Why This Award-Winning Piece of AI Art Can’t Be Copyrighted::Matthew Allen’s AI art won first prize at the Colorado State Fair. But the US government has ruled it can’t be copyrighted because it’s too much “machine” and not enough “human.”
Why This Award-Winning Piece of AI Art Can’t Be Copyrighted::Matthew Allen’s AI art won first prize at the Colorado State Fair. But the US government has ruled it can’t be copyrighted because it’s too much “machine” and not enough “human.”
No. No he didn’t create it. He put words into a black box.
“He didn’t create it. He moved a mouse.”
“He didn’t create it. He put commands into a keyboard.”
“He didn’t create it. He pressed the camera trigger.”
“He didn’t create it. He threw store-bought paint at a canvas.”
“He didn’t create it. He cleaned some dirt off the wall.”
“He didn’t create it. He was inspired by gods.”
Where you see a categorical difference, I see a qualitative one. AI-generated art can be nothing more than putting words into a blackbox, but it can also be a day-long process of tweaking dozens of parameters to get what you want from the words you put into the box. A child can slather paint onto a canvas without much thought - but that doesn’t mean great artists drawing complex, intricate paintings isn’t art, does it?
Generative AI is a tool. It can do more than most tools, but still, it is something wielded by an artist.
As I’d just written in another reply here, there is a world of difference in describing an illustration and creating an illustration.
I have to say that when I focused on computer-aided graphic design, my instructors who had done that kind of work with material supplies totally felt my work was invalid.
And when I was writing essays in high-school English and getting downgraded for poor penmanship, my teacher refused to let me word-process my work, lest I write a whole essay with the touch of a button.
So yes, creators have had their efforts minimized from the dawn of time, especially as new technology makes output better or easier.
Still, this isn’t about the art, it’s about the capitalism. If we had a society where no-one had to toil for a meager existence, then artists could do their thing for the sake of creating beauty and not to earn a buck. I believe post-war social programs in the UK drove the Rock-&-Roll revolution in the 1960s (advancements in electric guitars also did some heavy lifting).
So… feed our artists?
Same goes for lightning a fire without and with a lighter.
But you are creating the image as it’s often never what you intended on the first try. If anything they are editors, and last I checked we aren’t taking any rights away from editors. Someone else made the material and “you” manipulated it into a better product or into what your vision actually was.
Editors also don’t have copyright protections on what they edit
Even if I were to grant you that generative AI is just “describing an illustration”: other people say there is a world of difference between painting something with your hands and using a mouse, yet I think digital illustration is as real as physical illustration. Yet other people say there is a world of difference between creating something from the ground up and using store-bought materials and tools, yet I don’t discount artists who do just that.
But I don’t grant you that, because if I simply describe an illustration, the generative AI will not give me anything close to what I want. I have to learn the prompting language of the model (what words and phrases result in what?), I have to learn the influence the many different parameters have on the output, and I have to learn how to use things like prompt weighting, negative prompts and the like to get what I want. It’s something completely different from describing an illustration.
And that’s ignoring things like variant generation, inpainting, outpainting and the many different things that are completely removed from just “describing an illustration”.
Learn how to make a digital illustration, learn to make an oil painting and learn to make an AI image. Then we can talk.
I can do all three (worked on comission basis as a digital illustrator and did make Sci-Fi illustrations with acrylics and ink in the past). Generating AI images is not even in the same universe as the ballpark where digital illustration and traditional painting are playing.
It’s like saying watching someone’s Let’s Play of playing GTA is “kinda similar” to driving a Formel1 sports car yourself. Because you still have to turn on your computer and find a good streamer.
Done. What do you want to talk about?
And what ballparks are there? How many ballparks exist in the realm of illustration, and where are the borders?
I just spent literally 31 seconds making this image:
According to what you write, this has a much higher artistic value than the header image of the linked article. Now please, explain to me: what value does this view bring to any discussion?
It brings value to the discussion if the discussion revolves around whether artists should be paid and how much. Whether AI images should be committed to art contests. Whether someone using AI to create an image should have copyright on that image. How much value we put on the time and effort it takes to learn artistic skills. Whether we want people to continue to take on that endeavour. Etc.
Actually I think discussing the differences and similarities between AI image generation and other forms of creating art is quite central to the issue.
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He did some touch up in photoshop before submitting it.
Touching up your photograph or painting does not make it mine.
So…he did something and then by a process something beautiful was created. How is that different from pour painting?
He put words into a box == he just tipped over a can of paint
Now I’m just hoping some idiot out there is trying to copyright melting crayons down a blank canvas.
This seems to follow a similar line of thought ( On Art In Context )
Yea, we’re well into DADA-ist territory to find interesting reference points for the timeless question of “what is art” in this discussion.
I’m curious: how do you feel this relates? Does the banana feel like it should or should not be art and/or copyrighted? Is it an energy/effort quality being compared to the end result? Or just the concept vs physical manifestation of the concept?
Because the AI controversy isn’t about art, it’s about money, and the notion that artists have to art to stay alive. Specifically, they have to please rich patrons, often by providing a thing that fits into their own vanity project. That said, it doesn’t matter how much time someone spent on a thing, whether they poured their soul into a 100,000 word volume, or taped a banana to a wall. All that matters is if it entertained a Rockefeller enough that they are willing to pay a fee.
If artists weren’t on the brink of starvation and homelessness and getting shot by law enforcement, then AI would be a new keen tool. And it’s not even that it will replace artists, but that rich guys think it’ll replace artists and it will save them from tossing some coins at riff-raff.
We actually saw this during the 2020 epidemic and lockdown, that artists given a grocery budget, a warm home and nowhere to go will get arty on their own, and by this way we could have a very robust public domain. But that’s now how we do things.
Sorry, did you take this as me coming at you? I was genuinely interested in your take on the banana’s relevance because high conceptual contemporary art is very easy to dismiss as “not art” by the layperson which makes it an interesting touch point for the AI value debate. I very much understand and agree with what you’ve said here, and you’ve described me at two separate stages of my career.
I find it fun that you mention a 100,000 word novel because I keep going back to thinking about how “a picture is worth a thousand words” is probably seeing some major economic volatility nowadays. That adage is very much in question now. Some of these prompts are getting way up there and, personally, the results very rarely look like they’re worth the effort.
As it exists, AI isn’t even a keen new tool, yet. But I am biased as someone who routinely creates visuals from scratch and uses a lot of different tools. It’s clearly mind-blowing for the folks who don’t. It is a kinda fun gadget, but it’s really no more sophisticated than good old “content-aware” and just as fiddly and commercially not useful. The prompt engineers will have words for me, but really: this tech is laughably dumb at this stage.
But I don’t believe it ever really will be keen with this mode of operation as it’s basis - all this will ever do is force the homogenization of visual anything/everything. We’ve already seen similar thanks to Pinterest and ArtStation and any other community drawing for the same reference points. Fantastic if you don’t care about visuals but uh, hope you’re really into hyper-mainstream media because that’s all it will look like.
Because you’re right, it’s only the non-artists who think it can replace artists -because they don’t actually value art, just the benefit it grants them. Not that they value the artist either, obviously. These are people who agree with AI developers that not only can visual design be formulated, but even worse that it should be to make it easier/cheaper/whatever.
But the sad reality is that it’s here. And it’s impressive enough to convince those with resources that it is worth pursuing further down this path of development. It isn’t, but they’re definitely not going to go back to carve out protections for the creative community. So we are stuck with a few options.
-adapt - work it into your flow because you’ll have to at this rate. Sucks, but they fucked the game.
-abolish - yea, we’re not going get that far, but we might be able to maintain this copyright denial which will keep it from replacing jobs by way of being unusable content.
-compete - obviously it’s going to be impossible to do so directly as an artist versus an AI for output, but keep in mind this still just the first wave of this concept. Future iterations of the concept (I’m talking specifically not future versions of current tools) can still be about challenging the basis this technology operates on. Something ethically designed to respect and reward the human behind every element the AI interacts with. They’d love for us to think they’re too dominant to challenge, but look at how many copycats exist already. There’s tons of room for sending this wave to the obsolete pile.
So he did make it. The tool can’t generate anything without something feeding it prompts. I mean technically it can but it will just be random totally incoherent stuff.