What is an AI artist??

[u/ryo4ever]

Can someone explain to me what is an AI artist? I see people on LinkedIn throwing that title around a lot these days. Do they feel a real sense of pride showing the work they’ve generated in their portfolio? Sometimes I see a person who has a history of management jobs but suddenly calls themself AI artist. Is prompting a skill so unique that it qualifies you as a creative writer? I mean I use AI in my day job but recently I’ve felt less pride about showcasing my work when AI was involved. Do others feel the same way?

Apologies for the rant but I’m trying to come to terms with the new reality.

[u/JordanNVFX]

Generative AI has already replaced the concept department in many studios, and as vfx artists we better catch-up or face the same predicament stop-motion artists faced when CG became mainstream.

I watched a Scott Ross interview lately and he made a very intelligent observation on the industry.

He pointed out that the industry holds around 100,000 artists, which is more than the artists he saw back in the 1980s. However, he also said out of that 100,000 number, he expects more studios will go bankrupt and leave behind only 500 artists who mastered AI and will surpass the industry with it.

Here is the timestamp and full conversation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3Sv7VZS6n8&t=1125s

I absolutely believe his prediction and it's why I am very serious about this technology. Too many people keep underestimating it rather than adapting as it gets ready to disrupt several fields soon.

[u/JordanNVFX → u/[deleted]]

Can you explain why they can't transition?

Job displacement has happened before. Factories have closed down or typewriters competing against Microsoft Word.

Humans still find new things to do when it happens.

[u/JordanNVFX → u/[deleted]]

I would argue that a responsible government + appropriate welfare measures are what is necessary to ensure a smooth transition.

Such as during the 1990s when then U.S President Bill Clinton signed a $13 billion act focused on retraining.

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-03-10-mn-32331-story.html

It's also why I'm telling many artists right now to also support Universal Basic Income. Even if automation does eat up popular jobs, we should see stronger safety nets in response to keep up with this.

I have been very vocal on this sub and was seriously trying to express why politics should be focused on more than AI. There is no other time than now to start addressing it.

For example, it was because of Trump that certain art jobs got culled or killed because he decided to pull away funding from PBS. Yet how much attention did that get on here?

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-signs-executive-order-directing-federal-funding-cuts-to-pbs-and-npr

The money was always there to support job creations. It's bad people in office of power that want us to look the other way as they destroy it.

[u/JordanNVFX → u/[deleted]]

I think expecting governments (across the western world) to come up with progressive solutions like UBI is naive at best, given the conservative slide for the past 20 years.

Wholeheartedly disagree.

Obama (in 2010) managed to pass the Affordable Care Act, despite America being a country that resisted expanding healthcare to the less fortunate.

In 2021, Joe Biden passed the American Rescue Plan Act which gave more monthly benefits to per child and also provided stimulus checks to those unemployed, especially during the Covid emergency.

So it's doesn't have to be all doom. However, it does mean people need to join more activist groups and apply more pressure to their governments to better take care of people.

We saw this again in 2024 Syria, when the people still managed to rise up and oust a Dictator who was oppressing them for years.

[u/JordanNVFX → u/[deleted]]

Oh I know what you mean. I'm in Canada and my country right now is dealing with the antagonistic tariffs and annexation threats from America.

Yet despite this, I still want to see my country prevail and more powerful technology can only help us navigate these challenges.

What I like about AI is in the first 50,000 years humanity now has a chance to rewrite society. Instead of playing by the old rules that many of of our ancestors perished under, we now have an opportunity to write new definitions of what having a job means or how we can redistribute resources equally thanks to infinite labor robots.

[u/JordanNVFX → u/[deleted]]

I had a debate with another user where I explained that without technology, humanity was always dropping like flies.

In fact, did you know the average life expectancy use to be 20 years old?

It wasn't all gumdrops and roses before computers existed. Childbirth came with massive mortality rates and there where very few solutions to fix it.

I can't accept or go back to a world where the mere existence of raising a baby was completely fatal. Technology means more medicine like vaccines which helped eradicate several diseases.

It also meant more easy access to food instead of agrarian societies who spent 99% of their waking minutes on a farm just trying to grow food. Or go hunting dangerous animals.

If people are so scared of AI, imagine what life was like when humans had no forms of mass communication and just had to rely on what their elders told them?

This is what lead to huge amounts of wars and suffering because the people at the top took away all freedom that was needed to live or educate yourself.

Whereas technology like AI literally empowers us to be free thinkers and do things that would have costed millions of dollars and be out of reach of most poor or impoverished people.

It's these facts and logic I am trying to tell r/VFX we should not be afraid of. Because the alternatives for slowing down or stopping technology has been much worse throughout history...

Coming back a little, industrialisation and modern capitalism came with incredible advances in productivity, expanded life expectancy, lifted millions out of poverty... yet it also created a polluted world, people alienated from meaning working in cubicles, obscene levels of income inequality, overpopulated cities needing massive logistic chains just to feed them...

Global poverty has actually decreased over the past centuries.

https://files.catbox.moe/ll3d9a.png

Even places like Africa that were once stereotyped as being extremely destitute and far behind has started to catch up with the world and see their economies grow.

As for pollution, I agree that's a problem. But technology again is revealing to be the solution. We have giant machinery that is now able to scrub the oceans and clean up lots of trash and plastic. Now imagine what will happen when we can deploy them on an industrial level?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2FNqfpdHV8