Messages

Artists and creatives don't "need" a shortcut-

Bad ones do...

-but if a company needs some piece of media, and one person can provide a good quality product without AI in a week, and another person can provide an acceptable level of quality in 3 days that used AI as a base, the company would probably go for the AI one. -purely AI-created works are pretty much error-riddled trash.

But you can't argue both points; either AI art is good enough to provide a useful product (proto-art that a human can then expand upon, or use in creating a finished piece of art), or AI art is garbage that nobody in their right mind would try to pass off as acceptable. If the AI is making bad art, why would an artist want to use that as a base to work from? On the other hand, if AI will eventually become "better", why limit it, why not let it take over content generation completely?

There's no doubt, that in some form, AI could be used effectively as another tool in making artwork (much like Photoshop), whether with advanced compositing, background removal, etc*. What I object to is the concept of "creative" AI; generating content alone, not with creativity or insight, but by algorithmic necromancy. Quality is irrelevant.

Nobody is going to be replaced by someone purely using AI and nothing else.

As I said in my earlier post, that indeed is the end result sought by those at the top of the food chain. Sensible people like you and me might see it as folly, but that's where we're heading.

One thing I think both you and @Babar underestimate is how much of art only serves in a supporting role, as a necessary but not central element of some other work, rather than as an end in itself. For images, we can take book covers as one example: A book needs one, but the cover is not the work being sold. I think lots of authors and publishers would be fine using an AI-generated image for that. Or let's say a T-shirt with Mickey Mouse (or Peppa Pig or whoever is popular with kids these days) standing in front of a local landmark, sold as a souvenir. It doesn't need to be some interesting or "good" work of art, it just needs to feature the right elements and the right look. I'm sure if they can whip up those images automatically, nobody is going to complain that the result is formulaic and insipid: that's rather the point.

Over one hundred years of fabulous book covers (or record covers, movie posters...even toy boxes!) show that you don't have to reduce commercial promotional art to the status of the purely functional. Oh, you can, and yes, I'm certain that publishers/manufacturers would indeed be welcoming of purely AI-generated content in this sense. But as a consumer, what would be the benefit? And while such products don't need to be "interesting" or "good", they also don't need to be free of such qualities. And why deny the guy who designs your milk carton a job, simply because nobody cares what a milk carton looks like as long as it has milk in it?

Maybe the milk would be cheaper...?

The same thing with backdrops or even background characters for TV animation: the goal in many scenes is to provide decent-looking but not attention-grabbing scenery for what happens in the foreground. It's not striving to be the pinnacle of art.

But don't you see that as a diminishing of the art, regardless of it's status? Maurice Noble created some astonishing backgrounds for old Warner Bros. cartoons (backgrounds that sometimes whizzed by in the blink of an eye during a Road Runner short), and I'm sure, as he cashed his weekly check, he didn't consider his work would end up as museum pieces. Or what about the beautifully designed backgrounds in Samurai Jack? People care. Granted, not everybody cares, but still. To argue for lesser art, simply because of it's nature, confuses me.

I guess that over time it will require an effort to prove that you did "it" yourself too.

It would be a sad day to find yourself arguing that your art is indeed yours, because of the normalization of AI art, and the expectation that everybody must be using it.

Just to clarify, bad art, or art created as product, is still art. AI-generated art is non-art, or the inverse of art. In a consumer/capitalist society, non-art may indeed be acceptable to the majority, even as a replacement of art, good, bad or indifferent.

But fuck that society.

*: But, since we do indeed live in a consumer/capitalist society, to those saying we could just use AI in this way, or just a smidge of AI in this area, I have little option but to view all those suggestions as covert back-doors to the afore mentioned end goal; total adoption, by those in power, of AI as a replacement for human creativity.

Also this.

Have you seen those AI created pieces of art/writing? They're very obvious and not really useful as is. The most they can be used for is a jumping off point or base to make something. If companies are rushing to fire their creatives and replace them with AI, they're going to be in for a pretty bad fall when the quality of whatever they are making will suffer immensely.

They obviously don't care about quality, as we've already seen with those companies who tried to pass off AI content on the quiet. We have to remember that no creative or person knowledgeable of the limitations of AI are in any position to stop the blanket use of AI, since it's the executives who only care about the bottom line calling the shots.

People talk about the coming of AI content, but it's already here; abused into shape and cobbled together though it may be. Amazon is chock full of AI books and artwork on it's Kindle Unlimited service, not a particularly good service in the first place (so much so that I cancelled my own subscription), but practically unusable now due to search results coughing up SEO'd AI garbage, and burying books written by actual humans. A similar situation is brewing on Spotify, and I presume on other music streaming services.

What I do see happening is the roles and work those creatives do being modified a bit to "prompters" and then using the created thing as a concept or jumping off point. Which is going to be pretty suck in the short term (in terms of derivative art), but hopefully AI will improve at some point and that will be less of a problem.

Now, I'm going to rant a little here, and it's not directed at you, Babar, but you raise I point that I hear a lot.

Where did this idea come from that, all of a sudden, artists/musicians/writers/etc need some sort of crutch or short-cut to be creative? We have hundreds of years of creativity that worked just fine without AI. Artists learned their art through practice, study, and discipline. Yes, the influence of existing art and the world around us will shape and inspire an artist, as it always has, but that art will be embraced on a critical, human level, not ingested as an algorithm. AI apologists like to talk about "opening up art to the masses", as though lack of actual talent was just a single pebble to be avoided on the road to creating (commercial of otherwise) art. It's a lie. It's not gatekeeping that stops you from being an artist...it's the fact that you're not a fucking artist! That doesn't mean that you can't eventually become one, if you have a small grain of talent that can be honed and polished through hard work. But there's no magic bullet.

AI is a way for talentless people to appear otherwise, and unscrupulous people to make easy money. Read the opening to that article I linked above. The man featured is not a writer, and has no discernible talent in that arena. AI enabled him to overcome this, by generating a hollow, ersatz product which he used to fulfill his "dream" of becoming a "published" author. Will AI write his next book too? It would be tragic, if it wasn't so damaging to actual artists.

An AI article still needs human supervision, so one has to suppose people will be paid to do that. And with articles that need to be insightful, you also require the proofreader to know the subject to a considerable degree.

One supposes nothing of the sort. The ultimate end goal of these companies is a workforce of precisely one; the guy who sits at the computer and presses "GO". No offense to anyone, but arguing otherwise is wishful naivety.

To me it seems that a lot of the negative sides of AI being discussed are really general problems of capitalism, rather than something specific to the technology.

Indeed, but there's blood in the water, and too many eyes focused purely on profit. I feel it's now too late to talk about AI (especially in how it relates to artists) without acknowledging the influence of capitalism.

But complaining about AI taking other people's jobs sounds a bit like an angry mob with shovels trying to destroy an excavator.

Well, that analogy might work if we consider AI to be an improvement over, or evolution of human creativity, which it isn't, though it is cheaper and faster. And to corporations that's really all that matters.

AI save lives in Denmark....google if you want "source".

Quite.

But this is a case were I can see AI being actually useful, healthcare usually being a woefully understaffed field. But this is different than bringing in an AI to write your articles because you you don't want to pay a writer.

AI replacing human (creative) jobs is inevitable, though humanity will be the poorer for it. AI can't create. It can't critique. It can generate ersatz "new" media based on learning models and algorithms, but, despite what tech-bros would have us believe, this is not "just like" how a human creates, and the more they pedal that lie, the more I despise them for it.

And to those "AI art is gonna happen! Just accept it, or get left behind!"-spouting fatheads, I submit to the court a hearty "Fuck you!"

As far as I know, Hatsune Miku, being a Vocaloid, is more like a synth instrument than an AI, requiring musical skill to utilize, and as such doesn't "perform" without extensive user interaction. "Her" software doesn't analyze existing music to create ersatz "original" music based on a learning model, and won't produce anything unless "played" via a DAW.

Vocaloids aren't replacing human singers, as the whole point is to hear the Vocaloids "sing".

EDIT: Also, I merged the two AI discussions into one thread (so some messages may now be jumbled about a bit), as having two AI discussions seemed a little redundant.

Well, it looks increasingly likely that you won't be able to browse Twitter without an account login.

...

Also, I'm getting bored waiting for Twitter to die.

Also...this.

Well, it kind of seems like you've already made your mind up, and are offering arguments in favour of AI, because you're looking for some form of validation (the ends justify the means). And while AI isn't inherently evil, anybody who uses it will have to admit, on some level, that they are comfortable with not caring that it's built upon other people's creativity without their consent.

And that's...kind of shitty.

Even an AI trained solely on singers who were paid and credited for their service, and knew there voices where going to be used for such a service, could still take jobs away from other singers who may have been hired to sing on whatever the AI is now singing.

The whole point of a possible mass adoption of AI by the entertainment industry is to stop having to pay people for their creativity.

Personally, I've taken, and will continue to take, an anti-AI stance, across the board, and will refuse to pay money for media created wholly or partly by AI. And I hope there are many others like me.

Just to keep everyone updated, heltenjon has tried to contact Les' son on FaceBook (awaiting response), and Cat has potentially found a number for him, so we'll keep trying.

Good stuff.

I know he has at least one son (Luke), but I couldn't track down any current social media under that name. I did find an old MySpace page that tracks (name, area), but it wasn't much use. No luck on Twitter or Facebook.

Taking into account Les' age, and his health problems-

Spoiler

-I also checked the current death notices (morbid, I know) in and around where he lived, just to rule it out. Nothing popped, thankfully.

[close]

I guess, like CaptainD says, we'll just have to hope, and wait and see if he resurfaces.

Any update on this?

It worked, though, didn't it?
The AI generated bot text pulled you in.

The call is coming from...inside the house!

In other news, the EU's doin' stuff!

Larry Vales was the reason I found AGS.

Me too.

Here's to you, Mr. Reed.

RIP ...and thanks.

Well done to the nominees and winners! And thanks as always to everyone who helped make the awards happen!

He hasn't logged in since November of last year.

There was also a period of 3 months, or so, early last year when he didn't post at all, so...maybe he's just taking a break.

Couldn't find anything via Google regarding him (social media posts, his Kickstarter, etc.) dated later than 2022, though.

Did you try the email on his profile?

Panorama3D demo now runs in 42 fps for me, compared to ~33 fps it had with original engine...

@LimpingFish, could you try it if you have spare moment?

It's definitely faster than other post-3.21 versions.

For the record, I get sub-30fps (which I consider "normal" for my PC's specs) running 2.72, sub-25fps running 3.21 (I mistakenly thought 3.21 was on par with 2.72, but it is marginally slower), sub-15 (closer to 10) running anything past that. With your new version I'm back to sub-25fps. Not quite as fast as 2.72 (which might be down to my machine more that anything), but more or less the same as 3.21, and much better than anything else.

Thanks for taking the time to check it out.
                                 
EDIT: Also for the record, I always assumed that my PC just had an easier time running 2.72, and once AGS jumped to 3.x, and moved to newer, modern libraries, that it simply took more effort for my machine to run AGS games (particularly calculation-heavy games, such as those made with Panorama3D), thus resulting in slower fps. I'm not sure if that's true (or if it's even relevant to the conversation!), but it's very interesting to see your improvements making such a difference.

I'm way out of my depth here, but I'd just like to point out that Kweepa's Panorama modules run considerably slower in post 3.21 versions of AGS.

Just re-discovered this one. Looove those lyrics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-FhWTvfg5A

Nice!



I'm more of a 70's Alice fan, myself. I'm a big fan of Billion Dollar Babies from 1973:

Also, in my never-ending journey through 80's pop from around the world, I present:

On a different note, this album actually moved me to tears. Goddamn kids!

And, finally:

I think we need to remember the people are, by and large, dicks, and no amount of level-headed respectful debate is going to change the fact that AI-created art/music/writing/etc, much like pre-made assets, open-source media, and the like, will be exploited en masse, flooding markets with artistically corrupt money grabs and outright scams, turning marketplaces into even worse hellscapes of bullshit and corruption.

So frankly, I don't care about the potential benefits of AI, because those benefits will seem so marginal when compared to the massive influx of bad actors intent on exploiting it.

Also, reducing art to an algorithm is the antithesis of human creativity.

I hate it.

EDIT: Has anyone noticed the spam AI music on Spotify? Whole albums, usually ten or so tracks of nonsense music, each track under a minute to maximize play counts, uploaded multiple times under different names in an attempt at flooding playlists and to spam the recommendation algorithm? For what, 0.01 of a dime per play? Fuck those people.

If you genuinely made something good, trust your new fans to support you.

Perhaps, if game development is simply a hobby, you could afford this luxury. But if it's a means to support yourself and your family, and for some commercial developers here it is, this is a big ask.

Maybe a requirement for consideration in future AGS awards should be free evaluation copies to anyone who requests it, with controlled download links that are shut down after the awards?

A situation like that is just begging to be exploited. And, honestly, I think most developers would rather make sales, than worry about their eligibility for a community awards ceremony.

Aw, I left it a few days to see if anyone would get in ahead of me, but no...

Anyway, I think the answer is Three Colors: Red.

I say "think" because I've never seen any of the Three Colors films in their entirety, catching bits and pieces of them on TV over the years. But I recognize the lead actress, and I also know that the lead actresses in White and Blue are not her, because my brain has the annoying habit of storing random bits of information about random movies I may have glimpsed at random times throughout my life.

Which is why I kinda resent the IMDB...it's rendered my one "worthwhile" ability obsolete.