Adobe was formerly renowned as the maker of Acrobat and Photoshop. Adobe is quickly being renowned as one of the worst digital swindlers of the contemporary era.
From its shady subscription models to making people pay for certain colours in PhotoShop (which is also Pantone’s doing in a “jointly” made decision), the company is more concerned with growing its bottom line at any cost than it is with considering the needs of its users or the consequences of its actions.
A week after asking customers to double-check that they weren’t reading an Onion article while learning about colours, the corporation has revealed its embrace of AI art. This is not only a massive scam, but it also poses a severe danger to the careers of artists all over the globe, large and small.
It is a danger not just to artists, but also to art. While people’s employment is vital, we’re not just talking about cotton gins and how this is a labor v capital breakdown in many respects; we’re talking about a process that intrudes on genuinely human activity and creative endeavour.
Art is not created by machines. They’re robots! They’re just creating an approximation of a casserole out of human creativity that has been put into it, in many instances without recognition or remuneration. It’s just “a technology that exists to eliminate the human element from the process of creative expression,” as Dan Sheehan puts it in his brilliant essay, Art in The Age Of Optimization.
Anyway! Adobe said this week that AI-generated art will be accessible as part of the company’s large collection of stock photos, going so far as to suggest the area is “amplifying human creativity.” The company makes bold claims, such as “deeply considering these questions and implementing a new submission policy that we believe will ensure our content uses AI technology responsibly by creators and customers alike,” and that “generative AI is a major leap forward for creators, leveraging machine learning’s incredible power to ideate faster by developing imagery using words, sketches, and gestures.”
Words are being typed into a machine that has been fed genuine art! Even if Adobe can only reveal photographs that have been “properly built, used, and disclosed,” as they say, it still stinks! Gah! Attempting to address one of AI art’s issues—art theft—doesn’t relieve it of others, such as the fact that nothing about these pictures or their production has anything to do with art!
In the last six months, artists’ reactions have been as polarized as every major AI art revelation. Some criticize the firm and others resort to more conventional appeals, pushing people to look for alternatives to Adobe’s goods.
