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I'm not interested in approaching the question from the perspective of, "what is permissible for an individual artist to do?". I'm interested in approaching the question from the perspective of, "what impact will this technology have on culture and the nature of art?".
Consider the impact that AI is already having on the genre fiction market. It's easy to imagine that writers will soon feel compelled to collaborate with AI, even if they don't want to, in order to match the output rate of authors who do use AI. I think that's a rather deplorable state of affairs. But that problem doesn't come into view when we only consider individual actors in isolation; it only becomes apparent when we zoom out and look at culture as a whole.
I recommend reading Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction if you haven't. Not because I necessarily endorse his conclusions, but because his thought process is illustrative of how technology can impact the meaning and nature of art, independent of any one person's thoughts or actions.
What impact is it having, to date? I've seen stylistic filters and a few other things; what I haven't seen is people claiming they're a problem, rather than a solution. I have a friend who wants to be a writer, who's been using some of the automation tools to polish his work. I don't see how harm is done.
I don't grok how this is a problem caused by AI. writing, like most forms of art, is an endless task. You can always spend more time on a piece, improve it a little more, tweak, add, cut, polish... That's why deadlines are such a ubiquitous part of all creative industries. Artists need them.
Artists who don't want to collaborate with AI don't have to. This will doubtless mean they are less productive, so they have to make a choice on ends and means. I don't see how this choice is different from pretty much any other choice in the artistic world, all the way down to whether one takes weird furry fetish commissions. Is the artist's goal to make money or to express themselves? Both options are still available. To the extent that AI output is distinguishable from pure human effort, I think it will retain value. To the extent that it is not distinguishable, I question whether it is valuable. Is the Muse less divine for being instantiated in silicon? And it is the Muse, the infinite recombination of human experience, washed clean of one's own ego and presented to the intellect for assessment.
No time to read now, but I'll try to hit it tomorrow, thanks for the recommendation.
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This feels like it is applicable to any tool and any skill. Programmers have to keep up with tools is a well-known trope if only because the tools change so rapidly.
In your original post, you described this tool as coming from malice, can you elaborate more on that?
Not the OP, but apparently Emad Mostaque was fairly excited about the disruptive potential of Stable Diffusion. Whether that's malice or Emad simply taking a colder-blooded accelerationist stance is probably up for debate.
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