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No elephants: Breakthroughs in image generation

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Re: No elephants: Breakthroughs in image generation

#251

Post by dylan604 »

nitwit005 wrote: post #215
Gasp0de wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love using LLMs to generate pictures. I'd call myself rather creative, but absolutely useless in any artistic craft. Now, I can just describe any image I can imagine and get 90% accurate results, which is good enough for the presentations I hold, online pet projects (created a squirrel-themed online math-learning game for which I previously would have needed a designer to create squirrel highschool themed imagery)…

> For many, many websites this is going to be good enough. It was largely a solved problem though. Companies did not seem to have an issue with using stock photos. My current company's website is full of them. For business use cases, those galleries were already so extensive before AI image generation, that what you wanted was almost always there. They seemingly looked at people's search queries, and added images to…

Really? What stock service would have a selection of squirrels in a high school setting doing various math or other subject related things?

To think any/all combined stock services would be the end all is just unrealistic. Sure, someone one might have settled on something just because they got tired of scrolling (much like streaming video services), that does not mean they are happy with their selection. Just happy to be done.

Now, with generativeAI, they can have squirrels doing anything in any setting they can describe. If they don't like it, they can just tweak the description until they are happy. It's an obvious plus for them.

I never drank the kool-aid to be all gung-ho on this boom/fad, but I'm not going to be so obstinate that I refuse to accept some people find it quite useful. May someone make all the squirrel attending highschool generative art they want, but you can't tell me some stock place is good 'nuff for everything.

Re: No elephants: Breakthroughs in image generation

#252

Post by mrdependable »

Taek wrote: post #33
probably_wrong wrote: post #12

> Is it okay to reproduce the hard-won style of other artists using AI? Who owns the resulting art? Who profits from it? Which artists are in the training data for AI, and what is the legal and ethical status of using copyrighted work for training? These were important questions before multimodal AI, but now developing answers to them is increasingly urgent. I have to disagree with the conclusion. This was an importa…

I don't think there's consensus around that idea. Lots of people (myself included) feel that copyright is already vastly overreaching, and that AI represents forward progress for the proliferation of art in society (its crap today, but digital cameras were crap in 2007 and look where they are now). Its also not clear for example that Studio Ghibli lost by having their art style plastered all over the internet. I went…

Studio Ghibli might not have been affected yet, but only because the technology is not there yet. What's going to happen when someone can make a competing movie in their style with just a prompt? Should we all just be okay with it because it's been decided that Studio Ghibli has made enough money?

If the effort required to create that can just be ingested by a machine and replicated without consequence, how would it be viable for someone to justify that kind of investment? Where would the next evolution of the art form come from? Even if some company put in the time to create something amazing using AI that does require an investment, the precedent is that it can just be ingested and copied without consequence.

I think aside from what is legal, we need to think about what kind of world we want to live in. We can already plainly see what social media has done to the world. What do you honestly think the world will look like once this plays out?

Re: No elephants: Breakthroughs in image generation

#253

Post by gerash »

GaggiX wrote: post #45
rkharsan64 wrote: post #20

Are there any local models that use this new approach to generating images?

GPT-4o is the only model that seems to work well in the text-image joint space to this degree, even Gemini Flash 2.0 with native image support is not nearly as good so it will probably be a while for a good open source alternative to pop up (a while in the context of AI development).

depends on the use case.

I used GPT-4o for some image editing (adding or removing things) to an image of a person and they distort the look of the people after each edit but (Gemini Flash + image out) did much better.

The main problem is there is little control. For example I asked to add a helicopter to an image in a ski resort but then it seems cumbersome for me to have to write a full paragraph to describe where exactly I want this helicopter to be rather than if I could just do it by dragging things with a mouse.

Re: No elephants: Breakthroughs in image generation

#254

Post by singingboyo »

__loam wrote: post #225
ldoughty wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate how there's no possible way to use this technology without actively harming artists? If a classroom of 14 year olds are making a game in their computer science class, and they use AI to make placeholder images... Was a real artist harmed? The teacher certainly cant afford to pay artists to provide content for all the students games, and most students can't afford to hire an artist either.. they perh…

[flagged]

There are legitimate criticisms that AI is harming creative endeavours. AI output is sort of by definition not particularly innovative. By flooding spaces with repetitive AI work, it may be drowning out the basis for truly innovative creation. And maybe it does suppress development of skills it tries to replace.

The appropriation argument is somewhat unsound. Creative endeavors, by definition, build on what's come before. This isn't any different between code, creative writing, drawing, painting, photography, fashion design, music, or anything else creative. Creation builds on what came before, that's how it works. No one accuses playwrights of appropriating Shakespeare just because they write a tragic romance set in Europe.

The hyperbolic way you've made whatever arguments you had, though, is actively working against you.

Re: No elephants: Breakthroughs in image generation

#255

Post by megaloblasto »

Garlef wrote: post #241
genewitch wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatever. I wrote and co-wrote ten albums and my total take was $3. The market is saturated and the way it works means ten get rich for every million artists. I feel as though this has been pretty constant throughout history. Of course there's a lot of talent out there, "wasted", but I think that's always been the case. How many William Shakesmans did we lose with all the war, famine, disease? I actually decided I'd…

> How many William Shakesmans did we lose with all the war, famine, disease? (Just a small comment out of context of the remaining discussion:) Maybe not many? It could be that "cultural attention" is limited and there's not much space at the top anyways. In other words: It might be that there's always a few famous artists that get remembered and the rest is forgotten. Same as winning the world cup: There's always a…

do you think that if the Beatles never existed, some other group would have absorbed their fame, like a power vacuum being filled? I've wondered this before.

Or maybe they just really were that good.

Re: No elephants: Breakthroughs in image generation

#256

Post by TheGrognardling »

pixl97 wrote: post #246
haswell wrote: post #48

> The question isn't whether these tools will change visual media, but whether we'll be thoughtful enough to shape that change intentionally. Unfortunately I think the answer to this question is a resounding “no”. The time for thoughtful shaping was a few years ago. It feels like we’re hurtling toward a future where instead we’ll be left picking up the pieces and assessing the damage. These tools are impressive and w…

>But I think it’s going to be a rough ride, and whatever new equilibrium we reach will be the result of much turmoil. Honestly visual media just seems to be the start. In the past two years we've seen about as much robotics progress as the last 20. If this momentum keeps up then we're not just talking about artists that are going to have issues.

Honestly, I'm pretty encouraged by all of the projects and efforts within legislation and organizations regarding clear lines being drawn - i.e., through watermarking to clearly label whether something is AI-generated or not - as well as the efforts by industries for livelihoods to be protected, specifically in the creative space, where human intentionality and feeling are still of the utmost essentiality. We've seen, are seeing, and will see cultural and societal acceptance and backlash against one thing or another, but I'm confident that we will adapt. Ultimately, pushback, thanks to the Web itself, is already pretty monumental among artists and even other AI researchers in many respects - regulations for the internet, largely due to lack of the Web, were far slower to materialize, on an exponential scale. I remain optimistic that we will find the niches where AI is needed, where it isn't, and where it is detrimental.

Re: No elephants: Breakthroughs in image generation

#257

Post by schwartzworld »

nitwit005 wrote: post #215
Gasp0de wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love using LLMs to generate pictures. I'd call myself rather creative, but absolutely useless in any artistic craft. Now, I can just describe any image I can imagine and get 90% accurate results, which is good enough for the presentations I hold, online pet projects (created a squirrel-themed online math-learning game for which I previously would have needed a designer to create squirrel highschool themed imagery)…

> For many, many websites this is going to be good enough. It was largely a solved problem though. Companies did not seem to have an issue with using stock photos. My current company's website is full of them. For business use cases, those galleries were already so extensive before AI image generation, that what you wanted was almost always there. They seemingly looked at people's search queries, and added images to…

AI is mediocre at a lot of things, but it makes a damn fine upgrade from stock photos. This is the art that’s going to get replaced by this tech, shitty low effort stuff. Images where you just need a picture of X because people are expecting a picture.

It’s the same with code. I don’t think software engineers will really be replaced, but small web dev agencies have a good reason to be nervous. Why would you pay someone to make a website for your restaurant when 3-5 prompts will get you there?

Re: No elephants: Breakthroughs in image generation

#258

Post by Vvector »

__loam wrote: post #225
ldoughty wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate how there's no possible way to use this technology without actively harming artists? If a classroom of 14 year olds are making a game in their computer science class, and they use AI to make placeholder images... Was a real artist harmed? The teacher certainly cant afford to pay artists to provide content for all the students games, and most students can't afford to hire an artist either.. they perh…

[flagged]

* You cannot ethically use a tool that was produced by appropriating the labor of millions of people without consent. You are a bad person if you use it. *

I disagree. When you publish your work, I can't copy it, but I can do nearly anything else I want to with it. I don't need your consent to learn from your work. I can study hundreds of paintings, learn from them, teaching myself to paint in a similar style. Copyright law allows me to do this.

I don't think an AI, which can do it better and faster, changes the law.

Re: No elephants: Breakthroughs in image generation

#259

Post by mrdependable »

gcanyon wrote: post #34

It's interesting to hear people side with the artists when in previous discussions on this forum I've gotten significant approval/agreement arguing that copyright is far too long. As I've argued in the past, I think copyright should last maybe five years: in this modern era, monetizing your work doesn't (usually) have to take more than a short time. I'd happily concede to some sort of renewal process to extend that p…

This sounds more like a problem with you specifically not seeing value in art. Why would you want the incentives not to work in their favor?

Re: No elephants: Breakthroughs in image generation

#260

Post by nitwit005 »

dylan604 wrote: post #251
nitwit005 wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For many, many websites this is going to be good enough. It was largely a solved problem though. Companies did not seem to have an issue with using stock photos. My current company's website is full of them. For business use cases, those galleries were already so extensive before AI image generation, that what you wanted was almost always there. They seemingly looked at people's search queries, and added images to…

Really? What stock service would have a selection of squirrels in a high school setting doing various math or other subject related things? To think any/all combined stock services would be the end all is just unrealistic. Sure, someone one might have settled on something just because they got tired of scrolling (much like streaming video services), that does not mean they are happy with their selection. Just happy t…

I searched Shutterstock for squirrels doing math. Here's a squirrel doing math: https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/pensive-squirrel-d...

Yes, it's obvious that if your use case is obscure enough, or you need a ton of unique images, they won't work, which is why I said "largely a solved problem".

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