Another AI company wrote us and here’s our response

This was the money quote.

I love what I do (which tends to be programming, but I approach it as a craft), and often do things by hand, that others automate, because I love my work, and also the people that use it.

That is where we are with AI art right now. Most of it is garbage created by people who don't know what good art is.

But just like back in the day, a few professionals decided to adopt the new tools instead of complain about them. And all of a sudden they were creating good art much faster than their competitors. And then those tools simply became the tools of the trade.

This is where AI art is going. It will be a tool in the artists toolbox, just like Photoshop is. A great artist will use AI to do most of the work, and then add their professional taste and talent to make it great.

The smart artist is learning how to integrate AI into their workflows.

* And I'm including software engineers here as well. The smart engineer is incorporating copilots into their software development workflows.

I read a book many years ago called If this is your land, where are your stories? One of the sections described how a group of native people from western Canada successfully reclaimed some of their land by telling stories in court. They lost their case in a lower court, because the court ruled that they were just telling stories. A higher court ruled that their people's stories, while not always factually correct, do lay claim to the land they lived on.

Everyone has a story. It's a confusing world where machine-generated stories can be indistinguishable from actual human stories.

Trust in authenticity is going to be a valuable asset going forward; I appreciate people sharing responses like this. It's easy to be cynical and say this response won't change anything, but if the people at Muse and companies like it keep getting these responses, some of them will realize the emptiness of what they're doing and move on to more meaningful work.

https://www.amazon.com/Where-Stories-Finding-Common-Ground/d...

https://www.theregister.com/AMP/2024/07/08/github_copilot_dm...

I do sympathise with the creatives on an emotional level but it’s looking like the laws won’t

The idea of publishing something these days has become quite unappealing. For me, there's something dehumanizing about being used as LLM training data. Not that my thoughts are unique or interesting or special. But, man...

This feels oddly similar, except there's only a couple Sysco's and US Foods' and probably thousands of AI Content Farm startups at this point.

As a developer myself, I want to see coding as a creative act and feel uneasy about the idea of relying on a tool that makes the code one tab away. But I also recognize most of the coding we do is in a commercial context where artistic expression is less relevant.

I thought, if I’m having this sort of issue figuring out if the contact is genuine, how will I feel working on this product? Even if it is genuine, is it ethical to have been recruited by a real person to work on a product that fools people into thinking they’ve been contacted by a real person?

Disagree. People use social media for plenty of other reasons than to consume artists' content. Sharing news with family and friends, arguing with strangers on the Internet -- HN itself is the obvious counterexample.

> The surge in AI has been built on the backs of creative people like us. Artists’ work has been harvested in order to train large language models and they have not been informed or compensated.

The AI company is literally informing them that they want a partnership, which obviously involves discussing compensation. That is the polar opposite of harvesting all their comics to create a language model. So how is this relevant?

Thing is, AI is happening to creatives whether you like it or not, so you might as well play a part in directing its trajectory. Apple hired world class drummers for the new AI drummer feature in their flagship music production software. Dreamtonics hired a lot of vocalists for its flagship vocal synthesis software, which happens to be quite brilliant.

The last reason says:

> Artists would much rather have an AI that actually helps with grunt chores, such as writing invoices, or helping with taxes in order to focus more on fulfilling creative tasks. Such an AI-tool would be of much more value to the artist community.

Such AI tools already exist in large numbers. It just so happens that the current frontier of AI is the creative arts. This is all rather similar to how people resisted personal computers in the 70s and 80s.

As wild as it may seem, there are people who love accounting and tax work for the mental stimulation it gives them to find those little places to save money (I am not one of them, but I know several). So at some point the argument breaks down into “don’t automate MY job, just somebody else’s that I value less”.

This concept that there are things we like/are good at and things we dislike/suck at is why specialization and trade exists. AI breaks that model in ways that most people (in this case, the author) don’t consider or understand.

I’m the opposite end of an artist. But the generative AI is perfect for my use case. I wouldn’t be able to make “book” for my young without the help of genAI

'Properly compensated'... determined by the market, right? That's being driven close to $0, just like with software (and was headed that direction before the recent AI craze).

"Artists would much rather... focus more on fulfilling creative tasks."

Like the two penis jokes shown on that site? Incredible.

"Any business model that does not acknowledge this and does not seek proper compensation for artists is not of interest to us." -> screenshot of their reply is missing the first two "not"s.

A lot of friends around me are really good in drawing. They do not sell anything. A friend can draw really really good like photoreal, he also can barley life from this.

All of this was before AI.

I want to use AI for customization and not because i don't appreciate art.

If an artist gets frustrated because of some AI companies, sry to say but i don't think you are honest to yourself.

I also still hate this 'companies grabed our art and now we hate it'. Everyone looked at art from others to learn from art. There is very little unique art styles and just because someone else did it, doesn't mean that someone else can't come up with it.

Btw. i do photography for 20 years. No one wants to buy my prints either. But i still don't mind AI training on all my pictures. Why? I really really believe that AI will enable us to do a lot more and is necessary to achieve a Star Trek like system were we will have time again to actually persue art because all the capitalism bullshit like ads ads ads and ads (don't forget ads) will be less relevant to us.

I doubt anyone on the other end will read their reply

Even if they do, it is unlikely that they will stop sending their AI spam outreach

This is just the normal state of the web now ¯\_(ツ)_/¯