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An obnoxious Leftie take I have is that we need to make it common knowledge that the medical term for a miscarriage is a “spontaneous abortion” it makes it much more difficult to say something should be illegal when it is understood medically as something the body can just do sometimes.

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#truth

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we do need to revisit the wording of "you can't have your cake and eat it too" because i don't think it clearly enough conveys that it's more that you can't simultaneously retain a cake and also get to consume it (which would render you cakeless). for years i was like But why not....it's my cake....?

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Please don’t use midjourney it steals art from pretty much every artist out there without any compensation. I didn’t know this at first and tried it but then during the creation process i saw water marks and Getty image logos (though I’m sure they’ve hidden that now) so it’s definitely stealing.

No, it isn't. And you've taken the wrong lesson from the Getty watermark issue.

AI training on public facing, published work is fair use. Any published piece could be located, examined, and learned from by a human artist. This does not require the permission of the owner of said work. A mechanical apparatus does not change this principle.

All we, as artists, own, are specific expressions. We do not own styles, ideas, concepts, plots, or tropes. We do not even own the work we create in a proper sense. All our work flows from the commons, and all of it flows back to it. IP is a limited patent on specific expressions, and what constitutes infringement is the end result of the creative process. What goes into it is irrelevant, and upending that process to put inspiration and reference as infringement is the end of art as we know it.

The Getty watermark issue is an example of overfitting, wherein a repetitive element in the dataset over-emphasizes specific features to the point of disrupting the system's attempts at the creation of novel images.

No one denies that the SD dataset is trained on images Getty claims to own, but Getty has so polluted the image search functions of the internet with their watermarked images that the idea of a getty watermark has been picked up the same way the AI might pick up the idea of an eye or a tree branch. It is a systemic failure that Shutterstock and Getty can be so monopolistic and ubiquitous that a dateset trained on literally everything public facing on the internet would be polluted with their watermarks.

Watermarks that, by the way, they add to public domain images, and that google prioritizes over clean versions.

The lawsuits being brought against Midjourney and Stable Diffusion are copyright overreach being presented as a theft tissue. The facts of the matter are not as the litigants state. The images aren't stored, the SD weights are a 4 gig file trained on 250 terabytes, roughly 4 bytes per image. It runs local, does not reach out to image sources over IP. All you've got are mathematical patterns and ratios. I would go so far as to say that the class action suit is based on outright lies.

But for a moment, let's entertain the idea that what goes into a work, as inspiration, can be copyrighted. That styles can be stolen. That what goes in defines infringement, rather than what comes out. What happens then?

Well, the bad news is that if Stable Diffusion and Midjourney were shut down tomorrow, Stable Diffusion is in the wild. It runs local, it's user-trainable. In short, the genie isn't going back in the bottle. Plus, the way diffusion AI works, there's no way to trace a gen to its sources. The weights don't work like that. The indexing would be larger than the entire set of stored patterns.

Well good news, there's an AI for that. The current version is called CLIP Interrogator And it works on everything. Not just AI generated, but any image. It can find what style it closely matches, reverse engineer a prompt. It's crude now, but it will improve.

Now, you've already established that using the same patterns as another work is infringement. You've already established that inspiration is theft. And now there's a robot that tells lawyers who you draw like.

Sure, you can fight it in court. If it goes go to court. But who's to say they won't just staplegun that AI to a monetization re-direction bot like youtube has going with their content ID? Awesome T-shirt design you uploaded to your print-on-demand shop... too bad your art style resembles that from a cartoon from 1973 that Universal got as part of an acquisition and they've claimed all your cash. Sure you can file a DMCA counter-notice, but we all know how that goes.

And then there's this fantasy that upending the system would help artists. But who would "own" that style? Is that piece stealing the style of Stephen Silver, or Disney's Kim Possible(TM)? When you work for Disney their contracts say everything you make is theirs. Every doodle. Every drawing. If the styles are copyrightable, a company could hire an artist straight out of school, publish their work under work-for-hire, fire them, and then go after them for "stealing" the style they developed while working for said corp.

Not to mention that a handful of companies own so much media that it is going to be impossible to find an artist that hasn't been influenced by something under their control.

Oh, and that stock of source images that companies like Disney and Universal have? These kinds of lawsuits won't stop them from building AIs with that material that they "own". The power goes into corp hands, they can down staff to their heart's content and everyone else is denied the ability to compete with them. Worst of all possible worlds.

Be careful what wishes you make when holding the copyright monkey's paw.

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next time youre hurling abuse into your headset playign video game.. think.... you never know who could be on the other side of the screan

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all my haters become tomaters in my lovely summer garden

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will: had to open you up to get a decent sound out of you

everyone else in the fbi morgue:

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I am so sick and tired of seeing the trans women around me being slowly hot coaled into the closet and into essentially being forced back into "Men who would really love being women but Can't because they Aren't". It is so painful stop fucking doing this to our trans women. Stop forcing them to be "Fine" with being called dude bro man he and biologically male stop it stop it stop it you are killing her. You are killing her.

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I pulled Hephaes' designer's reflection and took some screenshots that I forgot to post until now.

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just finished deltarune ch3

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Of a Man; Trying to explain a metaphor I thought suited Qin Yi well

An old writing exercise(?)/metaphor test thing i wrote in my concepts file that fit Qin Yi really well in my head. Just constantly removing everything and everyone that affects him the best he can, to remain blank and suitable to whatever comes his way. Anyway;

——— Human nature is more akin to paintings than those of animals. An animal’s existence, its worth, is not tied to being perceived. In fact, most animals go out of their way to remain invisible to anything which could perceive it.

But humans (painters) need their ‘nature’ (paintings) to be observed for their ‘self’ to comfortably exist. A man is only made through the existence of those who allow his personhood to be witnessed. A kind heart means little in the void of space, and cruelty lies useless without another to feel the pain.

Most acknowledge their nature. They take great care to be seen and adored, so that they may be maintained through the years. However, art restoration is a finnicky thing; some restorers are faithful to the artist’s intent. Other’s will take advantage of their employer’s trust, and paint over whatever part they find distasteful or ‘wrong’ within the art.

Some artists never give their paintings to galleries or museums; some hoard their art. Insecure of its quality, or finding it too close to their chest.

They wish to go against their nature. But unlike paintings which are left in the backroom of some gallery, the ‘self’ gather dust. The debris and grime accumulates with the absence of another to notice its degrading varnish, until eventually, the paint chips. It falls, year by year, until what was painted is left an unrecognizable, broken canvas.

At some point. They will need maintenance from a careful hand.

Some paintings are too gaudy for most. Some are too simple. Some are too grand, too grounded, too fantastical, too rigid, too sweet, too cruel. Some paintings are fragile, and need to be kept in storage for long periods, only being shown to the public in set schedules. Others are open to view all hours of the day, all throughout the year.

But they need to be witnessed. Regardless to what the artist may feel, their paintings need to be appreciated, felt, and cared for.

Qin Yi, he knows his ‘self’ is a well-loved, rare exhibit. It is a rare sight, but once his time comes to be shown, his painting is hung on the center of the gallery. And each day, miraculously, his paintings would change to be perfect. Fitting the temperament of the day's guests without fail.

Eyes fall upon him, day by day. Loved, appreciated, seen. Each time that painting is brought to a restorer, it is in mint condition. They can do nothing but marvel at the beauty, and some cannot help but add their own strokes of paint to the art, hoping to be part of such a beautiful creation.

But it won’t matter. As once the day is done, when the painting is retired from the gallery and is brought back to the privacy of its storage, Qin Yi walks to the backroom, takes his painting, and lathers it with titanium white.

Everyday, until his next show comes around, he paints everything over, to prime it, in case he needs to start creating a new suitable picture for the next set of eyes. After all, he was the best actor around. Prepping himself just for days before shows were not good enough. Because for as long as people live, the show goes on.

Either way, Qin Yi can no longer remember what it was originally beneath all that paint. And he’s gotten this far without it. It must not have been too important. ——— some notes abt this metaphor that made me wanna write all this shit:

i rly like the metaphor thing cause, the act of 'mutual gaze' is just that. its an active thing you need to do. When someone sees your painting, takes it in, whether they enjoy it or not, you have the choice to reciprocate their attention. You could go out of your way to find their painting, and perceive it back. But you can just… not. you could just note their existence, and never attempt to find THEIR painting (aka self/nature), even when they saw yours, whether through mistake, convenience or actual effort on their part.

Or, you could try to find it. Sometimes its in a completely different gallery, sometimes its not being shown yet and you have to wait until its scheduled appearance. Sometimes it's not even in a gallery, its in a home. You can go through many lengths to find it. or again, you could just… not.

It all depends on the person, and whether you think they’re worth looking for. ALSOOOO

I see Qin Yi's constantly changing paintings, not that the SUBJECT of the painting is different each time, (like, one day its a galiant knight riding a unicorn on top of a the clouds in an abstract style, and the next its a beautifully rendered picture of human shit, made in reneissance style) its more, he has one core theme in every show which he 'reskins'. But every show is a new core theme. Lets say, the first show has a painting with the subject of a puma sleeping. The first day of that showcase will be in the abstract style, as the guests entering the museum that day enjoy that art style. the next day, some purists are going to enter, and he paints the canvas white, to replace it with the same painting of the sleeping puma, this time with an old, medieval style (western or chinese you decide idc). When those seperate demographics who enjoyed his paintings come together to discuss him, they'll think the other won't appreaciate the art like they do. So when they talk to them and the other party LOVED the painting, they just think 'Oh! Qin Yi's painting is just so good, even this goober with their usually bad taste in art can tell how good that painting is!'. They wont think that anything is wrong, because the subject is the same. a sleeping puma. But the way they saw it on that day; it's suited to their taste.

Now, the second show he does, he changes the theme of sleeping puma to a newly hatched bird or whatever the fuck. And it goes on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and— anyway. The first layer, aka the very FIRST painting, its basically lost to time. The 'base' of who Qin Yi is, is gone even from his own psyche. it'll take literally forever of delicate care and EXTREME determination for any one person to remove all those layers of paint to get to the very start of it all. Qin Yi can try to do it himself, but there's only so much a person could do, and considering the state of his head, it's unlikely he even finds a need for it. Its not perfect, but i rlyyyy like it for what it is. im not good at explaining myself either but know the effort is there lol

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Always loved the design for sailor luna from the live action SM show. Wanted to draw her more catlike. Im so bad at drawing furry snoots lmao

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chunnibyou moment fanart

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If you were like, "boy 22to22 has been quiet lately, hope they're alright," first of all that's very sweet of you. Second of all, you (yes, YOU) can force me outta retirement for One Last Job to help a trans couple get the hell out of Texas.

For a measly $10 you can get me to draw basically anything. That's 2003 prices in 2025, folks--unadjusted for inflation. In this economy!!! Just send me a receipt of your donation to Ellie's GoFundMe and a short description of what you want (or else submit yourself to my whims) and I'll draw the damn thing.

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'I've never been wanted anywhere.'