Did AI Just Die? - Company's Pull The Plug

So whilst it seems like every company might be wanting to jump on the AI bandwagon, some other companies are taking a different approach. Procreate, a company that is focused on artists and how individuals can use things like a physical pencil on an iPad to create wonderful pieces of art, is taking a completely different direction. I'm going to show you guys the clip and then I'm going to dive into why this is more fascinating than you do think.

You've been asking us about AI. You know, I usually don't like getting in front of the camera. I prefer that our products speak for themselves. I really hate generative AI. I don't like what's happening in the industry and I don't like what it's doing to artists. We're not going to be introducing any generative AI into our product. Our products are always designed and developed with the idea that a human will be creating something. You know, we don't exactly know where this story is going to go or how it ends, but we believe that we're on the right path supporting human creativity.

So James Kuda, the Procreate CEO, just made a statement that actually did shock the industry. This tweet actually has millions and millions of impressions on Twitter. And, you know, this is a testament to something that I've been saying for quite some time, is that, you know, whilst yes, AI is good, whilst yes, it can save time, the damage that you can do to your own brand by using AI is indispensable compared to the amount of love that you can get by actually using humans. And this is a firsthand example of that. Now, this company truly does understand its users. I mean, the company understands that their end users are people who don't like generative AI. The obvious reason for this is the simple fact that generative AI is something that is going to negatively impact millions and millions of artists and the CEO of a popular piece of software that many individuals have used to kickstart their creative career. Coming out and publicly saying that, you know, f generative AI, this is a statement that resonates with, you know, the public consciousness on how they've been feeling, since not only is generative AI impacting their work, it's something that, you know, has actually trained on their work without their permission and. And is then going to be replacing them. Now, if you do head on over to their website, they do state clearly that creativity is made, not generated. So they say generative AI is ripping the humanity out of things built on a foundation of theft. Like I said before, it's trained on publicly available data, which essentially they didn't get the permission to. It's steering us towards a barren future. We think machine learning is a compelling technology with a lot of merit. But the path generative AI is on is wrong for us. It says we're here for the humans. We're not chasing a technology that is a moral threat to our greatest jewel, human creativity. In this technological rush, this might make us an exception or seem at risk of being left behind, but we see this road less traveled as the more exciting and fruitful one for our community. So I think this statement here on the left is one that does make sense for a company like this because if you've actually listened to the concerns from artists, they've, you know, continually reiterated these concerns, such as the theft, such as the, you know, generative AI ripping the humanity out of things and the fact that creativity is made and it's based on human experiences. And you know, clicking a button is just pretty much not how art is. That like, that's just fundamentally not how art is. It's like saying, you know, generating music is just like how you generate music. Whereas, you know, music is, there's an entire process and it's like actually an art form, which is why it's something that's respected. So of course there is a debate. You know, some people that are in technology are just like, ah, yeah, I'm an AI artist, I don't really care. But of course those who have been in this space for a lot longer are going to have a completely different opinion. Now. They've also stated their position and their stance. They've stated clearly that there will be no generative AI. We deeply respect your hard earned skills. So here they're clearly stating that, look, there's going to be no generative AI embedded into their products. And this is kind of surprising because generative AI is something that is advancing quite rapidly. And of course, as they said, they don't care that this makes them potentially be left behind, which is of course a huge risk, especially if your company is a technology company, App SaaS. Because of course one of the things that we do know is a constant is that there will continually be a change happening. And I'm wondering if they're ever going to go back on this. They've also said that your work belongs to you. We don't have access to your art by design. Some companies have opted to allow themselves to train on work generated on their platform, which is of course a privacy kind of issue because it's like, yo, this is my work. I thought it was mine. And they're like, nope, you made it on a platform, it's ours. And then of course, they said, your activity is not tracked in our app. So it seems like this approach of actually putting the consumer first might be one that is remarkably effective. And this, honestly, the tweet just got so many views that it was something that seemingly broke the Internet. Now everyone can make statements and everyone can be like, look, I hate generative AI. I hate what it's doing. And you know, we as humans, we completely understand why there is such a reaction. And you can even see their response to some of the criticisms from those who are questioning their business tactics. You see, it says, I understand the message here. Their entire client base is artists. On the other hand, though, not supporting AI is like saying, we don't believe in electricity. I mean, they literally copied all analog methods of painting in digital software. And I'm pretty sure their developers are using AI to code. I do love Procreate, but they lack realism in their business goals, in my opinion. And they responded to this saying, no use of generative AI tools in our company. Procreate is filled with creative humans developing our apps, creating copywriting, creating art, and producing the videos you love to see from us. So it seems like they've done a complete 180 compared to what other companies are doing. They're stating, look, there are no generative AI tools in our company. So, you know, I'm guessing no ChatGPT for copywriting. There's going to be no AI tools for making videos. And this is going to be a not controversial take because if you've paid attention to other instances and other scenarios, this is something that is quite normal considering the amount of backlash that you can get. And it seems that, you know, company image is something that is becoming increasingly important, even if it offsets the acceleration that you might get from using AI tools. But the point is, is that when does the tipping point switch to a point where you might actually be losing out? Currently, it seems that having no use of AI tools, which within your company, like what Procreate is doing, seems to be the most effective approach until AI can be streamlined into every single process. Now, I do want to say that this approach can't be adopted by smaller companies because they just don't have the chance to do that. They just don't have the overhead and the millions and millions of dollars that larger companies do have. But it will be interesting to see how that space evolved. Now, there was Another question that I did want to add here because it covers a topic that I think most people might be confused confused by. It says, I have one question. I completely understand the hate for generative AI, but what about things like background removal using AI, Would that be included? And it says here that we understand that some AI tools may help with productivity and we don't have any problem with these as long as they're doing the boring or dangerous work and the data is ethically sourced. We'll only be interested in exploring AI tools to, to create even better tools for artists. So I think, like I said before, you know, in my school community, in other videos, that the main problem that people have with AI automation is the parts where AI removes human ingenuity and human creativity as a form of expression. For example, people wouldn't have an issue if there was like an AI robot that could sit at a desk and could code out any application with a 100% accuracy rate. Whilst yes, things like that are going to be far, far into the future, people don't have any issue with that because it's not something where human expression is valued. Art and music and the creative industry, however, these are industries that are going to be seemingly more resistant to AI. Considering the fact that companies now are realizing, and I realized this months ago, that using these AI tools actually results in huge backlash and even makes people hate the content that AI produces. There was also even a study which revealed that when AI was used to create a certain product, it actually resulted in lower conversion. This seemingly shows us that right now AI sentiment is oddly in the negative and it seems like the only positive influence that AI has is where it does the tedious work. Now I want to show you guys this tweet right here that was released around the time of Sora. Sora is the video creation tool released by OpenAI which shows us how you can use an AI model, a text video AI model where you could literally just get a video from a simple text prompt. And you can see that this tweet, with 3.4 million views, 18,000 retweets and 69,000 likes, clearly illustrates most people's opinions. It says negative use cases, spreading fake news, meddling in elections, non consensual corn, fake evidence for court cases, scamming gullible people, creating low effort soulless content for social media, and replacing the jobs of artists. Here are the positive use cases. None. So what we have here is the general consensus when it comes to AI art. You have to understand that the creative community is one that is quite huge. And they express their opinions as clear as day. And the thing is that it's not just creatives. We can see here that the average person was stating that you're hurting jobs with this. And I don't think you're realizing how many artists you're screwing over right now. And there was also this video that actually went viral, this TikTok I've seen plastered on many different areas. And this entire video was, you know, a video that basically said AI is ruin the ruining the Internet. And I disagree. I don't think it's AI ruining the Internet. I think it's humans using AI that's ruining the Internet. But, you know, you can agree to disagree. But what we have here is a small snippet that I want to show you guys because it illustrates the main issue. There's going to be some flickering images. Just a quick warning.

Don't understand why we're in such a rush to replace all of the work that humans have done. At what point does this cross an enormous ethical line? Again, we're not talking about works of fiction here. We're talking about literally rewriting history, creating fake documentation from scratch, and not even mentioning, hey, by the way, this isn't real. No human being could ever compete with the volume of output these new tools can generate. Also not learning anything this way. Part of what makes art special is that it's difficult to make even with all the tools right in front of you. It takes practice, it takes skill. And every time you do it, you expand on that skill. Every song you hear, every movie you watch, is the result of thousands of hours of trial and error. You can fail a million times and use that experience to finally succeed. Making a video using generative AI does not teach you anything about making video.

So I'll leave a link to the original video because it had some really cool background music. But due to copyright reasons, I did go ahead and remove that. That initially. Now, like I said before, this isn't just procreate saying this. This isn't the first time that we're going to hear this. And I think we're going to see this in many other industries, not just in art, but in other technical fields as well, where human experience is going to be something that is valued. So essentially what we had here was this stand with animation. And this is something where it's an event by the Animation Guild in order to garner support for animation workers as they enter into contract negotiations with with the alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. This rally just Aims to highlight the challenges faced by the animation industry. And this includes issues related to fair compensation, the working conditions and of course the impact of AI on jobs. Now, like I said before, this isn't the only thing that is like this. Of course there is also this. For example, if you thought that Procreate was the only company that's doing this, there was this example of the director of an AI written feature. And basically what happened was that this cinema, they did a screening for something that was written by generative AI and the feedback was so bad that they had to cancel the screening. So you can see here it says that the director of AI written feature the last screenwriter speaks out after London Cinema cancels screening the Prince Charles cinema in London, Soho announced this week that it had axed the screening after receiving customer feedback highlighting strong concern about the use of AI in place of a writer. So essentially this was something that showed that, you know, people truly aren't receptive to AI, even if it is good yet. And like I said before, you have to remember, like I've always said, that humans are always going to prefer humans to for at least the short term. And I think most people have to understand that, you know, humans are going to be the ones of the end product. So if humans don't like it, then you shouldn't really use it. Now there was also another example where CNET actually used AI. You can see that well respected US tech website CNET, where I served as science editor until August 2023, published dozens of articles generated by a custom AI engine. At the end of 2022, in a total, CNET's robot writer racked up 77 bylines. And after investigation by rival publications, more than half of its articles were containing inaccuracies. And then of course, the backlash was swift and damning. One report said the Internet was horrified by CNET's use of AI and the Washington Post dubbed the experiment a journalistic disaster. Trust in the publication was shattered basically overnight. And for journalists in the organization there was a feeling of betrayal and anger. So once again, this is something that you're seeing industry wide isn't the best thing to do. And of course there was the Hollywood writers where they are on strike because they essentially wanted to push back against this technology. Overall, the point here is that whilst yes, AI technology is going to be advancing rapidly, many individuals are resistant to change and I completely understand why.