So if you’ve been on social media in the past year, you’ve probably seen the discourse in a lot of creative circles about AI. And to be upfront, I agree with them as a creative. In this post, I want to talk about it, and how it affects smaller creatives like myself.
So starting off, I think we should start with the current state of the creative arts and entertainment industry. As a full time content creator and author, I realize there’s an increased need for entertainment. And in theory, AI could address that need by streamlining the creation process and assisting creatives. However, as we quickly learnt, that was not the case. Between the ethical concerns and environmental issues, AI was clearly there to lower the cost needed to pay creatives in the entertainment industry.
And nowhere was that more evident than in the animation and writing industries. With the creation of ChatGPT and other AIs, it was clear that what AI wanted to do was generate entire works with just a few words. And that led to the flooding of social media and publishing sites like Amazon with AI generated works. But the question a lot of us were asking is how these AIs were being trained. Well, the answer was not what we expected, or what we needed. Essentially, the AIs were going through different sites, copying art and writing styles without compensating the original creators. And no one was hit harder than indie artists.
With the increased desire for content, artists and other creatives have taken to social media in order to not only share finished works, but also find clients. And that leads to the biggest issue that a lot of creatives found out when it came to AI. Because their work is “public”, then it became fair game for AI companies to train their models. And it wasn’t just artists that learnt this. Authors, musicians, models and voice actors were all learning that their work was being used to train models. And that led a lot of creatives to feel apprehensive about where and how they share their works. Sites like Twitter (now known as X), DeviantArt and Wordpress allowing not only AI work, but actively pushing AI training using content on their sites.
And because of this, a lot of creatives, mostly artists, have taken down their works from sites greatly limiting their visibility. And when you’re starting out or even a small creative, that can actively hurt your growth. Take for example Mara Reboi. Mara is the artist who worked on the covers for a lot of my books as well as other artwork for my projects. A massive concern they’ve always had is their work being used for AI training and having to compete against AI “artists”. Considering they take weeks, if not months to finish a project, they are at a significant disadvantage against AI, who can create anything at the click of a button.
(insert covers here)
And then there are the corporations who are trying to replace creatives with AI. The issue they keep pointing to is the fact that budgets are getting out of control and they need to find a way to keep it down. And to be honest, I don’t believe the issue with budgets is the talent, rather the executives trying to keep profits up. As someone trying to work on video game and animation projects, I have a small outlook on what is needed to create something. Take the art for example. Across all projects, I would need around $70,000 for both art and animation. And while that might look like a lot, you need to look at the projected income and decide whether it’s worth it. And when you have a budget in the millions of dollars, how much of that is actually being spent on artists, voice actors, script writers, etc?
There are more issues when it comes to AI in its current form such as the environmental impact of AI. But I think that as long as the access and ease of use for AI is easy, then creatives who put time and effort in their projects are going to lose out to the barrage of AI content being pushed out all the while having to worry about their work being used to train models without their knowledge and consent. This is why it is becoming increasingly difficult to work as a freelance creative unless you have a pre-established reputation in your field. New creatives have to compete not only with AI, but people being skeptical about how you created your work. By AI just existing, it has made the creative industry exceptionally hostile for anyone who isn’t on either extreme of the spectrum. And that has led to people on social media having to ask people to state whether their work is AI or even outright banning AI work from posts that boost work. But as long as massive corporations see value in AI, we as smaller and indie creatives will have to compete with it, often with disastrous effects on our physical and mental health.
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