A.I. - Where Do I Stand?

I have thought about this for a long time and mostly kept my mouth closed about it as I watch my friends, family, peers, and colleagues argue over both stances of this ordeal, whether to embrace or completely resist and eliminate all traces of this technology from our lives at every level. 

For me, I feel like I'm standing in the middle whether everyone is tugging me back and forth in either direction as I can see the sound justifications from both sides. 

FROM AN ARTIST "THE CREATIVE" MINDSET

Every single day, I question whether or not that label/moniker is the appropriate classification for what I do when I question and disgrace with everything from the "conventional/traditional" artist mindset. If I were honest with myself, I would call myself a creative more than an artist.

The Good I see in embracing this technology

• Could aid in conceptualizing ideas from clients and artists to produce pieces faster.

• Aid clients in visualizing ideas commissioned work to relay to artists in a much more coherent manner, thus eliminating the need for numerous revisions. This would free up commissioned artists to take on more clients and support their income/way of life easier. 

• Aid in reducing time in workflow in terms of creating multiple similar pieces, especially in the digital art spaces. I realize that this can already be done with Photoshop but this can expand on that. 

• Offer a glimpse of different styles and themes of art that can be applied to an existing work at a press of a button without extensively researching, learning, and applying that particular style or theme. i.e. You can imitate and create work in the style(s) of your favorite artists with ease. 

I feel like I should clarify right off the bat that I have absolutely no problem with the assistive AI nor the technology and applications being used in medicine and science. If that technology can be used to cure cancer and identify other deadly illnesses to treat and eliminate them sooner, then I'm all for it. 

What I don't agree with is the "hustle culture" mindset where everyone is encouraged to be profiting off of their hobbies and/or interests. Otherwise, it's seen as a waste of your time, effort, and ultimately, your life as a whole. But with this technology, a lot of those content creators who have devoted their entire way of living to providing some content have a means to make that never-ending workload a tad easier on them. I don't agree with it, but I won't knock anyone's hustle to keep food on the table for their families. No one is made to keep up that hustle mindset of endless content without either burning out completely or just quitting altogether. 

The Bad I see in embracing this technology

• Encourages laziness and lackluster quality in favor to quantity over quality. 

• Pay to win mentality in the same vein as live-service gaming ~ The more you spend on said AI software, the more elaborate results. This creates customers trapped into this addictive ecosystem of subscriptions and tiers to continue churning out more images and videos while allowing the users to have more chances or rather "instances" to generate what they want. 

• Creates a double standard when teachers, mentors, and peers are championing this technology while urging you to study the fundamentals when they aren't practicing what they preach in the least when it comes to applying that knowledge to their own AI output. 

• AI has created a flood of spam and utter cesspool in terms of the oversaturation of AI generated imagery and video across every platform. Fetishes and smut from all genres have championed it, forcing a lot of creatives to submit or give into its demands. AI has given the average person the excuse to call themselves artists without putting any legitimate work into studying the artform nor practicing/honing their craft in any means whatsoever outside of entering prompts and waiting for the generated results/output.

Meet Evie Decker, an A.I.-created digital influencer. She's not the first and she definitely won't be the last. 

Look on Instagram, Fanvue, Twitter/X, Facebook, and OnlyFans (to a lesser extent since they have taken steps to mitigate against A.I.-generated influencers profiting off their platform) and you will see a wealth of these fake models with perfect curves and features looking to sink their claws into you and make thirsty (read: horny) followers into spending their hard-earned money on them on these platforms. Fanvue openly invites and encourages this new age take on catfishing to a distributing degree and allows these creators to make just as much if not more money than most OnlyFans models on that platform. 

It's hard enough for those genuine thirst-trap accounts to find stable footing when both Instagram and Patreon are cracking down on adult-oriented content, then there's a move to do the same with how both YouTube and Twitch has groomed an entire culture of these influencers/models "pretend" to be interested into gaming to attract viewers of all ages to seek out their adult-oriented content. It was bad when everyone was at home during the COVID-19 lockdowns and now it's even worse when anyone can create an avatar without even showing their genuine face and garner a following like this with a genuine voice and reacts to feedback in real-time. It's borderline terrifying what people are using this technology for in terms of malicious behavior just for a profit. 

Don't believe me? Look up how Ava Starz showed up at a Lakers game and fooled majority of the users on the Internet who saw her photos on Instagram. 

I honestly can see the appeal when it's even more foolproof than catfishing since the creator doesn't even have to go making a one-to-one copy of some random model's social media pages. Creating an A.I.-generated influencer/celebrity/personality from scratch eliminates that fear and dread from the creator(s) where they are hoping and praying that the person whose identity that they stole never gets wind of it. 

I have seen some content creators go as far as creating interactive games where the A.I. mate/influencer learns your personal tastes and it continues the game to satisfy your preferences, who matter how kinky or disturbing they may be. 

(Laughs) This is going to either put Nev (creator of MTV's Catfish) out of business or create a whole new wealth of stories for a totally new generation of victims if this continues. 

It's both frustrating and soulcrushing to get excited to see one of my favorite artists, writers, creatives, or just one of my many peers across all walks of life, show up on social media or one of these numerous platforms where we share our work and I instantly recognize that work to be AI-generated.

Before people start bitching at me, I'm not against the fact that they are creating AI generated content. In the words of comedian Roy Wood Jr., "If that's your crab leg, then eat it! It's none of my business!" 

What bothers me is when I see that it's low effort image/video generation or the literature is obviously written by ChatGPT or similar applications. There's numerous errors/flaws in the work that those same people would chew me out and nit-pick if it existed in my own man-made work, yet it's openly accepted over their own genuine work. I have lost count at how many writers whose work I stopped reading mid-paragraph when I realize that whatever generator they used is repeating the same patterns, phrases, and word structure over and over. It annoys me as someone who is constantly told to join these various communities and circles online to share content and I'm seeing these are the same people who preach about perfection and striving for the best version of your work they aren't even doing it themselves. 

To my peers (along with anyone else) who are actively using this AI software to generate content and take it from there to edit and tweak extensively to your own means without it just being a generic output that you paid to win for, I'm NOT talking about you. Most of you put in the work and it shows. Those who don't, I have made no qualms about expressing my dissatisfaction in said pieces. The flaws are nearly non-existent in your AI usage and it doesn't look like everything else that everyone else is churning out in the software across the board, whether they are an artist or not.

The only people I notice who aren't speaking up, challenging, nor acknowledging the problems with AI is presenting and threatening our current way of life are the people who genuinely don't care about the long-term effects, those who only care about generating as much "content" as possible and fuck everyone else as long as the money keeps coming in droves, and the people who it hasn't affected in the least (yet) in their own everyday lives/they are too ignorant to acknowledge it.

As much as I hate to get into politics, but our President currently in the United States is the poster child of promoting and championing ignorance and closed-minded thinking. By backing this technology, we have seen critical thinking diminishing on a widespread level - not just in this country but globally, at an alarming rate. As someone who works at the university/college level of education, I see it every single day currently over the last few years. Students are quick to race to opt for ChatGPT to do their assignments for them instead of doing the work for themselves. No one wants to do their own research or write their own papers, especially when you see Harvard graduates bragging about ChatGPT helping them get their degree(s).

II. THE CONSUMER MINDSET

The Good

• AI assistants on devices aid your daily routines, regimes, and schedules to optimize and maximize your time. 

• AI tailors experiences and interactions across devices/browsers to suit your tastes and preferences. 

• AI creates EXACTLY what you want, given the "right" prompts and resource/reference material fed into it ~ For an artist, that is additive, especially when one would spend their entire lives obsessing over chasing the white whale of mastery and perfection to be able to create those mental images precisely as we see them in our head. Artists and non-artists gravitate towards this magically opportunity to skip past the years of agony and trial and error of what you have to learn, study, apply towards mastery. 

As someone whose IRL job is within the space of higher education, I see it everyday in terms of students looking for the easy way out in terms of wanting for an easier path to the finish line instead of challenging themselves via the conventional means of learning and applying their knowledge. They want to plug any and all problems through ChatGPT and get answers instantly without any research any footwork/additional effort. I have to constantly remind my god son/youngest nephew about this all the time to use his mind and not excessively rely on this technology as he is going to be in a rude awakening when he comes across a situation where he cannot think nor solve these problems for himself without the technology doing it for him. On top of that, the technology isn't without flaws, largely due to its users being highly dependent on it. This causes them to ignore and neglect those flaws for the sake of quicker results and faster output for they can direct their energies elsewhere. That on itself is a double-edged sword. 

This creates a double-standard where you have people across the board demanding perfection, yet don't provide that in their own work. 

I know that I can't escape it either as there's going to come a day sooner more than later when I will have to adopt this technology into my life in some capacity to continue functioning or I will be simply left behind if I'm not already to some extent. My peers, friends, and even family members are actively using it in their creative spaces on and off social media. I see content creators across several mediums that I actively follow and digest their content using it to create their thumbnails, banners, posters, and ads to promote their work. I don't care for it all looking the same but heck, they are getting shit done. 

(Laughs) Seeing AI-generated flyers like that reminds me of my snobbish graphic design friends from college who would give me shit for using Comic Sans font as it was the worst thing ever conceived, yet we're seeing stuff like this today roughly two decades later. At least I had the excuse of liking that font from being a comic book nerd. What is everyone else's excuse with this? To this day, I haven't seen a single "major" content creator nor influencer who isn't using that template for their ads/flyers. It's fucking EVERYWHERE. It saddens me more every single day to see individuality exchanged for generic, bland, cookie-cutter, low-effort content. 

I won't lie. I thought it was cool when I saw a few of these show up in a few of my e-fedding circles among the few people I do keep in touch with from that community, but then when I saw this same style showing up in EVERYTHING, it stopped being cool and unique when everyone was doing the EXACT same thing. How does your content stand apart from everyone else's when everyone's flyers look all the same? You don't know what type of event you're looking at when all of these designs merely blend together as if they are promoting the same show every single day of the week at first glance. There's nothing unique nor distinguishing to identify that work to a particular artist(s) nor creator. AI is transforming art into a "template" that is universally applied and adopted by everyone until they move onto the next flavor of the month that these programs have scraped resources to develop into the next one from whoever is the next creative they want to feed (read: steal) into it to learn from. What is going to happen when these programs run out of artists to imitate, copy, and steal from? 

So... Where Does This Leave Me?

I'm sure someone is going to chime in and say that this isn't different than that fad that consumed the superhero art spaces a few years ago where it was one specific artist who was offering to recreate anyone's original characters in the same style as Justice League Unlimited from the beloved DC Animated Universe. I can understand the appeal as I would love to see my OCs in the style of Jim Lee, Michael Turner, or Marc Silvestri's art styles. At the same time, I would want to pay them for the original work instead of getting a free handout or some mock imitation/impersonation of their genuine work from secondary artist. In that scenario, I never got any of my OCs made in that JLU style as it was merely an imitation, not the genuine byproduct of the artists/team who championed that art style. Nothing against the artist who was imitating that style and doing it for free (I believe so, if not feel, free to correct me...) but at the end of the day, it was a counterfeit of the original product. 

Once again, I feel like I should clarify that I'm not knocking anyone for collecting that type of work as I know a few peers who collect the artwork of artists of their OCs in that particular artist's style, whether they are imitating another artist's unique style or has an unique one of their own. I have a private bin where I cherish and preserve the art that my peers, friends, and family members have given me as far back as high school, especially those where we were struggling in our youth to copy our favorite anime and comic book artists. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. What I am against is blatantly ripping off artists and their styles that most of them have spent lifetimes mastering without giving any credit just to fulfill that quota of "content" to output on your platform of choice. 

Over the past week, I felt that had to unfollow one of my favorite toytubers who was making light of and completely dismissing the concerns of AI in terms employment and laughing at Americans struggles in this current economy all because he flexing that he has $10,000+ paycheck (tax-free) coming in every two weeks. That doesn't sit well with me.

How can you dismiss AI isn't affecting jobs when Andy Park, who was the Creative Director/Director of Visual Development at Marvel Studios (examples of his work can be seen above), was terminated from Marvel Studios a few months ago. Park worked for Marvel Studios for over 16 years, spanning over 40 films and television shows. Whenever those Making of artbooks would come out from Marvel Studios' projects, I would often go out of my way to pick those up, no matter how I felt about said project, just to see his concept art for those films and TV shows. 

Marvel Studios were already put on blast for resorting to AI usage for the opening sequence to Secret Invasion, when that show already had a lot going against it in the first place before we even discuss that lackluster narrative in long-form someday. Yeah, yeah, yeah... I'll get around to a long form review/discussion on that show eventually, but that's besides the point right now... 

If that is what we have to look forward to in the wake of Park's termination in terms of visuals for the MCU following Avengers: Doomsday (which was the last film he had any involvement in prior to his termination), then I'm not too optimistic about it if Marvel Studios is going to dive head first into pushing AI-generated visuals to the forefront. It's a recipe for disaster and I know it's not going to be received well, if not at all. 

The effect of AI on employment doesn't stop with Park, but I have seen it trinkling down to every level of art, game design, graphic design, and illustration. Gamers see it happening in real-time as Microsoft, one of the biggest pioneers and companies championing the push for AI has laid off over 300+ employees, shut down multiple studios, and citing that they are going to have to make even more cuts to justify the demands of supporting AI. I have several peers who are full-time artists and (ghost)writers, who are struggling to find work period for commissions when they have to compete with consumers who rather just opt for AI to satisfy that itch for something they need designed or written. 

The being "left behind" rebuttal when it comes to AI art is comical and ironic for me personally. I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm already painfully left behind. I gave up on art in the early 2000s during my freshman year of college. I came back to it roughly a decade later, only to have to relearn and learn technology that has left me in the dust that my peers use easily as breathing in comparison. I quit when PhotoShop was in its infantcy, only to come back to art currently and completely everything is digital while I'm still trying to making archaic art with a pencil and paper. My jaw is on the floor when I hear that a lot of modern artists don't even do nor use line art in their 2D work(s). Even in that medium, I'm behind academically as well to the point where I have to constantly remind and refresh myself on the fundamentals of art and the principles of design. I don't know where to begin in terms of anything digital when it comes to art to the point it's daunting and anxiety-inducing to me. Don't even get me started on how lost I am with lighting, shadows, and inking methods. But no... I'm constantly told that I SHOULD know this stuff being a student of film theory. That's all on me for that shortcoming in my education and I will gladly own that. In relation to generative AI though, I don't see the point of piling on something else to learn when there's far more vital skills that I lack. And I'm fine with that being the price I have to pay down the road. I will gladly cross that bridge when I get to it as I obviously have enough on my plate enough as is. 

Closing Thoughts

I reiterate, I'm not telling anyone what to do in terms of how they want to express themselves or approach their craft in whatever medium they choose, whether it is man-made or AI-generated. What I am saying is be conscious of what your actions are doing in the grand scheme of things. Maybe, just maybe that generated video of your favorite celebrity fulfilling whatever fetish/kink you have might not be worth destroying a community, poisoning drinking water for generations to come, or putting artists out of work all to build that data center and continue ramping RAM prices through the roof to justify this technology. 

Is it all bad? No, as there's definitely some good to be had with this technology with the right moral compass as with any technology to point it in the right direction. It's a cool toy to play with, but I feel that people are going too far in terms of allowing it to dictate and control so many avenues of our daily lives to the point that we neglect, ignore, and flat out abandon the right to think and learn for ourselves. We currently live in a world when so many of our simplest of freedoms are being taken away day by day, especially in the United States. Once we give away our freedom of expression, ability to learn, and our intellectual curiosity - all for machines to do these things for us, then all hope is lost for us as a species. And I fear that day is coming far sooner.