With the development of generative AI, a lot of possibilities have opened up even to folks who have little to no experience in certain fields. Manual art, for example, may take years to master while anyone could generate them in mere seconds using texts. Apparently, some artists believe it's a good thing.
Artists on the Side of AI
The letter serves as a voice for artists who believe that instead of limiting or going against generative AI, the tools actually help with the process of creating art. It states that while artists spend their lives studying traditional mediums, they dream of generative AI's capabilities.
Sure enough, tools like Stable Diffusion, DALL-E 2, and Midjourney can be an extension of a person's artistic expression. After all, it's a person's ideas and text prompts that lead to whatever the AI-image generator produces.
The artists in the open letter claim that generative AI makes art more accessible, opens new artistic mediums and lowers barriers to creating art. In the case of barriers, it is pointed out that some artists don't have the right connections, abled bodies, or financial means.
One of the main points of the letter is for the artists on the side of generative AI to have a "seat at the table from US Congress," given that most artists are on the other side of the argument where they believe that generative AI will be the end of their careers.
With the proverbial seat at the table, the artists hope to "shape generative AI's development responsibly." Addressing how major corporations use technology to exploit artists' labor, the artists believe that Congress should work with those who are "working within its potential and its limitations."
The effort is also to show that there are artists out there who wish to use AI to their advantage, as the letter indicated that there are creative minds who are afraid of backlash if they use the tools. It's a legitimate concern, especially since most artists are standing in solidarity against AI.
What They May Have Overlooked
The people behind the open letter are not oblivious to the fact that anyone without artistic knowledge can use AI tools. In their words, some say that AI image generators are about "merely typing in prompts or regurgitating existing works."
They also said that they are not interested in exploitatively replicating existing works. One thing they failed to address is the fact that in a way, they are replicating the work of others. Although it has not been proven, AI tools have been accused of using unconsented data to train AI models.
As mentioned in Tech Crunch, the AI systems are created through wholesale intellectual property theft which they then use for their own gain. Creators of the generative AI tools scrape data online, allegedly using copyrighted data to be able to generate what the text prompts specify.
Fellow artists are robbed of their work and are not paid for it. It also overlooks the fact that since anyone is capable of using these tools, it eliminates the need for professional knowledge in creating art, thus, risking the livelihood of artists more than it already is.
