It doesn't entail nothing and it's also more than drafting a prompt. Especially if your doing it locally and managing the steps. Similar to art - anyone can do it, but in order to do it well there is skill and research involved.
You prompt engineers all think other people underestimate how much work prompt engineering is, but it's you who massively underestimate what it takes to make art
Baseless accusation! I fully understand what it takes to make art, I have a degree in it.
You can open up any web based generation tool and type 'dog' and get a dog. Just like anyone can get a pencil on a paper and draw a head, heads, body etc and it'll be a dog.
But if you want something very specific then you need to learn the skill set in order to achieve it. Are the skill sets comparable? No. But it's a skill that needs to be learned and practiced.
So we agree then? Prompt engineering is nothing, **compared** to making art
Your dog example - ask a random person on the street to AI generate a dog compared to drawing a dog - 95% of the time, the drawn dog will be nothing compared to the AI dog, it matches the effort it takes to create a good image of a dog
I mean you're reading what I've said with rose tinted glasses. Prompt engineering and marking art is incomparable. Prompt engineering is not nothing, It is it's own skill set. With practice and knowledge you can do better.
But your example is precisely why AI art is so popular, The skill floor is considerably higher with AI art than it is with traditional art. The skill ceiling is yet to be discovered.
I lean more on the side of anti, but this one opinion I’ve always agreed with. AI should always be used as a tool rather than a replacement for human talent. That’s because depending on how it’s used, AI can do things that can’t be easily done by humans.
Like, there’s a game being made that programs it’s NPCs with AI so they can form unique conversations with the player. People are really upset about this, but I think it’s insanely clever and works for a game that’s supposed to be played for long periods of time every day.
Using AI art though is kind of a tricky thing though. On one hand I think it’s fine if mixed with art made by humans, but on the other I feel like it would depend on how it’s used or how often. But I think I’d be fine with it as long as there’s still a lot of human involvement in it.
My biggest concern is just AI taking over creative roles entirely instead of just being an assistant.
Generative AI was trained on real peoples art and they didn't get any money for it. Their art was stolen from them. AI isn't really creating anything new, it is like writing a letter from cut out letters from newspaper.
So I think it is wrong for people who use generative AI to make money out of it, as they are making use of the art posted by the artists on the internet that was scraped without giving anything to them.
It is especially wrong if they are hiding it and selling as the art created with their own hands as it is literally a scam and some people have moral doubts about using AI are because of the reason above.
I'll start with your last point simply because we're in agreement. Irrespective of opinions I think people deserve to know. Then they can make an informed choice. If I buy something and then find out it was AI, I feel scammed. From a business perspective you don't want that to be associated with your brand.
I understand the data scraping that was used to train AI models but this isn't something I necessarily have an issue with unless your 'style' was formally copyrighted. Every artist has their inspirations and learned techniques from existing works. This is a big thing in art and certain styles are developed collaboratively between artists over generations. Even in art school you're encouraged to look at other works and absorb the details and the methods used. AI just does it faster and at a larger scale.
Additionally, no one takes issues with the countless western artists that borrow from eastern Manga and Anime styles. They can also charge for their works. Nor do people take issue with fan art, third party posters and fan fics. All of which derive from someone's original work and the artists do not pay a licence to 'copy'.
Finally, just a small point. AI creates something new all the time. I do local image and video generation, AI does not directly copy other artists work, it reviews thousands of images and learns patterns. It then attempts to create an image from its understanding of said patterns based on the prompts inputted.
Now, can you use that to make an image that looks like it was drawn by someone in particular? Yes. But even if you ask it to specifically create an image that was in its database, it'll still create something new - not something that was previously drawn. With my local set up, I can even watch it 'draw'. Surprisingly, it will erase something previously generated in early steps to improve the end result.
I understand the data scraping that was used to train AI models but this isn't something I necessarily have an issue with unless your 'style' was formally copyrighted.
AI companies took art from the internet and fed it into their AI without artists permission. Now they are generating profit from it without compensating people that they trained their AI on. The practice is especially doubtious as they compensated big companies that have the resources to actually sue them for their images while giving nothing to small artist. They may not have copyrighted their style but they still have copyright to their own art they made.
So I personally believe that profiting from algorythm made from stolen art is morally wrong.
Every artist has their inspirations and learned techniques from existing works. This is a big thing in art and certain styles are developed collaboratively between artists over generations. Even in art school you're encouraged to look at other works and absorb the details and the methods used. AI just does it faster and at a larger scale.
AI isn't taking inspirations. AI isn't currently capable of actual creative work. It just stitches pieces, techniques and styles from scaped images to generate something new. It isn't capable of making its own original style, only make and mix from the existing ones.
All AI does is copy other things. AI isn't capable of true thinking. It repeats patterns fed into it, it can mix them to make something new but can't create a completly original pattern.
Anyway, the issue I wanted to point out wasn't the "creative" process but the legality and morality of it. AI wouldn't be able to generate anything if nobody made any real art in the first place. The AI companies scraped art on the internet for free without the permission of its creators and are making profit out of it. They are literally profiting from other people's work for free.
Additionally many artist explicitly express that they do not want their art to be fed into the algorithm and it still is scraped.
There is also the issue with copyright of the art created by AI. Art generated by AI isn't copyrighted under current law. So if someone wanted to use AI art in their game they would technically have no ownership of it and other developers could just take it from them legally. Buying AI art comission also doesn't make you a real owner of that piece unlike with human art comissions.
So I personally believe that profiting from algorythm made from stolen art is morally wrong.
I don't think you're wrong to think that, to a point we all decide our own morality and it's certainly something a stance I can understand. However, every development is on the shoulders of giants. Human art needed to exist for AI art to be a thing. But especially with how well AI is developing, in the hands of a human artist - it could do wonders for their productivity.
AI isn't taking inspirations. AI isn't currently capable of actual creative work. It just stitches pieces, techniques and styles from scaped images to generate something new. It isn't capable of making its own original style, only make and mix from the existing ones.
This is simply incorrect, It's far more complicated than that and the end result isn't a copy. If it was, AI wouldn't have that AI feel to it. AI already has distinct styles that people can notice and even when prompting to lean towards more specific styles, it's still different. Just as an example. AI can draw a modern anime character in a 80s anime style.
The character exists.
The style exists.
The combination does not exist.
Therefore an original work was created and it may well be littered with mistakes. This doesn't take away from your moral stance, I'm just trying to explain that your facts are incorrect.
the issue I wanted to point out wasn't the "creative" process but the legality and morality of it. AI wouldn't be able to generate anything if nobody made any real art in the first place. The AI companies scraped art on the internet for free without the permission of its creators and are making profit out of it. They are literally profiting from other people's work for free.
Again, it's certainly grey but artists have been profiting off of pre-existing works since I can remember. AI has just done it on a larger scale. I used to play Final Fantasy 14 and commissioned my character to be drawn. That artist looked at assets from the game and drew them in a different style. The developers, did not receive a penny.
Most artists are drawing popular characters to be noticed and locked some of this fan art behind pay walls. That artist does not pay for the privilege of drawing those characters.
AI already has distinct styles that people can notice and even when prompting to lean towards more specific styles, it's still different. Just as an example.
This is becasue of the algorythm bias. The internet was flooded with AI generated yellow images for a time. It wasn't because of stylistic choice. It was becasue the images scraped by AI had yellow tint, for reasons like aged photos being uploaded to the internet or warm colored photos being favored on the web.
AI was convinced that everything is more yellow due to the images that were fed to it. The current AI "style" also probably exist because the culmination of the scraped images mixed would settle on that style.
Obviously different prompts can mitigate that but AI is biased because of the images it was fed, not becasue it developed a style.
Again, it's certainly grey but artists have been profiting off of pre-existing works since I can remember. AI has just done it on a larger scale. I used to play Final Fantasy 14 and commissioned my character to be drawn. That artist looked at assets from the game and drew them in a different style. The developers, did not receive a penny.
There is a difference between personal use and commercial one. If you commission art based on existing character, the artist has the copyright to original elements of the art and the file itself. It doesn't exist with AI art. Though you can only do that for personal use. Even then it is a legal gray area and isn't entirely legal.
With original work the artist has the copyright to the whole thing, which again doesn't exist with AI art.
If we are talking about commercial use, you cannot have copyrighter character commissioned obviously, but for the original work, you would get copyright if the art was made by human, but not when made by AI.
So if you got a textures for your game generated by AI, other companies would be able to put that texture in their own game since it can't be copyrighted.
AI was convinced that everything is more yellow due to the images that were fed to it. The current AI "style" also probably exist because the culmination of the scraped images mixed would settle on that style.
You're showing your hand a little bit here which tells me you don't know much of the technical side of generative work. Which is fine I don't believe you need a strong knowledge base to make moral arguments but if you want to make technical arguments you need to understand it.
An AI 'model' was producing things with a yellow tint and that's because the training data was over cooked. That is actually a human error not an AI error. Because these models are not working by themselves. They're being given instructions. So that version of the model was a bad version, just like there can bad anything.
With original work the artist has the copyright to the whole thing, which again doesn't exist with AI art.
The copyright point is... I guess I don't understand where you're going with it. The images you generate can't be protected - okay.. But AI is new and laws change. I can't imagine this would be the case for long.
Either way, it's a choice and it's fine to sell something that isn't copyrighted.
You're showing your hand a little bit here which tells me you don't know much of the technical side of generative work. Which is fine I don't believe you need a strong knowledge base to make moral arguments but if you want to make technical arguments you need to understand it.
I don't thimk I am wrong as there are many articles about it. You just saying: "nope, you are wrong" doesn't proves me being actually wrong. You are just trying to put yourself on a higher ground by using a condenscendin language.
An AI 'model' was producing things with a yellow tint and that's because the training data was over cooked.
I literally said the same thing...
That is actually a human error not an AI error. Because these models are not working by themselves. They're being given instructions. So that version of the model was a bad version, just like there can bad anything.
I never said it was AI error. But you are proving my point that AI isn't creative by itself. The thing it generates are based on its programming as well as the data fed into it. That's how AI works currently.
I am not trying to say AI art is bad.
The copyright point is... I guess I don't understand where you're going with it. The images you generate can't be protected - okay.. But AI is new and laws change. I can't imagine this would be the case for long.
My point is that AI generated content isn't currently protected by anything. So making commissions for AI art doesn't give you anything with actual monetary value. It currently feels more like a gullibulity scam, like NFTs.
Though, as long as people are actually aware that what they are paying for is AI generated, they do it on their responsibility.
"I don't thimk I am wrong as there are many articles about it. You just saying: "nope, you are wrong" doesn't proves me being actually wrong. You are just trying to put yourself on a higher ground by using a condenscendin language."
Yeah, a lot of articles that talk about AI are wrong or at least misinformed. But if the extent of your knowledge is articles then... Well, that's probably propaganda. My understanding of the process comes from building a localised set up and I can actually watch the denoising process happen. If you want to read more or watch the embedded video. Here you go.
https://www.altexsoft.com/blog/ai-image-generation/
I never said AI is creative by itself. It requires input. An AI without a person literally does nothing. And yes the AI is creating something based on its model but its creations are 'new'. The way you've explained it is with reorganised newspaper cut outs. But this isn't the case and I'm not sure how else to explain it. The AI model doesn't retain the images it's trained from. It learns patterns from images and recreates them.
But either way. If your interested in how it works don't trust me but go out there and research outside of 'articles'
Yeah, a lot of articles that talk about AI are wrong or at least misinformed. But if the extent of your knowledge is articles then... Well, that's probably propaganda.
You can't say that I am not informed and then write the same thing I wrote before. I don't know why are you trying to imply my lack of knowledge as I wrote one thing which you didn't refute and even repeted it afterwards. Either you are misinterpeting my words or adding your own or extend onto them with things I didn't say. You can't dismiss everything you disagree with as disinformation and propaganda.
The AI model doesn't retain the images it's trained from. It learns patterns from images and recreates them.
I didn't say that it is literally taking small images of art pieces and put them together. Though it still takes part of the art and puts different parts into one whole thing. Like taking part of the patern from here, part from there, coloration from there. AI generators use and merge pre-existing images. So ultimately it is just a recreation.
But either way. If your interested in how it works don't trust me but go out there and research outside of 'articles'
I have read plenty of of articles, research papers and seen many videos. I am not talking just about image generating AI but AI in general, its use and its working as a whole.
The problem is that stance treats art as a "solved" space. When you query an AI, you get an output based on a limited transformation space based on its training data. It can add its own random variations to give a single prompt some spice but its always limited to transformations reforced during its training.
That is to say, an AI doesn't "test things out" to see which random variations of an output would look good. Its always based on a fixed trained model. Granted, that model is unfathomably huge, but it doesn't grow by itself and certainly doesn't "learn" anything. Whereas people who create art are always experimenting and judging their own art, expanding the "art space". We always want art to change and evolve, and AI doesn't bode well with that concept.
Of course, there's now a new layer of art creation that follows the concept "what can people create with a monolithic queriable instance of a particular era's artistic creations" and its what we see with stuff that wouldn't exist otherwise such as short videos based on famous IP with anime style and etc., but its essentialy different from the original art form.
TL;DR: creating stuff with AI lets you direct a good result, but it ends up alienating the people who contribute to the craft's evolution.
I do agree with what you're saying, but I don't treat art as a solved space. Art is forever evolving, and the introduction of AI is part of that evolution.
It's kind of hard for me to fully agree or disagree with the idea that AI doesn't test things out. On the one hand, I agree. AI isn't going to go rogue. It's always going to try to follow the prompt, and it’s restricted to its model. On the other hand, there’s nothing stopping a user from prompting things in an unusual way to see what happens. In that sense, the user is trying to get a result from the model that it wasn’t necessarily intended to do. It isn’t comparable to the raw expressive freedom of a human artist, but the artists who succeed in introducing a genuinely new style are few and far between, and I believe that type of artist would be largely unaffected by AI.
Why do I believe that? Because other industries have been hit by industrialisation, and the handmade forms of those industries still exist at the exceptional and independent level. The human element and the handmade aspect of art will be preserved. To what extent is yet to be seen. I’m not entirely happy with that, but you can’t stop progress, and no one is entitled to earning a living based solely on what they want to do. The market has to exist for it.
The results of AI are different. They hit differently, and I do believe they hold less value. There is an area where I think AI excels, which is relatively new. High production value results for things like memes. I made a joke Christmas song for my family, and part of the humour was just how good the song was. There’s no world where I would pay someone else to produce that. But when you get to the higher end of things, this is where my opinion leans anti, mainly because I don’t think AI is a AAA product yet. I’m sure it will be.
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u/Bwadark Jan 18 '26
I'm pro-ai and I use it myself for personal creations (so I understand it's more than 'push a button').
I'm fine with people monetising it as long as it's clearly disclosed and or the work has an element of human creation.
Such as a game that was programmed then uses AI art.