Ethical AI art generation? Adobe Firefly may be the answer
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IANAL, and for a real opinion on contract law you should definitely consult a specialist contract lawyer, but this section:
seems to pretty much give Adobe or its sublicensees the right to make any derivative work in any format that might ever exist. If artists are arguing that AI-generated images are derivative works, then they're covered by this agreement and it's fine for Adobe to do what it's doing. If they say they aren't derivative works, then what's their problem?
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There won't be any backlash... people are just getting a few peanuts per month from their work and if they are lucky they might get one or two commissions for weddings or ads. Imagine spotify but much worse... The worst is that I have to opt out for training images with whatever I make in the adobe ecosystem.
What will happen is class action suits.
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Well, if we go into the philosophy of art, we can consider the Grand Canyon. Is it art? No, but it is beautiful. It was made by complicated processes and even a picture of it would be art, but it itself is not. Now, one might ask if an AI graphic of a canyon then is art or not? There's no expression of creative skill or imagination, for instance. So in a technical sense, we can argue it is not art, but merely looks like art, much as an earthquake knocking over a paint can might create something that looks like art.
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Two difficulties.
1. It will become hard to prove something was created by an AI as time goes on. So if the person who generated the images lies, who will know? They'll get their copyright anyway.
2. This only applies to copyright, whereas there are other was to protect an image such as trademarking it. Can't do that in every situation, of course, only for branding, but it's still significant area, imho.
There's also a huge gray area on how much work has to be done to make something copyrightable.
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It has nothing to do with philosophy. zunipus said there is no AI art "as per every dictionary ever written". It's semantics.
AI art exists, it is being actively discussed by millions of people, no one have any problems understanding what these words mean. No amount of sophistry can change these trivially observable facts.
New things that don't exist "as per every dictionary ever written" emerge all the time. There was no smartphone 30 years ago in dictionaries, then it was added. The same will happen with AI art.
"So in a technical sense, we can argue it is not art" - you could but why would you? No one claimed it was.
"It has to be an expression of creative skill or imagination" is completely arbitrary requirement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_(Duchamp) - literally urinal, "everyday objects raised to the dignity of a work of art by the artist's act of choice".
In December 2004, Duchamp's Fountain was voted the most influential artwork of the 20th century by 500 selected British art world professionals. The Independent noted in a February 2008 article that with this single work, Duchamp invented conceptual art and "severed forever the traditional link between the artist's labour and the merit of the work".
See, the link was severed. 106 years ago. Forever.
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You specifically said mass reproduction diminishes the work. Which means producing copies of the same work. Like making prints of a painting or copies of a book. What you seem to really mean is mass production of distinct AI images based on random prompts from users, and that's different.
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You're using dictionaries as your definitive source on what art is? Seriously? When the question what is and isn't art has been hotly debated for over a hundred years, with multiple schools of thought. Look at this part from section 5 of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's article on the definition of Art:
"Conventionalist definitions account well for modern art, but have difficulty accounting for art’s universality – especially the fact that there can be art disconnected from “our” (Western) institutions and traditions, and our species."
"and our species". Hmmm.
But sure, use dictionaries and their extremely simplified definitions...
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/art-definition/
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This is sort of a positive development. Artists, and people who appreciate their work, should still be extremely hostile to the creators, providers, and users of the tech.
AI art looks like shit and the intent of the people behind the tech is THEFT. I think most will realize this scam relatively quickly as people in the last few years have become more aware of the bait and switch ethical tradeoffs tech companies have been pulling on the world.
AI art looks like shit and the intent of the people behind the tech is THEFT. I think most will realize this scam relatively quickly as people in the last few years have become more aware of the bait and switch ethical tradeoffs tech companies have been pulling on the world.
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I have seen in the Louvre students with easels sitting in front of an old master trying to imitate the artist style, so clearly it's been a large part of the art education for centuries. I'm pretty sure Leonardo's students painted a few...
I would think eventually we'll all decide to applaud the human performances where we can find them, and the art that pleases to surround ourselves.
Caveat Emptor - "this art might not be official".
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Adobe. You wouldn't steal a car. Right ?
I'm not cheering on theft. Ai art is theft... that is the intention of every single company pursuing the tech. These AIs are not creating anything. People can argue about how humans iterate on existing works all they want. Creating software that apes style and composition is not art. Its here now no undoing it... but I won't be supporting any company trying to profit from it either. "Ethically" sourced photos or not isn't really the point. The tech at its core is a theft tool.
I'm not cheering on theft. Ai art is theft... that is the intention of every single company pursuing the tech. These AIs are not creating anything. People can argue about how humans iterate on existing works all they want. Creating software that apes style and composition is not art. Its here now no undoing it... but I won't be supporting any company trying to profit from it either. "Ethically" sourced photos or not isn't really the point. The tech at its core is a theft tool.
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It's literally not theft if the artists have specifically signed over to Adobe the rights to use their work and relicense it as they see fit, for any purpose specifically including making derivative works and specifically including purposes that haven't been thought of yet. Which is what the small print in Adobe's documentation that was posted up-thread actually says.
The debate over other AI models can run on, but Adobe appears to be home and dry on this one.
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I was talking a while back to a marketing head at a uni. He was observing that the art & design students liked interning for him because he paid them. Most shops had a pool of interns that had to compete for projects. They designed some page layout / picture / etc and then the company paid for one of the pool.
I listened to an interview with the art director at Fantasy Flight Games during the LCG heyday. She observed that to generate hundreds of art pieces for a monthly or bi-monthly release required many artists. She had a website requesting specific art pieces with styles described and artists submitted pieces. She'd buy some of them and use them. The rest were left unused.
Back to the marketing head at the uni, I asked him what the average graduate made going out into the world with a credible deign degree. He observed that the average pay was around $35k per year in our region (lower cost of living), but compare that to the estimated baseline of $41k at the time for a family (all necessities and a few extras).
The point I'd make is that people talk about all the artists being put out of work. Are they though? I'm not an expert in the field, but from what I can tell, it's already a brutal field. Many of them seem to have day jobs and do art on the side because they want to. At best, this might reduce the likelihood of people running a side gig or alternatively, AI assisted art might make provably human generated art that much more valuable. It could boost the incomes of the mid-tier / top-tier artists.
I listened to an interview with the art director at Fantasy Flight Games during the LCG heyday. She observed that to generate hundreds of art pieces for a monthly or bi-monthly release required many artists. She had a website requesting specific art pieces with styles described and artists submitted pieces. She'd buy some of them and use them. The rest were left unused.
Back to the marketing head at the uni, I asked him what the average graduate made going out into the world with a credible deign degree. He observed that the average pay was around $35k per year in our region (lower cost of living), but compare that to the estimated baseline of $41k at the time for a family (all necessities and a few extras).
The point I'd make is that people talk about all the artists being put out of work. Are they though? I'm not an expert in the field, but from what I can tell, it's already a brutal field. Many of them seem to have day jobs and do art on the side because they want to. At best, this might reduce the likelihood of people running a side gig or alternatively, AI assisted art might make provably human generated art that much more valuable. It could boost the incomes of the mid-tier / top-tier artists.
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Yes, people have been, not advanced AI systems being used by the masses. Anyone who has ever spoken to even just a semi-experienced artist understands that they never show their direct reproductions, let alone distribute and claim them for their own. There have always been unethical artists and artists who recreate unethically, but we call those unethical artists for a reason.
At the very least, artists with a sense of community and kinship understand the importance of ownership, style, and creativity. They tend very careful to adapt the styles of their influences in ways that aren't disrespectful or too mimetic of the original. A lot of the ordinary people who aren't artists getting their hands on this technology don't understand what it means to labor for years, to study other artists and their processes, and painstakingly work to develop a distinct style and voice with a bedrock of good influences.
I don't trust Bill from operations to understand the culture around artists when he decides that he wants to start generating images in someone else's style and then fancying himself an original creator when posting them online.
Originality has never really been anything other than a vague notion, especially for younger art students still developing their craft, however the respect and consideration that artists are taught to afford to one another is real. If you ever go to an art school, they teach you critique and make you talk to your peers about art because it's inherently a collaborative process.
The technology can't be stopped, but we NEED to think about how to be ethical about this stuff because anything can be made unethical in the method and ends. AI isn't just changing how we live and work, it's changing our morality and forcing us to come to terms with behaviors and attitudes that were once just harmful but can now be disastrous.
For example, it was previously never unethical to have a type or to consume pornography, but now that it's possible to generate porn of real people, we have to be very thoughtful about our principles and what we will or won't allow as people and as a species. Simplicity is gone, and we can't measure the new code of ethics based on some flippant notion of what "people have always done".
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"AI might put the mediocre ones out of a job though."
But on the other hand, it might put us atrocious artist into a job. I have the artistic ability of a tree stump. I do, however, have ideas, ideas for which I lack the physical skills to express visually. AI image generation might help me--the worst artist in the world--express my ideas.
By extension, I can also see it being a godsend for the physically disabled who want to give artistic visual expression to their ideas.
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Yea, an AI image generator isn't going to make you an artist.
Also physically disabled artists hate being used as a talking point for why AI is great for them.
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I'm not INHERENTLY opposed to AI art generation. I'm opposed to theft of course, and while teaching a human to draw using previous samples is one thing, it's another when it's a corporate owned soulless entity. That does change things morally. Further, putting artists out of work is a threat under our current social systems. Provide a basic minimum standard of living and eliminate poverty, THEN we'll talk about how this tool could benefit people. As it stands, it threatens instead to put artists out of work and replace them with... nobody. Not even you. Some corporate executive will just say "make the thing" and an AI will do all of it for free. No art staff, amateur or otherwise, required. It evens the playing field by putting talented artists out of work, not by putting those with ideas but no means of expressing them INTO work.
Even if you have unique ideas, it doesn't take much to make another AI create a similar but legally distinct version of it and just sell it anyway without bothering with your permission.
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The other day in my art class, my teacher was talking about how unfeasible it is to be an artist today, and how even a professional with ten+ years of industry experience might needs a secondary source of income if they're not involved in a very exclusive and small group that can be employed full time by a massive corporation (where they will likely never own most of what they make). Being an art teacher has become the dream as at the very least you get to stay within your field for your work.
As an artist, for once in my life I would like to go a year without some shocking, world shifting change that forces us to adapt in ways most other industries haven't had to.
I'm 24, and I'm just fucking tired. Wanna be an artist? Sike, gotta learn photoshop now. Now Flickr. Now Instagram. Now Patreon. Now Ko-fi. Now Tik Tok. Now everything. All the while, at every avenue we're faced with people who don't understand the value of art and design devaluing our labor. The art meta is oppressive, stupid, and most importantly UNSUSTAINABLE.
It's not just that we've been forced to continuously adapt, it's that each adaptation has made a mockery of and diminished the profession. The work we do is different but not less complex or involved than that of an engineer, and yet we're seen as utterly disposable. The artist can no longer just be a creator, they have to be an INFLUENCER now. The new meta is to post short videos of you making the art to improve retention, social media attention, and to show that you're not posting machine generated content.
AI art is a big deal, but the effects it's having aren't even the biggest shake up in the last couple decades to the profession. The art world has been having severe problems throughout for a long, long time that don't get the attention they should. The condition of the creator class is a massive reflection of the state of the world, both socially and economically. I really hope you're right and that it increases the value of traditional artists because something needs to change. There's no reason why it should not be a feasible profession that pays a livable wage.
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I hear the pain and respect the point. I tend to view the problem (making a livable wage) as a 1st world problem. Let me explain by example.
At the previously mentioned uni, one of the elderly faculty observed that their education came via the electric washing machine. Their mother acquired free time to take the child to the library, read and cultivate a desire to learn.
I suspect that the problem you face in your career prospects is simply this: More people have the freedom to indulge in art than ever before. If rarity increases value, than quantity decreases it. In this case the quantity being the people who can produce credible art.
For what it's worth, I've been using AI to create emotes for a streamer. They need to be 112x112 pixels so, you know, low quality. Even then, I'm struggling at times to make something that expresses my thoughts. So, I installed gimp yesterday to add a new layer (literally) to my AI output. /sigh Art is hard.
Still, without AI, I wouldn't have gotten this far.
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Your contention takes my statement out of context. What I said was that using automated tools or lackeys to produce work, and THEN subjecting it to mass reproduction diminishes the role of a so-called artist. And I stand by that statement, and shake my fist at clouds.
And that applies to professionals or to hobbyists. Again, the involvement of the tool-user at each step, with active engagement and editing and re-direction, is the bright line I draw. Offering a prompt and taking the end result as presented doesn't cross that line.
Workman-like product can be produced with that easy approach, and I am happy to accept it as craft, but not as art.
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As far as the output of AI image generation is concerned my personal feeling is that it shouldn't be subject to copyright protection unless it's had substantial human modification. Apparently the Copyright Office feels the same way.
To me art requires intent and the generator doesn't have intent. It has a model for interpreting written prompts. It's a more complicated, automated paintbrush.
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I think we can argue whether or not it's art all we want, but critically, the real argument is whether or not it was created by someone. I'd argue no. In the same way a monkey taking a picture shouldn't give the man who owned the camera a copyright on that photo (nor the monkey, unless the monkey asks for it), neither should any "artist" get credit for telling an AI to make something, and then the AI makes it. They get, at BEST, copyright over the specific text they typed into the prompt. Who does it belong to? I'd say it's best if art generated by AI belongs to no one at all, unless the AI asks.
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I'll accept that.
A floating grocery bag can be beautiful in its way (I think that was from American Beauty). I watched a squirrel dart around a tree yesterday, and enjoyed it immensely, even though it was probably the same squirrel who crept onto my patio and ate my entire basil plant (I read peppers discourage them, and will pick up a few to scatter among the herbs).
Those are not art, yet are thoroughly enjoyable for the acts of the universe that they are.
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As I said here before, the best Artists-that-complain-about-AI-Art can get is that a trivial number of them get a trivial amount of money. And with this story, it looks like that trivial amount of money has already been paid even before the rise of AI generators. I hope they are happy.
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Apparently Adobe doesn't feel the same way. And now that this thing is so "ethical", the copyright issue is resolved, and image generator is being integrated into the most widely used software for artists the Copyright Office will have little choice in the matter.
AI is a tool. It is used by a person with intent. Non-trivial results mostly require non-trivial efforts. The guy who won Colorado art competition spent hours making his piece, including redrawing a few parts.
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People are still doing it. AI isn't sentient. People are controlling the AI and telling it what to do.
omg you sound exactly like the people who say 3D art isn't real art, that only 2D art is real. Or that digital art doesn't count as art, only traditional art does. People having to do less work to make something is a good thing! Its not bad!
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There is no such thing as 'unethical art' and suggesting that there is ... that's terrifying.
There is also no such thing as an ethical Adobe product and suggesting that there is ... that's terrifying.
There is also no such thing as an ethical Adobe product and suggesting that there is ... that's terrifying.
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Of course there's such a thing as unethical art. Art created by abusing people is unethical. We even have numerous laws meant to decompile industries built around this sort of unethical art. Do you want me to spell it out further?
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I'm curious how markets will drive this. I was on Steam when I saw a prohibition sign with "AI" in the middle of it, it was a community news update for a porn game called "Isekai Frontline" that, due to buyer backlash, was removing AI generated art assets. I didn't see if this was due to scruples or people resenting paying for AI generated works, but it was interesting to see there was enough of a response to drive action on the part of the developer.
I think it's easy to say I'd like for some ethical outcome, but a part of me fears something like this would turn into a pipeline for "You can make $X a day/week just [submitting photos and drawings]!" scams that really just end up delivering sub-minimum wage for content churn.
I think it's easy to say I'd like for some ethical outcome, but a part of me fears something like this would turn into a pipeline for "You can make $X a day/week just [submitting photos and drawings]!" scams that really just end up delivering sub-minimum wage for content churn.
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Alexander Dumas gave some one a job, even if a very shitty one.
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And here's me who ditched Adobe for Affinity and never looked back. But then, my use of InDesign/Illustrator/Photoshop used pretty much the same templates and workflows over and over again for over a decade, and moving those to Affinity was a snap. Firefly seems... interesting.
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I don't agree with your assessment of the similarity of human cognition and machine learning. However, this comment was so outrageous I made an account just to respond.
You do realize that this exact kind of fanart is illegal to sell, right? That major franchises nonetheless allow sales of fanart to exist at a low background level because it boosts sales of the franchise and thus doesn't compete (free advertising)? That Pokemon still has the right to smack for sale fanart into oblivion if it so desires, and that an artist can never sell that fanart at scale? That if a fanartist did try to expand their production and make a competing game using these copyrighted corporate assets it would get sued into oblivion, as often happens with fan games? Do you understand the stratospheric level of confidence in copyright protection that the Pokemon company has? Do you know how many YouTube videos got taken down in the last week because they used still images from the pokemon anime for personal commentary?
The only reason fanart exists is because there are very clear legal boundaries of copyright and the franchise holder has all the power to allow controlled transgressions or not-- and it has made the call to allow it. Fanart stops when the company says it stops. Why. ON EARTH. Would you want that power to stay only in the hands of major franchises and corporations and deny small independent artists the right to the same level of protection? Your attitude towards the law and legal protection is just catapulting the world into a dystopia of legal haves and have nots.
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I have worked in commissioned art as a freelancer.
It is not a viable career for the vast, vast majority of people who do it. I would say it's similar to music in terms of what percentage of people can make their living with it vs what percentage are trying to, maybe worse. It's not even particularly close to an actual side job like Uber. I have similar feelings about it to what I have about the music industry, or professional sports: it's not really a "career" in the way we think about it. It's a lot more like the lottery. I'm not saying all people are equally good or equally dedicated, that's obviously not true, but luck on some level is the determining factor, not skill or dedication. For every Justin Bieber there are thousands of others who were just as good, just as dedicated, and who simply didn't get lucky. The idea that you can just "be a musician"/"be an artist"/"be a basketballer" in the same way that you actually can just "be a carpenter" or "be a lawyer" if you get the appropriate accreditations, is not true.
That said, there are what we would think of as more traditional careers, making art. In games, you will have artist positions. In animation as well. It's not as sexy as the idea of a starving artist who's so good they attract a patron, or its modern equivalent the freelance commission artist over the internet, but those jobs at least actually exist and you can realistically get them if you develop the skills and make some industry connections. Those jobs are going to be affected by AI art, long term. In particular, artists that refuse to use anything AI related are likely going to lose work simply because they won't be able to produce the same quality of work in the same timeframe as artists who are using the best tools available, eventually.
I would like to think there will be something like the streaming explosion for TV, where we end up making a lot more art and so require a lot more artists, even if those artists are individually (for example) twice as productive as they used to be able to. But whether that happens or not, the reality is that we live in capitalism, and unemployment is a built-in part of the system. The priests of our system will tell you with a straight face that "full employment" means significant unemployment by their own definition, plus all of the uncounted unemployment that happens from people no longer looking for work even though they want it. This system isn't kind to people, and technological unemployment is a cruelty it's more than willing to promise. If we lived in a more humane society, then maybe we could have automation always accompanied by re-training and new jobs for everyone displaced, but we don't. I don't believe the solution in any society is to try to ban the new technology, but it can certainly feel like it to people who have zero confidence their society will care for them if their jobs are automated.
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I never said that any of those mediums aren't real art, and it's either highly dishonest or just plain foolish to act like AI art is the same as digital art. I can fully accept that there are uses of AI in art that serve as extentions of the artistic process, but that's the key here: the process. In art school you are taught not just to improve the product, but how you get there. That is preserved in digital art, but is completely eliminated in most AI generation. A good number of the people using AI aren't using it to generate parts of a work, but are instead generating graphics that are fully completed pieces from the get go.
And yeah, people are telling the AI what to do for now, but it seems like no one is considering the long game here. No one is thinking about how it will change or dictate tastes. There is a real possibility that art becomes fully stagnant as it fully becomes a means of entertainment rather than expression, endlessly remixing existing artwork into ways to elicit the greatest amount of pleasure possible. There is a real risk that we are creating a psychological trap that we are not prepared to get out of.
It's so rude that people here are acting like any reservation is irrational, any hesitation or criticism is symptomatic of some kind of personal failure in understanding rather than a failure in the current state/expression of the technology. It's important to be worried, because this is not utopia and giving in completely to the idea that any technological development is necessarily progress is highly dangerous.
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It's also worth pointing out that some of these examples of luddite fear of the future, as in talking about the fear of cars, miss that the dominance of cities designed for cars rather than people really HAS become a social disaster and the fears over cars were in fact quite justified. It's hard to get that across however, because of a generational failure of imagination to see how cities could be designed any other way. The fear here is that if AI art becomes the norm, future "artists" won't be able to even conceptualize how are could be done in different ways. This HAS been an issue in the past in fact. The era of classical realism was so engrained that art that went very intentionally unrealistic was seen as disruptive and, frankly, "bad", reacted to even worse than Wind Waker in the "realism obsessed" gamer culture of the early 2000's.
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Oh sure, if you don't mind the complete loss of CSI's accuracy. You can never use AI to reconstruct the original license plate data in an image if not enough data to show said number wasn't already in the image in the first place. The AI, like us, will "invent" based on it's biases.
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