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David Revoy

Thanks to all of you who took part in my poll. So I have made my decision: I will no longer hashtag my art with #HumanArt, #HumanMade or #NoAI.

I've blogged about why this happened:
davidrevoy.com/article977/arti

Thank you for making me change my mind.
#krita #MastoArt

68 comments
Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell:
@davidrevoy Haha, ça me démangeais un peu de faire un mauvais troll comme quoi g'mic c'est un peu une AI sur les bords. ^^

Blague à part c'est un très bon article, le coté de virer une méta-donné (le hashtag) d'ailleurs est aussi assez intéressant, ça fonctionne pas que pour des choses comme la vie privée.
ren

@davidrevoy I am immensely fascinated by what will be created by the AI ouroboros, as this technology starts to devour its own tail.

But I’ve always been more fascinated by the works that people make, using their own skills and with their own aesthetic choices. It tells a story that AI image generation can never capture, because AI does’t go through the same process.

eev kuchenka

@ziphi absolutely agreed! I like art because I'm interested in the people who make it, not in their technical prowess. And it's cool that people can choose to express themselves through AI art too, but I feel that it doesn't allow the same breadth and originality of expression that full human control does. Sometimes, the crappiest napkin stick figure is more interesting than the shiniest cg painting. :)

yuvipanda

@davidrevoy my god this picture is amazing! Do you sell prints?!

David Revoy

@yuvipanda Hey, thanks! I used to post things on Redbubble, but they reduced so much the percent for artists that I don't have any incentives anymore to take the time to upload and enter the looooong form to add a new product.

So, just grab the high resolution peppercarrot.com/en/viewer/mis and print it ( on a USB pendrive; in supermarket there is booth to print big photos, or home printer, or color photocopies does a very good work nowadays).

inj4n

@davidrevoy @yuvipanda and then you can still give something to the artist.

Adam Dalliance

@davidrevoy Yeah, as usual the humans are all labeling things wrong.

There is no such thing as AI Art.

There are AI images, but there is no *art* in the images, because art is the product of human emotional connections to the subject, and all there's here is amalgams and machine associations.

Wish they'd just use #aiimage instead of #aiart

Gumwars

@pre I respectfully disagree. AI art is a composite construct of human efforts across the entire race, spanning centuries of work. Art is in the eye of the beholder, and it matters very little what hand guided the brush. What matters more is how do we feel, what have we learned, and where will this new tool of art creation take us? You are focusing too much on the semantics.

Adam Dalliance

@gumwars Yep. Sounds like we do indeed disagree.

Art is what artists do, far from being in the eye of the beholder, the beholders are generally ignorant proles who wouldn't know art if you smacked them around the face with it. 😆

An artist may use whatever they find, including large pixel models, but just typing out a prompt and selecting from the results isn't expression or feeling.

It's not art, it's just iconography.

Gumwars

@pre As a point of discussion, and evidence pointing to the oddity of your statement, take Mark Rothko's work as an example. Saying simply that "Art is what artists do" begs the question, what is art, exactly? Rothko is known for absurdly simple work, nothing more than blobs of color on canvas. No knowledge of anatomy, nature, color, or any of the skills commonly associated with the masters convey, even in deconstructed or abstract expression. (continued p1)

Gumwars

@pre (p2) Why is AI generated imagery not a valid tool? What makes it less important, less authentic than people literally standing behind a jet engine flinging paint onto a canvas? We are looking at the first steps towards anyone being able to share what they see in their mind to the world. If this isn't a valid form of creation, then art as a medium of visual expression needs to be redefined.

Adam Dalliance

@gumwars If an advertising executive asks David to draw Pepper drinking a lovely can of cola, does that make the advertising executive an artist?

If you want to call these AI images art, then it's far to ask "who is the artist?" in that case.

I can see an argument for the artist being the people who produced all the training data, or maybe the team that built the model.

But definitely not the person who just typed a prompt.

They can maybe be the executive producer or something, but not the artist.

@gumwars If an advertising executive asks David to draw Pepper drinking a lovely can of cola, does that make the advertising executive an artist?

If you want to call these AI images art, then it's far to ask "who is the artist?" in that case.

I can see an argument for the artist being the people who produced all the training data, or maybe the team that built the model.

Adam Dalliance

@gumwars
The prompt itself may be art, an expression born of the suffering and emotion of the prompter who wants to tell a story.

But the image isn't art, the image is just a mashup caused by the flow of electrons in response to the art of the prompt, rather than the passion or rage of a human being being human.

Gumwars

@pre You still haven't answered the question underpinning this matter; what is art? Before we can put to bed if AI generated images can be art, or not, you need to define art itself. It isn't fair to say AI art can't exist if you can't define what art is to begin with.

Adam Dalliance

@gumwars Yeah I did, I said it's what artists do.

Lying in bed all day can be art if an artist does it.

Good art is born from human passion and experience, it's an expression of their frustration and pain and joy and curiosity.

Which are all things that the machine hasn't got, and which preclude it from being an artist, and so preclude it from making art.

That's these machines that are just mashing up pixel technique anyway. It may be possible one day to build a machine which can experience joy and curiosity and longing and which is about to express that.

But these machine's aren't it.

The art of AI images is in the prompt writing, and I would rather read the prompt.

@gumwars Yeah I did, I said it's what artists do.

Lying in bed all day can be art if an artist does it.

Good art is born from human passion and experience, it's an expression of their frustration and pain and joy and curiosity.

Which are all things that the machine hasn't got, and which preclude it from being an artist, and so preclude it from making art.

Adam Dalliance

@gumwars

And an artist may use these machines in their work. If they have a story to tell, and illustrate the story with photographs or a collection of pebbles or a film of a plastic bag floating, or the pixels that fall out of a pixel grinder that's all cool and legit.

But the art is in the story there, the human communication, mind to mind, not the pebbles or pixels.

Gumwars

@pre So, you're saying it's art if and only if an artist does it. Then who is and who can be an artist? I've got more than a decade of professional training as a classical artist, but I work for a railroad, am I an artist? Is what I do through stable diffusion art, while a layperson doing the same isn't? Do you see how arbitrary your definition is?

theo⏚ ✅

@davidrevoy

Nice thought-provoking post.

Although, I'm not convinced that it's an issue for an AI to use data generated by other AI.

Just use near-slaves in 3rd world countries to to teach your system to generate something a human would expect.

Goofy 📖 🍝 :unverified:

@davidrevoy
C'est bien intéressant, en particulier sur ton mode de création qui semble passer directement de l'imagination à la réalisation dessinée sans passer par la verbalisation textuelle.

Adam

@davidrevoy Great post! You're hard work, human touch and meaning is what provides your art value. You will prevail.

boingo-00 🦊 :fluffytail:
@davidrevoy I tried Stable Diffusion and other neural networks to generate some drafts. Of course it is far from perfect, but it is good instrument to look if one or another scene does ever make sense
I want to learn how to draw, but until i can, i have a tool for playing with my thoughts
Olivier Saraja ☕️📚🦖🛸👻

@davidrevoy I feel this as the right move. Not the easier, but the right one.

It is not to the humans to provide proof of their genuine work, but to the AI generated one to be tagged as.

You have all my support, old friend!

Olm-e

@oliviersaraja @davidrevoy I agree in the argument
The label I made was a sort of satire : it's totally insane reality is now turned over upside down and people have to justify their art is human made or to restrict the use in predatory database ... I think laws and practice are evolving and hopefully dust will settle and we'll get back to more reasonable conversations
but still, artists needs to organise more to defends collectively their rights, visual artists are strangely not unionised

Pixel_Lime

@davidrevoy This is how I feel in the summer because of the hot weather.

David Revoy

@Pixel_Lime 🤣

I hope you'll have many fresh days this season!

chrismckee

@davidrevoy love this version of the 'this is fine'. My daughter loves your comics

Ivan Sagalaev :flag_wbw:

@davidrevoy completely agree with your choice. Actually creating things is what's normal, it's re-purposing of existing work that should require special attribution.

Thanks for doing your part of keeping the Web human and interesting. I enjoy your work!

LumiWorx

@davidrevoy @gumwars
... speaking as a creator for 60+ years, most of us create because we must. It isn't rooted in money or fame, or from a request. It is an imperative that sustains our soul and our very human existence.

What we create - "art" included, in every sense of the word - is born from human expression and personal experience. A Spirograph is not an artist because it mimics a human with a pen. A CPU has no form of expression, nor code, nor a pile of gears. Art is not "the process"!

David Revoy

@lumiworx @gumwars

> It is an imperative that sustains our soul and our very human existence.

Oh yes, and it took me time to realize it was a necessity to me for reaching a psychological balance.

Gumwars

@lumiworx Absolutely. I write because there are stories in my head that need to be told (even if it's only to the walls of my room). I draw because those stories need to be visualized. I paint and model because I need to see those characters in this world, not just on a paper or canvas. I use AI to iterate those ideas. I start with work that I've created and explore it in ways that would take me months to do otherwise.

LumiWorx

@gumwars what you describe seems to be a collaboration if the handoff was to another person. I won't speak for anyone else or some abstract point of view...

If I were to do the same thing, my creation would no longer be 'mine'... it would turn into someone elses vision and interpretation, and out of my control to match what I alone see. I just couldn't put my name on it.

I have been refining 'her' for 15 years, and I'm still not done. Time invested is irrelevant.

lumiworx.com/albums/3d-softwar

@gumwars what you describe seems to be a collaboration if the handoff was to another person. I won't speak for anyone else or some abstract point of view...

If I were to do the same thing, my creation would no longer be 'mine'... it would turn into someone elses vision and interpretation, and out of my control to match what I alone see. I just couldn't put my name on it.

Gumwars

@lumiworx Do you attribute the software engineers that created Blender, Maya, or Zbrush in the creation of your work? Or are those simply tools you used to actualize your vision? Granted, a truly hardcore 3d artist could create an image using plotted points and a .CSV file, but that seems a pretty harsh hurdle to get over to "own" a particular work.

LumiWorx

@gumwars The 3D model would be mine, as would the render created to present it.

Even though I'm not required or asked to... Yes, I do attribute the software when I present a render, commercial or FOSS.

However, if I were to publicly show a painting or a drawing or a film print, no, I don't credit the paint's or camera's maker, nor do I feel their branded technical expertise in their products is relevant. They are simple non-thinking tools.

LumiWorx

@gumwars I'm not suggesting anything is wrong with your approach. Visualizing another step past where something was can be a valuable tool, but for me, that wouldn't be my final output.

Gumwars

@lumiworx Nor is it mine. I'll take a character sketch, plug it into SD, and can create 100 iterations in about 10-15 minutes. I can explore different palettes, textures, backgrounds, or just riff on ideas. I can be vague or specific. Those go back under my pen (or tablet in this case) and I work on them further.

LumiWorx

@davidrevoy @gumwars

All I could offer is that #ai is not in any workflow I personally would use, and I can say with certainty that it will not be a part of it in the future. I say that with no reservation and with no judgment.

#Pollock could have been accused of being an 'accidental artist' because he chose not to use a brush and spill paint on a canvas. His work wasn't accidental, but he embraced an errant droplet or dribble of paint as long as it kept his vision intact.

LWFlouisa

@davidrevoy Your art looks awesome.

Glad other people are getting tired of the digital == aiart.

LWFlouisa

@davidrevoy I wonder if eventually if AI art consumes to consume its own byproduct, if that will eventually collapase that industry.

I make AI myself, but I very specifically such that it doesnt do web scraping and other unethical things.

So hearing FOSS is doing it gives me reason to hope.

Stemy

@davidrevoy Avec les NFT et l'art IA, il ne fait pas bon d'avoir de l'ambition artistique ces derniers temps. Je vois se profiler un monde où tous les artistes humains auront disparu, où le seul semblant d'art produit ne sera que le résultat sans âme de quelques lignes de code, ce que je qualifierai de dystopie. ça me console un peu d'apprendre que l'art AI se prenne toute cette haine. Bon, ça fait très OK boomer, mais tant pis.

David Revoy

@stemy Oui, je comprends en tout cas si ce contexte décourage certains jeunes artistes, ou les pousse vers l'aquarelle et les techniques traditionnelles. C'est l'informatique tout entier qui risque de se priver de talents.

Evv1L

@davidrevoy literally said: :blobcatthisisfinegoogly:

Good art 👍

Agonio

@davidrevoy ty for the blog post, an interesting read. I definitely agree with the problem of consent for data usage, it's an abuse of the privilege of companies with high server-power.

Just a note. You start by saying that you see people mistaking human art for AI, not able to appreciate the effort when it is there.
I believe this misses the issue. I don't think art is something you make to show off effort and skill... We need to move past that. This should resonate with the end of your post.

David Revoy

@Agonio
> not able to appreciate the effort when it is there.

Yes, you are right. It shouldn't be related to effort or skill. But I couldn't refrain to write it, probably the frustration of spending all my hours and years of experience to get my paintings and being compared with someone texting something.

Thanks for the comment.

ArtfulGenie

@davidrevoy I am a fellow creator myself and have given this much thought. I believe that very soon companies and individuals looking to profit off the use of AI-generated content will be federally regulated or even universally regulated and will be enforced to say this advertisement for example is 50% AI generated. Some companies are already doing this. That being said, I believe that you are ahead of the game by using hashtags such as #realartist #realart #humancontent #realartisty #humanlyinspired, and soon #humanartsfoundation That being said, I feel as if starting a movement that aims to become an open source platform that serves the interests of the artistic community and those that want to support it and be able to find art that is purely created by humanity. Now, a very high-tech algorithm would have to be in place to detect AI-generated content and it would be non-profit. I believe it will take the artistic community to form this movement before it is implemented by big tech, rather than big tech being ethically involved. The “human” art movement will continue to grow into an even bigger industry and I want to ensure that we as artists have as much control as we can going forward. The human art foundation so to speak, if the name is implemented and agreed upon by the community, will include all art forms - poetry, writing, video, music, songwriting, and yes even digital art and graphic design. I would love to collaborate with you and have a full conversation please let me know how we can possibly get in touch and start this movement !

@davidrevoy I am a fellow creator myself and have given this much thought. I believe that very soon companies and individuals looking to profit off the use of AI-generated content will be federally regulated or even universally regulated and will be enforced to say this advertisement for example is 50% AI generated. Some companies are already doing this. That being said, I believe that you are ahead of the game by using hashtags such as #realartist #realart #humancontent #realartisty #humanlyinspired

David Revoy

@ArtfulGenie Hey, thanks for your nice words. Welcome to the Fediverse, I checked your profile/page to try to know more about you but I saw you just joined and you still have to fill up your profile. It will be easier for me to meet you first in this way. Speaking to collaborate or engage in a full conversation is a bit early 😉

Owl!🦉

@davidrevoy

> But lately I started to enjoy this behaviour in a new way, because this faking could be what wastes all the data sets and training models

AI artists from civitai have already made a million of loras, trained on the midjourney outputs. For now it's more like compiler bootstrapping rather than "eating ourselves".
To be honest, I think the main problem with using generated images in training is that someone would say that even though the datasets contain no copyrighted hand-drawn images, it's still "unethical" , because they are generated using old models and continue this "ethics" shitpost.
In order for this to make sense, we first need to create some kind of model to which no one will have any complaints, and then start bootstrapping.

> I will continue to publish all under a permissive Creative Commons licence and with the source files, because that's how I like my art: free and libre.

Just at the moment when computer geeks came up with idea how they can use your images to create somewhat free and open source it turned out that it's forbidden. This is funny.
I understand why you may not like midjourney, firefly, dalle2 and other non-free stuff (i don't like them too), but SD is completely free, open source and can be used or modified by anyone...

> With AI, AIArtists simply type in keywords for a subject.

No, we don't, stop it. With no control and editing at all ai draws random broken shit.

@davidrevoy

> But lately I started to enjoy this behaviour in a new way, because this faking could be what wastes all the data sets and training models

AI artists from civitai have already made a million of loras, trained on the midjourney outputs. For now it's more like compiler bootstrapping rather than "eating ourselves".
To be honest, I think the main problem with using generated images in training is that someone would say that even though the datasets contain no copyrighted hand-drawn images,...

David Revoy

@lonelyowl
> SD is completely free, open source
Yes, but not Free/Libre as GPL (src en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stable_D )

> it turned out that it's forbidden.
it's not, but if you do derivation of my art, you have to keep attribution. I should get credited in this regards legally in all AI images, because my art is part of the dataset. (but I don't want, that would be a nightmare). Also, got already ethical request to train on my art davidrevoy.com/article642/scie and accepted 😉

@lonelyowl
> SD is completely free, open source
Yes, but not Free/Libre as GPL (src en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stable_D )

> it turned out that it's forbidden.
it's not, but if you do derivation of my art, you have to keep attribution. I should get credited in this regards legally in all AI images, because my art is part of the dataset. (but I don't want, that would be a nightmare). Also, got already ethical request to train on my art davidrevoy.com/article642/scie

Owl!🦉

@davidrevoy

> Yes, but not Free/Libre as GPL

It's similar to more permissive licenses, i don't think this is bad.

> I should get credited in this regards legally in all AI images

This is technically possible, pic related.
However, result image isn't even bareilly similar to your drawings, also model contains information about thousands of other artist's drawings, which maybe or maybe not used to produce this shitty example test image...

Owl!🦉

@davidrevoy

Among other things, your problem is that you reduce the whole process of using AI-art models to "entered three words - waited 8 seconds - got a picture", but this is not always the case. To be honest, I rarely use ai this way.

What do you think about this images, are they ai/unethical or not 🤔
lor.sh/@lonelyowl/110453224310

David Revoy

@lonelyowl Please feel free to publish articles, videos and tutorials about your process if you think your audience needs to be informed about your craft involving AI tools. I might reconsider my words about the simplicity of entering a prompt and hitting enter.

About the ethic, I have no idea what you are asking... what you used precisely? based on what dataset? and what you want to make with it? Also: not my job to comment on that, if you have an ethic, it's your job to communicate them.

Owl!🦉

@davidrevoy

I hardly have the patience for full-fledged tutorials or vids, but I think that I could at least do step-by-step processes for creating these pictures.
To be honest, I'm not particularly interested in organizing some ai art-education, I just want to stop being considered a subhuman.

> About the ethic, I have no idea what you are asking... what you used precisely?

The line to the pictures in this post was drawn by hand in procreate and colored by using a controlnet/canny, the model used is camelliamix_line v2 -> civitai.com/models/44195/camel

@davidrevoy

I hardly have the patience for full-fledged tutorials or vids, but I think that I could at least do step-by-step processes for creating these pictures.
To be honest, I'm not particularly interested in organizing some ai art-education, I just want to stop being considered a subhuman.

> About the ethic, I have no idea what you are asking... what you used precisely?

Resuna

@davidrevoy If we ever develop AI this will no longer be an issue. Calling generative neural networks "AI" makes my brain itch.

hairylarry

@davidrevoy@framapiaf.org

I love the insight into your thought process in this article.

Alexis :verifiedtransbian:

@davidrevoy Nice! I intentionally don't specify that I'm trans in my photos for the same reason. I want to make sure that I don't help malicious ai make it easier to discriminate against trans women via facial analysis, so I just tag myself as a woman, just like any other woman

[DATA EXPUNGED]
Badri
@davidrevoy I missed the discussion, but I love the idea of "AI eating itself"! I wrote an article speculating that this could happen, a few months ago 🐍

https://snipettemag.com/in-the-style-of/

It was exciting to see the Platformer piece you linked to talking about the same ideas! I didn't realise it's already happening though, but it's true; I don't trust Google (or even DuckDuckGo) search results the way I used to, and I'm having to scroll a lot to find genuine content 🙁

https://www.platformer.news/p/the-ai-is-eating-itself

Your art is very recognisable though and those who know you know it's certainly not AI. Also, I noticed you put the #krita hashtag here—for those who know what that is I suppose that's the most self-explanatory 😉
@davidrevoy I missed the discussion, but I love the idea of "AI eating itself"! I wrote an article speculating that this could happen, a few months ago 🐍

https://snipettemag.com/in-the-style-of/
ジョアン

@davidrevoy I will continue supporting you and your art, but, at this point, I don't think there is much anyone can do to stop the AI art. I'm glad you're not stopping

der.hans

@davidrevoy Yes, we will continue to support you!

Thanks for sharing your art with us :)

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