Procreate's Anti-AI Pledge Attracts Praise From Digital Creatives (theverge.com) 50
An anonymous reader shares a report: Many Procreate users can breathe a sigh of relief now that the popular iPad illustration app has taken a definitive stance against generative AI. "We're not going to be introducing any generative AI into our products," Procreate CEO James Cuda said in a video posted to X. "I don't like what's happening to the industry, and I don't like what it's doing to artists."
The creative community's ire toward generative AI is driven by two main concerns: that AI models have been trained on their content without consent or compensation, and that widespread adoption of the technology will greatly reduce employment opportunities. Those concerns have driven some digital illustrators to seek out alternative solutions to apps that integrate generative AI tools, such as Adobe Photoshop. "Generative AI is ripping the humanity out of things. Built on a foundation of theft, the technology is steering us toward a barren future," Procreate said on the new AI section of its website. "We think machine learning is a compelling technology with a lot of merit, but the path generative AI is on is wrong for us."
The creative community's ire toward generative AI is driven by two main concerns: that AI models have been trained on their content without consent or compensation, and that widespread adoption of the technology will greatly reduce employment opportunities. Those concerns have driven some digital illustrators to seek out alternative solutions to apps that integrate generative AI tools, such as Adobe Photoshop. "Generative AI is ripping the humanity out of things. Built on a foundation of theft, the technology is steering us toward a barren future," Procreate said on the new AI section of its website. "We think machine learning is a compelling technology with a lot of merit, but the path generative AI is on is wrong for us."
Unless (Score:3)
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Less than one minute of searching yielded the fact that Savage Interactive is not a public company.
Re: Unless (Score:2)
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Indeed, but another minute again and you'd find they have one principal.
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Let us know when AI can generate images of humans with five fingers or toes.
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i am releasing a new Al project free for every one to use
i call my Al project "CtrlC/CtrlV", no it is not theft, i say so.
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depends on the page size, could probably do it at first attempt
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The problem with your school analogy is that there is very little new art to teach them with. Basically every website worth its salt is now hardened against AI scraping bots or they mix so much AI generated dross into their data that it will poison your AI in training.
In short, if today's AI is kindergarten level, you have no more data with which to get it to first grade, let alone college.
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The problem is that while members of a certain group (artists, in this case) may be able to agree to and even (to some extent) enforce a proscription on the use of AI generated content, there will be those who will now find the expense and annoyance of dealing with human artists no longer worth it. If AI doesn't figure out how to get around technical measures designed to prevent it from usurping our job roles, there will be more than a few very crafty humans to help. Once an AI can be taught to do your job (whatever it is) as well as you, it'll only be a matter of time before you're replaced by an AI. People may care about humanity; businesses don't - and AI's don't care about anything but gaining a high score. They have no emotions in the matter. Good luck keeping AI out of anything - even if it doesn't "want" your job, somebody somewhere wants the money they'll save.
Ok, lots to unpack there. For starters, quite frankly most if not all AI generated art I have seen kinda sucks ass and even the 'stunning examples' of AI generated art are a distinct 'Meh...' at best. The thing is that generative AI needs human generated input, otherwise it goes into a recursive learning cycle. Without a constant infusion of fresh real data generated by humans (such as artists) in each training iteration, AI models start feeding on their own output with an inevitable decline in the quality
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Customer's perspective (Score:5, Interesting)
A few years ago, I asked several ordinary (the equivalent of "garage band", if that makes sense) graphical artists how much would it cost me to make around 200 drawings (for a small free game I was designing). More like simple sketches, such as a black background with some dots as stars and a couple crudely drawn spaceships in the foreground, just black and white. The drawings were necessary only for the introductory cutscene of the game.
I was quoted between $2K and $14K (depending on artist).
I didn't have that much money, of course, so I abandoned the idea.
Now, I can do that myself with hardware costing less than the smallest quote, some prompting and a free model from CivitAI. I could churn batches of hundreds of images from a single prompt and simply pick the best ones, iterate based on them and so on. And then I get to keep the hardware (if I had to buy it, which i don't, because I already own it).
Now, did the artists lose me as a customer because of AI? No. I wouldn't have paid that amount anyway.
But did I find a method of taking my idea (or at least part of it) into practice? Yes, definitely so.
From a (potential) customer's perspective, generative AI is a Godsend. It sucks for a beginner freelance digital artist, of course, but there's more than one perspective on the subject.
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Now, did the artists lose me as a customer because of AI? No. I wouldn't have paid that amount anyway.
The people who pirate your game will use the same argument.
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And many of them will be perfectly right.
When I was 12 at school we had an active pirate scene going during the lunch break. And it included some pretty fancy stuff. I don't think any of us had the pocket money to legally pay for 3D Studio.
These days it's much easier to click "Buy" on Steam. Having money is quite convenient.
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And many of them will be perfectly right.
After you invest 30,000 to 40,000 man-hours in getting a product to market we'll see how you feel about someone just taking it and then fabricating justification.
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I don't think any of us had the pocket money to legally pay for 3D Studio.
The people who learned how to use 3D Studio became artists at studios that ended up purchasing that software for them. In simpler terms piracy helped make 3DS Max a dominate 3d package for a while because there were people that could drive it. That's a bad example for you.
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You mean the people who will pirate my FREE game?
Let them pirate as much as they want to. Sheesh, I would be extremely happy knowing my idea would be appreciated by so many.
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Ok. You put 30,000 man-hours into a game and make it free forever.
We'll see if your opinion changes after 3-4 of those and eight years of your career go by.
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Buddy, it's a hobby. One that I don't care becoming rich off.
It's been something I've been cooking on and off for 10+ years now. It might not be released or finished ever, at no loss for mankind.
More reason to not spend a few grand on some stupid sketches for an intro which a player would, in theory, only see once.
I have many hobbies which might or might not materialize into something tangible. I've written literature which I never cared about publishing, I've made music I never released, etc. I did al this
Re:Customer's perspective (Score:4, Insightful)
can do that myself with hardware costing less than the smallest quote
Yes, this is exactly the point.
All through history, the same pattern recurs. As new discoveries, inventions, techniques or processes appear, regular people can suddenly do or make things that were only possible before for small groups of specialized people (or for the rich people who could afford the specialists). While this sucks for specialists whose hard earned knowledge is now worth much less, it's a benefit for the rest of humanity who doesn't need to go through a limited resource (the highly skilled worker) to get what they need anymore. This democratization of knowledge and capabilities is one of the main engines of progress.
It's interesting to see how the introduction of the printing press faced resistance quite similar with the current techno-panic regarding AI - even many of the objections were comparable to the current ones against AI. With moving type, regular people could suddenly create large numbers of books quickly, without being trained calligraphers. This had a large impact on calligraphers (most of which were monks), who were left without a trade - and many of them objected. Their arguments ranged from complaining that monks will be left out of work, to social fears - an abundance of printed books would overwhelm regular people with information and corrupt them, to worries that copying books manually strengthens the copyist's character in ways printing doesn't.
Here's a relevant quote from medieval abbot Trithemius's [wikipedia.org] De laude scriptorum manualium:
Brothers, no one should think or say "Why do I have to wear myself out writing by hand, when the art of printing has brought so many books to light, so that we can cheaply put together a great library?" Truly, whoever says this is trying to conceal his own sloth. [...] He who ceases the work of a scribe because of printing is not a true friend of Scripture, because heeding no more than the present he takes no care to educate posterity. But we, dearest brothers, heeding the reward of this sacred labor we will not cease our work, even if we have many thousands of printed volumes. Printed books will never equal scribed books, especially because the spelling and ornamentation of some printed books is often neglected. Copying requires greater diligence.
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here's the difference. the invention alone wouldn't be able to provide these thousands of images that OP could generate without the collective works of numerous artists. they never agreed to be a part of this invention nor are they compensated. and again without them the software is literally useless. so I don't think it's comparable to past inventions.
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Re: Customer's perspective (Score:2)
Showing your ignorance, posting something publicly does not imply you forgo copyright protection. They still retain their copyright whether they post something publicly or not.
AI will probably change copyright law, but as it stands, they are offside using images without permission.
Saying, 'your honor but they posted it publicly' is not a valid argument. Sounds like a whining argument.
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the invention alone wouldn't be able to provide these thousands of images that OP could generate without the collective works of numerous artists.
First, I'm not convinced that AIs looking at somebody's work is even a copyright infringement. Technically, there is no copy of the original work in the AI's data. However, this is something to be decided by the courts, so let's step past this particular question.
Why do you think AIs need to be trained on artworks only? I imagine regular photos can be used very well to teach AIs what cats look like, or how many fingers people have. Moreover, even if you consider only artwork, there are myriads of items in t
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The modding community was different. I won't say better - artists risk cheapening their work when they do it for free/cheap after all - but you wouldn't have had trouble finding an artist. Game engine communities were like that too. I can't speak to what it's like now though.
Never understand this... (Score:1)
Same group of people who were celebrating AI taking tech peoples' jobs are now bitching because they can be replaced with an /imagine command? Ironic that. Perhaps they should have helped band together as opposed to cheering "techbros" losing their jobs/careers?
The classic, "First they came for the Communists, but I wasn't a Communist, so I didn't speak up." adage applies here.
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Considering that you use the term "UNIX engineer" and "UNIX engineering", I can see how you would be easily replaced.
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Same group of people who were celebrating AI taking tech peoples' jobs are now bitching because they can be replaced with an /imagine command?
The same group of people?! You clearly have no idea what the Procreate community actually bitches about. There was no about-face, here. You'll notice this article's not about a user-revolt.
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this wouldn't work for software devs (Score:3)
Somebody will make an AI version.
At least in Procreate's case, many (or most?) of their users are hobbyists just trying to have some creative enrichment.
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If Microsoft took a firm "anti AI" stance for Visual Studio, people would pivot toward other tools.
I think that's what's going to happen here, too. People who need generative AI will just use other image editors (such as Photoshop). Procreate's action is more of a protest than a holding back of the tide.
Procreate takes jobs (Score:3)
Isn't procreate taking jobs by there software? Their own tagline "Art is for everyone." implies that. Previously you'd have to hire a pro artist or specialist to do a lot of the things you can do with procreate. Everything from coloring to the drawing of outlines.
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Just from an audience perspective, if something unexpectedly good comes out of it, I'm going to want to find the original work it's based on. The style isn't in the seed. It's not always explicitly stated in the prompt. The prompt is not always shared. AI's do not reliably reverse engineer prompts. Users are gamblers, and so too are the viewers. You never know what you're going to get, and you're never completely sure that you can repeat it.
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Every work of art and science is based on learning from the artists and engineers who came before. All art is incremental improvements over centuries on what a bunch of bored apes in a cave in Lascaux France did. Every artist, directly or indirectly, learned from them via their proteges. You shouldn't have to pay royalties on knowledge. Can your kindergarten math textbook author require you to pay him money and provide credit every time you add two numbers?
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Every work of art and science is based on learning from the artists and engineers who came before. All art is incremental improvements over centuries on what a bunch of bored apes in a cave in Lascaux France did. Every artist, directly or indirectly, learned from them via their proteges. You shouldn't have to pay royalties on knowledge. Can your kindergarten math textbook author require you to pay him money and provide credit every time you add two numbers?
Unless you're gonna pay him, you're a hypocrite. A
My kid is a digital artist, my GFs kid paints... (Score:1)
Guess which one is planning on going to post-secondary school for art and actually has career prospects?
The painter.
My kid is despondent that all the skills that they have developed over the past decade are economically worthless. I keep telling them that digital art alone has never had any real 'value' without a narrative to give it context. Digital artists that create stories to accompany their art (or art to accompany their stories) will be able to have jobs; it's trying to make a living off of doing dig