kitspeth

[kitspeth]

🚌 my designs for the brand new season! 🎲

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[ID: A digital art movie poster for the Dimension 20: On A Bus show. At the top of the image, the cast of the show is listed as: Aabria Iyengar as a blue M&M, Jasmine Bhullar as one of those little army soldier toys, Brennan Lee Mulligan as a golden monolopy hat, and Mark Mercer as ball of lint. Six-sided dice and a purple and pink explosion border the "characters". Below the cast is a large, pink bus (a Barbie dream caravan) with a logo for the show on the side. The bus is being driven by a smiling elvish white woman, underneath is written: Dragon Master, Katie Marovitch. At the bottom, a quote text reads: "I can't imagine what happened." - Dimension 20 Executive Producer. End ID.]

[kitspeth]

Looking at some of your work, it is stunning but it is very similar in style to AI artwork, do you have any recommendations for how to tell apart photography like yours from AI.

I've been thinking about this. And this may sound controversial at first, but I'm hoping people will hear me out.

We should stop trying so hard to detect AI art.

I think we should all lift that burden from our brains.

I have often talked about "woke goggles." Where conservatives have lost the ability to enjoy anything because they are hypervigilant about detecting anything woke. They've cursed themselves into just hating everything. All they have left is the "God's Not Dead" Cinematic Universe.

And I worry people are getting AI goggles now. They are so concerned about accidentally enjoying robot art and hurting artists that they have overcorrected to the point where they are hurting artists.

One cannot say "AI is all soulless slop that always looks bad" and then accuse a real artist of making something that looks like AI and not hurt them. By doing so, it includes the baggage of all of the "slop" comments along with it. This crusade is having collateral damage to the very artists we are trying to protect.

Yes, we need to be cautious about malicious AI images. Misinformation and deepfakes are going to be a big problem. People using AI imagery for profit is already a mess. But if you are cruising your feed and like a cool sci-fi robot gal or a photo of a waterfall and it turns out to be AI... that's fine.

It was trained by real artists and AI is going to create some cool shit because of that.

Honestly, I think a lot of the worst slop is because the dipshits creating the prompts have no artistic taste. People keep blaming the AI for how bad it looks and often don't consider it is a product of the loser who published it.

There is plenty of non-slop out there that has fooled me. And, like it or not, it is going to get harder and harder to tell what is AI. Until there are better tools or better regulations, I don't think there is much we can do to avoid enjoying AI art every once in a while. If only by accident.

Current "AI detectors" are mostly a scam. Even the best forensic-level AI image detectors struggle to stay above 70–80% accuracy across a wide range of models and image types. And that's in controlled lab conditions.

Free online tools often drop to near coin-flip accuracy (50–60%), especially with newer image generators and post-processing applied.

The best way to avoid AI imagery is to look at an artist's body of work. It's much harder to create consistent, non-obvious fake images in a large sample size. That is usually enough to have confidence in authenticity. Plus, if they have posted similar art before 2022, you can pretty much rule out any shenanigans.

Otis literally died before genAI was available.

But images you see in the wild, just let yourself enjoy them if that is what your brain wants to do. It'll be okay.

I just think we are attacking this backwards. If we want to protect artists, we need to support them.

Calling out random AI art does not support them.

It does not put money in their pockets.

It does not grow their audience.

Over a decade ago I tried to lead a fight to create better systems of attribution on websites like Reddit and Imgur. I even spoke to the Imgur team after an article was written about me.

I asked them to allow sources on their posts and to develop tech that would help people find where an image came from. They said they were "working on it" and it never manifested.

IMAGE SHARING SITES STEAL MORE FROM ARTISTS THAN AI.

But we just kind of accepted it. No one really joined me in my fight. The prevailing defeatist attitude was, "That's just the way it is."

I think now is the time to demand better attribution systems. We need to be vigilant about making sure as many posts as possible have good sourcing. If an image on Reddit goes viral, the top comment should be the source. And if it isn't, you should try to find it and add it.

Just to be clear, "credit to the original artist" is NOT proper attribution.

And perhaps we can lobby these image sharing sites to create better sourcing systems and tools. They could even use fucking AI to find the earliest posted version of an image.

And it would be nice if it didn't require people to go into the comments to find the source. It could just be in the headline. They could even create little badges "made by a human" for verified artists.

Good attribution helps artists grow their audience. It is one of the single most effective things you can do to help them.

I literally just got this message...

There are maybe 10 popular artists who I helped grow their audience early on. Just because I reblogged their work and added links to all of their social media. I even hired my best friend to add sourcing information to every post because I believed so much in good attribution.

Calling out AI art may feel good in the moment. You caught someone trying to trick people and it feels like justice. But, in most cases, the tangible benefits to real artists seem small. It impedes your ability to enjoy art without always being suspicious. And the risk of telling someone you think they make soulless slop doesn't seem worth it.

But putting that time and effort into attribution *would* be worth it. I have proven it time and time again.

I also think people should consider having a monthly art budget. I don't care if it is $5. But if we all commit to seeking out cool artists and being their collective patrons, we could really make a difference and keep real art alive. Just commit to finding a cool new artist every month and financially contributing to them in some way.

On a bigger scale I think advocating for universal basic income, art grants for education and creation, and government regulation of AI would all be helpful long term goals. Though I think our friends in Europe may have to take the lead on regulation at the moment.

So...

Stop worrying about enjoying or calling out AI art.

Demand better attribution from image sharing sites.

Make sure all art has a source listed.

Start an art budget.

Advocate for better regulations.

[kitspeth]

my humor might be broken cause I find this trend actually funny

[kitspeth]

a lot of media assumes robots would be immortal but i think its a lot more interesting to explore robots dealing with their parts wearing down and battery life shortening and all the horrible little failings that come with being a complicated machine. sure they can replace parts but you'd assume you cant completely ship of theseus them, or it'd have pretty big rammifications on their sense of identity. idk. give me robots with distinct, unique signs of aging. as a treat.

[kitspeth]

on watching a parent age

i saw somebody say “what if you’re gone and i haven’t become anything yet” and basically that broke me on a random thursday evening

[kitspeth]

not to be a number nerd on main but 2025 (45^2) will be the only square year most of us ever experience. the last one was 1936 and the next one will be 2116

[kitspeth]

[kitspeth]

"there should be some kind of test you have to take before having kids" -> wrong, extremely dangerous and highkey eugenicist and racist "the youth should have safe and effective legal pathways at their disposal to make sure their human rights are constantly protected and upheld" -> based, centers the youth, gives minors more power to fight inequality and does not reinforce the idea that parents are immune to scrutiny from their kids

[kitspeth]

Fucks me up to think about how every character in the world is literally just someone's OC

[kitspeth]

silliness and sincerity are not opposites btw. they are married. bisexually

[kitspeth]

Ok, loves, so we've all got the message that joking about suicide is bad for your mental health. Now we need to get on "joking that the planet/all of humanity has no future is bad for societal health/encouraging resistance to bad shit."

[kitspeth]

Concept: cursed blade rehabilitation center. Destroying a sentient weapon is expensive and highly unethical, so adventurers bring them to the center where highly trained staff can care for them and eventually find them forever homes. It turns out most cursed weapons are products of trauma and are not strictly evil themselves. Some blades turn out to be fiercely protective companions. Others don't even want to be weapons at all, finding joy in simple work like blacksmithing or farming. Most blades just need to be loved.

[kitspeth]

On the one hand, I’m delighted to see more of Eryn. But on the other hand, I am now very, very scared for her.

[kitspeth]

The face of a man wondering if he’ll ever be invited on Game Changer again

[kitspeth]

there will be a show with two guys in a fucked up power dynamic that is the core of their relationship and all the posts will be like "i love them but i hate the power dynamic" and all the fic is like "what if there was no power dynamic" or "what if the power dynamic was switched". like okay actually i think the imbalance is fun and awesome. anyone else

[kitspeth]

all politics about ai aside if you use it to create fanwork you're just a fucking dweeb