DeviantArt’s Downfall Is Devastating, Depressing, and Dumb (slate.com)
from misk@sopuli.xyz to technology@lemmy.world on 17 May 2024 06:26
https://sopuli.xyz/post/12725460

#technology

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haywire7@lemmy.world on 17 May 2024 06:32 next collapse

AI generated content is great and all but it drowns out everything else on there. Anyone can type a prompt and generate a great looking image with a couple of attempts these days it seems.

The people spending days, weeks, months and more on a piece can’t keep up.

hellothere@sh.itjust.works on 17 May 2024 07:12 next collapse

It’s almost like low quality mechanisation is something that should be resisted. I wonder where I’ve heard that before…

Kusimulkku@lemm.ee on 17 May 2024 07:47 next collapse

I don’t know for what product that’d be desirable. What did you have in mind?

TheBat@lemmy.world on 17 May 2024 09:40 next collapse

yOuRe GaTeKePiNg!!!

the_crotch@sh.itjust.works on 17 May 2024 09:44 next collapse

You heard it from traditional artists when the camera was invented

makyo@lemmy.world on 17 May 2024 09:49 next collapse

And photographers when Photoshop was invented

yildolw@lemmy.world on 17 May 2024 12:42 next collapse

Every gallery in the world did not rush out to exhibit every submitted photograph with no curation or quality filter when photography was invented

GBU_28@lemm.ee on 17 May 2024 12:45 next collapse

A physical gallery has limited wall space. A website does not. Ai art should just be tagged as such, so it can be filtered

the_crotch@sh.itjust.works on 17 May 2024 13:46 collapse

If youre implying that every gallery in the world is rushing to exhibit every submitted ai picture with no curation or quality filter, name 5.

DarkDarkHouse@lemmy.sdf.org on 17 May 2024 13:44 collapse

And birthed impressionism as a result. These are tools, artists will adapt.

the_crotch@sh.itjust.works on 17 May 2024 13:47 collapse

And if they can’t compete with the soulless generic crap that ai spits out, they probably shouldn’t be artists

TheCannonball@lemmy.world on 17 May 2024 19:45 next collapse

Everyone should be an artist. It doesn’t have to be professionally but everyone should be creating something.

the_crotch@sh.itjust.works on 17 May 2024 20:19 collapse

If they’re not doing it for a living they don’t have to compete with anyone, least of all AI

FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today on 18 May 2024 03:45 collapse

It’s less of an issue with competing via comparisons of two, more an issue with never being seen in the first place as real works become grains of sand on beaches of generated content.

Even_Adder@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 17 May 2024 10:09 collapse

As the photographic industry was the refuge of every would-be painter, every painter too ill-endowed or too lazy to complete his studies, this universal infatuation bore not only the mark of a blindness, an imbecility, but had also the air of a vengeance. I do not believe, or at least I do not wish to believe, in the absolute success of such a brutish conspiracy, in which, as in all others, one finds both fools and knaves; but I am convinced that the ill-applied developments of photography, like all other purely material developments of progress, have contrib­uted much to the impoverishment of the French artistic genius, which is already so scarce. It is nonetheless obvious that this industry, by invading the territories of art, has become art’s most mor­tal enemy, and that the confusion of their several func­tions prevents any of them from being properly fulfilled.

― Charles Baudelaire, On Photography, from The Salon of 1859

FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today on 18 May 2024 03:49 next collapse

TBF he was kind of right, if you look at the industry of wall art these days then 98% of whats on people’s walls is printed imagery and copies. Imagine if we paid a real artist directly for every one of those framed and hung works instead of giving profit to some soulless corporation to make monotony incarnate.

Ultragramps@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 19 May 2024 09:04 collapse

have contrib­uted much to the impoverishment of the French artistic genius, which is already so scarce.

<img alt="" src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/v6DFme4Wvtg/maxresdefault.jpg">

lurch@sh.itjust.works on 17 May 2024 07:13 next collapse

there’s some stuff image generating AI just can’t do yet. it just can’t understand some things. a big problem seems to be referring to the picture itself, like position or its border. another problem is combining things that usually don’t belong together, like a skin of sky. those are things a human artist/designer does with ease.

tal@lemmy.today on 17 May 2024 07:23 next collapse

there’s some stuff image generating AI just can’t do yet

There’s a lot.

Some of it doesn’t matter for certain things. And some of it you can work around. But try creating something like a graphic novel with Stable Diffusion, and you’re going to quickly run into difficulties. You probably want to display a consistent character from different angles – that’s pretty important. That’s not something that a fundamentally 2D-based generative AI can do well.

On the other hand, there’s also stuff that Stable Diffusion can do better than a human – it can very quickly and effectively emulate a lot of styles, if given a sufficient corpus to look at. I spent a while reading research papers on simulating watercolors, years back. Specialized software could do a kind of so-so job. Stable Diffusion wasn’t even built for that, and with a general-purpose model, also not specialized for that, it already can turn out stuff that looks rather more-impressive than those dedicated software packages.

hagelslager@feddit.nl on 17 May 2024 09:17 next collapse

I think Corridor Digital made an AI animated film by hiring an illustrator (after an earlier attempt with a general dataset) and “draw” still frames from video of the lead actors, with Stable Diffusion generating the inbetweens.

admin@lemmy.my-box.dev on 17 May 2024 10:04 collapse

I think creating a lora for your character would help in that case. Not really easy to do as of yet, but technically possible, so it’s mostly a ux problem.

tal@lemmy.today on 17 May 2024 15:27 collapse

I think creating a lora for your character would help in that case.

A LORA is good for replicating a style, where there’s existing stuff, helps add training data for a particular subject. There are problems that existing generative AIs smack into that that’s good at fixing. But it’s not a cure-all for all limitations of such systems. The problem I’m referring to is kinda fundamental to how the system works today – it’s not a lack of training data, but simply how the system deals with the world.

The problem is that the LLM-based systems today think of the world as a series of largely-decoupled 2D images, linked only by keywords. A human artist thinks of the world as 3D, can visualize something – maybe using a model to help with perspective – and then render it.

So, okay. If you want to create a facial portrait of a kinda novel character, that’s something that you can do pretty well with AI-based generators.

But now try and render that character you just created from ten different angles, in unique scenes. That’s something that a human is pretty good at. Here’s a page from a Spiderman comic:

<img alt="" src="https://spiderfan.org/images/title/comics/spiderman_amazing/031/18.jpg">

spiderfan.org/images/title/comics/…/18.jpg

Like, try reproducing that page in Stable Diffusion, with the same views. Even if you can eventually get something even remotely approximating that, a human, traditional comic artist is going to be a lot faster at it than someone sitting in front of a Stable Diffusion box.

Is it possible to make some form of art generator that can do that? Yeah, maybe. But it’s going to have to have a much more-sophisticated “mental” model of the world, a 3D one, and have solid 3D computer vision to be able to reduce scenes in its training corpus to 3D. And while people are working on it, that has its own extensive set of problems. Look at your training set. The human artist slightly stylized stuff or made errors that human viewers can ignore pretty easily, but a computer vision model that doesn’t work exactly like human vision and the computer vision system might go into conniptions over. For example, look at the fifth panel there. The artist screwed up – the ship slightly overlaps the dock, right above the “THWIP”. A human viewer probably wouldn’t notice or care. But if you have some kind of computer vision system that looks for line intersections to determine relative 3d positioning – something that we do ourselves, and is common in computer vision – it can very easily look at that image and have no idea what the hell is going on there. Or to give another example, the ship’s hull isn’t the same shape from panel to panel. In panel 4, the curvature goes one way; in panel 5, the other way. Say I’m a computer vision system trying to deal with that. Is what’s going on there that there ship is a sort of amorphous thing that is changing shape from frame to frame? Is it important for the shape to change, to create a stylized effect, or is it just the artist doing a good job of identifying what the matters to a human viewer and half-assing what doesn’t matter? Does this show two Spidermen in different dimensions, alternating views? Are the views from different characters, who have intentional vision distortions? I mean, understanding what’s going on there entails identifying that something is a ship, knowing that ships don’t change shape, having some idea of what is important to a human viewer in the image, knowing from context that there’s one Spiderman, in one dimension, etc. The viewer and the artist can do it, because the viewer and the artist know about ships in the real world – the artist can effectively communicate an idea to the viewer because they not only have hardware that processes the thing similarly, but also have a lot of real-world context in common that the LLM-based AI doesn’t have.

The proportions aren’t exactly consistent from frame to frame, don’t perfectly reflect reality, and might be more effective at conveying movement or whatever than an actual rendering of a 3d model would be. That works for human viewers. And existing 2D systems can kind of dodge the problem (as long as they’re willing to live with the limitations that intrinsically come with a 2D model) because they’re looking at a bunch of already-stylized images, so can make similar-looking images stylized in the same way. But now imagine that they’re trying to take stylized images, then reduce them into a coherent 3D world, then learn to re-apply stylization. That may involve creating not just a 3D model, but enough understanding of the objects in that world to understand what stylization is reasonable to create a given emotio

tal@lemmy.today on 17 May 2024 17:14 next collapse

On the other hand, there are things that a human artist is utterly awful at, that LLM-based generative AIs are amazing at. I mentioned that LLMs are great at producing works in a given style, can switch up virtually effortlessly. I’m gonna do a couple Spiderman renditions in different styles, takes about ten seconds a pop on my system:

Spiderman as done by Neal Adams:

<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.today/pictrs/image/1bed8ef6-b5f8-46af-a051-23f57318bbb8.png">

Spiderman as done by Alex Toth:

<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.today/pictrs/image/9e27afc1-7c5e-4afc-9062-f65f79ab0cda.png">

Spiderman in a noir style done by Darwyn Cooke:

<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.today/pictrs/image/299e3f6c-2645-42cf-95a9-2dc11d973d15.png">

Spiderman as done by Roy Lichtenstein:

<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.today/pictrs/image/a0df29a9-19ed-4beb-9a10-078496424493.png">

Spiderman as painted by early-19th-century American landscape artist J. M. W. Turner:

<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.today/pictrs/image/605bed61-d603-40d6-9eb7-e63e93100aac.png">

And yes, I know, fingers, but I’m not generating a huge batch to try to get an ideal image, just doing a quick run to illustrate the point.

Note that none of the above were actually Spiderman artists, other than Adams, and that briefly.

That’s something that’s really hard for a human to do, given how a human works, because for a human, the style is a function of the workflow and a whole collection of techniques used to arrive at the final image. Stable Diffusion doesn’t care about techniques, how the image got the way it is – it only looks at the output of those workflows in its training corpus. So for Stable Diffusion, creating an image in a variety of styles or mediums – even ones that are normally very time-consuming to work in – is easy as pie, whereas for a single human artist, it’d be very difficult.

I think that that particular aspect is what gets a lot of artists concerned. Because it’s (relatively) difficult for humans to replicate artistic styles, artists have treated their “style” as something of their stock-in-trade, where they can sell someone the ability to have a work in their particular style resulting from their particular workflow and techniques that they’ve developed. Something for which switching up styles is little-to-no barrier, like LLM-based generative AIs, upends that business model.

Both of those are things that a human viewer might want. I might want to say “take that image, but do it in watercolor” or “make that image look more like style X, blend those two styles”. LLMs are great at that. But I equally might want to say “show this scene from another angle with the characters doing something else”, and that’s something that human artists are great at.

Even_Adder@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 17 May 2024 23:09 collapse

I don’t think it’s supposed to solve every problem. Just like very scene in the new Sand Land anime wasn’t 3D, the same goes for every other artistic tool. There are some things are easy with some tools, others it’s not well suited for.

What you have to ask yourself is what ways can it help you with what you’re trying to do.

anlumo@lemmy.world on 17 May 2024 07:30 next collapse

It‘s even hard to impossible to generate the image of a person doing a handstand. All models assume a rightside-up person.

Even_Adder@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 17 May 2024 15:17 collapse

This hasn’t been true for months at least. You really have to check week to week when dealing with things in this field.

100@fedia.io on 17 May 2024 09:04 collapse

think of an episode of any animated series with countless handmade backgrounds, good luck generating those with any sort of consistency or accuracy and you will be calling for an artist who can actually take instructions and iterate

yildolw@lemmy.world on 17 May 2024 12:44 collapse

We’ll soon be hearing that only Luddites care about continuity errors

Soundhole@lemm.ee on 17 May 2024 08:54 next collapse

People spending that much time on their work can and should create things in meat space.

EDIT: This comment got some hate and in retrospect it does sound pretty snotty. No disrespect to any digital artists intended, including AI artists.

I just meant to highlight that more traditional artists can still create in meat space and newer AI artists simply cannot do that easily yet. I personally hope any artist with the ability to focus for hours and hours considers also doing meat space work. Actual tangible, 3d work can only be sold once, but can be sold for a lot. And it’s cool.

admin@lemmy.my-box.dev on 17 May 2024 10:02 next collapse

Almost 10 years old now, more relevant than ever: Humans need not apply.

PipedLinkBot@feddit.rocks on 17 May 2024 10:02 collapse

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Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee on 17 May 2024 16:30 next collapse

I’m a bit surprised about how quickly I got tired of seeing AI content (mostly porn and non-nudes) Somehow it all just looks the same. You’d think that being AI generated would give you infinite variety but apparently not.

istanbullu@lemmy.ml on 17 May 2024 16:53 collapse

The same way people using shovels can’t keep up with an excavator.

Technology changes the world. This is nothing new.

Stern@lemmy.world on 17 May 2024 07:10 next collapse

Both disappointing and expected.

just_another_person@lemmy.world on 17 May 2024 07:32 next collapse

Could still be the antithesis to AI bullshit, but don’t think there’s an easy way to tell now.

metaStatic@kbin.social on 17 May 2024 07:42 next collapse

Deviantart died a very very long time ago. the creature currently wearing it's skin can fuck off and die for all I or any other actual artist cares.

Anon518@sh.itjust.works on 17 May 2024 07:53 next collapse

What do you use instead?

Anamana@feddit.de on 17 May 2024 08:15 next collapse

All these news pieces about A.I. killing ancient company xyz …

Potatos_are_not_friends@lemmy.world on 17 May 2024 11:36 collapse

I was shocked to see this post. I honestly thought it was dead after 2015.

stoy@lemmy.zip on 17 May 2024 08:30 next collapse

Welp, I had no idea about this, time to delete my gallery I have had for 20 years.

Stopped using it last year as it was just so slow.

Brunbrun6766@lemmy.world on 17 May 2024 09:48 collapse

Is there really a point? It’s likely already been scraped into the data pool

stoy@lemmy.zip on 17 May 2024 11:52 collapse

Sure, I may be too late now, but removing real content makes their platform less valuable overall.

iAvicenna@lemmy.world on 17 May 2024 08:40 next collapse

wow I had forgotten about this website for such a long time. Like maybe 15-20 years ago it was a great resource for fantasy themed drawings and inspiration for rpg games

StrawberryPigtails@lemmy.sdf.org on 17 May 2024 09:41 next collapse

That’s a site I haven’t heard of in a while.

MargotRobbie@lemmy.world on 17 May 2024 10:37 next collapse

Most serious artists have switched to using ArtStation and/or Instagram a long time ago, not because of AI, but because of the weird stuff on DeviantArt.

This article also misrepresented Andersen v. Stability AI, you can read the judge’s opinion here:

…bakerlaw.com/…/ECF-117-Order-on-Motion-to-Dismis…

But basically, the judge’s opinion was scathing and dismissed all but one of the plaintiffs’ claims.

There is a very good reason you can’t copyright artistic styles.

Mango@lemmy.world on 17 May 2024 16:53 collapse

The weird stuff on deviant art is still better than people who direct link PDF files at law firm websites.

MargotRobbie@lemmy.world on 17 May 2024 17:36 collapse

😢

Mango@lemmy.world on 17 May 2024 17:40 collapse

You get a pass for being the local Android crazed Margot Robbie.

RandomGuy79@lemmy.world on 17 May 2024 12:06 next collapse

There should always be a home for you degenerates to enjoy whatever category of poorly drawn unicorn porn one likes

altima_neo@lemmy.zip on 17 May 2024 12:50 next collapse

Didn’t forget Sonic inflation comics

IndiBrony@lemmy.world on 17 May 2024 13:43 collapse

I’m more of a Pegasus guy myself.

>IWTCIRD

atrielienz@lemmy.world on 17 May 2024 12:55 next collapse

Angelo ran da into the ground long before this. Not gonna lie, I’m not surprised. Not even disappointed.

DFWSAM@lemmy.world on 17 May 2024 14:06 next collapse

It’s obvious, generative AI could not exist without human work on which to train and rather than ask, or pay, for access to it, tech companies (and the assholes running them) feel free to appropriate it as they see fit.

Fuck them running.

istanbullu@lemmy.ml on 17 May 2024 16:54 collapse

The coolest AI work these days is open source, and developed by enthusiastic communities across the world.

LucidNightmare@lemmy.world on 17 May 2024 14:09 next collapse

Ah, man. I remember when I went to this site to get themes for windows cursor, windows themes, and even skins for some of the programs I liked at the time. They went downhill quite some time ago, maybe around 2014 or 2015, as I stopped using that site as much because of the increase in pornographic stuff that showed on the front page. It will be missed though, either way.

Plopp@lemmy.world on 17 May 2024 14:35 next collapse

Coincidentally, I remember starting using that site in 2014 or 2015.

LucidNightmare@lemmy.world on 17 May 2024 17:13 collapse

How was it? What was your use-case for it? The software/theme part of the website started to get drowned out by furry stuff, and the occasional live nude models or just scantily dressed models, which is fine but not what I went there for.

LaunchesKayaks@lemmy.world on 17 May 2024 19:11 collapse

I stopped using the site in 2014. Used to post regularly but got sick of all the porn. I stopped posting art online for a long time. Then I stopped drawing for a while. Now I’m trying to get back into it. Posted on the artshare community a while back and the feedback was nice.

Sabata11792@kbin.social on 17 May 2024 15:09 next collapse

Thinly veiled and successful porn site blocks porn. Everyone leaves. They killed themselves for money.

The lifers clinging to the site blame AI because the bots are the only thing keeping the lights on. All the humans left with the porn.

Sylvartas@lemmy.world on 17 May 2024 16:49 next collapse

I’d argue all the humans left when artstation became big. All my artists friends used to upload their (non porn) work to deviantart before artstation was popular. But banning the porn was the first nail in the coffin for sure.

Sabata11792@kbin.social on 17 May 2024 17:16 collapse

I haven't head of art station till now. What's the difference from diviant art? Seems like its a censored platform as well from 30 seconds of googling.

Sylvartas@lemmy.world on 17 May 2024 18:20 collapse

The UI looks more “slick”, and it is censored, so your portfolio or whatever you want to showcase isn’t displayed alongside some MLP porn or pregnant Sonic comics. Which doesn’t mean there isn’t tons of “artistic nudity” on the site though, last time I checked.

I’m not an artist myself but I know the artists in my industry (videogames) love to use it

Sabata11792@kbin.social on 17 May 2024 19:23 collapse

Thanks. I never seen it mentioned, although I wouldn't have much reason to not being an artist.

RampantParanoia2365@lemmy.world on 17 May 2024 17:44 next collapse

They did? Since when?

Sabata11792@kbin.social on 17 May 2024 19:00 next collapse

Who decides if that's porn or not? The rule says no porn and I can only imagine she has less on for the account only images.

https://www.deviantartsupport.com/en/article/what-is-deviantarts-policy-around-sexual-erotic-and-fetish-themes

As a hypothetical potential user, I see "no porn" from a site I seen a lot of porn on in the past. The first thing I think is a big corpo bough them and milked it dry. Even if it's not enforced the perception is "we caved to censorship for profit over letting our users do whatever doesn't wreak the law". They killed trust.

sebinspace@lemmy.world on 17 May 2024 20:53 collapse

Buddy there’s fucken porn. If you assholes split legs like you split hairs you’d be a lot less miserable…

SaltySalamander@fedia.io on 18 May 2024 03:22 collapse

"sexy" is not automatically porn.

RampantParanoia2365@lemmy.world on 19 May 2024 00:57 collapse

She is often fully nude. She calls it erotic cosplay.

Blackmist@feddit.uk on 17 May 2024 20:32 next collapse

My missus used to post drawings on there about 10-15 years ago.

Think all the actual art is on Twitter these days (although some have gone to Mastodon).

Just seems a bit of a niche social network when bigger ones exist with bigger audiences and more chance of people actually wanting something drawn. Even if it’s mostly really weird smut.

Toribor@corndog.social on 17 May 2024 21:03 next collapse

Where will I get my pregnant Sonic fix now?

Kolanaki@yiffit.net on 17 May 2024 21:13 next collapse

When did DA ever allow porn?

Sabata11792@kbin.social on 18 May 2024 00:34 collapse

Wasn't it years ago? I'm starting to think I'm just making a big dumb now.

Kolanaki@yiffit.net on 18 May 2024 01:17 collapse

Afaik, it hasn’t and I have been using it since around junior high or high school. It might have allowed it when it was brand new; I don’t know how old it was when I first stumbled upon it.

Sabata11792@kbin.social on 18 May 2024 01:20 next collapse

Honestly, its as old as I can remember and im old enough to forget that shit. Now I'm just sad for being old.

Microw@lemm.ee on 18 May 2024 01:40 collapse

I think it used to allow all kinds of erotic content and fetish stuff, just not outright porn.

rottingleaf@lemmy.zip on 19 May 2024 09:27 collapse

Thinly veiled and successful porn site

All I ever came to DA for is wallpapers.

homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world on 17 May 2024 16:27 next collapse

Worse still, DeviantArt showed little desire to engage with these concerns

Well. There it tis.

sfantu@lemmy.world on 17 May 2024 16:47 next collapse

To take it from the publishing industry, A.I. is already decimating once-common job prospects. An April report from the Society of Authors found that 26 percent of the illustrators surveyed “have already lost work due to generative A.I.” and about 37 percent of illustrators “say the income from their work has decreased in value because of generative A.I.”

I have to say … I LOVE THIS !

Adapt or else …

istanbullu@lemmy.ml on 17 May 2024 16:51 next collapse

Deviant is probably having the best time of its existance thanks to generative models.

coriza@lemmy.world on 17 May 2024 18:57 next collapse

It is sad that so much of technological advancement is not freeing people from labor has the opposite effect, making people fight to pay rent and necessities everyday and never having free time to live. There is so much to like in these new Ai technologies but they being wielded by capitalists to extract a little more money. I highly doubt that visual arts is a big expensive in movies and films since usually half the budget is marketing and another big chuck to secure big stars to the project.

In any case everyone already lost and the Internet is a little bit worst. Reading about this class actions I think no good will come out of it, or the draconian copyright laws will be even worst and small artists will already have lost to the prior models using their content or a “fair use” exception will be made but only for big companies AI and not help small artists and content creators that battle with DMCA abuse taking down fair use vídeos from YouTube and content from over the net anyway.

rottingleaf@lemmy.zip on 19 May 2024 09:26 collapse

Technological advancement, thus power, is sometimes used against other people to reduce their power.

We live in a society.

I think what we still have is a lot. Saying it’s all dead is a huge exaggeration.

I’ve just installed Encarta 98 for nostalgic feelings, and found it quite lacking (as in being false and on the side of the criminal and not his victim) on a few points. Wikipedia is better on those.

We are also taking some things for given.

HawlSera@lemm.ee on 18 May 2024 01:51 collapse

It fell ages ago, all the artists I follow went to FurAffinity ages ago.

FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today on 18 May 2024 03:43 collapse

I didn’t really move to another platform when I stopped using deviantart a few years ago, I just started sharing my work with small circles and local galleries instead.