I first dabbled with AI image generation back in 2022 and sprinkled a few such images throughout my worldbuilding project. It was easy to look past all of the flaws with the idea that it was nothing more than a novelty. And I never cared nearly enough about my worldbuilding to pay anyone for artwork of it.
Now that I look back at it, those images are obvious slop, which I’ve grown to dislike as much as the next person. But recent comments I’ve seen here and on other sites have made me wonder if my brain has rotted in the same manner that makes some boomers fall for AI slop. There will be videos where the use of AI is not very noticeable to me, but not with deceptive intent. Maybe an illustration to get the point across or a subtle two-second animation. Commenters will very passionately point it out. To be honest, I don’t see the creator either paying for the equivalent human work or drawing anything better themselves.
Does it really just look that bad? Is it an issue with what AI and the companies that sponsor it stand for? Theft of real artists’ work? Does it change at all if the images were generated locally with the creator’s own hardware and resources? What about upscaling images, like I do with old wallpapers so that they look better on new monitors?
I assume what I’ve just said will attract downvotes, but that was my thought process and I do want to understand where other people draw the line and for what reasons. Should we limit it to quick-and-dirty illustrations, pure novelty, upscaling existing images, a model that only incorporates work if the artist consents, or something else?
Honestly my main issue is that this gives more power to the corporations who can steal any content and then sell it as a subscription.
Even local generative AI is ethically sus, but as an occasional pirate I don’t have any moral high ground. I don’t really mind as long as its user in a way that doesn’t harm the jobs of the artists (which it often does).
Quality wise, realistic images are often sloppy but I too am starting to fail to notice sometimes, which doesn’t feel good if it’s something that can misinform me. Recently I played for some hours with an anime based model, and I have no chance telling what is real there. But it still really drew home the fact that it lacks some of the artistic expression. No matter how much you write in the prompt you can’t control all the details with intent like the artist does, and you’re at the mercy of the model on anything that you leave to interpretation. And if the model doesn’t have enough data on what you want it will just break down. So it only works as long as you have a relatively vague idea and don’t care about the specifics. Which is why I also think it can’t replace anyone as long as the audience cares about intent being there and being consistent (which again often they don’t care).
Anyway, I consider these models to basically be creating interpolations of existing art now.