this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2024
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Crypto was stupid from the beginning, NFTs are even more stupid. And people who knew about the tech told everyone so, before the idiots bought the shit to get rugpulled.
Ai art is bad for artists, but not inherently bad bs.
AI art is antithetical to art. Art requires artistic intent.
It could have some limited application for very early exploration in commercial art, or perhaps as very limited tools used in existing art software, but generative art is inherently pointless and you need artists to be able to do incremental iterations properly, which is required for real work, which isn't supported yet. I'll sure it'll get better and more convincing, but it's still inherently pointless to use AI for art, since the is supposed to be human expression.
It's a tool. Artists will learn how to use it to create art.
Artists actually know it's bullshit, not a tool
People that say that AI could be used as a tool to help artists clearly as never pickup a pencil to draw. The thing that makes an artists voice, that makes that art theirs are the decisions they make while making their art.
When you are drawing something, you are constantly making small micro-decisions with every stroke of your pencil, and those decision and how you make them is what makes art so beautiful, as no two artists make those decision the same way and each artist as a certain consistency in those decisions that evolves with them as a person. As such, art is so much more than a pretty picture, it is a reflection of the person who made it. Those decisions are also the fun part of making art.
AI art doesn't let you make any decisions: you type the prompt and out comes an image. An image made of an weighted average of human made images with a similar description. You have no say in the micro-decision the machine makes, you have no say on where exactly the pencil strokes go. Therefore this machine is useless for artists. You might say "Just edit the image!", but that doesn't help either, as editing the image still doesn't give you that micro-level of decision making. Also, editing a flat image with just one layer is just as useful as any other image form any search engine image search result. Unlike text, which can be easily edited to be exactly what you want.
I know their might be some wait to integrate machine learning into art, but right now the tools available don't do that.
People who say that AI can't be used as a tool to help artists clearly have never tried using AI as a tool. Everything you've written here is untrue.
Artists can manually curate unique datasets to create LoRAs. They can draw from their own photographs, drawings, paintings, etc., and then coordinate prompts and parameters to blend their custom LoRAs with other creators' LoRAs/models/checkpoints to craft something unique. The process can be even more involved with tools like ControlNet, where artists can sketch an outline of the scene by hand. I.e., you can have precise control over where the pencil strokes go.
The tools available right now do that
I've used it and continue to research it.
You're wrong. You can't have the same level of control as the person above describes. Even if you train the model on your own work, it will still be the one generating every "stroke" of the pencil. If trained for it, it will do it based on how you must often do so, but you can't clearly control it. You can't control granular details of the process of creating the image. It's all broad strokes. I don't know what your level of experience with art is, but so much of what makes art is tied up in the process of having to think through every little addition you make to an image. And by little addition I don't mean "let's add a person here" but "let's do these 200 individual strokes that make up that person". The involvement in the process is the point, and when an image is generated for you, you remove so much of the involvement and granular decision making, that the actual point is lost.
It's like cooking with premade, pre-prepared ingredients. You can pick the dish and put it together with the stuff you buy, but you can't control the whole process, because you've given up that for the sake of speed and convenience, and the dish will be different for it.
With ControlNet, you can control that very finely though. It partially combines computer graphics into the mix which is definitely not easy to get into.
But it's different from drawing, that is for sure. Different decisions with different outcomes and different possibilities. But you see similar differences with every form of art. You don't make 200 strokes for a photograph, or for a cut out collage, or algorithmic art, or sculpting. But you do make different decisions that are similar in nature. They shape the end product, and in a way no other person would do exactly the same. You still have to be involved in every step of the process, even if some steps are no longer done by yourself, they are replaced by other decisions.
Again, this is assuming they aren't just clicking generate and calling it good to go, but if someone is using ControlNet they should be well above that, since the quality of blank generations is often not the best and demands refinement to anyone with an creative outlook.
This is why we shouldn't confuse AI art, AI assisted art, and other forms of visual art, even if they all end up making an image as the end result. Something can be impressive when drawn, but mediocre if made with AI. Just like painting a scene isn't the same as taking a photograph of that same scene, even if they end up being visually similar. Everything exists in context.
And yes, you are giving up some creative control for sake of convenience. But the question is how much. A painter that hand crafts their brushes will make a different painting had they used a pre-made brush. But we can agree I think that the creative control they lost by doing so is negligible. Artists generally lean on what they have produced before as references too. 3D sculptors can start with a cube too, but if they're going to be making a person they will start with a mesh of a human figure, male or female depending on what they want. There is no shame in taking shortcuts in steps where it's possible, even if it's commendable if you don't.
Art takes long and is expensive to produce, it would be unsustainable in this modern day to do everything from scratch every time. And as long as you focus on the parts where your decisions make the artistic intent happen, you can still make something unique and valuable in it's own right.
That's a cool visualisation of what kind of visual input you can feed into the process with ControlNet.
And it really makes it clear that what AI images is good for if communicating a general idea. I think comparing AI generated or Assisted images or videos to photography is probably the closest analogous medium we have, but I think AI images are stort if in-between that and more classical art. You have more control over the more technical aspects of the image, as you can alter those things with big strokes, but you've given up too much control to really infused it with artistic intent. Even when photography, where you are generally limited by reality, you can better infused artistic intent into the picture, because you carefully examine what makes that object of the picture unique. Even if you try to direct AI models, it limit their scope they will always add whether the most average expression of what they're adding, because that what it looks for in the training; the commonalities/averages of whatever it was trained on.
Even ControlNet is just a way to claw back a little more control over the process. I wouldn't actually call the examples I've seen of ControlNet to be examples of fine control. I'm struggling to find a way to clearly communicate it, but it's like the difference between 3D art that is trying to look like 2D, and actual 2D. There's always something lost in the translation.
Most artistic disciplines are their own language, and I just don't think we have a way to communicate that language without actually doing the art, and art requires artistic intent, which I don't think is possible with the current AI tools. Maybe it will be at some point, but artistic intent and control over the process are so interconnected that the balance becomes very difficult.
While I kind of get what you're trying to say, I do personally think you have some point that the expression of the AI is more generic, but that's kind of where the value is. Certain actions, even if you are manually doing everything, are repetitive and provide a low level of artistic expression. Like coloring in large surfaces, background characters, background buildings. It's impressive to do so yourself and you can even get very good at it, but in a regular scenario they are unimportant by design. Sometimes you just want to get to the core of where your ideas matter. You can also use AI to upscale your own drawings to allow yourself to add more detail and work on a larger scale. I personally find it horrible and demotivating to manually upscale something I've drawn already. You'll be tracing lines for hours if you want to do it well.
For the more detailed things that no AI is sophisticated enough to be guided towards, that's something I would also draw myself and leave the AI out of, exactly because I want that level of finer control there. To me it's about using AI for it's strengths and not as a catch all, just like you don't use a sledge hammer to kill a fly.
I do disagree with the framing that ControlNet 'claws back' control over the process. I see it more as it enhancing the control you already have. Because you are specifically priming the AI with very fine parameters. The amount of information you can encode in a string of text is just miniscule compared to being able to provide a texture that could realistically be 2K in resolution where you have 2048*2048*4(For every RGBA value) = 16777216 individual pixels that you could fine tune. Same thing with image to image, even doing a couple of iterations with that creates possibilities beyond human understanding of scale, same as other art. Now not every one of those permutations will be valuable, but the same can be said about drawn art. And driving it to the valuable creations is what an artist does.
A big part of my process is reflecting on the value the AI added, and whether or not I can still call something my own by the end of it. I even compare images I've completely made myself to the ones that I produced with the AI to ensure that. Especially when I started out I binned some ideas because I didn't feel they were expressive enough. To me it is a requirement to be happy with what I created. And I think that's something a lot of people understand in their own way. So I guess we must agree to disagree on that, based on our different experiences.
Hi, person here who's drawn extensively with pencil as a kid but then slowed down. AI has reignited my passion for art, because unlike pencil or even digital drawing, you can iterate much more quickly, which allows me to do so while working a demanding job and having a life besides it. You are severely underestimating the amount of micro-decisions that go into AI art, and more importantly AI assisted art. If you'll allow me, let me explain.
Lets break it down into levels of effort and creative input, I like to refer back to photography since it has some comparison:
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Sadly, most people that talk confidently about how much they hate AI just know point #1 and maybe point #2. But I see point #3 and #4. And when I talk to artists that haven't yet picked up on AI, but if they are aware (or made aware) of #3 and #4, suddenly their perspective also changes in regards to AI. But the hostility and the blind anger makes it quite hard to get through to people that not all art with AI is made equally. We should encourage people that want to use AI to reach the point of #3 and #4 so that their creative input is significant to the point it's actually something produced by their human creativity. And this is also where an existing artist switching to using AI will most likely start off from.
Also, in terms of time. #1 might take seconds, #2 might take minutes to hours, but #3 and #4 can take days or weeks. Still not as long as drawing those same pieces by hand, but sometimes I wish it was as easy as people would make it out to be.
I'm glad you've found value in it. I've played around with a similar workflow you describe in step 3 and 4, but I just find that it always produces the blandest version. Sometimes you get a surprising iteration, but I think being used to seeing visual patterns makes it much more obvious just how predictable the image details get. It just ends up looking like a compilation of techniques.
I'm sure it won't bring the same results for everyone, and that's fine. I'm glad it's that way and not just so easy it would consume all other ways of making things, as it would cease to be a tool at that point and just become the entire process. I really just try to make what I am already imagining since before I even put anything to paper, and so I know what I want the AI to help me with ahead of time. I get surprisingly close to the idea in my mind because of that. Much closer than I reasonably could get in other ways with the finite time I have.
That sounds like a good tool for you then. I do art as my day to day, and there are definitely aspects of my work that I would love to have a bit of AI injection to help speed the process up, but that is much more as a tool directly integrated into the softwares I already use, like a beefed up content aware transform tool that allows me to move parts of a finished image around just a little bit, and having the AI fill in the small gaps that creates.
I see so many small ways to make the art process less painful or introduce more non-destructive editing tools, if only the AI was built into the software and actively training on the art you were doing, as you did it, rather than having it take over whole parts of the process as it is currently used.
Yes, I want it to go that way too. But that does take time. Which is why I think it's a shame some people are really hostile to it indiscriminately. I get that the big corporations are absolutely wielding the worst aspects of it, and I hate that too. But once you go to grassroots and small corporations, suddenly there is a whole different view of it. AI is a product of humanity's collective efforts, and as such all of humanity should be it's benefactor, not a small group of people that just happened to have the most money and influence at the time. Especially if they had nothing to do with actually creating the technology behind it. And by making the story about them rather than the people using it as it should, it will inevitably lead to people falling behind to corporations, and widening the gap even further. Making artists even less valued than they already are. Which is something I've always fought against even before AI.
I mean, the hostility is entirely understandable. The current form of generative art is meant to replace artists. It is part of what is currently devastating peoples livelihoods, although I think some companies and clients are already learning that it currently leads to lower overall quality, due to how much harder it is to implement changes based on feedback. It lowers the overall quality bar, although it does have the potential to raise the floor a little. The larger models that are causing this hype are quite literally trained on the work of unwilling artists.
It is the most disrespectful and clearly ethically wrong basis to build it on, and it really begs the question of whether the ends justify the means. Beyond that, art is just not an area where we need AI. It largely hurts artists, is super energy demanding so it actively hurts the environment for no real benefit.
The energy would be so much better used solving actual problems, so more people could spend time doing things they enjoy. If some people enjoy AI generation, then that's fine but I think it shouldn't replace a passionate, skill-based workforce.
It is understandable. But what is not understandable is turning a blind eye to the nuance and choosing hate over understanding. I'm glad you have not done so and done your own research, and I happily applaud you for that. But I meet plenty of people that blindly take some art social media influencer's misguided (sometimes suspiciously conveniently so) ideas on how AI works. Big companies aren't all that exists, and they are not the only ones making advancements. Or the majority of it, really. It just looks that way because they get all the attention and have all the means.
Pretending it is so is gives them far more unwarranted power than is healthy, as it creates a situation where people think they're destroying the big corporations, but in fact are destroying the means for smaller creatives that operate in the shadows to keep up and compete. AI technology will never be restricted in a way that will just harm the corporations as it currently is. Stricter copyright laws are a common proposal but I'm sure Disney et al are just downright content if that what ends up with it, as they have enough data to their own to easily train their own AI. And banning the technology as a whole would open up cans of worms that it won't be banned everywhere, leading to economic losses to the countries that do ban it.
I'm working day to day with professional artists from smaller companies that are using it for the right jobs to speed up their work. But their voices are unheard because if they speak up they get showered with hate and people calling them fake or frauds. Again, people that have created wonderful things without AI and deserve the title of artist multiple times over. They don't have millions of followers to back them up, so they just don't bother with and do what artists do, which is to create. Ironically, it's also in part artists that are silencing other artists over AI, not the big corporations.
While I agree with that, it should be mentioned that it's mostly LLMs that require massively out of proportion energy. Generating images is about as expensive as playing a video game on high settings. Modeling software and 3D software also drain energy and producing art is just generally more expensive than consuming it. I think just saying 'it hurts the environment' is slightly misguided, since you can say that about literally everything. Humans existing at all is bad for the environment, but the balance of it is what matters. I do think LLMs go over the edge and big company's insistence to shove it into literally everything is despicable, and not proportional to the benefit.
So one thing I want to mention there is that AI is downright revolutionary in medicine. You can't look at technology as something that takes linear paths from improvement to improvements. The lessons learned in one area can also become applicable to other areas. AI can be used to detect cancers early, solve protein folding, find tumors on medical scans. And that's from just the relatively little knowledge I have of it. So yes, image generation doesn't solve such issue, but the technology that allowed them to exist does solve real tangible issues, and it's popularity and spread is inherently linked.
100% agree. No AI should ever replace humans. I would rather see people get excited to make something because of AI, and once they have some success and secure funding, switch over to competent human artists. That's how humans should replace AI in my eyes, not the other way around.
I never said that art will necessarily come from AI in its current form but it's true that it's what I had in mind. You basically expressed something very similar to what I meant in your last paragraph.
And yes I do love pencil drawing :)
But I'm more thinking about conceptual artists with decades of work behind them that I can imagine will create art using these AI tools that will transcend what the average Joe/Jane is producing with these tools right now. To produce something that will shock, move us, make us think.
There are so many different facets to art.
Right now it is not a tool. Right now it is an attempt at replacing artists.
It could be implemented in existing softwares in parts to make it a useful tool. Like a tool that could easily recolour parts of a fully rendered illustration, while still respecting the artistic intent with the form and lightning.
But right now it just spits out the blandest stuff, based on what it has identified as the most common denominators in art.
A lot companies are using the AIl to attempt to replace artists, that does not mean that some artists are not using it like a tool already.
I know quite a few artists that are already training their own artwork into custom data sets.
That is their perogative. It's still antithetical to the whole concept of art, and if they sell AI generated images as art, then they are no longer artists, but just a middleman for generative images. Whether those images were trained on art or not.
AI art is also really prone to breaking when fed AI generated images, so it needs artists to work, but it's use in the industry devalues the artists labour by being able to flood the market with low value replacements for art, thereby pushing actual artists out of the market and it's own training pool. If the art industry cannot support professional artist because they are driven out of the industry by falling wages, then there will almost only be AI images left, accelerating the staleness of AI generated visuals.
Artists intent makes the artist, not the ability to make images. Otherwise art would have ceased to exist when cameras got sufficiently capable.
I love Ai defenders who are ready to tell you what art is and what artists wants. Like maybe instead of recomending this cloud based bullshit app, first try to pick up a pencil actually?
I understand the excitement, but it is very much a situation of a layman trying to describe to experts what the expert and all their peers need.
I think it is just because AI has been hyped so much, and has genuinely made such impressive progress that people get swept up by the excitement, and idea that they could make their ideas into something tangible. They just don't know the amount of consideration that goes into translating that.
Right now AI art is like Google translate poems.
The majority of people using AI will not insist you use it, aside from just trying to get others a realistic look on what the technology actually is. Just like a photographer won't preach to a painter that they should pick up a camera. But that does not mean there isn't benefit to derive from understanding how the other produces art. And if the painter thinks the camera is doing all the work and the photographer is a fraud, it's probably good for them to get some exposure and realize it's not just pressing a button. Like I explain here how that metaphor works for AI.
Most people I know that use AI are *shocker*, artists from before AI was a thing. They know how to draw with pencils, brushes, sponges, but also painting programs like Photoshop, sculpting programs, modeling programs, surface painting programs, shader production, algorithmic art. They are through and through artists. Them adding AI to their toolbox does not change that.
Until we have autonomous agents, AI art is human expression
AI art is human expression in the same way that the Gaussian blur tool is. It's a bunch of math spitting out a pattern based on specific inputs.
All while currently being as ethical as the fast fashion industry producing scam versions of high fashion products.
It has the potential to be very useful in certain applications, but right now, all it really does is create Content to be consumed. Kinda like elevator music or that horrible Corporate Memphis style that has invaded every piece of corporate media/advertising in recent years. Soulless and without meaning. It's pretty high quality slop, all things considered, but slop nonetheless.
I think it's safe to say you don't know what you're talking about
I strongly disagree. 99% of the work is being done by an algorithm. It's like if we had autonomous driving and you said you were actively driving all day, because you told the car where to go, and then took a nap in the car until you had arrived.
Photography is widely recognized as an art form, even though the scene exists independently and the photographer "simply" frames and captures the shot.
A better driving analogy might be Tesla's current level of self-driving, where you have to keep a hand on the wheel and eyes on the road the whole time, and remain in charge of all the critical decisions. When someone arrives in a Tesla and says, "I drove here," no one goes "ackchyually..." Even if we follow your analogy, it’s the individual’s idea to reach that destination- often a novel place no one has even been to before.
Creative individuals curate unique datasets, which can take countless hours of manual work, to create LoRAs. They often draw from their own photographs, drawings, paintings, etc., and then coordinate prompts and parameters to blend their custom LoRAs with other creators' LoRAs/models/checkpoints to craft something unique. These creations exist only because they had the vision and put in the effort to realize it. The process can be even more involved with tools like ControlNet, where artists might even sketch an outline of the scene by hand.
A quick selfie might not be considered art, but intentional expression through creatively capturing a scene is (photography). Similarly, a quick generation via Copilot for a meme might not qualify as art, but intentional expression through creative generation certainly does.
I disagree with your analogy, as I find it overstates the active involvement of the driver (prompter) during the drive (actual image generation).
Preparation is it's own process, whether you're curating art you made yourself/stole from non-consensual artists, or have been finding references as an artist. Different skillset. They help the process of making the final image, but they are not a direct part of that process.
And let's not kid ourselves about theses datasets. There's no accountability so there's no way to ensure that any dataset you're getting from other people aren't comprised of, at least partially, stolen art.
ControlNet let's you add visuals to your prompt for greater control, but you're still generating the image externally, and leaving the vast majority of the decision making to the model you're using. Even if someone is happy with the result they get from a generative model and find it visually pleasant, that doesn't make it art. The model is doing the work and the model cannot have artistic intent, so it cannot make art. It can make images and people can enjoy those, but those images aren't something new.
They are amalgamations of most basic common denominator of existing things. It is much more like a really advanced collage that is great at hiding the seams.
Amazingly, everything you've written is wrong, but I really don't care enough to further correct you
Ah yes, those sour grapes, indeed.
Nope.
When humans make art, they are constantly making decisions. Decisions, decisions, decisions. With every stroke of the pen, with every color (not just a generic pink, blue or yellow, but specific tones and shades of those), with every everything they to while making that piece, they are making a lot of micro-decisions. Those decisions are made in respect to the person that is making the art, as their personal life experiences are what dictate how they make such decisions, even if they don't notice it.
AI art is not like that. With AI, you type a prompt and outcomes an image. The user does not have a say in any of the micro-decisions that when into making that piece. The AI it self isn't making any decisions either, it is just making the mathematical weighted average of what images with a description with similar tokens look like, and simply copying said decisions. The AI does not decide, it simply regurgitates previous decisions.
You are looking at the lowest form of AI art and then declaring that to be all there is. There is more than just pressing generate to a prompt. If you're actually interested, I wrote a lengthy post about it: https://lemmy.world/comment/12743504
Yeah you definitely don't know what you're talking about
"crypto was stupid from the beginning"
How? Do you find debit cards stupid?
"people who knew about the tech told everyone so"
completely untrue.
people at the forefront of cryptography and economics were excited about the Bitcoin white paper because cryptographic digital currencies is an obvious-in-hindsight evolution in currency.
they were so excited about it that they joined nakamoto in creating cryptocurrencies, collaborating and developing new technologies until it was launched and beyond.
"idiots bought the shit to get rugpulled"
how exactly is gaining 400,000% in value over a decade a "rug pull"?
Ok maybe we had bitcoin over a decade and nobody cared. It was mainly used by criminals and tax evader. The concept of a decentralized money system is stupid when they just drop the Blockchain and fork a new one once a too rich person got hacked.
Bitcoin is not regulated by the government, but by rich people. Bitcoin has a 100% virtual value. An artificial scarcity does not create value. If tomorrow the the USA makes bitcoin illegal, it's value will drop a lot.
I mean the stock market is similar, but at least it is regulated.
The rugpull was in the context of ntfs.
Type these things into a search engine first and then read, so you spare yourself and others from blatant ignorance and misinformation.
alternatively, if you can replace Bitcoin with USD and your concerns are identical, then none of your concerns are valid arguments against cryptocurrency.
"Ok maybe we had bitcoin over a decade and nobody cared."
this is incorrect.
cryptographers, economists and governments were and are excited about cryptocurrencies because they're an obvious evolution in centralized currency, in the same way that debit cards linked to bank accounts were, and now QR codes and digital wallets are.
"It was mainly used by criminals and tax evader."
this has been wrong and irrelevant as long as people have been saying it.
Between 35 to 39 percent of USD is used for criminal activity, does this rampant criminal activity make the USD illegitimate?
"The concept of [USD] is stupid when they just [literally print money from nowhere] once a too rich person [gets caught]"
See what I'm saying? literally just replace the words and see if what you're saying is still valid.
Printing USD and writing laws to protect rich people is a problem.
"[USD] is not regulated by the government, but by rich people."
they are called the federal reserve, a private company that manipulates the dollar value at will.
The American aristocracy illegally manipulates the printed paper.
[USD]has a 100% virtual value.
That's what happens when you decouple a currency from It's backing value, like when the USD got taken off the gold standard and private companies are allowed to print fiat currency at their own discretion.
"An artificial scarcity does not create value"
scarcity precisely creates value, that is how the federal reserve manipulates the value of the USD.
It's literally why the interest rates have been lowered this year rather than continuing to increase, the federal reserve is trying to create an artificial scarcity.
"If tomorrow the the USA makes [USD] illegal, it's value will drop a lot."
oh, "a lot"?
The gold price certainly didn't drop after being made illegal.
"I mean the stock market is similar, but at least it is regulated."
leaving aside that you are unaware of existing and developing cryptocurrency regulations, why are you so proud of regulation when it has been shown to facilitate illegal fiat currency manipulation?
Yes, the USD and stock exchange are "regulated" to an extent, but that regulation is completely irrelevant since white collar crime and illegal activity has continued unabated since fiat currency has come into play.
cryptocurrency is also regulated.
it literally has tax forms, just like the fiat currency that criminals use.
"The rugpull was in the context of [USD]."
If you want to talk about rug pulls, type in USD fraud.
you'll get a few hits.
none of what you typed was relevant or correct, just type what you think into a search engine if you're unaware of the facts.
Don't make things up that are demonstrably false with a simple search or substitution.
Ok when you said that NFTs are the same as any crypto currency you definitely showed that you don't understand the difference.
Please tell me how crypto is regulated?
And I mean by a trustworthy entity like a state or at least a company that you can sue in case of error.
What regulations am I talking about?
Imagine you are at twitterX and have to pay some fines to a specific bank account. However because your incompetent ceo fired the accounting department the new people get the account wrong. Now your money is in the wrong place.
However in most countries keeping that money is illegal and the bank will assist you to get it back.
Now imagine they used bitcoin instead. They enter the wrong wallet. Once the transaction is done there is no way back. You could in some way try to get in contact with the person of the wallet, but you can't even be sure you can get a hold of them.
Even better if you entered a nonexistent wallet. Then the money is gone. No backsis takis.
And don't get me started with the cost of transaction, or the power cost.....
"...when you said that NFTs are the same as any crypto currency..."
I made the exact opposite point, that nfts and cryptocurrency are not the same thing and that is the main problem with the meme.
"Please tell me how crypto is regulated?"
In general? currency is regulated by a regulatory organization imposing guidelines and legal restrictions on a currency so that the exploitation of that currency is minimized.
with USD, if you accrue mineral royalties, that is income and you would pay tax on those royalties according to the IRS.
if you mine cryptocurrency, that is income and you have to pay a tax on that mined cryptocurrency according to the IRS.
the IRS is a large regulatory body concerned with collecting taxes from the American population.
these are two examples of federal currency regulation.
since you asked about which companies regulate cryptocurrencies, we can look to coinbase, the largest centralized exchange for cryptocurrency.
coinbase complies with multiple banking acts such as KYC and consumer protection to ensure legitimate transactions the same way that your credit union or banking institution on the corner does.
Afaik coinbase does not actually use the Blockchain. It has a centralized own system for accounts in its system. It mirrors the value of bitcoin in its internal bitcoin. But you can't buy bitcoin on coinbase and then send it to a real bitcoin wallet.
I mean in the case of bitcoin it makes no sense for normal people. You have several hundred $ of transaction fees. If that would happen in coinbase nobody would buy btc.
So your best platform for crypto is only mirroring the prices of the real Blockchains.
If you're referring to the coinbase wallet, that's on the blockchain.
you're sending it to a custodial account owned by coinbase, not your own personal Bitcoin account.
It's the same thing as having a bank account and giving all of your money to the bank.
You're giving up absolute control of your funds for convenience, absolution of responsibility and imagined security.
That's how broad societal financial operations still work for the moment. centralization isn't always nefarious, but it is largely archaic at this point.