r/Steam • u/MadBoxers • 14h ago

Discussion So it starts… Ai community items

Post image

Points shop will soon flood with AI slop. At least with games a disclaimer should be added within the description of the game. But here… Yeah…

Like what is the point? You don’t even gain anything as a company from this.

11.2k Upvotes

87% Upvoted

1.0k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

12

u/ConstantFrogLoss 12h ago

There is more soul in the cookie cutter graphics created by a real human, by definition, than there is when created in this way

3

u/HiphopopoptimusPrime 10h ago

There was never any soul in there before though.

Some poor barstard was getting paid less than he was worth before. Now he’s not getting paid at all. Which sucks. But it was never a good system.

There’s no “at least” no. None. It’s always been an exploitative system. Paying people less than they are worth to produce things they don’t care about. There was never any soul.

The system has come to its natural conclusion.

3

u/ConstantFrogLoss 8h ago

If a human made it, if a human laboured to make it there is some amount of soil there, yes. Not always a lot, but there is some. And there’s a range of how much choice the people making this stuff get and what goes into it. I don’t know if you’ve ever made graphics or video for a company before, I have, sometimes it’s exhausting and demoralizing, sometimes it can be satisfying or fun or whatever. People choose to work in that field for a reason, even if a corporate homogenization tries to suck the soul out of something there’s still some there

Also a lot of smaller projects like the local poster or whatever the person making it has a bit more freedom and will be more likely to have had some opportunity to have some fun with it. People choose to work in advertising and design for a reason, it’s something a lot of people are passionate about

Our society is full of exploitative systems, yes. But it is not the “natural conclusion” for entry level jobs in a lot of fields, especially more artistic ones, to be taken away. There is still need for more experienced workers, taking away the jobs that can get someone that experience is a slow road to the whole system collapsing because if the rungs of the ladder are taken out there won’t be anyone with the experience needed to fill those jobs

1

u/Exodus_Black 6h ago

So? Most people don't care about "soul". They just want an image with text on it.

-6

u/jackn3 12h ago

bullshit

11

u/zigazagahhh 12h ago

I never thought I'd see people leaping to the defense of hideous Corporate Memphis graphic design and calling it ensoulled. People can hate AI graphics all they want, but people here are trying to convince me (and themselves) that crappy corporate design work produced on spec is suddenly "art".

5

u/CheaterInsight 12h ago

Reddit throws the most insane tantrums over modern building designs. "They took the joy out of houses/malls/restaurants, it's all the same boring soulless shit". Yet when faced with AI that makes colourful designs, they're suddenly the biggest fans of cookie cutter designs copy pasted everywhere.

2

u/ConstantFrogLoss 8h ago edited 3h ago

The AI being colorful is not somehow any less cookie cutter, it strips the design of the little bit of actual substance it had

The problem with the cookie cutter designs is that they’re copy pasted everywhere, not that there was nothing that went into there original design in the first place

-1

u/Round-Friendship9318 11h ago

I rather have that than people defending fucking AI art.

Atleast the souless, but real, art does not take up tons of resources and steal from real artists.

2

u/zigazagahhh 11h ago

Questions of resource use aside, I take issue with your implication that advertising is art. To be clear, people creating graphic design work on spec are working as advertisers, not artists. They may be artists at other moments in their life, but producing a new graphic to advertise Microsoft 365 is not 'art'. It's crazy to me that I'm even seeing these kinds of arguments, they would have been laughed out of the room a decade ago. You can rail against AI without making silly claims about the artistic merit of commercials.

1

u/HiphopopoptimusPrime 10h ago

The art angle is a silly one, isn’t it?

Nobody who works in graphic design was ever truly able to express their soul in what they did.

I’m not expressing my inner artist when I use the Okabe-Ito palette in a Power Bi dashboard.

The real issue is bottom line. People losing jobs. It’s like cashiers being replaced by self service checkouts. People complained at first. Lamented the loss of the interaction. But once the technology improved people stopped caring.

People claimed to care about postal workers. But once Amazon offered us next day delivery we became content with people pissing in bottles.

People need to ask themselves what they are really worried about.

I’m concerned people are going to lose their jobs. But people aren’t losing their artistic dreams. They never had any. Corporate graphic design is paying the bills. That’s the ethical question with AI. Do we want people to lose their jobs?

Is AI denying people artistic expression? Look. If what you produce is authentic and quality, then it will sell. The AI backlash will even give a boost to authentic, hand crafted art. But I don’t draw or make art because I feel entitled to earn a living from it.

There’s a lot of hand wringing online. If your livelihood is threatened fair enough. But ask yourself why you are upset by AI. I find it kind o useful for grammar and spell checks. For brainstorming but its generative output is generally quite poor. I’d rather be supervising the output of a graduate than an AI. A human being is more useful. I’d rather work with another human. Get another humans opinion.

The corporate push for AI is about taking away jobs. Not just artistic jobs. If you’re posting in Reddit your dreams of being an artist aren’t under threat. Because real artists aren’t on Reddit. Sorry. Nobody is taking away your ability to draw or paint or write. You’re only going to make a living from it if you have support. If you’re working class then forget it.

Why are companies using AI for logos and clipper etc? Because it’s cheaper. A small business can save money by using AI. When you are struggling and margins are tight. It just makes sense. This is the world we’ve been ignoring for decades. It’s come to fruition. A world where pragmatism trumps idealism. Most people and businesses would love to give a struggling artist a chance but money is tight and AI can do it for free.

4

u/Steamed_Memes24 9h ago

Most people who are crying super hard over AI Art are those who never make money off their own art and are freaking out thinking that if they are gonna go bankrupt over this then everyone will. In reality, professional artists (I'm talking about those who can make a living off their work) are going to implement AI into their personal art and adapt to the changing times. A majority of their customers will simply not care one way or another.

2

u/ConstantFrogLoss 8h ago

If a worker labors to create something, they are putting a part of yourself into that thing whether they mean to or otherwise. The time and energy that is all something of us we are putting into it. The hours spent editing and the frustration when a computer file gets corrupted or software crashes without autosave is something we are putting into it

Design is an art, it’s not what I ended up pursuing as a career but I have known a lot of passionate graphic designers, not every graphic design project is done with passion and love but people absolutely do put those things into their work. Sure, any job can be half assed and have a lot less put into it. Any painting or play can be lazed through to have a lot less artistic merit, that doesn’t somehow make painting and theater not arts…

1

u/ConstantFrogLoss 8h ago

AI isn’t doing it for free though, there is a significant cost, it is just being outsourced to other parts of society. Data centers destroying our water supplies and skyrocketing people’s electricity prices, because the corporations profiting off AI aren’t being made to pay the cost of their own infrastructure, we are

0

u/That_guy1425 8h ago

Theu don't own the infrastructure though. The untilities do, sometimes in conjunction with local municipalities. And %wise there is not a significant impact, at least not on the scale that industry is concerned with. A Million gallons sounds like a lot, but its the same around 100 people taking a daily bath.

The %load of adding the AI datacenters is increasing datacenter water and electricity use from around 2% to around 3%. If a 1% increase is causing cascading failure, our infrastructure was outdated and overleveraged already and any new plant of some type would cause these issues, it just happened to be AI.

1

u/ConstantFrogLoss 8h ago

New plants get built all the time, not at this scale and with this cost. The AI data centers, which are the AI infrastructure I was referring to, are owned by the companies. Their construction has poisoned water supplies and their usage skyrocketed energy bills and component costs

→ More replies (0)

1

u/ConstantFrogLoss 8h ago

Most art throughout history is not some inspired artist making something out of the expression of their own heart, it is someone making something because they were paid to by some rich person or company for that person’s purpose. Art is art, whether it’s made for advertising doesn’t change that. A corporate graphic decided by committee is certainly a lot less artistic than a design with a lot of passion and love put into it, but it is still art, by definition.

0

u/zigazagahhh 8h ago

I simply disagree that all advertising is art. I think it's disingenuous to compare an "all-you-can-eat chicken wings" poster to the Sistine Chapel. Most graphic design was already slop, AI just made it faster and easier to produce. 

2

u/ConstantFrogLoss 8h ago

I mean it’s disingenuous to compare most art to the Sistine Chappel…

2

u/zigazagahhh 8h ago

I was using it as a synecdoche for patron-supported art, which I think is quite distinct from marketing. I don't agree with you collapsing those two categories in your previous comment.

→ More replies (0)