The Consequences of AI-Generated Content

[Photon Jet 5,491]

Hello everypony. There's something I really wanna discuss here and it's not something I'm happy with. It's about content generated by artificial intelligence. That's right. I'm ridin' the stormy waves here. Before I start, I'm NOT against users on here who are in that sort of stuff. I'm talking about the use of AI in general.

At first, I thought it was an interesting idea to just mess around with the AI of video-game characters such as Team Fortress 2. I too made a couple of videos using a tool called 15.ai. That was before I realized what the humongous downside of using AI in creative content is. Since AI has been used widely, we aren't aware of the sheer consequences it brings for us and I fear it'll get worse in the future if we don't do something about it quickly. Here are the reasons I learned before creating this topic.:

Reason 1: Voice actor theft. I saw several headlines that AI-generated content creators use voices of voice actors either from video games and movies without permission just to make their own stuff, which leaves a big toll on those who do it for a living. It pains me to see someone like Erica Lindbeck who voices Futaba from Persona 5 get bullied just because she told someone who told someone to take the content down containing her voice. That's something Princess Twilight Sparkle doesn't want to see. It's no wonder it left a lingering effect on Hollywood Studios, causing the actors to go on strike 'cause of the use of AI.

Reason 2: Use of AI in video games. One big example is Enchanted Portals, a clone of Cuphead. The level layouts and enemy placements in the game are randomized for each playthrough which players don't like. The reason why is because the game used AI to make levels for them. That's right, AI made the 2D platformer levels with enemies and platforms all over the place. That, goes against the rules of level design. Levels must have one single structure to follow for players to enjoy the game.

Reason 3: Lack of creative development: This, in my opinion, is the biggest reason why the use of AI in creative content terms is bad. It hinders our ability to create something we put our heart and soul into, such as a masterclass portrait which took a lot of patience to make, or such a stunning animation as Pizza Tower. Using AI causes our creative growth over the years to be completely redundant. We get in the backseat while the computer makes something soulless for us. It should be the other way round where we put our abilities to the test. We may not be perfect, but there's something we have that AI doesn't: evolution.

Those reasons are why it'll be a big concern for the newer generation when it comes round, because if the use of AI goes outta control, they won't have the creative mindset we have now which'll leave a severe impact on video-game and movie companies. Instead, I think we should use AI for other stuff such as rescue operations and life support more while maintaining our creative skills with our minds and hooves (and magic if you're a unicorn). I know there are rules starting to take place but

So yeah, that's what I think of the whole situation. I'm very sorry if this topic made you uncomfortable. Once again, I'm not against anyone on here who's into it, but I just want to see everypony grow as content creators themselves. We are very intelligent beings in the world and a big imagination as well and we must prove it with the help of constructive criticism. That way, we can climb even higher, leaving inspiration to our newer generation.

But I'll finish this topic with a question. Do you think content generated by AI should be banned or do you think there should be more strict rules in place so that the use of it doesn't spiral out of control like a cloud?

Thanks for reading and I hope you have a nice day.

[Gaines 1,221]

5 hours ago, Photon Jet said:

Reason 2: Use of AI in video games.

AI in video games is inevitable. Quote from Wiki, "Artificial intelligence has been an integral part of video games since their inception in the 1950s."
The problem with Enchanted Portals is that the level designs (platforms and enemies) were programmed to be randomized. Video games make (good) use randomization all the time, but, like you said, using it for platform games is generally looked down upon.
 

5 hours ago, Photon Jet said:

Do you think content generated by AI should be banned or do you think there should be more strict rules in place so that the use of it doesn't spiral out of control like a cloud?

I believe AI generations should've continued to privately be studied and experimented on by those who are serious about it, rather than allowing the public mess around with it however they'd like. 

[Photon Jet 5,491]

1 hour ago, Gaines said:

AI in video games is inevitable. Quote from Wiki, "Artificial intelligence has been an integral part of video games since their inception in the 1950s."
The problem with Enchanted Portals is that the level designs (platforms and enemies) were programmed to be randomized. Video games make (good) use randomization all the time, but, like you said, using it for platform games is generally looked down upon.

I believe AI generations should've continued to privately be studied and experimented on by those who are serious about it, rather than allowing the public mess around with it however they'd like. 

Oh yeah, I completely forgot about that. We wouldn't have CPU players to face or stuff happening by chance otherwise. I should've been more specific. Whoopsie.

On what you said about AI generations, I completely agree. Public use of AI is a serious issue to tackle and there must be laws and regulations to reduce risks.

Edited October 11, 2023 by Photon Jet

[Samurai Equine 51,345]

There is a lot of risks and dangers involved with relying too heavily on AI-generated content to make things.

That being said, while I do stand with the creators that don't want their work or their soul stolen to feed an AI, while I definitely want to see creators get paid for the irreplaceable work they do... We're fighting against progress. Like cavemen fighting against the newly developed wheel, we can't stop this from being a thing. It's here, it's popular, and the AI's that people are using are only getting more sophisticated and more capable as time goes on.

We're going to stumble.
We're going to make mistakes.
We're going to get it wrong perhaps MANY times before we get it right. But eventually, we will get it right. And when we do, I hope AI can become a useful tool that we all can enjoy responsibly.

[Megas 27,622]

AI shouldn’t be banned but it should be heavily regulated. One issue regarding AI is that it heavily relies on what is available on the internet to creat work, i.e., stealing other people’s work, and obviously people don’t like that. There’s also the argument of AI being tool which, yes, it is, but it’s not a replacement. Artwork that’s completely AI has no heart or soul put into, and often full of blemishes that are obvious not the result of human error. I’ve seen it used effectively as a tool, maybe a prompt to give an idea then draw it themselves.  But those examples are few and far in between.

 

I get it, not everyone is an artist and can just create themselves, but really, just the idea of AI generating artwork, actors, voices, and just pieces of media, etc, just feels really dystopian 

 

[Saphire Systrine 180]

I'm going to drop my 2cents in here about why I believe reliance on AI generation can be bad for society in general, and the reason my actually surprise you...

 

WHAT I AM NOT SAYING:

I am not saying that any person should be bullied, hated, or attacked for using AI art

I am not saying that AI shouldnt exist, and all generative AI should be destroyed

 

WHAT I AM SAYING:

Reliance on AI art generation has the potential to lead to the loss of artistic knowledge

While it is difficult to create things without AI, it can be more beneficial in the long run as it teaches and evolves the skills of the one creating, or other creators

 

I spent a good while thinking about all of this because I knew the idea of "AI art is theft" and "it will steal Jobs" just didn't hold up to long-term projections. I previously supported AI generation to some degree, until I gave it much more thought and came to these conclusions.

 

To learn more, look below:

AI Net-Loss Theory

"Net Loss" is a financial term, and it means that, once everything is added up, there is less money than what was started, even though there was some gain here and there.

Net Loss is hard to see when zoomed in on a small scale, like our tiny snippet of reality. But when zoomed out, even though it seemed like there were even increases and decreases, it was actually all trending down:

 

Thesis Statement

Generative AI usage in creative fields is a net loss to society's artistic skill, which will lead to the eventual endangerment of artistic wisdom and ability.

Explanation:

AI already starts with a debt to society, both using art before and replacing artists out there, but it never pays that off, even if there are tiny gains here and there.

Lets say you wanted an image for a youtube video. Without AI, your options are:
>Find an image online, thus exposing that artist to a wider audience and increasing their customer base +4
>Ask for free art, which will increase your interpersonal skills, the artist's artistic skills, and the artist's exposure +15
>Commission an artist, which will increase your interpersonal skills and financing skills, increase the artistic skill of the artist, give them more exposure, and fund that artist so they can keep doing art +25
>Create your own art, either by learning or increasing your own skill, thus adding more artistic skill to the world +50
>Not use an image in that video and instead re-write it to not need it, thus increasing your creative problem-solving skills +15

These can be applied to any art form, whether it be voice acting, music, art, 3D modeling, anything

All of these things add to society in multiple ways, either by helping another artist or increasing your own skill exponentially.
All of these things allow for art as a whole to continue existing, evolving, and thriving as a part of humanity.
Because these things start with virtually no debt, they are a gain to society in some way. They are all a net positive to society.

However, when you use AI:
>You don't increase your own skill, because you aren't using your own mind to actualize an idea into reality, which takes practice, work, and learned skill to do how you want it to. Your ability increases a little bit, but not nearly as much +3
>You do not learn by compare and contrast. Because the AI-generated content is a heartless amalgamation of previous works, it does not have the intent and ingenuity of a real artist. It can only do "the most expected thing" because that is how the Neural Network works. This happens regardless of if the data it was trained on is stolen or not. In comparison, a song from a human artist has intention and design in it, which you can learn from. -3
>The dataset to train the AI is, in most cases, stolen, and in best cases, provided freely and open source. Either way, this creates a debt which can either be huge or small. For bandcamp, they probably use the entire site's music files to train their AI, meaning it already has a huge debt. -100
>When generating something you will just use as is, you are robbing yourself and someone else of all the opportunities listed in the last section. -100

Because Generative AI already starts with a debt, that is, it has used massive swaths of the artistic world to generate its, and due to the computing and power consumption, the gains do not outweigh the loss. These things detract from society because they do not encourage one to learn from other artists or hone their own expressive/translative skills. It also prevents artists from earning money/exposure every time you use it, which makes it harder for them to devote time to said art or teaching others said art.

Because it both stunts learning and decreases art production, all forms of art will slowly fade, since people arent using/refining those skills as much anymore, nor are they able to devote as much time to doing so because they cannot compete with the quick profitability of generative AI. It will become rare for someone to know music theory, or color theory, or perspective, or good topography in 3D modeling, or good code writing in programming. This knowledge will fade away.

But what about archival?

It also will not be archived on the internet. AI-generated content is already exponentially increasing the amount of used data on servers, meaning large swaths of internet data like Youtube will need to be deleted to make more space. Due to the sheer amount of data that is currently produced, it is nearly impossible to sift through it all and find what should or shouldn't be deleted.

It will become harder and harder to pass down artistic knowledge because there will be less artists, and less room to distribute it. Thus, slowly, artistic wisdom and knowledge will begin to fade away.

But cant someone just search on how to make art without AI?

Potentially, yes, but this will rely on 2 major factors:

1. Artists share their knowledge and wisdom in ways that can be learned. This one almost doesn't work, because an artist's skill doesn't merely blossom from tutorials. Much of artistic growth happens through emulation of inspiration, and studying the intent and reasoning behind it. Since AI does not have intent and reasoning beyond minor human interaction, this can make it difficult when the world is flooded with AI content. This is an entirely different conversation though

2. AI Content and Human Generated Content are verifiably distinguished. This is important because there WILL be floods of automatically AI-generated tutorials, and just like Chat GPT can hallucinate things when the data is sparse, the same thing will likely happen here as well, it is important AI-generated content be distinguished from Human-generated content. Here is an interesting video on that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrcbH0ge2WE

 

In Conclusion:

The overreliance on AI art, even in the smallest of capacities, has a high chance of leading to the eventual loss of artistic knowledge/wisdom both on the internet and in the world as a whole, and thus should be strayed away from even if not using it is harder at times.

As someone who has been creating all kinds of art for a long time, I can verifiably say that the limitations one faces when not using AI can lead to more creative and innovative work. I know it's harder, I know that you may think wont ever make it to where you want to go without it, but trust me you WILL. I remember when I dreamed of making what I could only sketch on paper into a fully realized 3D animation, and 8 years later I have been able to in my recent videos. It took awhile, but with time I got there, and so can you

Edited October 15 by Saphire Systrine

[Iforgotmybrain 5,654]

For writing, I don’t think AI will ever be able to replace humans. It lacks the emotions, the experience, the actual thought to do so. Writers put so much of theirselves into what they write, implicitly and explicitly. The things someone has experienced in life and the people they’ve met and befriended will influence their stories and what they write. AI will never be able to replicate that. It’s why AI writing will always feel off, and soulless.

The consequences of AI writing, then, would be projects feeling devoid of soul. I guess that’s not too dissimilar to some massive media projects that already feel like they were designed in a lab to be as bland and inoffensive as possible. But like Saphire’s post says, at least real people are getting paid to create those projects, as mediocre or bad as they may be. There’s people gaining experience from making them. People who could then go on to use that money and experience to work on or create better, more creative things. With AI there’s none of that. As a consequence it (imo) takes away opportunities from real people.

[Dreambiscuit 9,691]

Taking this one point at a time.

Voice actor theft: an actor’s voice can be stolen whether AI exists or not. As with any tools or mediums in the industry, safeguards must be in place and enforced. The world is great at regulating the hell out of everything but short on enforcing it when it matters. Actors have rights and even clout, so if no one protects their interests they’ll have to do so themselves and sue those who would infringe on them. But it’s not AI that’s to blame; only people.

AI in video games: This is another matter of lazy game designers. And again it’s the fault of people and not the tools they use. Anyone can abuse any tool and their art will suffer for it. It will happen whether AI exists or not; they’ll just use another shortcut.

Lack of creative development: This is an obvious problem, but an old one far pre-dating AI. For years people have been using tech as a shortcut to thinking and true creativity. People are lazy and their work is disposable as a result. Computers make people lazy; not because computers (or AI) are necessarily bad, but the way they’re overused is bad. Dependence on anything artificial is a slippery slope that will inevitably result in generic and pallid art. But its people who have to take the high road and use the tools the way they should be used and not as a crutch. Sadly the modern work ethic is so anesthetized to technology in every aspect of life that they seldom stop to think that there’s a better way, even though it takes a few more steps. Those steps are worth it.

If anything needs a change it’s the human users and not the AI. Remember, AI is not true artificial intelligence; it’s not self-aware and can only generate material according to its programming. People need to reprogram themselves or they’ll never be any better than their own tools.

[ZiggWheelsManning 10,241]

Thanks for the rundown @Dreambiscuit  I wonder if you listen to any 20th century rock and hard rock albums where music artists show their work of committing to playing instruments in garages and old fashioned and firm sounding recording studios  

[Dreambiscuit 9,691]

@ZiggWheelsManning I'm not a huge rock fan, but I like bits and pieces of just about everything. And I have heard some musicians playing their music with some equipment that some would consider antiquated. Ask anyone who has played a Gibson guitar that pre-dates the 1980s and they'll tell you what a difference there is, especially the guitars made in the '50s. There was a band (not sure which, Van Halen maybe?) that used an amp from a race track, dating back to the '50s, made of fiberglass and capable of sounds no modern amp could reproduce. They said it was irreplaceable. 

Usually its the old stuff nobody thinks about that relies on a trained ear and some lateral thinking that produces the best art. No computers or AI required.

 

[Xada 370]

While i don't think any usage should be banned, i think there should be restrictions put in place. From personal experience it seems to be increasing expectations of regular artists to an unrealistic degree.

I have been posting both my art and AI generated images on Derpibooru and the AI generated ones always get way better score then my own.

[Sir Hugsalot 9,348]

AI-generated content, while it looked promising at first, definitely got out of hand fast. 

• At this point I barely browse Facebook, since it feels like Meta literally endorses AI content, prioritizing it over content made by people. Amount of pages I get swarmed with that have AI "art" is staggering. 
• Searching for new music on YouTube is at this point a chore, because where algorithm doesn't lock me in a tight bubble of bands I already know, it recommends AI music to me and, frankly, it's all just uninspired snoozefest. 
• Searching for some nice visual art feels like diving into a barrel filled with AI to the brim in a valiant struggle to find actual, human made art. There are ways to minimize (not remove entirely) AI from such searches, but they take a lot of work to implement. 
• Then there are matters of theft of people's voice or scams like selling AI generated art. 

I am not opposing existence of AI, but there need to be proper regulations to answer these problems. Right now AI companies treat copyright and privacy laws like a toilet paper and even in Europe, where laws addressing the issue were already implemented to some extent Internet at large feels more like a landfill than a place where one can explore their hobbies or socialize.

In my opinion what needs to be done is:

• enforce AI developers to leave easily detectable, unremovable tag that certain things were created with AI
• create filters that will hide entire AI generated content, should people wish to use them
• update copyright and privacy laws so that literally entire population can be defended against being used to train AI models unless they give proper permission. Such permission should always be optional (to avoid Meta being sneaky with forcing its users to opt in or lose their account) 

Of course I am very much aware that it's not going to happen, but without such actions taken, Internet's condition will only get worse in time. AI content is created at much faster rate than human content and it's of much lower quality, not to mention, at times openly deceiving.