Marvel faces backlash after Secret Invasion uses artificial intelligence for credits sequence
A Marvel executive producer says AI fit Secret Invasion's themes, but the decision is facing criticism
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In the midst of a strike where the looming specter of artificial intelligence is a key concern, Marvel is offering a taste of the future. The studio’s new Disney+ series, Secret Invasion, features AI art in the opening credits sequence, a move that was so obviously going to generate discourse it almost seems designed for that purpose.
Executive producer Ali Selim tells Polygon that the show worked with AI vendors at Method Studios to create something in keeping with the Skrull-based confusion of the plot. “We would talk to them about ideas and themes and words, and then the computer would go off and do something. And then we could change it a little bit by using words, and it would change.” Selim says he doesn’t “really understand” how AI works, but nevertheless calls the sequence “explorative and inevitable, and exciting, and different.”
It is “different” in the sense that AI art hasn’t much been used in mainstream television yet, but it is also not at all different in the sense that AI is inherently plagiaristic. Artificial intelligence (at least in its current form) can’t create; it can only re-create based on art that already exists. That’s one of the reasons writers have been so adamant against its use amid the current strike. As Ilana Glazer put it at a recent Writers Guild of America rally at 30 Rock, “Writing is the recording of the Human Spirit. We reflect the human experience. And right when stories written by women by black writers, trans writers and queer writers are starting to emerge, they want to hire robots to mine stories from the past 100 years.”
Earlier this week, Amy Poehler pointed out that the AI issue in the writers strike is one of the unifying forces that has garnered support outside the writers’ sphere and the industry as a whole. Even if, like Selim, people don’t understand how AI works, they understand that the technology is threatening the work of real people. So it is with Secret Invasion, where the job to create could have gone to, you know, an actual artist.
And speaking of actual artists, at least one who actually worked on the show has spoken up about Marvel’s controversial decision. “Secret Invasion intro is AI generated. I’m devastated, I believe AI to be unethical, dangerous and designed solely to eliminate artists careers. Spent almost half a year working on this show and had a fantastic experience working with the most amazing people I ever met…” Tweeted concept artist Jeff Simpson. “I worked with the Vis Dev team on character design, props, keyframes for the show etc. and nothing to do with the intro which would have been done much later I assume—to clarify.”
There is plenty of backlash from outside the show, as well. “Marvel/Disney have infinite money yet used AI for the Secret Invasion opening credits. A slap in the face to literally every artist Disney has ever worked with & something that overshadows the hard work everyone did on this show. Seriously @aliselim?” Tweeted actor-director Stephen Ford (Teen Wolf). Moonrise Kingdom star Jared Gilman (who previously criticized that Wes Anderson AI) tweeted, “the real secret invasion was shitty AI swooping in and replacing talented real artists.”
In the observation Twitter user @jonathanmb32, “The Secret Invasion AI credits is such an insane miscalculation by Marvel in that it A) immediately created noxious buzz around the premiere of their new program, and B) only further validates AI concerns RIGHT as actors and directors are on the verge of striking because of it.” No doubt Hollywood’s various guilds are filing this one away to strengthen whatever contractual argument might be made about AI in the near future.
216 Comments
I’m excited to see them, I’ve seen some AI generated music videos recently and they’re friggen cool. I mean, check this shit out:Amazing!
Also, plug for Dirtwire, everyone check out their other songs!
Thanks for letting me know of a band I will never check out!
Thanks for being an asshole who gets flagged!
I aim to please
The heat was hot and the AI was artificially intelligent…
There were Tronsand HALsand Droidsand things
One of the easiest songs to learn to play on guitar, that one is. Only two chords!
Dude wrote it when he was I think like 15? Song’s got legs for one written by a teen lol
After two days playing the guitar my hands began to turn red
Every AI video I’ve seen has a look, whether the video is good or bad. It’s not always pleasant and is sometimes downright nauseating. But, much like the worst side effects of Autotune became the point, I expect the worst of the AI aesthetic will be sought after for the next few years.Peter Gabriel just completed a contest to create videos for some of his songs using Stable Diffusion. They all have their own look, but they also all have the same jittery quality.
Yeah, it’s a very discernible look that will date very badly. And will also be dialed in for effect for decades to come, as “early AI art” will make people NOSTALGIC.
They definitely do all have the same look/feel to them. I think the bitching will calm down after a bit, just like the bitching about everything else.Peter Gabriel is the kind of guy I see embracing this kind of thing, he’s always loved to be creative in new ways.
Polygon has a gif of some of the title sequence. If you didn’t know it was AI generated, you could tell.But something people are missing is that it’s still the same people making these sequences as before. They’re just using different tools. I’m sure Selim “doesn’t really understand” how Nuke or Maya work, either.
Yeah it’s exactly like people in the ‘80s who thought computers would be making all the music by now because synths were a thing. I’m not going to say they’re Luddites, because the Luddites at least had a decent point…more like technophobes.
Then again, the vast majority of people greatly fear change of any kind, it’s not like it’s uncommon or ‘bad’ exactly, just human nature.
And it’s not to say that it won’t cause problems for some people. But photography didn’t kill professional painting. Photoshop didn’t kill professional photography. Painting and photography evolved.
Exactly!Now, when real artificial intelligence comes around, that’s gonna be a huge change. This stuff is just advancement as usual.
Yes, it’s amazing that there is no coherent vision from start to finish.
I found the guy who didn’t watch it!
You don’t seem to understand that there are still human artists directing this. They don’t just feed lyrics into Midjourney and splice what comes out together. They control what they want to see, the visual style, the camera movement, the framing. If you don’t see a “coherent vision”, that’s most likely on a human (or you’re choosing not to acknowledge what’s there). But in those humans’ defense, it’s a new tool that they’re just learning to use.
Holy shit I haven’t listened to Dirtwire in AGES
ew
Why bother? I can just listen to an AI Dirtwire band in six months and make sure the original doesn’t receive any credit or money. AI is awesome!
Yep just like the invention of synths meant no more analog instruments and the invention of CG meant no more hand drawn art,the invention of ‘AI’ means no more human musicians.
Secret InvAIsion
Every time I see someone impressed by “AI” “art”, it’s inevitably the most brain dead, uncreative person imaginable.Really hoping the Actors and Directors Guild co-sign the Writers’ strike.
A shame artists don’t have as effective a union fighting for them. Times like this I really miss hearing from Neal Adams.
“Every time I see someone impressed by “AI” “art”, it’s inevitably the most brain dead, uncreative person imaginable.”So each of these people is literally brain dead in your opinion? Not only that, the ‘most’ brain dead. That’s amazing!
In any case, thank god we have you to tell us what is good and what is bad. Free will would be horrible!
Your unwillingness to recognize hyperbole is helping the other person’s argument.
Nah OP is right, let him cook. If you think AI art has any worth, you really are a brain dead manlet.
Hey look I’ve found the thread of buggy whip manufacturers!
Hey look I’ve found the guy who thinks cold fusion is a thing because tHE fUtUrE
Not at all. I’m actually saying this whole ‘AI’ is scary and bad thing is a lot like cold fusion: A whole shitload of absolutely nothing.Except the media gets a lot of clicks and eyeballs on the screen if they say it’s scary and bad and only briefly mention the amazing advances it’s making in medicine.
are you one of those “AI” “NFT” “Tech” enthusiasts who couldn’t write a line of code or build a pc with a gun to their head
I doubt most people could do most things with a gun pointed to their head other than panic. Even experts in fields, having a gun to your head isn’t exactly conducive to success.
hmm true, we can change it to the OG motivator (whips)
What if the field I’m an expert in is having a gun pointed at my head? I’ll be cool as a cucumber.
Are you one of those people who don’t know how to write a sentence correctly? Yes, you are!
No, I’ve been working with and building computers professionally for decades.
You’re literally on a website that posts movie and TV reviews. Me informing you that you’re a brain dead idiot for your bad taste doesn’t take away your free will, you brain dead idiot.
Being brain dead precludes having free will, a brain is necessary for that.Hope you’re having a better day today than yesterday, you seemed like a real asshole yesterday, do better!
Unfortunately that is most people, including decision makers, so companies will embrace this to save some money.
Yeah, wtf does Peter Gabriel know?
Peter Gabriel is brain dead and uncreative obviously, internet poster 10cities10years has declared it and thus it is so!
Jack shit, thank you for asking.
I’ll trust the man with 50+ of working in the arts across the globe, thanks.
I’ll instead trust the guy who actually worked on Secret Invasion and is appalled by this shit happening.
You mean the guy who feels threatened instead of adapting. I’m in a career that AI is going to impact more than most. I’m learning how to use it and how it’s going to change things. So are many of the digital artists I work with — the ones who want to keep working in digital art. It’s our bread and butter. It’s going to change how we do things and we’re determined to not just accept it but to be good at it.
He knows that he’s already rich so if other artists get fucked over by this garbage tech, it won’t effect him.
That’s a weird take on six decades of social justice warring and arts patronage, but if you say so.
The DGA settled two weeks ago:https://deadline.com/2023/06/directors-hollywood-studios-reach-deal-new-contract-1235399542/
My understanding though is the members still have to vote on it, and that still isn’t settled until June 23. A few high profile directors expressed they’d vote against the deal, so fingers crossed.
It’d be rare for the membership to reject the tentative agreement, and the DGA is typically the Hollywood guild with the greatest affinity for management. However, we can hope that maybe something like this galvanizes their membership to realize that AI stands to threaten their jobs, too, and that the platitudes on AI in the agreement don’t do much to protect them.
I’m amused by the people who seem to think that “AI” is synonymous with “Magic”, like this guy just welding it onto the end of “E=MC2″. As if ChatGPT is going to create fusion.
Oh no, some internet comments. What a vicious backlash. How will they possibly weather the storm? By waiting a few days.
Seemed to get Alec Baldwin through that little Rust bugaboo.
The backlash would be the people on strike, who are currently slowing down all their productions, and the possibility that SAG-AFTRA could join them, which would actually cripple Hollywood. The writers strike hasn’t really shut things down because the studios stockpiled scripts and are trying to brazen through productions without official rewrites (they forget how well that worked during the last WGA strike). Without union actors, most productions go dark immediately.
I agree. It’s going to take SAG and the WGA to insist on some ground rules and licensing terms. I’m happy to pay my union dues and I just wish artists had similar unions to help.
funniest part to me is that they already have a show where the drawn credits are better than the show itself (the mandalorian).
And right when stories written by women by black writers, trans writers and queer writers are starting to emerge, they want to hire robots to mine stories from the past 100 years.Love ya Ilana, but most black, trans and queer writers mine stories from the past, because most (all?) writers mine stories from the past.
*sigh*Yes. And she’s concerned that people will us AI instead of hiring black, trans or queer writers.I mean Jesus, it’s not a difficult thought process to follow.
That’s not the point.Say you want to train one of these to write screenplays, so you feed it every screenplay that’s been produced from the last 100 years. The vast majority of those were written by straight white men.The AI has no POV of its own, it can only recombine what it’s trained on. So it’s only going to generate text using data primarily from straight white men.A human can look at those old stories and offer their own spin or POV (for example, Lovecraft Country). The machine can’t.
It’s fundamentally the same problem as now. Studios could invest in more diverse stories told by people with their own unique perspectives… or they could remake The Little Mermaid. This has been my biggest issue with the “A.I. art can’t replace human art because it’s soulless!” argument. Sure it can. Studios have invested a lot of money into making soulless “art.” You can argue that remakes and adaptations still require the creativity and labor of hundreds of human beings to produce, but that would still be true of a movie written by an A.I.Or take the “A.I. works by using a pool of content created by human beings!” argument. Yes, A.I. requires a large pool of pre-existing work to create “new” content. Much like Sony Pictures requires a pool of pre-existing work to create new Spider-Man movies so they can keep the movie rights.I think A.I. as a tool is pretty rad. I understand hating it because it will replace workers, but I think the people insisting that the quality will never be good enough for consumers to pay for are only deluding themselves. There is a very large market for lazy, uninspired art, and that’s the market A.I. art is optimized to replace.
I think the people insisting that the quality will never be good enough for consumers to pay for are only deluding themselves. Eh, I really don’t think so. These things can’t write for shit. And I don’t think that’s solvable without an actual general artificial intelligence. The machine fundamentally doesn’t know what it’s saying, so it can’t actually build a meaningful story, or employ any of the tricks that humans use. I think we’re either at or very close to the ceiling on what they can do.Also, if you give it anything remotely close to something that exists, the plagiarism becomes painfully obvious. Reposted from a different comment: I gave ChatGPT this prompt: “Write me a scene about a man named Bruce who decides to fight crime”And it gave me this:INT. BRUCE’S APARTMENT – NIGHT
A modest apartment, dimly lit, with newspaper clippings and crime-solving gadgets scattered across a worn wooden table. BRUCE, a middle-aged man with a rugged exterior, sits hunched over, studying a map pinned to the wall, connecting strings of events and criminal activities.BRUCE(whispering to himself)Gotham City… a breeding ground for crime. The innocent suffer while the wicked thrive. It’s time someone took a stand.Bruce’s gaze shifts to a nearby bookshelf, displaying a collection of crime novels and martial arts manuals. His eyes glimmer with determination.EXT. ROOFTOP – NIGHTBruce, now clad in a black tactical suit, stands at the edge of a tall building, overlooking the city skyline. The wind whips through his hair, his cape billowing behind him. He takes a deep breath, savoring the moment.BRUCE(voiceover)Tonight, I become something more. Tonight, I become a symbol. A symbol of justice. A symbol of hope.Bruce leaps off the rooftop, his body gracefully navigating through the shadows. He lands on another building’s ledge, unnoticed by the bustling streets below.EXT. DARK ALLEY – NIGHTBruce prowls the dimly lit alleys, his keen senses attuned to the sounds of wrongdoing. He spots a group of thugs harassing an innocent passerby, their intentions clear.THUG 1(teasingly)Hand over your wallet, old man. Or else…The passerby trembles, fear painted across their face. But before the thugs can react, a swift figure emerges from the darkness.BRUCE(gruff voice)I suggest you gentlemen find another line of work. Crime doesn’t pay.Bruce’s hands move like lightning, incapacitating the thugs with precise strikes. His combat skills, honed through years of training, shine through.Passerby watches, eyes wide with astonishment. Bruce turns to them, extending a hand.BRUCEYou’re safe now. Go home.The passerby nods gratefully and scurries away, leaving Bruce alone in the alley.INT. BATCAVE – NIGHTDeep beneath Wayne Manor lies Bruce’s secret base, the Batcave. It’s a high-tech sanctuary, filled with advanced gadgets, crime-fighting equipment, and a towering Batmobile.Bruce removes his mask, revealing a weary but determined expression. He paces back and forth, his mind already focused on the next challenge.BRUCE(to himself)This is just the beginning. Gotham needs me. The darkness won’t win as long as I’m here.Bruce studies the monitor, displaying news reports of rampant crime. His eyes narrow, a newfound fire burning within.BRUCE(whispering)I am Batman.Bruce dons his mask once more, his cape billowing behind him. With unwavering resolve, he descends into the Batmobile and speeds into the night, ready to fight the crime that plagues his city.FADE OUT.
Well, agree to disagree, I guess. The Planet Money podcast recently did a series about producing an episode completely written and partially hosted by an A.I., and while they ran into several obstacles, the hosts admitted that they were surprised by the results. They interviewed an expert in the field using technical questions written by ChatGPT, and the expert repeatedly praised the questions without knowing that they were written by A.I. At one point I think he even literally says, “An A.I. could not have asked me that question.” And the point isn’t that the episode is great or that anyone would have been fooled into thinking a human wrote it; it’s that A.I. is capable of producing “good enough” results that are at least as good as stuff that isn’t scrutinized. There is plenty of soulless, disposable media out there that exists solely to fulfill a contractual obligation or fill time that could be replaced with A.I. and hardly anyone would tell the difference. If you read or write enough first drafts, you’ll see stuff as badly written as the example ChatGPT gave you.And my other point is, ChatGPT was obviously unable to generate a completed audio file with sound effects, music, and dialogue perfectly assembled and mixed for listening. Humans had to intervene at several points throughout the process and cobble together the A.I. generated elements. It’s a neat tool that new artists will find useful the same way we find Photoshop useful. It’s the “corporations using A.I. to generate first drafts so they can pay humans a fraction of the salary to edit and rewrite it as they would for writing it from scratch” that’s sinister and unequivocally wrong.
I’m happy to agree to disagree.I just think that generating questions isn’t that impressive. I think we all had plenty of teachers growing up who weren’t creative but could write an exam.I don’t really know if it’s a positive or negative that we can essentially replace people who generate clickbait with machines that generate clickbait (which is what I think you mean by “good enough” material.)Really what we’re going to see is weird ouroboroses where you have bot generated content that other bots pretend to look at to scam advertising money.
Eh, not just clickbait (although yes, that is a great example). I watched an episode of Tyler Perry’s The Haves and the Have Nots, and the writing was absolute garbage. Just horrendous, repetitive stuff. And it’s awful because Tyler Perry doesn’t employ a writer’s room and writes like 30 scripts a week or something like that (if you’re unaware, Google the “Work ethic!” meme). I don’t think an episode written by an A.I. could’ve been any worse.But to your point, I don’t know that it’s good or bad that clickbait generators can be replaced or that Tyler Perry can use A.I. to automate his workflow of not paying other writers either. I just think that kind of lazy content already exists.
“THUG 1 (teasingly)”.He sounds like a jolly scamp!
Why do AI defenders have the IQ of dishwater
I heard there’s some fine artists still pissed about cameras and digital media too…
(there aren’t)
I remember when people thought the newfangled ‘electronic music’ was going to put regular musicians out of business. Now, some of the best acts I see combine electronic and traditional instruments.
Sure. But composers with a lot of Kontakt sound libraries really did replace orchestral musicians for a lot of low and mid budget work. Much less session work goes on for film and tv soundtracks.
Much like MidJourney is completely decimating a lot of low end illustration gigs and commissions. “Good enough” is good enough for a lot of people. I know a lot of folks who have lost plenty of business in the last year, and that’ll only increase. I like playing with AI tools for reference and brainstorming, but the people complaining aren’t ENTIRELY off base. Like anything, it’s a mixed bag. And like always, artists who aren’t in the top 10% are at the bottom of the food chain. Bringing up horses and carriages don’t make them feel much better.
I’ve always been of the opinion that if we can build a machine that does your job better than you, you should be grateful, because your job probably wasn’t as awesome as you thought it was.
I’ve been fixing computers for over 20 years, the second a machine can fix computers better than me I am skipping away laughing and never looking back.
No one ever thought this, pseudo-futurists.
Those things are just tools, like you.
AI is also a technological tool, idiot.
Tool are aids (like your mom), AI will be used by capitalists to replace workers entirely (like your mom).
And this sort of thing is why I’m not fully behind the Writer’s Guild Strike.Cause while I get their very real concerns about pay and making sure that their work is properly compensated, at the same time some of it is just knee-jerk reactionary luddism.Like, using AI generated art to deliberately create an uncanny valley effect through the sorts of weird and surreal digital imagery that only a computer can do, is a really really cool effect. And we aren’t, as a society, better off if we can’t have cool and weird digital effects. It’s not like anyone would have been paid more if they didn’t use AI, or if this particular effect took any paycheck from a starving artist. It’s just a digital effect not all that different from adding fake static or using an algorithm to create a digital fade effect. But it’s “AI” therefore it’s bad.Ugh.
I don’t think this instance is a 1:1 comparison. Studios are actually asking “can we have computers write scripts instead of people?” and are actively courting writers to revise ai-written scripts.
Is this really the worst scenario possible? Scripts are rarely ever shot on a first draft, anyway. There can be numerous re-writes and just as many credited writers anyway, depending on their contributions. I see AI-generated scripts as simply cutting down on the time needed to get an idea out there. The worst thing that can come out of this is the pool of created scripts is too formulaic (think: NetFlix original content that ‘feels’ the same). Fine, the writers get paid to come in and re-write some dialogue, punch it up, polish it off. JUST LIKE TODAY.
“Knee-jerk reactionary Luddism”The A.V. Club
it’s not like anyone would have been paid more if they didn’t use AIExcept that’s exactly why the WGA is fighting against it.It’s cheaper to pay a writer to rewrite a screenplay than it is to write a first draft. That’s why the studios want to be allowed to use AI, so they can generate a “first draft” and then hire a writer to “rewrite” at a lower rate.I’m using scare quotes because the draft the AI creates will be unusable garbage and the human is going to have to tear it down and start from scratch.
It’s bad because Marvel is notorious for underpaying and overworking its CGI artists, yet they took a shortcut here. They clearly feel comfortable fucking over actual people, them using an AI creation in this shit where previous TV show credits have been well made and gorgeous is just a step forward in that direction.They also didn’t use this recently, this was in the plans at least 2 years ago, which means fucking over the actual humans doing shit is the endgame.
Eh. Two things can be true: 1) writers have every right to demand studios not to replace them with A.I., and 2) artists should have the right to use any tool they wish to do their job.
By definition, if you use AI to create the work, then you haven’t created any work. If you tell a computer programmer to build you an app, and then they do all the work, can you claim you built the app?
These dweebs can’t tell the difference. They live in a world where the only cultural capital that matters to them is objectified cultural capital – because they can’t get any other kind. So, to them, to take, buy, borrow, or otherwise obtain cultural capital through no effort on their part is the only thing that counts.
It’s way more like that app is a word generator and you use it to generate a random word, can you claim the computer programmer generated the word?It’s a tool. If writers find it useful somehow to come up with a line of dialogue or brainstorm ideas, who am I to tell them they shouldn’t use it?
If you use Photoshop to make art have you created any work? All you did was click and move a mouse! While this seems an absurd argument, in the late 1990s when such tools took over from artists actually using pen and paper, people seriously made this argument. Telling the computer what you want (whether by clicking a mouse or typing a prompt) is work, even if it maybe doesn’t look like it to people trained on older tools.
This argument that AI (it’s not AI, but for simplicities sake I use the term) is just another tool in an artist’s toolbox is an exceptionally stupid one, for so many reasons. Let me explain with a long diatribe. You can choose to read this response and consider the points I make, or you can ignore what I write and just reply “Nuh uhh, DUUUUURRRR!” Up to you.
1) The first issue with this argument is what I call the “Slippery Slope” view. People who are enamored with AI (for brevity, I’ll call them “Idiots”) always say AI is just inevitable technological advancement and accuse people who dislike AI of being “luddites”. These Idiots say, “People have always been scared of technological change, but the adoption of AI is no different than the switch from typewriters to computers. It’s just a new technology for the writer to use.” (I’m using writing because that’s my field, but it could just as easily be photography, film, or even coding.) What this Idiot’s argument assumes is that every technological advancement is just a natural evolution from technology before it. That is a faulty assumption. Look, I have no problem with technology, I use it all the time. I also accept that technology can make our lives (and jobs) easier. I’m happy I don’t have to go out and churn butter every day; my life (and popcorn) is better for it. But, also, the job of butter churner disappeared. That’s a profession that simply doesn’t exist anymore (outside of Colonial Williamsburg). My point being that there are technologies that make doing a job easier/faster, and then there are technologies that flat out replace jobs. Sometimes those technologies are one and the same, but not always. Having a digital word processor instead of an old-school typewriter hasn’t dramatically changed the job of writing novels, other then it makes editing and revising quicker. I still have to sit down, formulate my ideas, then type them out and edit. In that way, my process isn’t all that different than what Fitzgerald or Hemingway would have done. Alternatively, with AI, the process of writing novels doesn’t just get quicker, it completely disappears. (To be clear, I don’t think AI can actually write a good novel, yet; I do think within a generation it will be able to produce a James Patterson-level novel, something uncomplicated with minimal character development and a mostly coherent plot.) Farting a prompt into a computer interface (whether it be a sentence, a paragraph, or even a full-page synopsis) and then calling what comes out “my novel” is horseshit. For many reasons, not least of which is that AI isn’t actually AI, it’s just an advanced predictive text algorithm that regurgitates sentences based on popular sentence formulations. Yes, writers (artists) “borrow/steal” from their influences, but art is the process of creating something new from existing materials/concepts (I’d argue some truly brilliant artists avoid the borrowing trope altogether, but that’s a tangent for another time). AI doesn’t create something new, AI creates a distorted (some might argue defaced) facsimile of data it’s been fed. So, no, AI doesn’t make writing novels easier. It eliminates the process altogether so a machine can produce a novel-like thing (“I Can’t Believe It’s Not Brontë”), and it certainly can’t be called the product of writing.2) The concept of artistic mediums exists for a reason. We define artists and art by their mediums. If I’m an artist who makes a photorealistic drawing, that doesn’t make what I’ve created a photo, even if the layperson can’t tell the difference. The medium dictates what type of art we’re talking about. An algorithm that can spew out a “novel” or a “photo” or a “movie” isn’t actually creating any of those. It’s creating something in a different medium that resembles those other artforms. Until AI can create a wholly original artform based on the unique attributes of its design, it’s not an artistic tool, it’s a funhouse mirror merged with a photocopier. (To your point, Photoshop does change the process of photography, but a person still has to go out and take photos; if they aren’t doing that, then what they’re producing isn’t photography, it’s another form of visual art.)
3) People are allowed to love and praise “AI art” (whatever that is). Odds are, such Idiots weren’t ever going to buy or appreciate actual art anyway, so it’s not really a net loss for those industries. Likewise, people are allowed to use AI to create their art facsimiles. It doesn’t mean they deserve to be taken seriously as “artists.” You know how I know “AI novelists” aren’t real novelists? Because 99% of them never actually completed writing a novel before they had an algorithm that did it for them. I don’t care how “complex” your prompt is, it’s still the equivalent of a pothead going, “Wouldn’t it be cool if there was a TV show where Luke Skywalker fought Big Foot?” Nifty idea, but since you didn’t actually do any work to create anything real, it’s hardly an achievement.
4) Most of this conversation is moot for the moment because, outside of some “cool” visuals, “AI art” is still absolute garbage (even most AI visuals are ugly, but that’s extremely subjective). Because AI is just predictive text, it can’t plan a story ahead of time and seed it with meaningful imagery, foreshadowing, or symbolism. It might accidentally produce something that feels symbolic to a receptive audience, but without intention, it’s just the equivalent of a Christian seeing Jesus’ face in a grilled cheese sandwich. You see what you want to see.
5) I italicized “for the moment” before because my overarching concern is for the years to come. I know this AI will get more advanced and better at what it does (already the better fake photos are avoiding some of the earlier mistakes, like six-fingered people). It’ll still never be able to create anything of truly great artistic merit (because, again, it isn’t really artificial intelligence and therefore can’t create with intention), but what it can do is create artistic facsimiles that the general audience will eat up and publishers/studios will gladly shit out, because it will be cheaper and faster to create than human-made art. And this brings us back around to my first point: the ultimate use of AI is replacing/eliminating workers. Not today, not in the next three years, but down the line. And where it can’t actually replace workers, it will make their work less valuable so they can be paid less (this will be true in almost all fields). People like Elon who are talking about the “apocalyptic” potential of AI are lying (or Idiots), because this AI isn’t going to rise up and launch nuclear bombs. What it is going to do is allow billionaires and corporations (hello Elon) to devalue human work. No profession will be safe from that. Perhaps the AI-ification of employment is inevitable. All the more reason things like the WGA strike are so important. If we don’t safeguard workers (or implement UBI), the looming wealth gap will make what we have now look downright equal.
I regret that I have but one star to give for this masterpiece.
Thank you, Sir/Madam.
You aren’t saying anything that hasn’t been said before, it’s just not very convincing. And you haven’t even thought through your examples. You mention word processing as a technology that just helps a user and not replaces a job. But it did. Office workers used to have secretaries who typed for them. They would say out loud what they wanted typed and it would be typed by the secretary who knew how to type quickly and without mistakes. When computers entered the office it became expected that workers learn to use a computer and type things themselves, since with things like spell checkers and cut and paste it was a lot less frustrating than using a typewriter. And so people don’t have secretaries anymore (okay, high level execs have “administrative assistants” but they are rare, have much more responsibility than old time secretaries and are offended if people call them secretaries) . But did that mean that this caused massive unemployment? No, the people (generally women) who were secretaries for the most part moved into other, often better, jobs, often working alongside the people whom they had served as secretaries for. And the same thing has happened with every other job that disappeared because of new technology. You don’t see many travel agents anymore now that people can easily book flights and hotels themselves thanks to the Web, but it doesn’t mean there’s lots of unemployed travel agents hanging around. This idea that somehow AI is going to destroy society by causing unemployment is dumb and the people who think it haven’t looked at history.
I also think you miss the point of how AI can be used. It’s not about just taking what the system gives you and running with it, it is about using that as a start and then modifying it. This is why Photoshop is adding a generative AI feature in the new version. It isn’t for people to just type in a prompt and call it a day — it’s to get something on screen to play with and improve. I imagine word processors will add something similar soon if they haven’t already. This is also how coding tools like Copilot work. People talk about them writing a program, but in reality all they can do, as with text, is produce some code that looks like it would follow what you’ve already written. Sometimes it is amazingly correct, sometimes it is completely off base, and most of the time it generates code that needs to be heavily edited to use.
“You aren’t saying anything that hasn’t been said before”
The irony in you starting this poorly argued response with that statement could build a thousand skyscrapers. You’re literally just regurgitating talking points from the corporations who are investing heavily in this tech. (Why is Elon currently developing AI while warning about its “dangers” to society? Because he wants to claim his is the “good” AI.)
My example was specific to one thing, being a novelist. As I said in my first point (go ahead, re-read it), some technological advancements can be both ones that make jobs easier and ones that eliminate jobs. It doesn’t mean any given technological advancement will eliminate all jobs; when I used the word processor example, I was being specific to what I do, not to what everyone on Earth does. Obviously computers have eliminated jobs, any fucking idiot knows that. There have been periods in modern history where technology has created new industries and jobs, thus offsetting other industrial/employment losses. But I haven’t seen a single AI supporter make the argument that AI will create new jobs. As your second paragraph makes clear, the argument for it is is always “It can make work easier/faster,” or “It’ll allow more people to ‘create’ art” (jerk-off motion). That’s because AI doesn’t exist to provide new opportunities, it exists to devalue work, all work.
And that gets at the heart of the problem with your whole line of thinking (which, again, sounds like you’re just spitting out talking points that billionaires baby-birded into your mouth): the last decades of stagnant wages prove that greater productivity (due to technology) hasn’t led to greater incomes for the middle/lower classes. The main issue isn’t about people being “unemployed” (again, something I explicitly stated in my final point), the issue is the work being undervalued, either because tech makes it seem easier to do or because bosses know the threat of unemployment can scare employees away from fighting for higher wages. I’m unimpressed with a 2% unemployment rate if 50% of the population isn’t making a living wage and the next 30% are only just getting by.
Here’s a useful link: https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/
Finally, as I said before, I’m not a luddite. I understand the value of technology, even in what I do. Because I must use Google Docs and Word for what I do, I’m exposed to AI all the time through their editing tools. They do make my job easier. I don’t have a problem with them. But you’re pretending like these kinds of augmentation tools are the only way AI is used, when that clearly isn’t true. After all, we’re discussing this in an article that literally is about a major studio using AI-generated art instead of paying the team of artists they normally would have. More close to my home, Amazon’s publishing platform is being inundated by AI-generated novels, which is killing that self-publishing avenue for thousands of writers (after Amazon already made the book industry worse). Likewise, almost all the literary agents/journals are having to fight against the tide of AI-generated submissions, which not only makes their jobs harder, it makes it harder for writers to stand out in an already difficult industry. Those are just two examples specific to what I do. Filmmakers, photographers, artists, coders, and so many more are dealing with similar issues. It’s why the use of AI is such a pivotal sticking point in the WGA strike; these aren’t just whiny writers wanting more money, they see the writing on the wall (because their jobs are already being stripped away by greedy companies).
If you’re actually interested in this topic and why lots of people are down on AI, here’s a good explainer:
My example was specific to one thing, being a novelistWhich I ignored, because it was bullshit. Very, very few people are novelists, and certainly not you (other than maybe in the tedious hipster sense of “I’m writing a novel” that never gets finished let alone published or maybe in the disturbing world of self-published fanfic)
If you’re actually interested in this topic and why lots of people are down on AI, here’s a good explainer:I’m deeply disappointed in Adam Conover for that worthless diatribe, which I’ve seen before. He used to have interesting factual things to say about stuff like how nearly all eyeglass frame brands and chain stores selling eyeglasses were owned by Luxotica despite the illusion of different brands, but here he’s just repeating the typical boring anti-AI talking points repeated by people with no technical background. The only person who actually has interesting anti-AI points, although I disagree with them, is Geoffrey Hinton, a former CS professor who developed many of the neural net algorithms used in generative AI.
I literally make all of my money as a writer/editor, but go off. You’re talking like your some tech expert and not just an AI fanboy without a creative bone in your body. (Also, your counterpoint about secretaries in your previous response actually only reinforced what I was saying, but I’m not wasting time on that).
Btw, Conover has had on people in the industry to talk about this subject. There are all kinds of people raising concerns about this, from the tech industry as well as the other industry where this “AI” nonsense is having an effect. The best case scenario is probably just that AI is the “new shiny thing” whose bubble will burst when corporations realize its content is shit. But even in that scenario, the bosses can still use the threat of AI as an anti-negotiating tactic against workers (it’s literally what’s going on with the WGA strike right now). Anyway, Cory Doctorow has expressed similar thoughts in a longer form:
https://doctorow.medium.com/the-ai-hype-bubble-is-the-new-crypto-hype-bubble-74e53028631eTo be clear, my concern is not that what we’re calling AI will actually be able to replace workers. My concern is that it’ll help the people in power persuasively argue that the workers aren’t as valuable. And it’s credulous idiots like yourself who hype AI as an “important” tool that will help them do it. Let’s call a spade a spade: So-called “AI” is fancy predictive text that is only impressive to the kind of people who couldn’t create something original if their life depended on it. It’s just unfortunate that describes most CEOs.
Anyway, muting you now because if I wanted your perspective, I’d just follow a bunch of Crypto idiots on Twitter.
So now we’ve moved on from the grandiose “novelist” to the humbler “writer/editor” which could be anything, but suit yourself. As for Cory Doctorow, he is basically a conman. People treat him as if he has some insight into technical stuff because he’s written some science fiction, but he literally has no actual background in anything — not even in liberal arts. The guy flunked out of university! Multiple times (or as his Wikipedia page puts it more diplomatically he “attended four universities without obtaining a degree” as if that was a deliberate choice) I get that not everybody is into intellectual things — I have a cousin who also didn’t do well in school and yet is very successful as a carpenter, but nobody treats him as a pundit. AI is complicated. I’m a computational biologist with a doctorate in microbiology and I have implemented various machine learning algorithms (mostly of the now “old school” ML/AI like random forests and support vector machines) in order to analyze biological data. Even with my background I find reading the new deep learning method papers that are the basis of the generative AI methods today tough going. And yet I know more about the field than 99% of the public. So I get annoyed when people (half of whom probably never have taken a calculus class let alone be able to define what a “tensor” is) spout out about AI without having the least shred of understanding of it.
AI isn’t actually AI, it’s just an advanced predictive text algorithm that regurgitates sentences based on popular sentence formulations. Precisely. The algorithm is not “thinking,” but simply predicting a response based on a defined data set. 99% of people who say “AI” don’t know what the fuck they are talking about.
I mean I can understand if you can’t keep up with all the types of ai out there, but everyone knows the big two. ChatGPT and other writing AI and image AI models. One AI that writes, and one that makes images. But prompt engineers is a viable? It’s merely a requirement because these AIs are new and haven’t been combined yet.
Except 2 isn’t true, who has the right to AI models trained on stolen artwork without consent?
Yea it seems odd to me too. If a movie uses computers to render some CG image is that taking a job away from artists since surely those images could be hand drawn on a computer one frame at a time.In general it just seems kind of pointless to fight against technology in this type of situation since I don’t think that is a type of fight where technology has ever lost.
Do you know how rendering works? You can’t draw a Pixar film, or digital effects on a Marvel film. You can model the characters, animate it, do effects, lighting, backgrounds, and those are all jobs, plus the job of a render wrangler. But there’s no way you can draw the render, that’s what makes it CG and distinguishes it from Computer animation.
We’ve had technology that’s replaced jobs in the past. We’ve never had a technology, that’s dependent on human artwork, data, culture history, not gathered with permission or consent to work. To say it’s pointless to fight is to say humanity’s existence is pointless and we should let AI companies have the baton and reap the rewards of this technology at the expense of everyone else. That’ll be a sad point if we collectively decide to go that direction. Never in the history of life has a species not been concerned of its own survival. Let’s not be the first species.
“that only a computer can do”
Prove that, and you have an argument.
Whenever a neckbearded AI-fan says “Only computers can do it”, what the really mean is “I can’t do it, but I wish computers could do it for me and I could get credit for it”. That’s pretty much it. “I want the same respect and adulation actual artists gets, I don’t have the talent or discipline to do what it takes, so I should be allowed to cosplay as and get the same benefits.”
And they won’t be the ones to benefit from AI based on theft, it’ll be the AI companies and corporations that work with them that will.
was this written by chatgpt? because it uses a lot of related words but doesn’t seem to get the specifics of what the WGA are asking for
It’s “bad” because it used AI rather than hiring, and paying, animation effects artists to do animation effects-heavy opening credits. That’s why.
“Writers don’t deserve fair pay because they’re not willing to join me in mindlessly worshiping AI” is exactly the sort of take I’d expect from people hopping onto the latest post-NFT techbro fad.BTW, the Luddites were a workers’ movement, and they weren’t opposed to technology; they were opposed to cheap, exploitive technology which replaced workers and created an inferior product. The idea that they were against ALL tech was actually propaganda spread by the big companies they protested against. Their philosophy can basically be summed up as, “Technology should make the common man’s life better, not worse.”
So when you describe people opposed to AI art as Luddites, you’re being accurate, but not in the way you think.
The meaning of words can change over time though, not always for the best. I’d say he used the word correctly in the way he meant to. If Kinja doesn’t mangle the formatting here I’ll be midly impressed: LudditenounLudd·ite ˈlə-ˌdīt : one of a group of early 19th century English workmen destroying laborsaving machinery as a protestbroadly : one who is opposed to especially technological changeThe Luddite argued that automation destroys jobs.
They’re using the AI to create an unsettling effect, if it can be accomplished with AI what is the point of hiring a VFX house to replicate what the AI is going to do anyway
The Luddites were correct in their actions. Its always funny to see the term used as if it’s a negative that people took direct action to prevent bosses and owners from undercutting their pay just like the WGA are doing now. You’ve just revealed you side with the owners in both cases. Lol.
See Bad Kuchi Kopi’s post above. The historical Luddites acted in a way that supported their interests (I think saying “correct” is sort of boiling down complex historical social interactions to a third-grade reading level) but the word Luddite has come to have a negative connotation. There’s certainly a sort of pitiable, tilting-at-windmills connotation to it.Opining that cab drivers should maybe try to get a different job before driverless cars leave them high and dry doesn’t mean you “agree” with anyone (more third-grade analysis here.) It means you think driverless cars are going to see widespread adoption and the people whose jobs that will destroy should probably think about what they’re going to do when that happens.AI’s a more complicated beast, both because of the ethics of displacing workers and also because anyone who thinks they know what its capabilities are going to look like could be catastrophically wrong.
Nope they were correct to protect their livelihoods against people who wanted to automate it away. The same way cab drivers would be correct for taking direct action to protect their livelihoods. The effort to make luddite a derogatory term is precisely because they were correct and it angered bosses and owners.
“Correct” in the sense of understandable from the narrow standpoint of their own self-interest, yes. But fighting the industrial revolution wasn’t a good idea. We have a far higher standard of life (and have way more clothes) than people did in the early 19th century when clothes and other household items were made by hand by craftsmen. A handmade shirt cost the equivalent of hundreds of dollars in today’s money. No wonder many people only had one or two sets of clothes in those days.
You don’t have a higher standard of living because Luddites were impoverished. You’ve conflated technological advances with the desire of bosses and owners to reduce labour costs and fuck the labourers.
No, even Marx said that the cost of an item is dependent on the amount of labor needed to make it. Machines reduced the the amount of needed labor to make things, and brought the cost down to consumers. Sure, to the people making those things, it may have sucked, but then the printing press made books cheap, which sucked for people working in scriptoria hand writing books. Didn’t mean that society as a whole didn’t benefit.
“it may have sucked” lol. It destroyed their livelihoods not for technological progress but for high profit margins. You’re still conflating technological advances with the desire of bosses and owners to reduce labour costs and fuck the labourers.
that only a computer can do[citation needed]
lol
You don’t seem to understand what the Writer’s Guild Strike is about at all. No one’s against AI being used as tool BY A WRITER. People are worried that studios will REPLACE WRITERS with AI, because it’s cheaper. Sure, in this instance the use of AI works with the material, but if you think the only reason they used it is for the look, you’re out to lunch. What about when AI gets better, and it can mimic what humans do?
It’s just a digital effect not all that different from adding fake static or using an algorithm to create a digital fade effect. But it’s “AI” therefore it’s bad.
You seem to fundamentally misunderstand what AI does. All of these modelers are generating content using existing content that it’s been trained on – content which it uses free of charge to create new content. A multi-billion dollar company used an AI model to harvest other people’s work to create the intro to part of a multi-billion dollar franchise, and at no point did they pay the people who originally created the content.
“Oh well it’s not actually the original artist’s work anymore, it’s an interpretation!”
Yeah cool so if I just move into your house and change the drapes, that makes it mine, right?
I don’t think you understand how AI works. As pointed out in the article, AI isn’t creating imagery from nothing. It’s mining the work of real artists with no proof that they’ve consented and essentially using a thesaurus to change a couple words of the sentence it ingests. It is plagerism in it’s purest form. If Disney wanted to achieve that effect, it could have hired artists to create the art fed to AI and allowed them the control to distort it.
Nobody is against AI. People are against AI that only does what it can do based off of theft, artists were not asked permission before these AI companies use their work to train their AI models.
“It’s not like anyone would have been paid more if they didn’t use AI, or if this particular effect took any paycheck from a starving artist.” This is simply just not true. The number of people that worked on the sequence was less than the number needed in the same project without AI. Therefore artists lost out to AI.Why do artists have to lose jobs and money on a title sequence to AI powered by their work so that society can have cool effects? Why not Disney lose something. They could lose out on money to hire artists to create cool effects since they’ve done since the dawn of cinema. But no, you want artists to sacrifice their livelihood to make something cool for society like we artists owe society that. We artists are just workers, working 9 to 5 just like you in whatever industry you work on. Sure you wouldn’t want to not make rent so ai could do your job and give something to society.
Artificial intelligence (at least in its current form) can’t create; it can only re-create based on art that already exists.Based on my understanding, this isn’t really true unless you apply a standard of originality that no-one would ever apply to a man-made creation. It’s like saying that any Impressionist painter past the first Impressionist was only re-creating.
Don’t get me wrong, its use in art (and in general) is an absolute travesty either way. But there are other, better arguments to make against that.
Nah, it’s just harder to spot in visual art than it is text. Here, let me share one of my recent experiments with ChatGPT. I gave it this prompt:INT. BRUCE’S APARTMENT – NIGHTA modest apartment, dimly lit, with newspaper clippings and crime-solving gadgets scattered across a worn wooden table. BRUCE, a middle-aged man with a rugged exterior, sits hunched over, studying a map pinned to the wall, connecting strings of events and criminal activities.BRUCE(whispering to himself)Gotham City… a breeding ground for crime. The innocent suffer while the wicked thrive. It’s time someone took a stand.Bruce’s gaze shifts to a nearby bookshelf, displaying a collection of crime novels and martial arts manuals. His eyes glimmer with determination.EXT. ROOFTOP – NIGHTBruce, now clad in a black tactical suit, stands at the edge of a tall building, overlooking the city skyline. The wind whips through his hair, his cape billowing behind him. He takes a deep breath, savoring the moment.BRUCE(voiceover)Tonight, I become something more. Tonight, I become a symbol. A symbol of justice. A symbol of hope.Bruce leaps off the rooftop, his body gracefully navigating through the shadows. He lands on another building’s ledge, unnoticed by the bustling streets below.EXT. DARK ALLEY – NIGHTBruce prowls the dimly lit alleys, his keen senses attuned to the sounds of wrongdoing. He spots a group of thugs harassing an innocent passerby, their intentions clear.THUG 1(teasingly)Hand over your wallet, old man. Or else…The passerby trembles, fear painted across their face. But before the thugs can react, a swift figure emerges from the darkness.BRUCE(gruff voice)I suggest you gentlemen find another line of work. Crime doesn’t pay.Bruce’s hands move like lightning, incapacitating the thugs with precise strikes. His combat skills, honed through years of training, shine through.Passerby watches, eyes wide with astonishment. Bruce turns to them, extending a hand.BRUCEYou’re safe now. Go home.The passerby nods gratefully and scurries away, leaving Bruce alone in the alley.INT. BATCAVE – NIGHTDeep beneath Wayne Manor lies Bruce’s secret base, the Batcave. It’s a high-tech sanctuary, filled with advanced gadgets, crime-fighting equipment, and a towering Batmobile.Bruce removes his mask, revealing a weary but determined expression. He paces back and forth, his mind already focused on the next challenge.BRUCE(to himself)This is just the beginning. Gotham needs me. The darkness won’t win as long as I’m here.Bruce studies the monitor, displaying news reports of rampant crime. His eyes narrow, a newfound fire burning within.BRUCE(whispering)I am Batman.Bruce dons his mask once more, his cape billowing behind him. With unwavering resolve, he descends into the Batmobile and speeds into the night, ready to fight the crime that plagues his city.FADE OUT.Nope, no plagiarism there!
I haven’t checked behind the couch in the basement yet, but I have looked everywhere else and haven’t found a single fuck to give about this.
seems like a bit of a non-story.there isn’t a big “generate Skrull title sequence” button in any software. it’s clear that a team of actual human artists and motion designers devised and produced this sequence, it just also uses the recognisable style that the likes of stable diffusion tend to generate. all of the visuals will have been created by traditional or digital illustrators first and then processed through an AI workflow to achieve the desired effect, before being handed off to motion designers or animators. and i dare say the people responsible for processing the images and achieving the final product are skilled at what they do and i would assume were even paid for their work (well, ‘paid’ in the sense that marvel pays any of its outsourced artists/designers, which they don’t have a great track record for if we’re being honest).poorly timed given the strikes and likely to cause ire? probably.entirely automated and devoid of human endeavour? no.
It looked a lot like they were trying to reference the Deep Dream era of computer assembled art, only with skrulls instead of endless dog faces. It made sense to me conceptually (“everyone looks weird and just a hint Skrull-ish, is there an invasion or am I crazy?)“, enough that figured at best they used AI for some pre-viz concepts and then just fleshed the rest out via traditional animators. Guess maybe not. Shame, because the vibe of scary dream logic and deepfake references made perfect sense with the show.That said the whole “It’s a SLAP IN THE FACE (seriously, can we find a new one of these) to every animator that ever worked for Disney” sounds familiar, because I remember it being parroted a bunch back when like Toy Story came out and everyone was all “The death of hand-drawn animation! Ready your face for slaps!”
Well, hand drawn animation has kind of died (at least in America).
Re: your second paragraph, yes, agreed. The “AI is designed solely to eliminate artists’ careers” pull quote is a bit much as well.
These are people with no real problems in their lives.
For what it’s worth, it looks fucking terrible, like the dumpster baby of Skynet and Ed Hardy.
Glad that after the mindless AI drones left Kotaku because they dropped talking about it, we can enjoy them here at the AV Club, as if this place wasn’t bad enough.
edit: nm misunderstood. agreed!
Did someone say they were interested in NFTs?
The fact people recognized it was AI art is proof – AI art – is art. It has its own look and style. AI art is a perfect medium for a Marvel story about distortions of reality, authenticity and what it means to be “real”. The opening expresses the grotesque nature of the Skrull lurking around and shape shifting. It gives an element of unsettling horror to the opening.
Critics have no clue how hard it is to train AI to make animation let alone an entire intro that seamlessly transitions. Nor, do they understand many artists are still drawing and doing the work to make it work. Give it a year, fan boys will expect AI intros and rail against traditional intros. Humans are weird like that.
You’re right, it has a definitive look: shitty.
Picasso, Pollack, Chagal, Van Gogh, Kahlo, Dali, Bruegel, all made ugly, offensive and questionable stuff for their time. But people would now say it’s their signature works. I think people just like to talk shit on things they don’t understand. It’s fun. Then they forget about it. LOL
Having working on two animations using AI this past year… nah, it’s not hard. Some annoying problems to solve with flicker, but it’s not hard.
With skill and experience with animation. Which the common person doesn’t have. Also, mind showing us what you worked on?
Its can’t be art because the machine does not think. It can’t be art because art has to created by a human (CF PETA Vs that photographer court case).
A painting can’t be art because the brush doesn’t think!
Any idiot can use a brush and any idiot can tell a generative AI to make something. The idea that the output will have any artistic worth is inherently subjective. Certainly the chances of these tools’ outputs having artistic worth are higher if the user is creative and skilled.
I think as a society we’re going to decide that AI art has low artistic value specifically because there’s not going to be much differentiation in its output. It’s not impossible someone could come along and make something really new and thought-provoking using this tool. (If I remember correctly, sampling and collage were both sort of initially dismissed as the work of artistic magpies, and this feels similar to me.)
Anyway I suppose this is all semantics.
Nah. AI won’t create art because AI cannot think. Paintbrushes can’t think and therefore aren’t artists either.
Ah, you got it! Yes, we agree that AI is a tool and it’s not an artist. Here is where we may disagree: I claim that someone could use AI to create art, just as they could use Audacity or a loaf of bread or a random number generator or or or…
Anyway, carry on, have a nice Thursday.
That’s not what people mean when they use the term AI Art. No one calls paintings paintbrush Art.
They sort of do, actually, in that oils are distinguished from collage and sculpture, etc.I think we can categorize “AI art” as a thing, right? In the sense that you’re referring to a collection of images. All of it was created using a tool being driven by human input (“create an image showing animals with vinyl records for heads in the style of Vincent van Gogh”) with the idea that people would look at it.I just don’t see a difference between that and shitty hotel lobby art except that the former can be created with much much less effort and at much larger scale. I don’t think either are subjectively good art. But just arbitrarily saying it’s not art, ehhhh, I don’t buy it.I’m not saying the image prompt above would make a second Mona Lisa, but clearly there’s an element of creation (again, not especially good or compelling) in suggesting a scene to render.
The AI is not actually a thinking or feeling anything it can’t therefore create art. Collage and sculpture are not paintings either.
Alright, enjoy not engaging with anybody else’s opinion.
If it is plagiarism then it was created by a human, ergo it is art.
Correct it’s not plagiarism
I’d like to know Joe Eszterhas take on all this.
That’s a really great joke.
I heard rumours Writing Unit 12 really carried that project, and doesn’t think 5 or Eszterhas deserved on-screen credits.
“AI is inherently plagiaristic. Artificial intelligence (at least in its current form) can’t create; it can only re-create based on art that already exists”AI developer here. That statement is false – Generative AI is incapable of plagiarism. It is a probability engine that observes existing work to develop rules like “eyes generally don’t appear on chins”, but it can not copy-paste. With writing, if you ask ChatGPT to show you what website or book it pulled a phrase from, it could not tell you. What’s more, if you yourself could manually search every website or book that has ever been fed to ChatGPT for that phrase, you wouldn’t find it either. That’s because it does not copy-paste – it writes new content based on probabilities calculated from observing existing content. If “creating new content based on patterns and expectations observed in existing content” is plagiarism, then all of human writing and art-making is plagiaristic too. In fact, the very laws of grammar and syntax would be plagiarism. The concern of AI replacing human jobs is very real, and unions should be concerned about it (just as car-making robots replaced autoworker jobs) – but I think it’s important for everyone to understand what it’s actually capable of.
Don’t bother. A certain kind of extremely online personality has decided to understand as much about generative AI as Joe Rogan does about vaccines. It just sucks that is this case it mostly isn’t right-wing chuds but people you otherwise ally with.
I’d say that training a neural network is encoding some distinct patterns of the art and artist being fed as input as compressed data in the ANN. Those patterns are used directly when synthesizing an output, just combined according to what’s ultimately a very convoluted (pun intended) weighted average. I think that clearly such a generative system can be plagiarism: if I trained a generative AI to specifically generate its best approximation of a pre-existing scene from Star Wars: A New Hope given a prompt describing said scene then Disney would likely be quite cross with me should I distribute the model (assuming a sufficient level of success, anyhow). At some point I’m just distributing a compressed copy of the film.My inclination is to consider a generative AI model to be a lossy archive of all the things that went into its training. If the current models pass fair use then they do so only by virtue of their compression being very, very lossy. A generative AI that can, given the right prompt and seed, reconstruct its own training data with no distinguishable loss is legally dicey even if it’s not literally copying and pasting any bits — and encoding the training data so it can be reconstructed with minimal loss is exactly what backpropagation is designed to do.
I love when I read two competing takes on something and they’re both informed and make great points. Shame it’s so rare on here.
This is the Internet, you’ll take incoherent hate-screaming and you’ll like it, buddy!
then all of human writing and art-making is plagiaristic too.
Anytime I hear someone making this incredibly tired excuse, my first thought is “this person has no understanding of creativity.” People are influenced by art, but that’s not ALL they’re influenced by! Inspiration can also come from people’s actual lives: from people’s experiences, from their relationships, from people or places or events which had an impact on them. It can come from the culture they live in or from simply observing nature or other people. And AI can’t take inspiration from any of that, because it’s incapable of having experiences. All it can do is consume, copy, and regurgitate other art. It’s a creative parasite. The fact that AI evangelists see all art as an endless game of telephone where nothing new is ever added just shows how pitifully shallow their understanding of the field they’re attempting to “disrupt” is.BTW, there is a legal distinction between taking inspiration from someone else, and plagiarizing them. AI bros had best learn what it is, because this stupid “UM, ACTUALLY, EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD IS PLAGIARISM” excuse has been tried in court plenty of times, and it never fucking works.
“Inspiration can also come from people’s actual lives: from people’s experiences, from their relationships, from people or places or events which had an impact on them. It can come from the culture they live in or from simply observing nature or other people.”And if you haven’t figured out that all of the above generally combine to create extremely derivative narratives in the first place, then you completely missed the point where AI derives from existing patterns. Every person thinks they’re the main character in a unique, insightful story, when in reality they’re playing out an incredibly similar experience in a slightly different manner. Everything in the world may not be plagiarism, but it is a series of similar human experiences, narrative structures and lessons compiled into archetypes.
Inspiration can even come from the city of New York, which is kind of like its own character in this story.
Ah I think you’ve confused the debate though – the debate of is it “real art” vs “not real art” is different from the debate between is it “plagiarized” and “not plagiarized”The fact that real creativity requires real lived human emotions is something I agree with, and I think that’s fairly uncontroversial. But the fact that AI does not have this “soul” of creativity does not mean that it is copy-pasting its training data, as the quote in the article accuses.Something can be original (as in not copied from anything) and still be uncreative. For example, writing a 1000-digit random number may be wholly original in that it has never been written before, but it’s not creative.
Sounds like something an AI would say!
yeah it’s just a total coincidence that when you prompt for famous celebrities, you get variations of totally recognizable publicity stills of them
No dumbass, not a “coincidence”. It’s literally probabilistic that a new rendering of a celeb would resemble one of their famous photos. That’s exactly what OP is explaining.
AI developer here. That statement is false – Generative AI is incapable of plagiarism.LOLLet me repost this for a third time.I gave ChatGPT this prompt: “Write me a scene about a man named Bruce who decides to fight crime”INT. BRUCE’S APARTMENT – NIGHTA modest apartment, dimly lit, with newspaper clippings and crime-solving gadgets scattered across a worn wooden table. BRUCE, a middle-aged man with a rugged exterior, sits hunched over, studying a map pinned to the wall, connecting strings of events and criminal activities.BRUCE(whispering to himself)Gotham City… a breeding ground for crime. The innocent suffer while the wicked thrive. It’s time someone took a stand.Bruce’s gaze shifts to a nearby bookshelf, displaying a collection of crime novels and martial arts manuals. His eyes glimmer with determination.EXT. ROOFTOP – NIGHTBruce, now clad in a black tactical suit, stands at the edge of a tall building, overlooking the city skyline. The wind whips through his hair, his cape billowing behind him. He takes a deep breath, savoring the moment.BRUCE(voiceover)Tonight, I become something more. Tonight, I become a symbol. A symbol of justice. A symbol of hope.Bruce leaps off the rooftop, his body gracefully navigating through the shadows. He lands on another building’s ledge, unnoticed by the bustling streets below.EXT. DARK ALLEY – NIGHTBruce prowls the dimly lit alleys, his keen senses attuned to the sounds of wrongdoing. He spots a group of thugs harassing an innocent passerby, their intentions clear.THUG 1(teasingly)Hand over your wallet, old man. Or else…The passerby trembles, fear painted across their face. But before the thugs can react, a swift figure emerges from the darkness.BRUCE(gruff voice)I suggest you gentlemen find another line of work. Crime doesn’t pay.Bruce’s hands move like lightning, incapacitating the thugs with precise strikes. His combat skills, honed through years of training, shine through.Passerby watches, eyes wide with astonishment. Bruce turns to them, extending a hand.BRUCEYou’re safe now. Go home.The passerby nods gratefully and scurries away, leaving Bruce alone in the alley.INT. BATCAVE – NIGHTDeep beneath Wayne Manor lies Bruce’s secret base, the Batcave. It’s a high-tech sanctuary, filled with advanced gadgets, crime-fighting equipment, and a towering Batmobile.Bruce removes his mask, revealing a weary but determined expression. He paces back and forth, his mind already focused on the next challenge.BRUCE(to himself)This is just the beginning. Gotham needs me. The darkness won’t win as long as I’m here.Bruce studies the monitor, displaying news reports of rampant crime. His eyes narrow, a newfound fire burning within.BRUCE(whispering)I am Batman.Bruce dons his mask once more, his cape billowing behind him. With unwavering resolve, he descends into the Batmobile and speeds into the night, ready to fight the crime that plagues his city.FADE OUT.Pretty weird that a system “incapable of plagiarism” took “Bruce” and “fights crime” and somehow came up with Gotham, Wayne Manor, the Batcave, the Batmobile, and Batman.
Haha, fair experiment! I just posted the same prompt into a model I’m working with, and while it didn’t get as specific with the names (different training set) it also definitely went in a close-to-Batman direction. I guess the point I was clarifying is that the Marvel credits shown above are NOT directly plagiarizing any given artist, as the article said, just as none of the sentences in your or my generated scripts are literally copy-pasted from a Nolan script, etc. But you’re right, as it is just a probability model, it’s highly probable that when we talk about a crimefighter named Bruce, we’re talking about Batman, and so the model’s going to give us that. I’m not a lawyer, but maybe I’d call this more copyright infringement than plagiarism. AI is very much capable of infringement (in fact a problem I’m working on this week!)
The phrase “it writes new content based on probabilities” kind of gets at the philosophical dilemma. Algorithms approach tasks in a fundamentally different way than humans do, and since technology doesn’t operate in a bubble there’s going to be a debate about which way is “better.” It gets extra touchy for professional writers, who (in my experience) view their creative process as its own end, rather than a task to streamline. But you’re also analogizing human language use (learning grammar, reading, and writing) to the way algorithms function, which is equally inaccurate. It’s true that an algorithm can’t tell you its “inspiration,” the way a human writer can, but the developers can presumably tell you what training set they used.
Get a real job
Hey, not all of us can save orphans from burning buildings all day like you do! There are only so many orphanage fires!
If “creating new content based on patterns and expectations observed in existing content” is plagiarism, then all of human writing and art-making is plagiaristic too. In fact, the very laws of grammar and syntax would be plagiarism.
That’s not how plagiarism works. Artists have permission to study other artists’ work, it’s a time honored tradition to do so, there’s no issue with it in copyright and artists haven’t protests and contacted their elected officials to get copyright updated to prevent this. On the other hand, artists have explicitly said they don’t want AI models using their work to train on. I’ve watched congressional hearing with AI CEOs being asked, if the model is trained on this musician’s work, “why are they not compensated?” to which there was no answer. Artists, governments around the world are asking this question.
So if you do work in AI, you should know, your industry doesn’t get to define what plagiarism or theft is. The owners of the data your models are trained on get to define it, and it’s based entirely around consent.
And it’s nothing like robots replacing auto workers jobs. These AI models steal worker’s data, they can’t work without that stolen data, and then are used to replace workers. That’s never been done by any technology before this.
“So if you do work in AI, you should know, your industry doesn’t get to define what plagiarism or theft is. The owners of the data your models are trained on get to define it, and it’s based entirely around consent.”Sorry, that’s not how law works. To give a recent example: the estate of Marvin Gaye sued Ed Sheeran arguing that one of Sheeran’s songs was so close to one of Gaye’s that it was not just “inspired by” but in fact “stolen from.” By your logic above, Gaye’s estate should be able to “define plagiarism or theft” because it is “based entirely around consent” – Gaye’s estate should win the case automatically because they firmly did NOT give consent to Sheeran to profit off a song so (allegedly) similar to Gaye’s. However, the court did not rule that way – and in fact rarely does. They found that Gaye’s estate’s claim was baseless and ruled in favor of to Sheeran.
So no, artists not giving consent for their content to be used as training data does not allow them to define it as theft. Only the law can do that. To be honest, if you’re worried about a greedy tech company taking direct advantage of a creative’s hard work for its own profit – your villain is Spotify.
I have nothing to do with Spotify, I’m an animator, AI is affecting a lot of us.
Look man, if you don’t care about people, just say it. Cause a lot of people across the creative arts are losing our jobs because AI isn’t properly regulated. There’s strikes to try to get AI protections. Not just for writers and actors. The hospitality industry there’s unions striking for AI protections because the government is struggling to regulate AI. I’ve seen congressional hearings where AI CEO’s are asked do they don’t pay artists, and the reply back is that it’s very important that artists be compensated and they hope the government can help them write laws to address this issue. Which I mean, the AI CEOs were asked, “Do you pay artists?”, we need a nanny state to tell businesses they need to pay people? So if you want to play legalistic games, that’s cool. If you want to treat AI like like every previous technology even though this technology works exponentially faster than any human. It’s not a tool that people can work with like past technology. It’s a tool to replace the person, it does the “thinking”. Cool. We can just use old cases to regulate fundamentally new technology if you want.
Millions of us are gonna be unemployed and unable to find work or new careers. I hope you do alright, cause obviously for everyone that still have jobs, you will have to pay socialist level taxes on your wealth to support the rest of us on welfare.
So on the one hand, I can see how “eerie, not-quite-right but nothing you can put your finger on wrongness” is exactly the vibe for a show like this, and that’s the sort of thing AI generated art is good at, so, I sorta get it.But on the other, goddamn, what an absolutely braindead move guaranteed to piss off everyone who works for you and all your fans while giving your many detractors the undisputed moral high ground.
It is kind of appropriate for the show. Since it’s all about aliens impersonating humans and trying to infiltrate human society, sowing chaos and distrust.
Kirby is rolling in his grave.
But for several other reasons, most of which have to do with Stan Lee. But don’t worry. Once news of this gets to his ghost he’ll crank up the RPMs.
I think it looks good in a surreal way, and more importantly it basically gives the show a massive amount of guaranteed free press. All publicity is publicity, negative or not.
“So it is with Secret Invasion, where the job to create could have gone to, you know, an actual artist.”You know AI art is created by artists right? How do you think any of this works? You even mentioned the studio that did the work: https://www.methodstudios.com/en/
but then you just pissed and moaned for the rest of the article instead of bringing anything valuable to the conversation. Maybe next time look up the artists at the studio and ask them for an interview rather than just linking tweets?
If you’re feeding a generative AI prompts you aren’t an artist. You’re doing data entry.
Nah
The best part is that the DC fanboys can’t say jack shit about this, because they just got done insisting the crappy effects in The Flash were a “deliberate creative choice.”
Depends if they had permission to use the training data for this purpose.
If permission is granted then there’s no real problem.
Narrator: They did not.
Secret Invasions suck. RockHard prefers to let everyone know He’s poundin a woketard’s bunghole
I bet it’s not about creating a certain look to fit a certain theme, as they claim. They are just testing the waters here.
I’d like to know more about HOW this AI was used to generate the opening credits. I assume (maybe naively) that it was not fully autonomous. A studio exec didnt promt “make me some opening credits” to a generative AI, at least that’s not all of it. There is artistry and design and engineering that goes into producing satisfactory outputs from any complex tool capable of knowledge work. The Disney Gallery series that goes behind the scenes of The Mandalorian goes into some detail on the various technologies (including AI) that went into creating the young Luke character. There’s a lot of human in that loop.
When will these soulless AI devs learn how to program these dumb things to draw normal hands
Unfortunately, they’ve fed the AI the complete works of Rob Liefeld.
The funny thing is how utterly dated the sequence looks already. This feels like state-of-the-art from two years ago.
The intro did not look good and ran for way the hell too long as well.
I know I’m so late no one will ever see this, but I keep seeing things like “they could have hired an artist instead” and I’m like, why are you assuming no artists were involved in this? Why are you assuming that this was trained on other people’s work and not on a corpus they had human artists create as training material? Do we even know the background of how the intro was created, and who worked on it? I’m not in favor of the studios trying to replace workers with crap tools just to save money, but I’m also getting real strong “anything that uses generative tools is automatically evil” energy from a lot of these comments.