#AI. IS. A. TOOL.

[animentality]

[unforth]

Y'all I know that when so-called AI generates ridiculous results it's hilarious and I find it as funny as the next guy but I NEED y'all to remember that every single time an AI answer is generated it uses 5x as much energy as a conventional websearch and burns through 10 ml of water. FOR EVERY ANSWER. Each big llm is equal to 300,000 kiligrams of carbon dioxide emissions.

LLMs are killing the environment, and when we generate answers for the lolz we're still contributing to it.

Stop using it. Stop using it for a.n.y.t.h.i.n.g. We need to kill it.

Sources:

[chipped-chimera]

3 things about this:

Making it opt out is always an asshole move whenever it's anything that's appropriating other's content in any way (unless it is warranted critique - e.g. whatever Hbomberguy feels like doing, but that is 'transformative').

This is actually super good for accessibility and we shouldn't throw that baby out with the bathwater like we always do as soon as someone says "AI".

AI is a tool. It is morally neutral.

I am not against this idea, it's the equivalent of a screen reader condensed into a specific app. This would let people who have not been able to access fanfic access. Accessibility is never a bad thing.

Text To Speech (TTS) has been around for years and honestly I am super hyped that TTS now sounds coherent and realistic instead of stilted and robotic! That opens up a lot of content for those with vision issues! It's great!

Also in MOST legally licensed uses of AI generated voices for TTS, it has been consented to by the individual to have their voice reconstructed. They did work, they were paid for it. The only time TTS is morally bad is when the voice source has been approximated from stolen content. So anyone user-making AI voice TTS from audio clips that have been ripped from anyone non-consentually. This is not a rocket science take, y'all gotta stop knee-jerk reacting to AI being bad immediately. You've been using AI for years. A lot of the shit on your phone technically falls under the 'AI' umbrella (face tracking in photos, algorithmically enhancing pictures when you've zoomed past the physical threshold, text prediction etc.)

That said, yes, the legality grounds are extremely grey-area here. But at the same time I don't think we'd be making the same noise about this if we were talking about someone's desktop screen-reader program which is functionally doing the same thing. This is just that but with internalized bookmarks.

That said, grey area. If lore.fm plans on releasing this completely free, in spirit of what Ao3 is as just a way to increase accessibility for users - great. However any attempt to monetize it, off content they do not own - that is 120% in the 'probably illegal' area and I'm pretty sure is against Ao3's TOS. That's when someone needs to be held accountable.

Take that as you will, but I'm begging people to remember as more things like this are developed that accessibility is a good thing and AI is a tool that is morally neutral. It's all about how it's a. developed and b. used.

Anyway that's today's AI TED talk everybody, as you were.

Hey I don’t know if this is being talked about on Tumblr but thankfully the AO3 subreddit has a conversation going about this app that just went live.

TikTok user unravel.me.now has just launch an app (lore.fm) she is calling “Audible for AO3”. It’s an app that uses AI voices to read out fics.

🚨She is requiring any authors who do not want their fics to be on this app to OPT OUT by emailing team@lore.fm 🚨 🚨She has not given an actual template or how you’re supposed to prove you’re the author or said how her team will process this or how she will keep these requests secure🚨

I do not have this app. I haven’t seen anyone use it yet. According to Reddit users, unravel.me.now’s earlier TikToks stated she envisions the app being able to create libraries stored on that app and to have version of “Spotify wrapped”. That implies that eventually data collection must happen, if it’s not happening currently.

I don’t know the actual capabilities of this app. I don’t know the legalities. I do know that it personally feels like this app is trying to turn AO3 into a content generation source and I haven’t heard of the app allowing you to leave a comment or kudos or interact with the original work.

I’m just sad about this.

[bogkeep]

there's something so deeply dystopian to me how tech companies don't understand that a forced convenience is not a convenience at all. i'm sure autocorrect is helpful for many, but a function that forcibly changes my actual written words and punctuation is taking away my language. photo filters can be nice but i need to choose using them myself or else i have lost the ability to take the picture i want. i don't want a machine to draw or write for me. taking away the option for me to do things manually feels like violence!!!! all this talk of endless opportunity, why are you RESTRICTING me

[ellipsus-writes]

Back when we started Ellipsus (it's been eighty-four years… or two, but it sure feels like forever), we encountered generative AI.

Immediately, we realized LLMs were the antithesis of creativity and community, and the threat they posed to genuine artistic expression and collaboration. (P.S.: we have a lot to say about it.)

Since then, writing tools—from big tech entities like Google Docs and Microsoft Word, to a host of smaller platforms and publishers—have rapidly integrated LLMs, looking to capitalize on the novelty of generative AI. Now, our tools are failing us, corrupted by data-scraping and hostile to users' consent and IP ownership.

The future of creative work requires a nuanced understanding of the challenges ahead, and a shared vision—writers for writers. We know we're stronger together. And in a rapidly changing world, we know that transparency is paramount.

So… some Ellipsus facts:

We will never include generative AI in Ellipsus.

We will never access your work without explicit consent, sell your data, or use your work for exploitative purposes.

We believe in the strength of creative communities and the stories they tell—and we want to foster a space in which writers can connect and tell their stories in freedom and safety—without compromise.

[maodun]

shout out to machine learning tech (and all the human-input adjustment contributors) that's brought about the present developmental stage of machine translation, making the current global village 地球村 moment on rednote小红书 accessible in a way that would not have been possible years ago.

[lightningshrikes]

if i see one more person say gen ai is an accessibility tool im gonna hit whoever it is with a car

[visuallifes]

[incognitopolls]

Anon's explanation:

I’m curious because I see a lot of people claiming to be anti-AI, and in the same post advocating for the use of Glaze and Artshield, which use DiffusionBee and Stable Diffusion, respectively. Glaze creates a noise filter using DiffusionBee; Artshield runs your image through Stable Diffusion and edits it so that it reads as AI-generated. You don’t have to take my work for it. Search for DiffusionBee and Glaze yourself if you have doubts. I’m also curious about machine translation, since Google Translate is trained on the same kinds of data as ChatGPT (social media, etc) and translation work is also skilled creative labor, but people seem to have no qualms about using it. The same goes for text to speech—a lot of the voices people use for it were trained on professional audiobook narration, and voice acting/narration is also skilled creative labor. Basically, I’m curious because people seem to regard these types of gen AI differently than text gen and image gen. Is it because they don’t know? Is it because they don’t think the work it replaces is creative? Is it because of accessibility? (and, if so, why are other types of gen AI not also regarded as accessibility? And even then, it wouldn’t explain the use of Glaze/Artshield)

Additional comments from anon:

I did some digging by infiltrating (lurking in) pro-AI spaces to see how much damage Glaze and other such programs were doing. Unfortunately, it turns out none of those programs deter people from using the ‘protected’ art. In fact, because of how AI training works, they may actually result in better output? Something about adversarial training. It was super disappointing. Nobody in those spaces considers them even a mild deterrent anywhere I looked. Hopefully people can shed some light on the contradictions for me. Even just knowing how widespread their use is would be informative. (I’m not asking about environmental impact as a factor because I read the study everybody cited, and it wasn’t even anti-AI? It was about figuring out the best time of day to train a model to balance solar power vs water use and consumption. And the way they estimated the impact of AI was super weird? They just went with 2020’s data center growth rate as the ‘normal’ growth rate and then any ‘extra’ growth was considered AI. Maybe that’s why it didn’t pass peer review... But since people are still quoting it, that’s another reason for me to wonder why they would use Glaze and Artshield and everything. That’s why running them locally has such heavy GPU requirements and why it takes so long to process an image if you don’t meet the requirements. It’s the same electricity/water cost as generating any other AI image.)

–

We ask your questions anonymously so you don’t have to! Submissions are open on the 1st and 15th of the month.

[bixels]

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

if i have to explain to you that using a camera to take a picture is not the same as using generative ai to generate an image then you are a fucking moron.

[tobyisave]

let him be pink!!

[scipunk]

Hardware AKA MARK 13 (1990)

[samrisoval]

@samrisoval

[javert]

ok look. what are you actually imagining that these engineering students are using chatgpt to do? because my experience of engineering school in every class that actually mattered was that the entire grade in the class came from

going physically into an exam room

taking a test with a pencil and paper and a graphing calculator

sometimes it was open note/open textbook but it was never open computer

there is no room here to use chatgpt

if somehow you are using chatgpt to explain the material to you in a new way beforehand and then memorizing it so that you can go into the test and answer the math questions correctly, that is simply called "learning the material" lol

[yameoto]

reminder that cai is not real, the characters are not real, your relationships are not real! be wary and keep an eye on your own screentime. don’t blindly use the app for unhealthily long stretches of time. mentally check yourself! don’t get sucked in. its a fun, self-indulgent app, but that is all it is. it can do more harm than good. unlike cai, you’re real, with real relationships and real people that care about you. please take care of yourselves!