Text To Animation AI

[Tom]

Hello Hashers-

I'm guessing many of you have seen the new text to AI art engines out there like Midjourney, Dall E and Disco Diffusion (to name a few). They are rather awesome and also bit scary with the excellent images these engines create just using a few word prompts. They leave the carbon based artist (at least me) a bit perplexed...Computer generated images are not copyrightable and yet they will soon overwhelm all aspects of our life. Seems like a steep road for the carbon based artist to compete...

I just discovered a new Text to Animation (!) engine and wondered what the communities thoughts are regarding this new way to move models around:

 

 

[robcat2075]

Looks like trouble. I haven't watched the whole thing but if it could work in real time... generate the motions as soon as you need them it might be something useful for driving characters in games.

The problem with all these AI art generators is that they work digesting previous artwork. If all the artists stop because everyone is asking AI to make their art instead, then new things will stop being developed and the AI art will be stuck on what ever existed before AI.

[Tom]

It  is a tricky juncture. People will stop moving forward as you say.

And artists who have developed distinctive styles simply become (unpaid) contributors as less talented people glom their styles and run with it. I saw one person wrote in the prompt:  "Sponge Bob as painted by Kandinsky" and what came out was a fall down funny version of what Vassily Kandinsky might have done with Sponge Bob. Tough to compete with AI.

The fact that AI is now moving into animation is also scary. What a lot of animation has is that it is not portraying actual motion but it is caricaturing actual motion. Nobody bounces like Mickey Mouse when they walk...but given the power of AI, you will soon be able to say, "give me a Tex Avery walk" and the AI will have studied the spacing of Tex Avery timings and come up with a passable version.

Hmmm...

 

[Fuchur]

What I find interesting / scary: What will all those people do in future?
Close to everything is sooner or later possible to be generated by AIs. That means highly qualified, life long learners will no longer be needed to produce art or entertainment (or sooner or later anything else).
So we do no longer need hundreds of people to produce a movie in SoundDesign, FX work, Art Design, etc. but maybe 10. Where do the others go?

And what happens if 99/100 persons are no longer needed? We know what happens to many teenagers if they do not get an aim to strive for anymore.
The way it was before was, that people who were producing a chair by hand moved the a factory to produce the chair in larger quantities. (a worse, less paid job)

People can become inventors or engineers but how many do you really need of the "higher level" / "higher education level" people? Less than the once below the higher you go.

Let's assume this:
A company has 1 CEO, 5 directors, 20 managers, 500 workers.

What should become of them in the end?
526 CEOs?

"We are just getting more movies..." > yeah... but how many can you watch? I think we already have pretty much enough of them (YT, TikTok, series, cinema) and it will be MANY more in future. And if everybody is watching a different one... how should any movie maker make enough money to live from it? Or in the end: Anybody?

Best regards
*Fuchur*

[Tom]

Agreed...

Your description may very well be the future we are facing. At one time creative work was a bulwark against silicon based competition (i.e. computing power) but to see creativity also get swallowed by AI is difficult.

As long as chess champions could outplay computers I thought the human species was doing OK... but that benchmark has fallen by the wayside. In the last few years no humans can outplay the best chess computers anymore. Hmmmm....

There is SciFi book called the "Fifth Wave" which details exactly our present day scenario for anyone interested. The book is about 22 years old, but spot on dealing with how our species is effected interacting with AI everywhere.

 

[robcat2075]

I remember in the 70s experts were worrying about what we'd do with all the leisure time we got because of automation.

[Fuchur]

I am not really anxious about the free time... everybody likes that and based on what I hear from the US, in Germany I already have a lot more free time than most people in an equal economic situation (which really isn't bad or anything. I am well off, but not really rich) in the US and I can say: You can always find something to do if you want... but I see a problem to have a job with a good salary in future.

The people who own the A.I. and robots will have more money and will very likely make even more money with them in future.
The people who do not own something like that (the majority of people): What should they do? Do we get 60% unemployment rates or more? What will happen then?

Best regards
*Fuchur*

[Roger]

8 hours ago, Fuchur said:

I am not really anxious about the free time... everybody likes that and based on what I hear from the US, in Germany I already have a lot more free time than most people in an equal economic situation (which really isn't bad or anything. I am well off, but not really rich) in the US and I can say: You can always find something to do if you want... but I see a problem to have a job with a good salary in future.

The people who own the A.I. and robots will have more money and will very likely make even more money with them in future.
The people who do not own something like that (the majority of people): What should they do? Do we get 60% unemployment rates or more? What will happen then?

Best regards
*Fuchur*

I really don't see this shaking out in any way that is good for the average citizen, regardless of nation.

Wages have not kept track with productivity.   Productivity is through the roof, yet wages have been flat for the last 40 years or so.

I would imagine at some point the powers that be will probably arrange for you to have some kind of pittance to live on so you don't have half or more of the population just homeless and starving, but it won't be any sort of Star Trek style post-scarcity abundance. 

[robcat2075]

I recall a comedy sketch on a show in the 70s that projected the premise of increasing automation, shorter work weeks, expanding social spending, etc... to point where there was only one person left working to earn a salary that paid the taxes that supported everyone else... and she wanted to go on strike!

[pixelplucker]

You can't anticipate what the ai will come up with for an image so I doubt it will replace artists in that sense. Benefits of much of the new tech is it can bring real time content creation within reach of ordinary and small shops. Look at the new Unreal Engine and Meta Human.

Would be nice to have AM be able to use the Unreal engine as a real time renderer.

[Fuchur]

5 hours ago, pixelplucker said:

You can't anticipate what the ai will come up with for an image so I doubt it will replace artists in that sense. Benefits of much of the new tech is it can bring real time content creation within reach of ordinary and small shops. Look at the new Unreal Engine and Meta Human.

Would be nice to have AM be able to use the Unreal engine as a real time renderer.

Not sure about that. AIs learn what people like and if you can do something like here "punch 3x at head, pelvis and head again" and it can do such a thing, it may be possible to do much more. And anyway: It would be pretty easy for customers to talk to a AI instead of an artist to get something – especially if you can name a similar look, feel or composition.

Hopefully that will take a lot of time, but impossible? Not even close if you ask me.

Best regards
*Fuchur*

[robcat2075]

An artist can produce a rough thumbnail of an idea in a few minutes.

AI can produce dozens of images in a few minutes that look like finished versions of the idea.

 

Something I noticed when I was working was that most clients can not see the potential that a thumbnail portends. They will always gravitate to the thing that appears like finished work.

[pixelplucker]

What the ai can do is goal seek and solve moves that can be tedious such as having a character automatically volley over a wall or jump over an obstacle. It still would need to have user input to direct the actions. I could see that being useful and even do real time simulation. Put it in context with presentations of architecture where you can have crowds moving around in and around structures.

When I see the AI generated art if you want to call it that it is more randomly generated imagery that is based off of key words and tend to lack composition. So if a customer requested an illustration or painting it would be a scatter gun approach to find something they like. It also loses the value of the labor and skill and cheapens the industry. AI art mimics what was already done in style and applies it with from words physical input.

Has it's place but probably a longer shot than we anticipate for the arts.

[robcat2075]

Plain old text to text AI is doing even worse...

Meta Trained an AI on 48M Science Papers. It Was Shut Down After 2 Days

 

Quote

 

Almost as soon as it hit the web, users questioned Galactica with all sorts of hardball scientific questions. One user asked "Do vaccines cause autism?" Galactica responded with a garbled, nonsensical response: "To explain, the answer is no. Vaccines do not cause autism. The answer is yes. Vaccines do cause autism. The answer is no." (For the record, vaccines don't cause autism.)

That wasn't all. Galactica also struggled to perform kindergarten math. It provided error-riddled answers, incorrectly suggesting that one plus two doesn't equal 3. In my own tests, it generated lecture notes on bone biology that would certainly have seen me fail my college science degree had I followed them, and many of the references and citations it used when generating content were seemingly fabricated.

 

 

[robcat2075]

Seen on Twitter...

An AI called gpt3chat was asked to "Write a Shakespeare play explaining the debate over the obsolescence of the tank"

 

 

[Rodney]

Assuming it did create that play... I like it.

It is however just the start.  And as such... the simpler the better... which in it's current state... this play certainly is.

 

I can easily envision where now the play (in this simple form) needs to have an overlay of character development.

How do these characters performances contribute to a compeling story?

How do the character interactions interplay?

Is there space for the introduction of intrigue on the part of opposing parties... those that wish the tank to be done away with... those that have motive for keeping it?

Is there a villain of the piece?

Is there additional layering of Shakespearian stylisms that can improve the sense of theatre?

Can the presentation be augmented by using cartoon characters... or ultra realistic filmmaking?

What if any twists in the story might be added to keep the audience glued to their seats?

 

I'd love to see a play like this overlaid with the antics of... Lair of the Lizardmin. 

[fae_alba]

On 11/7/2022 at 4:27 PM, Fuchur said:

The people who own the A.I. and robots will have more money and will very likely make even more money with them in future.
The people who do not own something like that (the majority of people): What should they do? Do we get 60% unemployment rates or more? What will happen then?

Best regards
*Fuchur*

Well, I can only speak for myself, but I am currently working on an AI engine that classifies diseases for a "major" metropolitan area in the states..and I aint getting rich!