What is Ethical AI Art?

Talk about scientific and technological developments in the future
Post Reply
User avatar
urdestan
Posts: 28
Joined: Tue May 18, 2021 11:45 am

What is Ethical AI Art?

Post by urdestan »

Gosh, I don't have any word to say without getting cancelled from either side. I'm gonna dump my big rant here, given that recent events of "NO TO AI ART" by artists has started to surge on DeviantArt and Artstation. Not sure if its even the right thread, but please move it if it isn’t appropriate. However, it does talk about the future of AI art, so I thought it would be in a technological perspective, rather than cultural or purely political.

A lot of artists are doing this by spite. They are genuine about it, some, but at this point, it is getting a lot ridiculous with the flooding of a certain image that has come off it recently. I'm speaking as that hobbyist or amateur artist that wants to go professional someday, but by no means I am also supportive of the other side (that being AI).

At the moment, there's this big push to start having artists be represented through lobbying. As far as I know, their commitment is to make sure that AI generators are "ethical". In their definition, it should be that all models should only be trained on purchased/licensed content that the trainer has bought or from public domain and Creative Commons images. Moreover, they also want artists to be paid for what they have (for example, damages to hte model) and that all models should only explicitly allow an opt-in setting and that AI companies should be financially liable or obliged to a contract stated by the terms of an artist.

However, I disagree on turning this into law. Why? It causes more questions than answers. I believe maintaining the status quo or having safeguards to protect people work, to make sure models that generate certain NSFW content, is potentially responsible (for their creators) for what they have just created or generated for. However, at this point, anyone could create them. It is basically out of the bottle; nothing can be stopped to put it back.

If the artist is to be paid, who is going to be paid, especially if someone passed away? Their family? Their estate? What about the large corporations that have their own IPs and millions of images, are they also going to get paid? The latter of which, is an interesting one. They can use this law to shut down anyone who even dares to violate their intellectual property, by simply having an image of a copyrighted work onto there. And if they are considered artists, then what about the artists below it? The ones who work for say, blockbuster films?

The question of "protect the artists" or "support the artists" becomes even more murky there. If we're talking from only an AI regulation perspective, of course. I'm not gonna talk about the special effects problem here, you've probably seen the laughable moments of MCU films having bad CGI recently. But the point is, in most cases, anyone doing client work most likely ends up at the hands of the company. It is not fair to those artists who have their work taken.

It seems that it only favours a minority or say, the myriad of random Twitter artists, who do have total control of their work. If you worked for say, Disney, its bad luck for you, because you probably won't have the control of what you have, so you probably won't have the share that this law had.

Capitalism really sucks. I know. But these visions, I'd say, isn't just the one solution. Its a lot more complex than you'd think. It isn’t a solution I agree with.

That proposal made by these certain artists almost reminds me of another thing: a few years ago, the European Union made the infamous Art 11/13 basically law, as part of a copyright directive back in circa 2018-19 (I can't remember it). One of the things and potential concepts from it was to use a widespread content filter, like Content ID but everywhere. People then made jokes about it. A few years later, it seems that the whole thing somehow flopped or is struggling to be implemented. If it became law, I believe that is going to be on par with the failures of Article 13, simply because no-one is going to notice which is stolen or not, regardless of the style that is being stolen or copied upon.

It seems to be trendy to jump into this bandwagon, though I'm having a lot of second thoughts on this. With NFTs, it is much more understandable from my perspective- though with AI art or images as its critics call it, it is a much, much murkier situation.

If some guy like RJ Palmer (who is notoriously active in that kind of activism) would someday read this, then yeah, fine. Have it your way. Do what you want with your work. But seriously, those artists who lament and call for strict regulations for ethical AI models are basically an antithesis to creativity to an extent, to top it all off. Anyone supporting these policies are a lot worse than that.

I'm not having enough time to flesh out my arguments, but these are my vain thoughts, criticising the artists who demand ethical AI. I have yet to be convinced otherwise, but this is just one take.
Post Reply