Why don't indie devs use AI-generated images as art?

[Lyric Suite]

waiting for new roguelike tilesets to come out of all this.

Dwarf Fortress with actual non-copy pasted graphics here we come lmao.

 

[Nazrim Eldrak]

Next we need an AI that generates animations for characters by saying/writing what the animation should be.
No skills required, just imagination and creativity.

 

[V17]

More hilarious/retarded drama!

Automatic1111, the author of the most powerful Stable Diffusion GUI, was temporarily autobanned from github because a section of his repo that talked about custom models contained links to models with sexual content and he was probably mass reported based on that. It was reinstated like half a day later, but in the meantime the reason for banning was unknown and le redditeurs did some detective work speculating about the reasons for the ban. This is what they found out:

- his github contains mods for Rimworld that make all people white, make the game narrated by George Floyd supposedly (that one is called "peaceful protests" or something similar), and also one (that I haven't seen personally) which allegedly makes all people black and stops technological progress
- the actual Stable Diffusion repo contains a long list of about 1000 artist names that you can easily add to your prompt to make it stylized in their specific style. The list also contain tags, each artist has exactly one. Tags such as "fine art", "anime", "black & white", "nudity" or very commonly "scribbles". Well, certain authors that take photos or make paintings of children are tagged with "c". And about 16 artists who either are black or produce art that contains black people are tagged with "n".

So half of the subreddit was fighting for freedom against evil github for banning him, while the other was raging because they decided that he's obviously a huge racist and possibly a pedo. Situation is still ongoing.


---


This second one is less interesting because it's literally just reddit news, so it's people being fucking retarded as is standard. Sorry for sharing something so inconsequential, but this one goes a bit further than usual reddit bullshit, so I was captivated by how dumb and stereotypical it is.


The /r/art subreddit, like many others, banned Ai art quite some time ago. It's a large default sub, so it's full of boring shallow "art" with no original ideas, which is also what most AI users produce, so naturally they feel more threatened and called out.
Their rule is that if somebody is suspected of using AI, they have to provide proof they actually made the submitted picture or risk getting banned.

The problem is one of the mods is one of the sweatiest retards there is, so she decided to accuse a guy of using AI and when he offered to post a .psd proving it's his work and linked his deviantart page showing he's been drawing images in the same style since 2019, long before current AIs existed, she told him to go fuck himself and banned him anyway.

This has not been exactly popular, so the /r/art subreddit is currently set to private.

 

[Dexter]

LOL @ Reddit finding out AUTOMATIC is a typical Russian and prolific Modder: https://steamcommunity.com/id/no-sry/myworkshopfiles/

I hope some of the retards stop using the best Free SD UI available because major contributor has wrongthoughts.

 

[Dexter]

https://www.traffickinggame.com/ai-assisted-graphics/

January 4, 2023

AI assisted graphics​

Final in-game capture​

As a fun little prototype, I wanted to see how much work would it be to use AI to create as much of the art for a 2.5D point and click style game as possible.

I figured the backgrounds would be a given, as the game would pretty much be 2D, but the characters were more complicated. I would need to have a lightning fast pipeline, a pipeline that allows me to use mocap data so creating animations would not be a bottle neck. I needed a way to translate AI generated art into form that can accept motion capture.

The best way seemed to be to generate character concepts with AI and model them into 3D.

I have been working in the games industry for 20+ years, modeling characters and backgrounds for a large part of it. So it would be interesting to see how AI would enable me to work faster. And by how much?

I planned to use the characters in wide shots only, so the possible low quality or messed up details would not matter as much, but the AI tech has come a long way since and the coherency of the art is way better than it used to be mere months ago.

Prompt building​

I started by ordering the AI (Midjourney in this proto, but I use stable diffusion more) to make me a model sheet with turnaround images of a character. Similar to one you would have at an animation studio. That would be a good starting point for a thing like this.

cyberpunk point and click adventure game character model sheet turnaround –v 4 –ar 3:2​

The first result was very promising. Naturally it was not good for me as it was in black and white, but model sheets usually are. I try to not use any reference to any living (or dead) artists. But with AI it is impossible to not get influences from a bunch of artists. This way I just wish the waters are more muddled and there is no direct reference to anyone specific.

cyberpunk point and click adventure game character model sheet turnaround full color –v 4 –ar 3:2​

The second try was not great either. But it was a step in the right direction.

After some tweaking I had a prompt that produced art that was usable for me to use as a base for the 3D step:

cyberpunk point and click adventure game character, full body, model sheet turnaround, full color, two thirds wiew, front::4 view and back view –v 4 –ar 3:2​

The images had surprisingly good coherence for the different angles. These are very usable for modeling and texture projection. There is one major issue though: the images have perspective shift and are often from odd angles. But I had some ideas on how to overcome these issues.

As these images are created by an AI, no one has a claim to their copyright. That is the “contract” you sign when working with AI at the moment. They can be freely used by anyone, as replication of these images is pretty trivial. At least this is how I feel about AI art.

Modeling​

I chose an image the AI produced that had a good front and side view, but a challenging back view. Just to get to solve that problem and see how it affects things. is it even possible to extract textures for the final mode from this?

I started by using the side and the front view to get a first draft of the character going in Modo. Once the character was done, it was pretty clear to see that the different texture projections did not match properly on the mesh.

To fix this, I created morph maps for each projection, making sure the front, side and back thirds view matched on the mesh as well as possible.

Front projection / Side projection / Back thirds projection​

Next I needed to do an old school UV unwrap on the mesh. It is time consuming and tedious, but had to be done properly so blending the textures together in photoshop would be easier to do. After the UV was done it was time to project all the different images on the UV using their respective morph maps.

Front projection / Side projection / Back thirds projection / Final combined textures with some overpaint​

The finished model
​

The model is now finished and ready for rigging, for this I used Mixamo. In the past I have not used any auto-rigging tools, but in the spirit of efficiency I wanted to see if there would be a way to make this process as quick as possible. Mixamo did a pretty good job at rigging the character, but I needed to do some touch up on it. Especially the beard.

Background image​

The background image was a lot simpler, as it would be used as a 2D image, not a 3D model.

cyberpunk point and click adventure game screenshot marketplace exterior –v 4 –ar 3:2​

Even though the image is 2D, it requires some work to merge the 3D character in it beautifully. First, we need to get the camera data from the image. I used a free tool called fSpy to reverse-engineer the camera.

The image in fSpy​

fSpy has an import add-on for Blender, so it was very easy to get the image and camera to blender for modeling a rough representation of the location.

the location in blender​

The 3D version of the location is required for the perspective shift on the character to match, and to allow the character to pass behind objects. It is also useful for setting up the lights in 3D space and to get shadows from the location on the character.

Blender also has a great tool for generating UVs from camera projection, so it was the perfect tool for this step, although I needed to learn everything from scratch as the software is very alien to me.

Putting it all together​

Now that I have the all the pieces of the puzzle, it was just a matter of putting them together. I used Unity for this. I created a simple animator for the character locomotion, scaled the 3D location to match the character and set up some lights to match the scene lighting so the character would not stand out so much.

Conclusion​

I spent 18 hours working on the 3D assets and unity scripting for this prototype. 12hours on the character model/uv/morph/textures/rigging – 3 hours on the location camera & mesh – and the rest on game scripting – not including any of the AI prompting.

On minimum the AI saved me 2 days of work on the character and 3 on the location. As per my estimation.


The end results are not perfect by any means. Closeups of the character are not ideal. The location is hard to art direct and can be very random. But if you accept the AIs shortcomings and work around them, creating a full game using AI as a co-worker is perfectly possible. It enables the creation of games that would otherwise be left unmade because of budget or time constraints for sure!

 

[Dexter]

All of the character portraits in Space Wreck are AI-generated.

The real reason behind it is rights - real people's faces belong to them and it is complicated, and expensive to get their model signoff, especially for 100+ pictures.
Additionally, we have sexual deviants, pornstars, maniacs, pimps, and billionaires in the game and this may represent the model in a "bad light", so additional problems.

We used a variety of services - Generated Photos, ArtBreeder, custom, and even got a referral as a "use case" - https://generated.photos/solutions.

Image-Generating AI Can Texture An Entire 3D Scene In Blender​

[Carson Katri] has a fantastic solution to easily add textures to 3D scenes in Blender: have an image-generating AI create the texture on demand, and do it for you.

It’s not perfect — the odd door or window feature might suffer from a lack of right angles — but it’s pretty amazing.
As shown here, two featureless blocks on a featureless plain become run-down buildings by wrapping the 3D objects in a suitable image. It’s all done with the help of the Dream Textures add-on for Blender.

The solution uses Stable Diffusion to generate a texture for a scene based on a text prompt (e.g. “sci-fi abandoned buildings”), and leverages an understanding of a scene’s depth for best results. The AI-generated results aren’t always entirely perfect, but the process is pretty amazing. Not to mention fantastically fast compared to creating from scratch.

https://hackaday.com/2022/12/18/image-generating-ai-can-texture-an-entire-3d-scene-in-blender/ (https://archive.vn/i6IS1)
https://github.com/carson-katri/dream-textures

ArtStation's Artists Have United in Protest Against AI-Generated Images - 80 level

 

[Gerrard]

 

[Nathaniel3W]

As if Epic would know what anyone uses Megascans for.

 

[Victor1234]

The suits are coming to ruin this. Brought to you by the same guys that thought selling a $400 juicer that couldn't make juice was a great business model, to the tune of $120 million...

https://www.businessinsider.com/chatgtp-and-generative-ai-could-form-techs-next-big-bubble-2023-1

• The buzz behind ChatGPT is fuelling investment into other generative AI startups.
• In the last three months, AI startups have raised big rounds at high reported valuations.
• The business models are unproven, and running AI involves high computational costs.

 

[Stavrophore]

 

[Morgoth]

I hope OpenAI kills Google & Co.

It's time for a creative destruction deluge.

 

[Sarathiour]

could someone give him the bender rating in my stead, I'll just do with JJ in the meantime

 

[Dexter]

https://echoesofsomewhere.com/

 

[Dexter]

https://restofworld.org/2023/ai-image-china-video-game-layoffs/

AI is already taking video game illustrators’ jobs in China​

“AI is developing at a speed way beyond our imagination. Two people could potentially do the work that used to be done by 10.”​

By Viola Zhou 11 April 2023

• Recent breakthroughs in AI image generation have created widespread anxiety in China’s video game art industry.
• Given the high quality of AI-produced artwork, many illustrators are losing their jobs to AI image generators such as Stable Diffusion and DALL-E 2.
• The gaming industry’s job market was already precarious after the Chinese government’s licensing freeze in 2021 threw thousands of game developers out of business.

Freelance illustrator Amber Yu used to make 3,000 to 7,000 yuan ($430 to $1,000) for every video game poster she drew. Making the promotional posters, published on social media to attract players and introduce new features, was skill-intensive and time-consuming. Once, she spent an entire week completing one illustration of a woman dressed in traditional Chinese attire performing a lion dance — first making a sketch on Adobe Photoshop, then carefully refining the outlines and adding colors.

But since February, these job opportunities have vanished, Yu told Rest of World. Gaming companies, equipped with AI image generators, can create a similar illustration in seconds. Yu said they now simply offer to commission her for small fixes, like tweaking the lighting and skewed body parts, for a tenth of her original rate.

Recent breakthroughs in AI image generation, with the release of programs such as DALL-E 2, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion in 2022, have enabled users to produce impeccable drawings from text prompts. In the past few months, Chinese video game companies, from tech giants like Tencent to indie game developers, have begun using these programs to design and create video game characters, backdrops, and promotional materials.

The rise of AI art has created widespread anxiety in China’s video game art industry. Artists are crucial to game production, be it for conceptualizing characters or drawing background elements like cityscapes or signs. Given the high quality of AI-produced artwork, many in the industry are wondering how long they will be able to keep their jobs, seven game illustrators told Rest of World. Artists joke that they should switch careers to peddling rice noodles on the street instead, several of the illustrators said.

“AI is developing at a speed way beyond our imagination,” Xu Yingying, illustrator at an independent game art studio in Chongqing, told Rest of World. Xu’s studio produces designs for major game developers in China. Five of the studio’s 15 illustrators who specialize in character design were laid off this year, and Xu believes the adoption of AI image generators was partly to blame. “Two people could potentially do the work that used to be done by 10,” she said.

Chinese tech giants, such as Tencent and NetEase, that own large video-game publishing divisions, have been researching how to cut game development costs with artificial intelligence for years. NetEase’s Naraka: Bladepoint, an action-adventure battle royale game, rolled out a temporary feature in March that allowed players to create new “skins” for avatars using the company’s in-house AI program. Following a criminal investigation against a prominent voice actor, allegedly because of a business dispute, gaming companies miHoYo and NetEase used AI to generate the voices of his characters.

A spokesperson at NetEase told Rest of World the company had applied AI-based technologies to assist game animation, and the models are trained using its proprietary or licensed resources. “Our goal has been to develop better tools to enable our talented teams of art designers and illustrators to create assets faster or more efficiently during the game development process,” the spokesperson said. Tencent and miHoYo did not respond to requests for comments.

AI-generated art was so skilled that some illustrators talked about giving up drawing altogether. “Our way of making a living is suddenly destroyed,” said a game artist in Guangdong, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of being identified by her employer, to Rest of World. Yu, the freelance illustrator, said it was “despicable” that algorithms — trained on vast datasets that took humans decades to produce — were on the verge of replacing the artists themselves. Still, Yu plans to train AI programs with her own drawings to improve her productivity. “If I’m a top-notch artist, I might be able to boycott [them]. But I have to eat.”

Illustrators say employers are encouraging them to use AI image generators to boost their productivity. At Xu’s studio, for example, AI generators create clothes and accessories from human-illustrated character sketches. Game designers also use AI programs to draw treasure chests and gold coins, a Shanghai-based illustrator told Rest of World.

The Guangdong-based game artist, who works at a leading gaming company, said that previously, employees could draw a scene or a character in a day; now, with the help of AI, they could make 40 a day for their bosses to choose from. “I wish I could just shoot down these programs,” the artist told Rest of World, after getting off work late one night. She said fear of impending layoffs had made her colleagues more competitive; many stayed at work late, working longer hours to try to produce more. “[AI] made us more productive but also more exhausted,” she said.

The gaming industry’s job market was already precarious after the Chinese government’s monthslong licensing freeze in 2021 threw thousands of game developers out of business. Leo Li, a gaming industry recruiter in Hangzhou, told Rest of World the number of illustrator jobs plunged by about 70% over the last year — not only because of regulatory pressures and a slowing economy, but also the AI boom. Given the rising capabilities of AI tools, “bosses may be thinking they don’t need so many employees,” Li said.

The poster for ‘A Madman’s Game’ which follows a depressed artist in a world where ChatGPT and AI artwork have taken over. MaskCatStudio

Within the gaming community, some players have been pushing back against AI illustrations, denouncing them as “digital carcasses” of man-made art, and criticizing those who scrape art from the internet without their creators’ consent. They scrutinize character illustrations and fan art for traces of AI, such as an unnatural-looking hand or mispositioned eyeglasses. In February, after players called out a well-known illustrator for using AI to make a poster for the mobile game Alchemy Stars, Tencent’s Tourdog Studio, the game developer, said the poster would not appear in the game itself, and pledged against using AI-made artwork.

Some players told Rest of World that although they don’t mind AI-made avatars and skins, they wouldn’t pay as much for them. “As a consumer, I hope there’s human labor behind my purchase,” said Xie Jinsen, an algorithm engineer in Shanghai, who plays mobile battle games such as Honor of Kings and PUBG Mobile. “Emphasizing how something is made by AI will make people feel it’s cheap.”

AI image generators still lack some human capabilities, according to illustrators. Although they excel at creating anime and cyberpunk styles — possibly because they are able to scrape the vast trove of similar images on the web — they don’t perform as well with more niche aesthetics. Zigi Mo, head of Huanxiong Studio in Chengdu, which started using Midjourney and Stable Diffusion this year, told Rest of World AI image generators could polish illustrations, but were unable to come up with designs that addressed specific client needs. “At least for our company, it couldn’t replace any human worker,” he said. “It’s just a tool that assists us.”

Jeffrey Ding, an assistant professor at George Washington University who studies the development of AI in China, said the advancement of AI could open up competition and create new opportunities, but it could also eliminate a wide range of white-collar jobs currently done with computers. “The reality might be that [AI] will displace a lot of jobs, not just artists, but like lawyers and writing services,” Ding told Rest of World.

The Chinese government is taking steps to regulate AI art. In January, China’s internet watchdog enacted a new regulation requiring “deepfake” generators to clearly label content that could confuse the public. In April, the regulator published a draft law applying the same rule to AI-made imagery and videos, adding that copyrights should be respected. The draft didn’t mention if companies need to inform consumers about the use of AI in games or other products.

The anxiety experienced by illustrators might soon spread to other professions, Xiao Di, an independent game developer, told Rest of World. Xiao said indie developers like himself used to outsource illustration work to art studios, but now save costs by creating characters and backdrops with AI.

In Xiao’s latest production, A Madman’s Game, set to be released in April, the protagonist is a depressed artist looking for hope in a time when ChatGPT and AI artwork have taken the world by storm. Paradoxically, some of the game’s characters were made with the AI image generator Draft. “Every technological revolution leaves some people behind,” Xiao said. “AI illustration is just the beginning … It might be programming or customer service next year, or the year after.”

 

[gurugeorge]

https://restofworld.org/2023/ai-image-china-video-game-layoffs/

AI is already taking video game illustrators’ jobs in China​

“AI is developing at a speed way beyond our imagination. Two people could potentially do the work that used to be done by 10.”​

By Viola Zhou 11 April 2023

• Recent breakthroughs in AI image generation have created widespread anxiety in China’s video game art industry.
• Given the high quality of AI-produced artwork, many illustrators are losing their jobs to AI image generators such as Stable Diffusion and DALL-E 2.
• The gaming industry’s job market was already precarious after the Chinese government’s licensing freeze in 2021 threw thousands of game developers out of business.

Freelance illustrator Amber Yu used to make 3,000 to 7,000 yuan ($430 to $1,000) for every video game poster she drew. Making the promotional posters, published on social media to attract players and introduce new features, was skill-intensive and time-consuming. Once, she spent an entire week completing one illustration of a woman dressed in traditional Chinese attire performing a lion dance — first making a sketch on Adobe Photoshop, then carefully refining the outlines and adding colors.

But since February, these job opportunities have vanished, Yu told Rest of World. Gaming companies, equipped with AI image generators, can create a similar illustration in seconds. Yu said they now simply offer to commission her for small fixes, like tweaking the lighting and skewed body parts, for a tenth of her original rate.

Recent breakthroughs in AI image generation, with the release of programs such as DALL-E 2, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion in 2022, have enabled users to produce impeccable drawings from text prompts. In the past few months, Chinese video game companies, from tech giants like Tencent to indie game developers, have begun using these programs to design and create video game characters, backdrops, and promotional materials.

The rise of AI art has created widespread anxiety in China’s video game art industry. Artists are crucial to game production, be it for conceptualizing characters or drawing background elements like cityscapes or signs. Given the high quality of AI-produced artwork, many in the industry are wondering how long they will be able to keep their jobs, seven game illustrators told Rest of World. Artists joke that they should switch careers to peddling rice noodles on the street instead, several of the illustrators said.

“AI is developing at a speed way beyond our imagination,” Xu Yingying, illustrator at an independent game art studio in Chongqing, told Rest of World. Xu’s studio produces designs for major game developers in China. Five of the studio’s 15 illustrators who specialize in character design were laid off this year, and Xu believes the adoption of AI image generators was partly to blame. “Two people could potentially do the work that used to be done by 10,” she said.

Chinese tech giants, such as Tencent and NetEase, that own large video-game publishing divisions, have been researching how to cut game development costs with artificial intelligence for years. NetEase’s Naraka: Bladepoint, an action-adventure battle royale game, rolled out a temporary feature in March that allowed players to create new “skins” for avatars using the company’s in-house AI program. Following a criminal investigation against a prominent voice actor, allegedly because of a business dispute, gaming companies miHoYo and NetEase used AI to generate the voices of his characters.

A spokesperson at NetEase told Rest of World the company had applied AI-based technologies to assist game animation, and the models are trained using its proprietary or licensed resources. “Our goal has been to develop better tools to enable our talented teams of art designers and illustrators to create assets faster or more efficiently during the game development process,” the spokesperson said. Tencent and miHoYo did not respond to requests for comments.

AI-generated art was so skilled that some illustrators talked about giving up drawing altogether. “Our way of making a living is suddenly destroyed,” said a game artist in Guangdong, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of being identified by her employer, to Rest of World. Yu, the freelance illustrator, said it was “despicable” that algorithms — trained on vast datasets that took humans decades to produce — were on the verge of replacing the artists themselves. Still, Yu plans to train AI programs with her own drawings to improve her productivity. “If I’m a top-notch artist, I might be able to boycott [them]. But I have to eat.”

Illustrators say employers are encouraging them to use AI image generators to boost their productivity. At Xu’s studio, for example, AI generators create clothes and accessories from human-illustrated character sketches. Game designers also use AI programs to draw treasure chests and gold coins, a Shanghai-based illustrator told Rest of World.

The Guangdong-based game artist, who works at a leading gaming company, said that previously, employees could draw a scene or a character in a day; now, with the help of AI, they could make 40 a day for their bosses to choose from. “I wish I could just shoot down these programs,” the artist told Rest of World, after getting off work late one night. She said fear of impending layoffs had made her colleagues more competitive; many stayed at work late, working longer hours to try to produce more. “[AI] made us more productive but also more exhausted,” she said.

The gaming industry’s job market was already precarious after the Chinese government’s monthslong licensing freeze in 2021 threw thousands of game developers out of business. Leo Li, a gaming industry recruiter in Hangzhou, told Rest of World the number of illustrator jobs plunged by about 70% over the last year — not only because of regulatory pressures and a slowing economy, but also the AI boom. Given the rising capabilities of AI tools, “bosses may be thinking they don’t need so many employees,” Li said.

The poster for ‘A Madman’s Game’ which follows a depressed artist in a world where ChatGPT and AI artwork have taken over. MaskCatStudio

Within the gaming community, some players have been pushing back against AI illustrations, denouncing them as “digital carcasses” of man-made art, and criticizing those who scrape art from the internet without their creators’ consent. They scrutinize character illustrations and fan art for traces of AI, such as an unnatural-looking hand or mispositioned eyeglasses. In February, after players called out a well-known illustrator for using AI to make a poster for the mobile game Alchemy Stars, Tencent’s Tourdog Studio, the game developer, said the poster would not appear in the game itself, and pledged against using AI-made artwork.

Some players told Rest of World that although they don’t mind AI-made avatars and skins, they wouldn’t pay as much for them. “As a consumer, I hope there’s human labor behind my purchase,” said Xie Jinsen, an algorithm engineer in Shanghai, who plays mobile battle games such as Honor of Kings and PUBG Mobile. “Emphasizing how something is made by AI will make people feel it’s cheap.”

AI image generators still lack some human capabilities, according to illustrators. Although they excel at creating anime and cyberpunk styles — possibly because they are able to scrape the vast trove of similar images on the web — they don’t perform as well with more niche aesthetics. Zigi Mo, head of Huanxiong Studio in Chengdu, which started using Midjourney and Stable Diffusion this year, told Rest of World AI image generators could polish illustrations, but were unable to come up with designs that addressed specific client needs. “At least for our company, it couldn’t replace any human worker,” he said. “It’s just a tool that assists us.”

Jeffrey Ding, an assistant professor at George Washington University who studies the development of AI in China, said the advancement of AI could open up competition and create new opportunities, but it could also eliminate a wide range of white-collar jobs currently done with computers. “The reality might be that [AI] will displace a lot of jobs, not just artists, but like lawyers and writing services,” Ding told Rest of World.

The Chinese government is taking steps to regulate AI art. In January, China’s internet watchdog enacted a new regulation requiring “deepfake” generators to clearly label content that could confuse the public. In April, the regulator published a draft law applying the same rule to AI-made imagery and videos, adding that copyrights should be respected. The draft didn’t mention if companies need to inform consumers about the use of AI in games or other products.

The anxiety experienced by illustrators might soon spread to other professions, Xiao Di, an independent game developer, told Rest of World. Xiao said indie developers like himself used to outsource illustration work to art studios, but now save costs by creating characters and backdrops with AI.

In Xiao’s latest production, A Madman’s Game, set to be released in April, the protagonist is a depressed artist looking for hope in a time when ChatGPT and AI artwork have taken the world by storm. Paradoxically, some of the game’s characters were made with the AI image generator Draft. “Every technological revolution leaves some people behind,” Xiao said. “AI illustration is just the beginning … It might be programming or customer service next year, or the year after.”

Jesus Christ, what a sorry state of affairs. I suppose the best possible outcome is that some kind of UBI is implemented, then those with an artistic bent can just do art to please themselves and whoever else is interested in their art. But more likely we're on the brink of descent into a machine civilization nightmare, where humans barely exist like rats in the interstices.

For all x's: was x made for man or man made for x? At what point do people wake up and start taking charge of their destiny and stop this blinkered descent into hell?

 

[thesecret1]

https://restofworld.org/2023/ai-image-china-video-game-layoffs/

AI is already taking video game illustrators’ jobs in China​

“AI is developing at a speed way beyond our imagination. Two people could potentially do the work that used to be done by 10.”​

By Viola Zhou 11 April 2023

• Recent breakthroughs in AI image generation have created widespread anxiety in China’s video game art industry.
• Given the high quality of AI-produced artwork, many illustrators are losing their jobs to AI image generators such as Stable Diffusion and DALL-E 2.
• The gaming industry’s job market was already precarious after the Chinese government’s licensing freeze in 2021 threw thousands of game developers out of business.

Freelance illustrator Amber Yu used to make 3,000 to 7,000 yuan ($430 to $1,000) for every video game poster she drew. Making the promotional posters, published on social media to attract players and introduce new features, was skill-intensive and time-consuming. Once, she spent an entire week completing one illustration of a woman dressed in traditional Chinese attire performing a lion dance — first making a sketch on Adobe Photoshop, then carefully refining the outlines and adding colors.

But since February, these job opportunities have vanished, Yu told Rest of World. Gaming companies, equipped with AI image generators, can create a similar illustration in seconds. Yu said they now simply offer to commission her for small fixes, like tweaking the lighting and skewed body parts, for a tenth of her original rate.

Recent breakthroughs in AI image generation, with the release of programs such as DALL-E 2, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion in 2022, have enabled users to produce impeccable drawings from text prompts. In the past few months, Chinese video game companies, from tech giants like Tencent to indie game developers, have begun using these programs to design and create video game characters, backdrops, and promotional materials.

The rise of AI art has created widespread anxiety in China’s video game art industry. Artists are crucial to game production, be it for conceptualizing characters or drawing background elements like cityscapes or signs. Given the high quality of AI-produced artwork, many in the industry are wondering how long they will be able to keep their jobs, seven game illustrators told Rest of World. Artists joke that they should switch careers to peddling rice noodles on the street instead, several of the illustrators said.

“AI is developing at a speed way beyond our imagination,” Xu Yingying, illustrator at an independent game art studio in Chongqing, told Rest of World. Xu’s studio produces designs for major game developers in China. Five of the studio’s 15 illustrators who specialize in character design were laid off this year, and Xu believes the adoption of AI image generators was partly to blame. “Two people could potentially do the work that used to be done by 10,” she said.

Chinese tech giants, such as Tencent and NetEase, that own large video-game publishing divisions, have been researching how to cut game development costs with artificial intelligence for years. NetEase’s Naraka: Bladepoint, an action-adventure battle royale game, rolled out a temporary feature in March that allowed players to create new “skins” for avatars using the company’s in-house AI program. Following a criminal investigation against a prominent voice actor, allegedly because of a business dispute, gaming companies miHoYo and NetEase used AI to generate the voices of his characters.

A spokesperson at NetEase told Rest of World the company had applied AI-based technologies to assist game animation, and the models are trained using its proprietary or licensed resources. “Our goal has been to develop better tools to enable our talented teams of art designers and illustrators to create assets faster or more efficiently during the game development process,” the spokesperson said. Tencent and miHoYo did not respond to requests for comments.

AI-generated art was so skilled that some illustrators talked about giving up drawing altogether. “Our way of making a living is suddenly destroyed,” said a game artist in Guangdong, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of being identified by her employer, to Rest of World. Yu, the freelance illustrator, said it was “despicable” that algorithms — trained on vast datasets that took humans decades to produce — were on the verge of replacing the artists themselves. Still, Yu plans to train AI programs with her own drawings to improve her productivity. “If I’m a top-notch artist, I might be able to boycott [them]. But I have to eat.”

Illustrators say employers are encouraging them to use AI image generators to boost their productivity. At Xu’s studio, for example, AI generators create clothes and accessories from human-illustrated character sketches. Game designers also use AI programs to draw treasure chests and gold coins, a Shanghai-based illustrator told Rest of World.

The Guangdong-based game artist, who works at a leading gaming company, said that previously, employees could draw a scene or a character in a day; now, with the help of AI, they could make 40 a day for their bosses to choose from. “I wish I could just shoot down these programs,” the artist told Rest of World, after getting off work late one night. She said fear of impending layoffs had made her colleagues more competitive; many stayed at work late, working longer hours to try to produce more. “[AI] made us more productive but also more exhausted,” she said.

The gaming industry’s job market was already precarious after the Chinese government’s monthslong licensing freeze in 2021 threw thousands of game developers out of business. Leo Li, a gaming industry recruiter in Hangzhou, told Rest of World the number of illustrator jobs plunged by about 70% over the last year — not only because of regulatory pressures and a slowing economy, but also the AI boom. Given the rising capabilities of AI tools, “bosses may be thinking they don’t need so many employees,” Li said.

The poster for ‘A Madman’s Game’ which follows a depressed artist in a world where ChatGPT and AI artwork have taken over. MaskCatStudio

Within the gaming community, some players have been pushing back against AI illustrations, denouncing them as “digital carcasses” of man-made art, and criticizing those who scrape art from the internet without their creators’ consent. They scrutinize character illustrations and fan art for traces of AI, such as an unnatural-looking hand or mispositioned eyeglasses. In February, after players called out a well-known illustrator for using AI to make a poster for the mobile game Alchemy Stars, Tencent’s Tourdog Studio, the game developer, said the poster would not appear in the game itself, and pledged against using AI-made artwork.

Some players told Rest of World that although they don’t mind AI-made avatars and skins, they wouldn’t pay as much for them. “As a consumer, I hope there’s human labor behind my purchase,” said Xie Jinsen, an algorithm engineer in Shanghai, who plays mobile battle games such as Honor of Kings and PUBG Mobile. “Emphasizing how something is made by AI will make people feel it’s cheap.”

AI image generators still lack some human capabilities, according to illustrators. Although they excel at creating anime and cyberpunk styles — possibly because they are able to scrape the vast trove of similar images on the web — they don’t perform as well with more niche aesthetics. Zigi Mo, head of Huanxiong Studio in Chengdu, which started using Midjourney and Stable Diffusion this year, told Rest of World AI image generators could polish illustrations, but were unable to come up with designs that addressed specific client needs. “At least for our company, it couldn’t replace any human worker,” he said. “It’s just a tool that assists us.”

Jeffrey Ding, an assistant professor at George Washington University who studies the development of AI in China, said the advancement of AI could open up competition and create new opportunities, but it could also eliminate a wide range of white-collar jobs currently done with computers. “The reality might be that [AI] will displace a lot of jobs, not just artists, but like lawyers and writing services,” Ding told Rest of World.

The Chinese government is taking steps to regulate AI art. In January, China’s internet watchdog enacted a new regulation requiring “deepfake” generators to clearly label content that could confuse the public. In April, the regulator published a draft law applying the same rule to AI-made imagery and videos, adding that copyrights should be respected. The draft didn’t mention if companies need to inform consumers about the use of AI in games or other products.

The anxiety experienced by illustrators might soon spread to other professions, Xiao Di, an independent game developer, told Rest of World. Xiao said indie developers like himself used to outsource illustration work to art studios, but now save costs by creating characters and backdrops with AI.

In Xiao’s latest production, A Madman’s Game, set to be released in April, the protagonist is a depressed artist looking for hope in a time when ChatGPT and AI artwork have taken the world by storm. Paradoxically, some of the game’s characters were made with the AI image generator Draft. “Every technological revolution leaves some people behind,” Xiao said. “AI illustration is just the beginning … It might be programming or customer service next year, or the year after.”

Jesus Christ, what a sorry state of affairs. I suppose the best possible outcome is that some kind of UBI is implemented, then those with an artistic bent can just do art to please themselves and whoever else is interested in their art. But more likely we're on the brink of descent into a machine civilization nightmare, where humans barely exist like rats in the interstices.

For all x's: was x made for man or man made for x? At what point do people wake up and start taking charge of their destiny and stop this blinkered descent into hell?

Implementing UBI is a fast track to the hell you describe, lol. A person living off of UBI is literally a liability, a drain on the system that doesn't produce anything of value for the rest of the society (as then he'd be able to turn that value into money). The system would have every reason to eliminate such a person. That's not to mention how easy it would be to instill totalitarian control over such people. Oh, you were spreading misinformation on the internet? Guess no UBI check for you this month.

 

[gurugeorge]

https://restofworld.org/2023/ai-image-china-video-game-layoffs/

AI is already taking video game illustrators’ jobs in China​

“AI is developing at a speed way beyond our imagination. Two people could potentially do the work that used to be done by 10.”​

By Viola Zhou 11 April 2023

• Recent breakthroughs in AI image generation have created widespread anxiety in China’s video game art industry.
• Given the high quality of AI-produced artwork, many illustrators are losing their jobs to AI image generators such as Stable Diffusion and DALL-E 2.
• The gaming industry’s job market was already precarious after the Chinese government’s licensing freeze in 2021 threw thousands of game developers out of business.

Freelance illustrator Amber Yu used to make 3,000 to 7,000 yuan ($430 to $1,000) for every video game poster she drew. Making the promotional posters, published on social media to attract players and introduce new features, was skill-intensive and time-consuming. Once, she spent an entire week completing one illustration of a woman dressed in traditional Chinese attire performing a lion dance — first making a sketch on Adobe Photoshop, then carefully refining the outlines and adding colors.

But since February, these job opportunities have vanished, Yu told Rest of World. Gaming companies, equipped with AI image generators, can create a similar illustration in seconds. Yu said they now simply offer to commission her for small fixes, like tweaking the lighting and skewed body parts, for a tenth of her original rate.

Recent breakthroughs in AI image generation, with the release of programs such as DALL-E 2, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion in 2022, have enabled users to produce impeccable drawings from text prompts. In the past few months, Chinese video game companies, from tech giants like Tencent to indie game developers, have begun using these programs to design and create video game characters, backdrops, and promotional materials.

The rise of AI art has created widespread anxiety in China’s video game art industry. Artists are crucial to game production, be it for conceptualizing characters or drawing background elements like cityscapes or signs. Given the high quality of AI-produced artwork, many in the industry are wondering how long they will be able to keep their jobs, seven game illustrators told Rest of World. Artists joke that they should switch careers to peddling rice noodles on the street instead, several of the illustrators said.

“AI is developing at a speed way beyond our imagination,” Xu Yingying, illustrator at an independent game art studio in Chongqing, told Rest of World. Xu’s studio produces designs for major game developers in China. Five of the studio’s 15 illustrators who specialize in character design were laid off this year, and Xu believes the adoption of AI image generators was partly to blame. “Two people could potentially do the work that used to be done by 10,” she said.

Chinese tech giants, such as Tencent and NetEase, that own large video-game publishing divisions, have been researching how to cut game development costs with artificial intelligence for years. NetEase’s Naraka: Bladepoint, an action-adventure battle royale game, rolled out a temporary feature in March that allowed players to create new “skins” for avatars using the company’s in-house AI program. Following a criminal investigation against a prominent voice actor, allegedly because of a business dispute, gaming companies miHoYo and NetEase used AI to generate the voices of his characters.

A spokesperson at NetEase told Rest of World the company had applied AI-based technologies to assist game animation, and the models are trained using its proprietary or licensed resources. “Our goal has been to develop better tools to enable our talented teams of art designers and illustrators to create assets faster or more efficiently during the game development process,” the spokesperson said. Tencent and miHoYo did not respond to requests for comments.

AI-generated art was so skilled that some illustrators talked about giving up drawing altogether. “Our way of making a living is suddenly destroyed,” said a game artist in Guangdong, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of being identified by her employer, to Rest of World. Yu, the freelance illustrator, said it was “despicable” that algorithms — trained on vast datasets that took humans decades to produce — were on the verge of replacing the artists themselves. Still, Yu plans to train AI programs with her own drawings to improve her productivity. “If I’m a top-notch artist, I might be able to boycott [them]. But I have to eat.”

Illustrators say employers are encouraging them to use AI image generators to boost their productivity. At Xu’s studio, for example, AI generators create clothes and accessories from human-illustrated character sketches. Game designers also use AI programs to draw treasure chests and gold coins, a Shanghai-based illustrator told Rest of World.

The Guangdong-based game artist, who works at a leading gaming company, said that previously, employees could draw a scene or a character in a day; now, with the help of AI, they could make 40 a day for their bosses to choose from. “I wish I could just shoot down these programs,” the artist told Rest of World, after getting off work late one night. She said fear of impending layoffs had made her colleagues more competitive; many stayed at work late, working longer hours to try to produce more. “[AI] made us more productive but also more exhausted,” she said.

The gaming industry’s job market was already precarious after the Chinese government’s monthslong licensing freeze in 2021 threw thousands of game developers out of business. Leo Li, a gaming industry recruiter in Hangzhou, told Rest of World the number of illustrator jobs plunged by about 70% over the last year — not only because of regulatory pressures and a slowing economy, but also the AI boom. Given the rising capabilities of AI tools, “bosses may be thinking they don’t need so many employees,” Li said.

The poster for ‘A Madman’s Game’ which follows a depressed artist in a world where ChatGPT and AI artwork have taken over. MaskCatStudio

Within the gaming community, some players have been pushing back against AI illustrations, denouncing them as “digital carcasses” of man-made art, and criticizing those who scrape art from the internet without their creators’ consent. They scrutinize character illustrations and fan art for traces of AI, such as an unnatural-looking hand or mispositioned eyeglasses. In February, after players called out a well-known illustrator for using AI to make a poster for the mobile game Alchemy Stars, Tencent’s Tourdog Studio, the game developer, said the poster would not appear in the game itself, and pledged against using AI-made artwork.

Some players told Rest of World that although they don’t mind AI-made avatars and skins, they wouldn’t pay as much for them. “As a consumer, I hope there’s human labor behind my purchase,” said Xie Jinsen, an algorithm engineer in Shanghai, who plays mobile battle games such as Honor of Kings and PUBG Mobile. “Emphasizing how something is made by AI will make people feel it’s cheap.”

AI image generators still lack some human capabilities, according to illustrators. Although they excel at creating anime and cyberpunk styles — possibly because they are able to scrape the vast trove of similar images on the web — they don’t perform as well with more niche aesthetics. Zigi Mo, head of Huanxiong Studio in Chengdu, which started using Midjourney and Stable Diffusion this year, told Rest of World AI image generators could polish illustrations, but were unable to come up with designs that addressed specific client needs. “At least for our company, it couldn’t replace any human worker,” he said. “It’s just a tool that assists us.”

Jeffrey Ding, an assistant professor at George Washington University who studies the development of AI in China, said the advancement of AI could open up competition and create new opportunities, but it could also eliminate a wide range of white-collar jobs currently done with computers. “The reality might be that [AI] will displace a lot of jobs, not just artists, but like lawyers and writing services,” Ding told Rest of World.

The Chinese government is taking steps to regulate AI art. In January, China’s internet watchdog enacted a new regulation requiring “deepfake” generators to clearly label content that could confuse the public. In April, the regulator published a draft law applying the same rule to AI-made imagery and videos, adding that copyrights should be respected. The draft didn’t mention if companies need to inform consumers about the use of AI in games or other products.

The anxiety experienced by illustrators might soon spread to other professions, Xiao Di, an independent game developer, told Rest of World. Xiao said indie developers like himself used to outsource illustration work to art studios, but now save costs by creating characters and backdrops with AI.

In Xiao’s latest production, A Madman’s Game, set to be released in April, the protagonist is a depressed artist looking for hope in a time when ChatGPT and AI artwork have taken the world by storm. Paradoxically, some of the game’s characters were made with the AI image generator Draft. “Every technological revolution leaves some people behind,” Xiao said. “AI illustration is just the beginning … It might be programming or customer service next year, or the year after.”

Jesus Christ, what a sorry state of affairs. I suppose the best possible outcome is that some kind of UBI is implemented, then those with an artistic bent can just do art to please themselves and whoever else is interested in their art. But more likely we're on the brink of descent into a machine civilization nightmare, where humans barely exist like rats in the interstices.

For all x's: was x made for man or man made for x? At what point do people wake up and start taking charge of their destiny and stop this blinkered descent into hell?

Implementing UBI is a fast track to the hell you describe, lol. A person living off of UBI is literally a liability, a drain on the system that doesn't produce anything of value for the rest of the society (as then he'd be able to turn that value into money). The system would have every reason to eliminate such a person. That's not to mention how easy it would be to instill totalitarian control over such people. Oh, you were spreading misinformation on the internet? Guess no UBI check for you this month.

If everything's done by machines then there's no possibility of anyone producing anything of value for the rest of society.

 

[thesecret1]

If everything's done by machines then there's no possibility of anyone producing anything of value for the rest of society.

It is unlikely everything will ever be done by machines. What we're seeing with the AI is more akin to automatization. Back in the day, you had hordes of factory workers losing their jobs to machines. The market adjusted, new fields opened up, and life went on, new jobs replacing the ones lost.

 

[Egosphere]

I like it. People get hung up on the ai having to generate the whole image, but if you know photoshop/krita then it's an invaluable tool. Stitching several images together, adjusting the colours and adding some filters can give a distinctive art style. The problem is when the ai images are used unaltered, and the eye quickly learns to discern them, and it comes with a strong uncanny valley effect - not human drawn, but not perfect either.

 

[what am i doing]

https://restofworld.org/2023/ai-image-china-video-game-layoffs/

AI is already taking video game illustrators’ jobs in China​

“AI is developing at a speed way beyond our imagination. Two people could potentially do the work that used to be done by 10.”​

By Viola Zhou 11 April 2023

• Recent breakthroughs in AI image generation have created widespread anxiety in China’s video game art industry.
• Given the high quality of AI-produced artwork, many illustrators are losing their jobs to AI image generators such as Stable Diffusion and DALL-E 2.
• The gaming industry’s job market was already precarious after the Chinese government’s licensing freeze in 2021 threw thousands of game developers out of business.

Freelance illustrator Amber Yu used to make 3,000 to 7,000 yuan ($430 to $1,000) for every video game poster she drew. Making the promotional posters, published on social media to attract players and introduce new features, was skill-intensive and time-consuming. Once, she spent an entire week completing one illustration of a woman dressed in traditional Chinese attire performing a lion dance — first making a sketch on Adobe Photoshop, then carefully refining the outlines and adding colors.

But since February, these job opportunities have vanished, Yu told Rest of World. Gaming companies, equipped with AI image generators, can create a similar illustration in seconds. Yu said they now simply offer to commission her for small fixes, like tweaking the lighting and skewed body parts, for a tenth of her original rate.

Recent breakthroughs in AI image generation, with the release of programs such as DALL-E 2, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion in 2022, have enabled users to produce impeccable drawings from text prompts. In the past few months, Chinese video game companies, from tech giants like Tencent to indie game developers, have begun using these programs to design and create video game characters, backdrops, and promotional materials.

The rise of AI art has created widespread anxiety in China’s video game art industry. Artists are crucial to game production, be it for conceptualizing characters or drawing background elements like cityscapes or signs. Given the high quality of AI-produced artwork, many in the industry are wondering how long they will be able to keep their jobs, seven game illustrators told Rest of World. Artists joke that they should switch careers to peddling rice noodles on the street instead, several of the illustrators said.

“AI is developing at a speed way beyond our imagination,” Xu Yingying, illustrator at an independent game art studio in Chongqing, told Rest of World. Xu’s studio produces designs for major game developers in China. Five of the studio’s 15 illustrators who specialize in character design were laid off this year, and Xu believes the adoption of AI image generators was partly to blame. “Two people could potentially do the work that used to be done by 10,” she said.

Chinese tech giants, such as Tencent and NetEase, that own large video-game publishing divisions, have been researching how to cut game development costs with artificial intelligence for years. NetEase’s Naraka: Bladepoint, an action-adventure battle royale game, rolled out a temporary feature in March that allowed players to create new “skins” for avatars using the company’s in-house AI program. Following a criminal investigation against a prominent voice actor, allegedly because of a business dispute, gaming companies miHoYo and NetEase used AI to generate the voices of his characters.

A spokesperson at NetEase told Rest of World the company had applied AI-based technologies to assist game animation, and the models are trained using its proprietary or licensed resources. “Our goal has been to develop better tools to enable our talented teams of art designers and illustrators to create assets faster or more efficiently during the game development process,” the spokesperson said. Tencent and miHoYo did not respond to requests for comments.

AI-generated art was so skilled that some illustrators talked about giving up drawing altogether. “Our way of making a living is suddenly destroyed,” said a game artist in Guangdong, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of being identified by her employer, to Rest of World. Yu, the freelance illustrator, said it was “despicable” that algorithms — trained on vast datasets that took humans decades to produce — were on the verge of replacing the artists themselves. Still, Yu plans to train AI programs with her own drawings to improve her productivity. “If I’m a top-notch artist, I might be able to boycott [them]. But I have to eat.”

Illustrators say employers are encouraging them to use AI image generators to boost their productivity. At Xu’s studio, for example, AI generators create clothes and accessories from human-illustrated character sketches. Game designers also use AI programs to draw treasure chests and gold coins, a Shanghai-based illustrator told Rest of World.

The Guangdong-based game artist, who works at a leading gaming company, said that previously, employees could draw a scene or a character in a day; now, with the help of AI, they could make 40 a day for their bosses to choose from. “I wish I could just shoot down these programs,” the artist told Rest of World, after getting off work late one night. She said fear of impending layoffs had made her colleagues more competitive; many stayed at work late, working longer hours to try to produce more. “[AI] made us more productive but also more exhausted,” she said.

The gaming industry’s job market was already precarious after the Chinese government’s monthslong licensing freeze in 2021 threw thousands of game developers out of business. Leo Li, a gaming industry recruiter in Hangzhou, told Rest of World the number of illustrator jobs plunged by about 70% over the last year — not only because of regulatory pressures and a slowing economy, but also the AI boom. Given the rising capabilities of AI tools, “bosses may be thinking they don’t need so many employees,” Li said.

The poster for ‘A Madman’s Game’ which follows a depressed artist in a world where ChatGPT and AI artwork have taken over. MaskCatStudio

Within the gaming community, some players have been pushing back against AI illustrations, denouncing them as “digital carcasses” of man-made art, and criticizing those who scrape art from the internet without their creators’ consent. They scrutinize character illustrations and fan art for traces of AI, such as an unnatural-looking hand or mispositioned eyeglasses. In February, after players called out a well-known illustrator for using AI to make a poster for the mobile game Alchemy Stars, Tencent’s Tourdog Studio, the game developer, said the poster would not appear in the game itself, and pledged against using AI-made artwork.

Some players told Rest of World that although they don’t mind AI-made avatars and skins, they wouldn’t pay as much for them. “As a consumer, I hope there’s human labor behind my purchase,” said Xie Jinsen, an algorithm engineer in Shanghai, who plays mobile battle games such as Honor of Kings and PUBG Mobile. “Emphasizing how something is made by AI will make people feel it’s cheap.”

AI image generators still lack some human capabilities, according to illustrators. Although they excel at creating anime and cyberpunk styles — possibly because they are able to scrape the vast trove of similar images on the web — they don’t perform as well with more niche aesthetics. Zigi Mo, head of Huanxiong Studio in Chengdu, which started using Midjourney and Stable Diffusion this year, told Rest of World AI image generators could polish illustrations, but were unable to come up with designs that addressed specific client needs. “At least for our company, it couldn’t replace any human worker,” he said. “It’s just a tool that assists us.”

Jeffrey Ding, an assistant professor at George Washington University who studies the development of AI in China, said the advancement of AI could open up competition and create new opportunities, but it could also eliminate a wide range of white-collar jobs currently done with computers. “The reality might be that [AI] will displace a lot of jobs, not just artists, but like lawyers and writing services,” Ding told Rest of World.

The Chinese government is taking steps to regulate AI art. In January, China’s internet watchdog enacted a new regulation requiring “deepfake” generators to clearly label content that could confuse the public. In April, the regulator published a draft law applying the same rule to AI-made imagery and videos, adding that copyrights should be respected. The draft didn’t mention if companies need to inform consumers about the use of AI in games or other products.

The anxiety experienced by illustrators might soon spread to other professions, Xiao Di, an independent game developer, told Rest of World. Xiao said indie developers like himself used to outsource illustration work to art studios, but now save costs by creating characters and backdrops with AI.

In Xiao’s latest production, A Madman’s Game, set to be released in April, the protagonist is a depressed artist looking for hope in a time when ChatGPT and AI artwork have taken the world by storm. Paradoxically, some of the game’s characters were made with the AI image generator Draft. “Every technological revolution leaves some people behind,” Xiao said. “AI illustration is just the beginning … It might be programming or customer service next year, or the year after.”

Jesus Christ, what a sorry state of affairs. I suppose the best possible outcome is that some kind of UBI is implemented, then those with an artistic bent can just do art to please themselves and whoever else is interested in their art. But more likely we're on the brink of descent into a machine civilization nightmare, where humans barely exist like rats in the interstices.

For all x's: was x made for man or man made for x? At what point do people wake up and start taking charge of their destiny and stop this blinkered descent into hell?

UBI = the government can starve you immediately if you say anything they don't like, or if it has reason to believe you hold unacceptable beliefs.

 

[gurugeorge]

If everything's done by machines then there's no possibility of anyone producing anything of value for the rest of society.

It is unlikely everything will ever be done by machines. What we're seeing with the AI is more akin to automatization. Back in the day, you had hordes of factory workers losing their jobs to machines. The market adjusted, new fields opened up, and life went on, new jobs replacing the ones lost.

Yes, I know the nostrum, I was a libertarian for a long time and laughed at the Luddites.

The question is, does that principle always hold, or does it have limits?

 

[thesecret1]

Yes, I know the nostrum, I was a libertarian for a long time and laughed at the Luddites.

The question is, does that principle always hold, or does it have limits?

Depends on the policy. If you take the commie path of "machines will do all the work", then yes, you will be made obsolete. If you take a more capitalist-oriented mindset, what this means is you can get a lot more labour for a lot less money, meaning the barrier of entry into starting your own company got lowered. If you let the government have all the means of production, you will be just a parasyte. If you instead have your own homestead where you oversee your automated production chain, you become an independent actor that can both generate value on his own, and thrive without relying on government handouts.

If you feel like your job is in danger of being automated away, you have three options:
1. Learn a different trade where you can still get a job
2. Become a welfare leech and whine about how you should get more money for doing nothing
3. Go from employee to employer, and enjoy the benefits that the automatization brought to you.

 

[gurugeorge]

Yes, I know the nostrum, I was a libertarian for a long time and laughed at the Luddites.

The question is, does that principle always hold, or does it have limits?

Depends on the policy. If you take the commie path of "machines will do all the work", then yes, you will be made obsolete. If you take a more capitalist-oriented mindset, what this means is you can get a lot more labour for a lot less money, meaning the barrier of entry into starting your own company got lowered. If you let the government have all the means of production, you will be just a parasyte. If you instead have your own homestead where you oversee your automated production chain, you become an independent actor that can both generate value on his own, and thrive without relying on government handouts.

If you feel like your job is in danger of being automated away, you have three options:
1. Learn a different trade where you can still get a job
2. Become a welfare leech and whine about how you should get more money for doing nothing
3. Go from employee to employer, and enjoy the benefits that the automatization brought to you.

Yes, I understand the logic, as I've said. The thing is though, that a presupposition of that point of view is that human beings are free-floating actors with no ties to people or place, who if they would only be rational dammit, would "find a way."

It also treats economic conditions like a kind of weather that people have to cope with. The analogy is between having to cope with nature's foibles and with the ups and downs of the market - they're both considered as unaccountable somethings that impinge on said fungible rational actor, that he/she simply has to deal with. "Unintended consequences of intentional actions" or whatever Hayek said.

But what we are pleased to call "markets" these days are not really free like that, and their resultant is not like the weather; via financial and market manipulation, they are almost as "centrally controlled" as Communist economies - only for the benefit of the rich, rather than the ostensible benefit of all.

I see no reason why a republic can't take control of its own economy and make that economy work for its sovereign (the people), and give the market freedom only insofar as it benefits that sovereign, rather than the people having to cope with the wayward shenanigans of the super-rich. That would mean elements of both central control and free markets, on a purely pragmatic basis - Social Democracy or Fascism, depending on the flavour. Both work, and work better than plutocracy.

What would we lose out on? A few cool innovations? Eh. Better to have a stable society with the bulk of people content and reproducing, warmly interacting as human beings rather than being fungible units of a production process that costs them as much, if not more, than it benefits them.

Innovation must be monitored by a State that's genuinely democratically controlled by a majority of the population. Politics should be the art of negotiation and compromise between the various "houses" of society, not a rubber stamp for the plutocracy.

 

[thesecret1]

The problem with that is that if you decide to stunt technological progress in the name of stability and such, other countries won't, and will outcompete you. Imagine if luddites got their way and the government decided to stop factory automatization in some country. How could it even hope to compete? Maybe running some hardcore sweatshops where wages would be so low they'd undercut the machines? I don't think that's a path that benefits anyone.

Today's markets may not be free, but note that the powers that be do not try to stop the current, merely direct it. You cannot stop automatization with AI at this point, it's too late. You can only adapt.

And you know, I really don't see it so negatively. In the article, they say that two people can now do the work of ten. Isn't that a great thing? It means that if you ran, for example, an indie game studio, your costs went down by a large chunk (or your productivity skyrocketed). This means that you need less capital to start such a studio (you are paing fewer people, after all), meaning more people will be able to start one. More studios then mean more jobs. It's a net benefit by far.

 

[gurugeorge]

The problem with that is that if you decide to stunt technological progress in the name of stability and such, other countries won't, and will outcompete you. Imagine if luddites got their way and the government decided to stop factory automatization in some country. How could it even hope to compete? Maybe running some hardcore sweatshops where wages would be so low they'd undercut the machines? I don't think that's a path that benefits anyone.

Today's markets may not be free, but note that the powers that be do not try to stop the current, merely direct it. You cannot stop automatization with AI at this point, it's too late. You can only adapt.

And you know, I really don't see it so negatively. In the article, they say that two people can now do the work of ten. Isn't that a great thing? It means that if you ran, for example, an indie game studio, your costs went down by a large chunk (or your productivity skyrocketed). This means that you need less capital to start such a studio (you are paing fewer people, after all), meaning more people will be able to start one. More studios then mean more jobs. It's a net benefit by far.

Oh sure, there will always be winners with every change, but there will also be losers. Has anyone ever seriously done a cost/benefit on it though?

It could all be stopped with a worldwide moratorium on AI research (similar to the consensus re. poison gas weapons, etc. - "this is bad for all of us, so all of us need to stop, and we will police this"). Not that I think AI is yet at that sort of stage - but if this nonsense keeps going, it will eventually be. Are we human beings or lemmings?

As to the competition point, so what? Outside of pure and applied sciences and military (which as we've seen, even centrally controlled economies were capable of keeping up), most of the innovations people "compete" in are artificially stimulated - which is another point against the libertarian line of argument (IOW, it's not that capitalists compete to service real needs better, it's that they stimulate artificial wants for more and more nonsense that nobody really needs).

Economy for man, or man for economy? Are we supposed to have lives of which our economic activities are just one part, or are we merely cogs in an economic machine (or more realistically, playthings of a plutocracy)?

I wouldn't want to give the impression that I'm against markets and competition on apriori grounds, free markets are a necessary, functional part of any economy. But economic efficiency has to be balanced by other considerations, in a republic that has its eyes open for present and future costs to the well-being of its people, as well as benefits.