Life's A Draw 3 - Much AI-do About Nothing
Or, that thing most artists love to hate today
Ah, that dreadful Eye-Aye acronym that has turned the world (and most artist’s gag reflexes) upside down and it’s being sold to us ad nauseam as the new solution-for-everything. Including, for what it seems, avoid hiring a costly artist to do creative work because there’s now this awesome and exponentially powerful digital Leviathan able to create not only similar quality renders, but also doing so in a fraction of the time (and the budget) it used to take. Who wouldn’t want that?
What’s an average or just-getting-started artist (heck, any artist, young or old) to do? Is it even worth trying in this day and age? How do you articulate this to a youngster about to enter college to study arts and he or she’s now undecided if it’s still worth it?
Despite US Congress stating that AI-generated works are not eligible for copyright, and the subject has been already brought to court (via crowdfunding, which I’ve participated in), in jurisdictions less concerned with intellectual property rights as those of my world region of Latin America the legal word on AI and protection to artists is still a hazy one. Meanwhile, grifters of the hour are freely selling shirts and other goods plastered with imagery rendered from databases fed with billions of images siphoned from the Internet without any consent of their original posters, including some from truly problematic sources. Which has most of us scrambling for resources to beat this new technology-turned-menace for artists, such as Glaze, a kind of algorithmic “image cloaker” designed to render picture data mining interpretations by generative AI systems inaccurate. Either way, these counter-efforts are but a drop in the big AI pool, and as much as we’d wish AI go away in a puff of smoke, it won’t. It’s here to stay. Like the proverbial genie’s out of the magic lamp, never to go back in.
So again, what’s a professional artist, who depends from his or her skills to make a living, to do?
While I still vouch for a mandatory legal regulation on all matters of AI if only to protect humankind from itself in the near future (and which we may hopefully see it coming through 2024, as world congresses become finally aware of the reach and impact of AI in society), it may also be time for us artists to wake up and learn how to deal with this new reality. Recently, I listened to a podcast (in Spanish only, sorry) featuring an influential Mexican entrepreneurial coach named Engel Fonseca covering, in a way, this very issue, and he makes an interesting subdivision between four times of creators:
Source creators: The original artists, painters, composers, sculptors, writers — the prime originators of the work.
Replicant creators: Those who “create” new things using AI fed with material from source creators, aka most every generative AI user nowadays.
Source-replicant creators: Those who besides being prime work originators, apply their unique knowledge to produce new works through AI and/or combined sources. This is the kind of creator most likely to be in demand and survive in the forthcoming times.
Source-nonreplicant creators: The source creators who by fear or resistance chose to ignore the tide of AI at their own peril, according to Mr. Fonseca. In relatively short term, these will become more prone to be rendered irrelevant and obsolete in the new scheme of things.
Therefore, a source creator cannot be substituted by a replicant creator. But it can (and will) definitely be replaced by a source-replicant creator. And source-replicant creators have an edge that mere replicant creators can’t bring to the table: added, perceived and proven value through experience and skill. And that value better be something worth charging and paying for —that’s up to us.
And yes, there’s still the big, unsolved BUT of author copyrights, attributions, sales royalties, regional and global IP protections and everything else that is keeping us awake at night, and the lingering, resentful feeling of AI being a new burden bestowed upon us, something nobody asked to deal with — in the end, it’s all about how to keep our hard-earned art careers sustainable through our lifetimes, plain and simple. In Mr. Fonseca’s view, there’s no way for this but to eventually be fixed along with technological advances, as everything can and will be tracked and measured using the same tools. I beg to differ on this rosy view, at least in the short term. But we will need to reach a working consensus because keeping on stasis while the technology steamroller comes at us won’t be of help either.
Believe it or not, no AI was used at all in the creation of either this text, or the headline graphic above. It’s all from my hands and my mind, as it has always been. The ChatGPT guys and social media CEOs don’t need any more money thrown their way. But I could definitely make a difference for me. How about join in to my Patreon starting at just $1 a month? The more supporters I can get, the more quality content I can produce back to make it worth it to you.
From The D̶o̶o̶d̶l̶e̶ Life Board
Starting 2024, what I really wanted was to hit the beach and get my heavy dose of Vitamin Sea — something I had not done since 2020, escaping from the worst of the pandemic. My, how I was needing it — I wish to extend my public thanks to Betty D., my mother’s friend who generously helped us with the stay at her vacation home in the Guanacaste area of Costa Rica. So instead of a drawing, have a pic of yours truly feeling the happiest in a long time, on a secluded, almost private paradisiacal beach (and not easy to access through an ill-kept trail). Why my daily worries can’t be of the kind of which beach to go to, choosing a sunblock and sipping margaritas on sunset view? I could happily manage that 🥹🏖️
Doodles will come back on the next issue.
Noteworthy Finds
If you are into creating graphic novel stories for middle grade audiences and are in search of a supporting community, I can’t recommend being part of Kids Comics Unite hard enough. Starting in 2020 and managed by Janna Morishima, a greatly experienced literary agent and an awesome person all around, I have been a member since 2021 and have partaken both in their Intensive and Studio programs, because I wanted to learn all I could from the American publishing business, how it deals with authors and what is expected from you as a professional creator. Being an overseas foreigner, I acknowledge some of their most worthy content can be very US-specific in terms of cultural and market terms. However the benefits outweigh the inconveniences for me personally, and having a supportive crowd of people who “get” you because they are on the same boat is comforting and encouraging.
Kids Comics Studio is an ongoing program for serious creators with accountability meetings, tons of video learning roundtables and more. And right now it’s at its lowest price ever — tons of worthy knowledge for the cost of two movie tickets per month.
This is it for the present edition of Life’s A Draw — Stay tuned for issue 4 next week where I tell you all about the most important comics event in Europe where I’ve been to twice — the Festival D’Angoulême. Better yet, subscribe to this newsletter and don’t miss any future issues — it’s free! See you in the next one.
— Alberto