Obviously AI generated art has market value to companies with creative staff because AI is designed to devalue and commoditize the work of actual artists, such that the work of all artists can be replicated by someone on Mechanical Turk writing prompts for pennies a day (or some equivelent low-wage plebian drone.)
AI has already been used to steal commissions from working artists, and companies are already firing their entire creative teams to lean entirely into AI generation. The better the technology gets, the worse the situation gets for working artists because that's the plan.
I don't see how anyone can have witnessed the glee with which AI techbros danced on the graves of the art industry, ridiculing and harassing artists, calling them gatekeepers and fascists, and telling them their careers were doomed, and think this will benefit artists in any way.
I really want that to change, because I find this technology fascinating, but as of now the well has been poisoned, the bridges burned, war declared, and most artists with actual talent would rather starve in the street than touch anything AI.
Then you have the artists who matter, whose work is valued because it has their name on it, regardless of what process was used to create it. AI will be just another tool they may choose to use.
"struggled to get paid for expensive manual labor?" You seem to have a contempt for most working artists, because most struggle to get paid regardless of talent, not because they're incompetent but because art of any kind has always been a difficult market. And yes, it's hard work, which many people fail to appreciate. You're really illustrating my point more than I think you intend to.
Perhaps we have a very different understanding of what "art that matters" is, certainly I'm not thinking of anyone producing art at volume for a corporate IP. In any event, nothing ever stopped such a corporation from reproducing a certain style with cheaper labor, whether it's human or not. If you were, say, an art director working for a corporation, your job was never to perform much of that manual labor. AI isn't replacing you.
As an artist (creator) myself, I do not feel threatened. I do not consider the tedium to add anything of value to my work… and hell, it’s suck to integrate /generate fill (as an example)
It seems like generative AI will wipe out many design shops and non-IC/exec brokers/managers of creatives (recruiters, talent agents, admins, etc.) at least to the degree the web wiped out newspapers and their non-creative staff.
But it'll also enable creative designers/artists/writers to become their own studios. As Kubrick said, "one [person] writes a novel, one [person] writes a symphony." Generative AI will enable one person (or a very small team) to create a blockbuster movie or AAA videogame.
A copy of a Picasso painting is worth nothing. An original Picasso is worth millions.
Perhaps. But what would that change and do you have any choice? 'Techbros' can make do with genAI or even stock images. I'm not so sure about said artists.
AI can generate an image "in the style of Banksy" but so can a thousand other artists who aren't Banksy, and their work product would have no more value than the AI's.
The way this makes you feel is about more than texture and shading:
https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2021/contemporary-ar...
You might be able to get Stable Diffusion to generate something like that with a sufficiently detailed prompt, but then its uniqueness would come from the creative effort required in devising the prompt. It's not like you can just type "street art in the style of Banksy" and expect the output to make you feel something like that.
I Agree, those who produce the training data or the thing that the AIs work will be based on, should be properly compensated.
Being serious so, human art is what it is because it requires effort. AI art doesn't require nearly as much, is generic and abundant. In short, boring.
Remember:
Duct tape + banana + wall + 3 minutes = incredibly valuable and controversial art.
Me taking a year to paint a detailed depiction of a bowl of fruit = worthless, terrible art.
Results are what people care about, not effort.
There is a sci-fi prediction that humans would eventually reduce to a thing with an eye and a finger that only presses a button, and machines would do the rest; I take it as an optimistic view that it means humans remain relevant, and that human values only come from humans.
So, if an artist's work makes 100$ per work an AI system which can generate the same quality work but 1,000,000 pieces a day this won't end up the AI system generating 100 million dollars a day.
It will simply rise the bar for artists instead. Which is a good thing for the society as a whole because the baseline will be very good and the work of the talented artists will be highly valued.
Adobe can eat the market of mediocre artists if they are the only one with this technology so they can control the output rate and create artificial scarcity. They are not the only one with this technology.