Yeah I've been playing since '83 and I'm totally relaxed about the use of AI. I use it in my work (software engineering), as do almost all the folk that report to me, and I use it in my campaigns to provide myself with things like just enough depth on "might need them, might not" minor NPCs, which works great with creative and unusual prompts.
A Poll On The Use Of AI Art In TAS Products
- Thread starter Terry Mixon
- Start date
Yeah I've been playing since '83 and I'm totally relaxed about the use of AI. I use it in my work (software engineering), as do almost all the folk that report to me, and I use it in my campaigns to provide myself with things like just enough depth on "might need them, might not" minor NPCs, which works great with creative and unusual prompts.
Arkathan
Emperor Mongoose
But is the software AI mining the works of others without permission while looking for an optimal solution, or is it trained on the structure of the language and licensed libraries? The latter is an ethical use.
NPCs. For non-commercial use there are provisions for fair use. I can make a wooden cutout of a known character to put in my yard and I'm OK, but if I try to sell them, that is a different thing. So that is an outlier to the main conversation.
NPCs. For non-commercial use there are provisions for fair use. I can make a wooden cutout of a known character to put in my yard and I'm OK, but if I try to sell them, that is a different thing. So that is an outlier to the main conversation.
Yes. But it will need to have been trained on a sufficient body of that artist’s work to be convincing.
The LLMs and agentic AIs that we use in software engineering are absolutely trained on material that was dubiously sourced at best. But the horse is already out of the stable and clattering merrily down the street so everyone sane uses it anyway. To adopt a purist approach would be plausible but self-harming.
Studio Cat
Banded Mongoose
Some important information to consider. There is a recent article in The Atlantic entitled The Unbelievable Scale of AI's Pirated-Books Problem. Within the article it details the problem with Meta using books that are still under copyright to train its AI. A site known as LibGen allows you to see if something you wrote is in the dataset. I've found a couple of my own works, bur more importantly you can find Traveller works by Marc Miller and Matthew Sprange. While not a visual art dataset, it is a good analogy to what those datasets farm. Take a look, the results are surprising.
Search LibGen, the Pirated-Books Database That Meta Used to Train AI
Search LibGen, the Pirated-Books Database That Meta Used to Train AI
Studio Cat
Banded Mongoose
David Deitrick and Rob Caswell are both still alive.
Even a small risk of legal action regarding the use of unsourced art that turned out to be unauthorised is probably too much for a company the size of Mongoose. You can't copyright style, but the original artworks are owned by someone, either the artist by default or whomever they sold them to.
So unless you have the blessing of all parties involved, it's better to stay clear. At some point (quite possibly right now) you may be able to pay for clean AI generated art that's been trained on legit sources (public domain or which has been properly purchased for the purpose of AI training), and that should be okay. But only that.
So unless you have the blessing of all parties involved, it's better to stay clear. At some point (quite possibly right now) you may be able to pay for clean AI generated art that's been trained on legit sources (public domain or which has been properly purchased for the purpose of AI training), and that should be okay. But only that.
Nadia Grell
Banded Mongoose
As an artist who live to sell art in galleries in more than one country. I feel this statement is not actually a good one. I do not criticizing you, @heron61 but please listen.
I take ideas from other artists, how they use shadows, lights , shades of colours etc. I have taken pictures of famous paintings and used them as inspiration and in a few cases used their technique on how they use people in the background so that i admit that it was almost the same.
Many artyists done this, in the classes I have taken all students and teachers have admitted to done this when we have talked about it. We take from each other in hope to find the best way to get better.
I have worked as a freelance art teacher, i see my students take things from me and use that in paintings that they sell. That is the way many artists do it.
So what is the difference? I honestly want to know.
Nadia Grell
Banded Mongoose
If the chef did not know that the cow was stolen, it would not be a criminal intent to make it into a steak and therefore according to law, the steak would be clean to eat and not tainted by theft. as in most civil law countries there is a "good faith purchaser defese"
Arkathan
Emperor Mongoose
When you take inspiration from another piece of art or from nature/surroundings, you use talent and effort to render an original work of art.
When a person pushes the button for AI to instantly make art, the person required no talent and exceedingly little effort for AI to go POOF and produce an image that is as heavily sampled from other artists as shady rappers were before other record companies caught on and demanded their royalties.
There is a difference between an artist painting something similar and a computer copy/pasting someone else's work with automated stretch functions.
There are people on DTRPG who spam up to three publications per day of AI slop, "art" and "written" adventures. They crowd out REAL artists' work.
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
Since this is Traveller.
It's the rate of acceleration that is perturbing, not the obvious outcome of digitalization.
It's the rate of acceleration that is perturbing, not the obvious outcome of digitalization.
"good artists copy; great artists steal" - Picasso (https://www.bbc.co.uk/culture/article/20141112-great-artists-steal)
Edit: example: "To the Memory of an Angel" by Alban Berg, which is a direct lift from the Bach motif *(B flat, A, C, B natural): a radical and inventive sequence which in German notation spells "BACH" and which has been copied and used (sometimes, but not always, with open attribution) by a huge range of other composers since.
This sounds like the reasoning that stopped us hearing Three Feet High and Rising by De la Soul for decades.
Edit: on the other hand, Disney, Fox and other big copyright rentiers definitely agree with you and have paid millions of dollars to congressmen and senators to lock up these rights for decades to prevent the flourishing and cross-pollination of art.
Arkathan
Emperor Mongoose
I look at the proliferation of AI slop on DTRPG, in which talentless hacks attempt to charge for work they did not do, while crowding out REAL artists, and I find myself not caring about losing out on AI produced whatever.
Calculating gravitic slingshots? Cool.
Coordinating microsecond relays on a fusion magnetic bubble? Sure.
Taking out spots reserved for the Self Actualization Tier of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs? Not cool, and rather dystopic.
Arkathan
Emperor Mongoose
One would assume that Alban would have needed at least SOME degree of competence to do that.
Whereas the user of AI does not.
And while Berg lifting Bach is shady, Bach is public record, so it is unfortunately legal. So is AI directly ripping off REAL artists, but only because laws lag and lawmakers can be bribed by donations.
What is really infuriating is You Tube using AI filters on people's work, thereby making their drawings look bad - and then stealing their work for use on non-monetized official You Tube accounts. All "legal."
Nadia Grell
Banded Mongoose
Firstly, to lighten the mood: You do not need to have talent or use effort to be an artist
Now more seriously: Some people who make Ai art that I have met are actually artists in a way, in my eyes at least, they can sit for hours or days to make a ai program form the absolute perfect image they want. Is that not skill or effort? I mean, i can hardly make an ai program create a picture of a cat without it looking bonkers.
If you build a house from ground up, or you designed a car, etc and i walk past it and then painted a picture of it to sell. Isnt this the same wrong use of me to sell that art?
Then again, I am not a blue-eyed doe, living on a pink cloud of innocence - I know that I have had some of my works i have created and posted online be made into people's AI art. I know this because i had a couple contacting me telling me that they found ai art that they loved and when they googled the picture, my art came up as suggestions. So they wanted to buy paintings made in my style.
Have I lost money?
- Oh yes, probably!
Do I care?
- Not that much no.
Do I consider it a theft?
- Nope.
Why?
- Someone could go into a gallery in London, take a picture of my painting on the wall, go home and paint a copy themselves. If they would sell that by the wall to Hyde Park Place or Bayswater Road in London. I paint to have fun, and because i like to do it. I knop that my art if attractive to some as I have lived of it for years. If someone does this and earns a few quid. So what, I know that the art I sell is mine and came mostly from my heart.
Lastly, in my eyes as someone who paints and craft for a living, well maybe not craft that much, but started to do ceramic things (and i really want to do glass) and use that as a livelihood, I find that this debate is full of non-artists who claim to speak for us artists. They are more in it as social justice warriors than to care what we as artists think.
Just like when Vampire 5th edition was published, there were so many social justice warriors who complained about a few lines in the books. why not just ignore it. It would be as if I object against Mongoose Publishing, GDW and Marc Miller because i feel that people from my hometown that i love are misrepresented as they have depicted Solomani very racist and not at all as inclusive as I know people from my hometown are. So to go back...
I am an artist, I do not think AI steals my work, if people use AI and it use my style, who cares? When I sell my next painting, i will still get paid and what I think my art is worth. I am not rich, but I have enough to survive, save an amount for a rainy day, have a child that wants for nothing (he is 6 months old, so he has not that much wants at the moment to be honest), i can still take 1 long or a few smaller vacations a year without feel that money is straining me and i just bought a house and paid of my student debt and i am not even 30. and I did that without money from parents or husband.
So in my eyes, if you are not an artist, let the artists say what they think, i doubt that we will complain about similar things about ai in your workplaces or something else.
Nadia Grell
Banded Mongoose
Heh, you believe that technical ability is important for great art?
Let's gloss over you having a go at Alban Berg, one of the greatest of the modernist composers whose works have literally moved me to tears in live recital. You make amazing spreadsheets that I use almost every day but I'm not sure that art criticism is really an area you should be asserting authority in.
Arkathan
Emperor Mongoose
You made the assertion that Berg ripped off Bach. Without researching to refute your assertion, I stated that it may be shady, but is legal. That is not a rip on Berg, that is a response to your assertion of theft.
It is good that we can disagree on a subject without cancelling each other.
History, Sociology and Ethics are subjects I can speak with authority on. I tend to listen more to the originals than those who riffed on their themes. USB stick with all of Beethoven's and Mozart's symphonies and several other collections are on repeat when I drive. Almost everything since the late 1800's is derivative.
AI art is not good for the human experience. It is an extension of the participation trophy crowd.
Humans NEED to be challenged in order to grow..
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Warhols multicoloured prints of Marilyn Munroe were taken from a publicity photo. By adding colour he created a unique art work. AI can take Andy Warhol's Marilyn Munroe images, change the colour and by the same token be permitted to call it a unique art work.
Any AI that was trained with classic art, by a dead artist or with images out of copyright is not stealing. If it was there wouldn't be so many T-shirts, and posters with classical art on them. These are direct copies without any changes. The only way you can steal art is by taking the original. Theft requires you to have the item and the lawful owner not to. It is an unauthorised transfer of possession. A copy does not deny the owner the original so can we stop calling it theft.
Reproducing a copy for commercial purposes without permission is violation of copyright. Basing an image on another image is part of the artist process and always has been. Classical artists had schools where they taught students how to do works using their techniques and aimed to make them indistinguishable from their own, there are works that we are not sure if they are by a famous artist or one of their students.
I think one of the reasons that some artists are having such a hissy about this is that it has exposed the fact that art isn't necessarily difficult and that a machine can often do a better job than a mediocre artist. If you cannot compete with a machine and feel that you need to throw in your sabots then I am not sure you deserve being carried by society. AI is not stealing any of my money from an artist. I wouldn't be paying them anyway, the only artwork that is being usurped is my own sausage fingered scribblings.
I'm sure the monks said the same thing about the printing press, the farm labourers about the combine harvester, the printers about digital publishing and the stevedores about the Iso Container. Times change and jobs change with them. A craftsperson will always find work, but a hack will be replaced once a cheaper method can be found.
There are plenty of things to be concerned about AI. Ecological impact (but equally crypto currency), making fake news easier (but equally the fake politicians who made it easy for them), identity theft. Replacing artists is lower down the list.
Any AI that was trained with classic art, by a dead artist or with images out of copyright is not stealing. If it was there wouldn't be so many T-shirts, and posters with classical art on them. These are direct copies without any changes. The only way you can steal art is by taking the original. Theft requires you to have the item and the lawful owner not to. It is an unauthorised transfer of possession. A copy does not deny the owner the original so can we stop calling it theft.
Reproducing a copy for commercial purposes without permission is violation of copyright. Basing an image on another image is part of the artist process and always has been. Classical artists had schools where they taught students how to do works using their techniques and aimed to make them indistinguishable from their own, there are works that we are not sure if they are by a famous artist or one of their students.
I think one of the reasons that some artists are having such a hissy about this is that it has exposed the fact that art isn't necessarily difficult and that a machine can often do a better job than a mediocre artist. If you cannot compete with a machine and feel that you need to throw in your sabots then I am not sure you deserve being carried by society. AI is not stealing any of my money from an artist. I wouldn't be paying them anyway, the only artwork that is being usurped is my own sausage fingered scribblings.
I'm sure the monks said the same thing about the printing press, the farm labourers about the combine harvester, the printers about digital publishing and the stevedores about the Iso Container. Times change and jobs change with them. A craftsperson will always find work, but a hack will be replaced once a cheaper method can be found.
There are plenty of things to be concerned about AI. Ecological impact (but equally crypto currency), making fake news easier (but equally the fake politicians who made it easy for them), identity theft. Replacing artists is lower down the list.
MasterGwydion
Emperor Mongoose
Except in the AI example, gen AI was trained using stolen works, so you cannot use the defense that you didn't know. It is common knowledge and has been proven. If Gen AI can prove it was not made with stolen works, in my mind anyhow, that would be a different thing entirely.If the chef did not know that the cow was stolen, it would not be a criminal intent to make it into a steak and therefore according to law, the steak would be clean to eat and not tainted by theft. as in most civil law countries there is a "good faith purchaser defese"
