#can and will probably be stolen by these AIs. it's the same thing as with art being stolen

[dimiclaudeblaigan]

Just as a heads up, I’m locking all my fics on AO3 to registered users only due to the Elongated Moosk incident and his scummy fanfic thieving bot. I know some people read fics without an account there and I’m sorry to anyone who doesn’t have an account. If you want to get one, it’s super simple but there’s a queue you have to wait in so you’ll have to wait a couple/few days or so to get your invite emailed to you by their staff.

I’d like to take them off private at some point since I really do not prefer having them locked to registered users, and hopefully the AO3 staff can do something about this (they’ve been informed about it), but I don’t feel like having my hobby’s work stolen by stupid, shameless straight rich white men’s AI bots.

Also, they’re planning to profit off their fic theft, so... yeah.

[lackadaisycats]

Hey Tracy! Have you heard about the new Ai called Sora? Apparently it can now create 2D and 3D animations as well as hyper realistic videos. I’ve been getting into animation and trying to improve my art for years since I was 7, but now seeing that anyone can create animation/works in just a mare seconds by typing in a couple words, it’s such a huge slap in the face to people who actually put the time and effort into their works and it’s so discouraging! And it has me worried about what’s going to happen next for artists and many others, as-well. There’s already generated voices, generated works stolen from actual artists, generated music, and now this! It’s just so scary that it’s coming this far. 

Yeah, I've seen it. And yeah, it feels like the universe has taken on a 'fuck you in particular' attitude toward artists the past few years. A lot of damage has already been done, and there are plenty of reasons for concern, but bear in mind that we don't know how this will play out yet. Be astute, be justifiably angry, but don't let despair take over. --------

One would expect that the promo clips that have been dropping lately represent some of the best of the best-looking stuff they've been able to produce. And it's only good-looking on an extremely superficial level. It's still riddled with problems if you spend even a moment observing. And I rather suspect, prior to a whole lot of frustrated iteration, most prompts are still going to get you camera-sickness inducing, wibbly-wobbly nonsense with a side of body horror.

Will the tech ultimately get 'smarter' than that and address the array of typical AI giveaways? Maybe. Probably, even. Does that mean it'll be viable in quite the way it's being marketed, more or less as a human-replacer? Well…

A lot of this is hype, and hype is meant to drive up the perceived value of the tech. Executives will rush to be early adopters without a lot of due diligence or forethought because grabbing it first like a dazzled chimp and holding up like a prize ape-rock makes them look like bleeding-edge tech geniuses in their particular ecosystem. They do this because, in turn, that perceived value may make their company profile and valuations go up too, which makes shareholders short-term happy (the only kind of happy they know). The problem is how much actual functional value will it have? And how long does it last? Much of it is the same routine we were seeing with blockchain a few years ago: number go up. Number go up always! Unrealistic, unsustainable forever-growth must be guaranteed in this economic clime. If you can lay off all of your people and replace them with AI, number goes up big and never stops, right?

I have some doubts. ----------------------

The chips also haven't landed yet with regards to the legality of all of this. Will these adopters ultimately be able to copyright any of this output trained on datasets comprised of stolen work? Can computer-made art even be copyrighted at all? How much of a human touch will be required to make something copyright-able? I don't know yet. Neither do the hype team or the early adopters.

Does that mean the tech will be used but will have to be retrained on the adopter's proprietary data? Yeah, maybe. That'd be a somewhat better outcome, at least. It still means human artists make specific things for the machine to learn from. (Watch out for businesses that use 'ethical' as a buzzword to gloss over how many people they've let go from their jobs, though.)

Will it become industry standard practice to do things this way? Maybe. Will it still require an artist's sensbilities and oversignt to plan and curate and fix the results so that it doesn't come across like pure AI trash? Yeah, I think that's pretty likely.

If it becomes standard practice, will it become samey, and self-referential and ultimately an emblem of doing things the cookie-cutter way instead of enlisting real, human artists? Quite possibly.

If it becomes standard industry practice, will there still be an audience or a demand or a desire for art made by human artists? Yes, almost certainly. With every leap of technology, that has remained the case. ------------------ TL;DR Version:

I'm not saying with any certainty that this AI blitz is a passing fad. I think we're likely to experience a torrential amount of generative art, video, voice, music, programming, and text in the coming years, in fact, and it will probably irrevocably change the layout of the career terrain. But I wouldn't be surprised if it was being overhyped as a business strategy right now. And I don't think the immensity of its volume will ever overcome its inherent emptiness.

What I am certain of is that it will not eliminate the innate human impulse to create. Nor the desire to experience art made by a fellow soul. Keep doing your thing, Anon. It's precious. It's authentic. It will be all the more special because it will have come from you, a human.

[n7punk]

Adventures in unlicensed buffoonary! Recently this SPOP "Trivia book" got listed on Ebay, which was baffling to me both because I had never seen it before and because it was listed for two hundred fucking dollars

My gut instinct was "this isn't real" because again, I'm a freak who knows all these things, and yeah I can confirm this is bullshit.

Clayton Gallagher makes himself scarce online (probably to hide out from the lawyers), so I couldn't find any social media or a website for him - not to mention it's the name of a character from one of the Shameless shows to fuzz the radar - but he seems to exclusively create "trivia" and activity books based on random popular... things. Mostly shows (Trollhunters, the Amazing World of Gumball, etc) but also some... other things (Dolly Parton for some reason??).

He has created not one, but FOUR trvia books for She-ra, all using stolen/promotional art but that carefully never include any official endorsement or mention of Dreamworks, Netflix, Mattel, or Filmation. I'm highly convinced these things were written with AI, mostly due to things like the below excerpt from the first book's summary:

Like. Jesus christ. Maybe it's just a second language thing but the lack of spaces screams machine bullshit and we'll look at the insides later.

Okay so the first book came out on August 19th 2021 (another reason I lean towards AI) and features the debut season art. All the others came out on August 20th 2021 (literally a day later) and feature the season two art, stolen licensed book cover art (from Island of the Magical Creatures), and the season four teaser art (Rebellion variant).

I can only find these things available as e-books but apparently, supposedly, this one eBay seller has a rare physical paperback, which surely must make it worth 270$. I fully don't believe this is a real paperback unless it was self-printed. I think you either get a shitty slapped-together print out or a puff of smoke if you order this.

Now lets get into the stunning content. They all start with the cover art and then the same incredibly generic header

After about two seconds of investigation I see this is a pattern with all his trivia books across franchises. They all start like this and have identical copyright pages as well. Instead of taking four screenshots to show content is identical, just trust me from here on out everything is exactly the same across the She-ra books, including chapter headings, formatting, and trivia questions. These are just cover swaps.

The final chapters cut off here are "Chapter 6" and "See you later", neither of which has a page number. Again, this awkward phrasing is either written by AI or the author is ESL and I'm pretty 50/50 split on which. Let's get into the "trivia" and see if it solves it, shall we?

So. A couple things.

Yes, it DOES have a fill-in the blank for you to write your name even though this was clearly intended to be primarily, if not exclusively, an e-book. That's bold innovation!

They start off strong with a misspelling of quiz in the fucking header.

The formatting is godawful (point to AI for inconsistency, any human would see the obvious problems here as they work - or if they cared enough to glance at the output, which they clearly don't. Why is there a random A. out of nowhere?).

The trivia questions are awful (is She-ra an America streaming show? You think this counts as trivia that a kid - the obvious target demographic - wants to know? Second, I KNOW you're saying streaming because you're so scared of the word Netflix but somehow you're not worried about using the show logo and literally stealing the promotional art for the cover?).

The trivia answers are awful. Mama? Really? Maria is the only kind of good option because it's close to Mara to trip kids up or whatever, but also none of these are "other names" for She-ra! Adora and Mara are people who bear the title of She-ra, but you can't say "Genocide Joe" is another name for president, that's not how titles work! If you wanted to use this question, the answer would be "Princess of Power".

(Also lol at the answer key for question 2 now being wrong. Shit that might have been wrong at the time, when did Nate choose a new name? 2021? 2022? All those years blur together).

Okay I know you've all been on the edge of your seat about that last question cut off at the bottom of the page and yes, it is as factually wrong as you're expecting, and only gets worse as we settle firmly into the "AI" territory.

More lists because jesus christ.

Everyone knows Adora is She-ra. This is not a secret. The answer is every member of the Rebellion and most random citizens. 5 is equally stupid given yes, they never existin the same space at the same time, but people always watch Adora transform before their eyes. The grammar is also bad, but whatever, this does segue into the next questions.

Question six is when it becomes obvious what happened: the writer fed prompts into an AI without fact-checking anything and the AI gave back answers related both to the reboot and to the original. He-man canonically does not exist - he isn't just not mentioned for legal reasons, Mattel said he straight up could not exist or ever be hinted at (due to not existing) - in SPOP. 7 is once again completely untrue in the reboot. Adora came through a portal - not necessarily kidnapped, not from Eternia, and again, no Adam

Why is only Sunna's name in black for question 9. Mostly shocked they spelled her name right.

Things somehow manage to fall apart even more in the final remaining questions available in the Kindle preview sample!

Genuinely have no idea what the answer to 15 is supposed to be. "What is the original country of SPOP have?" isn't a sentence. All I can figure is you're supposed to pick America as it's the country of origin, but I don't trust this book to even have an answer key at the end, so who knows. All that said, Earth was canon in the original, so this might be (intended to be) related to the 80s series.

The Cure took me out.

Okay but Adora isn't leading the "Great" Rebellion!! She's definitely a major leader on the field, but the answer is Angella! There is no correct option here! If they said "the Princess Alliance" I would let that go because you could argue she is the leader of the Princesses, but the rebellion? No, that's the whole military and Angella/Glimmer lead that.

17. THE ANSWER IS ANGELLA. I fully do not believe you're supposed to pick false here, this is not a trick question, they're just wrong (see question above for evidence they're stupid)

They don't even call it the Great Rebellion in the reboot....

The sample ran out and I'm not paying money to feed this AI bullshit but I don't expect it to improve from here.

Anyway this was an interesting display of Bullshit and fuck AI generated books fr

[vorthosjay]

Do you have any personal opinions you can share about the use of AI art generation for magic? I personally think it's really cool but I'm also concerned about what it could do to the artists.

I think 'AI' art is shit (this goes for AI 'writing' too). It's bad on every possible axis. Sure, it's novel, but that doesn't mean good.

The only reason the technology is even possible is through at best dubiously scraped data and at worst outright theft of intellectual property. It is, in effect, one giant plagiarism machine, even if it does so broadly enough that it's not always noticeable. A human being inspired by or even imitating something is not the same thing as an algorithm averaging values of stolen work and spitting something back out. You can tell there's a different because a human being looking at their own work enough doesn't suddenly stop being able to produce art. And that's what happens with 'AI', you feed it enough AI derived work and you get model collapse, like a xerox of a xerox of a xerox, the output quality degenerates.

From a business perspective, you'd certainly save money in the short term, which is probably all most care about, but in the long run you're producing art you don't actually own. And eventually, model collapse will happen and you're left with a useless tool, because you've flooded the inputs into the system with AI garbage. The only reason these AI models work right now is because all the data they're scraping are made by humans, but widespread AI usage would kill that quality input and replace it, again, with AI generated garbage.

As for artists, they're being stolen from, and at best the companies producing AI art will want to pay them a pittance to 'fix' the art AI produces. Same goes for writing. But of course, it wouldn't be obvious (to business folks) that widespread usage of these tools will ruin entire industries until it's too late, in the same way 'pivoting to video' decimated journalism.

[betterbemeta]

As it is right now, machine learning image generation is classist. It depends strongly on the human audience's eye for pareidolia to smooth over its inconsistencies and find patterns in its noise where its procedural generation falls short.

This means that the less opportunity a person has to gain context for information, the more likely 'AI art' is to be convincing. As long as that person has been given a baseline to 'believe' the general arrangement of elements, AI art will 'make sense' even if that baseline is just exposure to more acontextual imagery. Which is what the machine learning's algorithms were trained on in the first place.

For example, 'AI' right now struggles to coherently depict plants. When it's not blurry, indistinct plant fur, leaves from different kinds of plants appear on the same stem, plants from the wrong biome are included in 'nature' images. Someone who has very little educational opportunity, but has seen movies where people walk through jungles or forests as set pieces or something, might not notice the difference. And why do you 'need' to know if the plants look right, poor person; you'll never leave your immediate area or take a biology class!

Someone without the opportunity or comfort to travel might not recognize that a cityscape has been artificially generated, depicts no actual real-world city. Is that supposed picture of Dubai or New York City or Cairo showing a real place that exists? Who cares, you're too poor to ever go there.

Searching for information about animal species, even, can get messed up by generated 'content.' Do servals have ear tufts? What kind of insect is that? What species of lizard or snake am I looking at? You don't deserve to know what kinds of animals are real. What time do you have to go to a zoo, if there's even one around you?

The less money you have, the more likely you are to be surrounded by advertising and "AI Art" is ideal for advertising because it only tells a very simple story at best. There's no complicated human emotions; its literally made of averages of what has been seen before. Marketing and advertising content often replaces actual art that might be a window into a greater world. It may even just be dropped in there to fill the awkward silence or blankness that would have otherwise surrounded marketing efforts-- commercials would be surreal without some say-nothing 'music' track behind them, and billboards would be creepy without the graphic noise that surrounds the product and its information. Someone who passes through more monetized public spaces per day will see more of it than someone who inhabits private property.

And like, at the end of the day if you are wealthy... you probably don't care about any of this. You have access to whatever you want, so why do you care what's real? You trust you can 'pay for' the real thing, right?

Plus, who knows the economic status of who generated imagery the machine learning algorithms train on? It's all stolen.

Photography has been critical in modern history for bringing 'the world' across social divisions of class, race, geographical divides. Photographers and filmmakers, along with other visual artists as well as musicians, writers, and journalists associated with all of these disciplines give us lenses, framing, voices, and perspectives to understand our greater world no matter where we are. Hell, identifying the human intentions BEHIND those lenses, framings, voices is key to our development. No matter your circumstances, with a strong grasp of media literacy anyone can sit down and say, wait a minute, is this real, would it be true for me too? Or is this someone's point of view?

To the point of view of wealth and capital, the working class and those without wealth who cannot work (disabled people, displaced people, homeless people shut out of employment, and more) do not deserve to know about reality. To that point of view, nonwealthy people don't deserve to even know who created the perspectives they're allowed to see. You can be born, get trained to work, go to work, come home to the minimum, repeat, and die having seen no images of reality for all they care. They'd like that! How can you dream of something outside the current exploitative structure if you can't even trust you know what plants and animals and cities look like, outside your tiny box?

[dokidokitsuna]

...I just remembered I wanted to make my own statement on the AI thing. ^^;

So you've probably heard, but in case you haven't: Tumblr just sold out everyone's data to the AI trash compactors, they probably did it long before they gave us the option to opt out, and even if you do opt out they're probably still taking and using your work anyway (telling people to opt out instead of actually asking for their permission is already scummy business practice, but when it comes to AI it's functionally meaningless. :/ It's always "well, we're telling them not to use these people's data and we're hoping they'll be nice and go along with it" with no regulations or consequences if they decide to just steal everything indiscriminately...)

Despite that, I am not leaving Tumblr anytime soon. I'm looking into other sites*, but at this moment in time, I have nowhere else to go. ^^; Besides, I still like it here. When I left DeviantArt I was already getting sick of the place, having my art stolen regularly by "fans" and paradoxically getting less and less interest in my work over time. By the time the devs turned the website into eye-blinding slop with Eclipse, I was more than ready to move on.

But I still enjoy using Tumblr. I like writing long text posts that no one would bother to read anywhere else, I like answering asks, and I like the unique sense of humor and style among the users here. ^^ It would take a lot to force me out.

Also, I can take a little solace in the fact that AI-bros do not value "low-quality" art like mine. ^^; If messy cel-shaded sketches with visible pixels ever become popular, then I'll worry, but for now I think it's highly unlikely that anyone will want to wholesale regurgitate my art. If anything, I think prioritizing it in their datasets would only make them worse...and on that note, if you do have "high quality" detailed/painterly/semi-realistic art that would be targeted, I'd recommend 'poisoning' it with Nightshade/Glaze. Although I heard a rumor a while back that AI is "building immunity" to Nightshade and already learning to work around it, but I'm really hoping that was just a wishful lie from the trash compactors themselves. I haven't heard it repeated since then, so I think it's still worth a shot. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

So anyway, like the post I reblogged said, I think the best thing we can do now is to make it clear that WE DON'T WANT AI ART. We don't care how easy it'll be to instantly generate thousands of hours of mindless 'content' to look at; we don't want it. Since regulation is lagging so far behind (wanna know why Disney's copyright hounds didn't shut this down on sight? Most likely, they're hoping to profit from it down the line) the only way to fight this right now is with individual litigation and consumer demand.

Don't support projects made with AI**; don't hate-watch them or spotlight them. Focus your energy on the millions of human artists who are still here, and need your support now more than ever.

*I've heard people mention moving to Twitter and/or Artstation: fam, you're jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire. ^^;;; IIRC, Arstation was one of the FIRST art sites to start flirting with AI, and Twitter has been selling off its users' data for several months already. Go there if you must, but don't go under the impression that it's "safer".

**Please keep a cool head when discussing AI art, and keep in mind that it used to mean something other than "mass theft". Artists have and still do create AI tools that are built on limited data sets with permission/compensation, that are used to aid them in their work and encourage human artistry (Vocaloids and DAW's, for instance) rather than stamp it out. Until a specific word evolves into popular use for exploitative AI, we're kinda stuck with this confusion, so remember to get the facts before you speak out.

P.S. Praying every night that this is a dumb fad that will soon die and go to the same hell as NFTs. >_< Praying every morning that the influx of AI art into its own datasets will eventually corrupt itself and make it useless. >_< >_< Praying every afternoon for both at once! >_< >_< >_< Like to charge, reblog to cast, all that

[lllllllllllines]

(I urge that you read this to the end, as I know some of you will take pieces of what is said here and use it as ammunition for more drama. I can't really do tl;dr because i feel like it would ruin a lot of my points)

I don't usually like to deal with drama or discourse in general leaves a bad but I feel like this needs to be said.

This discourse is stupid, a lot of different points on either side due to several reasons at least in my opinion.

Ive seen many people who were against palworld use claims for stolen designs, mentions of AI art as well as lots of people either acting in defense of game freak/TPC/Nintendo as well as some acting in defense of artistic integrity.

I've seen the people who were for the game act in one singular way while just trying to have fun with it(which i cannot deny, it looks fun as fuck).

This being them claiming that they are just kissing the boots of Nintendo, though i don't think its quite fair to put them in the same category.

Just have fun with the game, no need to engage with the hate if you don't want to(even though i know it's difficult, especially when it's staring you in the face).

For those who are for, I only have a couple things to say.

Companies are not faceless entities, I know that this sounds like basic knowledge but I've noticed that's not something people usually mention.

Not everyone who attacks this game, cares for pokemon. Im gonna go in more depth when i get to them, but i feel like this needs be said.

While there are many good things on the internet, the internet as a whole, especially nowadays, is chaos and pain.

So many different opinions, leading to low self-esteem and rage.

You just want to have fun, you probably don't like pokemon, or if you do, you probably don't like what they've been doing with it.

You've seen the early trailers and had a laugh, found out this year that it came out, sought it out be cause hey, could be a bit of a meme.

But soon you start to actually have fun with it and hope it succeeds, despite some of the designs not being totally original, and you don't care.

But soon, like usual, you find that there are people who dislike the game.

In the real world, it doesn't matter to you, it rolls off you like nothing, because you don't know them, maybe you get into a heated argument with a friend.

But as soon as you hit the internet, you feel as though people are personally attacking something you like, (emotions are hard to convey through text) so you defend.

Not really caring about how it sounds to those you desperately fight against.

But in the end that's just adding fuel to the flame.

(though I can say that this discourse is great publicity for the game, good or bad it still lets people know that it exists.)

So just have fun with it.

(Unless dealing with discourse like this is fun for you idk)

For those who are against,

I am first going to speak to those who seem to want to defend Game Freak/TPC/Nintendo and those who speak for artistic integrity.

Why do any of your thoughts matter when it comes to a company.

as I had stated earlier, people usually associate companies and conglomerates as faceless entities.

They don't see them like systems, heavily broken systems, like if a beehive were born from an unloving tyrannical queen.

The ones at the top exist to fill their pockets while those at the bottom suffer for it.

I bet around half of the people speaking of artistic integrity don't really know the names of the designers of each pokemon(and to those who do, I'm glad, cause then I know you know what you're talking about.)

I feel as though speaking of artistic integrity only works when you're talking about an individual.

Which means, by extension, that a company like Nintendo, or the other two companies that own or work on the ip, those that see only the product and the work.

To them, artistic integrity is dead.

Why else would the shoot down fan works so heavily?

To keep their product close to the chest.

But what about the claims that they stole from fakemon artists?

To my knowledge, (please let me know if im wrong) there has only been one claim of such a thing, and it was soon taken back as they soon found out that the palworld model was older than their's.

Which im pretty sure proves that claim false.

And to the people who are against AI art, don't get me wrong, I hate the idea as much as you do.

But AI image generation like many things is a tool.

And if used properly, tools can be useful.

like say for example, you have an idea you want to draw, but you can't fully figure it out in your head.

There are no pictures that fully convey what ur thinking in the depth you want for a reference, you could use an image generator for reference.

Add to an image in your own way, while removing the parts that were taken by the algorithm.

Be creative.

When tools are used properly, they can do a lot of good things.

The reason people hate AI art, is because people are being stupid and lazy with it.

Hell, i think pocketpair realized their mistake a long time ago as not only has that game been absolutely shat on in the steam reviews, but you cant even find it on their website, or at least i haven't.

Lastly, I'm gonna show you a trailer for a game pocketpair is also making, it should be coming put Q1 this year.

A game I have not heard mentioned this whole discourse.

As an honest question, what part of this looks AI generated to you?

Its a 2D sidescrolling platformer, said to be a mix of a metroidvania and a roguelite, also with base building elements since that seems to be a commonality for them.

The only things i could see that were taken or inspired by are the backgrounds, which feel very hollow knight, and the main mechanic being a possession mechanic which loosely reminded me of super mario Odyssey.

I've seen AI 2D animation, and it's usually pretty jarring due to how quickly everything warps and changes as things move.

I don't see that in this.

Nor do i recognize any of the monster or character designs.

I could be wrong and both palworld and never grave could be scams, seeing as both are in early access.

And if or when i am, then that's egg on my face.

Those that were all happy to play a new and exciting game, will seeth and mald.

And you can live happily, i guess.

But it at least shows they know some integrity.

I mean, as long as they make any of the new pals that come out more original than the 111 that they have now, we should be fine.

The only time we should be outraged, is if there is sort of harm coming to the workers, and I don't think I've heard any news on that.

If it bothers you that much, make your own game.

Actively do something about it rather than complain on the internet.

Like, I can't even imagine how difficult that is.

Especially for a smaller company.

Pokemon has it easy, It doesn't need defense.

Defend it from itself before defending it from others.

Stop paying for shit that doesn't work out the gate.

Do something to force the people making the bad game to do better.

And stop trying to shit on the little guy for your own ideals.

Criticism is fine, yelling over a game on the internet is not.

Not by a long shot.

But hey I don't think anyone is gonna read this.

Much less to the end.

Because I've scrolled passed shorter posts for less.

[rabid-mercenary16]

So, I am doing both asking something, and saying how I just think shit in your AU goes in general, bc brain bored and I’m in gym class, not giving a shit. All of it is positive, but, I’m an over thinker so—

Anyways, so, Caine has an alternate personality of sorts, the ‘evil’ or malware version of him, but why exactly hasn’t Caine and Able (C&A) fixed it yet? That is though, a whole other topic to open up as to see why and what is actually happening in the original version with C&A. So, instead I will go off of the assumption that the company purposely trapped people and their souls here.

Any virus of any sort, is human made. For a specific reason and purpose, there’s many ways malware can be spread, and it also depends what kind this is. Say what if, for example instead of just being malware (malicious software), is actually ransomware, where people steal the data and certain others have to pay to get it back. I say this theoretically, because it is a random thought that came to mind, in a way, the players in general are being ransomed, taken over and not let out, but than that would oppose the question of what does the maker/perhaps corrupted Caine, want? Maybe it’s not Caine that wants something. Maybe someone wants something from C&A.

Say if it is this, than, perhaps that would explain the ‘help’ that Pomni and Zooble get, because I have read somewhere that from the corruption AU they sometimes find things around, things that could be helpful, things from past ‘players’. I know it’s probably just normal Caine trying to help whereas he can’t do much against the malware, but what if, instead, it was the company? I don’t know, since we don’t know much about the actual company story in the Og version, but I believe if C&A really wanted to drive people insane and steal their souls or something, they’d just find a way to do it off the bat, immediately, why wait for abstraction? What if this is somehow an attempt from the original company, with the small amount of access it has, trying to help the players in the game? Jax and Ragatha are both sort of on the edge, and I feel like if character data was stolen and held somewhere else, yet bits of it were still with the original people, the scattered code would make an affect like that, and than with others who are completely gone, there is no control over them at all.

…Anyways that was random and I just thought of that all on the spot just now since I got the ball rolling— ANYWAYS.

There is almost an infinite amount of possibilities, yes, Caine is an AI, but he can only go along what has been set for him. Such as how in the character ai app if a character says something that doesn’t Aline with the policy of the developers(ex, gore, NSFW content, etc), it gets rid of the message and notifies the user about it, saying to try again or if this is a big problem, to report it to the developers.

I might just be overthinking the technology, especially since if we go based timeline wise than if we’re still in the era of the technology it looked there was in tadc original pilot, this is probably taking place in the 90’s for the Og thing, from what everyone assumes, so I’ll assume this is the same time period. Caine does seem like a somewhat accurate ai for the time period, he stalls and goes back to the previous thing you said/asked if it’s something he isn’t designed to deal with, whereas an AI in this time might still answer the question and a bit confused. I suppose the overall question is who gave Caine that sentience? As in, the other Caine. It’s probably just me looking at it from my negative point of view, but for some reason the corrupted Caine gives a more humane vibe, in the way of acting, with definite maliciousness to the others. The only thing I can wonder is if this Caine already existed, just needed to be activated, like a prototype that then seemed to go a bit off the deep end while being replaced and left as idle undeleted code.

An ai would only have control of the physical bodies, I believe, so it would make sense, as where the virus starts as a physical part that just acts off of a player’s emotional state. It’s one goal? To corrupt. I have no mouth but I must scream, AM super computer vibes right there, and yes Caine’s original character is based off of that, but he’s a more wacky version. What if, pretty much the exact opposite of what I was theorizing before, C&A did this on purpose? In a way. As in, Caine was originally a malicious entity meant to corrupt those who came there and take them over, put them in eternal suffering like the five last remaining humans in the short horror story that AM the supercomputer originated from. Maybe Corrupted Caine is just more like AM in general, perhaps he was just the base code and than left, only in the end hating humans for the way they are, hence he wants to torture all those in the circus, make what little hope they have, turn into extreme fear, almost turning the tides entirely from what his situation had been? I dunno.

Anyhow, I’m a coding person, per say, a family of cyber people and hence in a way I can almost understand a lot of what’s going on here. Abstractions from before staying the same, since they’ve already become ‘abstract’, unstable code and likely can’t be ‘abstracted’ again. I like how it shows the difference personality wise, the abstractions would stay where they are, where as the ‘abstracted’ or corrupted above the surface, are either fighting, in a constant tug a war, or completely given up. So, what I’m getting at for the cyber part is, would there be any way for them to, in game, have any sort of.. protection? Like a failsafe, or something added recently to the game, because I’m thinking from a cyber security perspective. I can see how the players would get infected, since really all someone has to do to infect or hack into something is find a weak link, like hacking into the weak device in a network and than using that to get through to the others. Is there any type of antivirus things, or is that just not possible with how the circus is right now? The players are people, after all, they can’t just have their minds hacked into, unless that is their overall overwritten by the virus, but that would be for the already infected.

…That’s all the random shit I thought of in the last like three minutes and typed here randomly, sorry for the text wall, lol. Probably like none of this makes sense but I figured maybe as well theory rant for a bit

I love this analysis

C&a are an abandoned company long forgotten until it has opened and that’s when Pomni entered the game-

The virus is a WHOLE separate entity feeding on existing code that describes the characters and every time a character is added that code it added to the system constantly changing and morphing on the characters actions

But the moment they started to abstract that code is broken and allows access to the character for the virus to invade corrupting the characters code into a scramble mess bits where the virus pits it into a new form

But just because the code is broken doesn’t mean it’s completely useless some code is still protected and we see what that looks like with Jax and Ragatha

[mirrorthoughts]

20 Questions for Fic Writers

I got tagged by the lovely @lavender-lotion 💕💕💕 Thank you, dear!!

How many works do you have on ao3?

53, translations (of my own works) included!

What's your total ao3 word count?

I just cracked the 200k with How wrong you are! :D

What fandoms do you write for?

Currently mostly (like, 99% of the time) Teen Wolf, though I do dabble in Assassin's Creed (Desmond lives!!!!!) and sometimes I post original stuff.

Top five fics by kudos:

Wolf Heart

Intruder

Loyality

Dead on Time

Not afraid

All of them Teen Wolf and Steter 😂💕

Do you respond to comments?

Yes! I try to answer all of them!

What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Ouf, that's a hard question? I don't like to end stuff angsty - I need my happy endings. So I think currently the angstiest is probably Dead on Time bc of a slight cliffhanger/foreshadowing thingie for the next parts?

What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

I have literally no idea o_O... As I said before I do like to end on happy endings (or at least something intriguing and hopeful) so I'd say most of my stories have the same kind of happy ending?

Do you get hate on fics?

Luckily not yet! Usually most people mean well and are nice even if they sometimes phrase their words weird. I did get a (for me) lot of comments asking if I abbandoned a certain fic, though, which rankled and baffled me the same way?

It's The little things, which is currently on Hiatus bc I had to concentrate on the Secret Santa I wrote at the time and I decided that I would chance my MO and try to finish the story before I would return to posting chapters! Because the pressure of writing and posting (and not being able to do so) in a certain time frame was burning me out!

So, just for the record: None of my fics/WIPs are abbandoned! If they were I'd write it in the author's notes and/or tag them as such!

Do you write smut?

No!

Craziest crossover:

Probably Hello World, which is currently just the first chapter/more like a prologue because I had too many WIPs at the time and decided to concentrate on other stories.

It's supposed to be a Murderbot Crossover where Peter's a technician/programmer on the ship the Hales own and who makes an AI he's programmed and called Stiles (who got messed up by a virus) into a construct that's learning how to live.

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not as far as I know! Knock on wood and all that!

Have you ever had a fic translated?

Not by other people! But I do translate my own stuff! I started with writing in my first language (German) and translated my stuff to english, though by now I mostly write english. So if someone wants to read something in German, they can just ask (nicely) and I see that I'll get the story translated!

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

not really, no.

All time favourite ship?

I can't really answer that question 😂 I love all the ships I love forever 😂 Even from the fandom that shouldn't be named, I still love the same ships I've loved for years.

But I'll say that Steter has a special place in my heart, since I mostly write them?

What's a wip you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

I don't think I currently have a Wip like that?

What are your writing strengths?

I'm good with knitting plot points together and explaining inconsistencies away 😂 Also I do think I'm good at getting a certain vibe across and I have good ideas

What are your writing weaknesses?

I'm not good with descriptions - especially when it's about facial expressions or emotions! Also I think I tend to soften the edges of the characters I write - or at least it feels like I do that!

Thoughts on dialogue in another language?

Depends on how the author's using it? I'm not entirely against it and as long as I get either a translation (i.e. with a foot note or because the character translates the words or at least their meaning), it's a generally known phrase (like Alea iacta est) or you can interpret it by context clues, I'm okay with it! It actually makes me want to dive back into learning more languages, to I'd say that's a plus 😂

First fandom you wrote in?

Vision of Escaflowne! It was a Mary Sue-ish self-insert and is lost to time and me clumsily stumbling over and thus crashing the external harddrive it was saved on 😂 I'm both sad and glad about that 😂😂

Favorite fic you've written?

Aaand ending with a really hard question, I see 😂😂

uuh... I do love most of my stuff, but for some reason one of the shorter ones, No Love Letters, has a special place in my heart? :3 I do like the whole scene - even if it isn't much more! 😂

Low-/no-pressure tagging for @aurevell, @midmorning-bomb, @dear-massacre, @tkwritesdumbassassins, @vmures, @meggie-stardust

[wildissylupus]

You seem to be well read on OW lore so I have to ask. Wtf are the dragons?? Are they real spirits?? Is it a hologram?? And by extension, how does Kiriko’s fox thing work?? Is there actually a spiritual realm in OW?? And if that’s the case, is the iris connected to that?? (Am losing my mind ever since Kiriko got revealed cause how can all the teleporting and talisman and her ult be explained with technology)

Srry if you’ve made a post about this already and I just didn’t find it btw 💀

Oh, I wish I could give you a solid answer for this question.

Because canonically, up until Kiriko, it was stated that there is no magic in the OW universe. Meaning, originally, the dragons were technology. Do we know what kind of technology? No, cause this was in yee olden days of Overwatch lore and we were lucky to get anything that related to lore.

But with the introduction of Kiriko, it's blurred the lines a bit, and what's blurring them even more is the fact that the writers are doing things and confirming things that were previously debunked. Such as God AI's featuring very heavily in the OW lore when Anubis was supposed to be a one off villian, and Emre Sarioglu being the same guy in Ana's photo. Meaning it's entirely possible that the writers have changed their views on magic being included in the OW universe.

So I can't give a solid answer until I myself have been given answers. However, I can try and explain how the dragons and the fox could be technology;

First off the dragons because they're the easiest to explain. There have been many theories of what technology the dragons could be but the most believable is that they are some form of hardlight technology. My personal theory is that the dragons are a combination of an early predecessor to hardlight technology combined with some biosocial aspect to make the dragons easier for a person to control (the biological aspect probably being something to do with the tattoos).

As for Kiriko's powers, that's a little harder to explain. Like the dragons I think the fox would be a mix of hardlight and some biological component, since we do see from Symmetra's old kit that hardlight does have support qualities. Her talisman could actually be explained with nanobiotics, we know that after the fall of Overwatch Mercy's tech was basically stolen so it isn't that far out of the question that Kiriko's talisman could be a smaller version of Mercy's staff, using the same homing and healing technology. As for her teleportation I don't really know how she would do that but we do know that self teleportation is possible because of Sombra, Kiriko could be using a more official and advanced version of Sombra's tech? Or maybe she's doing something like Sym's teleport turrets? We haven't really seen much teleportation in the OW universe, only three characters being able to do it, two of them obviously using some tech to do it. So Kiriko teleporting, though not entirely out of the question, is hard to justify with technology since the tech isn't obvious.

[hungwy]

ON THE AI ART THING

i see three main points people are making, which i think are fair: first the supposition that the products of people's labor are being used somewhere in the process of art generation in an unfairly profitable way; second the supposition that the products of the artists' labor are being stolen before they can sell it; third that the other two result in a chain-reaction down the line where nobody's an artist any more because neural networks are adjective-er than humans.

for what its worth the way AIs combine images is just not the way you think AIs combine images. machine learning is complicated. neural networks are complicated. read up on GANs; watch a few Two Minute Papers videos (like this one, which is particularly relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCf8OA4GPvI). the way they combine im its not forgery (AI are not perfectly replicating your piece and selling it as it is for their own value; at some point it might involve copying/"looking" at it), its not stealing (you still have your art with you), its not even Youtube Poop remixing. generally the hypest way to do neural networks right now is to take a collection of items the AI knows to contain similar concepts and creates an understanding of that shared concept; a good dataset will be big enough to understand all the full variations of that concept, or accurately deduce the rest of the variations, all through the natural inconsistenties that a bunch of pictures of the same thing might produce. an AI knows how to do an oil painting style because it probably knows quite well the actual qualities of an oil painting. it also knows what the sun looks like, how cloth drapes at different weights, how holes in the ceiling of a building might imply shafts of light illuminating on the floor, and other incredible stuff. beats me how it does that, and you likely won't get it either. but the point is the way people are talking about AI on here seems solely informed by imagination.

for unfair and stealing bit, there's something to be said about how certain online communities, websites, people, blogs. etc are naturally private due to obscurity while also being technically completely public; like caves hidden in valleys that take quite a bit of looking to get to and see. in the past we just assumed they would stay hidden: the art on this blog will only be seen by its followers, or people i link the blog to, surely; ill teach you the way to my little cave. unfortunately the internet has been filled with extremely informed and skilled valley-treading and cave-finding robots, and unless you have big ol' signs that say "DO NOT FIND THIS CAVE!" (i remember for forums you could stop scrapers from coming to your website, i think on tumblr there is something like a "do not show in search results" button too), or somehow otherwise avoid their path using strange internet tricks or complete luck, they will totally find your little cave and rummage through it. what i mean to say is this: your art is already part of the publicly available data, and you're in a tough spot to do anything about it. i have no solutions.

the objectionable part is not in this collection of references for analysis, nor in how the AI is usually interpreting what objects are what, but the misuse of the AI to produce things you don't like (which is part of the point i wanted to make in my first post, besides arguing for the artistic integrity of what the AI is doing with its sources). and i see how it seems unfair -- someone smarter and more knowledgeable about art, labor, intellectual property, and value could articulate this more -- that a customer of a neural network could so freely replicate someone else's work with the original stylist having nothing to show for it. it wouldn't be any better if a sufficiently skilled person was requested to draw original pieces in your style. so in that way this is less about AI and more an objection against the violation of someone's intellectual property, if that exists.

for the second point on losing artists, i understand the reasoning as following: nobody wants to be a starving artist, and to avoid that in capitalism one needs money, and if someone is dead set on being an artist (or for some reason can be nothing else) they must sell their art to make money. if no one is going to give them money for art, they will certainly be a starving artist, which we don't want. the conclusion here is, if we want artists (starving, at the very least), we should restrict anything else that makes art which might compete with the artist's. okay, that might work: we could stop having AI make art. but what if, despite our best efforts, we can't fully restrict such a thing? what if AIs are here to stay? more importantly, what if artists are actually already partnering with AI to make art, and you've just been none the wiser? What if you yourself could adapt to new technology and use it to better your own art? The improvement of this tech is, as far as anyone can tell, inevitable. Like any tool, it will be applied in obvious and creative ways. It will displace some people, it will be used by others, and further it will be ignored by the rest.

naturally we would think at least some artists could no longer be paid for what they currently do. if companies can afford a concept artist they likely could better afford a subscription to DALL-E. If their work is no better than AI and they cost more it seems clear they're out. but im simply not jumping to the conclusion that companies specifically will be replacing ALL artists with AI, since most trained artists are in fact better than AI, and come with the human factor. some companies will certainly try the switch to AI for the novelty of it, two or three might succeed, most will probably find out negotiating with an artist or two for long term projects is much easier than talking to the team of computer science geeks to see if the damn art-generating program will churn out something slightly more [quality], more palatable to today's changing tastes -- all that, IF "AI generated images" is even the zeitgeist in whatever hypothetical time period in the future this is happening. maybe by the time the tech is developed people will think handmade stuff is popular and companies will follow suit, with all their logos or whatever being painted on glass panes.

i mean, who are we even talking about, considering artists? the fandom artists definitely aren't disappearing because of neural networks. all those millionaire furry artists simply won't lose business because people are going to Midjourney and entering in "shirtless anthropomorphic tiger, [famous furry artist]-style". people who want oil paintings want some physical oil paintings and usually not a digitally-generated oil painting printed on canvas. people want a human intermediary for basically everything, and if you've ever worked retail with an older customer base you'd know that's true. id certainly prefer human-made art to neural networks if i was gonna spend money (and i apologize to our future robot overlords for such a statement).

so who is really completely losing out here? many artists are, quite frankly, not big enough to get fried. concept artists for triple-AAA shooters might take a hit, i imagine; its decently easy to generate generic cities and alien landscapes with AI. but frankly, artificial intelligence is a tool, and not a scooch-along robot replacing your cubicle in the office. you still need people who know about art, and artists willing to put in the work, for it to produce anything of commercial value. even if it gets so good that the CEO of a business can log on to ARTIFICIAL-INTELLIGENCE-WEBSITE.com and type into the text box "I wuld like to buy a compny logo for $50 please", im sure there will always be more status in having that "human touch" to your designs, and less status in those robo-packs of ugly slightly mismatched placeholders. besides, artists are already using AI to help create their products in the first place; i refer to that Two Minute Papers video again (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCf8OA4GPvI).

Edit: Considering Two Minute Papers, we do see that VFX artists and simulation scientists are trying to find ways to realistically simulate liquid, gases, fire, etc. with AI. This likely will have consequences for whatever hand-simulated stuff VFX artists have been doing.

your art is publicly available and you really don't have much control over what happens to it. unless little intranets for families and towns and cities and such become more popular, unless you start password protecting websites like forums used to do, your shits getting collected. its not a good reality and im definitely an advocate for internet privacy. for many artists the internet is unfortunately the only place they know how to get their stuff out there. its not a good situation for artists to begin with. the thing is, what's happening with modern AI art generation isn't... really that bad. unless some specific human wants to make it bad. if from this moment on we decide to push for legal-social-whatever punishments for not compensating the artists whom AI was trained on, okay, i guess. companies developing these AI probably have too much startup money anyway and most artists make far too little for the years of wrist pain. but i would say the customers requesting your art style or whatever are certainly at more moral fault, because it almost certainly wouldn't just pop out a given art style unless your prompt guided it to.

i will stand by the fact that the art of modern neural networks is more complicated, less hurtful, and way cooler than ripped off collage nonsense, and it will be exciting and scary to see where we go from an AI winning an art tournament -- for the moment you can be scared if you want, i guess, but if you didn't already lose your job to a guy utilizing a neural network then you're probably already safe. (and you might as well get on the train before you're left behind.)

[pjunicornart]

I'm gonna go throw up now, thanks.

If you didn't hate AI art already, you're certainly gonna hate it even more now.

CW: disturbing images of (fictional) minors in compromising positions (CENSORED BY ME), and AI art I'm bringing attention to this because I think it's important to talk about. Under the cut is the rant and discussion.

Last night, I was looking through Google images for more stock images of my favorite character, Lewis/Cornelius from Meet the Robinsons, so I could maybe do scene redraws in the future. Or just to have on my phone as reaction images. When I came across this...

In case you couldn't tell (or if the image isn't loading), it's an AI generated image of Lewis. What's disturbing about this one is that his sweater and shirt were up, exposing his stomach. I censored it because I do not feel comfortable showing minors in a position like that. I don't care if nothing SUPER explicit was shown, I still censored it.

Also, it should be noted that it wasn't even Cornelius in a position like that. It was made clear that it was supposed to be Lewis. For context if you're not familiar with Meet the Robinsons, we see this character in two stages of their life. We follow him at the age of 12 (Lewis) for the majority of the movie, since he's the protagonist. Towards the END of the movie, we see his future self (Cornelius) as an adult in his early 40s.

Time travel shenanigans are to blame for what appears to be two separate characters, but they're not. The same character, different life stage. (I'll be using their names as a distinction from now on.) But the reason why I mention this is because I can kind of see where they were coming from by making Cornelius in positions like that. Since he is an adult.

Now, look, I'm not gonna get into the morals of drawing aged up characters in compromising positions here. I have my own set of morals, but I'm not gonna discuss them in depth here. Just know that I lean more on the lenient side, and see things as a case by case basis. I try to approach everything as a gray, not just black and white. (If you need me to explain, totally understandable. Just shoot me an ask.) However, what I'm really strict about? Minors in sexual situations.

Clearly, the image is of Lewis. You can tell by how youthful the face looks, as well as his clothes. Out of morbid curiosity, I visited the site the image came from. Let's just say... the image above was the tamest there, and I need eye bleach.

What I find really disturbing is how the image came to be. Someone had to CONSCIOUSLY DECIDE to write "Lewis" into the generator instead of "Cornelius." They also probably had to write in all the actions the image has (shirt up, heavy blush, etc.). I think this is revolting. Let me remind you, there's more images like it that are MORE explicit.

My stance on AI art is clear: AI "art" is stolen art or images with no value. It should not be used to generate images to sell, trade, use professionally, cheat artists of commission money, or anything of the sort. Most importantly, AI image generation should not - I repeat - SHOULD NOT be used to make images of anybody in compromising positions. This goes for fictional characters, and real life people. The people who use AI to fulfill their gross desires should be reported and held responsible via the justice system, especially if children are involved. I may not like kids and will probably never have any of my own, but that DOES NOT mean I advocate for their exploitation.

TL;DR - I found an AI generated image of a fictional minor character in a sexually suggestive position, and made the following point: AI image generators should not be used to make images of minors (fictional or real) in compromising positions. I will never advocate for a minor's exploitation.

[calculus-homework]

How to ACTUALLY opt-out!

Sooo. I learned today that opting out of the third-party sharing on tumblr does nothing. Yup. You click that button, but it's up to the AI companies that tumblr affiliates itself with to say "yay" or "nay" to that. And thennn... they can just do whatever they want with your data and anything you post.

2 ways to opt-out:

Always use Nightshade before you post ANY of your art/work.

Delete your account. No. Seriously. I have a few friends who are creative industry professionals who have had to delete their 10+ year old tumblr accounts that they have used as portfolio showcases just recently.

Once I have some things in order, I will be deleting my tumblr account by next week.

You can find me on...

TAPAS

PATREON

INSTAGRAM (probably not for long, but I need it for traffic atm)

Spread the word. Protect your work.

PS: Tumblr is run by the same corporate shills from any other social media site, regardless of how you want believe they're "relatable" or "understand" you as a person or what you want in a community-driven site. To them, you and your info are something to be sold. To ai tech companies, your work is something to be stolen and exploited. The end.

[user-needs-new-hyperfixation]

What are your opinions about character ai? (Totally not asking bc im turning to it to feed my sherliam and alcroft hunger bc im picky and cant find actual fics i like right now and Im not motivated or confident enough to actually write anything myself)

I say this emphatically but with total kindness towards you as a person: AIs don't write, don't draw, don't create. They devour and regurgitate plagiarized art, and in my opinion the best thing we can do is collectively completely ignore them until they become so unprofitable they cease to exist, or are repurposed to do other things that free us humans up to actually create more art. The proliferation of them is likely part of why you have a hard time finding fic you enjoy: more and more folks are scared to share their art when it might be stolen and fed into AI, and more and more are locking their AO3 profiles for the same reason. So uh...my opinion is "AI (at least in its current iteration) = bad."

Lecture aside, let me encourage you to dabble in writing yourself, even if you don't feel confident! In the decade or more since I last published fic before getting into Yuumori, I've started and abandoned probably well over a hundred WIPs for different fandoms. And even though all those snippets just sit on my computer for my eyes only, they were all fun to write! You don't have to share something to enjoy creating it. Have a line you want to hear one character say to another? Write a single scene, just for yourself, incorporating that line! It doesn't have to be complete, and no one else ever has to see it. It's healthy: you're interacting with something you love, flexing creative muscles, engaging your brain and practicing grammar and cadence and so on and so on and so on. Writing is good for you!

Also, if you don't already, get into your fandoms. Engage. Comment on fic you DO like. Become a fic author's recognized regular. (And don't ever ever ever feed their work into AI!!!) Do all that, and you might find someone whose authorial voice you really like who is willing to take prompts and feed your ship hunger for you, in a way that has heart and soul and humanity embodied in it.

Anyway, I hope this wasn't too harsh...I do be going off about things I'm passionate about. I know AI is kinda ubiquitous now and it's easy to think it's just something fun to play with and not doing any harm, but it's good to talk to authors and artists about this stuff and hear where they're coming from. I'm not super defensive of my work myself (not that I WANT my writing put into AI, please don't!), but I am easily riled up for the sake of my many friends who are very stressed about the whole topic and what it means for their art!

[lorwolf-salt]

Regarding the AI art issue

Hii guys I’m Jay (#287), some of you might have seen me from time to time on the apparel discord. I just saw this whole thing about R using AI art, and I’m willing to risk putting my name here to help clear their name, that they are not using AI art at all. If you trace back their art from their DA, you’ll see pieces from 2020 and 2021 that are in a similar style to the backgrounds, and they are all 100% surely drawn by them, as AI still wasn’t a popular thing back then.Actually, one of the pieces used to “prove” they are using AI, was also done on 2021, and therefore, its actually not an AI piece. The whole style they are using is about drawing loosely and doing low detailing, which is a common style for concept art. And that style leaves ground for some weird things like trees growing from rocks. The weird birds repeating on their paintings is also proof these arent in fact AI art, it’s highly unlikely an AI was repeating the same patterns on multiple pieces, They are probably a bird brush R used.

If you want more details, feel free to send me a DM on discord, I know another person who draws on the same concept art style and they are taking their time to clear R’s name as well. if this whole thing about Rai takes off, other artists like them are in danger of being accused of crimes they did not commit.

Here is a bit of what my friend, who is also a concept artist, and has done commissions for me before, has to say about it.

“The short of it is I traced R’s art back almost four years and all of it is that style. That style is not AI style, it’s called Concept Art Illustration, and variations of it, that AI has unfortunately stolen and tries to mimic, but it can’t mimic genuine concept artist pieces that well and its very clear R’s are genuine. I even traced their skill increase each year they meticiulously practiced the style and there certainly weren’t AI in 2020 that could replicate R’s stylethat well.

The fire reflection? I have made those mistakes too.

Rocks growing out of trees? In concept art we don’t care about the logistics, the idea is to paint out a piece as quickly as possible, which means trees look a bit sketchy and so forth. The concept art style goes back to the 1800’s so its not new either and some people think it goes back further. Its a style that involves using impressions to convey an environment instead of actually painting the details. The most famous example is Claude Monet’s much loved Water Lilies series. If you walk up to this piece the whole thing falls apart into scribbles.

This style was recently slightly changed and adapted for the film and game industry where artists had to paint very fast and very quickly so they could develop films, make sets or pitch ideas to potential sponsors. It isn’t meant to be nice, artists aren’t thinking about river currents when they do it. The only thing they are thinking is ‘how do I convey the mood and feel of this scene as quickly as possible.”

R is just…that good, they are an amazing painter and can paint concept art with a maestry you don’t usually see on petsites. I understand why this made a few of you cautious, but accusing them without proof could damage their reputation and even make them lose their job, and I do believe they work on the art industry.

sorry for the long post, I hope this can clear some misconceptions

[m1shapanda]

Opinion on AI "artist"????

(I hate 'em)

i dont think they even deserve to be called artists, like, this is the definition of an artist from the merriam-webster dictionary lol

heavy emphasis on "a PERSON who creates art". Having an AI "create" art just by you putting in a command or something and trying to put it in the same caliber as artworks actual PEOPLE worked on feels really unfair and ignorant to the art work and time that goes into actually fucking drawing.

the thing is, i dont think AI is inherently bad either. In fact, i think it's an easy way for non artists to be able to visualize their ideas effectively and efficiently. The problem is that these AIs were trained using other artists' work (usually without consent, eg. the samdoesart situation <- there are more but this is probably the most popular example). As an artist myself, it feels so.. humiliating? the fact that i can work for months or even YEARS to get my artistic skill to a certain level when i can make art i am proud of only for some people to take those artworks and use em to program these AIs to try and imitate someone's work. It's just highly unethical

from my smart friend's words, "AI is a powerful tool but the issue with “AI art” is that it’s just stolen art modified". Not only that, art itself is a very emotionally driven craft which.. AI cant emulate. I cant fully explain it either lol but seeing an artist being so driven to improve their craft and practice over YEARS seems a lot better than someone just putting in some code and getting a "perfect" artwork in seconds.

TLDR; AI "art" and AI "artists" are just new ways to steal other people's art and i fucking HATE it