AI is a hot button issue right now and for good reason, it’s coming for our art industry. So yeah, I care about it and I feel like this is the best place to share my thoughts and ideas on the subject. You may have a different opinion and you can feel free to comment below but I’m not looking to have a debate about this with strangers online. I’ve had many personal discussions about this topic with both professional artists and programmers and among those are a lot of varying opinions. A lot of people are divided on the topic and if you feel a certain way about it my thoughts are probably not going to change your mind, but I’m going to speak my mind none the less. If you are totally on board with AI art and see it as a positive thing than feel free to frown while you read this.
AI can have many positive uses in our world but we need to be careful about how and why we use it. The people building these AI Image Generators don’t care about art and they certainly don’t care about artists. They’ve built these platforms on the literal backs of hard working professional artists by taking their artwork without consent, compensation and without any regard for the creators they stole from and feeding it into their programs in order to “teach” the AI how to reproduce a similar image. So at its core AI image generators are unethical for that very reason I just mentioned. The AI doesn’t know how to draw or paint, that is not what it does, instead the program mashes together and copies from existing artwork, ripping the very “code” from the artists themselves. It breaks the art down into ones and zero’s and then vomits out a similar looking piece. I’ve been told by many people that “programmers steal code all the time”, like that somehow is supposed to justify the AI theft of artists' work. Art theft has been alive and well in our industry for ages, but unlike programmers, artists have NEVER accepted it as a norm and we certainly won’t accept it now.
“BUT WHAT ABOUT PHOTOSHOP???!! YOU USE PHOTOSHOP!!!!”
Yes many artists like myself use digital tools that help cut corners and save time, heck, before I used computers I used light boxes and stencils to help save time and improve my overall work. Technology in one form or another has always been a part of art but up to this point it’s only been a part of the process. The artist still required years or training and skill to produce the artwork with the help of tools. AI Image Generators are different. Sure they can be an art tool as well but it gets really murky when you think about how it can be used and that the images it spits out are made up of pieces of stolen artwork. Since AI has the ability to leap frog over the entire creative art process I fear many corporations will use them to cut artists out completely in place of these cheaper rip-offs. It won’t be long before a lot of the content that fills our eye holes is solely generated by these Frankenstein’s monsters of the artworld.
Am I personally worried about the impact of AI Image Creation towards my own career? A little bit. It could certainly affect some of my potential design jobs down the road but I hope the companies I work for value what I bring to the table. The one thing I know is that AI will never replace is my ability to tell stories and draw my comics. I’m betting that people who truly value and care about the art of comics and story telling won’t choose some mutant monster of a graphic novel spit out by a machine over what I can create on my own. At least I hope not! Regardless of how bleak the art world gets, I believe people will always have a need and desire for true art created by humans, so for that reason I’m trying to keep a positive outlook for the future.
So as it stands now, I’m perfectly content being the old man refusing to embrace change, much like many artists that came before me in the face of big changes to our industry. However, I feel this new change that’s coming is far bigger and potentially more devastating than any other that has come before it. I know that AI is inevitable in many aspects of our lives, including the art world. However when it comes to my industry I refuse to help usher it in. I won’t be using it and I certainly won’t help promote or champion it in any way. If an inevitable flood is going to devastate your town would you destroy the dam to get it over with quicker or do you grab a bucket and do your best to dump the water out? I choose to fight the flood of AI into the art world and not simply let it drown me.
-Derek