Latest / Mythmakers / AI Revolution: What should writers and artists do? Part 1: Images

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AI Revolution: What should writers and artists do? Part 1: Images · Mythmakers

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  Hello and welcome to MythMakers. MythMakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy
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  creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Golding. I'm
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  an author but I also direct the activities of the centre and today I'm joined by a good
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  friend called Pete Williamson who is an illustrator and artist and we first met because he
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  was illustrating one of my books which is a rather nice moment for writers when we get to meet
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  other creatives. So today our theme is trying to find a way through the new phenomenon of AI
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  generated images and text because we both have skin in the game so to speak. So first of all what
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  we're going to do is just talk a little bit about what a real life person does as a creative
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  process and then have a look at the issues that the new AI world of creativity presents looking
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  at its pros and cons. So first of all Pete, you have some most wonderful imagery which I love.
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  How would you describe your artistic style and how has it evolved over time?
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  I mean it's described for me as kind of being gothic which is odd because I kind of understand it
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  I've never been like a gothic person but it's very mainly black and white. My best work is in black
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  and white and it's quite classic in a way. I think my favourite illustrator is still John Tenniel
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  who did the Alice books but Lewis Carroll. I loved that precision of draftsmanship but also
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  the strangeness of it. I loved the idea of applying that draftsmanship to absolutely weird
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  and kind of a dream like atmosphere. So I've always been trying to capture that. There's lots of
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  things in the mix. There's asterisk, there's wizard chips, there's war comics from when I was 11
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  and then there's American underground comics which as a children's book illustrator I tend not
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  to mention because they can be quite obscene in a way but they were kind of quite influential
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  because they were yeah again they're very stylistically diverse and the draftsmanship was always
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  really impressive and I didn't actually go to college I kind of did that thing of just being in a
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  room and drawing and drawing and drawing until things started to look how I wanted them to look.
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  So did you have a stage when you were actually literally copying somebody else's style?
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  So did you yeah and how did that happen? Was it you were you copying the illustrations to see how
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  it felt to put the lines down or were you drawing in the style of Tenniel or somebody?
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  Yeah I was drawing in the style of sometimes very early on copying pictures from comics
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  and then just yeah and then just trying to apply that style to
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  the ideas I was getting from from the stories. And these weren't things that were being
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  published they were like your training is that yeah very much yeah yeah so at one point I was kind of
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  doing this the dark stuff that was inspired by American alternative comics from the 60s and the 80s
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  which had a connection to the kind of American alternative culture and at the same time I was
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  looking at children's picture books because I've got the idea though well you know taking
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  my love for drawing it has to go into into a commercial area so for children's picture books might
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  be somewhere to go I'd love Dr. Zeus and I you know I'd probably poured over those picture books for
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  years so it so for quite a few years I was I had these two strands that were separate
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  whereas I was learning to draw this really quite cute stuff with lots of little kids playing
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  with dinosaurs in gardens yeah same time doing doing work which which was perhaps getting quite eerie
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  and you know Edward Cory was a big influence in the early 90s and then gradually these two strands
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  started to kind of gel and move together and I was starting to do work that people have told me
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  since he's kind of you know strange they say strange but beautiful or you know it's quite weird
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  stuff that's also cute it's I seem to have created this balance between stuff that can be quite
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  odd but also endearing which has which has been great on lots of the illustration projects I've
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  had yeah that was the style that really suited a short series of books I did about a Victorian
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  little boy called Mel Foster who was like a superhero idea it was like Avengers set back in
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  the Victorian period with the second generation monsters like Frankenstein and Dracula those sorts
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  of characters and it was you your pictures had the exactly the right world where it was suitable
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  for children but had that atmosphere and edge and I imagine you can push that either way depending
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  on what your what the product is it's not just one thing but it goes with the scale that you're on
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  I suppose yes yeah yeah so I did an exhibition a few years ago where I went
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  away from children's books into but using that style to to kind of address what I
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  what I'm saying we're like adult concerns and not not your normal adult stuff that
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  you know sex and drugs and rock roll that kind of cliché stuff but but kind of
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  anxiety and I'd kind of used the art to look into my heritage which I found out
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  from being adopted I found out about my adoption that a grandparent had come over from Poland
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  that started a second world war so it was interesting to use my children's book out to kind of
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  investigate ideas of displacement and and kind of fleeing danger and that kind of idea I
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  was able to use that that black and white style to kind of really go into those ideas and it
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  I was really interesting and then surely after that I was I was using the sweeter side of my art to
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  you know to kind of entertain children in book workshops and you know they don't want to see
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  sinister eerie art you know well to an extent they like a bit of it to me but yeah but to go and
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  do something that's funny and goofy and that and and his art is entertainment so it's nice to have
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  those they have to move between those those holes I suppose yeah and so would you say that there's
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  a distinctive Pete Williamson like if you look at a picture you know you've done it and you could
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  probably somebody else like your agent could say oh yeah that's Pete's that's Pete's work some
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  like in the same way there's someone looks at a Rembrandt and says that's Rembrandt and they look
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  at a bango and they say that's a vengo is there a Pete Williamson indefinable you should
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  say part about your drawings I think there is and I think it's to do with the
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  with the use of I kind of don't sting from the Indian ink that's kind of for children's books there's
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  quite a lot black in there and and shading and and just getting someone once said I had I created the
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  most colorful black and white pictures she'd ever seen which which I thought was a really
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  interesting it's just a lot of use of um you know that lighting effects where things
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  it's kind of odd to describe our suppose because it's such a it's just an intuitive thing
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  by this point so that's the equivalent of the the brush work but would you say there's also a
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  um attitude I suppose it's the person behind it I'm thinking about here because of the nature
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  what we're discussing would you say there was a approach to characters in particular the way
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  children are shown the way dragons are shown whatever which has come out of your relationship to
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  the things you're drawing yes I think I think I think in a way I mean I'm doing a graphic novel
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  at the moment of a character that I had was a successful book series a few years ago
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  and I was looking at him earlier and he's basically just like a a small child that's kind of
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  really on edge in the world and I wonder I think I'm putting some that that seems to be my character
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  I think and I like there's a I think I'm I'm always capturing a sense of perhaps unease
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  it gets characters tend to kind of not look that comfortable with what's going on but partly
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  that's because the writers they put me with are also working in that area where things are slightly
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  odd and off key and you know the the characters don't really know what on earth
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  that they that it's almost like a sense of threat underlying the stories so I think
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  New York in a way captures that was a sense of things aren't things aren't quite what they're
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  supposed to be I think that's what it what are mainly capturing and when I was doing the art
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  pieces I was I was kind of looking into that as well there was always an element in an image where
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  something was wrong like that I did an image of a girl running across the field and it was all in
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  at night time so she was almost like illuminated this low and figure kind of fleeing across
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  a landscape but I did the moon black and it just gave it a sense of wilderness and things not being
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  quite how they should be so I think I found out I a while ago found out I had ADHD I think that's
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  been coming through all all these years with sense of not quite things not quite being right.
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  Yeah and of course there's that wonderful rich ridden when he wrote the Percy Jackson series he
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  made Percy an ADHD sufferer because he has the the extra sort of awareness of the Greek deity world
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  it's just out on view of everybody else you know that sense of being on edge at something you know
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  minor tours about to leap out which was a lovely way of explaining that phenomenon so do you
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  actually when you come down to the we've talked about the attitude and the learning process when
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  you actually come down to the art do you use any you have sort of pen and ink scanner in person
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  or do you use an iPad or some kind of digital assistance how does the actual work happen
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  it's I'm very very very old school it's it's watercolor paper pen and ink Indian ink and black
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  watercolor and that's it it's a I mean I I've worked for an animation company I did a lot of work
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  on on Photoshop and I really found and I think it's to do with the ADHD I found it difficult to kind
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  of create because it there were no limits it wasn't you know I've got a pen and a pencil and
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  a pot of ink and some paper it was it was just enormous what you could do you could do something
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  it was wrong get rid of it do something else but also is interestingly you you'd have no trace
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  of what got wrong so you couldn't work from it it was every time you cleared something away you were
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  it was a blank slate again and I think for ADHD people having that just limitless choice
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  just means you're never really making decisions it's always you can always do something else add
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  something take something away change color the end of the day you might think you've created
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  an image the next day you come and change everything whereas because I'm limited with with the
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  materials I use it just feels there's just a focus there which feels far more far more creative
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  things get done there's a no just scratchiness that the nib and the the watercolour soaking in
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  and the you know the paper piling up on the desk it's far more physical material so I've seen
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  all the pro create things coming up on social media and while it's kind of you know I can be
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  really impressed by it I've never really felt that I want to go into it it hasn't got that
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  feel for me that I think would work yeah yeah you're the perfect person to talk at two about
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  this then because you're in you are at the end of a scale which is yeah we need the physical hands
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  on um illustrator approach for you to work so drawing a parallel because we're going to be talking
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  about the sort of images generated by AI as well as the text generated by AI so looking at the
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  sort of parallels from my rise to be a writer it started off similar to you obviously a primary
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  school we're all taught to paint and we're taught to write hopefully and for me that initial phase
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  was very much I would write what I was reading so if I was reading the narnia books I would then
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  write stories like the narnia books if I was reading the famous five I would then read would write
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  stories like the famous five and you know that's the sort of this is the tween you know the pre-teen stage
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  and then I carried on reading and writing but it then became more like an academic reading and writing
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  writing essays you know the all that stuff I wasn't particularly writing so much in my late
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  teens early 20s and it wasn't until I had a bit of a gap later on in after having a child
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  that I actually started writing again because I had an audience I was doing writing for academic
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  purposes I was doing writing for a work context but the actual creative let's tell a story hadn't
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  been happening and so looking at the beginnings of my professional career I was already moving towards
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  my own voice I wasn't copying people I got ideas from reading other things and very often they
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  would be I don't want to do that so what do I want to do it's quite useful to have I don't like
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  that style so actually my choice is and I'm a terrible person for if I don't like how a film finishes
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  or how a TV series is going or a book I will say no what should have happened actually one of the
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  things I was I was trying my my brain out on was the Harry Potter series because that came out quite
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  slowly for you remember and we all knew that there was going to be I know seven books or something so
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  I was always rewriting the end I was thinking how's it going to go from here um yeah what what
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  see story logic because there is a certain sort of some underneath a story um another podcast
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  is was I write or not you know um I got a couple of key things right anyway um so I was sort of
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  inspired by the work of other people and of course because I give so much of my time to Tolkien
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  I was very inspired by the Lord of the Rings but I've never sat down to write a Lord of the Rings
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  look alike you know sort of in the world of or a sort of sideways step where it's really Lord of the
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  Rings but I just give it my own names I'm not I'm not interested in doing that because
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  the sort of Tolkien world where you create something so at such detail it's not where I am
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  creatively I like to tell lots of stories and lots of different places lots of different reasons
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  historical contemporary and so yeah yeah so there you can be inspired by other artists other writers
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  you don't necessarily want to be them you want to do what they're doing in the sense of produce
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  your own work but you don't want to be them so I'm not copying them uh so my other hero is Jane
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  Austin I don't want to write a Jane Austin novel um so when I am writing the actual after years
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  and years of reading of stories doing my own little efforts when I was younger when I actually
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  can't come to writing I'm fairly straightforward in how I do it I do write straight onto
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  computer rather than longhand um but because I know how to touch type I'm not thinking about the
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  mechanics of writing in that way it's as though it's going straight for my brain onto the screen
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  there isn't awareness of the physical I don't have that you know the I'm sure some people
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  are inspired by the actual movement of the pen that's not something that matters to me um and the place
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  I'm in in my head when I'm writing feels a bit like meditation or prayer or something it's a kind of
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  space where I can lose sense of time so if I'm really in a story I can be sitting very still
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  it's terrible of health I can be sitting really still the whole afternoon will go and something
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  breaks in and you think where have those three hours gone um and that's the most creative space
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  I'm in and do you get like that when you're really in a picture that there's a sort of
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  almost like a time just stretches and disappears it boundaries disappear until you're aware of it again
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  yeah it's um it's quite a magical space isn't it you're in this I mean the antithesis of that
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  is when I'm having difficulty drawing something yeah yeah spend seven seconds drawing a line
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  and then feel exhausted enough to go away and have a cup of tea but yeah when you when you spend
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  hours I was doing it last night actually I just spent hours you know with a glass opera on in the
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  background so that was just tuning away in the background and it just I just spend hours kind of
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  working on the project I'm doing now and then suddenly it's kind of you know you look up
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  it's quarter to ten and then you look up again and it's called about twelve and you
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  yeah and just kind of create they're seeing that your creation kind of just emerge in front of you
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  there's just something really hypnotic about it as well when it's going well I think yeah when it
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  doesn't go well then it then becomes the insult of the inanimate object so you know the pen that
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  breaks the computer that is updating and won't let you in or has lost your stuff you get really annoyed
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  I find that probably it's just me but I get really annoyed with inanimate objects who were standing
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  in my way because everything goes wrong then you stub your toe then you know it's like the world turns
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  against you so that's the sort of experience of us to as creatives and again I'm I'm not using
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  I suppose I'm using a word processor and I and I'm using the internet for searches but I'm not
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  generating any text via you know I'm not I'm not using even predictive text I hate that
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  I'm just working on it's my words going down yeah and so let's move on to thinking about the
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  potential of the AI artificial intelligence version of what we do so Pete and when I asked you
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  on this because of your very hands-on approach you hadn't particularly done anything with any AI
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  I'm presumably on both sides either text or imagery so I have used AI generated art for the reason
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  I use it is if for web presence so I can't correct but the the the Oxford Central Fantasy we
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  can't afford to pay for bespoke illustrations every time we put up a post but we may just want
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  something sitting behind our title that says this is about so for today's one if you were doing
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  an AI generated image for sitting behind it on YouTube I might put into one of the generators
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  you know a computer drawing a picture and it would come up with a suggestion for it I enjoy using
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  those images can be quite inspiring so for example today I was thinking about planning a room
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  inspired by nature and there's there's a real room which we're planning to decorate and I
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  thought oh well what was it being like if you imagined this room as a woodland grove so you can
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  put into an AI generator a living room like a woodland grove and because it's so random
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  it will come up with its own version of that and I looked at that and thought well I like the
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  bit of that and I like a bit of that so that's a good design idea and then there'll be another step
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  on from that where I go and think well how do you realise that in the real world yeah and so I can
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  use it to spark ideas this it's a bit similar in my mind to those story cubes you get which they
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  use in schools where you have a bag of dice and you shake and a picture comes out of a skeleton
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  a shoe and a I know a shepherd and you have to make a story up about it it has that feel it's
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  like a lottery yeah um it's not so you can I could go and pay a designer but I can't well I can't
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  fall to pay a designer but it also I want to do the design and what it's doing is giving me ideas
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  for my design so in a sense it's like giving me a paintbrush for me to do something um
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  so it helps my visual creativity because I'm not I you know I can draw but not that good at drawing
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  um so that's where it's useful uh now so there's a world where lots of people are finding
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  a word you know a way of interacting with this to just kind of get images that use them or
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  interest them or uh suggest ideas to them so that's one way of doing it
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  then if you let's stick with it because there is we could sidestep over to the text but let's keep
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  with the images so I can imagine as an illustrator you're not too worried about people
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  having a go at just spinning the wheel and coming out of images but if I had put in and I haven't
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  if I had put in draw me um Victorian heroine little girl in the style of Pete Williamson
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  yeah and it came out with something like your work then you would be worried because
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  that is somebody ripping off I know your website or something which the chat the bot has gone through
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  and stolen yeah that does at the moment I kind of assuming that's not going to happen but if it does
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  it's kind of yeah because you get as a crazy person you get to the point where you have your own
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  voice after a you know it's usually about quite a long time isn't it like just hacking away uh
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  the the kind of the work and just trying to find your voice just you kind of know what you want to
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  be doing but the voice often emerges almost by accident in a way and then for someone just to
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  kind of swoop in and and kind of go like I kind of understand it as well like it's kind of thing I
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  would I suppose when you're young or as far as it's different if you want to be if you want to be
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  creative yourself and maybe I'd say I want to an image but by one of these cartoonist I was really
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  into if I put that into one of these programs and they created something yeah I said yeah I was
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  but hmm it's interesting as I guess the issue is if people are just kind of taking a facsimile
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  of your style and perhaps using it to to make money I mean I would don't know if I'd be that bothered
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  if someone did it just because they liked my work and they they wanted to use it on a website
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  or something like that I wouldn't have much of an issue with that we would almost be a compliment
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  but I guess it's when you know when it gets translated into an advertising campaign at some point
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  and you're not you're not seeing any any benefit from that I suppose that's good that's a good
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  example because that's a bit like fan fiction for me yeah yeah I've had various books where they're
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  fans of written continuations or stories in the world of and absolutely you take it as a compliment
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  I think it clearly clearly seems wrong to me to do that for somebody whose work is in copyright
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  so for live so is it for illustrators the same as writers it's in this country it's life plus
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  70 I think yeah yeah yeah so if it's Van Gogh for example I think putting you know draw me I know
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  a Ford motor car in the style of Van Gogh something which he wouldn't have done but you think
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  oh wouldn't it be fun to see what it would be like to imagine he was doing that seems just playful
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  and fine because Van Gogh is not under copyright yeah well also he's so well known
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  that you you know he's not an obscure artist who you're kind of like preempting any success that
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  they might have that's a good point too and kind of taking their voice before they really
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  get it out into the world with Van Gogh you're just it's a cultural reference point isn't it you're
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  kind of applying that to like you say a car or yeah yeah a product I guess it's that that difference
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  if if he thinks someone would do that because people know what Van Gogh looks like when they saw
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  there would be that that incongruity which yeah yeah it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's
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  the workup that I suppose so I think we can say that because I'm trying to sort of fill my way to
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  what I think eventually the law should be or and what what people who care about this should be
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  doing that when there is a clear intention to rip off the style of somebody who's who has
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  either they're undiscovered or they they've got some kind of copyright that seems to me clearly
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  unfair and when you know it's unfair to let a bot sort of it's like a parasite then isn't it
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  it's living off the work of other people when it's something images that are
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  uh not protected by copyright and I'm just in a melange I don't I think it's fine to sort of say
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  you know draw me a modern girl in the style of tenials at Alice you know why not it doesn't matter
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  tenials doesn't care yeah but there is there is an issue here where
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  it's less clear um how the image has been generated so I before this we were reading some articles
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  up in this area and back in January um one of the AI image creators was taking being sort of
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  challenged by Getty Images for its use of photographers and illustrators work because
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  obviously Getty Images is like a library of work and you pay to use an image um yeah so the the
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  fear is that people whose income is uh by having the photographs or the illustrations used
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  and getting a royalty for that or payment for that uh I'm missing out because
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  they're being uh ripped off by the as in like ripped in the old sense of you know when we used
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  to rip CDs back in the day you know that idea apart from um so they're pirating the images
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  but then they're putting it in one big digital cauldron and swirling them around and using it to
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  paint new pictures so it's very hard for Getty Images to say well that pixel in that thing is
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  actually taken from this image because it just isn't traceable so what do we what does the
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  world do about this I'm not expecting you to have the answer people what does your gut tell you
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  about the fairness of that and the unfairness because those who are defending AI are saying well
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  it's just the same as uh you creatives when you are learning something you go and look at this
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  picture and you look at that picture and a digital brain that the artificial intelligence brain
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  is doing the same thing is um it's learning from these images and using that to present a new
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  vision of its own I find it really um yeah it's really it's really tricky isn't it
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  I mean you saying about ripping CDs reminded me years ago 20 years ago or something um
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  I kind of knew musicians and they weren't they musicians who were just you know they weren't
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  very well paid at all and they would kind of just swap pirated CDs you know and it and it was
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  they they knew you know well it's obviously illegal on a certain level but if they they didn't do
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  it they wouldn't be like hearing what they wanted to hear and they would they wanted that information
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  to put into their creative stew and I wonder even though that's the musicians were losing money from
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  the CD sales I suppose it's got you somewhere it was going on to create something else but then
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  with the AI there aren't individuals the whole point is it's not an individual human being is it
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  just taking this melons of imagery and creating something new it's although there's
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  an opportunity obviously money being made somewhere yeah so to do you go to those people and do
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  do you do they have to pay into some kind of I'm not sure I know what you mean there's like
• 33:03
  that you couldn't pinpoint the pixel that you'd taken from Getty that was in an image that maybe
• 33:11
  the Guardian or what the times had used you know they'd used an AI image sauce that used it for an
• 33:17
  article yeah so it's entering it's put being put into the marketplace money spent change hands
• 33:26
  yeah and you do actually see more and more if you look at newspapers I've noticed
• 33:31
  they're not necessarily saying but there are more images that I know are easy to create on
• 33:37
  these image generators so for example if you want to do a political image say you wanted to do
• 33:41
  a commentary on the recent visit of President Xi to Putin I think this is the image I've got
• 33:48
  in my head I saw an image of that in that sort of a style in period you know that that art they
• 33:57
  had then with the worker with the red flag flying like I it's probably sometimes that modern style
• 34:02
  they had in the 20s and 30s so the image was of the the two meeting in that style which you could
• 34:09
  do very easily by running it through an image generator because you would just reference the style
• 34:16
  the people and off you go yeah so it's would they have employed an illustrator to do that or is it just a
• 34:25
  quick I don't know maybe not but it's a quick way of summing up the the way they're presenting
• 34:33
  the art you know it's times with what the article was saying about the friendship that was going
• 34:38
  on there the real politic behind it so the creativity there resides in the person or the the
• 34:48
  team of people who are programming these so let's you know these programmers are creative they're
• 34:53
  are creative on that side of it I don't think yet we've reached a point where the AI itself is
• 34:59
  sentient so it's even though it's extremely clever and a bit black boxy and that you don't know
• 35:05
  what's going on I don't think we're yet giving it copyright of itself I mean there's a whole
• 35:14
  cases about this happening in law but you've also got the person who's saying well in order to
• 35:21
  illustrate what I'm writing here as a journalist I need this kind of image and so he or she is putting
• 35:27
  that they found a way of describing their idea into one of these image generators to get the
• 35:34
  illustration for their piece of short-term journalism yeah that's you know I can see why I can see
• 35:43
  why someone goes that way because we are now an increasingly visual culture and so that's the
• 35:49
  thing isn't that's a big part of it that there needs to be this constant flow of new imagery
• 35:56
  and with without budgets the budgets aren't there for it but there just needs to be like
• 36:03
  newspaper cartoons that made you kind of go through yeah and then you turn the agent forget about it
• 36:11
  so you're not going to pay Chris Redell like a thousand pounds or what I don't know what he gets but
• 36:17
  I mean he's a great political cartoonist but he can't do something every day you know it's
• 36:26
  they are going to just be yeah like you say they're just going to be going and putting this
• 36:30
  like an art director I guess he's got is putting what they want into these these programs and
• 36:38
  and kind of there's a bit of kind of aesthetic judgment going on when they choose which one
• 36:45
  they're going for but it's I mean I think we should so I'm saying about the creativity of the
• 36:52
  person thinking it's only a very low level creativity it's nothing of the engagement of
• 37:00
  of something that you do it's a very different it's more like I don't know paint by numbers or
• 37:08
  something it's something where you're the actual picture is being formed by something else and
• 37:13
  you're just putting in some rules yeah but there's always there's always this is super
• 37:23
  chastity but there's always culture by numbers isn't that there's always the always films
• 37:28
  that you know be movies that were just it has to do this this is you you know you make the film
• 37:34
  and you put it out and you know I think we're books as well we're mentioning the romance genre
• 37:43
  that there are areas of culture which are like which kind of thrive on being formulaic yeah and
• 37:52
  there are there is areas where people are far more you know it's far more kind of an artistic vision
• 37:59
  but there's so much of culture by numbers like you know pop music your novels you know that kind
• 38:08
  of thing that it may I'm not sure it feels like it isn't going to go away but it feels like
• 38:14
  yeah that's the other yeah that's the other point isn't it we don't want to be the frame breakers
• 38:19
  you know the Luddite so if you're looking at this or the 1810s there was a whole problem of the
• 38:24
  mechanization of the weaving industry so the cottage industry of home weaving was going moving
• 38:31
  into big factories and there were people going around smashing up looms saying this is taking away
• 38:37
  the livelihoods changing the pattern of our work which it was yeah it wasn't it terrible that
• 38:43
  they had invented the power loom what was wrong with somebody sitting at home with the treidel
• 38:48
  doing it at home and you know two hundred years on what where are we now well you you still have
• 38:56
  people who do craft weaving high spec weaving yeah and in a sense it's it's much more valued and
• 39:02
  venerated but we're probably all wearing clothes made in huge factories somewhere I don't even know
• 39:08
  where no you know so the Luddites didn't win so are we no whether they're still there are people
• 39:19
  doing corkature on that the savor of the still that very rarefied area
• 39:24
  so if we're going to sort of surf this wave of perhaps we could do the the the texting in a sort of
• 39:32
  second part of this so let's finish with the imagery so this avalanche is here we're all riding
• 39:38
  this wave the kind of line that I've been thinking let me test it out with you because I've been
• 39:43
  trying to think what is fair so when I work with an illustrator I absolutely know that it's a
• 39:51
  conversation a creative conversation between myself and the illustrator they bring something else
• 39:58
  to the process they bring their vision they bring brilliance of their unity of how they draw so
• 40:06
  each of their pictures looks like the same you know it looks like the last one but is new you know
• 40:12
  it's part of a series if I was doing that with AI art there's all sorts of problems about AI art
• 40:21
  because it doesn't understand the picture it's drawing an AI doesn't know what it's drawing so
• 40:29
  you can often tell AI art from hands it has no idea how to attack how to approach hand so see
• 40:35
  how my hands are like this a lot of hands in photographs look like this so an AI looks at that
• 40:42
  and thinks it's one hand yeah and then you'll get strange conformations of hands and and
• 40:48
  chable lips it just can't it doesn't understand what it's drawing because it's not a thing to
• 40:52
  understand so there is a real problem about AI art actually being superficially attractive when you
• 41:00
  look at the details so much is wrong so it's a week at all from that point of view so would it be
• 41:08
  fair to say that we should value the expertise of the designers and the illustrators for
• 41:21
  you know bespoke we like proper long-lasting work ephemera which you know is it is to illustrate
• 41:32
  an article about something political or today's posting on Facebook is lesser an issue I mean yeah
• 41:42
  I don't yeah I feel in a way it's not it's difficult because I think people will always respond
• 41:48
  to the human feel in in art and culture and just in life you know was talking to a partner
• 41:57
  as you know you get on the phone and you were talking to machine you just want to say hello to a
• 42:02
  human person yeah and have a chat and and fix something very quickly but you talk you're going through
• 42:10
  you're putting it being put into a box and then the box is getting ticked and I think this
• 42:16
  human feel thing is really important when you when you're illustrating you when I look straight
• 42:20
  character it's never the same page by page I kind of I slightly I'm slightly getting it wrong or I'm
• 42:28
  I'm emphasizing one feature over another or from what the character supposed to be doing I'm
• 42:36
  I kind of almost subconsciously emphasizing maybe a head tilt or a hand or a posture so there's
• 42:47
  all this always huge this subconscious human expression that's happening which it just doesn't
• 42:54
  seem this AI stuff is ever going to be able to it's going to look really slick and perfect all
• 42:59
  the time it's not but we're not slick and perfect creatures and we we know that and I think we
• 43:05
  respond to kind of certain yeah of polish in in our art that the AI stuff just looks like a lot of
• 43:15
  that really slick work he used to get in 70s and the this is for the posters on the wall stuff
• 43:24
  I remember there's quite a few yeah see posters really funny yeah yeah so so I think I think
• 43:33
  I think AI will be something that it will be coming it will be interesting because human beings
• 43:38
  creative human beings will react to it and and kind of work with it and push it in certain ways
• 43:43
  and comment on it I think I wonder if it'll take in the creative world I wonder if it'll just
• 43:51
  it will just be there is this kind of great kind of blob that just takes up space the AI art
• 43:58
  we illustrate AI articles and it would just be way of putting adverts in front of people in a magazine
• 44:07
  all on a you know on a website I don't I'm not sure what do you think it's well it's interesting
• 44:18
  me at all it's been in the my peripheral vision this can't really slick kind of all just stuff
• 44:25
  where it's just I just think I hear we go again it's kind of tech people thinking they you know
• 44:33
  so like when they said no one's ever going to everyone's going to get rid of their books no one's
• 44:37
  going to want to book it yeah that's that's that's a good good comparison it's got more and more
• 44:41
  beautiful they just look incredible now so so people buy books because it's a beautiful artifact in
• 44:46
  your house you know it's I think one thing I've been doing just as to to sort of I'm really trying
• 44:54
  to understand it and so I was doing a little series of putting into because one of the areas
• 45:04
  it comes into my work is there's a plea for people who do cover illustrations that they don't get
• 45:10
  edged out because you don't want you could imagine a world where there's a lot of front covers
• 45:16
  generated by AI are anyway yeah yeah so I could well let's see what happens so I started putting
• 45:23
  just the name of famous fantasy books into one of these image generators to see what would happen
• 45:32
  and I noticed we got to notice a couple of things as I went through it some of the some of the images
• 45:37
  were actually quite thought provoking and inspiring but some of them showed a bias so I put in as
• 45:44
  the Philip Pullman's book called the firework makers daughter I put that in and all of the girls
• 45:51
  that came back were western yeah right every single one and in order to make it somebody from
• 45:59
  an Asian background or a black background you had to put you had to move away from the title and
• 46:04
  put in you know use an ethnic description so there's a bias already in somewhere way back in
• 46:13
  this coding imagery the data that's fed it and then the other again on Philip Pullman
• 46:20
  I put in the Amber Spyglass which is the last of his books and because that's a really specific
• 46:26
  idea and concept the image that was generated was pretty much the image that the designer of
• 46:33
  the front cover used and they should have been credited you know it's the same I don't know if
• 46:39
  you remember what the cover is yeah yeah it was a version of that or five four versions of that
• 46:45
  so clearly the AIR had a much smaller data set to go by and has come back with something
• 46:52
  much more derivative so yeah it's not in terms of a paint box in magic like I'm on massive
• 46:59
  paint box it is not a neutral thing but we may be mistaken for thinking it is it's got
• 47:07
  all sorts of weaknesses so we have to be very knowing in the way we use it but positively so it's
• 47:15
  got lots of weaknesses as well as hands I'm really worried about hands they're just terrible
• 47:21
  and often actually the other thing that's sometimes really weird our eyes eyes and hands so these
• 47:26
  look like you know really these get these right for illustrations but the other thing that I
• 47:31
  on the positive side that sometimes it produces an image which actually makes my imagination spark
• 47:39
  yeah there will be something in it which I could use in my own medium which is words so I can
• 47:45
  think oh that's a really interesting way of thinking about uh I don't know a world in the sky
• 47:53
  or you know you can give you prompts a bit like a dream might give you a prompt or looking through
• 48:00
  well any any any source of inspiration so I could see it being used as a prompt for creativity
• 48:09
  yeah and I think it always we need to have a way of admitting that we're using it
• 48:15
  yeah as well to show that because you can imagine there'll be artists now who will be able to pass
• 48:22
  off their work say oh I do this when actually what they mean is I I inputted a command into
• 48:28
  um one of these online AI generators and you know I can see there's going to be a bit of
• 48:33
  fakery going on yeah I earlier I was wondering if it would be a bit like music really remember
• 48:42
  there was there were corporations that would create music and it would just be filtered into
• 48:47
  work spaces a lot then it would be filtered into commercial spaces just as a just as a
• 48:53
  uh just to fill the space where they thought music should be but they did not use real music
• 49:00
  but then musicians artists responded to the concept of music and took it into their own work
• 49:07
  and it because it was something in the in the cultural environment like like AI is I'm just
• 49:17
  looking at it in terms of how will it be used how will creative people use this thing that isn't
• 49:25
  there's a strange new form of creativity how will human beings kind of take it into
• 49:34
  and use use it in their own voice and I mean obviously it's very early days but I got
• 49:41
  almost feel like people will get tired of it you know it's so I think looking I don't want to put
• 49:48
  words in your mouth but I would have thought one of the things that you might want to do you and
• 49:53
  other image creators the hard way what want to do is to be able to remove your images from these
• 49:59
  datasets are used to train the AI artist so that if I put in the command drawing the style of
• 50:07
  Pete Williamson they can't or they'll find Pete Williamson in you know Denver who's allowed
• 50:13
  his stuff to go on but not you uh yeah so that you can actually protect your creativity so get the
• 50:23
  images they should be able to remove all the images that have gone online there should be some
• 50:31
  way of coding behind that to prevent it being used um I don't know if that's I don't know if technically
• 50:37
  that's possible but that would seem to be fair because it's then there are loads of imagery which
• 50:43
  are not protected by any copyright which is absolutely fair game people want it out there to be used
• 50:49
  and yeah we interpreted and you know um but the things which people are earning their living on
• 50:56
  should be able to be kept out so if there's a van Gogh alive today his style or her style doesn't
• 51:05
  get ripped before they've got anywhere yeah that would seem you know should we um have a little
• 51:15
  a pause there uh sort of a pin in uh illustration and we'll move across now to look at um the issue
• 51:24
  on my side of this which is the actual text the chat about gpt can basically how that whole
• 51:32
  side of things are suddenly exploded in the last few months yeah definitely
• 51:43
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