zlacker

At the point that a program that could instantly copy the style of your favorite artist within half an hour was invented, a lawsuit being filed against its creators was inevitable. And I'm not sure what humanity can do to just not invent Stable Diffusion. The math is impeccable, and the results speak for themselves, and it's convinced a lot of people. It's angered many others for understandable reasons, and has the potential to cause harm. Financially yes, but also (and I think more importantly) in a spiritual sense - setting the standards of millions of people that art can be created better and faster by a non-human entity, and that humans are meant to be preempted at their passions if something more cost-efficient comes along.

So how could this situation have been reasonably avoided? Was it meant to be avoided? Even supposing this lawsuit succeeds and Stability AI is dissolved, it's not going to change the fact that people are going to keep using Stable Diffusion anyway, even if people stop themselves from talking about it in the open.

Another thing I've been mulling about is the negative effects of new technologies could be amplified if those technologies can be completely controlled by an independent person. As an example, 3D-printed gun are considered less dangerous than traditionally manufactured guns, but there was the incident where Shinzo Abe was assassinated using a homemade gun in spite of the extremely strict gun control measures in Japan. I think the conversation about that kind of danger would be intensely revisited if just anyone has the ability to manufacture a more efficient weapon using only things they can buy themselves.

Giving away the 8 gigabytes of Stable Diffusion for free with the means to run it on anyone's computer means that the harms that many people perceive about AI-generated art are going to exist forever. There is no solution to the problem now, only ideological differences to be repeated forever. To those that are against it, art style appropriation is now a mathematically defined fact, published as replicable research.

If the progress in generative art today breaks the spirits of artists, the small hope for me is that at least it was a technology that's unlikely to cause mass deaths or destruction. I have to wonder if humanity will be ready when that time does come for a different breakthrough. AI art at this stage can already cause mass die-offs of motivation and attention spans.