Magma provides new ‘ethically accountable’ AI artwork instruments
Monday, June twelfth, 2023 | Posted by Jim Thacker
Collaborative browser-based artwork platform Magma has launched its AI Assistant, a brand new suite of generative AI-based instruments, together with text-to-image technology, inpainting and outpainting.
Magma describes the toolset, which is at the moment in beta, as “ethically accountable AI”, tagging the elements of a picture created with AI, and storing a whole historical past of the textual content prompts used.
The AI Assistant is at the moment primarily based on the contentious Steady Diffusion 2.1 AI mannequin, a problem that Magma addressed in an e-mail dialog with CG Channel summarised later on this story.
A collaborative browser-based platform for illustration and idea design
Launched in 2020, and initially known as Magma Studio, Magma allows artists to collaborate on-line on a shared digital canvas, creating pictures utilizing a workflow acquainted from offline instruments.
Its toolset features a vary of brushes, modifiers, layer transformation and choice instruments, and filters.
The platform additionally consists of built-in suggestions and communication instruments, together with video calls, and integrates with third-party undertaking monitoring instruments like Jira.
It now has near one million energetic customers monthly, together with professionals working in recreation growth, movie and animation, notably for idea growth.
Experimental new AI Assistant provides generative AI instruments to Magma
To that, Magma’s new AI Assistant – at the moment in public beta – provides a spread of generative AI options.
In addition to producing complete pictures from textual content prompts, the toolset helps inpainting to exchange a part of an present picture with AI-generated variants, and outpainting to increase backgrounds.
Magma shops a historical past of textual content prompts used to create the AI components of customers’ pictures.
An ‘ethically accountable’ strategy to AI?
Magma describes the toolset as offering “ethically accountable AI”, as set out in its on-line AI artwork manifesto.
The positioning blocks using particular person artists’ names in prompts, until they’ve given specific permission for customers to take action, and mechanically tags AI-generated content material.
Though different instruments builders have introduced plans to tag AI-generated artwork – Adobe says that it intends to take action in its Firefly toolset – Magma’s strategy is extra granular.
In a Magma undertaking, the precise layer created utilizing generative AI is completely tagged as ‘AI’, and the location shops a whole historical past of the textual content prompts used to generate the picture.
The strategy is meant to allow artists to ascertain artistic possession of of pictures partly generated by AI, within the gentle of the US Copyright Workplace’s latest coverage assertion that artwork works created purely from textual content prompts are usually not copyrightable.
Tagging at the moment applies solely inside Magma: the agency describes the addition of tags to the metadata of pictures downloaded from the location as a “prime precedence”.
At the moment primarily based on Steady Diffusion, however meant as a ‘proving floor’ for future fashions
In its preliminary implementation, Magma’s AI Assistant is predicated on the open-source Steady Diffusion 2.1 AI mannequin.
The mannequin is controversial within the idea artwork neighborhood for being educated on pictures scraped from the web with out their creators’ consent, points summarised in our story on AI cloaking expertise Glaze.
In an e-mail dialog, Magma informed CG Channel that “we perceive [the] issues, and agree that whatever the energy they provide, unethically educated fashions pose an actual challenge to human worth.”
The agency described the AI Assistant as a “proving floor” for generative AI inside the platform, and stated that it “will proceed to discover ethically educated fashions as they develop”.
Requested why it didn’t delay the launch till such ethically educated fashions turned accessible, Magma informed us: “No matter how sturdy the opposition to AI is, generative AI is right here to remain in a single trend or one other.”
“With this in thoughts, we imagine that as a substitute of taking a again seat strategy and seeing how issues play out, [a better solution is to discover] as shortly as potential which features of generative AI … are most respected to artists whereas [enabling them to remain] accountable for design.”
The agency additionally stated that it was “exploring many prospects” for customers to monetise using their pictures in coaching future AI instruments, together with funds for artists who decide in to let their identify be utilized in textual content prompts, and enabling customers to coach and publish their very own customized AI fashions.
Worth and system necessities
Magma’s AI Assistant is at the moment accessible in public beta.
It ought to work in any present net browser, together with cellular browsers, though Magma recommends utilizing the platform on a pill or laptop computer somewhat than a smartphone.
Free accounts assist as much as 5 customers in a single shared artspace; Skilled accounts value $25/editor/yr or $250/editor/yr, and assist limitless artists. See a function comparability right here.
Learn extra about Magma’s new AI Assistant within the on-line documentation
(Contains directions on easy methods to entry the general public beta)
Learn Magma’s on-line ‘AI artwork manifesto’
Tags: Adobe, AI artwork, AI Assistant, AI tagging, animation, beta, browser primarily based, cloud-based, collaboration, collaborative digital portray. collaborative picture enhancing, Idea Artwork, idea design, moral AI, firefly, free version, recreation artwork, recreation growth, generative AI, illustration, inpainting, Jira, Magma, Magma Studio, on-line collaboration, outpainting, Photoshop, value, immediate historical past, system necessities, text-to-image, vfx, visible results
