The problem with AI generated images, in this context, is that they can be used to imitate the style of specific artists, meaning any unique talent and vision those artists have no longer has market value. The scenario you describe isn't actually a business model anyone is following, except maybe morons shitting AI porn onto instagram and trying to flog their patreons.
Obviously AI generated art has market value to companies with creative staff because AI is designed to devalue and commoditize the work of actual artists, such that the work of all artists can be replicated by someone on Mechanical Turk writing prompts for pennies a day (or some equivelent low-wage plebian drone.)
AI has already been used to steal commissions from working artists, and companies are already firing their entire creative teams to lean entirely into AI generation. The better the technology gets, the worse the situation gets for working artists because that's the plan.
I don't see how anyone can have witnessed the glee with which AI techbros danced on the graves of the art industry, ridiculing and harassing artists, calling them gatekeepers and fascists, and telling them their careers were doomed, and think this will benefit artists in any way.
I really want that to change, because I find this technology fascinating, but as of now the well has been poisoned, the bridges burned, war declared, and most artists with actual talent would rather starve in the street than touch anything AI.
Yeah, commission-based digital art seems likely to mostly go away, in the same way commission-based oil portraits mostly went away with the diffusion of photography.
It seems like generative AI will wipe out many design shops and non-IC/exec brokers/managers of creatives (recruiters, talent agents, admins, etc.) at least to the degree the web wiped out newspapers and their non-creative staff.
But it'll also enable creative designers/artists/writers to become their own studios. As Kubrick said, "one [person] writes a novel, one [person] writes a symphony." Generative AI will enable one person (or a very small team) to create a blockbuster movie or AAA videogame.
And we already got that with print for a while. You can create an Andy Warhol piece as well as his assistant for a long while now and no the market didn’t collapse or art disappeared. It open some door, close some other, offered new tool.
As an artist (creator) myself, I do not feel threatened. I do not consider the tedium to add anything of value to my work… and hell, it’s suck to integrate /generate fill (as an example)
> The problem with AI generated images, in this context, is that they can be used to imitate the style of specific artists, meaning any unique talent and vision those artists have no longer has market value.
AI can generate an image "in the style of Banksy" but so can a thousand other artists who aren't Banksy, and their work product would have no more value than the AI's.
The way this makes you feel is about more than texture and shading:
You might be able to get Stable Diffusion to generate something like that with a sufficiently detailed prompt, but then its uniqueness would come from the creative effort required in devising the prompt. It's not like you can just type "street art in the style of Banksy" and expect the output to make you feel something like that.
>I don't see how anyone can have witnessed the glee with which AI techbros danced... most artists with actual talent would rather starve in the street than touch anything AI.
Perhaps. But what would that change and do you have any choice? 'Techbros' can make do with genAI or even stock images. I'm not so sure about said artists.
>The problem with AI generated images, in this context, is that they can be used to imitate the style of specific artists, meaning any unique talent and vision those artists have no longer has market value
I Agree, those who produce the training data or the thing that the AIs work will be based on, should be properly compensated.
The artists that are hurt by this have neither a name nor a distinctive style, they are the ones whose work was derivative itself, who already struggled to get paid for expensive manual labor.
Then you have the artists who matter, whose work is valued because it has their name on it, regardless of what process was used to create it. AI will be just another tool they may choose to use.
The narrative that the only artists affected by AI are mediocre and derivative and thus deserve what they get, is just propaganda. AI was trained to replicate the distinctive style of artists who "have a name" and "matter," and those artists likely work for companies that are training in-house AIs on their own IPs as we speak.
"struggled to get paid for expensive manual labor?" You seem to have a contempt for most working artists, because most struggle to get paid regardless of talent, not because they're incompetent but because art of any kind has always been a difficult market. And yes, it's hard work, which many people fail to appreciate. You're really illustrating my point more than I think you intend to.
I'm not saying they "deserve" what they get, not any more so than the people who found themselves out of work after weaving or sewing machines were invented. That's just technological progress.
Perhaps we have a very different understanding of what "art that matters" is, certainly I'm not thinking of anyone producing art at volume for a corporate IP. In any event, nothing ever stopped such a corporation from reproducing a certain style with cheaper labor, whether it's human or not. If you were, say, an art director working for a corporation, your job was never to perform much of that manual labor. AI isn't replacing you.
Moreover, the emergence of mass manufacturing always comes with a counter-movement attempting to maintain the "human touch" and charging a premium for it. For every Budweiser, there's a thousand craft beers. Neither replaces the other.
Obviously AI generated art has market value to companies with creative staff because AI is designed to devalue and commoditize the work of actual artists, such that the work of all artists can be replicated by someone on Mechanical Turk writing prompts for pennies a day (or some equivelent low-wage plebian drone.)
AI has already been used to steal commissions from working artists, and companies are already firing their entire creative teams to lean entirely into AI generation. The better the technology gets, the worse the situation gets for working artists because that's the plan.
I don't see how anyone can have witnessed the glee with which AI techbros danced on the graves of the art industry, ridiculing and harassing artists, calling them gatekeepers and fascists, and telling them their careers were doomed, and think this will benefit artists in any way.
I really want that to change, because I find this technology fascinating, but as of now the well has been poisoned, the bridges burned, war declared, and most artists with actual talent would rather starve in the street than touch anything AI.