New blog post: An art-challenged individual's perspective on AI (anime)

generated art

content/post/2022-11-20-an-art-challenged-individual-s-perspective-on-ai-anime-generated-art.md

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 date: 2022-11-20 22:17:41+01:00
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@@ -55,7 +55,7 @@ Many, from researchers to particularly smart lay people, actually started workin
 
 The advantage of all of this is that a regular user, assuming the availability of a suitable high-end GPU (NVIDIA or AMD, although Intel's ARC could also prove useful in the future), can generate art. There's a [plethora of software available to do so](https://www.reddit.com/r/StableDiffusion/comments/wx7f50/stable_diffusion_user_interfaces_and_how_to/), [although the most popular one is very ambiguous on licensing](https://github.com/AUTOMATIC1111/stable-diffusion-webui/issues/2059). There is still [plenty of movement (warning: some links contained there may be NSFW)](https://rentry.org/sdupdates3) in the field, as well.
 
-The rest of this post, in fact deals to what I actually did with all this stuff.
+The rest of this post, in fact, deals to what I actually did with all this stuff.
 
 ## Art-challenged?
 
@@ -85,7 +85,7 @@ Clicking at random through the list of the "newly added" sites made me end up on
 
 {{< imgthumb src="images/2022/11/maya-shocked.png" size="600x" caption="I'm... I'm the copy of someone else's memory!?" >}}
 
-However, I was never able to find the drawing again. I don't even remember the web page, and the image was not on any of the many backups I made. I remember saving it, but it was likely lost. So for many years, "Maya" was just an idea that kept going back and forth in my head. At some point, the concept of a "civilian Maya" (the one you've seen so far) and a "battle Maya", heavily inspired by 1980s anime like 超音戦士ボーグマン ([Sonic Soldier Borgman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_Soldier_Borgman)), having the ability to transform and don some kind of powered suit (with a bracelet heavily borrowed from Borgman's Baltector).
+However, I was never able to find the drawing again. I don't even remember the web page, and the image was not on any of the many backups I made. I remember saving it, but it was likely lost. So for many years, "Maya" was just an idea that kept going back and forth in my head. At some point, the concept of a "civilian Maya" (the one you've seen so far) and a "battle Maya", heavily inspired by 1980s anime like 超音戦士ボーグマン ([Sonic Soldier Borgman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_Soldier_Borgman)), having the ability to transform and don some kind of powered suit (with a bracelet heavily borrowed from Borgman's Baltector), took shape.
 
 {{< imgthumb src="images/2022/11/maya-suit.png" size="600x" caption="I'm also Maya, and I will fight whatever random evil threatens this town!" >}}
 
@@ -147,9 +147,20 @@ There are several points that will need to get cleared:
 
 1. This is not "stealing". At best it is plagiarism, or copyright infringement. They are not the same thing, as stealing implies a physical deprivation of something, not an unauthorized copy or modification;
 2. Whether AI art is a derivative work of the images it was trained on, it is likely a matter that will need courts to get involved, because at this point there is absolutely no clear way to call the generated art "original" or "derivative", in particular when no preexisting subjects are involved;
-3. There's the whole stuff of AI being used for stuff that people would find unpleasant, borderline legal, or outright revolting and creepy. Again, now that the models are out, while one can "censor" or "limit" them, other people may be still able to add whatever they want to them, so it may need law, or courts if such limits are wanted;
+3. There's the whole stuff of AI being used for stuff that people would find unpleasant, borderline legal, or outright revolting and creepy. Again, now that the models are out, while one can "censor" or "limit" them, other people may be still able to add whatever they want to them, so it may need law, or courts if such limits are wanted.
 
+Given the pace this field is evolving, I'm guessing it will take some time for everything to settle and these issues are discussed (if they are). Interesting (or troubling, depending on your point of view) times ahead.
 
+{{< imgthumb src="images/2022/11/yumiko-wind.png" size="600x" caption="Is a storm brewing, or will the sun shine again?" >}}
 
 ## Conclusions
 
+So, what's the conclusion of this somewhat long and rambling text (aside "close browser tab", of course)? I'm not an artist at all, and I admittedly enjoy the opportunity that these methods give me to give form to concepts that, for lack of skill (and sometimes money) were left to random thoughts in moments of boredom. Likewise, they injected a second life (or rather a third in the project's development history) in old characters and stories: Yumiko and Satsuki's creator actually enjoys those images quite a lot.
+
+Like everything, it is not perfect and there are problems of all kinds. It's getting to the level of good enough for me, and I honestly look forward to any potential improvements the future may bring. And with a technology that brings, inherently, some distruption, I guess that the debates on AI generated imagery won't calm down any time soon, and some shift in perspective (good or bad) will have to occur.
+
+So, this brings the journey narrated in this very long post to an end. The three real stars of it (certainly not me), Yumiko, Satsuki, and Maya, bid you farewell. Maybe they'll pop here again with another post on AI generated art, maybe they won't.
+
+{{< multithumb "images/2022/11/yumiko-farewell.png" "images/2022/11/satsuki-farewell.png"  "images/2022/11/maya-farewell.png" >}}
+
+Only time will tell. So, until next time.