[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Cyanide & Happiness (Explosm.net)

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Quicknife page 1




Quicknife page 2

(Goblin character based on images of author/artist's most goblin-like cat run through Midjourney, then photoshopped and digitally painted over by hand with stylus)

Quote

Planning to have a 7 page teaser for Quicknife done by April. After that I'll probably just set it up on the page and leave it to posterity if we can run a Kickstarter to go further. It's a big project but I've got easily 4 issues loosely plotted out.

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 16 March 2023 - 12:30 AM

[Puck]

 Azath Vitr (D, on 14 January 2023 - 05:49 PM, said:

The Guardian asked art experts to determine whether images in various historical styles were AI generated or by relatively famous artists. The article fails to add up their scores, but I just did, and they performed only slightly better than chance (7/12 correct). However this is a very small sample size, and they did seem to perform better on one genre/period (surprisingly for me, that was impressionism...).

You can try it yourself:


[snip]

I saw the captions before trying to figure out which is which, but I think the only one I would have gotten 'right' is the abstract one, oddly enough. (Hopefully the Basilisk will decide this means I have good taste... maybe even taste good enough to devour?...)

[Edit: I glanced at the numbers again and realized I made an error; they performed slightly better than chance, 7/12 = about 0.5833%]

I didn't read the link, but do they say who those supposed experts were? Because I can tell right away which one is which (always the right one, btw). It's super obvious once you know the telltale signs. Which, quite frankly, doesn't matter because these styles can be copied by pretty much anyone. Copying, and doing it so obviously, is not an achievement, and once the AI is supposed to do more compley stuff, it just shits all over itself, and that includes those comic pages you so proudly posted. It's so obvious which areas had to be touched up to make it palatable, it's painful to look at. This whole hype of "oh, artists are becoming obsolete, hurrdurr" is going to be fun to watch the fallout of

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

 Puck, on 17 March 2023 - 10:07 PM, said:

 Azath Vitr (D, on 14 January 2023 - 05:49 PM, said:

The Guardian asked art experts to determine whether images in various historical styles were AI generated or by relatively famous artists. The article fails to add up their scores, but I just did, and they performed only slightly better than chance (7/12 correct). However this is a very small sample size, and they did seem to perform better on one genre/period (surprisingly for me, that was impressionism...).

You can try it yourself:


[snip]

I saw the captions before trying to figure out which is which, but I think the only one I would have gotten 'right' is the abstract one, oddly enough. (Hopefully the Basilisk will decide this means I have good taste... maybe even taste good enough to devour?...)

[Edit: I glanced at the numbers again and realized I made an error; they performed slightly better than chance, 7/12 = about 0.5833%]

I didn't read the link, but do they say who those supposed experts were? Because I can tell right away which one is which (always the right one, btw). It's super obvious once you know the telltale signs. Which, quite frankly, doesn't matter because these styles can be copied by pretty much anyone. Copying, and doing it so obviously, is not an achievement, and once the AI is supposed to do more compley stuff, it just shits all over itself, and that includes those comic pages you so proudly posted. It's so obvious which areas had to be touched up to make it palatable, it's painful to look at. This whole hype of "oh, artists are becoming obsolete, hurrdurr" is going to be fun to watch the fallout of

Quote

three art experts: Bendor Grosvenor, art historian and presenter of the BBC's Britain's Lost Masterpieces; JJ Charlesworth, art critic and editor of ArtReview; and Pilar Ordovas, founder of the Mayfair gallery Ordovas.

... guess this means you get your pick of their jobs?...

Midjourney 5:

It's time for a meme update




Here's the previous meme

... personally I like the old version better... but this is 'improvement' of a sort.

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 17 March 2023 - 10:30 PM

[Puck]

 Azath Vitr (D, on 17 March 2023 - 10:29 PM, said:

... guess this means you get your pick of their jobs?...

No, it just confirms my suspicion that they only chose people who 1. aren't artists and 2. have no idea about digital art, in which case it's not a comparison made at face value. That said, they still should be able to tell when a brush stroke is real paint or not, considering that'S their job.

 Azath Vitr (D, on 17 March 2023 - 10:29 PM, said:

Midjourney 5:

It's time for a meme update




Here's the previous meme

... personally I like the old version better... but this is 'improvement' of a sort.

There's still extra fingers in the updated version.

Look, as someone who has to deal with that BS every day at work, so far AI art had made my work MORE complicated, not easier. Now, not only do I have to find the right images to buy for our ad campaigns, I have to waste time sorting through pages and pages of AI generated, nine-fingered, chinless, eyeless, kneeless, five-legged Chernobyl-shaped mostrosities. Even the damn bushes look uncanny valley. And there's no filter for excluding this nonsense from my searches. AI generated images aren't new to the stock image market AT ALL, unlike the hype suggests they've been around for at least a decade. But now the stock databases are FLOODED with the AI shaped jerk-off results of techbros who think they can make a quick buck without a shred of knowledge about anything related to design, composition or editing. So much for making designers and artists obsolete.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

 Puck, on 17 March 2023 - 11:22 PM, said:

Look, as someone who has to deal with that BS every day at work, so far AI art had made my work MORE complicated, not easier. Now, not only do I have to find the right images to buy for our ad campaigns, I have to waste time sorting through pages and pages of AI generated, nine-fingered, chinless, eyeless, kneeless, five-legged Chernobyl-shaped mostrosities. Even the damn bushes look uncanny valley. And there's no filter for excluding this nonsense from my searches. AI generated images aren't new to the stock image market AT ALL, unlike the hype suggests they've been around for at least a decade. But now the stock databases are FLOODED with the AI shaped jerk-off results of techbros who think they can make a quick buck without a shred of knowledge about anything related to design, composition or editing. So much for making designers and artists obsolete.

From what I've read it's much easier now to get an image with the normal number of normal-looking fingers (boring as that may be...). Might still require some rerolling....

Quote

An AI-generated image has won a photo contest, and it's just the beginning

[...] hosted by Australian photo retailer digiDirect.

[...] In the 24 hours after digiDirect shared the image as the winner of its 'Summer Photo'-themed contest on Instagram, there were plenty of complimentary comments about it. Put simply, no one thought the image was suspect.

Absolutely Ai then publicly confessed its experiment to digiDirect and forwent the prize money, and the story made the news across Australia. Now that it's in the spotlight, the winning image has come under intense scrutiny, especially from photographers. [...]

[...] this was a photography contest, judged by photography professionals, that awards photographers for their creative endeavors, and the professionals were taken in by an image that took a few word prompts to create (and from a huge pool of photos from almost entirely unknown sources, which is a whole other issue).

An AI-generated image has won a photo contest, and it's just the beginning

[Dolmen 2.0]

It's pretty interesting to note the latest step has been the new Glaze software bigname artists are using to counteract midjourney. It effectively makes a copy of a digital artwork and scrubbs it into numerical randomizers that scratch midjourney results.

Its fun to see the arms race at work here. We're seeing new techniques and counter techniques pop up over night.

I love that Karla Ortiz, one of the artists pushing a lawsuit against AI generators has already converted to it and her new work seems to damage prompts. It's quite literaly an artist fighting science with more science.

[Tiste Simeon]

Dolmen 2.0, on 19 March 2023 - 07:08 AM, said:

It's pretty interesting to note the latest step has been the new Glaze software bigname artists are using to counteract midjourney. It effectively makes a copy of a digital artwork and scrubbs it into numerical randomizers that scratch midjourney results.

Its fun to see the arms race at work here. We're seeing new techniques and counter techniques pop up over night.

I love that Karla Ortiz, one of the artists pushing a lawsuit against AI generators has already converted to it and her new work seems to damage prompts. It's quite literaly an artist fighting science with more science.

Ssh you'll summon Azath here with a million articles on why it's actually a good thing that computers are stealing art from actual creators!

[Dolmen 2.0]

Tiste Simeon, on 19 March 2023 - 08:15 AM, said:

Dolmen 2.0, on 19 March 2023 - 07:08 AM, said:

It's pretty interesting to note the latest step has been the new Glaze software bigname artists are using to counteract midjourney. It effectively makes a copy of a digital artwork and scrubbs it into numerical randomizers that scratch midjourney results.

Its fun to see the arms race at work here. We're seeing new techniques and counter techniques pop up over night.

I love that Karla Ortiz, one of the artists pushing a lawsuit against AI generators has already converted to it and her new work seems to damage prompts. It's quite literaly an artist fighting science with more science.

Ssh you'll summon Azath here with a million articles on why it's actually a good thing that computers are stealing art from actual creators!

Theres a great video by T B Skyen on how problematic AI art is. At it's core we know the push for AI in art is easy to exploit in the name of immediate gain. Thats very attractive to the Industry giants hungry to cut budgets into fractions. Its money grabbing activity that kills art authenticity and people have a good natural instinct for it.

Like the gaming industry, I suspect the taste for genuine art will only increase. The Indie gaming market exists and thrives today purely because some discerning gamers want more authenticity. AAA games tend to miss the mark in that sense.

Art wont be any different. I suspect AI art will evolve in its own right and spawn its own form of "authenticity". Once the art theft issue has been properly considered.

This post has been edited by Dolmen 2.0: 19 March 2023 - 11:11 AM

[Puck]

Dolmen 2.0, on 19 March 2023 - 11:00 AM, said:

Tiste Simeon, on 19 March 2023 - 08:15 AM, said:

Dolmen 2.0, on 19 March 2023 - 07:08 AM, said:

It's pretty interesting to note the latest step has been the new Glaze software bigname artists are using to counteract midjourney. It effectively makes a copy of a digital artwork and scrubbs it into numerical randomizers that scratch midjourney results.

Its fun to see the arms race at work here. We're seeing new techniques and counter techniques pop up over night.

I love that Karla Ortiz, one of the artists pushing a lawsuit against AI generators has already converted to it and her new work seems to damage prompts. It's quite literaly an artist fighting science with more science.

Ssh you'll summon Azath here with a million articles on why it's actually a good thing that computers are stealing art from actual creators!

Theres a great video by T B Skyen on how problematic AI art is. At it's core we know the push for AI in art is easy to exploit in the name of immediate gain. Thats very attractive to the Industry giants hungry to cut budgets into fractions. Its money grabbing activity that kills art authenticity and people have a good natural instinct for it.

Like the gaming industry, I suspect the taste for genuine art will only increase. The Indie gaming market exists and thrives today purely because some discerning gamers want more authenticity. AAA games tend to miss the mark in that sense.

Art wont be any different. I suspect AI art will evolve in its own right and spawn its own form of "authenticity". Once the art theft issue has been properly considered.

Yeah, this. At teh end of the day people want to know there's other, real people behind the things they spend their hard earned money on. People want to the art, whichever media it may be, they consume to feel authentic and AI is not able to achieve that, no matter how much and how loud the tech bros scream about AI getting better every second.

At the end of the day, AI is just a tool, and it will change things for artists the way photography and digital art did and the human behind the art will not disappear. The issue here is not that a new tool has bene created, the issue is that the makers of this tool are using the work of millions of other people to train their tool without so much as asking for permission. AI art should, by definition, not be allowed to be be copyrighted unless it has been generated only on the basis of copyright free material, and that day will never come (inbefore Azath chimes in with "But the propts are intellectual property!" - sure, go ahead, copyright those if that strikes your fancy).

This post has been edited by Puck: 19 March 2023 - 03:13 PM

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

I addressed most of these arguments at length in the 'What's messing with your groove' thread. This thread is supposed to be for pics, not debate about the ethics of AI art. So I'll just respond briefly:

1. Learning from peoples' art to create original works in similar styles is not stealing. There's a large amount of misinformation going around on the internet. See the other thread for details.

2. Artistic styles are not protected by copyright. Most of the artists complaining make extremely derivative representational art. However, if an artist does have a very distinctive and original style, even though it's not protected by copyright I do think there's a nontrivial ethical issue with flooding the market with copies of their style. But this will probably have minimal effect for most galleries / museums / high-end art collectors, because the value of a work is tied to its provenance (which incidentally makes the copyright issue for these venues mostly irrelevant).

3. Purely AI generated works can be copyrighted in the UK but not the US or France. So where the distinctiveness of the IP itself is not enough to guarantee protection (images of superheroes, distinctive franchise designs ('Star Wars'), etc.), most commercial applications will still desire enough human intervention for the work to be copyrightable. Though some have already adopted it---for example, several of the leading music sample library creators have added what clearly appears to be AI generated art where before they had seemed like crappy and completely forgettable stock images.

4. If the training sets for ML based art were legally limited to the public domain or IP owned by the training entity, IP holders like Disney---or any company with enough money to buy usage rights from those IP holding companies---would almost certainly still be able to create AI generated art of similar quality. So in that scenario use of high quality generative AI would probably be limited to large corporations (or those they choose to give access, for a fee...). And the vast majority of commercial artists would still not be legally entitled to compensation.

5. On 'authenticity': for commercial art, do most people care if CGI in a movie/TV show or imagery in an ad was 'hand-crafted' by humans or not? No. For the gallery/museum 'art world' the idea that an artist must hand-craft every aspect of a work for it to be 'authentic' mostly died out a long time ago. 'Authenticity' as naively understood does not stand up well to scrutiny (though if you want 'authenticity' as not just technical skill (by machines or humans) but the imagination, emotion, expression, and play of patterns and concepts that technical skill makes easier and more effective---then in the near to mid future noninvasive, portable, and relatively inexpensive brain-computer interfaces and other biometrics should integrate well with thoroughly tweakable AI models).

For people at cons and genre art---sure, some people will place a premium on getting something by a human artist. (Incidentally, a large % of sales at cons are in open violation of copyright law; protected franchise IP tends to sell the most.) But the ability to easily generate a large number of unique images at low cost will probably decrease demand for work by human artists (unless it increases overall interest enough to compensate, or anti-AI backlash drives sales---especially if people who are afraid of AI taking their jobs or subverting misplaced notions of human supremacy channel those emotions into buying art). There may be more of a switch to mediums that can't easily be replicated by the standard printers most people have access to.

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 19 March 2023 - 05:11 PM

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

THE FEYN (aka "nightfolk", ) are threshold spirits of death, who have found a way to take form in their "new" home in the Second World.)

More

[Dolmen 2.0]

Azath Vitr (D, on 19 March 2023 - 04:45 PM, said:

I addressed most of these arguments at length in the 'What's messing with your groove' thread. This thread is supposed to be for pics, not debate about the ethics of AI art. So I'll just respond briefly:

1. Learning from peoples' art to create original works in similar styles is not stealing. There's a large amount of misinformation going around on the internet. See the other thread for details.

2. Artistic styles are not protected by copyright. Most of the artists complaining make extremely derivative representational art. However, if an artist does have a very distinctive and original style, even though it's not protected by copyright I do think there's a nontrivial ethical issue with flooding the market with copies of their style. But this will probably have minimal effect for most galleries / museums / high-end art collectors, because the value of a work is tied to its provenance (which incidentally makes the copyright issue for these venues mostly irrelevant).

3. Purely AI generated works can be copyrighted in the UK but not the US or France. So where the distinctiveness of the IP itself is not enough to guarantee protection (images of superheroes, distinctive franchise designs ('Star Wars'), etc.), most commercial applications will still desire enough human intervention for the work to be copyrightable. Though some have already adopted it---for example, several of the leading music sample library creators have added what clearly appears to be AI generated art where before they had seemed like crappy and completely forgettable stock images.

4. If the training sets for ML based art were legally limited to the public domain or IP owned by the training entity, IP holders like Disney---or any company with enough money to buy usage rights from those IP holding companies---would almost certainly still be able to create AI generated art of similar quality. So in that scenario use of high quality generative AI would probably be limited to large corporations (or those they choose to give access, for a fee...). And the vast majority of commercial artists would still not be legally entitled to compensation.

5. On 'authenticity': for commercial art, do most people care if CGI in a movie/TV show or imagery in an ad was 'hand-crafted' by humans or not? No. For the gallery/museum 'art world' the idea that an artist must hand-craft every aspect of a work for it to be 'authentic' mostly died out a long time ago. 'Authenticity' as naively understood does not stand up well to scrutiny (though if you want 'authenticity' as not just technical skill (by machines or humans) but the imagination, emotion, expression, and play of patterns and concepts that technical skill makes easier and more effective---then in the near to mid future noninvasive, portable, and relatively inexpensive brain-computer interfaces and other biometrics should integrate well with thoroughly tweakable AI models).

For people at cons and genre art---sure, some people will place a premium on getting something by a human artist. (Incidentally, a large % of sales at cons are in open violation of copyright law; protected franchise IP tends to sell the most.) But the ability to easily generate a large number of unique images at low cost will probably decrease demand for work by human artists (unless it increases overall interest enough to compensate, or anti-AI backlash drives sales---especially if people who are afraid of AI taking their jobs or subverting misplaced notions of human supremacy channel those emotions into buying art). There may be more of a switch to mediums that can't easily be replicated by the standard printers most people have access to.

Image for control, good ol' Mies Van der Rohe

1. Training software to replicate and manipulate imagery off a particular data set pulled from the web without permission or consent is not "learning" in the traditional sense. It's not the traditional angle for an argument on art theft as presented in a court of law. I don't think it makes sense to use traditional values of the law in this regard.

2. Style is a product of method and process. If AI assimilates the resultant 'look' derived from a method that it cannot replicate then clearly its an acknowledgement of the representative methods efficacy. Would you want AI art that only produced art like a 1st grader? Of course not. You want art that looks like [insert example here]. Recognizability is more valuable than actual image quality and recognition is attached to style. The ability to replicate a style is only attractive to someone looking to take advantage of that form of representation. Again not the lynch pin around which major legal arguments for theft have been made but it's worth a quizzical look since some of the prompts appearing in art generation software like Dali actually label certain prompt tags after actual artist names Eg. Style: 'Stanley Lau aka Artgerm' or 'Lunis' or 'Kortiz' etc. I think that's it's own separate issue and some AI generators have done well to not cross this particular line.

3. This is a fluid stage for the technology. A lot is hinged on how court discussion goes. I neither credit nor discredit the UK, the US or any other country adopting an initial stance on the issue. they are not, in anyway, in the right or in the wrong whilst the ground work is being established in the arenas of litigation and policy.

4. Grounds for compensation rely on too many factors to apply a uniform approach to who is deserving and who is not. If the copies are exact, grounds are high, if the copies are derided several steps from the original, grounds are low. Add to that the aping of meaning versus the transformative aspect of an artwork and there's a trillion different ways an artwork could be seen as a copy or as a transformation. I think this is a losing battle and isn't worth fighting for artists. There's more benefit for a wronged party in preventing the use of work in 'training' AI. I think protecting work digitally is the only way to resolve the problem as legal contestation over copyright is time consuming, financially draining and rarely an even playing field. All the Lawsuits against Blizzard/Disney/Marvel show you how power and influence can, and will, affect legal proceedings around IP. Have a look at the lion kings 'the lion sings tonight' where Disney never paid royalties to the author of the song during their life time. AI companies will be just as disinclined to acknowledge the work of the artists they've used. Modern copyright law is not an ethics engine.


5. Authenticity is worth discussing. When I speak to authenticity I speak about the sense I get from an artwork that another person is trying to tell,show,share a thought, feeling, experience. I get the sense of meaning from artwork with true deliberate intent. Authentic works manage this in a variety of ways and as I say above, AI generators can manage this. At the moment AI art tends to give a stock, impersonal feel, reliant on colour complexity and plaster finishes rather than narratives that convey a point through medium, tone and scale. I love that as the technology gets better, people have gotten better at meshing AI into traditional workflows to introduce meaning, that's exciting to see! But the stuff an AI generator spits out on the fly is still far from that authenticity you get from deliberate, hand-developed artwork.

I believe ease of access to AI will speed up the creation of bad art, which is good. I believe people improve fast when they fail faster. I think lessons on what makes things authentic will be learned by more people at an increased rate and that might open people up to other artistic options. Ultimately I think I want AI to find its place in the world in a non-exploitative manner. Part of that is people taking the process of securing their artwork seriously, part of that is AI being a lot more genuine in its approach to data training. This all hinges on how general law interprets the AI models currently in place.

This post has been edited by Dolmen 2.0: 20 March 2023 - 07:55 AM

[Dolmen 2.0]

Here's a link for further reading on the Glaze Software: https://glaze.cs.uchicago.edu

And here's an example of work currently under it's protection:


I've attempted the software, its fairly simple to use but a lot bigger than I expected.

Windows seemed unhappy to run the application. Glaze is a 0.02 version, It's early release and free, the map for updates looks decent.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Dolmen 2.0, on 20 March 2023 - 08:30 AM, said:

Here's a link for further reading on the Glaze Software: https://glaze.cs.uchicago.edu

And here's an example of work currently under it's protection:


I've attempted the software, its fairly simple to use but a lot bigger than I expected.

Windows seemed unhappy to run the application. Glaze is a 0.02 version, It's early release and free, the map for updates looks decent.

How is the artistic style of that image even remotely original? It's extremely derivative, and Midjourney should have no trouble reproducing this general style and pose from the many, many other visually similar images in the training data. The only slightly unusual aspect is the combination of ancient Greek dress + laurel with an Indigenous or East Asian person---a substitution which, again, generative AI can easily accomplish. (Though if it only had to rely on public domain images I'm not sure if there would be enough public domain images of paintings of Indigenous or East Asian people in this style....) Obviously the idea of substituting racially diverse characters into canonical 'Western' historical or fantasy scenarios has become commonplace.

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 20 March 2023 - 01:17 PM

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

 Dolmen 2.0, on 20 March 2023 - 08:30 AM, said:

Here's a link for further reading on the Glaze Software: https://glaze.cs.uchicago.edu

And here's an example of work currently under it's protection:


I've attempted the software, its fairly simple to use but a lot bigger than I expected.

Windows seemed unhappy to run the application. Glaze is a 0.02 version, It's early release and free, the map for updates looks decent.

Apparently Glaze didn't actually work for this image:

Quote

1. K.Ortiz tried to use the new "Glaze" thing to protect her jpeg from AIs
2. I guess the "glazing" didn't work, and AIs were still able to process it
3. But against all odds, the original work has more Zendaya face that any of AI generated stuff, and usually, it's the opposite


Link including images: rtyom Tucović on Twitter: "1. K.Ortiz tried to use the new "Glaze" thing to protect her jpeg from AIs 2. I guess the "glazing" didn't work, and AIs were still able to process it 3. But against all odds, the original work has more Zendaya face that any of AI generated stuff, and usually, it's the opposite https://t.co/IGDyawXhqn" / Twitter

[Dolmen 2.0]

 Azath Vitr (D, on 20 March 2023 - 01:15 PM, said:

 Dolmen 2.0, on 20 March 2023 - 08:30 AM, said:

Here's a link for further reading on the Glaze Software: https://glaze.cs.uchicago.edu

And here's an example of work currently under it's protection:


I've attempted the software, its fairly simple to use but a lot bigger than I expected.

Windows seemed unhappy to run the application. Glaze is a 0.02 version, It's early release and free, the map for updates looks decent.

How is the artistic style of that image even remotely original? It's extremely derivative, and Midjourney should have no trouble reproducing this general style and pose from the many, many other visually similar images in the training data. The only slightly unusual aspect is the combination of ancient Greek dress + laurel with an Indigenous or East Asian person---a substitution which, again, generative AI can easily accomplish. (Though if it only had to rely on public domain images I'm not sure if there would be enough public domain images of paintings of Indigenous or East Asian people in this style....) Obviously the idea of substituting racially diverse characters into canonical 'Western' historical or fantasy scenarios has become commonplace.

I think you're operating under the assumption I shared this as an example of originality or authenticity? If so, that wasn't what I was doing. I shared this oil painting by Ortiz because it was an example of the Glaze software which, by her account can no longer be utilised by todays midjourney systems.

That said I agree, midjourney could make an image of this sort from the data set of work that it pulls from, but could it replicate this image exactly? Since glaze has been implemented here, the chances of an exact copy are significantly less, which makes the work significantly more meaningful.

It's the story behind a painting like this that makes it valuable. The ability to post this without the worry it would be easily copied by AI is important to any digital artist trying to use media to market their art.

Securing art like this is the path artists of the future will likely take in response to AI. Hopefully Chicago U will develop Glaze further for ease of use. This won't take away from AI which has alot of existing art to pull from already but it will reduce chance of replication.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

 Dolmen 2.0, on 20 March 2023 - 03:05 PM, said:

 Azath Vitr (D, on 20 March 2023 - 01:15 PM, said:

 Dolmen 2.0, on 20 March 2023 - 08:30 AM, said:

Here's a link for further reading on the Glaze Software: https://glaze.cs.uchicago.edu

And here's an example of work currently under it's protection:


I've attempted the software, its fairly simple to use but a lot bigger than I expected.

Windows seemed unhappy to run the application. Glaze is a 0.02 version, It's early release and free, the map for updates looks decent.

How is the artistic style of that image even remotely original? It's extremely derivative, and Midjourney should have no trouble reproducing this general style and pose from the many, many other visually similar images in the training data. The only slightly unusual aspect is the combination of ancient Greek dress + laurel with an Indigenous or East Asian person---a substitution which, again, generative AI can easily accomplish. (Though if it only had to rely on public domain images I'm not sure if there would be enough public domain images of paintings of Indigenous or East Asian people in this style....) Obviously the idea of substituting racially diverse characters into canonical 'Western' historical or fantasy scenarios has become commonplace.

I think you're operating under the assumption I shared this as an example of originality or authenticity? If so, that wasn't what I was doing. I shared this oil painting by Ortiz because it was an example of the Glaze software which, by her account can no longer be utilised by todays midjourney systems.

That said I agree, midjourney could make an image of this sort from the data set of work that it pulls from, but could it replicate this image exactly? Since glaze has been implemented here, the chances of an exact copy are significantly less, which makes the work significantly more meaningful.

It's the story behind a painting like this that makes it valuable. The ability to post this without the worry it would be easily copied by AI is important to any digital artist trying to use media to market their art.

Securing art like this is the path artists of the future will likely take in response to AI. Hopefully Chicago U will develop Glaze further for ease of use. This won't take away from AI which has alot of existing art to pull from already but it will reduce chance of replication.

Diffusion models do not produce exact copies. As I explained at length (with references) in the other thread, in the vast majority of cases they don't produce anything resembling a rough copy, with the exceptions almost always being cases where an image occurs a very large number of times in the training set and the set of words associated with it otherwise occurs relatively rarely. Those cases are already covered by copyright law.

What they do 'copy' is artistic style. But complaining about AI 'stealing' her artistic style when her style (and, in this painting and others I've seen, the poses and ideas she uses) seems completely derivative is ridiculous.

Quote

@pencilforge

Why does her original art already look ai generated

Artyom Tucović
@vor_bokor

That's why she's so scared!

[...] it's Karla who "muddies the waters" by [...] hiring Washington lobbyists with crowdfunding instead of campaigning against Marvel or any other of her corpo bedfellows secretly forming entire AI departments right now

https://twitter.com/...502147632807947

Part of the appeal of this painting certainly comes from her being of Indigenous ancestry---or at least so she claims, since she looks very white: 'I'm Puerto Rican, I am a blend of Spanish, African and Native American blood'---hopefully she has evidence for that beyond simply having been born in Puerto Rico and having a Spanish name....

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 20 March 2023 - 05:43 PM

[Dolmen 2.0]

 Azath Vitr (D, on 20 March 2023 - 03:29 PM, said:

Diffusion models do not produce exact copies. As I explained at length (with references) in the other thread, in the vast majority of cases they don't produce anything resembling a rough copy, with the exceptions almost always being cases where an image occurs a very large number of times in the training set and the set of words associated with it otherwise occurs relatively rarely. Those cases are already covered by copyright law.

What they do 'copy' is artistic style. But complaining about AI 'stealing' her artistic style when her style (and, in this painting and others I've seen, the poses and ideas she uses) seems completely derivative is ridiculous.

The ability to copy something for a human being with a set of paints, a pencil and some thumbnails is not the same as copying something digitally. To copy a style and employ cliche or trope elements from the works of masters is one of the best ways to get better as an artist. Many of the great artists we see from classical times were born into the tradition of copy painting. They became masters when they surpassed their teachers ability to paint ultra realist copies and started to generate their own novel takes.

Today an artist learns to draw from surrounding media, I myself started with comic books, anime and game characters for example. Only after getting 'ok' at producing fair copies of what I liked was I able to see what I lacked and develop from there. I also looked up the responsible artist for the work I admired and adopted their practice methods. All the great artists develop styles that pull from their formative years, learning from better artists and its a big part of what makes human art interesting. Humans can offer credit to their influences and inspirations. Its this process that defines an 'artistic tradition'.

AI doesn't acknowledge the hands behind the styles it copies in the slightest sense of the word. I don't think that's reasonable and I also don't think it's comparable.

 Azath Vitr (D, on 20 March 2023 - 03:29 PM, said:

Quote

@pencilforge

Why does her original art already look ai generated

Artyom Tucović
@vor_bokor

That's why she's so scared!

[...] it's Karla who "muddies the waters" by [...] hiring Washington lobbyists with crowdfunding instead of campaigning against Marvel or any other of her corpo bedfellows secretly forming entire AI departments right now

https://twitter.com/...502147632807947

Part of the appeal of this painting certainly comes from her being of Indigenous ancestry---or at least so she claims, since she looks very white: 'I'm Puerto Rican, I am a blend of Spanish, African and Native American blood'---hopefully she has evidence for that beyond simply having been born in Puerto Rico and having a Spanish name....

I don't fully understand why ethnicity is a factor? I mean I do enjoy more diversity in fantasy art but I don't think it needs to come from an artist of that ethnic group to hold value for me at the very least.


Marvels plans on developing an AI division is still at grassroots level last I looked this up? The lawsuit against AI generators was aimed at active models that pull from affected artists work. I would not understand why one would sue Marvel for plans to explore AI as opposed to Wonder or stable diffusion with active models trained on data sets that very likely include Karlas work and the many others included in the class action lawsuit.

...









More from Kortiz, just to keep on topic:

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Quote

A German artist who recently won the top prize at a prestigious photography competition has refused the award, revealing himself as a “cheeky monkey” who’d set out to hoodwink the organizers with an image generated through artificial intelligence. Boris Eldagsen’s entry, Pseudomnesia: The Electrician, a portrait depicting two women from different generations, won in the creative open category at last week’s Sony World photography awards.

Photographer Refuses Prize at Sony Awards After Revealing His Entry Is AI-Generated (thedailybeast.com)

341704380_191711887043367_3492456918738498464_n.jpg (1746×1304)

Quote

photography contest where the award is $5,000, camera equipment, a trip to London for the award ceremony, and publicity through a book and exhibition.

Pratik Naik