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The AI Unbundling

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Re: The AI Unbundling

#171

Post by ben_w »

Paracompact wrote: post #167
ben_w wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh, was not expecting Fur Affinity to be a poster child for such a ban. The surprise is not because it’s furry — the art scene is such a large fraction of the furry economy that the introduction of AI art is approximately equivalent to introducing modern farming to, IDK, the 1850s or something — but rather because of that site’s lack of reputation with regards to technology. Although, perhaps that explains why the q…

This was actually predictable, if one was listening to the buzz around the different communities when the "this waifu/pony/fursona/etc. does not exist" generators were first introduced. Every community seemed to love the spectacle, except for the furry community, who were noticeably more on edge about it. I still don't really know what to attribute the attitude to, but it seems to be a pattern.

As I said, the surprise is that particular website, not that specific fandom. The fandom is unsurprising for the reason I gave.

Re: The AI Unbundling

#172

Post by nanonomad »

telotortium wrote: post #158
echelon wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My startup can make you sing as Taylor Swift. Not like Taylor Swift. As Taylor Swift. We'll have our new product out very very shortly. We're at end times.

If it's as good as your Donald Trump voice conversion demo on your site, I'd have to pass. That sounds like someone with a cold trying to do a poor impression of Trump. The voice doesn't even have a New York accent!

[dead]

Re: The AI Unbundling

#173

Post by psadri »

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…

> This is good for society but bad for many individual artists.

If something affects a large group of individuals, it will eventually have an impact on society as well.

Re: The AI Unbundling

#174

Post by HanyouHottie »

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…

I think the demand represented by this meme [1] is one such example of a market waiting for cheaper art.

[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/u8j3lf/i_n...

Re: The AI Unbundling

#175

Post by bergenty »

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 be incapable of distinguishing AI art from the “real” thing. Or people will just start claiming AI generated art as their own human made creations. The lines will become indistinguishable.

Re: The AI Unbundling

#176

Post by bergenty »

Jevon23 wrote: post #40
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's going to destroy the livelihoods of the majority of independent artists in a way that looks inevitable to me. Why is SD going to destroy the livelihoods of artists when machine language translation hasn't put human translators out of work yet? I don't think there's been any industry that's been ended by AI yet, and yet people are strangely confident that art is going to be the first.

There would be way, way more translators in a highly globalized society like today if it wasn’t for machine translation. Also translation is an exact science for the most part, art isn’t.

Re: The AI Unbundling

#177

Post by Paracompact »

Jevon23 wrote: post #170
Paracompact wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go ahead and get me a photo off Google images of an alpaca in a suit playing chess in vibrant digital painting style. Without meaning to sounding rude about it... I'll wait.

I'd be curious to see if you could get that from the AI as well. I tried generating that exact prompt a few times at theartbutton.ai and all the results were nonsensical. For example: https://theartbutton.ai/image/OW1HZLfhjg6DFvJtk4vQZzUYqI7pGG...

Here are my best attempts: https://imgur.com/a/obZH7X5

Not a very wide range of what I could do with the idea in terms of composition, but just some variations of finishing touches/intermediate steps. I achieved this with some human-in-the-loop iteration and inpainting, but it was no more than 15-30 minutes toying around with it, and I'm no artist.

If you have a semi-decent graphics card and would like to experiment with a bunch of extra settings and tools than are readily available online, this is a good repo for that: https://github.com/AUTOMATIC1111/stable-diffusion-webui

Re: The AI Unbundling

#178

Post by dzonga »

people forget that art is something unique to the artist.

you can't have another van gogh by reproducing van gogh paintings.

reproducing van gogh painting will teach you a lot about art.

but once you become good, you develop your own flair / style.

and that's what makes art great, the infinite possibilities.

it's the same reason, we tend to overlook countless paintings of trees done by street artists unless the style is so unique and evokes our emotions by beauty or novelty.

for that reason alone - I will go against the grain and say AI art won't push artists out of jobs

Re: The AI Unbundling

#179

Post by Paracompact »

ben_w wrote: post #171
Paracompact wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was actually predictable, if one was listening to the buzz around the different communities when the "this waifu/pony/fursona/etc. does not exist" generators were first introduced. Every community seemed to love the spectacle, except for the furry community, who were noticeably more on edge about it. I still don't really know what to attribute the attitude to, but it seems to be a pattern.

As I said, the surprise is that particular website, not that specific fandom. The fandom is unsurprising for the reason I gave.

The pony and anime communities also revolve around an economy of mostly static 2d art, for what it's worth.

Re: The AI Unbundling

#180

Post by echelon »

idontpost wrote: post #169
echelon wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Today you're a Taylor Swift fan and you want more of her music faster than she can deliver. Maybe you make it yourself and share with friends, and it goes viral. She might even get on stage and sing it. Tomorrow, you want more Taylor Swift and you tell the computer to give it to you. It delivers with no human intervention whatsoever. You love it, but want it a bit more country - so be it. Piano and acoustic. Got it.…

You don't get it. > A never-ending stream of novel music that tailors itself to you. That's worthless. A firehose of novelty is almost immediately no longer novel. Why would anyone want this? It's the same problem already with streaming services and their own series. They're all already joyless and immediately forgettable. They have less and less value. Your breathlessly described "amazing transformation" sounds incr…

> You don't get it.

It's easy to say that as someone on the outside without skin in the game, not working on this, not in the know.

> That's worthless. A firehose of novelty is almost immediately no longer novel.

And yet here you are on HN. I'll bet you have a Twitter and phone and consume social media, too. That's all just a poor man's version of what we'll be building.

> Why would anyone want this?

I have literally wanted this exact thing all of my life.

There have only been a handful of films I've walked out of and felt truly satisfied. I've seen thousands of movies shot by mere hundreds of directors at best. That's billions of dollars of institutional capital put behind a few lucky white men for what amounts to as a "meh" at best. Now we can empower anyone to have their own take at it. To build and express anything. To sift and sort through emotional/concept space and deliver truly new things.

We get one short life to experience the universe. Let's climb the gradient to the stars and experience the limits.

> It's the same problem already with streaming services and their own series. They're all already joyless and immediately forgettable. They have less and less value.

Spaghetti thrown at walls by blank check writing firms trying to capture eyeballs. This isn't at all what I'm talking about. This technology will bankrupt that type of behavior.

Everyone will have access to these tools and be able to build whatever their heart desires. Whatever they want to put out into the world for the rest of us to experience.

> Your breathlessly described "amazing transformation" sounds incredibly boring and pointless.

I don't get you, but that's fine. We'll be building away regardless.

I don't think humans are the end point of our tiny quadrant of the universe. We're a transitional blip. This is just part of the changing of the guard. And the transformation will yield beautifully captivating results. I'm here to contribute and experience.

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