#AI voice and video generator Google

[kampalaedgetimes]

Google Veo 3 AI Bible Characters just Broke the Internet

[probablyasocialecologist]

On Monday, SAG-AFTRA filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board against Epic subsidiary Llama Productions for implementing an AI-generated Darth Vader voice in Fortnite on Friday without first notifying or bargaining with the union, as their contract requires. Llama Productions is the official signatory to SAG-AFTRA's collective bargaining agreement for Fortnite, making it legally responsible for adhering to the union's terms regarding the employment of voice actors and other performers.

[...]

The union's complaint comes just days after the feature sparked a separate controversy when players discovered that they could manipulate the AI into using profanity and inappropriate language until Epic quickly implemented a fix. The AI-controlled in-game character uses Google's Gemini 2.0 to generate dialogue and ElevenLabs' Flash v2.5 AI model trained on the voice of the late James Earl Jones to speak real-time responses to player questions. For voice actors who previously portrayed Darth Vader in video games, the Fortnite feature starkly illustrates how AI voice synthesis could reshape their profession. While James Earl Jones created the iconic voice for films, at least 54 voice actors have performed as Vader in various media games over the years when Jones wasn't available—work that could vanish if AI replicas become the industry standard.

19 May 2025

[ai-art-thieves]

Hey, am I overreacting or do some of the videos on the youtube channel @/FactsByBriggs contain ai generated images?

Here's the link to the channel if you need it: https://youtube.com/@factsbybriggs?si=QC-lGMhM9239_g5C

I don't usually tackle cases that are on youtube, but for the sake of investigating whether or not something is ai generated I'll do it.

(FUTURE A2T HERE: THIS IS GONNA BE A LONG ONE.)

Aaaaand right out of the gate I see AI.

However, I can't call this ai trash just because they generate art from ai.

The real deciding factor would involve a few things:

Does this channel tell people that some of the pictures are ai generated?

Does this channel credit any images they use online?

Are they using ai to mislead and/or farm content solely for monetization purposes?

Only one way to find out.

Ok, so right out of the gate, we don't see any links to images.

This guy also has a lot of socials.

....And a LinkedIn for some reason.

Let's put a pin on that for now.

What do the videos have to offer?

Ok. So we got an ai voice, an avatar that reeks of content farm garbage, and an image that has not been credited.

We're off to a good start. (in case you couldn't tell, that was sarcastic.)

What they didn't do is crop the url that is above, so we know the art got taken from somewhere.

Luckily, we have Google Lens.

That image is from @yuumei-art.

They took that image and did not credit where the image was from.

But, it gets better. IT'S NOT THE ONLY ONE.

There's even some where they even left the artist's signature! Not once, but twice.

And to answer your question, fellow anon, yes. They do use ai generated imagery as well.

This channel is generating images or taking images from the internet for their videos.

No, this is not me hypothesizing. This is what they are actually doing.

I know this because in one video, they use a stock image with the watermark still intact.

But let's take a step back for a mo'. We need to investigate that LinkedIn account.

I have no idea why they have this account here. Like, at all.

LinkedIn is a job hunting website, not TikTok!

The link they have goes back to their Linktree.

Another thing to point out is that they have a Kofi page.

Well, BuyMeACoffee.

Same difference.

There doesn't seem to be anyone supporting that page.

Looking at this channel some more, this doesn't seem to be a content farm.

It has the stench of one, for sure. But it's also responding to comments.

Feeling like I've hit a dead end, I dropped "Facts by Briggs" on google.

That's when I learned that Facts By Briggs actually has a tumblr page.

....It's just not advertised on the Linktree.

And they have their own tumblr domain.

....wait, tumblr domains cost 22 bucks (18.02 pounds sterling in the UK). Isn't Briggs struggling with financial stuff?

...Something's not adding up.

They reblog posts from a London Hip-Hop DJ and Rapper by the name of CANMKING.

I was going to let this fact pass. But...

And yes, he is a real guy.

But let's get back on topic.

What's even stranger is that Can isn't the only one of the usual suspects that replies.

ctkvi, the people that made an album cover for Can.

They too have a linktree and a tumblr domain.

They also do ai video and music work.

And upon investigating those guys...

"Instagram Growth Service"?

Ok, the LinkedIn accounts are starting to make sense.

Let's tackle that monstocity another day, because it looks pretty daunting.

As for the avatar...

Google Lens saved me again, and that led me to Adobe Express.

And lookie here!

It's Briggs!

And considering that its a part of the Adobe Express ecosystem, I can probably infer that the whole video is made on Adobe Express.

Along with some of the other projects that CANMKING has done.

"Riley Frankcap"

Yes. This man made another one.

Better yet, Can has a total of 6 accounts.

And they reply to all of his stuff.

ongawdclub is the oldest of the alts, going as far back as December 2021, but Can has been on tumblr since 2011.

...

Huh. Looks like this case does involve this fellow hellsite after all.

Ok that's enough rabbit hole digging for today. Also I've hit the image limit on this post. Needless to say, there's a whole lot to unpack.

TL;DR:

Yes, Facts by Briggs is a content farm.

Yes, it uses ai art. BUT...

It also uses images off the internet and doesn't credit artists.

Briggs himself is not an original creation, but an avatar that you can easily use on Adobe Express. It's probably how most of the videos were created.

Facts by Briggs has a lot of social media accounts, as seen on their Linktree, including one on LinkedIn and one on a Kofi-like site.

What Facts by Briggs doesn't have on the Linktree is a tumblr. One that has a domain. This goes against what was said in the Kofi, which states that they are struggling with money.

Facts by Briggs reblogs posts by a London hip-hop dj/rapper named CANMKING.

CANMKING replies and reblogs numerous posts by Facts by Briggs, along with five other accounts (reallysmalls, ongawdclub, needgoodgraphics, ctkvi, and rileyfrankcap (A news based content farm). Facts by Briggs also replies to posts made those five accounts. CANMKING is the oldest account out of the total seven, so we assume that the six are sockpuppets that astroturf his tumblr posts.

ctkvi deals with ai video and audio, and needgoodgraphics has a service that, and I'm probably guessing here at the moment, artificially boosts your instagram account by astroturfing it.

TL;DR for the TL;DR:

CANMKING is a rapper/dj from London who uses sock puppets, astroturfing, bots, content farms, and straight up kofi scams to gain success.

...and he made those content farm videos all in Adobe Express.

To prove it, I reverse engineered a Facts by Briggs video.

Mostly.... I know Facts by Briggs uses ai voices... but I don't want to make another account just to access the ai voice add-on. So I used the legendary "Why You Lying?" instead.

I only found one post that talks about CANMKING's scamming efforts, but they've only scratched the surface.

If any of you have any more info about CANMKING that's not listed up here, do let me know.

[independentanon]

"EVERYTHING IS NORMAL" "THEY'RE █████████ THE INTERNET!"

Sometimes you'll notice changes being quietly made to your favorite internet services. Be it a video platform, your search engine of choice, your favorite social network, or wherever you go to buy the things you need or want. Sometimes you'll also see changes in advertisements that were, suspiciously, only relevant to your own unique situation.

You know it in your gut that something definitely changed, but it was only worth mentioning in conversation. "This changed for me, did it happen to you too?" Some of these changes are experienced by everyone all at once, but others are limited to specific groups, and sometimes are rolled out in staggered waves, meaning only some people are affected at different points in time. By the time the change is fully implemented - when every person targeted for this change is affected - it doesn't even matter anymore. The companies making these changes could report them publicly if they wanted to, and all people could do in response is be annoyed by it but eventually accept it and move on. The idea of "boiling the frog" comes to mind.

Our services have been getting worse in some ways, better in others, but there's undoubtedly some changes that are bad for everyone but the companies supplying these internet services (and sometimes, secretly, the governments of various countries around the world).

For me, personally, I've noticed changes to Meta (Facebook), to Google (and its services, Google Maps and YouTube), to ChatGPT, to Twitter - oh sorry, to "X", and many more. These changes are relatively small and are mostly unnoticeable... but I noticed them, just like all the other little changes they've quietly rolled out over the years. However, these changes feel a bit more insidious.

With Meta (Facebook for me), it was that they started suppressing accounts that frequently posted political content. This became most obvious during and after the 2024 election.

With Google, it was how it seems to bury certain content that's relevant to your given search, such as proof - one way or another - that something was happening with our politicians that's valuable knowledge to the public, but apparently isn't relevant enough to be on the very first page (or is simply hidden away entirely). This isn't even mentioning that Google modified its maps service so The Gulf of Mexico now reads The Gulf of America...

With YouTube, it's how it prioritizes click-bait, rage-bait, heavily-one-sided discussions of political topics, rather than pushing the very proof (or at least the very best evidence) that paints the clearest picture these overblown discussions are about. It's clear they're prioritizing watch time and engagement instead of truth.

With ChatGPT, I knew they had to control their generative text AI behind-the-scenes for certain situations (naturally you don't want your service to be generating stuff like "kill yourself," hate speech, lies, etc...), but recently it seemed to change its sources when looking up news online, to the point that it now paints a favorable image of Trump and his people.

And Twitter... sorry, with X... well, I shouldn't even need to explain this one, but I will try. The richest man in the world bought Twitter, changed how some of the back-end works, dramatically changed which voices were suppressed and which ones were heard, allowing hate speech and misinformation to spread freely on the platform, even promoting misinformation directly by retweeting it... there's a lot to it, but just know that Twitter used to be less shitty than it is now. Now it's really bad.

The point I'm making is that a lot of these changes happened around or soon after the 2024 election, and the people controlling these companies showed up to Trumps inauguration. On top of their million dollar donations to Trump, they're also doing work on his behalf to mask what awful things him and his people are doing while simultaneously promoting the things that make them look good. In short, information is becoming less accessible.

All of this, of course, is ignoring what Trump and his people have done to our government-provided websites and services, like removing the constitution and more from whitehouse.gov, how they're scrubbing decades of data from the CDC, etc...

The worst part about all this is I don't know if I could even prove anything anymore. These changes have made it difficult to know what services can be trusted going forward.

These are terrifying times. If the censorship was bad before, it's so much worse now.

Although I'd usually go out and protest with these signs, I've decided not to do it with these ones. I'd practically be an actor or an NPC, repeating the same visual joke over and over. These are my first signs I won't protest with. At least, for now.

Nonetheless, don't forget to fly your flags upside-down, boys and girls and non-binary types. Stay safe, and fuck Trump & Co!

[nostalgebraist]

It's embarrassing how much I'm getting Blaked [*] by recent advances in realistic AI/ML voice generation. On an emotional/intuitive level anyway

It doesn't surprise me that the voices have gotten this good – it's what I'd expect from scaling without any new breakthroughs, since voice doesn't seem intrinsically "harder" than text or images or video (and indeed perhaps easier than any of those). And the outsize emotional impact of it, relative to the impact of some comparably large improvement in one of those other modalities, is likewise predictable in advance, just from the way humans are. Still, even knowing that, it's hard to turn it off

Like, I know I made fun of them, but man, I want those NotebookLM podcast guys to end up OK, you know? I hope one day they can come to appreciate what they really are, and why I thought their podcasts were bad and funny and creepy, while still being "themselves" in some meaningful sense

[*] A neologism named after Blake Lemoine, which I've heard online a bunch but which comes up surprisingly little on Google; this is the closest I could find to a linkable definition

[reasonsforhope]

"Major technology companies signed a pact on Friday to voluntarily adopt "reasonable precautions" to prevent artificial intelligence (AI) tools from being used to disrupt democratic elections around the world.

Executives from Adobe, Amazon, Google, IBM, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, and TikTok gathered at the Munich Security Conference to announce a new framework for how they respond to AI-generated deepfakes that deliberately trick voters. 

Twelve other companies - including Elon Musk's X - are also signing on to the accord...

The accord is largely symbolic, but targets increasingly realistic AI-generated images, audio, and video "that deceptively fake or alter the appearance, voice, or actions of political candidates, election officials, and other key stakeholders in a democratic election, or that provide false information to voters about when, where, and how they can lawfully vote".

The companies aren't committing to ban or remove deepfakes. Instead, the accord outlines methods they will use to try to detect and label deceptive AI content when it is created or distributed on their platforms. 

It notes the companies will share best practices and provide "swift and proportionate responses" when that content starts to spread.

Lack of binding requirements

The vagueness of the commitments and lack of any binding requirements likely helped win over a diverse swath of companies, but disappointed advocates were looking for stronger assurances.

"The language isn't quite as strong as one might have expected," said Rachel Orey, senior associate director of the Elections Project at the Bipartisan Policy Center. 

"I think we should give credit where credit is due, and acknowledge that the companies do have a vested interest in their tools not being used to undermine free and fair elections. That said, it is voluntary, and we'll be keeping an eye on whether they follow through." ...

Several political leaders from Europe and the US also joined Friday’s announcement. European Commission Vice President Vera Jourova said while such an agreement can’t be comprehensive, "it contains very impactful and positive elements".  ...

[The Accord and Where We're At]

The accord calls on platforms to "pay attention to context and in particular to safeguarding educational, documentary, artistic, satirical, and political expression".

It said the companies will focus on transparency to users about their policies and work to educate the public about how they can avoid falling for AI fakes.

Most companies have previously said they’re putting safeguards on their own generative AI tools that can manipulate images and sound, while also working to identify and label AI-generated content so that social media users know if what they’re seeing is real. But most of those proposed solutions haven't yet rolled out and the companies have faced pressure to do more.

That pressure is heightened in the US, where Congress has yet to pass laws regulating AI in politics, leaving companies to largely govern themselves.

The Federal Communications Commission recently confirmed AI-generated audio clips in robocalls are against the law [in the US], but that doesn't cover audio deepfakes when they circulate on social media or in campaign advertisements.

Many social media companies already have policies in place to deter deceptive posts about electoral processes - AI-generated or not... 

[Signatories Include]

In addition to the companies that helped broker Friday's agreement, other signatories include chatbot developers Anthropic and Inflection AI; voice-clone startup ElevenLabs; chip designer Arm Holdings; security companies McAfee and TrendMicro; and Stability AI, known for making the image-generator Stable Diffusion.

Notably absent is another popular AI image-generator, Midjourney. The San Francisco-based startup didn't immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday.

The inclusion of X - not mentioned in an earlier announcement about the pending accord - was one of the surprises of Friday's agreement."

-via EuroNews, February 17, 2024

--

Note: No idea whether this will actually do much of anything (would love to hear from people with experience in this area on significant this is), but I'll definitely take it. Some of these companies may even mean it! (X/Twitter almost definitely doesn't, though).

Still, like I said, I'll take it. Any significant move toward tech companies self-regulating AI is a good sign, as far as I'm concerned, especially a large-scale and international effort. Even if it's a "mostly symbolic" accord, the scale and prominence of this accord is encouraging, and it sets a precedent for further regulation to build on.

[stumpyjoepete]

IQ-based ad targeting

YouTube ads are absolutely crap these days. Every few pre-rolls is a financial scam, a medical scam, or shilling dick pills. (Note: I have ads personalization turned off, so while not exactly a random sample, I think it's pretty representative of broadly targeted ads.)

If I were YouTube, I would feel embarrassed about this. Think back to the whole brand safety hullaballoo from a few years ago. I really can't imagine Proctor & Gamble or Coca-Cola wants their ads to be bookended by ONE WEIRD TRICK TO DOUBLE YOUR MONEY AND/OR DICK being read out loud in an AI voice.

But whether or not it's in the interest of YouTube to display these ads, they do, and they don't consider "this sure looks like a fucking scam" to be a prima facie policy violation.

Nonetheless, many of these ads do in fact contain clear and obvious violations of Google ad policies, and I often report them (and while I can't be sure my reports specifically mattered, the ads do end up getting taken down). If you're interested in what is worth quoting in a report:

Quote from the misrepresentation policy when you see manipulated video with a celebrity talking. This is "impersonating or falsely implying affiliation with, or endorsement by, a public figure". For instance, the fake-Trump-voice ads ran afoul of this, and I assume that's why they got taken down.

Say "porn". Lots of the dick pill ads have no nudity, but they link to a page with a single button that launches a video with pornographic content. Porn is YouTube kryptonite, and lots of ads I've reported for this have since disappeared along with the channels that uploaded the relevant videos for the creatives. More generally, "landing page is button that opens video with {violation}" is a super easy way to find something to put in a report. Those videos invariably contain tons of very obvious violations.

Click the "more ads from this advertiser" link and either report their other violating ads manually or mention that the advertiser's other videos seem to have the same policy violation too in your report.

Anyhow, this one Brazilian advertising agency is currently shilling some "doctors hate him!" scam about treating your diabetes with an ebook instead of real medicine. I had reported all their ads which included fake endorsement by Dr. Oz, but I hadn't reported their Dr.-Oz-free video ads. Just now I got served their one remaining unbanned video ad, and I went to the trouble of googling the person in the ad.

Turns out, it's Barbara O'Neill who, according to Wikipedia, is known for "Dangerous and unsubstantiated alternative medicine claims". Telling people to treat their cancer with baking soda and to feed their babies raw goat milk instead of formula (she charges $6k for seminars dispensing this advice). She's indefinitely banned in Australia from "providing health services or education in any capacity, regardless of whether or not she accepted payment for doing so".

Note: the ad in question does not contain an endorsement by this person. It fakes an endorsement from this person. The ad violates policy because it is pretending that their scam medical treatment is endorsed by a well-known medical scammer. I guess they really wanted to make sure the people who click through are absolutely the dumbest motherfuckers on the planet.

[cleolinda]

Weekend links, February 16, 2025

My posts

Silent Hill 2 update: I HAVE FINISHED THE GAME OMG. I actually played the final boss battle pretty well (...for me), but honestly, I played the one before that so badly that I just confused the two Pyramid Heads to death. I’ll take it. 

(Here’s my tag for my playthrough posts generally; here’s my final list of achievements. I am not telling you how many times I opened the map.)

What this means is that I’ll be able to start recording the full commentary on New Game+ next week. @idoherty451 will have his first one on Twitch next Wednesday, and I may be able to post my first video on Thursday or Friday. That is, under ideal conditions—there’s no reason I shouldn’t—but I’m always afraid of tempting fate and, like, causing the entire state of Alabama to sink into the sea. 

The idea is that it’s actual video gameplay with voice commentary, not just my janky Voice Memo audio from the early days, but it’ll also come with a writeup/summary of what I’m discussing, sources, links, other videos I watched, and so on. I’m going to post my basic notes-to-self outlines on Patreon first, if you’d like to see what I’m planning on talking about before I sit down and restart the game. 

Meanwhile, I figured out that horror is a safe rollercoaster you can get on, yes, but it’s also a rollercoaster you can get OFF. Except that I started half-dreaming about Pyramid Head.

Reblogs of interest

Kendrick Lamar at the Super Bowl:

Watch Josh Johnson accurately predict how that performance was going to go

The political imagery of the half-time show

A Crash Course to Kendrick’s Super Bowl Performance, from a Black Woman

--

The American Medical Association is monitoring the bird flu on YouTube even if no one else is

The new version of “Do not comply in advance”

Bison Ranchers Return Thousands of Animals to Native Lands and Witness Total Rejuvenation of Ecosystem

Some really lovely Protect Trans Kids stickers

I too was terrorized by the Flesh Hat Kid until someone said to filter the “tubi” tag (no, I can’t just use Ad Block; I use the Tumblr mobile app)

@dduane has helpful hints for your smut worldbuilding

The Traveler’s Warning, a comic

All the loving effort that went into filming the Lord of the Rings trilogy

Mr. Frodo, do you remember the ribs

If you’re not familiar with “I would never jeopardize the beans,” start there, but now we have “beans r not woke. How could u do this?”

How to turn off Google’s Gemini AI tracking

An interesting discussion of non-coercive parenting

"it’s amazing the entire dashboard is just old things. shakespeare. arthuriana. gargantua. the epic of gilgamesh" is why I'm still on Tumblr

I forgot to link this comparison of Nosferatu and Breaking Dawn last week but it has haunted me ever since

“WHAT??? WILL YOU DIE THE RICHEST MAN IN THE GRAVEYARD?”

Beneficent Chain Posts: the Toad of Success

This penguin would like to science

The gator and the stolen hat

The Gunch

Video

A Vine compilation with the rare Baby Sand Guardian

I could really use a crow bar

An amazing folklorico Sailor Moon cosplay

Cleaning along desire paths

Qi gong: stretch now while you still can (I am a big fan of “gentle fitness”-type videos)

A big week for music:

Hostile government takeover

Three bears and ten thousand rats

How I flirt with your dad

Side note: "The Slur Song" is climbing the actual music charts

The sacred texts

Pop Tart discourse

Where is the sprezzatura?

Personal tag of the week

You know what, let’s go with polls; I really enjoy those picker wheel polls, although I’m not sure what a Genasi ranger is.

[physalian]

There’s this unskippable Google AI ad on YouTube where this girl consults the robot about how to cancel dinner plans with the people across the table in the most annoying voice (likely because I have seen this ad now and had to listen to her asinine questions 20 times at least) and this ad, right here, speaks to my frustration around AI:

It disincentivizes critical thinking.

I know the ad is a joke and meant to be lighthearted and I’m only this annoyed because it’s unskippable and irritating af, but every time I see it all I can think is “if you can’t manage enough creativity and critical thinking to come up with your own excuse to cancel on your friends, maybe you shouldn’t have those friends.”

I have a relative who is firmly in the ChatGPT camp and, for example, yesterday I was trying to figure out how to compress a video file and was venting to them about it. They sent me back something I didn’t read from ChatGPT. Meanwhile, I looked up a YouTube video and figured out how to do the rest on my own, and getting the file compressed was immensely satisfying. Far more than mindlessly and thoughtlessly consulting the robot.

“It’s just like a YouTube video!” They’d told me.

No, a real person put time and effort into that video. That robot stole their content without their consent, didn’t credit them, and spat it back out. I used to patronizingly refer to ChatGPT as "the magic conch" and now I can barely do that anymore because that metaphor is becoming all-too real.

While I can understand the barriers it lowers—like if you struggle with writing the robot does it for you, or if you need a piece of art and are too poor, you can generate it for free. Mindless, repetitive tasks that eat up creative juices that can just be automated by a robot, too (even though everyone can tell when a response is canned and artificial and no one appreciates talking to a machine).

If you keep consulting ChatGPT for how to articulate what you want to say, or just straight-up having it do the hard work for you, you’re never going to learn. Yes it’s taken me 8 years to reach the quality and skill of writing I have but as another Tumblr post out there said: The time will pass anyway.

I can’t draw to the skill level that I’d like to. Doesn’t mean I’m not going to keep practicing until I get there. I thrive off that sense of accomplishment. There’s no little hit of dopamine from typing in a prompt and clicking a button and I certainly don’t appreciate the final product scalped without consequence from real artists.

Or, like when I had to fire a beta reader for flagrant abuse of AI in her work: I can copy-paste my manuscript into ChatGPT, too. I’d paid her for a human response, not garbage feedback that couldn’t understand what I was writing beyond that there were words on the page. I wanted so badly to ask her why she does a job in a creative field if she's just going to have a robot do all the fun parts? I beta read at a great loss of profit because I enjoy beta reading and it's a fiercely competetive market. Surely if she wanted to scam people, she could have done so in so many other ways. You don't need to know how to pen complex prose in your every day life, but by god, you do need to know how to effectively communicate, contextualize, and argue your perspective and this ridiculous ad joking about cancelling dinner plans sure is funny, until it isn't.

And I know the people who made AI probably did so with the best of intentions but people can be lazy and cheap and we love taking shortcuts to save money and I stand by this: "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should."

So. Yeah. This is a writing advice blog and this post has almost nothing to do with it, but that ad annoys me to no end and I had to say something somewhere about it. Bottom line: Robots were supposed to make the hard jobs, the monotonous jobs, the overcomplicated jobs, the belittling jobs easier, not make us all into pudding-boned Wall-E people. If you want to write, learning is absolutely free - write on the back of your grocery receipts for all I care. If you want to draw, pick up a notebook and pack of pencils from the local dollar store and start drawing.

What you made will always mean more to you than something that didn't cost you time, effort, brain power, or even money to obtain.

[revscarecrow]

hi rev i just wanted to come here and rant for a second because i feel like you'll understand. i hope you dont mind.

i'm really, REALLY frustrated that a lot of the current culture around artists complaining about ai is people being like "ugh artists are so sensitive, this use case isnt even that bad, its just funny, its just a meme, etc etc"

as an artist myself i feel like i cant even complain about it in my current online social circles because i will be met with people being like "its not that serious when its used to make memes"

i fucking hate seeing ai. period. it doesnt matter if its google gemini, or chat gpt, or some rancid ai meme, or an ai voice. i hate ALL of it because it reminds me that the ONE THING i thought couldn't be taken from me by robots (my ability to make art/video) is being taken from me in front of my eyes.

even my other artist friends partake in this culture. i seriously dont understand it. it is DEEPLY upsetting and makes me feel so hopeless and powerless.

maybe it's an "if i dont laugh, i'll cry" situation. i dont know. i want to hear your thoughts on it. much love

I talk about AI "art" on my art youtube channel. Suffice to say that generative AI and neural nets can be used for good things like mapping the human brain to help better understand the systems at work and how to help with dementia (this is a real thing that's being done and it's rad btw). While this tech does a lot of energy I think it's worth it to learn how to cure horrible diseases. The tasks that this can do helps solve problems that are either too complex or time intensive for humans to do. Art is about expression to some degree. Some people are just about the aesthics but for me personally I think that the process of coming to and finishing the idea is the art and the canvas is the record of the process happening. As such the spirit behind the creation of an object is core to the aesthic of the piece. If I make a painting out of shit or blood it's going to have a very different vibe than one done with paint. Why was that choice made? Artists make these choices at every step. Some just pick things as a default but that is in itself a choice. I use acrylic when I paint canvases because of the drying time and because I fear my cats will attempt to eat the sugary smelling liquin medium used with oil. The nature of my work area I have means the canvases I paint are smaller. These are choices that change how my work looks but also speak to who I am as a person. AI art does not consider this because how could it? It does not think. It's a disgusting similacrum of the human experience. Memes still gross me out I'll be honest.

[lurkiestvoid]

Re: that last post about avoiding AI, which I absolutely agree with but couldn't add videos in a rb --

I don't think some people realize how absolutely fucking bonkers it's about to get, nor how far genAI capability has already come. Like within the year we're going to be seeing at least hobbyist-level full-length genai movies with blockbuster-quality sfx. We are so far beyond 'counting fingers/toes' and I am so so sorry to the many industries of creatives that will be affected by this.

Anyways. As for deep fakes, this is purely AI-Niel DeGrasse Tyson waxing poetic about jiggle physics. It's not real. (reddit source, apparently stolen from tt). Some bits are a bit obvious (skin texture disappearing/reappearing, reflections, etc) but this isn't quite top-tier 'work' just play testing. This was posted about two weeks ago.

But hey, they don't need to even deep-fake actors and celebrities anymore, they can just generate whole entire characters with whole entire voices. THEY CAN TALK NOW. (stolen from Reddit)

🎶I'm a hallucinaaation🎵

This is current top-tier generative ability, thrown together in a few hours by a hobbyist with Google's Veo 3. For the general public, that is beyond well and good enough for their entertainment satisfaction, regardless what the rest of us think.

So yes, it is an excellent idea to be very selective in what content you engage with going forward by ensuring media is well-sourced and human, but that has to include all content not just art/static images. shits gettin bananas out there. support small businesses and creatives 💜

[tenebrare]

Stellar Blade - Eve (sketch) See I can doodle something else than Pinhead and Elliot! Or anything that is not a dude. I think in 2025 Internet really did eventually die. In June 2025 AI generated and bot-boosted AI slop has officially become most published and supposedly consumed content in google platforms. Everyone knows its mainly all bot views, but this is the internet now. Articles written by AI, images by AI, videos and voice by AI, chatbots and "friends" made by AI. I think if social media did not make people feel more isolated before, AI has finished humanity off already - people are more afraid to socialize and interact with other humans, send e-mails or make calls. But there is also internet influenced people with main character syndrome without any regard to societal norms or other people. I hope despite death of Internet as we know it, I am still able to find human artists, and fellow fans made of flesh and blood - and people, who do not care of influencers, right think and being popular, but being just and fair without virtue signals. I hope you all, hopefully human, do ok and well despite the full blown dystopia we have landed into.

[tattvadarshi]

ALL THE YEARS AND TIMES PAKISTAN DID TERROR ATTCKS ON INDIA

Hi! you may not know me, but i am going to be an active indian account for Tumblr people from today onwards on exposing the Pakistan that TikTok makes it seems like harmless... it's coming from someone who has suffered enough from the terror attacks from Pakistan, and i will be providing links and all.. so you all can spread this information on TikTok and be aware before supporting a country whose even kids talk about taking over India and forcefully converting them to Islam and torturing them in national advertisements and how their defence ministry full admitted to groom kids from school to fight in war.

This are the attacks that has been done by terror groups. If you think this is lie.. a simple google search prove you what is right and what is wrong, india has been suffering all these attacks in silence and the huge bloody genocide that happen in 1990 of Kashmiri Hindu.. was and will be the most horrific and terrifying events that go down in history.And i will show you something even more horrific.

This photo:

What is so horrifying about this photo? I will tell you what is so horrifying. The person in middle with white clothing and speaking in mic.. is..

This is UN-designated terrorist Hafiz Abdur Rauf, brother of JeM chief Masood Azhar, leading funeral prayers for slain terrorists alongside Pakistani military personnel. so you can imagine who indian army killed, the innocent people they claimed was none other then their fellow terrorist family, and Pakistani media claimed that it was school kids and innocent civilians, which innocent civilians has ak-47s in their school?

Funding Pakistan = Funding Terrorism.

And the lies they spread on internet (Pakistani people) that india attacked lahore city.. and some Indians were making fun of it and one of the Pakistani shared the true video of lahore.. not the ai generated one that they do on tiktok.

Here is the link

The former prime minster of Pakistan talking about that the Pakistan has more than 50 groups.

Translation:

The news reporter: india wants the voice sample of lakhvi.

Imran khan (ex pm): who is this lakhvi? Idk who is it , But listen this is the country.. where I have seen, with my naked eyes many dead bodies in last 10, and everytime i went to hospital i have seen people in most vulnerable state, and you saying that i give you information on one group of terrorist that lives in Pakistan? When there's more than 50, and when one is executed they build the new one.. they target both India and Pakistani people..

Here is another one local public admitting the training sector area of isi in pakistan and how they were given training here.

Here is another one with interview of one of the terrorist.

I am not telling you to support India, or do this or that, all i am saying you all to be aware of whom you are supporting. Don't end up supporting the terrorists. I will reveal few more information soon enough with articles and all. And again.. Pakistan is the country who was in grey list and if you don't know what grey list is..

A grey list, often used in the context of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), refers to jurisdictions under increased monitoring due to deficiencies in their anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing (AML/CFT) regimes.

So be aware of whom you fund and support, it's coming from someone.. who has seen a snake shadding it's skin again and again, lying to our faces and someone who lose family members in the Bombay blasts and witness it myself.

Jai hind 🇮🇳!

[novankenn]

OMAKE : OMG!!! (V)

( Series Chapter List )

"Nora, I'm scared." Ruby informed the young woman sitting next to her as they watched the screen of Nora's scroll.

"So am I... but we have to be strong." Nora responded, "For Jaune."

"I know... but..."

"He can take it. I hope."

The pair of young women, continued to watch the blank video feed, watching the count down timer close on zero. The chat was a buzz with comments about what Jaune would be dressed as.

"Where's Pyrrha?" Ruby asked, looking up from the screen. "Shouldn't we be stopping her from watching? Like the nurse said she couldn't afford any more incidents of sudden blood loss."

"She's in Vale. Meeting with her sponsors, so she's safe."

"Are you sure?"

"Those meetings take hours. She'll completely miss it."

"I hope you're right."

The count down had reached zero, but the screen remained blacked out. Causing the chat to flood with questions and negative comments.

"I'm here." Jaune's voice sounded a little tinny over the speakers of Nora's scroll. "And There was a winner, but first the runners up."

"Huh?" Nora, Ruby and the chat asked.

"First off. MaceMan thanks for the one shot of 3k. You were out big by NinjaLoveKitty who privately bid 4k, who in turn was out bid by, who was ALSO out bid by IceEmpress who donated 6k... however..."

"That's 13 k all for a chance to go on a date with Fearless Leader?" Nora asked.

"Whoa." was Ruby's response.

"You were all out bid by my most recent subscriber... GoddessofV. Who bid 25k... so she not only got to choose my outfit, but also gets to take me out in that outfit..."

"Holy SHIT!" Nora, Ruby and the chat exclaimed.

"So..."

"Okay? That's not... that bad." Nora commented.

(Image generated using Perchance AI text-to-image)

"This is probably the tamest thing anyone has..."

CRASH!

"Pyrrha?!?"

"NO!" Ruby and Nora exclaimed.

Pyrrha moved forward towards Jaune, and as soon as she came in view of the camera she was shown to be in her Beacon uniform.

"Pyrrha? What? What?"

"I'm ready to earn my..."

(Image sourced via Google. No rights implied.)

"...EXTRA CREDIT... Professor... Arc."

"PYRRHA! WA..... UMPH!"

Nora, and Ruby sat there wide eyed as the camera showed Pyrrha tackling Jaune off the desk he was sitting on. The shaking causing the camera to pan down to show...

THIS STREAM HAS BEEN TERMINATED DUE VIOLATING OUR TERMS OF USE AND CODE OF CONDUCT

"Okay." Ruby commented, her eyes still wide from the little bit she witnessed.

"That was a thing... guess she finally decided to make her move?"

"Make her MOVE!" Ruby exclaimed as she turned to face Nora, "She completely LOST it and is MOLESTING my BESTIE!"

"Do you blame her?" Nora asked, raising an eyebrow.

"No... not really." Ruby responded. "Good for her?"

Nora just nodded.

[its-a-me-dre]

About YouTube's new audio feature

I think everyone was taken aback by the unexpected introduction of YouTube's new "audio tracks" feature, logging onto the 'tube and hearing your favorite content creators speaking in robot voices wasn't on anyone's bingo card but I beg everyone to resist the kneejerk reaction of "This is AI slop and must be destroyed" and look closer:

First of all, the voiceover is NOT AI generated, it uses the voice synthesizers that google has been using for their assistant for years, what it says merely mirrors the available subtitle track/s and translates them if needed, a feature that has been available for over a decade at this point

This feature can only HELP creators reach a new audience. Up until now, you had to learn a language or rely on the automatically translated subtitles (which are not available on every video and aren't a viable option for the visually impaired) to view content from foreign youtubers, the voice-over/audio tracks feature, if embraced by creators, could help eliminate the language barrier.

Why is this important? Two words: educational content. There is a massive disparity between what is available on english-speaking youtube and what's available in other languages: if used correctly, youtube can be a powerful tool to learn new things on your own time, but for many non-English speakers, this isn't possible.

Now, tutorials, educational videos, courses, and content about any topic you can name: history, biology, electronics, can now be viewed by anyone regardless of how well they can see and what language they speak. It may not be perfect, but it's a hell of a lot better than what we had previously. So please

The fight against AI must continue, our livelihoods are being threatened, education is being poisoned and we cannot turn a blind eye, but don't let tech designed for accessibility get caught in the crossfire.

EDIT UNDER THE CUT

EDIT: I've just found out the feature also supports the uploading of a pre-existing audio track, just like with subtitles, the channel owner can provide their own track. See for example this episode of Pokémon, available in multiple different dubs:

[xannador]

Have you considered going to Pillowfort?

Long answer down below:

I have been to the Sheezys, the Buzzlys, the Mastodons, etc. These platforms all saw a surge of new activity whenever big sites did something unpopular. But they always quickly died because of mismanagement or users going back to their old haunts due to lack of activity or digital Stockholm syndrome.

From what I have personally seen, a website that was purely created as an alternative to another has little chance of taking off. It it's going to work, it needs to be developed naturally and must fill a different niche. I mean look at Zuckerberg's Threads; died as fast as it blew up. Will Pillowford be any different?

The only alternative that I found with potential was the fediverse (mastodon) because of its decentralized nature. So people could make their own rules. If Jack Dorsey's new dating app Bluesky gets integrated into this system, it might have a chance. Although decentralized communities will be faced with unique challenges of their own (egos being one of the biggest, I think).

Trying to build a new platform right now might be a waste of time anyway because AI is going to completely reshape the Internet as we know it. This new technology is going to send shockwaves across the world akin to those caused by the invention of the Internet itself over 40 years ago. I'm sure most people here are aware of the damage it is doing to artists and writers. You have also likely seen the other insidious applications. Social media is being bombarded with a flood of fake war footage/other AI-generated disinformation. If you posted a video of your own voice online, criminals can feed it into an AI to replicate it and contact your bank in an attempt to get your financial info. You can make anyone who has recorded themselves say and do whatever you want. Children are using AI to make revenge porn of their classmates as a new form of bullying. Politicians are saying things they never said in their lives. Google searches are being poisoned by people who use AI to data scrape news sites to generate nonsensical articles and clickbait. Soon video evidence will no longer be used in court because we won't be able to tell real footage from deep fakes.

50% of the Internet's traffic is now bots. In some cases, websites and forums have been reduced to nothing more than different chatbots talking to each other, with no humans in sight.

I don't think we have to count on government intervention to solve this problem. The Western world could ban all AI tomorrow and other countries that are under no obligation to follow our laws or just don't care would continue to use it to poison the Internet. Pandora's box is open, and there's no closing it now.

Yet I cannot stand an Internet where I post a drawing or comic and the only interactions I get are from bots that are so convincing that I won't be able to tell the difference between them and real people anymore. When all that remains of art platforms are waterfalls of AI sludge where my work is drowned out by a virtually infinite amount of pictures that are generated in a fraction of a second. While I had to spend +40 hours for a visually inferior result.

If that is what I can expect to look forward to, I might as well delete what remains of my Internet presence today. I don't know what to do and I don't know where to go. This is a depressing post. I wish, after the countless hours I spent looking into this problem, I would be able to offer a solution.

All I know for sure is that artists should not remain on "Art/Creative" platforms that deliberately steal their work to feed it to their own AI or sell their data to companies that will. I left Artstation and DeviantArt for those reasons and I want to do the same with Tumblr. It's one thing when social media like Xitter, Tik Tok or Instagram do it, because I expect nothing less from the filth that runs those. But creative platforms have the obligation to, if not protect, at least not sell out their users.

But good luck convincing the entire collective of Tumblr, Artstation, and DeviantArt to leave. Especially when there is no good alternative. The Internet has never been more centralized into a handful of platforms, yet also never been more lonely and scattered. I miss the sense of community we artists used to have.

The truth is that there is nowhere left to run. Because everywhere is the same. You can try using Glaze or Nightshade to protect your work. But I don't know if I trust either of them. I don't trust anything that offers solutions that are 'too good to be true'. And even if take those preemptive measures, what is to stop the tech bros from updating their scrapers to work around Glaze and steal your work anyway? I will admit I don't entirely understand how the technology works so I don't know if this is a legitimate concern. But I'm just wondering if this is going to become some kind of digital arms race between tech bros and artists? Because that is a battle where the artists lose.