AI Workflows that Accelerate Production & Respect Artists' Process (GDC 2024)

Invoke
15 Apr 202435:57

TLDRKint KY, CEO and founder of Invoke, discusses the role of generative AI in the creative process at GDC 2024. He emphasizes Invoke's commitment to empowering artists by providing tools that accelerate creativity without replacing the artist's role. KY highlights the importance of owning creative power by training AI models with one's own data and style, creating a new visual language. He demonstrates how Invoke's interface allows for fine-tuning and control over the AI generation process, which can be integrated into various creative workflows. KY also touches on the future of generative AI, including the potential for 3D model generation from 2D images and the ethical considerations surrounding AI training on existing art. The talk concludes with a Q&A session addressing legal concerns, the comparison between Invoke and other tools, and the future possibilities of AI in creative fields.

Takeaways

  • 🎨 **Generative AI in Creative Workflows**: Invoke, an open-source interface, aims to integrate generative AI into creative processes, enhancing productivity without replacing the artist's role.
  • 🚀 **Accelerating Creativity**: The Invoke tool is designed to speed up the creative spirit of humanity by providing artists with more control over the AI generation process.
  • 🤖 **AI for Professionals**: Unlike mainstream AI tools, Invoke focuses on training AI models on a professional's visual language, leading to more control and consistency in the creative output.
  • 🧩 **Customizable AI Models**: Artists can train AI models on their assets and intellectual property, creating a new visual language that they own and can use within their creative pipeline.
  • 📈 **Workflow Integration**: AI can be incorporated into various stages of the creative process, from sketching to texturing, allowing for a more efficient and personalized workflow.
  • 🌟 **Quality Over Quantity**: The goal is not to produce a high volume of average assets but to maintain quality while saving time and enabling the creation of more varied and immersive content.
  • 📉 **Mainstream AI Limitations**: Mainstream AI tools often generate repetitive patterns and lack the ability to fully understand and replicate a specific artistic style without fine-tuning.
  • 🛠️ **Iterative Process**: The creative process with AI is not a one-step push-button solution but an iterative one where artists have significant control over the final output.
  • 📱 **User-Friendly Interface**: Invoke provides a simple user interface for teams to adopt generative AI without the need for extensive retraining or learning complex new tools.
  • 🔍 **Legal and Ethical Considerations**: There is an ongoing discussion about the legality of training AI on various datasets, with a move towards using clean, openly licensed data to avoid legal risks.
  • 🔗 **Community and Collaboration**: Online communities like Hugging Face facilitate the sharing of models, though it's crucial to ensure that these are commercially viable and respect copyright laws.

Q & A

  • What is the main focus of Invoke as a company?

    -Invoke is focused on providing creatives and artists with tools to utilize generative AI on their local machines, aiming to give artists more control over the generation process and integrate it into their creative pipeline.

  • What is the significance of owning your creative power in the context of AI tools?

    -Owning your creative power means that artists and creatives can incorporate their style, concepts, and characters into an AI model that they own. This allows them to train their content into the system, creating a new visual language that they can control and use effectively.

  • How does Invoke differentiate itself from mainstream AI tools?

    -Invoke differentiates itself by offering a fine-tuned model that is trained on artists' assets and intellectual property, which allows for a more personalized and controlled creative process. It also provides a visual editor for users to define their creative workflows.

  • What are some of the challenges professionals face when using mainstream AI models?

    -Professionals often struggle with control and consistency when using mainstream AI models. These models can be difficult to manage and may not always produce outputs that align with the desired style or character.

  • How does Invoke assist in reducing the time taken to generate character concept art?

    -Invoke assists by providing a tool that allows artists to upload a concept sketch and receive a more detailed, colorized version of the asset. This process is streamlined through Invoke's interface, which helps to accelerate the creative process without compromising quality.

  • What is the importance of training AI models on a specific visual language?

    -Training AI models on a specific visual language helps to ensure that the generated outputs are more in line with the artist's or team's unique style. This results in a higher quality and more consistent output that can be effectively used in the creative process.

  • How does Invoke's interface help in the deployment of AI tools within a team?

    -Invoke's interface allows users to define and deploy creative workflows through a simple UI. This enables teams to leverage the controllability and flexibility of generative AI without the need for extensive retraining on new systems or processes.

  • What is the role of AI in the creative process according to the Invoke CEO?

    -According to the Invoke CEO, AI should be viewed as a tool that accelerates the creative process rather than replacing the artist. It is meant to help artists realize their creative visions more efficiently and effectively.

  • What are some of the use cases for AI in the creative industry that Invoke supports?

    -Invoke supports use cases such as concept exploration, ideation, asset texturing, seamless tiling and textures, 2D visual assets creation, and potentially 3D model generation from 2D images in the future.

  • How does Invoke ensure the legal and ethical use of AI models?

    -Invoke ensures the legal and ethical use of AI models by using open source models that respect artists' opt-outs and robots.txt instructions. They also advocate for clean, openly licensed datasets and provide professional services for training models on specific datasets.

  • What is the future outlook for AI in creative industries according to the Invoke CEO?

    -The Invoke CEO anticipates significant advancements in AI technology, including improved image-to-3D model conversion and image-to-video models. He emphasizes that AI will continue to accelerate creative pipelines but will not replace the need for human creativity in the process.

Outlines

00:00

🎉 Introduction to Generative AI and Invoke

Kint KY, CEO and founder of Invoke, introduces the topic of generative AI, noting a shift from fascination to thoughtful consideration of its role in creative processes. He outlines Invoke's mission to provide creatives and artists with control over generative AI, emphasizing its potential to enhance rather than replace human creativity. The company's history as an early open-source interface for local generative AI use is highlighted, along with its commitment to enabling artists to integrate AI into their workflows without surrendering control of their data or creative output.

05:02

🚀 AI in Professional Workflows

The discussion shifts to how industries like game studios and VFX studios are integrating generative AI into their pipelines. Kint KY differentiates between mainstream AI tools, which often produce repetitive and low-quality assets, and professional AI built for creatives, which allows for training on specific visual languages and greater control and consistency. He also touches on the importance of owning creative power by training AI models on proprietary content, thus creating a new asset for the team.

10:04

🎨 Training AI Models for Artistic Style

Kint KY explains the process of training AI models on an artist's style using Peter Morbach's artwork as an example. He contrasts mainstream AI's generic outputs with a fine-tuned model trained on Morbach's assets, which better captures the artist's unique style. The process of incorporating AI into the creative process is outlined, including defining where in the workflow AI should be used and deploying it as a team tool through Invoke's interface.

15:04

🛠️ Customizing AI for Creative Workflows

The presenter delves into the Invoke interface's capabilities, emphasizing customization and control in AI-assisted image generation. He demonstrates how users can adjust variables like sketch strength to balance AI creativity with fidelity to the original sketch. The potential for 3D generation from 2D assets is also discussed, highlighting the iterative nature of the process and the need for human input to refine AI outputs.

20:05

🌟 Creative Applications of AI in Industry

Kint KY explores various applications of AI in creative fields, such as concept exploration, asset texturing, and generating 2D visual assets for marketing materials. He emphasizes the importance of training AI models to generate specific types of images that align with a company's needs and the potential for AI to accelerate the creative pipeline without replacing human creativity.

25:07

📈 The Future of AI in Creative Processes

Looking ahead, Kint KY discusses the impending advancements in AI, including improvements in image-to-3D model conversion and the emergence of image-to-video models. He stresses that these technologies will continue to augment the creative process, changing the type of work done rather than eliminating the need for human creators. He concludes with a quote from illustrator Dan Lisi, encouraging a view of AI as a tool that enhances human creativity rather than a threat to it.

30:07

🤝 Open Source and Community Engagement

The conversation concludes with a Q&A session where Kint KY addresses questions about training AI on personal art styles, the availability of a community for sharing models, and legal considerations surrounding AI and copyright law. He also differentiates Invoke from other open-source tools, noting its commitment to commercial-friendly code and its focus on artists and creative professionals.

35:08

🔌 API and Workflow Scalability

In the final part, Kint KY discusses Invoke's plans for an API to invoke specific workflows, indicating that while the hosted product does not currently have an API, the local product does, and it is something they are working on for scalability. He assures that Invoke is designed to be artist-friendly while also being adaptable for other creative professionals.

Mindmap

Keywords

💡Generative AI

Generative AI refers to artificial intelligence systems that are capable of creating new content, such as images, music, or text. In the context of the video, generative AI is used to accelerate the creative process in various industries like game development and visual effects. The speaker discusses how generative AI can be integrated into an artist's workflow without replacing the need for human creativity, but rather enhancing it.

💡Invoke

Invoke is mentioned as an early open-source interface for utilizing generative AI on a local machine. It is designed to give artists more control over the generation process and to incorporate AI into their creative pipeline. The company behind Invoke aims to respect and accelerate the creative spirit of humanity through its tools, emphasizing that they are building for artists and not to replace them.

💡Control and Consistency

The terms 'control' and 'consistency' are highlighted as two main concerns for professionals when using generative AI. Control refers to the ability to guide the AI to produce a specific style or character as desired by the artist. Consistency means that the output should align with the established visual language and quality standards. The speaker discusses how training AI models on an artist's visual language can address these concerns.

💡Fine-tuned Model

A fine-tuned model in the context of the video is an AI model that has been trained on specific assets or intellectual property (IP) to generate content that closely matches the artist's or company's unique style. This is contrasted with mainstream AI models that may not capture the nuances of an individual artist's style as effectively. The fine-tuned model is a key part of Invoke's offering, allowing for more personalized and controlled creative output.

💡Workflow Integration

Workflow integration involves incorporating AI tools into the existing creative process in a way that enhances productivity without requiring a complete overhaul of established practices. The video discusses how AI can be integrated at different stages of the creative pipeline, providing artists with more time to explore concepts and ideas while maintaining quality standards.

💡AI for Mainstream

AI for mainstream refers to the general-purpose AI tools that are available for widespread use, often with a 'push button' approach to generate content. The video contrasts these tools with professional AI tools that offer more customization and control. The speaker points out the limitations of mainstream AI in producing high-quality, unique assets for professional use.

💡Data Privacy and Legal Risks

Data privacy and legal risks are important considerations when using AI, especially regarding the use of personal data to train centralized models. The video emphasizes the importance of artists owning their creative power and the data used to train AI models. This includes respecting copyright laws and ensuring that the AI models are trained on legally licensed data to avoid legal complications.

💡Creative Process

The creative process is the series of steps that artists go through to conceive, develop, and produce creative work. In the video, the speaker discusses how generative AI can be a tool within this process, rather than a replacement for it. The focus is on how AI can accelerate certain aspects of the creative process, allowing artists more time for concept exploration and refinement.

💡AI Training

AI training involves the process of teaching an AI model to recognize and replicate specific styles or types of content by feeding it a dataset of examples. The video explains that this can be done by individuals using open-source tools or by professionals who may use services to train models on their specific assets. The trained models can then generate new content that aligns with the artist's or company's unique visual language.

💡Open Source

Open source refers to software where the source code is made available to the public, allowing anyone to view, use, modify, and distribute it. Invoke is described as an open-source interface for generative AI, which means it can be freely accessed and customized by the community. This approach promotes collaboration, innovation, and transparency in how the AI tools are developed and used.

💡AI and Human Creativity

The relationship between AI and human creativity is a central theme of the video. The speaker argues that AI should be viewed as a tool that complements and accelerates human creativity rather than as a replacement for it. The goal is to use AI to streamline certain tasks, allowing artists more freedom to focus on the aspects of their work that require human insight and creativity.

Highlights

Generative AI is no longer seen as magic but as a tool for creative processes.

Invoke is an open-source interface for generative AI, focusing on creative control for artists.

Invoke's vision is to accelerate the creative spirit of humanity through AI tools.

The importance of owning creative power and training AI models on one's own assets and IP.

Professional AI tools offer more control and consistency compared to mainstream AI.

AI models can be fine-tuned to understand a team's visual language and style.

The process of using AI in creative workflows involves training, defining the creative process, and deployment.

Invoke provides a visual editor for teams to codify and deploy AI workflows.

Generative AI is not about replacing artists but augmenting their capabilities.

AI can reduce the time taken to generate character concept art while maintaining quality standards.

Invoke's interface allows for the definition of creative workflows with AI, such as concept sketches leading to detailed art.

AI-generated images are an iterative process that requires human input and creativity.

Invoke's tool offers control over the AI image generation process, allowing for detailed adjustments.

AI is being used for concept exploration, asset texturing, and creating 2D visual assets like icons and marketing materials.

The future of AI includes 3D model generation from 2D images and video creation.

AI tools should be seen as the next step in creative technology, similar to the transition from traditional to digital art.

Invoke offers professional services for training AI models and has an open-source community for sharing knowledge.

Legal considerations for AI training involve fair use and the shift towards contract law to prevent unauthorized data scraping.

Invoke's approach to AI is commercial-friendly, focusing on clean datasets and respecting artists' rights.