AI won’t make artists redundant – thanks to information theory
This entire article misses critical developments in the AI art space.
Controlnet was just released last week. It allows for precise fine-tuning of the image with skeletal positions, depth maps, outline sketches, etc.
It has been exceptionally received in the AI art community, because pure-text-prompting precisely runs into the issue described in the article. You can only convey so much information with text prompts.<p>That being said, artists in general still don&#x27;t want to touch controlnet. Because despite controlnet solving their complaints about how the AI isn&#x27;t controllable precisely, it doesn&#x27;t solve the real problem, that drawing skills are massive devalued.<p>Artists will still exist, but most likely as hybrid 3d-modellers, AI modelers (Not full programmers, but able to fine-tune models with online guides and setups, can read basic python), and storytellers (like manga artists). It&#x27;ll be a higher-pay, higher-prestige, higher-skill-requirement job than before.
And all those artists who devoted their lives to draw better, find this to be an incredibly brutal adjustment.<p>PS: Despite how people made fun of &#x27;proompters&#x27;, or predicted that prompting would be automated away. The skill ceiling to good AI art has radically increased. There&#x27;s now 10 different fine-tuned models you need to learn the basics of, each with different strengths. There&#x27;s thousands of LORAs to insert into prompts to precisely reproduce a subject that the base model has no information on. There&#x27;s 20 parameters to tune, each with different effects. There&#x27;s VAEs which affect coloring and fine-details. Now there&#x27;s controlnet, and you&#x27;d better learn blender to rig basic skeletons to feed it.
This likely suggests the future of an AI-augmented economy: People become AI wranglers. Wordpress was supposed to make blogging easier, instead it spawned an industry of WP wranglers.