be prepared for Ai generated artwork

[DL Signs]

We have had this discussion before and I am left with this question to the forum. How exactly are copyrights going to be applied. If you pay for the AI service, and it was your creative input that generated the art, is it not yours?
If you are using a free service, is it yours. And if not your creation, who gets the claim on the copyright?

There is no claim on copyright, or it being "yours".

For a copyright, art must be created by a human, and input instructions do not meet the criteria of created by a human. This has already made it's way through courts, and through the copyright regulatory system. AI generated is, for lack of a better term, "open source". Designs and logos can be plagiarized at will by anyone, for anything. Purchasing AI generated art through image sites is a fools game, because it's not protected, there is no copyright, only a license, which you're foolish enough to pay for on art that had zero protection of ownership in the first place. An AI generated logo could end up on someone else's brand, just because they think it's cool, and because it was AI generated, and there's nothing anyone can do.

On the other side of the coin, permission must be granted for artwork used in AI learning if it's copyrighted or IP of any person/ entity. Hence the new TOS from Adobe that could potentially give them unfettered access to forbidden fruits. One of the early suits filed was by Getty, after their watermarks were found in AI generated works. It's a race for one to have more to work with than the next, first they were skirting/ breaking laws to do it, now they just include it in the EULA that we never read. If you ever see any part of something that you may have created, start scouring all the agreements you made in order to use design software, cloud storage, file sharing, social media... You probably agreed to it.

Artists will always be needed. Always back up files for anything you create to protect your works, and not on cloud services who are a mere TOS update away from you giving them permission to use those too, and some already have.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

This has already made it's way through courts,

As far as I know, just with the finished artwork. The prompts are where it could be the difference as the prompts have a better chance of being done by a human.

and through the copyright regulatory system. AI generated is, for lack of a better term, "open source".

Not actually accurate. OSS (even artwork that is OS) is already assumed to be copyright by the person that created it. Why there has to be a license attached to it to use it, it's just that license is far more open compared to what you would get from Adobe etc. Why lawyers tend to freak out on public domain licenses. Typically when that happens, you'll see a dual license and the 2nd one is usually really permissive, MIT/BSD (1,2,3 clause) etc. And typically that's there just to satisfy the lawyers. With artwork, it's usually some acknowledgment in whatever "you" used it for that has the original creator of the artwork. There are more restrictive ones, but typically that's the the type that is picked. Of course, there are some open source projects that have protected the marks for their project, while having a more permissive license for the code.

In case of AI, since it's pedigree may not be pure, there is the assumption of some unknown person(s) maybe able to lay claim to it later on. The prompts for the AI may be were this changes with this tech, because that prompt will generate different results depending on how the "AI" was trained and more likely written by a human (although I'm sure some type of automation process to minimize that input will happen as well.



Just to put this out there. With more and more "AI features" in the software itself. How you interact with those tools and the results of those tools could actually be used to feed the models as well. And there has been a lot of "AI" integration into various tools. So there is that as well. How we get the little ads of "skip the photoshoot".

 

[GAC05]

I talked to an AI-generated lawyer and it said not to worry. Soon all property and rights will belong to the Cloud.

 

[Ron at Forest Litho]

Gotta be careful with this.
I put 'Trump 2024' bumper sticker in the text prompt.
Said it would not do it. It then closed and deleted my Illustrator install, canceled my Adobe account, and signed me up for a 30-day MS Office 365 subscription trial.

LOL

 

[Ron at Forest Litho]

It doesnt matter, just as long as the client understands how to send us the HI-RES CMYK PDF, and not the thumbnail that looks fine on their stupid phone.

 

[pro-UP]

I enjoy the new technology tools, like chat gpt. They are quite handy at generating content (but be careful to read what it provides because it is very frequently incorrect, learned this the hard way with hilarious results). I use it more as an editing tool. I'll input something I've written and prompt it with, "make this more professional, but easily understood" or "rephrase, shorten, and improve the tone" and get some very useful results. In so far as the art side of things, everything has a strange, ethereal look (or fantasy type of look) for the majority of what I've seen. I'm personally not a fan of that style.

I believe this will actually grow the market for human-designed or hand crafted type of descriptions. This will be what holds value. Everyone knows the AI stuff is very quickly generated, can be done repeatedly, and is not actually made by the person prompting the system. This is why human made art will become more valuable. People will pay more for it, just like they are willing to do with "natural" foods.

I'm also in agreement with some of the other commentors and that none of it is really unique or truly "AI generated." It was very telling when the woman (I think she was from ChatGPD, but I'm not sure of her name or exact title) was asked in an interview if they basically stole from YT. She said not that she knew about and then grimaced. If they are going to lie, they probably should have someone better prepared to skirt the topic and not someone so obviously lying.

A very telling article from Proof News goes into detail on all the data scrapping and compilation into something called the Pile (which is publicly available). One YT creator found that all 28 of their videos were included in this enormous dataset scrapped from YT. (link to article: Apple, Nvidia, Anthropic Used Thousands of Swiped YouTube Videos to Train AI)

 

[JamesLam]

I've already been having to deal with some of that crap in customer provided artwork. The generative "AI" stuff in Adobe Illustrator is live-traced from raster-based results. While the stuff might be "vector-based" it sure isn't all that clean, much less production-ready. Worse yet, the "AI" functions almost always bake various amounts of odd, uncanny valley nonsense into the artwork. It's like the "AI" photographs where a guy's hands will have 7 fingers. Correcting the errors means re-drawing those objects.

More and more I think the whole "AI" thing is a scam being perpetrated by stock trader bro bean counters. Create software bot operations that eliminate human workers. Craftsmanship gets totally de-valued. I've seen discussions going on about stock photo agencies, such as Adobe Stock, getting overwhelmed with AI-generated stock image submissions, many of which are blatantly violating copyrights.

I'm sure the private equity jackasses are all salivating over the "opportunity" to use AI tools to eliminate human staff in companies they buy up (and ruin). It's easy to imagine one of these vulture capital firms buying a bunch of sign companies and then using some AI-driven schtick to replace in-house designers. You still need human beings to apply vinyl, do fabrication and installation work, etc but it's all about race to the bottom economics. Any of those workers in the newly bought company could expect to be paid less. The vulture capitalists seem to forget one big thing: if you downsize too many workers you're not going to have any customers either. Customers are people who have jobs and enough spare money after basic living expenses to buy stuff. 70% of our economy is driven by that.

If a vulture capital firm wants to buy me out for let's say about $40million or so (plus a one year consultancy fee of another $10million) I'd be happy to let them AI themselves to their hearts content.

 

[Medina Signs]

OKay - so in a previous thread about AI we discussed AI generated art. I had a poem written by the bot that only used English words in the public domain. I will paste it below for those that have not seen it. To me, it still leaves the question as to who owns this poem. You be the judge. See Below.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Interesting thread! (my comment on the previous thread sometime in 2023)

So I have done a little dabbling with Chat GTP - My inbox has been bombed by people trying to sell me the bot. Turns out it is free to use, just go to the site and sign up. The results are quite good, it all depends on how succinct you are in presenting your queries.

Only a few chats until now, but at first I asked to describe in layman's terms about different types of signs, thinking I could copy and paste the answer for customers who call and say "I want a sign"
Well it works pretty good - I don't think I like it, I don't even like fancy coffee - it's "Black Joe" for me.

My humble opinion is that it is here to stay. I sure in it's early stages it will turn out to be a ##it Show. Especially after humans get involved. Hell, it's already happening.

So after reading this thread I asked it to write a poem in iambic pentameter. "write a short poem on AI technology as it pertains to AI generated art"

Here is the result -

"Sure, here's a short poem in iambic pentameter"

AI technology has come to be
A force that's changing artistry
With algorithms and neural nets
A new era of art begins to set

From paintings to music, and beyond
AI-generated art is now a bond
Between human minds and machine
A collaboration that's rarely seen

With pixels, colors, and data points
AI art breaks traditional joints
And creates something entirely new
A reflection of AI's point of view

But as we marvel at its beauty and grace
We must ask ourselves, what's the true face
Of AI-generated art, and what it means
For the future of humanity's creative dreams

Did the Bot write this poem or did I,
It was written for you to spy.
It's pretty good and not too slow
No Latte please, Just "Black Joe".

****************************
Credit: Some Bot Somewhere, Me, Google AI for correcting any spelling errors.

Mic Drop!

 

[Boudica]

So, it's not very clever with poetry?

 

[WildWestDesigns]

OKay - so in a previous thread about AI we discussed AI generated art. I had a poem written by the bot that only used English words in the public domain. I will paste it below for those that have not seen it. To me, it still leaves the question as to who owns this poem.

If anything does get to where it is able to have ownership, more likely it will be the prompts themselves, not the final product. Just me speculating, but that's where I see it going.




And of course, we have one of the more industrious uses of "AI" here: https://blog.knowbe4.com/how-a-north-korean-fake-it-worker-tried-to-infiltrate-us

Now we also have something like this: https://www.fastcompany.com/9115821...stimated-more-work-longer-hours-upwork-survey

What I have a feeling is that like with power trace/live trace/auto conversion, it will have a very narrowly defined use case to where it is the absolute best fit, outside of that, it isn't worth squat. Now those with less abilities, less knowledge will try to use it in other areas and we will just see the requisite "crap in -> crap out". Businesses are hopping onto the "AI" train, because it's another way to get more data and data has far more value to them compared to other products. Why I see some software vendors that have been around 30+ yrs are more data miners and not so much software vendors anymore (and that software is long in the tooth, so they really only have the option of implementing things that have been asked for for about 20 yrs and they do so in a hacky way due to tech dept, but I digress). Or the mid/upper management are really trying to pad their salaries, by looking like their departments are more industrious compared to what they really are.

 

[Stacey K]

I guess we are going to have to get used to it. Personally, I hate doing artwork so for me, if people can do their own, I'm fine with it. The hard part now making it useable.

I have dabbled in it a little bit just as an idea generator and sometimes it works, other times not so much LOL

 

[Boudica]

I guess we are going to have to get used to it. Personally, I hate doing artwork so for me, if people can do their own, I'm fine with it. The hard part now making it useable.

I have dabbled in it a little bit just as an idea generator and sometimes it works, other times not so much LOL

I make my avatars for signs101 with it. that's about it for actually generating "art" from text - from scratch.

I will admit, I have found the generative fill in photoshop is really quite useful. I've used that quite a few times. when a photo isn't quite to scale, it's pretty handy for some slick photo editing - it really saves a LOT of time.
And when I get artwork that I want a bleed for trim, I can effortlessly create it - rather than sending it back. Because more and more frequently the "graphic designer" who created said art doesn't know how to make a bleed (canva)

 

[WildWestDesigns]

Because more and more frequently the "graphic designer" who created said art doesn't know how to make a bleed (canva)

That actually goes into my fear of what's going to happen with especially the future generation of users (and we see that already with a lot of tools as it is). They already iffy on how to do things, just imagine when they have good enough results when things are abstracted away.

While I do like my abstractions and they are time savers, if one doesn't know what they are abstracting away, when they go down for whatever reason (and that has already happened with multiple ones during the same time), that's going to be no bueno for those that depend on them.

 

[Boudica]

That actually goes into my fear of what's going to happen with especially the future generation of users (and we see that already with a lot of tools as it is). They already iffy on how to do things, just imagine when they have good enough results when things are abstracted away.

While I do like my abstractions and they are time savers, if one doesn't know what they are abstracting away, when they go down for whatever reason (and that has already happened with multiple ones during the same time), that's going to be no bueno for those that depend on them.

I was a photo editor for almost 20 years with some pretty slick photoshop skills.
I learned PS with version 4.0 - then on to the CS versions.... That was before AI made more tools that now feel like cheating. I still think the new tools are pretty neat, and I can still do it old school, it will just take longer.

like riding a bike vs driving a car. If you never learned how to ride a bike... you walk.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

I was a photo editor for almost 20 years with some pretty slick photoshop skills.
I learned PS with version 4.0 - then on to the CS versions.... That was before AI made more tools that now feel like cheating. I still think the new tools are pretty neat, and I can still do it old school, it will just take longer.

like riding a bike vs driving a car. If you never learned how to ride a bike... you walk.

I wasn't talking about you, but the "designers" that you were complaining about. I do remember the v4 days, I remember AI 4 very well in early 90s.

Not all new tools (in my opinion) are neat though. "AI", or what passes for it, is one of them. I do like my computers, I do like writing my own in house programs for computers as well. A lot of my processes are scripted, so I'm not against things like that, but I also learned all the commands in order to create those scripts. "AI" abstracts way too much and the later generations are only going to know that method. As we get further and further with the tiktok generation and the post tiktok generation, most people are just going to want the "magic bullet" and nothing more.

Even if one doesn't go into the "AI" type of stuff, as more and more tools that people depend on go SaaS, the issue is there. Something goes down (for whatever reason), SOL until it comes back up or find another model to use (and we see in other areas, even with computers and the younger generation, it's about as bad as my silent generation dad handles new tech). Not all new ways of doing something are good.

The analogy isn't quite the same with creative endeavours that have atrophied due to using abstraction versus riding a bike vs driving a car. If one doesn't really exercise their creativity and try to go back to it later, depending on how long it's been, won't get back to where you were before. The mind has a different degradation rate compared to the other muscles. How we learn, how much we are able to learn something new, all happens as we age (even if one is a "lifetime learner"). Factor in people's nutrition (or lack thereof), that will have an affect as well.

Now this is all just me, "you" do "you" and that's fine. I personally won't touch it for the creative implications(more so this) as well as the legal ones (legal implications probably will change, but even at that, probably won't make a difference to me).

 

[Boudica]

I guess I should have went with the analogy of riding a horse rather than bike.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

I guess I should have went with the analogy of riding a horse rather than bike.

Not really, my comments would have been the same.

 

[Johnny Best]

Hello,
at that time we got the ordered heads (refurbished) after a long time without any answer on my emails, but only one of three was good. I haven't any will to send back and try to get others. That was the last time when I bougt used heads from Jeff, but one delivery before was perfect.

Not really, my comments would have been the same.

Wild is telling the truth with that comment. I rode a bike yesterday and still can ride.