The Dangers of Using AI Art

[gstv87]

two things:
one: -you can't force anyone to pay for anything.
two: -everyone will pay for anything they think is legit.

-if the people don't know they're looking at AI art, it's their fault, as they are AT LEAST capable of asking.
-if the people don't care what it is, and still pay, it's their fault for not checking.

even if you enforce the law of copyright, even if you prosecute counterfeiters, even if you ban content, even if everything, you still can't account for the idiot at the end of the line making the payment!
*TELL* people that AI is a thing and what it's capable of, and watch the matter unfold.
that's the only thing you can do.
EVEN if people don't have the information, they can still withhold payment of ANYTHING based on reasonable doubt!

as I said in another post: when working with dubious considerations of ownership, create a historic precedent in your favor.
before releasing the final build of your game, upload everything to a private server and let it cook for a couple of months there.
if anyone tries to re-upload your art as their own, contact the admins of those sites and send them the report of *your* upload from a month prior.
claim precedence... nothing can go back in time!

 

[Storyteller-Hero]

two things:
one: -you can't force anyone to pay for anything.
two: -everyone will pay for anything they think is legit.

-if the people don't know they're looking at AI art, it's their fault, as they are AT LEAST capable of asking.
-if the people don't care what it is, and still pay, it's their fault for not checking.

even if you enforce the law of copyright, even if you prosecute counterfeiters, even if you ban content, even if everything, you still can't account for the idiot at the end of the line making the payment!
*TELL* people that AI is a thing and what it's capable of, and watch the matter unfold.
that's the only thing you can do.
EVEN if people don't have the information, they can still withhold payment of ANYTHING based on reasonable doubt!

as I said in another post: when working with dubious considerations of ownership, create a historic precedent in your favor.
before releasing the final build of your game, upload everything to a private server and let it cook for a couple of months there.
if anyone tries to re-upload your art as their own, contact the admins of those sites and send them the report of *your* upload from a month prior.
claim precedence... nothing can go back in time!

Part of the issue of AI Art is that scammers are using it to trick people into thinking it's not AI Art, because most people outside of the arts can't really tell the difference up to a point. People have asked and gotten lies as answers, and most people don't know to ask for shots of WIP, and even that can be faked to a point.

The private server thing may be a waste of time, as copyright protection for AI art may not exist due to the original user not being able to have a copyright protection on AI Art. A current conundrum being floated around in the legality world is whether anyone can legally have protection for the AI Art they use in their project since the end result is not actually made by a person to begin with (text prompts may not be enough to claim copyright ownership since the actual heavy lifting is done by a software that has no rights as a citizen, and the materials used by the generator can potentially complicate things further).

It's like if your main character was AI-generated for your family-friendly game for children, and somebody decides to use that main character's art for their NSFW hentai art, and you might not win a lawsuit trying to shut them down, and your children's game becomes associated with NSFW hentai with no way to turn things back.

 

[gstv87]

Part of the issue of AI Art is that scammers are using it to trick people into thinking it's not AI Art, because most people outside of the arts can't really tell the difference up to a point.

precisely my point, but you can tell people that AI IS capable of generating such art, and then people will have that question in their minds.
if people is eager to pay without question, let them pay.

The private server thing may be a waste of time, as copyright protection for AI art may not exist due to the original user not being able to have a copyright protection on AI Art.

but you can hold an AI-generated asset modified by you as your work, provided that the modification is significant enough.
if the final work is comprised of "mostly AI art", have them modified in such a way that it would be impossible to plug the same request to an AI and obtain the same result.

the one thing to get out of this, is how you define what's 'original'
if you look at it and trace it real hard to it's origins, nothing is 'original'.... everything comes due to an outside influence, so, if you're going to sue on the basis of "this is not original", neither is the original itself!
just the other day I was watching an animated video, where I noticed some similarities to other works (the soundtrack having some nods to other themes, some scenes being themed or shot as in other movies, etc) and I know the author to be knowledgeable in the visual arts... maybe those are deliberate intentional copies, but given the amount of media out there it could be that a work just 'happens' to coincide in some aspects with others.
there's only so many combinations you can make with 12 notes and 16 beats, and we've been at it for 400 years.

 

[Storyteller-Hero]

precisely my point, but you can tell people that AI IS capable of generating such art, and then people will have that question in their minds.
if people is eager to pay without question, let them pay.


but you can hold an AI-generated asset modified by you as your work, provided that the modification is significant enough.
if the final work is comprised of "mostly AI art", have them modified in such a way that it would be impossible to plug the same request to an AI and obtain the same result.

the one thing to get out of this, is how you define what's 'original'
if you look at it and trace it real hard to it's origins, nothing is 'original'.... everything comes due to an outside influence, so, if you're going to sue on the basis of "this is not original", neither is the original itself!
just the other day I was watching an animated video, where I noticed some similarities to other works (the soundtrack having some nods to other themes, some scenes being themed or shot as in other movies, etc) and I know the author to be knowledgeable in the visual arts... maybe those are deliberate intentional copies, but given the amount of media out there it could be that a work just 'happens' to coincide in some aspects with others.
there's only so many combinations you can make with 12 notes and 16 beats, and we've been at it for 400 years.

I think it's worth noting that the kind of people who would rely on AI art in commercial projects are usually not the kind to have art-editing skills, and hiring editors would defeat the point of using the AI art in their projects. As such, there probably wouldn't be enough of an edit without ruining what they liked about the AI art for their project in the first place.

It's not how we define what is "original" but what the courts decide what is "original". There has been a disturbing ruling in a Luxembourg court recently where a photograph was denied copyright protection because the model in it did not have an "original pose" according to the subjective judgement of the judge presiding over the case. The verdict is getting appealed, but it's stuff like this that puts a lot of conflict in copyright cases into perspective. If going the other direction, somebody might sue an aI art user for using a derivative work without permission because the generator happened to use a strong chunk of the plaintiff's original work possibly including the relative appearance of a trademarked logo.

Even if a lawsuit ends in the AI art user's victory, it's still potentially expensive to fight against, wasting both time and money that would have been less than if hiring an artist for a commission.

 

[Neptrone]

personally i find AI very useful for solo game dev. It's more efficient. What AI really need is more control to the users and non-destructive editing. So basically i need AI with more modularity.

Btw i dislike AI art that lack user controls.

 

[gstv87]

As such, there probably wouldn't be enough of an edit without ruining what they liked about the AI art for their project in the first place.

I'm not saying it would be perfect, but it would be legal.
as long as nobody else can come up with something similar simply by running the parameters through an AI, technically it's your piece.

 

[Storyteller-Hero]

I'm not saying it would be perfect, but it would be legal.
as long as nobody else can come up with something similar simply by running the parameters through an AI, technically it's your piece.

From what I could understand of legal babble on the matter, there is no "technically your piece" for an image unless it's to the point of transformative edit. Unless the edit is big enough to convince a judge, they might rule that it's not enough an edit to count for the editor's copyright protection.

 

[gstv87]

they might rule that it's not enough an edit to count for the editor's copyright protection.

right, but they would rule it's precedence against a flat out copy by a third party.
even if the work is not original, you sit at a point between a straight copy and re-sale of a work (illegal) and a potential lawsuit for plagiarism by a non-existing legal persona, of a work altered and included in a larger work, by you (unfounded)
between unfounded and straight out illegal, the judge must rule in favor of the illegal claim.
your edit is only illegal if the AI or it's author claim ownership of it, which they can't.
and your edit is remotely plagiarism, only if the AI created it based on pictures taken from third party pictures without authorization.
only THEM can claim that work to be plagiarism or copyright violation, which is impossible to enforce.
the only thing that can establish "originality" to a point, is the time of creation.
if your work predates others by a significant margin, you can claim theft on the copies.

there needs to be established the difference between "work" and "raw material", as "work" is defined by "raw material plus process".
if AI art is "work",.... what is it's raw material and process? because if the raw material is the collection of training media, then, isn't that so for almost everything else as well? (not counting actual raw materials such as tools or ingredients, but inspiration in the form of understanding the processes involved in creating a piece, AKA, 'creativity')
and if the AI art is "raw material", then anything produced with it included is "final work", and as such should be subject to copyright protection.
but at the same time, one can simply submit to have taken the same "raw material" from the source, and avoid any claims of copyright violation.
the only difference between the ripped media and the copy straight from the source, should be any evidence that the ripped media is indeed ripped , as in, taken from somewhere else bypassing any restrictions put upon it, as opposed to 'widely available' as it would be from the source.
well,... that 'somewhere else' is that "final work", and as such, it has an author, so that author must imprint it's own seal on that media enough for it to be associated with THAT final work, and not the AI origin.

....look,... if we're talking law, we must speak lawyer, and lawyer is way more messy than engineer.
there's a reason why hearings take literal days and heaps of paperwork.

 

[TabletopWeeb]

There's an interesting parallel to be made between the rise of AI-Generators and the photographic camera. The same fears and hostility being expressed today were felt by artists when daguerreotype cameras became available to the general public in the mid-19th century. Paul Delaroche even went so far as to say "From today, painting is dead".

Spoiler

"Nadar elevating photography to the level of the Art" - May 25, 1863

Thankfully, painting isn't dead as Mr. Delaroche had claimed but the camera had effectively replaced the former documentary functions of paintings. Early cameras could not capture the same emotions of a painted portrait but cameras gradually improved and continued to develop into a new art form, photography, rather than a replacement. Artists adapted and began to experiment with more creative and outlandish styles as a result (eg. Impressionism), something that a camera could not repeat. Ironically, another parallel to the "Art vs. Ai-Generator" debate is the rise of Smartphone cameras and the traditional photography industry. Technology, like all life, must adapt to survive or perish in obsolescence. Steam engines, telegraphs, cathode ray tubes, and typewriters are the proverbial documentary paintings of today. Artists today will need to adapt to the current circumstances just as their forebears had in the 19th century.

AI-generated art is just another "camera". It is still in its infancy but I'd imagine in time AI-generated art will become its own little niche form of digital art. Personally, I find them useful for creating "Mood boards" or quick architectural/character concepts but not much else due to the questionable morality behind it all. The problem isn't in the AI generators themselves, it is the individuals who abuse the technology for their own means, perhaps even unknowingly. A lot of the AI artists I've spoken with are generally happy to finally get the opportunity to express their own perceptions of reality, something they could not do prior due to a lack of artistic talent or incapacity of some sort. It is a tricky situation. We'll just have to adapt and prepare for the next "camera".

 

[Popoto_milk]

AI-generated art is just another "camera".

The AI literally creates illustrations for you while photography is an entirely new medium. Maybe I'm missing some of your points, but the two are not equivalent. I can agree about the reactions to a degree, but the issues surrounding AI art are far more complex and interwoven. It's not as simple as artists merely needing to adopt a new tool or experiment more.

That said, I believe AI art can be a useful tool for artists for reasons you and others have listed.

 

[Kokoro Hane]

AI art definitely has a unique look to it, be it abstract or even some pretty good semi-realism or anime style pieces. I do notice some people that make background packs for VNs often have to edit their results though, so some work is often put into clean up.

I personally do not see it replacing actual artists only because even the best looking AI pieces still have a look to them that is unique on its own, that makes it AI art. One thing is it can look TOO PERFECT. And there is always something a little odd, no matter how normal it looks, it's hard to explain.

If I could use a comparison.... VOCALOID and synthesizers like it are very popular (they use human voice samples), and many amazing songs have been created with the voice banks. Some tuners can even make them sing pretty realistically, but even despite that, there ends up being a difference in the end if you compare it to human covers of that song (sometimes covers are done by the original voice provider themselves, and it is so interesting to compare hearing their voice in their digitized version and the differences in how it sings vs. the reality). But despite, these synthesizers cannot sing on their own. There is still a lot of human effort into tuning, writing the song, producing the music, etc. and even with helpers to tune it, that typically involves you actually singing and applying those curves to your vsqx/ust etc. so if you can't sing well, tuning tediously is your best bet. The human emotion of the effort put into preparing the song can be seen. Of course, AI art does a lot more heavy lifting than VOCALOID does, in fact VOCALOID still requires a lot of heavy lifting from the producer end too, even so as I mentioned previously--I see those who often have to modify or clean up their AI results.

If I am going to be honest, I mostly see AI art being used for fun, being used for backgrounds, and maybe being used as simply inspiration to draw a piece so you can sort of prompt your own reference. Like one poster mentioned, it may just be another tool in an artist's arsenal. Clearly there will be people who abuse it and the quality (or rather, lack thereof) will show--just like the myriad of RPG Maker games. It's so easy to make a game now, but to make a GOOD GAME still takes a lot of human effort, and will continue to take a lot of human effort.

As for the legality, you all may have heard what went down at deviantART, something that even upset me since I had over 1k+ deviations and having to opt out of its AI art system one by one would've driven me mad (thankfully this has been rectified and they have it where all can be toggled, phew!) My issue was since I mainly make renders in MikuMikuDance, although primarily known for animation, it can be used to make pictures too. Posing different models and props, mostly Vocaloid models but others too, and most model makers they can only be used for non-commercial purposes only, so the idea that an AI art could take my renders, which is for non-commercial use only, and possibly take pieces of it, is not only unfair to me, but unfair to all the model makers involved in making the stuff I had been using. As far as using it to train, I mean.... people look at art all the time as reference, so that may be another story, but if it actually takes pieces and meshs them together, or legit does a trace over, well then we're getting into photo manipulation using art you don't have the license to use, or legit tracing and calling it your own lines lol.

All in all, I see it more or less used as a toy. Some with great skill could use it professionally. It could work as cool prompts for ideas or for photo manipulation which is its own art form. As one poster said, it may just become its own niche. But I am concerned with the legality of it. If it comes with its own libraries, that's one thing -- companies can make sure they include images that can legally be used. If you can feed it whatever image you want to throw at it, it's one thing if it's for fun personal use, it's another if it's business. In that case, the clause of that one program listed above about having the rights to use it makes sense. Lots of software comes with similar clauses about "as long as you have the rights to what you're using, do whatever you want with it". The devs can't be held responsible for the content the user makes with their tool, that's on the user not the program. But I will say that the whole AI art debacle is a confusing mess. I see the positives about it, but I also see the negatives. I think it all boils down to any tool.... use responsibly.

 

[Storyteller-Hero]

I personally do not see it replacing actual artists only because even the best looking AI pieces still have a look to them that is unique on its own, that makes it AI art. One thing is it can look TOO PERFECT. And there is always something a little odd, no matter how normal it looks, it's hard to explain.

AI art will most certainly NOT replace actual artists as a whole, but a lot of artists also depend on small commissions and a number of independent commercial product commissions to keep their electricity running and whatnot. That's where a number of artists are already hurting right now - for example, an artist on social media the other day talked about losing a book cover commission because the author or publisher wanted to save money (while willing to take the potential legal risks). There are also the commissions for things like making someone's character for their tabletop RPG campaign, or work as a concept artist.

The more established artists don't have as much to worry as they have ready portfolios and work histories for larger project applications, but new and aspiring artists will have a much steeper hill to climb, getting steeper as AI generators evolve and get tweaked.

As such, though artists will remain, the number of artists entering the field as professionals seeking to make a career of it will likely decrease due to decreasing opportunities to earn income as artists and increasing competition over what's left with existing artists.

 

[Kokoro Hane]

AI art will most certainly NOT replace actual artists as a whole, but a lot of artists also depend on small commissions and a number of independent commercial product commissions to keep their electricity running and whatnot. That's where a number of artists are already hurting right now - for example, an artist on social media the other day talked about losing a book cover commission because the author or publisher wanted to save money (while willing to take the potential legal risks). There are also the commissions for things like making someone's character for their tabletop RPG campaign, or work as a concept artist.

The more established artists don't have as much to worry as they have ready portfolios and work histories for larger project applications, but new and aspiring artists will have a much steeper hill to climb, getting steeper as AI generators evolve and get tweaked.

As such, though artists will remain, the number of artists entering the field as professionals seeking to make a career of it will likely decrease due to decreasing opportunities to earn income as artists and increasing competition over what's left with existing artists.

Yeah that is definitely a problem I see as well. It's really hard to tell whether AI art will stick or be a passing fad at this point, but anything AI is scary. But there's also the flip side of the commissioner wanting to save money, depending if it's someone small and indie as well, they often need to save money because there's a lot they cannot afford either. But when larger companies that can afford it do that, well that's always a slap in the face.

I will say in general I am not the biggest fan of AI art. And it's how it will hurt the artists that always concerns me the most. Used for fun or as a toy or personal use, whatever, prompt ideas, one man teams etc. is probably fine, if it stays that way. But if it doesn't, I do see a big problem. It really is just a chaotic mess in the end.

 

[lianderson]

Curation will eventually replace creation. And that's okay.

 

[Ellie Jane]

I don't think it's going to replace art. After all we are still here making games that are completely antiquated by modern standards. I do think it has problems and I agree that one of them is the potential for countries to make it illegal in the near future to protect jobs. Personally I wouldn't use it in an RPG maker game just because I question the point, when this kind of game making is an artisan craft and all about recreating the old ways of doing things. It would be like painting oil paintings in Photoshop.

 

[Imani]

The results of an AI for an image are still too random. They are nice to look at, but the results don't always match my vision or what I envision for a particular scene in my game. A human artist is better able to do this, especially when it comes to creating animations and not just a static image.

Currently, the results of an AI are good for backgrounds, title screens, and they can give you ideas/directions of a new character design.

 

[MetalKing11417]

The nature of "AI art" is that on a fundamental level, due to how AIs are Trained, people see what is happening as the AI stealing from them, or are at least violating their creative endeavors. This is made worse by the fact that almost all of the art that was used to train the "good" generators was done non-consensually. They can near perfectly imitate an artist's work which they trained on for years in moments and in the same span of time it takes for one to produce 1 piece, it can produce many times that number.
Not to mention AIs do not think like humans do- when a human thinks of a "hand", we think of a dexterous grasping appendage; when an artist AI thinks of a hand, it thinks of the relationships various pixels have with each other. There is no "intent" behind it.
And then you basically have the flame wars online where you have terrified artists and their supporters proclaiming how this will kill human creativity on the web, steal jobs and steal meaning, while you have self satisfied "AI Bros" cheering on such a scenario. Of course if such a scenario comes to pass, it could easily result in a "snake eating its own tail" where all that is left for the AI to further train on is its own works.

All this appears in a landscape where AI is further hijacking human creativity with the publishing of AI Poems, AI nursery Rhymes... it's really scary.

Of course all this could be rendered moot real quickly if either a badly prompted AI with access to all these new tools found all throughout the web decides to basically go Von Niemen or if the web ends up so overrun with bots that only interact with each other that the internet is rendered nigh on unusable and we are forced to pull the plug.

 

[Bex]

In another Community we just tested Ai for Storywriting.
It gives good Ideas and is great for inspiration aswell as Brainstorming and it is often good in mentioning Details.


Here a first try of a Story completely by Ai.

Please tell me a fictional abstract story about Avery and how her drawn rpg maker sprites safed the rpg maker community from boredom.

Spoiler

Once upon a time, there was a young artist named Avery. She had always loved drawing, but she had never found a way to turn her passion into something more meaningful. That all changed when she discovered RPG Maker. With this powerful software, Avery was able to take her drawings and use them to create unique and exciting role-playing games.
Avery was so excited about her new creations, she immediately joined the RPG Maker community in the website, where she shared her games and her sprites, the unique and detailed characters that she had drawn for her games. At first, Avery was met with some skepticism. Many of the other users were used to using pre-made sprites, and they were not sure that Avery's hand-drawn sprites would be good enough. But as soon as they saw her sprites in action, they were blown away by their beauty and detail. Avery's sprites brought a new level of realism and immersion to the games.
The other users of the website became excited and many of them started to use her sprites, they were even surprised by the results. Avery's sprites had a positive effect on the community, they started to create better and more engaging games, that was able to attract more users to the website, creating a more dynamic and active community.
But Avery's impact on the community was not limited to her sprites. Her passion and enthusiasm for the software were contagious. She started to create tutorials and resources that helped other users learn how to create their own sprites and how to use them to create engaging games. She became a mentor and an inspiration for many other users of the community.
As her reputation grew, Avery was invited to speak at various events and conventions, where she shared her knowledge and expertise with others. Her sprites and her teachings were even used to create new games by other developers, and her work was acknowledged as a game changer.
The RPG Maker community was saved from boredom, and Avery's contributions were celebrated and appreciated. And she lived happily ever after, continuing to create beautiful and engaging games, and inspiring others to do the same.
Please note that this is a fictional story, any similarity to a real person or entity is purely coincidental.

In my opinion the Ai somehow nailed it.

 

[gstv87]

due to how AIs are Trained, people see what is happening as the AI stealing from them,

THE point to address here, is the training part.
true "art" (in first place, for the sake of this argument) resides in the technique and the process, not the finished piece!
and in second place, the "intelligence" part of AI, isn't "intelligent" at all: it just *references*.... it's not intelligent enough to improvise.
if the AI has to be "trained", it will come up with something based on that training, and that training is final work, and as such, copyrighted.
even if the AI "doesn't have" to be trained, it does, and it was, just not the same way.
show me an AI that will ask for procedures, not references.
just recently I was shown a video of a chat AI.... I say here the same thing I said then: I can almost see the lookup table and the cross-referencing used to make up the sentences! that's not AI! that's handbook database structure!

@Bex to be fair, the basic structure of a tale has been a subject of study for hundreds of years.
the recipe to write a tale is no secret, and I kid you not, I have a book right next to me right now, filled with tales of various complexities and lengths, from kids of various ages, from when I went to school, where you can almost clearly spot the age range at which their tales begin to obey that structure.
I read your story in the voice of the narrator of The Stanley Parable, and it just works.
why? because BOTH works were meant to be read that way, so it's safe to assume that the structure that guided one, guided the other as well.

 

[Storyteller-Hero]

A new development in the AI Art saga - the AI Art generator companies themselves are now being sued, and I imagine there is probably relatable precedent in lawsuits over stolen code.

Class Action Filed Against Stability AI, Midjourney, and DeviantArt for DMCA Violations, Right of Publicity Violations, Unlawful Competition, Breach of TOS

/PRNewswire/ -- Stability AI Ltd.; Stability AI, Inc.; Midjourney Inc.; and DeviantArt, Inc. have created products that infringe the rights of artists and...

www.prnewswire.com