Personally I would prefer people identify when art was AI generated, rather than taking credit themselves. Much like people do now when making 3d versions of someone else's concept art. It's only polite.
Explain how good you are at crafting the text prompts, walk us thru the process, inspiration, etc. I'd like to see that.
Isn't using AI more like hiring somebody to do the work for them according to your specifications? It's not your work, in my opinion - you're not in full control of the output, just steering the 'thing' towards a hopefully cool looking result. In my opinion a night and day difference from doing the actual work needed to create said output.
I have no issue with AI generated content as such - apart from outright copying the signature style of someone living - but that's more of a technology showcase to me, or perhaps an idea guy's body of work. Does not belong in an art-centric portfolio that says 'I made this'. IMO.
Anyway, I just had my third glass of whiskey, don't mind me.
I think for now it's best to judge this on a case by case basis.
Use the Flag:Report button, and give us details on exactly how the piece is infringement. Include screenshots of original art side-by-side with the new one. If it's an un-attributed steal, we'll take it down, and warn the offender.
We've done this recently, when an outsourcer used someone's store content in their portfolio, with minimal changes and without attribution. We'll do the same with infringing AI art.
As it stands right now, AI art appears to be a gray area on outright infringement. Yet it's not gray in terms of morality, if an AI user is passing off a piece as wholly their own, without attribution.
Should we prohibit all AI art, period? Only allow when clearly attributed? Allow unless demonstrably infringing on a specific pre-existing piece?
Polycount isn't a portfolio website like Artstation, people aren't as much publishing digital art here, so personally I'm not concerned as much about AI spamming up the gallery or artists that only have AI only portfolios. If those become a problem like on Artstation, sure, then address it.
The only rule I'd like to see enforced is disclosure whenever a concept or image is from an AI image generator with an image (that's not your own) being used as an input. Even if it's just being used as a concept or reference to work off of.
The above could perhaps make sense (allowing 3D work based on ML-generated images) if the ML generator being used has being trained ethically - that is to say, only using images under public domain or explicitly opted in, and with a human readable dataset. Allowing any of the current arttheft-based models would be a huge slap in the face of all artists who never consented to this (and this includes 3D artists as well, since unethically scrapped renders are part of the dataset).
Once that is sorted out then there's the question of whether or not work derived from ethically trained models have a place here - and this is definitely a stance that the mods/owners and/or the user will have to take one day or another, as even an ethically trained model means skipping a whole bunch of meaningful steps and can only lead to more and more reliance on automatic design generation. Not to mention that it will likely only take a few months for fully AI-generated 3d models to be here anyways.
"But speaking as a site admin, in general it's not our job to police content."
Um... yes, that is the job. That's the job of a site admin.
In the same way that you'd work to keep out obviously illegal content, step in when conversations become toxic, or throw out Nazis, this is also content that needs policing.
The difference is that instead of being a clear and obvious attack by an individual against another individual: it's an open source, distributed, structural attack on artists as a whole, globally. Artists are making their voice pretty clear about this.
There's the argument that communities could allow ai generated images from neural networks that trained on ethical data, but the problem still exists: such things are very few and far between, if at all.
Any ai generated image will without a doubt have been generated from a neural network that trained on copyrighted data.
This is the very thing that makes it very easy to argue for a blanket ban on ai generated images if a community actually wants to side with the artists.
Could ethically sourced datasets ever be verified? Seems like it would just be like green-washing and organic labels are now. Nobody actually knows what the truth is, so all it amounts to is people paying more for something with a label which has a good chance of being as close to an outright lie as it possibly can be. And verification that some food producer is following guidelines seems like it would be a lot more practical to enforce compared to a complicated technical process that probably only a handful of people even understand the inner workings of completely.
I don't think there is anything to actually protect artist work other than them literally never posting it anywhere - though that's not practical and defeats purpose of art - but at least as far as making a statement goes, I don't see how anything less than blanket ban means anything?
you're not wrong re: a blanket ban being the only effective one but where does the line lie?
AI art is a form of procedural art which you can't ban because everything we do round here is procedural to some extent - and it's not straightforward to define where proceduralism becomes AI because the only real difference is the scale at which the algorithms operate.
well, right now everybody here who is making art probably required a few years of training before anybody was like, "hey that's pretty cool what you did."
but with AI like, a ten year old can be a epic prompt engineer in an afternoon. Its not harder than solving a puzzle in a game. Just trial and error for an hour and you got it.
So I guess if I was the one defining the line, I'd try to put that into lawyerly writing.
Also if there is the faintest sniff of the procedural tools being related to unethical sourcing practice, that could be a flag.
I mean, we already have some community unwritten rules to some degree on the subject. Like if i make a scene and all the textures is megascans, it seems pretty normal to mention that, and then people know that my work was focus on layout, composition, other technical matters, etc.
i suppose same thing could be done with AI art... just that to me if all you are showing is a static 2d image and it was made like 99% by AI art, i might see the image and think it looks neat, but it indicates nothing about the "artist" who made it. So I guess I can appreciate the art for its own sake but the person who pushed the buttons could be a penguin as far as I'm concerned.
Well first of all it is absolutely possible to design AI-driven tools that have been trained ethically. That's what the team behind Cascadeur did, sourcing their own animation work into a tool that helps ... animators.
But that doesn't mean that an AI-assisted tool, even ethically trained, is necessarily desirable. For instance the 2d side of me would (perhaps) not want some magical AI-driven line smoothing tool even if ethically trained, because it would still feel like leeching on the effort of others. Whereas I don't see that much of a problem with algorithmic line processing (as done by LazyNezumi) because it is 100% coming from ingenuity and clever software design, overcoming the limitations of poorly performing or limited hardware and software.
I also don't know what to think of the inevitable "2D to 3D" AI tools. Sure, they'll be fascinating to watch evolve, and sure enough many designers will love the idea of being able to turn their sketches into 3D renders, skipping manual modeling/sculpting/VR Sketching. But is it really that desirable in the long run ?
Also, I tend to think that a place for artists that doesn't allow any AI-generated imagery (even if ethically trained) would overall feel more welcoming and less toxic. I guess we'll see how all this turns out in practice within a few months to a year.
At the end of the day perhaps it comes down to making the conscious choice of not necessarily being at the forefront of technical progress, for the sake of preserving "slow art". Whether such slow art is commercially viable is a big question, but I honestly don't think that the most successful products are necessarily the ones with the most intricately detailed visuals. See pixel art, Minecraft, and so on.
but how do you know their sources are legit? (cascadeur)
maybe you know the people are something? But over time things grow and change. Leadership changes. And even if you know them and think they are trustworthy, that doesn't actually mean they are. People are married to serial killers and don't know it. I don't think trust counts for much when it comes to protection of peoples livelihoods and dignity. There has to be enforceable laws or its always going to be a free-for-all.
One thing we do know for absolute certain is that people will go as absolutely far as the law will allow. (well, they will go as far as they can get away with, law not-withstanding). You can count on it - that's why we have to have laws in the first place. Even a person who is 99% of the time upstanding citizen, a real person of their word - if they can do something that benefits them at expense of others, and they know chances are high that they can get away with it - there is zero reason for them not to do it. They are gonna do it, sooner or later. And honest people are probably like 1 out of 100, given that there is little incentive to be honest and almost zero oversight in most things.
Alex - yeah makes sense although legislating enforceable laws?! imho probably not in the foreseeable future.
I mean gov't bureaucracy, at least where i live tend to move at a glacial pace on these and/or similar matters besides which it's gonna take truck loads of legal geniuses too work their way through this lot - barring there's even a modicum of stimulus to do so via the 'powers-that-be' in the first place...
Should we prohibit all AI art, period? Only allow when clearly attributed? Allow unless demonstrably infringing on a specific pre-existing piece?
Going to chime in with my $0.02. I feel a kinship with Polycount, and I would like to share my thoughts with that feeling in mind.
I have always been drawn to Polycount more than many other communities - even as a 2D artist, because polycount has always respected the craft, and it has always respected honesty. You didn't come here for asspats and likes, you came here if you wanted the truth. And as a secondary benefit, you got a lot of great examples of how to conduct oneself in the industry, among peers. I think a lot of people feel this.
As a result, I don't think there's much to worry about regarding an influx of AI art to deal with here - at least not in the immediate future. "Illustration generators" remain the most easy-to-access and most successful sort of AI work at the moment, and not only is Polycount's 2D section light on activity at a base level - the AI artists seeking their instant gratification and "oohs" and "aahs" from strangers will not find it here. For a time, at least, a case-by-case approach is probably practical enough.
That being said, my hope is that Polycount will continue to respect the craft, and respect honesty. At a minimum, any AI generated content should be declared such (honesty) - and if you're going to call it yours to the point of posting it here - there should be some substantial human involvement/alteration/etc (craft). I wouldn't mind a rule that declared simply, "We prefer works crafted by people. If you're posting AI-generated content, the expectation is that you declare as much and that you show some of your involvement in the process." I would also hope that site administrators eventually - if possible, will be looking into the tech-side of things to eventually protect anything uploaded to polycount from getting scraped. I don't expect Polycount to be at the forefront of this movement, but staying educated can only benefit us.
My preference would just be to not allow AI-generated content. If it's more prompt than paint, if it's more generation than sculpt, I don't care to sift through it. Go post it on your instagram. But I'm not sure such blanket-style bans are polycount's style, and I also don't know that they would be needed - so perhaps that's a bridge we cross when we come to it.
A good point they made was they could have just limited themselves to cc0 content, and then sourced the rest of the data ethically by requesting consent etc. I guess cost and convenience won out there.
I don't speak for all of Polycount's management, so don't take my replies as 'gospel'.
However I do think it's important to take a measured approach with large issues like this.
There are definitely a lot of emotions running high in the community around this. The artist side of me wants to fucking destroy all the AI bros masquerading themselves as true artists, I mean seriously those people can fuck off with their job-destroying bullshittery.
But the moderator side of me wants to tread carefully and evenly, and not make fast decisions.
GAN-generated content has not taken over our community at this point. In fact I'm hard-pressed to even find anything here, at least outside of these discussion threads. If or when we start to see these kinds of pieces posted, then we'll want to deal with it, in context. The Polycount community has always been great at rooting out plagiarism and art theft when we see it. I don't currently see any way to automate this.
At its heart, Polycount has always and will continue to be firmly on the side of content creators. And as a community we rely on each other to identify issues as they arise, and work on them together.
I saw this yesterday, guy seems a bit clueless to the ethics and functionality, but I can see how more projects like this are likely to occur.
AI may initially make projects like this more accessible but I think it's ultimately short sighted. Sure, wide variation can initially be inspirational but ultimately consistency is needed, breakdowns, art direction, etc.
I don't have to hear their stupid music anymore, which I always hated
I don't have to pay groceries for like, at least three weeks
The idea is just kind of exciting, isn't it?
I can see some cons, I guess. Or at least, people are making a stink about this idea so I'll go along with it. But come, on, why wouldn't I eat my neighbors?
It also comes down to what these people think works for web3 since it targets mass appeal.
And since it's marketing that matters they really just need something that is polished and cool to make a sale.
Hence the logic of I don't need a concept artist since I managed to use Ai to create something cool.
And if I can sell this concept someone might want to buy a model of it.
So let me package these concepts as part of a series and sell and upsell until people tire and then I can do the same with 2 wheelers, semi trucks etc.
It's why metaverses pitched by these people really suck because they are all centered on fulfilling the need of users to feel special.
So in this sense AI art helps because of the speed of creation, hype and monetization.
But I don't know too many 3d artists that could use what he's generated to build a 3d model since what he has is a concept mood board.
Maybe it could help a concept artist create model sheets?
Not sure why he had to make his statement in such a pompous way and come across as highly unlikable.
It's like that nut on twitter that posted a pic of red dead redemption and stated how AI can create full games.
Replies
All good.
Yeah, no one's going to ask first, I bet. :)
Personally I would prefer people identify when art was AI generated, rather than taking credit themselves. Much like people do now when making 3d versions of someone else's concept art. It's only polite.
Explain how good you are at crafting the text prompts, walk us thru the process, inspiration, etc. I'd like to see that.
Isn't using AI more like hiring somebody to do the work for them according to your specifications? It's not your work, in my opinion - you're not in full control of the output, just steering the 'thing' towards a hopefully cool looking result. In my opinion a night and day difference from doing the actual work needed to create said output.
I have no issue with AI generated content as such - apart from outright copying the signature style of someone living - but that's more of a technology showcase to me, or perhaps an idea guy's body of work. Does not belong in an art-centric portfolio that says 'I made this'. IMO.
Anyway, I just had my third glass of whiskey, don't mind me.
I think for now it's best to judge this on a case by case basis.
Use the Flag:Report button, and give us details on exactly how the piece is infringement. Include screenshots of original art side-by-side with the new one. If it's an un-attributed steal, we'll take it down, and warn the offender.
We've done this recently, when an outsourcer used someone's store content in their portfolio, with minimal changes and without attribution. We'll do the same with infringing AI art.
As it stands right now, AI art appears to be a gray area on outright infringement. Yet it's not gray in terms of morality, if an AI user is passing off a piece as wholly their own, without attribution.
Should we prohibit all AI art, period? Only allow when clearly attributed? Allow unless demonstrably infringing on a specific pre-existing piece?
Polycount isn't a portfolio website like Artstation, people aren't as much publishing digital art here, so personally I'm not concerned as much about AI spamming up the gallery or artists that only have AI only portfolios. If those become a problem like on Artstation, sure, then address it.
The only rule I'd like to see enforced is disclosure whenever a concept or image is from an AI image generator with an image (that's not your own) being used as an input. Even if it's just being used as a concept or reference to work off of.
Well, there are many layers to this ...
The above could perhaps make sense (allowing 3D work based on ML-generated images) if the ML generator being used has being trained ethically - that is to say, only using images under public domain or explicitly opted in, and with a human readable dataset. Allowing any of the current arttheft-based models would be a huge slap in the face of all artists who never consented to this (and this includes 3D artists as well, since unethically scrapped renders are part of the dataset).
Once that is sorted out then there's the question of whether or not work derived from ethically trained models have a place here - and this is definitely a stance that the mods/owners and/or the user will have to take one day or another, as even an ethically trained model means skipping a whole bunch of meaningful steps and can only lead to more and more reliance on automatic design generation. Not to mention that it will likely only take a few months for fully AI-generated 3d models to be here anyways.
"But speaking as a site admin, in general it's not our job to police content."
Um... yes, that is the job. That's the job of a site admin.
In the same way that you'd work to keep out obviously illegal content, step in when conversations become toxic, or throw out Nazis, this is also content that needs policing.
The difference is that instead of being a clear and obvious attack by an individual against another individual: it's an open source, distributed, structural attack on artists as a whole, globally. Artists are making their voice pretty clear about this.
There's the argument that communities could allow ai generated images from neural networks that trained on ethical data, but the problem still exists: such things are very few and far between, if at all.
Any ai generated image will without a doubt have been generated from a neural network that trained on copyrighted data.
This is the very thing that makes it very easy to argue for a blanket ban on ai generated images if a community actually wants to side with the artists.
Could ethically sourced datasets ever be verified? Seems like it would just be like green-washing and organic labels are now. Nobody actually knows what the truth is, so all it amounts to is people paying more for something with a label which has a good chance of being as close to an outright lie as it possibly can be. And verification that some food producer is following guidelines seems like it would be a lot more practical to enforce compared to a complicated technical process that probably only a handful of people even understand the inner workings of completely.
I don't think there is anything to actually protect artist work other than them literally never posting it anywhere - though that's not practical and defeats purpose of art - but at least as far as making a statement goes, I don't see how anything less than blanket ban means anything?
you're not wrong re: a blanket ban being the only effective one but where does the line lie?
AI art is a form of procedural art which you can't ban because everything we do round here is procedural to some extent - and it's not straightforward to define where proceduralism becomes AI because the only real difference is the scale at which the algorithms operate.
well, right now everybody here who is making art probably required a few years of training before anybody was like, "hey that's pretty cool what you did."
but with AI like, a ten year old can be a epic prompt engineer in an afternoon. Its not harder than solving a puzzle in a game. Just trial and error for an hour and you got it.
So I guess if I was the one defining the line, I'd try to put that into lawyerly writing.
Also if there is the faintest sniff of the procedural tools being related to unethical sourcing practice, that could be a flag.
I mean, we already have some community unwritten rules to some degree on the subject. Like if i make a scene and all the textures is megascans, it seems pretty normal to mention that, and then people know that my work was focus on layout, composition, other technical matters, etc.
i suppose same thing could be done with AI art... just that to me if all you are showing is a static 2d image and it was made like 99% by AI art, i might see the image and think it looks neat, but it indicates nothing about the "artist" who made it. So I guess I can appreciate the art for its own sake but the person who pushed the buttons could be a penguin as far as I'm concerned.
Well first of all it is absolutely possible to design AI-driven tools that have been trained ethically. That's what the team behind Cascadeur did, sourcing their own animation work into a tool that helps ... animators.
But that doesn't mean that an AI-assisted tool, even ethically trained, is necessarily desirable. For instance the 2d side of me would (perhaps) not want some magical AI-driven line smoothing tool even if ethically trained, because it would still feel like leeching on the effort of others. Whereas I don't see that much of a problem with algorithmic line processing (as done by LazyNezumi) because it is 100% coming from ingenuity and clever software design, overcoming the limitations of poorly performing or limited hardware and software.
I also don't know what to think of the inevitable "2D to 3D" AI tools. Sure, they'll be fascinating to watch evolve, and sure enough many designers will love the idea of being able to turn their sketches into 3D renders, skipping manual modeling/sculpting/VR Sketching. But is it really that desirable in the long run ?
Also, I tend to think that a place for artists that doesn't allow any AI-generated imagery (even if ethically trained) would overall feel more welcoming and less toxic. I guess we'll see how all this turns out in practice within a few months to a year.
At the end of the day perhaps it comes down to making the conscious choice of not necessarily being at the forefront of technical progress, for the sake of preserving "slow art". Whether such slow art is commercially viable is a big question, but I honestly don't think that the most successful products are necessarily the ones with the most intricately detailed visuals. See pixel art, Minecraft, and so on.
Looks like Artstation alternatives are starting to pop up
https://www.arrrt.io/
@pior
but how do you know their sources are legit? (cascadeur)
maybe you know the people are something? But over time things grow and change. Leadership changes. And even if you know them and think they are trustworthy, that doesn't actually mean they are. People are married to serial killers and don't know it. I don't think trust counts for much when it comes to protection of peoples livelihoods and dignity. There has to be enforceable laws or its always going to be a free-for-all.
One thing we do know for absolute certain is that people will go as absolutely far as the law will allow. (well, they will go as far as they can get away with, law not-withstanding). You can count on it - that's why we have to have laws in the first place. Even a person who is 99% of the time upstanding citizen, a real person of their word - if they can do something that benefits them at expense of others, and they know chances are high that they can get away with it - there is zero reason for them not to do it. They are gonna do it, sooner or later. And honest people are probably like 1 out of 100, given that there is little incentive to be honest and almost zero oversight in most things.
Alex - yeah makes sense although legislating enforceable laws?! imho probably not in the foreseeable future.
I mean gov't bureaucracy, at least where i live tend to move at a glacial pace on these and/or similar matters besides which it's gonna take truck loads of legal geniuses too work their way through this lot - barring there's even a modicum of stimulus to do so via the 'powers-that-be' in the first place...
Should we prohibit all AI art, period? Only allow when clearly attributed? Allow unless demonstrably infringing on a specific pre-existing piece?
Going to chime in with my $0.02. I feel a kinship with Polycount, and I would like to share my thoughts with that feeling in mind.
I have always been drawn to Polycount more than many other communities - even as a 2D artist, because polycount has always respected the craft, and it has always respected honesty. You didn't come here for asspats and likes, you came here if you wanted the truth. And as a secondary benefit, you got a lot of great examples of how to conduct oneself in the industry, among peers. I think a lot of people feel this.
As a result, I don't think there's much to worry about regarding an influx of AI art to deal with here - at least not in the immediate future. "Illustration generators" remain the most easy-to-access and most successful sort of AI work at the moment, and not only is Polycount's 2D section light on activity at a base level - the AI artists seeking their instant gratification and "oohs" and "aahs" from strangers will not find it here. For a time, at least, a case-by-case approach is probably practical enough.
That being said, my hope is that Polycount will continue to respect the craft, and respect honesty. At a minimum, any AI generated content should be declared such (honesty) - and if you're going to call it yours to the point of posting it here - there should be some substantial human involvement/alteration/etc (craft). I wouldn't mind a rule that declared simply, "We prefer works crafted by people. If you're posting AI-generated content, the expectation is that you declare as much and that you show some of your involvement in the process." I would also hope that site administrators eventually - if possible, will be looking into the tech-side of things to eventually protect anything uploaded to polycount from getting scraped. I don't expect Polycount to be at the forefront of this movement, but staying educated can only benefit us.
My preference would just be to not allow AI-generated content. If it's more prompt than paint, if it's more generation than sculpt, I don't care to sift through it. Go post it on your instagram. But I'm not sure such blanket-style bans are polycount's style, and I also don't know that they would be needed - so perhaps that's a bridge we cross when we come to it.
Interesting reads.
Related practitioners are also in debate about ethics and legality about it : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20256681
In this post about LAION-5b there are also researchers questioning the ethics of it : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33953891
A good point they made was they could have just limited themselves to cc0 content, and then sourced the rest of the data ethically by requesting consent etc. I guess cost and convenience won out there.
I don't speak for all of Polycount's management, so don't take my replies as 'gospel'.
However I do think it's important to take a measured approach with large issues like this.
There are definitely a lot of emotions running high in the community around this. The artist side of me wants to fucking destroy all the AI bros masquerading themselves as true artists, I mean seriously those people can fuck off with their job-destroying bullshittery.
But the moderator side of me wants to tread carefully and evenly, and not make fast decisions.
GAN-generated content has not taken over our community at this point. In fact I'm hard-pressed to even find anything here, at least outside of these discussion threads. If or when we start to see these kinds of pieces posted, then we'll want to deal with it, in context. The Polycount community has always been great at rooting out plagiarism and art theft when we see it. I don't currently see any way to automate this.
At its heart, Polycount has always and will continue to be firmly on the side of content creators. And as a community we rely on each other to identify issues as they arise, and work on them together.
Didn't mean to kill the thread.
I saw this yesterday, guy seems a bit clueless to the ethics and functionality, but I can see how more projects like this are likely to occur.
AI may initially make projects like this more accessible but I think it's ultimately short sighted. Sure, wide variation can initially be inspirational but ultimately consistency is needed, breakdowns, art direction, etc.
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7016078229526523904?updateEntityUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afs_feedUpdate%3A%28V2%2Curn%3Ali%3Aactivity%3A7016078229526523904%29
Lol I see this, open linkedin to find the guy and there's his post.
What a moron though, doesn't understand game dev at all.
And as expected he is into Web3 and marketing.
If I eat my neighbors, there are a few benefits:
I can see some cons, I guess. Or at least, people are making a stink about this idea so I'll go along with it. But come, on, why wouldn't I eat my neighbors?
It also comes down to what these people think works for web3 since it targets mass appeal.
And since it's marketing that matters they really just need something that is polished and cool to make a sale.
Hence the logic of I don't need a concept artist since I managed to use Ai to create something cool.
And if I can sell this concept someone might want to buy a model of it.
So let me package these concepts as part of a series and sell and upsell until people tire and then I can do the same with 2 wheelers, semi trucks etc.
It's why metaverses pitched by these people really suck because they are all centered on fulfilling the need of users to feel special.
So in this sense AI art helps because of the speed of creation, hype and monetization.
But I don't know too many 3d artists that could use what he's generated to build a 3d model since what he has is a concept mood board.
Maybe it could help a concept artist create model sheets?
Not sure why he had to make his statement in such a pompous way and come across as highly unlikable.
It's like that nut on twitter that posted a pic of red dead redemption and stated how AI can create full games.
https://twitter.com/Tocelot/status/1602338827284238337?s=20&t=WWXd9M_Lw4gsU7VcfruKcg
some people will spend their entire lives trying to avoid doing work. what else is there even to do?