In my opinion, AI just feels like the logical next step for capitalist exploitation and destruction of culture. Generative AI is (in most cases) just a fancy way for cooperations to steal art on a scale, that hasn’t been possible before. And then they use AI to fill the internet with slop and misinformation and actual artists are getting fired from their jobs, because the company replaces them with an AI, that was trained on their original art. Because of these reasons and some others, it just feels wrong to me, to be using AI in such a manner, when this community should be about inclusion and kindness. Wouldn’t it be much cooler, if we commissioned an actual artist for the banner or find a nice existing artwork (where the licence fits, of course)? I would love to hear your thoughts!

  • jsomae@lemmy.ml
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    4 days ago

    Wouldn’t it be much cooler, if we commissioned an actual artist for the banner

    I hate it when AI is used to replace the work an artist would have been paid for. But uh, this is a random open-source forum; there’s no funding for artists to make banners. Rejecting AI art – which was voted for by the community – just seems like baseless virtue signalling. No artist is going to get paid if we remove it.

    But like if you want to commission an artist with your own money, by all means go ahead. You’ll still most likely need another community vote to approve it though.

    • SanguinePar@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      That doesn’t change that real artists who made real art will have had their work used without permission or payment to help generate the banner. I’m with OP.

      • jsomae@lemmy.ml
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        4 days ago

        If I drew something myself, those artists would also not be paid. I can understand a deontological argument against using AI trained on people’s art, but for me, the utilitarian argument is much stronger – don’t use AI if it puts an artist out of work.

        • BennyTheExplorer@lemmy.worldOP
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          4 days ago

          It’s not about anyone getting paid, it’s about affording basic respect and empathy to people and their work. Using AI sends a certain message of 'I don’t care about your consent or opinion towards me using your art", and I don’t think, that this is a good thing for anyone.

          • jsomae@lemmy.ml
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            4 days ago

            Well yeah, I don’t care about IP rights. Nothing has been materially stolen, and if AI improves, then the result could some day in theory be indistinguishable from a human who was merely “inspired” by an existing piece of art. At the end of the day, the artist is not harmed by AI plagiarism; the artist is harmed by AI taking what could have been their job.

          • GaMEChld@lemmy.world
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            4 days ago

            If I saw the artwork myself and it inspired my artwork, would it be any different? Everything is based on everything.

        • SanguinePar@lemmy.world
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          4 days ago

          Yeah, but if you drew it yourself then they wouldn’t expect to be paid. Unless you plagiarised them to the degree that would trigger a copyright claim, they would (at worst) just see it as a job that they could have had, but didn’t. Nothing of theirs was directly used, and at least something original of theirs was created. Whereas AI images are wholly based on other work and include no original ideas at all.

          • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.ml
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            3 days ago

            You haven’t explained how it would be different in any way. Human artists learn by emulating other artists, and vast majority of art is derivative in nature. Unless a specific style is specified by the user input, AI images are also not plagiarised to the degree that would trigger a copyright claim. The only actual difference here is in the fact that the process is automated and a machine is producing the image instead of a human drawing it by hand.

          • jsomae@lemmy.ml
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            4 days ago

            You’re posting on lemmy.ml; we don’t care much for intellectual property rights here. What we care about is that the working class not be deprived of their ability to make a living.

              • jsomae@lemmy.ml
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                4 days ago

                I agree that they are not mutually exclusive, which is why I usually side against AI. On this particular occasion however, there’s a palpable difference, since no artist is materially harmed.