Ok but what is an actually good solution to the whole AI art debacle?
I heard about C2PA and I don't believe for a second that it's not going to be used for surveillance and all that other fun stuff. What's worse is that they're apparently trying to make it legally required. It also really annoys me when I see headlines along the lines of "Is AI the end of creativity?!1!" or "AI will help artists, not hurt them!1!!" or something to that effect. So, it got me thinking and I tried to come up with some answers that actually benefit artists and their audience rather that just you know who.
Unfortunately my train of thought keeps barreling out of control to things like, "AI should do the boring stuff, not the fun stuff" and "if people didn't risk starvation in the first place..." So I thought I'd find out what other people think (search engines have become borderline useless haven't they).
So what do you think would be the best way to satisfy everyone?
This is a big part of the issue.
The truth is that most artists would still make their art if they didn't make money off of it provided that they are ensured basic necessities and enough time.
The whole idea of AI art would be much easier to brush away as a non-issue for many artists if it didn't immediately pose the question of "how is this going to affect my ability to live?"
I wholeheartedly believe this too. There's something so amazing about the feeling of creating things with your own hands and seeing what the rest of the world says about it. But the moment you rely on this to literally not starve, any unfairly advantaged competition becomes that much more dangerous.
Yes, indeed. And, in fact, it would probably make them happier if the bullshit commercial art that's bereft of meaning - a subset of commercial art, to be clear - was no longer something they had to concern themselves with in order to pay the bills.
If they - and the rest of us - could be granted the dignity of a good and comfortable life while perusing projects that were personally fulfilling, then there'd be little issue. But instead, their work is being used not only to line the pockets of investors and a handful of tech enthusiasts with the right connections (generative machine learning models aren't that hard for anyone with some programming skills and basic linear algebra to develop, the magic is in the money), but to directly undercut their paid work. And that's just not going to fly.