Item — HN Reader

> There were a million Doom clones, none of which were as good as Doom. The same will be true of AI art copycats.

True, but this was also during a time when it was incredibly hard to make a video game. It wasn't like anyone could spin up a Doom clone in 2 minutes. Competition vs. commoditization at massive scale are different things.

3 comments

I'd argue many of the clones were better but not enough better. Doom was the first to do X and once you already played a game that did X the next game needed to do 2X not 1.2X.

Yeah, the concept of a commercial / off the shelf game engine wasn't that much of a thing until Doom, but with Doom and especially its successors Quake and Unreal from Epic it did. Quake's engine spawned Half-Life's, Unreal became one of the biggest game engines anywhere.

The question is how much that first-mover advantage still means. I guess with video games and movies (Doom and Ghibli), there's a massive difference between telling ChatGPT to make your selfie look like Ghibli.

But for illustrators and graphic artists? What's now keeping me from downloading an illustrator's portfolio and telling ChatGPT to make me something in that style, but for my company?

Is there still value in that illustrator pioneering her unique style? It used to be a client magnet, now a good portfolio might take your potential clients away.

I guess the other side of this is that the more a style/idea/media spreads, the more comesw back to the original creator, but I'm doubtful this is true in AI.

Imagine what classical realists artist though about early photography and how it shaped in history. Painters abandon achievement for replicate reality (all kind of *ism come later) or use new technology (photography) to improve creative process (Mucha).

AI is just another tool for artist. AI by itself never generate "art". It cannot by definition.