Took me a while to get into the AI wagon. Cause I was reluctant to make this post or talk about AI in general. Why? Because I do not care. Yep, here I said it. 

Since 2002 (2000 according to Wikipedia) artists around the world have been rallying around a common enemy. AI. The debate grew so much that lawyers were involved and artists began suing AI itself. Athough many of you will hate me after this post, it is time to share my thoughts. 

The main argument against AI is that AI is stealing artists jobs, it bypasses the human factor. This is not an issue, it has been happening from the beginning of humankind. The Industrial Revolution “stole” many workers’ jobs. Does this mean that it should have never happened? Of course not. The Industrial Revolution was a milestone in human history, and now with the rise of AI we are living another major shift.

There is however another aspect that needs to be addressed: the basis upon which AI was built. Image generating AI was built scrapping off millions of artworks by thousands of artists WITHOUT their consent. I am not sure if this was strictly illegal at the time, the legal framework was probably non-existent, and history proves that big companies commonly exploit gaps in regulation, or simply do something illegal straightforward when they deem that the financial gain will outweigh the legal implications.

However it is unethical and I condemn it.

But, this is just the tip of the iceberg. You see, people are hiding behind the illegal aspect of AI and condemn it (rightfully so) but I have the impression that even though AI was legal, artists would still scream about it. The same thing happened about 20 years ago. Yep, I might not be old (or so I like to think!) but I am old enough to have witnessed the rise of photoshop and digital art. Back then, digital artists were accused of “cheating”, digital art  was not considered real art. And I’m asking you: what about digital art now? Nowadays digital art is considered the pinnacle of arts. The same might happen with AI art in a few years. And you may argue that “AI art is not art”, “Art can only be done by a living being”, “AI art is not original”, blah blah blah. But let me tell you that, AI generated images sometimes “talk” to me more than human made artworks do. It frightens me really. But the fact remains, if this isn’t considered art, what is?

And as I mentioned before, this is the tip of the iceberg. Let’s assume that we live in a perfect world where AI was trained legally and ethically. With stock pictures, with real artist stuff with their consent (in which case credits should be given to them), or even better by commissioning a large number of artists to create AI training images. In time, the result would be identical to the current situation. Would artists be happy then?

I don’t think so. We don’t want our work to be diminished or neglected in any way, especially when a machine gets the credit! But this phenomenon isn’t even new! There were always, “artists who cheat”, “artists who will do it for less”, “artists who use unethical means”. And this is not even art exclusive. A few years ago I was working as a web designer/developer. And I had to compete against workforce from low income countries, whose work was too sloppy and cheap, but the final result was identical to someone unfamiliar with this type of work. Do you get what I mean? There will always be people who will choose the machine, because it is faster, cheaper and more convenient. These were not YOUR clients in the first place, YOUR clients are those who respect and value your work. Our mission as artists is to find OUR place in the world, not get credit for everything.

One thing is for sure, AI is here, there’s no going back. Let’s stop pretending it’s the enemy and let’s try to honor our art, regardless of the AI.