Neural network-based text to image generators have been around for quite a while now, but only in the last year or so have gotten good enough to capture the attention of the general public and force us to ask real questions about the value of art and artists.

One big reason they have improved since the days of blurry 240p results is because of the vast amount of data, i.e. images, that they’re trained on. Many of these images are copyrighted by companies or individual artists and can be closely replicated by the generator if given the right prompt. The question of whether or not the practice of training an AI on copyrighted data is legal is still up for debate in court, but regardless of the technical legality, many artists are understandably furious that their own past work is being used to render their future services less necessary.

In this episode, Kent, Tim, Kyle, and Dr. Denning share their thoughts on the rapidly evolving and impossible to ingnore technology.


You can read more about this episode on our blog.

Denoise is a podcast about Blender, from the folks at CG Cookie. If you're interested in leveling up your skills in Blender and supporting what we do, check out our extensive library of courses on cgcookie.com and subscribe to our YouTube channel.