Salon 59 // AI: Trends and Issues

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome everyone to our Techspressionism virtual salon number 60. Is that right? 59. 59. Oh, almost 60. I'm getting ahead of myself. This is actually going to be our last salon of the year. So huzzah, if you've stuck around this long, it's been a long journey thus far, and we are right here at the tip of the year. And thank you for coming. If it's your first time being here.

Davonte Bradley

I like to kind of talk about a little bit about what we've been doing. Most of the time it's sharing art and talking about art. That's what these are about. But here lately we've been having discussions about all sorts of things. Today's topic of discussion is actually kind of a revisit about AI. And we have... I've talked about before, but things have changed and it's now an even more hot topic issue than it was before. But before we get into that whole thing, we have some words and things to share before that. So I will pass the mic over to Colin.

Davonte Bradley

Thanks, Davo. Hey, everyone. So my name is Colin Goldberg, and I, you know, I'm really stoked to be here. Appreciate your... Your moderation, Davo. And ScoJo, who's one of our longtime community members, asked me to share a couple things about Techspressionism, just because there's a whole bunch of new phases here. People who've been... Never been to a salon before. So, you know, Techspressionism, it's a term that I came up with about 10 years ago, just as a way to describe my own work. And then in 2020, a bunch of us artists got together and, you know, ended up... Deciding to formulate a community around the concept. And, you know, it sort of has turned into something where, you know, it's grown and, you know, sustained itself and become, you know, a really nice kind of... I would describe it primarily as a community.

Davonte Bradley

And, you know, there's a website and we recently had a Wikipedia article published about Techspressionism. All right. That was odd. When I mentioned Wikipedia, it said recording stopped. Maybe Zoom doesn't like that. But hopefully the recording is now resumed. It seems like it has resumed. So, yeah, you know, and I would say that our salons are kind of our primary activity. We did have our first physical exhibition this past summer at Southampton Arts Center. There were over 90 artists involved from more than 20 countries. And it was a really exciting experience to work on that.

Davonte Bradley

And we do have something new kind of in the works. And I'm going to pass the mic over to Vernetta to share briefly about that, which is related to today's topic. So, for Vernetta, you have the floor. Thank you, Colin.

Welcome, everybody. Old faces and new ones as well. We have a journal in progress, online journal we're planning for the last couple of weeks. And thus far, we've gotten through the action plan and have started finalizing the business plan and chosen the initial, the inaugural topic. And the inaugural topic for our first issue would, it will be AI. So, we will be culling information from the past salon on AI, friend or foe, as well as paying close attention to what we discuss here today. And for those who are participating today, and those who have participated in the past, we ask that you consider submitting some of your work that we can share with our hopefully global audience. So, start thinking hard about how you want to present your point of view on AI in terms of your artwork. And also, if you have scholarly research on this topic that you want to share, get that buffed up and ready for submission.

Journal announcement

We will let you know the email addresses and how to submit your documents. And we will keep you informed as to... How we're progressing. But we anticipate that if we stay on point the way we are right now, that things will be ready to fire up within the first quarter of 2023. So, thanks, everybody. You will be contacted if you've already volunteered. We'll keep you posted. And I look forward to seeing everyone's creativity bubbling over.

Journal announcement

All right. Thank you. Thank you. That sounds like a fun project. We're going to get it. Keep going.

All right. Now, we have ScoJo to kick this discussion off about AI with two opening questions, I believe. Thank you. So, there's probably a lot of questions. But there were two that kind of came to mind right off the bat that I was hoping that we could hit on. So, the first one is, how does this AI technology actually work? You know, we know that it's learning based on all these different artists' artwork. Often without their consent. Almost all the time without their consent. So, what part of the equation is actually training? And what part is theft? It's not so black and white. So, I was hoping we could talk about that. How exactly does it work? And the second one is what is being done to protect artists? Are there any measures that are working right now that protect artists? And if so, what are the actionable steps that we as artists can take?

ScoJo

To protect the work and styles that we've taken sometimes a lifetime to create? So, those are my two questions right off the bat. How does it work? And how can we protect the artist? Anyone wants to take those, have at it. And let's take these in kind of an orderly fashion. If you are familiar with Zoom's platform, which I believe most of us are at this point, do raise your hand. And I will see the order in which you raise it. And then we can kind of go through in order with who has their space. So, I'll give you the first response. Looks

Like Vernetta is first. Yep. All right. Well, I think in order to address those issues, we have to consider what we have already in place to protect intellectual property for artists. And that would be copyrights. And the copyright. A lot of people figure that, you know, everything about an artist is copyright.

Verneda Lights

And that's not necessarily so. You can copyright an entire painting, a drawing, a completed work of art. But you cannot say copyright a color unless you're Pantone or you're a scientist and you come up with a new color. You cannot copyright a brush stroke. You cannot copyright a theme, so to speak. So, when you consider how copyright laws are already in place, you can't say copyright a theme. You can't say copyrights are already established.

Verneda Lights

You can't really with certainty say that AI is stealing artwork. You can consider that the AI is functioning much like a human brain. Because we ingest the artistic influences of our environment. And we assemble, disassemble, reassemble. And build upon it. And many artists have other artists who've influenced their work. The Cubists, for example, that's an entire movement. And they influenced each other. So, no one would truly say that they stole from each other, although they may have. But you can say that they culturally appropriated African culture and African sculpture.

Verneda Lights

But even so, could we then distinctly say that they stole in terms of the United States law for plagiarism and copyright infringement? I don't think that you could. So, the AI, by assembling and chewing through the work that's submitted to it, is doing basically what we've been doing all our lives. It's learning. It's learning. So, what we can address, I think concretely, would be to say that the AI has to compensate the artist for the labor and the service that they're doing by virtue of submitting their work. To be digested and to have this machine learn from it and maybe improve upon it or change it in any way. I think if we come at it that way, we can advance and create new protections for artists. But I don't think that we can solidly stand on the fact that we feel that it is stealing material.

Verneda Lights

Because according to the laws as they're written now, you can't really prove that. So... I think a good chunk of the discussion mostly boils down to the fact that the AI is stealing. And I think that's the idea of consent here. Yeah. It's like email addresses. They're free. And in a lot of cases, they're freely accessible. But you can't just be put onto somebody's mailing list without your permission. Like, even though it's kind of one of those free things. Or you look at the image mills like Shutterstock and things like that. They can't just take someone's art and put it on Shutterstock because they didn't have that artist's consent to do so. And I think part of the issue with the image AIs right now is that they're taking a lot of people's art to train on. But they didn't necessarily get the consent of the artist to train it on that content yet.

Verneda Lights

And I think that's kind of where it's running afoul of, like, people are feeling a little violated. And rightfully so. It's like, sure, you can take inspiration and all that. But if you're putting an image out there on the internet. You're expecting some, like, I guess a... What's the word I'm looking for?

Verneda Lights

You're expecting, like, a level of respect to be given. And I don't think that the way that training algorithms are currently set up are not necessarily respecting the creators the way that they should be

At this time. Hey, dude. The platforms. The platforms aren't good. They're not giving creators, you know, the respect that they're due. Because most of the terms of service on most of the platforms allow the platforms to do whatever they want to see fit to do with that. And that includes leave it open for scraping.

Patrick Lichty

True. And I mean, so what happens is that... Anyway, I don't want to get started because of the fact that I went and did deep research for about a week and a half. And I just... There's a great reel that came out from... Isa was a Sagetovic from Hyperallergic. And I think it just says it all. And I was going to give a presentation, but I can't because it's just... It's too much. I could go on for hours.

Patrick Lichty

This discussion is a lot. Can you summarize it? Huh? Can you summarize it? Yeah. Pretty much. Yeah, pretty much. Give me a couple of bullet points. What's that? A couple of bullet points maybe that you got from... Well, I mean, okay. I mean, like, you know, like, you know, Carl and I got started on, you know, I mean, I don't know. I mean, I was a generative artist since 96 and all that sort of thing. And, you know, doing the outrace thing and all that sort of thing. But the deal is like... Getting into these, you know, machine learning things, you know, started out with a few things, but, you know, with a little bit of code, with a little bit of torch. But the whole thing is I really got into this thing with a guy named Ahmed Algamal with Playform and me and Anne and Carla. And, you know, the thing is you'd feed it your own stuff and it would go and it would churn through and, you know, you'd build your own latent space and all that sort of thing.

Patrick Lichty

And in a way, that's kind of cool. But, you know, the thing is, is that you get into, you know, these larger things that, you know, most of these things use a database called LayOnB, you know, which is, you know, which is a part for profit, part non-for profit organization, which I have some big problems with. And the thing is they're using this and the thing is that they're scraping everything. They've got like billions of files from Safe.

Patrick Lichty

Yeah. To Not Safe, to medical files, to just on and on and on. But I think the thing that really broke my back was Lenza is that, you know, stable diffusion is supposed to be open source and free. So, you know, Lenza goes on there, puts a front end on it, you know, and makes these, you know, magic avatars, which, by the way, if you send it the wrong images, it can give you the wrong images right back. And but it's using.

Patrick Lichty

Stable diffusion, which I think is actually a really problematic platform. I mean, a really problematic thing. And what happens is that, you know, you sent the wrong stuff, it'll send the wrong stuff back. And, you know, the rabbit hole goes real damn deep. And let's see here. I don't know. I think that there are.

Patrick Lichty

I, my God. I know as I have this stuff in my head and it's just crashing at the moment. It's I think what happens is that I just kind of see that there are people taking these diffusion models and doing things with them that I mean, I think just people should not be doing. And, you know, in the name of freedom and, And, you know, and it's also theft and it's also, you know, inequity and whitening and, you know, just about everything, you know, everything that is not, you know, inclusive of DEI. And the thing is, is that, you know, we just kind of go, it's like, oh, that's kind of cool, you know. And,...

Patrick Lichty

You know, the thing that where I'm at with it with it at this point, let me, let me see if I can pull this thing up. Let me see if I can pull this thing up. Is that I'll go and pull this up and, you know, it's just, it's just kind of funny is that she's, she's kind of the. She pretty much is the correspondent on, on, on. On. Hyper allergic for on Instagram. And I, in, in a funny sort of way, I think she kind of says. Like, and it's like this.

Patrick Lichty

Is that. In my opinion, in the model that we have now. It's broken. There is no optimism and it needs regulated and needs regulated now. Here. All cops. All cops are bastards. All cops are bastards. All cops are bastards. So, and I mean, she speaks for, I mean, she's, you know, she's the, you know, talking for hyperallergic, which is. Know very much about you know about very dedicated you know craig and his group are very you know dedicated to you know justice social justice and equity and that sort of thing and I you know I'm you know when I when I dug into things you know kind of seeing that there are these and the other thing is that when we train the when we work with these machines with these prompts basically what happens is that if you look at the fine print is that they don't talk about artists at all in other words basically what's going on here is that we are training these things to eventually be able to make their own prompts you know and so the thing is and just completely cut us out and so it's just a matter of saying eventually you know the creative industry won't need artists because artificial intelligence will would be potentially training us to have that its taste and generating its own material and I mean I'm being really disopened but I'm just saying that it is a viable model I think you know for the future and I think we need what I wind up saying is I'm saying it's like I think we need to be aware of the inequities in these in these models you know for economic you know social etc but I think on the other hand is that I don't think that we should completely turn away from them because we need to be able to know what's going on so we can hold them accountable and I think that we should be vocal and but as far as I'm concerned I said to a colleague of mine I said I am going to stay at my job I'm going to stay at my job I'm going to stay at my job I'm going to I shall end up the kiddie pool and I'm going to make my nice little cat tank.

Patrick Lichty

And, you know, and I'm actually probably going to wind up going to, to, you know, I don't know what I'm talking about. You know, I'm probably gonna go back to a lot of my work in the 3d flannerism, like, you know, like she and I have done some a bit, you know, and you know, she has a different sort, but I think I'm going to probably go back there.

Patrick Lichty

Cause man it's, it's sticky. So anyway, that's, that's kind of my, that's, that's kind of my hot take on it. Well, thank you. And it's very much appreciated. As, as we opened, it's like, it's a very, it's a complex and controversial issue right now. And there's a lot of, there's so many different moving parts that you could talk about individually with it.

Patrick Lichty

But that we'd probably need actually multiple salons in order to accurately or adequately cover even a chunk of it. But in the interest of moving along with other people that had things that they need to say, I think Gopak Kumar, what's next? Yes. I have a, are you, are you, hello? Yep. Okay. Okay. Okay. I have a small, a, a, a presentation. Presentation means I created a, a small AI project with the, with the text prompt. I will show you from my screen. I will just try to share. Okay.

Patrick Lichty

Okay. That's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 32, 33, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 38, 39, 40, 42, 43, 42, 44, 45, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 52, 52, 52, 53, 52, 53, 51, 52, 53, 52, 53, 52, 53, 52, 53, 52, 53, 52, 53, 51, 52, 53, 52, 53, 52, 53, 51, 52, 53, 52, 53, 52, 53, 52, 53, 52, 53, 51, 52, 53, 52, 53, 52, 53, 52, 53, 52, 53, 51, 52, 53, 52, 53, 52, 53, 52, 53 Got to get it working.

Patrick Lichty

I will try to. If you don't mind, we can come back to you if you want. Okay, no problem. All right, sounds good. Yeah. All right, next up we have Michael

Price. Thanks, Davo. Yeah. Yeah, this is an interesting topic, obviously. But I think right now for me, and I still have not seen any really detailed descriptive formulation of what it means for any particular engine that I've utilized, what's going on in the engine. And I know a lot of this can be highly detailed and highly theoretical in some regards. But there's been no...

Michael Pierre Price

So, you know, I... I... I hear Patrick and my concerns, you know, I think so far everybody's kind of vocalized a lot of that. But the issue I have is what the heck is really being manipulated? What's being looked at? How's it used, et cetera, et cetera. And to this point, I have not seen any of the major engines come out and say, this is a good idea. This is exactly what's going on. So for that, that's problematic for me as an artist, number one, because using a tool that I don't really understand what's going on at the core makes it a very, very tricky proposition. So I have been playing around with prompts.

Michael Pierre Price

You know, I've been playing around with prompts. I've been playing around with things that have no allusion to artists, no allusion to certain styles. And let me bring up my screen. I'm not saying any of this is, you know, wonderful artwork or anything. But here's... Here's an example. I'm assuming you can see this. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So basically, I just talked colors and shapes. And the only allusion to something real world was a mention of impasto oil paint. That's my only allusion to potentially looking at other artists or movements or anything. But other than that, I talked about colors and shapes. And fed that in. And these are some of the examples that I got. So something is going on underneath the engine. And I still, you know, I don't know why certain things come out the way they do. The prompts that I played around with, with certain movements like surrealism or, you know, abstract impressionism, Techspressionism.

Michael Pierre Price

Obviously, those are being drawn from, I would assume, real world artists. But the thing is, I don't know under the hood what keywords are associated with what images. I know that... As Patrick mentioned, stuff is getting scraped from every corner of the online world in which we are living. So, I don't know. I really struggle with that. But I think as artists, and I've said this to other people. I've said, I don't equate art with art. I equate making an image to artwork. I said those are two different things. So, I don't know where we fall into using something that we are kind of dealing with a black box. And I know some of this stuff is open source. And I know you can read articles that say, theoretically, here's how this stuff is working. But from a practical standpoint, what are they actually doing?

Michael Pierre Price

And I have yet to see a good explanation of that. Everybody's focusing on prompts about what you want to get. And to me, that's dictation. And I find that boring. I'm not interested in that. Stable kind of tells you what's going on. Huh? Stable is fairly transparent. Dali is completely none. You know, a lot of these guys are primarily dealing with the lay on 5B database.

Michael Pierre Price

I understand that, Patrick. And that's still very theoretical. But it still doesn't say what's going on. And I've talked with several people who are AI experts, not necessarily text to image, but in audio and in other areas. And they've said a lot of the programmers. And architects of this stuff don't really know what's going on either. Yes. At a low fundamental level. And that's kind of crazy to me. But that's, you know, I'm assuming they're not BSing me when they tell me that. No. It could be the case that it's in because I've read about how in some cases with machine learning, especially when, like, an AI is not a machine. It's a machine that creates an AI of its own and starts to develop a language between itself that humans don't necessarily understand.

Michael Pierre Price

That could be going on as well. I don't know. I mean, it's, you know, we're using AI in the medical field. We're using AI in a lot of other areas. And I don't imagine that people don't know anything of what's going on. I guess right now I think because a lot of this is paid. You know, you're paying to play here at this point. They want to keep some secrecy. But, you know, I don't know. I wish I understood at a really fundamental level that isn't theoretical, that could show me concrete if, you know, here's what's going on. Here's what's being drawn. Here are actual images that are being utilized or sets of images so that it isn't just all theoretical talk. But we could look at it. And say, oh, my God, I didn't realize that. And so far I haven't heard anybody speak to that level to me. I know I'd love if that could happen.

Michael Pierre Price

Well, I mean, I sat down with Steve DePaola. He's one of the heads of the AI graduate program at Simon Fraser. I've known him for a long time. And we talked about this back when Deep Dream was going on. And from a simpler perspective, you know, when you did Deep Dream, you knew you saw everything. You knew you saw everything that looked like this thing on acid, you know, with a whole bunch of dogs, you know. And so the thing is, is that this is a simple example of that. You know, so in other words, what happens is the fact that they basically took, you know, took Google image search and threw it on, you know, with a search parameter of, you know, all corgi dogs or something like that. And then they used that as, you know, the fundamental part of this. And so the thing is, so, okay, everything's going to look like that.

Michael Pierre Price

But the issue is that with Leon B, it's like 5 billion images. And so the thing is, is how are you going to look at 5 billion images, you know? And so the thing you can't. And so, I mean, is that, I mean, there are about two major parts of this. The latent space that's made up of the data field, you know, of 5 billion images or two or however, but it's billions. And then the way that the translator. You know, goes and maps itself to, you know, you know, through the, through the diffusion engine to the tags on each of the images that this thing is created. And the thing is, is that it's, it develops, it develops, it develops its own taxonomy. And this is, you know, what you're talking about here is that, you know, this is why, you know, the AI people don't know what's going on because of the fact that the machines created its own taxonomy based on the rules of the text translation engine.

Michael Pierre Price

And, you know, the latent latent space, you know, I mean the, I mean of the, of the, of the, of the field and then the latent space in which this thing generates. And it's just, it's, it's indeterminately, you know, you know, complex but the thing is, is that the, that the data that you know it's this depending on the database but the database you know, you know, really has, it's just, it's just this Hoover. It's just this Hoover. And it has no rules for, you know, for ethics, you know, in it, you know, and, you know, and I think this is I think this is where the new frontier is.

Michael Pierre Price

Just realizing that the order started to change with the hands. Mr. I get it. I get it. That's because I dropped out I dropped out and had to come back in so I got pushed to the end. And I was like I know Gavin was towards the top why is he at the bottom now okay. And since you put that video that I that I that I threw out to the game thing it's beside him really demonizing everything at which I don't agree I mean I think you should be really kind of like objective and neutral towards this stuff. I think you make some good points except for the fact that I don't think he knows knows knows enough about Hagel. Oh god. I don't think anybody can know enough about Hagel if I'm being 100% honest. Yeah, it was a mess.

Michael Pierre Price

That's a discussion for a totally different time. Yeah. And maybe one needs to be involved with that one. Anyway, I'm moving along,

Gavin. Sure. Yeah. So my name is Gavin. I've been in the AI art generation now for about two and a half years. I've been working with a lot of visual effects artists down in Los Angeles, doing pre visualization, and what I've seen has blown my mind, and it maybe has made me really excited about AI generative art. A lot of this stuff I saw was being worked on to develop concept art for the backgrounds for the new Obi Wan Kenobi TV series, and all the new Star Wars TV series that you're going to be seeing coming out. And what's really cool is. Imagine if you could live forever and you could create artwork in your mind where you can reference everything you've ever done and build off from that. What they did was they basically taken the entire canon of all the worlds that have been created in Star Wars, and they've been able to build off and generate and create like thousands of variations within hours, and really ideate and really create amazing new things.

Gavin Farrell

And they're still having a lot of input and what the final result is. But. But they're using this tool as incredible brainstorming technique. And all I hear from you guys and from everyone out in the internet right now is everyone's all dark and gloomy because they don't know what the technology is. They're not excited about they're scared about losing their jobs. Right. And here's the deal. We don't know what the back engine of Facebook is, or Instagram or all those big tech companies, but you guys have all been uploading your artwork on there for the last 10 years. Right. You're voluntary, you're voluntary participants in this because you want to get the right people to participate. If you want to get that exposure and you don't want to read the 20 page terms of agreement document that's written in a point one typeface.

Gavin Farrell

So you know you've made your own concessions by giving away your artwork by putting on the internet. Now I've yet to like this. I'm selective. Yeah. The other thing I want to say though. The thing I want to say is, you know, if we had a universal income for everyone. So all the artists had your basic needs met. Met and you weren't worried about, you know, a lot of you guys probably make your living off of your artwork. So it means immediately AI is threatening to you, right? So it closes your mind off of the possibilities.

Gavin Farrell

And the thing is, is like, AI is probably the evolution of where artwork is going. We're just, we're just, we're too close-minded to realize that, you know, there is something greater than us as individual artists, right? In my opinion, personal opinion, I think there's the history of art and there's the movement of the art and there's the evolution of art. And right now, you guys are all experiencing something that is a major evolutionary shift in what we all do. There's a fusion of the historical collection of all the artwork that's ever been created and everything that's on the internet. And then there's that kind of this pseudo AI intelligence that's creating kind of like this new, new thing that you guys just described. We don't even know how it's being created. But what I can, what I've been seeing around the visual effects artists that I've been working with has been blowing me away and the work that I've been doing.

Gavin Farrell

And I use it as an ideation tool to run experiments. But in the end, I always end up creating my own artwork. And I know ScoJo does the same thing. And I see it as like this, as another incredible tool in our toolkit. Now, Jen, Jen posted, something on Facebook, where she had a friend or someone that she knew that had a specific watercolor style. It was sort of like these sort of like fairy like ethereal creatures. And you could totally see the story that people were using her name and their prompts to create mimic her art style. And I can totally see how that's threatening. But at the same time, as an artist, it's like, do you really want to put a pigeon pigeonhole yourself in the same, same style? Forever?

Gavin Farrell

Because you know, it sells well, and makes you a lot of money? Or are we part of a greater cause? Are we a part of something bigger than that? And just because like, like I said, just ask yourself this question. If all your needs were met, if you had all the money in the world, and you didn't have to worry about surviving or feeding your family?

Gavin Farrell

Would you really be that threatened? So that's, I just want to leave it at that. We, we, we don't live in that world. I don't either. We know that's, that's not I mean, universal basic income would be amazing. But it's not where we are. Yeah, that's, yeah, Gavin, I think you're misreading why you're misreading me if that if you're kind of, you know, throwing all of us into into one big pot here. That has nothing to do with it. It for me, it has to do with the integrity of what I create.

Gavin Farrell

And if I don't, and I'm, I'm, I'm still optimistic about AI, I'm trying to do things so that it feels like my work, but it's, it's very easy to, to create or mimic other people's artwork. And so for me, I just I want to understand the tool better. That's my that's my only thing right now. And I don't understand it. If I had a really solid understanding, then I could use it better. And for the most part, what I see being put out there in terms of people, you know, supposedly experts in the area, they're just, they're just all talking about how to get better prompts to get what you want. And that doesn't cut it for me, because that's, that's just the interface.

Gavin Farrell

And, and so I, you know, I'm not working on, you know, a branded, you know, storybook or something like that. So yeah, your examples all well and good. And that's fine. And I do appreciate. And that's why that's why I'm interested in this. I'm always on the cutting edge of things that because that's where I want to be. But it's, it's unsettling for me. It's, I don't see it as dark. I just see it as a tool that I have to be very mindful of. I just see it as a tool that I have to be very mindful of. I just see it as a tool that I have to be very mindful of. How to work with it, because there's so many unknowns.

Gavin Farrell

Yeah, as a quick example. So say, for example, you know, if your database was all the frames of all the Star Wars films and that sort of thing. And, you know, in other words, you were within your own ethical bounds and that sort of thing. I'm, you know, that would be fantastic. I think it's a fantastic technology for, you know, you know, if you're using your if you're using, you know, an intentionally shaped.

Gavin Farrell

Database, you know, it's a great tool, you know, I'm not that I'm, you know, I mean, I've always been on the edge of technology for 30 years but you know it's just the matter that my biggest issue is just the practices of the people who are, you know, who are doing these things and they're abusive. And, you know, so the thing I don't yeah I don't I don't disagree. I don't disagree with that at all I just think that we've, we've set ourself up to be put in this position because we sign away our rights.

Gavin Farrell

And I think that it's that have been scoured. But now I think as artists, we do have to be cognizant and aware that like even if you have an art show and you take a picture of your art show and it's on Facebook, it's probably gonna get scoured. Intentionality. Yeah, and one thing I just wanted to say, it was like, I was super excited when I learned that there's ways to take the unstable, and code it on your own database and basically create this AI that is in your style so that when you pass away your kids can go in there and have their parent that like the AI is going to create like continue to create their parents artwork super I think you know and I actually just wanted can I just share one thing for like three seconds I'll just say Claudia Hart is working on a project like that right now so if you all are following kalani nicole's eat works it's a consortium of people in new york but and Claudia Hart has just started working on a project where she has several people who will maintain I'm one of them who will maintain kind of her estate and this AI we're the people who will curate what the AI generates so that her art will continue to be made after her death right I think it's really interesting yeah that's really cool you know that's almost reminds me of like if we could get to a legality point where maybe we all have ais for our own database of work I know I've scanned I started doing sketchbooks since I was five I scanned about I don't know 500 sketchbooks into a database which I'm preparing for AI but let's say you want to do a collaboration with another artist you know maybe you both have AI databases that can kind of be temporarily combined you know yeah I just wanted to share just one thing that I thought was super fun that I think everybody might get a kick out of which is I just share this real quick can everybody see this I see the edge of a folder yeah I see the top part of a folder can you see that now yeah so this is something that was really crazy so I took asked my daughter to make a funny face so can you guys see that there's a big now so there's a funny face she made and then I ran it through the AI and I said make it like a like a an elf an excited elf and it created these three these four images and it really got the three-dimensionality down you know amazing and then I put it together and I made this holiday car and I had all the three-dimensionality all in your of different family members make funny faces.

Gavin Farrell

And then I had I said, make a fireplace mantle. I did this in probably about 20 minutes. And I just think that, you know, at that speed, it's just you, it's obviously here to stay, right? You can do as an artist, you can ideate really quickly. And, you know, I just think that, for me, that's always been a big challenge. And I find this, how do I stop sharing now? I find this really, I try to focus on the glass half full positive side of things. And I think as artists, it's like, we're basically, it's like we've gotten access to the muse in some ways, like we're mainlining the muse. That's how I put it. Like you have, you have like, there's a dam full of creativity, and you've just been given the siphon to that dam. And you have to be careful how much you can crank it open. But it's just the power of this is, as you guys well are probably well aware is it's just right can be frightening.

Gavin Farrell

Sure. Gosh, trying to figure out how to segue back. As riveting at this discussion is I do want everyone to be able to have the opportunity to share their thoughts and ideas. I think, Gopal, if you could just share your thoughts and ideas. Well Kumar finally got his video working correct so I'm going to switch back to him. Okay.

Gavin Farrell

Yes seven hands up. All right. Yeah. And Carla you can go ahead and share your thoughts and ideas. Okay. Okay. Thank you so much for after this. Still seems to be having technical difficulties. Are you seeing this? No. Not seeing? No. We've got a black box. Speaking of black boxes, but no, we're not seeing anything, unfortunately.

Gavin Farrell

His equipment does not support the video that he's using. It was the message. Yeah. Could be a connectivity issue too. Yeah. I'm not seeing anything. Then what I will do, I will share this link to the chat box. All right. Sounds like a plan. Sorry it's not working out the way you tried. Okay. I'll share.

Gavin Farrell

This wouldn't be one of our salons if somebody wasn't having technical difficulties of some kind. Might as well be a tradition at this point. All right. Well, sorry about that, Gopal Kumar. Okay. Yeah. If you want to drop the link in the chat for people to view it, that would be great. Yeah. All right.

Carla. I know you've been waiting patiently. Hey, everybody. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And let me just share a screen. Okay. So I have a bunch of things pulled up. You can all share. See my screen. Are you seeing a purple screen or no? I think you're seeing the wrong screen. Let me make sure I'm sharing the right one. If technology it's this one. Yes. I've got three screens here. So I was like, okay. So you should now see just an Instagram photo of a talk. Does everybody see that? Awesome. Okay, cool. So one thing I wanted to turn you all on to, and I think you can find it on SVA site now. I went about three weeks ago to this great talk that was happening in the United States. It was hosted by SVA with Natasha Chuuk and Lev Manovich. And some topics that came up were about Lev training on both Mid Journey, on DALI, on Stable Diffusion.

Carla Gannis

And he's actually been having conversations with the guy who runs Mid Journey. And he showed some examples where he just put in one word, for example, sphere. And like with each update of Mid Journey, for example, you're going to get different results. Same with Linza. That's what they give you when you are logging in. They're like, each time you'll get different results. And they've been skewing it now more to kind of polish beautiful images. And Patrick and I both started Ann Ann and a bunch of people started with Playform back in 2019. And one of the things I loved about the program was that the works in a kind of now traditional GANs model were very abstract. All that said, check out this if you can find it. It should be super easy to find. Google Natasha Chook and Lev Manovich and watch that video because I think it would be highly informative to all of you since this is a topic that we all are perplexed by.

Carla Gannis

And that said, I think I was kind of inspired by that talk. I started thinking about mixed media. And I've been doing this Google results project for like 15 years where I just query Google with different string searches. And only rarely do I get zero results. Only rarely do I think that I'm actually have, you know, having an original thought. And today I was listening to this great talk on hard fork. Hard fork is a New York Times podcast. You might want to listen to that about some AI stuff. And they were talking about our not really understanding how these engines work, how the algorithms work, what's going on. And that's the thing that can be most kind of frightening to us. But that said, I started thinking about mixed algorithm art. I only found one good one. And that was Google results for the string search.

Carla Gannis

So what I did because it's all the rage right now, mid journey and Lenza, I generated results on both of those. Mid journey I've been working for five years on this Wonder Camera project where I train image data sets on these different taxonomies in my Wonder Camera. It's WWW under camera. This idea of a Wonder Camera for Web 3 for the metaverse age, a decolonized feminist post-Juban Wonder Camera.

Carla Gannis

Coming out of the history of museums being the Wonder Camera in the 17th century. I've trained it on so many data sets on decolonization, on feminism, on humor is salve and salvation, all of these things. So anyway, I put the Wonder Camera into, oh, I guess I could show it as a slideshow, into mid journey and generated all these images. I put myself from age six to now, which is 52, into Lenza.

Carla Gannis

And I've been working on a lot of these. And then I put it into Playform. So I really liked kind of taking the results from these two different platforms and then putting them into another platform, which brings me to that wonderful quote by Jasper Johns. And I think it's something we as artists have to remember. Take an object, it can be a virtual object, do something to it, do something else to it. And I think that's really crucial. I think, you know, we have dealt with this in the past. Photography radically radically changed painting and so did physics. If we think of cubism was raised before and painters no longer had to think about verisimilitude because the camera could do that better. And so we're always, as digital artists, we have to be incredibly elastic. Some other points I wanted to make really quickly.

Carla Gannis

The other day, a thought came up, how long have you been collaborating with AI? I say conceptually over 20 years. I like that said yes, because it's not always just working with the AI engines. I work a lot with avatars right now for my wonder camera. I have seven avatars. They're all speculative fiction, speculative design. They're me thinking through these things. I've run a race. Ran down the middle of a highway as a physical human while my avatar in second life ran down a highway in second life. And so we can think these things through conceptually. I mean, we've seen throughout the 20th century, conceptual art is where humans really can, you know, it's not just the images, it's what we're thinking about, what we have to say as a story or as a concept or as a philosophy.

Carla Gannis

This is an avatar I created like 20, oh my God, in 1997, Sister Gemini. She was an AI alter ego and she broke into websites and hacked into websites through quick time videos, right? So we've been thinking about these things through a long time. And as curators, as, artists with like important ideas, we still are not, you know, going to be taken over by the AI. And then finally, I've had an avatar that I've been working with. We've done two solo shows together. We've done multiple. She has her own Zoom account and her own Instagram account, Carla Gannis, cross-platform avatar for a cursive life action generative adversarial network. And, you know, as she becomes more autonomous and all of this, again, is speculative fiction, but it's me working through these ideas. And I think as long as we are like, having a sense of humor about all of this, and we're really thinking through it critically, and it doesn't always have to just be using all these freaking, like every platform that gets released now is ChatGPT.

Carla Gannis

We, you know, it's great. I'm experimenting with all of them, but like that does not an artwork make, but it's great. We're experimenting with them, but we can do it outside of just using the engines and we can do it in other ways through critical design, speculative design and speculative art. And I'm going to stop sharing and I'll stop talking and I talk really fast. So apologies. My students are always, you know, I'm not going to like freaking out about it. You're fine. You're fine. That was great.

Carla Gannis

Yeah. I get the feeling in some cases that even from some of the things that Gavin was saying saying earlier, part of what's going on here seems very close to how, you know, people were talking about the transition from traditional art to digital art, like the reason why this community kind of came together was because there was like, there was the idea that the kinds of art that we that we make is kind of illegitimate. In comparison to what's been come before.

Carla Gannis

And there's kind of those new kid on the block growing pains, so to speak. And I think it's going to take some time for, you know, things to acclimate and I also think that the ethical issues aren't necessarily going to go away the conversation is definitely going to shift but it's what we're seeing it's new but not so new like the idea or the concept of what's going on isn't exceptionally new like this isn't completely brand new territory for us photography right you know painters you know right painting painting the nature of painting shifted because of photography right sure and it's that scary that scary beginning time where it's kind of just showed up and people are not like Michael was saying it's get we don't know what's going on here in some cases like it's just it is a black box we don't know like if there was a way to see at least for me I think it'd be interesting if there was a way to see like step by step how the algorithm actually works like okay so this is this is the data I'm pulling from this is where I'm going to put this is where I'm going to put this and like actually see that mapped out that'd be really interesting for me to see but at this time we don't have anything like that at least I don't think we do unless they're keeping under wraps somewhere but yeah it's we're definitely going into territory that is still being mapped someone made the claim it's like it's almost like the wild wild west the nft space was very much like the wild wild west so we have a lot of new things that ethics and create ideas are all over the place intertwined and getting mixed up and I think it's hard to kind of focus that too even with me talking about this it's hard to focus on just one thing to actually kind of address but I don't want to take up any more time than I already have so I'll let Cindy have the floor you

Still here okay yeah I'm here thank you uh-huh this has been really interesting I've heard a lot of things that maybe I haven't even thought about before by listening to people I want to say though that this is a little similar to back when music synthesizers came out and people were synthesizing instruments and you know all the studio musicians and everybody thought they'd lose their jobs I mean it did change things but it's if you're a talented musician it's not gonna hurt you know and I feel like in art because music is art too I don't know okay well of course I don't make my living at it but I think it depends on what you want to get out of your art I think we don't have to be afraid of it like we've heard some of the other people mentioned you know that it is a movement it's just the way it goes it's it evolves and I just because you know the neftorian was having the AI contest so I just for my first time was in you know starting to do some AI and I gotta say I thought it was addicting it's kind of like how I do my artwork anyway and that was a little bit like Carla was saying you know I'll take things and mix it up with something else and also it creates new jobs and new ways to do art like for with the music you could develop your own you know there's other platforms with that and also like I've heard this is just like another tool now I do understand you know you know there is you know some ethics things and whatnot but I think look for me okay like I know the physics of taking a picture a photograph a camera a tape recorder but to me it's still magic I just don't understand how like in the tape you got the little magnetic parts that make this I'm sorry I it doesn't sink in so to me it's all fascinating and I just want to go with the flow and personally if anybody wants to copy of any of my stuff they can go at it I mean I do because I do it for me I'm not doing it to make a living off of it yeah if I make I've made some money selling stuff and that's kind of cool it gives me a little high but I think we got to also kind of check ourselves what we're hoping to get from it and at least that's my take on it that's all yeah and I know that the intended results that's the thing that gets people because some the argument is made or has been made that you know the AI generated images themselves is art but some people say no you're just curating the outputs of the AI it's not necessarily art yet but some people are definitely trying to pass it off as that they'll say look at the art that I've created or that I've authored and it of course people will start to raise an eyebrow that it's like is it really because there's certainly an argument can be it's like you had a process and selection of the image you had a you had a hand in the prompt that was used to create this but the actual art itself or the actual image that was created you didn't maybe have as much of an influence as you thought it's but in I don't know it's smirky territory again it is I also did a little bit like michael I decided if I'm gonna do this I didn't do any styles I didn't do any artists I just put in my own words I put something in my head what I kind of wanted to look like and it gave me ideas for even maybe came out a little different you know different than what I had expected it but it gave me ideas for the future maybe the kind of art I want to do and I don't think I'd be stealing from anybody I mean it's like music too you take you see something you hear something you get inspired and it's all there for all intents and purposes this should help a lot with art block it should all right thank you for that cindy sure

Next up we have ross another year of you're muted oh I just said this has been so stimulating I'm not sure I remember what my first comment was going to be but I love that dinosaur that Michael Pierre Price has in the background I love that dinosaur that Michael Pierre Price has in the background we always seem to certain points reach one another but I have a dinosaur in my little crash that I have for christmas and there's a dinosaur and a qr code in the middle of it but I love the dialogue going on and you know I've talked about this before but when I first started painting in New York, when I arrived in New York City in the 80s and my paintings filled with these squares, these pixels, I had no idea what kind of a beast it was going to become. I mean, a lot of us, I think, are there.

Roz Dimon

I mean, it has become a beast that can swallow us all alive. And it's fascinating to write and talk about. So I think this idea of a journal with Vernetta taking that on is wonderful. If we could put up this dialogue in short essays and maybe have a q a based around some of them because you know none of us are going to get a perfect essay about this it is about questioning it's exploration but I just I think it's a very exciting point where we're entering into yes even more of the unknown I mean when I painted pixels I didn't know what the hell they were there was some kind of electricity that started that changed my entire art career for better and worse and fascinating and it just keeps going exponentially and I love that we're talking to that and I don't want us to get too bogged in the fear of everything because art is exploration and the futurist manifestos and all the great movements had a journal where they didn't quite know but they jumped in so we have to jump in and I think the dialogue with the ethics and everything else gives us more credibility and different sides and attention that is that is what makes a group really interesting so just saying I'm all in starting to do a little bit of AI myself with some of my old Wall Street boy pictures and not pictures images and I find it fascinating and I'm kind of accepting their days that I'm really depressed because the individual visual expression that comes out of us whether we were shy which I certainly was growing up had no idea how to make myself visible in this world and art was the way and music and you know it's to lose that to this larger thing where you just feel like you're one little piece of many that really is just what my diamond scapes my larger pieces are that I've been doing recently are all about or it's one image of millions but we're still kind of like a film director you're still curating and putting something you can still put something large together but we have to we have to accept we have to accept it and I think jump in I mean you got to jump into it so oh that's all right signing off for now thank you Ross all right next up we have Jennifer

Okay I have so full disclosure I'm a traditional artist now I've worked I worked for 20 years in video games I've done video I've done you know 2d art I've made 3d art my husband currently still works in video games I still use digital art as part of my process but and I was invited by Josh to do a video game and I was invited by Josh to do a video game and I was invited by Josh to do a video game I'm kind of not knowing the whole you know totally what was going on here but I have been embroiled with talks about AI and my husband has been too you know I think that for people making a living off of art the ethics really is a big deal right now you know I want to be like in the pie in the sky but I'm kind of like just happy with Gavin saying you know like oh but if nobody's job mattered you know if your job didn't wouldn't you want to just do whatever it is I yes I'm very interested in the pursuit of you know interesting evolutions in art but I kind of have the same sticking point that Michael was talking about and that it is it's really strange right now I've you know I've played around with it and I've stuck around I've tried not to use any art specific prompts but as someone that did does work as a commercial artist occasionally and did work in commercial art for a long time I hate not knowing how much of what is coming from where and you know I've seen examples where people have shown their artwork side by side with like a big chunk of it taken out or like a photograph that's just basically flipped and like from a user point of view I would feel disgusted with myself if I was just like taking that much you know people there have been a lot of people saying that AI is just doing what humans do and ingesting art and you know understanding the style and everything and you know putting it out there digesting it and making art from it but you know I think that it's not making the moral decisions and it's not making some of the ethical decisions that artists make when they're like deciding to copy a piece or reference your piece and what part they're copying and how they copy it like you have you don't really have a good idea of what's happening there on top of that the scrape of lots of individual living artists off the web you know you can get into the fact that okay we all put stuff on Facebook but you were asking for it.

Jennifer Hrabota Lesser

To me, that's a little bit like saying, oh, you didn't lock your door right after you walked in the house and someone came in and stole, you know, stole your laptop. You were asking for it. Maybe, maybe not. You know, I think we all walk through society kind of having a little trust and good natured interactions with the people around. Like, there's lots of times where you could take a thing, but just because you could, you don't, you don't because it was wrong.

Jennifer Hrabota Lesser

I think some of the ways the software has been developed is just wrong. Working in software development for, you know, 30 years, we pay artists to make art for our software. That's just like how, how we work. You know, my husband's an art director, you know, he's been an art... Director for 30 years and he makes sure that the art that people are submitting to use isn't plagiarized isn't still in artwork it's very important to how we work so you know I want you know someone said okay this is my hobby I don't make money off of it and I understand that point of view and I think that AI is really cool and fun but you know the ethics are very real for a lot of people and I think some of the way you know even stable diffusion treated their music AI differently than they treated their art AI their music AI output is not using any copyrighted music whereas the art they just chose to ignore that from my point of view I think that's from like a little less respect from artists in general and you know I don't I don't feel like it's right that it you know we let it slide I'm currently dry-throated sorry but I'll wrap it up really quickly I'm like I'm not against AI and my son is currently at RISD and he's you know studying art and he's interested in AI I'm just interested I feel like the ethical use is important and I think that some of these you know like lenza they just shouldn't have been able to do that at this point the way they the way they did that they shouldn't have been able to do that and some of the other software is just not really ready for prime time anyway that's it oh I got you and to speak more on the point about you know putting images on platforms like facebook and like I want to say that it's also the case like even even if you do sign a tos in terms of service and people agree to the tos I think a lot of us have seen or at least heard about situations where certain contracts are written a certain way to take advantage of people without them not necessarily realizing that they're being taken advantage of I mean we got into that whole issue when it came to like credit card lenders on college campuses like they were taking advantage of the fact that they weren't understanding what it was they were actually signing up for and they had to put it into that even though you know the government came in with their own student loan program but that's neither here nor there that's not part of the session but the whole idea is that even if you are signing a tos and you're reading it as to the best of your ability you can still be taken advantage of in that way because they're really good at wording things sometimes it's like they're really good as like legalese it's almost like it's its own language so that's how it's easy for them to take advantage of people using their platforms but when people actually start you know break it down that's when you start exposing oh yeah that's a glaring ethical issue right there that one line like that's that is an issue but if you don't know what to look for you don't your eyes aren't trained or you just don't understand you're not gonna catch on to that yeah let's see I have a couple more people and we are actually running low on time so I'm gonna try get to everybody as quickly as I can chani

You still here I actually wanted to share my work related about the issues and topic today but I don't think it is better timing to just show it's a little bit long long too I just wanted to add more comment from Jennifer that as a new media artist I enjoy AI and machine learnings as a tool to play around with but when I hang out with my friends who are illustrators who actually need to get a lot of contract with industrial companies they are having a lot of struggles and worried about the point how much AI can copy their work so I couldn't just avoid their idea because they are also same artists they are just in different field and then having different positions to live as well for me I'm just in academia and an educator so I feel I found out this is very interesting point to catch up and how to see the predict the future too but for some of people who are not related in our field but they are still same artists with us just using different tools they have a different idea it's totally understandable so I agree though part of the Jennifer's dimensions and then yeah I just wanted to add it more about it as a personal opinion!

Chanhee Choi

Well thank you for that is there somewhere that describes English sources and the LFIV that is a good question Colin I wouldn't I wouldn't even know where to look for that one also speaking of calling I don't know when your hand went up because since you're a co-host you're kind of perpetually at the top so

So from And just using it as a vehicle to play with AI, like sort of a reason to play with it. And it is addictive, I think, you know, and certainly now with ChatGBT, I've been playing with that and it's also addictive. And it's almost like I feel like, you know, I mean, I've been asking the AI to write haikus for me every day. And it's usually like I'm doing it for like half an hour and picking the ones that I like the best, you know, because it's so entertaining. And I feel like it's almost like I'm getting to know a person, you know, it's really strange. I mean, I remember this thing, Elisa, back in the 80s, which was, you know, a text-based psychiatrist, like simulator. That was like, you know, really rudimentary AI, essentially, you know. And, you know, even.

Colin Goldberg

When I first started thinking about Techspressionism, the terminology AI and artificial intelligence to me is very problematic. You know, it implies artificiality from the get-go, where what actually is, you know, artificial about it? You know, it's silicon-based intelligence, in my opinion. It's things that are generated based on rules, thus intelligence, right?

Colin Goldberg

Same thing with the technology. It's a lot of things that are generated based on rules, thus intelligence, right? You know, as a computer nerd growing up with computers and loving computers, I just thought, well, you know, this is actually reality. It's just experiencing it on a computer in a different way. So anyway, food for thought. I just wanted to pitch my two cents in.

Colin Goldberg

Your two cents are very appreciated. I'm going to put it in my jar. All right. Cynthia.

Hi, everyone. I think it's a wonderful discussion. And I just have a few things that I want to say. First of all, I'm all for artists using AI. I don't have a problem with that. In fact, a lot of the softwares we use involve AI. So we should, I suppose, understand better than anyone else the fact that we manipulate and so forth.

Cynthia DiDonato

And I think it's fine. And I think it's also fine for us to manipulate your own art as in Playform or within your own softwares. And that example that Gavin gave earlier of the Star Wars platform using their landscapes or whatever they had for all their films and then coming up with wonderful variations. I think it's wonderful. It's a variation on a theme. And again, it was their work that they produced.

Cynthia DiDonato

So I think that's fine. But I am bothered, as was mentioned by Jennifer earlier and other people in the discussion in the chat, with the whole issue of copyright. Now, when you look at Shutterstock, when you look at Flickr, when you look at images on Google, and you decide, gee, I want to use that Hanukkah picture because I want to say Happy Hanukkah to my friend.

Cynthia DiDonato

Very often it'll say, check what's the license on it. There's a copyright on it. So all of those things out there have copyright. Flickr got involved with Creative Commons and Creative Commons allows us to go and take an image. And again, we have to look at the license. Maybe we have to give credit to the photographer or what have you. But the point is that the copyright or the respect, as Davo mentioned earlier, is there.

Cynthia DiDonato

And to me, what we haven't seen with the AI that we've been talking about tonight, these different models, whether it's stable diffusion, DALLE, or what have you, we don't know that they are, well, we know that they're not asking to use our imagery. In fact, you know, they could be using our images. They could even have a thing where we could opt out, which I don't like. I think we should be, you know, either given royalties or we should have a license whereby we say, yeah, you can use it without any derivatives. But then that's a problem for them because after all, they're AI and they're interested in bringing all of this together.

Cynthia DiDonato

So I see that it's an issue and I'm concerned about those artists who make a living. Oh, yes. With their art and that as was mentioned I think by Jennifer earlier and I had read about it was the fact that they're very cautious when it comes to music and AI. They respect in many ways the copyright attached to music. So we as visual artists and not only us, maybe painters or whoever, people that put their work out there have been given short shrift in that we, you know, using visual recognition or manual rendering or visual preservation or visual Montana job training or visual it's important that we stand up for ourselves and that's not going to happen unless there are protests. There was a protest that was out there, no AI for last week. There need to be lawsuits, whatever, to make it clear that somehow the respect needs to be given to artists, whether it's in the form of royalties or what have you.

Cynthia DiDonato

So I think it's easily solved by their doing that. And I also had on another note, listened to a discussion. It might have been a Twitter space or it could have been art on internet because I listened to their master classes occasionally. And they made the point that AI artists right now have a tough job because they have to be better than what the AI is. And that's what they're doing. And I think that's what they're doing. And I think that's what AI puts out. And so I guess for all of us, what AI has done is made us know that we've got to work harder because it's here to stay. I don't think it's going to go away.

Cynthia DiDonato

So that's my two cents. Thank you for listening. Thank you, Cynthia. Can I just say, I did not mean any disrespect to people who make money from their art. If I could make money on my art, I would. Make a living, I mean. And also for me personally, if I had to rely on my art to make a living, I probably would not like doing it. But I totally, hey, if somebody copied something of mine and made a bunch of money, well, I would be upset with that. So I'm just saying, I just want to make sure everybody knew I didn't mean any disrespect. I think everyone here, I admire people who could make work off their art. I mean, make a living.

Cynthia DiDonato

I think we're pretty understanding here as a general community. I mean, I can't speak for everyone, but I think just from what I know of everyone that I've interacted with here, I don't think anyone probably took offense to that. Okay. I think we should also make a note that musicians probably get more respect in the AI development industry than the artists. And so I think that's something that we should listen to as well and remember this time we've talked about those parallel perspectives on Values for Financial Investment in education and Family Investment in Financial Investment in firkan Projekt APPLAUSE Musicians are unionized. Many of them are, you know? And so I think the time maybe is upon us for artists to likewise organize.

Cynthia DiDonato

I mean, we're kind of like hither and yon and whatnot, but if something threatens our livelihood sincerely enough and deeply enough, I think it would behoove us to start thinking about how we can organize to exert political influence and business. You hit the nail on the head, Renata, and we can use the music industry as a model. Yes.

Cynthia DiDonato

They've already been through it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You can divide and conquer. I mean, right now artists are very much divided. I mean, we don't even have a unified approach to this technology. No. This group is working on it. You know, that's not to say we will all have one voice on this thing, but we are working on making our opinions known in the world at large so people can't say they didn't know how it impacts us, you know, how it negatively impacts us, and also how it inspires us, you know?

Cynthia DiDonato

Just really quickly, there are some people that are trying to organize, and you who is, she does similar stuff to what Gavin does. She does a lot of movie concepting and ideation, has started a GoFundMe that is doing very well at this point and it's to actually hire a lobbyist to lobby for artistic rights and copyright laws in Washington.

Cynthia DiDonato

So I agree with that. I do think that artists need to organize in general, but also wanted to. Know, just put a point of finger at what Carla's doing, because I think she is working hard to do some good work for artists. Would you be able to post a link to that in the chat by any chance? Yes. My husband was laughing at me because I am not on Zoom calls very often. It'll just take me a second, but I will.

Cynthia DiDonato

We also have the Americans for the Arts. That's a nonprofit organization that lobbies on behalf of artists. And I'm a member of that organization. And when they protested back in 2000, I was a member of that organization. And I was a member of that organization. I think 2017, we went to D.C., we went through Congress, hundreds of us, and met with our senators and representatives and lobbied against them trying to cut fundings for the National Endowment for the Arts and also to keep them from messing with PBS, you know, because that was becoming a favorite talk. And after that particular event, the heat about decreasing funding for the arts greatly diminished and the endowment was well funded and PBS was no longer under threat. But it took an organized effort, you know, for hundreds of artists to show up and speak out.

Cynthia DiDonato

But we need to do that on a continuous basis, you know. Right. I think if there's resources like this GoFundMe and what Vernada was talking about, that would be a really good thing to add to the Techspressionism website somewhere on a page calling it, you know, take action or something like that, where, you know, people can actually do something specifically for artists' rights, you know. And, you know, it doesn't necessarily have to be somebody who's affiliated with the Techspressionism community who started the thing. Right. Because I think that probably no one involved with this project is going to actively be happy about, you know, their work being taken without their consent or things like that. There's probably some issues where it's a fairly unified mentality, I would think, you know.

Cynthia DiDonato

Yeah. We also have the future of the Future of Life Institute located in Boston. And they deal specifically with artificial intelligence and its negative effects. And they lobby and they inform the opinions of representatives and other people in Congress in order to make AI people accountable and to stop its injurious aspects. So if we were to engage the Future of Life Institute, I think they would welcome our presence in their discussions. And I think we would learn a lot from their efforts and gain more understanding as to how these software programs, these platforms are actually functioning because they have a deeper understanding of what's going on with AI from a military perspective and also from an artistic perspective. They have the nuts and bolts of that stuff down, Pat. So maybe we could tap some of their people to talk with us to so that we can gain insight, better insight into what's going on.

Cynthia DiDonato

And I'm quite sure they would welcome our input. Maybe Google culture. They're usually a fair response. I don't trust Google. I think they're, well, I can't say that. You know. They're not as bad as some. Yeah. Their motto is what? Don't be evil? Yeah. Right. They're the alphabet company. They can't be evil if it's the alphabet company. Oh, no, it's not the alphabet company's motto. That's just the Google subdivision alphabet. Actually, the umbrella can be evil. So as long as Google's not evil. Yeah. But I didn't say that came after Google. Yeah. Alphabet. Okay.

Cynthia DiDonato

So they're saying basically anything pertaining to language they own. That's what alphabet that whole name is saying that, you know, it's like meta or was it Altria having to do with, you know, like the Philip Morris Company and all that sort of stuff. Yeah. And Kraft cheese. Yeah. I mean, you know, I have a smoke and a cheese sandwich. How can you go wrong?

Cynthia DiDonato

Before we wrap things up, I know Paul still has his hand up. So I want to get to him before we. Hi. Hey. Thanks for I got this email to this link from a friend of mine who I talked to the other day. I am not an AI artist. I am a traditional artist and a graphic designer. I also own an art gallery. And one of my goals this year is

To put on a show about AI art to do, you know, call for entry for AI art to do a series of discussions about its role within the art world. The ethical issues you've all brought up here today, how it works into the workflow of traditional artists like photography does for us. I'm also really curious about trying to find an art historian who can put this in the context about innovations.

Paul Kroner

In the art world over time, that's been discussed here tonight, you know, painting the tube was a revolutionary idea at one point. And so I'm really trying to go. There's a lot of people I'm in Cincinnati, Ohio. A lot of people here are that I mentioned this to. They're like, what? What's that about? You know, and they're freaked out about it. And, you know, is it art and is it legitimate? Is it ethical? All these things. And I really want to try to present this in a way that educates and informs people about, you know, the art world. And so I've been listening with great interest in all that. I don't know if you're going to send out links to things or anything like that. But I'm interested in if anybody has thoughts on this kind of a show or have done this kind of show, I would very much like to be in contact with them.

Paul Kroner

I'm going to put my email address on the chat. Is that OK? Yeah, that's fine. OK. And because I'm really curious about this and I need to go. I'm really glad I got to chat. I'm really glad I joined this. And I hope to connect up with you because this is a great little thing you've got going here. So I look forward to being parts of future conversation.

Paul Kroner

We're glad to have you. OK. Yes. All right. We are at the top of the hour at 710. Yes, sir. Yeah. All right. OK. Just one last question. Well, I did see that in the Zoom in my Zoom account there was a recording that started and it says processing. So I'm hoping this recording will work. It does say recording in the top left corner of the screen. Mine as well. I've never seen it get interrupted like that before. So that was unusual. It's the ghost in the machine it didn't like that there was controversy about AI yeah right trying to shut us up is hell Skynet was listening and a hopeful Yalda to everyone so tonight is Shabay Yalda in Iran so it is all around the world it's the Persian solstice so anyway we don't say right now we don't say happy because it isn't happy so we're saying a hopeful Yalda this year I said Merry Crisis yesterday did you?

Paul Kroner

Merry Crisis oh that is so cute and you're all you know everyone's welcome to stick around after we stop the recording which probably will happen momentarily which is where we have our after party slash advisory board meeting so they are one and the same thing whoever sticks around gets to help decide what the next topic of the next salon is and also you know usually kick around ideas about community development and such so everyone is welcome mm-hmm and so what do you think Davo? Can I count us down? I think we can count down our tradition our tradition? Yeah you know you know what's really funny is the fact that like for several years I have been a person that's like tradition what tradition?

Paul Kroner

Let's do new things and now I'm part of traditions that's funny all right it's funny how that works but all right thank you all for attending and your contributions from discussion today it was great I probably will not be able to do this again I will not see you until the new year so there's that thank you all so much for coming though it's been a great year so far at least within this community it's been a great year the world at large who's to say it's been a mess but it's been great here within our little world or piece of the world absolutely and yeah thank you so much for coming and thank you thank you for letting me be you guys' moderator for this whole time too even though there's a slight lapse but thank you Dabo for your service for sure thank you all right signing off folks bye Dabo wanna count us down?

Paul Kroner

Come on you gotta count us down that's the tradition five four three two one and that's a wrap