> In the case of a human studying, a person puts in effort and gets rewarded for their efforts.
When someone needs something composed, they don't learn how to write music. They pay someone else the bare minimum, e.g. a few bucks on fiverr. The person will spend the least possible amount of effort to try to make their life go around with the little money they got.
When you then use an AI model, the work done for those five bucks is replaced by work done for almost free.
Neither the person you would hire or the AI credited those who created the material they trained on.
> When you then use an AI model, the work done for those five bucks is replaced by work done for almost free.
In other words, you pay a few cents to big tech for a generator that only exists thanks to work real composers, singers etc who now get the grand total of 0$.
As opposed to paying $5 to a singular composer that only exists because of other real composers, singers, etc., as they studied the craft. On the other hand, the easy access may cause new types of artists to appear by lowering the bar of entry, or just make custom music more generally available and more widely used as the price makes it a commodity.
We also stopped hiring computers (the occupation) and instead pay big tech companies which made computers (the device) available to everyone. And we stopped hiring people to do dangerous manual labor as companies started selling machinery to automate it. Markets change.
> As opposed to paying $5 to a singular composer that only exists because of other real composers, singers, etc., as they studied the craft
Yes.
> computers
> dangerous manual labor
If people are not in danger and don't have to do mechanical work, it's one thing. If composers stop composing original music that was used for training current AI because they don't get paid anymore then the field stagnates. Same for writing and everything else
People doing mechanical work made art through physical objects. Woodwork, pottery, glassware, you name it.
There are now far more options, both on the high and low-end, with the whole area being more affordable. The quality of most products also arguably went up, as factories beat handmade goods. And yet, if you want custom artisan goods, you can still pay a woodworker for it at more or less the same cost as you would have otherwise, as their labor costs are a function of time required and local living conditions.
In some cases, those workers were the ones to automate, benefiting from the assistance - woodworkers using CNC mills and laser cutters even for handmade goods, or composers themselves can use the AI - to speed up their otherwise fully manual work. It benefits the majority creating the demand, and tends to improve the craft overall.
> ... then the field stagnates.
A market that is not changing has already stagnated.
Dangerous manual labour like mining or tunnel building. In woodworking the art is art but if you use a machine to copy my original design then it's the same old theft again. :)
> A market that is not changing has already stagnated.
Yep. The way art is changing is thanks to original work and no one will be making it since anything you make gets stolen for free
> When someone needs something composed, they don’t learn to write music…
Speak for yourself! There is only one thing that scares me more than composing music, and that’s paying somebody a few bucks in fiverr to do it for me.
Despite your personal fears I believe I spoke for the vast majority of cases rather than just for myself.
Although I suppose royalty-free stock music is the norm nowadays for most commercial uses, which takes it a step further, anonymizing the composer entirely...
> Although I suppose royalty-free stock music is the norm nowadays for most commercial uses, which takes it a step further, anonymizing the composer entirely...
By the composer, yes, but the composer here is the AI. In neither case did the musicians that the composer studied/trained on get asked.
And that's the point: The difference is the replacement of 1 flesh-and-blood composer with 1 virtual composer, with the consequence being the lost business of the former. The artists studied were never part of the transaction in either case.
Now, the long-term consequences for artists - e.g., reduced supply on the low end as they're out-competed - is harder to guess, but that's just market dynamics. It may very well increase supply as composition becomes more available, diversifying by allowing people with other skills or creative treats to create music that previously could not - even if the musical part is done by AI.
Not AI, people who trained AI and who use it for profit
You can learn yourself but if you use an automatic tool to bypass and automatically make similar works and compete with original authors then you're IP thief
> In the case of AI, a person puts in minimal effort to generate something that devalues the work of all the people who did put in effort.
Worded differently: people who couldn't otherwise produce skill-based works of value have had the barrier of entry lowered for that specific medium of expression, allowing for more works across a wider spectrum of skill.
It’s so bizarre when people say stuff like this. There is absolutely nothing preventing the unpracticed or untalented people from any form of creative expression. What instead people who use AI seem to want is for unpracticed or untalented people to perform at the level of the practiced and talented, but this is no net gain to anyone. Why? Because only a rare subset of people who ARE practiced and talented create anything of interest or value in the first place. What this tells you is that skill or level of performance is not the barrier, but a means through which great things CAN be achieved (i.e. necessary, but not sufficient)
Flooding the world with unpolished, unpracticed works, AI-tuned to the level of being mediocre, is a creative and intellectual dead end.
> for unpracticed or untalented people to perform at the level of the practiced and talented
This is what tools are.
Cheap digital tablets have done away with the need for expensive consumables. You can just download a different brush style instead of learning a physical technique. No waiting for paint to dry or smudged pencils. The barrier to entry for painting has dropped to a one time investment of like a hundred bucks. Almost nobody mixes their own paint, nor stretches their own canvas. Those skills aren't needed anymore.
It's possible to build very precise machine parts by hand. It's very difficult and requires great skill, so nobody does that. Some do and are admired for it, but everybody else uses precise machines to make precise parts with nearly no effort.
It's just a tool. Only difference is that we had assumed art would never be automatable.
Objectively, I don't think this is a bad thing. It doesn't change the subjective value of art any more than the average cartoonist devalues the Mona Lisa. It's just a new form of art, there will always be people mixing their own paints and stretching their own canvas, just as there always has been.
It's only a problem because in our society you either have a job or you starve. No one can afford to be an artist. Those that do tend to grind out as many pieces as fast as they can so they can pay the goddamn rent. If not for that, these AI tools would be pretty cool.
I think the bizarrity arises from the following differences in beliefs:
* That "_any_ form of creative expression" is a viable creative substitute for people wanting to create in a _specific_ medium of creative expression -- especially those that had a high barrier of technical skills required to be seen as "good enough" to share.
* That a person who has an idea for art will put in the necessary time to become proficient enough to create that "good enough" art through traditional means (IMO demonstrably incorrect), and that is preferred over that person just not expressing a lower-quality version of that idea at all.
* That those who use AI primarily want or expect to "perform at the level of the practiced and talented" (i.e. top-tier art) rather than using it to produce art they otherwise couldn't have, even at low- and mid-level qualities.
* That there is no skill or talent in using AI tools to produce art (or that the skill or talent using AI tools is meant to be a full replacement for traditional artistic skills or talents).
FWIW, I'm a long-time sketch artist and acrylics painter (~20 years). There are many mediums, subjects, and styles that I'm not good at -- and I enjoy using AI to express myself in those areas (and have also liked using AI to create songs to show to my more musicially-adept wife...). But even in my own wheelhouse (landscapes and still life), I also often use AI to brainstorm composition, perspective, colors, textures, lighting, etc. It's a great tool for experts to lean on, but an even better tool for non-artists who couldn't or wouldn't otherwise share their art.
Indeed. As an amateur guitarist, but a professional virtual machinist, I have a ton of respect for people who have dedicated their whole lives to mastery in any one particular area. To have a machine gulp down untold eons of human exertion and then barf out soulless mimicry, no matter how jaw-dropping of a feat of engineering behind it, and then mint no-talent ass clowns by the million because viral videos make an awesome advertising platform--it's just some kind of dystopian peak tech, except the dystopia is mildly amusing rather than a disappointing and jarring marginalization, flippant dismissal of all of us.
Why is this the line? Where are the complaints about people using pianos to achieve rather precise notes instead of using their own voices? They are just untalented at singing and their use of any tool to create sound is of no net gain to anyone.
This person: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbUE-LxhUR8 ? They're recording and playing back on a loop! They should record full repeated playings, any use of the recording is of no net gain because it could be achieved otherwise.
Songwriters? If they write lyrics and someone else sings them the result should be cast into the sea - it's of no net gain to anyone because they did not create the sounds themselves.
Composers? Frankly pointless.
> Flooding the world with unpolished, unpracticed works
I hate to break it to you but there are a vast number of terrible works of art out there already.
> What this tells you is that skill or level of performance is not the barrier, but a means through which great things CAN be achieved (i.e. necessary, but not sufficient)
If it's a necessary thing, of course it's a barrier. That there are two barriers doesn't change that.
In the case of AI, a person puts in minimal effort to generate something that devalues the work of all the people who did put in effort.