1y ago

Wizards of the Coast denies, then confirms, that Magic: The Gathering promo art features AI elements | When will companies learn?

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Wizards of the Coast denies, then confirms, that Magic: The Gathering promo art features AI elements

Wizards of the Coast denies, then confirms, that Magic: The Gathering promo art features AI elements | When will companies learn?::undefined

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I don't understand the problem people have with AI art, anyone care to convince me how it's somehow immoral to use a computer for making art work?
- Speaking as a professional artist myself, I'd wager that many of the responses you've run into are emotional ones. Supporting oneself as an artist was already difficult, and AI generation is an astoundingly powerful tool. For a long time there was a sense of financial security in quieter/grunt background and asset design work such as the WotC backgrounds in this situation. WotC in particular was touted as "one of the companies that actually pays artists to make neat things" in fantasy art circles, and so their fans and artist clients (often one in the same) feel betrayed.
  I'm personally a sad-removed about it because my peers and I have been posting art for one-another and fans online since 2002, our work was scraped, and now people can click a button to ape the look of all of our work without having run across it organically, knowing our names, or being able to, like, say hello to us. I really don't mean that out of self-importance or ego- the community I grew up in online was all about discovering working artists by word of mouth this way, and getting to know them. So it's a weird (albeit unintentional) dismantling of a community and "a way that was", so to speak.
  More practically one of my specific worries regarding AI generated images: Illustration in the literal sense of the word means 'to illuminate', to make clear'. Think along the lines of technical illustration- biological in my case, but this extends to mechanical parts, manuals, diagrams, medical books. These are situations where clarity is seriously important, and I feel like the deluge of generated images (and the general public's lack of information about how the image gen works and how to decipher them) will cause harm.
  Hopefully that wasn't too much of a ramble. 🫤 TLDR: It isn't necessarily immoral, but people are emotional, it's a big change, and it's happening really damn fast.
  
  it IS immoral unless you consider theft a moral act.
  
  You wouldn't download an artist.
  
  i would if i could.
  
  What if you are stealing bread to feed a starving family?
  
  that doesn't make it right. would it be right to rob a bank if you were homeless? or better yet, is squatting ok if you're homeless?
- One of the big issues is that AI art doesnt have it's own style. It's a rough amalgamation of art stapled together and smoothed to remove the seams. The art used to staple together is were this style comes from, but without knowledge of or credit to that artist. The AI doesnt do a creative process only mimicry, it cant create a new movement in art like modernism or surrealism but it can ape those existing movements. This is the problem with it. Stolen artwork stapled together without any new creative ideas thrown in.
  
  It can create new art styles. If for example puntillismo (no idea how it's written in English, sorry, a painting made of small little dots) didn't exist, you could tell the AI to do do a painting of an old lady at the beach, the picture painted using small little dots, and with sufficient prompt engineering, you would pretty much create puntillismo.
  Most real people do not have their own, completely unique style. They inspire from previous work by other people, in cases like magic or commissioned work get a prompt of what they need to create, etc
  Pretty similar if you ask me. Sorry I cant expand more, gotta get to work.
  
  I don't think this is true though. If you come up with clever inputs you can certainly invent new styles, with AI being your instrument. At the point of plagiarizing, that's what all artists have done for the entire history of art and I don't think there is anything wrong with it.
- It's not using a computer that's the problem. The issue is that generative AI scrapes the entire internet to feed its model without compensating, or even asking, creators for using their work.
- Go look up the existing arguments against AI, and write your rebuttal to those, and then debate people about it. More productive for everyone involved.
- People are mad to realize something they thought was spiritual and purely human can be reduced to a mathematical algorithm and be generated by machines.
  Some claim they're mad that it's because the training looked at art without permission to develop the algorithm (which everyone knows all artist do, making those people look like complete hypocrites), but that just sped it up. It would have happened eventually anyway, because the fact is, art is not spiritual or uniquely human, it's patterns and shapes, which computers are great at.
  
  This seems disingenuous, because you equate algorithm training to human brain. I hope you dont seriously thing the process of looking at and thinking about art is that same for a human artist or an algorithm.
  The point were it doesnt equate is the idea of style. Each artist is constantly refining their style of art. But the algorithm doesnt have it's own style and can only ape a style that already exists.
  
  The foundational premise of this argument is purely that there's something "special" about human thought and that the way humans do pattern recognition is somehow "better" than a machine's.
  
  Hey, don't claim to represent my opinion if you don't understand my reasoning. I don't think art is mystical or spiritual at all, not in the way you're describing it. Art is absolutely about patterns, and I agree that those patterns are inevitably going to be learned by computers.
  My objection is not to "AI Art" in general, but to the specific type of art which is brute-force trained to mimic existing art styles. When organic artists take inspiration, they reverse engineer the style and build it up from fundamentals like perspective and lighting. Stable Diffusion and other brute-force ML algorithms don't yet know how to build those fundamentals. What they're doing is more like art forgery than it is like art.
  And even then, I don't really take issue with forgery if it's done in good faith. People sell replicas of famous paintings, and as long as they're honest about it being a replica, that's cool too. Ethically my objection is that AI artists typically "hide their prompts" and try to sell their forgeries as originals.
- I don't get it either. People complain about the theft of Art and that Artist will get paid less, but honestly, they will adapt and move on. Like they always have. Is it fair? I don't know. But the technology is here, and it is not going away.
  
  Historically speaking, "adapt and move on" is a euphemism for "live in abject poverty if you don't already have another skillset or income stream."
  For example, look at the Luddites. While the term is now used to refer to people who oppose progress, they were originally a group of craftsmen who opposed the industrialization caused by the invention of the loom. While the tech in itself is objectively good, it was the implementation by the elite class that threatened their livelihoods. They went from making decent livings in their skilled crafts to having the options to either 1) work for pennies in triple shifts at dangerous factories, or 2) fuckin riot.
  I'm not arguing on behalf of the Luddites, but context is important. In order for "adapt and move on" to be viable, there needs to be a system in place that values the humans involved.
  
  But what would be the solution? Ban AI for 5 Years? 10? 20? I don't think that will ever happen. They need to adapt. And they need to do it fast. You can like it or not, but this is the future. And yeah, you can bet I would be upset like hell too if that happened to me, but I would also know that there is no hope in undoing it. And it's not like there is no upside to this or only for the Elite. The creation of Art becomes available and affordable to millions of people who had either no talent or no money to hire someone. You could say Art gets "freed" from the monopoly of people who are capable of creating it. Like making clothes or building furniture was "freed" this way. It will even increase the "output" of Art. Choosing Human made Art over AI-made is a personal preference then.
  
  Social programs and monopoly busting worked quite well in American history, despite what many people may currently think.
  We have governments, they should be for the people. They can craft legislation that protects people and ensures their economic livelihood.
  
  Do not confuse Technology with Monopoly. Of course, you can fight Monopols and you definitely should! But You can't and shouldn't stop Technological advancements. And as sooner People realize this, the sooner they can move on and the smaller is the chance they will become totally crushed when they get replaced by AI.
  
  Make no mistake, I am not confusing the two. In fact, the whole point of my previous post is that the problems come from the latter and not the former.
  
  Oh yeah thats true! Fuck Monopols!

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