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INTEREST: New AI Program Purports to Let Even Beginners Make High-Quality Anime Character Portraits


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sirdano1



Joined: 06 Jul 2011
Posts: 307
PostPosted: Thu Aug 10, 2023 5:39 pm Reply with quote
They look so soulless.
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Fluwm



Joined: 28 Jul 2009
Posts: 1060
PostPosted: Thu Aug 10, 2023 6:33 pm Reply with quote
Very exciting! Now beginners[1] won't have to suffer through long minutes spent tracing other[2] artists' work, with the attendant risk[3] -- they can offload that busywork to a computer!

And thank god for that -- it's all about democratizing art, right? No longer necessary are those expensive materials -- paper, pencil, even erasers -- monopolized by the bourgeoisie. Now, everyone[4] can create[5] all the art[6] they want!

Truly we are catapulting[7] ourselves headfirst[8] into a more perfect[9], truly utopian future![10]

--------------------

[1] Hacks.
[2] Better artists.
[3] Learning.
[4] You know who.
[5] Manufacture.
[6] YMMV.
[7] Being catapulted.
[8] So our skulls will make impact first.
[9] Im-.
[10] Please consult a doctor immediately if your sarcasm levels increase above the FDA's daily recommended does, as prolonged exposure may be hazardous to your long-term mental health.
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TsukasaElkKite



Joined: 22 Nov 2005
Posts: 4031
PostPosted: Thu Aug 10, 2023 6:59 pm Reply with quote
This feels like cheating.
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Vanadise



Joined: 06 Apr 2015
Posts: 535
PostPosted: Thu Aug 10, 2023 7:18 pm Reply with quote
TsukasaElkKite wrote:
This feels like cheating.

Oh, it absolutely is. Just like all of the other AI image generation algorithms that have come out lately, this one is trained on hundreds of thousands of pieces of art that were used without permission (at least, I'm assuming so since I did not see them cite the source for their training data); it's taking a user-provided sketch and just recombining its training data in a way that is visually similar to it. It's just another tool for laundering plagiarism.
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Beatdigga



Joined: 26 Oct 2003
Posts: 4633
Location: New York
PostPosted: Thu Aug 10, 2023 7:29 pm Reply with quote
Just don’t look at their hands.
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PipimiOden



Joined: 26 Mar 2022
Posts: 204
Location: Pennsylvania, USA
PostPosted: Thu Aug 10, 2023 7:29 pm Reply with quote
At this point it might be better for me to get Phillip j fry'd and wake up in 3023 than to continue being an artist in this century.
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Traptrix Lover



Joined: 17 Dec 2022
Posts: 111
PostPosted: Thu Aug 10, 2023 7:49 pm Reply with quote
Beatdigga wrote:
Just don’t look at their hands.


I heard that issue has been solved these days.

I'm just happy to see AI art that doesn't have that glossy, realistic shine to it.
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overlordrae



Joined: 16 Dec 2010
Posts: 92
PostPosted: Thu Aug 10, 2023 9:12 pm Reply with quote
I have seen people screenshot streamers working on art and "finish" them in AI to post them before the real artists.

AI is already built of thousands and thousands of copyrighted imagery being used without permission. Make no mistake you're never going to see process shots or sketches again from artists without protection like Glaze until the legal aspects of datasets get sorted.
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overlordrae



Joined: 16 Dec 2010
Posts: 92
PostPosted: Thu Aug 10, 2023 9:17 pm Reply with quote
Vanadise wrote:
TsukasaElkKite wrote:
This feels like cheating.

Oh, it absolutely is. Just like all of the other AI image generation algorithms that have come out lately, this one is trained on hundreds of thousands of pieces of art that were used without permission (at least, I'm assuming so since I did not see them cite the source for their training data); it's taking a user-provided sketch and just recombining its training data in a way that is visually similar to it. It's just another tool for laundering plagiarism.

You're absolutely right that they are used without permission(if you ever posted anything on Deviantart like me or such you're work is Very Likely in a dataset you can find out on haveibeentrained dot com but be aware this is a pretty scummy company in itself that makes you sign up to request your work be taken down).

There are no less than three lawsuits currently happening against AI companies due to copyright infringement.
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Vanadise



Joined: 06 Apr 2015
Posts: 535
PostPosted: Thu Aug 10, 2023 9:17 pm Reply with quote
Traptrix Lover wrote:
I heard that issue has been solved these days.

Well, "solved" is a bit of an exaggeration, but it's better than it used to be. There are still lots of telltale signs, though; unfocused eyes, disconnected hair, nonsensical backgrounds, and severe issues with anything that's supposed to be symmetrical (like buttons or ties on clothing).
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JustMonika



Joined: 17 Jan 2022
Posts: 1169
PostPosted: Fri Aug 11, 2023 2:27 am Reply with quote
PipimiOden wrote:
At this point it might be better for me to get Phillip j fry'd and wake up in 3023 than to continue being an artist in this century.


Phillip J Fryed, lol
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Tenebrae



Joined: 26 Apr 2008
Posts: 492
PostPosted: Fri Aug 11, 2023 2:30 am Reply with quote
Vanadise wrote:
Just like all of the other AI image generation algorithms that have come out lately, this one is trained on hundreds of thousands of pieces of art that were used without permission

Well, technically there is a solution to this (while we wait for the generation that doesn't need training). If they start feeling the pressure, some large AI software company, say Google, could just use their money to buy themselves out of the situation. By for example buying a large image content holder, such as Getty Images. That's a humongous amount of photography they'd now be the legal owner of, which they can use to train the algos. As for anime art specifically, the same idea could be applied by buying perhaps Pixiv or Deviantart or whatever, and suitably tweaking the TOS.

With the legality issue solved, people can concentrate on debating the actual core issue they have: that they don't like the idea of an AI taking the place of a real artist.

As for the issue of hands etc, we know they're improving all the time. Let's not kid ourselves and think they won't achieve photorealism before long.
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Vanadise



Joined: 06 Apr 2015
Posts: 535
PostPosted: Fri Aug 11, 2023 8:39 am Reply with quote
Tenebrae wrote:
As for anime art specifically, the same idea could be applied by buying perhaps Pixiv or Deviantart or whatever, and suitably tweaking the TOS.

Buying a hosting site does not just immediately give you ownership of all of the images hosted there. The artists who post to Pixiv and Deviantart still legally own the copyright on their artwork, and the vast majority of them aren't going to give it away for free. Other sites have already seen mass exoduses and legal threats by artists when they've declared they're going to start using their artwork to train models.

It's definitely technically possible to train a statistical model using legally-obtained artwork, but obtaining enough to generate decent results would be expensive enough that basically nobody but Google could afford it, which is why it hasn't happened yet.

Tenebrae wrote:
As for the issue of hands etc, we know they're improving all the time. Let's not kid ourselves and think they won't achieve photorealism before long.

No, I think it's fair to be skeptical about this. I've worked in computer algorithms for decades now, and I have seen several times in other fields where there have been concerns that computers were going to replace real people, and the inevitable result is that the algorithm always gets around 80% as good as a human can be and then stalls out. Folding clothes, driving cars, or identifying people in images, for example, are all areas where computers have gotten decent but humans are still far batter, and there's been very little real forward progress in any of those things in the last ten years. Image generation has progressed very rapidly over the last few years, but advances have slowed down considerably recently.

Will a computer someday be able to generate a realistic image of buttons on a shirt? Maybe, but we're not even close today, even using illegally-obtained data.
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Joe Mello



Joined: 31 May 2004
Posts: 2317
Location: Online Terminal
PostPosted: Fri Aug 11, 2023 8:49 am Reply with quote
At no point in the piece does it mention how the AI was trained nor does it say how the "trainers" were compensated. Instead this just sounds like the kind of "copy/paste" press release type of thing that makes up a lot of the entertainment press.

Usually, it's not that big of a deal because it's the kind of thing every press outlet does and there's only so much you can actively do as a smaller site, but when you post a piece that blindly endorses something like this, I think it is actively harmful to the editorial integrity of the site as well as the greater fan community.
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Hoppy800



Joined: 09 Aug 2013
Posts: 3331
PostPosted: Fri Aug 11, 2023 10:00 am Reply with quote
This is an interesting development, it's a few steps (or less) away from being able to use AI to create sprites.
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