Comment by captainkrtek 15 hours ago
That’s an interesting way to put it, which asks the bigger question of (perhaps?):
Do we want a society where everyone can masquerade as an “artist”, flooding society with low-quality content using AI trained on the work product of actual artists?
The people doing as such do not have the talent they desire, nor did they do anything to upskill themselves. Its a short cut to an illusion of competency.
> Do we want a society where everyone can masquerade as an “artist”, flooding society with low-quality content using AI trained on the work product of actual artists?
Change the statement to: Do we want a society where everyone can masquerade as an “photographer”, flooding society with low-quality photos using cell phones, never having to learn to develop film, or use focus, or understand lenses...
Do we want a society where everyone can masquerade as an “painter”, flooding society with low-quality paintings because acrylics are cheap, the old masters made their own paint after all...
Why does it matter how it was created? It wasn't Bob Ross's "Joy of Making Incredible Art", it was simply the "Joy of Painting".
And people do enjoy content that, for lack of a better word, is disposable. Look at the "short dramas" or "vertical dramas" industry that is making money hand over fist. The content isnt high brow, but people enjoy it all the same.
> AI trained on the work product of actual artists?
Should we teach people how to play guitar without using the songs of other artists? Should those artists be compensated for inspiring others?
Some of this is an artifact of our ability to sell reproductions (and I would argue that the economics were all around distribution).
There is a long (possibly decades) conversation that were going to have on this topic.
>Do we want a society where everyone can masquerade as an “artist”, flooding society with low-quality content using AI trained on the work product of actual artists?
The internet was sold to us with the promise that everyone could publish, and wasn't that great? So many voices, we will hear wonderful new things!
What happened? Enshittification. The rise of the antivax community. Empowerment of far right white nationalists across what had been the most (lower-case "l") liberal governments in the world. Signal being drowned amdist the noise of a bot-driven ad-hellscape internet.
No. We do not want a society where everyone can masquerade as an artist.
Unless, that is, we hate art.