China Industry Network reporter Yin Wenzhuo
"Picture birth diagram", "text + diagram" birth diagram, "voice birth diagram"... AI painting became popular on Internet social platforms. Ordinary people holding AI drawing tools realize the dream of "with AI, everyone can be an artist".
But for artists, designers and other groups, the emergence of AI painting may be a disaster, threatening their jobs.
AI is on fire, how should "artificial" deal with it?
AI painting, growth and threat
Koshikawa gave up being an illustrator. In the past year, Koshikawa, who originally dreamed of becoming an illustrator, watched the AI improve and improve again and again, the speed was jaw-dropping, but the brush in his hand became heavier. In the face of the exquisite picture drawn by AI, he consciously lost the capital to compete with AI. "At least, the space for the illustrators on the ground floor is compressed." The implication: What is he, a beginner who has not yet entered the classroom, in front of AI?
Before the emergence of AI painting, many people thought that the first to be replaced would be the bottom labor, and the art field with creativity should be difficult to be eroded by AI. Unexpectedly, the "pure land" that people thought was hit by AI early.
AI painting was born, sweeping the world at an unprecedented rate of evolution. On the one hand, for people in the industry, "at a glance of AI, the style is too obvious", "can not accurately complete the requirements", "no logic, a little 'little retarded'". On the other hand, the painter circle is panicked, and most people stand on the opposite side of AI, resisting the AI that continues to smash their jobs after evolution.
Last year, freelance illustrator Liu Yuyu tried a new feature of AI painting on a reading game website, and the clutter of elements made it difficult for her to associate the word "work" with "beauty".
"The experience felt pretty bad." Because of this, she lost interest in AI painting and did not explore other software again.
Unexpectedly, within a year, the AI painting that was once scorned by Liu Yuyu gave her a sense of crisis.
At that time, there were three kinds of AI "drawing problems" circulating in the circle of Japanese artists: Sephiroth swimming, Higuchi eating ramen, cake, and beautiful girls. At this time, the AI painting is slightly immature, and many characters in the work have distorted limbs and incongruous proportions; Some hands have six or seven fingers on them, and even more fingers blend in with the object they hold or the background; The costumes are drawn so confusingly and "mixed and matched" that the resulting picture is quite eerie.
"They have absorbed more artists' work to improve their library and gradually fill in some of the previous loopholes." Liu Yuyu admits that "AI is really developing very fast", at least the problem of the characters' hands in the drawing has almost been solved.
After the emergence of AI painting, Koshikawa tried some AI painting tools, most of which were to draw some beautiful pictures without themes. For the finished product, he did not hesitate to praise "exquisite" and "good-looking". But this is also the reason why he gave up becoming an illustrator: "A 'third-rate' painter like me is no longer meaningful from the point of view of the cost performance of labor." ”
For ordinary people, on the basis of expressing the content they want, enter some keywords, get multiple versions of the preliminary finished product with AI feedback, and then select satisfactory works from them and repeatedly "feed" them to the AI, and after multiple rounds of processing and repeated screening, you can basically get the effect you want.
To draw the same level of full-scene beautiful pictures, many artists take a week or even longer, but AI only takes a few minutes, even seconds.
Juli entered the design industry after graduating and has been in the industry for nearly ten years. For work reasons, she has not only come into contact with AI drawing software, but also found AI drawing software videos on the Internet to learn how to use it. In her experience, she feels that AI is better than humans in terms of basic level of sophistication.
Pressure from art being crushed
"The illustrations in a comic produced by the AI painting tool Midjourney are not protected by copyright..." On February 23, 2023, the US Copyright Office recently ruled in a letter on the copyright of the illustration part of a comic created by AI, saying that because the author only provides text prompts for the AI painting tool, and is not the "main brain" of the final generated image, it cannot be counted as the creator. This is the first time that a U.S. court or official body has ruled on the scope of copyright protection for AI creations.
The issue of "copyright" has been criticized by professionals since the birth of AI painting tools. The beautiful "paintings" in the eyes of ordinary people are "scrapbooks" spliced together by elements in the eyes of the painters, and it is the "Frankenstein" whose painstakingly created works have been stitched up after being divided into corpses.
"Once commercialized, it may be crazy to fight lawsuits." Koshikawa, a self-proclaimed "third-rate" painter, now occasionally uses AI drawing tools to generate beautiful images for his own amusement, but in his words, "commercial use is enough", and a picture is likely to appear in the case of hand A, foot C, and action by artist B.
"Corpse block", many artists describe the work made by AI painting tools. Curiosity, panic, disgust... In the face of the "cyber" paintings that came out of nowhere, they didn't know how to best describe this emotion.
On the one hand, the creator is distressed that the painting he has worked hard to create is "fed" to AI as nourishment, and finally decomposed into an element in the AI painting, on the other hand, he is also worried that one day it will be replaced by AI, and the rice bowl in his hand will be precarious.
Their fears are not unfounded. Data shows that in May alone, AI caused 3,900 job losses in the United States.
"The (domestic) animation industry is probably the hardest hit area." After graduating in 2013, Zhao Nuan has been working in the animation industry for several years. At that time, the development of the domestic animation industry was sluggish, and considering the future and "bread", she withdrew from the animation industry and gave up her identity as an animation original artist. Now, she occasionally picks up a paintbrush as a hobby.
"If I am forced to 'withdraw from the circle' because of AI painting, I may fall into self-doubt." Zhao Nuan is extremely glad that she "ran first" and did not have to face the pressure of AI painting to squeeze living space, and the dimensionality reduction blow of AI painting.
Lower costs, more efficiency, more choice... Unlike artists, whether to accept AI has never been a choice question for companies, nor has it been confused. From the perspective of enterprises, embracing AI is a market demand and a general trend. It's just that this trend is not friendly to painters.
"Good works should have flesh and blood." Liu Yuyu has been studying drawing since her third year of high school in 2015 and has been working as a part-time illustrator during college. She believes that the process of selecting, thinking, and repeatedly deliberating in the process of the artist's completion of the creation gives the work "soul", which is lacking in AI paintings.
"At least for now, AI painting tools are more like a shredder of art than a creator of art." Zhao Nuan regretfully told the reporter of China Industry Network that it is a pity that ordinary people cannot distinguish these. For them, as long as the works created by AI are good and fast, it does not matter whether they smash or create.
The path of reconciliation between "artificial" and "intelligent"
The essence of being grabbed by AI is not good enough?
Despite being squeezed by AI drawing tools, Liu Yuyu has never been hostile to AI drawing tools themselves. "The initiator of squeezing the living space of original painters and designers is not AI painting tools, nor the people who design AI painting tools, but people who do not understand and respect the original meaning."
"The so-called conflict between humans and AI is essentially a game between people." Jumping out of the circle, Zhao Nuan feels that she can better see the essence of the contradiction between the artist and the AI painting tool. "If used well, AI mapping tools should be a good helper." But the level of the painter himself must be very high, so that he will not be led by the nose. Zhao Nuan told the China Industry Network reporter.
"When you don't use it yourself, you do feel like a lot of industries will be replaced." After several attempts to use it, Juli and the AI drawing tool not only reached a settlement, but also became a tacit "partner" in their work.
Some professionals said that "AI is a high-level PS", and the so-called dispute between people and AI is still a process of mutual replacement between different groups of people's jobs, industries, and positions. Juli also said in an interview with a reporter from China Industry Network that AI itself is a tool, and the communication method of algorithm improvement and human-computer interaction doubles the work efficiency.
Even David Holtz, the founder of Midjourney, said in an interview with British media that in his eyes, Midjourney is just a "vehicle of thinking".
Recently, Juli was doing graphic design for a model, and the proposal has been approved. Some of the design inspiration is provided by AI drawing tools. "You can use AI drawing tools to generate backgrounds of different styles of the screen as a reference." Juli told the reporter of China Industry Network, "Directly with the AI drawing tool to generate a specific person in the diagram, AI can not do it." Overall, AI painting tools are only a very efficient part of the creation project. But the entire workflow cannot be fully realized with just one AI. ”
Source: Zhonggong.com