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What's been happening in Feb 2025 (and A.I.)

 


The topic of A.I. generated art is getting louder in my ears. Like it's telling me, I've got to do something about it now or get left behind. Become obsolete. Will it put artists out of their jobs? Will artists still be needed? Common questions. If you're an artist, I'm sure you all have given it some thought already. I don't have all the answers. I still like drawing with my fountain pens. They give me more pleasure than getting my computer to generate an image for me. 

Complaining doesn't put me in a mindset to solve things. I do like seeing things from a positive/helpful angle. Manga and anime artists in Japan seem to be embracing it to produce work quicker. So to me, using an A.I. generator is like hiring an assistant or intern that can help me produce my work quicker. But, just having an assistant doesn't mean I'm going to produce work that will sell or make me rich.
I'd still have to direct my assistant to produce work that will be amazing. The stories and ideas will still have to come from me. And with the assistant, I can execute those stories and ideas quicker. If I train my assistant well enough, I'd be able to do that seamlessly. 

I could be wrong, but it looks like, if we artists focus on learning how to tell stories better, how to communicate ideas better, how to decide on what makes an artwork work and what doesn't, then an A.I. generator can become a useful assistant, rather than something that we fear will replace us.

In any case, I still like spending time away from the screens with pen, ink and paper and daydreaming.


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Comments

Kami said…
Personally, I don't really think there's any reason to be afraid of ai 'replacing' artists either way. The main reason people are so afraid of being replaced by ai now is just good marketing. But really, ai is not anywhere near as powerful as people like sam altman or that weird guy that bought twitter claim. In essence it is still just very fancy autocomplete. AI is very good at taking a lot of data and then making something that is 40-60% of the way there. But because of the way we are training these models, the way the software works, it will never actually be able to get over that hurdle of being able to replace humans in any creative field. Basically, how these models work is that they just take whatever prompt you give them and then predict what comes next by doing a whole lot of statistics. They can't actually think for themselves, just recreate worse mashups of their input data. The reason we don't notice this is because the amount of data they have access to is so unbelievably huge. In essence, they are just really good at pattern recognition and precisely nothing else. And sure, that can get you some of the way there. But it's not creativity. By design they cannot make anything truly new. Ai will never be able to make anything on the level quality a human can in any creative field because the way these systems were designed just does not allow for that. The problem is that they can get close enough to seem like they know what they're doing. Like, 'oh, if they just get a bit better we'll all be doomed!'. That's what the ai hypetrain is counting on, that exact reaction. That's why they keep saying to regulate it, that it's gonna be the end of society or whatever. Reality is though, that last 60% is just not possible. That's just my two cents though.
5:53 AM, March 04, 2025
Andrew Tan said…
Thanks for the thoughts Kami. It is good to hear the other side of the story. A "fancy autocomplete" could be an accurate way to see it. I haven't given it too much study. From what I've tried, it can make certain processes quicker. I like how it makes organising a list from A to Z super quick. And perhaps generating some scenes to help me visualise a scene. So far, it's never perfect and sometimes frustrating. It doesn't do all the work for me. And I do need to come up with good creative directions for it. So I agree it shouldn't be fears like some might fear:)
9:18 PM, March 05, 2025
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