Comment on ‘Mass theft’: Thousands of artists call for AI art auction to be cancelled
peanuts4life@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 days agoSorry, I might have went a bit ham on you there, it was late at night. I think I might have been rude
- Theft does not depend on a legal definition.
Intellectual property theft used to be legal, but protections were eventually put in place to protect the industry of art. (I’m not a staunch defender if the laws as they are, and I belive it actually, in many cases, stifles creativity.)
I bring up the law not recognizing machine generated art only to dismiss the idea that the legal system agrees wholeheartedly with the stance that AI art is defensibly sold on the free market.
- There is no evidence to suggest AI think like a human / It hardly matters that AI can be creative.
A) To suggest a machine neutral network “thinks like a human” is like suggesting a humanoid robot “runs like a human.” It’s true in an incredibly broad sense, but carries so little meaning with it.
Yes, ai models use advanced, statistical multiplexing of parameters, which can metaphorically be compared to neurons, but only metaphorically. It’s just vaguely similar. Inspired by, perhaps.
B) It hardly matters if AI can create art. It hardly even matters if they did it in exactly the way humans do.
Because the operator doesn’t have the moral or ethical right to sell it in either case.
If the AI is just a stocastic parrot, then it is a machine of theft leveraged by the operator to steal intellectual labor.
If the AI is creative in the same way as a person, then it is a slave.
I’m not actually against AI art, but I am against selling it, and I respect artists for trying to protect their industry. It’s sad to see an entire industry of workers get replaced by machines, and doubly sad to see that those machines are made possible by the theft of their work. It’s like if the automatic loom had been assembled out of centuries of collected fabrics. Each worker non consensually, unknowingly, contributing to the near total destruction of their livelihood. There is hardly a comparison which captures the perversion of it.
pupbiru@aussie.zone 6 days ago
i wasn’t meaning to suggest that it thinks like a human - simply that the processes are similar enough, and humans aren’t non-replicable… in which case there is some process behind creativity, and that process is some sort of input, processing via our neural processes, and some output. the intent was to say that AI having the possibility of creativity shouldn’t be dismissed off-hand just because it’s not human
is it though? does creativity rely on being able to interpret the concept of freedom? i think creativity can be divorced from a sense of self, and thus any idea of slavery except in the sense of anthropisation from a 3rd party
why though? if the art is the inspiration and intent, then the prompt is the art and the image itself is only the expression of that inspiration and intent - all are essential parts of the piece
agree and disagree there - it’s sad that a huge amount of artists that have devoted their lives to honing their craft are now less able to make money from using their skills… on the other hand, it’s the democratisation of skills. AI art allows more people to communicate their ideas without the need for skill
peanuts4life@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 days ago
I’m afraid that we seen to disagree on who an artist is and what is a valid moral trade off.
Is it really the democratization of art? Or the commodification of art?
Art has, with the exception of extraordinary circumstances, always been democratic. You could at any point pick up a pencil and draw.
Ai has funneled that skill, critically through theft, into a commodified product, the ai model. Through with they can make huge profits.
The machine does the art. And, even when run on your local machine the model was almost certainly trained on expensive machines through means you could not personally replicate.
I find it alarming that people are so willing to celebrate this. It’s like throwing a party that you can buy bottled Nestle water at the grocery store which was taken by immoral means. It’s nice for you, but ultimately just further consolation of power away from individuals.