Restrict AI Illustration from Publishing: An Open Letter

artisticinquiry.org

2 points·miriam_catira··3 comments

I think this is a conversation worth having, but personally I haven't made any decisions. There are a few interesting names on there though, from VOX, The New York Review of Books, and In Our Times. I think the community just needs to be aware that these types of pushback are happening, esp in the light of the Writer's Guild strike. The timing has to be intentional.

I love generative AI for ideation, esp around product design, but I don't think (at this point) I'd use any of what it generates as my final work anyway. But that's just me.

The current stage is rough, while jaw-dropping in /apparent/ quality¹. When finally the synthesis will be part of an artistic tool (your usual raster and vector graphics editors), then it will be a further tool for the graphic artist.

(¹The letter correctly almost suggests the crucial role of human intelligence in the product definition; I prefer to quote myself from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33752684 : «The visual style is stunningly good, but an unintelligent operation - it is relatively easy to mock a style, while the real thing was the judgement underneath. The Author knows if and why he would have used a curve made in such way in that place - not the simple mocker»)

> copyrighted images, harvested without their creator’s knowledge ... art heist ... daylight robbery

Rhetoric that pollutes the whole argument. The whole of art is there for an augmentation inside the public. We do not need to ask Flaubert to be inspired by Flaubert, and change ourselves and our ways after the inspiration - that is a basis of the cultural game. Copyright infringement is a very different thing.

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