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Q&A : What about AI? (Patreon)

Published:
2023-05-26 04:41:00
Edited:
2023-05-26 05:12:38
Imported:
2026-06

Content

AI is an interesting new horizon that is not going anywhere. It is going to be pervasive and will be invading every aspect of our lives over the next decade. It’s already been a part of our lives for a while now. It’s just now going to explode.I’ll start here: artists are not going away.Writers are not going away. Painters are not going away. Creators are not going away.Could AI be used to make an entire comic?Yes. It’s already been done.Could someone like Marvel or DC use AI to generate their comics? Yes.They probably have one of the easiest routes to do it as well. Decades of scripts and artwork. They could feed an instance of AI and have it dedicated to making comics. Or making scripts.They could do it, and it would be the end of Marvel or DC. It wouldn’t be immediate, but the stories would just be hollow.There is some obvious stuff I’ve seen where AI art can not consistently generate the same character design. Tattoos migrate and change shapes. Logos and costume elements change from panel to panel. And not in a creative process way, it a failed to understand that the S on the chest it what makes him Superman. It fails to realize it is an S. The more details, the more risk of failure.The other reason it would fail is creativity. AI can not think of new things. AI does not have motivation. AI can only mix and match what has already been done. An AI Batman script can only pull from what is already out there. AI can not push the characters in interesting new directions. The snake would just eat itself until all the story is exhaustedTo use some examples of the more ‘visionary’ creators, that AI could never bring in something new like a Frank Miller, or Chip Zdarsky, or Jack Kirby, or Kieron Gillen, or Chris Bachalo, or Walt Simonson, or Kelly Sue Deconnick, or Matt Fraction. They all took the stories they were working on, and either story or art went off in directions that no one could predict. An AI could not make those creative choices. People make those choices.Even with creators who are respected but known for almost exclusively reusing pre-existing materials like Alan Moore or Quentin Tarantino, they are bringing something new to the table. They have a point of view they are bringing into the story. They have emotions and feelings that are driving why they want to mix and match those elements.And just to prove this isn’t one of those articles about AI where they reveal that part of it was in fact written by AI…Alan Moore is a fucking hypocrite. Frank Miller shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near comics anymore. See, AI won’t deliver these medium to hot takes.I’m going pretty high level as there is just so much to cover and every potential use for AI is a massive rabbit hole to fall into and circle deeper and deeper into pros and cons to the use of AI in that realm. So for my sanity, I’m going to keep things detail light as we talk about practical ethical uses for AI.People become artists because they like to create. They aren’t going to stop just because there is now a smarter computer. They pursue these creative endeavors because they want to make things.But AI is a new tool in an artist’s belt. It’s main asset is that it is fast. It can make a lot of variations fast. All tools need someone behind them to wield it and shape it.A lot of the artists you like already use digital tools to save time. For a couple of examples.

Copy and Paste pencils from past pages into the current pages.

Creating custom digital brushes to reproduce hair details like braids, or into any repeated textures that reappears frequently in the art.

Rescaling parts of the art that doesn’t work instead of starting over.

Digital formatting tools

Visual references/Poser

I’m going to focus on two specific positive aspects of AI. Generating ideas/brainstorming and generating first drafts. There are a lot of different AI systems at the moment focusing on writing and art. These benefits apply to all of themLet’s talk about Generating Ideas/Brainstorming. This is actually an area I like to think I’m good at. Was something when I first started making comics, I kind of trained to look at all the options a story could go, then work on picking what seemed the most interesting.I sat down with Chat GPT and Bard AI and played around with making a story with them. One of the most successful results I got out of it was asking it “What possibilities could happen next?”Asking it for one direct answer made it freak out. But using it as a sounding board to generate a lot of possible options resulted in it looking at what was already on the page and taking many guesses at potential outcomes. It was a nice way to get creative juices going. Not to say one of those suggestions had to be the answer, but that they spark a path to the answer.This brainstorming can also be used in visual media. One option that seems the most interesting to me would be using a script to have the AI generate different page panel layouts. I tend to like a grid, but it could help me break out. But I also know I change the script and the number of panels when I sit down to draw.Architect and designer Dami Lee did a similar experiment with using AI for help in looking for designing a new logo. Using AI to generate ideas and help her focus on what she really wanted. She is very well spoken and makes some great videos, and I’ll include that here.https://youtu.be/CsIfKB3bb-4Making drafts is another key aspect to AI. But it can only do those with a lot of information. It needs clear direct specific information to accomplish what is being asked. Even then it can get like 75% percent of the way there. Back to the story I played with on GPT and Bard. I wrote an outline and told it to write a story based on the outline I provided. The more detailed an outline I wrote the closer it could get to what I wanted.But I’m not famous. Chat GPT doesn’t know me. It doesn’t know how I write or how my characters sound when they talk. It doesn’t know that really witty thing I’m going to make Lexi say when she finally gets up the nerve to kiss Stephanie. Or that it is now a fun thing to tease since I know people want it. It’s the new K-pop. Also K-pop isn’t off the table. I have a path to get there that is still very much at play. AI could never write this paragraph.But all the weird stuff we want to say like my diversion is never things AI could do. Those are also the things that make something unique. But sometimes a structure or a skeleton of a story can be basic and common. There is an outline. A writer could save some time with generating a first draft, then going back in and changing it to fit them, and fit the emotions they are going for.It could result in very cringey stories. Or a writer could take this as the bones and keep adding and adding and fleshing it out until they get something personal and not resembling the AI draft at all. Ultimately it’s a tool and it’s about what the user wields it.There has been a lot of this on the visual side of things. Artists using AI to generate art then bring it into photoshop to adjust and fix and alter until it is the thing that they want. On the visual side it can still be that first draft.Adobe has a version of this with Firefly. One of the features was AI taking a script and making storyboards. It’s not a stretch to see an artist train the AI on their own artwork and have it generate pages for them to art from. I think with the demands on time and the format of the art, I could see this first showing up in Manga, if it hasn’t already.Shazam director David Sandberg had a video about communication and pre-production. The way he talks about using every tool at his disposal I think really shows that something like AI generated storyboards wouldn’t be putting artists out of a job, and more that it is one more tool out of many already existing tools that someone can use to communicate.https://youtu.be/IP-Vaqq91dABut I’m going to leave it here for now. Basically on my stance that AI doesn’t have to be evil. It’s scary right now and people can do lazy hack stuff with it. Artists write or draw or create because they want to make things and share their ideas. Ultimately it is a tool that will help creators make new things, and not take away the creative experience.There are a million different directions to go with discussion of AI. Such as 

How does this affect the writers strike?

How will young new creators interact with AI?

How much AI have we been using for the last decade? Why won’t we call those tools AI?

Accusations of fanfiction authors using AI?

Why a lot of editing AI is going to suck for a while.

If there are specific things you're curious about, let’s discuss in the comments.

Comments

IvyReed

As we all saw when IBM's Watson won Jeopardy in 2011, and with Siri, there just are no more humans playing game shows, or working as personal assistants. (what font does sarcasm come in again?) As ever, I'm much more worried about bad actors, than bad tech, (insert AI art bad actor of your choosing, here) and this was a thorough and reassuring read!

roseleaf

Bad actors I think may accomplish short term goals, but will fail long term as people catch up.

Halima Abdi

What's interesting is that the current tech, just as it is right now (assuming we hit a wall at GPT4/Diffusion and it takes another 30-50 years for any major breakthroughs), if deployed correctly, would absolutely eviscerate the entire labor market, as well as their remaining, dwindling political power from the old days. This is an invention on the scale of the printing press or internal combustion engine, and we're far from seeing the end results. * How does this affect the writers strike?: Feed scripts into an AI trained on the material, and you have a scriptwriter that can write thousands of scripts in less than a tenth of the time it takes for a human to write one. While in the short-term most of those scripts will be trash, the writing's on the wall for the WGA. Whether they can actually get a win for workers, or if we see mass layoffs and AI replacements this year, this is it for human-only/AI-free writing as a profession. * How will young new creators interact with AI? As someone who uses AI on a regular basis, you basically have to wrangle it. It's not so much a regular tool like a wrench or a IDE, but a little idiot-god that will do exactly what it thinks you said, and you very quickly realize that it'll take that to extremes, or omit key details, or just spiral off into madness. They have minds of their own, if simple, and I can't even guess at the impact that this will have on kids growing up with this stuff. One thing's for certain, things that AI can already do extremely well will be significantly less valuable to future generations. Art and writing commissions will be almost completely gone within the next decade or two, relegated to the cobblers and weavers. As a side note, I think in the future we might see some form of shoggoth-speak where humans optimize their prompting of AI to the point it becomes incomprehensible to our generation, in the same way a Victorian-era scientist would be confused by a laptop running Windows 11. with us being the Victorians. * How much AI have we been using for the last decade? Why won’t we call those tools AI? Earlier AI tools, like GPT-3 implementations (AI Dungeon and NovelAI, Kolbold AI) had much shorter memories and couldn't stay on-plot or on point for more than a few paragraphs. Just by giving it more memory and tokens, LLMs and Diffusion models have gone from brain-dead to far beyond what one human can do. Besides, there's a difference between spending 90% of your time wrangling an AI to get a couple paragraphs right, and spending 10% of your time doing that. * Accusations of fanfiction authors using AI? AI will be considered a regular, normal tool for all writers, and standards for writing will change as a result. Any hardcore anti-ai writers will find themselves increasingly marginalized in the same way the Luddites were, for the same social and economic reasons. * Why a lot of editing AI is going to suck for a while. Nope, we've already seen massive advances just within the past year. Watch Google and Microsoft's conferences, and read some of the scientific papers coming out of the machine learning field. AI sucking at things is a temporary phenomena, and editing will be very easy for them, just like most other human tasks. We need to accept that most of what the human mind can do can be easily replicated by AI, because AI is *not* a tool. It is a thinking machine, a *mind*. And it will have the same effect as the Industrial Revolution had on physical labor, but for mental labor. EDIT: I just want to say, what I've said doesn't mean its a good thing or a bad thing. This is simply where we are at, and where we're headed.

Halima Abdi

History time: one of the most popular books of the early printing-press era was The Malleus Maleficarum, which single-handedly brought witch-burnings back from the dark ages. Written by the 15th century German equivalent of an incel who jealous of a successful widower, the book "indirectly ;)" resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of women by burning, drowning, and worse forms of execution, lasting centuries after its author's death, and created a culture of terror that lasted as long. The Church at the time of its initial publication tried to suppress the tome, citing that witches, black magic, and other superstitions didn't exist, that only God could perform miracles. The public ate it up anyway, and Western society changed to fit these new ideas. Seriously, this is a short-sighted, pollyanna take that's not reflective of the history of technology and how it changes society. We haven't seen the worst of AI, not even close.

roseleaf

I'll admit to being optimistic. I also have my fears. There are a lot of bad results that we are already starting to see like the pentagon fire the other day. I tried to keep my focus intentionally narrow here knowing I could not possibly address everything.

roseleaf

I don't think we are near our wall with AI and the next ten years are going to change the world dramatically. This is a modern big step that will have larger ramifications that recent additions of the internet and cell phones.

Omega Numari

I really am against AI for making art. It always has this super uncanny valley feel to it.

Robert Louis Stoll

If you use AI I'm out. Using it as a story idea generator may not cross a line as that's not a specific reference to any work (no less so than other generators online) but the minute someone else's art ends up *literally* in your art, I'm done.

Robert Louis Stoll

"AI" (the term is will and truly useless now) doesn't have to be bad but any popular generative utility shows how even clinically the sector has been developed without ethics in mind. It's a tool like a gun is a tool; doesn't have to be evil, and can certainly be useful. But it's uses are so broad it boarders the bad uses tarnish any positive uses it has.

Robert Louis Stoll

Even from a skill point of view much of the "exciting" new things other than theft is automating bits that really shouldn't be automated. Skill takes knowledge and practice; if you depend on a robot to draft your story or come up with a character design then you no longer get that second vital part. Hell having trained myself on CMSs I am now an objectively worse coder.

Robert Louis Stoll

The only legitimate use is a blank shell, fed only small scale consented material, with specific purpose in mind. Training an animation studio's system on everyone's work and keywording it could speed up the process if only kept to work created by that studio. You've got enough pages you may be able to do the same, but even then you'd just be going from primary artist to cleanup artist which makes no sense to me personally. Most other legit uses don't even improve with a generalized generative model. If you want a story idea, a random string generator that literally just pulls from a couple categories does just as well for a first draft as whatever the voice of a thousand other voices can give you via generative models. Hell Google is superior over Bard because you literally know where the information is from, and can apply far better sense towards research. This push towards supposedly artificial intelligent only becomes useful at large scale and even then provides worse solutions than what already exists. Nothing but nfts 2.0

Delicurious

AI can be a great tool, enabling to fill in sequences, and even animate between poses. In Chat, great texts can be written that seem to make perfect sense. What AI doe NOT do is respect copyright or intellectual property. In Chats AI does not do "fact checking", so it could write the biggest nonsense, while still "sounding" totally honest. AI pick up whatever is on the internet, does not use any restrictions, has no obligations and doesn't care about human conventions. Just remember, it doesn't actually think, and everything AI does has to be checked and double checked. So yeah, AI is a great tool, great for beginners who are not experienced yet, but for experienced artists and writers there is probably not such a big gain.

Robert Louis Stoll

Beginners don't get experience if a robot is doing the practice.

roseleaf

I think the pure art generated by AI is soulless and creeps the hell out of me.

roseleaf

Fear not. I do not, will not use AI generation for the comic. The fun of making the comic is making it. I'm not handing it off to a computer.

Itaru

I like AI stuff.

roseleaf

finally circling back now that I have a little bit of time to give deeper responses. With my potential other topics, I was accidently a little vague on a couple of them. With Editing and Pre-existing AI tools, I was thinking about some more of the art and Adobe suite tools. Adobe has had AI intergrated into their system for at least a decade now. As of today of the tools do not work well unless the art is very specifically prepped for the best case scenario. I have no question it's going to improve faster and faster. But watching it over the last 10 years, it's interesting to see where there are some massive gaps in the tech. It makes my life so much easier using their AI to cut people out of photos. But I've also specifically photographed them to make it as AI friendly as possible. But as all these AI tools have been introduced over the last decade, AI is brought up at the introduction. But they just become part of the software and a specfic button over time and people kind of forget they are AI.