#agree with op here>> ai art is not art

[scribeofmorpheus]

I hate how LLMs have made it very untrustworthy to regard what one comes across as genuine craft anymore. i know artists are struggling big time with scrapping. I even wrote a paper on how openai was scrapping ao3 based on their early story prompt structures reading like a lot of popular fanfics i'd read before.

i was actually so paranoid that i locked most of my fics on ao3. sometimes i roll back the lock when i work on a fic again, but i usually lock em back up again after a while. scrapping is abhorent and i hate how much ai has shifted digital art paradigms and is now seeping into fandom culture.

I will say that i do find the "nonsense description" portion of this post a bit hard to align with. I'll get into it below the cut. but this is purely discursive, I'm not condemning or abstaining (I'm on op's side here), I'm just pointing out some factoids of my own for perspective!

here it is:

""her nimble fingers worked with quiet precision" (ct. 1), "his grip firm but tender" (ct. 33), "her gown pooling around her like embers" (ct. 1)."

See, I write like this, becuase i was trained in poetry first and then moved on to prose later. i use imagery, i use atmospherics, i use sensation in place of actual telegraphed motion or action that one expects of an action alone--it flows better, sounds sweeter and sometimes, yes, nimble fingers can move with quiet precision (not quiet as in "sound" but as in "understated", as in "draws little attention to the movement"). Firm but tender is another of my favourites--juxtaposition, contrast between the outward seen and felt execution of the action and the internalised, more personal mode of emotion conveyed so as to angle how we broach the situation. "firm but tender" is assuring, it's safe. "firm and rough" is more edged, and since we're left with little assumption of the setting and intent of such action, we cannot tell if the action and the emotions align--if its sexual, is it also consensual? if it's violent, is it because of haste to act, fear, annoyance, etc, etc. now "pooling like embers" is odd. embers spark and bristle and fly and catch things on fire, they disperse and scatter, never hold a body of matter congealed enough to pool. pooling like unfurled flame from dragon's breath? yeah, now that works! especially if it's a magic setting.

all this to say, ai is making it exceeding harder to prove craft is genuine if you work outside structural modes one can fact check. if you try to be more experimental, there's high chance you'll end up like me, and chip away at rigid writing structure in order to form your own voice. repetition and favoured descriptions is also a known trait of writers. one of my fav fanfic writers back in the day used to love "hard" after a pause. like: "he slammed the door, hard." or "his kiss pressed deep into me, hard." and it was noticeable and i loved seeing they had a tell.

though, i do agree that one of the things that need the least repetition in fiction is hair colour. but even published books like to remind readers of physical traits id it's something the author is so beguiled by. poor writing, but writing none the less.

i did suspect something was off with TSATS because of how fast the updates rolled. because damn! 23k word update after a 13k word update with less than 48 hrs between? crazy if true. but alas, i don't think i have it in me to be disappointed if i go seeking and do indeed find a pattern that proves LLM usage.

but to all my fic writers that take like half a day to write 3 pages and the other half procrastinating, if you (like me) got notified of all the updates and wondered if you weren't "productive" enough, you are not making a product, these are labours of love, keep at it, at your own pace, with your own skill, the process is the process!

we need to talk about The Silence and The Song

as per my last post, i have received a lot of encouragement to go public with this, and the more disappointed people i have in my dms, the angrier i get. so i will.

the silence and the song is an ancient arlathan au DA fic on ao3 by luxannaslut, and it is partly, if not entirely, written by an ai. i have no wish to be involved in any kind of fandom drama or witch hunting or bullying, but as a writer myself there are few things that piss me off more than watching people steal the work of others because they can't be fucked to write. it's disrespectful to your fellow writers, it's disrespectful to your readers, and it's disrespectful to the authors of the works the ai is stealing from.

ai is a plague that has no business being in creative spaces and you must do better.

the writing pattern

there was something very odd and monotone about the sentence structure of tsats that i couldn't quite place, so i fed chatgpt a prompt along the lines of "two people in a fantasy novel hate each other, but they secretly desire one another, and they kiss", and the screenshots above are the results. the third one is an excerpt from chapter 40 of tsats. the writing pattern is identical and it doesn't seem like the "writer" has even bothered to pretend they wrote it. if you're going to use ai, at least be sneaky about it. you know, paraphrase a little.

nonsense descriptions

"her nimble fingers worked with quiet precision" (ct. 1), "his grip firm but tender" (ct. 33), "her gown pooling around her like embers" (ct. 1).

fingers don't make sound, so what does quiet precision mean? as opposed to what? her joints cracking with every movement? how is a grip firm but tender? what does that mean? since when do embers pool?

the entire fic is littered with these adjectives that contradict each other or just straight up do not make sense, because all an ai does is generate descriptive language with no understanding of what the words it's spitting out actually mean. i could spend hours picking out examples from the seven billion pages worth of text, but i quite frankly have better things to do and would simply challenge you to try getting through a chapter or two without noticing the pattern.

repetition at structure-level

all the scenes in this fic are described in pretty much the same way. they open with purple prose vomit of the surroundings; solas is standing somewhere looking "unreadable as ever"; ellana's fiery golden molten fire copper ember ginger red hair is flowing this and that way; there's some dialogue with whoever is present and it leaves ellana feeling different variations of "something she couldn't name". this is, once again, a blatantly obvious sign of ai. below is the result of me feeding chatgpt the line "write me a scene from a fantasy novel where a woman with red hair is sitting on the ground in a magical garden at night", and side by side with that is the opening scene of the fic. make your own judgement.

repetition at word-level

this one speaks for itself. we fucking get it. her dress is orange, her hair is red, mythal's presence is heavy in the room, solas looks unreadable, compassion is sitting on her head like a crown, solas' ears are betraying him and ellana's move with every thought she thinks. we get it. the issue here is that an ai remembers the info you feed it, but not necessarily the info it shits out. if it's being told to write scene after scene of an elven woman with a gown that looks like fire doing xyz, it's going to do so with no regard for how many times the reader has already been informed of these details.

lastly: the breakneck speed

359,6k words in four weeks by a person who allegedly is employed and married and hasn't pre-written anything? no. any writer will tell you that this simply isn't possible. it absolutely infuriates me to see how much praise this "writer" gets for posting up to three full chapters in a day without anyone calling bullshit. i am pulling out my hair, you guys.

why i'm not going to live and let live this one

perhaps i would be less angry if the fic was some silly bullshit court intrigue Y/A stuff, but this is a text that handles very heavy and triggering topics such as SA, coercion, domestic abuse, and other things of the same vein. to sit back and put your feet up while having a robot write these extremely sensitive and very real human experiences with words it has stolen from texts written by actual persons is fucking heinous. the "writer" should be deeply ashamed of themselves and i'm sick and tired of watching people eat up their bs.

and on that note: the amount of people in my dm's telling me that they feel stupid and naive for not clocking this has infuriated me more than anything else. you're not foolish for this. being fed ai-generated bullshit is not what is supposed to happen on any creative platform and much less a fandom-centred one, so of course no one approaches a fic through that lens. fandom and fic writing is supposed to be about passion and the only person in this situation who needs to do better and change their behaviour is luxannaslut. polluting our creative spaces, wasting the time of your readers, and minimising the effort of actual writers who are working hard to provide content for us all to share and enjoy is vile and so, so lazy. i beg of you: do better.

[pass1onepr1ncess]

I Need Help (Updated)

I'm gonna make another post about this because I am ever so slightly desperate!

I gave updates in the reblogs of my original post but I figured I'd explain everything upfront as well. When I initially posted about this I was still employed but my physical health was getting worse because of hEDS and I knew I'd likely need to quit soon. Luckily (/sarcastic) my bosses agreed with me and fired me shortly after that post was made! Many of my coworkers- including ones that have worked there for years- have been saying that the reasons they gave for my termination were bullshit and that it was likely an excuse to fire me because I needed to use a cane to get around the store in front of customers, which I guess was a bad image for them. It also should be noted that I was very good at my job both in the words of coworkers and the higher ups that were above the store ops that fired me in the first place.

Nevertheless, I don't have a job currently and haven't for about 2 months now. I've been looking everywhere for another job so I can have money for rent, groceries, and my two cats. However, despite having gone to many interviews at this point it's been a bust. I am also restricted by the fact that I cannot walk or stand for long periods of time without being in excruciating pain and risk my health worsening even more, and unfortunately that automatically disqualifies me from a lot of the job market.

Until I get hired on somewhere else, I need help. I have less than $100 in my account currently and even that's dwindling fast. I have a gofundme for any kind souls who can donate, but if it means anything I would be far more comfortable with art commissions! I was raised to not accept help without doing something in return, and while I am trying to break from that I would be far happier making art for you if you'd be so kind to commission me!! Here are some examples of my art to persuade you!!!

And here are my refs!!!!

Headshot

Sketch - $3 Lineart - $5 Flat Colors - $10 Shaded - $15 Full Render w Background - $20

Bust

Sketch - #5 Lineart - $15 Flat Colors - $20 Shaded - $25 Full Render w Background - $35

Thigh Up

Sketch - $15 Lineart - $20 Flat Colors - $25 Shaded - $30 Full Render w Background - $40

Full Body

Sketch - $20 Lineart - $25 Flat Colors - $30 Shaded - $45 Full Render w Background - $55

Additional characters/models +50% of original price

I can't draw furries, anthros, or mechs at the moment and I'm sorry about that, but I'm going to keep practicing in my spare time to add those to the roster! In the meantime, I am willing to ship art and NSFW to an extent! However, I reserve the right to refuse my services to anyone! Additionally, I forbid anyone from using my art to train any AI whatsoever.

If you'd rather just donate to the fundraiser, anonymously or otherwise, here it is!

[olderthannetfic]

https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/olderthannetfic/770240173023838208

Wow, I am not this anon but I was surprised by the p unanimous pushback, at least when I first saw the comments. I interpreted reupload here in this context as something more public than a dm, like something Google findable, but still effectively an interaction, so still technically peer to peer in the first place, and preservation not theft minded. Not like, a wattpad reupload? Like answering an ask or post on the deleted fic sub for help finding a fic with an archive link/cache link, or posting a google drive link? Idk if I’m using the right terminology for any of this now.

I’m a bit of a fic hoarder and seek out deleted things pretty often, and do show up in spaces like the aforementioned, hat in hand, when there’s stuff I can’t find, and also privately point people to where they can find deleted fics. I didn’t consider this kind of thing reupload, which I would prev had said I’m against (unless you’re the original author), but it did feel to me like it was what op was describing, on the other hand if it /is/ considered reupload, I also am pro this specific sort… like are these uncharitable interpretations of the ask, bc op was verbally telegraphing ‘very controversial take’ out the gate? Have I been secretly an fandom badguy all along and I didn’t know it??

Maybe I’m over correcting and being too generous in my read because I feel like they’re doing a bad job at, ultimately, saying something I agree with, but I also don’t think saying that the internet is written in ink is and individual human beings who like your art might preserve it or interact with it in way you don’t like once it’s public = AI scraping is fair enough, and ultimately on you, and so are sex crimes 😭, even if there were unfortch parallels in how this sentiment was conveyed... if you don’t want [undesirable outcome] don’t [preventative choice] is a standard format that can be used for good AND evil I think. I swear to god I’m not op even though it highkey sounds like I am how I’m going to bat

--

Wayback machine links and privately linking someone when they make a "Can anyone find X?" post are mostly accepted, in my experience. Posting a public link on that same post that isn't the wayback machine is sometimes okay with people, but it varies.

Anon was here to stir shit.

[willothewispwisteriadawn]

Rant about how the internet discusses AI

Im taking a nuanced position on this. On one hand, I’m wary of AI. It needs human work to function; this makes generative AI thievery. AI art and writing is also low-quality compared to a talented human artist/writer. Adjusting our standards to AI work will just lower standards. It’s the issue of cheaply made furniture; handmade items from the past are better. And I don’t want to become comfortable with lower standards of art too. Finally, AI is an option being eyed to cheat actors (by demanding to use their images and voices indefinitely).

However, I am also bothered by the extreme lack of nuance, sheep-like attitudes, and sanctioned unnecessary rudeness around this topic. I’ve seen this issue particularly on Reddit (using the Until Dawn sub as an example). There was a post a bit back where a person showed a funny answer to something asked to ChatGPT. One response was insisting AI was stealing from artists. OP was downvoted for pointing out the prompt was just text. No art was generated. OP was literally right about the individual point but this was ignored/downvoted in favor of just hissing at the use of ChatGPT.

A recent post was a speculation post about an actor. I didn’t particularly agree with all the points and one thing OP admitted asking ChatGPT for clarification on didn’t seem correct. There were respectful comments saying they thought the AI answer was wrong for xyz reasons. But some comments amounted to just “you’re stupid” or mockery over this one sentence on an eight paragraph analysis. It was just mean and unproductive and becoming people coming out of the woodwork, having never engaged with this sub, dog-piling over this one detail. Someone even claimed the OP used CharGPT to generate the entire essay which clearly wasn’t true.

It’s one of those things I know I’ll get downvoted mindlessly for ever addressing, and I just bit the bullet and addressed it anyway: Can we acknowledge that the use of ChatGPT is not a reason to treat people like garbage instead of engaging in good-faith debate? And can we actually educate ourselves about AI and be honest about what people did with it instead of regurgitating stock talking points like “you stole from an artist” or “you generated a wall of text” to someone who clearly didn’t do that? I should not be getting downvoted for pointing out that an accusation is clearly false. Hate AI or like it, objective facts exist.

My final issue here is that people like this become low hanging fruits for pro-AI people who paint everyone who objects to generative AI as just a bunch of luddites. They cite these people who are just irrationally angry and wrong as the opposing side in order to paint everyone who takes thoughtful issue with AI as ill-informed and emotional.

TL;DR: AI is problematic but engaging in objectively ill-informed and rude behavior over it is also problematic. And people get away with it by dog-piling to drown good points, letting people fester with this good points and argue all Anti-AI people are simply technophobes. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

[givrally]

You can't say "Everything humans make is art" right after a whole tirade about how AI isn't art.

Hi op here

I CAN actually.

The machine made to make "AI" is art. Its engineering+programming. Which are crafts and a highly difficult ones.

What that machine makes however is NOT art. Its not even true artificial intelligence. Its just a bunch of stolen work cut up and pieced back together using complicated programming. What is produced is not art. What made it however is. Its a feat of accomplishment that we can get a machine to do that kind of stuff

But what it makes is not art.

Feel like @snitchanon would have a field day with all this.

So Photoshop itself is art, but works done in photoshop aren't art ? It's engineering and programming, but what it makes is not art. It's just clicking buttons and dragging the mouse until you get what you want.

As for true AI, yeah, I actually agree with you in no small part. What we call "AI" right now is nowhere close to having any kind of intelligence, we're basically making a very complicated math function with many parameters and tweaking it until it spits out the right output. There's very little explainability (it's a black box for the most part, we don't know what goes on inside or why this particular input), and every year there's a paper titled something like "We Fucked Up : How we evaluate [field of deep learning] is flawed and gives the illusion of progress".

As for the ethical issues with using stolen works, yeah, I'm completely with you, that's a dealbreaker for me, and unlearning (=getting from a model trained on a dataset to a model trained on a dataset w/o some data, without having to retrain everything, but being 100% sure the excluded data doesn't leave a single trace) is too new as a subject of research to even be usable for the next few years, so for me, AI Art generators are a big no-no.

(Also, the online ones take as much of your personal data as they can, so I'd avoid those like the plague)

HOWEVER, what "AI" image generation does isn't to cut up stolen work and put it back together, that's a myth. I don't know how this started but I've heard that said like three or four times already, it's way too specific a definition to have evolved independently so there must be a Youtuber out there to blame.

It's like saying Photoshop just takes pixels from stolen works and weaves them in the right order to make a new image. That's technically true, but it's a stupid definition that gives Photoshop way more credit than it's due. Likewise, AI image generators don't look through a database to find the right image, cut out the part they like, and add it to their final product. Otherwise, why do you think AI art would have all those problems with hands, buildings, etc... ? There can't be that many people out there drawing weird 7 fingered hands, I know some people have trouble drawing hands but not to that extent.

What they do instead (or rather what they did, because I don't know enough about the newest diffusion models to explain them in an intuitive way), is deconvolutions, basically "reversing" the operation (convolutions) that takes in a grid of numbers (image) and reduces it to a small list of numbers. With deconvolutions, you give it a small list of numbers, at random, and it slowly unravels that into an image. Without tweaking the thousands or millions of parameters, you're gonna end up with random noise as an image.

To "train" those, what you do is you pair it with another "AI", called a discriminator, that will do convolutions instead to try and guess whether the image is real or made by the generator. The generator will learn to fool the discriminator and the discriminator will try to find the flaws in the generator.

Think Youtube vs AdBlock. Adblockers are the discriminator and Youtube is the generator. Youtube puts out new ads and pop-ups that don't trigger ad blockers, and ad blockers in return fix those flaws and block the ads. After a month of fighting, it turns out ad blockers have become so good that other websites have a lot of trouble getting ads past them. You've "trained" ad blockers.

The most important thing to note is that the training data isn't kept in storage by the models, both in the adblock example and in AI image generators. It doesn't pick and choose parts to use, it's just that the millions of tiny parameters were modified thanks to the training data. You can sometimes see parts of the training data shine through, though. That's called overfitting, and it's very bad !

In the middle, the model won't remember every O and X out there. It drew a curve that roughly separates the two, and depending on where a new point falls compared to that curve, it can guess if it's an O or an X without having access to the original data. However, in the example on the right, even if you remove all the O and X marks, you can still make out the individual points and guess that those holes mean an X was in there. The model cannot generalize past what it's seen, and if there's ten thousand variables instead of just two, that means you could change a single one slightly and get nonsense results. The model simply hasn't learned correctly. For image generation, that means parts of the training data can sometimes shine through, which is probably how the "cut up and piece back stolen images" myth came to be.

The reason I don't like to use AI image generators is twofold : 1. Right now, all the models out there have or are likely to have seen stolen data in their training dataset. In the state of AI right now, I really don't believe any model out there is free of overfitting, so parts of that will shine through. 2. Even if there's no overfitting, I don't think it's very ethical at all. (And 3. the quality just isn't there and I'd rather commission an artist)

HOWEVER, that doesn't mean I agree with you guys' new luddite movement. "Everything humans make is art except when they use AI" is not a good argument, just like "It's not art because you didn't move the pixels yourself" or "AI cuts up and pieces back stolen images". The first two give "I piss in Duchamp's fountain uncritically" vibes, and the last one gives "Don Quixote fighting windmills" vibes.

[umi-teardrop]

Hey um I wanted to let u know that I think OP was actually upset about u using generative AI. The response you gave seemed to imply you think it's just a roleplay thing, and I have autism so I totally get missing social cues, but the tags were about how old is anti generative AI and AI chatbots and this blog isn't a safe space for them.

I agree with OP that generative AI is bad and that using chatbots is also bad, but I also know that a lot of people don't seem to realize that the war of artists against AI isn't just image creation, and I recognized that there might be some misunderstanding here, so I wanted to send you a message :3

I write fanfiction and recently the AO3 database was scrapped, so all my work was stolen. News article writers and writers and bloggers from all over the Web face the same problem, and just like how image generation steals art from people who make images, AI chatbots for both roleplay and answering questions use this theft to function. It is a cornerstone of how ALL generative AI works, regardless of if it's making images, writing, music, or something else. If a computer is "making" something, anything regardless of medium, it's really just blending up other people's stuff and spitting the plagarized smoothie back at you.

I hope this explanation helped and I hope you have a nice day !!! /Genuine /lighthearted /not mad

Ahhh ı see well well that was something ı didn’t know… ı thought c.ai was just a place to have fun and role play with stories of other people ım so sorry @tommyssupercoolblog that your work has been stolen from you and ım sorry for @mcsiggy if ı made her feel uncomfortable for me c.ai is a place ı can have fun and let all my pent up stress down with characters even if they are not real ı did not know any plagiarism was going ı though the problem was that Ai art and music weren’t that liked because it had no soul no real creativity to it…but ı thought at least chat box was a bit different just generating stuff based on what you like and ı left it at that without questioning more…now ı would like to apologize for all those content creators content was stolen and plagiarised by Aİ but just to let anyone know that doesn’t mean ıll quit c.ai for me c.ai is really a comfort app to use my creativity and more but ı will try to be more considerate and not to mention c.ai or joke about it in any future posts @mcsiggy ım really sorry again for making you feel uncomfortable ı really like your Greek mythology content and the way you handle the characters and ı always find the idea of “Hera getting addicted to C.ai version of Zeus and the others have to stop her/ it annoying to everyone” and ı have no idea all of this was going on ı really am sorry for everyone’s work being stolen by Ai

[damnfandomproblems]

https://www.tumblr.com/damnfandomproblems/754655237101453312/5168-you-made-some-good-points-but-the-tone-of?source=share

I do not care if you think i sound angry or swear too much. I also dont care for you attitude about it making you seem like you think yourself superior for not saying "fuck". You can shove your passive aggressiveness back up your ass where you pulled out from.

Now. I agree about the misunderstanding about what "AI" is, however I was not going to go on a long and complicated tangent about the differences and misunderstandings in a problem venting blog like this. (To the guy/gal that said "OP sounds like a person who hears someone programming an NPC and immediately screams “pick up a pen” at them for that" fuck off, if you could read you would be able to determine what kind of "AI" and use for it im talking about.)

Most of that last paragraph could have been simplified but since you're so hung up on me swearing, I'm gonna not put a lot of effort into rereading it, and just go for what i obviously disagree with.

"What if the options for someone are either using it or not having art for something? What about someone's personal roleplay that they never post anywhere?"

1. Fuckin just dont use it? This is assuming that said hypothetical person is incapable of saving up to commission an artist. Which in this economy can be understandable for those that live paycheck to paycheck. I would argue however, as someone who lives paycheck to paycheck, that they have better priorities than having a painting on their wall or on their computer. What "something" could be so important that you "need" artwork for? And don't mix up "want" and "need" here. I wanna know what is so essential to a person living that they need artwork for it.

2. The same chat bot one person uses for "personal roleplay they never post" is used by hundreds of others for online roleplay, generating responses to real people, or generating fics to post. People have gotten by long enough without chat bots. They do not need them. It is a greedy and lazy want, and people act like spoiled children over the thought of their toy that does everything for them being taken away. This doesn't even mention the resources needed just to generate these responses.

Fandom is a hobby. You know whats also a hobby? Pottery, wood working, glass making, smithing ect.

Machines can automate a lot of that work for you. Hell most of the mugs in your cup board are probably made by a machine. Made perfectly identical to eachother that you bought at walmart or something. Designed by a human but still made by a machine. Same with pins and charms and stickers you find of etsy. Designed by humans made by machines.

You can't automate the design process. That's why things you buy in store or online designed by a human can still be considered art, are still appreciated by people as art and are bought to support the artist. Consensual copies of the original designed/made by a human maybe but still better than stolen work chopped up and put together by a machine.

The thing about fandom is that it has always been about art and the artists. Whether you write, sing, paint, or what have you. You cannot automate the process of making something original. You cannot automate the process of appreciating something. A machine cannot appreciate the show you love. Producing generated responses to a roleplay you are in just shows how little you value someone elses effort they put into their writing. People who think you can automate art don't view art as art. They view it as content to consume. Entertainment for them.

Its a greedy and selfish desire that drives people to use "AI" to automate content for them to consume. They don't want human connection. They want entertainment and they want the easiest way of obtaining it. Its lazy and soulless. And I'm sick of it.

Posting as a response to a previous ask.

[newkiqx]

Nearly every single modern computer utilizes cobalt, a mineral whose supply chain is so heavily dominated by slave labor that it's practically impossible to ethically source. Ignoring AI, it is even ethical to do digital art at all? The production of a drawing tablet is not a victimless crime.

I feel you when you want to reduce this to something as simple as a comparison. But bear with me (or alternatively, I put a tl;dr/conclusion at the end).

Much of capitalism is unethical - yes. I agree with this point completely. It's impossible to completely avoid unethical consumption in the world we live in. But it's good to be thoughtful of it and I think businesses and governments responsible for bad practice should be held accountable. Sadly I can't change the world on my own in any meaningful way, but i'll do my part where I can & vote people into power that care about this too.

Taking your comparison for a second, I feel like the art project of that OP was asking a much more direct "I bought cobalt I didn't need and then turned into a children's toy, could this be art?". And my reply was basically yeah sure it could be art, but was it worth it? My point is that I'm not sure on that last part, and leaning towards a 'no'. They specifically sourced it unethically and made that the center piece, which is distinct from the utilitarian nature of consumer electronics we need to get through our lives. Unethical sourcing of art can be a goal or statement (like here cw dead pets) but will then of course still be a part of it. I don't think ethics were considered for the post we're discussing though and it instead only discussed the very unproductive 'is it art' discourse. This, of course, matters about as much as my "dick" being objectively "long" or not.

Maybe getting a little sidetracked, but I also want to mention that cobalt is an extremely useful metal, whereas AI.. well.. i've mentioned the very human cost of mturk and the wholesale theft of the entire internet. There's also:

the power required

the jobs in art it threatens and therefore the skilled labor we stand to lose if we're not careful

the inevitable price hike and betrayal of the public as soon as alternatives are out competed (this will happen)

the risks of biases (racism, ableism, sexism) in an opaque weighted system like AI & the fact we cannot deal with this except for slapping some extra prompts in front

AI poisoning our actual collective knowledge with untrue shit. Recent cases in point being the hilarious fake mouse dick science being published and the ai generated inaccurate servals on google, but there's a lot more going on

the risks of companies and people in power using AI to more efficiently screw everybody over and hide behind 'machine told me so' accountability loopholes

the risks of AI being used in all sorts of malinformed use cases

But what are the gains? What do we stand to win? Call me cynical, but we already had an infinite amount of pictures at our fingertips, as well as all the mediocre writing you could ever want (but actually much better because someone loved writing it). I feel like all these general AI's are good for is filling the pockets of some very rich robber barons and grifters, as well as diluting everything that's beautiful and true in the world.

Quick sidenote - Some specialist AI have genuinely already improved the world, like with medical screenings, but even then it's hard to really call it a win because reverse engineering the reasoning of an AI is so fucking hard. And again, they're a slippery slope with insurance companies wanting a piece of that pie badly, just so they can apply their 'justified' penalties to people not even sick yet.

tl/dr; So in conclusion, no, I don't think your comparison holds up. I agree that it sucks that so much of necessary consumption is unethical in ways we can't easily fix as consumers. But one thing bad does not equate other thing good. If anything, it should inspire you to do better where you can make a difference and hold the ones responsible for the exploitation in this world accountable.

Don't let it eat you up though. I'm not even saying you can't use it for inspiration ever. But any art based on these generated pictures cannot be divorced from the ugly side we'd rather not see: the underpaid army of technically not slaves and the wholesale theft of everything.

also sorry but i couldn't not include this (source: matt bors)

[blanketforcas]

Genuinely no hate, but I'm curious about your "morality contest" post in relation to that AI destiel kiss, considering you've called out people before for posting/reblogging AI art. What's the distinction that makes someone posting bizarre-looking AI stills of Dean and Cas unethical and weird, versus you reblogging that bizarre-looking video of Dean and Cas kissing? If someone made that in a program like Blender, we all win and we all rejoice. But having AI do it is just as shady as anything else AI does. Right? Am I missing something here?

hi! gonna take this in good faith. while i'll always (at least for now with how it works/its impact and it not being regulated) be against gen AI, when i called out AI art in the past, it was always about the fact that they weren't transparent about it being AI. i'll always find it icky in and of itself and i'll side-eye it, as i also do the video btw, but the bigger issue for me (from the pov of someone who is part of an online community) is when people try to hide the fact that it's AI.

the op of this video was honest about it, it's in the video itself. and it being a destiel kiss (which i'd personally never seen like this as part of the confession scene) evoked a strong emotion in me (watching it from afar/blurry eyed, cause i agree manip folks do it better) as clearly it did for many people. i can have principles and a moral code that i try to live by best as i can, but i can still get swept up in a fandom moment.

i also don't think this particular one takes away from real artists, it's doing something different entirely. it has a different aim, and for most people it is a bit uncanny. which, to get the opposite feeling, most fans do still seek out real art. so i don't think people reblogging this is gonna create some kind of slippery slope effect. if you look in the tags you can see most people struggle with this inner conflict, so i don't fear that just yet

[implausiblyjosh]

If the best argument for “I shouldn’t have to think critically about what messages I yes-and or where they come from, even when the come from abusers trying to make their abuses seem like no big deal” seems to be “saying my posts are bad is actually like yelling at food service workers”, you've lost. You're done. You're just trying to make sure people are mad anywhere else but in your direction, and you're trying to rile up your followers.

I'm sorry, but txttle/tale was "yes and"ing a post that was pretty explicit in saying that you need to start supporting queer people who are into "ageplay or cnc or incest shipping" because any objection to it means you're not pro-kink for having any set of standards that doesn't align with what some random user thinks about kink. The "yes and" from txttle/tale was to add "your standards are too high for people who are not cis girls, and you should care about actual abuses instead". On it's face both posts are bad, but then when the OP is revealed to be an abuser, that definitely throws the "you should care about actual abuses" part into question, right?

The criticisms of txttle/tale are incredibly clear here. The posts were bad on their face, and are made worse because of who the OP is, but even if the OP wasn't an abuser they're still bad posts. This is why I keep reblogging my posts about That Eightpoint Mod and people's reactions, it's incredibly similar!

For my money, I would say that the "care about actual abuses" line from txttle/tale is made worse in retrospect! If I actually cared about the abuses, I would not go nuclear over the idea that someone pointed out I reblogged and "yes and"ed a post from an abuser. I would not be riling up my followers to harass some account because they pointed out that I agreed with an abuser and their post that was almost directly tied to trying to provide cover for their abuses.

Unapologetically racist, pro-ai art, AND trying to get someone harassed over your bad posts? Get it together.

[tempesttz]

unnecessary rant about an

unnecessary (but very odd) debate

i know this is not my usual post but tumblr just suggested me another account (as it does), so i went to check them out. openly endogenic, wonderful. inclusive, check. "if i block you, you're probably not inclusive enough." sure? then i scrolled down a bit more, and... tw: mentions of discourse, nazis, the holocaust, and ai art. i'm also just not very nice, so tw for that too.

".....ai art is still art and arguing otherwise is spreading nazi bullshit regardless of if you personally like it or not...." ....what? at this point i'm thinking okay, op has no clue what a nazi is or something. right? right??? there was a link, so i, an unwitting fool looking for more elaboration on this take, clicked it.

"blocked a long time follower because they were being reactionary. here is your reminder that regardless of your stance on copyright, as soon as you start regurgitating that ai art isn't art, you are spreding the rhetoric authoritarianism. you are being reactionary and conservative. in fact, you are literally spreading nazi shit. read up if you have the spoons for it: link here. the focus should be on mitigating harm to those more directly impacted, not on trying to erase the art now exist.s not on ai arts legitimacy as art." i'm not going to just sit here and say "oh wow weird take, point and laugh guys." that would be weird and frankly no better than places like r/fdc and r/systemscringe. so instead, we're gonna break this down: first off: what is degenerate art? well, let's check their wikipedia link.

"Degenerate art (German: Entartete Kunst) was a term adopted in the 1920s by the Nazi Party in Germany to describe modern art. During the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler, German modernist art, including many works of internationally renowned artists, was removed from state-owned museums and banned in Nazi Germany on the grounds that such art was an "insult to German feeling", un-German, Freemasonic, Jewish, or Communist in nature. Those identified as degenerate artists were subjected to sanctions that included being dismissed from teaching positions, being forbidden to exhibit or to sell their art, and in some cases being forbidden to produce art." okay, so op is claiming that dislike of ai art is comparable to the suppressing and banning of large amounts of art in nazi germany. which is a wild take. but why is it wild? 1. ai generators clearly do not experience much suppression or banning in places considering that they are an active threat to artists. 2. the main issue with ai image generation is that it is stealing from actual artists to create their images and putting people who have trained for years to hone their skills at risk of losing their jobs. this diminishes the amount of artists who will actually pursue a career in that field, thereby reducing the amount of actual artists and directly harming the art community. 3. a lot of people will lie about being ai "artists," attempting to claim the work as actual art. 4. the concept of comparing something like this to the holocaust in general is just... wildly insensitive, frankly. this should be common sense, but there seems to be a distinct lack of it here anyways. 5. people are allowed to have opinions? you can think ai art is a valid form of art. i'll think you're weird, but that's a valid opinion. some people don't think certain genres of music are art. some people don't think certain kinds of art should be considered art. for example, those pendulum paintings that were everywhere, and might still be everywhere. i saw a lot of discourse about those. some people did not consider them to be art, or at least not on par with things like large, dedicated paintings. does that make the people who have that opinion nazis? .....no????? there isn't a moral to this post. it probably shouldn't exist. i just saw this and needed to rant, and decided to make you all my unwitting victims, lol. if you agree with op, then... i don't know, have a nice day? maybe stop conflating something like ai art (which is basically inconsequential unless you are in a community it effects or witnessing a downgrade of media quality due to its usage in production) to the holocaust (one of if not the worst historical event to this day in history)? okay wait, i have a moral! you can dislike things or have an opinion without it having to be taken to the total extreme. for anyone who read through this entire thing, thank you for sticking around! have a cookie. 🍪

[fischotterkunst]

I’m very aware I’m not the intended audience of this post (rather, I’m in the group expected to agree and further the point by othering the subject of this claim) but this is so fucking pretentious and a huge part of the reason many people actually hate modern art. Having a BFA myself, i studied and thoroughly understand modern art, and that understanding also gives me the insight to continue hating it specifically because of how elitist gallery culture, like that being displayed in this post, is. Attending an art gallery is expensive, acquiring the understanding of art is expensive, and the spaces surrounding galleries are deliberately othering and elitist because of the simple fact that “highbrow” art is funded by the wealthy (who in honesty don’t understand it either but use it as a display of wealth). we’re talking about the original NFTs, if you will. It’s inaccessible and that’s deliberate. These are assholes like the one above who disguise their own lack of understanding by using the age-old argument of “well, you’re just too stupid to understand”. Ok well, then, explain to me, “modern artists”, the majority of which are statistically cishet upperclass white men, just how unfair society is. Clearly my lack of appreciation for their situations is evidence that I’m stupid. Again, i have a BFA with emphasis on printmaking (“highbrow”) and illustration (“lowbrow”) art so this is coming from an objective, factual standpoint.

(Asterisk: obviously this is not including the works of artists like Ai Weiwei, Kiki Smith, and Louise Bourgeois, to name a few modern artists whose art i actually do enjoy because they actually carry messages of value rather than, say, Anish Kapoor or Banksy who actively participate in the exact form of privilege their imitations of “lowbrow” art steal from. Forgive me for not appreciating your PETA-sponsored van of shredded plush toys claiming to be pro-animal rights while one of your other exhibitions involved coating an elephant in toxic paint and subjecting it to severe distress for a shallow pun. I guess I’m too stupid to see the nuance there.)

Also, one can understand something and still dislike the aesthetic. A lot of modern art uses inorganic colors and shapes that, because they are not found in nature, tend to appeal less to the human eye for purely psychological reasons. That doesnt even mean one necessarily thinks its “bad” art, and it certainly doesn’t indicate a lack of education. It’s a matter of personal taste.

I did check out the OP’s blog to gain some context before posting this and to my surprise (sarcasm) it’s full of closed-minded arguments against people disagreeing that do nothing but further cement the points i’m making here. The original context is in defense of gallery culture and elitism and accepting zero rebuttal in favor of repeating the “no youre stupid and im better than you” so. One of those great examples of someone trying to punch down and acting childish when offered an intelligent response.

[elfanonymous]

what kind of fucking hot take is “disliking ai art/writing is fascist because (insert rightwing blogger) said they didnt like it either” like hello????? HELLO?!????? im not fucking exaggerating this is the post someone has just reblogged onto my dash I WISH I WAS EXAGGERATING!!!!!!! explain to me how *checks notes* disagreeing with art theft…is a rightwing ideology? please I would love to hear your explanation beyond “everyone who disagrees with me must have some sinister ulterior motive” or “if one bad person agrees with a take than that take is automatically bad as well” PLEASE I genuinely cannot comprehend how we got HERE?? its. an opinion about a little fucking image generator?. I believe that people can identify as animals and you think that im a right winger because. I disagree with a little fucking image generator? not joking I checked the replys and ops response to someone was quite literally “umm agreeing with a fascist is bad no matter what” like ok elon fucking musk loves ai I guess your not so fucking great either?

[thedeviousdevilxx]

So some interesting discourse appeared on my Twitter dash!

Read more below

So this account I follow made the above comment on this AI generated image of Henry Cavill, and got me thinking does this apply to fanart as well?

I vehemently oppose AI generated content because it STEALS from real artists. AI generated art is NO GOOD. Period.

What fascinates me more is this argument about the content being presented here because I follow/seen/and known a LOT of fan artists who draw sexy fanarts of celebrities, or characters portrayed by actors that are fairly photo-realistic. An example, I’ve seen very sexy/nude fanart of Henry Cavill’s Geralt, where they draw his face to look exactly as Henry.

I read some posts underneath this with people sharing real legitimate concerns about AI being used maliciously on non-celebrities, like creating deepfake porn of real people who aren’t celebrities, and I totally agree that should be a concern, it already exists hence why I do not LIKE OR SUPPORT AI art period.

However if say this image of Henry was drawn by a real person (I’ve seen hyper realistic paintings, some mad talented folk out there!), would people be so up in arms like the OP was? What if it was tagged as Henry Cavill’s Superman in a sexy outfit? Would OP be as outraged or not? Does it or should it matter?

I honestly don’t wanna ask on Twitter if they’d feel differently if it was fanart made by a real person, would their opinion differ in any way, because on Twitter people are vicious and I don’t wanna be accused of asking in bad faith because folk love to sling that accusation around when people simply want or need some clarification or wish to have honest convo, Twitter ain’t it folks! lol

So what are folks thoughts on this?

[sirsparklepants]

Of course I agree with OP about literacy being incredibly important, but I have some quibbles about the above comment. If you wanted to say "Republicans in the US (all I can speak to) have long been decrying colleges and universities of hotbeds of liberal thought that will brainwash your kids", I would agree with you, but the overall narrative in the US is absolutely not "everyone should go into trades". Trades are still experiencing and have been experiencing a labor shortage. And a liberal arts education doesn't stop you from being in favor of AI adoption. In fact, higher socioeconomic status makes you more likely to be in favor. And a liberal arts education isn't in particular danger here, either. According to the department of education, immediate enrollment in a two or four year institution upon high school completion is not at a measurably different rate in 2022 than in 2012. In fact, immediate enrollment in a four year institution above a two year was higher in 2022 than 2012. If we're coming out in favor of literacy, especially literacy as a tool to fight propaganda and systems of oppression, it's important to back up the things we claim, imo.

📢📢📢

[tacobellebandit]

Saw a post that was like, the actual important part of the debate in AI use isn't/shouldn't be copyright or stealing, but consent, and personally I think framing it around consent is... a very weak argument.

Because people have differing beliefs on what level of explicit consent is needed for certain things. You could make the argument that, by posting something online, where anyone can just save, print out, trace, do anything with it short of reposting elsewhere (or posting a traced piece, but the tracing is not the infraction in that cast), then that is implicit consent to do anything up to transformative use of it, in which case the argument suddenly hinges on whether AI art is transformative enough. Which, basically, would just swing the debate around to square one.

I mean, personally I think it should be an opt-in thing, and consent may play some role in that, but to me it's more protection of the work artists put in, and throwing in consent into the argument makes the waters murkier rather than being a good line. Do you need consent to make fanfiction, fanart, etc? You're using the ideas and work someone else came up with. You know, fanfiction.net iirc had a list of authors and media that you couldn't post fanfic of because they specifically said not to. They are explicitly withholding consent for that but... I still wouldn't say it's wrong for people to make transformative content involving those works.

I also see a LOT of screenshots of tweets on here, and no way to see if consent was obtained before the reposting, and I see very little backlash when it's directly ripping from another person. News articles use screenshots of tweets too. Posting them on a public site seems to be implicit consent for this use.

Tbh the post also talked about ownership and theft as fake ideas, which, I mean, I agree that they're social constructs, but so is the concept of consent and morality, as well as money and gender and everything that makes up different cultures, so idk why those in particular would be considered fake. It's all fake, we've made up all of it. Language is entirely made up, too. That's really all an aside tho, like I agree with the idea that AI art is a problem and artists are being exploited, but I don't think consent is a good metric to use in arguments because it's not actually that clear a boundary. We'll just be arguing about the reasonable level of explicit vs. implicit consent (and I think unfortunately, that artists are the one who'll lose that debate, especially when this is something that must necessarily be regulated on a legal level, and artists generally aren't the ones with the money or power here)

idk anyway, I didn't want to reblog and argue with OP about it, just wanted to get my thoughts down. i don't think it really matters anyway, like i really don't think AI art is going anywhere no matter how people argue about it and all you can really do is 1. try and get some legislation passed to regulate it and 2. improve economic conditions for everyone so people don't fucking STARVE because suddenly art becomes unviable with the AI shit, in an ideal world art would come from the desire to create over the desire to not die under capitalism, regardless of whether it is something artists can make some money from or not