“Go generate a bridge and jump off it”: How video pros are navigating AI
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If a creator uses AI they should expect to be replaced by AI
Also, why would someone using AI to generate content expect to be paid for the content?
Also, why would someone using AI to generate content expect to be paid for the content?
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I would add another criticism to the use of AI art that isn’t unique to this form of AI, but deserves inclusion anyway: the environmental cost.
It’s conceivable that future advances in efficiency or related tech could blunt this criticism somewhat, but we’re still talking about a substantial risk for environmentally destructive changes in entire supply lines. And for what?
It’s conceivable that future advances in efficiency or related tech could blunt this criticism somewhat, but we’re still talking about a substantial risk for environmentally destructive changes in entire supply lines. And for what?
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“is a YouTube thumbnail artist.”
Thumbnail creator or thumbnail technician perhaps. But artist?
Thumbnail creator or thumbnail technician perhaps. But artist?
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macosandlinux
Ars Praefectus
Just using the term AI is not helpful in the discussion.
Using a plugin to remove noise (that is sold as "AI/ML" derived) is just doing the job like other plugins did before it, better or worse, and they always had algorithms to do their tasks.
Replacing real, shot footage with AI-generated one, on the other hand (and then not even disclosing that), is another story... and get the f out of here with AI-gen (personalized/targeted) advertising.
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This was a great overview, but there is an area where AI is already being used aggressively: politics. trump didn’t actually dump a load of poop on Americans but definitely generated an AI video of it. ICE and Homeland Insecurity are also using AI frequently.
Is this costing political operators, like modern Lee Atwaters, their jobs?
Is this costing political operators, like modern Lee Atwaters, their jobs?
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This is the talk of a person who doesn't value his own contributions to the medium, and perhaps should be doing something where he has more to offer.
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I'll go ahead and admit that I have no idea if any of the people in the pictures are real or just "this person doesn't exist" type. Only the title photo gives me pause, in case it really is a lady with one abnormally large eye I can't afford to make fun of her disability and call her "AI slop".
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They are new, short dramas shot and edited for vertical video. The business model tends to be free episodes followed by $1 or $2 premium episodes. This episode
of The Ankler is a great primer on vertical dramas.
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I can't feel good calling about the people using AI for this sort of thing "creators". I would suggest the alternative label "sloppers". Seems more accurate about who they are and what they are actually doing.
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You're not going to sway me with "I can't afford to do it otherwise." Sorry buddy, then don't do it. Labor cost is a thing everyone has to deal with. Don't you think amazon and mcdonalds and walmart would love to replace their entire workforce with robots and/or slaves they don't have to pay? Just because you don't/can't want to pay someone doesn't give you the moral high ground to claim AI is good.
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Ai generated photos and video are a scourge and should be considered artless. Using these tools to replace workers wholesale is something we should outright consider unacceptable. A truly abhorrent example of media complicity.
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I mean, have you been into a McDonald's recently? The one near me doesn't even have any cashiers. There is one drive thru attendant and a couple of cooks. Otherwise when you walk in you're expected to place your order using a big, grimy gross touchscreen. When it's ready, the ccok just drops the order on the counter with a number on it without saying a word.
And yet they still somehow need to charge twice as much as they did a couple of years ago. This is all 100% about removing labor costs and still increasing their profits for shareholders and fuck everyone else, especially the workers and customers.
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It turns out Quibi was just too early and not the terrible idea it was on paper.
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I'm so annoyed by this, AI generated video didn't exist in 2016. Miyazaki was shown a video of an ML algorithm crawling around unnaturally with a monster 3d model and was, for some reason, reminded of a disabled friend.
I hate generative AI, if you use it on a product i will simply not pay for that product, but i've never understood people who bring up that clip like it's the same thing.
Do people also hate Euphoria ragdolls in Rockstar games or most bots in racing games?
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If you trained an AI image/video creator exclusively on content you made then that is about the only ethical way I could see it being used. But that isn’t the case. They have all been trained by wholesale theft of others works and are mostly used to continue that theft (see fake movie trailer guy). If a group of people made an elaborate animation of something I did, I’d be flattered, but generating fake content using AI that you fed all my work into would piss me off.
You want me to accept something AI generated? Train it on all your own content and make something original that isn’t stolen. Then let us know how it feels when it’s stolen by a hundred other “AI creators” and you still can’t make rent even if it is awesome.
You want me to accept something AI generated? Train it on all your own content and make something original that isn’t stolen. Then let us know how it feels when it’s stolen by a hundred other “AI creators” and you still can’t make rent even if it is awesome.
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How does this work? If I am a stock image creator I assume I will get paid every time someone pays to use it. But AI is only trained once (so it only uses the image once) and then it can forever generate similar content. Is there a higher fee for creators who agree to have their images used for AI training?
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Less than useless, an active detriment to the usefulness of search engines. Even specifying -AI doesn't work unless it's all correctly tagged (spoilers: it's not).
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AutoCAD makes things that become real. Its entire purpose is to help people organize things in a rational, efficient way so that they can be made into real objects reliably. Generative AI is all hallucinated fantasy from top to bottom. The only reason it exists is to pump up companies' valuations by selling the fantasy that it can be a useful tool beyond making low-quality fakery.
AutoCAD has a low likelihood of being used to perpetrate fraud.
Generative AI is pretty much exclusively used for fraud (and porn, which AutoCAD COULD do but is highly unsuited for). The "content creators" cramming their content mills full of push-button images and video frames in an attempt to stay relevant are the fringe use case.
AutoCAD was created mostly by people compensated in some way for their contributions. Generative AI was created by scraping the web en masse, copyrights and creators be damned, entirely to usurp said creators.
AutoCAD didn't gut the workforce of draftsmen, it displaces drafting tools. It's not the people who would have used a ruling pen that lost their jobs because of AuotCAD, it was the companies making ruling pens. Generative AI guts the market of people working in the same niche it's supposed to be used in; it wasn't the people working on CorelDRAW or After Effects that lost their jobs because of AI tools, it's the people who would be using CorelDRAW or After Effects.
I really don't see a comparison between digital tools that are, from the start, designed in a way that allow you to more rigorously and accurately create things for real life, and pushbutton bullshit generators whose major use case is to churn out convincing fake shit that falls apart under scrutiny.
Remember that the selling point of Generative AI is that it was supposed to lead directly to General AI, super-smart real digital minds. That pathway turned out to be a mirage, but we still have to deal with the fallout of living in a world where anyone can post a video of gorillas robbing a liquor store and nudge-nudge-wink-wink "the usual suspects." AutoCAD didn't do that to us.
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I'd rather Mcdonalds and Amazon use robots than exploit humans by paying them less than they need to live.
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Cheating jerkass rubber-banding ass jackals, one bad corner after a whole race and they're right there!
Seriously though, it's a good point and unfair to put ML in the same basket as generative AI. I'm playing FEAR again and it still has some of the best combat AI, and obviously nothing to do with ChatGPT and its ilk.
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I will say "AI" denoise models are incredibly impressive (I've used adobe and topaz) and have been a great help for some of my noisier photos.
But i refuse to use any generative tools to edit my photos in a way that adds something that isnt real and wasnt in the photo to start
Even something like Adobe's focus/bokeh tool (which is again impressive). Those things are functions of a physical reality - the focal length of the lens, the aperture used, the distance to subject, and foreground/background/subject separation
I know at some point it may be impossible to avoid, but I'm goi g to hold out as long as i can
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Slight tangent, but turns out the real trick with FEAR is that the enemies are just programmed to shout out whatever you are doing. They don't necessarily know how to effectively counter you hiding behind a couch or how to counter flank you. But if you have in game soldiers shout out "he's behind the couch" or "he's flanking us" it tricks the player into thinking there's more going on there than there is. Plus the level design of these games being mostly empty office buildings and warehouses just lends itself well to bot pathfinding.
Which is to say: FEAR's best trick is making it feel like it has really smart AI, which turn out to be more important than actually having super smart AI.
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The transition from hand drafted to CAD design is more equivalent to the rise of CGI special effects and scenes in film than what is happening with ai generated content. CAD and CGI both digitized the workflows of skilled, talented professionals. AI generation seeks to eliminate those workflows entirely by copying the published works of all those professionals without compensation. I'm actually quite surprised you are not more concerned. As soon as a building construction company can convince a government building inspection body that AI generated plans are safe professional architects will start losing their jobs.
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When everything gets reduced to entries in an Excel file, it loses the point of it.
I can understand you dreaming of making your own movies and, well, never being able to get the money to even put a draft of your ideas out. But, on the other hand, the point of art has always been doing. The folks interviewed seem all somehow to be doing it, with AI as a hand.
But actors act because they love acting, not because they want to see their bank accounts grow (perhaps some). Musicians play because it's an interesting social experience, and it is fun, and practicing is hard but highly rewarding. Photographers photograph because of the beautiful mix of art, vision, technology and process.
Sometimes I feel like I've done all the wrong choices in life. IT became rubbish. I photograph semi-professionally and I am always frustrated I don't have time to shoot more. I studied music, and I'm in the worst shape I've ever been. With properties costing 15-20x the yearly income, I will probably work and pay rent until I die (and I am not poorly paid).
And yet, there's no choice, because all the things that used to be fun doing while paying bills are on the cut by Excel counters. Frustrated creatives use generative AI as a way to put out a vision they may not be ever able to execute otherwise. Owners and creators of the material used to train AI to begin with see nothing. A few people get even more obscenely rich and the rest?
Rant over. I just can't... =( And I have absolutely zero interest in coming to the cinema to watch AI acting. I'm always in awe by what amazing things humans can do and cinema (or music) would not be the same otherwise. You know, when I go watch a favourite musician and come out of "how do they PLAY LIKE THAT???"
I can understand you dreaming of making your own movies and, well, never being able to get the money to even put a draft of your ideas out. But, on the other hand, the point of art has always been doing. The folks interviewed seem all somehow to be doing it, with AI as a hand.
But actors act because they love acting, not because they want to see their bank accounts grow (perhaps some). Musicians play because it's an interesting social experience, and it is fun, and practicing is hard but highly rewarding. Photographers photograph because of the beautiful mix of art, vision, technology and process.
Sometimes I feel like I've done all the wrong choices in life. IT became rubbish. I photograph semi-professionally and I am always frustrated I don't have time to shoot more. I studied music, and I'm in the worst shape I've ever been. With properties costing 15-20x the yearly income, I will probably work and pay rent until I die (and I am not poorly paid).
And yet, there's no choice, because all the things that used to be fun doing while paying bills are on the cut by Excel counters. Frustrated creatives use generative AI as a way to put out a vision they may not be ever able to execute otherwise. Owners and creators of the material used to train AI to begin with see nothing. A few people get even more obscenely rich and the rest?
Rant over. I just can't... =( And I have absolutely zero interest in coming to the cinema to watch AI acting. I'm always in awe by what amazing things humans can do and cinema (or music) would not be the same otherwise. You know, when I go watch a favourite musician and come out of "how do they PLAY LIKE THAT???"
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Effortless creation is inherently caustic to anything that requires our time to be enjoyed. Economic incentives will turn everything AI touches into a race to the bottom, a flood of endless quantity-over-quality slop desperate to extract any return on investment by parasitically devouring our attention.
In the AI future, everything is ads and we'll all treat it accordingly.
That's of course ignoring the fact that it isn't actually good enough to do much of the above, and between the general stagnation and staggering losses it operates at that doesn't look likely to change any time soon.
In the AI future, everything is ads and we'll all treat it accordingly.
That's of course ignoring the fact that it isn't actually good enough to do much of the above, and between the general stagnation and staggering losses it operates at that doesn't look likely to change any time soon.
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If I encounter AI generated material online I block that account. No appeals. No forgiveness. No exceptions.
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You may be right but based on the current state of the art that won't be happening anytime soon (I hope!)
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Coffee shop artist aka barista
Way to shit on people with jobs.
Must feel nice being all superior to your fellow man, eh?
Someone figured out how to make money doing something creative. Good for them!
<sigh>
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I hope you enjoy your Big-Ass Fries(tm), cuz that's where this ends... With Carl Jr's taking your kids.
I watched a documentary about it. Very informative stuff.
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"Production Artist" is the term that I'd use... I was one at the start of my career, nothing to be ashamed of.
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Agreed. There will be niche audiences for something more authentic, but most will be fed 'good enough' AI. After all, most of the world seems to find the ad soaked internet preferable to subcribing to what is valuable. One can hope for a revival of community theater perhaps? Or maybe some Nick Park eccentrics who lean in to difficult time consuming ways to produce unique visual experiences. The mass market is hosed for exactly the reason you point out.
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It works much the same as a sweatshop does. Yes, you can legally (or quasi-legally) employ people who live in an area with such poor prospects that the pittance you give them is one of their best opportunities not to starve. Until we ever reach post-scarcity, there will always be such places.
In much the same way, you can "ethically" train AI on art that you've had people sign their rights over for. But in reality, I don't think it's all that ethical because you're going to find someone, somewhere who will agree to whatever pittance (and definitely a one time pittance) you want to give them for it.
It's all just a smokescreen. There is no ethical genAI. Even if you say you're going to be training it purely on your own data, no human produces a large enough data set to make that truly feasible. At least with current technology. It needs a large enough data set to fake creativity.
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