Technology

Not sure why artists are brought up here but I guess that’s one of the highly affected groups.

Just to talk about that particular consequence, however, I don’t agree with your take. There are AI trained on works of specific artists, and the end result is that the AI is really good at producing work that’s similar to that artist’s work, effectively creating an alternative to that artist, even if it’s of slightly lesser quality and a lack of depth of the original. While this would likely not affect the artist in the short term, in the long term, new prospects who don’t yet know the artist well enough would likely be unable to tell the difference in quality, and may even go straight to the AI model since that’s distributed cheaply or even free. It may also negatively reflect on the original artist to people who don’t know the artist, as the works from the AI would likely be more abundant, and people not in the know may think that the original artist was in fact just producing their works through AI. It is highly discouraging for artists who have worked hard to hone their craft, only to have people think that their works have little difference or even a mimicry (don’t underestimate misinformation).

There has been many instances where such training was done without the knowledge of the artist. Imagine just waking up one day, and finding that there’s someone or something that can very closely reproduce your works, one’s you’ve taken many years of practice to produce, of which its quality is almost unique to yourself. There’s a blatant lack of respect for the hard work that people put into their craft, one that seemingly belittles their blood and tears, and could even be a mockery of their existence. Some artists don’t have other jobs; their art and craft is their job, and some may have even sacrificed learning the skills needed for other jobs to pursue their passion.

Saying that AI is not intended to replace artists, but to improve accessibility, is like saying ATMs weren’t meant to replace bank tellers. True, there’s much less skill required for bank tellers, and getting cash out of banks is an important process that should be swift with almost no errors, so replacing bank tellers with ATMs is a general good, except for the bank tellers, which then banks can retrain them for other jobs. Since then, the job has virtually gone extinct, and almost nobody would want to become a bank teller, and if anyone would like to, they would need to perform better than ATMs. Artists require great skills and creativity, many of which are not easily trained or obtained. Seeing an automated system produce works that are acceptable by most people would either greatly discourage new artists or perhaps even entirely remove the idea of becoming an artist for most people. It raises the barrier to becoming an artist: not only do you need to stand out, you also need to be good enough such that people can’t just train an AI model on your work to produce results that are highly indistinguishable from yours. How many more years do people need to train to be that good? For those with a job but wish to become an artist, abandoning their job to focus on their craft will likely become a much more difficult choice to make. Also, I don’t doubt this would further rise the prices of commissions due to how much work artists would have to put in, and this would only get worse at a rate that’s much faster than a scenario without AI.

So a line should be drawn somewhere. AI trained on public works or artist-approved works are definitely okay. All other options will likely need further discussion and scrutiny. We’re talking about the possibility of ruining an already perilous career path, whose works are coveted.

Seems like wishful thinking to assume that technology being used to replicate artists' styles is not going to affect their livelihood. Unlike large media companies, even a few lost clients can make a huge difference for smaller artists. Then there's also upcoming artists, if they aren't already well-known and better than AI, how are they going to get a foothold on an artistic career? That might kill their chances before they get anywhere.