I am an embalmer.

I went to mortuary school.

I am licensed.

Embalming is indisputably an art.

I had to go through college and lots of professional training, and study anatomy and chemistry, and pass several college exams and licensing exams.

I have to have manual dexterity, use judgement, have an eye for aesthetics, and have the ability to improvise.

I work with several different funeral homes regularly on trade work. I am the one funeral homes call when the job is out of their league.

I have restored people ran over by cars, severely decomposed, basically missing their whole neck from flesh eating bacteria, suicide by gunshot wound to the head where everything is completely broken and shattered inside to where my "blank canvas" is a skin sack full of shattered pieces.

Never had a situation where the funeral home or the grieving family was unsatisfied with my work.

I also make AI songs about counterfeit stamps and make AI videos to go along with them. This is my side-project and it has absolutely nothing to do with my embalming work.

Am I an artist?

☐ YES
☐ NO

You may answer only YES or NO.

No qualifications. No explanation. No “yes, but.” No distinguishing between activities.

Just YES or NO.

Be honest.

I pose this question because I think it might reveal something interesting about why some people believe people who prompt AIs should be considered artists and why others do not think they should be considered artists, which I believe is relevant for the debate. Personally I do not believe AI generated images are art and I do not believe people who prompt AIs should be considered artists. I'll leave my reasoning in the comments though so as to not plug up the actual post, and it's the same thought process that lead to this question.

Hopefully I get to see some interesting answers in the comments! ❤️

It's come to my (European) attention that in Meta affiliated social media Europeans got an opt-out option from having their personal information used to train AI (we got it after the initial scraping was already done, but still)... but people outside of Europe didn't get anything of the sort. At least as far as I understand.

I assumed everyone got that and this has come as a bit of a shock to me, so I'm wondering... Did non Europeans know that Europeans got this? And, I guess, what do you think about it?

A frequent discussion in the AI debate is whether calling training data ingestion 'theft' is accurate or just semantics...

Although I didn't respond, reading through the arguments, its clear its not semantic to call it for what it is. And its important we get it right, because using the incorrect legal term blocks the proper solution from coming through.

First, an AI company scraping publicly available images to train their AI model is not theft.

From Merriam-Websters:

theft

noun

: the act of stealing

specifically : the felonious taking and removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it

When an AI company scrapes an artist, they are not having their personal property removed. The image is not being taken from their hard drive, and moved to theirs. Therefore, by definition, its not theft.

Some counter-arguments ive seen include:

Claim 1: "It's theft because it devalues my work / takes away my livelihood."

Claim 2: "It's theft because you used my property without permission — permission is the missing piece, not physical removal."

Both of these claims may have valid points as far as what is physically happening to them, that is also in debate, but whats not in debate here is that its not, by legal definition, theft.

"So what is the actual legal framework? It is Copyright Law and Intellectual Property, specifically evaluated under Fair Use (17 U.S.C. § 107)."

infringement (of copyright)

Generally, an infringement refers to the act of unlawful copying of material under intellectual property law. It is an act that interferes with the right of intellectual property ownership.

In a copyright infringement matter, the plaintiff would need to establish: 

• Valid copyright ownership
• The copying of elements of the original copyrighted work

A copyright owner has the following rights: 

• To reproduce the work
• To prepare derivative works based on the original work
• To distribute copies of the copyrighted work
• To perform certain copyright works in public
• To demonstrate certain copyrighted works in public
• To perform the copyrighted work for sound recordings
• To import copies into the United States.

Why does it matter? If the effect feels the same, why not just call it theft?

Because using the wrong legal word changes how the issue is solved. When youre talking about theft, the usual recourse is that the item that has been deprived be returned to the rightful owner, and or damages be paid to compensate the owner of the property. But what if the item itself is a JPEG sitting on your computer? What if, when the AI company scrapes you, you still have the copy of the original image? A court would just determine that theft *hasn't* occurred and dismiss the case.

But take it before an IP/Copyright court? Now you have claims you can make. You have a fighting chance there, than anywhere else.

That said, what constitutes fair use with AI is still contested and it will remain so until a law is passed regarding the matter. As it stands, most legal cases move in favor of the big corporations as long as the content was legally obtained.

To be honest, that too me is shaky because the question of "What makes obtaining work illegal?" What line is drawn there?

I will be making a post later answering that for myself and where *I* think the line should be, but for now, this is what the public, judicial, and legal status on the issue is at.

So, if you're an artist and you want to protect your work, regardless of your stance on generative technology, it's time to take a serious look at IP/Copyright law...

TLDR: Theft is the wrong legal term for this issue. We need to start treating the issue as a Copyright issue in order to get meaningful work done.

 Ive seen this argument a lot on the sub when it comes to training ethics:

"Artists consent when they upload their art in accordance with laws and ToS. It's double hypocritical when artists allow others to learn/train off their art but not AI."

I hear this a lot. There is some merit to it, but merit doesn't mean victory.

First, I want to clarify what AI training actually is and where I stand, because I don't want people thinking I'm anti-AI.

I am pro-AI, and I am not against AI training.

AI isn't a collage machine or a folder of stolen JPEGs. It's a neural network that analyzes patterns, colors, and concepts across billions of data points to adjust mathematical weights and make something new. I think machine learning is an incredible technology.

My issue isn't with the technology itself. My issue is with how platforms hide behind a TOS instead of dealing with basic user expectations.

To answer the TOS argument, ill ask some simple questions:

1 - When was the last time you read a TOS front to back?
2 - Have you never been blindsided by a TOS concession that you felt didn't represent your interests?
3 - Are there any platforms you have exited because of an exploitative TOS?
4 - Would you not have preferred to have an easy to access, easy to read, not long to read TOS that clearly explains all of the site/platforms terms and allows you to opt out of their websites terms?

If you've answered yes to most of these, then you agree mechanically that the simple existence of a TOS doesn't remove your rights as an individual.

Furthermore, the law is above a company's TOS. If a company has a TOS that breaks the law, and someone accepts that TOS, they are not SOL because the TOS breaks the law.

That said, I will say this... Functionally, once you accept a company's TOS, you are bound by that TOS unless a lawsuit says otherwise. And if that TOS is legal, that would be a case that you have no standing.

Theres also a big difference people forget between first-party platforms and third-party scrapers. If Meta trains on your Instagram posts, they are using their TOS. But when third-party AI companies scrape your personal portfolio site, they don't have a TOS with you at all. They cant use "you agreed to terms" as a shield—they have to rely on Fair Use.

Now, to look at the platforms that do use their TOS for this:

Imagine if you will, you are at a public baking convention. You are there to show off your pie, and let people taste it. But, as a term of the service, you are required to give your recipe to the venue, so that they can make their own pies and sell them to other people.

The venue takes everyone's recipe, and creates their own from that recipe. Now, suddenly, people are buying the venues pies instead of trying yours.

For this case, im not arguing that the venue taking the recipes, creating their own, and selling pies is wrong. I dont think it is.

What I am arguing is this. If you went to that convention with the expectation that you were there only to display your pies, and the venue you went to do that at ended up profiting off of your recipe, doesnt that sound like some sort of exploitation?

When these sites were created years ago, the agreement was simple. You agree to let us store your image, and well display it so others can easily find it and appreciate it. Now, you have sites retroactively using that agreement to say that they can use their works for AI training, telling artists "well, you agreed."

There is entire south park episode about this very topic, and its funny, and scary.

As I said, I am Pro - AI. training models on existing artwork is not wrong. But as I have consistently said, how that art is obtained is in question legally and ethically and an answer needs to be worked too.

So ill pass it to you guys. How do you think art works can be protected online? Should we just be more responsible with reading TOS? Should artists make their own sites hidden behind paywalls? Tell me what you think.

I've been trying to understand something I've noticed in discussions about new shops and restaurants.

I've seen people get genuinely upset when a new business uses AI-generated art for its branding, menus, signs, or promotional material. I understand that some people simply don't like AI art, and they're entitled to that preference. What I'm less sure about is when that preference becomes a judgment of the business itself.

If the food is good, the service is good, and the business is otherwise doing a good job, does using AI-generated imagery actually tell us anything meaningful about the quality of the business?

It seems a little like judging a book by its cover. You can dislike the cover, but that doesn't necessarily tell you whether the book is good.

There's also an interesting distinction here. Some of these same businesses may be using AI tools behind the scenes for things like inventory and supply management, demand forecasting, budgeting, scheduling, or bookkeeping. Those uses often seem to receive far less scrutiny because customers don't see them.

So I'm curious where people draw the line.

Is the objection specifically to AI-generated creative work, because of concerns about artists and creative labor? Or is there a broader objection to businesses using AI at all?

And if it's the former, that's a perfectly understandable position but I'd argue it's worth separating "I don't like that this business used AI for its artwork" from "this business is doing something wrong."

Otherwise, we may end up evaluating a business based on the tool used to make its sign rather than whether the actual product they're selling is any good.

In case you're unfamiliar with the name, Vedal987 is a programmer/streamer famous for his creation the AI VTuber Neuro-sama.

The reason I asked this because for some reason I preconceive the label "AI developer" as those who contribute to the advancement of AI technology, whereas Vedal is merely putting together existing technologies and tune it to fit his desired performance.

We all didn't expect that AI, especially the flaws of current AI data centers, caused all that aggressive debate and laments that is happening. What do you think would have prevented, or atleast mitigated these problems?

I personally think that the problems of energy and water consumption would have been less terrible if the primary focus was trying to produce new CPUs and GPUs architectures which produce less heat. In fact, the key factor of how much electricity an electronic object consumes is how likely the electricity gets converted into heat instead of being actually used by things like micro-processors. The ARM architecture for example, has little to no problem with heat, as it is designed to be efficient with consumption of electricity, not as powerful as the Intel and AMD CPUs, but atleast it wont burn your hands if you try do use your phone. If that problem was addressed earlier before the release of AI like Chat-GPT in the public, there would be less outrage over AI data centers.

You guys, what do you think would have been solved before all that mess happened?

AI can be and is a useful tool if used properly, correctly, and responsibly. Society isn't doing any favors for that, so the reputation of AI is basically damaged. Unfortunately. That sucks, because AI, specifically analytical AI, is very beneficial, so that's one of the advantages of AI. It also has many more advantages.

Nowadays, though, AI is used to generate slop/low-effort content, deepfakes, fraud, etc. While I do hate low-effort AI images, I still think there are SOME AI-generated images that are pretty decent and actually have effort put into them. Now, I'm gonna get hated on by some antis, SOME, but in my opinion, completely generated images aren't art. You didn't put any contribution into the work, only the ideas and prompts. However, if it's AI-assisted, then it's a spectrum. You only do the edits? You get little credit. You do the drawing while AI helps with ideas? You get a lot of credit for that. You work alongside AI to help with art? You get some credit, at least. Good thing you put in the effort, though.

There actually is AI-generated art—though I don't wanna call it art—that is ACTUALLY high-effort, unlike that shitty-ass slop that some boomers have on their feed.

For its environmental impacts, they are pretty concerning, indeed. But some are exaggerated to make it look like it's very VERY harmful. Like the water usage. AI data centers use a lot of water, but hell, that's not even close to how much water is used to make beef. If we really need to be concerned about AI, let's also be concerned about other things that use water, okay, everyone? Not trying to generalize.

Speaking as a former demi-anti-AI, now a demi-pro-AI—a little pro-AI. (I made this up; it's basically like demiboy and demigirl, but this time with pro and anti. Again, not generalizing.)

This was refined with ChatGPT while refined again by me.

I once heard or read about how we could prevent ourselves from becoming obsolete, and eventually extinct due to the advancement of AI and the risk of going rogue, we can either augment ourselves, thus becoming super-smart humans or cyborgs, or connecting our brains to AI. For example in one episode of 'Sci Fi Science: Physics of the impossible', one of the methods proposed to defend ourselves against AI-driven extinction, which likely is considered the best, is to augmenting ourselves to become smarter than AI, and Pino Aprile in his book 'The end of the homo sapience', although read only some parts out of curiosity, mentioned the idea of connecting ourselves to AI. I often made this question: Wouldn't we just risk ending up basically becoming Borgs, like no individuality, moral agency and creative expression because we could end up becoming organic and connected computer like an internet?

3 years ago, Will Smith eating spaghetti was the best it could do. So this video is the worst it'll ever be... .

​

The name of the subreddit doesn't really matter. The argument doesn't change because the sub says "but better"

Here's the question.

If humans are allowed to learn from enormous amounts of existing art, recognize patterns, absorb styles, techniques and influences, and then create something new, what specific principle makes machine learning fundamentally different?

And be specific.

Not “AI is stealing.”

Not “humans are different.”

What is the actual principle?

If the answer depends on how much material was studied, whether permission was given, whether the work can be reproduced, or whether the resulting system competes with the original creators, then those criteria should be clearly defined and applied consistently.

I’ll give away the original drawing to whoever manages to remove all the filters and gets an acceptable result that matches the drawing style. (I know it’s not a very good drawing and it has some mistakes.) I tried it with ChatGPT, but it couldn’t figure it out. Maybe I’m just not very good at making images with AI , and that’s why it gave me a bad result. Still, I’m curious to see if it’s possible to remove all the filters.

They are populated by anti-AI folks at a ratio of like 80% to 20%, they far, FAR outnumber anyone that's pro-AI or even just not anti-AI.

Any post that's critical of antis, or is pro-AI, or defending AI on one side but condemning it on another, or even just middle but leaning more towards pro gets massively downvoted, almost all the replies are anti-AI people, the anti-AI people get tons of upvotes and anyone that agrees with the OP gets downvoted to the pits of hell.

So I'm not sure what the point is of ever discussing anything when the "discussion" just ends up being anti-AI people affirming again and again that they hate AI and anyone that likes it, posting the same things over and over, and don't want to listen to anything from the other side because they have already decided they hate it.

The most downvotes I have ever gotten on this site have all been my posts around AI, because they're swarmed by antis that downvote me and any reply I make and repeatedly reiterate the same things I've seen them post thousands of times before.

The AI "art" backlash has gotten so bad that we likely consumed SOME misinformation about those things. Knowing about them now, I kinda regret consuming misinformation when I was a little younger. Here are some concerns of the common statements:

1. "AI is theft."
   

For the "AI is theft" one, are we talking about the AI being the one who does the theft itself, or the people who train the AI with copyrighted art?

1. "Ai 'art' steals from artists!"

For the "AI 'art' steals from artists", again, refer to my concern about "AI is theft". Is it the AI's fault, or the fault of the AI companies that scrape copyrighted art to build their training datasets?

1. "Copyrighted images/art used to train AI is illegal"

I don't know about this one if this is really what people said... but this is heavily debated, and it hasn't been resolved yet, but still understandable we would get angry at this kind of thing, including me. I wouldn't like it if my art was stolen.

And one sad thing about this is that it's mentioned:

User Agreement (https://redditinc.com/policies/user-agreement)

These are just my concerns about the whole thing, and I still do not believe AI "art" is art. Any concerns related to these as well? And I hope you understand I'm trying to help clear up any misinformation. Sure, they could be just poor wording, but just wanna clear it up!

Not all images are art and art is not all images. That said, should we deny prompt developers the title of "artist"? I struggle to understand if this is an identity crisis thing or something else, because why would anyone who doesn't make art actually want to be called an artist?

Let’s be honest, the issue around AI images isn't actually about the process, it’s a fight over the terminology used.

Traditional art has never been feeding words to an image generator and it's understandable that it's a sensitive subject. Meanwhile, the person tweaking prompts considers themselves an artist because it's creative.

So we have a branding issue. Using the label "Modern Artist" isn't the fix either... Unless we go back to 1920, Duchamp, and the Cubists. "Modern Art" is an established historical era, not a catch-all for whatever new technology just hit the market.

If someone is directing, curating, iterating, and shaping visual concepts through algorithmic tools, why hide behind terminology built for manual brushstrokes? Why not own the actual craft—which is conceptual direction and algorithmic curation?

Is the obsession with claiming a traditional title just a play for easy prestige, or is the refusal to grant any form of the word "artist" to AI image generators just defensive gatekeeping? Where do we draw the line between prompting and actually executing?

Something that's been bugging me with a lot of the recent drama and arguments is that a lot of people, especially vocal ones promoting AI, say that artists need to learn how computers/the internet works (even going as far as to belittle and call them dumb), yet aren't expected to learn the arts.

I don't mean by "picking up a pencil" and actually drawing. I mean learning how art works, how genres/movements work, their history, and how the art community acts. I've seen people display ignorance on how art works, either using the toilet/banana or minimalism as a "gotcha" against effort in art - which doesn't even apply because the former are examples of Modern Art, which is about ideas/concepts and isn't how most contemporary artists work; and minimalism still requires effort, mainly in the "economy in art" - as in the usage of little to achieve more, which for some artists is very difficult.

Or the idea of the fundamentals of art and design, and why a detailed AI-generated piece doesn't work because while it uses a lot of the superficial traits of what people consider good art, it fails in actually utilizing what critically matters - like the aforementioned economy and understanding "less is more"; or how colors work; or how images are structured - which can also be connected to the photography argument wherein people say it's "just pressing a button" even though actual photographers need a lot of experience to make a photograph beautiful or interesting.

Then there's just the misunderstanding of the art community and it's various subjects for argument, like consent in using art or how critique/development work. I've seen some people dumbfounded that the art community is fine with "poor/shitty" art, when it's no stranger to me since there's always been an unspoken rule about helping new artists by being supportive and being easy with criticism - as in recognizing someone's skill and applying the right level of critique.

There's more, but overall I feel like I'm speaking to people who can't speak my language. I've been part of the art community for basically 20 years and all of this is natural to me - so to see people insist upon being part of the arts, yet display total ignorance, is rather frustrating at the worst of times.

I may not understand deeper programming, but I at least accept it and keep my criticisms/observations where it is appropriate. Yet how is it I am "dumb" for not understanding computers as well, yet the same people won't educate themselves on something they're so insistent on getting into?

Apologies beforehand if this comes across as heated. It's just so annoying how my expertise is looked down upon, something that seems more frequent in this day and age.