What's wrong with using AI art? 

I work in AI, my biggest issue is'nt the technology itslef it is the blatant violation of fair use laws to train models and profit off them without any compensation for the creators of the training data.

As an artist, I'm coming to terms with the fact that I care less far less about whether small time creators use AI and more about the arguments they make for using it. I fully empathize with creators needing to get ideas out faster and convey them better. It's making creation accessible to some people, and I find that lovely. When it comes to the YT platform in particular, a majority of what AI is replacing are those prominent stock images (complete with watermark) from the last decade, no biggy there. I guess the only thing this changes is that content creators aren't constantly in my Discord asking for 3 hours of work and an additional hour of changes for $10. We knew the content creator community didn't really highly value us and sometimes they just *couldn't* -- but I guess it was fun to be a part of it. It's the way that we now also have to *hear* about how undervalued we are and how much easier AI is that's hard. It's almost like people forget that they're comparing a machine to human beings, often those whose lifelong passion is in the art world. I think what really irked me was the "poetic justice" comment about art being a white collar job, coming from a youtuber who is able to afford Warhammer, no less. You realize that art has become so much more accessible in only the most recent decades? There's a reason we have a term for the "starving artist." You're not taking some big swing at the upper class, here. The AI offense to art isn't poetic justice, it's the "shoot the shaggy dog" trope, which is the absolute opposite. The white collar job in this case is the one where people get to bank off of the AI's automated work, and somehow, that's not the artists whose work taught those programs. All of that to say, it would have been better if you continued on as you were and didn't make this video. I know, you were getting comments and you still would have, but that's not going to stop, and you're only drawing more attention to it, now.

Hey GN. Artist 30 years over here, and a fan of your channel/your content for a while... and Im actually really disappointed and saddened by the content of this video, as well as seeing so many of my favorite OPR creators in the chat expressing solidarity with the viewpoints displayed here. I watched this video all the way through, and I don't believe you've any malicious intent, and as a small time creator (Twitch broadcaster, myself. VERY slowly migrating some of my Twitch workflow towards doing OPR, Indie Wargamming & TTRPG work on youtube) I feel your pricing concerns. So much of what we do is limited by time and treasure, and getting both is hard... But I also feel that you only glossed over or vastly oversimplified the problems artists and ethicists have with GEN-AI technology & its use/development, and boiled it down to "I cant afford an artist and never planned on hiring one, so I'm justified in using this technology"... as someone whose contemporaries are harmed on the regular by this technology, that hurts to see. Again, I don't attribute this to malice, I think its just a lack of context and an opportunity for dialogue. If possible, I'd like to talk to you at some point about this topic, if you think you'd be willing. A genuine discussion and an opportunity to talk earnestly, from a dedicated artist who's seen Generative AI's impact & very real damage of my field of work. If you were willing to do this (Id be willing to host the convo on my Twitch Channel if you'd be down, but a private discord meeting would be fine too. I don't want to put you on the spot and my goal isn't to milk it for views, but to open a dialogue on the topic. I wouldn't be able to do this until July anyhow), I'd be willing to do a *one-off, Gratis, Digital Art Commission* for you: Your Logo or that Red Bearded Dwarf, your call which one, free of charge save for a bit of your time. I only ask to retain the rights for purposes of putting it in my portfolio & for attribution (just tell folks who did it if they asked), and would otherwise be fine with giving you full distribution, reproduction & usage rights, even for profit (my only request is you not use the commission as a sample for feeding an AI Algorithm). I know that's a hell of an offer, and maybe I'm devaluing myself, but I would consider the opportunity to talk with you about this & establish a respectful dialogue with a fellow OPR community member worth a couple hours of my time. I would extend that offer to ONE PAGE MORE & WARBOSS FITZ as well, if they wanted it (One Gratis Character Commission for One Honest Conversation), but I don't want to get ahead of myself here. I love this hobby & I genuinely love OPR. And as an artist, I think it offers upcoming Artists and creators an incredible chance to build something cool, unique and equitable in the Tabletop Wargaming space. Would this be something you'd be interested in?

Skill issue

i hear a lot of excuses. best one yet tho is that "never wanted to become an artist - the job doesnt pay enough - so i use AI art - where I dont have to pay artists." perfect.

Your final conclusion is terrible. 1- The AI makes all the art, you just tell it what to do, like you would an artist. it's not really your creation, the same way it wouldn't if a real artist made it. 2 -AI can't create, as in it physically can't generate images it without a source to steal from. Artists use reference to enhance their work, but they can absolutely do art without relying on any reference. Humans have the ability to create, AI can only replicate. 3 - You're glossing over the fact that the reference material itself has been obtained illegally, it's a violation of intellectual property. No artists were paid to train the machine. We're not horses, we're professionals who's job is being illegally taken to train our replacement. Let me reiterate that: Illegally. It's not "the march of progress" it's mass plagiarism done by a mega corporation that's above the law. If your conclusion was "yeah, I know it's unethical, but idc" at least I would have some respect for you for owning up to your actions, I mean, what are you supposed to do? You're a small youtube guy, you guys were already stealing art left and right for thumbnails and we were absolutely cool with that. But this "Hey it's cool guys, it's just like taking reference tee hee" justification is old, mean spirited, and disingenuous. Oh and in a couple of years when it comes for your job, (and it will, much sooner than you think) I'd like to see you tackle it with the same dismissive tone.

I think you're missing the severity of plagiarism because you're exclusively looking at it from your fairly small scale usage and benefit from the stolen art. If some company came along selling your silver gold and blue paint scheme exactly as described, and making tons of profits off of that, you might be more than a little bothered. That's your idea, they took more than just inspiration, and now they're the ones making the money. By specifically focusing on youtube thumbnails and stuff, which really don't add that much monetary value all told, you're biasing your view. Also, why would you assume that there will still be real artists creating in a couple decades once AI has won? So long as people are shortsighted enough not to realize the societal costs of using AI, they're jut going to use AI. Why would *anyone* ever get paid to make art if someone else can get the same thing for pennies. Nobody has an incentive to make the lossy investment to keep creating human stuff. There will be no human art, there will be no human creativity, and AI will be left to inbreed with itself, endlessly reproducing the same things over and over. That's the future we're heading for. The AI world isn't a good one, and every use of AI takes us a tiny step closer to it. I can't speak for everyone, but my that's my reason for being an AI-not-even-once-er.

I think you're really missing the point. The issue is that these Ai models have been trained on people's art without their consent or compensation. It's literally build of the backs of the people it's going to replace, without compensation. These ai's are at the level where they can imitate the style of specific artists. Artists that will have trained for decades to reach that point. Who are now without their consent or compensation being replaced with uninspired copies. The industrial revolution argument doesn't add up entirely either cause Without the artists, the AI would never have been able to do create this art, since AI can only recreate. It kills and replaces an industry that was barely scraping by with a cheaper alternative that can't innovate, only shuffle things around. Unlike industrialization where the human element was still there in the form of product design and patenting for the machines. If paying artists for their art in order to train a model that can replace them, is ethical, is a debate we can have. But if you think stealing an artists work and using it to train a model to imitate their art for cheaper is in any way ethical or okay, then I'd be seriously disappointed in you. I used to treat it a lot less serious too till I got to talking with some artists that have been affected by the whole Ai revolution. I'd strongly suggest you do the same since it's better getting a grasp of why artists care. It's not the competition. It's the way the sausage is made

It's simple: who's being exploited is the person that had the art stolen that won't be paid and effectively did free labor.

So i'll try to put out my thoughts on the matter, hope you'll find them usefull. It's not an easy topic, hence there's no easy answer, but what i can say is that your specific use of AI isn't problematic at all. What's been unethical all along is simply how almost all the models out there came to be. But since you mentioned the way humans also references other artists work all the time, let's analyze that argument first: in my opinion, it's always been somewhat of a hidden consensus amongst artists that canonical referencing "is not a problem". Why that is true, however, is extremely important: 1) scale: humans can only achieve so much! It is also why the way you're using AI in the first place is totally fine. You're using the references to either create your own custom art or for relatively unimportant aspects of everydays life, like thumbnails, which i think they're more embellished titles than piece of artworks anyway. Even if you were to manually copy other's people work 1:1, there's only so much damage that you could do. 2) tactfulness and respect: while not universally true, most artists will iterate upon the references enough so that the result is now distant enough from the work of the original artist and more representative of their own vision. Exactly how you had iterated on the idea of the gold details on the models. It'd be vastly different if you proceeded to copy other people ideas 1:1 in order to sell them and profit off of it. Ai changes both of these. Scale is now a problem of gigantic proportions for the most problematic use of reference images, the 1:1 copying of a specific artist style. There's no tactfulness nor crediting nor the notion to be transformative enough. There's a lot of "use an artist name on a prompt to copy their exact artstyle". Hence the referencing performed at the level that the AI does is now totally in the realm of a commercial usage, which should be rightfully licenseable. This is why artists screams it was a robbery; nobody had the time to protect themselves from big corporations that quietly scraped billions of images in order to profit from them. Funnily enough, nowadays artists have not only developed licences that prohibit the inclusion of their work in any dataset, but also the tools that could taint their new artworks so that it would confuse ai models, thus preventing the continuous innovation from ai. So I wouldn't just bet that AIs will be able to stay innovative. In regard to the video, i would have prefered if you didn't cherrypick examples that clearly favors the AIs: that napoleon goblin logo could have been made by a fiverr artist for 15/20 bucks and better. So in terms of market rates, it was perhaps a relic from the past or a wildly overpriced piece of artwork. The most sensible artists have accepted the fact that AIs are here to stay, but there are those that have been created without permission and those that are, in fact, endorsed by artists, that have paid licenses and are definitely the "ethical" choice. They might not be the best ones out there, but if supreme quality wasn't your first concern, why not only use the ethical ones? It'd be interestesting to see a follow up video where you consider all the comments that you have received so far and if your opinion has faltered a bit.

I understand why people would be afraid of losing jobs but I feel there will always be a place for a good artists. I however do like to use ai for stuff i would never pay for. Like a dnd profile pic, for fun, for some backgrounds i may use for dnd. I would never pay for those, I couldnt afford to. However, i also dont have the ability to do it myself. Now I can kinda with AI.

I totally agree with the content creator. I've created art professionally and it doesn't bother me one bit that it was used without my permission to train an LLM, because like he said, we've all taken from other artists. The only way for nearly all artists to learn and become artists is by taking other's work for inspiration and/or to learn their techniques that we use in creating our own art/music/media. This has been going on since cave paintings and I doubt it will never stop, because the best way to learn how to do something is by either watching someone else do it, and/or learning how to copy it. I also believe he's is also right about the fact that the genie is out of the bottle and nothing short than a unanimous global consensus is going to stop it, and that might not work either, because as long as at least one person or company is still willing to use AI to create or assist in creating media it will eventually be everywhere again. All one can do now is either accept and/or adapt to it, because its out and much of it is free and that's just the way it is.

These people wont understand until it negatively effects them. This guy has enough videos to train a model to talk like him and write video scripts. Someone should come out with goodnuff gaming 2 channel thats all AI generated conent.

Everything LLM AI modules are trained on are stolen. Therefore no content AI makes is not stolen

Blatantly obvious you're not interested in a discussion and just want validation, given the usual Tech Bro circlejerking and only response to well trodden criticism being "nuh uh!" Use it or don't, but you're not a "victim" lol

That Orc Civil War poster does look sick! Keep on keeping on.

We want robots to do the labor and dangerous jobs people don't want to do so we can do the jobs we want like make Art and Music.

It's stealing.

Don't complain when streamers watch your full videos and obfuscate any information that would help their viewers find you. Its the same thing. You are profiting off others work.

The problem with AI is that discourages innovation in art. This is unconstitutional as per Article I, Section 8, Clause 8: [The Congress shall have Power . . . ] To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries. Graphic art is "useful art", so it's protected. But on the same hand, AI art is also "useful Art" so it's also protected. AI art isn't illegal, because there's no laws against it, but the Constitution says that there need to be laws to mediate all this. So basically congress isn't doing it's job. The danger is that there won't be anymore art development. Without jobs for mid-level artists, no one will train up to become a top-level artist. And without top-level artists there won't be any new art. Though I do find it funny that there are a bunch of artists who do nothing but draw copyrighted characters, crying foul about copyright law.

I am totally for AI art. I am in the middle of making a video now that has over 100 "art" pieces in it. Some of those are on the screen for 5 seconds. The last one of these videos I did made $1.47 there is absolutely no way that it would ever be viable to get an artist to make that for a dollar. Neither would an artist be capable to make art with the speed I need to use it.

First video of yours and using AI is inherently anti-artist. These images aren't yours because you can't copyright AI content. Something that is built for profit, which all AI is, it's not for free. You like AI but this defense just proves you are pro-ai, and they aren't good reasons to use AI. You don't need it. AI content is not something you need. Whats wrong with AI? Everything.

It is new Tech that WILL be used regardless of anything ANYONE can do about it. Accepting reality will make no difference, but it prevents alot of "old man yells at cloud" stress and wasted time.

Dont apologize for doing what you want, you're an adult and its your channel and its not against the Laws.

Using AI art is fine. There is this exceptionally unrealistic view that artists are actively compensated for their artwork (they are hardly if ever compensated for their work), and that somehow people who are using AI art prevents this (it doesn't). For the average person who either has no artistic talent or has no time to make art AI art is an amazing tool to allow access to creative tools that express themselves. I would not describe myself as an artist, but many of the people who have seen my work tell me I have talent. I use AI art and songs all the time because it gives me a means to creatively express myself that works for my schedule, which I expect my free time will shrink even further with the prospect of starting my family.

When I saw this I thought it was a joke. As an artist I use this analogy as a way to think about it; "If you are a shopkeeper and someone takes a little bit out of that product and the guy who took it is a multimillion dollar company who doesn't give a shit about the artist, do you think the shopkeeper would care well they do and can't do a damn thing". So it's not your problem or anything you can change by using or not using ai art. But just know that you are still probably funding a multimillion dollar company who thinks nothing of artists. I don't care if your a gamer if you make a BOLD claim about a field you have no part in, then don't make the most BOLD comment you can.

Artist & Programer for 20+ years, lost my employment last year and took a timeout to learn AI & Machine & Deep Learning. 99% of neysayers should just be ignored is my opinion. 1. The change is unavoidable anyways. 2. If you dont use it , others will use it and make more money/be more succesfull. U would be stupid to not use AI. 3. If you are an artist and dont want your art to be stolen dont put it on the internet , have you learned NOTHING growing up ? 4. Most artist that complain have their stuff on open platforms like facebook, twitter, deviantart ect. they DONT pay anything for THAT but recieve the webspace and traffic and "cloud" for "free", in reality they pay with exacly that, their data as it should be and be expected, read your contracts (General terms and conditions) before signing up. 5. AI is nothing more then alghorithms and dumb stupid code in the end, the same as a photoshop filter, u would need to ban images using filters with their logic too. (or similar things using techniques they cant create themself) 6. The argument that they dont even get mentioned in the "credits" for the art is similarly stupid, havent seen many artist credit the brushes and fonts they use or other resources, many artist "pirate" fonts anyways if they arent working on a rly rly big project anyways. (talking about smaller stuff ofc) 7. Rarely any ai generated image is instantly usable, in most cases it needs finishing touches or bigger changes anyways if u dont wanna spend hours or days working on the ai generation optimization. Even then it might not be what u want and u need to hire an artist anyways, same as before. Yes, some of my arguments are more stupid then others, doesnt change the fact that i never understand my "artist" colleagues always saying its "fair use" or "just inspired by" but when someone does it with their stuff its suddenly the end of the world. Grow up, world has changed, deal with it and stop whining.

I think @One_More_Page has the right of it -- on little channels, creators can't just hire a tonne of artists to make all this great stuff. It would be fantastic to be able to afford to hire a team of artists, but these small niche channels would never make-up the costs of hiring artists in youtube ad revenue. You just wouldn't do it, so there isn't actual any loss happening here. The same reason Lamborghini didn't lose a sale because I bought a Mitsubishi, I was never in the market for something as expensive as a Lamborghini. It makes the content more interesting to watch and provides the viewers something to look at that simply would not otherwise exist. You are bang on for the rest of it. I'll go a bit further though. Artists who've priced themselves out of the market can't complain they aren't getting business, that's not how the market works. The price is ALWAYS what the market will bear, and if its too high, then it doesn't sell. Creating art is a lot of work, yes, but you aren't working for someone else, you are working for the market. The market decides the value, not the artist, no matter what they think. This is true for all goods and services. Artists have simply priced themselves out of the small/hobby/for fun market and now a competitor, AI, has filled the void.

I only care if you’re trying to sell it to me in an overpriced art book disguised as a rule book

nothing. it's just something else to fearmonger about. People see a new tech and their caveman unga bunga brain tells them to be very afraid.

Commenting for the people who don’t care either way. As long as the video content is good, I’m good.

Just technology doing it's thing. Artist are not the first to suffer or the last, move on.

ifyoudontplaytowinsomeoneelsewill/shrughhhrhr

EVERYTHING!!!! hire a real artist or learn how to do art yourself

the argument of "we all use inspiration to make things" is a false equivalent. because, as someone who made some AI models and knows the math behind technologies like stable diffusion and wave-function collapse, they don't use "inspiration" but the literal pieces of the original art used in training. it might be obfuscated behind 100 layers of mathematical abstractions and averaging, but in the end of the day it's just a more complex "copy-paste" of many images blended together. most people don't understand that because math is hard, and advance math+complex algorithms is even harder. there's a reason why you can't copyright AI art, and another reason why you should never be able to do so, unless you own the rights for ALL art pieces used in the training, or all pieces that are not owned by you were royalty free with a permissive use licenses specifically addressing the creation of copyrighted material from those works. that is the MAIN controversy surrounding AI art, as ALL large AI groups used copyrighted material in the generation of the base algorithms like most stable-diffusion models without even giving credits to the artists. and it just gets more muddy the more you actually dig into the legal issues surrounding it. it's all fine for personal use, but there is still legal debate over who would even hold the rights if you COULD copyright the image from an AI model - will it be the person who wrote the prompt? the person who trained the AI? the person who wrote the algorithm? the company who made the piece of hardware used to run the model? or something completely different like "just give it all to Dave"? all of those have serious arguments against them, all have a little value supporting them. especially Dave, Dave should be the one to get the rights for the AI art and I don't have some disembodied robotic voice telling me to say that. Dave.

As an artist, and tech user, I have mixed feelings about AI. It does alow me to quickly get ideas out of my head into a physical product, but it is just to easy to use and takes away from developing my skills. I believe AI is and will continue to be "the greatest theft in history " in more ways than we understand.

Artist here. I get it. As a small YT creator, commissioning artists for 200+ dollars for an artwork for a video you probably make less than 5 dollars on is a poor proposition. And we need to charge that much as an artwork requires tens of hours of work and we ourselves ALSO don't want to get paid less than $5 per hour of work either. Once you are someone who makes thousands per video, and custom artwork is required (say, a lore video with very specific art), then yes commission artists. AI image does leave a bad taste in my mouth and DOES reduce my chance of me watching your content, but I get it.

You know, you don't HAVE to use any sort of custom art for your thumbnails. What's wrong with using photos? Or official artwork? Hell, why not use your painted minis in the thumbnails? You trying to explain why ai images are "good" is seriously disappointing.

I am a hobbyist artist who has sold some commissions. I make a living off a regular non-art related job. So I personally don't feel threatened by AI but I feel I can speak a little on the matter at least. For the first point, $500 is really steep for a commission. Most run between $30-$200 give or take. Not all artists charge the same thing so finding a happy medium between cost and quality isn't that hard. If I had to guess the artist charged your friend that much because it was for a company's branding and anything that goes into a company costs a lot. Sort of like how software for business is so much more expensive. Still, you can always find another artist to work with even for that. As for the theft. To my understanding, no, the AI is not taking reference or inspiration from the art in it's database. The art is just a collage of noise and snippets from its data set. More like an essay made of 100% quotes with no attribution than someone studying and telling what they learned from others. If you have the AI's data set and the image it produced (and enough time to compare everything) you can pick out the pictures it grafted into the new image. With a human, you can see where the inspiration is from, and what they took as reference, but it is never a 1 to 1. Entering in a prompt is not like making art, no matter how much effort you put into it, what the machine produces is still snippets of other artists work. Just in a way that the machine thinks conforms to you command. All that said, you using it for your channel doesn't bother me. I just didn't care for your reasoning. Enough to give you engagement it seems. The big threat to art as a profession is from corporations adopting AI. Either way, best of luck with your channel.

As an artist I can't help but find these AI tools fascinating, with all that's possible, so long as I don't look at the greater implications. The way I understand it, to build these AI tools a continues supply of high quality data/art is necessary or else they will become dated. I don't really care about the specific interpretation of copyright law so long as artist are necessary there should be some way for them to make a living. If these companies continue as they have I fear the next generation of artists will be expected to develop all the skills of a full time artist in their spare time. If I borrow your comparison to industrialization; it would be like a factory owner not paying their labourers, you the customer may not have done anything wrong but you are complicit in their exploitation. To be honest, I expect that I may be required to do the same soon and I don't know what to think about that.

I would rather you had kept using AI generated images rather then make this video defending your use of it.

Would you have an issue with somebody training an AI on your voice and using that for their RU-vid videos? I mean it's no longer your voice, it's just AI and whatever the person used your voice to say would be their idea, they aren't stealing anything. It would take them a long time to perfect the tones to match how they want your voice to say things, so they are justified in using your voice, because they would spend a lot of time working on it.

By using AI, you are contributing to a tragedy of the commons. Yes, you as an individual will benefit, but the eco system which you inhabit will be adversely affected by your actions and that of others who are seeking their own benefit. As a teacher do you make your students write essays on a topic because you want X number of words on a certain topic you already know a lot about, or do you do it because you want your students practicing the craft of writing? If your student were to satisfy your assignment by prompting an AI until it gave them enough coherent words to meet the parameters of your assignment, would you still pass them? In my view, AI is a shortcut around putting in the time to improve yourself as a creator. You stated you can not afford to pay a human artist, but you still want your videos to have a cool looking thumbnail so you have resorted to AI art. I interpret this as you wanting to compete with youtube channels that have visually compelling thumbnails, but have not developed your skills to produce the thumbnails without resorting to AI. You are now also competing with channels who have an AI voice read a script, written by a human, an AI voice reading a script written by an AI, and 100% authentic human creators. Who is cheating, and who is using new technology to augment their own creative endeavors?

Love the video! Great points, but I am not sure you are right when you said "By using AI art I am taking away potential work from aspiring artists." Now I don't know your financial situation, but usually a channel of your size doesn't have the funding capability to do commissions. If there is no money to pay for the work of aspiring artists, than can you really say that you have taken away anything? The only thing I can really see that you have "taken" away is the potential "exposure" that you could have provided to aspiring artists by using their publicly available art and crediting them. Until one is capable of paying for a commission or to license art, the use of AI art is not taking away anything.

On the one hand, YT needs more OPR content. On the other hand this is a very weak and disappointing set of justifications for why you shouldn't have to change what you want to do, which is use AI art. I'm no one special, you don't need to care about my opinions on this, but since you've indicated you're going to keep using AI I'm going to block your channel.

I'm a graphic designer for a community college. I do photography and illustration. People constantly ask me if I'm worried about how advanced phone photos are getting, and web-based design programs like Canva. Honestly, I've been pushing and training instructors to make their own flyers and snap their own photos for small club events so that I don't have to be so involved and can then I can focus on the big complex projects like orientation books and program brochures. The sharpest most advanced camera on the planet will not make a good portrait photo unless an experienced human is working with the client and directing them on how to pose. I also play music and I've noticed that in my city, people have found a renewed appreciation for live music. (or maybe I'm just getting better lol) But I think because of technology, being able to see someone actually do their craft live or in person without autotune is special again. So yeah technology takes away some jobs but at the same time makes some people more specialized. And also don't stop using the red beard dwarf. I see your title card mixed in with the other RU-vid videos and I automaticly know that it is you. I'm like, "Look at Good'Nuff being good'nuf with marketing skills." Cheers!

I find many of the arguments being made against AI art, even the "theft" ones, to be the exact same arguments that were made against digital art, even up until a few years ago. As much as some may deny it, I experienced it myself in the 90s, and more recently I've seen a collection of posts, from around 5 or more years ago, which show some pretty harsh criticisms of digital art, that frankly I was shocked were still held by some. AI is a tool, like any before it, it has good and bad uses. I've seen several very skilled artists make use of AI recently, in ways novice users can't touch. That said, AI in general is going to impact our society on the level of the industrial revolution, if not greater.. And that includes the automation of most human labor, and various forms of AI and robots out competing the vast majority of workers. People need to wake up to what that means, as soon as possible. We need to demand an AI Dividend for all, to repay everyone for their data investment, which goes into training AI. We need to form a large movement, to demand that AI be collectively owned by society, so that we don't end up with techno feudalism.

have you considered the energy cost of ai art and the impact that has on fuel consumption/global warming in the long term? You mentioned having children, so i think it may be worth looking into the sort of future environmental impact this sort of technology can have. To your point on the history of the industrial revolution, its impact on global warming is also very clear and undeniable. So maybe ponder that aspect of it as well. Also the gray area of personal vs commercial fair use gets really muddy really fast, like sure, we all reference each other's paint schemes in the hobby, but that is almost always a personal hobby project. (the only case i can think of where it becomes commercial is when it comes to paint commissions). Sure going to the library and referencing a publication for a school project you were never meant to make money from is imo totally fine. but when it comes to making money using ai art trained on art who's creators never signed to have their work used to be "studied" by the machine, like... the line gets muddy fast! I understand being a small creator with a channel that is primarily a hobby and for fun, and using every tool available at your disposal to the best of your ability for your goals. but i think there are some points on its use you've yet to consider. and its made the message of this video feel a bit disingenuous and selfish. Maybe try putting yourself in the shoes of artists, or put yourself in the shoes of the industrial revolution era street cleaner trying to make ends meet. Consider how content farm videos with their drab robotic vocals and nonsensical scripts could impact the field of video making from you current shoes.

I'm an artist, and I would click your videos and watch them through if you used MS Paint stick figures, so long as the video has substance. AI art is far less appealing, and it tells me that 1. You're incredibly vain, but don't want to expend the time, effort, or money to appeal to your vanity, and with that, 2. You're not considerate of others, and will retroactively justify things that you do that may be seen as unethical to bury the cognitive dissonance for using something shrouded in controversy that you don't understand. Stick figures are way cooler than AI art. Just saying... it's the modern equivalent of using Clipart and Comic Sans for your 90's and 2000's business logo... but worse somehow.

it looks so ugh. it's the immediate knowing that its ai too right from the get-go i can tell its ai slop. not that there isn't inherently wrong with it besides the countless artist artwork being used to fuel their machine without their permission including artists that passed away it looks so lazy; I can't really watch what you made it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. like really dude you can't make a normal RU-vid thumbnail??? you can use stock images to make pretty creative thumbnails.

You could have used music industry as a historical reference as well. The thing AI companies are doing to visual artists didn't fly with music AI, the whole thing was dead before it got to lay eggs. Also, you call AI generated images your creations, they are not, just as you wouldn't call commissioned art your creation. Machines don't do inspiration, the analogy the way humans are inspired by someone else's work is also wrong. I agree thechonology is here to stay, there is no going back, it's just the way it is. As with any tech out there, AI is in it's early wild west phase, there are no regulations yet, but I'm sure there will be and the world will adjust.

Do whatever you want. Fire up that AI. Keep making cool content.

Do you want videos and other creations from a larger diversity of sources? or do you want 3 producers to be the only option? AI art / generative AI in general allows small creators to exist. AI art is not going anywhere, it will only get better and cheaper. What it means to be an artist is changing, please keep up, adapt find a way to use these new tools. Don't try to stop technological progress, it won't work you will waste your time and effort.

The technology in and of itself only works because millions of works of art were used without permission, credit, or compensation to hundreds of thousands of artists. In addition, the server farms that are necessary for the technology to operate have spiked electricity demands to a historically unprecedented degree. They have curtailed the switch away from fossil fuels in many areas and are exhausting fresh water supplies in other areas. If you continue on this path I will lose all respect for you whatsoever and block your channel. No, the further the video goes the worse you get. Goodbye.

I think the complaints against AI art remind me a lot of how journalists a few years ago telling oil workers to just learn to code after losing their jobs. Something which they did not take well when news companies started mass layoffs and others reminded the formerly employed journalists of their previous comments.

Your copy of a copy analogy is completely wrong. I use synthetic data to generate loras all the time to create consistent characters. If you use the right comfy UI workflow, You can in fact "enhance".

There ought to be an AI art generator site that artists can upload their works to, users pay a fee, and the uploading artists get paid out depending on how much of their work was used over the month.

Maybe is something from the english language that I can't fully understand, but I see a lot of people talking about "AI art" like a synonimous of "AI generated image". If made by AI, then is not art. Or at least, the concept of art we have in spanish language. Your channel is good, and your content is fun and useful, but the AI generated images of the thumb made me reluctanct to watch your videos before.

Two minutes in, and you admit you'd rather put people out of work and use AI art instead. That's enough for me.

Horse drawn carriages are common is some parts of Ohio and Pennsylvania. Prepare for a flood of comments from all the Amish you just slighted!

I feel people saying they want to use AI art are mainly coming from the stance that "I don't want to pay for good art", since...I don't see people doing AI art of crappy drawings of cats and dogs...for example. Not to mention that AI art is based on a massive intellectual theft.

Hey i remember copied cassettes! Does that make me old? No. The gray hair makes me old...

you're so full of it. i hope all your students turn in ai essays.

I think you may be focusing too much on the automation and not that much on the real issue people have, which is the plagiarism part. As others have mentioned, AI depends on existing art which is a) made by real people and b) used without their permision. Then you equate that with the "inspiration" or "learning" that artist do from others, but that's a hard disagree. It'd be more accurate to compare it to tracing, for which artists _have_ gotten into trouble in the past. Something something, my 2¢. This issue aside, love your podcast, tho. c:

In PR training i was taught that for every 100 customers, only 1 will comment. So, every one commeng does roughly equal 100 people's opinions.

Seeing AI art leaves a bad taste in my mouth, but that is for the association I have with big companies using it. If I pay for a product I expect it to have art made by a human and human mistakes if any. The new edition of Hero Quest comes to mind. When it comes to RU-vid creators, I cannot stop my initial reaction of distaste - but I won't complain. I understand it's unrealistic to expect a small youtuber to commission art for every thumbnail. Some day we might be playing with AI generated rulesets, using AI generated miniatures in AI generated VR game rooms, but I don't think it will ever be the same (and therefore replace) as something made by a person, with all its beautiful flaws. I guess it is like you said, tailors today are premium, and horses are a hobby. If youre passionate about art, it will still be there to consume in the future. Anything non AI will likely still be there, albeit more expensive.

Use any tools to do a nice vid and don’t listen to prehistoric thinking people. I remember in the 1980’s when I started using a computer to produce art, a lot of my fellow students considered it was no art at all…

*Battle for Azeroth cover art mirrored* ... "unique creation of mine"

What's the AI you use to create your images?

My entire career, start to finish, was graphic design. Retired now. I would have loved to have these tools when I was at my desk. I would have used them non freaking stop. Photoshop was fun, but this is next level. I see the code monkeys behind the scenes as being the artists here. They did good work and made great tools that democratize the ability to be creative. Not butthurt at all that a five year old can now do the designs I used to do back in the 90's. We all stood on the shoulders of someone that went before us.

AI art is fine. The idea that small creators are going to commission a ton of work, or even any, is delusional. It does kind of suck, but AI is going to put us all out of business eventually. I am a programmer, I use AI in my job; AI will evolve to do my job and then I will use it to make my own programs or architect projects, but then even those jobs will be done entirely by AI in fairly short order after it can program competently. This isn't going to be like other revolutions, there will be less and less for humans to do. On top of that, this is inevitable, to deny us this power would only allow other powers to exploit it first and rule the world in a less 'free' fashion. Hopefully this will end in utopia and not dystopia, but the only way human art is going to be done is because people want to do the work so much so it is done for free or near free. There can still be value in that, potentially a lot, but its not going to be in dollars, but prestige.

pretty much everyone opposed to AI art, especially as b roll in a video, are doing so out of some kind of knee jerk reaction they haven't thought through. I don't really want to go into particulars here, but what I will say is in my opinion there is such a thing as the tyranny of art. Art is one of the most labor intensive, man hour consuming, money consuming things in existence. Got a videogame? Probably a good 60%, 70%, hell, 80%, of the man hours involved are going into some form of art, whether it be 3D modeling, texturing, etc. AI art improves the creative prospects of small teams and independent developers by removing a massive roadblock in their way. The same is true for video related things, it's easier than ever to produce a professional looking video without having to pay buttloads for assets. Yeah it sucks for artists who might not get a job, but in a lot of the cases I'm talking about above they probably never would have gotten a job. Now are huge companies going to use this to save money? Yeah, and that sucks, but overall I think more good is going to come out of this. We could witness a creative revolution where shackles and roadblocks are removed, and imaginations are much freer to produce what they want, and the little company can start to challenge the big company in quality. The democratization of media if you will

Ai is the future. Embrace it

Everything is a Remix

Artists blaming AI is similar to Herod ordering the slaughter of the innocents. How did artists become artists in the first place? Didn't they mimic previous artists and their styles? AI will never have the imagination and the talent of a good artist. If I was an artist myself, I would use AI in my benefit instead of blaming it. (be it music, drawing or any other kind of art)

let me save you 23 minutes; there is nothing wrong with using AI art, it just kinda long like shit sometimes. next question

If I see ai imagery in a video's thumbnail, I'm gonna assume the creator put as little effort into the vid as they did the thumb and not watch it

You just want a cheap shortcut to have things learned and done for you while relying on what others have already done without that same advantage.

AI is the future of content creation.

Great Video! You did an excellent job exploring the topic and teasing out the issue.

I dont like AI art. I think its fine as a tool to create a foundation and build upon it. Because it does use work of artists who mostly didnt agree to let their stuff to be used for it. Many scummy stuff has been done like buying a sketch for cheap and evolving it with AI. Or people screenhotting stuff off Artstreams, evolving and posting the stuff as their own. That is just my opinion, ultimately its similar to using photos and inspiration to create something new out of it thats why I accept it as a tool. And there is also nothing wrong to use it for fun every once in a while. Personally, I think the biggest problem of Ai is that it is simple a shortcut and does stuff that people who love drawing or do it for a living might never reach the quality with zero effort. Its just completely unfair imo and has now created the situation that, if trained well enough, you cant be sure if its AI or not. Etc. Nothing that makes Ai illegal or anything. Its just demotivating especially if you have worked hard to get to this skill level. Or want to but might never will. Back in the day we did say similair things to digital art being a cheatcode but its not even comparable to Ai. Digutal and traditional art are completely different things but both are a craft while Ai is just mass production with extra steps. And ultimately while it might not steal as many jobs from freelancers the big companies are always willing to let people fall if it just increases their profit by 0,1%. They care just as much about the value of art and the ammount of time and work like an average person. Somone who isn't an artist or at least someone who draws for fun can't understand it fully I think. I dont write this to discredit your arguement. People who arent into playing tabletop and building models or people who dont enjoy videogames and stuff also wouldnt understand whats the deal with them for example even if the worst of the worst is currently happening vehind the scenes of these medias/things. I also think that Ai should've never been this easily and early publicly available without any form of enough regulations and safety meassures. But its probably impossible to attempt something like that anyway. Ultimately I think its better to pay an artist and I think the example you provided wasnt the best since it sounds like Waterloo games was absolutey scammed and there are enough artists who'd do similar stuff cheaper. However Im also realistic and wouldnt shame someone who runs a small channel for fun to use Ai over buying art. There is not as much damage from a RU-vid thumbnail as the examples I listed above. And Im here for fun OPR Videos. But I'd also say that its not the best or ideal arguement to say that technical advancement has always taken jobs, etc. etc. so its just how things are going. Since it affects friends of me and people I follow who earn their living with that and this makes it sound meh. So it comes across like a bit of a cold hearted justification when it wasn't nessecarily meant to be one. I am sure you will definitly find someone who is willing to draw a mascot or emotes and stuff for less than 1000$. But of course, for thumbnails this frequently etc this would eventually eat into your bills. Art is not fully compareable to other jobs. In terms of products, yes. But there is so much more to art than that which is not taken into consideration here.

AI voice to text sounds more lively than this bro.

What we have now is peak AI, from now on it will start devouring itself. AI or not I associate bad art with bad content, RU-vid has an ocean of content and i am more likely to support someone who puts in the effort.

Oppositing A.i. art is like a painter opposing the camera...now everyone hads a camera in their pocket. Its simple gatekeeping becsuse no one wants to lose power.

Keep using AI! You cannot un-invent cars. AI as technology cannot be bottled up and buried. It exists. It will NEVER go away now.

well, I mean, the argument falls apart, when you realize that the artists that an artist uses for inspiration, don't get paid for their work either. So if I make a painting, none of the artists I used as references get paid either. Keep on using AI art.

When you are making youtube videos where you can fair use post other peoples artwork as a thumbnail that relates to what your talking about.. Imagine trying to talk about a book without showing its cover art.... so why is that okay? but ai art in a youtube video is not okay?... Its all about context. RU-vid is the perfect place to experiment with using Ai art. As most youtubers are solo creators that cannot afford a team of artists for their videos. "Ai Art" will show its limits it will become "mainstream" the sign of a low quality work... and sometimes low quality is okay.. look at south park. So when big studios use AI they end up looking like low quality mainstream work... and they will fail... Look at Disney these past few years, they are using low quality stories, thus they are failing even with high quality artists. If high end studios are to survive they have to innovate and to innovate you need real artists.

First they came for the artists, wonder what sector they will come after next, maybe education? The problem with AI is that it takes over white collar jobs, and there are not many blue collar jobs left, as machines have taken over or are taking over even more. What will you do if you are obsolete? The artists see this already, but a lot people don't see it YET. So if you want to keep your job in future you need to stop supporting AI now, or use it very sparingly. I also seriously doubt that you will commission many thumbnails in the future even if your channel becomes successful, as AI will get much better and there won't be a need anymore. And one last thing, when everybody can create any content they want with the help of AI, your content will lose most of it's value. Only big corporations will have the marketing budget to be able to be seen in a sea of content, and make most of the revenue to boot. Just look at the Mobile market and small developers, it's pretty much impossible to make a living nowadays due to the enormous amount of content on offer. It seems to me that you haven't thought this through properly.

I have been a professional artist for >30 years and I think AI is the best thing for art since Adobe Suite when it was subscription free. Artists who spend their time complaining instead of learning the tools are shooting themselves in the foot and I'll be happy to take their clients. I think a lot of the negativity is just ignorant people too lazy to do any research absorbing the astroturfing from industry lobby groups looking to engineer some kind of regulatory capture of the industry.