Nye's Digital Lab — Weekly scribbles on creativity in the age of rapid change.

Own your work! Understanding IP for Artists

TLDR - Young artists should understand why Intellectual Property is so important to their livelihood. Especially, in the age of AI.NOTE - I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice.Where great cartoons go to die (Stable Diffusion)Development HellWhen I was 29, I sold an animated show idea to a big TV network. Cool, right? Well… The pitch process was, (shall we say) stressful. Once we started developing the show, bureaucracy watered down the content so much that it lost the creative spark tha...

Rethinking Talent for Generative Game Pipelines

TL;DR :: Artificial intelligence promises to completely transform every creative workflow. What does the need for creative talent look like in the game industry? If we look to the past, we see three potential archetypes.AI Imaged Pixel Art Level Maps, Stable Diffusion XLAI has ArrivedNotice the pixel art game level above? This image took 26 seconds for Stable Diffusion XL to imagine from my written prompt. Considering how fast AI is moving, it won't be long before I can write and manifes...

AI University

The three components of a persistent, credentialed, global education network.The components of AI UniversityTrustworthy AI Education?Artificial Intelligence will accelerate and democratize our ability to educate the entire planet. The pursuit of the global education ideal will potentially undercut the higher education business model. However, most concerning is the authenticity of the information AI will proliferate. (1) We are headed towards a crisis of data accuracy and intellectual propert...

Royalties, Attribution & the Blockchain

Digital Artists are rarely rewarded with intellectual property ownership. The blockchain may provide an alternative.Movie Magic, Pen/Ink, PhotoshopCentralized ProductionIn 2012, the world marveled at the film adaptation of Life of Pi. The key to this film, was the performance of its tiger co-star. Unable to get an animal like this to perform, (and the dangers associated with it) the film enlisted the help of visual effects firm Rhythm and Hues. R&H, as it is known in the industry, created a f...

Gamifying Reputation

We've spent a decade gamifying engagement in education, work, and health. Empty points are short-term dopamine hits. Maybe we should gamify our reputations.Disengagement, Pen and Ink/PhotoshopThe Disengagement CrisisSince the pandemic, the data has shown a disturbing trend in our society. We're disengaged. According to a recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, there is a crisis in student engagement with the university communities, describing students as losing "their s...

Interoperable Storytelling

The more modular our content becomes, the greater the potential for infinite, hyper-personal, storytelling. That's if the system allows it.BEDTIME STORYBedtime Story, Pen and Ink/PhotoshopEvery night, I make up a bedtime story for my kids. The first night was a joy, but I ran out of content after two weeks. If I were to do this every night, I needed to develop a system to generate stories. At that time, my boys loved Paw Patrol, an animated action show about a group of talking dogs who r...

Protecting Artists from Centralized AI

If we are to defend our creative data from being sucked into large centralized AI models, we may need a new ethos and behavior.THE AI SOFTWARE ECOSYSTEMNeural Network, Pen and Ink.In a recent interview, Sam Altman, the CEO of Open AI, foretold a vision of how companies with multimillion-dollar processing power will sit at the base of a new artificial intelligence software ecosystem. (1) A gold rush of smaller companies, will use the APIs and "tune" these massive models to provide customizatio...

To Teach or Not to Teach Artificial Intelligence

(Originally published on https://nyewarburton.com in Fall 2022.) While watching academic (and non-technical) environments, I’m beginning to see that the pervasive instinct is to ban AI in writing and artwork curriculum. The argument is that students will use it to facilitate cheating, or it’s use will “cheapen” the learning of the artform. But increasingly, I worry that this approach will not prepare the next generation for the true world they are about to enter. Can we open the debate in a w...