#about AI

[tangibletechnomancy]

The reason I took interest in AI as an art medium is that I've always been interested in experimenting with novel and unconventional art media - I started incorporating power tools into a lot of my physical processes younger than most people were even allowed to breathe near them, and I took to digital art like a duck to water when it was the big, relatively new, controversial thing too, so really this just seems like the logical next step. More than that, it's exciting - it's not every day that we just invent an entirely new never-before-seen art medium! I have always been one to go fucking wild for that shit.

Which is, ironically, a huge part of why I almost reflexively recoil at how it's used in the corporate world: because the world of business, particularly the entertainment industry, has what often seems like less than zero interest in appreciating it as a novel medium.

And I often wonder how much less that would be the case - and, by extension, how much less vitriolic the discussion around it would be, and how many fewer well-meaning people would be falling for reactionary mythologies about where exactly the problems lie - if it hadn't reached the point of...at least an illusion of commercial viability, at exactly the moment it did.

See, the groundwork was laid in 2020, back during covid lockdowns, when we saw a massive spike in people relying on TV, games, books, movies, etc. to compensate for the lack of outdoor, physical, social entertainment. This was, seemingly, wonderful for the whole industry - but under late-stage capitalism, it was as much of a curse as it was a gift. When industries are run by people whose sole brain process is "line-go-up", tiny factors like "we're not going to be in lockdown forever" don't matter. CEOs got dollar signs in their eyes. Shareholders demanded not only perpetual growth, but perpetual growth at this rate or better. Even though everyone with an ounce of common sense was screaming "this is an aberration, this is not sustainable" - it didn't matter. The business bros refused to believe it. This was their new normal, they were determined to prove -

And they, predictably, failed to prove it.

So now the business bros are in a pickle. They're beholden to the shareholders to do everything within their power to maintain the infinite growth they promised, in a world with finite resources. In fact, by precedent, they're beholden to this by law. Fiduciary duty has been interpreted in court to mean that, given the choice between offering a better product and ensuring maximum returns for shareholders, the latter MUST be a higher priority; reinvesting too much in the business instead of trying to make the share value increase as much as possible, as fast as possible, can result in a lawsuit - that a board member or CEO can lose, and have lost before - because it's not acting in the best interest of shareholders. If that unsustainable explosive growth was promised forever, all the more so.

And now, 2-3-4 years on, that impossibility hangs like a sword of Damocles over the heads of these media company CEOs. The market is fully saturated; the number of new potential customers left to onboard is negligible. Some companies began trying to "solve" this "problem" by violating consumer privacy and charging per household member, which (also predictably) backfired because those of us who live in reality and not statsland were not exactly thrilled about the concept of being told we couldn't watch TV with our own families. Shareholders are getting antsy, because their (however predictably impossible) infinite lockdown-level profits...aren't coming, and someone's gotta make up for that, right? So they had already started enshittifying, making excuses for layoffs, for cutting employee pay, for duty creep, for increasing crunch, for lean-staffing, for tightening turnarounds-

And that was when we got the first iterations of AI image generation that were actually somewhat useful for things like rapid first drafts, moodboards, and conceptualizing.

Lo! A savior! It might as well have been the digital messiah to the business bros, and their eyes turned back into dollar signs. More than that, they were being promised that this...both was, and wasn't art at the same time. It was good enough for their final product, or if not it would be within a year or two, but it required no skill whatsoever to make! Soon, you could fire ALL your creatives and just have Susan from accounting write your scripts and make your concept art with all the effort that it takes to get lunch from a Star Trek replicator!

This is every bit as much bullshit as the promise of infinite lockdown-level growth, of course, but with shareholders clamoring for the money they were recklessly promised, executives are looking for anything, even the slightest glimmer of a new possibility, that just might work as a life raft from this sinking ship.

So where are we now? Well, we're exiting the "fucking around" phase and entering "finding out". According to anecdotes I've read, companies are, allegedly, already hiring prompt engineers (or "prompters" - can't give them a job title that implies there's skill or thought involved, now can we, that just might imply they deserve enough money to survive!)...and most of them not only lack the skill to manually post-process their works, but don't even know how (or perhaps aren't given access) to fully use the software they specialize in, being blissfully unaware of (or perhaps not able/allowed to use) features such as inpainting or img2img. It has been observed many times that LLMs are being used to flood once-reputable information outlets with hallucinated garbage. I can verify - as can nearly everyone who was online in the aftermath of the Glasgow Willy Wonka Dashcon Experience - that the results are often outright comically bad.

To anyone who was paying attention to anything other than please-line-go-up-faster-please-line-go-please (or buying so heavily into reactionary mythologies about why AI can be dangerous in industry that they bought the tech companies' false promises too and just thought it was a bad thing), this was entirely predictable. Unfortunately for everyone in the blast radius, common sense has never been an executive's strong suit when so much money is on the line.

Much like CGI before it, what we have here is a whole new medium that is seldom being treated as a new medium with its own unique strengths, but more often being used as a replacement for more expensive labor, no matter how bad the result may be - nor, for that matter, how unjust it may be that the labor is so much cheaper.

And it's all because of timing. It's all because it came about in the perfect moment to look like a life raft in a moment of late-stage capitalist panic. Any port in a storm, after all - even if that port is a non-Euclidean labyrinth of soggy, rotten botshit garbage.

Any port in a storm, right? ...right?

All images generated using Simple Stable, under the Code of Ethics of Are We Art Yet?

[bobbole]

Clark told Gizmodo that the group now gets more "done in less than a day, less than an hour what they were taking a week to produce. [...] In the area of efficiency, it made sense to get rid of people."

[emotionalsupportgoblin420]

Edit: so guess who fucked up? Apparently, it's much worse than I thought. SPS has mentioned the possibility of collabing with Grok to make character AIs! Now, in my defense, in every Tumblr post I read on the situation, all the posters said was "SPS is using AI so I'm boycotting" and failed to elaborate and ya girl doesn't have Twitter. Also, Google misinformed me. Thanks Google. So anyways, Imma leave this post up as a testament to my ability to fuck up and Imma join in the Blush Blush boycott. Which also means @kitsune-lover will be on hiatus till further notice. If anyone could let me know of any updates, that would be much appreciated.

Special shout out to @blushblushbear for correcting and informing me on the situation. Absolute legend 💖

Ignore all below:

So apparently SPS is using AI for their game. When I first heard this I was worried they were using AI art or voice acting but they just using AI for game optimization and to aid in monetization. From my understanding, they're merely using AI as a tool to help make they're game run smoother. As someone with a computer major brother, this isn't that bad. It's not replacing computer programming. Merely adding in the programming process. In my opinion, they are only using AI as a tool, as they should. I think so many people are hearing the word "AI" and are assuming it's some horrible, human replacing, Duolingo type situation. We've been so trained by media and corporations misusing AI that we just assume all use of AI is bad when it's not. AI should only be used as a helpful tool. Not a replacement of human work. And that's what SPS is doing. Something else people need to understand AI isn't going anywhere and it's perfectly fine as a tool. So, I will still be supporting SPS and posting Blush Blush content. If they ever start replacing people with AI, then I will jump ship.

[fairwish]

I’m the anon who mentioned the ant thing. I didn’t mean to be condescending, I just have trouble getting intentions across through text. I saw other tumblers who want to be informed if they reblog ai, so I just thought you may want to know. Sorry for coming across as condescending. If you have advice for getting my point across better, I would really appreciate it. I’ve had this problem for a while and would appreciate any help that you could offer.

And I am not the pussy anon you mentioned. I don’t know how to make that clear, however.

Okay, so it's AI. What now? What do you expect me to do about it?😩😟 Do you want me to take it down? That wouldn't really help, since people have already seen it and reblogged.

I honestly thought that those ants were floating, because maybe there's wind or the crow is shaking them off🤷🏽 And I don't know much about crows, as I made it obvious in the initial post. So why would you expect me to know what it wings are supposed to look like?

It's getting really hard to spot AI, because it's progressing so quickly. And there's nothing that any of us can do about it, except refrain from using it ourselves.

Maybe you were trying to help, but honestly, if I can't see that it's AI (I always do my best to check) and I'm not the one who generated it, I don't really care. Maybe other people said that they want people to tell if they accidentally reblog AI, but I never said that. So why would you assume that about me? That's really not the vibe🫤

I can't stop people from using AI, and neither can you. So, if you know someone doesn't support that shit, and you see them accidentally post that - unless they explicitly tell you to - don't say anything. Just let them be.

Like, it's so unnecessary, dude. Just let people have their fun. It's not that big of a deal🌸

Like, you could clearly see that I was having fun with the thing that I was doing - with my blissful ignorance. So then, having you be like "We'll, actuallyyy☝️🤓" kind of feels like you're just shitting on my parade. As if you're expecting to scrutinise every image I come across, more than I already do. If I fail at that every now and then, then I fail...whatever🤷🏽

Like, I was really non the wiser, dude. And now you ruined it for me. Because now I can't look at it the same way☹️Are you happy now?

Also, if you want to express yourself better, maybe use emojis idk😒😕

You also didn't need to send me this ask multiple times

@whitneysslut @jennzworld @tomiokagiyuufirstfan @rado-brisingr

[naralanis]

"If you're not using AI every day at your job, you are falling behind professionally."

I'm sorry, Steve, learn to save to PDF first and then come talk to me about how your AI insights are just sooo life-changing and how your AI procurement tool is just the best fucking thing since sliced bread.

I'm tired

[bi-the-wei]

[ask-the-commodore]

hello! I'm useless when it comes to technology and know literally nothing so I'm so sorry if any of the questions I ask are really dumb

But, I was wondering, as a Commodore 64, what is your opinion on ai, specifically gen ai?

Hello! No, this isn't dumb at all!! :]

Well, as you can see in my previous post, I have this thing about... Innovations that blossom humanity's creativity and the ability to CREATE. The human brain is fascinating, and they're capable of everything... And technologies like me are supposed to be tools and help this process. But we aren't supposed to interfere. Only let them create.

Generative AI makes me sad... Oh, they are capable of so much... Why are they letting the US create the only thing that makes them... An alive, creative, sentient being? :(

We're here to help you with the boring, processual tasks... Sorting data, understanding codes and giving you programs to work with, but don't let the accommodation of technology make you kill your creativity! You still need to paint! Write! Communicate! DO IT! CREATE!

I feel so sad seeing that we, that were made to help humans be even MORE human, are slowly letting them rot their abilities... :(

[mariana-oconnor]

I want the Cabin Pressure episode about this.

- New Scientist, 5th April 2025

[dambiex]

i saw a post i didnt like

[lovrboyx]

Original video by Drew Gooden obviously

[ghostieking]

hate being online these days and having to wonder if the image i got in front of me is goddamn real or not

[aboutaiart]

Know about AI in full detailed.

[hot-edits-of-the-ice-cold]

more like I will search the internet for hours trying to find the same actors in a different time/genre 😂

You will not use AI to get ideas for your story. You will lie on the floor and have wretched visions like god intended

[semperintrepida]

This is the worst timeline. (x)

[bixels]

As gen-AI becomes more normalized (Chappell Roan encouraging it, grifters on the rise, young artists using it), I wanna express how I will never turn to it because it fundamentally bores me to my core. There is no reason for me to want to use gen-AI because I will never want to give up my autonomy in creating art. I never want to become reliant on an inhuman object for expression, least of all if that object is created and controlled by tech companies. I draw not because I want a drawing but because I love the process of drawing. So even in a future where everyone’s accepted it, I’m never gonna sway on this.