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The AI Unbundling

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Re: The AI Unbundling

#141

Post by joe_the_user »

yojo wrote: post #51
megaman821 wrote: post #6

I am not sure I see the unbundling here. AI generated art may be a threat to generic stock photography and small jobs for custom blog art, but artists higher up on the food chain now have a new tool for them to use. They can quickly generate a bunch of concepts to tryout ideas, and polish those into a higher quality piece of art than if left to their own devices.

If it’s a 10x force multiplier, then one person could do the work of 10. There are two possible outcomes: 1) the lower rate per piece enabled by higher productivity unlocks a much larger market for commissioned work. No one has to lose their job, people make up the price difference in volume. 2) there is not a much larger market waiting for cheaper art. The existing pool of artists is too big, and some of them need t…

AI is not a "force multiplier" in any literal or semi-literal way. Having an mediocre version of an image isn't something that gives an artist much of a leg up on producing a good version.

If you want something a diffusion model can produce, you can get it for nearly free. If you want something significantly better, you have to pay an artist significant money for it.

Re: The AI Unbundling

#142

Post by moonchrome »

mejutoco wrote: post #39
gizmo wrote: post #33

Although we talk a lot about disruption, only very few technologies are truly disruptive. You can tell by the panic and awe in the air whether you're dealing with real disruption or incremental change. Dropbox made filesharing easier. It's a good product, but not disruptive. Nobody panicked that Dropbox would make their job redundant. Uber was hard on the taxi industry, but fundamentally you still have drivers taking…

> People will insist that SD art isn't real art. Artists will fight back, and lose. When talking about Stable Diffusion and art there are usually two different aspects of art. I am not going to try to define art, but sometimes we refer to art as illustration, or stock images (what SD puts in danger) and some as broad modern art. I am no trying to say that one is more valuable than the other, but want to qualify these…

> art as illustration, or stock images (what SD puts in danger)

I'd say the opposite. Seeing how shit SD was at generating placeholder products for a demo, and how it fails at stuff like proportions, depth, etc. the only good applications I've seen so far is abstract/concept art where you suspend disbelief because of the setting.

I think abstract art is lower hanging fruit. "High art" will be impacted as long as someone spins it into a story, it mostly reduces into social circles and selling bullshit to eachother anyway.

Re: The AI Unbundling

#144

Post by morisy »

0xa2 wrote: post #98
gizmo wrote: post #33

Although we talk a lot about disruption, only very few technologies are truly disruptive. You can tell by the panic and awe in the air whether you're dealing with real disruption or incremental change. Dropbox made filesharing easier. It's a good product, but not disruptive. Nobody panicked that Dropbox would make their job redundant. Uber was hard on the taxi industry, but fundamentally you still have drivers taking…

It is disruptive but only to one type of art - flat. So yes, since we are in front of screens most of the time flat will disrupt some. But art is more than that.

For a while, there's been a few ML based tools that have been given flat images and generated 3D renders:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7j4f6U7FJ4

I think that machine learning models will quickly hit some walls that feel unintuitive due to a lack of training data, but I also wouldn't want to bet on which ones.

Re: The AI Unbundling

#145

Post by lofaszvanitt »

gizmo wrote: post #33

Although we talk a lot about disruption, only very few technologies are truly disruptive. You can tell by the panic and awe in the air whether you're dealing with real disruption or incremental change. Dropbox made filesharing easier. It's a good product, but not disruptive. Nobody panicked that Dropbox would make their job redundant. Uber was hard on the taxi industry, but fundamentally you still have drivers taking…

Oh, when you are required to use implants to do your job... and you don't want to, because you think your body is sacred and those implants must be returned at the end of your job... well then you are disrupted.

"There will be backlash"

Re: The AI Unbundling

#146

Post by ryan93 »

DisjointedHunt wrote: post #114

Anything this guy writes gets gobbled up and worshipped mindlessly to no end. The opening here was so crass i didn't bother reading the rest (yet) until i find a better time to do so and have put my strong feelings aside. The News aren't just about distribution, you moron. If we didn't have large companies such as twitter and Facebook misclassified deliberately through government protection and instead called out as…

They aren't publishers. Me posting a link to the NYTimes on facebook is not the same as writing a NYTimes article. That fact that NYTimes articles get more boost from the algorithm than a sketchy right wing site does not make facebook a publisher

Re: The AI Unbundling

#147

Post by hnhg »

laingc wrote: post #121
enord wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have convinced me quite thoroughly that you have not availed yourself much of what modern art has on offer. If I am right, it would behoove you to not speak so surely of that which you do not know or care to understand.

I have tried, through a very good friend who is an artist. She has exhibited at some major galleries in Europe, and I’d say she knows her stuff. Much as I love my friend, after the exposure I’ve had to modern art I have to agree that it is almost without exception meaningless trash. Look, let’s just be real for a moment here. Take a step back and ask yourself what’s more likely: that (A) there really is something dee…

I've seen those kinds of art friends too, and it's possible that your friend has terrible taste, and has been directly or indirectly responsible for filtering out anything you might actually like. There's definitely a lot of noise to signal out there, and you definitely need people who can filter through it for you.

Re: The AI Unbundling

#148

Post by stavros »

gizmo wrote: post #63
mejutoco wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People will insist that SD art isn't real art. Artists will fight back, and lose. When talking about Stable Diffusion and art there are usually two different aspects of art. I am not going to try to define art, but sometimes we refer to art as illustration, or stock images (what SD puts in danger) and some as broad modern art. I am no trying to say that one is more valuable than the other, but want to qualify these…

I think the sad reality is that modern art is largely trash. Perhaps because painting/drawing/sculpting with excellent technique is too much of a commodified trade already. Perhaps because it's too hard to be original. A new oil painting of a tree, no matter how well executed, won't draw people to an art gallery. So artists take refuge in social commentary: A banana taped to a wall. A naked person holding a trash bar…

I don't know if SD is art or not, but it has already generated one of my favorite ever photos/paintings:

https://phantasmagoria.stavros.io/images/RSXTZVMjYhTdyTmE/

I want to hang this on my wall.

Re: The AI Unbundling

#149

Post by notahacker »

karaterobot wrote: post #107
mejutoco wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People will insist that SD art isn't real art. Artists will fight back, and lose. When talking about Stable Diffusion and art there are usually two different aspects of art. I am not going to try to define art, but sometimes we refer to art as illustration, or stock images (what SD puts in danger) and some as broad modern art. I am no trying to say that one is more valuable than the other, but want to qualify these…

This comment is right on the money in making the distinction between illustration/stock images, and fine art, let alone installation or performance art. It's a distinction not made often enough in these conversations. These functions are performed by different people, for different reasons, and they're used in different ways. Sadly, the market for the kind of art that the these models cannot disrupt is relatively sma…

> I find it fascinating that the kinds of skills required to be "good" at using these image generation models — "prompt engineering" if you like — are largely different than the ones required to create art from scratch. You can be a great studio painter, but not be able to "talk to" Stable Diffusion at all. Likewise, you may have zero artistic ability in the traditional sense, but be a prodigy at getting the computer to spit out what you are imagining, or something even better than that.

But then, if you're a great studio painter, SD doesn't threaten your livelihood in any meaningful way, whereas if you're the sort of artist that produces video game assets, you've probably already got a keen eye for spotting rendering issues, and prompt engineering and inpainting and producing concept images AIs can work with are all likely to be skills you pick up considerably better than the average person... and then it's just another tool.

Re: The AI Unbundling

#150

Post by pentagrama »

mejutoco wrote: post #39
gizmo wrote: post #33

Although we talk a lot about disruption, only very few technologies are truly disruptive. You can tell by the panic and awe in the air whether you're dealing with real disruption or incremental change. Dropbox made filesharing easier. It's a good product, but not disruptive. Nobody panicked that Dropbox would make their job redundant. Uber was hard on the taxi industry, but fundamentally you still have drivers taking…

> People will insist that SD art isn't real art. Artists will fight back, and lose. When talking about Stable Diffusion and art there are usually two different aspects of art. I am not going to try to define art, but sometimes we refer to art as illustration, or stock images (what SD puts in danger) and some as broad modern art. I am no trying to say that one is more valuable than the other, but want to qualify these…

Is a good question how much AI will take the jobs of artists.

To do a practical exercise, I just enter to The Atlantic website, which in my memory has some level of quality on custom illustrations and photos/collages to represent a concept of the stories. The Atlantic now is paying designers/illustrators and stock image websites to create this images. After the research, I believe that using AI will be useful in many cases and will reduce costs for sure. What do you think?

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AI + Human "AI querier"

AI is able to do this just from a text query and maybe a human tuning the query

* https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/09/crypt...

* https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/09/brad-delon...

* https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/09/free-speec...

* https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2022/09/icebreake...

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AI + Human "AI querier" + Human designer/artist for visual adjustments (merge/remove stuff/retouch)

* https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/09/care...

* https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2022/09/developin...

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Not sure

* https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/09/liberal-de...

* https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2022/09/developin...

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