Used to be that a solid chunk of my Fridays was given over to putting together the artwork for whatever AlienSideBoob column I’d written that day. Sometimes it was easy. I could google up an idea, and someone had already provided the meme.
Sometimes I’d spend half a fucking day maxing out my very meagre graphic skills to stitch together some frankenimage that half worked. Sort of.
Nowadays, of course, I just hit up mid-journey with a prompt. For instance, this morning, I told it to generate an image of Vladimir Putin, writing a condolence letter late at night.
This was what I got back.
An unusually decent return on a quick investment. I used the really weird one in the lower right corner. I'm not sure why he's dressed in an animal onesie, or why there is a teddy bear on his side table. Something about the ‘Russian Bear’ I guess. But I love it. It really worked with the column.
I still have a slight twinge every time I do this, however. I know these things are going to kill us all one day. But first, they will impoverish us. I tell myself, I'm not taking work away from an artist because there’s no way I’d have paid an artist to do this. The economics just don't work out. If every column makes about 500 bucks, and a good commercial Artist costs about eight or $900 to generate an image, well, you can see where that's going. Into bankruptcy, backwards and fast.
So I'm really not depriving anybody at the work. And yet every time I do it, it feels like I'm depriving somebody of the work. But the only one who ever did the work, was me! Gah! And I did it to the best of my abilities, which is to say, pretty poorly.
I don't know that there is an answer to this moral quandry. I don't even know if it is a moral quandary. If I was running a magazine, with a subscriber base of 50- or 60,000 paying customers, for sure, I'd be paying artists to generate images for me, but that's not what's happening here and that's not how most of the generative AI tools are being used.
On the other hand, did the AI companies vacuum up the work of thousands or potentially millions of unpaid contributors? You bet they did. And they will never ever pay for that work.
Still, I think I might just put this one down to one of the contradictions of late stage capitalism and get on with my business.
It's OK, most artists make nothing at all. Much like how Ned Flanders feels in his skiing outfit.
Ai mostly generates agreeable nice looking art works that most graduates from aussie art schools would be unable to make in the first place. I know one woman who can actually paint like your average midjouney out put, her works sometimes sell for $15k, but mostly she works as a teacher and yoga instructor. What Ai is really doing is pointing out that art production is at best a ponzi scheme, where the winner takes all, at worst it's a social welfare charity for the indolent and feckless university crowd. I haven't been able to get Ai to write a genuine rubbish art statement and it can't emulate my wonky cartoons. Which saves me from being upset about it.
It's weird AI was suppose to free us from dull, repetitive work so we could create art and write stories. Instead the AI does the art and we are still stuck doing the dull repetitive work and still have a 5 day week, in the 21 century with the means of production the human race now commands that's bullshit.
When I saw the column this morning I thought you'd specified teddy bears in your prompt to the AI, so it's a bit wild it came up with it on its own. The fourth image is *chef's kiss* for the tone of the column.
you made the right choice - i gravitated directly to that bottom right one as well. Seems like those AI generators are still struggling with hands/fingers though. That will be the marker of end times when they get those right - means they understand their function and importance and will destroy us for it. ;)
I've been seeing a few of those 'are you a robot' thingos where you used to have to click on all the cars, etc, but where the images are AI generated, so now you get click on all the 'rabbits playing football', etc. I assume one no longer has to pay royalties on the photographs.
It's OK, most artists make nothing at all. Much like how Ned Flanders feels in his skiing outfit.
Ai mostly generates agreeable nice looking art works that most graduates from aussie art schools would be unable to make in the first place. I know one woman who can actually paint like your average midjouney out put, her works sometimes sell for $15k, but mostly she works as a teacher and yoga instructor. What Ai is really doing is pointing out that art production is at best a ponzi scheme, where the winner takes all, at worst it's a social welfare charity for the indolent and feckless university crowd. I haven't been able to get Ai to write a genuine rubbish art statement and it can't emulate my wonky cartoons. Which saves me from being upset about it.
It's weird AI was suppose to free us from dull, repetitive work so we could create art and write stories. Instead the AI does the art and we are still stuck doing the dull repetitive work and still have a 5 day week, in the 21 century with the means of production the human race now commands that's bullshit.
When I saw the column this morning I thought you'd specified teddy bears in your prompt to the AI, so it's a bit wild it came up with it on its own. The fourth image is *chef's kiss* for the tone of the column.
you made the right choice - i gravitated directly to that bottom right one as well. Seems like those AI generators are still struggling with hands/fingers though. That will be the marker of end times when they get those right - means they understand their function and importance and will destroy us for it. ;)
I've been seeing a few of those 'are you a robot' thingos where you used to have to click on all the cars, etc, but where the images are AI generated, so now you get click on all the 'rabbits playing football', etc. I assume one no longer has to pay royalties on the photographs.