AI's Place in Creative Industries
hey everyone! this video is a bit different to my usual content, but i think it raises an important topic that is becoming increasingly impactful on the careers of creative workers. let me know what you think in the comments!
big thankyou to @Sadiquecat and @mossbeaalien for feedback on this video, and contributing some of the points you see below!
a few considerations not mentioned in the video:
1. (related to part 2a) when people share their content online, their is an inherent acknowledgement that it will be seen by other creatives and subconsciously influence their work. the same could be said for ai, but as it is an emerging technological advancement, this consideration isn't embedded into the thought process when sharing content. as time goes on, perhaps this will become part of the consideration when sharing content, that inevitably it will be used to train ai. that's not to say this should be the case, but without proper enforcement of ai restrictions, it seems inevitable.
2. (related to part 2b) when determining if credit is needed for the content used to train assistive ai models, it is important to consider the alternative, of assistive technology being created by hand by a human. e.g. a mastering engineer creating a plugin that responds to basic parameters, but manages advanced eq, mixing, and mastering techniques that the user doesn't need to understand. in this case, the ai is equivalent to the human writing the code, and the training data is equivalent to all of the past projects the engineer worked on. is it fair to say that every artist, band, and producer that the engineer has ever worked with is entitled to royalties because the engineer learned from that experience? this issue doesn't seem to have a clear answer, but it highlights that this is not a clear-cut situation.
3. (related to part 2c) human-created art that resembles the ai aesthetic is punished for looking a certain way. in the future, it is likely that public interest will shift towards more "natural" looking art styles, which is unfortunate but inevitable for those who have an artificial style. as ai advances we will likely fight harder to look more and more natural, but this ends up with us putting artists in a box of what they can and cannot create. again, there is no clear solution here, but this also seems like an inevitable consequence of the way humans respond to artificial-looking works.
4. this is something andrew huang mentioned in his response video, but i didn't mention it. every time a new piece of technology emerges, there seems to be a panic about it replacing jobs. e.g. vst software replacing session musicians, daws replacing engineers who are trained with hardware equipment, etc. and while this is true, session musicians and engineers retain significance in the industry because you can often tell when something is made with these technological replacements, and many artists seek the more natural sound of the "old-school" techniques. this is likely to occur also with ai, where after its initial boom in popularity, it will fall back into a cheap option for amateurs and those on a budget, but real art will maintain a focus of the industry and hold onto its place in public interest.
some key sources:
ai being used in architecture: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddes...
andrew huang's initial video and response video: • Getting musical inspiration from a deck of... • The AI art situation
chapters:
00:00 preamble and intro
01:58 ai in the book of chances
4:41 influence vs plagiarism
8:40 assistive technology
11:29 ai replacing jobs
13:08 ai and creativity
19:42 conclusion