Why AI Art Sucks – by Killbait

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Why AI Art Sucks – by Killbait

This conversation is not going to get into any legality issues revolving around the various model sets. If that’s what you’re here for, move along.

What I am going to talk about is why AI art sucks, and why it doesn’t. Get ready, this is going to offend some folks…

AI art sucks because it’s too convenient and makes things easier for both mass production artists and those with little to no personal skill. It removes the ability for people to suffer for their art. It also creates situations where some people may feel like they do not need to personally improve, to simply allow the machine to do the majority of work and then fix any errors.

This last point is probably the only one I can see truly being bad, and yes, the rest of the points were meant to raise hackles. Because all of the complaints coming from artists today against AI have already been dealt with and proven nonsense. Thirty years ago. Yes, that’s right. This problem is thirty plus years old and has already been solved and done with. Anyone remember Photoshop? What about Autodesk Maya, Lightwave, 3D Studio Max? Yes, I know some of you won’t because you weren’t even born yet, way to make me feel old…

I remember when I got into digital art how much time it took to complete a single piece of work. You could draw something by hand, tape it to your screen, and try to use your mouse to draw the image as accurately as possible, but in the end, you’d have to zoom in and make manual adjustments for hours. And then there was the shading. Use of dithering allowed you to shade reasonably well, but it took soooooo long, especially when compared to shading on paper (scribble scribble, done). Then we got graphic tablets, man did that change things; that’s also when the real arguments against digital art started up. Why? Because it made things “too easy”. People who had spent years honing their skills were suddenly outshone by a new group that didn’t have to go through all the same effort the old group had to in order to make good quality products.

Physical artists complained that it wasn’t real art, but in the back rooms the real reason was they knew digital artists had a significant advantage over them. Make a mistake in digital art? Undo or reload the previous save. You might lose a little bit of work, but you didn’t have to start over from scratch. Want to try a new technique, maybe adjust the overall warmth of the image? Create a copy of the file or a new layer to test it on. Did you like that one? Make a copy of the settings and quickly and easily apply it to another piece of work.

The same complaints being hurled at AI art today are the exact same complaints thrown at the release of those programs and graphic tablets, about how horrible this new digital art and computer animation would be for the art world. How it made it too easy for anyone to become an artist. How it would destroy the effort required to be a successful artist. How it wasn’t real art. Sound familiar?

Toy Story killed those arguments really quick by showing what could be accomplished with an effectively used tool and good writing.

Oh yeah, do a lot of the people complaining about AI art understand that most animation (digital and computer) isn’t done by humans, and hasn’t been for decades? See, animation companies figured out fast how useful it was to only need to draw a few frames and then let the computers fill in the rest for them. That’s all this big kerfuffle over AI art is complaining about. You feed it the starter images (again, not going into any legality issues here) and it spits out the filler.

And plain old computer animation, not to be confused with digital animation, is even “worse” in that skeletons are rigged to the characters, start and end points added, and then they fill in all of that extra data as well (oversimplified, but you get the idea). Heck, the programs will even handle most of the lighting and shading for you once you set up a couple starting points; change the viewing angle, completely change how the lighting/shading looks and you didn’t even have to change files. All that work was taken out of the artists’ hands, making the job far too easy for people.

In the end, AI art is a tool just like any other tool. It is going to open up a world of options for smaller groups, or individuals, to complete work that never would have been possible before. Think of all of the complaints about AAA game studios churning out junk games while independent small studios release games like Palworld and outsell them in a week. Imagine how a tool like this is going to positively affect the gaming industry, or the animation industry, giving individuals the chance to release episodes and movies at a fraction of the budget or time it would normally take them. The innovation so-called AI tools can assist in is astronomical.

And that brings me to my last point. These tools that have everyone up in arms over? There is no artificial intelligence there.  The intelligence involved is humans, directing machines to complete a task with a set of plain language terms instead of some deep knowledge of programming languages. It is no different than a person directing a mechanical arm in an automobile factory.

I often wonder if any of the folks complaining have really paid attention to who is publicly on their side of this argument. Hollywood and companies like Blizzard, Wizards of the Coast, and EA; they’ll go “oops” if they get caught using it, but you know they like it and will continue to use it to their advantage. Because people don’t like these companies, they’ll look at them using AI tools and think the tools are even more evil. That’s cost savings though, and if those companies can control who has access to it that also means no competition. They’ll tell you to your face that they stopped using it, but in the background, you know it isn’t true. Again, it’s just a tool. The same as any other tool, it is neither good nor evil, it just is.

Assuming the world hasn’t crumbled to dust, for completely different reasons, in another thirty years people are going to be looking back and wondering what the big freak out over “AI” tools was all about. Hopefully I’ll be around to see it, so I can say I was there for two major technological advances in the arts and the day that a few big companies controlling the entertainment of the world came crumbling down.

195 thoughts on “Why AI Art Sucks – by Killbait”

  1. My wife rants about auto-tuning, a process in which electronic sound technology adjusts the pitch of a note, particularly a singer’s voice, to exactly the pitch that the written music specifies. On one hand this removes any subtle shifts of pitch that could add expression to the song, and produces a sterile perfection; on the other hand, it ensures that singers don’t need to develop their own sense of pitch, because the robots will do it for them. Apparently it’s become dominant in the music industry, and increasingly people are saying that there’s no reason not to use it.

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    1. We should meet and get her to argue with Dan. ;)
      Dan says there are uses for it. Not all uses are good, of course.
      We’ve been planning a couple-day expedition to Topeka. It might even happen this year or next….

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      1. Do people actually go TO Topeka? I’ve only ever gone through Topeka. Or around Topeka. Probably twenty times or more, given how many times I’ve taken trips out West.

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        1. C and I went their to visit their zoo, kind of a sad little place. And we’ve gone to the combat aircraft museum that’s actually a bit outside the city, which was quite marvelous, with two hangars full of (usually) obsolete aircraft that were technological marvels of their ages.

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      2. C says that if you are going to be in Topeka, she would be glad to drive there, perhaps for dinner. You have our e-mail, right?

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      2. Autotune often has a just noticeable transition sound when it “snaps” the voice to the correct pitch.
        I was watching American Idol auditions last week and heard a singer young enough to have heard autotuned pop music all her life reproduce that sound in her live singing! She probably didn’t realize that was an digital artifact and had just copied it when learning to sing her favorite songs.

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      3. I have rarely heard an autotuned song that sounds good. I would have said “never”, but I can think of one exception. My wife introduced me to Owl City, and in some of his earlier albums he uses autotune, quite deliberately, to create a flat, synthesized-sounding effect, because it fits with the nature of the music he’s writing for it. And so the same effect that sounds terrible when other people do it, sounds good when he does it — because he is a craftsman who knows his medium and is using it to create an effect, rather than someone who’s just trying to “sound better” with no understanding of what it’s doing to the sound.

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      4. Somewhat missing the point of the post.

        Training a singer to hit the right pitch takes time, and has to be done for each individual singer. Also, it can’t be done at all for the majority of humans (if there is a dictionary entry for “anti-tune,” it would have my picture).

        Getting software to do what a well-trained singer does might be technically difficult (dunno, audio processing wasn’t my specialty) – but, once you have done it, it can be applied to every singer on the planet, even myself.

        That it may not have been done for auto-tune is a failure of the implementation, not the idea itself.

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        1. Most people talk on pitch, and most babies cry on pitch.

          But yeah, there are implementation problems, somewhere along the line, with singing. Maybe it is trying to do too many things at once.

          It is kind of a weird thing… Obviously people notice more problems, if they have perfect pitch perception.

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        2. Most people talk on pitch, and most babies cry on pitch.

          But yeah, there are implementation problems, somewhere along the line, with singing. Maybe it is trying to do too many things at once.

          It is kind of a weird thing… Obviously people notice more problems, if they have perfect pitch perception.

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      2. I’m recalling the initial uses of autotune in the early 90s. At first, people were using it for subtle tweaks, and to my (damaged) hearing, it sounded tolerable. OTOH, some people decided it was a Kool!!!!11eleventy! Effect, sang in a monotone and let Autotune handle the melody. Or equally bad, using the horseshoes and handgrenade approach to singing on key. Yuck.

        It seems to be less often used in country music, though I’ve noticed a few exceptions. It might be more present than I think; depending on which ear, my hearing can be described as running between slightly impaired and awful.

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        1. It’s incredibly common, bordering on ubiquitous now, and when implemented well, even pros have a very hard time telling when it was used; it’s probably easier to tell when it *wasn’t* used by noticing the imperfections it otherwise would’ve smoothed out.

          Digital signal processing has changed _everything_ about music production in the last 20 years, and not actually for the worse. It can lead to a sterile sound and frequently is overused and abused, but people of all talent levels have many more, and much better options now than they used to. It’s pretty much the same situation outlined in this article with Photoshop and now AI for visual art.

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  2. This goes back before digital art. I stumbled on some of the protests against artistic photography a while back… and it’s the same arguments all over: It’s too easy, the artist doesn’t have enough control to make it ‘real art’. And that was 100 years ago! Photography didn’t end Art. AI won’t either.

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    1. Photography opened art to some. That is how grandpa did his art. They took pictures, had them developed, then he painted from various pictures. Didn’t have to be onsite. Sister is doing the same, difference, she is using her digital pictures she takes on her phone. They are not the only ones. Are there still people in the field, setting up easels, or just using sketch books? 100% Great-grandma (grandpa’s mother) had to go off memory or her own ideas (her art isn’t actual scenery given where they homesteaded in Montana, because she didn’t sketch the plains).

      A cousin can do art from pictures, that is how she did the commission work I gave her (hubby’s Malamute in ink and watercolor). But most of her sketches are free form, from ideas. Same with a niece (who does not sell, it is therapy, her words).

      The professional artist whose prints of her art were in the office I worked at from ’90 – ’96. Which the prints sold discounted to employees for minimum of $900 for smaller versions to around $1500 for larger ones (her husband worked for the company). We also got to admire larger (small wall size) original commissioned oil pieces (hung in his office) until commission paid but the owner paid to have it packaged and shipped. The photos the commissions would be based off of would also be on display. These were $30k – $100k+ commissions. (I remember his last name, but not the name she painted under. She died in the late ’90s of cancer.)

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      1. Indeed, and I see AI opening art in various ways to others. Photography not only was an art form itself, but photographs gave rise to, as you were saying, the REFERENCE photo. Which are still useful for those who draw ideas out of their head. ”What angle would that paw be at for the my sphinx?” *finds image of lion paws, gets paw at the right angle*

        AI’s still too new to know all the ways it will be used, but I’ve already seen a broadening of references using it. And it’s starting to show up on some stock sites, especially amongst the artists that were doing extensive special effects and photobashing (especially in the ‘avoiding looking like someone in painfully obvious cosplay’ effect a lot of the fantasy stock art has.)

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      2. When speech-to-text first appeared, some people were confidently predicting a great burst of creativity.

        A sage soul observed what you would probably get was a tiny minority, who had suffered from disabilities that made typing too hard, using it to overcome that.

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  3. The problem with AI art right now is that it lacks the exact precision of manual graphics programs. When the commands are standardized and more detailed it will be better.

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    1. With some art training — I only have three years — you can fix it.
      And yes, I AM aware I owe you new covers. or don’t owe you, but would like to do it.
      I’m just trying to get ahead on writing a bit.

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      1. My stuff is selling fine with the old covers. Maybe just a couple of the really old ugly ones like “Paper or Plastic” and “Down to Earth”. Do take care of your main business! No rush for me.

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  5. Thanks for the post. I’ve followed the academic literature on computer graphics techniques for decades, particularly those on image synthesis (an outgrowth of my interest in terrain synthesis). Many of those techniques made it into commercial as well as free open source products, while others required too much tuning of non-intuitive parameters and/or selection of source images to be really accessible. It seems to me that the current “AI art” is simply a large language model layered atop of such techniques, doing the source image selection and parameter tuning.

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  6. Artist here (both classically trained and graphic design, though the black dog means I haven’t done much of either in the last 10-15 years, sigh)

    As I pointed out to some a-hole on FB who was chewing out a poor woman in a cat group for DARING to use AI to make a cute movie poster of her blind cat (who has freaky blue orbs)…That woman could never have afforded to hire an artist to make a just-for-fun cat poster. That woman was NEVER GOING to hire an artist to do any such thing. So scolding her for “taking work away from REAL artists” was just being a jerk.

    I think AI art is pretty cool. I haven’t done much with it, but I enjoy the products (the wallpaper on my phone/computer is a very, very pretty male elf generated by an AI art engine. I enjoy looking at him :D) I think it’s a great tool for indie authors, in particular, to make awesome covers–I have noticed a major uptick in the quality of indie pub covers in the last couple of years. Because you know what? If I had an indie book I was publishing, *I* would probably use AI instead of spending massive amounts of time doing it myself. And for authors who haven’t got the artist skills for it–it is *entirely* up to them if they want to hire a separate artist to do the cover or not. Certainly, if I was in the book cover business, I would charge a lower fee for doing a cover using AI art–because while it still takes skill from me to tweak it to exactly what I and the author want, it’s still less time-and-resource consuming than, say, painting something!

    TL;DR version: I’d like to smack the sanctimonious gits out there who are screaming at anyone who dares use AI art. It’s a new tool, nothing more, nothing less. It’s not “stealing” it’s not “cheating” anymore than using stock photography to create art in Photoshop is.

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    1. Recently there’s been chatter about a new AI animation system – Sora – that’s supposed to be quite good. So now it’s not just AI creating pictures. It can also create fully animated sequences using just a few keywords.

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      1. A little over a year ago, OpenAI released a short video generated by their tool Sora, of Will Smith eating spaghetti. It was quite horrific. Last month they released a new video showing several animated scenes generated by Sora showing how much the AI had progressed. Most of the scenes were indistinguishable from reality. When Tyler Perry saw the video, he announced that he was suspending work on a $800 million expansion of his Atlanta studio. His reason was that by the time the expansion could be finished, Sora would have made it obsolete.

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        1. While the idea of false videos indistinguishable from “real” videos is a bit worrying–imagine what someone can do without the stranglehold of Hollywood. I think we will be seeing a new revolution in entertainment that doesn’t require the studios and billions of dollars to create.

          Heh. It’s actually probably going to look something like the dawn of the film age, when tiny little movie studios were popping up everywhere. Limitations of the technology is, I think, part of what allowed the Hollywood monopoly to happen–with this tech, it’s possible that there ARE no limits.

          (As to false videos, well…such fakes have been with us always in one form or another, and there will always be idiots who believe them. That may cause a problem–and might cause a major problem in the realm of criminal prosecution–but…we won’t know until we reach that bridge. What I think will happen is a rise in forensics dedicated to determining the reality of a photo/video–moreso than we already have.)

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          1. I’m not familiar with the tools, but I’ve seen analyses of images that try to determine whether or not (and if so, how much) an image has been Photoshopped. I assume it’s going to be the usual race between better tools to create and better tools to detect.

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            1. From what I understand, Photoshop detection largely works by checking for the tiny irregularities that occur when you take parts of what are two different pictures, and put them together. There will always be parts that don’t fit quite right, even if the difference isn’t visible to the naked eye. Since an AI image is created as a single image, identifying one will probably require a completely different toolset.

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              1. Yes, the AI detectors will have to find the tells (Henry the 8th looking like Snoop Dog might be a clue) both obvious and subtle. Not my circus, but I suspect there will be some signatures that will be findable.

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                1. It won’t be the content – it will be artifacts in the data caused by the fact that AI is generating at some specific resolution.

                  Anything that’s based on reality is a capture of something infinitely higher “resolution,” so image data will include capture artifacts and noisiness based on variations in the sensor doing the capture, the lens, the environment, and the rest of the capture tech chain. Tweaking an image or video basically leaves footprints in that noise, repeating patterns or areas much different in noisiness than others, which can be detected.

                  Heck, if you through the right filters at an digital image you can see the areas that have been fiddled with.

                  Generating something from scratch that looks like it’s real will undoubtedly also leave footprints, in still frames and especially in video, where things like that image noise will either change too much to be real or too little.

                  One example off the top of my head I would check for would be variations in color suddenly going away when they get out of the color gamut the eye can see.

                  It should not be difficult to identify images and especially video which is generated rather than captured.

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    2. I can’t afford the covers I’d need. I can afford ones that don’t work. or I can make them myself in my copious spare time.
      AI still takes my time, but far less. (I fix, improve, etc. after)

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      1. And that is exactly why I find myself getting irked with those idiots screeching about how AI is taking work away from “real” artists. It might, on a very small scale–but by and large the folks making the most use of AI are the ones who couldn’t afford a “real” artist’s rates anyway! (and I am totally on board with artists choosing what their work is worth–just as it is the consumer’s right to decide if they agree or not, and if not, go elsewhere.)

        (This is why I only knit socks as gifts. To charge for them, the actual cost of the yarn plus time plus skill? Would just be a silly high price. :D)

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        1. Even if the prospective buyer agrees with the artist regarding the value of the work, it may be beyond the buyer’s means. I may agree that a hand-built $2M supercar is worth the asking price, but that has nothing to do with the fact that I can’t afford it, and buying a $20k used Honda isn’t “stealing from the supercar builder”.

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    3. Going along with the different prices you would charge, the way I look at it, AI art programs are going to end up like other technologies — a mix of lower costs, greater production, less jobs for people making low quality stuff, more money for the people that remain. 

      Having played around with some of the AI art programs, I can see that getting something stunning takes a certain amount of skill. And I am sure someone with actual artistic talent is going to be able to make a much better composition than anything I can do, so as the market settles I think we will see artists who specialize in good AI art who can charge reasonable fees for really nice compositions.

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      1. “a mix of lower costs, greater production, less jobs for people making low quality stuff, more money for the people that remain. ”

        Which is a prime reason for trying to depopulate, and also move away from competence to innate membership. A lot of them are aware on some level that they won’t make it on quality, so they’re going to limit competition.

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        1. Yeah, it is the eternal fight of the luddites. What they miss is something that was mentioned in the comments on a recent post, that the greatest resource is humans themselves. When technology frees up people from doing something, they go find something else people want that they can supply. Tractors create nurses, what new jobs will people create after AI? If I knew I would be a rich investor.

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            1. Instead of living hand to mouth, people can work doing jobs that previously didn’t get done at all. Including giving the care needed to keep people alive and in good condition for longer.

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              1. Got it; thanks. So just an example of the process of industrialization and its effects overall, not a specific (and by extension, rare) anomaly.

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                1. Yes, that is the point I try to get at with AI: it is part of a long line of industrial technologies, and will be no different in the broad strokes of aggravate economics then all the previous technological revolutions.

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                  1. Agreed. While the specific effects will be different, the overall impact will be quite familiar.

                    And I, for one, hail our new robot masters! 🤣

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            3. Subsistence farming, such as was normal for 12,000 years before the Industrial Revolution, consumes 80% of the available labor. That is, it takes 4 people farming to feed 1 additional person doing something else.

              American industrialized farming occupies about 2% of the labor force. 2 farmers can feed 98 people doing other things. Thus we have scientists, engineers, programmers, mechanics and electricians.

              Also bureaucrats, professional athletes and celebrities, but even so it’s better than grunt-labor farming for everybody. Which is what the Davros elitists want to bring back.

              ———————————

              Candidate Joe Biden, August 2020: “We have assembled the most extensive, comprehensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics.”

              Minutes later: “What do you mean, I wasn’t supposed to say that?”

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    5. Has anyone read all the way through the wossnames, EULAs we sign to use the AI software? Do the freeware online versions like Stable Diffusion differ for the paid services like MidJourney?

      The legal issues concern me, as the two-tiered justice system continues apace. Be small enough not to get hit, or big enough to afford to fight back. If you get juuuuust big enough, then wham, suddenly the owners of the AI system send a Cease & Desist to whoever is hosting your book.

      Yes, I know. Doomcasting. I write this though, because even worst-case scenario, one can use the AI to create reference art from CC0 photograph sets online. It’s pretty cool! And of course, the opportunities to insta-meme are sweet.

      For myself the downsides to the digital art revolutions are (1) paying for subscription software and (2) the learning curve.

      (And oy, do I remember drawing with my mouse with Microsoft Paint back in the 90s :-)

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      1. The hosted-on-your-own-machine AIs are open source. There isn’t an EULA.

        The models have licenses on them. If you use a model that someone else put together. A lot of them are basically licensed as “hey, go for it, I just put this together and don’t care, credit me if you make something cool so I can try it!”

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        1. Thanks. Still trying to wrap my head around getting software I can download and understand (there’s a Stable Diffusion one an acquaintance recommended). Still relearning my ClipArt Studio program.

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    6. That black dog has hindered my art work, too. I haven’t drawn anything in years, nor have I wanted to…but I want to learn how to create prompts to use AI art. Maybe it will move me to pick up a pencil in the future. Maybe it won’t. But I won’t disparage a tool simply because it’s not “the way it’s always been done”.

      I’ll slap some of those gits too.

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  7. I’ve been putting Bing AI images on my blog posts (once again, if I didn’t have AI, I might occasionally have some free stock art, but otherwise nothing. I’m not putting any real artists out of work.). I’ve discovered that simply changing the styles, and nothing else, will give a completely different interpretation of the prompt.

    Today I wanted an image of Jimmy Durante. A few weeks ago, I was able to include that in the prompt with no problem, and got a reasonable facsimile of him.

    But today, that was apparently verboten. So I tried “an older man with a big nose”, and one of the four images Bing came up with looked like Cyrano Durante. So I used that one. I have a feeling that Jimmy would be amused. 😉

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    2. I don’t deal with Bing AI, but I have noticed Midjourney getting progressively worse about mimicking lesser known celebs from version to version. (The last few people to occupy the White House it does fine with, but I think that’s because there’s always a ton of users making political cartoons and forceably retraining Midj to recognize these people). Current big names from the MCU, etc it seems to do okay at.

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  8. My big problem with AI art is that you’re dependent on the people that programmed the AI/LLM system and the results you get from that (Google Gemini and Black Nazis? How you get chewed out if you try to create a white person in a historical context, but if you do something else…). I’ve typed in some very clear requests to quite a few AI programs and gotten things that…offend my sense of understanding.

    (My big issue with digital art? People using it that don’t learn things around it, like color theory and anatomy and physiology. I have grown sick and tired of the Tumblr Noodle People that I feel an Al Pacino rant coming on…)

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    2. If you set up something like Stable Diffusion, you can download different models– yes, you’re still dependent on whoever is programming them, unless you do it yourself, but it’s more like how you’re dependent on the folks who make your paint not screwing with the colors than it is taking or leaving it.

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      1. There’s even a website set up for people to share their Stable Diffusion models, with sample images of what the models can produce: https://civitai.com/. There’s some really cool stuff there, all freely available to download and use.

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        1. I use it to help me get an idea of how to describe something, too– I have a character who has opaline scales, for example.

          They’re like a snake’s, but… wrong muscles under it. And I was having trouble visualizing it.

          So I played with [checks model] Absolute Reality v16 using my Invoke install, and eventually got this:

          Which isn’t “right,” but it’s got enough bits I can get the words to flow, and I know what it looks like.

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          2. If it weren’t for the barely-visible beard and mustache stubble (and the Adam’s apple I just now noticed), I would have pinged that character as a woman. Very feminine-looking face, long flowing hair… Especially in the “pretty but useless” variation you posted, with the pretty frame. That chest-length hair looks very feminine to me. Maybe it’s because it’s in front of the shoulders; the few men I know who have long hair keep it pulled back in a ponytail, so “hair in front of shoulders = woman” is hardcoded in my brain.

            Don’t know if there’s a point to this comment, just thought it was interesting that the AI-generated face had a mix of masculine and feminine features. Did you specifically ask for that in the prompt you gave it, or did it just come out that way because of how the AI mixed and matched source images?

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            1. “Pretty” and “cute.”

              “Handsome” kept getting me Fabio clones with snakes on their shoulders.

              Amusingly enough, the main character has long hair specifically because it’s feminine. Nobody takes a guy who is flipping his hair around like a girl seriously, especially when Everyone Knows that real men have short hair.

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              2. One of Donald Hamilton’s bad guys explained he kept his hair that way so people would underestimate him. Which shows you how long ago that was written…

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  10. I’m imagining musicians who play fiddles and the like saying that those new keyboard thingies are not real music because the instrument does all the work …

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    1. Or authors who write with pens, pencils, or other stylus-based implements saying that those new ‘typewriters’ and other keyboard-based thingies don’t produce real stories.

      (Also the old film photographers bemoaning that digital cameras make photography ‘too easy.’)

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      1. Oh, I suspect that the glass plate photographers were ticking off the daguerreotype people, and the film photographers were ticking off the glass plate ones.

        Then there’s lenses. (Makes mental note to see if the pinhole experiment photos were kept.)

        And developing. Manual bath vs automated processing, not to mention the fun and games one can do with an enlarger.

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      2. Only difference between SLR film VS digital is, expense (not the expense of the equipment), and how fast the photographer gets feedback. I know. We’ve had both (or hubby does. I still don’t know how to use, except on auto mode.)

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        1. I miss my DSLR camera. It got the digital images, but depth of field, exposure, and so on could be adjusted like a film camera of similar type. I know there are apps that let you do that with phone photos, but I liked having the option there when I composed the photo.

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          1. Hubby has two DSLR cameras with the interchangeable lenses. He uses different settings and then plays around with the pictures. He then sends them off (used to be Costco) to be printed. We have 4 from spring 2021 of Tetons printed on metal. He has a number of Elk pictures. Hasn’t gotten around to picking the best bear and cub pictures from spring 2023.

            I usually just use my cell phone (watch and handle Pepper). But did use one of his cameras a couple of times (when Pepper was in the car). Three sessions (luckily not with the Obsidian grizzly sow with her tiny triplets, Yellowstone) the settings got knocked off of auto (two different settings). Pictures did not come out good. Lesson learned on what to look for.

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            1. The budget said hell no when DSLRs first came out, and I used my Nikon F2 for many years. Looks like it took about 4000 pictures over the years, of which the usual 10% might be decent. Nikon did a digital back for the F2 in the early ’80s, but at nosebleed prices (vague memory, $12,000). No.

              I’d have to start with new lenses if I went for a DSLR; the current collection include many that predate the camera body, and digital compatibility for the newer one(s) went away 20 years ago. I’ll stick with the Canon point-n-shoot. It’s good enough for what little I’m doing. (The flip phone has a camera, but the most it usually does is drain the battery if the wrong button gets depressed. It doesn’t do well in crowded pockets.) Haven’t tried the Samsung phone’s camera. One of these days.

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              1. When hubby made the switch to DSLR, he needed new lens even if he stayed with the firm brand he had. Switched from Pentax SLR film to Nikon DSLR. The Pentax and lens went eventually to the nearest HS with a photography club. On his 3rd iteration of the Nikon (7000 series, I think, new large sensor, both bodies are the same type). Donating the old bodies and base lens. Plus bought a wildlife telephoto lens (too big for me to handle). But the prior telephoto and wide angle lenses we’ve gotten over the last 18 years work with the newer tech.

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              2. Nikon D70 DSLR worked for me, and Pop used it professionally for a couple of decades. Supposedly compatible with the older Nikon lenses on manual / “real camera” mode.

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  11. Non-artist here. I’ve been known to screw up a stick figure :). What AI does well is prototyping.

    Years ago if my boss wanted new promotional artwork, I would electronically snip bits and pieces from different artworks and paste them together until I had an approximation of what he wanted, then pass that along to the graphic designer along with details. It saved us a lot of development time and money.

    Using this same technique for myself to come up with a logo/brand for my short story writing with Midjourney. Once I have something that’s close to what’s in my brain, I will hire a graphic designer to do the actual creative work.

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  12. those with little to no personal skill. … It also creates situations where some people may feel like they do not need to personally improve, to simply allow the machine to do the majority of work and then fix any errors.

    This combination may be the biggest problem. If you don’t have the skill (and it is a skill that can be trained, I’ve seen it) to draw, how do you know what is an error in the first place?

    Seeing and understanding the error is a drawing is also a skill that is most easily trained… by drawing.

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  13. Having spent a couple decades as a 3d artist now, and having even done it for pay, I’ve had the ‘the machine does it all for you’ accusation thrown at me for years.

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      1. well, they seriously thought the render time was all of the creation, and i didn’t actually do much

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        1. I’m fairly sure that people can at least as fairly say that the computer is doing everything for me.

          Which is to say that it would not be fair, but also that maybe the general understanding of computer related tasks is not uniformly excellent.

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        3. Thank you, I am now having flashbacks to architecture school and the stupid number of hours it took the computer to render my designs…. which was after many multiples of those hours putting the design together in the first place and picking just the right perspective, and before another several hours tweaking the image to look less like Revit had just spit it out.

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      1. well when the machine is sitting there doing things by itself , with no human input, and the picture magically appears, its obviously doing all the work. that was the theory.

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        1. Next up, I didn’t make dinner because all I did was pull it out of hte oven.

          (which, from what I understand of computer animation, is actually kind of similar– you have to know how to set it up so that what comes out actually tastes good, and you can’t season to taste on raw pork.)

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      2. I’ve heard it said, believe it or not.
        Okay, grandfather (mom’s dad) “The only reason you can hope to have a writing career is that you’re not required to write it by hand.”
        (It was more a comment on my er… penmanship.)

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            1. On a bad day I can’t read my own writing. Long since gave up on cursive (modulo writing checks, and I do as few as I can get away with now), but even my printing is horrible. My third grade teacher despaired of my penmanship. It might have been the high point for me.

              Mom insisted I take typing the summer of 7th grade. Hated it then, but it paid off when computers started showing up in my life. (029 keypunch to start. :) )

              Fine motor skills? Sometimes, but not with a writing instrument. Piano might be doable, but it’s a bit late in life for me to aspire to greatness. [grin]

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              1. I had to take typing in 7th grade, female, and 1968. Rolls eyes. Helped when got into computers, 15 years later. (Did it help in HS and college for papers? Hell no. Still touch type. But accuracy, not so much.) But even then my typing speed was atrocious. After 30 years, physical speed is better, accuracy speed hasn’t improved as much, I correct as I type. Would I survive as an administrative assistant typing up others work? Not unless my mom, or I am married to him (I type up hubby’s and mom’s stuff. But that is rare. Mom touch types, but … Hubby uses two fingers.)

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                1. A few years earlier for me. I first encountered the keypunch senior year in high school (could have taken AP chemistry, but somehow, young RCPete figured that computers were going to be in his life. Understatement deluxe.

                  Mom was a full time secretary for several years, then was working for both a church and a surgeon. She could type 60 WPM, and my 11 after the class was pathetic, but acceptable for the odd paper in high school and a few more in college. My portable Olivetti and I did not get along (it needed smooth, even strokes, something beyond my ability. Stray spaces made my life hell.) but it was (barely) Good Enough.

                  Started doing computer-based work in the mid ’70s, after which I was deep into coding and/or writing. I don’t know my speed, though the last time it was measured (mid 1980s) it was 2-3 times better than 7th grade. Definitely Good Enough for my purposes.

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                2. In college I wrote a 25 page term paper on my trusty Olivetti typewriter. I made the mistake of choosing a subject where the major reference sources were by Zbigniew Brzezinski. My hands were otherwise useless for a week after that.

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                3. in 82-ish my high school still had typing as a class, and the newly minted Computers teacher (using Apple ][e units with color monitors) highly recommended everyone should take a year of it. One kid took two years and was already learning code languages. He was also hoping to get one of those upcoming Macintosh units.

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                  1. Son’s class, everyone, was required to take a keyboarding class, about 1/2 year. He at least touch types.

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                    1. I think computer classes have taken over the “typing” sort. but many today actually doo poorly on a standard size keyboard, having learned on a condensed laptop or notebook set of keys. I’m the opposite, well, sort of. I type better on a standard set and miss more on the condensed sizes. I keep a full size USB keyboard on hand for when I used a laptop. Last time I considered getting another one, I was looking at full sized KB desktop replacements, but I really like my number pads

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                    2. Hubby is limited to “full keyboards”, or QWERTY with number pad on right. Now his typing is two fingered hunt and peck (he is 72). I can use my small Surface QWERTY tablet keyboard no problem. Hunt and peck numbers. Number use is limited. Can also use full size keyboards as well as angled keyboards with integrated touch pad to alleviate forearm pain (incorrect mouse placement caused the problem). I like a numeric keypad too, just like the tablet more 😜

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                    3. I had to retrain on the number pad. for 6 years I used an adding machine to balance out the fuel trucks at the airport, and the numbers on that are different from the keypad on a keyboard. My now passed Aunt was two-finger-hunt-and-peck nearing 100 words a minute

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                    4. now passed Aunt was two-finger-hunt-and-peck nearing 100 words a minute

                      Didn’t imply hubby was particularly slow using two-finger-hunt-and-peck. Not 100 words/minute. Besides who doesn’t remember the scene with Scotty TOS movie The Voyage Home?

                      Liked by 2 people

                    7. When I was working, I needed at least two screens (need? Helped, not need.) My current Surface laptop wouldn’t have worked, screen not big enough. I’ve adapted to the smaller keyboard. These days for social media, I can deal.

                      Screen size is just right for reading with it propped on my lap, or table. Perfect size to take on trips to use to backup both dashcam video, phone and DSLR pictures onto external drives. Battery life subpar (6 hours with battery saver on). But knew that when got it. Drive size small (thus using external drive for pictures backup). But got 16 GB memory.

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                    9. I’ve been using the split keyboards on my desktop machines since they first came out. Still have one with the mini-DIN plug for the shop computer, though it’s happy with a USB keyboard.

                      Laptop keyboards and I don’t get along. I find the arrow keys when I use the right shift button, or my thumb will graze the touchpad. I use that as backup, even though a wireless mouse battery lasts a long time.

                      Agreed on the screen location. For a two night road trip, a laptop is adequate, but not preferred.

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                4. After college I did a bit of temp work (it’s called desperation). My first assignment they sent me to a union office to type up a contract. First, I got so interested in reading it I slowed down to a crawl, and then I broke the Selectric.

                  The agency put me on non-typing jobs after that. <grin>

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                  1. When we moved to Eugene, I went to a temp agency (they had no idea what a programmer did, ’85). They had me take a (go figure) computer typing test. Result: 30 WPM (better than I figured I’d do). Got told they didn’t have any jobs they could send me out on because the score was “lower than acceptable”. Back then, yes, touched typed. Didn’t say I touched type fast accurately.

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                    1. Heh…

                      When I moved to Minnesota after completing my comp sci degree I took the temp agency typing test. 

                      Mainly addresses. And the test samples were from Atlanta, where I grew up and attended college. Not sure if my 50 WPM was muscle memory or skill…

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        2. I hear you. Had similar conversations, mostly with teachers. “How can you expect to go through life when no one can read your handwriting?”

          Me in middle school: “By the time I grow up, everyone will use computers and no one will care about my handwriting!”

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          1. “By the time I grow up, everyone will use computers and no one will care about my handwriting!”

            Son never said that. But he should have. Didn’t help that both grandpa and dad print, do not write. He was in k – 12, ’94 – ’07. He was taught cursive. He got his “cursive” license. Early in middle school (age 11) we got a “not turning in lessons” call. Not quite. That was something that was sorted out in grade school, 4th grade. What was happening was some homework was being returned as “unacceptable” (special, but required, project) because his handwriting was so atrocious) which he redid, but still so bad not accepted. Once we got involved solved the problem by having him type out the written part, and tape in to the drawn portion. Why when he did his Eagle application, he typed the answers, and taped them in the Eagle application (did so for some merit badges too, even if “discuss” was the requirement. Had his words for the discussion.) Seriously, his signature, is bad. So is his dad’s. Mine has slipped, some, but at least legible, unless electronic. Dad’s and son’s, not legible regardless.

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            1. Nobody’s signature is legible on those electronic pads. They sleep mid-signature so you get random straight lines, do weird things with pressure, and don’t give any timely feedback as you go.

              My theory is electronic pad signatures are only useful to the entity collecting them if something actually looks OK, which means something smells fishy.

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              1. :laughs:

                A couple of months ago, I ran into a lady who can finger-sign on a tablet AND IT LOOKS JUST LIKE A PROPER SIGNATURE!

                I kind of boggled, and asked her how long she had to work to get that– got a big grin, and informed me it took her weeks to get it down pat.

                Geeeeeeeeek! ❤🧡💛💚💙

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                1. I have to ship HazMat often as well as just non-haz DOT regs, where the rule is “We don’t care how legible the signature is, but when we show up and ask ‘Who Is This’ the answer better be ‘This person right here’ so I print my sig (some of my Bill Of Lading have the name in the sig position in bold Arial print as that is allowed) and I can scrawl if rather fast and neatly, even on some of the tablet bills when receiving (I fill in when our material handler is off), but FedEx has some horrid thing on their small tablets that makes even my simple and clear printed sig look like a deranged monkey with a 20 inch willow twig tried to write it.

                  Liked by 1 person

                2. My signature is as close to legible as I can get, though I ran into trouble in grad school, when the admin people took my signature for the name. Seems that my middle initial can look like a different letter if I don’t pay attention, and that was the only place (ever!) that used a signature for entering names.

                  My first encounter with he finger-pad signoff was when I was getting a cornea buff & polish*. Already had the three ‘don’t care if they kill me’ pills, but it was as close to a shock as it could have been. (I walked from the hotel to the eye center for the job. They called the hotel for a shuttle so I’d actually get back.) It vaguely resembled my signature. Close Enough, they said. I didn’t care. :)

                  ((*)) Treatment for “map-dot-fingerprint dystrophy”. Lumpy outside corneas, but they clear up nicely with the diamond burr treatment**. I was supposed to get more far-sighted, but nope. Got seriously myopic in one eye. Not much change in the other. Shrugs.

                  ((**)) Yes it does. Acetaminophen + Ibuprofen after one or two doses of Vicodin deals with it. Soft contact lens for a week til it heals.

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                  1. Writing VS printing. I always print our street name. Cursive makes it Twoli, not Tivoli. Have seen mail returned to sender because Twoli does not exist.

                    Liked by 1 person

          2. [remembers when the computer industry was promoting “handwriting recognition” with a stylus and touchscreen as the Wave of the Future]

            I guess I wasn’t the only one who was entirely underwhelmed by the idea.

            Liked by 1 person

            1. I find it useful for novels that only come out longhand, or for notes. But my handwriting demands certain compromises. For instance, Rafiel in shifters has to be changed back from Ratel which is what the recognition thinks he is.

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        3. I’ve heard tales about the editing of James Joyce’s Ulysses. It was back in the day of handwritten manuscripts, and his use of language was so unusual that the copy editor sometimes guessed wrong about what the Ms. said.

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        4. 1981, senior year in high school, my Advanced Composition class. I got my first two papers back and they were a C- and a D. Now, Cs and Ds simply Were Not Allowed in my household upon pain of slow death. (I’m pretty sure my parents, God rest their souls, could’ve taught Asian tiger moms a few things about grade pressure, they gave me stinkeyes every time I brought home a B…except in art, go figure, where I flunked a period and they shrugged.)

          Anyway. I went to the Comp teacher, whose room some of us hung out in before homeroom, and asked him what I did wrong. He said, “Oh, your writing is great. But if you don’t type your papers, I’m going to flunk your ass, because your handwriting is *redacted* and I don’t have the *redacted-ing* time to read it so I’ll just fail you instead.”

          Next paper was neatly typed on the old electric Smith-Corona at home and I got an A- for it. I ended up with a B+ for the year…I barely missed an A- by those first two papers. My parents grudgingly accepted it.

          Coincidentally, to avoid putting me in a full-year study hall (because “study halls are for kids that aren’t as smart as you”), I was taking a one-semester Typing Personal Use class at the same time. By the end of it I was doing 61 wpm with no errors on those good old Selectrics. I could make those suckers SING. I can do 100+ wpm on a good computer keyboard and so can the wife. Which is why I’m picky about my computer keyboards…clicky mechanical or bust. :)

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          1. “Now, Cs and Ds simply Were Not Allowed in my household upon pain of slow death. (I’m pretty sure my parents, God rest their souls, could’ve taught Asian tiger moms a few things about grade pressure, they gave me stinkeyes every time I brought home a B…except in art, go figure, where I flunked a period and they shrugged.)”
            I didn’t know we were siblings!

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            1. I think it’s an indicator of when our respective parents were from. My dad was born in 1919 and my mom in 1925 (they had me very late). Both firmly “Greatest Generation” Virginia born-and-raised from large families. My brother went in the Army and came back to the family business so they were damn committed to making sure that I went to college. My mom liked to tell me “you don’t want to KNOW what the doctor said your IQ was at age 5.” And she never told me, either. 

              So grades were all that mattered. Was I miserable in school? Yes. Did I have friends? Not many. Was I socially awkward? Lord yes. None of that mattered. Bringing home As, that’s all I existed to do. And I did, got out of high school fifth in my class of 370 with a 3.94 GPA (out of 4+). When I finally did get to college I discovered the joys of slacking but still made decent grades, got out with like a 3.3 GPA so not bad. I’ve probably done less with more than most people but I can’t complain *too* much. :)

              Art did not figure into their thought process. To them it was completely unnecessary. So the fact that I had the artistic prowess of a draft horse didn’t matter and bringing home an F for my last six weeks of 9th grade art was no big deal. Everything else was an A, that’s all that mattered.

              And boy I’m glad for that fast typing. Since I went into computer programming 35 years ago I’ve stayed glued to a keyboard. And being able to bang out things at a ridiculous rate of typing makes me look better at it than I actually am, so bonus! There’s something about the tactile feeling of a good keyboard (like the Logitech I’m on now) that’s…weirdly calming and soothing. I can’t explain it, but it’s there. It helps the thoughts and words to flow.

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              1. My HS transcript is around 3.9 (max 4.00 then). Yes, A’s and B’s expected (including art and PE). But never really learned to study. College didn’t go so well, and I worked my tail off. 1) 2.34 (204 hours) Refused to quit. 2) 3.98 (96 hours) ( 3) 3.75 (96 hours) accumulative about 3.4-ish. For 182 hours to pull 204 hours from 2.33 GPA, to 3.4 GPA, lets just say, I figured it out. No, partying was not it. Working wasn’t it either, as I worked just as much, or more getting the CSS degree. Still had the fear when I’d over hear other students who I thought were “better at all this” than me stating “wow that final was hard” and I found it easy (pulled an A+ and the only way to do that was to ace that test). Some things are hard to leave behind, even when you know you’ve finally gotten everything together.

                went into computer programming 35 years ago I’ve stayed glued to a keyboard. And being able to bang out things at a ridiculous rate of typing makes me look better at it than I actually am, so bonus!

                Retired now, after 33 years programming. I was the same. Fingers flying with code showing up on the screen. All coding on the fly. “In the zone.” (Do not sneak up on me. Bad idea. Was known to scream, once or twice.) Does slow down other typing, I mean, programming doesn’t exactly use full words let alone sentences. A lot of back spacing.

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        5. I took typing class in 10th grade, because I wanted to learn how to type. Never imagined I’d do so much typing over the next 40 years but…computers.

          Dad typed, too. In Navy boot camp they asked “Who knows how to type?” and he raised his hand. “You’re a Yeoman!” quoth the Chief, and so he spent his whole enlistment typing.

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            1. Electric? Not for me. There were 2 or 3 electric typewriters in the whole classroom and I didn’t get to use one until the year was half over. It was one manual after another, mostly Smith-Coronas. Took two weeks of building up pinky muscles before I could get Q, A, Z and P to show up properly. I also had Dad’s old Smith-Corona at home.

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              1. Electric typewriter? What are those. I didn’t ever come close to an electric typing until I got on computers in ’83. Even the teletype in ’76 didn’t have the easy feel of typing. While I took a year long typewriting class 7th grade, mom actually started us learning on grandma’s old black typewriter, from 1920’s, or earlier (might have belonged to her stepdad). My college typewriter (Christmas gift senor year) was a manual portable. What I used for college papers through ’79. ’83, and beyond (until ’90), it was Apple IIe and Wordstar, for papers.

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    3. I am aware I oversimplified how it works. Spending another page explaining that wasn’t something I wanted to do though. I am right there with you, even if I haven’t done any professional work in the field for over twenty years.

      The point I was going for was that the computer makes all of those tasks easier. Maybe would have been a better way for me to say it, sorry.

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      1. Your essay was just right. I think I’ve written 4 essays now about “AI” (as you say, no intelligence, but definitely machine learning). You hit all the right notes in your brief essay. Just because I can think of 10 more examples, doesn’t mean including them would make your essay any better.

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        1. It would be genuinely hard to select a short list of concise essays to write about neural net AI.

          I guess because of the range of skillsets and or economic impacts that one could choose to discuss.

          Even just the essays I am equipped to write on that broad category are more than I can do immediately.

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    4. A good rebuttal to the “machine does all the work” people is to force them to watch the credits for a modern Hollywood picture. There are sometimes literally *hundreds* of people listed in the digital effects section.

      Far too many for the notorious cheapskates in Hollywood to be paying if they weren’t actually necessary.

      As far as Autotune goes, it can be used subtly or bombastically. A friend of mine once described the latter as making the singer sound like a “robot hooker”. Heh.

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  15. I’ve been using DTP programs since the late ’80s. (Our offset printing operation went all-digital in the early ’90s.) I realized quite early on that what I was doing in apps such as CorelDRAW! was PostScript programming — and at a fairly high level at that. my objection to AI — and I use it daily, as well — is that it’s not a smart computer, but a group of smart-ass programmers. Software engineers seem to tend to be arrogant f**ks. They think they know everything, but do not realize the depths of their ignorance. And hubris. I’d say, “One of these days, they’re going to get somebody killed,” but that horse has already fled the burning barn.

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    1. Software engineers seem to tend to be arrogant f**ks. They think they know everything, but do not realize the depths of their ignorance. And hubris.

      Not all of us. I’ve ran into my share too. I’ve fought with them to get what the client needed.

      “One of these days, they’re going to get somebody killed,” but that horse has already fled the burning barn.

      Nothing I’ve ever worked on. Auto filtered those jobs out. To terrified to consider.

      Liked by 1 person

  16. A professional artist (sculptor) and I were talking about AI and art. He pointed out that it made commercial art so much easier, because the artist could generate a variety of images for the client, and if the client hadn’t been clear enough about the design, it would be much easier to change things, and cheaper.

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    1. I think that is going to be one of the bigger effects of AI art. Skilled commercial artists will be able to produce much higher volumes, those who adapt will do better than before, those who fail to adapt will be unable to compete.

      Liked by 1 person

  17. What got me about AI art is the sheer vehemence of the opposition, to the point it verges on a moral panic. A well known author and editor, a thought leader in the indie field, stating unequivocally that all AI art was by definition theft, that anyone who used it was a thief, and that anyone who defended it was advocating theft and not worth knowing. The mass of lawsuits against the various bot operators. The wave of vituperation in several AI art Facebook groups, to the point that multiple people were piling onto anyone who wouldn’t condemn it, treating them as moral monsters on the level of the tyrants of the Twentieth, just for regarding AI as a tool, not evil incarnate.

    I’d just been getting some decent results with my own efforts at using AI-generated images for covers when it all blew up, and it was so frightening that I took them all back down and replaced them with make-do covers. With the amount of time that I’m on the road with the day job, I couldn’t afford to have Amazon or one of the other distribution platforms suddenly declare that any cover made with AI would be treated as a copyright violation and the book blocked. They give only a limited amount of time to rectify it, and not getting it done in time can get your whole account shut down without recourse, so I didn’t want to get caught with no time or no access to my files to change it.

    I’m hoping that things will die down before long, and AI art will be just another tool for making commercial art, and the people who are carrying on about it will feel as foolish as the painters who damned photography, etc. But until then, my options are limited (we just had to cut our biggest convention because the promoter raised booth costs *again* and sales at it have been steadily declining ever since that promoter took over).

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    1. “What got me about AI art is the sheer vehemence of the opposition, to the point it verges on a moral panic.” 

      A lot of the outrage had a point in that machine learning requires huge datasets on which to train the “AI”, so most companies took the easy way and just shoved all the art on the internet into their gaping maw with no attribution and no compensation regardless of copyright. Even worse, if you put up art on a free site on the web, they just appropriated it to feed their machine.

      You do realize that Google put out their Captcha “security” app in order to train their image recognition program? We’ve come a long way from Dan Bricklin’s Cornucopia of the Commons.

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    2. A lot of the folks who were bankrolling the nastiest parts have gotten caught using AI– and folks have been burnt enough, they actually looked at the Strangely Specific Loopholes in things.

      And then some of the judges involved actually looked at the relevant laws. Instead of obeying the copyright violation claims. Especially in notable when the evidence offered had absolutely nothing to do with the legal claims.

      I, too, hope it dies down soon. It’s getting old.

      Liked by 1 person

    3. amazon is not going to pull ai covers. They’re more concerned about 400 books a day from the Chinese. But they were doing that before AI was officially a thing. It’s just faster now.

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  18. Just a note. farmer’s protests today in UK and Belgium. They’ve brought back the manure in Belgium. Nothing in the news of course. Oh and Chinese automobile purchases are below 2016 levels. Nothing to see here, move along.

    Liked by 1 person

    2. I keep thinking the rulers of Europe’s best response is to ignore them. So what if the peasants drive their tractors around? Sooner or later they have to go home to plant, and meanwhile you can identify the ringleaders for future lawfare/regulatory punishment. So long as it’s nonviolent protest, who cares?

      I did see an Epoch Times article saying the CCP has another purge starting, which if the economy is that bad makes sense, along with trying to pick a fight with the Philipines.

      I know I sound black-pilled. Some of it is probably my reaction to the Key Bridge collapse. I’ve driven that bridge multiple times. Seeing the imagery of it coming down was a gut punch.

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  19. The visceral nature of the response to AI Art has actually surprised me in an age where we commonly use electronics to create music and computers to update and modify pictures.  Some of the stuff I have seen has been pretty impressive, at least to me.

    To points above, this sort of “Katie, Bar The Door” reaction to technology in industry and art has been happening for a great while. Are people displaced from careers? Yes – they way they are from any change in fashion, interests, or technology. And yet others find careers in these same new areas.

    It does create great potential for content creators – which is why it is interests me; anything that breaks the monopoly of the great media houses has my support.

    Will some people always make a living from “actual art”? Of course. But it will be in two groups; those that do it for love of the art and those that are skilled at the art.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Hmmm…. Okay. I’ll bite.

      This is a bit of a leap, however, the set of public creatives who feel free to post their instant emotional responses trends heavily to those within the Narrative.

      IFF that can be given, then naturally, these viscerally unhappy people are all well aware of the abusive, gas-lighting, exploitive, and dishonest character of those up the chain from them. Worst-case scenarios are reasonable from their perspective. And in fairness, we ought to consider them as well. And do so more imaginatively.

      Amazon is turning sour (I never expected to be mass-flagged and deplatformed, but here we are), and Big Pharma turned out to be everything the leftist agitators claimed and then some.

      Perhaps making sure (preemptively) non-fragile independent AI art and music programs are supported?

      IDK, just noodling around here.

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      1. Issues:

        the worst case situations are, generally, not possible, unless one does what the upset want. (note, the payroll folks against getting caught using AI art, lots). Which in fairness is kinda par for the course with Narrative.

        Amazon has been declared to be ‘turning sour’ for the better part of a decade, now, and yet keeps wanting to make money; when each case gets looked at, it turns out to be more complicated at best, and generally a weaponized violation of needed safeguards. (ie, false reports)

        “Big Pharma” followed the laws put in place by said leftwing agitators– in an echo/preview of the AI thing, should we listen to the emotive screamers. Other than that, most of the outrages have left folks who are familiar with vaccine discussions beyond screaming “antivaxxer” scratching our heads, going “you really didn’t know that? I told you that years ago.”

        The independent AI programs are exactly what they keep going after, trying to make it so there’s only the big, organized, easy to control options around.

        Liked by 2 people

        1. On board with about everything you’ve written, especially the action/reaction cycle of people gaming the system. The reaction that follows sweeps innocents up. I just now thought of another trend in media: start a TV show that just tells its story, then start turning it woke once it’s popular. Used to take a long time, now the cycle happens in three seasons. So that might be coloring my thoughts. Also, look what happened to Twitter vs. Facebook: One was always going to go bad because the founder is a snake. The other went sour for other reasons, and is somewhat course correcting. Another point for what you’re asserting.

          So ones mileage may vary and there’s lots of people creating AI out there. Agreed that the OMG-panic mode is the part of the false binary: Any plans to weaponize it require gutting any independents who can create counter-weapons.

          Side note:

          The Big Pharma thing though: Nope. That was our free-market friends including yours truly (mea culpa, mea maxima culpa) providing cover for “getting the plaintiffs attorneys out of the business”. It was a counter-reaction (see above, false binary) to John-Edwards-Obstetrics-Lawfare-tyle-grifting being done to vax manufacturers. Though you’re right again: Any leftist solution to a leftist-observed problem is going to make it worse.

          And we (and I’m talking libertarians here “we”) were the ones backing both pharma company mergers, turning a blind eye to pharma/regulatory agency revolving doors, and Clinton’s allowing them to advertise.

          So yes, in the sense that “Just because the folks giving the alarm are lefties, doesn’t mean there isn’t something to be alarmed about”. In fact, I’d argue that the more obviously repulsive ones that reach us through mass media, the more likely there IS something to be alarming.

          Based on the Big Pharma example, however: It is not what the lefties are yelling about. And they have the merdas touch for solutions. By the same token regulations or rules or relaxation of same that makes it to the same mass media from “conservatives” in reaction to them, is going preemptively make managing any down-the-road consequences a lot harder.

          Not sure I wrote that all out well enough. Corrections welcome, as I am still thinking this through.

          Like

  20. Welp, it’s happening:

    FAST FOOD WORKERS ARE LOSING THEIR JOBS IN CALIFORNIA AS NEW MINIMUM WAGE LAW TAKES EFFECT

    But we were all just Eeevul Hatey Panic-Mongers when we told them this would happen. “You lie! Nobody would ever lay off thousands of low-skill workers just because Our Benevolent Rulers doubled the cost of labor!”

    ———————————

    It is not within the power of any government to increase the value of labor, only to raise its cost.

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            1. You know he is. I know he is. So why don’t I think the damage is permanent? Because unlike Biden I GET second order effects.
              When life in the US is no better than back home (look, it’s getting there. Oh, not in the great heartland, etc, but in the places they’re flocking to) and they on top of that lack the connections they have “back home” a lot of them will leave.
              Judging by the lack of say Spanish radio stations and magazines, like there were during the last great surge in tens, and other signs, like the fact they’re flying them in, so they don’t KNOW how to go back, and flying them away from the border, etc. I think outside areas as where you are, where obviously the church will be immense and it’s hard to gauge what’s going on, a lot are already leaving.
              And I think that will only accelerate.
              Green card? Oh, useful for the gangs operating in both countries. Until.We’ve.Had.Enough.
              Horrific? Yes. Permanent? No.
              But you know, this is the principle of vaccination for cultures. Stupidity has to hurt, so it’s remembered and doesn’t become permanent.

              Like

      2. Gee, who could have ever predicted any of this? I mean, besides anybody with a F*KING CLUE?!!

        We are ruled by idiots. Every brain cell they have is dedicated to lining their pockets and advancing their positions, in politics or bureaucracy, with none left over for actually DOING THEIR F*KING JOBS!

        It’s been two days since an out-of-control freighter knocked down a bridge less than 100 miles from D.C. and we haven’t heard a peep from Pothole Pete. You’d think the Secretary Of Transportation might have some role to play in this matter.

        As I’ve said before, the Biden* Regime has managed to assemble an entire administration without including so much as one single competent individual, even by accident. That can’t have been easy. The few that have left their positions were replaced by others even more incompetent.

        ———————————

        The President is a mumbling, bumbling, stumbling buffoon, the Vice President believes her inane blather is profound wisdom, the Department Of Justice is practicing monstrous injustice, the Secretary Of State is clueless about international diplomacy, the Secretary Of Defense and Chairman Of The Joint Chiefs Of Staff blundered their way through one of the worst military debacles in our history, the Transportation Secretary knows nothing about transportation, the Energy Secretary knows nothing about energy and the Treasury Secretary knows nothing about the economy. I thought ‘Circle Back’ Psaki sucked as Press Secretary but she was an articulate genius compared to Mop Head.

        Liked by 1 person

        2. So your saying we don’t really need a Federal level of Department of Transportation as proved by the lack of involvement by the person in charge? That the work going on is going at least as well with out oversite? 

          Liked by 1 person

  21. That is an interesting take on AI art, for me, the hangup has been the fact that current copyright office guidance states that the AI generated art isn’t copyrightable because it isn’t generated by a human. Digging into their guidance further, they believe it takes more than a prompt in a LLM coupled art program for it to qualify as made by a human.

    I’m somewhat puzzled by this trying to thread the needle, but would also hate to create something and then have issues maintaining copyright on it.

    Have you ever noticed that every time a technology evolves the powers that be want to claim it is a wholly new from whole cloth invention and the current laws don’t apply?

    Like

    1. NO, You’ve been misled on copyright. The office stated that you can’t copyright it to the AI. which is what idiot tried to do.
      Let me rub Foxfier’s lamp.

      Like

    2. :appears from what sure looks to be a coffee urn:

      The Copyright Office said that AI programs can’t hold a copyright, because they’re not humans.

      It has one of my favorite lines ever for a gov’t annoucement, this:

      The Ninth Circuit has held that a book containing words “authored by non
      human spiritual beings” can only qualify for copyright protection if there is “human
      selection and arrangement of the revelations.”

      The copyright has to belong to a human, is the very short version.

      No, I don’t know why even folks who are lawyers looked at the rulings and went “can’t copyright AI stuff!”

      Here is a link to the decision in question.
      https://www.bloomberglaw.com/public/desktop/document/THALERvPERLMUTTERetalDocketNo122cv01564DDCJun022022CourtDocket/5?doc_id=X7E62VT5QQT84BRJVKSNVMDPLJV

      Like

    3. I’m somewhat puzzled by this trying to thread the needle, but would also hate to create something and then have issues maintaining copyright on it.

      K, this part I can explain.

      Chinese robots attacked the system.

      :pauses with a grin:

      No, really is that way, they were getting flooded with applications for books (and probably scientific articles, honestly) that were completely AI generated, and it was causing serious issues. That’s why the examples in the guideline are all based on long form content, not images.

      Liked by 1 person

  22. I think you can use images in addition to a text prompt.

    so you can kit bash a collage with daz studio and photos,

    to get a composition and anatomy right, the prompt for style,

    and the AI for the details.

    Like

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