IS AI GENERATED ART ETHICAL?

The more efficient the tool is, the less human intervention it requires. What should get the credit: the tool or the human ?

Whether it's done by a human or a tool doesn't change what the process is: plagiarism. There is a MASSIVE difference between taking inspiration from other works and copy/pasting pieces of said works into your own, and I'm kinda baffled that simply slapping "AI" over the process legitimizes it to some people. We don't live in the Mass Effect universe where AI can have "soul" of their own. When you take the "soul" out of an art piece, you have to replace it with something. AIs replace it with algorithms. No filter. No voice.

RMN allows people to submit games with ripped assets under most circumstances. However, doing so while claiming all assets are their own original creation would make you a liar and a thief. And yet, if the exact same thing was done by an AI, suddenly we're supposed to just act like it's okay? No, it's not. The process hasn't changed, and the "it's only a tool" argument is just shifting the blame in an attempt at weaseling out of the ethical swamp that they willingly chose to dive into themselves.

I don't think there's anything tricky about this subject at all. If the images fed into the AI are done so without the original artist's consent (a fact that creators of these programs proudly flaunt), then using it is unethical. When someone finds an AI art model trained only through works in the public domain and submitted willingly by artists, then I'd be all for it. As it is now, whatever benefits it can bring should be kept out of the final product.

All of this is kinda moot, though. The Pandora's Box has been opened now, and the accessibility and ease of use means it's not going away anytime soon. Use it if you're gonna use it. Just don't pretend that it's anything other than a collage of works already made by other people. You are no more an artist for your use of prompts than I am a porn star whenever I go on pornhub.

I always do my best to credit the artists when I use art. If I use AI, how should I credit the art source ?

Here's a thought: what are the copyright laws surrounding artworks that have been copied by hand? For example, if I personally took pencil to paper and recreated the Mona Lisa by my own hand to near perfection, what would the laws be surrounding that? I'm technically the artist, but the intellectual property is not my own. Whatever laws exist to protect artwork in that sense should also apply to artwork that is AI generated under these algorithms, with the source materials they draw from.

author=Irog
I always do my best to credit the artists when I use art. If I use AI, how should I credit the art source ?

enter a prompt here https://haveibeentrained.com/ and then credit every single person that pops up. have fun

Fortunately AI is still pretty shit at writing

But I'm sure spambots on RMN will be algorithm-assisted soon enough. Already a lot of their posts almost seem relevant.

EDIT: Like I'm 90% sure this guy is a spammer/bot:

author=RestorMaster
I see nothing wrong with artificial intelligence generating texts. This is why robots and other mathematical models were created - to free people from routine and monotonous work and to allow them to work more creatively.

author=kentona
"AI and robots will save us from the drudgery of tedious tasks, allowing us humans to pursue uniquely human things, like art and writing!"

Techbros: "Hey guess what we're training to AI to do!"

Every single time

Also, shooks, didn't realize KooryToombs had a namechange to SunflowerGames! I was wondering who this familiar character was that I had never seen before.

This is a complicated issue with a lot of nuance. However, overall, it really depends on how the AI generated art is used, how it is represented, and how it is altered if at all to determine if it is "ethical" or not.

Generally, I think AI art is a great tool to get something out quick if you need a quick, basic sketch or base to work off of. However, it is not and will never be a replacement for human-made art, because 1: human made art will always be superior when done by a talented artist and 2: AI cannot innovate, it can only made new content based on existing databases.

In short, AI art is an amalgamation of every piece of art fed into the system. The more hand-picked the selection is for the particular kind of art you're trying to generate, the better the results. I do not consider this plagiarism, because AI generated art, as an amalgamation of countless works, is transformative and therefore falls under fair use, similar to how a collage works.

However, there are limits to what I consider to be "ethical use" of AI generated art. For one, AI generated art should not be spammed. As AI art can be auto-generated at an astounding rate, feeds for art websites have been filled with spammy AI generated posts from incredibly new users. This should not be the case. AI generated art should be used as a tool, not a primary source of profit.

I have seen constant users popping up all the time on DeviantArt, offering basicly anyone "requests" to have something generated for them. These requests eventually start becoming insanely bloated, causing the user/scammer in question to open up a "fast lane" where for $10 you can get your request done instantly rather than waiting for the requests to catch up.

Once the scammer starts getting tons of people in the fast lane, he completely shuts down free requests and requites people to pay up. Only problem? The website most of these art spammers use to generate AI stuff in NovelAI, which costs $10 a month to generate around 100-200 images. Meaning that these scammy "comissons" cost more than an actual subscription to the website, causing the scammers to get a net gain on ignorant users who don't know what sort of scheme they're running.

This is, obviously, unethical and exploiting the system, making profit off ignorant users who don't know any better. Another scummy thing people do with AI art is refuse to credit. Being, they claim that their very cleary AI generated art is their own work. This is highly misleading. You did not put any effort in. Generating an AI image off Novel or some other program is as easy as searching something in google. You put no heart into it and are just trying to farm clout. This is also unethical.

However, AI art does have it's benefits. Can't figure out the specifics of a character design you're thinking of? Can't find the right pose you want online for reference? Just use AI art and use that as a base to make your own art off of.

It's not tracing if it's AI generated, because it's a combination of so much existing work that the original image is considered transformative and fair use, making the AI generated version common domain. It's owned by no one besides arguably the person who made the program.

However, you're own version of the AI generated artwork is definitely your own. I've used AI generated art as a base countless times to resounding success, and with my version I'm able to touch up all the weird errors and kinks AI art makes as well.

So yeah, that's my take on AI art. A great power indeed, but with great power comes great responsibility. People will constantly misuse the power AI art brings, and we need to condemn that (scummy practices) rather than condemning the technology itself as a whole. I can't even mention the times people have raged against me because I had, like, 3 AI generated images on my DeviantArt (which were paired with a short story fyi) among a sea of custom artwork. They called me a "fake artist" and a "crypto techbro scumbag" all because I used the technology for it's intended use, using the images generated as bases to work off of.

author=kentona
"AI and robots will save us from the drudgery of tedious tasks, allowing us humans to pursue uniquely human things, like art and writing!"

Techbros: "Hey guess what we're training to AI to do!"

AI and other machines doing some activities don't prevent humans from doing the same activities.
But AI and other machines doing some activities can prevent humans from earning an income from those activities.

Many see the Universal Basic Income (UBI) as the solution to give humans the freedom to do the activities they enjoy the most, regardless of the income from the activities.