I used AI in a video. There was backlash.
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Let's talk about Artificial Intelligence. AI art. After all, if there's an elephant in the room, address it.
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If you could have made made that video in a few hours, I trust you would have made many more.
Oh, buddy, would I ever. 😂
Exactly, what do these people think, it takes 2 hours to make a 1 hour high quality animation. That's actually insane. These people are actually silly.
edit:
Someone said people are getting confused so I will clarify
I don't think it takes 2 hours to make a 1 hours high quality animation, and I think it's silly to think like that.
@@randomdams9179 I'll admit I would have guessed a much shorter time period than the actual answer, but I'm pretty darn sure my guess would have been much longer than 2 hours!
I use Latex which is a Math Markup editor. I know it takes HOURS of editing to make it look nice for the students on notes. When Austin talked about voice and how many takes I could easily relate with that. And I'm just using what is basically a fancy text editor. Like I say for every 7 hours its 3 hours writing on content and 4 hours editing it to make it look readable. I can't imagine the work that goes into doing AI with video.
You'd think that would be obvious. Apparently, to a lot of YT commenters it isn't.
I don't know about anyone else, but I would really enjoy a "here are all of the digital creation tools I use/have used, and what they do" video.
Agreed. There is a disconnect between what tools viewers assumed made the videos and what the creators actually used.
I always like seeing credit to the whole team making a video and their roles.
My favorite is when there is a legit sources list - especially on noted facts or referenced claims (think Lemmino’s most recent video) yes, it takes more time, but it provides that layer of depth that shows true intention and care for the subject being discussed.
I agree! I'm very fascinated by the range of programs that exist! I'm only familiar with Grammarly.
Great idea, Corridor Crew here on youtube did a behind-the-scenes on their entire process regarding an AI anime video they made. It's incredible the amount of work they put into it.
Only if he did it once that's fine but if he has to do it for every video then it becomes this thing were ppl are always going to want him to prove his work like he's in math class.
@@LovehandelsBut there is a reason behind that. Math isn’t meant to teach you how to do one type of math, it’s meant to teach a wide swath of mathematical concepts. It’s the difference between driving somewhere by a specific route, in comparison to just driving through a field, or using a highway. You’re meant to memorize the complex functions, rather than just know how to do the basic functions.
But I feel you. When a question wants a specific answer, and you provide the correct answer, but don’t get it because of how you solved the problem, it’s frustrating. But that is more of a problem with the way math is tested, and I don’t think anyone really knows any other option for testing for math skills right now.
In terms of that first comment hypothesising that the whole book must obviously be AI generated too...the several months I personally spent writing the first draft of The Spider Queen (of which there is still a backup in my files) can put your minds at ease. Austin was an INCREDIBLE client who paid my full proposed rate without a blink and was super supportive and understanding throughout the whole process.
Austin said that he has Audible working on a voice recording of your and his book right? So even with his “no effort AI video” voice, a voice actor will still be paid to narrate the novel, correct?
That's exactly what a robot pretending to be a human would say!
@@wisemage0 lol
The AI scare has gotten so bad that I got a comment from someone who thought some art from a video of mine was AI generated. Ignoring how the video was released many years before AI tech got good, and the original piece of art was credited in the description to like 2016 lol
Someone thought AI was used in an image in your video just means the art looks terrible. It's not a sign It's gotten bad. But good job working your video into the comment.
@@itsgonnabeanaurfromme Bro the art in the video was absolutely amazing and a banger. Way too good to be AI (Persecution of the Masses Metal Cover, I think the most popular video on my youtube channel)
@@itsgonnabeanaurfromme I also wouldn't say it if I didn't get that ridiculous comment from that guy in the first place, it's not a plug, cause I don't like the song I made for it anymore.
@@Poliostasis no need to defend yourself, ignore the idiot. I'm sure your content was amazing :)
@@chbmckie I guess...
one of my favourite artists on pixiv got wrongly accused of using AI, having all of their work tagged AI even if they were made before the advent of AI tools. I get your struggle.
Fitting pfp mate, fight the power✊
what artist is it? I'd like to show some support and check out their work
That has definitely happened. There is also a website where visitors can take the test and check if they're able to spot AI from non-AI (artorai or aiorart or something... 10/10 would recommend though).
This is becoming more and more of an issue because beginner artists, UNKNOWINGLY most of the time, try their hand with shortcuts, just to feel some instant gratification. This means beginners will be discouraged as more and more people will just call them out for using AI (Which, they are, to be clear, and it's now worse since it's stained with all unethically scraped works so far... so the backlash I think will be just as bad... even if they're just training their eyes or whatever).
You either need to have a trained eye to spot them, or hope the artist is being transparent. Much like how you can tell a drawing was traced. Right now, AI has the same issues: unaided, it spits out wrong perspective, proportions, sometimes structure - not to mention composition. You actually need to work a lot to make an AI generated image "passable" - not NEARLY as much work as you have to put in to get there the traditional way. And we'll still be disappointed that real mastery won't be acknowledged. But then again... isn't that already happening?
It's just an on-going struggle, just slightly worse
But Austin DID use AI.
@@TNEQLAnd people should get off their high horse about it.
I think Most people’s problems with AI is that companies think that they can competently replace people with it rather than use it as a tool to help them.
It’s not “will think” they’re already doing it.
People need to avoid blaming the technology or the tools and place the blame where it belongs- stone-hearted greedy people being evil.
But the truth is the problem is capitalism not AI. AI is just technology, just like cameras replaced most portrait painters. Our real issue is that these tools will result in unemployment and starvation for others. Which is a capitalism issue not an AI issue.
This fearmongering nonsense has accompanied every technological innovation ever.
No, it's just the popular thing to hate these days so, whether they realise or not, they're doing it for kudos.
Why would they promote uncompensated labour for it otherwise? Uncompensated labour is the old issue, AI art is the new issue therefore AI is the Devil's work while uncompensated labour is okay.
I just found out about this response video, and I want to seriously apologize. Thank you for explaining how the original video was made. You made significant effort to ensure the resources you used were ethical and no one was uncompensated. And it took months of work to have it come out as good as it did, so none of this was by any means a shortcut. You also made good points regarding where the line should be drawn as far as computer assisted tools go, and what counts as transformative media, and it’s much more nuanced than it seemed. It’s worth thinking about.
The last jab at you in my comment was really uncalled for, too, and I’m doubly sorry. You are an artist and you care about how your art is made. This whole AI panic has been a nightmare, and there is still real concern, but we can’t get so caught up in the frenzy that we forget there’s good and ethical use cases for it, and we need more information before we jump to conclusions.
I hope your book and future projects are a success. Keep up the good work, keep having fun making stuff, and sorry again.
Well I definitely wasn’t expecting an apology! It’s always nice to find that rare moment in the internet where someone manages to change another’s mind. Good on you for listening man! :D
fr@@dreamy_kiwi2780
Mad respect to you for watching the video and making an apology. That's awesome dude.
Actual respect, not many people like you
@Ocorydonagreed
As an illustrator and graphic designer, the AI images I generated by text prompt can never replace the specific image that I had in my mind. I thought AI can help with ideation, but as it turns out, I still need myself to do the concepts. You still need people to put things together for it to be cohesive and for it to make sense. Totally agree with you Austin!
21
@@tijesunimiadebiyi7405 You stupid
Is it just me? I always got the impression that every video you made was some type of an experiment. Be it in the way you tell stories, the kind of media, or the type of stories you are sharing with us. It’s honestly one of the reasons I love your channel. Every video is different and I always found it encouraging, at least to me, to try something new or to think outside the box or to not be afraid to share random facts that I’ve learned with people who probably didn’t care to know, but are all the better for knowing now☺️ Keep doing what you’re doing….. there’s more of us that love your work! 🥰🥰🥰
Exactly!
no. totally not just you :)
Indeed. You never know what the next Austin vid will be and I'm all for it!
Analyzing and living in a digital age: metaliving. Metal iving? Metal Ivy! There you go! No intelligence required :D
Huge respect to the way you responded to this. Infortmative, non-combative, and well thought out
So good! Really interesting video and totally respectful. Great example of how AI can be used to supplement content without wholesale copy-pasting it.
I'll bring in the combativeness he left out; ha! Get railed, morons. Take the L, sit down, face the corner.
i don't like how he didn't say that he did use ai art, he just used tech terms that not everyone knows.
@@aqua-bery Except he did. He lists all the tools he used, including AI. He begins listing those at 12:28 and includes AI (which was trained only on images owned by the company) on that list. What the hell else do you want from him?
@@aqua-beryTitle of the video, my guy. 😂
@@aqua-beryThis is an exceptionally bad faith interpretation.
Zoomed in and read the comments. Thanks Austin. Y'all are sad. A lot of it is very self-absorbed. A lot of it is talking to Austin like you're his boss and he works for you. A lot of it is talking down to a guy who has tried hard to make a LOT of creative content for you guys. Should have called the comment section 30 minutes of completely useless advice from strangers. these people have 'megamind' size heads. Keep up the good work Austin. Haters gon' hate. Use whatever tools you need to make your videos in whatever fashion your creative heart desires. Them folks are boobs
21:29 Audio transcriber here, I still have a job! We just spend our time editing AI transcriptions, and writing them when it fails to capture anything.
We started that BEFORE ChatGPT!!
I worked on that as well :)
I cant believe the Moist Critical jumpscare at the start actually scared me that was so unexpected
ugh same :(
Lol wasn't even scary I laughed
@@M_u_t_e96024cap🧢 scariest thing in the world
Lmao 🤣
You probably looked too closely at your screen or your sound is too loud.
Its because he’s so scary.
Darn it, Austin, I was watching this video and formulating a response of "how dare you not shoot your TH-cam content on Super 8 and project it on the side of a barn for passing cars" when you brought that point home in the last 30 seconds! Well done.
He should've commissioned a play writer and some actors to perform this live on a world tour. This is just lazy tool using :(
Anyway, I have to run. My leg won't roast itself. I have to at least reach Mach 7 to generate enough heat.
I look at it in the same way that a paintbucket tool doesnt mean you didnt think about the color in a scene
Your story with the “film-only” professor was a perfect conclusion to this essay!
The same discussion happened when the sewing machine was invented. And then the washing machine. And desktop publishing, self-serve gas pumps, ATMs and self check-out. If we grew up with it and it put people out of work before our time, it's just how things are but if it's new and putting people out of work, it's gross.
People in my small town complain a lot about self-checkout putting cashiers out of business, but I never saw these people getting the more expensive gas at the full-service gas station which was still operational until a couple of years ago....
As an exclusively-digital photographer, I still get people exactly like that professor, saying that my photography isn’t “real” because it’s digital-“the camera does all the work for you, right?” No. It doesn’t.
I talked to a guy who used to do film photography and he said that my photos aren’t REAL photography because they’re digital, and I wish I’d had the presence of mind to tell him, since he was a photographer too, that he sounded like the people who say that all photography isn’t REAL ART because “all you do is press a button.” He didn’t even see the hypocrisy.
ETA: oh I forgot about this aspect of that particular conversation too-I mentioned that most of my photography is nature photography (mostly birds, plants, and landscapes) with very minimal editing, and he said that made it slightly “better” in his eyes… but I could easily see an argument from a different photography-gatekeeper saying that that’d make it worse! If there’s minimal editing choices made by me, then the camera really IS “doing most of the work,” is it not? Seems so exhausting to be an art-gatekeeper, because now you have to decide whether you’re Team “Your Photos Must Be This% Unaltered to Ride” or Team “The Subject and Equipment Did The Art, Not You.”
Lately, I've been a "where is this channel even going??..." subscriber, but this video has given me a lot of context. And on top of that, what a great way to open up the reality of all the "industry tools." I'm really excited to keep seeing your work.
Well his live is going in different places and that means he shifts focus in what he does.
I was on the fence about the video having AI elements, but you clarifying the effort and time/financial roadblocks you had throughout the production process absolutely convinced me that this was a project of passion and not laziness. Some may still disagree and they’re within their right to do that, but I’m definitely satisfied with your thorough explanation and I’m still eagerly looking forward to your future content. Thank you Austin.
Cat.
@@codekillerz5392 kitty 🐱
I feel like it should be assumed, most of the time, that if someone is using ai its because they don't have the means to get vocalists, artists and a full team.
chiming in with my opinion on the matter of AI as an artist seeing the advantage of ai while being wary of it: I think the issue lies with the end product. a lot of the tools you've mentioned in the "this is powered by AI and it's no problem, so why is my creation a problem" comes down to the fact that they are *tools* that help in creating a human-made product. you use ai to help you edit a video that you shot and appear in. the end product of a generated image *is* the generated image, therefore it is not a tool, it is a replacement to something that a person could've created.
that essentially is what the discussion of ai boils down to in my opinion: what is supposed to be a tool is used as an artwork guising itself as genuinely hand-made. every example you gave was basically "artists use this tool to make their work easier" but the tool in question helps them in the *process* of making something themselves. in your animated video the images of the characters are generated to imitate the look of human-made artwork and is the final product, therefore it can be criticized as replacing human-made creations. I don't argue against progress, and I personally find ai-assisted tools in editing softwares to be godsend that help make tedious works easier as they are just part of the whole. I argue that since art is largely a very human-centered concept, and being made by people with feelings and thoughts is what makes it unique and interesting, replacing it with machine-made imagery designed to pass as human-made feels jarring. it essentially boils the beauty of art to a bottom line, a product to be presented and not thought of.
also- adobe firefly/ai image creation is a very thin veil to cover under, as more and more artists come out and reveal that their works have been fed to the algorithm without their knowledge or consent, and adobe themselves basically said "everything uploaded to our services will be used to feed the algorithm *without* asking permission from the respective artists". this is basically theft, thus while being legal it's still pretty shitty and ethically grey.
!! this
No place like the internet to take a nuanced, complex issue and boil it down to "thing good" or "thing bad"
if its an ethical issue…. yeah
I would like to see more people make a behind the scenes video to show how they use these tools because I’m not sure how this software works and how it meshes with these types of creative works. Thanks for this perspective.
Ong
lookup corridor crews rock paper scissors anime breakdown
The main thing I got out of this video is the realization that AI, used responsibly, enables smaller creators like yourself to make things they would never have been able to otherwise, and that is something I can certainly get behind.
That's the wonderful thing about it. Productivity tools allow faster growth. They don't put people out of jobs. The faster people can break through the more quickly they can hire professionals to fill in the gaps in their ability, or to delegate labor to. And the more efficiently those professionals work... etc, etc.
Yeah
Yep. I'm making an illustrated book for a sequel for the Dinotopia series by James Gurney (intended solely for my kids to enjoy), using entirely AI art and using AI editing and cleanup for my own (messy) story. The result is looking great, and it's gone from "a pipe dream that would require me to spend years to learn oil painting to a professional level and months to paint hundreds of pieces" and is instead now "a month or two of editing and layout each evening" which makes it suddenly a reasonable side project to spend time on for my kids.
@@darkPrince10101 This is an amazing idea, and you should make it available either non-commercially or with proceeds maybe donated to a charity of your choice, maybe one benefiting kids reading or charity: water is a good one. You're not held up to the same standards as Disney unless you're trying to profit from it
@@mulethedonkey2579 True, but the style, characters, and setting are all explicitly connected to or derived from James Gurney's copyrighted works, so I would want to seek his approvals before I'd be able to ask for donations for it.
However, I have another short story unrelated to any existing IP that I want to convert into an illustrated kids book via AI art, and I really like the idea of making it available with proceeds going to charity so I will likely do that when I finish and publish it!
I do not mind AI being a tool for creative people who have a great passion, not at all. I just would hate to see people lose jobs and go broke because million dollar companies who have the money and resources getting even more greedy. AI could be used for so many good things I just really hope it will be a tool for the artists and not for rich CEO's to get even richer.
That's partially what WGA & SAG-AFTRA are striking for. We shouldn't burn independent creators at the stake because they use the same/similar tools. Our anger should be focused solely at those truly causing harm like the studios, the companies replacing human support with chatbots and other powerful people hurting everyone (consumers, employees & the environment) to make, often only marginally, more money. Or the tech & AI companies who will talk about AI ethics but haven't demonstrated that it's anything but buzzwords to prevent regulation.
Problem is, honestly it isn't intended to be made for helping creative people given how much they push into it.
Imo that's just abit of coping and road to slippery slope.
@@darkzeroprojects4245but we could make ones that are, out of the ones that are open-source
I 100% agree, and I think this is a very reasonable concern. However, it's not something I'm overly concerned about because this is true of almost all immerging technologies. In many or most cases, jobs aren't made obsolete due to the development of any one innovation. Rather, the scope of the job evolves to utilize the resources that become available and people adapt to use them. This is how we make any meaningful progress in any endeavor.
No more customers eventually
So glad you took the time to put all of this into a video! It was very informative and professional- I think something is up with my YT notifications. I haven’t watched your videos in a while so I didn’t know anything about Spider Queen until now. After watching this I’ll go ahead and check it out! I’m kinda glad in a way, if it weren’t for this video I wouldn’t have known about Spider Queen at all.
In relation to your story about the professor who refused to use digital cameras over film, I'd like to share one that a co-worker once told me. I work in the planning/estimating phase of construction, specifically drywall. One of my co-workers used to work for a contractor back in the early 2000's who refused to use these new-fangled computer programs to plan out projects or do simple takeoff. Instead, they preferred to use physical paper plans on these giant tables, going over them with pencils, rulers, and compasses. By the 2010's, they were bankrupt and out of business. You know why? Because computer programs like OST and AutoCAD allowed other contractors, their competition, to pump out bids and proposals at a quicker rate with the same level of detail. Now these older programs are being replaced too with things like Revit, which is almost like an all-in-one CAD program for use by architects, engineers, estimators, project managers, field workers, etc. We're yet again having to adapt to the most efficient way of doing things, and so long as people adapt then nobody's being put out of a job.
Imagine a writer saying that if you don't chop down trees to make pencils, then it's not "real" writing. Tools are tools, they're only a side-thing that's necessary to make _something else._
Not a relevant argument. There's no "adapting" to quitting and just letting a computer do all of the work.
Exactly. I'm reminded of luddites who destroyed factory machines because they feared for their livelihoods, or the elevator operators who went on strike because they didn't want to lose their jobs. The world moves forward.
@@Cr3zant didn't watch the video, did you?
@@I.____.....__...__ you don't?
This is one of the best AI discussions I have seen, I honestly hope this video reaches a wide audience, I´m 100% on your side on this one Austin, hope you are doing well.
Exactly this! Shared this with some friends who normally wouldn’t be interested in Austin’s videos, but I feel like this one can apply to all
Same!
I agree. People who readily dismiss all AI as ‘the devil’ should listen to this.
It really goes to show that 99% of people who vehemently hate anything AI dont actually know a single thing about AI and just base their opinions on things they've been told by people who also have no idea what they are talking about. I guess that's modern discourse in a nutshell though huh
Hell this even goes for people who use AI all the time, thinking it does things it absolutely does not
There's no side, that's silly. Austin is just a dude who uses controversial tools. Saying this just muddled discussions, especially since Austin himself still doesn't know the technology fully himself. Like the part he mentioned training a diffusion model on purely licensed works. Doing that from scratch is super costly, especially for a video. What he means is fine tuning. Using a existing model to then fine tune to coax out a style. However, the foundational data itself isn't licensed.
I don’t get the hostility to ai
I certainly don't side with the AI bros "git gud or find a new job" mentality when it comes to the threat of AI to human artists but I think you nailed an aspect of AI use that human artists have to be capable of, throwing the baby out with the bath water. If a project requires 10 artists to get the job done on time, you either don't do it and no one gets paid, try to make it work anyway by underpaying and overworking the artists you have, or use AI to supplement your deficiencies. That's not without its issues and there is the risk of ending up with a slippery slope where artists become less and less essential each year until you've got one guy just there to sign off on what the AI produces but at least for now, artists can benefit from the new creative ventures that AI allows us to pursue.
You presented your case, your evidence, and your examples very very well. I genuinely believe you don't deserve the backlash for the time and effort put into the project
On the one hand, AI voiceover work is beneficial to smaller creators and opens up options unavailable to them previously. On the other, it's when larger companies start replacing working people en mass that AI voiceover becomes a problem. That second situation is the one that should get backlash.
The backlash over the AI visuals could have been avoided if Adobe made their systems more well known. People outside of the creative space don't know there are ethically trained AIs out there. So when people see AI work, they assume it's done in a program that steals other work for training purposes.
@@TheKrstff Does it become a problem, though? It's no different than millions of other innovations in productivity that you simply take for granted.
@@pXnTilde Any system that puts an entire industry out of work is a problem.
As a society we should be wary of any tool that puts thousands of people out of work overnight. Especially when it is art.
As a culture we should be scared when technology ends a form of artistic expression.
@@TheKrstff to be fair a large production will find it easier to just hire a voice actor for the amount of time an effort it takes to use AI to deliver a performance that they want. It takes an AI 3-5 minutes to generate a spoken line of dialogue that would take a real voice actor 3 seconds to perform. It will be cheaper for the small production to take the time to regenerate the line (to be "good enough") than it would the large production, but cheaper for the large production to simply pay the voice actor their day rate for a better performance.
@@TheKrstff You are making the wild assumption that a) it's going to "put an entire industry out of work" and b) that it will happen "overnight"
You seem to lack any ability to look into the past at great booms in productivity tools. Even the ones that made an industry disappear did not do it "overnight" - not everyone will jump on at once, and many of the people who would be doing that work will become the experts on using the AI.
You're viewpoint is naive as to be asinine. But there's always a group of people indoctrinated into fear of the future.
I hate that you can never seem to catch a break. I appreciate your hard work and creativity to provide so much free content, and I know a lot of people would say the same.
I would definitely say the same.
I think at a certain point you would just not care.
It's pretty obvious when you see ai art if it was made by an artist or made by an ai fan
Hopefully it stays that way
A big part of the copyright issue is there's not a lot of transparency regarding what has been drawn from. I think there's quite a bit of room for us to regulate and ensure some sort of paper trail. This would also make it that much easier for creators to cite their sources.
@@chbmckie Adobe trained Firefly on Adobe Stock, but they failed to notify their contributors before they trained on their content, and they didn't - and still don't - respect any creators who never wanted to be a part of the training. They just updated their massive ToS on their website, expected people to actively check said site, and went on abusing hundreds of thousands of art pieces. Oh, and then they marketed the shit out of it with the message of "See how ethical we are, we trained this AI on OUR content". Except, they were never copyright holders to begin with, and you can literally read in their own terms, that contributors don't sign over their rights when contributing to Adobe Stock.
Even now, you cannot effectively opt out of training their algorithm, even if you don't want them to use your work.
I swear, this level of sycophancy for greedy corporations like Adobe really has to end.
there's also the fact that a lot of AI generated images are very very close to actual artwork to the point where artists have found AI images that are basically traced versions of their own art, showing that at the very least the AIs are not doing much changing in some instances
There trained to imitate like humans are.
you cant copyright a style
Yes, but really if one of my drawings was in thousand or hundrid or even 5 other drawings, is that even my drawing anymore?
People are confusing art with drawing. There is art in using ai as a tool to convey a message, there is art in using tts to make your characters feel alive. What isn’t art is just writing a basic prompt and posting it online. But that is obviously not the case here and artists should understand that. What Austin has done takes skill, effort and patience. It compliments the story and combining it with literature is a great example of how we can elevate our talents with modern technologies, as artists. I use ai myself and I completely understand your reasoning. It removes a tedious step, it increases our reach for our creative expressions and it enables us to dive deeper into interests we might not have gotten a chance to do otherwise.
I was admittedly one of the people who thought the book was a graphic novel, but that was 100% my own mistake. I just somehow assumed that. Before the "chapter 1 video" was even out
Also 33:33 people really saw old material that wasn't as good as today's standards and said "oh it must be AI" that's says a lot
I own a compendium of all the original Marvel Man comic issues and oh boy...comics back then were drawn with human anatomy being a suggestion.
@@jamestomato1744 the original Deadpool was also really wonky and it was done by a human!
I think I started the chapter thinking it was intended to be graphical in some capacity, but prose is pretty unmistakably prose, so just listening to the words gave it away that it was something written with the idea that there didn't need to be any visual component in order to be intelligible. That dude saying we all thought it was a comic, crying false advertising or whatever, well he couldn't have spent long actually listening to it, because I don't know any comic book that has that much space for words on the page.
The comic is looking wonky because it was up-scaled and de-noised, it didn't look like that originally, you can see that in some panels the background with the cmyk dot print is just a mushed color with weird likes, that's because the de-noiser interpreted those points as noise, so in the end, looks "AI" because "AI" uses the a similar process of de-noising, but at the end it isn't. That being said, the people claiming that looked AI wasn't claiming that just to be annoying, they had legitimate concerns
@@Kodak-Qthey did not have legitimate concerns. They just don't read enough Golden Age Comic Books
If a worker uses a electric cement mixer to make a house rather than mixing cement with a shovel does that devalue the work they do? Should i pay him less?
This is the conversation that needs to be had, thanks for educating sir
If I'm being honest, I never thought there was anything hinky going on with the video, but I was just listening to it while getting ready for bed.
"AI" has been being used for a while, the outlines for Into the Spiderverse was helped with "AI". In college 10 years ago, there was an "AI" that would sync the camera audio with the sound recorder audio. Logic would use "AI" to remove dead space in audio tracks.
If someone wasn't going to get hired to do the thing in the first place I don't see an issue if it's not done this way, as long as it's not done in an exploitative way.
Using ai to cut out the artist, that's bad. Using ai to assist the art and the artist, I don't see the problem.
"Using AI to cut out the artist, that is bad. Using AI to assist the art and the artist, I don't see the problem."
I agree 100% with that statement. And that is exactly what Austin did.
But what if - AUSTIN WAS THE ARTIST? As he explains, HE DID THE WORK to prep the AI with his own art. He isn’t stealing from anyone.
@@LuckyBird551 There are two things mentioned there which are mutually exclusive. Which is it you think Austin did? Because it's pretty clear to me from this video that Austin used AI "to assist the art and the artist."
Exactly. In this case, Austin himself is the artist.
@@glennacAI stealing from artists also refers to their training data, bruh
AI is an increasingly complicated topic, and my understanding of it is also pretty limited. But if there’s an ethical way to use it, I can agree this is it. I am glad you were able to find different ways to tell your stories, and I’m excited to see what you’ll continue to do in the future. I am also very happy to listen to your experience. Thank you!
I actually put that video in my watch later because I was interested in hearing the first chapter, but assumed it was going to be a still image and narration, so I wanted to put it on during the day like a podcast. I would have watched it right away if I had known it was a full animatic.
Milton Friedman went to China where a handful of government bureaucrats showed him a canal-building project. He couldn’t help but notice the lack of heavy machinery.
He said to the bureaucrat: “Why are the workers digging with shovels? Where are all the machines?”
The bureaucrat replied: “You don’t understand Mr. Friedman, this is a job-creation project!”
He said: “Oh, I thought you wanted to build a canal...If it’s jobs you want, why don’t you take away their shovels and give them spoons?”
I'm sorry for the backlash you've seen, I know how devastating that can be. Thank you for your content, most of us appreciate all your efforts!
Tbf it's Austin, if his audience doesn't give him a backlash then something is definitely wrong, we are an annoying bunch, critical, but annoying
@@michaeltagor4238 that's a strength more than a weakness, but people gotta know when and where to direct it.
@@michaeltagor4238 critical and annoying* It's not a positive to be critical. And maybe y'all should try to be less annoying too? Austin is a real human being. You're not owed the right to interject into his life. We should all try to have more grace with each other.
@@Dysiode being critical is, well, critical. Because to say being critical is bad is to imply complacency is preferrable. Unless you're confusing "critical" thinking with "negative" thinking. Those are different words meaning different things, and I'd agree if you were referring to the latter.
@@DanielFerreira-ez8qd My brother in Christ, if you have to use "is to imply complacency is preferrable" in a sentence about TH-cam videos it's time for some self-reflection.
Austin McConnell isn't making videos for you and doesn't need your opinion about what he's doing wrong. In fact, he's better off without it. You're not advocating for him, you're using him to feel superior.
If you think complacency is a problem, there is a lot of suffering in the world you could contribute to ending.
Animation student here. I haven't watched the Spider queen video yet, because I started doing so and IMMEDIATELY realized the production value that it had. A 50 minute video is very long and takes a lot of time to produce. I believe that AI is a powerful tool when used correctly and this video shows that Austin did precisely that imho
Without getting into the right or wrong, hopefully this event hasn’t caused you too much stress❤
So let me get this straight...anti-AI crowd complains about how training data is taken "without consent" and how AI-generated content takes little effort.
Then you used public domain training data and put a ton of effort into your work, addressing both complaints. And yet you still received backlash.
Either the anti-AI crowd was moving the goalposts or was against AI-generated content simply because it is AI-generated. And the "stolen" and "low-effort" arguments were just used as a tool.
Backer for the movie here. This seems like you've used AI as ethically as possible, while also doing your best to have as much human creativity inserted as possible.
I haven't gotten around to watching that chapter 1, so I didn't even realize AI was used, but the clips looked super cute and you can't even tell from those anyway, aside from the voice. But it still seems really well done, and as a Vocaloid fan, I like AI voices when you're unapologetic about the voices being robots.
I didn't realized ai was used either
As someone who values creativity and is doubtful of AI, I'm glad I waited for your follow-up before making any assumptions. I can't speak for everyone, but my own personal initial concern with the use of AI in the video was that the AI was used to generate the imagery from the start. And you very quickly assuaged those doubts while also opening a nuanced discussion about what computer assisted tools are and what human creativity actually means.
My personal opinion of where to draw the line is whether or not the process of creating art is *started* by a human or a computer - e.g., typing in "red-headed anime woman and white-haired anime scientist" into Dall-E vs commissioning art, or typing in "write a script for Spider Queen" vs thinking of the script and writing it yourself. I don't think AI as a tool of enhancement is a problem, I just don't want it to be part of the foundation of a creative work.
If you want a certain degree of specificity, you'll have a hard time just using AI with 1 prompt and get good results. There will be a whole lot more work involved, including often manual work. Those who don't have the toolset to do manual work will be more limited. They're tools which augment the user's talents/skills.
lol. You're opinions are worthless.
People were very premature in making their comments. I feel like people online nowadays draw conclusions right away, instead of allowing the original poster to explain themselves. It's going downhill.
Fear is the basis of anti-AI sentiment.
"I just don't want it to be part of the foundation of a creative work." I think that's just your assumption since, at least for todays stages of AI development and excluding those pesky sexy girl picts generator on twitter, for anyone who still value thier creative works, AI are just a tool, nothing more.
That guy's mustache is so fancy
I'm reminded of how TRON (1982) was basically disqualified for the special effects Oscar because "using computers was cheating".
New tools are always scary, and big studios need to be held to a high standard to protect creatives, but I am with you here Austin; Tools are tools, artists are artist. And artists need tools that help them as much as possible, while still maintaining their creativity.
Photoshop is cheaper and easier than paints and brushes and air compressors and canvases... And that's been the norm for 20 years, but we still use paints etc.
I have ethical problems with ai but you've 100% done your due diligence in these projects, you licensed everything & put a lot of effort into making the preview. Thank you for sharing your process
This video really made me self reflect, on how much I’ve actually looked into issues like this before engaging in discussion on it, which hasn’t been a lot. I realized when you said it, I totally was one of those people who just wanted that little sense of moral superiority, and that’s embarrassing to be honest! So, thank you for the well put together video and encouraging self reflection and betterment! Keep making cool stuff.
I respect the self reflection that you allowed your self to do.
Not everyone is self-reflective enough to admit to wanting moral superiority on a subject. Happens all the time, and most people have gone through it.
This kind of self reflection is something everyone needs in the internet age
As one of those on the complete opposite end of the spectrum (anti-IP extremist who believes AI art is never immoral), Even though I also disagree with some of the choices he made (for the opposite reasons from most), I also think this video is a very rational and robust justification of his actions and a reality check for all extremists on both sides about how the legal use of AI art will most likely actually be in the future: legally untouchable when fully licensed datasets are used, and legally dubious the more dubious the dataset is.
Be honest, did you use chat GPT to write this self aware comment? 😅
in seriousness, it's nice when people have an open mind and consider the opposite perspective, regardless of whether it changes their mind or not. I thought he made a very good video here and made a lot of good points. I didn't really disagree with his point even before watching the video, but even so it did widen my perspective quite a bit.
Holy shit everyone to ever post anything about ai art online needs to watch this video and actually consider what you said.
Also I don’t think people actually understand what ai is or what it does.
As a student who is studying ai the way people just villainise it is crazy. Not only is making these models super complex but training them and even coming up with training data is all an art form in its self.
Humans learn from each other and by trying to copy each other. Ai is just the same process done a lot faster allowing for more people to be able to create and interact with more means of creation be it video images writing games programming whatever I don’t see how any of this is “evil” or sinister.
I see a day where artists train their own models of their art to help them and code editors have built in line generation and more advanced debug tools. People just don’t see the tool as a tool yet and I hope that will change
Way too many people see in black and white. You just proved that using artificial intelligence to act as an artist isn't automatically a bad thing.
still slop,
I can't believe you would put out an apology video and not put up billboards, you're putting the men who update billboards out of work
To hell with the billboards, they're putting town criers out of business!
"Hear ye, hear ye- support Austin and his content!"
tbh. this ended up being an interesting behind the scenes/movie magic featurette if anything.
I understand your arguments, but I also think you're conflating Algorithms, Computer assistance, and AI. There's a line that needs to be drawn but i do think you're strawmanning a few of the arguments. I've used Grammarly, levelator, and various algorithmic tools built into art editing software. If I were to propose a line to be drawn in the sand, I would put it at the point of fully generating something with only prompts. I think creating artificial intelligence itself at this level is unethical, but i also do believe that AI robs a core aspect of the job from certain areas by taking over the core aspect which is creation itself. Right now it isnt very coherent, and you did go about this in probably the best way possible, but what about others? And what about when it does become indistinguishable? Maybe not the best argument, but its my take on it
What scares me is that for right now it's impossible to make a video like that for 2 hours. For right NOW it may be improving it's truly scary. But props to you for this video
It's a really complicated topic for sure. As an artist, I get the feeling that Anti-AI groups are more against large companies who believe artists can be replaced entirely with AI, or people who call themselves artists after putting a prompt into a text-based image generator and making no additional adjustments. They don't think about the fact that tools like Grammerly or motion capture are "ai". When I say I'm against AI art, it's against the total replacement of artists, not for it's use as a tool.
I personally struggle with people who type a prompt into something like Dalle and call it art. But I can see an argument for using AI for the specific weird, surreal style it produces or training your own on your own art to help with workload. I still feel uncomfortable with it and won't ever use it myself, but I won't pretend like I don't see the benefit of it. Idk, it feels like a slippery slope.
More or less my opinion on the matter as well. Obviously there's no way to completely stop AI as a whole, technological advancement and cost-saving practices make that inevitable, but my problem is when people try to use it as a way to replace artistry as a whole or to cut out artists entirely. Honestly, my biggest issue with the video so far (I'm at around the 2/3rd mark) is how he discusses the use of AI to supplement the animators because they were too expensive or because "the artist might use AI themselves".
Animation is by its nature requires an immense amount of work and skill to do, even with all the shortcuts modern computing has given them - there's a reason hour long movies cost in he millions to make. If he learned that hiring animators was going to be outside of his budget, he should have found some other means to advertise his book, like using whatever assets he already had interspersed with him talking about the book in his normal format as opposed to it being a full story-book approach or some other means adapting what he had already acquired - limitations breed creativity, but instead he felt he had to stick to his original format.
I'm absolutely against the idea that he should've "not made it at all", but once you learn what you can and can't do you need to change your approach, but going to AI is not the right option; doing so inherently devalues the work and skills creatives put in to get to the level needed for this kind of content - it sets the precedent that "even in spite of the years of work you've put in to get the to point to do this professionally, I've found an alternative that can replace you for cheaper". As such, these specialists will either need to appropriate AI into their own work, many of whom are morally objected to the idea due to its unethical use and potential to replace them entirely in the future, or lower their prices significantly (and artists already don't make a whole lot of money as it is), neither of which is a comforting idea.
As for the hired artists using AI themselves, that seems like such a simple solution - talk that out with the artist themselves, find out who you're hiring and ask them about it before taking them on the team
Unfortunately, cases like this show me that it's more than likely artists will end up *having* to incorporate AI into their work to keep up with market demand AS WELL AS lowering their prices. I can only hope that people put up enough of a fight that it doesn't overtake the industry completely, or else artists will become the next horses in a world of automobiles.
I've literally had people tell me I'm a horrible person and my art is terrible because I decided to say that drumming up such a hysteria over AI is a horrible thing to do.
There's no minimum social profile required for people to get on your case over this stuff. I've yet to meet anyone who's willing to hold back with me because I don't work for a massive corporation.
Unfortunately, we don't get to gatekeep who is an artist and who isn't, and if someone wants to call their shitty Midjourney generated pfp their art, well, it is. We built this version of what art means throughout the 1800s and 1900s. We don't get to walk it back now because it suddenly became inconvenient.
I have very little patience for those who perpetuate this hysteria anymore, and the rest of the world is starting to turn around on that too, especially with recent developments with Adobe.
As one of those on the complete opposite end of the spectrum (anti-IP extremist who believes AI art is never immoral), Even though I also disagree with some of the choices he made (for the opposite reasons from most), I also think this video is a very rational and robust justification of his actions and a reality check for all extremists on both sides about how the legal use of AI art will most likely actually be in the future: legally untouchable when fully licensed datasets are used, and legally dubious the more dubious the dataset is.
Nah, is not complicated at all, the people complaining about AI are dumbasses.
Plain and simple.
So what about the huge group of people (like me) who couldn't make art, but now were able to create art (including a lot of adjustments and compositing)? Am I replacing an artist, or am I 'becoming' an artist? I would think a sensible argument could be made that far more people have become artists *due* to generative AI, in the same way as nowadays anybody can easily create a website and designers with little technical skills can create websites using their own designs, whilst 20 years ago you had many developers who had to be involved in that process. Most 'pure' developers I now meet who still make 'simple' websites are there to do unique elements, and I think artists will fulfil similar roles: cookie cutter art will be completely delegated to AI, whilst producing new styles and training new models with particularly unique elements will be an artists job.
As someone who’s trying to create a full 30 minute pilot episode for a show and straight up not being able to afford animators or Lengthy AI Motion capture, the pain of being the only animator, modeler, texture artist, rig builder, sound designer, and one of two writers while also barely surviving on ramen noodles in college is more painful than whatever any hate comment can ever be.
AI should and will be used for non-commercial, small creator content like what you're talking about.
@@mulethedonkey2579Of course. Large companies will definitely try to pull a fast one. But people are freaking out on random people earning as much as they do if they catch a whiff of AI.
Why are you trying to make a 30 minute episode in college? Have you ever supervised an episode of a TV show? Interacted with various departments to bring an episode together? Broke down and graded an episode and allocated shots to artists? This is just some of making a show. May seem cool in college to make your own show, but animation is a team effort. It's also a business, one that generates jobs, puts money and taxes into the local economy and supports other businesses around the location of a studio with lunch and other things bought during work hours and is considered by many governments to be one of the vital industries in their economy. Special visas are often given to support labor in this industry. If it's even possible to make a 30 minute cartoon with just AI, you will do very little for your community beyond make a cartoon compared to a studio that actually works with people.
@@jmhorange maybe because they want to?
its clearly a passion project based on what they are doing in order to try to create it and that they are "surviving on ramen noodles in college".
Not everyone does everything because it makes money, some people do stuff because the enjoy it.
Also just because some big team worked on it doesnt mean its good , sometimes a small team of people that care about the project beyond just making money to survive off can make something as good as a bigger team that doesnt.
Im not trying to villainize professional animation teams here, just say that you shouldnt be putting down some random person on the internet that is obviously very keen on being creative just because they arent doing it the way you would.
Putting it like that makes me think you missed the entire point of this video.
@@guesswho2778 the point of the video is the host spent like 3 minutes and considered it his 3rd and final point poorly making clear if he used AI based on theft or not. At a time when there are various lawsuits around AI, a government have asked a CEO of an AI company point blank in a congressional hearing, why aren't you paying people for their data to train your models, to Hollywood striking because of AI, it seems like one would in this climate say in 5 minutes or less is his use of AI ethically. So I know what the video is about, you can read my thread on this video and other comments I made on others' threads in the video.
The reason I spoke to this person is unrelated to the video. And I am not putting him down. He wants to make a cartoon. Everyone wants to make a cartoon in college while eating Ramon noodles, I've been there. I'm just saying there's more to animation that just the artistic side. And even the artistic side, you grow so much more after college than in. I'm not putting him down, he's free to listen or continue his goals to make a cartoon on his own. I'm just giving advice. And I brought up none of the ethical concerns that I addressed for the host of the video. Because the host is reaching an audience. If people on their own want to use the current AI models, I have no desire to judge them. I judge AI companies and those that spread misinformation about AI like this host.
Anyways, if you consider a functioning community with jobs and making sure kids get fed every day and going to well funded schools...just about making money. I don't know what to tell you.
I think the one of the biggest problems with the debate about AI is people are blaming AI for the rampant abusive and low wages for artist when really what artists need is something more like a union, you can even see it with the Writers/SAG-AFTRA strike. Writers and actors are not upset with AI they are upset with how the companies want to use Ai as an excuse not to pay them.
The technology I am more concerned with is Deep fake tech, as I can see way more plainly malicious ways to use that tech.
I think that you used AI as it should be. As a tool, not as a replacement for the artists themselves. It's pretty amazing what indie creators can now do with the tools that are able to them.
he did. he literally is excusing replacing the artists he didnt hire
@@BinaryDoodhe DID hire artists though, hes using AI alongside them
@@nottimhortons badumts
Categorical Imperative needed
@@BinaryDood Should I commission someone to do a bunch of maths by hand, or can I just use my calculator? Should I pay someone to follow me around and press buttons on elevators, or can I just use the control panel myself? Should I pay someone to connect my calls for me, or can I just use my mobile phone? Saying you arent allowed to use a tool because you should pay someone to do it instead is such a useless argument.
@@sharkfinn0010 When subjectivity and creativity are at stake, when you can play apart on the destruction of the very aims which define humanity, then you should think past your shallow examples. This infinite expelling of images is the opposite of art. The calculator does not do the full job of a mathematician. The smartphone had one of the worst possible impacts on society and it should have been not. The elevator button... is a button. This is not a binary. Art requires value from being percieved, when speaking of it as a commodity. Ir is not a function, quite the contrary, what defines art is exactly how astray it is from utilitary needs. Even in a highly corporate environment there is the integration of the artisan's knowhow to be interpreted by the viewer. To draw is to sacrifice your previous way of seeing things, to develop yourself and not just a piece. This extracting of the art away from the artist is depriving it of its purpose, not a stroke to have any meaning behind it, to be regruggiated ad infinitum. Where the ignorant has infinitely more power than the willful and creative, for one would have to sacrifice years in stern study and practice to get to the point they would produce one acceptable (yet meaningful) piece in a week, whereas for all those years the ignorant and exploitative has been producing 100s per day. Flooding, saturating the landscape, to the point no window for meaning could be opened. Creaitivty becomes dysgetic, and not just in the arts. It is the death of the potential for wisdom, when wisdom is most needed. Every exscused sideways glance to get away with its adoption is a step towards something akin to the Brave New World. If you are willing to throw creativity and subjectivity into the traintracks for it to become an I/O function, then you must imagine the world if everyone did it, because then you would be on tracks yourself my friend. It will come for you too, you will be hollowed out, replaceable in a society which quantifes qualia and qualifies quanta, hence where production is king. Your line of thinking has already turned you into a product. Yes, I would actually love to understand the inner mechanisms of the elevator, but my hours a day don't allow me to such spreaded interests, I am atomize from my surroundings, as it was made the norm with consent manufactured in generis. Now, with surroundings gone from man's mind and hand, they come for the inside, and you accept it willingly. Truthfully people do to themselves now what tyrants in the past attempted to enforce on the populus. So yeah, take your pills, everything is function, don't think past it, good boy.
I get both sides. Artists, especially in the gig market, are some of the moist exploited workers of the modern age, even though the urge to create is one of the rawest and most beautiful impulses we as humans have.
And there is a lot to unpack here. Something that was always seen as human is now approached by machines. Something to intertwined with life made by something that never was alive. It's icky, it's uncanny, it came out of nowhere and now it's here.
This is can put myself over.
But second is the exploitation. Artists struggle to afford their rent. I'm in the artist community and e-begging is super common, simply because they can barely sustain their lifestyle without emergencies so any emergency could start a debt spiral. Massive companies who can easily afford to hire artists fire artists (especially writers) and replace them with AI to save a buck. It's all about money to them, while to artists it's about having the means to survive.
Capitalism pits the worker against the machine while the machien should be a tool for the worker.
AI is the enemy, and it can only be the enemy as long as artists need to earn money to survive.
In your case, you couldn't have made this if it wasn't for AI. You simply didn't have the budget. You aren't those who 'should have hired artists' simply because you can't.
And I don't think it's fair that you then 'don't deserve to get your project made'.
If everybody was able to survive without the need to earn money, AI wouldn't be a problem. Intellectual property wouldn't be so strongly defended as it only really exists to secure the pockets of the creator of something. I could see you upload an AI version, only to get some messages from artists who'd love to redo some AI art for something you can give in return rather than money. Over time it turns into a fully human project. You saw this in the past with Vocaloid too. It's just how humans work.
And if you're not yet convinced over the evils of AI + caplitalism, look at the hollywood strikes. What caused it is some of the biggest evil I've ever seen towards art.
But where does that leave you? Unable to do your project? Able to do your project but knowing your means are hated by those you wish you could afford to hire for the project? I'm sorry, I have no answer for this. You're between a rock and a hard place
One of the Main things I've learned in life? 'You can't make everyone happy'.
Keep on keeping on Austin, The majority of us have your back!🙌🏻❤
The people you are least likely to make happy are the ones who complain at length about how unhappy they are, and how it's your fault they are unhappy. You won't make them happy even if you do exactly what they ask; they will just unearth some new reason why they're unhappy. It's like their hobby or something.
@AtomicShrimp I just clarity dude, I said this as replies to others. We only had guesses and assumptions before due to no credits before and there's still lack of clarity on the diffusion model.
@@killzone110ad assumptions are not a sound basis for anger and judgment though, IMO.
@@AtomicShrimp Anot good reasons for emotions? Not saying folks should dox or belittle Austin but when the vast majority of models are used to exploit people, its pretty reasonable to be disappointed in your favorite creator partaking, especially when it looks obvious. Granted, i have no problem with the licensed tools and assets he mentioned. However, Austin is probably incorrect in his assessment of not using unlicensed data, since he mentioned using diffusion, where none of the data was actually lincensed, and trying a model from scratch with licensed material is costly and time consuming for a promo video. Mind you, I ain't calling for his head but yeah, that disappointment is still there.
@@killzone110ad are you assuming 'diffusion' means some specific implementation like Stable Diffusion?, because there is not just one diffusion-based model out there.
i think this ai controversy is apart of a larger issue where people put too much emphasis on quality being the core of art when its always been soul at the core of it. to me, as long as you start a piece of art with good intentioned passion then its already good; quality is just there to refine it
This
Finally an actually good showcase of how AI in the hands of an artist with an vision can result in a great artwork. And also finally a creative person talking about AI who took the time to learn what it is and which path is the ethical one. The black and white style of narration about AI online and in the news was slowly making me mad, because it was making artists who potentially could benefit from AI, turn their backs at it.
That's why I'm so happy that this video exists and educates people.
Hey, Austin. Fellow Austin here. You handled this very well. I am currently waiting for a copy of the book and I am so excited to read it when it comes in.
Hey Austin, fellow Austin here. A very astute comment about Austin's handling of the situation. I agree!
Austin.
@@austinpigza Hey Austin, it’s the Austin from earlier. You know, it’s not every day I receive a compliment from another Austin and I’m glad we can both agree that Austin’s handling of the situation was quite good.
Austin.
I dare someone to make a rebuttal to this entire video
It's TH-cam, somebody will
Well its a 40 minute video, any rebuttal would by necessity have to be like 2-3 hours long to address every point, not to mention implement reasonings and resources to back up counterpoints. You can even say that here, this video, 40 minutes, is a rebuttal to a few comments and a backlash. Its unrealistic to be able to truly respond to it without summarizing unless someone really wanted to make it into an example
@@benfawefwaeffwaefawfdekk2080I Just made one with AI in 10 minutes 😁
Personally my limit on using AI is part 3: art theft, using image data from non consenting artists. You've explained that the data used are from properly licensed sources, royalty-free data or from your own sources via commission. I think that's still within the ethical range of using AI, and thank you for explaining it to us.
calling ai art art theft because it trains an ai without your consent is like calling a human artist an art thief because they saw your art and became inspired by your style and drew art based off it without your consent.
if you think of the brain as a computer, whenever we make art we are taking from gathered data by other artists we have seen. that's essentially what the AI is doing.
art theft is a meaningless term anyhow. when you put something into the public eye it is no longer yours. people understand this in regards to re-writing canon they don't like and justify it with "death of the author", but apparently "death of the artist" is a step too far.
@@gotgunpowderA.I data training and building your visual library are completely different things.
One is REQUIRED for you to add thousands of images to train the computer to its thing you CANNOT create images without using the data set, if you ask a computer to make an image of the Mona Lisa without ever using any image of the Mona Lisa in the data set it’s simply CANNOT, A.I can only create images from its data set.
Where’s an Artist who never saw the Mona Lisa in their life CAN redraw the Mona Lisa just by having someone describe what does it looks like, humans can IMAGINE and create made up things out of their heads with their thinking and reasoning abilities which a computer cannot.
Computers and human brains are two different things and it’s unfair to treat them the same
@@patrickkirby6580dude its literally just AI art. It's hurting no one. Whats an ai image gonna do?
Yea it doesn’t hurt anyone. Besides, it only used photos of ACTUAL PEOPLE that can be used to frame them for crimes…
We there is no way this could be abused, right?
Dang, you don't deserve that. Thanks for discussing this. Keep up the good work!
But one question remains. Is Austin HIMSELF an AI performance? *squints with suspicion* Say something only Austin will say.
One day we'll all have to ask ourselves if we're ok with an AI version of Austin writing, creating, and starring in 30 minutes of useless information videos
@@Dysiodeas long as I get my useless info fix, I'm cool with that.
18:55 LMAO I've literally seen people nearly canceled for running art contests before, let alone using it for what is effectively an ad.
I completely agree with you, Austin. I don't understand the arguments of people wholly being against AI. I would bet that big animation companies like you mentioned, (like Pixar, DreamWorks etc.,) use tools that can be attributed to (at least to some degree) AI. The same people who are against your video for using some AI, would use (like you said) spellcheckers, or even google maps could be argued as "AI" because it uses the computer to determine the quickest route. So those people would be hypocritical unless they use a paper map. If they really wanted to not be hypocritical in this case, they'd basically be Amish, or at least not use the internet. If you start typing "You" into google I bet some form of pattern recognizing AI would fill in the rest and suggest you want to go to TH-cam. So to me their arguments make absolutely no sense. Austin, I think you did a great job, with the resources you had available. In these times, almost everything can to some degree be attributed to AI in some way. So if people are wholly against AI, they better not watch any animated (or even live action) film, or art, or basically any creative work. As always I love your work Austin, I don't care if you use AI as a tool for videos. I think people who do care about using AI as a tool, are hypocrites.
I have always believed that AI can help and reduce stress in work the amount of cool things that can be done with ai and people working together I’m glad that you made this video to show people
Not sure why people jump to conclusions with such entitlement in their tone when they do not know how much effort goes into making things. Thank you for addressing the concerns in a constructive way and that is why we love and support you.
Wow, people being ignorant, stupid and prone to kill the sacrificial lamb to feel like they have the higher moral ground... Who would have thought...
The vast majority of people don't know there are ethically produced AIs. The only ones that make the news are programs like Stable Diffusion which are arguably stealing other people's work.
There def feels an undercurrent of "my experience has been ruined by thing I don't like and I'm.mad at you"
@@hammerandthewrench7924 the general conversation is nowhere near web scraping here. Austin didn't (or at least not directly) participate or endorse that kind of AI usage. The fact people jumped to his throat the moment they noticed it was AI just proves that people are very angry about things they don't fully understand.
Yeah, this whole 'do better', 'educate yourself', 'take the video down and apologize' thing - I think I have only ever really seen it in the context of angry, wrong assumptions.
There is also the idea that if someone says "if your going to use AI then just don't make it", that point contradicts the "your stealing jobs from the artists". If you use AI to make a project, a theoretical artist isn't getting paid. If you don't make the project, a theoretical artist isn't getting paid. Plus, in theory of you don't do a WHOLE project because one part needs Ai to make, now no one else gets paid. So if a movie isn't made because a scene was going to use AI, then all the writers, musicians, actors, etc. Then more artists are losing jobs.
I'm not seeing this exact point being made nearly often enough. Which, in my honest opinion, shows that the people driving this argument don't actually care about artists getting jobs, but exclusively want to ride the "anti ai train".
You're saying this on a video where the first point is that he acknowledges that he used an AI voice instead of just picking a voice actor, in large part because it meant he did not have to pay them and that he considered it simpler than working with a voice actor he wasn't 100% happy with. Projects like this are a dream for aspiring voice-actors trying to build a portfolio while still getting paid at least a little, and now that job was taken up by an AI.
Not saying all of what you've said is invalid, but when a project is primarily AI-generated like the Spider Queen sampler, using AI and deciding not to make the project at all have functionally the same result for the artists who could have worked on it.
@@dublinjakefirstly, I'm sure you saw that the VAs weren't cheap, secondly, he still did pay for manny assets and stuff created by artists and had stiff he commissioned.
but even if he hadn't, that still doesn't mean he shouldn't have made the video or it's any less valid
@@dublinjake I respect your view point and appreciate the calm and non-accusatory tone in your reply, however I feel as you missed my point. Yes, he chose to use A.I. instead of paying the voice actors. If you look at it purely on numbers perspective though, many more people got paid for their work by him using A.I. than would have if he didn't. The fact of the matter is he could not afford to pay the voice actor for the amount of work required, he just did not have the money and would have lost so much money if he did hire one. So that leaves the options of use A.I. for voice acting and hire people for other aspects (I know he also used A.I. for a lot of the art too, just focusing on the VA to make the point more clear), or not make the project at all. Those saying that he shouldn't have made the project if he couldn't pay for a human voice actress miss how many other artist would have also not been paid if there were no project.
To illustrate this, I'm using random money amounts, I have no idea how much this would have cost or how much he paid for anything else.
So let's say he paid $500 for the spider queen character design commission, another $500 for various key frames/models to put into the A.I. art maker, and another $200 for music licencing from artists (these are all high balling estimates to make a point). If he chose to not make the project because he couldn't pay for the VA like various commenters said to, then that's $1200 not going to OTHER artists that also need the work.
What you said at the end is basically my argument, the result of making it with A.I. or not is the same for the VAs or the animators he didn't hire, regardless they don't get paid. However, it is vastly different to the artists who were hired for the project.
Respectfully, when you show your choices between available VA's and while hiding bias in the choice the AI one wins in the poll are you really going to go with what would likely amount to a worse off result to fill some high horse of false morality?@@dublinjake
I mean you've used Ai in a way that's meant to be used. As a tool to create not a handful of those Wes Anderson ai generation trailers. Your project has soul which Ai can never duplicate
As a Comp Sci degree who took a class on AI, coded the strongest video game AI of my graduating class, AND MAKES ART (not as a career, but as a hobby - primarily traditional pencil sketches), I think you hit the nail on the head in acknowledging that intent is very important when discussing the use of AI.
Using AI can be unethical when using training data gathered without permission or attempting to replace human effort in an attempt to make a low cost _(cough cough low quality)_ product to sell, but it's clear that video was not attempting either.
Between you, your cowriter, and all the evidence you showed of the editing process, + attempts at casting, while AI was used to assist the creative process, you already had the story, knew what you wanted to make, and spent a lot of time and effort to make sure it was RIGHT - and since you're NOT a company with the money to spend on hiring an animator at a fair price to make the whole thing for you...
Telling someone who is clearly an artist with a passion for their art, who created something not for the sake of cranking out an easy paycheck, but for the sake of creating what was in their head for fun, that if they can't do it themselves or hire someone, it would be better for them to NOT bring their idea to life at all? I don't agree.
I agree with most of what you said, but would take it a step further: I don't think permission should at all be required for training. For the vast majority of human history, there were no restrictions on what you could do with something you acquired or experienced. We added copyright as a common protection following the advent of specifically the printing press to prevent just wholesale trivial duplication, and only for a limited time.
Adding a protection to give creators control over how their work would be used after its distribution was never the intent. The norm has always been, and continues to be, that once you release something into the world, you've upgraded the world to now know about that thing and make that sort of thing independently from you. That was never some evil, beyond cases of forgery which are explicitly deception and fraud. It was in fact considered a *good* thing; that ideas and styles and everything would be freely shared as new additions to common culture, while individuals could make a living off of the specific works they create.
I get why as a creator it'd feel good to have extra protectionism in place. But we have to understand what we're asking, why it's not covered by existing protections, and why it may not actually be the right thing to do. Things that on paper seem to be guided from the spirit of "preventing abuse" can absolutely end up being strong forces of rent-seeking, and we can't just add protections because of a gut feeling that it's the right thing to do and a misinterpretation of the spirit of our current protections.
My dude, I'm so sorry you got all that backlash. I loved the storybook animation of Chapter 1, and really appreciated the multimedia approach to telling your stories. I did not clock that the main voice was AI! Maybe it's because I've had to rely on text-to-speech technologies for around 25 years now, so I know how frustrating and unreliable it is as a tool! It does not surprise me in the least how much work you had to put in to get a good quality reading. Thank you for taking the time to go through all the knee-jerk responses. My friend watching this with me said "This is the most polite F*** you video I've ever seen"! Sending you the love - soooo excited for the Spider Queen audio-book! x
You're not taking jobs away from people if you couldn't afford to pay them anyway.
Anyway, I really liked how informative this video was! It taught me a lot about how you can use AI and how much human is still involved in it. Really hope the video was also intended that way and not just a defence to the misguided/uninformed people that commented on your other video.
Exactly. Tony he “do it right or don’t do it at all” crowd, what would happen if he just didn’t make it at all? Creators still wouldn’t get paid money he doesn’t have
@jajones11 The argument that I think they're making is that, if a lot of people start using ai to create art for projects like this, then eventually people who could afford to pay artists will also start using ai. Not sure if I necessarily agree with that argument, but I think that's what they're saying.
@@denisnevsky3734 yes they would and I'm pretty sure they are doing this right now. But "good art" will always be somewhat time consuming. The artists of today (most of them) are not using paint (like literal paint and brushes), the artists of tomorrow will probably use less and less digital brushes, replacing them with AI tools and sliders. Yes, there will be some who will use AI as a mere shortcut, but if you want a good product you either hire a professional or train and do it yourself. AI just makes it more accessible and (maybe?) cheap.
Hey, Austin. Really appreciate you sharing your experiences and educating me on matters like the "Secret Invasion" opening sequence. I'm sorry to you got caught in the crosshairs of this hot button topic.
As a freelance video editor and husband of a WGA writer, its hard to avoid the rapidly evolving conversation around AI on a daily basis; which is usually associated with dread. While these Hollywood strikes are more nuanced than just blaming AI, hearing reports of studios bringing AI technicians in house doesn't paint a good picture.
All this to say, I don't think that AI is inherently bad (at this time). In fact, I find the current visual style derived by AI videos to be mesmerizing. While the independent creator in me relishes in the prospect of realizing my budget visions with fewer limitations, knowing that Studios are following in suit to ride this trend, possibly at the cost of labor, is a hard pill to swallow.
It feels as though we're witnessing a transition in both the democratization of narrative expression, but at the cost of a potential mass exodus from an industry that brought American Cinema to where it is today; for better or worse. If that does happen, what is needed most is a safety net to support everyone caught in the crosshairs, but that's a different discussion.
I work for a company that does court recordings. Ever since that one lawyer used AI to generate BS legal documents, a few too many judges have been afraid of AI. We now have to be cautious about the ID of us AI to clean the recordings because somehow the two are completely equated thanks to those 2 little letters.
"Hire actual artists and voice actors"
"Im fucking poor."
"Understandable. Have a great day."
Loved this video.
Theres a ton more involved and much more nuance to creating projects than people realise.
And like you pointed out, there's also a LOT more AI being used than people realise.
I'm fucking poor is a great way to tell someone to shut up :)
Personally I just watched The Spider Queen promo today. Learning that the voice for Shannon Kane was a text-to-speech program was a bit shocking. I could tell that it was on the lower end budget wise but the story being told had me at the edge of my seat not the visuals. The visuals were helpful for setting the scene and did their job well enough. The only aspect of the AI work on that videos production was a particular pain point for me was the ‘VA’ for Shannon, but that does make me question why the other AI works didn’t bother me. Obviously in an Ideal world hiring a ‘Proper’ artist for all the things would be the play but art is expensive. Though that said, the ‘AI VA’ did out preform other human workers that could have used the project to build experience and their resume to build themselves up along with your project. All this to say I don’t blame you for using AI or AI assisted tools, only that there are other things that I consider. Regardless with my personal gripes with AI and its use here, the story being told did grab my attention and I do intend on picking up a copy. The work you put into getting multiple takes from the text-to-speech to sound right sounds somewhat similar to the work a voice director does working with voice actors. Just food for thought, regardless have a pleasant day.
Sincerely
-The Void
I actually don’t mind TTS AI. Some people can’t afford voice actors, or just can’t do the impression of it. And if you’re an indie group or one man army, I’m completely fine with it. Literally anything else, is very different
I've used tts. It's a life saver for people that wanna make videos but, for whatever reason, can't speak or have trouble speaking or recording
@@FajreroCintilo or if you can’t speak the language well. That’s why I’m more understanding with it
Why is it different for everything else?
@@SimplySuperior Voices can’t always be replicated. Nor can everyone afford it. Drawings are different. In my opinion, context matters on the rest. So does TTS, but less so. It’s different cause
Not sure how I got this recommended, but I'm a software engineer with a masters in machine intelligence, and from my perspective we are in the same situation that people where in the beginning of the industrial age. There where a lot of pushback on factories, and people fearing loosing their jobs. People did loose jobs, but the world as a whole became better. But what history teaches us is that you can't stop this kind of progress. And I don't think in 20 years that we would have wanted to.
Unless we are in the scenario where ai destroys us all.... but due to human nature, we can't(wont) stop it, so I choose not to think too often on that side of the coin flip.
I think the disconnect happening between us on the AI discussion that I'd like to add is that we (artists working in the industry) are still having negotiations with studios on how AI's advancements should require boilerplate contracts to be updated to prevent loopholes that financially hurt artists trying to earn enough money in their occupation.
For example, there's a current loophole (that is being negotiated by the WGA strike right now) where potentially, a CEO could ask AI to write a script outline (one that has no editing by a human mind, so it's not in a fit state to greenlight), and then gives that outline to a hired screenwriter, asking the screenwriter to "expand" on the outline (read as: basically rewrite the thing so that the plot makes sense). Because the screenwriter was given an outline to work from, they technically didn't start from scratch (even though they did--because of the state of the AI script). This means that, according to their contract, they will be paid less than they should for the same amount of work. If this loophole was left as it is, it would be used to save money by underpaying writers. So writers are trying to get contracts updated to remove the payment amount loophole.
Now to the conflict I have with all this: In order to even have these discussions, it's important to keep in mind that companies care about how the public view the tech. They care about people "making a big stink." So painting AI as something to be concerned about, in part, helps to make companies stop and go, "we need to listen" and not choosing to ignore compensation issues workers raise with the growth of AI. But in order to do this, there has to be some level of visible public backlash towards AI use. But that also means that indie folks (who use it in a way where they double-check to make sure everyone involved in the AI tool's production was fairly compensated) get caught up in the situation too. Is there a way to get companies to listen to worker's concerns of AI without having to paint all AI under the same brush? And right now, the answer I'm unfortunately stuck with is, "Not at this moment in time." Because we're still in the new negotiation stage. And I don't know the future.
While AI has potential to help artists as a tool (I like how older AI tech like AI upscaling has allowed old 90s game cutscenes to have better image quality for video archives, for example), it's also capable of doing harm if no rules are invented alongside the tool's invention.
It's not so much the AI tech I have an issue with, it's the people who will absolutely use it to take advantage of artists if there aren't rules implemented to stop them.
Thank you for this video. I'm glad you mentioned the writer's strike in it. I just wanted to add to that section.
Like you said : public perception of the tech is crucial right now to have a lot of necessary discussions.
But for that, we are forced to "take a clear side" because nuance can unfortunately lead to apathy or worse : be weaponized. And that just benefits companies in the long run. This need of polirization truly suck, but it is unfortunately necessary right now due to the truly impressive speed at which the tech evolves and is being pushed.
Isnt that a problem with companies, laws and how the corporate world works and not with AI itself?
Ai is not inherently bad. Spreading it as such will only hinder progress because it simply is not true.
Corporations, however are inherently bad. The legal definition of a corporation makes it inherently bad, it needs to make use of loopholes to save money, to make more profit, to ignore worker welfare. Of course if it is proven that well cared-for workers make more profit for the corparation then corporations will try to improve worker life, but that is seldom true.
This was an interesting video.
I think, if properly used as Austin did, ai will be a tool to help artists and people in all fields to assist with their jobs.
My concern is when big companies will try to use ai to supplant or replace their workers to make a greater profit.
This is going to happen no matter what. That's what a profit driven capitalist society does.
If people didn't want it to come to this, they've had hundreds of years to make political change. They didn't.
Replacing workers is a good thing.
@@biomerl I dont know whether you’re being funny or not.
In concept i agree with that, jobs are going to get replaced with machines, many jobs have. But people need a way to survive. Sooner or later humanity is going to have to rethink “work” and what that means because even jobs thought to be safe may be replaced with machines.
Learn to weld
@@Superunknown190I share your concern about the ethics of big movie studios.
As for jobs being taken away, I'm not sure that's as big of a problem as people think. When a job that was previously done by a person is done by a machine, jobs are then created for people to design, build and maintain the machines. Humans are not removed but the part of the process they're responsible for changes.
29:59 the diffusion model learns what "appleness" is, then when generating denoises the noise until it has something that looks very apple-ly
New technology is always controversial. In ancient Greece, people thought literacy would make people lazy because they wouldn't need to memorize things anymore.
btw, thank you for explaining that the Spider Queen comic frames were not in fact AI art. I spent so much time looking at them trying to figure out what indicated they were AI generated, and couldn't get it, they didn't look that way at all. Thanks for putting that to rest for us.
I love how the solution to not being able to afford a professional artist is "well, then you just shouldn't make anything at all." Like, either way, the artist isn't getting paid. What exactly does that solve? 😂
First time back in years. Great video to start on. your timeline hurts to look at. much love and respect for your work and effort.
This video got me thinking, especially the part about your old professor.
"If you use AI you take work away from real artists"
"You should just find people who would do it for free"
What the fuck, man
IKR?
I don’t understand why people always seem to be so critical of you. I’m excited to read your book!
Becuase they're trolls, and they want to feel "artier than the artist."
@TheSaneHatter I guess so
@@TheSaneHatter Sure must be easy to argue when you shrug off your opponents as "trolls" all the time, huh? Artists are the ones complaining.
Trolls, lots of them
@@parallelblack788 then those artists need to rethink their approach
"Try to have a nuanced conversation........" You do realize that this is the internet?
Yeah, but I'm still going to try anyway. :)
People be here discussing AI art and all I can focus on is how amazing that mustache is. It takes work to care for a good stache, my man. The Mustache Society approves.
wow man i can’t believe you didn’t spend several years or thousands of dollars to become/hire a competent animator, voice actor, and artist just to make a promo video… really feeling betrayed rn…
@@hammerandthewrench7924 not everyone has that kinda time. if you’re a grown man with a job and multiple side projects you might not have an excess of free time to learn how to become a decent animator, and you probably don’t have the money to hire one either.
@@williamomalley6081 exactly : and that's the perfect context to find creative solutions to make things works under constraints anyways. Using generative AI is not only an insult to all those who got their worked scraped without consent, it is also the straight road to an atrophy of skills.
@@hammerandthewrench7924congratulations on completely missing the point.
Another problem are people fearmongering what AI is actually capable of doing. Like plenty of the artists and others in his previous videos. Your method is fine and good if YOU are exclusively an artist or you're privileged enough to afford time for all of that, otherwise you dont have much choice but to go with an objectively more efficient and affordable option@@hammerandthewrench7924
@@hammerandthewrench7924clearly you have never tied using a "400.00" tablet for a proper project that is longer than 30 seconds.
Proper professional software and an associated functional tablet cost quite a bit more and there is a mean learning curve .
I can absolutely say that I would rather see you use all the tools at your disposal to bring your ideas to life than to not. I love your work please keep doing what you are doing.
Honestly I didn't even know that video had AI elements, even the voice actor because AI voices just can't sound that good without meticulous tweaking and refining and for that, I commend you.
Also Austin said that he has Audible working on a voice recording of his book right? So even with the “no effort AI video” voice, a voice actor will still be paid to narrate Austins novel.
@@SupericeCapwhy did you ask this three fucking times lmfao
@@SupericeCap For the Official version yes of course
People think AI is this magical algorithm that can do everything perfectly with no errors insight.
I appreciate that your choice of words is that the artists asking price was specifically out of your budget, not that it was an unreasonable amount of money. 50 minutes of animation is a lot! That's 2 and a half episodes of a TV broadcast cartoon.
I don't think that helps anything, though. Saying it's okay to use AI because it's "out of budget" to hire people ultimately just means that ANY cost to hire artists will become "out of budget" because why would anyone ever pay for something they don't have to? Being respectful towards the huge costs of illustrated work doesn't mean much when your reaction is go "well, good thing I can bypass this barrier entirely by cutting them out of the industry, so they can TRY to charge whatever they want."
@@KittyQuixotiche bought assets that were made by artists. He spent so much on something that he was putting on TH-cam for people to watch for free
It was an ad for a product, ultimately. I'm not sure whether the monetization of a work is where you want to draw the line on whether or not AI is okay. Him buying the AI software does nothing to address the ethics that are in question. Him buying character models was in reference to his other project, not the Spider Queen ad.
@@KittyQuixotic he didn't just buy AI software. He also bought assets like 3d models
@@KittyQuixotic also even if it was an ad, it was 50 minutes long! And it took him 5 months!