A.I. (Artificial Intelligence) - A Help or Hindrance to the Artist? -- Musings on Midjourney

As somebody who's (at least somewhat) creatively/artistically inclined, I find myself absolutely stunned by the recent advancements made in AI-rendered art. However, I admit to being conflicted and of two minds over such.

Half of me has that giddy mindset of a "kid-in-a-candy-store", especially when I experiment with Midjourney -- for the unfamiliar, "an independent research lab that produces a proprietary artificial intelligence program that creates images from textual descriptions" -- or see what others can come up with.

In its current state, which is still very much in its infancy (MidJourney beta only being released in 2022), AI-generated art gives a whole new meaning to the phrase, "the imagination is the limit", having the ability to render whatever the user wants, based on a unique prompt. Admittedly there is some level of SKILL required in utilizing the prompts, learning what particular kind and combination of prompts achieves the desired result. But in any case, the images that Midjourney produces -- spanning practically every genre and style and medium -- are absolutely, completely mind-boggling. See, for example, the regular postings to the Official MidJourney Facebook page.

But there's another part of me that is tentative, even fearful, for the potential impact it can have on artists and photographers and illustrators. What does it mean, for instance, when you can render a painted image in a matter of MINUTES, that would take a human literally days or weeks to produce on their own, using skills they have spent the bulk of their lives honing and cultivating as a craft?

What are the implications ... when I read that the first portrait created using artificial intelligence sold at auction in 2018 for $432,500; and that only this year, a Midjourney AI-generated painting won first place in the Colorado State Fair?

According to Kevin Roose, A.I.-generated art is already transforming creative work, both positively and not necessarily so. Some artists are less concerned than others about the impact AI may have on their careers, as in the example of an interior designer who has figured out how to use AI to streamlining their work, fleshing out prospective ideas for office-renovation in real-time. On the other hand you have stories like this:

"Initially, Mr. Waldoch planned to hire human artists to illustrate each day’s rhyming word pair. But when he saw the cost — between $50 and $60 per image, plus time for rounds of feedback and edits — he decided to try using A.I. instead. He plugged word pairs into Midjourney and DreamStudio, an app based on Stable Diffusion, and tweaked the results until they looked right. Total cost: a few minutes of work, plus a few cents.

“I typed in ‘carrot parrot,’ and it spit back a perfect image of a parrot made of carrots,” he said. “That was the immediate ‘aha’ moment.”

Mr. Waldoch said he didn’t feel guilty about using A.I. instead of hiring human artists, because human artists were too expensive to make the game worthwhile."

On the other hand, David Holz, the founders of Midjourney, was interviewed by Forbes and was largely dismissive of the idea that AI-generated art would have a negative impact on artists themselves:

... think that some people will try to cut artists out. They will try to make something similar at a lower cost, and I think they will fail in the market. I think the market will go towards higher quality, more creativity, and vastly more sophisticated, diverse and deep content. And the people who actually are able to use like the artists and use the tools to do that are the ones who are going to win.

These technologies actually create a much deeper appreciation and literacy in the visual medium. You might actually have the demand, outstrip the ability to produce at that level, and then maybe you'll actually be raising the salaries of artists. It could be weird, but that's what's going to happen. The pace of that demand increase for both quality and diversity will lead to some wonderful and unexpected projects getting made.

A generation of students graduated art schools, many of them heavily in debt, counting on relatively well-paid jobs in entertainment production, videogame production, commercial art and so on. How does the emergence of AI text-to-image platforms impact their future?

I think some people will try to cut costs, and some people will try to expand ambitions. I think the people who expand ambitions will still be paying all those same salaries, and the people who try to cut costs, I think will fail.

Of similar concern are the copyright and privacy issues involved. Take this story of fantasy artist Greg Rutkowski, who found his own original work quickly overtaken and overwhelmed online by AI-generated replications:

Rutkowski was initially surprised but thought it might be a good way to reach new audiences. Then he tried searching for his name to see if a piece he had worked on had been published. The online search brought back work that had his name attached to it but wasn’t his.

The article goes on to describe the experience of others -- illustrators, photographers, models, actors and actresses, directors, cinematographers" -- who are grappling with the fact that their work is being fed into the 5.8 billion dataset used by AI. It is currently the case that artists don’t have the choice to opt in to the database or have their work removed.

Anyway ... no offense intended in this post to those who use Midjourney and are demonstrably very adept at guiding it to producing what they desire. I honestly remain very much enthralled by its potential and entertainment value.

But lurking in the back of my mind are the questions and the issues raised in these articles as well.

"The Madness of Crowds" by Douglas Murray

Douglas Murray's The Madness of Crowds is perhaps a little too reliant on lengthy anecdotes from current events, scene-by-scene (or blow-by-blow) transcriptions of televised traumas and social media skirmishes, such that those familiar with some of the incidents related my be tempted to skip over some pages. Nevertheless, I believe this stands is one of the best analyses of the functional incoherence of the phenomenon of intersectionality, with its competing oppressions [and/or] victimhood of race, sex and gender which to Murray "grinds hideously and noisily both against each other and within ourselves."

Murray mines the world of television talk shows, Facebook frenzies, Twitter-storms, and other locuses of current events to depict our times -- where a misconstrued word or phrase or action can become tinder for blame and resentment; where what might be an ordinary differing of opinions all-to-quickly escalates into the deaf shouts of a vengeance-thirsty mob; where daily life and social interaction is rife with "impossibility problems" (i.e., in the observation of Mark Lilla, one simultaneously demands "you must understand me" AND "you cannot understand me"); where life has been reduced to a "endless zero-sum game between different groups vying for oppressed status, [robbing] us of time and energy for the conversations and thinking that we do need to do."

That this cultural phenomenon has all the characteristics of what was erstwhile reviled in religion -- the zealous hounding of heretics, the establishment of campus inquisitions -- has not gone unnoticed to Murray ("A fixed set of virtues are being celebrated. And a fixed set of prepositions are being set up"). In this case, however, the claims advanced and to which everyone is expected to give assent are themselves a recipe for madness:

As anyone who has lived under totalitarianism can attest, there is something demeaning and eventually soul-destroying about being expected to go along with claims you do not believe to be true and cannot hold to be true. If the believe is that all people should be regarded as having equal value and be accorded to equal dignity, then that may be all well and good. If you are asked to believe that there are no differences between homosexuality and heterosexuality, men and women, racism and anti-racism, then this will in time drive you to distraction. That distraction -- or crowd madness -- is something we are in the middle of and something we need to try and find our way out from.

Murray's book is long in the diagnosis -- but worth reading for his keen ability to identify what is amiss. At the same time it comes up short on a prescription, perhaps impeded in part because Murray suspects those engaged in the fomenting the madness may not necessarily be in search of a cure (capitalizing as they are in the perpetuation of grievances) or otherwise chasing after a utopian dream. After all, muses Murray: "the most likely explanation of human motivations in the future is that people will broadly go on behaving as they have done throughout history, that they will continue exhibiting the same impulses, frailties, passions and envy that have propelled the species up to now."

One of the strongest chapters (if only a brief interlude) is on the necessity of forgiveness in societal relations and civic health -- culling from Hannah Arendt ("without being forgiven, released from the consequences of what we have done, our capacity to act would, as it were, be confined to one single deed from which we could never recover"). Murray points out how society's capacity to forgive has diminished, hampered by the all-encompassing memory of social media, where one's sins are no longer confined to the community (where they might fade over time, or be negated by further acts of reconciliation) but instead rendered transparent and timeless on a global scale, for all eternity.

For it is the tendency of social media to bolster the trench-digging and doubling down on positions -- "when someone is face to face with another person it is far harder to reduce them to one thing that they have said, or strip them of all characteristics except one." Murray reminds us that it was not too long ago that Alexis de Tocqueville observed (in his travels in the 1830's), that one of the strengths of the United States was the capacity of the American citizenry to resolve their differences in face-to-face encounters, remedying disputes before the intervention of higher authority was needed. These days, it seems we are rushing headlong in the other direction -- thanks in large part to social media's ability to erase barriers between the private and public, past and present. To counter this, Murray asks if in fact the "spirit of generosity can be extended any more widely" in interpreting the remarks of others, and to counter the headlong rush to "politicize everything" by doing precisely the opposite:

"Of all the ways in which people can find meaning in their lives, politics -- let alone politics on such a scale -- is one of the unhappiest. Politics may be an important aspect of our lives, but as a source of personal meaning it is disastrous. Not just because the ambitions it strives after nearly always go unachieved, but because finding purpose in politics laces politics with a passion -- including a rage -- that perverts the whole enterprise. If two people are in disagreement about something important, they may disagree as amicably as they like if it is just a matter of getting to the truth or the most amenable option. But if one party finds their whole purpose in life to reside in some aspect of that disagreement, then the chances of amicability fade fast and the likelihood of reaching any truth recedes."

* * *

The NSA and Edward Snowden: Patriot or Traitor?

The following two-part series from PBS Frontline is worth watching as preface to this blog post, for education as to the extensive mesures the National Security Agency has taken to gather intelligence on its own citizens and the history of how we arrived at where we are today:

It can be argued that intelligence has always been vital to the security of our nation, or of any nation. And we've always had covert operatives gathering intelligence, beginning with the Culper Spy Ring of 1778 (tangential note: anybody else a fan of the AMC TV series 'Turn'?). I'm not necessarily opposed to the core responsibilities of the CIA or the NSA, for that matter, which had its start in World War II. The role of such agencies in military history is something I'm quite fascinated by. The history of espionage is a dirty and sordid business but there are also moments of moral courage and heroism. I have a great deal of respect for those in both organizations, unrecognized and having forfeited public recognition and honor, who gave their lives in defense of this country against its enemies.

But there is also the reporting of Frontline ("A Nation of Secrets"), and NBC's Brian Williams' interview with former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, which -- if accurate -- is very troubling.

He comes across as somebody who respects the business of intelligence, the validity of the profession -- but likewise recognizes that the agencies he has worked for have vastly overstepped its bounds. In Snowden's own words:

"The definition of a security state is any nation that prioritizes security over all other considerations ... I don't believe the United States is or ever should be a security state."

And as to what he is concerned about, in detail (taken from another, earlier interview with German television network ARD):

"Every time you pick up the phone, dial a number, write an email, make a purchase, travel on the bus carrying a cell phone, swipe a card somewhere, you leave a trace. And, the government has decided that it’s a good idea to collect it all. Everything. Even if you’ve never been suspected of any crime. Traditionally the government would identify a suspect, they would go to a judge, they would say we suspect he’s committed this crime, they would get a warrant and then they would be able to use the totality of their powers in pursuit of the investigation. Nowadays what we see is they want to apply the totality of their powers in advance, prior to an investigation."

Something is seriously amiss when the nation's most powerful intelligence agency is going well beyond the law, intercepting and data-mining our email correspondence and phone calls of American citizens and treating us as suspect. Trouble enough to have Facebook and Google invading your privacy for the benefit of advertising without the prying eyes of Big Brother looking over their shoulder.

And to suggest that Obama is going to curb the power of such agencies -- he has waffled so many times on this matter of intelligence-gathering that whatever he currently promises I have to take with a heavy dose of salt.

* * *

Responding to Snowden's first television interview (with a U.S. network), Secretary of State John Kerry remarked: "Edward Snowden is a coward ... He is a traitor. And he has betrayed his country. And if he wants to come home tomorrow to face the music, he can do so."

And some closing thoughts from Snowden himself, excerpted from the interview with Brian Williams:

"I think it's really disingenuous for — for the government to invoke — and sort of scandalize our memories, to sort of exploit the — the national trauma that we all suffered together and worked so hard to come through to justify programs that have never been shown to keep us safe, but cost us liberties and freedoms that we don't need to give up and our Constitution says we should not give up."

[...]

"I think patriot is a word that’s — that’s thrown around so much that it can be devalued nowadays. But being a patriot doesn’t mean prioritizing service to government above all else. Being a patriot means knowing when to protect your country, knowing when to protect your Constitution, knowing when to protect your countrymen from the — the violations of an — and encroachments of adversaries. And those adversaries don’t have to be foreign countries. They can be bad policies. They can be officials who, you know, need a little bit more accountability. They can be mistakes of government and — and simple overreach and — and things that — that should never have been tried, or — or that went wrong.”

Are those the words of somebody who loves his country or somebody who is sickened by what he's witnessing? Judged solely on the basis of the interview, it seems to me this is a man compelled to do what he did on the basis of his conscience.

The irony, to me at least, is to hear John Kerry -- "WInter Soldier" gone rogue in the 1960's, who spoke out against what he perceived as atrocities committed by troops in Vietnam -- denounce Snowden as a traitor.

Related Links and Reading

• Readings & Links: NSA Secrets Frontline (PBS). In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the NSA launched what would become known as “the program” — a massive domestic surveillance operation designed to prevent terrorist attacks by collecting the communications of millions of Americans. “The program” was once among the nation’s most closely guarded secrets, but leaks by insiders like former NSA contractor Edward Snowden have since exposed the operation to the world. Here are some highlights of those leaks, as well as a series of government reports on the NSA programs.
• Revealed: how US and UK spy agencies defeat internet privacy and security. James Ball, Julian Borger and Glenn Greenwald. The Guardian 09/05/13.
• Obama on Mass Government Surveillance, Then and Now PBS Frontline. 05/13/14.
• A history of the NSA (pictorial). Washington Post
• The Sickening Snowden Backlash, by Kirsten Powers. The Daily Beast 06/14/13. "It's appalling to hear the Washington bureaucrats and their media allies trash Edward Snowden as a traitor, when it's our leaders and the NSA who have betrayed us."
• Noonan: Privacy Isn't All We're Losing, by Peggy Noonan. Wall Street Journal 06/14/13:

  If—again, if—what Mr. Snowden says is substantially true, the surveillance state will in time encourage an air of subtle oppression, and encourage too a sense of paranoia that may in time—not next week, but in time, as the years unfold—loosen and disrupt the ties the people of America feel to our country.

Further Reading

Neda Agha-Soltan: “The Voice of Iran”

• In a Death Seen Around the World, a Symbol of Iranian Protests, by Nazila Fathi (New York Times):

  Only scraps of information are known about Ms. Agha-Soltan. Her friends and relatives were mostly afraid to speak, and the government broke up public attempts to mourn her. She studied philosophy and took underground singing lessons — women are barred from singing publicly in Iran. Her name means voice in Persian, and many are now calling her the voice of Iran.

  Her fiancé, Caspian Makan, contributed to a Persian Wikipedia entry. He said she never supported any particular presidential candidate. “She wanted freedom, freedom for everybody,” the entry read.

• Family, friends mourn Neda Agha-Soltan, Iranian woman whose death was caught on video, by Borzou Daragahi (Los Angeles Times). Neda Agha-Soltan, 26, 'was a beam of light' and not an activist, friends say. The video footage of her bleeding to death on the street has turned her into an international symbol of the protest movement.

• In Iran, One Woman's Death May Have Many Consequences, by Robin Wright. (Time) - Neda is already being hailed as a martyr, a second important concept in Shi'ism. With the reported deaths of 19 people on June 20, martyrdom provides a potent force that could further deepen public anger at Iran's regime.

On the protests in Iran, see also From Tehran's Streets: Hope and Rage - A Photo essay from LIFE Magazine. (NOTE: The Tehran-based photojournalist who made these pictures is now missing).

An Easter Rescue for Captain Richard Phillips

On this Easter, I would like to join in a commendation of Captain Richard Phillips -- profiled here in the New York Times.

According to Reuters, when the U.S. Cargo ship Maersk Alabama was attacked by Somalian pirates on Wednesday, Captain Phillips told his crew to lock themselves in the cabin and offered his own life in exchange for their safety. The crew having disabled and regained control of the ship, the pirates resorted to holding the captain hostage in the lifeboat, negotiating for his release:

[Maersk Line Limited President and CEO John] Reinhart said the 19-member crew was challenged with the order to leave the captain behind and head for safe harbor in Mombasa, Kenya, where they arrived Saturday night.

"But as mariners, they took the order to preserve the ship and they knew the Navy would preserve their captain, so they did that tough choice and they took the ship away," he said. "When I look at it, I think Richard has exhibited the true spirit of an American."

Captain Philips was in turn liberated by snipers of the United States Navy on Easter Sunday. Three pirates were killed and the fourth captured during the rescue:

Captain Phillips was pulled out of the water — details were not clear on whether he had jumped in — and was transported to the Bainbridge, where sailors delivered him a note from his wife, Andrea.

“Your family is saving a chocolate Easter egg for you,” she wrote, according to Vice Admiral Gortney. “Unless your son eats it first.”

According to John Reinhart, the Maersk Line president and chief executive, Mr. Phillips told him by telephone: “I’m just the byline. The real heroes are the Navy, the Seals, those who have brought me home.” President Obama, making his first comments on the situation, praised Mr. Phillips’s “selfless concern for his crew,” who had been freed when the captain let pirates take him off his cargo ship. “His courage is a model for all Americans,” Mr. Obama said.

News of Phillips' rescue is of particular relief to his wife, Andrea, and members of St. Thomas Church in Underhill, Vermont:

Drawing a parallel between the resurrection of Jesus Christ and Phillips' predicament, the church pastor told about 170 congregants that just as Christ triumphed over evil after being crucified, Phillips was attempting to triumph over the evil of his captors.

"Evil and death and sin do not have the final say," Danielson said. "That is the essential message of Easter. Love and life, goodness and life, they always are the true realities. The world of terror and war and greed, the world of pirates and criminals large and small who prey on individuals, whole nations and regions of the world, they are the ones on the wrong side of history."

• Daring rescue of ship's captain leaves Vermont parish overjoyed, by Chaz Muth. Catholic News Service. April 13, 2009.