#ai discourse /

[therobotmonster]

Saw some of your posts about AI recently, but don't really know very much about you. I have two questions:

1. Are you an actual artist, or do you just do genAI?

2. If you are an actual artist, why do you use/support AI?

We're going to get into this in a minute, but yes, by what you'd likely use as a definition of 'actual artist', I am. I have a BFA in graphic design, a minor in art history, I've been working as a freelance artist either on the side or as my main hustle since 2001, and I've been making art since I was five. Multimedia, 3d modelling and sculpting, photography (in a darkroom type and digital), acrylic painting, illustration, writing, puppetsmithing, I'm a jack of many, many trades.

Because it's a potent force multiplier that lets me do things that I could not previous (as well as helping compensate for my increasingly arthritic joints) and because it's entirely keeping with the copyleft principles I've had since the 1990s. It's just plain interesting and fun. And I had my fill of moral panics in the 1980s.

This is gonna be a long one, enjoy a song while you read.

I've gone over all this many times before, (for full reading, here's the #AI Discourse tag on my AI blog) but the short version is that I agree with the Electronic Frontier Foundation's position on AI art.

To demonstrate, we've got some of my non-AI photobash work, and some of my AI-work of the same type. Both were made using many, many public domain images broken down to B&W lines, scaled, reinked, normalized and colored.

On the left, is a comic made with specific panels from comics that have had their copyrights expire (back when that could happen), on the right, a comic made with about 35 individual dall-E 3 gens. The techniques are the same, the only difference is the source of the pubic domain images.

No one debates whether what I've done on the left is art, yet somehow the one on the right is a problem for some people. Yet I have vastly more control over the latter than the former.

And it's hard to get more transformative than 'broke down into math and blended with literally millions of other math formulas in order to make a completely new image" Replace 'math' with 'memory' and you have how all human creativity works.

Moving to covers, one of my parody deepdream-adjusted comics, and a reinked-recolored AI one on the right. The one on the left no one had a single problem with, but Bruce Wayne and Jessica Fletcher are screencaps, the Specter is a sales photo of a statue with a copy of 1989 Ted Dansen's face, and I'm using direct DC trade dress. Crickets.

On the right, no actual images by humans are used (outside the barcode, comics code authority emblem, and the 30 cent mark.) Same techniques, same situation. Very different reaction.

I also was a young artist in the 90s when Disney and the RIAA bribed and lied their way into extending copyright to its current ridiculous 120 year term, and I recognize what's happening with the anti-AI movement.

The exact same fear-mongering was used to get small artists to rally their congressmen against their own self-interest, and that's what the Copyright alliance is doing now.

Copyright does not help the small artist. It's also a relatively new invention, one that would be baffling to humans through most of history. You can't own art. Not even the people who make it. You can own a canvass or a carved rock or a book, but you don't own the art itself because you can't own feelings or ideas.

Copyright is a limited patent on specific expressions intended (supposedly) to encourage production, a limitation on the business use of art. The arguments levied against AI would kill fanfic, fanart, pastiche, collage, and more.

This isn't a bug, it's a feature, because...

The anti-AI side isn't actually anti-AI, they're pro-regulatory-capture-of-AI-by-Megacorporations. The copyright anti-AI argument conveniently leaves it open for Disney, Warner Bros, Nintendo, Sony, the RIAA, all to make their own AI systems to lower their production costs, because they own more than enough material to make powerful datasets.

They get it, you don't, worst of all possible worlds.

Now, at the start I mentioned that we'd get into the "actual artist" situation. All those people making bog standard waifu-pics with AI? They're also making art. Kids using a spirograph make art. Duchamp's fountain is art. And people who make art are artists.

But more than that "if you're an actual artist why do you use AI?" is an interesting question, because if more people actually used the tech and saw how it works, you'd see a lot less people against it. Most of the anti-AI talking points are just factually incorrect or greatly misrepresent the situation, but nobody is gonna learn that if even using it is treated as a transgress worthy of 'fair game' treatment.

Funny how that works out.

To close out, enjoy one of my music videos, made from dozens of clips made using reference images made with dozens of heavily modified gens that I totally could have made the hard way, except for the lack of 5 million dollars and access to Geena Davis and Ron Ely circa 1982:

[reachartwork]

Gee I Wonder Who Has Been Screaming Shit Like This Already From The Rooftops Hmm?

[dominaexmachina]

Love the passion. But let’s break this down, shall we?

1. You say “art gets prompted.”

I don’t think you understand what prompting means. Prompting isn’t “downloading someone’s work” — it’s text input. Models don’t fetch art like Google Images. They generate based on abstracted patterns, not pixel theft.

2. You mention Miyazaki.

Yes, he called one specific AI animation “an insult to life” — because it depicted a grotesque, malformed humanoid writhing in pain. His reaction was about the concept, not AI itself. He’s also famously critical of CG and even some forms of 3D. Should the entire industry stop using those too?

3. Let’s talk about how learning works.

AI learns by studying massive datasets and recognizing patterns.

Artists do the same: they absorb thousands of visual references, mimic, remix, and eventually create their own voice. The process is eerily similar. If “training” on others’ work is theft, then every artist who ever studied anatomy from a Michelangelo sketch is guilty.

4. “Some random guy downloads your animations and trains AI on it.”

This isn’t how modern datasets work. Training sets are huge, anonymized, and filtered. If you upload art to public platforms without protection, that’s a platform-level issue. Pinterest and moodboards have existed for decades. Where was the outrage then?

5. “Generative AI is not needed at all.”

Cool. Don’t use it. But you don’t get to define “need” for everyone else. Millions use it, and your comment doesn’t change the fact that 88% of respondents don’t even try, while the few who do often don’t go back. That’s what my post is about — usage patterns and experience.

And just to clarify — you wrote this post using a device powered by machine learning, on a platform governed by recommendation algorithms trained via machine learning, to talk about how generative AI is “not needed at all”?

You’re already neck-deep in AI and didn’t even notice.

Lastly, how exactly does any of this invalidate my point?

I’ll wait 😌🫖

[malcolmschmitz]

So, there's a dirty little secret in indie publishing a lot of people won't tell you, and if you aren't aware of it, self-publishing feels even scarier than it actually is.

There's a subset of self-published indie authors who write a ludicrous number of books a year, we're talking double digit releases of full novels, and these folks make a lot of money telling you how you can do the same thing. A lot of them feature in breathless puff pieces about how "competitive" self-publishing is as an industry now.

A lot of these authors aren't being completely honest with you, though. They'll give you secrets for time management and plotting and outlining and marketing and what have you. But the way they're able to write, edit, and publish 10+ books a year, by and large, is that they're hiring ghostwriters.

They're using upwork or fiverr to find people to outline, draft, edit, and market their books. Most of them, presumably, do write some of their own stuff! But many "prolific" indie writers are absolutely using ghostwriters to speed up their process, get higher Amazon best-seller ratings, and, bluntly, make more money faster.

When you see some godawful puff piece floating around about how some indie writer is thinking about having to start using AI to "stay competitive in self-publishing", the part the journalist isn't telling you is that the 'indie writer' in question is planning to use AI instead of paying some guy on Upwork to do the drafting.

If you are writing your books the old fashioned way and are trying to build a readerbase who cares about your work, you don't need to use AI to 'stay competitive', because you're not competing with these people. You're playing an entirely different game.

[captainjonnitkessler]

Look, I'm not gonna pretend that I don't get it, when it comes to AI. But it's like this:

In most parts of the US, a residential electrician works only on houses and apartments. They use romex wire, that yellow cable stuff. You run it from the panel to wherever it's going, staple it to the studs, then make up both ends. You need to know basic electrical code but mostly it's pretty simple. A fast learner could be a decent residential electrician inside a month.

I, on the other hand, am a union industrial electrician. I work primarily in hospitals, factories, and research labs. Most of our wire is run in steel conduit that has to be hand bent on the job, which is an art form in and of itself. We work with much higher voltages, much heavier wire, much more complicated equipment, and we need to know much more of the code. Our apprenticeship is 4-5 years and that's only enough to scratch the surface of everything an industrial electrician might do.

And yes - I absolutely get a little defensive when unknowing people compare me to a residential electrician. There's absolutely a knee-jerk impulse to declare that they're not *real* electricians, that they're merely a pale imitation of what I do. But I fight that impulse because it's a *bad impulse*. Resi still takes skill and work, it's just different than mine. We're both electricians. And it's better for us to work together to improve working conditions for all workers than to get into pissing contests about whose job is more "real". And both our jobs are in increasing danger due to the proliferation of low voltage systems that the average homeowner can install and repair without hiring a professional.

So yeah, I do get it. But it has been very, VERY insulting over the last year to hear people repeatedly say "AI was supposed to replace blue collar jobs, not *my* job! My job is ~special~ because it has ~humanity~!"

Your job is not special. It's not more important than my job and it's not more fulfilling to you than my job is to me. And I don't get to insist that everyone start building homes with steel conduit just so less skilled people can't be electricians, and I don't get to yell at people for hiring a handyman to replace an outlet for $50 when my time would be worth $200.

I absolutely understand the instinct that AI art can't be real art because people who use it didn't "earn" it, or that automating art is uniquely damaging in a way automating other jobs isn't because it's "supposed" to be about human expression. But please actually think about what you're implying and who you're throwing under the bus when you say shit like that, and whether it actually holds up to your other values or if it's just a knee-jerk reaction you need to examine.

[lovemewednesdays]

The AI issue is what happens when you raise generation after generation of people to not respect the arts. This is what happens when a person who wants to major in theatre, or English lit, or any other creative major gets the response, "And what are you going to do with that?" or "Good luck getting a job!"

You get tech bros who think it's easy. They don't know the blood, sweat, and tears that go into a creative endeavor because they were taught to completely disregard that kind of labor. They think they can just code it away.

That's (one of the reasons) why we're in this mess.

[txttletale]

genuinely curious but I don't know how to phrase this in a way that sounds less accusatory so please know I'm asking in good faith and am just bad at words

what are your thoughts on the environmental impact of generative ai? do you think the cost for all the cooling system is worth the tasks generative ai performs? I've been wrangling this because while I feel like I can justify it as smaller scales, that would mean it isn't a publicly available tool which I also feel uncomfortable with

the environmental impacts of genAI are almost always one of three things, both by their detractors and their boosters:

vastly overstated

stated correctly, but with a deceptive lack of context (ie, giving numbers in watt-hours, or amount of water 'used' for cooling, without necessary context like what comparable services use or what actually happens to that water)

assumed to be on track to grow constantly as genAI sees universal adoption across every industry

like, when water is used to cool a datacenter, that datacenter isn't just "a big building running chatgpt" -- datacenters are the backbone of the modern internet. now, i mean, all that said, the basic question here: no, i don't think it's a good tradeoff to be burning fossil fuels to power the magic 8ball. but asking that question in a vacuum (imo) elides a lot of the realities of power consumption in the global north by exceptionalizing genAI as opposed to, for example, video streaming, or online games. or, for that matter, for any number of other things.

so to me a lot of this stuff seems like very selective outrage in most cases, people working backwards from all the twitter artists on their dashboard hating midjourney to find an ethical reason why it is irredeemably evil.

& in the best, good-faith cases, it's taking at face value the claims of genAI companies and datacenter owners that the power usage will continue spiralling as the technology is integrated into every aspect of our lives. but to be blunt, i think it's a little naive to take these estimates seriously: these companies rely on their stock prices remaining high and attractive to investors, so they have enormous financial incentives not only to lie but to make financial decisions as if the universal adoption boom is just around the corner at all times. but there's no actual business plan! these companies are burning gigantic piles of money every day, because this is a bubble

so tldr: i don't think most things fossil fuels are burned for are 'worth it', but the response to that is a comprehensive climate politics and not an individualistic 'carbon footprint' approach, certainly not one that chooses chatgpt as its battleground. genAI uses a lot of power but at a rate currently comparable to other massively popular digital leisure products like fortnite or netflix -- forecasts of it massively increasing by several orders of magnitude are in my opinion unfounded and can mostly be traced back to people who have a direct financial stake in this being the case because their business model is an obvious boondoggle otherwise.

[spaghettioverdose]

Notoriously Litigious Company who holds like half the IP in the known universe: hello AI company we are suing the fuck out of you because we decided your program is plagiarising our IP. This will expand IP law if it succeeds.

People who made part of their identity and livelihood to "plagiarise" IP from from Notoriously Litigious Company:

[local-dragon-haunt]

hey! i’m an artist and i was wondering what about the httyd crossover art made it obviously AI. i’m trying to get better at recognizing AI versus real art and i totally would have just not clocked that.

Hey! This is TOTALLY okay to not have recognized it, because I DIDN'T AT FIRST, EITHER. Unfortunately there’s no real foolproof way to distinguish real art from the fake stuff. However I have noticed a general rule of thumb while browsing these last few months.

So this is the AI generated image I used as inspiration. I will not be tagging the account that posted it because I do not condone bullying of any type, but it’s important to mention that this was part of a set of images:

This is important because one of the BIGGEST things you can use to your advantage is context clues. This is the thing that clued me in: right off the bat we can see that there is NO consistency between these three images. The art style and outfits change with every generated image. They're vaguely related (I.E. characters that resemble the Big Four are on some sort of adventure?) and that's about it. Going to the account in question proved that all they posted were AI generated images. All of which have many red flags, but for clarity's sake we'll stick with the one that I used.

The first thing that caught my eye was this???? Amorphous Blob in the background. Which is obviously supposed to be knights or a dragon or something.

Again, context clues come into play here. Artists will draw everything With A Purpose. And if what they're drawing is fanart, you are going to recognize most of what you see in the image. Even if there are mistakes.

In the context of this image, it looks like the Four are supposed to be running from these people. The thing that drew my attention to it was the fact that I Didn't Recognize The Villains, and this is because there is nothing to recognize. These shapes aren't Drago, or Grimmel, or Pitch, or any other villain we usually associate with ROTBTD. They're just Amorphous Blobs that are vaguely villain shaped.

Which brings me to my second point:

Do you see the way they're standing? There is no purpose to this. It throws the entire image off. Your eye is drawn to the Amorphous Villain Blobs in the background, and these characters are not reacting to them one bit.

Now I'm not saying that all images have to have a story behind them, but if this were created by a person, it clearly would have had one. Our group here is not telling a story, they are posing.

This is because the AI does not see the image as a whole, but as two separate components: the setting, and the description of the characters that the prompter dictates. I.E. "Merida from Brave, Jack Frost from ROTG, Rapunzel from Tangled, and Hiccup from HTTYD standing next to each other"

Now obviously the most pressing part of this prompt are the characters themselves. So the AI prioritizes that and tries to spit out something that WE recognize as "Merida from Brave, Jack Frost from ROTG, Rapunzel from Tangled, and Hiccup from HTTYD standing next to each other".

This, more times than not, is going to end up with this stagnant posing. Because AI cannot create, it can only emulate. And even then, it still can't do it right. Case in point:

This is not Hiccup. The AI totally thinks this is Eugene Fitzherbert. Look at the pose. The facial structure. The goatee. The smirk. The outfits. He's always next to Raps. Why does he have a quiver? Where's Toothless? His braids? His scar??

HE HAS BOTH OF HIS LEGS.

The AI. Cannot even get the most important part of it's prompt correct.

And that's just the beginning. Here:

More amorphous shapes.

So these are obviously supposed to be utility belts, but I mean. Look at them. The perspective is all off. There are useless straps. I don't even know what that cluster behind Jack's left arm is supposed to be.

This is a prime example of AI emulating without understanding structure.

You can see this particularly in Jack, between his hands, the "tassels" of his tunic, and the odd wrinkles of his boots. There's just not any structure here whatsoever.

Lastly, AI CANNOT CREATE PATTERNS.

Here are the side-by-sides of the shit I had to deal with when redesigning their outfits. Please someone acknowledge this. This killed me inside. THIS is most recognizable to me, and usually what I look for first if I'm wary about an art piece. These clusterfuck bunches of color. I hate them. I hate them so. much.

Anyways here's some other miscellaneous things I've noticed:

Danny Phantom Eyes

???? Thumb? (and random sword sheath)

Collarbone Necklace (corset from hell)

No Staff :( No Bow :(

What is that.

So yeah. Truly the best thing to do is to just. study it. A lot of times you aren't gonna notice anything just looking at the big picture, you need to zoom in and focus on the little details. Obviously I'm not like an expert in AI or anything, but I do have a degree in animation practices and I'm. You know. A human being. So.

In conclusion:

(Y'all should totally reblog my redesign of this btw)

[madagasc-art]

Anti-AI Zine

So generative AI is fucking bullshit, and I initially thought it was just going to fade away like its NFT brethren but clearly not, SO I've been busy

I spent about a year working on this zine about all the ways that current AI tech is undermining the arts, contributing to climate collapse, stealing our data, and just being all around shit.

I wrote a lot about my personal opinions on the subject and included quotes from writers, academic studies, and other creatives, as well as artworks from artists I admire, who I contacted for their permission beforehand. Because it TURNS OUT asking people for PERMISSION is the respectful thing to do????????? Who'd have known... 💀

The rest of the images were either made by me or were from the public domain (not fucken "publicly available" like OpenAI like to say 🤪).

If you'd like to read it I have the full PDF available for free on my website here and physical copies are on my etsy here. 💙

It's been really fun connecting with people about this subject and seeing people speak out more and more about how fucked AI is. Because as much as tech bros like to say that AI is an "inevitable" tech advancement that we can't take back, that doesn't change the fact that we still can and should be regulating the HELL out of it.

Stay safe out there folks, especially Sam Altman cause otherwise he's gonna catch these hands 👊👊

[ternwithatmblr]

gonna be real on main for a sec

I fucking HATE AI. Viscerally.

Seriously it used to not be that bad but the last year or two? Infuriating. I GET ACCUSED OF BEING AI ALL THE TIME.

My papers for university get flagged as AI generated and automatically graded as a zero. My online posts on other websites get comments saying stuff like “this is ai generated” or “you forgot an em dash”. Like IM SORRY I CAN WRITE AT MY AGE LEVEL WHEN I CHOOSE TO. SORRY I KNOW HOW TO USE AN EM DASH. MY BAD. LEMME JUST HAVE EVERY SENTENCE BE A RUN ON. LEMME NOT CAPITALIZE ANYTHING.

I had to go to my criminal law professor and show him my printed, highlighted, annotated references for my paper. I had to turn track changes on in Word just to prove I wrote my own papers. Online I get accused of being AI for no other reason than commenting on a post with proper grammar and spelling. I WILL THROW MYSELF OFF A CLIFF ISTG.

My Instagram account that I regularly post and comment on has been flagged as a bot and temp banned. TWICE.

WHY DON’T I PASS THE TURING TEST???!!!!

[reachartwork]

re: "outlawing AI"

i am reposting this because people couldn't behave themselves on the original one. this is a benevolent dictatorship and if you can't behave yourselves here i'll shut off reblogs again. thank you.

the thing i think a lot of people have trouble understanding is that "ai" as we know it isn't a circuitboard or a computer part or an invention - it's a discovery, like calculus or chemistry. the genie *can't* be re-corked because it'd be like trying to "cork" the concept of, say, trigonometry. you can't "un-invent" it.

even if you managed to somehow completely outlaw the performance of the kinds of linear algebra required for ML, and outlawed the data collection necessary, and sure, managed to get style copyrighted, you can't un-discover the underlying mathematical facts. people will just do it in mexico instead. it'd be like trying to outlaw guns by trying to get people to forget that you can ignite a mixture of powders in a small metal barrel to propel things very fast. or trying to outlaw fire by threatening to take away everyone's sticks.

the battleground is already here. technofascists and bad actors without your ethical constraints are drawing the lines and flooding the zone with propaganda & slop, and you’re wasting time insisting to your enemies that it’s unfair you’re being asked to fight with guns when you’d rather use sticks.

as a wise sock puppet once said; "this isn't about you. so either get with it, or get out of the fucking way"

-----

Attempts to prohibit AI "training" misunderstand what is being prohibited. To ban the development of AI models is, in effect, to ban the performance of linear algebra on large datasets. It is to outlaw a way of knowing. This is not regulation - it is epistemological reactionary-ism. reactionism? whatever

Even if prohibition were successful in one nation-state:

Corporations would relocate to jurisdictions with looser controls - China, UAE, Japan, Singapore, etc.

APIs would remain accessible, just more expensive and less accountable. What, are you gonna start blocking VPNs from connecting to any country with AI allowed? Good luck.

Research would continue outside the oversight of the very publics most concerned about ethical constraints.

This isn’t speculation. This is exactly what happened with stem cells in the early 2000s. When the U.S. government restricted federal funding, stem cell research didn’t vanish, it just moved and then kept happening until people stopped caring.

The fantasy that a domestic ban could meaningfully halt or reverse the development of a globally distributed method is a fantasy of epistemic sovereignty - the idea that knowledge can be territorially contained and that the moral preferences of one polity can shape the world through sheer force of will.

But the only way such containment could succeed would be through:

Total international consensus (YEAH RIGHT), and

Total enforcement across all borders, black markets, and academic institutions, at the barrel of a gun - otherwise, what is backing up your enforcement? Promises and friendly handshakes?

This is not internationalism. It is imperialist utopianism. And like most utopian projects built on coercion, it will fail - at the cost of handing control to precisely the actors most willing to exploit it.

Liberal moralism often derides socialist or communist futures as "unrealistic.", as you can see in the absurd, hyperbolically, pants-shittingly mad reaction to Alex Avila's video. Yet the belief that machine learning can be outlawed globally - a method of performing mathematics that is already published, archived, and disseminated across open academic networks the globe over - is far more implausible. literally how do you plan on doing that? enforcing it?

The choice is not between AI and no AI. The choice is between AI in the service of capital, extraction, and domination, or AI developed under conditions of public ownership, democratic control, and epistemic openness. You get to pick.

The genie and the bottle are not even in the same planet. The bottle's gone, Will.

[technomancer--emy]

I wanted to show off my process on this D&D character I made with chatGPT, step by step

This took me several hours to make

Ethics notes:

For the fabric swaths I used fabrics off of google. In the future I will use fabric uploaded to sites that are in the public domain.

I also created this with the training data turned off, so any reference images I used were not used to train the AI. Turning off training data locks the chat into the chat alone.

Above is the finished project.

Below the read more, you'll see the majority of the process used to create this image. The full conversation with chat is around 50 pages, so I'll just post the highlights here.

First I started with the basic sketch, simple axolotl person

Next, we made her a mage

Next I gave the AI this fabric to work with for her cloak

And that resulted in this

Next we started working on the color

Next I gave the AI the fabric for the hat

And I gave what I wanted to be in the crystal ball

And I asked the AI to make her a little cuter. I think the word 'cuter' resulted in a complete redo of the art style.

After spending some time getting the art style back, we got the background involved, the story is set in a post apocalypse, I wanted to do a water color background

Next, finishing details, a dagger and a bell and some birds in the crystal ball. The results were a bit awkward.

Finally, I added a bit of glow and made the face cuter, smoothed out the more awkward details and I tattered the robes.

This took me somewhere between 4 and 5 hours to make and something like 50 pages of reading to achieve.

For the D&D nerds, her name is Ayula. She's a triton celestial warlock and her patron is a servant of Celestian the Sky Wanderer. Her game took place east of the sword coast on an island called Alaron. I'm thrilled I could bring her to life.

[butchfriend]

Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College

[owlygem]

The ai stuff thats been happening has been getting to me quite a lot, to the point im barely drawing, any words of encouragement would be greatly appreciated 😥

[fixing-bad-posts]

I don't care. I don't care. AI entertainment without anything in it. could it hurt? yes. By using AI the investors make money on theft.