This must be so disheartening. To take the time to create something complex and wonderful only to have a bunch of drive-by yahoos shout "LOL! AI!" out the car window.
Creative work is now so devalued the instinct when most people see something is to believe that nobody put the work in and it was generated, because that's suddenly the overwhelming majority of "art" we are seeing. It's horrifying.
David Revoy isn't a random artist on social media. He's a featured artist on Krita and creator of various Krita brush packs and tutorials.
None of these accusers seem to have done the bare minimum of Googling the artist's name before starting making accusations. I don't know if it's laziness or just lack of tech literacy that pervades the modern world, but it's very sad to see it.
Don't let it get to you. They are all saying things without thinking.
i've been thinking about this a lot. working on a longer form piece on this idea:
i find it's actually easier to "discover" than it is to "create" using llms. discovery, especially in math, is mostly a question of throwing compute at a problem and trying different results. there's a verifiable answer at the end. but there's no way (afaik) to aim something you're training via RL at a creative problem and say "make the next lord of the rings". taste literally changes by the day, and so much of what makes art matter depends on cultural significance you can't specify in advance. if you were training a music model in 1915, it would never come up with rock and roll. it's so hard to know what's going to resonate. van gogh was making his work for essentially nobody and now it's worth millions. you can't pre-load a success criteria for that
i think this is important to call out in a world that seems to devalue creative work now. people think llm generated "artifacts" are creative but in reality it's garbage and based on pattern recognition
I see the resemblance to what AI generates, and wow some of those works are painfully detailed. I don’t think it’s just training.
His work I is what I would describe as somewhat middle of the road Fantasy / SciFi Pop art. The deviant art of old, or even before, the art that would cover the scifi magazine. It’s an amalgam of styles and interests from the nerdy spectrum, obviously done with great care by the artist. Problem is with middle of the road is that that’s where the LLM averages out. Not flaming the artist at all, these are lovely works, but an average of lots of pop art / interests. I don’t think he will lose his livelihood - art by commission will stay a thing. For poster and promo work, that’s gone probably.
I do AI assisted images for fun and browsing their art I can't see any tell of AI or even tracing on AI; people became paranoid and jump to conclusion without any substance and I find it sad that people who put a lot of time and effort into their craft are getting knee jerks comments like this.
> people became paranoid and jump to conclusion without any substance
Before AI, the only question was who made a particular artwork. Human-created practically a certainty.
When AI-generated art was new, it was all exiting & the process described to boast about AI capabilities or the skills of people deploying AI. But human-created still the default assumption.
Now, AI-generated <anything> is everywhere, and that default assumption of "human-created" is often questioned.
The natural next step is "AI-generated" as default assumption, unless claimed / shown (or even proven) otherwise.
Imho: assumption is the root of all evil. Investigate! Or take an author's word for it unless they're shown to be a liar. But as another commenter noted, it's a kind of tragedy of the commons. Methods to prove you as a human created <artwork> will be a thing.
Pre-AI I worked on a lot of (niche) open source; I've had several jaw-dropping moments when a friend or employee would tell me we should stop working on X because we're just making a copy of Y which is trending on some part of Twitter.
I was very surprised, so I'd look up Y and find it was just someone charging for a product based on my code. And people in the community would accuse me of stealing.
I've seen this scenario play out with several of my friends too.
This isn't a new phenomenon, AI just makes for a more efficient laundry. Nobody cares, and nobody does their research. The tech industry is full of psychopaths glad to piggy back on your work and find loopholes to get away with it.
It's one of the reasons I'm not so keen on open source anymore. I'm glad to do free work, but being accused of theft while people make money off it is not a great reward. Probably a lot of creatives are feeling the same right now.
Besides the actual topic. The portfolio is fantastic! I particularly liked the yin and yang of world hunger. https://www.davidrevoy.com/article43/yin-and-yang-of-world-h.... I mean not something I want to look at on a wall for too long but it draws on my enjoyment of dark comic book illustrations while also pointing to something topical
This sort of thing is older than generative AI. For the last couple of decades it has been impossible to share an interesting photograph without someone claiming that it was Photoshopped.
Creative content authors need to move up the ladder. Use AI fully and apply your talent to make it even better. No need to get recognition for your non-AI organic content.
When a machine weaves fabric, no point in sticking to handloom and sell it as handicraft. Use powerloom and add your artistry on top of it.
I encountered some of his art a while back, and I too thought it might be AI, or in some way AI-assisted. The main thing that convinced me otherwise was his extensive "pre-AI" portfolio. I feel bad for anyone who doesn't have that!
It is clearly not AI art when you look closely, the problem is on some of them you have to look closely.
The worst to my eye is the Alice in Wonderland one. What's going on with Alice's hair? What's the tea on the left being poured into? What kind of playing card has a 'C' (it can't be a messy Q as the figure on it is male) and why is there only half a heart there? What's with club on the jack next to it? What exactly is that black bird doing? (It's been a long time since I've read the books, what bird is that anyway?) How does the flamingo's body work? Is Alice sitting on it? Why are there buttons on both sides of the White Rabbit's coat, and why is it shaped differently on the left and right?
This is the problem with the genAI image hysteria. As the models improve, it becomes a fake outrage, since the ability to distinguish human creations from AI becomes impossible.
Those same people feel that they can detect AI-generated works?
Those same people have the audacity to spread their uninformed opinions online?
Those same people are spreading their harmful opinionated content online, actually causing real harm to real artists.
This proves the old adage that opinions are like assholes, everybody has one and they stink.
I've been following David Revoy for years and purchased his Pepper & Carrot books, long before machine learning and large language models got into the hands of unskilled people. He is right to complain.
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[ 0.23 ms ] story [ 22.4 ms ] threadCreative work is now so devalued the instinct when most people see something is to believe that nobody put the work in and it was generated, because that's suddenly the overwhelming majority of "art" we are seeing. It's horrifying.
None of these accusers seem to have done the bare minimum of Googling the artist's name before starting making accusations. I don't know if it's laziness or just lack of tech literacy that pervades the modern world, but it's very sad to see it.
Don't let it get to you. They are all saying things without thinking.
i find it's actually easier to "discover" than it is to "create" using llms. discovery, especially in math, is mostly a question of throwing compute at a problem and trying different results. there's a verifiable answer at the end. but there's no way (afaik) to aim something you're training via RL at a creative problem and say "make the next lord of the rings". taste literally changes by the day, and so much of what makes art matter depends on cultural significance you can't specify in advance. if you were training a music model in 1915, it would never come up with rock and roll. it's so hard to know what's going to resonate. van gogh was making his work for essentially nobody and now it's worth millions. you can't pre-load a success criteria for that
i think this is important to call out in a world that seems to devalue creative work now. people think llm generated "artifacts" are creative but in reality it's garbage and based on pattern recognition
Watch a time lapse illustration video here: https://www.peppercarrot.com/0_sources/miniFantasyTheater/ma...
His work I is what I would describe as somewhat middle of the road Fantasy / SciFi Pop art. The deviant art of old, or even before, the art that would cover the scifi magazine. It’s an amalgam of styles and interests from the nerdy spectrum, obviously done with great care by the artist. Problem is with middle of the road is that that’s where the LLM averages out. Not flaming the artist at all, these are lovely works, but an average of lots of pop art / interests. I don’t think he will lose his livelihood - art by commission will stay a thing. For poster and promo work, that’s gone probably.
Before AI, the only question was who made a particular artwork. Human-created practically a certainty.
When AI-generated art was new, it was all exiting & the process described to boast about AI capabilities or the skills of people deploying AI. But human-created still the default assumption.
Now, AI-generated <anything> is everywhere, and that default assumption of "human-created" is often questioned.
The natural next step is "AI-generated" as default assumption, unless claimed / shown (or even proven) otherwise.
Imho: assumption is the root of all evil. Investigate! Or take an author's word for it unless they're shown to be a liar. But as another commenter noted, it's a kind of tragedy of the commons. Methods to prove you as a human created <artwork> will be a thing.
I was very surprised, so I'd look up Y and find it was just someone charging for a product based on my code. And people in the community would accuse me of stealing.
I've seen this scenario play out with several of my friends too.
This isn't a new phenomenon, AI just makes for a more efficient laundry. Nobody cares, and nobody does their research. The tech industry is full of psychopaths glad to piggy back on your work and find loopholes to get away with it.
It's one of the reasons I'm not so keen on open source anymore. I'm glad to do free work, but being accused of theft while people make money off it is not a great reward. Probably a lot of creatives are feeling the same right now.
When a machine weaves fabric, no point in sticking to handloom and sell it as handicraft. Use powerloom and add your artistry on top of it.
Point and laugh at them, and move on. They don’t matter, they’re idiots.
Source: I’m a dumbass.
Mad respect for that. I've donated a couple of bucks.
The worst to my eye is the Alice in Wonderland one. What's going on with Alice's hair? What's the tea on the left being poured into? What kind of playing card has a 'C' (it can't be a messy Q as the figure on it is male) and why is there only half a heart there? What's with club on the jack next to it? What exactly is that black bird doing? (It's been a long time since I've read the books, what bird is that anyway?) How does the flamingo's body work? Is Alice sitting on it? Why are there buttons on both sides of the White Rabbit's coat, and why is it shaped differently on the left and right?
> … why is there only half a heart there? …
https://www.peppercarrot.com/gd/viewer/misc__2010-07-21_Alic...
C is coeur (French).
The adjacent Jack of Clubs has only part of the trèfle icon.
Comparable:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French-suited_playing_cards#/m...
Those same people feel that they can detect AI-generated works?
Those same people have the audacity to spread their uninformed opinions online?
Those same people are spreading their harmful opinionated content online, actually causing real harm to real artists.
This proves the old adage that opinions are like assholes, everybody has one and they stink.
I've been following David Revoy for years and purchased his Pepper & Carrot books, long before machine learning and large language models got into the hands of unskilled people. He is right to complain.
True, almost without exception. In some situations I instablock complainers.