Mastodawn

Ziggurat Aug 1, 2023

How much did photography "stole" painter jobs ?

https://sh.itjust.works/post/2036821

How much did photography "stole" painter jobs ? - sh.itjust.works

With all the fuzz about IA image “stealing” illustrator job, I am curious about how much photography changed the art world in the 19th century. There was a time where getting a portrait done was a relatively big thing, requiring several days of work for a painter, while you had to stand still for a while so the painter knew what you looked like, and then with photography, all you had to do was to stand still for a few minutes, and you’ll get a picture of you printed on paper the next day. How did it impact the average painter who was getting paid to paint people once in their lifetime.

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NotAnonymousAtAll Aug 1, 2023

It sure did have a big impact, comparable to what some people expect to happen soon with AI.

However, I think your framing misses the main point of why many artists today are wary about AI: They are not just being replaced, their own work is used as a building block for the tools that will replace them; and they were not asked for permission and don’t even get any compensation for that.

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Vlyn Aug 1, 2023

If you have a basic understanding how AI works then this argument doesn’t hold much water.

Let’s take the human approach: I’m going to look at all the works of popular painters to learn their styles. Then I grab my painting tools and create similar works.

No credit there, I still used all those other works as input and created by own based on them.

With AI it’s the same, just in a much bigger capacity. If you ask AI to redraw the Mona Lisa you won’t get a 1:1 copy out, because the original doesn’t exist in the trained model, it’s just statistics.

Same as if you tell a human to recreate the painting, no matter how good they are, they’ll never be able to perfectly reproduce the original work.

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Deestan

This is true, but the way AI differs in a problematic way is usually described in confused and incorrect terms like “stealing” or “copying without permission”.

It is, to some degree legally and to some degree culturally, not allowed to copy someone else without their permission. For human artists this problem is contained.

If I am inspired by your work and create a painting a biiit to close to your work, intentionally or not, you have the option to talk to me and we can work something out. Or worst case take me to court.

If an AI does the same, unintentionally of course, it’s not one painting after a few weeks of work. It’s thousands per day. You have no capacity to find and initiate conversations about each of those. And worse, your conversations will not be with someone who recognizes that they were inspired by your work. It will usuallt be with someone who doesn’t have the affinity to see the similarities and will shrug and says “I don’t see it sorry” and you have to take the fight to the AI supplier third party’s legal team who will also shrug and hide behind terms like “algorithm”.