI is threatening to replace the livelihoods of living artists I'd say that it is an immeasurable impact.

Governments might still come down in favour of the companies, because like I said before, money talks, but there is a very strong case for artists.

There's also the fact that AI will eventually roll out into other fields. We're having this discussion about AI now but eventually it will be able to do office work, social media management, SEO, we'll have self driving trucks etc. The amount of industries and jobs this will impact is astronomical. Hopefully someone in power is smart enough to see that this might start with art but it will set a precedent for everything else to come.

Personally, I think the most ethical thing to do would be to mandate that all AI must be non-profit. That way you pretty much protect every human that could be replaced. You want to replace your social media manager with an AI? Too bad, can't use it for profit. Want to replace your art team with a single art director and a laptop? Too bad, can't use it for profit. Want to replace your fleet of truck drivers with self driving trucks? Too damn bad.

No matter how you spin it, if artists did not consent to getting their images taken and used in the model, it is theft. If you break consent, it's stolen. Period.

Personally, I'm excited to see what real artists come up with in the days ahead. I anticipate a 'Punk Rock' kind of rebellion in visual art, music, literature; supported by other disrupted professionals of all walks.

Ai art, design, will make the industry pay to win, not who has the skills to make it.

How about if it's free? For example, Unreal Engine 5 with their metahumans and Quixel assets could potentially kill a lot of jobs, like modelers, animators and so on. But at the same time it offers a true shift that is revolutionary, indie developers could potentially create games and movies with a quality close to big studios.

I know Unreal doesn't work scrapping the web like Midjourney does, but what if a free and open source openIA project came that offered a similar service? Would that be unethical too? It would cause the same damage to artists, that's for sure.

I loved your comparisons, especially the fuel one :D . One small thing, though, I do not believe that an artist copying the style of another artist and marketing it for example on Fiverr is ethical. It is legal, but not ethical, to me at least. Yes, I understand it takes a lot of work to imitate a style and it probably will not be 100% identical, but still doesn't seem ok to me.

Milli Vanilli. That’s why we should be a bit more cautious.

It'll be interesting to see how this changes people's jobs in the future. For example in 3d simulations have become so much easier to achieve due to computational systems. I think this will affect coders first before artists.. for real creative work you need to be extremely specific. Although the day will come where you'll be able to generate anything and then type in the client amends to precisely change what they ask for. You will no longer need say 10 employees.. you'll only need one for the same amount of work.

Please try hi paint on android please

Think of it this way: A taxi company owns the vehicles (machines) and they have built the company to offer taxi services to the public, but the machines can't drive themselves. A human driver, who has spent time effort and money to become a skilled driver, must drive the machine. A deal is made between the taxi company and the human drivers where both parties are compensated for their efforts. Without the drivers, there is no company. Human artists are driving these large AI models and some compensation must be arranged for this technology to move forward. Even participating in a focus group pays something. A bigger question is if a machine that has no idea what 'fair use' is or what a law is or what a human is or what anything outside the data-set is can use work in a way that is 'fair-use'.

It's probably going to be ruled as fair use, and not even unethical. And even if ruled against, hiring starving artists to produce training art, using paid-for stock photos and art, using public domain art, and just sending image capture around to capture public scenes will provide enough training, especially with the advancements coming. What if such an ethically-sourced training set produces an image that just happens to look like Greg Rutkowski's work, the image is tagged as "Greg Rutkowski" and fed back into the training, or used to influence what the training set produces? You'll still get Greg Rutkowski calibre artworks that were never trained on his works, or even past AI images that did benefit from training on his work. So, even a 100% ethical AI tool will end up producing anything in any style, including those that are triggered by a prompt using an artist's name.

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Thank you very much Brad for voicing out your honest opinion. I agree 100%, people should know when to draw the line on what is unethical and not and sadly, things somehow aren't going into a better direction.

This argument seems to me to be a philosophical question and not a legal question. According to U.S. copyright law, only humans can get a copyright - A.I. can't. So it doesn't matter if A.I. generated art is doing the same thing as a human, building on outside influences - It can not get a copyright... no more than an elephant moving a brush on a canvas can get a copyright. And if you are a publisher or a marketing company hired to create a mascot for a cookie company, both you and your client would expect that artwork to be copyrighted. The only way the A.I. companies will ever be able to change the law as it is now, is to convince lawmakers to change it. Till then, the question is moot.

I'm a traditional painter, and I disagree with your comment about what AI is doing is unethical. The only thing that's unethical is having a tool that removes the craft side of things and workload from the human factor and not offering it to the masses for free.

I postulate that EVERYONE is an artist. This is the root of the disagreement between most artists and the public that wants to use AI. Artists say "no, not everyone is an artist". And I say, BULL. Everyone has a unique way of seeing the world, and as such, they should be able to express it. The reason why they couldn't do that in the past is because of having to learn the craft. The CRAFT side of art is the big obstacle that AI removes. NOT the ideas (which is what makes art artsy and interesting -- that's why Matisse-like paintings today are more popular than photorealistic paintings).

As such, it's unethical to gatekeep the ability of society to express itself under the guise of keeping exclusivity rights because of your ability to CRAFT. You (or me) are not a better artist that some kid in Zambia who has a unique way of seeing the world, but not knowing how to draw KEEPS THEM BACK. THAT is what is unethical!

Yes, I know that this realization hurts artists mentally, because most of them still have student debt from art schools. They can't process the idea that their profession is near-obsolete. But they need to look at the bigger picture, and what is good for the society as a whole, rather than their own little world.

Or do you think we should remove Photoshop, or weaving machines just so we can make room for more craft professions, for the sake of it? Society has been better since machines were able to automate things. They democratized expression. These machines are still directed by human ideas. AI is not different. The AI we have today is not AGI that can think for itself. And possibly it will never be. As such, AI is a tool. As a tool it needs to train to whatever came before it. And then offered to the masses in order to democratize expression. That is not only totally ETHICAL, but the right thing to do in the first place.

Yes a distinction between ethics and legality