It’s been a crazy week for artists and cartoonists! With all the stuff going on with Adobe, Meta, and AI as a whole, I wanted to share my thoughts with you all and share my perspective about all of it. So, here are the next couple pages of my comic and my thoughts around the craziness surrounding tech and artists.
CHAPTER 1: Page 9-10
The Tech Industry and Artists
The last week or so there have been a lot of developments in the tech world that have really been frustrating for artists. At the forefront of all of that is AI. There are probably a lot of people reading this that have found AI to be extremely useful in their day-to-day. It helps write emails. It helps create schedules. It can write your cover letters and resumes. My perspective is this: once you let something out of the box, there’s not putting it back in (especially when it comes to technology). But let’s dive more into the specifics of what’s been going on.
Adobe’s Terms of Service
This week Adobe made a radical change to their terms of service. One that not only will affect artists, but potentially many people in other professions. Here’s the change for context:
So what does this mean and why is it an issue? Adobe is the industry standard when it comes to making art. Ad agencies, comic artists, fine artists, animation studios and more rely on this Adobe’s set of programs to help them do their work. But now, Adobe is saying that any work created with their products is free for them to use and to sell to sell to other companies to use. The first part claims “solely for the purposes of operating and improving the services and software…”. How I read this is Adobe wanting to double down on their generative AI model. With these terms, they can now take our work and train their machine on our work. And we would get no compensation for it. The implications of this are wild. A lot of people do NDA work on Adobe. What protection does that have? At this moment, it seems like none.
They’ve also made it so that when you sign in to Adobe a pop-up asks you to agree to the term changes and if you don’t you are locked out. But it is seeming like anyone trying to cancel their subscription has to log in…and to move forward you need to agree to the terms. Which is all super sketchy to say the least.
So what am I doing to protect myself? I do not use Adobe a lot. My comics are mostly done on traditional paper and the coloring is done in Procreate. There is just a small part of the process that happens in Photoshop…which I have to pay $60 a month for. I am going to spend time figuring out how to do that part of the process outside of photoshop (probably through Clip Studio Paint) and go ahead cancel my subscription. Adobe is gradually increasing its involvement with AI. All their social media posts are promoting their generative AI features. And now they are trying to find a way to take artists work and use it how they please and further build their AI model. I can’t wait to jump off the platform.
The Mass Exodus from Instagram to Cara
If you’re on Instagram and follow artists, you probably noticed this week that a lot of them said they were moving over to a new social media app called Cara (or at least adding Cara to the places where they share their art). You may be wondering why that is, or this may be the first you are hearing about it.
Meta (the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and Threads) is jumping headfirst into the AI business. Now, this isn’t new information. Of course Meta is diving into AI, it’s a tech company. It would be weird if they didn’t. But what has been frustrating recently is how they are managing and using the content posted on their sites. They also have in their terms that they can use anything we post to train their AI models. But they included an option to opt in or out. Hypothetically we could opt out of them scraping our images. Sounds great right? Wrong. Opting out is not as easy a simple click of a button. You have to submit a claim. Once you submit a claim, Meta reviews it by seeing if any of your work has indeed been scraped. If at that moment they determine your work has not been used in training their AI, then they deny your claim.
Which makes absolutely no sense. Basically it’s saying you cannot ask us to not steal your work until after we’ve already stolen it.
In comes Cara. Here’s how Cara describes themselves:
“Cara is a social media and portfolio platform for artists.
With the widespread use of generative AI, we decided to build a place that filters out generative AI images so that people who want to find authentic creatives and artwork can do so easily.
Many platforms currently accept AI art when it’s not ethical, while others have promised “no AI forever” policies without consideration for the scenario where adoption of such technologies may happen at the workplace in the coming years.
The future of creative industries requires nuanced understanding and support to help artists and companies connect and work together. We want to bridge the gap and build a platform that we would enjoy using as creatives ourselves.”
Honestly, I’m a fan. But I’m not jumping full steam ahead over there just yet. I’m going to create an account simply to save my username and leave it at that. Since Twitter got taken over by Musk and became X, new social media platforms having been popping up left and right. Mastodon, Bluesky, and Threads all popped up to try and take advantage of the uncertainty surrounding Twitter. And to be honest, none of them have really figured it out. But I don’t think it’s the fault of the platforms. I think society on the verge of moving on from social media. Not in the sense that it wont exist any more. But in the sense that businesses, large and small, will see diminishing returns to the point where it is no longer worth being there. For me social media is to share my comics and art with people. But the algorithms put in place now make it so my followers don’t even see my posts. People are also less willing to engage. People don’t like, follow or comment as easily as they used to. And it’s almost impossible to convert people to actual paying customers.
Cara itself is a place specifically for artists. But I don’t create work to necessarily be found by art directors. I create work that will be self published. Any work I want as part of my portfolio will live on my website.
Also, at the moment, Cara is self-funded and works through volunteers. That is not a sustainable model. Over half a million artists have apparently jumped onto Cara. Volunteers alone will not be enough to sustain something of that size. At some point in the near future, they will reach their limit and will either have to shut down temporarily or permanently until they can figure out funding. I hope I am wrong. I hope it thrives and grows and becomes a space that truly supports artists. But for now I’m in a wait-and-see mode. If Cara is here a few months from now, I will happily jump over there. But right now, I’m too exhausted from social media to jump onto another platform just for it to fail in a few months.
AI and Artists
So what does all this mean for artists? I think a lot of people are scared that AI will replace the work they are doing and that they are passionate about. We have spent years and years learning our crafts and now programs like MidJourney, ChatGPT, and Sora threaten to take away legitimate jobs. So I understand the fear. I also think there is no going back. This technology is now out there and people will continue to use it to make their lives easier. I think AI will also start being infused into many artists’ processes. No, they won’t use it to create images, but they may ask it for composition ideas, or concept ideas which they can take and execute on. However, before I am comfortable with any of this, I want to see it done in an ethical manner. Whatever AI tools are out there should not be allowed to use our images to train their software without our permission. It should be easy to opt in or out. And that is not the case at the moment. So I will continue to stay away from it when it comes to my art.
I would ask you all to consider not using AI to simply generate images, but instead hiring artists if you need art. The AI images you use are most likely made by a program built on stolen images. I know it’s cheaper and easier, but it also makes it harder for independent artists to make a living.
That’s all I got for this week! If you made it this far, thanks for reading! I would love to hear your thoughts on how AI is effecting artists AND non-artists.
Have a great week!
Raj