thousandfold said:
I'm a bit confused on pretty much this entire sentence, and maybe this is a result of my somewhat lacking education on AI. What new techniques could they possibly invent that would increase the value of their work? How can any of this make an artist a lot more money?

Faster art output for an artist means they can produce more of their work cheaper. Let's say I am an established artist with thousands of pictures. I could create a custom models just from my pictures that is a lot more potent and close to my style than a model someone that only has access to published work of mine could make, therefore I could produce the art of my style much faster, making more money per hour of work.

thousandfold said:
Except there are limitations for what an artist can do with AI. Especially if AI evolves further, then it's not like anything an experienced artist can do using AI, would be all that much better than what an inexperienced artist can do with it.

I think that's wrong, an artist is far more adept in things non-artists aren't, like color theory, noticing anatomical mistakes and fixing them, setting up far more appealing and unique poses and settings, and they can supplement the pictures with their art which is something non-artists can't do. At best they can spend a lot more hours trying to wrangle the AI to get a result they are satisfied with rather than a result they actually wanted. That's the big difference between AI users that are non-artists and AI users that make full use of the tool they are given. It's just a matter of more people picking up on it.

pheagleadler said:
I think we should stop it.

The issue with that is, if one person won't do it, the next person will, and given how there are no legal grounds to stop it, you better start planning your life around it rather than being in denial.

ckitt said:
The issue with that is, if one person won't do it, the next person will, and given how there are no legal grounds to stop it, you better start planning your life around it rather than being in denial.

Or we could show some morals rather than drive artists out of business?

pheagleadler said:
Or we could show some morals rather than drive artists out of business?

Think we should have shown morals when we drove blacksmiths, farmers, and factory workers out of business when we industrialized to the point where 2 communist revolutions happened and 100 million people died? I think we've already set the precedent when it comes to progress vs x group of people.

Thankfully, the case for artists is different here. Yes, they will have a smaller part of the pie since a lot of people who were forced to buy from them might not do so when they have easier access to AI pictures, but that won't mean people with money, who actually care about art beyond showing their character but also getting art from X artist, will keep on buying art from them. AI will also help them produce more of said art with less effort which will subsidize their losses even more and maybe give them more free time to expand their skillset even further or the leeway to try new things. There is a path to adaptation offered to them unlike with the industrial revolution where so many people were literally left stranded without an option.

The immoral thing would be to cause panic and not show people the alternatives but rather fight an obvious eventuality which will indeed, end up leaving people stranded and thinking they have no options.

pheagleadler said:
Or we could show some morals rather than drive artists out of business?

The 'we' in this case is every single country that has the technical resources to do this.
What do you honestly think, can 'we' 'show some morals rather than drive artists out of business'?

votp said:
A.I. can be used to automate functions that normally take quite a while to do manually. Linework and shading come to mind. Increased speed, increased output, more money. Bingo, bongo, Bob's yer uncle, you make bank by letting a robot do the busywork. Also useful for prototyping with full-on generation, takes out the "envision it" stage of figuring out the drawing.

Sounds great on paper, but not when you consider the concept of supply and demand, this idea falls apart. The more you make, the less you'll be able to sell your art for because you'll be increasing your supply. Even worse, lets say everyone starts doing this, imagine the amount of available commission slots there'd be, and the number of new AI artists emerging as a result of this.

ckitt said:
Faster art output for an artist means they can produce more of their work cheaper. Let's say I am an established artist with thousands of pictures. I could create a custom models just from my pictures that is a lot more potent and close to my style than a model someone that only has access to published work of mine could make, therefore I could produce the art of my style much faster, making more money per hour of work.

I think that's wrong, an artist is far more adept in things non-artists aren't, like color theory, noticing anatomical mistakes and fixing them, setting up far more appealing and unique poses and settings, and they can supplement the pictures with their art which is something non-artists can't do. At best they can spend a lot more hours trying to wrangle the AI to get a result they are satisfied with rather than a result they actually wanted. That's the big difference between AI users that are non-artists and AI users that make full use of the tool they are given. It's just a matter of more people picking up on it.

Lets say hypothetically you are an established artist who sells your work for a lot, and you add AI to your workflow by generating an image using an AI that was trained in your own artstyle, and fix all the mistakes yourself. OR lets say you make a sketch and then let AI fill it in with paint, and then touch it up on photoshop. All of the commissioners who don't support this type of use of an AI will be gone, they're not your customers anymore, this probably makes up the majority of people who buy art for a lot. The only customers you have left are the ones who don't care whether something is AI generated or not. By then, wouldn't they have just used their own AI to generate whatever they want? Wouldn't you may as well just be selling edits of their AI generated work in order to touch it up for them, thus causing the $ value of your work to diminish because you're increasing your supply significantly?

thousandfold said:
Lets say hypothetically you are an established artist who sells your work for a lot, and you add AI to your workflow by generating an image using an AI that was trained in your own artstyle, and fix all the mistakes yourself. OR lets say you make a sketch and then let AI fill it in with paint, and then touch it up on photoshop. All of the commissioners who don't support this type of use of an AI will be gone, they're not your customers anymore, this probably makes up the majority of people who buy art for a lot. The only customers you have left are the ones who don't care whether something is AI generated or not. By then, wouldn't they have just used their own AI to generate whatever they want? Wouldn't you may as well just be selling edits of their AI generated work in order to touch it up for them, thus causing the $ value of your work to diminish because you're increasing your supply significantly?

Why do you assume most people that buy art from a certain person will suddenly stop buying it if they add AI to their workflow? Will the customer mind not having to wait MONTHS to get a commission done because all slots are filled? Besides, if someone wants art the traditional way and they care THAT much about it they can probably pay the extra bucks for the work-time of the artist and the artist will be incentivized to price such art higher for those elitist chooms. Again, no issue there or reason for people to stop buying the art they want to buy. If there is a demand someone will always supply it. It will just be better for people on the lower economic end, finally able to afford art, and people on the higher economic end can still get what they want for the right price. It will probably normalize around an average of lower for AI art and a bit higher than it is today for non-AI assisted art if I were to take a guess.

Let's be real here, you are literally thinking of extreme cases being way more common than they actually are. Reality usually falls around the middle of the extremes. So, if the extremes are everyone will use and buy AI art driving artists out of their jobs, and AI art being banned. Then the reality will fall somewhere in between where everyone gets what hopefully is the best deal. Both artists and consumers, or else the whole thing collapses. As I said, those models are already out and being refined further. The progress they've had in the past year alone has been beyond insane. Most models are only on their 4th epoch, imagine what they will be like on their 12th and implemented into programs like photoshop since such programs don't shy away from new tech. Big studios didn't remove art directors and artists that draw textures but instead allowed them access to such AIs to increase productivity. Smaller studios are using AIs in place of artists so more games can be made by indie devs. I think you are minimizing the impact AI will have and only think of some extreme cases that might affect a handful of people while missing the positive effect it will have on orders of magnitude more.

edit: Truth be told, some models cannot 'get better' than they are due to inherent limitations in the available 'bandwidth' the model has. That's why you don't see AIs ever hit 100% certainty in anything, they are inherently noisy systems and by any means will most likely never be truly 'perfect' but then again, who is? That's why comparing them to just 'computers' feels wrong, because while a calculator on a computer will always give you 1+1=2, an ai made calculator might make mistakes.

As a tiny 'artist', time to poke snout in.

For one, it is funny how Ckitt says "maybe give them more free time to expand their skillset". When AI's seemingly most useful feature is turning scribbles to.. whatever AI does. In my limited AI experience, I found it impossible to implement it into my own workflow so far as having a thing just do a thing for me, as a slowly learning artist, feels quite unacceptable. It is like having another artist do thing for you without showing how they did it, with limited input from me on what I actually desire.
What exactly should artist learn if AI is commonplace, and how would artist learn if the easy way out of any drawing hurdle is asking a machine to do it for them.

My little investigation into AI ultimately shown to me personally that as an artistic tool it is useless.
It does things I do not want it to do, it overdraws in style that is not mine making it difficult to edit out AI's errors.
I seen no method to generate alpha channel, so for animation it is flat out useless until it gets it. Which it might, it would be something rather entertaining.
While over time learning you pick up your own tricks to speed up your own process, tricks that you, yourself, are in full control of.
As an example, if a background asset is required, I may already take a picture (or google for it), extract it as a texture, and plop on some filters to match the scene. Main selling point to have me sold on AI is basically dead right there.

For me AI feels like yet another filter, but really do I really ever want to use them? Probably not. It is not a tool as agile as a brush, and so it feels antithetical to drawing itself.
Which may require time for other artists to grow, learn the tool and use it. A new generation let's say, as for me, I can say for certain, divide between me and AI will grow only deeper.
And I cannot imagine it being any other way, either you grow as an artist or AI replaces what you cannot do. As far as my own experience goes.

--
It may help us produce works faster? For what pool? Is there any commissioner desiring hundreds of pieces with characteristic AI errors? Who exactly desires a generic species to be drawn over and over again?
I may consider drawing a generic species for practice, however, having AI fill it in is hardly practice.
Is there character owner that desires infinite images? It may appear so, but everyone has their limit. Art ultimately requires eyes on the other side to see it, to enjoy it. Is it really useful to draw out art faster? ..Yes, but as fast as machine can without having an "AI observer" to speed up art observing? I guess not.
Increase in AI assists will ultimately drive out some artists out, at a meager price of .. maybe all the shading having the same "AI bloom" and some curvy fingers.
Artists that do not adopt it will inevitably become drowned in "the attention economy" where being on main page is vital. And being on main page requires posting as much as possible.
Is that desirable? I'd also say no. Even more as one with an animation focus, it is undesirable to see the attention economy more flooded. Everyone who seeks to become a skilled artist, to perfect their craft is certain to oppose simple machine solutions.
It is.. in a way comparable to Grain's long lasting gripe with SFM artists, big part of who simply use ripped models. With ability to post daily, every few hours if they put their mind to it. While modeler that actually crafts the model will spend a week on the model alone. Even on curated E621 we have cases of furries going "I'd rather blacklist 3d than sift through this to find one that is actually good". To clarify, posting often is vital to popularity (may even quote Blitzdrachin here in forum somewhere on that), this fact alone will promote unhealthy use of AI and posting frequently without actually seeking quality.
It is the same, while theoretically beneficial to individual artists, ecosystem it entails is clearly toxic.

Now to political aspect, may admins have mercy on the Grain.

AI will advance, noone is capable of stopping it. Nor is it desirable to stop technological progress (possibly, just from earths experience that technology is good)
Do you care of it?
No, Ckitt, you do not. For you show no care to lives lost to industrialization. No sadness for individual tragedy of those whose livelihood was lost. For technology is perfect.
From the tragedies came labor movement, and from vile attacks upon labor movement came communist movement, which took up arms for the sake of revolution.
That too you dismiss as murderers. Clearly following propaganda (100 million, most exaggerated number you may get), instead of wast nuances of what the communist movement was, what they did and what they tried to achieve. Ultimately why it happened even.
As to spare everyone a lesson upon Marxist thought, concepts relating to falling rate of profit and differences between socialist/communist and capitalist society.
I may simply note that capitalist economy is increasingly in crisis as machinery replaces people, creating personal tragedy for person who is now without income they need to live or something. Socialist economy is hugely different, but sparing the details how, due to public ownership of productive means, automatization would not create personal tragedy as the person has personal stake in the workplace that was automated. Instead of being unemployed and poor, socialist citizen would enjoy product machine produces.
Why am I telling you this? Do I want you to become a communist? (well yes kinda hihi)
No, rather noting that Ckitt happily throws
1, artist income to the trash and says "well screw you, your work is automated now, get fucked"
2, when artist says "well can we organize society so I would still have right to LIVE", Ckitts response is, paraphrased, "100 million ded, fuck you commie."
Fuck artists double time, fuck everyone who is at threat of automation.

For these reasons I must applaud E621 staff for taking stance on AI that they did.
Even if AI is the future, creating a buffer where artists may exist as they are, a shield, even if likely temporary spares the personal tragedy individual artist experiences.
To be able to create and be seen, without being drowned in creations of the machine.
And for once we may note what "AI artist" cannot do, for as much as I can tell, GPU cannot feel hunger nor pain.
And for as long as there is no new thing, like universal basic income (which again, kinda cringe idea if you ask anyone who has investigated anything in political theory), this may not be the solution that we'd like, but thats the solution we get.

/end of politics segment.

>hate mail segment, now it is certainly ban time.
For as much as I can tell, all artist friends I have violently despise the development of AI, common reason is seeing it as theft or artstyle and drawn assets. Though I do myself believe that subconsciously aspects related to threat to their income take higher priority.
As far as I can tell, "experienced 2d artist+AI fan" is rare if they exist at all.
So copying Gabs_arts common statements. If you arent artist, maybe don't talk about artist issues. Like, sorry to say 'STFU' but Ckitt, all your theorizing about how rtists will use AI art, is in direct contradiction to my experience as artist.
(and in same statement, those who are not LGBT maybe should STFU about LGBT issues lol)

And finally, having talked about all of this, I can reach what is in my honest opinion perfect solution to AI question.
Dont ban AI, ban people who promote it. (Semi jokingly saying, clarifying below)
I fucking can't.
I keep getting some AI promoter on discord saying "there machine can do it better so quit art", or something in same light.
I keep getting sent "Two minute paper" video, saying "use this and you'll be so much better artist". Yea I'll use that unreleased code that only that researcher group has. And run it on my supercomputer with fucking MX150 graphics card.
I keep getting advice that I should use AI generation. On what? MX150? Whatever cloud service? On what money? Especially early on when AI has huge skill ceiling? Train AI exactly on what? 5 images on my character? Train it on 1 refsheet that commissioner has?
I keep getting seeing AI arts posted and everyone praising it like a piece of Amyths work, when it is a universally solo image of a generic species. That only gives a reminder AI would fail on original character and fail even more on helping with scene of any complexity, good luck getting multiple characters out of that.

After weeks of just being prodded by >NOT ARTISTS< to try out AI art.
I did, was not impressed and in a way it helped me to not fear it and be more at peace knowing that really it is kinda dumb. The whole trend began feeling more like just that, a trend, of people who just are exceptionally happy to see most generic furry scene recreated with extra bloom to it.
I may even invite artists to try it out and see that really.. Muskian promise that it is going to help or replace any of us. Even if it can go BRRRT on images.

And my personal view in the very end is.
AI is.. well, a tool, nifty technology. Dont think it is useful to me, I hope it will be useful to someone else though. Can't stop time, we live in amazing times.
But earths 'society research' is kinda behind, which makes automatization and all the wealth it promises actually look like a bad thing. Not just AI, even Mcdonnals automation, I mean.. good, nobody wants to work flippin burgers. Same people would be more productive elsewhere, but society as it is, will more likely push the potential to dumpster diving.
And above it all.
Fanboys of AI art, not to insult anyone here, discord users have brought me to the feeling before this thread happened.
Are so fucking toxic
and I dislike them.

ckitt said:
Why do you assume most people that buy art from a certain person will suddenly stop buying it if they add AI to their workflow?

Well I can't know for certain unless i go to each of my commissioners and ask them specifically, but its just my assumption based off how i've seen people react to things like adding a significant amount of AI to ones workflow. Alternatively i could always run a poll somewhere to see what people would think of it.
At the moment, for everyone i know who i've proposed the idea of adding AI to my workflow (aside from just references and backgrounds), all of them said they would just stop supporting me.

ckitt said:
Will the customer mind not having to wait MONTHS to get a commission done because all slots are filled?

Sure, perhaps a fair number of people may not care about what's in the workflow as long as it means they get the commission slot. But again this goes back to adding more slots, causing more supply and decreasing the value of the art because the price would need to be adjusted to be proportionate to the supply/demand

ckitt said:
If there is a demand someone will always supply it. It will just be better for people on the lower economic end, finally able to afford art, and people on the higher economic end can still get what they want for the right price. It will probably normalize around an average of lower for AI art and a bit higher than it is today for non-AI assisted art if I were to take a guess.

I was thinking the same thing, and I think this is fine as long as there's a market for both types of artists.

birdofgrain said:
AI is.. well, a tool, nifty technology. Dont think it is useful to me, I hope it will be useful to someone else though. Can't stop time, we live in amazing times.
But earths 'society research' is kinda behind, which makes automatization and all the wealth it promises actually look like a bad thing. Not just AI, even Mcdonnals automation, I mean.. good, nobody wants to work flippin burgers. Same people would be more productive elsewhere, but society as it is, will more likely push the potential to dumpster diving.
And above it all.
Fanboys of AI art, not to insult anyone here, discord users have brought me to the feeling before this thread happened.
Are so fucking toxic
and I dislike them.

It is a tool, but not for artists, never meant to be. It was made for people who cant draw, for people who cant put their ideas onto paper. Those who tell artists to adapt by using this AI as a tool, dont seem to understand art economics and why this just doesn't make sense. No surprise considering anyone telling us to just use AI to cut down the amount of work we have to do by a significant amount, aren't artists themselves, and aren't people who have experience in how it works when selling a certain craft.

Sad part is that artists were doing just fine before this technology was invented, we didnt need this nor will we ever need it. But y'know, this greatly benefits people who never put the work into learning how to draw, so why would they care? I also think its funny how people compare this with technological advancements that improved survivability and quality of life, whereas AI art doesnt improve any of that, it only causes more damage than help. (And no, increasing the amount of available entertainment on the internet does not increase quality of life, its one of those "you think you want it, but you dont" type situations)

In addition to what was said
*Pats Thousandfold*
I'd like to add another aspect, call it the soul of the art.
See my profile picture? That's Graineater, being a furry degenerate I kinda well, consider her to be me in a way. As many furriest I roleplay, as Graineater. She is my connection to my best friends, she has long lasting stories with multiple people.
Who found me through art of her, or found others through art of them.
See how profound it is, it carries aspect of my friendship.
She matters a great deal to me.
Respresents frostbites work.
Represents my friendship to so many.
And yea represents sexual things.

Now consider the AI art, AI as it currently exists, draws out generic animals. (Not doing all that well if you are "up sizing" OC from basic drawing either)
Who does it matter to?
Artist? - no, they only do it to poop out the drawing as fast as possible.
The character owner? - no for the AI drawing is generic tiger learned from thousands of tigers. And hence characters owner does not exist.
Raw lust? - well, if you'd FAP to it sure.

The more you think about AI, worse it gets.
Instead of finding a friend on a character design you love. ERP and friendship may follow, and few Stellaris games I guess.
AI represents.. rubbing one out to generic tiger and enjoying the fact it was cheap.

Overly philosophical? Maybe this idea will flop if AI figures out OCs.
But that's my bathroom thought to yeet yet another fact why hecc I really don't think AI is good for furry community. When there's a chance you'd have to sift through far more drawings to find said community.

The current state of pixiv says it all to be honest

thousandfold said:
Those who tell artists to adapt by using this AI as a tool, dont seem to understand art economics and why this just doesn't make sense. No surprise considering anyone telling us to just use AI to cut down the amount of work we have to do by a significant amount, aren't artists themselves, and aren't people who have experience in how it works when selling a certain craft.

Hi
You can use AI as a tool in your creative process, in the same ways you can use traditional photography

birdofgrain said:
In addition to what was said
*Pats Thousandfold*
I'd like to add another aspect, call it the soul of the art.
See my profile picture? That's Graineater, being a furry degenerate I kinda well, consider her to be me in a way. As many furriest I roleplay, as Graineater. She is my connection to my best friends, she has long lasting stories with multiple people.
Who found me through art of her, or found others through art of them.
See how profound it is, it carries aspect of my friendship.
She matters a great deal to me.
Respresents frostbites work.
Represents my friendship to so many.
And yea represents sexual things.

The "soul" argument is more in the eye of the beholder. It's based on what someone sees in the art and how they consume the art, and whether or not they care if a real person is needed to create the contents of the image. I've seen some AI-enthusiast consider the artist soul to be just a bunch of bullshit that we made up, but they dont understand since they consume art differently than we do.

birdofgrain said:
Maybe this idea will flop if AI figures out OCs.

It might figure out OCs, not that it'll matter. The biggest importance of having an OC or sona is so someone can share their character with the community, nobody is going to care about that OC if all their depictions are AI generated.

mabit said:
Hi
You can use AI as a tool in your creative process, in the same ways you can use traditional photography

I can, and this is what i consider a healthy way to use it as a tool.

birdofgrain said:
For one, it is funny how Ckitt says "maybe give them more free time to expand their skillset". When AI's seemingly most useful feature is turning scribbles to.. whatever AI does. In my limited AI experience, I found it impossible to implement it into my own workflow so far as having a thing just do a thing for me, as a slowly learning artist, feels quite unacceptable. It is like having another artist do thing for you without showing how they did it, with limited input from me on what I actually desire.
What exactly should artist learn if AI is commonplace, and how would artist learn if the easy way out of any drawing hurdle is asking a machine to do it for them.

My little investigation into AI ultimately shown to me personally that as an artistic tool it is useless.
It does things I do not want it to do, it overdraws in style that is not mine making it difficult to edit out AI's errors.
I seen no method to generate alpha channel, so for animation it is flat out useless until it gets it. Which it might, it would be something rather entertaining.
While over time learning you pick up your own tricks to speed up your own process, tricks that you, yourself, are in full control of.
As an example, if a background asset is required, I may already take a picture (or google for it), extract it as a texture, and plop on some filters to match the scene. Main selling point to have me sold on AI is basically dead right there.

For me AI feels like yet another filter, but really do I really ever want to use them? Probably not. It is not a tool as agile as a brush, and so it feels antithetical to drawing itself.
Which may require time for other artists to grow, learn the tool and use it. A new generation let's say, as for me, I can say for certain, divide between me and AI will grow only deeper.
And I cannot imagine it being any other way, either you grow as an artist or AI replaces what you cannot do. As far as my own experience goes.

Yes, a new tool that is like nothing before it will take time to learn how to use, obviously. Each artist might also use it differently depending on how they want to implement it and on what level. Most seem to not mind making backgrounds through it so that alone would save a lot of time and up the quality on a lot of pictures. As for creating alpha channels maybe someone will make a model for just that. There are already AIs that can fill frames in-between to create smoother animations, something you'd certainly want to implement in your workflow as an animator and a lot of people do.

It also sounds to me that you had a run with X model of AI and found it lacking without realizing the rough implementation AIs currently have. Stuff like DALLE and Midjourney or Nightcafe aren't artist focused AIs that can be customized to help with the creation or supplementing of art. You'd need a specifically trained S-AI model for this kind of work. Which I will come to later after I deal with all this dramatization of the situation you have created for yourself.

birdofgrain said:
It may help us produce works faster? For what pool? Is there any commissioner desiring hundreds of pieces with characteristic AI errors? Who exactly desires a generic species to be drawn over and over again?
I may consider drawing a generic species for practice, however, having AI fill it in is hardly practice.
Is there character owner that desires infinite images? It may appear so, but everyone has their limit. Art ultimately requires eyes on the other side to see it, to enjoy it. Is it really useful to draw out art faster? ..Yes, but as fast as machine can without having an "AI observer" to speed up art observing? I guess not.
Increase in AI assists will ultimately drive out some artists out, at a meager price of .. maybe all the shading having the same "AI bloom" and some curvy fingers.
Artists that do not adopt it will inevitably become drowned in "the attention economy" where being on main page is vital. And being on main page requires posting as much as possible.
Is that desirable? I'd also say no. Even more as one with an animation focus, it is undesirable to see the attention economy more flooded. Everyone who seeks to become a skilled artist, to perfect their craft is certain to oppose simple machine solutions.
It is.. in a way comparable to Grain's long lasting gripe with SFM artists, big part of who simply use ripped models. With ability to post daily, every few hours if they put their mind to it. While modeler that actually crafts the model will spend a week on the model alone. Even on curated E621 we have cases of furries going "I'd rather blacklist 3d than sift through this to find one that is actually good". To clarify, posting often is vital to popularity (may even quote Blitzdrachin here in forum somewhere on that), this fact alone will promote unhealthy use of AI and posting frequently without actually seeking quality.
It is the same, while theoretically beneficial to individual artists, ecosystem it entails is clearly toxic.

For the pool of people that don't care what you have on your workflow, just the art that they want to have and if the result makes them happy you finished your job a lot easier and faster. If it takes an hour of your time to finish a commission you just made 20 bucks bingo bango without sweating over deadlines or losing a day from your life. And the commissioner didn't have to pay out of their ass for a generic piece of art that they would get anyway as most artist's pieces are about as generic as AIs. After all, it was trained on them.

As for practice, if you want to practice shading you wouldn't make the AI shade for you, you could though have the AI make pictures with flat colors for you to shade, making your training easier. Same as you could have AI create lineart for you to color, and so on. If you can't practice because there is an 'easy out' then that's your perogative.

If AI assist will drive out artists then I don't know what to say, maybe technology is bad in the end and AI is the equivalent of the atomic bomb on particle physics, but I don't see that, I just see people overly dramatic and scared about new tech because it 'looks' like it can do what they had a monopoly on but better, which fair, but highly selfish. I'd rather focus on the positive aspects of it which there are just as plentiful. You seem to think that all AI art is generic without realizing that it has been trained on YOUR art, so it would be like calling your art generic. As I said, it highly depends on what model you use and what kind of style you go for. In some cases AI might not be helpful, for example in the development of new styles. In some cases, it will be highly more efficient to use. And stop talking about weird hands like this will be a problem in the near future. Before 3 months ago you couldn't even hope for AI to make a furry that would pass as one, today it's as easy as simply stating what kind of furry you want generated. And it will only get better from here on out.

birdofgrain said:
AI will advance, noone is capable of stopping it. Nor is it desirable to stop technological progress (possibly, just from earths experience that technology is good)
Do you care of it?
No, Ckitt, you do not. For you show no care to lives lost to industrialization. No sadness for individual tragedy of those whose livelihood was lost. For technology is perfect.
From the tragedies came labor movement, and from vile attacks upon labor movement came communist movement, which took up arms for the sake of revolution.
That too you dismiss as murderers. Clearly following propaganda (100 million, most exaggerated number you may get), instead of wast nuances of what the communist movement was, what they did and what they tried to achieve. Ultimately why it happened even.

I didn't make any political statements, all I said that we have already set a precedent on this with much bigger and life-impacting situations than drawing scribbles. With a group of people far bigger than the group that constitutes artists. I didn't say if that was good or bad, just that it happened. I really don't care about the political aspect of any of this so I will ignore it. In the end, you admitted that you can't stop and neither is it desirable to stop technological progress.

birdofgrain said:
No, rather noting that Ckitt happily throws
1, artist income to the trash and says "well screw you, your work is automated now, get fucked"
2, when artist says "well can we organize society so I would still have right to LIVE", Ckitts response is, paraphrased, "100 million ded, fuck you commie."
Fuck artists double time, fuck everyone who is at threat of automation.

1. I already explained how artists can increase their income through AI, especially when more refined and workable models come out in programs like photoshop which will be far easier to operate.
2. I was literally the first person to tell the Admin on the site that I agree with his policy for now until AI art settles in its niche, so again, you are wrong.
But I would certainly say yes, fuck the people who cannot adapt to new tech. That's their problem in an ever-changing world. I think ditching natural selection has coddled people into thinking they can do whatever they want without repercussions. Well, no, that's not how life was, is, or will be. You will constantly need to adapt to whatever new environment you find yourself in.

While I believe AI art will pave the way for more artists, not less, if it turns out to spoil the monopoly some people have on a subject, I'm more than happy to create a healthy marketplace where more competition exists, not less.

birdofgrain said:
For these reasons I must applaud E621 staff for taking stance on AI that they did.
Even if AI is the future, creating a buffer where artists may exist as they are, a shield, even if likely temporary spares the personal tragedy individual artist experiences.
To be able to create and be seen, without being drowned in creations of the machine.

I also agree that AI uploads should be limited, it was literally my first idea in implementing AI art here, to make it so each person couldn't post more than one or two AI pictures until they got approved.

birdofgrain said:
For as much as I can tell, all artist friends I have violently despise the development of AI, common reason is seeing it as theft or artstyle and drawn assets. Though I do myself believe that subconsciously aspects related to threat to their income take higher priority.

Close, the whole spite thing is all because of the monetary loss threat, nothing more. Those artists friends of yours don't care about art, skill or any other aspect of AI except the fact that they have settled in what they know, don't want to learn something new and at the same time feel entitled to other people's money.

birdofgrain said:
As far as I can tell, "experienced 2d artist+AI fan" is rare if they exist at all.
So copying Gabs_arts common statements. If you arent artist, maybe don't talk about artist issues. Like, sorry to say 'STFU' but Ckitt, all your theorizing about how rtists will use AI art, is in direct contradiction to my experience as artist.
(and in same statement, those who are not LGBT maybe should STFU about LGBT issues lol)

Well, you'll be sorry to find out I am a 2d artist too who really enjoys AI art and where it's heading, and since I am an artist I won't STFU about it. Especially in the face of uneducated, selfish people that are worried about their end and not what others experience. That don't care about low commission slots, don't care that people might have to pay an arm and a leg for representation of their fursonas and that take elitist stances only for the sake of monetary gain.

birdofgrain said:
And finally, having talked about all of this, I can reach what is in my honest opinion perfect solution to AI question.
Dont ban AI, ban people who promote it. (Semi jokingly saying, clarifying below)
I fucking can't.
I keep getting some AI promoter on discord saying "there machine can do it better so quit art", or something in same light.
I keep getting sent "Two minute paper" video, saying "use this and you'll be so much better artist". Yea I'll use that unreleased code that only that researcher group has. And run it on my supercomputer with fucking MX150 graphics card.
I keep getting advice that I should use AI generation. On what? MX150? Whatever cloud service? On what money? Especially early on when AI has huge skill ceiling? Train AI exactly on what? 5 images on my character? Train it on 1 refsheet that commissioner has?
I keep getting seeing AI arts posted and everyone praising it like a piece of Amyths work, when it is a universally solo image of a generic species. That only gives a reminder AI would fail on original character and fail even more on helping with scene of any complexity, good luck getting multiple characters out of that.

There we have it, I wouldn't ever joke about banning people from the community, inclusivity used to matter I think, now it's all about dividing people and you clearly are all for that.
The rest of your blabber is 'poor me I don't understand how to use it' well, wait for it to be commercialized then, it won't be long until an actual company picks it up and implements it in a way that is far more convenient and usable for artists. On the matter of 'where' to run it, in case you don't have your own beefy card, google provides people with free A100s for more than enough time per day to finish your workflow. Not to mention you can extend that by making multiple google accounts and using their collab service which again, is free. And that's today while no commercial implementation exists.

birdofgrain said:
After weeks of just being prodded by >NOT ARTISTS< to try out AI art.
I did, was not impressed and in a way it helped me to not fear it and be more at peace knowing that really it is kinda dumb. The whole trend began feeling more like just that, a trend, of people who just are exceptionally happy to see most generic furry scene recreated with extra bloom to it.
I may even invite artists to try it out and see that really.. Muskian promise that it is going to help or replace any of us. Even if it can go BRRRT on images.

Good, then there is nothing to worry about? By the way, I'd like you to share some of your AI creations and compare it to mine, see if you got the full experience or you just tried to use some unrefined models and formulated an opinion based on those results.

birdofgrain said:
And my personal view in the very end is.
AI is.. well, a tool, nifty technology. Dont think it is useful to me, I hope it will be useful to someone else though. Can't stop time, we live in amazing times.

This is an odd thing to say after the dramatization above.

birdofgrain said:
But earths 'society research' is kinda behind, which makes automatization and all the wealth it promises actually look like a bad thing. Not just AI, even Mcdonnals automation, I mean.. good, nobody wants to work flippin burgers. Same people would be more productive elsewhere, but society as it is, will more likely push the potential to dumpster diving.

Well, speak with your vote then. Get people in power that know what they are doing, god knows we need that.

birdofgrain said:
And above it all.
Fanboys of AI art, not to insult anyone here, discord users have brought me to the feeling before this thread happened.
Are so fucking toxic
and I dislike them.

If you go up and read through the forum, especially if you read through the submissions I made before the AI rule was properly implemented in the guidelines, you'd actually see the toxic, gatekeeping, divisive people, are the ones supporting your side. You literally came in on your first post asking 'jokingly' to remove people who simply state their opinion that AI is fine. If that's not toxic, I don't know what is.

birdofgrain said:
I'd like to add another aspect, call it the soul of the art.
See my profile picture? That's Graineater, being a furry degenerate I kinda well, consider her to be me in a way. As many furriest I roleplay, as Graineater. She is my connection to my best friends, she has long lasting stories with multiple people.
Who found me through art of her, or found others through art of them.
See how profound it is, it carries aspect of my friendship.
She matters a great deal to me.
Respresents frostbites work.
Represents my friendship to so many.
And yea represents sexual things.

Now consider the AI art, AI as it currently exists, draws out generic animals. (Not doing all that well if you are "up sizing" OC from basic drawing either)
Who does it matter to?
Artist? - no, they only do it to poop out the drawing as fast as possible.
The character owner? - no for the AI drawing is generic tiger learned from thousands of tigers. And hence characters owner does not exist.
Raw lust? - well, if you'd FAP to it sure.

Well, that settles it, you never actually saw a decent AI model optimized for furry art. Do you think this character is generic then?

If my fursona was a white feline and I asked an artist to make it do you think they wouldn't make a 'generic white feline'?

Could you look for a fennec/doe hybrid and show me who's art the AI stole?
I don't know about 'spirits' and 'souls' in art, I am not religious, but this is a character from my roleplays too, just as valid as yours, with the same friendships being created around her, with stories told and written, and I personally care for her as much as I do for my traditionally drawn characters. You talk about it being profound like you just had a DMT trip and thought you saw God. Get off that stick. It's just your personal opinion and nothing more beyond that.

There is nothing overly philosophical about your points, you are literally just whining about AI, and even worse, you are whining about points already addressed in previous posts rather exhaustively.

thousandfold said:
Well I can't know for certain unless i go to each of my commissioners and ask them specifically, but its just my assumption based off how i've seen people react to things like adding a significant amount of AI to ones workflow. Alternatively i could always run a poll somewhere to see what people would think of it.
At the moment, for everyone i know who i've proposed the idea of adding AI to my workflow (aside from just references and backgrounds), all of them said they would just stop supporting me.

You do realize you just contradicted yourself right? You said they'd stop buying from you if you added AI to your workflow unless it was for reffs and backgrounds, which you know for a fact would greatly increase your art output just by those two things alone. Did you ask those same people if they'd mind if you had more commission slots open? Did you ask them if they'd be okay if you still kept the option of requesting traditionally made art on an obviously slower commission queue(for obvious reasons)? This is why a poll asking 'are you okay with AI art' is meaningless. Because people have to assume way too much and they usually tend to assume the worst.

thousandfold said:
Sure, perhaps a fair number of people may not care about what's in the workflow as long as it means they get the commission slot. But again this goes back to adding more slots, causing more supply and decreasing the value of the art because the price would need to be adjusted to be proportionate to the supply/demand

The value doesn't decrease because of increased supply, it gets decreased by taking less time to do the same thing you did before. If you got paid $50 for a commission that took you 3 hours to complete, if you made the same quality of art in 1 hour, you'd of course ask for a bit less. Like 20 bucks. In that case you increased your profit per hour of work, meaning your art value actually increased.

thousandfold said:
I was thinking the same thing, and I think this is fine as long as there's a market for both types of artists.

Then we agree.

ckitt said:
You do realize you just contradicted yourself right? You said they'd stop buying from you if you added AI to your workflow unless it was for reffs and backgrounds, which you know for a fact would greatly increase your art output just by those two things alone.

I don't think it would increase my output by much at all actually, i can already get refs and backgrounds from elsewhere without the use of AI. Usually i dont even need to go out of my way to get refs for something.

ckitt said:
Did you ask those same people if they'd mind if you had more commission slots open? Did you ask them if they'd be okay if you still kept the option of requesting traditionally made art on an obviously slower commission queue(for obvious reasons)?

No but i could try, although it'd feel pointless since I don't think doing so is a good option for me.

ckitt said:
The value doesn't decrease because of increased supply, it gets decreased by taking less time to do the same thing you did before. If you got paid $50 for a commission that took you 3 hours to complete, if you made the same quality of art in 1 hour, you'd of course ask for a bit less. Like 20 bucks. In that case you increased your profit per hour of work, meaning your art value actually increased.

I think it's the use of the AI in order to decrease the amount of hours is what causes the decrease in value, but more-so does increasing supply. What i mean by value is the amount of money people are willing to pay for your work, if you're selling each piece for $20, then your work is valued at $20. If you're doing 3 hrs of work for $60 instead of $50, yes you do get more money per hour but you're also tripling your output, meaning you would need triple the amount of demand to meet the supply.
Additionally, if auctions take up almost half of the commission income, then fulfilling more demands will cause people to be less likely to bid on auctions, because they can just go get a commission instead. All in all, more slots would cause people less willing to pay the artists asking price.

Now here's a better alternative, one that doesn't require AI whatsoever. Instead of increasing the supply and adding use of AI to the mix (which by itself would cause a decrease in the amount of money people are willing to pay), you decrease the supply. Instead of selling 6 slots (3hrs of work per) at $50 each, making $16/h, you instead sell 2 or 3 slots at $100 each, making on average $27 per hour. You'd have less people willing to buy your work but it doesn't matter as long as you still have enough people willing to pay $100 for a commission.

thousandfold said:
Yes, decreasing the time and effort it takes does in a way decrease the value, but more-so does increasing supply. What i mean by value is the amount of money people are willing to pay for your work, if you're selling each piece for $20, then your work is valued at $20. If you're doing 3 hrs of work for $60 instead of $50, yes you do get more money per hour but you're also tripling your output, meaning you would need triple the amount of demand to meet the supply.
Additionally, if auctions take up almost half of the commission income, then fulfilling more demands will cause people to be less likely to bid on auctions, because they can just go get a commission instead. All in all, more slots would cause people less willing to pay the artists asking price.

You seem to think that supply is the end all be all, which if it was the case, as I stated in a previous post, China would have taken over most markets by now. Supply is good for people on the lower end of economic spectrum, offering things to them cheaper at usually a lower quality. There will still be higher quality work and people willing to pay for that, and that's where a mix of traditional and AI art will shine the most, as well as the more gimmicky traditional art without use of AI that I'm certain people will still be requesting, especially those of older generations that don't wish to adopt the new style. I don't see how more slots would make less people willing to pay, I always saw, in every single commission slot journal on FA, people whining about not making it in time to get a slot. Think those people would pay less if they actually GOT the slot? That's illogical. It would most likely make those people happier that they are getting what they wanted.

thousandfold said:
Now here's a better alternative, one that doesn't require AI whatsoever. Instead of increasing the supply and adding use of AI to the mix (which by itself would cause a decrease in the amount of money people are willing to pay), you decrease the supply. Instead of selling 6 slots (3hrs of work per) at $50 each, making $16/h, you instead sell 2 or 3 slots at $100 each, making on average $27 per hour. You'd have less people willing to buy your work but it doesn't matter as long as you still have enough people willing to pay $100 for a commission.

Well, if your alternative doesn't require AI it will fall flat on its face when people start using it and they can compete with you far more aggressively. You will only drive yourself into a niche that only a few people will be willing to go for. But by all means, if you can manage making people pay more for the same art they could get for half the price, and with AI maybe 1/5th of the price, be my guest, from my 30 years of experience on this planet there is no shortage of idiots that will pay more than they have to for less than they can get. But as I said, it will be a niche.

I also don't see how it will affect auctions. Did auctions on traditional art stop or had reduced income when digital art came about? Did Mona Lisa's price drop just because people started printing EXACT copies of it? Again, it feels like you are being shortsighted and only take into account the negatives without the positives while I'm trying to be realistic about the issue. Yes, every period where big changes happen in a field may cause havoc, some people won't be able to adapt and probably be forced to change professions but usually what we see is that a lot more people, especially the newcomers, take advantage of that to find their place in the new landscape that is left behind. This isn't inherently good or bad, it's just life cycling through.

ckitt said:
I don't see how more slots would make less people willing to pay, I always saw, in every single commission slot journal on FA, people whining about not making it in time to get a slot. Think those people would pay less if they actually GOT the slot? That's illogical. It would most likely make those people happier that they are getting what they wanted.

I should have specified that i meant the asking price of the auctions, even then, I would still argue that they wouldn't be happy if they knew AI was doing half the work.

ckitt said:
Well, if your alternative doesn't require AI it will fall flat on its face when people start using it and they can compete with you far more aggressively. You will only drive yourself into a niche that only a few people will be willing to go for. But by all means, if you can manage making people pay more for the same art they could get for half the price, and with AI maybe 1/5th of the price, be my guest, from my 30 years of experience on this planet there is no shortage of idiots that will pay more than they have to for less than they can get. But as I said, it will be a niche.

I know from experience that this does work. Besides, people pay artists for their art style, and many do so because they want the artist/commissioner interaction + being able to share the commissioned work they did with their friends and the rest of the community. I would argue that this is one of the primary reasons why people would spend hundreds of dollars on a single piece of art.

ckitt said:
I also don't see how it will affect auctions. Did auctions on traditional art stop or had reduced income when digital art came about? Did Mona Lisa's price drop just because people started printing EXACT copies of it?

The economics behind digital and traditional auctions are not the same. If a digital artist sells an auction for as high as $500, this only happens because the people who want art from a particular artist have no other option but to bid on that auction since that same artist only sells 2 or 3 commission slots each month.

ckitt said:
Again, it feels like you are being shortsighted and only take into account the negatives without the positives while I'm trying to be realistic about the issue.

It's just that i'm struggling to see what the positives are. Perhaps you can remind me what you consider to be positives by listing some

ckitt said:
Yes, every period where big changes happen in a field may cause havoc, some people won't be able to adapt and probably be forced to change professions but usually what we see is that a lot more people, especially the newcomers, take advantage of that to find their place in the new landscape that is left behind. This isn't inherently good or bad, it's just life cycling through.

A mild positive would be that yes newcomers can use AI to help themselves learn how to draw/paint, although this isn't much of a big deal since there are also several other ways to learn how to draw/paint. Unless newcomers plan on letting the AI do most the drawing or painting for them, which would only cause their own work to lose value because as that point its hardly their work, nor is it even their style.

Like.. NMNY kinda settled the question in an admirable fashion.
By now it is "Ckitt, what the fuck dude" thread.

Theres so much just techno worship, you don't stop by to think is it actually useful.
You are not an animator either. And there we go advice for using AI interpolation.
To animator that works with Vector graphics and motion tweening.
Thats kind of what pisses me off about all the technoboys that 1. are not artists. 2. are intent on prodding their snouts in in artist business. It is a thing that I get last few animations as this trend got up.
And there I can note a simple fact about vector graphics and motion tweening. It involves entering start position, end position and based on settings for desired frame rate, thats what you get. Simple, linear interpolation. And if I enter desire for 100 frames a second, thats what I would get.
(which I dont really want to do because 24 chokes most mobile devices as it is. It is kinda counter-productive upscaling it to 50 when lag will seem to reduce it back down to 5. If you even care about those who may want to see it on their 150 euro worth smartphone)

You just assume, by default that it is new and therefore useful. Likely it is not. Whatever, time will tell.

>And the commissioner didn't have to pay out of their ass for a generic piece of art that they would get anyway as most artist's pieces are about as generic as AIs. After all, it was trained on them.
>Well, that settles it, you never actually saw a decent AI model optimized for furry art. Do you think this character is generic then?
"Weird how every single time there's an example being passed around of good AI artwork it's always pinups of big breasted woman with no hands in sight. I wonder if they're hoping the large breasts will distract from the faces, eyes, or suspicious lack of hands." - NotMeNotYou 14 days ago

>" Before 3 months ago you couldn't even hope for AI to make a furry that would pass as one, today it's as easy as simply stating what kind of furry you want generated. And it will only get better from here on out."
2020 moment
Like, as far as I can see, you are just high on technology. Just praise the tech and forget everything else.

>"Good, then there is nothing to worry about? By the way, I'd like you to share some of your AI creations and compare it to mine, see if you got the full experience or you just tried to use some unrefined models and formulated an opinion based on those results."
Maybe look back to my statements on attention economy and take note. Artists who post more are more popular just by visibility.
I was already quite discouraged for a long time from going too deep into 3D, as when I tell it to friends they are far more enthusiastic about seeing 2D. Upon more prodding, it is easy to find when I say 3D, they think SFM, not h0rs3 or ruadri's 3D arts. And in a way it feels like I'm going to work on something for month to perfect it, only to have it lost in sea of quickly generated stuff. A message in a bottle. Oh well, thats certainly overreacting from me, good 3d art can shine above the sea of quickly generated content.
But sure hope it does not happen to 2d.
..AAaand, do you want to compare AI unassisted works?

>"I didn't make any political statements"
What about "my 100 million ded"? What about interpretation of markets that would even make libertarians cringe? What about outright social Darwinism in your speech?
Like, BOY, I can tell. Doesnt take a genius to figure out where you stand.
"I think ditching natural selection has coddled people into thinking they can do whatever they want without repercussions."
Just.. woow dude.
I would take stance that everyone must take steps to ensure that technological growth does not harm people. And then technological growth will be good.
But you, no, you may well be the fucking AI in the discussion.

thousandfold said:
I should have specified that i meant the asking price of the auctions, even then, I would still argue that they wouldn't be happy if they knew AI was doing half the work.

I know from experience that this does work. Besides, people pay artists for their art style, and many do so because they want the artist/commissioner interaction + being able to share the commissioned work they did with their friends and the rest of the community. I would argue that this is one of the primary reasons why people would spend hundreds of dollars on a single piece of art.

I'm getting a bit mixed signals here. On one hand you think people care so much about artstyle and getting it from a certain person they'd pay even more than what they think the art is worth just to get a stop due to them being fewer, and while I do get that, you do understand that you are literally saying that you will create an artificial limit to cause higher demand and ask for a bigger price, and that you are screwing over the customer in this case for more money, right? Not only that, but a further implication of what you said is that people would keep buying non-AI art because they want a certain style, the interaction and... well sharing the work isn't an issue since there are several platforms they can do that unless you know, we start banning AI artwork everywhere because you know, that's sensible. All in all, I see more and more arguments from artists leaning to the monetary issue, and even then it is under questionable morality when you start talking about artificial scarcity.

thousandfold said:
The economics behind digital and traditional auctions are not the same. If a digital artist sells an auction for as high as $500, this only happens because the people who want art from a particular artist have no other option but to bid on that auction since that same artist only sells 2 or 3 commission slots each month.

I think it's about time we separate between established artists that are on high demand, mid-tier artists that occasionally get a volume of people and need to complete far more commissions per month to earn almost as much as established artists do, and artists who are just starting or hobbyists who don't care so much about commissions because I think you are really focusing on the upper echelon like those people would fall behind AI art regardless of its future in the community. I think those are the last people who are really worried. We can mainly focus on the 'grinders'. Who have yet to establish themselves and would most likely be hit the hardest by the advent of AI, while I think the hobbyists and people starting will be the ones most likely to adopt and adapt to it the most. Wouldn't that be a fair assessment?

So, things like creating scarcity, or price gauging doesn't apply to those people since they will try to compete with a lot more artists on their level and will want to have a good throughput of pictures per month. Given how those people already have some level of skill, it's fair to assume they will be benefitting more from the AI in creating 'better art'. It will also help to create a term here, lets call it 'effective skill' which is a measure of how objectively good 'the art' of a picture is. Meaning linework, coloring, shading, style, and so on. What I believe AI will do is raise the bar of what people can produce, in terms of that. Certainly, someone who can't draw at all, will see the highest benefit in their 'effective skill' and people who are too used to 'the old ways' and barely want or need to use the AI to supplement their artwork, maybe only use it to keep up with production needs, will see the least amount of benefit in their effective skill. I mean, practically those people can literally think of a concept, imagine it in detail, and produce it exactly as they want it, so maybe AI would be more of a deterrent for them to reach their pre-imagined result so why would they settle for less? But again, there is the caviat that they could use it to settle for 'less' in terms of background and create a faster 'set' of commissions at any time they might need to. Maybe they want to take a trip and want to open 50 slots within a month. Something they'd normally find impossible to do they can now do it, selling their art a bit cheaper so more people can afford it and using AI backgrounds or masking to produce much faster results. Both consumers get cheaper art, and the artist produces more and earns more, everyone wins.

thousandfold said:
It's just that i'm struggling to see what the positives are. Perhaps you can remind me what you consider to be positives by listing some

It's literally what I've been doing this whole discussion, listing positives and dispelling negatives but sure, here's a nifty list:
1. Use it to generate fast a lot of ideas and combinations of concepts, never again get 'blocked' trying to think what you want to do.
2. Use AI for rough drafts.
3. Use it to quickly explore new ideas/styles/color schemes
4. Easier alterations, asset creation
5. Textures
6. background creation on the fly
7. Testing different lighting, adding edge lights, or shadows, and seeing a lot of different versions without having to use them, can just make a better iteration of them yourself if you have the skill.
8. Increased output
9. Increases the bottom bar for art in general.
10. Everyone has access to it.(I think adobe made a statement that the AI tools it will offer in the next suite will be free for non-commercial uses, or you could use stability AI.)

I'm sure there are more I forgot and even more that I haven't even thought of.

thousandfold said:
A mild positive would be that yes newcomers can use AI to help themselves learn how to draw/paint, although this isn't much of a big deal since there are also several other ways to learn how to draw/paint. Unless newcomers plan on letting the AI do most the drawing or painting for them, which would only cause their own work to lose value because as that point its hardly their work, nor is it even their style.

Why use other ways though? Especially with the amount of shitty art uploaded here(guilty as charged) wouldn't you rather see the 'bottom' line have at least far better quality? I guess in that case you won't be able to comment on the artist's skill since you'd always chuck it up to the AI but that aside I feel like it would be a far better space to navigate than seeing blocky or objectively 'bad' art. Unless that person legitimately seeks advice on how to improve I guess.

I do agree that AI art that will have no touch from the person making it will obviously have a lower value because literally, anyone with the prompts can make it, no skill required. But maybe there is some value in the idea itself for a prompt, after all, to start drawing any piece of art you first need to think about what you want to draw. Also, figuring certain prompts and combinations that give really good outputs, which can then be used by better artists to make even better pieces and that would create far more beautiful works from what was originally a simple prompt made by someone. As I said, we can't know the exact evolution this new tech will take and how our community will adapt to it. But that's what I came to argue here, that we need to adapt rather than reject and pretend it doesn't exist. And besides, this site is an archive for furry art, and in the end, I do think that AI as a tool created to assist in the creation of art, is by that definition art. And I have seen AI pictures that do contest art from the better set of their human counterparts so why not just find a way to adopt that instead of fighting over it?

birdofgrain said:
Like.. NMNY kinda settled the question in an admirable fashion.
By now it is "Ckitt, what the fuck dude" thread.

I was having a rather civil and fun discussion with Thousandfold, you seem to be the one getting triggered because I mentioned what happened during the industrial revolution. I simply stated a historical fact, are you okay?

birdofgrain said:
Theres so much just techno worship, you don't stop by to think is it actually useful.
You are not an animator either. And there we go advice for using AI interpolation.
To animator that works with Vector graphics and motion tweening.
Thats kind of what pisses me off about all the technoboys that 1. are not artists. 2. are intent on prodding their snouts in in artist business. It is a thing that I get last few animations as this trend got up.
And there I can note a simple fact about vector graphics and motion tweening. It involves entering start position, end position and based on settings for desired frame rate, thats what you get. Simple, linear interpolation. And if I enter desire for 100 frames a second, thats what I would get.
(which I dont really want to do because 24 chokes most mobile devices as it is. It is kinda counter-productive upscaling it to 50 when lag will seem to reduce it back down to 5. If you even care about those who may want to see it on their 150 euro worth smartphone)

You just assume, by default that it is new and therefore useful. Likely it is not. Whatever, time will tell.

Yeah, not an animator, just someone that consumes that content and state what I enjoy. You are free not to do it and I am free not to watch your stuff.

birdofgrain said:
>And the commissioner didn't have to pay out of their ass for a generic piece of art that they would get anyway as most artist's pieces are about as generic as AIs. After all, it was trained on them.
>Well, that settles it, you never actually saw a decent AI model optimized for furry art. Do you think this character is generic then?
"Weird how every single time there's an example being passed around of good AI artwork it's always pinups of big breasted woman with no hands in sight. I wonder if they're hoping the large breasts will distract from the faces, eyes, or suspicious lack of hands." - NotMeNotYou 14 days ago

NMNY having not seen AI pics where hands and feet are quite well made, sometimes without even the slightest bit of editing, doesn't mean it can't be done. But besides, shouldn't that make you feel safer about not losing your job? What's the point of whining then? Just for the sake of doing it?

birdofgrain said:
>" Before 3 months ago you couldn't even hope for AI to make a furry that would pass as one, today it's as easy as simply stating what kind of furry you want generated. And it will only get better from here on out."
2020 moment
Like, as far as I can see, you are just high on technology. Just praise the tech and forget everything else.

Again, if you think it will take forever, or that it will never catch up, why do you care?

birdofgrain said:
>"Good, then there is nothing to worry about? By the way, I'd like you to share some of your AI creations and compare it to mine, see if you got the full experience or you just tried to use some unrefined models and formulated an opinion based on those results."
Maybe look back to my statements on attention economy and take note. Artists who post more are more popular just by visibility.
I was already quite discouraged for a long time from going too deep into 3D, as when I tell it to friends they are far more enthusiastic about seeing 2D. Upon more prodding, it is easy to find when I say 3D, they think SFM, not h0rs3 or ruadri's 3D arts. And in a way it feels like I'm going to work on something for month to perfect it, only to have it lost in sea of quickly generated stuff. A message in a bottle. Oh well, thats certainly overreacting from me, good 3d art can shine above the sea of quickly generated content.
But sure hope it does not happen to 2d.
..AAaand, do you want to compare AI unassisted works?

If AI art is a pile of wet shit as you want to claim you shouldn't worry because people will simply ignore it and come to you for a better product. Getting more visibility only lasts until people feel like they are being spammed and block you so they don't have to see your crap. Why not give people the option to do that and you want to make that choice for them though?

birdofgrain said:
>"I didn't make any political statements"
What about "my 100 million ded"? What about interpretation of markets that would even make libertarians cringe? What about outright social Darwinism in your speech?
Like, BOY, I can tell. Doesnt take a genius to figure out where you stand.
"I think ditching natural selection has coddled people into thinking they can do whatever they want without repercussions."
Just.. woow dude.
I would take stance that everyone must take steps to ensure that technological growth does not harm people. And then technological growth will be good.
But you, no, you may well be the fucking AI in the discussion.

That's a historical statement, and idgaf about libertarians, I'd cringe myself out of existence if I was one. And I don't advocate for social Darwinism, I am just stating what the precedent is and I have already explained to Thousandfold the positives that come along with it, so no, I personally don't believe that people will go hungry or get less exposure due to AI art. I think it will level the playing field in terms of quality, increase quantity, and actual artists will always stand above non-artists simply typing prompts without any real ability to edit and refine the final result before publishing it. Those are the ones who will be lost in the sea of AI art, while actual artists, especially due to the fact that they produce less art will automatically have people more interested in their stuff than the AI-oriented ones which they will just browse as an afterthought most of the time after they check their favorite artists on their feed, it will also MOST LIKELY, be categorized separately in sites. Here is will have tags concerning it, so no, you won't get less exposure, you will just be in your own category.

Look, I can understand your point about artists being in danger of making less money, but you also need to understand that most likely that won't be the case. Regardless of your personal view or use of AI in the future, others will use it and will post their stuff online. What I want to see, is a place where said art can be vetted so we get quality out of it rather than quantity, you are asking for a ban that will eventually be lifted and let a swarm of it in when everyone and their mother will be using AI in their workflow. Just because you are in denial of reality you are making a big mistake in promoting this kind of thought, and not to mention you are majorly divisive while at it. Notice I didn't insult or attack you, yet you are the one throwing adjectives and implicit superiority.

>..AAaand, do you want to compare AI unassisted works?

Like here, I asked you to share AI art so I can see what you were working with, because I want to understand why you hold that opinion when my experience with it has been vastly different. Instead, you are asking to compare unassisted art to prove... what? That you have better hand-eye coordination? Are you proud? Want me to throw a party for your achievement? This isn't relevant to the discussion we are having, you just said it out of spite, like implying I'm genocidal or technophilic simply for advocating the use of a new tool that I personally found fascinating. It seems more likely that you are pissed off that someone has a different opinion than you and can't take it.
Grow up and come back when you can have a serious discussion without getting emotionally invested in it. 1000folds and I were having a perfectly reasonable conversation without your input/screeching. And if you read through it you'll have your grievances answered so with that, I will cut this interaction here.

birdofgrain said:
politics

I'm really sorry for the toxicity that has been directed at you by AI art enthusiasts. I've also been advocating for AI art in this thread and, for what it's worth, I actually do sympathize with the economic anxieties of digital artists in this situation. I agree that automation is not a bad thing in-and-of-itself, and that in a just society (read: Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism) we would have no reason to fear it.

I also agree that the threat of automation replacing jobs is symptomatic of a bigger problem (namely, capitalism). Where I think our views differ is this: I believe that opposition to automation is something that is presently being co-opted by reactionaries to redirect energy away from revolutionary ends.

Consider: a sitting US congressperson has petitioned the NSA to classify the open-source Stable Diffusion model as a dual-use technology and have it subject to export bans (but, notably, not any of the proprietary AI models which are locked away behind paywalls). The powers that be are afraid of this tool and want to control it, and if capital and the state want something banned, I'm not inclined to trust that they have the best interests of workers in mind. In this case, I believe that artists' legitimate fear of unemployment is being used to manufacture consent for the further state-sanctioned suppression of art and the further expansion of corporate monopolies on creative products. Merely opposing AI art will do nothing to address these oppressive power structures: The best case scenario is the preservation of the status quo, which is only a desirable outcome if one accepts that revolutionary change is impossible and that we currently live in the best of all possible worlds. I find that belief to be so depressing that I refuse to accept it.

Furthermore, I see AI art as not just an automatic digital painter or a fancy new productivity tool, but as an entirely new artistic medium whose potential we have only begun to explore. It makes me sad to see people ignore that potential and call for its outright destruction just to preserve the systems of exploitation that they are already familiar with, even if I understand and sympathize with their motives for doing so. It reminds me of something Mark Fisher once said,

"It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism"

and that seems to be what a lot of anti-AI people are doing: Lamenting The Death of Art and The End of Human Creativity and credulously talking about how all of culture going forward will be utterly ruined and humanity is now doomed.

But it doesn't have to be this way!

What the woman who labors wants is the right to live, not simply exist – the right to life as the rich woman has the right to life, and the sun and music and art.
...
The worker must have bread, but she must have roses, too.

— Rose Schneiderman, 1912.

In short, I believe that all art is intrinsically valuable and has the potential to be revolutionary; I don't want to live in a world where we are made to strangle new forms of creation in their cribs just to protect wage labour and the gig economy. I don't want Intellectual Property laws to turn artists into landlords who threaten to call the cops on anyone straying too close to their fence. I don't want to be pitted against people who have the same class interests as me instead of fighting together against the root cause of our mutual suffering.

We can strive for something better, can't we?

ckitt said:
I'm getting a bit mixed signals here. On one hand you think people care so much about artstyle and getting it from a certain person they'd pay even more than what they think the art is worth just to get a stop due to them being fewer, and while I do get that, you do understand that you are literally saying that you will create an artificial limit to cause higher demand and ask for a bigger price, and that you are screwing over the customer in this case for more money, right?

If an artist wants to suddenly charge $100 per piece instead of $50 and gets away with it, then his art is worth at least $100. It's worth whatever people are willing to pay for it. If that same artist is now only getting half of the customers he usually gets, and decides cuts down his available slots in half, then he's allowed to do so and i don't see much of an issue with it. In a way, it IS artificial scarcity, but it's more of a side effect of increasing prices for more $ per hour. Not to mention, artists who don't do this will often find themselves struggling to get by. I have a few artist friends who i know have way too many commission slots and also dont charge enough, causing them to work way more than they need to and barely getting by on top of that. Naturally you will be making less customers able to afford your work by raising prices, but i wouldnt consider that "screwing over" anyone.

ckitt said:
Not only that, but a further implication of what you said is that people would keep buying non-AI art because they want a certain style, the interaction and... well sharing the work isn't an issue since there are several platforms they can do that unless you know, we start banning AI artwork everywhere because you know, that's sensible. All in all, I see more and more arguments from artists leaning to the monetary issue, and even then it is under questionable morality when you start talking about artificial scarcity.

Sharing the work is kind of a big issue for AI. Lets say your OC only consists of AI generated work, and places like FA and e6 allow AI character art to be posted. What i think would happen in the future is there would be so many other people sharing all of their amazing looking AI generated art that it all just sort of blends into eachother and nobody really cares about what you post because its all computer generated. Sure they have platforms to share it on, but the sense of a community wouldn't exist.

ckitt said:
I think it's about time we separate between established artists that are on high demand, mid-tier artists that occasionally get a volume of people and need to complete far more commissions per month to earn almost as much as established artists do, and artists who are just starting or hobbyists who don't care so much about commissions because I think you are really focusing on the upper echelon like those people would fall behind AI art regardless of its future in the community. I think those are the last people who are really worried. We can mainly focus on the 'grinders'. Who have yet to establish themselves and would most likely be hit the hardest by the advent of AI, while I think the hobbyists and people starting will be the ones most likely to adopt and adapt to it the most. Wouldn't that be a fair assessment?

Yup sounds fair, mid-tier artists would be given the most struggle as a result of all this, and I would suggest them to use AI to help themselves learn how to become a better artist so that they can become an established artist. But I do not suggest that they let AI do most of the work for them.

ckitt said:
It's literally what I've been doing this whole discussion, listing positives and dispelling negatives but sure, here's a nifty list:
1. Use it to generate fast a lot of ideas and combinations of concepts, never again get 'blocked' trying to think what you want to do.
2. Use AI for rough drafts.
3. Use it to quickly explore new ideas/styles/color schemes
4. Easier alterations, asset creation
5. Textures
6. background creation on the fly
7. Testing different lighting, adding edge lights, or shadows, and seeing a lot of different versions without having to use them, can just make a better iteration of them yourself if you have the skill.

Fair positives, i see no issues with these.

ckitt said:
8. Increased output
9. Increases the bottom bar for art in general.
10. Everyone has access to it.(I think adobe made a statement that the AI tools it will offer in the next suite will be free for non-commercial uses, or you could use stability AI.)

I'm sure there are more I forgot and even more that I haven't even thought of.

Questionable, more art helps fill more peoples demands and that's about it, but there is such thing as too much art. There is also such thing as too much good art.

ckitt said:
Why use other ways though? Especially with the amount of shitty art uploaded here(guilty as charged) wouldn't you rather see the 'bottom' line have at least far better quality? I guess in that case you won't be able to comment on the artist's skill since you'd always chuck it up to the AI but that aside I feel like it would be a far better space to navigate than seeing blocky or objectively 'bad' art. Unless that person legitimately seeks advice on how to improve I guess.

No, I see this as probably one of the biggest negatives. I want to see low quality art, because the more of it i see, then the more special it is when i do eventually find a really good piece of art. If all the art is good then how can i appreciate any of it. This is what i mean by AI threatening the barrier that's protecting the value of art. If you have this infinite sea of all this amazing art, people will just become desensitized to it and experiences like "wow this art made my day" disappears. Low quality art makes higher quality art more special to people even if they don't realize it. If all art is special, then nothing is special, nothing is worth giving a shit about.

In fact, i've been checking the furry diffusion discord from time to time and i've noticed this actually happening. The amount of amazing looking art that's getting posted to that discord is incredible, and yet people dont say a word about any of it aside from a little emoji reaction. The kind of art that people would normally love and comment on how beautiful it looks, is now just something that gets created and then posted into an endless sea of amazing art every few minutes.
I've even seen someone say that they don't feel like anything they post matters because there's just so much of it.
Additionally, websites like Pixiv are unbearable to browse as a result of them not limiting people from posting AI.

At the moment the conclusion I come to is that while there are a fair number of positives provided by AI, there's also a fair amount of negatives waiting behind the lines, and i think time will tell whether the negatives outweigh the positives, or vice versa. While it can be a great tool to help artists learn and produce art a bit quicker, I consider AI as a concept to be disruptive to the community itself, as well as disruptive to artists trying to make a living. But who knows, maybe AI wont be as disruptive as I imagine it'd be.

... Fuckin' Socrates arguing with Aristotle in here. I ain't got time to read all that shit.

Listen, people will continue to buy shit regardless of how automation becomes a standard. Even here in meatspace, yes, you there, the human behind the computer, the space you occupy, handcrafted goods are not only typically considered of superior quality (rightly or not) to machine-produced equivalents, but are viewed as more desirable and valuable. Those who are going to use solely A.I., and not buy from artists likely were not a viable customer to begin with either due to scorn or resources, one can look to media piracy for a poor-taste comparison here. People who are going to avoid paying money weren't going to pay to begin with.

Supply and demand in the case of made-to-order luxury items like art does not apply to how much an artist produces, it applies to the volume of artists available instead and competetive pricing between them. The quantity of work an individual artist is capable of producing isn't magically going to decrease their ability to earn income, and I'm not sure where that idea even comes from. We're not talking about leaving food on the shelves to rot or boxes of toys to gather dust, everything to be purchased does not exist until money is already on the tables.

I'm not even going to get into the weird Capitalism-Communism-Socialism and Social Darwininsm nonsense that really had no place being brought up in the first place in a discussion about artwork produced wholly or in part by A.I., y'all need to touch grass and not find excuses to whip out political ideologies, you're going to get the thread locked and any actually pertinent discussion killed with that shit.

votp said:
I'm not even going to get into the weird Capitalism-Communism-Socialism and Social Darwininsm nonsense that really had no place being brought up in the first place in a discussion about artwork produced wholly or in part by A.I., y'all need to touch grass and not find excuses to whip out political ideologies, you're going to get the thread locked and any actually pertinent discussion killed with that shit.

That was probably a really poorly thought example on my part that got picked up for the wrong reason... But I do feel like there is a certain part of the community trying to sabotage the discussion because they feel threatened by it.

votp said:
y'all need to touch grass

Good suggestion, I spent too much time discussing this topic

thousandfold said:
If an artist wants to suddenly charge $100 per piece instead of $50 and gets away with it, then his art is worth at least $100. It's worth whatever people are willing to pay for it. If that same artist is now only getting half of the customers he usually gets, and decides cuts down his available slots in half, then he's allowed to do so and i don't see much of an issue with it. In a way, it IS artificial scarcity, but it's more of a side effect of increasing prices for more $ per hour. Not to mention, artists who don't do this will often find themselves struggling to get by. I have a few artist friends who i know have way too many commission slots and also dont charge enough, causing them to work way more than they need to and barely getting by on top of that. Naturally you will be making less customers able to afford your work by raising prices, but i wouldnt consider that "screwing over" anyone.

Sharing the work is kind of a big issue for AI. Lets say your OC only consists of AI generated work, and places like FA and e6 allow AI character art to be posted. What i think would happen in the future is there would be so many other people sharing all of their amazing looking AI generated art that it all just sort of blends into eachother and nobody really cares about what you post because its all computer generated. Sure they have platforms to share it on, but the sense of a community wouldn't exist.

I don't think there is a precedent for this. Why would more art create a lesser sense of community? Besides, most OCs and such are meant for groups of people that have met, either through these art communities or otherwise, to share their fursonas, stories, etc. I don't think that will go away with AI art, I just don't see how that would come about.

thousandfold said:
Yup sounds fair, mid-tier artists would be given the most struggle as a result of all this, and I would suggest them to use AI to help themselves learn how to become a better artist so that they can become an established artist. But I do not suggest that they let AI do most of the work for them.

If they want to become better yes, that would be the ideal way to go about it, so, where is the issue with AI slowly being implemented in these communities if we agree that actual artists will still be better off than the rest? And let's be real here, AI art and normal art won't be mixing, it will most likely be categorized so 'exposure' isn't really a reason. VotP and Species made some great points on that front above.

thousandfold said:
Questionable, more art helps fill more peoples demands and that's about it, but there is such thing as too much art. There is also such thing as too much good art.

Can you elaborate on that? How is more art and too much good art, bad?

thousandfold said:
No, I see this as probably one of the biggest negatives. I want to see low quality art, because the more of it i see, then the more special it is when i do eventually find a really good piece of art. If all the art is good then how can i appreciate any of it. This is what i mean by AI threatening the barrier that's protecting the value of art. If you have this infinite sea of all this amazing art, people will just become desensitized to it and experiences like "wow this art made my day" disappears. Low quality art makes higher quality art more special to people even if they don't realize it. If all art is special, then nothing is special, nothing is worth giving a shit about.

So, that kind of feels like saying I need to see poor people because then I can appreciate being rich, or I need to see ugly people because they can appreciate a pretty person when I see them, it doesn't really sound 'true', more like some really badly thought obsessive comparison, where everything loses meaning unless you see the extreme opposite of it and I would disagree. For example, should we hire 'ugly' people to run in beauty pageants so people can appreciate the beautiful ones? I am not saying that low quality art should disappear, but having less of it is certainly not bad, and I'm certain there will never be a shortage of people posting low-quality art, it will just be more diluted I would assume.

thousandfold said:
In fact, i've been checking the furry diffusion discord from time to time and i've noticed this actually happening. The amount of amazing looking art that's getting posted to that discord is incredible, and yet people dont say a word about any of it aside from a little emoji reaction. The kind of art that people would normally love and comment on how beautiful it looks, is now just something that gets created and then posted into an endless sea of amazing art every few minutes.
I've even seen someone say that they don't feel like anything they post matters because there's just so much of it.
Additionally, websites like Pixiv are unbearable to browse as a result of them not limiting people from posting AI.

I'm certain that people will feel that way, some are competitive by nature and maybe AI is such a force equalizer that those people cannot maintain some sort of superiority or gain the praise they are seeking. When I create AI art I don't do it because I expect praise, I will do it to either show a character, building, or town in a roleplay. Another use would be to make story thumbnails and so on. Those would be the main uses and I absolutely love the fact that people who used to 'steal' art will finally have this option.

thousandfold said:
At the moment the conclusion I come to is that while there are a fair number of positives provided by AI, there's also a fair amount of negatives waiting behind the lines, and i think time will tell whether the negatives outweigh the positives, or vice versa. While it can be a great tool to help artists learn and produce art a bit quicker, I consider AI as a concept to be disruptive to the community itself, as well as disruptive to artists trying to make a living. But who knows, maybe AI wont be as disruptive as I imagine it'd be.

I agree that it will be disruptive, the tech does seem like a 'big deal', and that's why I push for proper implementation of it rather than wasting energy arguing about it being or not being banned forever when it's very obvious that won't be the case. And we risk having a pixiv/bouru flood because we just unban it willy-nilly when a lot of people will start screaming about it being accepted or considered normal art. Or you know, e6 can stand firm by their choice and let AI be a boogeyman until 2100. I don't know, just seems like a glaring denial of reality to me.

And yeah, maybe we need to put a pause on this topic, thanks for the chat still!

thousandfold said:
If you have this infinite sea of all this amazing art, people will just become desensitized to it and experiences like "wow this art made my day" disappears. Low quality art makes higher quality art more special to people even if they don't realize it. If all art is special, then nothing is special, nothing is worth giving a shit about.

I mean when faced with a flood of "amazing art" you can just raise your standards higher.
One of my own gripes about the potential volume of AI art is that I already don't have the same art tastes as the average furry art viewer; for example if I'm to search by score here I'm more likely to find posts I like in the ballpark of 30 than 300. If art an average viewer would gravitate to were to explode in volume I'd likely have to wade through a whole lot more content that's not doing anything for me.
Call me an elitist if you want but AI seems to have the best results when it's trained on generic art or enough artists that it blends into a generic paste anyway, for the purposes of mass-producing art of that same kind.

birdofgrain said:

ckitt said:

thousandfold said:

I think there is a lot of denial here on both sides. Apologies if I retread anything. I read about 10,000 words catching up before calling it quits.

For artists, I completely sympathize and empathize. I was getting decent enough to make money off of my art, and after taking a break, I come back conflicted as to how I should proceed, because doing commissions or starting a patreon for traditionally made art right now seems like an absolute dead end. It's terrible and sad and tragic, but @Ckitt, you're wrong about the effect this will have on artists careers. Compare the market of people who buy a fancy dinner table off of amazon or ikea, to the people who "value traditional human made work", and pay a craftsman or woodworker to build them a fancy table from scratch, The craftsman is harder to find, needs to charge a higher price, and has a slower turnover. A job that once had a healthy market is now a mostly dead artform that caters specifically to a very small and wealthy niche. Now take that traditionalist market, and add in a new factor where you don't even have to pay amazon or ikea, but could just generate it for free, repeatedly in a couple of minutes until you were absolutely happy with it. That would eat away further at that tiny niche.

so first is the bad news:
The sad truth is, we don't know what is going to happen to the traditional skillset. I chatted with carrot_(artist) the other day on discord, and he has said that he's not sure if he ever would have bothered to learn how to draw if he were born now, and when he first saw a high quality piece of ai generated furry porn, I quote "oooh shit lmfao. we're fucked". I'm really concerned about what a future where the already tiny fraction of people who learn how to draw well dwindles much, much further. Also, this absolutely will absolutely destroy the traditional digital painting revenue stream, and still frame 3d revenue stream, and within a year, the writing on the wall will be clear for animators as well, because while text2video is still in its infancy, it's already looking better than text2img was when it first started becoming plausible, and so much of what is required to make it work builds off of text2image ai's.

To the people who keep on commenting on the the stupid mistakes current AIs make, that problem will be fixed by mid-next year. If you follow AI closely, you know that this field moves insanely quickly. I've also seen people experimenting with fine tuning for hands, and it can already be done, it's just not in the mainstream yet. In 2 years at the very top end (but probably much sooner), even without finetuning, every time you type a prompt it will nail it with no mistakes and no ai weirdness. So any hopes placed in "well AI makes weird anatomy mistakes, or doesn't listen to exactly what you say, so there's room for human artists who don't have that problem" are misplaced.

a side note:
For the people who haven't kept up with the state of the art in AI, someone with the proper knowledge can train a network with dreambooth or textual inversion to make your OC.

the good news:
To everyone saying that this has no place in an artists toolset, there is some good news here. I posted this earlier, but in case someone missed it. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1031880246624010280/1031880287426199562/wolfX3.png I had a colored lighted sketch (on the left), and ran it through image to image, and the middle one is kinda close to what I might have done if I took the hours upon hours my inexperienced self would have taken to refine the sketch into a clean painting. If I honed my skillset more to increase my volume and had a more substantial body of work, i could train an ai to master my style, and then I can jump from sketch to finished piece in my own style extremely quickly.

I think the future of AI tools will be like a real time version of this, where it's helping you complete your sketch as you go, then helping you color as you go, and reducing hours of work down to minutes, in your own style, with a high degree of editability. I realize this doesn't help for the people who love the slow methodical process of it, but for some artists, like me personally, it would be amazing to just start sketching and blocking in colors, and everything is being filled in around where I'm working, and adjusting the style and lighting and content and brushwork I'm using in the current spot I'm working on. And as I go in and edit places where it took artistic liberties I want to tweak, it will adapt to those tweaks and continue in the collaboration. Of course, all these features would be tweakable for how much if any ai help you want. Also I can foresee a future where you have your own custom skin brush or hair brush or fur brush, and you can paint shapes that auto tweak and fill and shade as you draw. Like, the paint coming off your brush is fully rendered as you paint. Again, I know this isn't what everyone wants, but it's more positive than a dystopia where the artist's hand has little to no place in the final direction of things.

And last on the good news, one thing that I found heartening personally and made the existential dread dissipate quite a bit, is that the nature of AI and the quantity and quality of output it can produce is that it will democratize the ability for one person or a small group of people to create grand scale content that was completely unreachable for most people. In the next couple of years, a single person will be able to create an animated series by themselves, faster than an entire team of people can do it today. You could be the director/producer/voice caster/lead artist, etc, with the equivalent of a huge team of world class concept artists, matte painters, animators, voice actors, composers, musicians, and writers to do your bidding. You won't have to come up with a budget, sign a bunch of contracts, fill out tons of paperwork, hold auditions, go back and forth asking people to redo or tweak things, while watching the calendar and your dwindling budget, after shopping around for a deal with netflix to fund your project. You can have an idea for an animated movie, or comic, or anything, and know with absolute certainty that you can complete it, by yourself if needed, with as much or as little artistic involvement at any step in the process. Don't want to be involved in in-betweening, but want to do keyframes? Sure thing. Don't want to bother animating the bustling crowd in the background, no problem. Want to make one of the background characters it made for you do something else or wear a hat instead, etc, etc. Keeping in mind that the normal limitations of budgets would no longer apply, so if thousandfold features wanted to make long intricate animations in their beautiful detailed hyper rendered style, where every frame is rendered to that level, that would be no problem, and they wouldn't have to painstakingly draw every frame. That is completely impossible with modern traditional animation techniques and budgets and talent pools.

I know this isn't what everyone wanted to do with their artistic talents, but it is going to be an amazing new world of possibilities for artists. I don't know how market saturation will affect things, but I suspect it will be a superpowered version of what's happened to music and comedy with social media. There are still radio musicians with traditional record deals, and there are millionaire comedians acting in movies, but there are also hundreds of thousands of smaller musicians and comedians making a comfortable living (if not quite rich) off of their craft, to a new previously non-existent market. As an animation enthusiast who has seen so many indie artists never get their series off the ground, or watched countless amazing shows get cancelled by idiotic networks and streaming platforms, there is a lot to look forward to in all this super disruptive technology.

Last thing I'll say is that, the conversation really should shift to what opportunities there are for artists in the new world, because regardless of how much pushback, lawsuits, e621 upload guidelines, and outrage there is. there is no closing pandora's box or putting the genie back in the bottle. regardless of whatever mitigation artists can make, the tech is here, and it will only get better. You don't prepare for an incoming tsunami by standing on the shore with a picket sign.

ps: your art is fantastic, thousandfold

savageorange said:
The 'we' in this case is every single country that has the technical resources to do this.
What do you honestly think, can 'we' 'show some morals rather than drive artists out of business'?

I dunno, you should ask yourself...can we? I can only speak for myself. I still find AI generated art to be soulless and threatening especially if it evolves to the point where it's indistinguishable from hand-drawn art.

pheagleadler said:
I dunno, you should ask yourself...can we? I can only speak for myself. I still find AI generated art to be soulless and threatening especially if it evolves to the point where it's indistinguishable from hand-drawn art.

No, you proposed it, you justify it.
Explain even generally what leverage anybody could use to force multiple countries to not jump on a technology with significant and increasing utility.

It's like saying 'oh, we should just unexplode this bomb'.

pheagleadler said:
I dunno, you should ask yourself...can we? I can only speak for myself. I still find AI generated art to be soulless and threatening especially if it evolves to the point where it's indistinguishable from hand-drawn art.

If you have to be told that something is soulless, because it is otherwise indistinguishable, is it soulless?

Maybe it's the opposite. The soul has been captured and enslaved by the Artilect Gods to do their bidding, and the soul essence is excreted into each drawing copying that art style.

I mean, the romanticism of making people work harder doesnt really seem like the take you guys think it is but go off I guess

I commented this on an "AI" related image post on this site, but I think it is worth reposting here as well:

Humans make art to express themselves and because they have something to say. That is never going away, so "AI" art will never outright replace artists completely. (By the way, I hate that term "AI" in this context, because the technology is so far from actual "intelligence". It makes it sound like it's much more complex and profound than it actually is.)

I get that people may be scared about it becoming a threat to their jobs, but unless the AI achieves actual sentience and can truly be called intelligent, I don't see that happening. And whenever we actually reach that point, we'll have much more pressing issues to consider first.

Like, everyone was scared that robots will take over all of the more "menial" jobs too, but that hasn't really happened yet either.

Today's machine learning can only make shallow copies of what's been done before. It can't bring in any new perspectives and other experiences from the outside world. Again, for that you need a fully sentient (maybe sapient?) being, actually living a life outside of art. You can't type in "What's it like being an AI" and get a genuine answer back.

Like, for actually good, targeted results, these algorithms (that I know of) still require a comprehensive and imaginative prompt – an outside spark of creativity, that it can't generate itself. Maybe these tools will change how art is generated and make it a lot easier for everyone, but there will always have to be a human (or otherwise sentient being) behind it. Not to forget, developing and training a specialized machine learning model requires a ton of ingenuity and creativity too.

robrobl said:
I get that people may be scared about it becoming a threat to their jobs, but unless the AI achieves actual sentience and can truly be called intelligent, I don't see that happening. And whenever we actually reach that point, we'll have much more pressing issues to consider first.

Like, everyone was scared that robots will take over all of the more "menial" jobs too, but that hasn't really happened yet either.

Those goddamn roombas, coming here from their factories and stealing our janitorial jobs.

ckitt said:Faster art output for an artist means they can produce more of their work cheaper.

this is capitalist thinking, not artist thinking. artists aren't picture factories trying at all times to maximise the rate of production so that the rate of profit increases, they're people honing an artform in order to express themselves.

ckitt said:
Think we should have shown morals when we drove blacksmiths, farmers, and factory workers out of business when we industrialized to the point where 2 communist revolutions happened and 100 million people died? I think we've already set the precedent when it comes to progress vs x group of people.

there were in fact people who opposed industrialisation because the machines that increased the rate of production weren't used for the betterment of all but to destroy the power that trained labourers had and to create an enormous pool of workers that would drive the cost of labour down. the communist revolutions that you mention happened because millions of people did in fact say that "yes, we should be moral to the farmers and workers who are discarded by industrialisation". what you are asking has been answered.

things don't "progress" by developing technology because reality isn't a videogame. no technology is ultimately better than the use to wich it is put and for whose sake it is wielded. social media is pretty tremendous information technology but is it progress? what people are concerned with is that corporations will replace living artists with a few button pressers and demolish all infrastructure used to develop and maintain artistic techniques. hell, Disney is well on its way there with the way that it focuses so heavily on green screen work due to the lack of unions in the field even to the severe detriment of its films.

I think AI generated art is pretty okay. As long as the person using it clarifies that it is AI generated.
Artists (on twitter specifically) are trying to shame people and bastardize it. Trying to make people ashamed for using such technology.

Just cause they trained to develope their skills doesn't really give them the right to talk down and shame others who may not possess such skill.
It was generally made for those who lack the art skill anyways.
I see good opportunities for it.

Like when you have an idea and you want to try and get a more literal visual on it, AI generated art can help with that. It has its ups and downs.
Anything can always be exploited, but for now I think it's pretty nice.

savageorange said:
No, you proposed it, you justify it.
Explain even generally what leverage anybody could use to force multiple countries to not jump on a technology with significant and increasing utility.

It's like saying 'oh, we should just unexplode this bomb'.

No it isn't. It's only an attempt to get people not to embrace a technology that threatens a form of art that's very near and dear to my heart.

lance_armstrong said:
If you have to be told that something is soulless, because it is otherwise indistinguishable, is it soulless?

Maybe it's the opposite. The soul has been captured and enslaved by the Artilect Gods to do their bidding, and the soul essence is excreted into each drawing copying that art style.

Real artists work hard on pieces like that, AIs are just told want to do and they do it effortlessly. It's not nearly as rewarding and I don't think real artists appreciate that work is being taken from them.

AI art is cool. That's all Ima say about it.

colacolabug said:
this is capitalist thinking, not artist thinking. artists aren't picture factories trying at all times to maximise the rate of production so that the rate of profit increases, they're people honing an artform in order to express themselves.

God, did I stumble into communist central? I don't care about the political implications, I simply stated what happened due to a very big and destabilizing to society technology that emerged 200 years ago did and what precedent we set, not if it's good or bad or whatever other attributes you might want to ascribe to it, just that it happened.

colacolabug said:
there were in fact people who opposed industrialisation because the machines that increased the rate of production weren't used for the betterment of all but to destroy the power that trained labourers had and to create an enormous pool of workers that would drive the cost of labour down. the communist revolutions that you mention happened because millions of people did in fact say that "yes, we should be moral to the farmers and workers who are discarded by industrialisation". what you are asking has been answered.

things don't "progress" by developing technology because reality isn't a videogame. no technology is ultimately better than the use to wich it is put and for whose sake it is wielded. social media is pretty tremendous information technology but is it progress? what people are concerned with is that corporations will replace living artists with a few button pressers and demolish all infrastructure used to develop and maintain artistic techniques. hell, Disney is well on its way there with the way that it focuses so heavily on green screen work due to the lack of unions in the field even to the severe detriment of its films.

The issue is without those machines you wouldn't have half the conveniences you do today, most artists would be forced to work on a field or factory 9 to 9 and not have the comfortable life that allowed them to sit on their ass and draw all day, that would be reserved for the richest of the rich who wouldn't need to actually work and the best of the best artists who's work would warrant them not having to take a normal job. Let's be real here, for what damage industrialization did, it brought that much good with it and more.

AI won't destroy the current infrastructure if there is a proper implementation, what happens in pixiv and r34 are improper implementations, banning it only puts the problem in the closet until it gets too big and bursts out. As I said, you guys are free to keep crying to the mods and convince them banning it is the right thing to do while less and less people will come to this site and less artists get promoted here because they use that tool even if their art would be more than superb in quality and fitting to be here. The only reason not to accept it will be some weird moral supremacy, but as I said, we will all be here and see where each of those choices lead.

colacolabug said:
things don't "progress" by developing technology because reality isn't a videogame. no technology is ultimately better than the use to wich it is put and for whose sake it is wielded.

Automated Saws (Band, Chain, Table, etc.)
Cameras
Drills
Dynamite
Microphones/Speakers
Nerve Gas
Photocopiers
Printing Presses
Scales
Surgical Robots
Welders

To name a few. Sorry, that statement in particular was just... bad.

votp said:

I would still put the Haber–Bosch process/efficient mass production of ammonia as one of the biggest steps towards the modern world. For as many people have been killed by the explosives it is used to create, it has also harbored the growth of many more through the fertilizer derived from it.

Without it, much of the world would have to be covered in far less efficient farms to be able to sustain the level of population we have now.

@Ckitt
You know what could have been done to avoid all the tragedies of industrialization? Plenty of things, but as not to make a long TL:DR list, humanity as a whole suddenly got a whole lot more of stuff. So thats good, yet you see people fall into poverty. Obviously, the problem was how the new stuff is distributed.
And we should learn from mistakes of that era. Or well, we will be doomed to repeat that.
And those who learn, apparently are *communists*.

This thread is not even about AI to me, I'm just here to say. "What the fuck Ckitt"
>"And I don't advocate for social Darwinism"
Well, if you don't want me to call you a duck.
>"But I would certainly say yes, fuck the people who cannot adapt to new tech. That's their problem in an ever-changing world. I think ditching natural selection has coddled people into thinking they can do whatever they want without repercussions. Well, no, that's not how life was, is, or will be. You will constantly need to adapt to whatever new environment you find yourself in."
Don't quack like a duck!

Still saying you are not a duck is a lot less convincing than the quacking like a duck.
How is one exactly supposed to 'adapt' to an ever-changing world exactly? In an instant? Clearly thats crazy. To learn new skills you need money. Money to feed you while you are practicing new skill, or even money for education. Given so many today live on the line, paycheck to paycheck. Studying, alone or in college is a scary proposition.
When people are already down, working some menial work, or precarious like drawing dragons online. Loosing that to automation puts them in significant risk variety of things that would 'naturally select them out of the population'.
It is not even just about E621, a lot of jobs are at risk.
Nations as a whole could ensure theres no harm. E621 is not quite .. a nation, but working to keep it focused on human artists, on principle alone, helps human artists.
But your stance is "It's their problem they can't adapt, fuck people who can't adapt"
So for that I say, "what the fuck Ckitt".

And ffs, Ckitt, you miss. Everything!
I dared to say one word. *Soul* of art.
Definition being:
1.the spiritual or immaterial part of a human being or animal, regarded as immortal.
2.emotional or intellectual energy or intensity, especially as revealed in a work of art or an artistic performance.

One word using its alternative meaning
And the whole fucking comment flies over your head. Immediately assuming we are religious in some way.
"What the fuck Ckitt"
The point I was making concerns attention economy and meaning of the art beyond the eyecandy.
I made the statement, and after it flew over your head, I made a reminder to it, and then it flew over your head again.
Look at "3d" tag, theres two ways someone may post on it.
One is to just download a model from somewhere, pose it and *shloip* you generated 'art'.
Another is to suck it up, learn to model and do a good 3d model.
If you look for 3d, as I just did. I had to scroll through 1.5 pages of the former to find the latter. And even that is just a custom dragon head.
>"Again, if you think it will take forever, or that it will never catch up, why do you care?"
Thats why, for ..which time is it now? Because I'm concerned 2d will be in same horrid state as 3d is.
When it comes to getting attention from community, every thumbnail is essentially the same and it is down to having someone click it. The chance of it goes way down if people can post generated art.
Which again, to remind, has no meaning to artist, they do not exist. Or exist partially. Has no meaning to the character owner, they do not exist. And questionable meaning to the wanker, as vast majority of AI generations I ever saw are 1 character, "presenting_pussy" tag if you are lucky. Generally boring. I can see why, if you have two characters in an image, chance AI will merge them together goes way up.

>"Like here, I asked you to share AI art so I can see what you were working with, because I want to understand why you hold that opinion when my experience with it has been vastly different. Instead, you are asking to compare unassisted art to prove... what? That you have better hand-eye coordination? Are you proud? Want me to throw a party for your achievement?"
And do you want me to throw a party for your achievement giving AI prompts?
It was there basically to say "well you do not have the same 2d drawing experience"
It is no wonder, as your AI understanding is greater than your understanding of 2d drawing. My understanding of 2d drawing is greater than my understanding of AI.
Clearly our experience will be different.
Like hell, we even see art as different things. (As we can see by you.. entirely missing the whole.. "soul of the art" thing)
So given that I will want to make very specific character, where the commissioner will even go "excuuse mee my character has 3 red stripes on the butt instead of twoo", having AI at the back of the work sequence wont work. At the front end, generating some assets to use is useful. But I found it is more convenient to search online for something useful than to use AI. As well as using blender 3d assets to explore lighting, poses, background assets.
And there I have everything that AI promises, but in a way that I find convenient to use.
So I shortened this whole explanation into short way to say "hecc off you don't know my art experience. And it is real bold of you to just stuff your experience as if it is intrinsically better"
(like AI frame interpolation for animators which is... problematic. Given how 6fps looks way better than 24fps done badly.
And then you missed the hint and took it as an insult, artist's attempt to flex hand fidelity on you.
You miss meanings of the words as much as you miss meanings of the art.
"what the fuck Ckitt"

birdofgrain said:

Dude, we get it, communism is your gf, you hate AI video interpolation, and you are afraid 2d AI art will steal clicks away from yours(even if AI and traditional art won't be in mixed galleries most likely).

If this thread isn't about AI for you then you can get off of it instead of trying to derail it and slide to DMs with me if you want irrelevant questions answered.

Quack.

ckitt said:
As I said, you guys are free to keep crying to the mods and convince them banning it is the right thing to do...

It's the other was around.

ckitt said:
while less and less people will come to this site and less artists get promoted here because they use that tool even if their art would be more than superb in quality and fitting to be here.

I don't see this happen. All my artist friends told me they hate it. _{^{(could be only my bubble)}} That makes it hard to believe that they'll use it in the future. They will keep up their normal art output, their art will be uploaded here in the future, and this site won't die.

ckitt said:
Dude, we get it, communism is your gf...

That's kinda childish. You shouldn't do that if you want to be taken serious.

dubsthefox said:
I don't see this happen. All my artist friends told me they hate it. _{^{(could be only my bubble)}} That makes it hard to believe that they'll use it in the future. They will keep up their normal art output, their art will be uploaded here in the future, and this site won't die.

That's kinda childish. You shouldn't do that if you want to be taken serious.

Take note of how the interaction with this person began and you should reasonably excuse my irritation.

As for the rest, time will tell. Adobe is already giving out free AI tools for non-commercial uses on the next suite, the industry clearly wants to push this and get people comfortable with it. Most new artists will use it the same way they use every other tool offered to them and is the reason we see better and better pieces of art. But let's wait a year and have the discussion then when the rollout of AI tools in art programs is actually ongoing.

ckitt said:
God, did I stumble into communist central? I don't care about the political implications, I simply stated what happened due to a very big and destabilizing to society technology that emerged 200 years ago did and what precedent we set, not if it's good or bad or whatever other attributes you might want to ascribe to it, just that it happened.

it did not simply "emerge". it was specifically implemented by specific people for specific purposes. specifically! it did not just "happen", it was done. technology that is used to liberate people from subsistence farming is good but technology that is used to corral people into a precarious labour pool is bad. technology that empowers the masses with access to the creation and enjoyment of art is good but technology that destabilises the infrastructure of art is bad. if you're uninterested in the implications of how a piece of new technology is used then you have nothing to contribute to the topic.

votp said:
Automated Saws (Band, Chain, Table, etc.)
Cameras
Drills
Dynamite
Microphones/Speakers
Nerve Gas
Photocopiers
Printing Presses
Scales
Surgical Robots
Welders

To name a few. Sorry, that statement in particular was just... bad.

all of which are no better than the use to which they are put. are surgical robots good if the sick have to personally pay for their use? are photocopiers good if the only places that have them are busywork offices? are cameras good if the only thing they do is surveil minorities? the thing has to be put to a good use through social organisation, otherwise it's just wasted.

colacolabug said:
it did not simply "emerge". it was specifically implemented by specific people for specific purposes. specifically! it did not just "happen", it was done. technology that is used to liberate people from subsistence farming is good but technology that is used to corral people into a precarious labour pool is bad. technology that empowers the masses with access to the creation and enjoyment of art is good but technology that destabilises the infrastructure of art is bad. if you're uninterested in the implications of how a piece of new technology is used then you have nothing to contribute to the topic.

I am pretty sure we have discussed said implications but you are free to state your specific grievances. So, in your example above you stated a positive and a negative of AI art, if both were true at the same time, are you saying we should deny people the creative freedom to ensure the artists' jobs? And again, that implies that anyone, both in government and industry, would accept a ban on the use of AI, because don't forget, it's not only 'artists' online that work in the domain of 'art'. Concept artists, video game artists, corporate and studio artists, all have varying needs and especially in big business, AI will be part of every toolkit the moment it meets the requirements that deem it acceptable for use. Which is quite soon. Or are you saying we should just ban on sites like e6 and those sites only, and make them like an 'artist haven' like we are protecting some endangered species?

colacolabug said:
all of which are no better than the use to which they are put. are surgical robots good if the sick have to personally pay for their use? are photocopiers good if the only places that have them are busywork offices? are cameras good if the only thing they do is surveil minorities? the thing has to be put to a good use through social organisation, otherwise it's just wasted.

A surgical robot will by default make surgical operations cheaper. So that's a bad example, and an even worse example when you consider, unlike physical equipment, AIs can be used by literally anyone, and the learning curve to use them even in their current unrefined form is much lower than learning the traditional skills required to pull off what it can do. And lastly, you seem to think we want to push AI to do the job of the artists just to push them out of business. What I came here to argue in the first place was that we NEED filters to avoid AI art flooding, that we NEED clear guidelines on how to use it that are sensible. Try and reading my first posts here and not the ones where I was talking to the most combative person of the bunch.

ckitt said:

A surgical robot will by default make surgical operations cheaper.

So you use it. I'm not risking my life to some fake-brained machine. AI has been shown to make stupid decisions so it could easily kill someone if it's allowed to perform something as complex and as dangerous as surgery.

pheagleadler said:
So you use it. I'm not risking my life to some fake-brained machine. AI has been shown to make stupid decisions so it could easily kill someone if it's allowed to perform something as complex and as dangerous as surgery.

Surgical robots aren't automated, they're used for microsurgeries and remote telesurgical proceedures. They neutralise hand tremours and increase overall accuracy with endoscopes, while reducing the overall size of surgical incisions and the damage caused in reaching targets.

colacolabug said:
all of which are no better than the use to which they are put. are surgical robots good if the sick have to personally pay for their use? are photocopiers good if the only places that have them are busywork offices? are cameras good if the only thing they do is surveil minorities? the thing has to be put to a good use through social organisation, otherwise it's just wasted.

Holy shit. Do you think everyone is out to get you? Yes, photocopiers are inherently good, they have effectively replaced the entire profession of scribes, in tandem with the printing press. Your line also makes less sense now you're arguing about it as what I chalked up to strange wording now just seems to be a complete linguistic catastrophe.

votp said:
Surgical robots aren't automated, they're used for microsurgeries and remote telesurgical proceedures. They neutralise hand tremours and increase overall accuracy with endoscopes, while reducing the overall size of surgical incisions and the damage caused in reaching targets..

Isn't that where we're headed? Automating fucking everything? Cashiers, automobiles, artwork, what next? Just because it's "easier" doesn't mean it's a good idea.

pheagleadler said:
Isn't that where we're headed? Automating fucking everything? Cashiers, automobiles, artwork, what next? Just because it's "easier" doesn't mean it's a good idea.

Maybe in 2100? Your exact response is why medical proceedures outside of scans will not be fully-autonomous for the foreseeable future. The next replacement in automation will likely be the majority of courier services being changed over primarily to robotics, by my estimate.

Yeah, this thread has run its course.

With both sides just talking past each other we'll be closing this one down.