Art
"Please stop me," says AI art generator founder
|
|
We’ve seen no shortage of criticism, concern and even outright terror around the recent advances in AI technology. From AI art generators turning out terrifying realistic images to chatbots that go off the rails, AI is suddenly everywhere, and its presence is being keenly felt in the creative sector.
But while clothing companies face a backlash for using AI models and artists sue AI companies for using their work as training data, the last person we might expect to raise concerns is the founder of an AI company. And yet Kevin Baragona, CEO of DeepAI, has signed the recent open letter calling for a pause in AI development. He told Creative Bloq why he can’t sleep at night (see our guide to how to use DALL-E 2 for more on text-to-image tech).
The AI company CEO who’s afraid of AI
“Someone should stop the AI industry,” Baragona says during our interview, which is a surprising comment from the founder of a company in the field. He launched DeepAI (opens in new tab) back in 2016, initially as an AI news portal. It now has its own text-to-image AI art generator and a bunch of AI chatbots that can respond to questions in different styles, from that of a ‘drunk friend’ to a ‘motivational coach’.
Baragona also joined the likes of Elon Musk in signing the recent letter that urged a pause in AI development. Asked whether this is not a little contradictory, he exclaims that DeepAI is “my only livelihood”, but that he now thinks AI is developing too fast and will become “smarter than us”.
“I wasn’t worried about AI at all until a year ago when we started seeing exponential progress,” he says. “Now I think AI is pretty scary. This is what keeps me up at night. What are we building here? Why do we need this stuff? It’s really fun, it’s cool, people love it. but it’s almost too good, it’s too disruptive.”
Why AI art?
“We’re going to have a lot more creativity in the world.”
Despite his concerns, Baragona still believes that generative AI, with the right controls, has benefits for human creativity, noting that it was AI art that made him want to enter the field. Describing it as “a cool technology that’s fun to play with”, he says kids love it and that the tech makes it cheaper to be creative.
“In the same way that Google made information really really cheap, AI makes creativity really, really cheap,” he reasons. His thesis is that if the cost of creativity goes down to zero, “we’re going to have a lot more creativity in the world: visually, audio, text, inventions, science, all of it.”
For now, DeepAI’s image generator is nowhere near as powerful as models run by DALL-E 2 (opens in new tab), Midjourney (opens in new tab) or Stable Diffusion (opens in new tab). It’s a freemium tool that focuses on simplicity and ease of use. Users can produce images in fixed styles, which limits the effectiveness of any style references provided in text prompts. It doesn’t seem to strictly obey instructions, and images lack the photorealism achieved by more recent models. But Baragona says this is the number one request from users and that DeepAI will “probably increase the photorealism gradually over time.”
“One thing that concerns me is that you won’t be able to tell what’s real or what’s fake on the internet anymore. At this point, I’m not really sure how we’re going to deal with that. Not just as a company, but as a world. It’s really troubling to be honest.”
As for how its model was trained, he’s a little cagey there too. He recognises that a lot of AI image generators were “trained on sort of stolen data,” which he says is “not good”. DeepAI’s model, he says, “used open-source data sets to fine-tune our own special models”. However, it also hosts Stable Diffusion, although Baragona says insists that it’s incapable of reproducing artists’ work verbatim because it produces “fuzzier” images than the original source material.
How artists are using the AI image generator
Baragona says the interest in AI art came Initially more from tech people than artists, but says artists have now become more interested, seeing it as “another tool in the artist’s toolbox.”
But how are artists using this tool? “One thing we see a lot of is artists inspiring their own art. Sometimes they get artist’s block and just don’t know what to create. So let’s say you come up with 30 ideas really quickly with the AI and then use that as the starting point to make something better […] We’re happy to help them overcome their creative block.”
The call for a pause in AI development seems to have fallen on deaf ears so far, and the controversy around AI art is likely to continue. See our pick of the weirdest AI art for examples of the kinds of things that people are creating.
A trio plays a cover of The Eagles hit Take it Easy as a dozen people settle in for an intimate open mic night inside Derrick McCandless and Dawn Mills’s cozy spot off highways 6 and 68 in Manitoba’s Interlake.
Strings of antique-style light bulbs cast a soft glow over the mandolin, banjo and dobro guitar that hang on a wall behind the band. An array of pottery shaped in-house by Mills dots the shelves behind the audience.
The Eriksdale Music & Custom Frame Shop is full of tchotchkes — like an Elvis Presley Boulevard street sign and vintage Orange Crush ad — that create the rustic country-living vibe the couple dreamt up before buying and transforming the vacant space over the past three years.
“I have met so many people in this community through them that I probably wouldn’t have … because of this hub,” says Mills’s cousin Dana-Jo Burdett.
Mills and McCandless are bringing people together in their rural community in more ways than one — though a return to Mills’s hometown wasn’t always in the cards.
The couple met in Winnipeg in 2011 while McCandless was playing a party at Mills’s cousin’s place. They had plans to settle in the Okanagan in McCandless’s home province of B.C. until he suffered a health scare. After that, they decided to head back to the Prairies.
WATCH | McCandless and Mills channel creative spirit into Eriksdale community:
Dawn Mills and Derrick McCandless host the RogerKimLee Music Festival in the Manitoba Interlake community of Eriksdale. They also turned a long-vacant space in town into a live music venue, instrument repair and sales store, and pottery and framing services shop.
It was the height of the pandemic in fall 2020 when the pair relocated to Eriksdale, about 130 km northwest of Winnipeg. They bought the old Big Al’s shop, once a local sharpening business that was sitting vacant.
“He was an icon in the community. He was a school teacher. He did a drama program here,” said Mills. “He brought a lot to the town.”
The building has become their own personal playground and live-in studio.
“It keeps evolving and we keep changing it and every room has to serve multi-function,” says Mills. “It’s a meeting place.”
While they love the quiet life of their community, they’re also a busy couple.
McCandless is a multi-instrumentalist with a former career in the Armed Forces that took him all over. Now, he’s a shop teacher in Ashern who sells and fixes instruments out of the music shop.
WATCH | McCandless plays an original song:
Derrick McCandless plays one of his original songs on acoustic guitar at the Eriksdale Music & Custom Frame Shop in March 2024.
Mills helped found Stoneware Gallery in 1978 — the longest running pottery collective in Canada. She offers professional framing services and sells pottery creations that she throws in-studio.
They put on open mic nights and host a summer concert series on a stage next door they built together themselves. They’re trying to start up a musicians memorial park in Eriksdale too.
One of their bigger labours of love is in honour of McCandless’s good friends Roger Leonard Young, David Kim Russell and Tony “Leon” — or Lee — Oreniuk. All died within months of each other in 2020-2021.
“That was a heart-wrenching year,” McCandless says.
They channeled their grief into something good for the community and started the RogerKimLee Music Festival.
Friends from Winnipeg and the Interlake helped them put on a weekend of “lovely music, lovely food, lovely companionship” as a sort of heart-felt send off, said Mills.
That weekend it poured rain. Festival-goers ended up in soggy dog piles on the floor of the music shop to dry out while Mills and McCandless cooked them sausages and eggs to warm up.
“It was just a great weekend,” says McCandless. “At the end of that, that Sunday, we just said that’s it, we got to do this.”
Mills says the homey community spirit on display during that inaugural year is what the couple has been trying to “encourage in people getting together” ever since.
The festival has grown to include a makers’ market, car show, kids activities, workshops, camping, beer gardens, good food and live music.
This summer, Manitoba acts The Solutions, Sweet Alibi and The JD Edwards Band are on the lineup Aug. 16-18.
Burdett has been a part of the growth, helping with branding, social media and marketing. McCandless and Mills’s habit of bringing people together has also rubbed off on Burdett.
“There’s more of my people out here than I thought, and I am very grateful for that,” says Burdett.
Their efforts to breathe new artistic life into Eriksdale caught the attention of their local MLA.
“The response from family and friend and community has been outstanding,” Derek Johnston (Interlake-Gimli) said during question period at the Manitoba Legislature in March.
“The RogerKimLee Music Festival believes music to be a powerful force for positive social change.”
Dolly Lindell, who has lived in Eriksdale for about three decades, said the couple is adding something valuable that wasn’t quite there before.
“There’s a lot of people that we didn’t even know had musical talent and aspirations and this has definitely helped bring it out,” Lindell says from the audience as McCandless, Dave Greene and Mark Chuchie wrap their rendition of Take it Easy.
McCandless, 61, said there was a time in his youth where he dreamed of a becoming a folk music star. Now his musical ambitions have changed. He’s focused on using that part of himself to bring people together.
“I think it’s that gift that I was given that that needs to be shared,” he says. “I don’t think I could live without sharing it.”
WATCH | Trio plays song at Eriksdale music shop:
Derrick McCandless, Dave Greene and Mark Chuchie play a cover of The Eagles hit Take it Easy at McCandless and Dawn Mills’s music shop in Eriksdale in March 2024.
- 1 day ago
- News
- Duration 4:42
Joel Jamensky’s sunny disposition explains why the artist with Down syndrome uses the name ‘J-positive’ for his online art business, started with the help of his parents two years ago. “There’s a lot more going on in [Joel’s] art than may be at first glance – just like him,” said his dad, Mark.
[unable to retrieve full-text content]
Made Right Here: Woodworking art CTV News Kitchener
Source link
CANUCKS PREPARE TO WELCOME FANS FOR STANLEY CUP PLAYOFFS 'GAME #2' | Vancouver Canucks – NHL.com
Auston Matthews turns it up with three-point night as Maple Leafs slay Bruins in Game 2 – Toronto Sun
Bird flu raises concern of WHO – ecns
Silver investment demand jumped 12% in 2019
12 Bizarre Things People Did Just To Make Social Media Content
Global Media Markets, 2015-2020, 2020-2025F, 2030F – TV and Radio Broadcasting, Film and Music, Information Services, Web Content, Search Portals And Social Media, Print Media, & Cable – GlobeNewswire
-
Business16 hours ago
Honda to build electric vehicles and battery plant in Ontario, sources say – Global News
-
Science17 hours agoWill We Know if TRAPPIST-1e has Life? – Universe Today
-
Investment20 hours ago
Down 80%, Is Carnival Stock a Once-in-a-Generation Investment Opportunity?
-
Health13 hours ago
See how chicken farmers are trying to stop the spread of bird flu – Fox 46 Charlotte
-
Health16 hours ago
Simcoe-Muskoka health unit urges residents to get immunized
-
Investment15 hours ago
Own a cottage or investment property? Here's how to navigate the new capital gains tax changes – The Globe and Mail
-
News21 hours ago
Honda expected to announce multi-billion dollar deal to assemble EVs in Ontario
-
Science22 hours ago
Watch The World’s First Flying Canoe Take Off
