As a (I dare to say) rather advanced hobbyist digital painter, I don't want generative AI. I want a good image search engine + database.
When I say "a woman looking outside from her seat on a train" I don't want it to generate such an image for me. I want it to literally give me existing images that more or less fit the description, with full credit. If it's from a movie I'd like to know the movie's name and timestamp and the actor's name and everything.
I know the difference between referencing and plagiarism. And if I'm going to cross the line, at least I know I am the one who makes this decision and takes the legal risk. With the current generative AI I don't even know who holds accountability. Likely nobody, or worse, an unaware me.
This is why I think the copyright law is very broken. If someone made the database I described above, their pants, house and first-born would be sued off. But I'd argue it's a not just more useful, but also more ethical product than generative AIs.
doright · 1h ago
Coincidentally I was also looking for one of these, does this work?
Both GenAI and that database could exist - they'd complement each other perfectly. You could use generative models in the privacy of your home, for reference or inspiration or to quickly explore possibilities, and then paint like you normally do - or even use generated images as they came out. When the time comes for you to publish your work, you could use the database with an image search engine, to compare your work against already published works, and determine if you haven't accidentally violated copyright, or created something that could be seen as plagiarism.
Similarly, other people could use that database to check newly published work, making it easier to detect and stop obvious copyright infringement.
Problem is, the copyright system - both as a body of laws and as a spirit and mindset behind them - prevents the database from ever being created. At least in any form other than "yes / maybe?" responses from comparing perceptual hashes; go beyond that, someone comes out of the woodwork, seeking royalties. Reverse image search engines exist, but are barely helpful because of that.
Anyway;
> And if I'm going to cross the line, at least I know I am the one who makes this decision and takes the legal risk. With the current generative AI I don't even know who holds accountability. Likely nobody, or worse, an unaware me.
Ultimately, you're still the one making the decision. No one forces you to publish whatever a generative model produced in response to your prompt. It's up to you what to do with the output. You also exercise creative control - both during and after generation.
The legal situation of GenAI in general is still uncertain - but at the very least, you're still in control of whether you're referencing or plagiarising in a moral sense.
creer · 17h ago
> I want a good image search engine + database.
You would think we'd be there already. But search as a field has died. Hopefully temporarily but pretty dead. This is interesting because good search is supposedly how Google make their profit. And for years now they have obsessed about anything but good search. It's now a given that a google search will give you anything BUT what you want. I know: there are upstarts - are the upstarts that good? For example, is there a great image search upstart?
qbane · 1d ago
My educated guess is that the profit for such a "magic" search engine is way too small than a magic "painter" that is more likely to replace a real artist. So the AI tech companies prefer the latter. It is all about the business model of the world we are in.
TeMPOraL · 20h ago
GenAI models are meant to create, not retrieve. The model being able to sometimes reproduce copyrighted material in training data is an unintended side effect, and usually requires the user to intentionally cause it to happen. Their business model is indeed a "magic painter" (and/or "magic writer", "magic coder", etc.), which is IMHO valuable and fair - again, it's meant to create, not reproduce or retrieve.
qbane · 3h ago
I indeed confused LLM/foundation models and GenAIs. They are both the current tech trend and both fall under the category of AI productivity tools, and I agree with your point.
1vuio0pswjnm7 · 1d ago
"I want a good image search engine + database."
One could hire a software developer to write such a program. But, in general, software developers can be untrustworthy and prone to stealing ideas for their own selfish purposes.
Before Mark Zuckerberg dropped out of college, he answered a classified ad from someone in the real world^1 who wanted to create a website that could search a database of images. Nothing to do with "social media". IIRC the target market was the auto insurance industry (I could be wrong).
1. Not Winklevoss brothers. That is another story.
Zuckerberg never finished the job but he did create his own website which searched and served up images of students at Harvard. He was of course sued by this person after Facebook became popular.
1vuio0pswjnm7 · 22h ago
Perhaps it is not a coincidence that so many software developers commenting online seem to have an extreme dislike for intellectual property.^1 It interferes with the stealing and copying they practice to compensate for their won lack of creativity. For example so-called "Big Tech" companies that do not produce any content despite billion of dollars at their disposal; instead they copy and store other peoples' work, so-called "user-generated content" (UGC).
1. With the exception of any intellectual property underlying software licenses. Microsoft wants a fair use exception for copyrighted works used by OpenAI but aat the same time it aggressively pursues copyright enforcement over its software, such as "Windows" and "Office".
cwsx · 1d ago
> One coulld hire a software developer to write such a program. But, in general, software developers can be untrustworthy and prone to stealing ideas for their own selfish purposes.
Ehhhh? Yes there are examples of that, as there are for any arbitrary group of humans you could select, but [anecdotally] I've noticed the opposite... it's not uncommon to find a passionate developer that's only interested in the challenge/problem solving aspect - it's a lot less common for say.. real estate agents.
I don't really get the point you're making beyond "people be greedy sometimes" (which I do agree with, don't get me wrong).
dmbche · 1d ago
Read the title as an order to reproduce myself
dev0p · 1d ago
For a second there I thought it was a think piece by Shinzo Abe.
danesparza · 1d ago
... Shinzo Abe who was assassinated in 2022???
rusty__ · 1d ago
I think he means Kobo Abe?
pb060 · 1d ago
I had the same interpretation and in fact there's some truth in it. I recently did procreate and realized how primitive AI is compared to human beings and how long it might take for it to catch up.
sshine · 1d ago
The rate of learning for infants is rapid, but unlike LLMs. Every day there are very small steps that eventually add up. The size and quantity of each step is often not that impressive, but the number of tries from first random attempt at something to consistent behaviour is impressively low.
TeMPOraL · 1d ago
Same. Completely forgot that there's a product with that name. I mean, it's already hard to read that name with a straight face under normal circumstances, but they've really outdone themselves with this headline.
terrib1e · 1d ago
Same
protoster · 1d ago
The " – Procreate" is absolutely not necessary in the title, the submitter knew what they were doing.
TeMPOraL · 1d ago
It's part of the webpage title itself (which uses the subtitle of the article + " – Procreate", so there's at least some plausible deniability :).
protoster · 1d ago
They're complicit
jjulius · 1d ago
Oh, the humanity! How dare they!
/s
ChrisMarshallNY · 1d ago
Nicely said. For those who don't know, iPad Pro + Apple Pencil Pro + Procreate == awesome art tool
criddell · 1d ago
For me, Procreate is the killer app that made me want an iPad and my 7 year old iPad Pro is my favorite computer.
I can't believe it's only $13 (I think I paid $10 many years ago). It's one of those rare apps that I wish was more expensive because a $13 purchase doesn't feel sustainable.
I should probably sign up for a Procreate course. The app is so deep that I know I'm only using the most basic features. If anybody has books or courses to recommend, I'm all ears.
svantana · 1d ago
The marginal cost of selling software is so small that with enough customers, almost any price is sustainable. They are estimated to earn $2M/month from this app [1], which should be more than enough to cover their costs. 150k new customers per month is pretty incredible, when you think about it.
Well, people who make a lot of money, do so, by selling lots of cheap, as opposed to few expensive, and I think that Procreate may be one of the best-selling apps ever.
I remember Corel Painter. It was about $400, and did many similar things.
I think it may no longer be around.
Tomte · 1d ago
Last release in 2022, so probably still alive.
rollcat · 1d ago
I say this to everyone who keeps telling me that an iPad would make a better jailbroken Linux computer than what it currently is today.
A close friend of mine (art college degree) has switched from oil / acrylic / watercolor to iPad - after trying it once.
criddell · 1d ago
There seems to be demand for a general purpose tablet computer and stylus similar to an Apple iPad and Pencil. I wonder why nobody makes one?
crq-yml · 19h ago
There are movements towards making these. It's an integrated SW+HW stack problem and Apple has had years of leadership on that space. Times are changing.
What you would see in the past are "PC or Android with a tablet manufacturer's sticker on it". Wacom has a history of occasionally licensing their stuff for a laptop. And XPPen, for example, has made a few in the "Magic Drawing Pad" series now and they needed a few iterations to move away from being a generic OSI tablet to actually using their digitizer tech. These products don't excite tech enthusiasts - a fully integrated device, as opposed to screen and digitizer, comes with more concerns about all-round performance and value - and so far, the premium on them makes them compete with iPads. But there is tremendous demand for it - seemingly every "art kid" sees an iPad and Procreate as a milestone, because that combination is what the content creators they watch are using.
criddell · 1h ago
> Times are changing.
Are they? The iPad is in it's 15th year now. Apple has shown exactly what needs to be done yet there isn't enough interest in the open source community to develop (or sponsor development of) a solution. I don't see much evidence of change.
> because that combination is what the content creators they watch are using
But also because it's the best hardware and software and can be relatively inexpensive, especially if you are willing to buy used.
ChrisMarshallNY · 1d ago
Not enough demand to make it worth the effort.
Making a screen tablet is really hard. The iPad is general-purpose enough (and does not require a stylus) to make it worth the effort (and price -they ain't cheap), but a specialized one would likely fizzle, due to a limited customer base.
rollcat · 1d ago
I keep wondering. Is there even a decent FOSS tablet (as opposed to desktop) environment? There are plenty of reasons why iPads and Macs have vastly different UIs. KDE seems strictly desktop-focused. Gnome seems to be pulling in both directions, but a considerable amount of functionality is only accessible thru crammed menus and buttons.
What about the apps? I've heard really good things about Krita, but what's the killer app?
queenkjuul · 1d ago
KDE actually has the best tablet interface I've tried, but it's still a long way behind iOS and Android
intended · 1d ago
For artists theres many options and you end up paying for those products, quite a bit.
neepi · 1d ago
Yeah happy customer here for that combo. There is nothing that even gets close to it.
ChrisMarshallNY · 1d ago
Remember when Wacom tablets were supposed to deliver that?
The iPad/Pencil combo knocks it into a cocked hat.
The kicker is that the Cintiq is around the same price (or more), and is less ergonomic.
jsheard · 1d ago
iPads can be a bit more ergonomic than Cintiqs, but if you can deal with the pen-screen disconnect then classic non-screen tablets are significantly more ergonomic than either, on top of being significantly cheaper. YMMV though, some people need that pen-screen connection.
neepi · 1d ago
Yeah. Cintiq isn’t much use when you’re sitting in a field in the middle of nowhere sketching.
Kichererbsen · 1d ago
as someone who's eyeing this combo (for a beginner) - does it need to be the iPad Pro or will i be able to get away with an iPad Air?
criddell · 1d ago
You will probably be very happy with the Air. I'd recommend the big one.
I use a 2018 13" iPad Pro and I love that size because it's basically the same size as a sheet of 8.5x11 (or A4) paper. It's the perfect size for reading and marking up PDFs too.
Last year I bought and returned the M4 iPad Pro because they didn't make a Smart Keyboard Folio for it which I prefer to the more heavy duty Magic Keyboard. So I'm still using my 7 year old iPad worrying about what I'm going to do when it dies. I thought for sure somebody would make a knock off, but nobody has made anything that I think is as good as the Apple product.
For me, Procreate and GoodNotes are a killer combination that justify owning the device.
About the same. The 120Hz on the pro feels very slightly better and has slightly lower latency. This does help a tiny bit for detail work. But you get used to not having it after about 30 mins.
alienreborn · 1d ago
Air works fine
ChrisMarshallNY · 1d ago
And there's a big Air (same size as the Pro).
I do suggest splurging for the more expensive Pencil Pro, though.
If you want to go the other way, the Mini works with the Pencil Pro (I have both).
imaginationra · 1d ago
"AI" is just a tool like any other- creatives will use these tools to make things they couldn't make before because of the limits of their budget and/or scale-
I just made an original animated feature film where I sang %75 of the roles by using an AI tool(audimee.com) to convert my voice into others- I couldn't do that before- we're now creating Portuguese and Russian language versions of the songs with a tool that has a $20 usd/month subscription! Couldn't do that before!
For creatives/artists- As long as we don't use AI to generate ideas we're good, human generated ideas are a must- bring on all the AI tools!
The whole built on theft thing- as a human film director I could rattle off endless examples just in cinema of human directors "stealing" premises, sequences, shots, styles etc from other filmmakers with no consequences- so why stop the AI now?
I see the "theft" as being democratized now- large studios/entities with large resources have always been able to legally "steal" so with these AI tools I guess we all can now?
I make original animated films, games, music, art etc etc and I feel no "threat" at all from AI-
I feel the opposite as I'm excited to see what things they will allow me to do next as a micro-studio with limited budgets but unlimited creativity.
Aesthetics are dead now imo because of generative AI as anyone can be any "style" so now it is all about ideas- original human ideas.
kumarvvr · 1d ago
> $20 usd/month subscription!
A majority of which will go to already rich people.
Its a sad state now, and a sad state in the future for humanity, where technology enables and accelerates accumulation of wealth, aided and abetted by the very consumers it consumes.
snk · 1d ago
No, it isn't, wealth is good. More readily creating and delivering value is good.
kumarvvr · 1d ago
Wealth, at a reasonable level of distribution.
Total wealth is a meaningless metric.
t0bia_s · 1d ago
What is a definition of "reasonable"?
acheron · 1d ago
Usually it's "anyone with more money than me has too much".
Tiberium · 1d ago
Regarding "we're now creating Portuguese and Russian language versions of the songs" - have you contacted any native speakers of those languages to listen to those songs? Since the translation part isn't that hard, making it actually sound native and nice is hard.
imaginationra · 1d ago
Native speakers are the ones doing the re-writing of the lyrics in those languages. The ai tool just converts the say Russian singer voice into different voices.
u5wbxrc3 · 1d ago
> I see the "theft" as being democratized now- large studios/entities with large resources have always been able to legally "steal" so with these AI tools I guess we all can now?
You don't see any issue with machine learning models trained on huge amounts of copyrighted and patented materials basically scraped from the internet. Yes you can make your animated film and audio but at the cost of hugely controversial and non-transparent generative models.
> Aesthetics are dead now imo because of generative AI as anyone can be any "style" so now it is all about ideas- original human ideas.
This argument kind of conflicts with itself, no? Aesthetics are inferred from ideas either inspired or original.
spankibalt · 1d ago
The proposition that "aesthetics is dead" because of [insert new thing here] is one of practically comical ignorance. I have never seen someone with at least a modicum of competence make it; it carries the same desperate, self-validating stench as "history is dead" or "truth is dead", etc.
imaginationra · 1d ago
No I don't see it as theft- in that I choose to not be a part of the formal film industry- I don't "monetize" any of my work- I have nothing that can be stolen but my aesthetics- but aesthetics are dead imo- they no longer have value- as an artist my ideas are what is valuable- and no ML/AI etc can "steal" my ideas as I haven't thought of them yet- my art and ideas are an expression of my soul- no machine will ever have a soul so I'm not threatened one bit my Ai etc
u5wbxrc3 · 1d ago
If I as an artist make a great piece of art, you don't think I should be compensated for it. If I complete a surgery or drive a truck which all of them are byproducts of ideas and knowledge I should be compensated for them, not just for thinking of them. You see the problem here? I don't want to pay for an idea of art, I want the complete and original piece made by the artist. As for if they generate the art using some machine learning model, they need to disclose that so I can make conscious choice.
imaginationra · 1d ago
Yes I do think we should be compensated for it, and we are- when we talk of compensation that usually refers to money- I'm referring to other forms of compensation-
I feel compensated on a spiritual level for my work- I do other things for money and my art can stay "pure" in a sense-
It's said that if you "sell your soul" you are unable to ever "buy it back"- so why sell it in the first place? Just so you can try to get "rich" and attempt to buy it back later because you are soulless and miserable? Doesn't make sense to me.
Maybe art is something higher? A higher cause? I was really inspired by the Rudolf Steiner book "The arts and their mission" early in my career- worth looking into if you are in the arts.
snk · 1d ago
Fair use?
intended · 1d ago
> AI to generate ideas we're good
Why is that the line in the sand? And if someone did find inspiration and ideas from an AI, and made something popular with it, wouldn’t it be indistinguishable from any other piece of popular content?
imaginationra · 1d ago
Sure- as the AI is trained on the work of humans- so if someone had an idea "inspired by ai" its really just saying they were inspired by humans anyway- for me personally I'll never ask an LLM for "ideas" though-
rollcat · 1d ago
The capabilities are interesting and useful, but the wider practical impact is that we're already being flooded with cheap cookie-cutter slop, while original artists' copyrights are completely disregarded.
If you're building tools to empower artists, this is antithetic to your mission, and simply unethical.
imaginationra · 1d ago
I do agree with the original artists work being disregarded but I think that has more to do with the aggregation and the lack of curation that is not motivated by $- as an unknown artist creating original work for 20+ years I'm optimistic about permission-less donation supported AI curators digging up unknown creative works and sharing them with humans.
almostdeadguy · 1d ago
The "just a tool like any other" perspective can't account for how much talentless slop is in practice created by AI.
Look at the work spotlighted by Google to promote their new Flow tool: https://x.com/GoogleLabs/status/1925596282661327073 . This is a garbage imitation of a Guy Ritchie film or a Jose Cuervo ad (maybe more the latter).
Instead of being a tool for creatives it has empowered a number of grifters to churn out more and more "content" bypassing any concern about craft and formal restrictions that help generate creative work. The work that is most often created with the help of AI is not creative, it's a bland, tasteless simulacrum of creativity.
snk · 1d ago
Sturgeon's Law predates LLMs by decades: 90% of everything is crap.
almostdeadguy · 1d ago
Sturgeon's law is generous to the output of LLMs.
wseqyrku · 1d ago
> more and more "content"
I think the blame is on the people who consume it.
almostdeadguy · 1d ago
I seriously doubt most of the money being made on this stuff is through consumption. There's a big pot of money by tech giants being used to commission and promote this kind of work to attract a user base.
For filmmakers- smart phones + cheap video cameras + free video editors + youtube monetization create what from my perspective is human made content slop. So to me slop is slop- it doesn't matter if a machine or a human "made" it. It's all slop and it all sucks haha.
Grifters will always grift- curation is what is important to sort through and ignore the slop- maybe there will be some systems with special fingerprinting algo's to "find" original human made non slop?
almostdeadguy · 1d ago
I regard this the same as the crypto/NFT people saying hate the practitioners not the technology. The only things people seem to do with the technology is to create more and more trash.
xeonmc · 1d ago
The Butlerian Jihad will soon be upon us.
intended · 1d ago
Yeah that article was the first time I heard of the Butlerian Jihad not being used outside of the context of Dune, and as an actual thing.
And since we can talk about it without engaging with the article points, and talk about the words “Butlerian Jihad” I foresee many posts coming forth, decrying the luddites of the world
Well, first we're going to need a millennia under brutal machine oppression. Who will be our Cymek Judas? So many good options these days...
mhh__ · 1d ago
I don't think we'll go quite that far but I can easily imagine a revival of a world in which the Internet is just a box in the corner of your office, and the church, driven by AI slop everywhere.
pydry · 1d ago
One prerequisite of the Butlerian Jihad is a model that doesnt absolutely shit the bed when given a non trivial coding task.
GolfPopper · 1d ago
I suspect that ubiquitously forcing people to use models that do reliably shit the bed (on coding and everything else) is an excellent way to get a real world Butlerian Jihad.
formerly_proven · 1d ago
Inshallah my friend.
michaelbuckbee · 1d ago
Tron (1982) which was disqualified from Oscar contention as they had heavily used computers for the graphics and this was considered "cheating".
I feel like we're at a similar spot today with AI.
There's a big YouTube channel that does special fx challenges that proudly proclaims "No AI" but the winner of the challenge used tons of physics and crowd simulators.
Is that not cheating?
cosiiine · 1d ago
That’s not cheating according to the definitions within this article that you’ve commented on.
Procreate is against gen AI on the grounded that it was unethically trained, and has become a vehicle of theft away from artists. They make a distinction between that and machine learning which is a very useful tools.
dostick · 1d ago
Easy for them to say that. The product is about manual drawing. It’s difficult to imagine where would you insert the AI in that process.
And maybe a smart strategy? If they add AI that will learn how you draw, and after couple of drawings will be able to draw for you, that may kill the product because artists will lose interest or reason to spend time with their product.
Maybe they realise that and just want to push away inevitable for as long as possible.
I wonder, they probably have same stance about AI coding, and have no need for that either.
soneca · 1d ago
> "The product is about manual drawing. It’s difficult to imagine where would you insert the AI in that process."
I can imagine. In fact, I wrote a scifi novel that imagines it! :)
In the story, the idle elite has painting classes with an AI teacher. They have levels of engagement they can choose from: see something and paint it, see an AI-made painting of that something and copy it, copy it over projected lines into your canvas, paint only the filling colors over AI-created lines delineating it, let the AI-teacher-robot fix the painting for you after you are done. Every student goes home happily with the same painting in the same high AI-made quality. :)
JohnKemeny · 1d ago
> ’s difficult to imagine where would you insert the AI in that process.
Then you don't use your imagination. Obviously one can "snap" a sketch into a car or an owl or a house or whatever, keeping the style similar.
You could use your reasoning similarly to spell checkers.
acdha · 1d ago
I think there are two key differences: a spell checker doesn’t write the document for you or change your style (grammar checkers are closer to that) so your work is still your style and something you can claim copyright on. If you sell your work, that last part can be important. If you’re an artist, customers are paying you for your skills and the more you say a tool can do, the less they’re going to think your time is worth.
They also have a bit of a different market: their customers are people whose work has been used commercially without compensation to endanger their future livelihoods. It may be futile in the long run but I’d imagine there is a substantial market of people who don’t want to contribute to the problem or worry whether Adobe’s terms of service give them rights to screw you.
teeray · 1d ago
> It’s difficult to imagine where would you insert the AI in that process.
“Sketch me a wireframe of a person running”
“Can you add a flowing cape to my character in a similar art style?”
“Add stippling for the shadows on these objects assuming the light comes from the left of the scene”
ummonk · 1d ago
They could certainly have introduced things like AI-powered brushes or filters, and competing products from Adobe definitely do include AI features.
As you say though, it could be good business sense. Adobe seems to be getting a lot of backlash from creatives at least on social media.
diggan · 1d ago
> Adobe seems to be getting a lot of backlash from creatives at least on social media.
That mainly seems to be about Adobe doing opt-out training on people's art and data (and sneakily re-enable that option for people who've already disabled it in the past), not just because Adobe now has AI features you could use. But maybe we're stuck in different bubbles/echo chambers.
cafeinux · 1d ago
Why do you say they "push away the inevitable"? Why would it be inevitable to have quality apps without AI integration? I would even argue that in a lot of cases, no AI integrationadds quality to the app.
itishappy · 1d ago
> The product is about manual drawing. It’s difficult to imagine where would you insert the AI in that process.
It's a brilliant strategy, IMO. Maybe not to take over the whole industry, but to carve out a loyal niche. Are there many other top-tier creative apps that take such a clear position?
ndr42 · 1d ago
Clip studio paint uses AI for coloring, better filling with gaps etc.
raincole · 1d ago
CSP once tried to develop a full generative AI, but they killed the project after a big backlash on social media (especially from Japanese on twitter).
It seems that the current line drawn by artists is: the app dev can do anything with neutral network as long as it doesn't generate a whole image.
intended · 1d ago
> It’s difficult to imagine where would you insert the AI in that process.
Automated pattern and design fillers? Colour palette testers?
bandoti · 1d ago
The thing that pops in my mind on misplaced AI integrations is: Copilot on Microsoft Word—infusing the caret with that God-Awful, purple Copilot “call to action.” Intuitively it makes sense to add AI capabilities to a writing program, but enough is enough. At this point it’s an insult on our collective intelligence.
If you ask me, keep the AI in a new, separate program.
Generative AI has a distinct workflow that is unique and the UX patterns will likely be different than traditional workflows. For instance: the generate, reject-or-accept loop.
I’m wondering how many people just copy and paste from their chat agent and simply ignore the other integrations (with respect to consumer products).
regularjack · 1d ago
I read it as them stating their stance. As in, "Our" means Procreate, not humanity.
sanex · 1d ago
While I agree that we should procreate, I disagree with the entire premise of this post.
I have always been garbage at the visual arts. Art classes in school were my worst class every year, I just could not get the pictures in my head down on to paper. I accepted that I just wasn't "creative". This mentality persisted through my school years and I ended up getting a business degree because it's not "creative". I was miserable. Eventually saw the light and got into web dev. I believe this is a creative pursuit, and the issue is the medium. Everyone is inherently creative and the general act of creation is one of the most fulfilling things you can do to occupy your time.
As a web dev AI allows me to be creative in my ideas and prompting, generating pictures that I would otherwise not have the ability to create myself. Before you say I'm taking the job of graphic designers, I assure you none of these uses would have ended in me spending any money or even someone else's time if AI image gen didn't exist. AI lowers the bar for people to pursue the act of creativity in a medium they otherwise struggle in.
No comments yet
lxdlam · 1d ago
Really happy to see some company that plays a key role that publish such a statement. Creativity comes from humanity, from our experience, our work, our connection.
AI may be not a theft, but it just sophisticated combinations from our wisdom. Until it can really create, the human will always win.
SpaceNoodled · 1d ago
Well, it's also theft if it's trained on stoled data.
mapcars · 1d ago
There was a time factory workers protested against automatisation too. You can't stop it, you have to adapt.
ecocentrik · 1d ago
You also can't really stop the protests. People will be displaced from highly specialized skills that some spent a lifetime developing. Jobs that gave their lives meaning, financial security and a sense of community and accomplishment. You can't fault them for being angry or even hostile if they aren't presented with a dignified alternative. When you're building any disruptive technology, you should be prepared for hostility.
mapcars · 19h ago
Sure, I don't blame anyone, they can protest as much as they want, but its not going to solve anything.
ecocentrik · 7h ago
Protest = statement of objection. Visual artists are protesting by exploring legal solutions for economic recompense for the use of their work in training and inference. It's clear they see neural nets a mechanism for copying and modifying their original work without permission.
squidbeak · 1d ago
This is an important point. Modern man is conditioned to find purpose through employment. The notion of the heroism of work isn't as cartoonish as it was in communist societies, but it's implicitly there - in the centrality of work to every part of culture and customs like that go-to ice-breaker, "What do you do?" The psychological shift of moving past that will be every bit as challenging as the economic adjustments of full automation.
ecocentrik · 1d ago
It's not just communism that celebrates the heroism of work. Providing for your family is viewed as a heroic act across civilizations. People speak of the sacrifices they make for their families. For most children, parents are their first superheroes and some of that is the safety and security they provide through their income, their sense of professional pride and success and participation in communities.
We can build a bleak dystopian AI driven future where we all work in service to the machines or we can build one that pays dividends by continuing to give humans an inflated sense of their potential. The later is preferable.
delichon · 1d ago
> Built on a foundation of theft
Theft here means that AI learns from our content and benefits from it when generating new content. I'm not clear on why this is theft when an artificial intelligence does it but it is not when a natural one does. These guesses are an effort to understand this:
1. It's a matter of scale, AI does it faster and cheaper, and that quantitative difference is qualitatively different, and therefore morally different.
2. When my enemies learn from me it is theft, regardless of the physiology of their intelligence, and AI is an enemy.
3. A human intelligence requires far more friction to transmit what they learn, making their learning functionally more local, and less likely to be used to supplant me. When my content is used to supplant me it becomes theft, as in copyright infringement.
4. ???
cosiiine · 21h ago
As an artist the frustrating thing is I was never asked about whether two decades of my work could be used by for-profit companies to create tools that make my market harder.
derekp7 · 1d ago
The courts have ruled in several cases that a work someone created was too close to another work and therefor infringing. If you are looking at someone's painting or photograph, and then paint your version of that subject based on what you are looking at, you then have created a derived work which may infringe.
No comments yet
dmonitor · 1d ago
Watching a movie and "recording it" with my brain is legal, and remembering scenes + dialogue is legal, but recording it with a camcorder and watching it whenever isn't.
When the artist gave you the work, it was under the pretense that you wouldn't train a robot to recreate those images. Humans are divine beings. Deal with it.
textlapse · 1d ago
AI/GenAI is unfortunately a loaded word.
Does Content-Aware Fill count as "AI"?
Does using trained data to fill content count as generative AI?
There is some nuance here that will be filled in by the courts and companies over time - just like other technologies that allowed creative mix-n-match.
I do agree that the current crop of "let's get all your YT videos and all your photographs to train our models and we will pay you peanuts by running ads" is objectively and morally wrong.
However, progress requires aligning the incentives and forcing some legal framework to compensate for training - not outright stop the generative AI train as that's simply not possible in this day and age.
t0bia_s · 1d ago
Im curious who would buy software that lack of features? As an artist, who use generative AI daily to speed up job done, those ideological statements looks more like call for attention.
spankibalt · 13h ago
> Im curious who would buy software that lack of features?
I will only use software that lacks AI for the profoundly simple reason that I don't need such "features". Non-artists on the other hand need AI for they're not competent (enough). At what stage of the process is irrelevant.
And competency in matters of sentient cultural expression manifest, the only one possible (as opposed to a mere simulacrum), is what defines an artist, after all; non-competency obviously doesn't.
t0bia_s · 10h ago
I know many artists that are not thirsty for competition. Actually I don't know any passionate artist who would create with competition in mind. It might be some weird "influencer" trend of thinking you talking about. If that is your definition of "artists" than you are talking about content creators.
spankibalt · 3h ago
> I know many artists that are not thirsty for competition.
Good for you.
> Actually I don't know any passionate artist who would create with competition in mind.
I on the other hand know many; the demosceners I grew up with, just to give one example. Competition there is part of these subcultures' very own aesthetics, i. e. (unwritten) rules.
> If that is your definition of "artists" than you are talking about content creators.
Albeit I have an aversion for the slopword "content" and avoid it to describe any artist's output, artists are, as creators (of "content" of an artistic nature) per se, i. e. per definition, "content creators". You also erected a strawman, for I only adressed competency as an attribute of definition... and not competition. And albeit the latter might help make anyone more competent as an artist, or empower an artist in becoming one in the first place, the concept doesn't define the artist as one on its own, in itself.
And with that I think we have exhausted our exchange at this point as a) I have answered your question about AI features in art packages, and b) you already have trouble understanding even the most basic of concepts in art creation, let alone art theory.
ramblerman · 1d ago
Do you think more efficiency = better art?
Genuinely curious. When you say as an artist I believe u are speaking as a professional digital designer. Or are you really producing “art”
t0bia_s · 22h ago
It depends how you define art.
I might not allways produce an art, but task that I'm payed for required work with aesthetic. For example when I design cover for book, AI helps with sketching multiple ideas that I of course need to edit for specific tasks. Few years ago I needed to do it manually which was more time consuming and expensive.
There is, however, field that AI would never help. Documentary photography that I do mostly. Any artificial interference that shifts captured reality contradicts this genre itself.
spking · 1d ago
If you use Procreate on an iPad, I highly recommend a Sketchboard to save your posture and wrist!
They aren’t the first, and certainly won’t be the last to reject AI.
whynotminot · 1d ago
I love the attitude, I really do. But it feels a little like the Charge of the Light Brigade. Bold, beautiful, and ultimately a devastating and inevitable loss.
ecocentrik · 1d ago
This is not a new product. This is new marketing targeting the segment of graphic designers that continue to work without the use of generative AI and are concerned about their intellectual property rights being violated. They're just trying to sell legacy software.
tmaly · 1d ago
Procreate is an amazing app. I actually like it a bit more than Photoshop because of how well it works with the Apply pencil.
I wonder if any of the developers there are using AI to code?
spankibalt · 16h ago
Good on them, even if the iPad/Procreate-combo is not my future.
qustrolabe · 1d ago
Easiest marketing farm for any creative company right now. Say "we won't add AI" and continue doing nothing as before
SuperV1234 · 1d ago
Great marketing strategy (that's all it is).
criddell · 1d ago
It's more of a business or product strategy.
t0bia_s · 1d ago
More like call for attention, but terrible strategy. Who would buy a software that is proud for lack of features?
doright · 1d ago
I think this is a new paradigm shift only just getting underway within the past decade.
In the past we used to be able to look forward to the future to solve obvious limitations of technology back then. Example is how limited and expensive it was to capture photos on rolls of film. Within the past 20 years we can now take effectively unlimited photos digitally on a device that can do much more than just take photos, and that limit has been abolished forever.
It is this forever that is starting to loom on us. Most of us can't imagine a life without Facebook, smartphones, addictive feeds and the like even if we don't directly use them. It is not possible to go back to a state of life untainted by this technology. So now a fancy new technology that promises to paint your end-products for you comes out and in the span of just a few years threatens to change the whole landscape of art that has been repeated in cycles for thousands of years, forever. It is only natural that some would loudly object.
But the same wheels driving human progress that removed the limitations of the disposable camera will not slow down at the stage of generative AI either. I don't see how this would happen given our intelligence has already gotten us far in many other domains. Progress is like a wildfire that eats up dry bushes. If enough of the medium is there it will spontaneously occur and not much can be done to prevent it. Except with technology, it is not dry timber but "what ifs." "What if art doesn't have to be defined by the journey to get there, but by a satisfying end product?" "What if a computer program could replicate the motions of a paintbrush, and create art indistinguishable from a human's?" Any one of us can come up with the next "what if."
t0bia_s · 10h ago
If you belive that art could be generative, think twice. Its not about how is it done. But what is a purpose of it? What is a point of make art? To express yourself? To give observers new point of view? To share experience? Also art is beyond digital pixels.
Paradigm is shifting same as first camera wad invented. Obsession with reproducing reality was abolished and shift to all kinds of *isms. Some artist (ie Mucha) used new technology for improve their creative process. Some believed, that photography stole a part of our soul that was trapped on taken picture. It repeats. Just with different technologies.
I'm honestly very interest how we, as humans, will deal with it and how paradigm evolve.
par · 1d ago
This feels more like grand standing to sell more copies of their app than any meaningful communication or guidance.
raincole · 1d ago
I don't know. On one hand, it's noble to see apps (CSP, Procreate, Krita) rejecting AI at this era.
On the other hand, I can't help but feel it's mental gymnastics when Krita is implementing a neutral network based linework filter [0] while very vocally being against AI. I understand the technical details, and I still fail to see the nuances here.
From that post, so context is easily discoverable here (I hate Discourse navigation, Discourse is the forum platform):
"It’s not a generative AI. It won’t invent anything. It won’t add details, any stylistic flourish besides basic line weight, cross-hatching or anything else. It won’t fix any mistakes. It will closely follow the provided sketch. I believe it won’t even be possible for a network of this size and architecture to “borrow” any parts of the images from the training dataset.
We will not be training the model on any of the existing datasets, or stolen pictures. All artworks will come from artists fully aware what it’s going to be used for. And our particular model will work better with special training data anyway, I believe. Maybe you’d want to help out with gathering the artworks - I will be making another post about that soon.
The calculations will be 100% local and offline. It won’t send the sketch image to any server to process and return the line art. I’m not planning to implement any networking functionality, and there are no servers planned either. It will only use your own computer CPU and GPU for calculations, the same way all of the other features of Krita do. It also won’t train on your images that you make in Krita. It won’t save it anywhere either, until you save it with Krita to your own device as usual, in a Krita file."
This being said, I don't think this is the correct approach. I don't think you need a convolution network or training. You would need some very carefully designed filters with parameters exposed to the user. Granted, this won't do as much of a "good job" at it, but the artist will touch it up anyways.
doright · 1d ago
I think emerging technologies from now on won't be judged solely by what they make possible that wasn't possible before, but under what parameters/limitations they are morally acceptable to specific markets.
(And this isn't a strictly good/bad thing to me, it's a natural byproduct of a sufficiently advanced state of technology in the future being capable of automating every last productive human activity.)
nestorD · 1d ago
I think the top post on the Krita thread does a pretty good job at setting their boundaries. Something that cannot replace artists: it will not "beautify" art, and stays close to the input, also it should not be trained on the work of unwilling artists.
criddell · 1d ago
Is the Krita filter trained on the work of thousands of artists?
spookie · 1d ago
It is trained on works of artists that fully knew it was being used for this.
russianGuy83829 · 1d ago
I don't see the mental gymnastics here, the post you linked pretty clearly delineates the differences to AI in the sense it is used today.
As major differences I'd highlight:
local and offline, so drawings not sent anywhere
trained on artist work with explicit consent
In Krita's case, they claim the AI isn't generative so it doesn't add detail.
Whereas the AI today is trained on stolen work and often on the inputs as well.
raincole · 1d ago
Well, first of all, I don't buy the idea that there is a clear line between 'filter' and 'generative' AI. Even in the example Krita dev posted [0], you can see the 'filter' AI made up a bit detail (the way the girl's eyes look became different), it's just not as smart as so-called generative AI.
And about the privacy and copyright concern, what we currently have are:
Stable Diffusion: local and offline, but not copyright-clean.
Adobe Firefly: online, but copyright-clean (if we believe Adobe's claim).
So if we combine the better sides of both, it suddenly becomes okay?
Well, there is a clear line between a handmade filter and AI. But this is clearly AI since it relies on a filter optimized via automated training on images.
I think we are in agreement, I have used more descriptive wording to just clearly indicate what I consider as a filter.
(Edit: yeah, looking at the image I can see it clearly takes some artistic liberties. Even on the dragon.)
sharemywin · 1d ago
Not what I thought that site was going to be about.
testfrequency · 1d ago
This needs to be a path more companies take.
Procreate knows their target users are skilled humans, and it’s been consistently refreshing to see them align their morals and beliefs to how much AI has stolen from the creative world.
I think unless you are a creative yourself, you’ll never be able to fully grasp just how sickening it’s been to watch and see centuries of artists blood, sweat, and tears all be garbled into a slop smoothie with no credit or citation.
Any creative who enjoys AI was most likely never a creative for the right reasons to begin with.
Closi · 1d ago
More cynically, they probably also know that the AI path is one that they can't win.
john_alan · 1d ago
Shock: company selling quills says printing press bad for humans.
guerrilla · 1d ago
I don't want to get into the subject right now but I have to say I love the design of that site. It's relaxing. Reminds me of Apple's site way back when.
shubhamjain · 1d ago
Disappointing to see all the snarky remarks here. Let me tell you, it's not easy to ignore the AI wave. The fear of being left behind is very, very real. AI-based tools are quadrupling their revenues in a matter of months, even on a very high base (Cursor famously going from $100M to $300M in 3 months). Reading "it's all over", "graphic design is dead" all over social media doesn't help either.
I am an author of a Desktop App [1] myself. More often than I like to admit, I find myself wondering how I can integrate AI, because that's all the rage these days and gets views, clicks, and potentially revenue.
Taking a firm stance like this and standing up for creativity is not an easy stance. Kudos to Procreate team for taking it!
If you were judging based on HN comments, you'd think that AI is failing miserably. In reality, people are using generative AI more and more - even if they do so silently or while criticizing it.
The jury is still out on AI-centric workflows, but AI augmented workflows are here and won't go anywhere irrespective of what the Internet mob says.
ivape · 1d ago
Some people just need to face fate. Maybe it was true that for a very long time true artistic talent like singing and drawing were god-gifted. Maybe something wants every living person to have access to it now. Let's not be so selfish.
ninetyninenine · 1d ago
Ai is the future. Face the truth.
Human creativity is cheapened by AI because AI can produce work faster, equal and at many times superior to human output.
This isn’t something that can be changed. It’s reality and it’s not necessarily a good reality but it’s something you have to accept.
The procreate title, the whole marketing idea, even the article itself could have been generated by AI and we would be none the wiser.
I can use ai generated art and bullshit and say I used procreate and no one would know.
This ad reads like an ad for typewriters at the dawn of ms word. It’s just everything is happening 10x faster and it’s all much more tragic as humanity is losing much more here.
diego_moita · 1d ago
I compare the debate of AI in art with the rise of photography and fall of realistic painting at the end of 19th century.
Back then, the work of painters had one among many functions: to preserve people's image. When photography arrived the market for painted portraits vanished.
Painters then went to do what photography couldn't do well: colorful landscapes, elegant distortions, etc. But, above all, they explored ways of looking at reality that the photography couldn't do: impressionism, expressionism, abstract art, cubism, etc.
I wonder what will artists do now. They'll need to create an art that AI can't create. Perhaps more interactive art, like video games?
Giorgi · 1d ago
It is not your future, because you have no future.
Unless, there is some sort of "great filter" for all the AI technology, it will pretty much outdo every kind of human creativity and rush into customized highly tailored generated art.
Like you click the button and now you have 43243 new games just like one you finished couple of hours ago. Oh you are bored by having so much games? Let me drip feed you. Etc. Etc.
It's pretty much over.
mcpar-land · 1d ago
> Like you click the button and now you have 43243 new games just like one you finished couple of hours ago.
You fell for it if you think this is ever going to happen.
Giorgi · 21h ago
Says who?
mrdoornbos · 1d ago
Amen.
RcouF1uZ4gsC · 1d ago
I have produced multiple neural networks through procreation, and am working on training them.
Training these neural networks that I procreated is very fulfilling.
They already have intelligence beyond the best models from OpenAI, Anthropocene, and Google.
I definitely encourage everyone who can on here to procreate.
b3lvedere · 1d ago
I do wonder if they will ever learn how to clean up their rooms though...
gchokov · 1d ago
Uh.. this sounds desperate.
kypro · 1d ago
Dumb. I was at an old mill recently and was learning about how workers protested when weaving jobs were being replaced by machines and they were losing their jobs due to human weavers being less efficient than the new steam-powered weavers.
This is why business with any financial sense wouldn't pay an artist for artwork anymore because it will be far far more expensive and take longer... Mills which didn't change with the time, according to the guy I was talking to failed and all the workers lost their jobs anyway.
The good news here is that like during the industrial revolution, soon loads of unproductive work will be automated away – coders, artists, accountants, lawyers, etc. And like during the industrial revolution this will result in huge profit increases and competitive advantages for businesses which adopt quickly. This isn't something any company should be sitting on the fence about.
While it's unfortunate people will lose their jobs we should remember that humans are still uniquely qualified for work where human interaction is valued – like service work. It's really only the inefficient knowledge work that will be automated away by AI, like how inefficient factory work was automated and outsourced out of developed economies over the last century.
GaggiX · 1d ago
The post was made on August 19, 2024 to give a bit of a context given the evolution of the technology and response to it.
jsheard · 1d ago
Also for context, a year-ish later Procreate and its animation counterpart Dreams are still the first and second most popular paid iPad apps.
Their target audience seems pretty happy with their decision.
GaggiX · 1d ago
Before the post where Procreate was positioned? I imagine it was pretty much in the same spot, it's just a good software. I'm sure the target audience is pretty happy about the post but I don't think it made a particular difference on the store.
popalchemist · 22h ago
This is a great marketing strategy for their niche, but to deny's eventual ubiquity AI long-term is foolish. While there will always be value in the human hand-made stuff, SO many tasks can and will benefit or be made entirely unnecessary through AI and automation.
Tired of this take. It's not virtuous nor is it based in deep principled thought, it's calculated. As are all such stances made by companies.
px43 · 1d ago
[flagged]
tomhow · 1d ago
If a submission seems inappropriate according to the guidelines, please just flag it or email us - hn@ycombinator.com.
Why? For the same reason any story floats to the top. We are clicking through to read the linked article, up voting, and (like you) participating in the discussion. Put all this stuff together, and the story will trend highly for a while.
HN doesn't have the kind of purity filter you are looking for.
ummonk · 1d ago
You can have whatever dislike of Apple products and their walled garden that you like (I certainly don’t own an iPad myself), but at the end of the day Procreate is one of the most popular digital art apps and many artists perceive generative AI as stealing their art, so the anti-AI stance Procreate is taking is definitely discussion-worthy on HN.
When I say "a woman looking outside from her seat on a train" I don't want it to generate such an image for me. I want it to literally give me existing images that more or less fit the description, with full credit. If it's from a movie I'd like to know the movie's name and timestamp and the actor's name and everything.
I know the difference between referencing and plagiarism. And if I'm going to cross the line, at least I know I am the one who makes this decision and takes the legal risk. With the current generative AI I don't even know who holds accountability. Likely nobody, or worse, an unaware me.
This is why I think the copyright law is very broken. If someone made the database I described above, their pants, house and first-born would be sued off. But I'd argue it's a not just more useful, but also more ethical product than generative AIs.
https://lenso.ai/en/search-by-text?desc=a+woman+looking+outs...
Similarly, other people could use that database to check newly published work, making it easier to detect and stop obvious copyright infringement.
Problem is, the copyright system - both as a body of laws and as a spirit and mindset behind them - prevents the database from ever being created. At least in any form other than "yes / maybe?" responses from comparing perceptual hashes; go beyond that, someone comes out of the woodwork, seeking royalties. Reverse image search engines exist, but are barely helpful because of that.
Anyway;
> And if I'm going to cross the line, at least I know I am the one who makes this decision and takes the legal risk. With the current generative AI I don't even know who holds accountability. Likely nobody, or worse, an unaware me.
Ultimately, you're still the one making the decision. No one forces you to publish whatever a generative model produced in response to your prompt. It's up to you what to do with the output. You also exercise creative control - both during and after generation.
The legal situation of GenAI in general is still uncertain - but at the very least, you're still in control of whether you're referencing or plagiarising in a moral sense.
You would think we'd be there already. But search as a field has died. Hopefully temporarily but pretty dead. This is interesting because good search is supposedly how Google make their profit. And for years now they have obsessed about anything but good search. It's now a given that a google search will give you anything BUT what you want. I know: there are upstarts - are the upstarts that good? For example, is there a great image search upstart?
One could hire a software developer to write such a program. But, in general, software developers can be untrustworthy and prone to stealing ideas for their own selfish purposes.
Before Mark Zuckerberg dropped out of college, he answered a classified ad from someone in the real world^1 who wanted to create a website that could search a database of images. Nothing to do with "social media". IIRC the target market was the auto insurance industry (I could be wrong).
1. Not Winklevoss brothers. That is another story.
Zuckerberg never finished the job but he did create his own website which searched and served up images of students at Harvard. He was of course sued by this person after Facebook became popular.
1. With the exception of any intellectual property underlying software licenses. Microsoft wants a fair use exception for copyrighted works used by OpenAI but aat the same time it aggressively pursues copyright enforcement over its software, such as "Windows" and "Office".
Ehhhh? Yes there are examples of that, as there are for any arbitrary group of humans you could select, but [anecdotally] I've noticed the opposite... it's not uncommon to find a passionate developer that's only interested in the challenge/problem solving aspect - it's a lot less common for say.. real estate agents.
I don't really get the point you're making beyond "people be greedy sometimes" (which I do agree with, don't get me wrong).
/s
I can't believe it's only $13 (I think I paid $10 many years ago). It's one of those rare apps that I wish was more expensive because a $13 purchase doesn't feel sustainable.
I should probably sign up for a Procreate course. The app is so deep that I know I'm only using the most basic features. If anybody has books or courses to recommend, I'm all ears.
[1] https://app.sensortower.com/overview/425073498?country=US
I remember Corel Painter. It was about $400, and did many similar things.
I think it may no longer be around.
A close friend of mine (art college degree) has switched from oil / acrylic / watercolor to iPad - after trying it once.
What you would see in the past are "PC or Android with a tablet manufacturer's sticker on it". Wacom has a history of occasionally licensing their stuff for a laptop. And XPPen, for example, has made a few in the "Magic Drawing Pad" series now and they needed a few iterations to move away from being a generic OSI tablet to actually using their digitizer tech. These products don't excite tech enthusiasts - a fully integrated device, as opposed to screen and digitizer, comes with more concerns about all-round performance and value - and so far, the premium on them makes them compete with iPads. But there is tremendous demand for it - seemingly every "art kid" sees an iPad and Procreate as a milestone, because that combination is what the content creators they watch are using.
Are they? The iPad is in it's 15th year now. Apple has shown exactly what needs to be done yet there isn't enough interest in the open source community to develop (or sponsor development of) a solution. I don't see much evidence of change.
> because that combination is what the content creators they watch are using
But also because it's the best hardware and software and can be relatively inexpensive, especially if you are willing to buy used.
Making a screen tablet is really hard. The iPad is general-purpose enough (and does not require a stylus) to make it worth the effort (and price -they ain't cheap), but a specialized one would likely fizzle, due to a limited customer base.
What about the apps? I've heard really good things about Krita, but what's the killer app?
The iPad/Pencil combo knocks it into a cocked hat.
The kicker is that the Cintiq is around the same price (or more), and is less ergonomic.
I use a 2018 13" iPad Pro and I love that size because it's basically the same size as a sheet of 8.5x11 (or A4) paper. It's the perfect size for reading and marking up PDFs too.
Last year I bought and returned the M4 iPad Pro because they didn't make a Smart Keyboard Folio for it which I prefer to the more heavy duty Magic Keyboard. So I'm still using my 7 year old iPad worrying about what I'm going to do when it dies. I thought for sure somebody would make a knock off, but nobody has made anything that I think is as good as the Apple product.
For me, Procreate and GoodNotes are a killer combination that justify owning the device.
https://www.creativebloq.com/buying-guides/best-ipad-for-pro...
I do suggest splurging for the more expensive Pencil Pro, though.
If you want to go the other way, the Mini works with the Pencil Pro (I have both).
I just made an original animated feature film where I sang %75 of the roles by using an AI tool(audimee.com) to convert my voice into others- I couldn't do that before- we're now creating Portuguese and Russian language versions of the songs with a tool that has a $20 usd/month subscription! Couldn't do that before!
For creatives/artists- As long as we don't use AI to generate ideas we're good, human generated ideas are a must- bring on all the AI tools!
The whole built on theft thing- as a human film director I could rattle off endless examples just in cinema of human directors "stealing" premises, sequences, shots, styles etc from other filmmakers with no consequences- so why stop the AI now?
I see the "theft" as being democratized now- large studios/entities with large resources have always been able to legally "steal" so with these AI tools I guess we all can now?
I make original animated films, games, music, art etc etc and I feel no "threat" at all from AI-
I feel the opposite as I'm excited to see what things they will allow me to do next as a micro-studio with limited budgets but unlimited creativity.
Aesthetics are dead now imo because of generative AI as anyone can be any "style" so now it is all about ideas- original human ideas.
A majority of which will go to already rich people.
Its a sad state now, and a sad state in the future for humanity, where technology enables and accelerates accumulation of wealth, aided and abetted by the very consumers it consumes.
Total wealth is a meaningless metric.
You don't see any issue with machine learning models trained on huge amounts of copyrighted and patented materials basically scraped from the internet. Yes you can make your animated film and audio but at the cost of hugely controversial and non-transparent generative models.
> Aesthetics are dead now imo because of generative AI as anyone can be any "style" so now it is all about ideas- original human ideas.
This argument kind of conflicts with itself, no? Aesthetics are inferred from ideas either inspired or original.
I feel compensated on a spiritual level for my work- I do other things for money and my art can stay "pure" in a sense-
It's said that if you "sell your soul" you are unable to ever "buy it back"- so why sell it in the first place? Just so you can try to get "rich" and attempt to buy it back later because you are soulless and miserable? Doesn't make sense to me.
Maybe art is something higher? A higher cause? I was really inspired by the Rudolf Steiner book "The arts and their mission" early in my career- worth looking into if you are in the arts.
Why is that the line in the sand? And if someone did find inspiration and ideas from an AI, and made something popular with it, wouldn’t it be indistinguishable from any other piece of popular content?
If you're building tools to empower artists, this is antithetic to your mission, and simply unethical.
Look at the work spotlighted by Google to promote their new Flow tool: https://x.com/GoogleLabs/status/1925596282661327073 . This is a garbage imitation of a Guy Ritchie film or a Jose Cuervo ad (maybe more the latter).
Instead of being a tool for creatives it has empowered a number of grifters to churn out more and more "content" bypassing any concern about craft and formal restrictions that help generate creative work. The work that is most often created with the help of AI is not creative, it's a bland, tasteless simulacrum of creativity.
I think the blame is on the people who consume it.
Grifters will always grift- curation is what is important to sort through and ignore the slop- maybe there will be some systems with special fingerprinting algo's to "find" original human made non slop?
And since we can talk about it without engaging with the article points, and talk about the words “Butlerian Jihad” I foresee many posts coming forth, decrying the luddites of the world
I feel like we're at a similar spot today with AI.
There's a big YouTube channel that does special fx challenges that proudly proclaims "No AI" but the winner of the challenge used tons of physics and crowd simulators.
Is that not cheating?
Procreate is against gen AI on the grounded that it was unethically trained, and has become a vehicle of theft away from artists. They make a distinction between that and machine learning which is a very useful tools.
And maybe a smart strategy? If they add AI that will learn how you draw, and after couple of drawings will be able to draw for you, that may kill the product because artists will lose interest or reason to spend time with their product.
Maybe they realise that and just want to push away inevitable for as long as possible.
I wonder, they probably have same stance about AI coding, and have no need for that either.
I can imagine. In fact, I wrote a scifi novel that imagines it! :)
In the story, the idle elite has painting classes with an AI teacher. They have levels of engagement they can choose from: see something and paint it, see an AI-made painting of that something and copy it, copy it over projected lines into your canvas, paint only the filling colors over AI-created lines delineating it, let the AI-teacher-robot fix the painting for you after you are done. Every student goes home happily with the same painting in the same high AI-made quality. :)
Then you don't use your imagination. Obviously one can "snap" a sketch into a car or an owl or a house or whatever, keeping the style similar.
You could use your reasoning similarly to spell checkers.
They also have a bit of a different market: their customers are people whose work has been used commercially without compensation to endanger their future livelihoods. It may be futile in the long run but I’d imagine there is a substantial market of people who don’t want to contribute to the problem or worry whether Adobe’s terms of service give them rights to screw you.
“Sketch me a wireframe of a person running”
“Can you add a flowing cape to my character in a similar art style?”
“Add stippling for the shadows on these objects assuming the light comes from the left of the scene”
As you say though, it could be good business sense. Adobe seems to be getting a lot of backlash from creatives at least on social media.
That mainly seems to be about Adobe doing opt-out training on people's art and data (and sneakily re-enable that option for people who've already disabled it in the past), not just because Adobe now has AI features you could use. But maybe we're stuck in different bubbles/echo chambers.
Microsoft Paint has AI these days.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/use-image-creato...
> And maybe a smart strategy?
It's a brilliant strategy, IMO. Maybe not to take over the whole industry, but to carve out a loyal niche. Are there many other top-tier creative apps that take such a clear position?
It seems that the current line drawn by artists is: the app dev can do anything with neutral network as long as it doesn't generate a whole image.
Automated pattern and design fillers? Colour palette testers?
If you ask me, keep the AI in a new, separate program.
Generative AI has a distinct workflow that is unique and the UX patterns will likely be different than traditional workflows. For instance: the generate, reject-or-accept loop.
I’m wondering how many people just copy and paste from their chat agent and simply ignore the other integrations (with respect to consumer products).
I have always been garbage at the visual arts. Art classes in school were my worst class every year, I just could not get the pictures in my head down on to paper. I accepted that I just wasn't "creative". This mentality persisted through my school years and I ended up getting a business degree because it's not "creative". I was miserable. Eventually saw the light and got into web dev. I believe this is a creative pursuit, and the issue is the medium. Everyone is inherently creative and the general act of creation is one of the most fulfilling things you can do to occupy your time.
As a web dev AI allows me to be creative in my ideas and prompting, generating pictures that I would otherwise not have the ability to create myself. Before you say I'm taking the job of graphic designers, I assure you none of these uses would have ended in me spending any money or even someone else's time if AI image gen didn't exist. AI lowers the bar for people to pursue the act of creativity in a medium they otherwise struggle in.
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AI may be not a theft, but it just sophisticated combinations from our wisdom. Until it can really create, the human will always win.
We can build a bleak dystopian AI driven future where we all work in service to the machines or we can build one that pays dividends by continuing to give humans an inflated sense of their potential. The later is preferable.
Theft here means that AI learns from our content and benefits from it when generating new content. I'm not clear on why this is theft when an artificial intelligence does it but it is not when a natural one does. These guesses are an effort to understand this:
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When the artist gave you the work, it was under the pretense that you wouldn't train a robot to recreate those images. Humans are divine beings. Deal with it.
There is some nuance here that will be filled in by the courts and companies over time - just like other technologies that allowed creative mix-n-match.
I do agree that the current crop of "let's get all your YT videos and all your photographs to train our models and we will pay you peanuts by running ads" is objectively and morally wrong.
However, progress requires aligning the incentives and forcing some legal framework to compensate for training - not outright stop the generative AI train as that's simply not possible in this day and age.
I will only use software that lacks AI for the profoundly simple reason that I don't need such "features". Non-artists on the other hand need AI for they're not competent (enough). At what stage of the process is irrelevant.
And competency in matters of sentient cultural expression manifest, the only one possible (as opposed to a mere simulacrum), is what defines an artist, after all; non-competency obviously doesn't.
Good for you.
> Actually I don't know any passionate artist who would create with competition in mind.
I on the other hand know many; the demosceners I grew up with, just to give one example. Competition there is part of these subcultures' very own aesthetics, i. e. (unwritten) rules.
> If that is your definition of "artists" than you are talking about content creators.
Albeit I have an aversion for the slopword "content" and avoid it to describe any artist's output, artists are, as creators (of "content" of an artistic nature) per se, i. e. per definition, "content creators". You also erected a strawman, for I only adressed competency as an attribute of definition... and not competition. And albeit the latter might help make anyone more competent as an artist, or empower an artist in becoming one in the first place, the concept doesn't define the artist as one on its own, in itself.
And with that I think we have exhausted our exchange at this point as a) I have answered your question about AI features in art packages, and b) you already have trouble understanding even the most basic of concepts in art creation, let alone art theory.
Genuinely curious. When you say as an artist I believe u are speaking as a professional digital designer. Or are you really producing “art”
I might not allways produce an art, but task that I'm payed for required work with aesthetic. For example when I design cover for book, AI helps with sketching multiple ideas that I of course need to edit for specific tasks. Few years ago I needed to do it manually which was more time consuming and expensive.
There is, however, field that AI would never help. Documentary photography that I do mostly. Any artificial interference that shifts captured reality contradicts this genre itself.
https://sketchboardpro.com/
I wonder if any of the developers there are using AI to code?
In the past we used to be able to look forward to the future to solve obvious limitations of technology back then. Example is how limited and expensive it was to capture photos on rolls of film. Within the past 20 years we can now take effectively unlimited photos digitally on a device that can do much more than just take photos, and that limit has been abolished forever.
It is this forever that is starting to loom on us. Most of us can't imagine a life without Facebook, smartphones, addictive feeds and the like even if we don't directly use them. It is not possible to go back to a state of life untainted by this technology. So now a fancy new technology that promises to paint your end-products for you comes out and in the span of just a few years threatens to change the whole landscape of art that has been repeated in cycles for thousands of years, forever. It is only natural that some would loudly object.
But the same wheels driving human progress that removed the limitations of the disposable camera will not slow down at the stage of generative AI either. I don't see how this would happen given our intelligence has already gotten us far in many other domains. Progress is like a wildfire that eats up dry bushes. If enough of the medium is there it will spontaneously occur and not much can be done to prevent it. Except with technology, it is not dry timber but "what ifs." "What if art doesn't have to be defined by the journey to get there, but by a satisfying end product?" "What if a computer program could replicate the motions of a paintbrush, and create art indistinguishable from a human's?" Any one of us can come up with the next "what if."
Paradigm is shifting same as first camera wad invented. Obsession with reproducing reality was abolished and shift to all kinds of *isms. Some artist (ie Mucha) used new technology for improve their creative process. Some believed, that photography stole a part of our soul that was trapped on taken picture. It repeats. Just with different technologies.
I'm honestly very interest how we, as humans, will deal with it and how paradigm evolve.
On the other hand, I can't help but feel it's mental gymnastics when Krita is implementing a neutral network based linework filter [0] while very vocally being against AI. I understand the technical details, and I still fail to see the nuances here.
[0]: https://krita-artists.org/t/introducing-a-new-project-fast-l...
"It’s not a generative AI. It won’t invent anything. It won’t add details, any stylistic flourish besides basic line weight, cross-hatching or anything else. It won’t fix any mistakes. It will closely follow the provided sketch. I believe it won’t even be possible for a network of this size and architecture to “borrow” any parts of the images from the training dataset.
We will not be training the model on any of the existing datasets, or stolen pictures. All artworks will come from artists fully aware what it’s going to be used for. And our particular model will work better with special training data anyway, I believe. Maybe you’d want to help out with gathering the artworks - I will be making another post about that soon.
The calculations will be 100% local and offline. It won’t send the sketch image to any server to process and return the line art. I’m not planning to implement any networking functionality, and there are no servers planned either. It will only use your own computer CPU and GPU for calculations, the same way all of the other features of Krita do. It also won’t train on your images that you make in Krita. It won’t save it anywhere either, until you save it with Krita to your own device as usual, in a Krita file."
This being said, I don't think this is the correct approach. I don't think you need a convolution network or training. You would need some very carefully designed filters with parameters exposed to the user. Granted, this won't do as much of a "good job" at it, but the artist will touch it up anyways.
(And this isn't a strictly good/bad thing to me, it's a natural byproduct of a sufficiently advanced state of technology in the future being capable of automating every last productive human activity.)
As major differences I'd highlight: local and offline, so drawings not sent anywhere trained on artist work with explicit consent
In Krita's case, they claim the AI isn't generative so it doesn't add detail.
Whereas the AI today is trained on stolen work and often on the inputs as well.
And about the privacy and copyright concern, what we currently have are:
Stable Diffusion: local and offline, but not copyright-clean.
Adobe Firefly: online, but copyright-clean (if we believe Adobe's claim).
So if we combine the better sides of both, it suddenly becomes okay?
[0]: https://krita-artists.org/uploads/default/original/3X/1/4/14...
I think we are in agreement, I have used more descriptive wording to just clearly indicate what I consider as a filter.
(Edit: yeah, looking at the image I can see it clearly takes some artistic liberties. Even on the dragon.)
Procreate knows their target users are skilled humans, and it’s been consistently refreshing to see them align their morals and beliefs to how much AI has stolen from the creative world.
I think unless you are a creative yourself, you’ll never be able to fully grasp just how sickening it’s been to watch and see centuries of artists blood, sweat, and tears all be garbled into a slop smoothie with no credit or citation.
Any creative who enjoys AI was most likely never a creative for the right reasons to begin with.
I am an author of a Desktop App [1] myself. More often than I like to admit, I find myself wondering how I can integrate AI, because that's all the rage these days and gets views, clicks, and potentially revenue.
Taking a firm stance like this and standing up for creativity is not an easy stance. Kudos to Procreate team for taking it!
[1]: https://textquery.app/
The jury is still out on AI-centric workflows, but AI augmented workflows are here and won't go anywhere irrespective of what the Internet mob says.
Human creativity is cheapened by AI because AI can produce work faster, equal and at many times superior to human output.
This isn’t something that can be changed. It’s reality and it’s not necessarily a good reality but it’s something you have to accept.
The procreate title, the whole marketing idea, even the article itself could have been generated by AI and we would be none the wiser.
I can use ai generated art and bullshit and say I used procreate and no one would know.
This ad reads like an ad for typewriters at the dawn of ms word. It’s just everything is happening 10x faster and it’s all much more tragic as humanity is losing much more here.
Back then, the work of painters had one among many functions: to preserve people's image. When photography arrived the market for painted portraits vanished.
Painters then went to do what photography couldn't do well: colorful landscapes, elegant distortions, etc. But, above all, they explored ways of looking at reality that the photography couldn't do: impressionism, expressionism, abstract art, cubism, etc.
I wonder what will artists do now. They'll need to create an art that AI can't create. Perhaps more interactive art, like video games?
Unless, there is some sort of "great filter" for all the AI technology, it will pretty much outdo every kind of human creativity and rush into customized highly tailored generated art.
Like you click the button and now you have 43243 new games just like one you finished couple of hours ago. Oh you are bored by having so much games? Let me drip feed you. Etc. Etc.
It's pretty much over.
You fell for it if you think this is ever going to happen.
Training these neural networks that I procreated is very fulfilling.
They already have intelligence beyond the best models from OpenAI, Anthropocene, and Google.
I definitely encourage everyone who can on here to procreate.
This is why business with any financial sense wouldn't pay an artist for artwork anymore because it will be far far more expensive and take longer... Mills which didn't change with the time, according to the guy I was talking to failed and all the workers lost their jobs anyway.
The good news here is that like during the industrial revolution, soon loads of unproductive work will be automated away – coders, artists, accountants, lawyers, etc. And like during the industrial revolution this will result in huge profit increases and competitive advantages for businesses which adopt quickly. This isn't something any company should be sitting on the fence about.
While it's unfortunate people will lose their jobs we should remember that humans are still uniquely qualified for work where human interaction is valued – like service work. It's really only the inefficient knowledge work that will be automated away by AI, like how inefficient factory work was automated and outsourced out of developed economies over the last century.
https://apps.apple.com/us/charts/ipad/top-paid-apps/36
Their target audience seems pretty happy with their decision.
Tired of this take. It's not virtuous nor is it based in deep principled thought, it's calculated. As are all such stances made by companies.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
HN doesn't have the kind of purity filter you are looking for.