A Poll On The Use Of AI Art In TAS Products

[Terry Mixon]

As the use of AI art in TAS products is rampaging in a different thread, I thought I’d take the temperature of the board. I’ve made the question as neutral as possible and the possible answers as well. I ask that you debate the topic in the other thread and leave this as a clean topic for voting.

Here is that thread: https://forum.mongoosepublishing.com/threads/the-use-of-ai-generated-content-in-tas-products.125425/

 

[LangyMD]

In my opinion, it depends. Not every use of AI generation is the same.

As an example, if I manually create a piece of art and then use AI to augment that creation - such as using infilling to fill in a section after I decide to remove something from the picture - that is vastly different from putting a single prompt into the machine and taking the first result.

I'm much more OK using AI to augment human-created content in sold products than I am with using completely AI generated content in those sold products.

The given poll does not include an option like that.

 

[Arkathan]

Use of infill in a photo editor samples only the surrounding image, or another image you have in local memory. That is not generative AI.
Infill uses and works upon an image that you claim is yours to modify. Generative AI is like rappers "sampling" the music of others while not paying or crediting the original artist(s) (Disclaimer: There are a large number - vast majority - of artists doing the "sampling" correctly according to copyright law, and I am not talking about them).

 

[OriginalCaruso]

The question is much wider than art. AI generated content is becoming reality for many aspects of life and the boundaries are continually being blurred. The public Internet is no longer considered an authoritative source of information having been polluted

Art cannot stand still, nor can music, computer programming and many other fields of human endeavour. We must adapt and use AI to our advantage to augment creative new ideas and not pretend AI doesn’t exist or ban it’s use

Creativity is the key, new ideas are beyond AI ability, but once formed, AI can be useful in augmenting newly created content

 

[Condottiere]

It's likely more what can be established that artificial intelligence has directly ripped off from a still living artist.

Anything in public domain is fair game.

Probably, all art will be watermarked, to indicate it's origins.

 

[Terry Mixon]

It's likely more what can be established that artificial intelligence has directly ripped off from a still living artist.

Anything in public domain is fair game.

Probably, all art will be watermarked, to indicate its origins.

The various companies scraped every image the could get, including from sites that license copyrighted works. They vacuumed anything they could. No attention was paid to watermarks.

 

[Condottiere]

Future artworks will be watermarked, in the sense that the consumer is informed of the origins.

Much like a lot of celebrity nudes are marked as fake.

 

[ottarrus]

OK, let's get something completely clear here about 'AI'. The current AI is not actual artificial intelligence. In Traveller terms, it is an Expert program with limited self learning capability. We're not quite at HAL 9000... yet.

However I will say that AI generated art and writing is disturbing to me. Taking the humanity out of creativity and just automating it to an algorithm hits all kinds of '1984' style buttons in me. What disturbs me more is washing textbooks through an AI program... somebody will [not 'if' or 'maybe'... WILL] program a certain set of social or political norms and use the AI to censor even the very act of reading, viewing art, or taking in entertainment. The social discussion will be reduced to a world made up of shades of beige.

OTOH, I understand the financial issues with content creators in TAS or other fan-produced content. They cannot afford good quality art for covers and illustrations for their low-budget /low-return works.

At the absolute minimum, I would insist on AI artwork being credited in the masthead of TAS contributions. And I will not buy AI authored material.

 

[Arkathan]

It's likely more what can be established that artificial intelligence has directly ripped off from a still living artist.

Anything in public domain is fair game.

Probably, all art will be watermarked, to indicate it's origins.

Visible Watermarks: Infill/Clone tool.
Hidden Watermarks: resize image to be a lot larger. Blur. Sharpen. Shrink image to be not quite the original size.
All but higher tech watermarks gone.

 

[Terry Mixon]

Future artworks will be watermarked, in the sense that the consumer is informed of the origins.

Much like a lot of celebrity nudes are marked as fake.

Ah. Now I understand. Thanks.

 

[boggo2300]

except of course that trusting these "AI" pirates to do this is just wishful thinking, and instead they are lobbying governments to gut copyright law.

 

[agentwigggles]

As long as its declared, I dont see the issue.

 

[boggo2300]

but it's not usually declared, just other peoples work taken with no permission and no attribution. Nothing is CREATED by "AI" the creations of other people are taken and mashed together to meet the requirements of the prompt

 

[LangyMD]

Use of infill in a photo editor samples only the surrounding image, or another image you have in local memory. That is not generative AI.
Infill uses and works upon an image that you claim is yours to modify. Generative AI is like rappers "sampling" the music of others while not paying or crediting the original artist(s) (Disclaimer: There are a large number - vast majority - of artists doing the "sampling" correctly according to copyright law, and I am not talking about them).

The generative fill feature in Photoshop uses generative AI. It is not solely trained on things in the particular image.

It also was apparently only trained on images Adobe had rights to, but whether the AI is trained on things the trainer had rights to ks a different question than the ethics of using generative AI in general. Even having everyone involved appropriately compensated and choosing to have their stuff used to train the AI doesn't eliminate the question of whether AI generated content should show up in stuff sold to consumers.

 

[Hermit King]

The question is much wider than art. AI generated content is becoming reality for many aspects of life and the boundaries are continually being blurred. The public Internet is no longer considered an authoritative source of information having been polluted

Art cannot stand still, nor can music, computer programming and many other fields of human endeavour. We must adapt and use AI to our advantage to augment creative new ideas and not pretend AI doesn’t exist or ban it’s use

Creativity is the key, new ideas are beyond AI ability, but once formed, AI can be useful in augmenting newly created content

lol i still say before someone complains about AI they should be required to give up their cell phones and smart tvs

 

[Ewan]

I voted unsure as I don't know enough about it. To be honest I've seen good (some of it really good), bad (even cringworthy) and indifferent AI and it does make a differene to the final product no matter how good the writing is.

 

[Condottiere]

Presumably, websites where images are uploaded will have policies, declaring if the picture was created, untouched by human hands, and to what extent.

Certainly, commercial ones would have to.

And that would extent to all forms of, ah, art.

Because audio visual recordings are going to be needed to be authenticated, especially in the age where manipulation of such can have diplomatic, social, political, economic, effects.

 

[swordtart]

The genie is out of the bottle. Most industries have had their work forces altered by increasing automation in the drive to reduce costs and as someone who has been forced to adapt over my several decades in the workforce, I do not consider artists as more deserving of special consideration than any of the others that have been subject to those changes over the years. I do not hold with "but not the Arts, darling" philosophy.

The trick with any of this is that it doesn't take much to automate a process. The key aspect is being able to recognise whether the process is worth automating or whether the automated products have more value than a non-automated one. If your hand crafted thing has additional value over a mass produced thing then you will still have a unique selling point and your craft will be preserved. If not, the inference is that the automated system can do a better value job than you and you either conform to that reality and get another job or subvert it and seek more discriminating marketplaces.

AI is a not less a tool than a CNC machine or car diagnostic machine. Currently it's output is highly variable. Artists will still be needed to filter the wheat from the chaff, create the baseline art that AI draws upon or actively prod the AI into the right direction. Some artists have been using automation for years from Jackson Pollack using physics to do most of the work with his paint spilling works to Damien Hurst using biology to do most of the work for his shark. The art is in the creative spark to even do such a thing (and then convincing others that it is actually art).

If you can teach a machine to make art, then you can teach an artist to drive a machine. If it is a taught skill then it is nothing special. It is what you cannot teach the machine that is where humanity lies.

The purpose of automation was supposed to free us from the daily grind so we could all spend more time on creative pursuits. It seems to have actually simply produced tech billionaires and we are grinding more just to buy the increasingly automated things that allow us to just keep up. We are in a dystopian present.

 

[Arkathan]

lol i still say before someone complains about AI they should be required to give up their cell phones and smart tvs

The only job a smart TV replaces is the kid forced to go change the channel. The landline providers went to internet, so their techs retained their jobs.
Maps with coordinates embedded became searchable before AI was strong enough to do anything, so AI there now just means you don't have to pull over or risk a wreck figuring out which turn to make.
AI needs to be used to make people safe, not lazy. Jobs that are dangerous, or that require speed and precision that people are not capable of, not art or writing. Writing, not spell checking.

 

[Arkathan]

The generative fill feature in Photoshop uses generative AI. It is not solely trained on things in the particular image.

But it only uses things in the image you are editing, which means it is not creating the image out of the property of others.

Agreed on the rest.