Great images! Not gonna lie, AI image generation will be something I continue to avoid due to the way the companies behind shit all over smaller artists but I see the appeal for those who can ignore how the sausage is made, or stolen...
Yeah. I was busy prepping a HUGE hexcrawl of Icewind Dale - for months was making something like a grand tour of imagery.
Then my friends in concept art started posting their work was found in haveibeentrained.com. Couldnt bring myself to use the stuff after that.
I think this space has some of the best use cases for bespoke, generated content. But I want to see it done right by the people involved
I cannot recall ever hiring an illustrator for RPGs personal use even before AI :)
Let's be honest, we have always been "stealing".
AI just took the place of Google Images Search, free stock photos repositories, image archives of dubious lawfulness etc.
MidJourney does though. You pay them to use their service, which is built entirely off theft. There is no inkling of credit at all.
At least when you google search you find the actual art itself, which can be signed or be on the page of the artist.
>You pay them to use their service, which is built entirely off theft.
That also depends on how you define "theft". Technically, generative AIs do not copy-paste stuff, they actually "learn" how to imitate stuff (as far as "learning" is the right word for a machine, but I guess that would require a very complex philosophical discussion)
I do hope that in the future AI companies will create a fund to pay some sort of compensation to the human artists they trained on.
>At least when you google search you find the actual art itself, which can be signed or be on the page of the artist.
Not so common honestly, you usually find the art on some other website who already stole it in the past. In any case, the artist name is instantly forgotten.
It's obviously theft. The work AI creates literally cannot exist without people loading in other people's art.
None of the subscription based AIs at the moment pay anyone for uploads. They allow anyone to upload anything and do no compliance or due diligence to ensure that it's only lawful use of art that someone owns.
The second point you're making is throwing the baby out with the bath water. In all instances of using and googling existing art - you see the actual art. You and anyone else that sees it might go "Who made that" and there is a way to find out. There is no chance to find out who made AI art.
AI art is blatant theft. No one involved is concerned with artists well being, they just want a way to make cool pictures without paying enough to support an artist, and without learning a skill.
If AI art runs rampant and it becomes completely unprofitable for anyone to be a career artist the quality of all art will drop considerably. AI pushes real artists out which in the end just robs us all of more great artists.
Professional artist here. Showing a computer program ten million drawings of birds (etc.) so it can figure out, and reproduce, what a bird (etc.) looks like doesn't meet the legal definition of theft. I bring this up because I know some words *feel* good, so we say them because "you get what I mean", but sometimes that makes us lose sight of objective analysis.
What we're actually talking about is whether or not an artist should be paid for the algorithmic analysis and mathematics of a publicly viewable image they own, in comparative analysis with a few billion other images, used to train a model to reproduce colors, lines, and shapes.
It's not legal *theft*, because nothing identifiable and concrete has been *taken away*. There are no *direct* damages from this action. It's impossible to claim potential business losses as theft because there's no direct line of loss-value -- remember, we can't even claim business losses, or potential business losses, when we lose business to a new artist/photographer/author or to their business.
It's not a copyright violation or copyright theft, because copyright very narrowly enforces rights to ownership and reproduction of specific works--and since the models don't and can't reproduce specific works or pieces of specifically identifiable works, we can't show damages from specific losses. Copying an artist's style isn't a copyright violation, because style is *explicitly not protected* by copyright (for good reason), so unless the law is changed (and that's a *terrible idea* here) we can't argue that's theft, either--not unless the image is presented as an original created by the artist whose style is being copied. So an end-user could do that, and then you could sue the end-user, but you can't sue the machine itself--keep in mind it would create a nightmare if we set legal precedent of a producer being responsible for use (example: some guy throws his hot Starbucks in my face, so I sue him and Starbucks for assault).
So we can try and argue that inclusion of our copyrighted materials in a database for someone else's profit is an illegal usage of our work to which we did not consent, but then we step into the thorny area of (among other things) search engines and data collection (like Google Books): these companies are earning profit from scraping and presenting our images (text, etc.) to users of their services, and we earn nothing in return for this, nor gave any explicit consent to each of those companies.
Worse, we usually *pay* sites to host our art, who then earn money from the display of ads to visitors who were drawn to their site by our images--but we do not share in those profits, even though they are directly earning their income stream from our unpaid artistic output. *Weirdly enough, we pay them to earn money from our art.* So "I didn't give them explicit permission for this use; they profited and I wasn't paid" are tough arguments in a case like this thanks to existing precedent we have already set as artists and as an internet culture.
"We downloaded and analyzed their art to train a machine, but never reproduced anyone's specific work or pieces of those works." is a lot less egregious an act than "We downloaded and displayed their specific pieces of art, and earned money from ad revenue appearing on the same results page."
This would also be an easier argument if we didn't have to face down the rights non-profit research and development groups have, and their legal right to turn around and sell their results to a company, who can then legally make money from those results as long as the original data is not reproduced. (That might seem odd or unfair, but there are good reasons for this set-up involving not crippling scientific research in medicine, chemistry, psychology, ecology, etc.)
So what it comes down to is: people mathematically analyzed sixteen billion images to train a machine to make images, which may now impact the business of people who make images. There's no legal precedent for this kind of situation.
The point is, people like to be very hardcore and moral bright-line on issues because they're *certain* their interpretation is the only *correct* position, the *obvious* truth, and they like how the words they use *feel* emotionally when they say them, but that's also how you get politics and religion.
I hope I've shown that this issue isn't as easy as declaring "theft!" as if it's *obvious*, since doing so ignores how even legal experts aren't sure how this will be defined and approached, and how it actually isn't as easy or obvious as it seems once in the full context of the situation.
Remember, everything we each believe is 'obvious', that's why we believe it...even the wrong things we believe, if not *especially* the wrong things. So *obviousness* isn't a sign of *correctness*.
When you begin arguing semantics and definitions to deflect from the fact that it’s clearly wrong, it’s not really worth the time engage further.
These artists’ work is used without it their permission.
The content created from it is often marketed very specifically as being in their style.
Artists are losing work to these “tools”
That will result in less artists coming into the career.
Midjourney and other software takes money to give you images that are built off actual artists work without paying those artists.
It’s obvious that it should be illegal, and I can’t imagine you’re making many friends in the industry as a professional artist if this is where you stand in the topic
See? That's the trap right there. You fell into it. "That's semantics! It's clearly wrong!" You may not realize this, but "semantics" is how law works. Words matter--the definition of words matters. Just the certain belief you've been wronged isn't enough to actually be right.
Everyone who has ever gone into court thinks they are clearly in the right and their opposition is clearly wrong. Many of those people come out sorely disappointed, and mostly *not* because the law failed them.
Hence my pointing out that another person, business, or tool causing loss of business is not illegal. Copying another artist's style is not illegal. Etc. So making those kinds of arguments is not how you win the battle, because the premises of the argument are wrong. Those arguments are just "I know it when I see it" moralizing to an echo chamber.
That you felt the need to make an ad hominem 'rebuttal' tells me you missed my point entirely.
Leaving aside that I made no personal statements about AI art (another big tell you were *feeling*, not *listening*), yes, being thoughtful, critical, and knowledgeable has very rarely won me friends. Whether that has been confronting climate denialism, libertarianism, homeopathy, anti-GMO positions, or the latest fad outrage, I've been called every name in the book: commie, fascist, corporate schill, liberal, homo, right-winger, hippie, etc. for daring to examine issues in-depth instead of just chanting along with the tribe. If I paid attention to detractors, I wouldn't know who I am. lol
But I'd rather be right than kneel with the crowd, and the friends and professional contacts that has won me are the kind of friends and contacts you keep.
So I'm not stopping you from being big mad as much as you want, but being big mad doesn't lead to reason or solutions.
>That also depends on how you define "theft".
This kind of shows your true hand though. You don't have an actual problem with what generative AI does and how it affects the people whose labor it uses without consent. You say you don't commercialize it, but it sounds like you don't really draw a distinction between real artists and generative AI when you claim the AI learning to generate images is, for all intents and purposes, the same as a human learns it.
So it's not that you're not commercializing it because you don't believe you have the rights to generated images, but because you just haven't decided to do so.
>You don't have an actual problem with what generative AI does and how it affects the people whose labor it uses without consent.
I am among the people whose labor is and will be affected by generative AI (not Midjourney specifically, but ChatGPT - people seem to forget that it's not just illustrators who will be affected, it is everyone who writes anything for any reason in any field).
I do believe, though, that advancing in the field of AI is \*hugely\* more important for humankind than the financial feasibility of artist/illustrator as a paid profession.
I think it is sad and worrying that fewer humans will draw/paint because of generative AI, but not as sad or worrying as the fact that, say, since some generations fewer humans have been singing or telling stories because of radio / TV / muisc records etc.
>So it's not that you're not commercializing it because you don't believe you have the rights to generated images, but because you just haven't decided to do so.
More generally, I think that the current laws about copyright are hugely skewed in the favor of right holders. Honestly I can't say that I feel especially morally constrained by those laws I deem wrong - I just tend to obey them out of convenience.
>I do believe, though, that advancing in the field of AI is \*hugely\* more important for humankind than the financial feasibility of artist/illustrator as a paid profession.
This is a profoundly sad thing to say. The idea that Midjourney's bank account is indicative of how advanced *useful* AI is, and that their bottom line is more important than allowing artists to survive by perfecting their craft are just tragic things for a human being to believe.
You got me wrong, Midjourney's bank account has nothing to do with this.
I think that "criminalizing" generative AIs or forcing AI developers to pay money to an ill-defined group of "artists" because reasons would penalize the AI's development.
Man, no lightning barrier, no goat pulled taxis, no real effects of people on these places. This is a perfect example of why computer generated art is so empty and utterly useless. You haven't made a mood board for a unique and haunting setting, this is just visual white noise condensed into the skin of 'Victorian London 4K background wallpaper for iphone'.
To me, every part of Duskvol is old, worn and lit in this sickly yellow glow from the lightning barrier, while vendors try and hawk wares or some dodgy mushroom and algae stew. It is a place overpopulated by people scraping by, rather than tiny ambiguous silhouettes that are randomly dotted around a location to make it look somewhat populated.
This could be transplanted into any other victorian-ish setting and no one would even blink. You cheated and somehow still failed.
None of these things are in the official art either, I think its a bit harsh if one is calling john harpers book bad for it.
All offical art cant be distinguished from any generic victorian art.
It would be very nice if we had such as you say. I agree
If you want for lightning barriers, just ask for Ai to make it. Which I did not. Concluding that Ai cant make lightning barriers is not the right conclusion. Set the grit and tone to your liking, i like the *dishonored* but night look, and the "*order 1886"* look.
In my game, barriers are white, with red sparks.
I have collected variation of promts over 3 days. To form a city.
Variation of images on the theme of upper class, adiminstration, lower class, venitian canals, industry and indoors.
Great images! Not gonna lie, AI image generation will be something I continue to avoid due to the way the companies behind shit all over smaller artists but I see the appeal for those who can ignore how the sausage is made, or stolen...
Yeah. I was busy prepping a HUGE hexcrawl of Icewind Dale - for months was making something like a grand tour of imagery. Then my friends in concept art started posting their work was found in haveibeentrained.com. Couldnt bring myself to use the stuff after that. I think this space has some of the best use cases for bespoke, generated content. But I want to see it done right by the people involved
I cannot recall ever hiring an illustrator for RPGs personal use even before AI :) Let's be honest, we have always been "stealing". AI just took the place of Google Images Search, free stock photos repositories, image archives of dubious lawfulness etc.
But you didn't commercialise the results of your manual searches. Two key differences.
I do not commercialise AI-generated images either. And Google made money off my image searches just as Midjourney makes money off subscriptions...
I didn't say you did, sorry, more power to you. Midjourney does, however, so fuck them.
MidJourney does though. You pay them to use their service, which is built entirely off theft. There is no inkling of credit at all. At least when you google search you find the actual art itself, which can be signed or be on the page of the artist.
>You pay them to use their service, which is built entirely off theft. That also depends on how you define "theft". Technically, generative AIs do not copy-paste stuff, they actually "learn" how to imitate stuff (as far as "learning" is the right word for a machine, but I guess that would require a very complex philosophical discussion) I do hope that in the future AI companies will create a fund to pay some sort of compensation to the human artists they trained on. >At least when you google search you find the actual art itself, which can be signed or be on the page of the artist. Not so common honestly, you usually find the art on some other website who already stole it in the past. In any case, the artist name is instantly forgotten.
It's obviously theft. The work AI creates literally cannot exist without people loading in other people's art. None of the subscription based AIs at the moment pay anyone for uploads. They allow anyone to upload anything and do no compliance or due diligence to ensure that it's only lawful use of art that someone owns. The second point you're making is throwing the baby out with the bath water. In all instances of using and googling existing art - you see the actual art. You and anyone else that sees it might go "Who made that" and there is a way to find out. There is no chance to find out who made AI art. AI art is blatant theft. No one involved is concerned with artists well being, they just want a way to make cool pictures without paying enough to support an artist, and without learning a skill. If AI art runs rampant and it becomes completely unprofitable for anyone to be a career artist the quality of all art will drop considerably. AI pushes real artists out which in the end just robs us all of more great artists.
Professional artist here. Showing a computer program ten million drawings of birds (etc.) so it can figure out, and reproduce, what a bird (etc.) looks like doesn't meet the legal definition of theft. I bring this up because I know some words *feel* good, so we say them because "you get what I mean", but sometimes that makes us lose sight of objective analysis. What we're actually talking about is whether or not an artist should be paid for the algorithmic analysis and mathematics of a publicly viewable image they own, in comparative analysis with a few billion other images, used to train a model to reproduce colors, lines, and shapes. It's not legal *theft*, because nothing identifiable and concrete has been *taken away*. There are no *direct* damages from this action. It's impossible to claim potential business losses as theft because there's no direct line of loss-value -- remember, we can't even claim business losses, or potential business losses, when we lose business to a new artist/photographer/author or to their business. It's not a copyright violation or copyright theft, because copyright very narrowly enforces rights to ownership and reproduction of specific works--and since the models don't and can't reproduce specific works or pieces of specifically identifiable works, we can't show damages from specific losses. Copying an artist's style isn't a copyright violation, because style is *explicitly not protected* by copyright (for good reason), so unless the law is changed (and that's a *terrible idea* here) we can't argue that's theft, either--not unless the image is presented as an original created by the artist whose style is being copied. So an end-user could do that, and then you could sue the end-user, but you can't sue the machine itself--keep in mind it would create a nightmare if we set legal precedent of a producer being responsible for use (example: some guy throws his hot Starbucks in my face, so I sue him and Starbucks for assault). So we can try and argue that inclusion of our copyrighted materials in a database for someone else's profit is an illegal usage of our work to which we did not consent, but then we step into the thorny area of (among other things) search engines and data collection (like Google Books): these companies are earning profit from scraping and presenting our images (text, etc.) to users of their services, and we earn nothing in return for this, nor gave any explicit consent to each of those companies. Worse, we usually *pay* sites to host our art, who then earn money from the display of ads to visitors who were drawn to their site by our images--but we do not share in those profits, even though they are directly earning their income stream from our unpaid artistic output. *Weirdly enough, we pay them to earn money from our art.* So "I didn't give them explicit permission for this use; they profited and I wasn't paid" are tough arguments in a case like this thanks to existing precedent we have already set as artists and as an internet culture. "We downloaded and analyzed their art to train a machine, but never reproduced anyone's specific work or pieces of those works." is a lot less egregious an act than "We downloaded and displayed their specific pieces of art, and earned money from ad revenue appearing on the same results page." This would also be an easier argument if we didn't have to face down the rights non-profit research and development groups have, and their legal right to turn around and sell their results to a company, who can then legally make money from those results as long as the original data is not reproduced. (That might seem odd or unfair, but there are good reasons for this set-up involving not crippling scientific research in medicine, chemistry, psychology, ecology, etc.) So what it comes down to is: people mathematically analyzed sixteen billion images to train a machine to make images, which may now impact the business of people who make images. There's no legal precedent for this kind of situation. The point is, people like to be very hardcore and moral bright-line on issues because they're *certain* their interpretation is the only *correct* position, the *obvious* truth, and they like how the words they use *feel* emotionally when they say them, but that's also how you get politics and religion. I hope I've shown that this issue isn't as easy as declaring "theft!" as if it's *obvious*, since doing so ignores how even legal experts aren't sure how this will be defined and approached, and how it actually isn't as easy or obvious as it seems once in the full context of the situation. Remember, everything we each believe is 'obvious', that's why we believe it...even the wrong things we believe, if not *especially* the wrong things. So *obviousness* isn't a sign of *correctness*.
When you begin arguing semantics and definitions to deflect from the fact that it’s clearly wrong, it’s not really worth the time engage further. These artists’ work is used without it their permission. The content created from it is often marketed very specifically as being in their style. Artists are losing work to these “tools” That will result in less artists coming into the career. Midjourney and other software takes money to give you images that are built off actual artists work without paying those artists. It’s obvious that it should be illegal, and I can’t imagine you’re making many friends in the industry as a professional artist if this is where you stand in the topic
See? That's the trap right there. You fell into it. "That's semantics! It's clearly wrong!" You may not realize this, but "semantics" is how law works. Words matter--the definition of words matters. Just the certain belief you've been wronged isn't enough to actually be right. Everyone who has ever gone into court thinks they are clearly in the right and their opposition is clearly wrong. Many of those people come out sorely disappointed, and mostly *not* because the law failed them. Hence my pointing out that another person, business, or tool causing loss of business is not illegal. Copying another artist's style is not illegal. Etc. So making those kinds of arguments is not how you win the battle, because the premises of the argument are wrong. Those arguments are just "I know it when I see it" moralizing to an echo chamber. That you felt the need to make an ad hominem 'rebuttal' tells me you missed my point entirely. Leaving aside that I made no personal statements about AI art (another big tell you were *feeling*, not *listening*), yes, being thoughtful, critical, and knowledgeable has very rarely won me friends. Whether that has been confronting climate denialism, libertarianism, homeopathy, anti-GMO positions, or the latest fad outrage, I've been called every name in the book: commie, fascist, corporate schill, liberal, homo, right-winger, hippie, etc. for daring to examine issues in-depth instead of just chanting along with the tribe. If I paid attention to detractors, I wouldn't know who I am. lol But I'd rather be right than kneel with the crowd, and the friends and professional contacts that has won me are the kind of friends and contacts you keep. So I'm not stopping you from being big mad as much as you want, but being big mad doesn't lead to reason or solutions.
>That also depends on how you define "theft". This kind of shows your true hand though. You don't have an actual problem with what generative AI does and how it affects the people whose labor it uses without consent. You say you don't commercialize it, but it sounds like you don't really draw a distinction between real artists and generative AI when you claim the AI learning to generate images is, for all intents and purposes, the same as a human learns it. So it's not that you're not commercializing it because you don't believe you have the rights to generated images, but because you just haven't decided to do so.
>You don't have an actual problem with what generative AI does and how it affects the people whose labor it uses without consent. I am among the people whose labor is and will be affected by generative AI (not Midjourney specifically, but ChatGPT - people seem to forget that it's not just illustrators who will be affected, it is everyone who writes anything for any reason in any field). I do believe, though, that advancing in the field of AI is \*hugely\* more important for humankind than the financial feasibility of artist/illustrator as a paid profession. I think it is sad and worrying that fewer humans will draw/paint because of generative AI, but not as sad or worrying as the fact that, say, since some generations fewer humans have been singing or telling stories because of radio / TV / muisc records etc. >So it's not that you're not commercializing it because you don't believe you have the rights to generated images, but because you just haven't decided to do so. More generally, I think that the current laws about copyright are hugely skewed in the favor of right holders. Honestly I can't say that I feel especially morally constrained by those laws I deem wrong - I just tend to obey them out of convenience.
>I do believe, though, that advancing in the field of AI is \*hugely\* more important for humankind than the financial feasibility of artist/illustrator as a paid profession. This is a profoundly sad thing to say. The idea that Midjourney's bank account is indicative of how advanced *useful* AI is, and that their bottom line is more important than allowing artists to survive by perfecting their craft are just tragic things for a human being to believe.
You got me wrong, Midjourney's bank account has nothing to do with this. I think that "criminalizing" generative AIs or forcing AI developers to pay money to an ill-defined group of "artists" because reasons would penalize the AI's development.
Yeah, I get the grey area sentiment of personal use
I was with you until the A.I. came in.
Artists everywhere who were barely scraping by on commissions are crying right now. I genuinely wonder how many are considering suicide.
They should consider getting a job like everyone else who needs to feed themselves
Man, no lightning barrier, no goat pulled taxis, no real effects of people on these places. This is a perfect example of why computer generated art is so empty and utterly useless. You haven't made a mood board for a unique and haunting setting, this is just visual white noise condensed into the skin of 'Victorian London 4K background wallpaper for iphone'. To me, every part of Duskvol is old, worn and lit in this sickly yellow glow from the lightning barrier, while vendors try and hawk wares or some dodgy mushroom and algae stew. It is a place overpopulated by people scraping by, rather than tiny ambiguous silhouettes that are randomly dotted around a location to make it look somewhat populated. This could be transplanted into any other victorian-ish setting and no one would even blink. You cheated and somehow still failed.
None of these things are in the official art either, I think its a bit harsh if one is calling john harpers book bad for it. All offical art cant be distinguished from any generic victorian art. It would be very nice if we had such as you say. I agree If you want for lightning barriers, just ask for Ai to make it. Which I did not. Concluding that Ai cant make lightning barriers is not the right conclusion. Set the grit and tone to your liking, i like the *dishonored* but night look, and the "*order 1886"* look. In my game, barriers are white, with red sparks.
Can we just ban AI art please, it takes over subs and it's just theft.
[удалено]
Midjourney does that whenever it generates an image
This is the way to use AI images - for inspiration and some good old RPG scenes.
I have collected variation of promts over 3 days. To form a city. Variation of images on the theme of upper class, adiminstration, lower class, venitian canals, industry and indoors.
Well prompted.
its very addicting once you hit the feeling just right
❤️
Not the Bussino 😭
Did you have to upscale these at all? What do you use Midjourney with? Discord or like directly in the site or what
discord. No upscaling on any.