For what it’s worth (and it’s probably not much), it doesn’t cost that much to commission comic book-style art from an actual artist online. When you do that, the proceeds go to an artist, not to an AI company that stole from them and a software developer who wrote a wrapper around their API.

In fairness no artists are advertising a personal coloring book. The time, effort and cost would put this out of reach for 99.99 of people.

No artists are losing income because of this and no industry is being upended. This is a new product that's available because of a technology advanced.

Why the focus the artist? Everytime you order in food online you take away a tip from a host, server, bartender and take away a job from a person who answers a phone. Why focus on artists when so many have been affected by technology.

I tried to do exactly that once. I was offering between $20-$40 per image to make a few coloring pages as a mother's day gift for my wife. Not complex images either -- just basic coloring pages from photos of my wife and child, without backgrounds, for my kids to color in.

I reached out to multiple artists, and got one image back (from a good friend). I gave up on commissioning actual artists, and traced the images myself on a tablet. I imagine someone with the right knowledge of where to find artists and the willingness to wait on their schedule could have done it faster, but I'd have used this service if it had been around.

Usually when you commission something you're asking the artist to do art and create something unique with their own artistic flair... not just line-trace an existing photo.

The intention and cost of something like that is not at all comparable to what is being offered here.

I can't imagine how much it would cost to commission an artist to do a whole coloring book and then organize them and send them to print but it's a good point. AI is never going to be as good as a real commissioned artist, but this idea makes having something similar far more accessible to a lot of people.

My opinion isn’t fully formed but I currently think either all content producers have a claim (potentially workable as eg a discount), or only those who contribute should get access to AI’s.

And by all I mean the AI companies owe a huge debt to all humans who wrote or designed or drew anything. The vast majority of the benefit of this technology relies on volume: the billions of pages and lines of code we wrote for other humans, but have now been repurposed. This technology relies on bulk, which was mainly unprofessional or freely given content, by those who intended it for other humans. It was not 100% built only on the output of the few who charge for their exquisite words or designs, even if their output is higher quality.

Alternatively, let the AI companies go for it but everyone who uses any kind of AI should understand that they’re standing on the shoulders of the millions of developers and nonprofessional writers whose work has now been repurposed. Not the few artists and journalists. So those artists and journalists should both refuse to contribute to, and use, AI.

* I’ve written very little of this useful content, but would be happy to pay my share to those that have built what we have. I also turn off training on my content, but I pay a lot for models. Feel free to help me think through this with comments of your own.

If it does not cost that much, that is obviously because the artist is too cheap. If you find that to be a preferable equilibrium, that's a choice I guess, but I find it fairly ironic in light of the purported motivation.

I can get ChatGPT to do this for literally free. Even in the free tier, I can get a couple images per day.

If this person’s service was to pay human artists $24 for a 23 page custom coloring book you’d be crying on here about them not paying human artists enough.

Almost nobody is paying $100 or more for a custom 5-page coloring book.

This service isn’t taking work from human artists.

Those transactions never would have happened, and never will happen.

Didn’t the artist “steal” from artists that came before them by looking at and taking inspiration from their photos? Especially ones that would do such artistic genres as commercial coloring book art?

Maybe, but then I have to negotiate with the artist, handle their refusal to draw art of my choosing, and wait for their (possibly unpredictable) schedule. AIs mostly avoid these problems.

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This is a cool technological feat but what is the cost to humanity and its artists?

Some of these replies seem rather dismissive to the artists’ plight.