🚫 AI
The discussion over AI Art has been getting ever more urgent and heated. On one side, we have artists, who complain about having their art stolen and copied by several art-oriented machine learning softwares that then present them as new artworks to their users. On the other side, we have people who can't afford to hire an artist or are delighted to finally be able to make their own art. This is a complex issue full of grey areas in which no side is completely right or completely wrong...
LOL, just kidding! It's actually quite simple: AI Art doesn't exist in a vacuum. The programs feed off stuff that has already been created, much of it by artists that are still alive and didn't consent to give away their work for free. Look, we don’t have a problem with people using AI Art for fun, to modify photos of themselves, create a love story between John Oliver and a cabbage, or try for the craziest possible images. However, it's different when people use it for commercial purposes, for something that would require hiring a human artist, or enter art contests with 'their' creations.
When we first saw images created by AI on Twitter, we didn't quite understand what they were. We just equated them with digital art and the same drawing/painting softwares that were used to make our webcomic series (Fun Fact: the first draft of Lesson One: Vampires was traced over the original notebook drawings). Later, we learned that they had been completely generated by a computer. Even then, we still didn't see a problem with it - computers are magical and can do anything, right? Also, the pictures were pretty, though somewhat cold. It was only when artists began tweeting against it that we realized that computers aren't that magical after all and the art hadn't come from nowhere. The reactions of the AI Art defenders, who dismissed their concerns by comparing it to how the invention of photography had been received by the artists of the time, made it even clearer just how problematic the whole thing was. The typical accusations of gatekeeping, snobbery, and ignorance showed nothing but a ridiculous sense of entitlement and inflated egos. The arguments in favour of AI Art would be funny if this didn't have the potential to affect real people, particularly people whose professional existence can sometimes be quite precarious. AI Art evangelists don't care - for them, this is a way to democratize art and help those who can't afford to hire an artist. Well, to be fair, some of them seem dumb AF rather than malicious. Like the people who taught an AI Art generator to draw like South Korean illustrator Kim Jung Gi right after his death. Because what better way to pay homage to someone's talent than showing how easy it is to replicate?
People's artistic abilities vary. Over the years, tools have been created that help overcome some deficiencies. Painting and drawing softwares have met with disapproval from a few more traditional artists. They allow people to manipulate images and combine colours in ways that would be difficult and even impossible to achieve otherwise, which some see as cheating. However, as impressive and as useful as they are, they don't draw and paint for you. Really, just compare the art on our webcomic to other works made using Clip Studio Paint EX - the end result still depends on the artist's ability. Even photoshopping, good photoshopping, requires some level of skill. On the other hand, to produce AI Art, people write what they want to see and keep writing until the software produces something they like. Writing prompts in a program someone else made and waiting while it cannibalizes the hard work of people who actually put in the effort into developing their natural drawing and painting skills to vomit back whatever you typed in the search bar doesn't make you an artist. And why the hell should artistic ability (or the illusion thereof) even be democratic? Should art and artistic education be accessible to everyone? Yes. However, artistic skills are a different matter. Not everyone has them, just like not everyone can play the piano, or is good at math. Some people just can't do it. You're not being oppressed by an elite that must be taken down because you can only draw stick figures. Maybe you could add text to those stick figures and create an intelligent, biting satire of today's society in comic book format. Or just go find something you're actually good at.
An even worse argument in favour of AI Art is the fact that it allows people who can't afford to hire an artist to make whatever art they need. This is actively encouraging people to bypass human artists in favour of a machine. When you take into account the fact that you can ask the AI to create art in the style of a particular artist, this could easily result in outright theft. To make matters weirder, there are articles praising AI Art as a way for indie authors to get that professional-looking book cover they wanted. They try to make it seem as if that cover image isn't the most important part of the whole process by pointing out that the prospective author will still need to add the words, as if they are going to have to draw some unique font themselves. Except, everyone knows they're just going to use whatever they can find on Canva. So, yeah, it's a pretty big win for indie authors with small budgets... and a big loss for the artists getting replaced. Given all the piracy issues regarding books and dumbass TikTokers bragging about their hacks for reading books for free (by returning them to the bookstore, which means the author loses the money you assholes) indie writers should be the last people to support something like this. We read more than one tweet that made it sound as if authors are entitled to a good book cover and why shouldn't they use AI Art to get it. This is of course dangerously close to the arguments of people who think they're entitled to own books and movies they can't afford and therefore turn to illegal download sites. How would that poor, cover-starved author feel if someone used that same justification to pirate their book? If you can't afford to hire an artist, it's simple - don't hire one. The economic argument is also extremely naive because it presumes the only people interested in replacing artists are the ones that are too poor to hire them and that big corporations would never dream of using AI Art for cutting costs. Yeah, right. Honestly, after seeing how much money self-published authors spend to make physical copies of their books, we don't get why some don't just opt for starting on ebook format only. Then maybe they could afford to hire an artist and get a great cover for the e-store thumbnail which then could be used for future print editions. We planned our series as graphic novels and wanted to see the books in physical form as the trade paperbacks for The Sandman, or at least as the smaller comic book issues, but we know we can't afford that on our own so An Introduction to the Fine Art of Monster Slaying exists in digital format only. It sucks, but we can't do anything about it.
The only semi-decent argument in favour of AI Art is that it's another tool to be used by real artists, not for creating full, complete images. However, using a tool that does so much work by itself is always going to be tricky. Not to mention that unless the artist shares their creative process, you'll never know how much of this new tool was responsible for the end result. There's a reason photography is considered separate from painting and drawing, so insisting that human artists are just being snobbish and stupid is simply dishonest. Unfortunately, since people are assholes, the only thing that can be done about AI Art is to legislate about how it can be used, what artworks it can feed on, and how any artist who's been affected by it can fight back. And AI has already moved on to writing. There better be laws in place before we start reading articles about how AI Writing is great for people who can't afford to buy books (or go to a library and get them for free) and a way to democratize writing because everyone is entitled to being a (good) writer. Sure, you can say that the works produced by AI aren't perfect, but should we really wait for it to get better?
Something else the proliferation of AI art has done is the ever growing number of AI detectives, who try to spot the AI piece. Naturally, this results in human artists being falsely accused because people see any imperfection as proof since, as we all know, real artists don't make any mistakes. Let's hope none of these highly perceptive folks find An Introduction to the Fine Art of Monster Slaying, or we could end up being the next targets of the AI Witch Hunt.
