Netflix Japan uses AI in anime (artists not happy)

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The problem with AI is that it can’t create art.

It absorbed other people’s images and melds them together.

So it’s basically just plagiarizing. Which is a pretty uncool way to lose a job.

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My wife and I follow one artist, who goes by Loish online, who confirmed that she discovered that one of the AI developers used her art without permission or compensation to feed it into their software.

AI's not smart enough, as you said, to actually "create" anything - it's ripping off real artists and simply combining things.

AI is better designed to put accountants out of work than artists, but for whatever reason AI developers went this route instead.

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she discovered that one of the AI developers used her art without permission or compensation to feed it into their software.

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Viewing an art piece and then creating your own piece with stylistic elements of the original is not theft. It's how creativity naturally occurs. Of course, an artist with a vested interest in protecting their income source would argue against anything that devalues their revenue stream. That protectionist instinct does not make their argument valid. Especially when the human's style is based on their perception and study of everything that's come before them. Fair Use dictates that a substantive change to the original is a new product. Regardless of the originators butthurt.

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So you're comparing taking other's people work, running it through an application, and generating a similar piece in a few moments to a person observing various art forms, spending years honing their craft, and generating something where you MIGHT see the influence of other artists?

Is this a "how dare you develop a skill I don't have, now I want stuff that makes you irrelevant" mentality?

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No, this is a "your skills have been made an obsolete time sink due to an advance in technology" mentality. You see, when guns became more effective, archers who had honed their skills over years became obsolete, as the skill set needed for success changed. Archers still exist, but in a niche market now, just as the skilled hand artist will become. The new tech opens new opportunities. Instead of the greatest technical skill in a niche being the most valuable, now the person with the most creative ideals when it comes to prompts will have a higher market value. The "arts" aren't dead because of this technological change, they are transformed.

Think about it this way, the youtuber artist bitching about it uses photos taken by another person as a reference. Yet, he/she probably doesn't see her transmutation of the form he's/she's copying as theft, because they're making changes to it and recreating it in another medium. The youtuber cannot see the irony of their own position and you, a blind consumer, do not see it either.

There is a class action lawsuit filed about this (maybe more than one?). I guess the courts will decide.

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So basically what you're saying is that you do not believe that the creation of art is a worthy pursuit, and your bias in this regard is the principal reason for your opinion.

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Define "worthy".

The worth of something is determined by the individual. So, do I believe that producing art has value? Yes, for the producer. Does it have value for the consumer? Only if/when the consumer finds value in it. In a survival scenario, there is no time for art, so it's value then is zero. Once needs are met, production of art may become valuable as free time is available, a luxury. You seem to be elevating the "artist" who sees their production as "a work", when it is actually just "work", non-utilitarian work.

The machinery has cut the "workload" into a microsecond, thus devaluing the cost of production. Further, it has devalued detail work as the detail time has been eliminated. I understand why commercial artists are freaking out. However, many of them gleefully told West Virginia coalminers to "learn to code" when their jobs became obsolete. It appears that the coalminers have indeed learned to code.

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You don't seem to understand what "cultural development" even is.

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Educate me.

From my understanding, culture develops from shared ideals. A person, or group, does something unique and then the surrounding people or groups copy it and add their own twists. Common motifs develop over time and a style or trend can be seen. This continues until a new element is added from within the group, or from contact with other cultures. Then the process starts anew.

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No, this is a "your skills have been made an obsolete time sink due to an advance in technology" mentality.

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Except if people don’t keep making art for the AI to steal it stops creating new art. It just keeps remixing the same styles.

Humans can adapt new styles. AI needs to see a style to recreate it.

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No, this is a "your skills have been made an obsolete time sink due to an advance in technology" mentality. You see, when guns became more effective, archers who had honed their skills over years became obsolete, as the skill set needed for success changed. Archers still exist, but in a niche market now, just as the skilled hand artist will become. The new tech opens new opportunities. Instead of the greatest technical skill in a niche being the most valuable, now the person with the most creative ideals when it comes to prompts will have a higher market value. The "arts" aren't dead because of this technological change, they are transformed. Think about it this way, the youtuber artist bitching about it uses photos taken by another person as a reference. Yet, he/she probably doesn't see her transmutation of the form he's/she's copying as theft, because they're making changes to it and recreating it in another medium. The youtuber cannot see the irony of their own position and you, a blind consumer, do not see it either.

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Wildly more articulate than I could have put it, but this is my exact sentiment. Well said, sir.

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Literally all "art" is. A human brain remixing things that it's seen is similar to a computer remixing available inputs.

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Human brain is connected to a soul.

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Human brain is connected to a soul.

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There’s a very real philosophical underpinning to all of this found in the mind-body problem. Materialists think the human mind is an algorithm exclusively based on the hardware of a meat computer we call the brain, and see the notion of creativity as either illusory or something that can be modeled as an algorithm.

I fall into a different camp, and while I think there are useful analogies to explain how a neural network is trained to optimize performance that compare it to human learning, we would be remiss to lose sight that these are merely analogies. There are fundamental differences in the “learning” process and computational methods like backpropagation aren’t feasible biological explanations for human learning.

These algorithms aren’t capable of any form of understanding like a human is, and by conflating these algorithms with the human mind I think all we end up doing is dehumanizing the conscious experience.

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If you raised a human in a bubble with no art and gave them paint and a window they could produce a unique painting.

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Well put, and the concept of “understanding” is IMO central to why this is so.