Artists, A.I., and Erroneous Claims (and free resources for you!)

So happy you are weighing in on this issue! Keep up the good work!

Yes! 🙌

Thoughtful and thorough analysis. Well written and a fun read. I create practical paintings and sculptures, but I make my living with digital art. I believe all people are inherently creative - we are creative animals. What has inhibited creativity for most of the population is the “professionalization” of art. People are afraid to sing because they won’t sound like Taylor Swift. People are afraid to paint because they can’t be Picasso. If we are to be truly responsible artists, we must encourage everyone around use to create - whatever it is. Write, sing, doodle - make something. This must be the true “democratization” of art.

Thank you for this Kyle!

Since I don't often read on this matter, reading the word, "gatekeeper" had me snickering on just silliness of the idea but your article kept the laughs coming. A great article and wonderful that you used humor to make your points. How you got past the "comedy gatekeepers" is a feat in itself. ; D

This is a fun read an does provide an amazing argument for the A.I discussion. A couple of thoughs: I really hope people can understand satire (I dont see it as a given anymore unfortunatelly) and second what I usually tell people is that there was a very specific social contract for artists to share their work for free: The art will make your day better and give the site or social media's page more relevance and in exchange this will be a platform for the artist to be known. What a LOT of people took from it (mostly non-artists) is that everyone has the RIGHT over your art if its online. This culture reflects on sharing and not naming the artists, Pinterest-like database full of unnamed artwork and finally techbros sweep on the internet to train their AI for free. The social contract is broken but it is hard to go back. We should think about the future if all those lawsuits go bellyup otherwise its over for creative professions as we know. Anyway love your stuff!

This line of thinking is unfortunately propagated by Adobe. From their CTO, in an article titled "Adobe CTO says AI will democratize creative tools": "The last decade or two decades of creativity were limited to professionals, people who really were high-end animators, high-end designers… Take Photoshop... You can literally create anything on that canvas that you can imagine... The problem is that to get to that level of mastery takes years, and there are only a few million people on the planet after a couple of decades who have mastered it at a level where they can extract the magic out of that tool. Now we are asking the disruptive question: can we bring that level of magic out of Photoshop without somebody spending years, or even months, or even weeks? Can they just approach this tool and using the power of AI and some breakthroughs in user experience, be productive and produce in Photoshop... This is what I mean by ‘democratizing’ — now a student could do this without knowing anything about Photoshop” https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/03/adobe-cto-says-ai-will-democratize-creative-tools/?guccounter=1

Thanks for writing this, I totally agree with all you said. My only concern is that, unfortunately, Adobe is actually part of the problem as they're using AI in their "adobe stock" and there are already many well known artists who have been affected by it (as it's possible to generate"art" that mimic an artist style by prompting their name in the description.. and Adobe stock is selling those AI gen stock images, gaining profit from it with zero respect for the artists themselves). There's an entire X threads by the brilliant Abigail Larson reporting all that, I suggest everybody to do a google search and read it.. it's depressing that the company that gave artists so many wonderful tools to help them create their work is now profitating in such an unfair and disrespectful way (Abigail managed to make adobe removing the AI gen images but the problem is still there).

Thank you, Kyle..! :)

Artists gatekeeping creativity and art-skills.. that's rich. First of, AI would generate nothing without artists in the first place. I'm a user of genAI myself but "art-skill" is a muscle and I don't think that relying on prompting solely makes you a more creative person down the road.

Thank you very much, Kyle. I am going to read it (I always do)

it is interesting to read that someone who created brushes inspired by Munch's style worries about style theft and the loss of artistic individuality.

yessir!

Jeez… where to start? Do you mind if I tell you two (long) stories? If you’re so inclined, please read on. I’m an Art school grad (one of those ritzy, super expensive Art school’s, that practically guaranteed you a career in the field when you graduated). 40 years ago (yes, I’m an old fart), as I was hanging out in the student lounge, one of my friends excitedly demanded I come to the brand-spanking new computer lab, to see the project he’d been working on. When we got there, he pointed me to a screen where there were several letters bouncing back and forth from one side of the screen to the other. He proceeded to explain that he’d designed the font and animated it. He went on to further say that this simple example would lead to a future where we’d be producing all of our artwork on computers, and that it would be so easy that anyone could do it. I didn’t respond immediately, and he asked what I thought. I told him that while it seemed exciting at the time, it would mean "the end of us as working artists". When he asked why, I told him that virtually all businesses would "always look toward finding ways to lower their costs. And if they could produce art themselves, or pay non-artists who would almost certainly be cheaper to contract with, why would they pay us?" He vehemently disagreed, claiming that people would always value "talent, expertise, experience, and human input." How wrong he was. Jump forward several years (to my second story)… my career as an illustrator didn’t go exactly as planned, and I found my self working as an Art Director. First in Advertising, then in publishing. As an Art Director, especially in magazine publishing, I hired illustrators on a regular basis for the projects I was working on. Because the publishers I worked for were some of the biggest in the country, my monthly art budgets were usually quite large, and because I’d spent several years struggling in the field, like many artists did at the time, I knew what it was like to try to make a living as an illustrator, so I made sure that the the artists I hired were very well compensated. But things change, and because of the explosive growth of (then referred to as) the World Wide Web, advertising revenue for virtually all of publishing started to disappear, and with it the ability of many people like myself to hire or properly compensate creators. As our budgets shrank, we were given strict instructions to continue to produce and present quality work, for a fraction of the money we’d spent previously. Hiring the best talent became almost impossible, because we didn’t have the money to pay them what they were worth, and had to go with, what was sometimes an undesirable option. And that was only if we were able to hire someone at all. Do you see where I’m going with this? AI is an existential threat to all actual creators, but it’s come for visual artists first. At one time, companies would be glad to seek out that unique voice, or talent, because it would separate them from their competitors. But in a world where everything that is created looks exactly the same, and can be produced for virtually nothing, and your only goal is to maximize your profits, companies will obviously choose the cheapest option. So, were we gatekeepers? Yes we were. Rightfully so. Oh, and one more thing. This idea that everyone is creative is nonsense. I went to school with lots of people who put in the time and effort, but were just not good enough to make it as creatives. When I hired illustrators, there were always people who were simply better, and more talented, than their peers. And now we’re supposed to believe that everyone is creative because they can instruct an algorithm to make something for them? That’s a hard no.

Excellent article Kyle! Keep standing up for artists and creativity!

Yes great job! The only part I personally disagree with is towards the end. I don't agree with using AI in any part of creating art, even if they found a way to make it completely ethical. Real artists can and should do all of this our selves. So I don't see a need for improvements of the tools them selves. Each of us are hired for our unique talents, imagination, perspective etc. it's how we create from start to finish that defines each of our works. AI in any form of creating art, would be using a crutch and ultimately weaken your skills and creativity as an artist. We learn through hands on involvement of every part of the creative process, often we learn more from our mistakes and what didn't work than what did. The only way to continue to grow as an artist is to continue to do the work ourselves, and not rely on a program to do any of that work. Over all great insight though! The snarky bit was funny too 😆 Thanks!

I like the sign off, long live human craftsmanship and creativity indeed (and this is coming from someone about to finish a Computer Science degree)