#ai is supposed to be for coding and shit not art

[arson-09]

Why is there so much fucking ai art in the acotar fandom this is bullshit

[assumedcryptid]

[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.

[monetmightexist]

Been thinking about the ao3 scrape. Looked into it, and I feel its important to acknowledge, first, the fact that every website that was scraped has had their datasets either disabled (temporarily, though it's highly unlikely that nyuuzyou will win any of their cases) or deleted. AI programs on HuggingFace cannot be trained on any of the data that was scraped. This specific iteration of the problem is, from what I can tell, solved.

But it's still incredibly concerning.

Someone could just... do that. Steal millions of works, both writing and art, and then have the audacity to fight against the DMCAs they've recieved.

Now, as idiotic as it sounds, I don't plan on restricting my fics. I've had a good number of guests leave kudos and comments, and I respect their decision to do so anonymously.

As much as I'd hate to have my words reused in a generator, I have to remember that I have faults.

If my fics were fed into a robot, it wouldn't stop talking about the character's eyes and eyebrows. It would have those random typos I keep making in Fish in a Birdcage. If left unflitered, it would curse randomly and rather excessively. Would it know what to do with page breaks? Would it be able to learn my exact usage of italics, or would it just guess randomly, if at all? If it were trying to replicate my QSMP fics with other languages scattered throughout them, would it be able to recognize that and just start throwing in random spanish or french without reason? Or would it start making shit up, not having a translator built in because the laziest person alive didn't consider that because the fic was labeled as English?

There are a large number of chatfics on ao3. If every single piece of fanfiction was thrown into a robot, I wouldn't be surprised for a piece of narration to be randomly interrupted by a youtube comment esque diologue. And maybe the shorthand typing would end up in the normal narration, too. Even if a person filtered out tags to reduce faults, there are still so many untagged fics. Not to mention, AI fics being fed into an AI generator will fuck up so much shit.

Authors make formatting mistakes. Authors forget punctuation. Authors may learn some CCS code to throw into a fic that would be incredibly hard to interperet. Authors throw headcanons onto characters that may change their gender, appearance, etc. The best thing about fandom is that each person experiences it differently. Trying to mix all of these into one will, with enough work I suppose, create a product that some people find to be acceptable. But it will be so harrowingly inconsistent and confusing that no one could ever fully enjoy it.

Ao3 is, quite possibly, one of the most diverse websites out there. Which makes it also a horrible training ground for AI, which has the sole capability of being able to follow directions consistently.

Yes, your works have been stolen. Yes, my works will probably continue to get stolen. Yes, it will suck ass, and some lonely bitch will manage to make a few cheap bucks off of it.

But all that matters to me right now is that AI never has the life, the ideas, the experiences, nor the expression that a human does.

[chameleonspell]

HTDC commentary - 17: VCDRKAA & 18: language & 19: knowledge & 20: again

[Looking back at HTDC after nearly ten years: comments on lore, character notes, influences, art, whatever. May contain spoilers for later chapters.]

chapter text: 17: VCDRKAA & 18: language & 19: knowledge & 20: again

I hope no one was expecting a line-by line complex exegesis of chapter 17, because I generated a wall of TEXTSLOP. It was never intended to mean anything specific, although I did edit it selectively, for poetry and interest. I didn't really expect anyone to read it, I just wanted them to open the chapter and go "what the fuck is this shit??"

I think I used this page to generate it, which must be twenty years old, at the absolute minimum, and the code is from the 1990s. It's beyond irritating that Markov chain text generators, along with other venerable methods of cut-up and creative mixology, are probably now tarred with the same brush as bullshit like chatGPT. Anyway, you could call it a Small Language Model, in that it only uses the text you put into it, doesn't steal it to do plagiarism, and doesn't require the energy and water usage of a small country to run.

I... had totally forgotten which texts I put into it, and had to spend way too long cross-checking fragments. All I remembered was that the nonsense-title of the chapter was taken from the title-letters of the input books, and it was supposed to be things Iriel had recently encountered, to represent a chaotic vomiting of his subconscious.

I think it's this:

V = 36 Lessons of Vivec

C = Chimarvamidium

D = The Book of Dawn and Dusk

R = A Less Rude Song

K = The Ruins of Kemel-Ze

A = Song of the Alchemists

A = Words of Clan Mother Ahnissi

...but I'm pretty sure there's also Special Flora of Tamriel there, in an uncredited role. I don't think that, or Song of the Alchemists is mentioned as something Iriel reads in-fic, but since Ire's an alchemist, I shovelled them into the word-hopper, too. I suspect I never noticed at the time that Song of the Alchemists is not an alchemical textbook, but silly Marobar Sul doggerel, and not exactly something Iriel would read.

Anyway, please do go ahead and cancel me for "writing fic with AI".

Playlist pick: Of Montreal - Heimdalsgate Like A Promethean Curse. For when you really, really need the drugs to work. Or something to work. Anything. It's all just chemicals, right? C'MON, CHEMICALS!

Once we're done with the psychedelic breakdown, we have a temptation scene, specifically, Iriel wakes up in a wizard's bed, and barely resists intellectual seduction by House Telvanni.

The mage laid the book across the bed and opened it, revealing page after page of writing in Dwemer script.

Neither of them can read it yet, but the book is Divine Metaphysics, one of the three books you need to solve Trebonius' Dwemer mystery quest.

He sighed, and turned another page, revealing a complicated diagram of… Iriel wasn’t sure, but he was interested enough to sit up fully, and examine it. “Chimarvamidium,” he said, eventually.

Iriel is reacting to the diagram in the book of an anthropoid Dwemer construct, a theme that also occurs in Chimarvamidium. The picture under his nose is almost certainly Numidium, something he should be at least theoretically aware of. Tiber Septim used it to conquer Summerset in the Second Era, within living memory of older Altmer, and if Ire wasn't concentrating in history class, he was fourteen years old at the time of The Warp in The West. Admittedly, the giant robot was stomping about in Daggerfall, by then (so no trying to claim it had any weird effects on Ire's developing psyche!), and perhaps even a Dragon Break was barely a blip on his radar, compared to the horrors of being a teenager in Lillandril. Either way, Ire misses the obvious fact about the picture, and makes a more remote connection, something Baladas takes as evidence of a subtler, more esoteric intellectual approach, when it's actually far more to do with:

“I’m sorry. I think I’m still sssomewhat under the effects of an Imperial fuckton of skooma.

Iriel was previously only ever doing moon sugar. Skooma is much, much stronger, more addictive, and, for a magic-sensitive Altmer, extremely psychoactive and hallucination-inducing. He also drank two bottles, straight. Skooma is a liquid, and can be drunk, but is more commonly smoked (inhaled as a vapour?) through a pipe. I am assuming that smoking is the preferred method because the effects are slow and gentle, whereas drinking it is extremely neither of those things.

Yes, fine, the line about skooma being like "eight hundred orgasms tied to a brick" is an echo of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy description of the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster cocktail as being "like having your brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick". NO that is NOT a pop culture reference, that's just me stealing shit, which is totally different okay?

“Was that a Daedroth back there?”

Baladas keep a pet Daedroth. Wait... is it a pet? Are they sentient? Some of them are named, and have relationships to other characters that could imply they were intelligent. But... hmm. Dangerous tangent. Let's assume it's just a pet, yeah?

“It’s adorable! What’s its name?” Ire poked it, giggling in delight as it contracted its metal limbs back into its shell.

Again. Please let the record show that the first time Iriel interacted closely with a non-hostile Dwemer automaton, he was overcome with nothing more lascivious or sinister than childlike glee and wonder. You filthy animals.

Poor little centurion, does your daddy not even care enough to–”

He did indirectly call a Telvanni wizard "daddy", though. I can't really defend him from that one, since I'm pretty sure he knew exactly what he was doing*. And so did Baladas, because he shut that bullshit down FAST.

(* exactly what he was doing = being very silly and no-filter. Iriel is not actually looking to get "mentored" by a much older wizard, even if he could find one more interested in doing it.)

“The miners report that a screaming, semi-transparent Altmer, covered in weeds and soaking wet, broke into the eggmine from the lower levels.

This whole bit is confusing, and I don't like it. It's not funny, and it really doesn't matter about the stupid route Iriel took to end up with the book on Baladas' doorstep. But yes, you can get into the Gnisis eggmine via the riverbed outside town, and from there, into the Dwemer ruin and back. If he knew, Iriel would feel smug about the fact Edwinna would have tried to make him go there, on purpose, later, if she hadn't expelled him by then.

“Auri-El, what did you do to them?” Ire had heard about Telvanni methods.

While he hasn't encountered many Telvanni in Morrowind, he would have read things like this, in which Telvanni mages are notorious for being fans of inventive magical torture.

Iriel knew the score. Baladas Demnevanni was a serious Dwemer scholar, [...] He could make far better use of it than Ire ever would. And yet, something in Iriel resisted.

Iriel does know the score, and part of the score that he knows is: while Baladas is much older and more powerful, he's not technically Iriel's senior. Because Ire's not in House Telvanni, or any other structure that makes him Demnevanni's subordinate. Which Ire leaves free to resist. Sure, Baladas could take the book by magical force, but Iriel has enough pride to want to force him to do that, to not capitulate based purely on academic bluster. (Yes, of course Iriel can have a powerful and resilient scholarly ego, while simultaneously having zero self esteem. You've met academics, right?)

“It’s mine,” he said. “I found it. And I never asked you to take care of me.”

Saying this feels good. It's true: he didn't ask to be taken care of. And Baladas' reasons for doing so are cleanly self-interested, and make perfect sense to Ire. There's no messy pity involved, no need to spare the feelings of someone who thought they were being a good person, when you're too bitter and damaged to be grateful. This whole conversation is, in many ways, Iriel's ideal type of social interaction.

I will give you information about the location of Dwemer ruins on Vvardenfell, and in return, you will bring me any more books that you find there.”

The location of known Dwemer ruins on Vvardenfell is not, at this point in time, especially secret information, so Baladas is rather getting the better end of this deal. But if he wasn't, he wouldn't be making it, would he?

The only people qualified are my fellow mages, but Telvanni do not co-operate. Anything they found, they would keep for themselves.

His reasoning checks out, though, so Iriel is inclined to trust him. I really did think Ire would take him the other books at some point, and Ire himself intended to at various points, but... in the end, things got complicated. Iriel comes back to Gnisis, but not to Arvs Drelen, and he keeps all his findings to himself.

“Sweet Mara, no. I just want to be left alone to read.”

“You have just spoken the unofficial motto of House Telvanni.

The problem, I suppose, is that Ire is entirely too Telvanni at heart. It was always touch-and-go, as to whether he'd find an excuse to join the House. After all, he's perfect for it... but that's exactly why he resisted.

Iriel knows he's an obsessive, isolationist weirdo, who's probably going to end up alone in a tower, reading esoterically taboo books all day. Surrounded by robots and summoned Daedra, because that's the only level of social contact he's capable of tolerating. He knows all that, he knows exactly the sort of person he is. He just doesn't like that person. And when Telvanni start tempting him to fully embrace weird hermit mage life, he's forcefully reminded of what Telvanni are known for, and how isolating yourself with only Daedra for company makes you lose all contact with pedestrian concepts like "morality", and "not torturing people to death with lightning spells".

Clearly, Ire's being ridiculous to think his own morality is so fragile, but after the day he's had, he's feeling fragile in all sorts of ways, and unwilling to trust his own limits.

each mage seeks only solitude and freedom to continue his or her work.” [...] “Knowledge may be power,” he was declaiming, “but for some of us, it is enough that knowledge is knowledge.

And Ire's right to question the actual content of Baladas' rhetorical  flourishes: freedom to do what? Power to do what? Knowledge of what? Doesn't it matter? The Telvanni answer certainly seems to be "no". But Ire's experiences with education have left him questioning the value of the "knowledge" he obtained. Certainly, if he was supposed to convert it into power, he appears to have missed a crucial step in the process. He's not sure he wants Telvanni instruction, for taking that step.

He stood up, and began to concentrate a sphere of magicka between his hands. “Where should I send you?”

I have a question about teleportation. What are the rules? Guild guides only transport people to other guild halls, but is that restriction due to rules, or ability? UESP says that guides "maintain magical contact with their counterparts in other branches", but I can't find an ingame source for this. If true, that would explain the restriction, but I'm not sure I buy it. It's possible for a guild guide to send you into a guildhall where the "receiving" guild guide is no longer there, for example during this quest. And the mage who sends you to Mournhold in the Tribunal expansion isn't a guild guide, but sends you as a favour, since she's a "powerful mage".

So: my theory is that it's totally possible for a skilled mage to teleport people to other locations without another linked mage "catching" them, but the right location helps. Receiving chambers are magically set up in guildhalls to act as teleportation beacons, and that's the focus, rather than the other guide. This fits with how Divine and Almsivi Intervention work, not to mention Mark and Recall. Guild guides are trained to be specially attuned to these beacons, but any sufficiently powerful Mysticism expert can sling people into them, as Baladas does, here. Really powerful ones might not even need beacons, though I imagine there are exponential risks to the subject, as the location gets more distant and/or unfamiliar.

So, because it's theoretically possible, if difficult, I also think there are strict rules about where guild guides can send people, just like you can't ask the bus driver to take you anywhere you want, even if he technically could. Because teleportation would have to be a highly regulated skill! You can't just send people anywhere, that could cause all sorts of trouble.

As an aside, every guild guide in Morrowind is a beautiful woman. There's something a bit retro air stewardess about that, isn't there? Male game devs thinking women should be in travel service roles, or something? Hmm.

“Um… Ald'ruhn, please. The Mages’ Guild, for preference, but as long as you don’t teleport me inside a wall, I’ll be happy.”

Iriel's not keen to launch into his Queer Coded Villain arc, yet. So despite Baladas' blandishments, it's back to the loving arms of the Mages' Guild, for now.

“I want you to know,” Edwinna was saying, “that this is not about the Dwemer tube.

...Ah. Never mind.

“Whilst you were gone, some disturbing information came to light. When I agreed to mentor you, I was unaware of the crimes for which you were convicted in Cyrodiil. I’m sure you understand why the theft of magical artifacts is not something I can simply ignore.”

I realised something really funny just now, which is that if Edwinna has been digging into Iriel's background check, presumably through a contact at the Arcane University, then she must know Iriel is also supposed to have straight-up murdered one of his professors. But that's not what's bothering her at all!

“In addition, there is the matter of your drug abuse.

I can only assume that when Iriel took a little too long returning with the Dwemer tube, she couldn't resist the temptation to go through his bedroom. In her ensuing freak-out at finding DRUGS, it emerged that no one had ever actually looked into the squirrelly-looking Altmer's claim on application that he'd studied at the Arcane University.

Ire stopped recasting the Paralyze spell on himself

I was determined to try and find creative ways to use Illusion spells, and to some extent, that was the motive for this whole scene.

He had fully expected to burst into tears as soon as he was alone, possibly sooner, but instead, he found himself gripped by a cold fury.

So, I had planned to get Iriel expelled for a while, and originally I, like Iriel himself,  assumed that he would be devastated, because the number of times he's got himself kicked out of magical institutions is ridiculous at this point. But coming right off the conversation with Baladas, that wasn't where his head was at, at all. He was furious, and when a character gives you the gift of an unexpected emotional reaction, you always gotta lean into it, because it's one of my favourite things about writing. Iriel's vitriolic contempt for the Mages' Guild (and Edwinna Elbert in particular) gave him the motivation to do all sorts of fun things later, and really channel that "I'll show those fools at the institute!" energy. Even if he never did join House Telvanni.

At the last minute, he stopped, turned back, and retrieved Vivec’s Sermon 14 from under the bed.

On the one hand, yes, I am making fun of Iriel for considering porn* an essential, but also... not entirely? At the risk of getting too brutally real about mental illness, masturbation can be a key hammer in the mental toolbox, albeit one that tends not to get included on cute little listicles of harm-reduction coping techniques like taking bubble baths or snapping an elastic on your wrist. For people who spend their lives trying to manipulate their brains into staying above the line marked "basic functionality", orgasm can occasionally seem like the brief boost of feel-good chemicals that might kick it over that line. It is, at any rate, cheaper and safer than many alternatives, and while it's not nearly as effective as skooma, at least you don't have to fight smugglers in a cave for it. Or worse, interact with Tsiya.

*Iriel's current opinion of said text. We can make fun of him for this one.

“I’m sorry, Iriel.” Erranil shook her head, primly. “I’m no longer authorised to transport you.

It is the stupidest fucking thing that you don't have to be a member of the Mages Guild to use guild guide transportation, but if you've been expelled from the guild, they put you on a permanent no-fly list! This was often extremely annoying, ingame.

That said, it was funny to be playing the opposite of a "proper" Morrowind character, who ends up head of all the factions, including being Pope of two different religions at once. Iriel, by contrast, got expelled while still Apprentice rank in the Mages, never got past the early ranks in Thieves, and while he got one or two Imperial Cult ranks, he stopped once it wasn't going to get him laid any more.

But yes, I did get Iriel ingame-mechanically-expelled from the Mages' Guild on purpose (possibly by stealing a spoon?). For immersion. Method gamer, y'know.

next: 21: refinement & 22: fragile previous: 13: legs & 14: plan & 15: claws & 16: door

[electronicironic]

quid pro quo my friend you must explain one of your oc groups to me

shriek. you daare squid pro quo ME. you don't even know that I HAVE oc groups actually who am I kidding. beans you over the head with these funny bastards. afterwards its your turn though

HUMAN RESOURCES DISPATCH AGENTS TEAM: Scrap Havoc (not sure if that's the team name or the story name) has a population of five (who only have code names because I haven't gotten around to real names. Team leader is Corleone and she orders around a squadron composed of Redbelly, Crispie, Cinnabar(&Mercury) and Shinjii.

Redbelly, joined the team as a pal of Corleone's and a solid worker is named after piranhas because that's her job. She has holdover magic powers from a system migration that gives her dope ass blood magic that's mostly used to heal real fast but you can also make pointy constructs out of blood and also she has a Special Unique blood dude ability, Devour, that she shares with her favorite shotgun. Devour is basically a blast shaped beam attack that annihilates matter and directly translates destroyed organic matter into more fuel for the Infinite Blood Healing.

Shinjii is Redbelly's fucked up and weird little nephew. He's in Redbelly's house and also business because he's the survivor of a Concerningly Redacted Sci Fi event that saw any family members with more respectable employment Deleted. He's also short enough to mention and kinda babyfaced which makes it odd for him to be doing Sci-Fi Adventure Bullshit, but Shinjii is also a fucked up little savant at the job. He's clever, small and fast and hard to keep track of, deadpan rude in a way that's GREAT for bantz, and best of all almost everyone else in the team can throw him if they need him through a high up window. He also may or may not be an inspecifically prescient were-dragon depending on the previously mentioned magic system migration. Either way it's a bit of an Image to put him (short, subtly and tastefully schemeful and unsettling) next to his auntie (tall, covered in blood, and very gregarious and boisterous.)

Cinnabar is an old friend from when she are Corleone were kids. She was SUPPOSED to be a cool and suave sharply dressed Corporate Agent you know the type of shit you see as bad guys in cheap cyberpunk-the-game stuff. She's great at things like infiltration, espionage, not being as horrifically crass as some of her teammates, and managing the paperwork that Sci Fi Adventure Bullshit probably causes. Her corporate base did get super duper blown up in the middle of corporate war. Cinnabar got not-exploded by breaking the glass on some Super Secret Corporate Bullshit and hitting the road with it and by it I mean Mercury. Mercury is a nanomachine grey goo with all the abilities a secret corporate grey goo project would probably have. It spends most of its time on Cinnabar's shoulder like a really fancy scarf and has all the brainpower of a really stupid smart dog. As a refined, dignified corporate agent she can appreciate fine art, such as Redbelly after a thirty minute street brawl.

Crispie is the team's funny operator robots guy and also the most honest character design here in that he's a guy who Maximizes his Gamer Skills by doing as much computer bullshit as humanely possible simultaneously. As the penultimate manifestation of such l33t g4m3r ski11z, Crispie can split his attention between his actual body and ludicrous amounts of drones and bots and hacker bullshit at any moment, to the point that he considers the entire network as part of his body more than his meat body alone. Despite such freakish computing power, Crispie has to put significant effort into preventing Shinjii and Cinnabar from sniping the shit outta him in most games. This universe is one energy-drink heart attack from the first true strong AI being made by accident by a dweeb who likes FOV drone racing.

You may think to yourself, what secret sauce does Corleone have to be the wise, respected, and even occasionally listened-to leader of this conference of freaks. Well for starters Corleone is a 6 foot something butch lesbian with a CDL and a set of sci-fi turbocarabiners. She also builds and mechanics dope-ass power rigs, the kind of shit that looks like wearing forklifts (and also she works on trucks because truck is still a concept even in the beautiful far future.) Leo also has a natural sense of wisdom, down-to-earth-ness, and capability for rough-housing that really contributes to the chill and love-and-friendshipful environment of this gang of Commits Tremendous Violence For Money And Advancement Opportunities Out Of The Back Of Corleone's Shop.

These guys kind of kick it inspecifically in a sci-fantastika setting that I gnaw on sometimes. Occasionally I lob these guys at funny hypothetical situations, or perhaps interactions with other characters in the setting like "1/4 of Satan" and "Capital A Alchemist who specializes in party drugs."

[specterofarts]

Remembering Robosapiens (so you don't have to - and also to paint it!)

I`m currently working on an illustration for a zine themed around Y2K - the call for artists said they're looking everything 1980s to 90s coded but my mind of course immediately went to the glitch where all our electronics were supposed to stop working on Newyears 1999 because somebody forgot to code in the ability to switch their internal clocks / date-displays upon the onset of the new milleniunm. (I was 4 when that happened, but I have some vague memories about everybody losing their shit). Since I'm an avid hauntology-enjoyer I decided to go with a sort of digital impressionist rendition of a photo my dad took at some unnamed Gartenschau (German garden-exhibition) - I like to imagine it was a Bundesgartenschau but I didn't do any research into that... yet! (My dad was a reporter for a small-town paper and he left me several folder and hard-drives of materials he collected over the years. He was also a photographer by trade so there are a ton of weird old pictures - I'll probably share some other strange finds on here at some point. In any case, I've been using stuff from his collection in my art-projects for several years now.)

Since I'm also an avid enjoyer of adding weird shit to old photographs, my next step was to add a bunch of old electronics strewn about the scenery, I'm currently still in the process of gimmicking up the characters form the original photos but to finally introduce the main subject of this post, the project got me thinking about all the weird tech-gadgets I had as a kid. I vividly remeber having a remote-controlled plastic spider with red glowing eyes at one point. My grandmother picked it up at REAL (a large German retailer that isn't doig all that well these days) and after my grandpa found a bunch of the weirdly specific batteries the thing requires and not included, I got to pilot the thing around my grandparents licing-room with a wrist-watch-style remote. It even had a button for spider-noises (whatever those are) - pushing it made the spider go 'Wyharrrwyharrwyharrrharrrharrr!'. I also a 'robot dinosaur' named 'Dino Chi' at one point - I saw it on holiday in Rostock and bugged my parents untill they got me one. I remember the thing was marketed like it was an actual robot with some sort of ill-defined AI allowing it to navigate your livingroom like an actual 20ish cm t-rex would have done way back when they still made those. The reality of Dino Chi was more like a bunch of infra-red sensors and a real, genuine mechanical button at the tip of its snout which woud 'sense' when the dino would ram itself directly into the next wall or table-leg. It also had a button on its head which you could push to make the eyes light up and the LEDs light up in a bunch of random shapes to give the dino some eye-articulation. That was pretty dope actually. It also came with a small plastic bone with a magnet in it. The dino was supposed to follow it around when the bone was near but I rarely got it to do so. Then, however, one fatefull day, entered the absolute GOAT of gimmicky 90s robot-toys - Robot Sapiens. I had seen the advertisement for several month between pretty much any cartoons I'd been watching, the robot itself was way chonkyer, rounder and masmoother than any of it's predecessors, could actually move its arms and hand and grasp stuff and little child me went absolutely apeshit when my dad found a barely used one on a fleemarket and brought it home!!!

[id: Screenshot of a work in progress digital painting in photoshop. The central subject of the part visible in the screenshot is a Robosapiens toy-robot, walking next to a child with a pink pullover. A reference-image of the actual toy can be seen in the corner of the image End id.]

Full disclosure, these days those plastic novelty toys just kind of depress me because I imagine that most of them ended up broken and discarded now, just chilling in some landfill, not to decompose untill eons after we have, produced from that prescious dino-juice we fight wars and royally fuck up the environment for, but on the other hand, Robosapiens fucking slapped! (And also the remote-controlled spider I guess. No Idea what became of that and if it's currently in a landfill, but critical support!). I'm also pretty sure our boy was on the more resilient side of 90s plastic tat - note the reference-picutuer I used is just a photo from some ebay listing I stole from google this morning! Ihave no idea if mine is still lurking somewhere in my mom's house or if it returned to the fleemarket from whence it came at some points but I'd be willing to bet money that if it didn't get got by a leaking battery, it would probably still work! Why then did I immediately think of Robosapiens when I was looking for a fitting tech object to pair with the child in the foreground of my mellow 1990s hauntology painting? Because I think it perfectly represents the promise of technology at that time - a sense of hope, speed and amazement, which accompanied me through my childhood and which arguably fuels much of the nostalgia on which a whole buch of recent tech-scams prey on. The robosapiens came with a huge remote with more buttons than the one of our VHS recorder and it could actually perform most of the functions it promissed just well enought to be servicable and capture the amazement of a child for a few days or weeks depending in how creative they are in finding objects both light and large enough for the robot to pick them up and maybe toss them a few centimeters. It had a bunch of blinking lights, stock soundeffect and even made its own music it could perform a few programmed dances to (not 100% sure but I think you could also create your own routines of a few moves and bind them to one of the keys on the remote). The robot picking up a piece of styrofoam I pilfered from a box of stuff my dad ordered online blew my mind back then and for a chonky, bipedal plastic-comrad the robot also walked pretty smoothely. The meat of this particular toy's user experience was still lining up plastic-soldiers, building-blocks, lego houses or some action-figures and then have the robot fuck up their shit!

To wrap up my thesis-lenghts post on the plastic robot I drew this morning instead of doing something for university: I have a whole treasure-trove of cherished memories about Lego - like spending all my allowance on additional cloe-trooper- and droid-figures to recreate the battle at the end of the second Starwars with the one friend equally obsessed with staying inside all day, playing with legos and listening to 'Die drei ???' audio-cassettes or me and said friend creating an intricate lore for our assorted lego-sets, involving Exoforce, Lego Alpha-Team's Ogel (the Olaf Scholz looking dude with the lazer-hookhand and the swimming servitor-skulls) and Jaba the Hutt banding together to stop a sentient mostertruck. I could write a whole manifesto about digging small trenches in the back-yard for our basic-ass plastic soldiers or pretending swords are sticks like its the great depression or something. For Robosapiens, however, my whole memories can be summarized by this post: The advertisements, going absolutely bonkers when my dad brought it home, having it pick up a small palstic bucket full of styrofoam pieces, having it knock around a buch of action-figures and eventually uncovering it in my closet way later, liely to pawn it off because I needed cash to buy a Wii.

This is the picture I'm working with by the way - further progress updates will probably follow.

[id: Photograph of a group of people in 90s attire, walking across a large garden or fairground on an overcast day. In the distance, a Ferris wheel and several pavillons can be seen. In the foreground, a borad walking-paths leads past a field of various garden-plants and flowers, including white, yellow, red and purple ones. A child in a pink pullover and blue jeans approaches the camera while a man in casual business-attire is inspecting an abstract sculpture and carrying a shopping-bag. At his side are a smaller child in a dotted pullover and a figure in a dark green blazer. A tall person in a leather Jacket and another in an off-yellow coat are walking past in the other direction. Furhter in the background a farm-house with a straw roof and several flags can be seen. End id.]

I'm also planning on adding a bunch of other retro tech like a few floppy disks and a Tamagochi somewhere. Which strange 90s toys are you weirdly nostalgic for. Did this post unlock any suppressed memories about Robosapiens. Did you have one as a child? Do you still have it? Is is still running? (Well then you better catch it - could be worth a nice sum on E-Bay) Are there any Y2K tech-products you absolutely need to see in this painting? I'd be happy abbout any inspiration!

[gaykarstaagforever]

The funny thing with AI art is that you could easily use it as a tool to save you time, like generate a thing, then go over it for like an hour cleaning up the weird shit, and claim you just made it yourself. And if everyone had done that, there would still be a debate about the stealing that enables it, but it would really be seen as a tool.

But these garbage-generating assholes are SO soulless and lazy that they just mass-generate the shit and spew it out, and demand the rest of us shut up and pay them for whatever the hell this is supposed to be.

And for what? Techbro greed. Instead of waiting to put out a sus but useful product made from this, they all just puked out half-realized crap onto the market. Because Sam Altman wants to use it to beg comic book villains for money, because every second he exists that someone isn't writing him checks, he goes into a panic. Because his parents were terrible people or something. Who knows.

AI is a product of the grift capitalism that is 100% how everyone does everything now: make nothing of value, lie about it, and spend the money before everyone notices they've been ripped off. This is how Boeing builds planes now. This is why my deodorant costs $7 but I can almost put my hand through the plastic sleeve they put it in.

We can't even overcharge people for a basic, functional product now. Everyone is idolizing podcasters, who generate wealth by calling you stupid if you don't send them money.

That's not sustainable. And AI will end up another mess of grey-market code on the trash heap of history, like Napster, because god forbid any adults slow down for 5 minutes and actually come up with a good use for it.

And also figure out how to make it work on the basis of something other than rapid pilfering.

[drtanner]

I'm feeling directionless today and it's resulting in me sitting here with my thoughts and getting rankled about Numerous things, but mostly about how bullshit it is to hear how other people in enviable positions got to where they are and how fucking isolated I am from anyone who could meaningfully help me achieve anything. There's that quote, something about being less interested in the weight and convulsions of Einstein's brain than the certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweat shops; I think about that quote just about every fucking day, and I especially think about it, and think about it bitterly, when I hear about someone who got to where they are by knowing someone in the industry they got into, or getting lucky by being in the right place at the right time, or having the freedom to try something that might not work.

(tl;dr - Yes, this is about the monster dating sim, again, but also it's really not. I've been pissed about this stuff for A While.)

The more I sit here and have ideas for this video game that will never get made, because I certainly can't make it by myself but it's either by myself or not at all, the more irritated and resentful I get at having been railroaded into mediocrity. Where were my big opportunities in my youth? The people I was supposed to connect with and get a leg up from when I was older? All I was ever told when I was growing up was that I should work hard at school, get good grades and ensure myself a sensible job that paid well, and to never dare dream of doing anything else. Now I'm a few years shy of being 40 and I'm fucking nothing, and frustratingly isolated from anyone who could actually help me execute any of the ideas I've been having. I could have all the good ideas in the world and it wouldn't mean shit.

For someone who grew up being told that my being "bright" would automatically assure me greatness as long as I never let that inherent trait of brightness be compromised by mistakes or failure, I sure did end up going fucking nowhere.

"Oh Tanner, just learn to code! You can find everything you need to learn to code for free online! It's easy, you can just make your game by yourself!" Yeah, maybe if the fucking ADHD meds had worked for more than a fucking day. I have a disability that affects my focus and memory, I am not learning how to do jack or shit, no matter how much I might want to. Just the thought of sitting down and coding something sets my brain shrieking like a distressed toddler and I think it might actually kill me to try, and that's before we get into how much art would be necessary to make this fucking thing. I work so fucking slowly, it would take me a fucking lifetime to make enough art for even the simplest dating sim. It is not fucking feasible.

I know what needs to be coded! I've spent the last few weeks coming up with Systems and ways to make things work beyond the basic functionality of a bog standard dating sim that I know wouldn't be difficult to code for someone who knows how! I know what art needs to be made! I just can't fucking do it myself, and once again I am left to wonder how, exactly, one becomes an Eccentric Auteur™ who just has the ideas and doles them out to a team of vastly more practical people who turn them into real things. One assumes that you have to have money to get started doing that, which I, a disabled old queer, most certainly do not.

It's going to be by myself or not at all, so I guess it's going to be not at all. Life's not a bed of roses, is it.

NB: Pre-emptively, I know that there are game engines that one can use to make dating sims easily. They are not going to be sufficient for the shit that I've been throwing into this game's google doc for the last few weeks. Believe me when I say that I'm more upset about this than you are.

Also, if you try to suggest that I should use AI to help me with any part of this, I'm going to walk to your house and smash your fucking kneecaps with a brick. I should not have to explain why.

[bananonbinary]

The problem is that due to the way AI art is created it's difficult to impossible to tell if the algorithm is making completely new stuff by cutting things up and piecing them together or if they're just a very slightly changed picture that was used to train it. The sheer volume of training data is so large that no one will ever know all of it. I have seen that this issue does occur with AI that is supposed to create faces. The faces it supposedly created were just ripped from its training data and distorted very slightly.

hmm if that is indeed happening, there's definitely a problem. my gut reaction is to say that transparency would solve this issue, so that people who understand code could see Why some bots are doing that and fix it so that they cant (or tell other people "hey this bot is crap and super illegal"). i guess part of the issue there is; can we tell if AI is *conceptually* a problem, or are there *specific bots* that are poorly made that aren't doing what they're supposed to? i would hope that this is more an issue of like, specific bots being shit, because my understanding of machine learning shouldn't allow for that at all.

[seriously-mike]

Like I said last time, AI image generators cannot replicate an artist's style. They can only provide an approximation, and not really a close one, and here's the proof.

The basic prompt uses an embedding of Keira Knightley's likeness, "embedding:keirkni as soldier with short brown hair, wearing black and silver scifi combat armor, city ruins background, cinematic lighting, high definition, detailed", the seed is locked as 91958671445024, the data model is Dreamshaper V6.3 for StableDiffusion 1.5. For each artist, "(painting by x):1.2," was added to the beginning of the prompt, with the exception of Liefeld (for whom it's "(comic art by Rob Liefeld):1.2,") and Studio Ghibli (for whom it's "(anime art by studio Ghibli):1.2,"). Now let's see.

Greg Rutkowski - once again, the similarity to Rutkowski's work is somewhere between jack and shit. Maybe the colors are somewhere in the ballpark, but compared to several other concept artists included in the test but omitted from publication, it's fairly samey. Ask for Axel Torvenius (of the new Wolfenstein games' fame) or Adam Adamowicz (concept artist for Fallout 3), you'll get the exact same damn thing.

Zdzisław Beksiński - the only similarity to Beksiński's work is the stupid hat with antennas on it and the rifle tangled in cables. Turns out that Midjourney can imitate Beksiński better entirely by accident.

Simon Stalenhag - I swear it's the same seed and prompt. Apparently, art of Simon Stalenhag consists of itty bitty characters facing humongous ominous-looking machines. Which is not that far from the truth. Asking for Jakub Rozalski gave similar results, just with an itty bitty character facing humongous ominous-looking ruined skyscrapers.

Rob Liefeld - while we can't see the character's feet and the outfit has uncharacteristically few pouches, the anatomy is as wack as if the real Rob Liefeld drew it. Not to mention the faithfully off-model face.

Ralph McQuarrie - a few bits of armor nicked from Captain Phasma's closet are the only things hinting that this is supposed to be based on the work of original Star Wars concept artist.

Todd Lockwood - the man draws mostly fantasy, not science fiction, which would explain the weird studded leathery bodysuit. Aside from that, not really close.

Hajime Sorayama - well what a surprise: this version of the dataset finally has it coded that Hajime Sorayama draws chrome butts. So it's super-tight chrome all around. But then, the prompt explicitly describes the armor as black and silver.

Masamune Shirow - leotards and thigh-highs right off The Major are spot-on, and the entire thing has the feel of promo art for the GITS game from a few years ago. I also tried an "anime art" version of the prompt and it's pretty much the same, just with more anime-style face and the legs being a little more robotic.

Studio Ghibli - funny thing, that. You could guess the inspiration seeing the old wooden windows and fluffy white clouds, not to mention the character heavily skewed towards "kawaii potato", but aside from that, not even close.

[ask-hexcode]

hex the typa guy to have 8 different accounts all with different political views and ragebaits with all of them

also some stuff ??? i guess ? that has been floating in my head about him ((NOTE. THINGS MAY CHANGE DOWN THE LINE

also also this is going to be bit of a ramble because its all shit thats been stuck in my head for a good few months so

he uses the royal we constantly ... i dont know why

his name is hex becasue. of HEX code get itha hs aha h ahahahahaa ha hah ha

oh yeah general stuff shoudlve gone first ok um. he/it/we/they but honestly? i doubt he cares. anab (Assigned Nuisance At Birth) but yeah hes mmmmale..>????? he doesnt care about that either. personality i havent fleshed out, i've got different ideas and interpretations rn. I CANT DECIDE… but some stuufff likee : he is constantly looking for change and surprises, hes erratic and selfish, hates routine

he got some thick eyebrows

orphan #LOSER!!!!!!!!!!!!sorry thats mean

loses touch with reality often, doesnt kill people because of his ego or something sky write something here to make it make sense later

^ future sky here . maybe like he thinks death is an escape and a prison. or he thinks people who die are cowards. does this imply he'd be a good first responder on suicide hotlines .

(UNSURE ABOUT THIS....) he combined his consciousness, mind with a type of ai/robot? slash reprogrammed his brain with tech and that def changed him a lot. bc of this hes ... strange

has a twin sister that never becomes relevant to the plot

fun fact: they were originally named hansel and gretel but, like, im not sure if i should keep those as their real names

i think hes bi idk i have to ask him

stole the godfathers staff

robo-body is powered by redstone

throws up redstone when hes using too much power/energy

staff is main source of redstone/power. he still has bits of it on him but like not enough if he had to fight someone i guess

voiceclaim is discord mlp

hes SUPPOSED to have wires and tubing all over his design but i just KNOW i cant be bothered to draw allat in the future

^ wires, tubes and loose straps can move on their own and are.. kinda sentient???

other weapon besides the staff is like a hologram saw thing

hes supposed to also have a bug motif and antenna but im not sure anymore

prosthetic/robot eye(s)... i have no idea if he should have both soon robot eyes or just one or straightup rawdogging vision

said robot eye can display images i think itd be funny

scar on forehead might be from battle, an experiment or a lobotomy, you decide.

kinda useless without his staff . look at this loser

hates small spaces

i thiought about the magenta part if his hair chanjng colour depending on the conduit but eehhhhhhhh

would listen to loud metal pipes banging against each other as music

^ unironically would listen to 'sleep phonk' and fall asleep sound as a baby

his design is reminiscent of a printer (if you squint LMAO) and cmyk stuff

cmyk aspect is used when he uses his tech/conduits, he basically has like some variant of these n mixes the colours to generate the right tool, if that makes sense...??????

the circle holograms under his feet are like nezhas fire wheelsHELP i watched nezha2 and i just had to

adding on to that..,,, maybe the holograms arent just for show, and they help him with mobility because hes lowkey weak and frail

ear has a cut part rip

if you wanna draw him and afraid of it turning out inaccurate DONT. actually make it MORE inaccurate there is not a single thing thats consistent about him

also i keep going back and forth on him having a vial of redstone as an earring Idk i feel like theres. already enough going on with his face bye

after his Little Playtime Session in his 'home city' he went about and caused havoc all around random villages and towns . bruh

maybe bumped into a cubed member or two before events of cube and yapped too much they started beating eachother

favourite food is coffee beans

ok i wanna try explaining how each of them look (art/story wise, minecraft mechanics are minecraft mechanics shh

Red conduit: ok i do not know how to explain this one but like, when he shoots laser beams, they come from his fingertips . like he goes 👉 and then A FUCKING LASER SHOOTS OUT

Blue conduit: he uses the palms of his hands and just... hovers them over over the person in question, directing the healing flow towards them

Light blue conduit (I'm calling it cyan idc): pretty basic tbh, hologram shield. maybe its like a cool geometric shape. shatters like glass and hits yo enemies

Lime conduit: deadly lime hologram spikes form the ground and around the opponent, like the walls of a prison

Black conduit: im actually not sure on how it'd visually look like.... but i was thinking like a spiderman kinda thing HELP like it shoots out from his wrists.

^ just got an idea for that, what if its like some anti gravity thing he shoots out and pulls himself towards them

okjayyyyy time for some non minecraft canon ones

Yellow conduit: like. a speed boost. he gets this yellow aura or he passes it on . doesnt take knockback or something too

Magenta conduit: blades of pure pain upon contact. you dont even get sliced it just feels like PAIN

[clueingforbeggs]

I've noticed that Canva now has AI apps available. Which is, uh... Not great.

But the absolutely hilarious thing is that they're asking creatives to use their AI when it's generating this shit, which they are using to advertise why you should use it:

From the 'professional logo generator'

Every professional wants a logo for their Natoanal Nataric Park.

Or this 'QR art generator'

For when you want your businesses QR codes to most likely become unreadable by a phone. And also likely much less accessible to anyone with a visual disability who is supposed to be pointing their phone at this.

[blackvahana]

I think ultimately people at the end of the day need to understand that just because you can do something in the astral, that doesnr mean you should. People say it's like a real life mmo, and people treat it as such... But like. MMO and Real Life are completely and utterly different things to the point they cannot be merged conceptually, not without some real big paradigms and shit. My point is, an MMO is a summation supposed to be mimicking real life in that it allows a large amount of people to gather in a simulated space and do things together in a simulated world. If it's Real, then it's Real Life. If it's real life simulated, it's an MMO. Saying the Astral is like a Real Life MMO is like saying a horse is a real organic robot ai horse. Is it real and organic or is it a robot and an AI? And can you understand why calling a horse a robot ai - when it's real and organic, as in a horse - instead of addressing it as a horse might cause a lot of people to see it as lacking the realness of a horse... leading to them overworking it, not feeding it, or otherwise abusing it?

The astral is real life. Real life inspires MMOs. MMOs are stories and simulations based on real life. The astral is not a story and simulation based on real life. Paris is not a real life mmo because you can travel there and interact with people and do whatever you want yay! I get that people are trying to say there's different functions and physics and stuff, but an MMO is not "a place where different rules apply and you can do different things than what you can do in real life" because that's blatantly false. In an mmo you can do exactly what you can do in real life: tap buttons on a keyboard and mouse or controller, talk into a microphone, stare at a screen. The MMO itself is an illusion of a reality

The astral isn't an illusory reality. Specifically: the Astral isn't an MMO because an MMO is a set of coding. You kill someone in game? It's not that the rules are different "in the world", it's that the coding of the simulation allows the simulation of a bunch of polygons that you can make move around, and that happen to look like the same visuals as killing someone... Youre not killing anyone or anything. You're not riding a horse, you're not exploring beautiful scenery, you are tapping buttons that make lights in front of you change shape and remind you of new things and spark new experiences in your mind

This is accidentally turning into a second part of my video game logic for astral violence post but like... The moment you think an MMO and real life are in any way the same thing... There's a reason you can play dress up in an mmo: digital art and 3d modelling, hoards of artists creating new experiences of clothes for the simulation. There's a reason you can play dress up in the astral: the fluid interactions of Mental substances and the catalogues extending through reality allowing the fluid formation of new astral matter from various laws and realities and so on and so forth. There's a reason you can kill in an mmo: Simulated violence, etc etc. There's a reason you can kill in the astral: You and your opponent are living beings, you are both sustained by forces, with your own independent lives that have come from those forces, and if you want to sever someone's connection to their ability to live there's ways of doing that through forcing their body into extremes they can no longer handle

You can (pretend to) be a magical girl in the astral, you can dress up like one and use magic. You can fly around and fight things. You can hunt, you can farm, you can do whatever the fuck you want... But a) this is not a programmed mmo, this isn't a sandbox that's purposefully built and cultivated to remove the irl implications and results of your bad actions in the way mmo's programme their simulation so that death is a mild punishment rather than an end, but still "looks" like irl death... And b) you can do these things in real life, because you're missing the fact that this is real life. Real life has real consequences. You can dress up like a magical girl irl and kill people too if you weren't a coward, and treating the astral like it's a place that "allows" you to "play" as whatever you want... Reality in all planes allows that. You can play, on this plane, as a knight going around stabbing people. Go do that if you love it so much! No? But you'll do it on a foreign plane? You understand right that if you think that you can fly to France and grab a sword and swing at French people you probably don't see French people as people who deserve to live, but you can't understand that getting excited to dress up and visit the astral to kill things is seeing astral inhabitants as lesser than you? Yeah. Anyway.

[skarletterambles]

Bygone bits and bytes

How can I end a four-day weekend more stressed than I started it?

Well, a lot of it has to do with caregiving burnout, but the cherry on the shit sundae today was discovering a combination of confusion and executive dysfunction made me lose the domain name I'd had for 25 years.

I hadn't been using it as a personal website for several years, and took down my super old content last fall, but my dad still had some local sports stuff on it. It wasn't a fancy, catchy, high value domain, either. Just our last name with two extra letters tacked on, but noooooo, apparently some domain sniper in Florida decided to snap it up. So if I decide to have a website again someday I'll have to start over with a new name.

My dad had another domain name that redirected to the part he ran, which has also lapsed somehow but hasn't been taken. I suppose I'll have to reregister his domain, get a new hosting plan, and just upload his stuff. He was really having trouble keeping up with it, cognitively, last winter, so I don't know how well it's going to go now. (See above re: caregiver stress.)

It's all made me think about how I REALLY miss the old days of the internet (mid to late 1990s through the early 2000s), before social media took over and made it this cookie-cutter, impersonal, commercialized, transient place. (And yes I realize the irony of posting this on social media.)

Personal websites used to be a common thing, with sections for your various interests and fandoms. Most people used Geocities or a similar freebie host, but the cool kids had their own domain names and ad-free sites. Now it seems like the only people with personal sites are those selling something, and everyone else just uses social media. I miss being able to have full control over the look of my content, with custom backgrounds and layouts and, yes, even funky animated .gifs.

(That's the tip of the iceberg of ancient .gifs lurking in the depths of my computer from the Olden Days.)

Anyway, I used to be able to easily make a website, upload, and manage it, but now when I look at potential web hosts' sites it's an incomprehensible alphabet soup of terms. I can see why nobody wants to learn SQLCSSOMGWTFBBQ in order to have a personal site when it's a heck of a lot easier to just post crap on social media with a few clicks.

Crap. I sound old. In this context, I guess I am.

BACK IN MY DAY, we hard coded HTML barehanded! Uphill! In the snow! You kids today with your Instas and X-es and QR codes on your newfangled phones! When I was a teenager we had a plain text message board to squee over fandoms on, and we LIKED IT! We had guestbooks, page view counters, and web rings! Yahoo! was the go-to search engine and you got real results in an organized manner, none of this sponsored garbage or AI telling us to eat glue. No, we chugged along at 56k and if you didn't make tiny thumbnails of the art you posted that people could choose to click on and then wait a minute or two for a picture to load, you were a pariah. Amazon was a river in South America, and streaming was just a description of someone peeing. We listened to MIDI music on purpose!

I'll stop. But I'm only half kidding. The nostalgia is real.

[possessesnightshift]

just over a year into it and already ai bullshit is essentially normal now.

not even probing into all the published research papers with clear evidence of ai in them (looking at you rat dick paper) or the fact that google images are now a bunch of ai generated nonsense, just seeing the way people talk about something like ai art is really discouraging

i see all these debates about why ai art is bad that boil down to "the problem isn't the artwork this person created, the problem is..." with that sentence being finished with either mentioning the unethical data mining or the environmental toll or whatever. but the problem is the very premise of that sentence is wrong no matter what goes at the end of it. if you type shit into a prompt and it spits out something that resembles a finished painting, you did not 'create' anything.

i want to go out of my way to emphasize that while the other bigger picture issues with ai are much more important than whether an ai "artist" deserves credit for their work, i still think it's entirely valid to say "ai art is also bad for letting people act entitled to the same praise and compensation as someone would have for literally painting the goddamn thing by hand."

"but what about the disability aspect? don't artists without fine motor skills deserve to be able to express themselves too?" im barely even going to entertain this line of defense simply for the implication that disabled artists (which i am btw, but not visual art) could not make art until 2023 is offensive to disabled artists throughout history, but also because it doesn't address my main problem with ai art either

a perfectly able-bodied ai artist is equally scuzzy to anyone else who solely relies on some OpenAI product to have any ability to create art. the problem isn't the fact that a computer is generating the art instead of brush or whatever. the problem is that there is NO ARTISTIC PROCESS.

you had no contribution to what the coders and programmers had to do to make ai art happen. you just benefit from their technology. but as a result of that, you allow their coding decisions to shape YOUR art. even if you rephrase the prompt over and over, you won't get the level of control necessary to create anything that isn't just regurgitated fluff. art isn't just a finished product. art is a feeling of inspiration that drives you to create. art is a way for humans to express truths beyond talking or writing about it. art involves imagining, listening, experimenting, and most importantly TIME.

it takes effort and practice over a non-instantaneous period of time to grow as an artist. and not only that, but that growth is THE ENTIRE FUCKING POINT.

i could preach more about this but i think i've touched on my main idea here. at the end of the day, we're so brainwashed by capitalism that we don't even see the way we regard the things we love as mere products. art is supposed to take time. art is supposed to be not obvious. while it might feel like i just wanna shit on top of anyone who considers themselves an ai artist, i honestly feel really bad for these people. if the idea of creating art could move these people as profoundly as it moves me, they wouldn't even think about using ai. i know these people won't get nearly the same joy or fulfillment from typing words into a prompt and spitting out images. even if they did, they still have remarkably little control over how they engage with making their art (what if fucking all of the ai models get sued and taken down forever? then what?)

art is not something that can be bought or sold. people don't seek out art to connect to the process of making money in the most efficient way possible. they want a connection to humanity. wherever that connection exists, people will find it (even in art is that's considered Bad by society's arbitrary standards).

and oh boy is there no faster way to guarantee a piece of art has no connection to humanity whatsoever than to ask the shitty, dysfunctional chatbot troubleshooting your wifi not starting up to make ALL OF THE ARTISTIC DECISIONS for you.