My another unpopular opinion.

Last month there was a global consensus in artist communities: AI is 'stealing' our artworks and will steal our jobs. This view is not unique to artists, but they are one of the loudest and most visible groups.

1. Stealing artworks

Imagine there is no AI at all. Artists post their work on Instagram, Behance, ArtStation, and many other platforms. At some point a huge wave of beginners appears, people who are not really artists but copycats. They start using these posted artworks as references and draw their own pieces that look very similar to the originals, with a few extra details or slightly different themes.

What is the real difference between these copycats and AI?

2. Stealing jobs

The other big topic is job theft. It is hard to explain my view here not because it is weak, but because in tech every programmer, QA engineer, and even system administrator lives in a constant alarm: 'You will lose your job next month / year / decade!'

Is that true? Yes, with some exceptions.

Will good programmers lose their jobs? I do not think so. Will mediocre programmers or QA specialists lose theirs? I am sure many will, and that is okay.

We are on the edge of a new era, similar to the Industrial Revolution. Back then, many workers lost their jobs, but within a few years they learned new skills and became great factory workers. So why are some people so obstructive now?

If someone is a mediocre artist, programmer, or manager, they probably will lose their job and will have to learn something new. That is how progress works, and it is okay.

3. Insanity

Why am I talking about artists specifically, and not programmers or others? Because some artists are going insane over AI.

I will not share here the artworks that glorify 'bombs as tools against AI data centers' or quote radicals who want to harm or even kill AI developers. Instead I want to highlight another kind of madness: Cara.

Cara is a new platform for artists that claims to fight AI and AI-generated images. According to Cara, they protect the platform from AI scraping and from AI artworks.

But here is the awkward part: a month ago I uploaded an AI-generated piece there (it is still up), and I also used some existing artworks to create AI-generated copies.

So what is the point?

Sadly, Cara is not really an AI fighter. It is just another kind of scraper, potentially more dangerous than OpenAI, Google, Meta, and others, because behind the scenes it is controlled by the CCP through several Chinese companies. This platform does not protect your art from being taken. It takes it for its own purposes.

Let us keep moving forward. Artists, build unions and communities that help each other grow beyond what AI can do, so that AI will not replace you.

Yes, mediocre artists will lose their jobs, just like mediocre programmers and other workers. We live in a world where we have to get better every single day, and that is actually awesome.