Spinning Steven's negative scenario a little further: If the rumors at OpenAI are true, that a superintelligence is being quietly bred there, then it could soon be that it is not we humans who harvest the AI to do our creative tasks, but that the AI harvests us humans to serve as not-yet-obsolete machine helpers or as suppliers of complex biostructures for an age in which non-renewable raw materials (for intelligent machines) become scarce. (Matrix is saying hello)
This would then be the end of humanity as we know it, and perhaps the saving of the planet.
Hey - that would be something that someone at DD might depict in a hurry before it becomes reality!

Here's a AI-created cartoon of Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, being harvested by Q* robots as a riksha-runner.

My first reaction was a firm NO WAY! But, well, we are an open community that doesn't judge content, and making any restrictive rules would go against the very principles this site is rooted in. I don't like AI art, the whole concept just feels wrong to me in every way imaginable, but I nevertheless have to acknowledge that it is finding its feet as an art form in its own right, just like photography and found objects did a bit more than a hundred years ago. Back then, the established art community balked against that and today they're remembered as some inconsequential old farts stuck in the past, acting like dinosaurs who shout “heresy” at anyone suggesting that there is such a thing as meteors… So: way, after all? Well, not really if you ask me, but we'll have to find an arrangement that doesn't alienate those who want to use AI and doesn't get the Duck sidetracked as a thing of the past.

A while back I ranted in another forum on what annoys me about DeviantArt and others, and one major issue is how I see being swamped by AI art becoming more and more of a nuisance. I hate having to sift through loads and loads of AI-generated sameness in order to find anything I could care for. As a traditional artist I put a lot of effort and practise into anything I draw - we all do. I do it just for fun and will go on doing it no matter what, but still I feel positively offended if this gets put on the same level as something done by someone who just typed a few prompts and let the machine do the rest. And mark my words: art done “the hard way” WILL get swamped, because AI is so much faster and easier to master.

My bottom line is: I think a ban on AI art is the wrong way to go in the long run, but unless AI art cannot be reliably contained so it doesn't get in the way of the rest for us users who can't stand it*, I'm dead against allowing it. I can't see how this would be realistically possible in the current site design, but make it a point of consideration for the redesign and we can discuss it again.

* btw. by “containing” I mean something like a genre of its own or something; not a discriminating label, just a fair chance for us old-fashioned people to opt out.

plymayer wrote:
Put me down as a supporter of banning AI on the Duck.

At least for now.

As Tantz_Aerine said, AI comics should have their own hosting site. If AI is art, it is a different sort of art right now.

Who knows, in a couple of years we might come back to the issue and think differently as things have evolved.

An offspring site for AI comics would be even better, but how could we possibly fund that? A kind of switch that can enable or disable whether AI comics being shown in the search results and on the front page - similar to how it works with age ratings for artwork on Newgrounds - might do the trick. Of course: that'd mean some major reprogramming and how could we possibly fund that?

But something like that will have to happen, before I can agree on allowing AI without getting serious bellyaches. I might have them even then, but at least in a way I could live with.

Another thought. I haven't entirely thought this through yet, but I'd like to know what you think.

What if we, maybe in a little design contest, designed a “100% AI-free” stamp for any Ducker who wants to to copy and paste into their comic titles and/or thumbnails, like a kind of tongue-in-cheek quality seal?

Again, this is not meant to discriminate AI users, and it's certainly not meant to create an inner circle for old people who like feeling aloof. That would in fact be the one thing we'll have to make sure to avoid, that's why I'd like to emphasize the tongue-in-cheek part.

However, I can imagine that if the future of comics and artwork in general keeps evolving towards more and more AI use (and let's never forget AI does come in extremely handy if your main interest is telling a story no matter how, and it'd be churlish to try to bar it as an option), then decidedly doing without it because you can may well evolve into a new way of standing out. Us non-AI artists might as well try and capitalize on it.

Well, what do you think?

PaulEberhardt wrote:
Another thought. I haven't entirely thought this through yet, but I'd like to know what you think.

What if we, maybe in a little design contest, designed a “100% AI-free” stamp for any Ducker who wants to to copy and paste into their comic titles and/or thumbnails, like a kind of tongue-in-cheek quality seal?

Well, although I'm out, I like this kind of eco-seal.

PaulEberhardt wrote:
Another thought. I haven't entirely thought this through yet, but I'd like to know what you think.

What if we, maybe in a little design contest, designed a “100% AI-free” stamp for any Ducker who wants to to copy and paste into their comic titles and/or thumbnails, like a kind of tongue-in-cheek quality seal?

Again, this is not meant to discriminate AI users, and it's certainly not meant to create an inner circle for old people who like feeling aloof. That would in fact be the one thing we'll have to make sure to avoid, that's why I'd like to emphasize the tongue-in-cheek part.

However, I can imagine that if the future of comics and artwork in general keeps evolving towards more and more AI use (and let's never forget AI does come in extremely handy if your main interest is telling a story no matter how, and it'd be churlish to try to bar it as an option), then decidedly doing without it because you can may well evolve into a new way of standing out. Us non-AI artists might as well try and capitalize on it.

Well, what do you think?

I like the creative problem solving attitude you have, but I'm afraid many would not want to make the impression that their comics have AI even if they choose not to put such a stamp out. My read on the general mood is that a ban is already in the air and only the degree of it is up for any decision. New users could get confused if they don't see it on the majority of comics, especially since most ppl who published aren't active anymore and I'm not sure people would want to make efforts to differentiate themselves from AI users even if there's no ban. That's just my take. I'm sure some would welcome it as an unofficial way to “guarantee quality” not just here, but all over the web. But most wouldn't want people assuming their comics aren't AI-free just because they don't have that out.

I'm against an outright ban, but there should be something put in place to restrict it. the seal of AI free is one idea. Or a tag as ai generated. I think maybe they could have similar restrictions to tribute comics?

Because of this discussion I looked into making a comic with it. I gave up after one page as I don't think it's good enough for what I want, but I see potential use as a tool for reference images.

Here's the page I made. Most of it looks great, however trying to get the exact images i want was very time consuming and mostly it failed to achieve what I was looking for. Not to mention the lack of consistency, hence I gave up



I'm aware that with much more time and effort I probably could have achieved something approaching what I wanted, but it didn't seem worth the effort.

I can see it being worthwhile for writers with all the artistic skill of a goat with Parkinson's, but as someone mentioned earlier it would be more satisfying to create a visually weak comic that's all your own making.

Not to mention the art is so derivative it's about as ethical as the British government.

PaulEberhardt wrote:
but I nevertheless have to acknowledge that it is finding its feet as an art form in its own right, just like photography and found objects did a bit more than a hundred years ago. Back then, the established art community balked against that and today they're remembered as some inconsequential old farts stuck in the past, acting like dinosaurs who shout “heresy” at anyone suggesting that there is such a thing as meteors… So: way, after all? Well, not really if you ask me, but we'll have to find an arrangement that doesn't alienate those who want to use AI and doesn't get the Duck sidetracked as a thing of the past.

I'll have to address this and other similar points because it's important:

AI imagery isn't like using:
-photography, found art, digital tools in Photoshop or other digital drawing programs, 3D art, pixel art, sprite comics, fan art, collage, a human using inspiration or reference or any of that.
Not in any way.

Those seemed new but they're just art creation tools requiring significant work by a creator to transform them into something original- and if the work hasn't been inputted it's obvious and the work is rightly open to criticism.


AI imagery is the randomised creations of a machine based on stolen art that has been fed to that machine
It's as simple as that.
If people want an accurate human analogue:
This would be like you finding a 3rd world artist for hire who is prepared to make sample art for free in hopes of getting hired for something real. Using your description they steal art work from all the other artists in the area cut them up and digitally blend them and give the finished result to you.

-It's an exploitative process on every level and you do nothing and have no creative part in it.

——————

It's not all a black and white issue of course. Ethical AI means that copyright and stolen art isn't an issue-
-And no that is nothing like sprite art or reference or fanart or anything like that because none of this is a human doing this stuff, it's a company stealing material to feed a machine. If it's done “ethically” then the raw material fed to the machine wasn't stolen. Simple as that.
-The use of spites is between the creators and the video game publishers specifically, but in the decades since it's been done they allow it under fair use. It's also transformative and created by humans.
-Fanrt comes under the same thing.

I also don't care if you use AI generated stuff for inspiration or backgrounds as long as it's a minor part of your work and you transform it a lot. That makes all the difference.

—————

“Pandora's box” is often used as a way to justify things or that it's coming and there will be no way to stop it- all those sorts of points are not well thought out.
Look at what happened with the explosion of free pirated software, games, video and music in the early 2000s. People said that would be how things were from then on: people could NO LONGER make any more from programming games, working in the media or playing music.
What happened though?
Legal challenges from copyright holders CRUSHED the big pirates and their methods, governments changed laws, and corporates changed the entire internet to shut off piracy.
It still exists but it's a minor part of the net and games companies, Taylor Swift etc and all making billions.

This means any advice that amounts to “lay back and take it” is wrong. We all fight and actively adapt and change things.

Make no mistake, this is NOT about some poor schlub with no artistic ability being able to suddenly make art- that was ALWAYS possible by them simply hiring an artist. This is about massive corporations stealing from creators to train their machines and make money out of them. The stuff that is “free” to use is just crappy samples, low quality, in order to make the process acceptable to the community, hype the buzz surrounding them and massively increase their share price.

Genejoke wrote:

Here's the page I made.

If this were posted, I would not know it was AI.

Genejoke wrote:

Here's the page I made.

Lookin at Ozoneocean's post just above, this is still your artwork because you created it from legal sources.

plymayer wrote:

Genejoke wrote:

Here's the page I made.

If this were posted, I would not know it was AI.

The last panel gives it away. The glasses stems weird shape.

PaulEberhardt
An offspring site for AI comics would be even better, but how could we possibly fund that?

We could just make AI an genre or category.

plymayer wrote:

Genejoke wrote:

Here's the page I made.

Lookin at Ozoneocean's post just above, this is still your artwork because you created it from legal sources.

That's just it, I don't know how legal and ethical this page is. Im not convinced it usual ethical AI.

Got it, Oz. You've got a point. I wouldn't want my stuff to be used by an AI either; even if I don't do artwork to earn money, I'd still feel cheated out of the recognition for the effort I put into it.

Of course, when I compared AI to the impact of photography etc., I was thinking of the legal kind. And it's certainly not as if I liked that development: after all, I regularly spend endless working hours teaching kids that copy-pasting is nothing but stealing and doing stuff yourself is more fun anyway.

Also, I've never meant to say we should just let things run their course. My line of thinking was that we need to keep an eye current developments if we don't want to get stigmatized as some old people's site. But, yeah, now that I've slept over it, I have to admit that taking a firmer stance won't hurt that at all and is probably the better way.

It sits better with my main concern about AI anyway, which is not so much the infringement but the sheer speed and volume of output. (All of which I've ever seen so far has looked to me like the same generic crap, making it smack of spam if anything - but that's just my personal opinion and beside the point.) No human being could compete against that, and as I said before, I don't want our work to get buried under an avalanche of it as I see happening on other sites.

I'm still toying with the “organic seal” idea.
I do think people here are generally smart enough to recognize an unofficial tongue-in-cheek statement when they see one and won't automatically assume a comic is AI generated just because it hasn't got one. Also, I'm pretty sure they know that anything posted before the 2020s must clearly be man-made.

This discussion reminded me about one website, now dead, which was a place where you could post your comic strips and jokes. Owner of this website started using bots to steal and post comics from other places, also giving everything bots were posting many likes, no matter what the quality was. People of course noticed and complained about it. Nobody wanted to see yet anther joke about cat throwing glass off the table. People wanted to interact with other people and see something new, not to get more of the same and no interaction. Everything became bland and boring, but at least sometimes you could laugh at bad autotranslate. Person running the site didn't want to listen and as a result now website is dead.

What I want to say by telling you that is that whille yes, AI can be used as a tool, but just trusting the machine won't get you anywhere. I'm fine with someone using AI the way you would use photo as reference, but not just posting something AI spat out without putting any more work into it.

And I often ask how much you is in things AI creates. When I draw something, I can say that this is something I made. It's my style, I could tell you what I was thinking during creation and sometimes my drawing can have some message from me - something I want to say. AI can't really say anything new. It is just repeating things that alrady exist. To me relying on AI feels like tracing/stealing art and claiming that it's something you did.

There are still people in my professional environment who are, let's say, almost unthinkingly enthusiastic about AI. With my shock-dilated nerd glasses on, I see them who have just discovered the possibilities of WhatsApp and emails and now want to have the phrase “using AI” on their flyers as quickly as possible. How can they ignore the obvious!
AI is based on the systematic spying on intellectual property.
AI tempts students to cheat instead of learning. And cheating becomes so easy.
AI is stifling creative human activity of all kinds.
Yes, still worse: AI is an integral part of the monopolization of capital and is bred to make artists and creative people jobless.
And still worse: AI is spoiling the taste of the public. It is the revenue-driven, self-optimizing Barbie doll of the digital world.
Finally, AI is dumbing people down. It will turn today's masters into future servants.
And no: Sam Altman's vision of a leisure society in which AI and automatons do all our work for us and we live in a brave new world will not come true. Because, see above: AI is integral to the monopolization of capital, and if not resisted, it will advance human misery.

That's my opinion, and I've also expressed it because I'm trying to show below that in my impression there is some inappropriate AI bashing going on here in this thread.

Or to put it another way: if AI were as vilified as it is here, it would not be a danger. But it really is, in my opinion, dangerously fascinating.

AI is not illegal by today's standards, because even if it sometimes obtains its information by crawling through protected platforms, it does not then go and collage what it has seen so that it can be accused of copyright infringement.
Instead, AI memorizes the “seen” images (or texts, videos, etc.) in order to display them again via prompts in a strangely reflected and varied way. The lighting conditions are different from the original but correct for most of the output images, the layout is pleasing and sales-oriented … Guys, this is really fascinating!

But what blows me away even more is what these chat AI bots can do. It's not just that they can make sense of language. Recently, I fed one with a task for proof by complete induction - bang! Not only was the result correct and clear, it was also explained more clearly than I've ever heard from a math teacher. (But what student is going to read through that when the AI can do all the work for them so much better?)
This uncanny ingenuity is, if I have understood it correctly, only indirectly the result of human programming skills. Essentially, however, neuronal structures program themselves and correct themselves based on the feedback of their “work results” - the game http://www.20q.net, for example, has been “learning” since the 1980s.
It is an evolutionary process that is routed but not really controlled by humans - and, from a certain level of complexity, is no longer fathomable.
AI has long since passed the Turing test. The question will be how long we humans can pass AGI's Turing test.
Ultimately, our AI bashing seems to me to boil down to something that I once read in a book formulated like this: “This mailbox may have an iron nature, but it has no soul.”

And for me, the question really is: how will we know that AI is still a job-destroying, senseless computer servant and not perhaps already a gagged, tortured, misunderstood Lisa (from Android Blues)?

And, to finally get to the point: I think we should take our own material and narratives here at DD more seriously. Because reality is pretty damn close.

Othosmops wrote:
AI is not illegal by today's standards, because even if it sometimes obtains its information by crawling through protected platforms, it does not then go and collage what it has seen so that it can be accused of copyright infringement.
Instead, AI memorizes the “seen” images (or texts, videos, etc.) in order to display them again via prompts in a strangely reflected and varied way. The lighting conditions are different from the original but correct for most of the output images, the layout is pleasing and sales-oriented … Guys, this is really fascinating!

This is actually wrong, it's the common belief and the defence by proponents but it's based on an incorrect premise-
AI is not human so what it “sees” is irrelevant and it doesn't matter how blended up what it produces is- none of that is relevant.
What matters is that this is a machine that was fed with copyright art.


Think of it like a magazine or gallery that takes your art and displays it and makes money from it- THIS is the correct way of looking at things because the generative AIs are not humans doing this for human reasons, it is a MACHINE that was fed illegally gathered art in order to be able to work.


The same with those used for music and writing.

I reallllllly hope people will be able to understand that XD



And yes I agree with your main point that it only puts more power in the hands of the super wealthy who are disproportionately taking a larger share of the wealth every day.
It's believed by many that this somehow empowers people- It does the opposite. The exact opposite. The lack of foresight of those people and superficiality of their understanding encourages me that a ban is the way to go because people are seemingly incapable of understanding the wider implications. It's like dissempowered people at the very bottom rung of society that still firmly believe in conservative ideals that that handouts and wealth trickle-down and good ways to survive.

The USE the machine is making of the copyrighted IP is the important part.
The usage here is that it trains the data-set.

Doesn't matter whether that art, video, or music.

This is no different to someone taking your art and publishing it, or using your comic to make a movie- it's the fact that it's being used to perform a function.

Has anyone read the book misspent youth by Peter F Hamilton? it's an okayish sci fi tale but one aspect seemed a bit prophetic. One of the main characters is a man who created a new kind of internet that essentially meant that anything uploaded to it was 100% available forever. The fallout meant that all artistic media was as commercially viable as a betamax tape in 2023 and all artists were hobbyists or on the poverty line as they made no money from their art. Seems like that's where we're headed.

Sorry, weird aside that came to mind.

I keep flip flopping on the idea of a ban. I see potential uses for it that if ethically done I have no issue with, such as backgrounds or references. Obviously I'm against the art theft aspect but it would be wholly possible to have ethically trained art AI. so many images are public domain, either through age or willingly put out that way. In theory that would be fine with me, however when I dabbled with AI art to create the page I posted, almost every image was clearly trained on copyrighted material. Does a truly ethical art AI exist, or is it just a buzzword to try and halt the backlash?

Typing this I'm leaning towards, if in doubt… Ban.

plymayer wrote:

Genejoke wrote:

Here's the page I made.

If this were posted, I would not know it was AI.

It's pretty obvious by how shit it's looks

Ozoneocean wrote:
Think of it like a magazine or gallery that takes your art and displays it and makes money from it- THIS is the correct way of looking at things because the generative AIs are not humans doing this for human reasons, it is a MACHINE that was fed illegally gathered art in order to be able to work.

I'm afraid it wouldn't help if you took away all datasets from the AI that contain copyright-protected works, because there are still enough resources left over to let the AI generate fancy images or pleasing texts that can outdo human creatives on the market.
Either you have to ban AI generation of images and texts etc. in general (which is effective but hardly feasible anymore), or strictly limit the use of AI to a few economic sectors.

Ozoneocean wrote:
This is actually wrong, it's the common belief and the defence by proponents but it's based on an incorrect premise-
AI is not human so what it “sees” is irrelevant and it doesn't matter how blended up what it produces is- none of that is relevant.
What matters is that this is a machine that was fed with copyright art.

Let's break this down:
First of all, specialized companies, some of which crawl the web, others of which rely on “legal” sources, create datasets to feed the AI machines. These datasets must contain two elements, namely a media or text file and a “label” that explains what is being displayed in the case of images, for example.
This means that the AI does nothing illegal per se because it is others who supply it with material.
However, the AI scans the datasets it receives with deep learning, runs recursive pattern recognition over them again, can recognize people in appropriately labeled media and reproduce them (re)generatively, e.g. see above that Sam Altman is shown driving a rickshaw from behind.

In order to create an ethical AI, you would have to start with the datasets and restrict them to those that do not contain any copyright-protected data in their library.
However, even search engines are using crawlers, so I can't see that crawling the Internet to create datasets is prohibited anywhere. Then all major search engines would also have to be made illegal.

But anyway, I doubt that all this will work (see previous post)…

Web crawlers don't access webpages to lift copywrited work in order to use it for a different project that will generate profit (or reduce the profitability) of that same work lifted without written consent.

Web crawlers access webpages simply to make it easier for users to find them, actually increasing the profitability of pretty much everyone on the internet.

Yes, it is quickly becoming legally forbidden to create datasets of material that hasn't explicitly given consent to be included. And it should; in any research where you don't even come CLOSE to hurting someone's intellectual property or livelihood, you need informed consent to ethically and legally include a participant in your dataset.

It's how it's done. The fact that people are unfamiliar with this base, extremely simple legal and ethical framework only speaks to how uneducated laypeople are- the fault of the mass education system.

Doesn't change facts about what is and isn't allowed tho. Sourcing of material matters. If the material is illegally obtained which is derived from the purpose it is used for then anything the AI produces is unethical in the least, and as I already said, illegal. Legislation is going to catch up with it. It already is.

Genejoke wrote:
Does a truly ethical art AI exist, or is it just a buzzword to try and halt the backlash?

Sounds like a very smart story

Yes they exist it's very simple :)
I'm genuinely confused by people's confusion over this:
The crappy generative AI like Midjourny and Stable Diffusion use crawlers to steal any content available totally for free. Whereas the ethical one that Adobe developed was trained only on the licensed and copyright free art that gave it.

People are imagination these things are like sky-net and grab stuff themselves. No, it's a really simple system. The developers are in total control, of course. They decide exactly what they train it on.

Othosmops wrote:
I'm afraid it wouldn't help if you took away all datasets from the AI that contain copyright-protected works, because there are still enough resources left over to let the AI generate fancy images or pleasing texts that can outdo human creatives on the market.

I'm not sure why you think this XD
Even WITH illegally used copyright material they don't “outdo” people, they just create images and text. It's not better or worse, it's just flawed and generic.
But forcing them to only use copyright free work and pay to license copyright work they want to use isn't about reducing the quality of what they make, it's about NOT openly screwing over creatives. It will also make their systems more expensive to create so they won't be able to offer the crappy free stuff they're doing now that all these morons are taking advantage off.

Again- Adobe pays for the material in their dataset, which is why it's NOT free to use, AND it's mainly used as a TOOL by creatives in interesting and clever time saving ways- like to draw realistic grass in an image, transform a picture to a night scene etc.


—

I'm very sorry for my frustrated, negative tone, it's nothing personal

Ozoneocean wrote:

Othosmops wrote:
I'm afraid it wouldn't help if you took away all datasets from the AI that contain copyright-protected works, because there are still enough resources left over to let the AI generate fancy images or pleasing texts that can outdo human creatives on the market.

I'm not sure why you think this XD

Actually, I don't. ;)
I wrote that AI can / is bred to outdo human creatives on the market.
And the reason is, just as you wrote:

Ozoneocean wrote:
It will also make their systems more expensive to create so they won't be able to offer the crappy free stuff they're doing now that all these morons are taking advantage off.

But as I said, I fear that your solution is not a long-term one. Because in the future, the business will be done by wealthy AI skimmers, media corporations that also procure the necessary copyrights, which will drive actors, CG studios and artists of all kinds out of the market with pleasing AI stuff supported by AI marketing strategies. Unless a crazy dictator destroys this market with ABC weapons, these companies are heading for a golden AI Bollywood.
The question will be what will be left for human creatives in the old-timer market.

Ozoneocean wrote:
I'm very sorry for my frustrated, negative tone, it's nothing personal.

No prob. Same here.