Your opinion on the use of AI and neural networks in the anime industry

From an artist POV: gen AI is purely stealing.

@c0_nes Stealing from whom? I can understand the accusation of laziness and lack of creativity if a program creates art, but is the program somehow stealing art from other people?

@RobertBobert People give the AI generators people's artwork. I saw someone on a Touhou art sub who found out someone had used their art to generate an AI image. There have been people feeling these generators artwork of various artist like Asanagi and Tony Taka too. I feel like that's stealing.

@Tropisch But then, isn't creating fan art in general stealing from that perspective? Because people also create their own art based on other people's original characters.

@RobertBobert This is the same lazy relativist response that grifters repeat over and over. People create, like you even said. It's when a class of 30 students draw a picture of the apple at the front of the room, there will be 30 different apples. That is not the same as making copies of the apple with a machine.
AI does NOT create. Didn't you read what he said? People FEED artwork into the computer so it can spit out copies. That is not creating. It is a machine programmed to spit out copies. This attitude that people are the same as machines is sickening.

But this right here ^ is exactly the problem. It IS using visual artwork in all genres in servers and there without permission of the creators. And I am not going to get into a useless argument about who expressly gave permission publicly- because even if a creator does, there's no reliable way to track that and the AI Generated image certainly does not!



It is 100% theft because computers cannot create. They can only take something that it is fed like we just said.


This is nonsense- because it already IS illegal to COPY someone else's work. It even has warnings like that in old books- "No part of this work may be copied in whole or in part" have you never seen this before??

@SuperAdventure This isn't nonsense, because you literally implied that copying someone else's work can't be considered stealing if you did it "creatively". Which does sound like an excuse for the stealing you're talking about above. If you are not talking about any copying, but only about noncreative copying, then this is really not a question of theft, but a purely creative question and should be considered in this plane. Otherwise, your arguments can easily be used to criticize any fan content in general.

@Tropisch But then, isn't creating fan art in general stealing from that perspective? Because people also create their own art based on other people's original characters.

@RobertBobert Fan artists draw their work from scratch using their own hard work and skill off of the original character designs. Unless you're profiting off of it then it's not a legal grey area, and some IPs encourage it such as Mihoyo. Gen AI scrapes thousands of people's work without permission and feeds it into their database to generate art. People then usually make profit out of it- I've seen so many patreon accounts with AI'ed porn as rewards.

@c0_nes @SuperAdventure The problem is that first you say "it's bad because it copies someone else's work", and then suddenly you say that copying someone else's work is not something bad because it's about creativity. Either we initially say that the issue is not about copying, but about uncreative copying, or we come to the conclusion that any copying is bad and then fan content falls under this no less.

@c0_nes @SuperAdventure The problem is that first you say "it's bad because it copies someone else's work", and then suddenly you say that copying someone else's work is not something bad because it's about creativity. Either we initially say that the issue is not about copying, but about uncreative copying, or we come to the conclusion that any copying is bad and then fan content falls under this no less.

@RobertBobert I'm not saying AI copies other's art. I'm saying it steals it.

Generative AI is antithetical to the point of creativity and art, therefore it does not belong in animation as it threatens the integrity of the medium

@c0_nes Yes, but your justification for that statement was almost exactly that. Basically saying it's stealing because it's not as creative as fan artists replicating art from scratch.

@SuperAdventure Okay, so what's the conceptual difference between this and copying someone else's art from scratch? Like what's the difference between an ai cover and a live cover of someone else's song? This is really starting to feel like the Beria the pedophile case, where people hyper-focus on his dubious reputation as a pedophile while ignoring his involvement in Stalin's terror, as if it's so unserious that you had to make sex crimes accusation to prove why Beria was a really bad guy. The argument that AI is anti-creative is enough, you don't need to further pretend that you're against copying other people's work.

@RobertBobert I am not pretending anything- it IS illegal to copy work and always has been.

You are the one who is pretending here- you keep dancing around a point rather than just making a point. The AI program/software/database/networks are taking actual works and producing copies of them. They are unable to create from scratch.

So stop dancing around the point and tell us why you think that's ok:

@SuperAdventure I asked you a direct question, asking you to define the difference between a conventional AI cover and a cover by real people. Why did you ignore that, choosing to simply repeat your thesis in a passive-aggressive manner a-la "no, you"?

@RobertBobert I already told you what the legal position is and that's all I should need to say.
So for the very last time and I do swear this is the last- you need to stop dancing around the point you want to make with this crap and just make it.

-Asking me to define something is dancing around the point- because you already have an argument in mind. Don't play games with people and use their words- i.e. GASLIGHT them- into the point you want to make; use your own. If you have a point to make, then make it-

-Otherwise we will ALL assume you have none to make.

I'm ok with AI because it's just a tool, not a real intelligence. If AI produces slop, give better prompts or make a better AI.

On one hand, I look forward to how much all the anime at the bottom of seasonal rankings will improve since they are literally slideshows, manga panels with colors. On the other hand, there is a risk that AI will make the above average anime look worse (why spend 100 to get 100, when AI lets me spend 10 to get 60?), but I'll start complaining about AI only when I'll see that happen.

Do we need to have this thread every week? Can we maybe go to monthly?

I have wondered about this. If I lost my job due to AI technology then I doubt anyone would care. In fact for most jobs outside the creative arts most people are rather ambivalent to the loss of jobs through automation. For any creative role it tends to stir more emotion and the discussions generally become more passionate. I am of the belief that all peoples' lives are equal and this thought extends to professions. If you are going to make a thing over the loss of creative roles then you need to place the same level of concern when this same technology is applied to other sectors.

I do think it is sad to lose jobs to AI in this manner but, from where I am sitting, it seems a matter of time before this technology becomes more widely adopted; the potential cost savings will be too hard to resist in the long run. You also got to consider the domestic market in Japan is not exactly thriving and their working population is declining which will only push companies to experiment and then deploy these technologies to keep costs down.

I suppose for ecchi lovers this could be an issue as I hear some of the AI programs out there are not always ecchi friendly...

@Nirinbo This is actually not a bad take. The biggest beneficiaries from this will be all the smaller studios whose work is nowadays (mostly) doing harem isekai. Much as with digital inking (no need for dedicated inkers) AI will reduce the number of frames that need to be drawn so those studios can only improve the quality of the output. But I think it's still way too early for that. In 5 years, as SLMs mature (and yes the animation execs absolutely do want to use AI to pump out productions even quicker, they just can't agree on how to train specialized models without infringing on each other's productions) I could see this being a thing.

@SuperAdventure So, you simply refuse to answer my questions (apparently very inconvenient for you for some reason), preferring to distract attention with an emotional repetition of the same theses, as well as accusing me of trying to develop the question instead of agreeing with you without any reservations? Almost directly telling me in plain text that if you don't like my points, then you will simply ignore their existence and assume that I don't have any. As I assumed, further conversation is simply meaningless. Thank you.

@RobertBobert Dead end convo, OP wants to play straw man arguments, shills for AI but can't defend it except with strawman arguments and red herrings. Completely refuses to commit to a position. Sad.