How much did photography "steal" painter jobs ?
How much did photography "steal" painter jobs ?
With all the fuzz about IA image "stealing" illustrator job, I am curious about how much photography changed the art world in the 19th century.
There was a time where getting a portrait done was a relatively big thing, requiring several days of work for a painter, while you had to stand still for a while so the painter knew what you looked like, and then with photography, all you had to do was to stand still for a few minutes, and you'll get a picture of you printed on paper the next day.
How did it impact the average painter who was getting paid to paint people once in their lifetime.
It sure did have a big impact, comparable to what some people expect to happen soon with AI.
However, I think your framing misses the main point of why many artists today are wary about AI: They are not just being replaced, their own work is used as a building block for the tools that will replace them; and they were not asked for permission and don't even get any compensation for that.
If you have a basic understanding how AI works then this argument doesn't hold much water.
Let's take the human approach: I'm going to look at all the works of popular painters to learn their styles. Then I grab my painting tools and create similar works.
No credit there, I still used all those other works as input and created by own based on them.
With AI it's the same, just in a much bigger capacity. If you ask AI to redraw the Mona Lisa you won't get a 1:1 copy out, because the original doesn't exist in the trained model, it's just statistics.
Same as if you tell a human to recreate the painting, no matter how good they are, they'll never be able to perfectly reproduce the original work.
With AI it's the same, just in a much bigger capacity.
And this bigger capacity makes a huge difference.
I try to give you an easy example:
When a company wants to fell a tree, it is no big deal. When a company wants to fell 100.000 trees, you would maybe start to think if they should be allowed to do that. Environment and all. When a company wants to fell all the trees in the whole world, you would say No to that plan (hopefully) without much thinking.
So, you see, scale makes a difference in nearly all decisions. Legal and other.
This AI thing is already at the size of "all in the world". It is a big deal. We need to think very carefully.
The thing is, with a certain model you could get a perfect 1:1 copy but that's not really the point. I have a degree that includes machine learning and I believe it's imperative that we have legislation that protects content owners and puts restrictions on what data you're allowed to use to train your models. Not because I don't understand but because I do understand.
Haphazardly introducing this technology at a large scale in society will come with serious consequences, not to mention the consequences to privacy if we don't curtail what data that companies are allowed to scrape from the internet just because they throw in buzzwords about "AI" in somewhere.
This is fundamentally not about being pro-technology or anti-technology, it's about how we value private citizens versus corporations.
An independent artist learning new styles and gaining inspiration in creating their own work is not at all the same as a profit driven software corperation stealing other artists works on a massive scale to develop their own commercial products. That's on top of most artists like myself prohibiting using our work for private commercial gain unless properly compensated or credited.
Let’s explore this further. When we look at the work of a human we can often see their influences (and they can often acknowledge them or even cite specific works). In a way, they are able to credit those they were inspired by.
Would an “AI” be able to do the same? I’m guessing it probably can, but more as a statistical similarity to other works. I don’t know if it can cite its sources.
This is true, but the way AI differs in a problematic way is usually described in confused and incorrect terms like "stealing" or "training without permission".
It is, to some degree legally and to some degree culturally, not allowed to copy someone else without their permission. For human artists this problem is contained.
If I am inspired by your work and create a painting a biiit to close to your work, intentionally or not, you have the option to talk to me and we can work something out. Or worst case take me to court.
If an AI does the same, unintentionally of course, it's not one painting after a few weeks of work. It's thousands per day. You have no capacity to find and initiate conversations about each of those. And worse, your conversations will not be with someone who recognizes that they were inspired by your work. It will usually be with someone who doesn't have the affinity to see the similarities and will shrug and says "I don't see it sorry" and you have to take the fight to the AI supplier third party's legal team who will also shrug and hide behind terms like "algorithm".
The difference is that we recognise humans and their history, imperfections and many many influences to be part of what makes both the human and expression unique.
A lot of the discussion doesn't grant the machine learning models the same inherent worth as humans get, and thus is viewed as a tool trained to replicate others' work (rather than a creative agent).
This means that where a student painter is expected to have a desire to express something, and are putting in hard work in practice and paying tutors. Replacing them with a machine without desires or stories to express, by stealing artwork without neither credit or compensation, to then replace the same people who've been exploited in creating the tool, seems unfair.
I take it you're not an artist? That's not how or why you do studies.
Well, photography basically replaced the Joe Average Portrait Painter. And then art took a turn to paint the unphotographable.
One topic that hasn't been raised in this thread is the effect of photography on artistry. Due to having a medium that could, well, photographically depict reality, painters changed in the way they depicted reality.
In the beginning expressionism, pointillism and so forth became more prominent. It was not recreating reality, it became infused with the emotion of the artist. Van Gogh, for instance, did not do realism at all, but showed how he felt through his work.
Later styles got more abstract, like cubism, dadaism and surrealism in the beginning of the twentieth century. Later abstract expressionism, minimalism and pop art.
So photography changed the way painting was executed, it forced the artists to reinvent what painting was.
New media change the meta, that's what's most exciting to see. How people will find new methods of expression given the updated tool set.
I don't have anything to add here; I'm an engineer, not an artist. But I just want to say this is one of the best questions and resulting conversation I have seen on Lemmy so far. Definitely not a stupid question, Ziggurat!
Thanks for the feedback, the question was triggered by a discussion in another thread, and it was the opportunity to post some content here
AI isn’t stealing jobs any more than cheap clip art has. The only people who would resort to AI for illustration stopped hiring actual artists ages ago, they buy from shutterstock and the like instead.
The reason artists are pissed id because they used our art to train the AI without our permission. And no, its not the same thing as an artist learning from others, first because of the scale, and second because a student who is learning from other artists isn’t looking to copy an existing style, they’re learning and developing their own. AI just regurgitates what it already knows and attempts to imitate the style of an actual person. It was developed specifically to do that.
If a human being copies the style of another artist rather than develop their own, they’ll be called out too. No one has ever been okay with that, ever.
I think you missed the point of the post.
The reason artists are pissed id because they used our art to train the AI without our permission.
I mean, it's license violation or it's not. It's your own fault or you can sue, like with everything art on the internet. I don't get the buz.
I'm not an expert but i learned about this at university one or two years ago. I'm not entirely sure of what i'm saying though, so take my word carefully and feel free to correct me.
From what i recall -and i think at least in western europe, i don't know for other places-, before photography, it was quite expensive to get a portrait or a family portrait, mostly because of the time needed to pose. So it was something only nobles or rich bourgeois family could afford.
Then photography was invented. At first, it was mostly an amateur hobby : you had to be a handy(wo)man to get all the components needed, and in first times even to build your own device. There were no schools, no official degree, knowledge only passed from person to person.
So first "professional" photographers (i mean the first one to get paid) were not exactly professionals, most had no previous clients, or anything. Of course, their prices were much low than painters, so increasing number of people came to their shop. But it was for the most part "new" customers, middleclass people or families, would previously could not afford paintings.
So at first, they did not really stole painters' jobs, they rather extended access to portraits to a new part of population. Now, when it became more popular, the less rich clients of painters tend to switch to photography : it felt modern, it was a kind of trend, and it was cheaper.
At that point, some of the painter's client disappeared. But there were mostly two situations : big and renowned painters still got jobs, because noble people kind of considered photography a thing for common people. Modest painters, who had client amongst bourgeois, began to lose their jobs. I think that a part of them switched to photography at that point : i also think this is were photo editing began, because they could use their painter/drawer skills to erase or slightly modify the picture when it wasn't "dry" (don't know the specifics of photography at that time ^^').
So overall, if you compare like the XVII century and nowadays, of course painters lost their jobs. But from what i (think i) know, transition was pretty smooth, as it let time to painters to continue to paint for upper classes or to convert to photographers.
I pretty much agree with other people, not sure if the comparison with AI is perfect. But at least I think it might show that new techs mostly comes with two effect : replacing previous practices and creating new ones (or at least opening them to new people).
Just to add some cool etymology to your reply: the word silhouette comes from a type of affordable portrait made by quickly painting or cutting out a persons profile in black paper. These, and portrait miniatures, fell quickly out of favour with the advent of photography.
The word silhouette is derived from the name of Étienne de Silhouette, a French finance minister who, in 1759, was forced by France's credit crisis during the Seven Years' War to impose severe economic demands upon the French people, particularly the wealthy.[3] Because of de Silhouette's austere economies, his name became synonymous with anything done or made cheaply and so with these outline portraits.[4][5] Prior to the advent of photography, silhouette profiles cut from black card were the cheapest way of recording a person's appearance.[6][7]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silhouette
This is also an interesting article on the subject of pre-photographic portraiture: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portrait_miniature
Also illustrators for newspapers - as the tech for mechanical reproduction made it possible to put photographs into newspapers and magazines most of those jobs disappeared.
I read an article on PC Gamer just the other week where one of the prominent D&D artists said AI was already impacting his work. And not just in the usual way of stealing away jobs, but also, by damaging their artistic reputation by people generating ai artworks in their style, and people not knowing what was or wasn't actually his.
A discussion around the extent to which painters were replaced by photographers (and professional photographers replaced by laypersons with smartphone cameras) isn’t going to quite be the same as a discussion about human illustrators being potentially replaced by “AI”.
I suspect the words “soul” and “character” (and derivatives thereof) to turn up more.
I imagine a better analogy would be scribes talking about the printing press.
Prior to the invention of the printing press, the endeavor of mass creation of copies of a book could employ dozens of highly trained, highly skilled workers whose recreations were frequently seen as an artistic endeavor as much as a literary one. When the printing press was introduced and didn't carry illustrations in the margins or nice little flourishes on some of the letters, the works were considered "soulless" and "without character"
I think the key difference is that the words put out via printing press were still arranged the way they were by human hand.
The painting and the photograph are framed by human eyes.
The output of an “AI” seems different because it seems that there is less (of potentially no) human input. I say “seems” because that may or may not be true. If a human guides the AI with instructions, is that enough?
In my line of work, AI is coming. I see it as a friend in silico
Comparing the emergence of photography to that of AI is a bit like comparing a nuclear explosion to an all-out nuclear world war. There are magnitudes of difference. You can say, humanity didn't get wiped out because of nuclear bombs or power plant failures so far. But what would you think if everyone today starts nukeing their neighbours?
Photography made an impact, but not like AI. You need to take into account that technology, goods, and resources moved at different speeds back then. Today, anyone can access a camera. And AI for that matter. Back then, it required a certain status, having money to purchase it, learning how to develop the photos, etc. It was a gradual change, not one that swept the rug under everyone's feet.
And yes, painters did lose part of their jobs as portrait painters, but not too much because those who could afford a portrait to begin with, were the wealthy. And the quality of a photo, then, wasn't always better than a painting. Which meant the wealthy still commissioned art for one reason or another.
Art gradually shifted towards printing and advertising, so taking all these factors into account, you could say that only portrait painters suffered less demand, but art overall was getting more and more commercial for other reasons.
AI in contrast just popped out of nowhere a couple of years ago and keeps perfecting itself at an incredible rate. It's so broad it what it can represent that it will affect all sorts of artists, not just this one specific subset.
Thank you for this comprehensive response. Out of interest, do you think that certain artist jobs/genres will survive? For example, I would imagine that humans can innovate better than an AI trained on existing data. So perhaps we'll see a shift towards more human-created modern/post-AI art?
It's difficult for me to make a prediction like that. I figure the next generation of artists- which we'll see mature in some 20 years- is going to be nothing like what we've seen so far. I believe having actual skills in art will become irrelevant and outdated. It will survive, the same way we still have people enjoying horse riding and archery but it won't be a determining factor on art as a final product.
Humans will surely be directing the way art evolves but AI will do the heavy lifting. Considering we have technology capable of putting thought (and I mean brain activity, not words, but actually thoughts) into images and words, it's just matter of time before art becomes something anyone can produce just by thinking about it.
The problem for me isn't so much copyright or how it will evolve, but this sudden transition phase which will drive to extinction the process of art as we know it. Well established artists today are probably going to stay the same, and the new ones as I mentioned will grow up with these new technologies so that won't be a problem, long term.
My concern goes for artists who just got started and who can't embrace AI as part of the process. It's gonna be rough. It's like asking someone to stop listening to their favorite music and switch to some new genre they have no love for. Considering artists are usually more sensitive (psychologically) than people without artistic inclinations, I'm worried for their mental health, not just the financial. AI is damaging the sense of self worth of many talented people and that's going to have consequences.
You forgot a massive step in-between: Digital art / Photoshop.
Which already vastly sped up art creation and made it easier (when you can just use special brushes instead of having to spend hours doing a pattern by hand).
And even though it's a lot easier, you still need artists to produce proper products. Good artists and designers will keep their jobs in the foreseeable future, while more simple one-shot works can be done by AI.
I really hope you are right about the last paragraph. About the rest, I didn't forget, I didn't mention it as it's not what OP made the comparison to.
But you make a good point about digital art creating more disruption to the status quo than photography did. However, AI is still an on steroids comparison if you ask me. You still need to invest a massive amount of time and practice to get good at digital. Creating a whole image can take hours , days, months. And if you don't understand what makes it look good, it won't. This is not the case with AI. You don't need art skills. It helps if you do, it gives you more control to manipulate a result, but the quality you get from the beginning is on another level.
I graduated with a Bachelor's In Fine Arts nearly a decade ago, so I feel like I have a good stance on all these "AI replacing human made art" debates going on. I'm going to give you an emotional response, and a rational response. Because as much as I want to scream about this debate, the majority of people do not take you seriously when you're "too emotional" because they think emotions=not thinking clearly and therefore not a good debate. So here you go. This will be long.
EMOTIONAL RESPONSE: I fucking hate AI art and I especially hate how easy it is to not only access AI art but for the average layperson to generate AI art. Everyone thinks they're an artist now. I spent 6+ years learning and practicing and listening to critiques and then graduating and creating portfolios and yadda yadda, only for all of that to be shrugged off by the majority of people because "why would I pay you when I can just have the AI do it". It's like all those housewives in the 70s who suddenly thought they knew how to cook just cause they got this amazing new appliance called "a microwave". And this apathetic stance against art is nothing new. The amount of times I'd get asked by adults (when I told them I was going to art college) "why would you want to waste money going to art college? how will you get a job? artists don't make any money" was an insane amount. I'm not studying art to fucking make money, I'm studying art because I like to make art. And to our society, there is no value in that. Art exists literally everywhere all the time, but nobody thinks or cares about it. Who designed the pattern on the shirt you're wearing? Who created the aerodynamic shape of your car? Who created the shade of paint you have inside your house, or rendered the transition that the Netflix logo makes when you boot the app up? All of these things were created by artists, but nobody ever thinks that, because it's hard to put a hard monetary value on art, and businesses fucking hate that, so they fucking hate art as a result. And this bleeds into society as a whole. Nobody outside of the art world cares about art. And all those people saying "well if AI is doing your job then you don't have to do any work and you're free to do what you want!". Bitch we live in capitalism! I gotta make rent somehow! And art IS WHAT I WANTED TO DO! But nobody will care about it if the trend of "just have the AI do it" mindset keeps chugging along. Fuck capitalism, fuck marketing, and fuck AI.
RATIONAL RESPONSE: I hear this debate a lot from AI enthusiasts, and while I think it's reasonable to make the association, I don't think it's a fair comparison. As people in the replies have already commented, photography took decades to fully develop. The first commercial cameras were available in 1888, but the first commercial COLOR cameras weren't available until 1942.. Yes, portrait painters were worried about losing their jobs, but we also got styles like impressionism and (my favorite) dadaism out of photography. There was also the emergence of the marketing and mass printing industry at that time, so artists focused less on landscape and portrait painting, and more on illustration and ad work. I see a similar comparison about how people reacted when Photoshop became commercial. Except with Photoshop, you still need knowledge of the UI and assets. Also, Photoshop doesn't automatically make the art. You still have to draw and create, just with a digital pen instead of a ink pen. Now let's look at AI. Compare what a prompt from looked like 1 year ago vs how it looks now. This development happened in ONE YEAR. There has been no time for artists to adapt (unlike photography), and programs such as Open AI and Dall-E have UI that anyone can learn in a day and are way cheaper than Photoshop was when it released to the public. Not only that, but unlike the artists of the late 1800s who switched to marketing/illustration, AI is being thrown EVERYWHERE. There is no limit, and AI can spit out an image/audio track/video clip/animation/page of code in seconds. Compared with my pitiful meat hands that have to thumbnail-sketch-line-color-render any artwork I make that takes hours or days. So of course when business are looking at their bottom line, why would they want to pay my pitiful meat hands when an AI (that they don't have to pay) can spit out a product much faster? Artists in the video game industry are already seeing their jobs being given to AI programs instead. Now you might say "that's just business" because of course a business's job is to make as much money as possible while also saving much money as possible, right? But that right there is the problem. This AI rush is just another result of the 'growth at all costs' race to some imaginary top for corporations. It won't just stop at art, because this rush is being heralded by big businesses who don't want to pay ANYONE so they can hoard everything for themselves.