So recently there has been a lot of debate on AI-generated art and its copyright. I’ve read a lot of comments recently that made me think of this video and I want to highly encourage everyone to watch it, maybe even watch it again if you already viewed it. Watch it specifically with the question “If an AI did it, would it change anything?”
Right now, AI-generated works aren’t copyrightable. https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/ai-generator-art-text-us-copyright-policy-1234661683/ This means you can not copyright the works produced by AI.
I work in games so this is more seemingly relevant to me than maybe it is to you. https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/03/valve-responds-to-claims-it-has-banned-ai-generated-games-from-steam/ Steam has outright said, earlier this month, that it will not publish games on its platform without understanding if the training data has been of images that aren’t public domain.
So right now, common AI is producing works that are potentially copyright-infringing works and are unable to be copyrighted themselves.
So with this information, should copyright exist, and if not, how do you encourage artists and scientists to produce works if they no longer can make a living off of it?
I can only speak in my case, but as someone who has been building a career in art and design I’m already looking for another career. It’s unlikely I’ll bother publishing anything I make on my own once I fully make the switch. It’s simply not worth the high risk of investing so much time and energy into a refined skill only to have an individual or a company scrape all your work without even notifying or compensating you and use it to train a replacement for you, using your own hard work to make you obsolete.
It’s very clear from the way the public discussion is going in general on this subject that society is going to have no real issue giving the finger to creatives over the next few decades. It’s essentially society doing that thing that cheapster clients do where they try to commission art way below your rate because “You’re an artist, you like making art so making it for me is like its own reward.”
I work in the games industry and can tell you AI isn’t going to get to the point any time soon to fully replace game artists. Likewise, I’m an engineer and chatgpt can generate code from prompts but it’s not very good. The 3d models that ai can generate are terrible. If you are a 3d artist you need not worry about ai.
It’s not so much about “can AI do everything an artist can do right at this moment” it’s more the fact that it is already being used to devalue artistic skills and has started a race to the bottom. I’m not going to continue down a career that’s destined to deadend.
And while I am familiar with several 3D design apps and use it in my work, it’s really a different area of work so not really a solution in and of itself. And, of course, AI’s lack of ability to create useful or compelling 3D models is a result of that human labor being more difficult to scrape, but it will be scraped eventually.
The general attitudes towards ai have made it clear to me that any career in the arts is not long for this world. I have finite time to build a career, it would be better to find something more sustainsble at this point then twenty years from now have the rug completely out from under me.
I mean every industry right now is a race to the bottom. Everyone is trying to provide a product or service cheaper than their competitor. There are 8 billion people on this planet and everyone is trying to undercut someone else to get enough money to live.