Interesting to hear your thought process! I didn't know this was a contentious issue at all, I thought everybody ageed that it should not be used. I was glad to see you change your website and posts in response to the comment yesterday, and I felt pretty guilty for not having said anything before. I had ignorantly assumed that you knew people wouldn't be happy about that and that you had made up your mind, so it would be best to just be supportive. I think that way I sent the wrong message as well. We all live in our little bubbles and have no idea what everyone else is seeing on the issues of the day. I would assume if I had to work with AI for my job (the editing job), then I would rely on my brain to justify this to myself. I would probably block out the ethical problems that come with it to a large extend, maybe even to other uses than writing. I think people are also pretty concerned about the environmental impact, just to throw that out there. Lastly, my personal opinion is that big corporations exist in capitalism as much as we do, so naturally they will have to exploit the same opportunities (unless laws or boycotts etc. are used to prevent it) that small creators will have to exploit. There is no way around either forever cutting costs or being driven out of business. So I don't think this is an entirely feelings-based boycott, but I could be wrong, of course. Thank you for making this discussion video, I'm excited to read everyone's opinions!
I feel like the whole AI conversation is something that should have started years ago and will be continuing probably for my lifetime at least! Each of us will have to navigate our own relationship with AI as it develops and I think getting hung up on one instance or another of one person using AI is going to distract us all from the bigger picture. My personal feeling is its fine to use for your own entertainment, and fine to share in a 'look what AI made me' kind of way. I do not think anyone should be allowed to make money from a piece of AI generated art (picture, book, script etc), but figuring out where that line is and proving what ISN'T AI generated puts pressure on artists too. And I'm not sure about using it as you did to promote something that will make you money, like I honestly don't know how I feel about that. I think the apparently huge amount of energy it takes is probably enough to swing me against it, but I also get that its a way of people who aren't painters and graphic designers creating publicity material to a high standard. I wouldn't judge you for whatever choice you made about this in future.
Well, now I can say someone has made a RU-vid video because of my comment. Like I said, I figured I could guess why you did it and your reasoning was pretty much exactly what I expected. I actually really hate confrontation and only left the comment because no one else was mentioning it and I felt it needed to be addressed. I do appreciate you taking what I said seriously and I'm glad we're not "beefing" over this but being reasonable adults about it! This is a discussion I've been very aware of for quite some time so it is always surprising to see other people aren't on the same page. Many people in the book circles are vehemently against AI and will not buy products that use it so I wasn't just talking about me personally, though as an artist this is extra personal to me. To add to this: as an author you're not safe from facing this same issue I've felt as an artist sooner or later either. My Kindle has been showing constant ads for AI generated children's books (as in the cover is AI and the text is AI) and at some point I started taking a picture every time my Kindle showed a different AI book ad on the idle screen. I have collected 19 since April and by this point the covers have garbled text almost managing to spell out the name of the book or something along the lines of it whereas before they had no text on the covers. So they're evolving. Some people are buying them, presumably unaware that no humans are involved in their production. Once people become more aware of this I'm sure they'll start assuming books with AI covers are also written by AI. The children's books all have a different author's name listed and at first they all had "Bedtime story for kids and adults" as a subheading so it was easy to notice the pattern and assume they came from the same place despite the different author names but now they've dropped that as well.
You mentioned it earlier somewhat, but AI also has the issue of plagiarism. But unlike typical plagiarism, it throws everything in a blender and then the company can claim ownership of the process of stealing and are financially rewarded for it instead of ostracized. And on top of this, the original authors in many cases may have no recourse depending on how different it is, even though it obviously is stolen. There’s a big difference between using chat GPT to write emails(which I’m also broadly against because AI and crypto are tearing the power grid and the planet to shreds even faster than we were) and using what amounts to stolen art from stock art workers who had no choice but to agree to those terms from adobe if they wanted to make a living.
I am sorry about my bad english, but I just had to add my thoughts to this discussion. Thank you for making such a calm and honest video talking about this. I do art as a hobby. I also studied graphic design, and tried to make art my job, but it was too much for me. I also enjoy writing and making my own book some day. So that is my background into this discussion. I totally understand the point of AI being an useful tool. It is, indeed, very useful. The issue for me is not with the AI itself, but the culture and people developing, educating and using it. AI itself does nothing wrong: it learns from the material it is given, and it uses that to complete the tasks you ask of it. People, however, are horrible and sleazy. In perfect world, you as a writer would credit the maker of the cover/material, even if it was AI. You would add to your material "cover made by AI 1234xy". And as one would search said AI, they could find a list that shows who created said AI and what material was used to educate it. Artists, whose art was used as material, whould be contracted and both credited and also would recieve payment for their works that were used to train that spesific AI. And everything would be communicated and available to the person purchasing your work, and everyone would be payed even though this tool was used in the process. It would still make your use of AI more affordable than paying the original artists, and the artists would be payed and credited by people in the big corporation that created the AI. Then it indeed would be useful tool. However, as said previously, people suck. Even though you use AI as useful tool, the big corporations that develop this technology exploit people without their permission, and don't disclose where the material they use come from. If you use AI in our current world, you basically show people that you don't care where the art came from or whose work and livelyhood was exploited without payment or credit. And if you don't disclose that you used AI like you would credit an illustrator or an artist, you kinda seem as sleazy as those big corporations who exploit people unfortunately. In these discussions we always talk about creative field and copyright issues, and AI taking peoples jobs. However, we often forget the third issue with AI, that is "AI always does only what is has been taught". In art field this is not such a big issue in general, because in fictional illustration there is not really such a thing as misinformation. However, we are currently creating the culture that surrounds this new technology, so we should be aware of issues we are creating when we use it without consideration. As AI is used for more and more things (customer service, text to speech, translations and other means to make material available to everyone, healthcare etc.) the culture we create around it has more meaning. Instead of a book cover, think about medical illustration in a textbook, or translation of information. If AI is taught with material that is wrong or not trustworthy, the translated text or created illustration can cause misinformation and dangerous situations. So as we are currently only coming to this technology, I feel like it is very important to be open and honest about when AI is used and what is used to educate it, as to make sure there will be no misuse or misinformation promoted. And because the corporations creating AI are not open and honest in their work, I think it's not right currently to use AI-produced material. However, if one uses AI as a tool to make or promote their material, I think it's the least they can do to be honest themselves and tell their customers/fans/readers etc that AI was used. As for not having money to pay a creator, I would encourage people to search for a partner instead of an employee. Student or a hobbyist instead of a professional. As a student who dreamed of illustrating books or making covers, and desperately needed to get work for my portfolio, it would have been amazing to have an opportunity to work with an author and create something together. Of course, if you have a partner or a student who doesn't get paid fully or at all, you can't be Karen of a client who demands what is done and how, but if you are willing to give a creative person full credit and artistic freedom to make something they are proud of, I would bet there is someone who would love to partner with you. There is such a thing as mutual benefit and creative partnership. Beginner writer paired with art student, Musician partnered with animator etc.... to make something amazing either of them couldn't have done alone.
As someone with a total lack of ability in visual art, and therefore no skin in the game whatsoever, to me your response to the criticism seems eminently reasonable and ethically sound.
"Even if you make mistakes sometimes, you're a good person who deserves love" 🙂 I think you handled this criticism really well and I also think AI should be used as and aid (there's a youtuber who used ChatGPT to study for medical exams - it generated questions for her which was quite useful), but not a replacement and it needs to be used very carefully when it comes to art or any creative process (I'm not just talking about pictures, but TV scripts. I know SAG-AFRA protest set some boudaries for using AI in this area, but shortly after that I watched the final season of one of my favorite TV series which was an utter shite, with all due respect, and I refuse to believe AI writing wasn't involved and I was just thinking if they needed AI to generate ideas for those episodes maybe they should've considered whether that final season was actually necessary).
AI should not be an end point but a jump start or placeholder to the individual's creativity. As someone who has taught at the undergrad level over the last several years I have seen an increase in AI use in writing papers and I believe that we will be teaching students how to revise AI writing alongside basic writing/editing skills. To me, AI is assisted intelligence which can range from checking your spelling, correct verb and tense usage, to writing a barely passable paper. I tell my students AI will produce a D+ or C- paper. In regards to AI art, AI allows those who "think in words" to generate a visual image. The issue with AI visual art is that it is not easily revised or adapted by the end user.
I admire the self-reflection you had in this video, the way that you compared your own justifications to the justifications people make for playing the Harry Potter game was very emotionally intelligent. And I agree with the conclusion you came to from looking at it that way. I’d also like to add that the mentality of “it’s okay if someone wasn’t going to be able to hire an artist anyway” is nice in theory, but in practice… it just doesn’t work. We can’t just say AI art is only okay for people who otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford hiring artists, because that’s entirely unenforceable. It just opens the door for someone who *would* have otherwise been able to hire an artist to claim that they couldn’t. Also just generally the more of this AI art that’s out there, the worse it is for the internet and society as a whole. As consumers the only option we have right now is to honestly keep rejecting it. Let it be relegated to trash and sub-par “content”, and it will become just another thing that makes quality art stand out. I think for you it is the right choice to veer away from it for your promotions. There’s a lot of negatives people associate with AI art that don’t align with your values nor your quality of work. And for what it’s worth, I think your new cover looks great 🥰
I think your point about ability to pay is valid, if I were to create a little game and put it on Steam for $2 and sell 50 copies, does it make sense to have paid $300 to some to create some graphics since I suck at that aspect. However, a company making large profits should absolutely be paying artists for higher quality work. If AI assistants didn't exist, then my little game would likely never have been created in the first place, so no one would have been paid, since it be financially dead to try.
You are a good person, Thom. One does not have to do everything perfect to be a good person, and it's especially difficult when money is tight. I get that. I can appreciate why it was appealing to use AI for promotional purposes. I personally didn't think it was a problem, but I suppose it does in general promote and normalize the use of AI art? The more I learn about AI art, the creepier it gets. Remember when CEOs wanted to use AI/ChatGPT to replace writers and even actors?? This is NOT the way that AI is supposed to liberate us. >.< I know that some AI art was even making the rounds in support of Palestine, and people had mixed reactions. I saw one AI generated image of a journalist in Gaza that was meant to be a tribute to her, and she did say that she appreciated it ... but she was WAY thinner in the image than in real life. That was disturbing. You may also be familiar with the "All Eyes on Rafah" AI image that was shared by millions of people (way more than currently speak up/post for Gaza). At first it seemed that suddenly huge swaths of people all over the world joined the movement for Palestine overnight... But, did any of them go out and protest? It doesn't look like it. A lot of people in Gaza felt touched by how many shares that image had, but then were REALLY hurt when literally nothing changed and there weren't reports of more people protesting. They were like, "If millions of new people shared that image (who previously never spoke about Gaza before), then where are they? Why are they not protesting??" So, it was like a form of "easy activism" that did nothing, and it was also such a weird image and overshadowed the countless real images coming out of Gaza every single day. So, I guess we should be weary of AI and cautious when we use it, especially cautious about normalizing it. Using ChatGPT for work or school or resumes seems okay though, bc that is just benefiting you and more private use.
I'm glad you brought it up. I would very much like some more SKAM REACTIONS, but I don't want to be pushy. And I understand that it may not be a topic that currently interests Thom.
All my homies hate modern AI 🙏 I do agree that there are some aids that AI have had/can have that make life easier for creative content. I know with things like animation they sometimes use animation ai to help with blur frames and transitions just to make it easier on them. But never in a context that the artist/creator themselves doesn't have full control over the AI and never takes over that person's job. I think even more people and corporations are learning that AI cannot thrive cause I recently saw an article that showed some fast food company (Genuinely don't remember lol) has removed all its AI drive thrus cause it wasn't able to do it as Fast or Well as an actual person. Not to mention all the new articles i've seen popping up about how this rise in AI has caused such an energy crisis cause just like NFTs they DRAIN the powergrid everytime they are used to even get a mediocre result. Also saw that some AI art thieves are running into the issue that they're feeding off other AI Art so it's got this Copy of A Copy effect where the quality keeps massively degrading with each copy. I spend too much time Doom-scrolling on twitter and find these things at 2am, it's not a problem i swear. Onto the actual issue i've never been a fan of AI Art cause it always has looked somewhat off and has from the get-go been a slightly personal issue cause I have friends who do commission work sometimes or those friends have people they know directly affected by the AI Art rise. I think it definitely sends a slightly wrong message at this stage to use it because it's been so contenious for a while. If there was a way for ethically sourced stuff to be used it would be so much nicer, like Vocaloids which people tried to wrongfully take down during this whole thing before learning that every Vocaloid has specific artists and Singers that are paid well for everything that goes into their production. But directly supporting the artist themselves at least with stuff like this is probably always going to be better in the end cause it's much less corporate than my vocaloid example. If only we all had an adequete amount of money to pay for the artists we want cause I know i'd be drowning in commissions if i had the money to ask for them XD
