My thoughts on Generative AI

Photocredit: Lars Petter Pettersen

This is sort of meta, not Meta, but real meta: my first post here is the post that lead me to start this blog, originally posted on FB and IG. It became my most shared post ever, and it feels right to start out with it here since it ignited the creation of this blog. At the moment I don’t know if I actually will go through with deleting IG and FB, but I might at least remove my content there as a first step.

I wrote this just to ventilate, but the piece got traction and lead to three newspaper interviews, the first one can be read here, the two others coming tomorrow.

Here is the post I wrote (in a slightly updated version with a few quotes I picked up since then), originally published June 4th, 2023:

Meta: "What's on your mind, Bendik?"

Bendik: Meta's AI grind is on everyone's minds these days, at least in my line of work. The AI plan has made me consider deleting FB and IG, which until recently would have been unthinkable (even though I've fantasized about it). FB is a place where I keep in touch with friends and family, and IG has become by far my biggest work platform. I don’t know whether I'll actually take the step, but right now I'm seriously considering it.

It seems to me like an extremely drastic step, with over 26,000 followers on IG that I've spent over ten years building up. The exposure radius has dropped significantly after Meta bought IG, and it definitely don't feel like I have that many followers in practice since the radius is choked by Meta and you have to pay to get the reach you once had.

At the same time, I don't really know if it's worth pulling out because my work are still scattered around Meta's platforms, shared by others who might not sign the opt-out form. And Meta is far from the only AI player out there, so I was worried enough already.

The opt out form, btw, is well hidden away and broken. My first attempts gave error messages and while I eventually managed to submit it, I still haven’t received any confirmation. It’s of course completely absurd that you have to apply for Meta NOT to steal your art, while it should be the other way around, and no one would ever allow it. The whole thing feels fishy but if I get a confirmation within the deadline, I might stay, naively enough. If not, it feels pretty unresponsible.

And for those who haven't looked into this and wonder why me and several colleagues are considering throwing in the Meta towel: If I'm still on FB and IG after June 26 (and haven't gotten the form approved) when this takes effect, it means I'm giving Meta permission to simply swallow my entire life's work, feed it into their AI grinder where it learns to copy my style so anyone can use it for free by typing in what kind of drawing they want in my style. The only one benefiting from this is Meta. Exactly how bad it will actually be I don't know, maybe I'm painting the devil on the wall, but to me it looks like a highly probable and nightmarish scenario when I see what other AIs like Midjourney and DALL-E can do already.

Illustrator Greg Rutkowski says in an interview with BBC that his style has been fed into AI learning to such a degree (more than Picasso's art) that there are now countless AI-generated illustrations on the internet in his style, which he hasn't made. Fans of his illustrations have an almost impossible task of sorting out what is actually made by him and what is just fake AI-copies.

Quote from the BBC interview: "The first month that I discovered it, I realized that it will clearly affect my career and I won't be able to recognize and find my own works on the internet. The results will be associated with my name, but it won't be my image. It won't be created by me. So it will add confusion for people who are discovering my works. All that we've been working on for so many years has been taken from us so easily with AI."

A total nightmare, and this was already before Meta, so again: a bit unsure if it's even possible to protect oneself against this.

I'm just talking about this from an artist's perspective now, but it applies to everyone on FB and IG: your photos get stolen and fed into AI and end up completely out of your control, so this is something everyone should consider carefully before June 26.

What are the alternatives? I draw because I have a basic urge to do it, drawing gives me joy and inner peace. But I also want people to see what I draw and I love sharing drawings and processes and getting feedback (even though I'm not very good at discussing and bad at responding).

Many have opened a Cara account, including myself, but it doesn't really appeal to me, tbh. I love drawings and am of course inspired by it, but perhaps since my days are so much about it, a feed full of other people's drawings is just too much. By all means, I love seeing my colleagues' stuff, but what I like about IG is that it's a mix of musicians and family members and friends and all kinds of people and posts, not just drawings.

Some suggest Pinterest, especially since posts there have a longer life. But after a bit of research, I get the impression that there are some dark clouds on the horizon there as well after they launched the business account model, where you basically pay for exposure ... I don't know, but I still have a free account for now.

A tempting solution that at the same time feels like singing in the shower all alone without an audience, is to start a blog on my website www.benkalt.no (which I just did!). A place where I can post things when I feel like it without the hassle of IG's sense of acuteness, which I often feel hovers over everything you do there: you have to post things preferably while it's happening and shortly afterward it sinks into the feed darkness. Such a blog would be an extension of my phd work, where I focused more on process, a kind of diary. At my own pace. But I'm afraid it will end up as a lonely affair with tumbleweeds blowing by since I don't know how to get people to bother checking out my website. It's not exactly a place where people hang out and check out news regularly.

Also, it strikes me when I start thinking about this, how incredibly poorly suited social media actually is for experiencing art: a small device with microscopic images on a phone. And on this tiny screen is actually where I experience a large portion of art these days. Maybe I should focus more on having exhibitions, making books, and showing films in cinemas – in the formats these things are meant to be experienced.

The thought of getting rid of FB and IG is actually more tempting the more I think about it. Not having to spend time creating posts that lasts just a moment. Not having to scroll, instead using the time on other things. But I’m also afraid I would regret it, lie in fetal position in a FOMO attack, then crawl back and start from scratch (and if so, make sure all posts are dipped in Nightshade or something similar that supposedly messes with the AI, although I don't know how effective this is either). Not to mention all the social stuff I would miss.

I haven't even talked about how unethical it is to use AI illustrations: AI devours images, texts, music – art and expression that humans have spent a lifetime learning, only to let anyone get things in our style for free. It’s a giant mass theft, and it's incredible that it's legal (is it really??). Any business, newspaper, advertisement agency etc. that uses AI-generated illustrations commits a highly unethical act involving stolen art and intellectual property. They should really think twice. Examples of the use of AI in the way me and my colleagues feared already exist. Sporveiene had a completely surreal Christmas campaign that at first glance looked like a professional "Coca Cola illustration" but if you looked just a little closer it revealed pure madness: people with frog legs, an old lady about to get run over by the tram, a woman disappearing into a teddy bear, faces twisted into a hellish pizza swirl. If a human had done this job, they would never have gotten away with the tram not resembling the actual trams, but since they save a few bucks with AI, the tram (and everything else) can look like anything.

And speaking of ethics, I want to include this comment on my original post by Janelle Crawford-Hine, that points out another big issue with AI: “The other thing people aren’t talking about is the energy consumption of AI servers. We are burning fosil fuels to teach machines to do human tasks of that more humans are disenfranchised. What is the point of the digital age if it only serves to further climate change, keep us more disconnected from the real world, and take over our creativity. It has historian future written all over it.”

Many claims that AI isn't yet as smart as humans when it comes to illustration and the complex ideas that makes a good illustration in addition to just looking good, and for now, that's true, but there's no doubt that this is also coming. And things look so seductively good that I think most people buy it anyway.

Another thing that scares me about AI is future generations, who will get used to art being something made in seconds when they want it. The understanding of what really goes into it disappears, how many years it takes to learn the craft, and how much blood, sweat and tears it can go into just a single drawing or writing a good sentence, etc. And why bother learning it if you can just get it for free in seconds? We can only hope that the human need for expression is so strong that it continues to live on.

I'm no expert, and there are probably many aspects I haven't covered and forgotten in the heat of the moment; this is just a personal and messy post written in affect, mostly to clear my head. For now, June 26th lies on the horizon as both a tempting and scary date ... I already have a list of pros and cons for a Meta exit, and the pros list is currently a little nosehair longer than the cons.

What is certain is that it's incredibly scary to realize how extremely dependent and entangled in Meta we all are.

Finally, I took the liberty to amateurishly translate this quite that I really like, by author and comic artist Knut Nærum:

“If I liked a book or an illustration or a song, and later found out that it was made by AI, I would have stopped liking it. The experience isn’t just about what words or lines or pixels or tones that are used, but depends on being chosen and produced by a human being that wants something for me. From now on I won’t like anything until I know that it’s human made. I already miss the time when I could like books and images and music without doing research.”