Why I'm not too concerned about the current #AIart

 

I don't consider these overhyped bitmaps to be magic or even that intelligent. When we see the results of these text to image services, we are looking at a fairly straightforward machine learning neural network application, albeit on a massively large training data set scale.

The data sets are so large and were scrapped together so quickly, without curation or even human review that they contain a lot of straight rubbish and often the darkest side of human behaviour. Whilst this is unpleasant it will be difficult to fix without starting again but there is a taint of not quite right. Importantly, a lot of the material used in the training was copyrighted but that was ignored as it was scrapped and fed into the neural nets. This is legally questionable, but the big money potential may spend this small problem away.

I think it is the lack of ethics in not attributing or even asking artists if they wish to contribute, that could be the undoing of the magic. If the majority of those consuming the images on the net don`t care or have already scrolled over the issue in their cosy little social media bubble, nothing will happen. However, if those looking also see the discussion of unhappy artists and appreciate the widespread collection and indiscriminant use of existing art renderings (style and colour, not cut and paste copies). Perhaps they might investigate and get a whiff of what is so on the nose. Let’s hope so.