#ai bullshit

[callmearcturus]

I said this elsewhere but

not to be That Guy but I don't really see the point of moving platforms anymore.

There is no where we can hide on the internet from the silicon valley bros. There just isn't. Patreon is VC-funded and could announce tomorrow that oh of course they've been partnered with Midjourney for months already. Twitter actively scraps everything for AI learning. And even if you trusted the other big players like FB/IG to tell the truth about shit, people are going to use these platforms for datasets anyway. They'll just do it quietly and hope no one notices.

And places like cohost or whatever-- honestly, if it makes you feel safer/better, go for it, but I don't think cohost has the sway or capital to build the type of legal team you need to fight against scrapers. Hell, you wanna retreat into private discords? Discord wants in on AI too.

Everyone big is already dealing in AI, and everyone small doesn't even have a seat at the table. In my opinion, we are all collectively holding out for Brussels or any of the many court cases to do something about this shit, because it's no longer a thing we can just hide from.

I'm going to keep my writing on the AO3 because they are the odd case of having an actual legal team in place for this shit. For artists, I have nothing but sympathy. I suggest glazing and nightshading literally everything you post.

But beyond that, I'm unsure what we can do. This is a matter for legislation. Silicon Valley doesn't care if we all go to cohost, and even less scrupulous data-crawlers will just grab our shit from there too.

So I'll be here.

[fixyourwritinghabits]

How to Tell If That Post of Advice Is AI Bullshit

Right, I wasn't going to write more on this, but every time I block an obvious AI-driven blog, five more clutter up the tags. So this is my current (April 2024) advice on how to spot AI posts passing themselves off as useful writing advice.

No Personality - Look up a long-running writing blog, you'll notice most people try to make their posts engaging and coming from a personal perspective. We do this because we're writers and, well, we want to convey a sense of ourselves to our readers. A lot of AI posts are straight-forward - no sense of an actual person writing them, no variation in tone or text.

No Examples - No attempts to show how pieces of advice would work in a story, or cite a work where you could see it in action. An AI post might tell you to describe a person by highlighting two or three features, and that's great, but it's hard to figure out how that works without an example.

Short, Unhelpful Definitions - A lot of what I've seen amount to two or three-sentence listicles. 'When you want to write foreshadowing, include a hint of what you want foreshadowed in an earlier chapter.' Cool beans, could've figured that out myself.

SEO/AI Prompt Language Included - I've seen way too many posts start with "this post is about..." or "now we will discuss..." or "in this post we will..." in every single blog. This language is meant to catch a search engine or is ChatGPT reframing the prompt question. It's not a natural way of writing a post for the average tumblr user.

Oddly Clinical Language - Right, I'm calling out that post that tried to give advice on writing gay characters that called us "homosexuals" the entire time. That's a generative machine trying to stay within certain parameters, not an actual person who knows that's not a word you'd use unless you were trying to be insulting or dunking on your own gay ass in the funniest way possible.

Too Perfect - Most generative AI does not make mistakes (this is how many a student gets caught trying to use it to cheat). You can find ways to make it sound more natural and have it make mistakes, but that takes time and effort, and neither of those are really a factor in these posts. They also tend to have really polished graphics and use the same format every time.

Maximized Tags (That Are Pointless) - Anyone who uses more than 10 one-word tags is a cop. Okay, fine, I'm joking, but there's a minimal amount of tags that are actually useful when promoting a post. More tags are not going to get a post noticed by the algorithm, there is no algorithm. Not everyone has to use their tags to make snarky comments, but if your tags look like a spambot, I'm gonna assume you're a spambot.

No Reblogs From The Rest of Writblr - I'm always finding new Writblr folks who have been around for awhile, but every real person I've seen reblogs posts from other people. We've all got other stuff to do, I'm writing this blog to help others and so are they, the whole point of tumblr is to pass along something you think is great.

While you'll probably see some variation in the future - as people get wise to obviously generated text, they'll try to make it look less generated - but overall, there's still going to be tells to when something is fake.

I don't have any real advice for what to do about this (other than block those blogs, which is what I do). Like most AI bullshit, I suspect most of these blogs are just another grift, attempting to build large follower counts to leverage or sell something to in the future. They may progress past these tattletale features, but I'm still going to block them when I see them. I don't see any value in writing advice compiled from the work of better writers who put the effort in when I can just go find those writers myself.

[witchpussy42069]

AI art is fucking horrible and I know I'm not the first person to say it but SPECIFICALLY what I personally hate about it so much is how pervasive it is. Not as in sexual, but as in it's fucking everywhere and it's NEVER tagged as AI so now everytime I see something beautiful, whether it's a photograph or a painting or something, I feel the uncanny suspicion that maybe there's not even an actual artist behind this. Maybe my liking and reblogging and support is in vain and I'm giving my energy, my admiration, my support to a soulless robot or a fucking con man. There's no way to fully filter it out of search results, or block it from my for you page/ home page. It feels insidious. I should be able to report AI creations for unreality/misinformation/ SOMETHING. the internet is becoming a more and more hostile place, even now when I just want to look at photos of flowers. This is horrible for the collective mental health of us all.

[courtofthevampireking]

HOW 2 OPT OUT OF TUMBLRS AI BULLSHIT GO!!!

step numbre 1: go to settings and scroll down

step numbre 2: you will click on one of your blogs

step numbre 3: scroll down until you see visibility and check "prevent third party sharing for [blog name]"

step numbre 4: repeat this for all of your blogs individually step numbre 5: shake fist disapprovingly at tumblr ceo

AND YOURE DONE!

*chorus of children cheering*

[symbioticsimplicity]

Sure, when AI takes parts of people to create a new person, its called revolutionary. But when I, Victor Frankenstein--

[snow-in-the-desert]

so just to be clear Tumblr is now trying to be twitter unironically. Twitter is being held hostage by a narcissistic billionaire who is trying to rebrand itself as an incel haven. TikTok is... I don't even want to know tbh that app is about as close to a black mirror episode as we've ever gotten irl. Deviant Art supports AI. Adobe supports AI. Imprnt currently won't pay it's artists. Redbubble pays artists practically nothing. All streaming services won't pay their writers and actors shit but hey let's start putting ads in the middle of whatever show you're watching even though you already pay a fee for the service. InstagramFacebookThreads doesn't bear mentioning, they're all spammy and horrible.

The state of the internet in 2023 is truly abominable. Hoard your media while you can folks it's not getting any better from here on out

[queerofthedagger]

as someone who personally really struggles to recognize AI art when mindlessly scrolling my dash, I can highly recommend adding 'ai art / ai generated / generative ai' to your filtered tags. it of course doesn't catch all of them, but certainly a bunch that I've seen people reblog who I don't think would if they knew <3

[so-engery]

Oh hey!

If tumblr goes AI, I'm gonna scrub my shit. However, I DO have a newsletter that you can follow where I put free comics 'n stuff. Tbh, it's JUST like my Tumblr except I send a nice/weird little email once a week instead of once a year.

Anyway. This is me. I sell comics and books and shirts.

[lets-steal-an-archive]

same energy, same outcome ⤵️

[tieflingkisser]

Tumblr and WordPress to Sell Users’ Data to Train AI Tools

Tumblr and WordPress.com are preparing to sell user data to Midjourney and OpenAI, according to a source with internal knowledge about the deals and internal documentation referring to the deals.  The exact types of data from each platform going to each company are not spelled out in documentation we’ve reviewed, but internal communications reviewed by 404 Media make clear that deals between Automattic, the platforms’ parent company, and OpenAI and Midjourney are imminent. The internal documentation details a messy and controversial process within Tumblr itself. One internal post made by Cyle Gage, a product manager at Tumblr, states that a query made to prepare data for OpenAI and Midjourney compiled a huge number of user posts that it wasn’t supposed to. It is not clear from Gage’s post whether this data has already been sent to OpenAI and Midjourney, or whether Gage was detailing a process for scrubbing the data before it was to be sent. 

[elishakhlebavenya]

I drew this for my nephew because he wanted a "Rick and Morty" poster.

DO NOT REPOST/PRINT/USE MY ART

[vintageandroid]

Looking at a list of calls for submission and let me just say

fuck off and die forever.

[chaoskirin]

This Post is GenAI

Hey everyone. Just wanted to warn y'all about a post that's going around being tagged/labeled as "photography," but it's just shitty AI. It looks like this:

If you've reblogged this, please delete it. Generative AI is theft, and in order to create this, OP had to steal from other artists.

There's a few ways to tell, but the easiest way is the anti-gravity stream of water coming out of the faucet. Water goes down.

[macabrecabra]

My feelings on the newest Tumblr snafu (AI bullshittery) is that it was always a matter of time. Nearly ALL major art sites now have some form of AI scrapping. My reaction is just going to be to learn how to use tools like glaze and nightshade to protect my art, continue to badger staff on how I politely dislike this (although it was inevitable with how AI companies are awful trash), and hope that more and more civil lawsuits get brought against these AI crap companies and bleeds em dry :I

This AI-plague affects us all. Always had. Even in sites that don't data scrap, third parties go in and manually feed stuff in. (this has happened to a lot of fanfic writers sadly...) The best way to fight this is to make a law AND some way to monitor these stupid AI-bro fucker nutters for plagiarisms. In the meantime, do what you can to protect your stuff. Opt-out, even if it is lip service, take every precaution you can and we will weather this awful plague together.

(ALSO It isn't even REAL AI if it can't do this shit on its OWN ye plaguebearing ratbastard pimple farters! Your AI is built on lies and poor understanding on what ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE really is! Everyone who makes AI has not the reading comprehension to even call themselves intelligent! Artificial Idiocracy be more like it ya anti-creative heathens! You snot-filled poop-nugget licking asspickles!)

[smolsleepyfox]

List of metal persons and bands that have used AI so far (somewhat filtered for my own follow bias so add on if you know more), because I am getting even more pissed off with every day:

- Within Temptation (acid trip music video)

- Sabaton (Metalizer visualizer videos, static images)

- Unleash the Archers (AI trained with permission of the artist but the programs are still iffy)

- Hammerfall (Easter greeting post)

- Rob Halford (Cat pics. Idk what to say here)

- Feuerschwanz (questionable looking shirt designs, unconfirmed)

- According to Google, a fuckton of bands using AI album covers, some of them pulling them once the shitstorm hit (Pestilence)

Guess we'll see where this goes but tbh I don't have much respect for musicians who treat other artists as replaceable because what does that say about their music 🤷🏻‍♂️