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This week was the Superbowl.
In addition to an American football game, it is the annual conclave of the best advertisements for the most notable products.
Microsoft released one for its artificial intelligence (AI) tool, Copilot.
The ad features images of relatively young people in unglamorous environments: snow, rain, buses, bridges over highways.
They are solitary individuals who try to get ahead despite their conditions.
Against this background, overlapping phrases emerge: “They said I would never open my own company or get my degree,” “they said I would never make my movie or build something,” “they say I'm too old to learn something new, too young to change.” the world".
And at the end, with a change of music: “But I say: look at me.”
Copilot appears there giving answers to the protagonists' questions: he prepares questions for exams, gives logo options for a workshop, writes code.
At the end the slogan appears: “Your AI assistant for every day.”
The announcement is an obvious attempt by Microsoft to frame the social image of AI.
Is it help or theft?
Does it help progress or does it take away labor rights?
Microsoft has its answer, although it cheats a bit: helping to get a degree (something personal) is not the same as making a movie, which is very difficult to be something individual.
But his message is clear: if you stop complaining, you are never “too old to learn something new.”
Wake up.
This generative AI has been popular for less than two years.
ChatGPT emerged in November 2022. Microsoft launched Copilot in September 2023. Google just launched Gemini this same month.
We are at the beginning of something, but it is quite big.
The big debate is obviously its impact on society, that is, on work.
This week the
Financial Times
published a long report on “How AI is revolutionizing the advertising industry.”
All newspapers make similar headlines with “AI revolutionizes” every sector imaginable.
For once, it seems that the revolution will be true.
Hello everyone.
Here we leave you the cover of #Estopia drawn with all his heart by our lifelong illustrator, Maestro Jandi, after 4 months of work.
We hope you like it 😅
You can now reserve it here https://t.co/W4NwhZGCzr
Welcome to the garden of… pic.twitter.com/HKXnCuhGXj
— Estopa (@estopaoficial) February 9, 2024
The example of advertising helps to imagine the impact.
Personalized audiovisual ads are now possible: how many thousands of hours of work would be necessary to produce hundreds of thousands of ads or different web pages for each consumer?
Or the reflection behind each product.
The FT cites the example of a new vegan product: “Instead of paying tens of thousands of pounds for a team of people to design a new name and logo, [the marketing manager] simply asked an AI chatbot for six ideas and selected the best,” explains the newspaper.
This is not something that is going to happen.
This is already happening.
Every sector sees examples like this coming: fashion, journalism, law, universities.
Few are going to escape.
Tasks that required labor, reflection and experience will be done in minutes by an AI and replicated as many times as necessary.
Faced with this evolution, there are two general options: accept it in the hope that it will create more wealth and jobs, or deal primarily with lawsuits and legislation.
In Spain, we are seeing the best public example with illustration.
Almost every day, examples of covers or posters made with AI circulate on X (formerly Twitter) that go viral thanks to hundreds of illustrators complaining.
That the Ministry of Youth and Children has made posters by AI (whose program used promotes child pornography), and also using an image of Disney (which could result in a very serious fine), and they have eliminated it 6 hours, after a lot of criticism from illustrators pic.twitter.com/rBLn4JYbVp
— Barda Petarda 🌈 (@bardapetarda) February 11, 2024
Some recent cases are a cover of Destino, a poster from the Ministry of Youth or the cover of Estopa's new album, which is precisely called EstopIA.
In the summer of 2022 I published an article about the beginning of this conflict.
It was titled “The emergence of AI causes war in the world of illustration.”
In less than two years the result of that battle can almost be published.
I have asked how some of those who appeared in that article see it now: did they see it coming that the wave was only going to grow?
Yes. What solution do you see?
It's complicated.
📺 LIVE TV |
Estopa, on the controversy over the use of AI: "In our case it must be said that we have given work to a designer, that we have not done them ourselves. But whether it is right or wrong is not up to me" # Goya2024 https://t.co/D7Bl6HP2Ki pic.twitter.com/SL5VGKxh4o
— EL PAÍS (@el_pais) February 10, 2024
Unlike cryptocurrencies or virtual reality, it's hard to meet someone who has used a creative generative AI tool for the first time and doesn't say “wow.”
That is the best example that he will not be able to stop.
If there is demand, there will be supply: “Legal and copyright problems escape people who are not specialized in the subject,” says Diego Areso, art director of EL PAÍS.
“That is why so many public administrations are happily using AI, without being aware that almost all of them, for the moment, are based to a greater or lesser extent on image theft,” he adds.
The cover of Estopa is especially interesting because the duo is amazed by the controversy.
They seem sincere.
This is what they said at the Goya on the EL PAÍS buses: “We didn't know that we were so important nor did we know that there was such an interesting debate.
We don't understand, honestly.
The one who suffers it is the one who knows it.
We were laymen on that subject.
AI is like nuclear energy, it can be used for good and bad: as long as it doesn't take away jobs, it is just another tool.
We have given a job to a designer, we have not done it ourselves.
Creativity will be above any machine.”
It is a good summary of the problems, half
wedged
, with what they have heard about the controversy.
What is the problem?
AI touches the bottom of our value as humans.
AI writes, translates, draws, composes, designs, programs like a human.
And then what value do we contribute?
“A computer, a tablet, a stylus or drawing and color software such as Clip Studio or Photoshop are tools that help you draw and do your work better and faster.
An AI, on the other hand, does not help to draw: IT ELIMINATES THE FUNCTION OF DRAWING
[sic].
And if you don't need to draw with it, it can't be considered a tool,” says illustrator David Rubin.
That's the bottom of the problem: now someone with grace, but no skill, can draw.
Seen from the outside it is a good thing: there are more people creating more drawings, some interesting and some terrible.
The same will happen in other arts.
But from within they logically see it as an invasion and theft of rights.
Especially since AI has learned using millions of illustrations and drawings made over decades by humans.
How does a machine effortlessly create what has taken years of sweat and ink?
“Artificial intelligence can be used in many ways.
Practically everyone knows the platforms where you enter four words and they offer you an image,” writes Jandi, author of the Estopa cover, in his clarification message in X. “The process of creating this triptych was really complex and laborious".
That is, only someone with knowledge could do it, sketch by sketch and improving with AI.
Javi López comes from the business world and after months of testing generative AI, he has created a tool to improve illustrations with more AI.
He even improved the cover of Estopa:
Someone had to try it 🤣...
Upscaled with Magnific up to 5376 x 5376
Details 🧵👇 pic.twitter.com/yYd6kJn7rS
— Javi López ⛩️ (@javilop) February 14, 2024
López also believes that illustrators still have a long way to go if they accept AI as another tool: “In the case of Estopa, he is an established artist with more than 30 years of experience.
He has been creating things for so long that it has gone from techniques such as using photocopiers and magazine clippings to digital editing and today to generative AI,” says López.
Just as “the camera does not make the photographer, generative AI does not make the artist.
Generative AI tools are another tool.
Artistic direction continues to be the responsibility and work of the artist,” adds López.
In this debate, the challenge is to know if AI causes what conceptual artist Marina Rubio says: “Art, by definition, is something human, and we have handed it over to machines too easily.”
This war comes too late.
The
New York Times
has denounced OpenAI precisely for feeding off its texts for its model.
The
Times
is a resourceful institution.
And it is not clear that he will win.
And if he wins, he will receive a few million dollars.
But ChatGPT will still work.
Even if there is compensation for a select group of those affected by AI, there is no going back.
“There is no point of return.
From now on, only multinationals will be able to protect their intellectual property,” says illustrator Jon Juárez.
“As a society we have to understand what this means.
AI does not generate
copyright
.
If a customer is paying for the rights to exploit an AI product, they are being scammed.
We have the right to know if AI engines have participated in the creation of an image, a text, a sound, etc.
Hiding or lying about this is a scam, it should be considered a crime, and this is the practice that is becoming normalized in Spain.”
This affects everyone.
Maybe there will be music from Estopa without Estopa creating it.
Illustrators know that they are only the first in a long list of those affected.
The anger will increase and perhaps it will no longer be strange to see people blowing up machines as happened with a driverless car in San Francisco a few days ago.
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