Raw LLM Responses

Fine artist and digital illustrator here, who also works professionally in web development. This is a painful transition time for the role of the artist, specifically for commercial artists. Unfortunately, the corporate dream of replacing the artist with technology has been in motion since the inventions of the printing press, the camera, and the computer. All of these tools took away the utility of the arts for visual communication in the market preference for faster reproducibility and consistent cheap rendering. Our true final stance against the training of these AI's is with our data. I know this may be uncomfortable, but we if we want to beat these tools before more damage is done to the arts, we need to view our images purely as the azomizable data that these neural net tools are abstracting and not as the legally copyrighted material we perceive it to be. Legally, we won't win this fight in the short term, and we only get one big shot to stop this before this type of AI gets engrained into everyone's daily lives as acceptable. As it stands now, the loopholes these image generating companies use to take our artwork were put in place by Big Tech in order to gather and sell our general information without consent. In the US, we need a comprehensive overhaul of our data protection laws and need to begin passing legislation that declares our data to be private property. If our data is protected as property, it may be the best way to save our artwork from being considered accessible data that is legally usable by these large AI's. We will likely not be able to stop all the lone developers who train an ai on a handful of our works without consent, but we can at least be compensated by these major companies that use our creations in their larger models without permission. Besides the legal challenge though, we also will need to have a cultural shift in general. Artists who still create by hand may need a rebranding in order to stay relevant. Right now, its easy to see all handmade art as being in line with organic foods, pasture raised meat, and traditional artisan crafts; luxuries for those wealthy enough to afford it, or socially conscious enough and willing to take the hit on their wallets. If we want it to become something bigger again, we may need to push our art skills into the same sense of appreciation society has for athletics. I know competition is not exactly the popular with contemporary artists, but healthy competitions that promote the value of human ability may be one of the best ways we keep these skills we love relevant long term. Sorry for the essay, but this is a subject that needs to be taken seriously if we want to control the outcome. Sam highlighted the issues very well in this video, and is getting this discussion rolling. Now all of us as artists or just fans of the arts, need to come together and figure out an action plan for how to get ahead of this AI wave.