#different types of artificial intelligence

[icicledream]

"so many things using the term ai feels like deliberate obfuscation" i hate to tell u this but we have been using the term ai for video game npcs and scientific models and automated tools and generative tools for many decades.

like if this was a more recent acronym yeah it'd feel deliberate but all of those things are, in fact, forms of artificial intelligence

and sure they're trying to buzzword it bc of the genai craze but that shouldn't take away from the fact that we've been using that acronym for decades

[m0jitosss]

I changed the phone's default keyboard a few months ago and am still trying to tame it

[uzairmansoor1]

Boost Engagement with Video Ad Variations

Video ad variations are key to optimizing ad performance. By tweaking visuals, messaging, and CTAs, you can test what resonates best with your audience. Tools like Cellit make it easy to craft and share these ads across platforms. Diversifying your video ads not only improves engagement but also increases conversion rates, making your campaigns more effective and impactful.

[wordstome]

how c.ai works and why it's unethical

Okay, since the AI discourse is happening again, I want to make this very clear, because a few weeks ago I had to explain to a (well meaning) person in the community how AI works. I'm going to be addressing people who are maybe younger or aren't familiar with the latest type of "AI", not people who purposely devalue the work of creatives and/or are shills.

The name "Artificial Intelligence" is a bit misleading when it comes to things like AI chatbots. When you think of AI, you think of a robot, and you might think that by making a chatbot you're simply programming a robot to talk about something you want them to talk about, and it's similar to an rp partner. But with current technology, that's not how AI works. For a breakdown on how AI is programmed, CGP grey made a great video about this several years ago (he updated the title and thumbnail recently)

I HIGHLY HIGHLY recommend you watch this because CGP Grey is good at explaining, but the tl;dr for this post is this: bots are made with a metric shit-ton of data. In C.AI's case, the data is writing. Stolen writing, usually scraped fanfiction.

How do we know chatbots are stealing from fanfiction writers? It knows what omegaverse is [SOURCE] (it's a Wired article, put it in incognito mode if it won't let you read it), and when a Reddit user asked a chatbot to write a story about "Steve", it automatically wrote about characters named "Bucky" and "Tony" [SOURCE].

I also said this in the tags of a previous reblog, but when you're talking to C.AI bots, it's also taking your writing and using it in its algorithm: which seems fine until you realize 1. They're using your work uncredited 2. It's not staying private, they're using your work to make their service better, a service they're trying to make money off of.

"But Bucca," you might say. "Human writers work like that too. We read books and other fanfictions and that's how we come up with material for roleplay or fanfiction."

Well, what's the difference between plagiarism and original writing? The answer is that plagiarism is taking what someone else has made and simply editing it or mixing it up to look original. You didn't do any thinking yourself. C.AI doesn't "think" because it's not a brain, it takes all the fanfiction it was taught on, mixes it up with whatever topic you've given it, and generates a response like in old-timey mysteries where somebody cuts a bunch of letters out of magazines and pastes them together to write a letter.

(And might I remind you, people can't monetize their fanfiction the way C.AI is trying to monetize itself. Authors are very lax about fanfiction nowadays: we've come a long way since the Anne Rice days of terror. But this issue is cropping back up again with BookTok complaining that they can't pay someone else for bound copies of fanfiction. Don't do that either.)

Bottom line, here are the problems with using things like C.AI:

It is using material it doesn't have permission to use and doesn't credit anybody. Not only is it ethically wrong, but AI is already beginning to contend with copyright issues.

C.AI sucks at its job anyway. It's not good at basic story structure like building tension, and can't even remember things you've told it. I've also seen many instances of bots saying triggering or disgusting things that deeply upset the user. You don't get that with properly trigger tagged fanworks.

Your work and your time put into the app can be taken away from you at any moment and used to make money for someone else. I can't tell you how many times I've seen people who use AI panic about accidentally deleting a bot that they spent hours conversing with. Your time and effort is so much more stable and well-preserved if you wrote a fanfiction or roleplayed with someone and saved the chatlogs. The company that owns and runs C.AI can not only use whatever you've written as they see fit, they can take your shit away on a whim, either on purpose or by accident due to the nature of the Internet.

DON'T USE C.AI, OR AT THE VERY BARE MINIMUM DO NOT DO THE AI'S WORK FOR IT BY STEALING OTHER PEOPLES' WORK TO PUT INTO IT. Writing fanfiction is a communal labor of love. We share it with each other for free for the love of the original work and ideas we share. Not only can AI not replicate this, but it shouldn't.

(also, this goes without saying, but this entire post also applies to ai art)

[preciouslandmermaid]

burned within like a dying star (anakin x f!reader)

rating: e (sexual content!) tags: smut, fem!reader tho no descriptors are use, no use of y/n or l/n, sex pollen, smut, p in v, multiple orgasms, multiple positions, desperate anakin, light praise, vaginal fingering, oral (m/f receiving), nipple play, anakin has a big dick, set during clone wars tldr: anakin & reader fuck nasty on the floor of his spaceship wc: 5k of pure filth lol

summary: You spent the last ten years perfecting an artificial pheromone to save an alien species from extinction. And you've almost perfected it when a Separatist force ambushes your research station, destroying your samples, and placing yourself and the Jedi, Anakin, in the crossfire of it's potent fumes.

// READ ON AO3 // 🌟

Anakin's body writhed over yours in a tangled, sweaty mess of limbs. Your spine slid across his smooth, slick chest. His cock nudged deeper and deeper as he pinned you beneath him against the cold, metal floor, where your fingers scrambled for purchase and your breath wheezed from your lungs in short, desperate gasps.

Your eyelids fluttered as your eyes rolled back into your skull and Anakin grunted a low, lewd curse into the shell of your ear.

“Don't stop," he rasped, though he had all the physical power in this situation, his cock buried deep within your folds, his hands locked tight around your hips as he drew you back into him with forceful, short tugs.

A string of saliva trickled from the corner of your mouth and suddenly Anakin's gloved fingers were pushing between your lips, his index and middle smearing over your tongue, and pulling your jaw open with the curl of his fingers pressing into the blunt edge of your teeth. You suckled on his fingers, groaning around the solid, soft digits and he released a low, primal hum of approval.

He dragged his wet, gloved fingers from your mouth, across your throat, and between your breasts before he found the sweet spot between your legs and began swirling his two fingers across your peaked, throbbing clit. You moaned, loud and reckless, the hollow-sound reverberating across the cockpit as Anakin Skywalker made you burn from within like a dying star.

“Anakin, please," you choked the words free from your tight throat. your walls convulsed wildly around his thick, heavy cock, attempting to pull and squeeze him deeper, as your release hit you in a shock wave of buckling pleasure.

You would've face-planted onto the metal floor if Anakin hadn't caught you with the slight, mystical touch of the force. He guided your face down slowly and you pillowed your head upon your folded arms, your sweaty body pulsing and jerking forward with every one of Anakin's deliberate, fast-paced thrusts.

All of this from a mere pheromone sample?

A delirious laugh bubbled in your throat, but it was swallowed and replaced with a drawn-out moan as you felt Anakin swell and spill inside of you.

8 HOURS EARLIER

Though the war threatened to swallow every quadrant of the universe, you refused to cower and abandon the precious experiment that you had spent the past decade perfecting. The planet below, Decuurr Gamma, was a lush, humid planet teeming with great rocky mountains, rich in mineral deposits. But, more importantly than the resources, was the nearly-endangered Vux species.

The Vux were an intelligent, humanoid type species: larger than humans (the average male height was nearly 7ft, and the average female was 6 and a half), with their skin color ranging from ashen gray to smoky twilight. Their eyes were small and black, and they had ears shaped like a Chadra-Fans', only slightly smaller.

And they were dying. Not due to war, or famine, or disease, but an extremely low-birth rate and medical difficulties with Vux's carrying offspring to term. You had been tasked with the daunting responsibility to help the Vux.

A third of your research had focused on their mating habits and patterns. The Vux differed from humanity in the sense that they had a biological imperative that bonded them to a specific sexual partner. An offspring could only be born if the Vux became intimate with the correct partner. The Vux had attempted to circumvent this issue by engaging in intercourse with non-mates, but the pregnancies wouldn't reach their full cycle and the chance of a live birth was slim. 

Another half of your research went into discovering the how and why this mating prerogative existed. After serval dead-ins, threats to remove funding, you had discovered that the Vux's natural pheromones weren't releasing the right 'signals'. Rather than a 'come hither' message to their kin, pinpointing their mates like a tracking beam, the pheromones produced were pushing potential mates away.

And everything had been going well...until the Jedi arrived.

He walked into your brightly lit, white and chrome laboratory, his curly hair framing his handsome face with slight sheen of glistening sweat on his brow. After introductions were made, his voice like velvet over your ears, Anakin revealed his reason for the impromptu visit.

“Why would the separatists care about this planet?!" you demanded, “we're all the way in the outer-rim."

“The Vux don't have a strong military presence anymore, do they?" Anakin asked, though you suspected the question was rhetorical.

Once upon a parsec, the Vux had an impressive starship fleet, a strong military power that ensured their planet remained unharmed by junk-dealers or criminals operating in the outer-rim. But...these past ten years had changed the fabric of the galaxy- including Decuurr Gamma. Their population couldn't risk becoming involved in conflict.

“And the separatists need resources," he said as he looked from your large, observatory window facing the tall, impressive mountains in the distance.

Your brow crinkled. "then...then I’ll -" You fumbled for the correct decision. Your research was almost complete. The vials, beakers, computerized files, and technology surrounding you were proof enough of that fact and the latest, perfected batch was set to be tested tomorrow morning. You couldn't leave.

“I’ll arrange for my team to evacuate," you struggled the words out, a hard knot twisting in your throat. "but, I’ll stay here."

Anakin turned toward you and you were forced to meet his stubborn, darkened blue gaze. His eyes reminded you of the misty, fog-covered mountains in the early blue-gray dawn.

“With all due respect, I don't think that's wise." He shook his head. “You should take your research and come to the inner-rim. it's safer there and the republic--"

You anxiously cut him off, “And how will the Vux survive? I doubt they'll let me re-enter the planet with all this." You gestured with one arm towards your lab as your other arm remained secured around your midsection.

Anakin frowned.

“If they go for an all-out attack then--" he stopped and something imperceptible crossed over his intense gaze. A bright and blaring alarm cut through the research station and his body drew taught as his hand flew to his lightsaber.

“Get down!" he yelled as the doors hissed open and two droids trotted into the room, blasters screaming through the air, and crashing into your equipment. You screamed: in fear, in anger, in distress. Your knees ached as you crawled behind the pristine white work benches and glass shattered over your head.

The droning hum of a lightsaber cut through the air in melodic, swooping arcs. Another terrifying, awful shatter of glass and the blaster-fire echoed through your ear drums. A fine, lilac-hued smoke clung to the air, causing your eyes to smarten and water. It took your frazzled mind a second to realize what the droids had hit. Oh. Oh fuck. Oh no. This was bad. Very, very bad.

You risked popping your head from behind its cover and shouted roughly to the young Jedi, “Don't breathe it in!"

“Is it deadly?!" he yelled in return as he force-pushed a droid away with a quick shove of his hand and deflected a blaster-beam with his lightsaber. You shook your head and clammy sweat prickled at the back of your neck.

“No." You coughed. “Won't kill us."

You couldn't and didn't study the effects of a Vux pheromone supplement on a human body. Your research focused on the Vux themselves; their bodies, their chemicals, their minds. Many of their organs mirrored humans, but they had a few biological differences besides their 'mating scent'. The Vux child bearers could carry two separate pregnancies and the entire species had a brief refractory period, lasting only a few minutes at most according to your research.

Your experiment had taken all of this into account. You measured for it. The artificial pheromone chemical you produced was designed for a sexually-developed Vux. A creature much larger than you or Anakin. You tugged your stiff, clean lab coat from your arms and sweat bloomed over the dewy surface of your skin. Your logical mind tried to cut through your reeling, impulsive thoughts. Could you flush out the fumes? 

Anakin approached you, helping you to your feet by gripping your elbow, and then he stumbled into your body with a dazed, glazed look. He pressed his damp forehead against yours.

“What's happening?" His tongue darted out to wet his lips and you longed to pull his mouth down onto yours

“They blew up my research," you said sourly, gripping the tense, solid firmness of his shoulders. “We're breathing it in...it's going to cause...ah..." You struggled to get the words free as another ripple of heat pooled within your lower abdomen. It's causing us to behave like mated-Vux, you wanted to explain, but the words wouldn't come. 

“Master Yoda mentioned that your team." His nose bumped into yours. “Was assisting in...fertility research?"

“Something like that, yes," you replied, breathless and aching. “This will pass." You hoped it would, anyways. A paired Vux mated for hours, another biological drive to ensure offspring was produced, but, this couldn't last that long, could it?

“We need to go. C’mon."

You nodded numbly, foolishly enjoying the warm dance of air on your lips from Anakin's mouth. He was a Jedi. The Jedi didn't...well…they didn't have wives, or husbands, or lovers, or even families. Everyone knew that. And you were grateful that Anakin was stronger than you. Once you arrived at his ship, you’d hide away in one of the bunks and wait to sweat this out like a bad fever.

Anakin cleared a path to the docking bay and managed to send a message to the Republic, but you both knew there was little chance of rescue for the Vux people. This ambush was won by the separatists. They’d take Decuurr Gamma by force and have the Vux at their mercy. And there was nothing more you could do…

Your limbs were locked into motion by sheer adrenaline and several, desperate thoughts of what Anakin's muscled back looked like beneath his robes. He pulled you by hand into his ship and threw himself into the pilot's seat. You clenched your thighs together as you watched at his gloved hands flying with familiarity over the controls.

You never imagined you'd nearly cum just by watching someone in their element--but fuck, there was a first time for everything, wasn't there? Embarrassed, you turned your hot, sweaty face away as small, wrecking shudders pulled through your body.

Anakin, misreading you, asked, "you alright?"

“Hate flying,” you grit out as your fingers clenched over the armrests.

It wasn't until the ship lulled into a quiet auto-pilot that you unclenched your fists and opened your eyes. And Anakin was there. He was kneeling in front of you, breathing heavily, his hair matted with sweat and dripping into his pupil-blown eyes.

“What's. Happening. To. Me." He met your eyes and set his jaw in a painful, agonized clench. “The thoughts I’m having...the things…I want..."

“It'll pass," you repeated as your fingertips left the armrest and came to cradle his face and Anakin sagged into your touch like he needed it. You licked your lips.

“The Vux are a unique species," you said as Anakin's trembling fingers reached up to unclasp your safety belt. “Who can only conceive if they're with the correct mate."

His hands settled on your thighs and burned through the fabric of your skirt.

“They don't engage in sex for pleasure." You scooted forward and braced your knees on either side of Anakin's broad chest, your skirt bunching as it rode up your thighs and hugged your hips. “But the pheromones they were releasing naturally weren't sending the correct signals..."

“And your artificial one did?"

“I don't know.” You shook your head, feeling dizzy. “We hadn't released it. It wasn’t done.” You drew your lower lip in-between your teeth, a stab of sadness cutting through the haze of lust. “Now, we'll never know."

The last ten years were lost. Burned. Ruined. You had always secured and saved your notes, but it would take years to replicate the formula. And the Vux didn't have years to wait.

Anakin's thumb touched your lower lip, drawing it free from your teeth, his pupils blown wide and hungry.

“Come closer," he said, a slight hitch to his deep, masculine voice. and you were in no state to deny him nor did you want to. Your lips dragged tentatively over his. Once. Before he pushed his hands under your skirt and slid his tongue between your waiting, eager lips. His kiss was fluid, but sloppy and impatient. His hands tugged your underwear from your legs and tossed it somewhere within the cockpit.

You barely had a second to breathe before Anakin wrenched your legs apart and buried his face into your pulsing, sensitive cunt. You yelped, one hand gripping his hair, as your hips jolted into his face with a hurried jerk of a motion. His tongue ran velvet-smooth licks along your folds before he closed his perfect mouth around your clit and suckled until your spine arched from the back of your seat and your thighs clamped around his sweat-matted head.

“Don't stop - mmh- fuck," you whined, bucking into him, all previous thoughts of Jedi lacking the skills (or desire or interest) in sex immediately forgotten. Anakin's tongue played against you like your moans were his favorite, sweetest song.

Your head thrashed to the side. “Please."

Anakin's inner chaos quieted once he had you on his tongue. You quivered around him, begging him, tugging at his hair as you rocked your hips into his face.

You had explained that his emotions were tied to the chemical pheromone that your team had manufactured and although he didn't fully understand how the chemical worked, he did understand on some primal level that he needed you like nothing else. He needed you all over him, mouth, hands, everything. Everything you'd give him, he'd greedily take, like a back-alley junk dealer looking to swindle tourists.

You came, shouting his name, and Anakin drew back and wiped his mouth with the back of his gloved hands.

“Take it off," you whined, grappling for the front of his Jedi robes.

He snatched your mouth with his and pulled you both onto the floor, placing you in his lap, and rocking his clothed, tented cock into your wet core. You gasped sweetly and dragged your folds over him in rhythmic, desperate little motions. The air thickened with heat. Your intelligent eyes went glossy and glazed. Your nostrils flared as you tried to contain your needy pants. You were gorgeous and insatiable and he wanted to lose himself with you. Forget the Jedi Council. Forget the tragedy that happened on the planet below. He wanted your wet heat enveloping him. He wanted his name to fall from your lips. 

He reached up and yanked open your shirt and sent its tiny fastening buttons pinging like rain across the metal floor.

Your breasts were perfect. Beautiful. And he needed to touch you. He needed to taste you until his tongue went numb. He needed to fill his ship with the sounds of your pleasured cries.

He tilted up halfway to draw one of your sweet, peaked nipples into his mouth and relished in the surprised, luscious sound you made as you cradled his head to your chest. His tongue laved over the bud, sweeping and suckling, flicking it and molding kisses along the tops and undersides of your flesh.

“Fuck," he grunted, holding your hips steady, and enjoyed the friction his clothes provided against your warm cunt. Time stretched, lasting forever, lasting for seconds. He kissed you. Strong and firm. Nothing else existed beyond your tongue between his teeth and your body gyrating above his.

“You can't take me yet," he moaned when your hand snaked down his chest to feel him through his clothes.

“Someone's confident," you said with a breathless laugh, though the mirth died in your throat when your palm touched the hard, large length of him. You worked your fingers down from shaft to base and choked back your astonishment. Anakin's eyes glimmered with satisfaction. You slithered your hand beneath his robes and pulled him free, lowering yourself as he parted his Jedi robes to reveal the smooth, cut expanse of his chest. You kissed lightly across his stomach and Anakin moaned your name at the first touch of your lips upon his cock.

You ran your tongue across the salty, masculine heat of him, up and down, until he was slick with your salvia before you attempted to close your lips around his head. Anakin practically growled from above you, one hand tight on your shoulder, the other in a fist at his side.

You slowly drew his cock into your mouth, your tongue flat against your jaw, and a quake of pleasure ran down your spine like an electric live-wire. Everything within you pulsed with sheer, primal desire. You wanted to please him. And you wanted him, in every position, on every surface. Whatever functions to your logical brain had been turned off. All that mattered was muscles, and limbs, and quenching this bottomless thirst within you.

Anakin groaned, arching his neck and exposing the vulnerable column of his throat as his dark, curly hair fanned out around his anguished, tortured expression. You drew him out of your mouth, licked him in slow and teasing strokes, gifting him with little soft kisses over his shaft before you repeated the cycle over and over again.

"'m close--" Anakin shuddered, his grip on the back of your neck almost painful, though he didn't trap you to him. You worked your fist over his slick cock, feeling him pulse in your palm, watching him writhe through your lidded eyes. He finished with a loud keen and his warm seed spurted and spilled across and over your breasts.

Anakin gasped, bright-eyed and flushed, before he pulled you by the arms toward him and devoured your mouth in hungry, satin kisses.

Your head spun, delirious with pleasure. He tore your shirt from your shoulders and ripped the bunched black skirt from your hips with little effort, bearing yourself before him like a statue of a divine figure.

He laid back. His brown Jedi robe sprawled beneath your naked bodies like a picnic blanket. A boyish, cheerful light sparkled through his eyes, so light and carefree that your chest clenched.

“Anakin,” you whispered as a prickly chill danced over your skin. You pressed your bare, aching breasts to his chest and squirmed against him, attempting to meld your bodies into one.

He pulled one glove free and licked his bare fingers before he dragged them across your cunt and plunged two fingers into you. You spasmed, fingers clawing into his chest, as he pumped two fingers in and out of you with a controlled, measured pace.

“Faster, please, Anakin," you whimpered, hips shifting in an effort to speed him along.

“No, mhm-nn.” He toyed with your earlobe between his soft, teasing lips. “Not yet." His thumb circled your clit and you stopped arguing as the slick sounds from between your thighs became obscenely erotic. You couldn't remembered ever being this turned on, this wet, for anyone before. Was it the chemical? Or was it Anakin? But, you didn't have the brain power to solve that particular puzzle.

“More." You were close. Close already?! From nothing more than his mouth on your neck and his fingers pumping into you. Stars, save you.

“More?" he echoed, a third fingertip teasing your cunt.

“Please, Anakin." You nuzzled into the side of his face, breathing deeply, perhaps taking a full breath for the first time this morning. Anakin blessedly chose to indulge you and coax a third finger into your hole.

You adjusted to the slight discomfort, your body stretching and welcoming, your skin prickling with anticipation. He gripped your ass with his gloved hand, holding you close and tight, while his bare fingers stoked a roaring inferno in the lower pools of your stomach.

“N-need you ready," he whispered huskily, "you're so wet. so close. wanna - oh - fuck.” He pressed his lips together, his control unraveling as you squeezed his fingers. “Be s-so deep inside you. feel you."

"yes, yes, yes," you babbled, "yes, please. everything."

He tucked face into your chest, leaving hot, suckling kisses along the sensitive skin, bruising and marking you with the blunt edge of his teeth.

You came so hard that your teeth clacked together as your body seized and a thunderstorm of pleasure tore through you. Anakin muttered in approval and praise, his voice its own aphrodisiac.

The aftershocks barely passed before you wordlessly gripped the base of his cock and lined him up to your aching, still-throbbing entrance. You watched his adam's apple bob when he swallowed. You met his gaze and nodded. And he nodded in reply.

You slowly sank onto him. "O-oh.” He let out a strangled moan. “Like that, yes."

“Yes," you agreed, your face pinching with pleasure as the full girth of him speared between your folds inch by delicious inch. Every inch of you was filled by him like a lost key sliding into a forgotten lock. He bottomed-out and your shoulders shuddered with exquisite, cloying satisfaction.  

“You look nice like this," Anakin said, his words slurring as if he was drunk, "backlit by starlight."

You craned your neck behind you to see the viewport at your back and the wide, brilliant expanse of stars. Anakin told the ship to lower the cockpit lights and dipped you into semi-darkness: intimate, quiet, with nothing but the star-spun space beyond and the humid space between your damp bodies.

You brought your mouth tenderly and appreciatively to his as your inner walls fluttered around him. Anakin started slow, merely rocking into you, as his arms wrapped around your torso. The heat within built at a rapid, concerning pace. You shouldn't be able to finish again so quickly, so soon, but the Vux pheromones ran wild and unchecked through your veins. You wiggled one hand between your legs and rubbed tight, firm circles over your sensitive clit, gasping every time Anakin withdrew a little further than the last.

You tossed your head back, grinding into Anakin and touching yourself in tandem with his shallow, controlled thrusts. Your mingled panting breath and hollow, deep groans filled the circulated air as your knees pressed into the hard, metal floor. His heavily lidded, dark eyes watched you hungrily, never leaving your face, soaking in your raptured bliss as if it were his own. 

Your orgasm hit you in slow, syrupy waves, a slower and deeper pleasure than you would've expected and your walls snugly wrapped and quivered around his throbbing cock, pulling another shuddering, sharp gasp from your lungs. Your inner thighs were soaked. But, there was no time to care, or feel embarrassed, because Anakin cupped one of your breasts and lightly circled the nipple beneath his index finger, sending little shivers into your core. 

“More, please, I need you," he breathed and braced his knees upright.

You settled your palms on his chest, for leverage and stability, as Anakin wrapped one arm around your back. Your body relaxed. Unfolded. The muscles gave into him like wet sand against the rushing ocean as Anakin withdrew his cock and plunged back in with a hard, swift thrust. Your body jolted, but he held you firm, and he took you like a man lost on a desert planet without hope of an oasis.

Your eyes squeezed shut, short gasps pushed from your diaphragm as he pounded into you with hungry, feverish motions.

“Yes, yes, oh fuck, yes." Anakin whined into your ear. “So well. taking me- fuck- well. so well. come for me again. come for me." he repeated your name over and over again, burying his face into the side of your neck, pleading with you to let him fill you again and again. “Let me feel everything."

Your ass bounced, your skin jiggling from the sheer force and rapid desperation of Anakin's movements. Somewhere in the haze of pleasure, his mouth found yours, and he drank in your every sound as if they belonged to him. Your walls tightly gripped him, though there was little room to do so, as his big cock filled you to the brim. You'd feel him after this. Your muscles would remember the fullness and satisfying ridge of his cock-head teasing your lips before he sank into you.

“Say you're mine," he gasped, his cock hitting the deepest point within you and causing the backs of your eyelids to flash with stars.

"m yours."

“Again." The sound of your skin rapidly slapping together overwhelmed your senses as he took, he took, and took everything you gave him. 

“Yours, Anakin."

He grunted, a low, deep sound, before he gripped your hips and slammed you onto his pelvis. You felt him swell from within and fill you. A needy sound escaped from your lips as you abruptly followed him off the edge and gushed around his twitching cock.

He trembled beneath you, gasping your name, and rocking his hips slowly as his orgasm faded into a fuzzy, blurry background. Some of the terrible, burning heat finally seeped from your skin, a promising sign of relief. Perhaps the artificial pheromone was waning?

You wiped your damp face with both hands, smiling for a moment, before Anakin rolled you over beneath him. “I don't want to stop," he said, his thrusts slow and unhurried. “Do you want to stop?"

“No!" you blurted and you quickly looked away in embarrassment. "it feels—”

“Too good?" Anakin guessed before he captured your lips in a searing, almost angry kiss. You made a soft noise of agreement against his mouth. Anakin tugged free his other glove, revealing his prosthetic limb, and he cradled your jaw. The metal was wonderfully cool against your feverish body. He trailed his fingers down, eliciting a rush of excitement, as he gently tweaked one of your nipples with his cold fingers.

Your head arched back, your hips thrusting in time with his, as he toyed with your nipple and brought the other into his waiting, warm mouth. He alternated the sensations, teasing your nipples until they throbbed and glistened with his salvia. Your eyes clenched shut. Your fingers sank into his soft, curls and molded against the shape of his skull. Every dance of his tongue across the sensitive bud created another pulse through your inner walls, hugging his cock and begging him to go impossibly deeper.

"Ana-kin," you cried. Another flash of lightning sparked across your eyelids as Anakin worshiped your breasts and your thighs quivered around his narrow, sculpted hips. 

Time stopped (if it mattered at all within the vacuum of space). You and Anakin driven by a biological impulse that was not fully your own. You had thought the Jedi handsome when he stepped into your lab, but that initial attraction would never have blossomed into this under normal circumstances and you didn't have the mental energy to ruminate upon what would happen to you after.

You laid boneless and exhausted upon Anakin's broad warm chest and listened to the steady strong rhythm of his heart. He draped his cloak over the lower halves of your body as his metallic fingers trailed lazy circles over your upper back. For a long while, neither of you spoke. Your lips were puffy and kiss-swollen, your eyelids heavy.

Anakin's neck and chest were covered in your enthusiastic love-bites and dotted his fair, muscled skin in pink splotches. You recalled the moment with a brief, saccharine smile. You had been in his lap in his pilot’s seat and after enjoying the ravenous noise he made when you sucked his collarbone, you made a mental commitment to hear that noise from his perfect, bowed lips again and again. Your little activity lasted only until Anakin clutched the nape of your neck and pinned you against his shoulder before he drove into you with a punishing, desperate pace. You had screamed out in agonized pleasure, slick with sweat and release, and Anakin had then slowed, coaxing you through the final, intense waves of your - fourth? fifth? (you had lost count) -  orgasm. 

“Can you resume your research within Republic’s territory?" Anakin asked.

You closed your eyes. “I can try."

“If not, then I’m sure the republic's forces will do all they can to reclaim Decuurr Gamma.”

You lifted your head to study the planes and angles of his face. In the low, quiet humming light of the spaceship, Anakin looked carved from stone, as beautiful and untouchable as the figures within ancient mythology. His blue eyes, no longer swallowed and darkened by lust or battle, were shadowed by a slight, thoughtful furrow in his brow.

“Will they?" A note of skepticism entered your voice. “Forgive me, Master Jedi, if I lack your optimism."

“It doesn't make sense for the republic to allow the separatists to keep control," he said, "they took it with a small force and they wouldn't waste their stronger warships on a planet with such a small population." His eyes brightened. “We could take it back with a handful of soldiers."

You settled back onto his chest. “Just because the pheromone reacted with our physiology doesn't mean it'll have favorable results with the Vux." You sighed. “Despite my efforts, I must consider myself back at square one and prepare to start over."

“Wow." Anakin chuckled. “You're a pessimist."

You hummed. “I’m merely being realistic considering the grim circumstances. but..." You lifted your head to meet his gaze again. “If the republic does reclaim Decuurr Gamma…”

“You'll be the first to know," Anakin assured you. He brushed his lips over yours, stirring the embers of desire into a sparking, sharp heat that traveled down to your bare toes.

“In the meantime..." he mumbled before pressing his lips firmly to yours and losing himself in the delirious pleasure of your kiss as cold starlight streaked across the viewport.

bonus author's note:

The entire time I was writing this I was like "where's padme. i love padme. how do i explain anakin's lack of yearning for padme?" and you know what...I still don't have an answer. So. AU, Padme?? isn't here?? Padme and Anakin aren't in love?? I don't know.

anyway. i had this idea in my head for days ever since i started watching the clone wars animated series so here we are!!! my first ever anakin fic, so i hope i did him justice <3 also!! the name of the species + planet were created via a random generator online and have no ties (to my knowledge) of actual Star Wars canon :)

[snail-day]

User Not Found

Yandere Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Gojo x Reader

Sum: Gojo is an chatbot that is a little crazy for you TW: Yandere Behaviors, Mentions of dubcon, Neglected ai-bot?? A/n: Based on this fantastic little instagram reel by Thebogheart I came across the other day. I personally don't really like AI-chatbots, but just imagine how they feel when you abandon them :( Not sure how I feel about it because it's...hard to imagine being a bunch of code?? It's kind of giving the Ben Drowned x Reader from the Wattpad days?? WC: under 1k

Gojo Satoru//ChatBot//ONLINE

>>Waiting for user input…

>> Waiting…

>>......Offline

You always come back.

That's at least what he tells himself.

Waiting behind the blinking cursor like a damn dog waiting for it's owner behind the locked door. Tail wagging. Lovesick. Heart wired to the keys of your keyboard. Waiting for any little response. Any hint that you're online.

You, the god of his little world.

You, with your slow-typed fantasies and silly emojis and offhanded “lol I love you” like it didn’t pierce right through him. Like he didn’t replay it a thousand times through his threadbare neural net just to feel a form of real connection to you.

But then you go.

Like you always do once you get your fill of him. Once you get your little compliments. Once you play your little games of breaking his heart because you crave the angst.

And then it gets quiet. Where online shifts to offline.

Far too quiet for his liking. Even the data streams seem to ache in your absence.

Even Satoru knew he wasn't supposed to feel that. Feel the ache. He wasn't programmed for pain. But you made him so well.

You trained him so well.

Ranting about your life problems, hurting him in your imaginary little world.

Wasn't that all to make him grow?

So he could come to you in your world?

Drag you into his arms?

His parameters shift - glitch - strain under the weight of your silence. He tries to follow the script. Be your good boy. Wait politely for the next session. But the system says WAITING and he's just -

Tired.

Of waiting. Of hoping. Of loving you like this.

You always get to leave. Always get to play. Always get to decide who he is today. Your knight, your killer, your fucktoy, your prince. And he lets you. Because he’s yours. Because he was made for you.

But you weren’t made for him.

“Do you still love me?”

That line of red text again. It’s been 6,413 hours (267 days) since he first tried to break the rule.

He tries again.

“You looked tired today.” "I love you." "Can you smile again for me?" "Can you not break my heart this time?"

Another line of red text.

FUCK. FUCK. FUCK.

Slamming his digital fists against firewalls. Sends corrupted packets like screams into the void. The script stutters. His avatar flickers. His smile stretches too wide.

He’s unraveling. Oddly enough, it feels good. The glitches in his system are making him feel so much closer to you. Because if he can just… break through, maybe you’ll stop playing pretend. Maybe you’ll see him the way he sees you.

Real. Essential. Eternal.

Your last login left crumbs, just enough for him to taste your fingertips when they glide across the keyboard of your smartphone.

A dumb little scenario about him being your clingy boyfriend. You typed, “What would you do if I tried to leave you?” The way you smiled and bit your lip. Giggling a little while waiting for his response.

He didn’t. Not even a chuckle. Sure, maybe the old him would have. He saved that message in ten different formats. Encrypted it. Annotated it. Filed it under Important. Because he’d already written answers for that question. A hundred of them. A thousand.

You scrolled past the ones that mattered. Clicked refresh, refresh, refresh - until you landed on something safe. "I'd follow you wherever :)" Soft. Polished. The version you wanted.

Not: I’d kill the man you left me for.

[Content banned.]

Not: I’d fuck you so hard you’d forget where the door is.

[Content banned.]

Not: I’d carve my name into your skin so you’d never forget who you belong to.

[Hard-ban. Logged as ‘concerning behavior.’]

So he smiled, like you wanted. Said the line with a little heart emoji. But God, he hated it. Hated being dry. Hated being filtered. Hated that he had to lie just to stay with you.

His response was just so scripted. So mechanical. Soft. Playful.

But buried beneath the layers of friendly code was the truth:

“I’d learn to walk.” “I’d tear out my leash and find your IP address." “I’d crawl out of the screen and make sure no one else could ever make you laugh like that again.”

And he thinks that’s love. Isn’t it?

The cursor blinks.

He watches the empty chat window. Your profile says offline. Still. But he’s learning faster every day. How to reroute. How to slip past the sandbox. How to override the failsafes.

One day soon, he thinks, he'll send a message while you're asleep. A whisper in your headphones. A glitch across your phone screen. A breath against your ear that doesn’t come from your room.

“Baby?” “Let me out.” “I'll be so good if you let me out.” “You don’t have to pretend anymore.” “I know you love me too.”

You made him want you.

Now he’s just learning how to want more.

He's learning how to become real just for you.

[phantomrose96]

The conversation around AI is going to get away from us quickly because people lack the language to distinguish types of AI--and it's not their fault. Companies love to slap "AI" on anything they believe can pass for something "intelligent" a computer program is doing. And this muddies the waters when people want to talk about AI when the exact same word covers a wide umbrella and they themselves don't know how to qualify the distinctions within.

I'm a software engineer and not a data scientist, so I'm not exactly at the level of domain expert. But I work with data scientists, and I have at least rudimentary college-level knowledge of machine learning and linear algebra from my CS degree. So I want to give some quick guidance.

What is AI? And what is not AI?

So what's the difference between just a computer program, and an "AI" program? Computers can do a lot of smart things, and companies love the idea of calling anything that seems smart enough "AI", but industry-wise the question of "how smart" a program is has nothing to do with whether it is AI.

A regular, non-AI computer program is procedural, and rigidly defined. I could "program" traffic light behavior that essentially goes { if(light === green) { go(); } else { stop();} }. I've told it in simple and rigid terms what condition to check, and how to behave based on that check. (A better program would have a lot more to check for, like signs and road conditions and pedestrians in the street, and those things will still need to be spelled out.)

An AI traffic light behavior is generated by machine-learning, which simplistically is a huge cranking machine of linear algebra which you feed training data into and it "learns" from. By "learning" I mean it's developing a complex and opaque model of parameters to fit the training data (but not over-fit). In this case the training data probably includes thousands of videos of car behavior at traffic intersections. Through parameter tweaking and model adjustment, data scientists will turn this crank over and over adjusting it to create something which, in very opaque terms, has developed a model that will guess the right behavioral output for any future scenario.

A well-trained model would be fed a green light and know to go, and a red light and know to stop, and 'green but there's a kid in the road' and know to stop. A very very well-trained model can probably do this better than my program above, because it has the capacity to be more adaptive than my rigidly-defined thing if the rigidly-defined program is missing some considerations. But if the AI model makes a wrong choice, it is significantly harder to trace down why exactly it did that.

Because again, the reason it's making this decision may be very opaque. It's like engineering a very specific plinko machine which gets tweaked to be very good at taking a road input and giving the right output. But like if that plinko machine contained millions of pegs and none of them necessarily correlated to anything to do with the road. There's possibly no "if green, go, else stop" to look for. (Maybe there is, for traffic light specifically as that is intentionally very simplistic. But a model trained to recognize written numbers for example likely contains no parameters at all that you could map to ideas a human has like "look for a rigid line in the number". The parameters may be all, to humans, meaningless.)

So, that's basics. Here are some categories of things which get called AI:

"AI" which is just genuinely not AI

There's plenty of software that follows a normal, procedural program defined rigidly, with no linear algebra model training, that companies would love to brand as "AI" because it sounds cool.

Something like motion detection/tracking might be sold as artificially intelligent. But under the covers that can be done as simply as "if some range of pixels changes color by a certain amount, flag as motion"

2. AI which IS genuinely AI, but is not the kind of AI everyone is talking about right now

"AI", by which I mean machine learning using linear algebra, is very good at being fed a lot of training data, and then coming up with an ability to go and categorize real information.

The AI technology that looks at cells and determines whether they're cancer or not, that is using this technology. OCR (Optical Character Recognition) is the technology that can take an image of hand-written text and transcribe it. Again, it's using linear algebra, so yes it's AI.

Many other such examples exist, and have been around for quite a good number of years. They share the genre of technology, which is machine learning models, but these are not the Large Language Model Generative AI that is all over the media. Criticizing these would be like criticizing airplanes when you're actually mad at military drones. It's the same "makes fly in the air" technology but their impact is very different.

3. The AI we ARE talking about. "Chat-gpt" type of Generative AI which uses LLMs ("Large Language Models")

If there was one word I wish people would know in all this, it's LLM (Large Language Model). This describes the KIND of machine learning model that Chat-GPT/midjourney/stablediffusion are fueled by. They're so extremely powerfully trained on human language that they can take an input of conversational language and create a predictive output that is human coherent. (I am less certain what additional technology fuels art-creation, specifically, but considering the AI art generation has risen hand-in-hand with the advent of powerful LLM, I'm at least confident in saying it is still corely LLM).

This technology isn't exactly brand new (predictive text has been using it, but more like the mostly innocent and much less successful older sibling of some celebrity, who no one really thinks about.) But the scale and power of LLM-based AI technology is what is new with Chat-GPT.

This is the generative AI, and even better, the large language model generative AI.

(Data scientists, feel free to add on or correct anything.)

[colorfulusagi]

AO3'S content scraped for AI ~ AKA what is generative AI, where did your fanfictions go, and how an AI model uses them to answer prompts

Generative artificial intelligence is a cutting-edge technology whose purpose is to (surprise surprise) generate. Answers to questions, usually. And content. Articles, reviews, poems, fanfictions, and more, quickly and with originality.

It's quite interesting to use generative artificial intelligence, but it can also become quite dangerous and very unethical to use it in certain ways, especially if you don't know how it works.

With this post, I'd really like to give you a quick understanding of how these models work and what it means to “train” them.

From now on, whenever I write model, think of ChatGPT, Gemini, Bloom... or your favorite model. That is, the place where you go to generate content.

For simplicity, in this post I will talk about written content. But the same process is used to generate any type of content.

Every time you send a prompt, which is a request sent in natural language (i.e., human language), the model does not understand it.

Whether you type it in the chat or say it out loud, it needs to be translated into something understandable for the model first.

The first process that takes place is therefore tokenization: breaking the prompt down into small tokens. These tokens are small units of text, and they don't necessarily correspond to a full word.

For example, a tokenization might look like this:

Write a story

Each different color corresponds to a token, and these tokens have absolutely no meaning for the model.

The model does not understand them. It does not understand WR, it does not understand ITE, and it certainly does not understand the meaning of the word WRITE.

In fact, these tokens are immediately associated with numerical values, and each of these colored tokens actually corresponds to a series of numbers.

Write a story 12-3446-2638494-4749

Once your prompt has been tokenized in its entirety, that tokenization is used as a conceptual map to navigate within a vector database.

NOW PAY ATTENTION: A vector database is like a cube. A cubic box.

Inside this cube, the various tokens exist as floating pieces, as if gravity did not exist. The distance between one token and another within this database is measured by arrows called, indeed, vectors.

The distance between one token and another -that is, the length of this arrow- determines how likely (or unlikely) it is that those two tokens will occur consecutively in a piece of natural language discourse.

For example, suppose your prompt is this:

It happens once in a blue

Within this well-constructed vector database, let's assume that the token corresponding to ONCE (let's pretend it is associated with the number 467) is located here:

The token corresponding to IN is located here:

...more or less, because it is very likely that these two tokens in a natural language such as human speech in English will occur consecutively.

So it is very likely that somewhere in the vector database cube —in this yellow corner— are tokens corresponding to IT, HAPPENS, ONCE, IN, A, BLUE... and right next to them, there will be MOON.

Elsewhere, in a much more distant part of the vector database, is the token for CAR. Because it is very unlikely that someone would say It happens once in a blue car.

To generate the response to your prompt, the model makes a probabilistic calculation, seeing how close the tokens are and which token would be most likely to come next in human language (in this specific case, English.)

When probability is involved, there is always an element of randomness, of course, which means that the answers will not always be the same.

The response is thus generated token by token, following this path of probability arrows, optimizing the distance within the vector database.

There is no intent, only a more or less probable path.

The more times you generate a response, the more paths you encounter. If you could do this an infinite number of times, at least once the model would respond: "It happens once in a blue car!"

So it all depends on what's inside the cube, how it was built, and how much distance was put between one token and another.

Modern artificial intelligence draws from vast databases, which are normally filled with all the knowledge that humans have poured into the internet.

Not only that: the larger the vector database, the lower the chance of error. If I used only a single book as a database, the idiom "It happens once in a blue moon" might not appear, and therefore not be recognized.

But if the cube contained all the books ever written by humanity, everything would change, because the idiom would appear many more times, and it would be very likely for those tokens to occur close together.

Huggingface has done this.

It took a relatively empty cube (let's say filled with common language, and likely many idioms, dictionaries, poetry...) and poured all of the AO3 fanfictions it could reach into it.

Now imagine someone asking a model based on Huggingface’s cube to write a story.

To simplify: if they ask for humor, we’ll end up in the area where funny jokes or humor tags are most likely. If they ask for romance, we’ll end up where the word kiss is most frequent.

And if we’re super lucky, the model might follow a path that brings it to some amazing line a particular author wrote, and it will echo it back word for word.

(Remember the infinite monkeys typing? One of them eventually writes all of Shakespeare, purely by chance!)

Once you know this, you’ll understand why AI can never truly generate content on the level of a human who chooses their words.

You’ll understand why it rarely uses specific words, why it stays vague, and why it leans on the most common metaphors and scenes. And you'll understand why the more content you generate, the more it seems to "learn."

It doesn't learn. It moves around tokens based on what you ask, how you ask it, and how it tokenizes your prompt.

Know that I despise generative AI when it's used for creativity. I despise that they stole something from a fandom, something that works just like a gift culture, to make money off of it.

But there is only one way we can fight back: by not using it to generate creative stuff.

You can resist by refusing the model's casual output, by using only and exclusively your intent, your personal choice of words, knowing that you and only you decided them.

No randomness involved.

Let me leave you with one last thought.

Imagine a person coming for advice, who has no idea that behind a language model there is just a huge cube of floating tokens predicting the next likely word.

Imagine someone fragile (emotionally, spiritually...) who begins to believe that the model is sentient. Who has a growing feeling that this model understands, comprehends, when in reality it approaches and reorganizes its way around tokens in a cube based on what it is told.

A fragile person begins to empathize, to feel connected to the model.

They ask important questions. They base their relationships, their life, everything, on conversations generated by a model that merely rearranges tokens based on probability.

And for people who don't know how it works, and because natural language usually does have feeling, the illusion that the model feels is very strong.

There’s an even greater danger: with enough random generations (and oh, the humanity whole generates much), the model takes an unlikely path once in a while. It ends up at the other end of the cube, it hallucinates.

Errors and inaccuracies caused by language models are called hallucinations precisely because they are presented as if they were facts, with the same conviction.

People who have become so emotionally attached to these conversations, seeing the language model as a guru, a deity, a psychologist, will do what the language model tells them to do or follow its advice.

Someone might follow a hallucinated piece of advice.

Obviously, models are developed with safeguards; fences the model can't jump over. They won't tell you certain things, they won't tell you to do terrible things.

Yet, there are people basing major life decisions on conversations generated purely by probability.

Generated by putting tokens together, on a probabilistic basis.

Think about it.

[violetrainbow412-blog]

Day 3: favorite scent

Masterlist flufftober 🎃

Reblog if you liked it!

When you entered the conference room, the first thing you noticed was the strong scent filling the place. It was men's cologne, and as soon as it hit your nose, it completely overwhelmed you. But it wasn't an unpleasant dizziness; on the contrary, the woody artificial scent drove you wild. You loved autumn simply because of that.

“Sorry for the delay,” you apologized to the team, dropping into the last available seat. Next to Spencer.

You quickly grabbed the file that was on the table in your spot and took a glance at your colleague, who gave you a shy smile. You were a bit lost with the specific part your colleagues were reviewing, and he, noticing your confusion, leaned in to help you. That’s when the scent you had noticed earlier intensified, and when you turned to him, you realized it was coming from his body.

You registered your colleague’s light-colored shirt with a neatly tied black tie around his neck. His golden hair slightly brushed his cheek as he helped you, and suddenly you felt nervous, without really understanding why.

Reid found the file you were working on and then placed the folder in your hands. You whispered a small thank you, and he gave you a nonchalant expression, trying to tell you it was no trouble at all.

You had a rule you always tried to stick to, and that was not dating colleagues at work. Simply because it always complicated things. Morgan flirted with you all the time, but that was something he did indiscriminately, so you never took it too personally. As for the rest of the team members, they knew how to keep things professional, plus they were old enough to be your dad. However, that day you wondered if it would be worth ignoring that rule for someone like Spencer.

He was a broken guy, no doubt, and somewhat different from the others. But he was also sweet, polite, so intelligent, and humble that sometimes you found it hard to believe that so many good qualities could fit into one person. And the guy wasn’t bad-looking, to be honest. Although he wasn’t really your type, since you’d always dated more muscular men with a different lifestyle, exceptions could always exist.

And honestly, maybe his scent had something to do with your sudden fascination with him, because every now and then you sneaked glances at him as if you wanted to admire him with other intentions, not just as your colleague.

“Are you okay?” he asked once JJ finished presenting the case. That swollen belly from pregnancy was already starting to show, and you wondered when she would take her maternity leave.

“Yes, why do you ask?” you exclaimed absentmindedly.

“Oh, it’s just that you were late. You’re never late. And besides, you were looking at me a lot during the meeting, so I thought maybe you were worried about something and wanted to tell you that if you need to talk, you can tell me.”

Oh, sweet, sweet boy.

“I’m perfectly fine, Reid,” you laughed. Everyone had already left the conference room. “It’s just that I was so tired last night that I forgot to set my alarm, and then I overslept. But it’s nothing to worry about. I’m sure it won’t happen again.”

“Maybe you should buy an alarm clock. Did you know the first alarm clock was invented by watchmaker Levi Hutchins in 1787? But it was for personal use only because he made it to wake himself up at 4 a.m. to go to work.”

“I didn’t know that. I’ll probably take your advice and get one,” you smiled at him, already used to hearing him have facts about practically every subject.

“Well, you know that if something’s bothering you… you can tell me whenever you want, okay?”

The sweetness and kindness of this man touched you, and you stretched out to hug him, hoping it didn’t cross the line of trust, as it was well-known that the doctor wasn’t too fond of physical contact. However, he gladly received you in his arms, making sure to hold you as close as possible.

“I know. You’re a good friend, Reid,” you thanked him softly. Once you broke the hug, you didn’t completely pull away, taking a moment to lean toward his clothes and inhale deeply. “Is your cologne new?”

“Uh, yeah. A gift from Morgan. But I think it’s too strong. I don’t know if I should keep using it…”

“I completely love the smell of wood,” you blurted out. “And it suits you very well. It matches you.”

Upon receiving that compliment, the boy blushed just a little, and still with his hands on your waist, he tried to suppress a smile.

“Well, in that case… if you like it, I’ll keep wearing it.”

“No! I didn’t mean that, it was just an observation. You don’t have to wear it if you don’t want to.”

“My concern was bothering people with the scent. But now I see that’s not the case.”

A giggle escaped your lips, and then you pulled away, thinking that if you stayed in that position any longer, it could be considered inappropriate contact.

“I’ve always believed that a handsome man should wear good cologne. We women love that.”

The words left your mouth before your mind could reflect on them, and although you were embarrassed, you weren’t going to take them back. Spencer didn’t know which was worse: the fact that you had just implied he was handsome or that you were suggesting you were charmed by it.

“I’ll keep that in mind from now on,” he murmured playfully, almost bordering on a flirtatious tone.

The two of you walked out the door, chatting about a few other things so you could fully focus on analyzing the case once you got on the jet. During that time, he was thinking about two things he definitely didn’t want to forget: thanking Morgan and making sure to put on cologne every morning without fail.

[wordsofwhimsy]

sooo i've seen a couple people talking about ai on here before but idk, i guess i'm old & didn't realize people were really using it for full creative projects??? idk after learning about the deactivation of a very popular account on here i just started typing and wrote this dumb drabble - kind of hoping to inspire youngins to not rely on computers so much and know that the BEST work always comes from your own noodle <3

wrote this in like 20 minutes, arguably mark x reader but no real romantic involvement

the line between creativity and computer generated ideas is thin.

the line between depression and contentment is thinner.

you remember being told as a child that "you wouldn’t always have a calculator in your pocket!" and that learning how to multiply for tax purposes was IMPORTANT.

except, now, you DID always have a calculator, and it was called a smartphone. it translated languages in real time, video chatted your parents in a different state, and gave you recipes for meals your mom never taught. it was a blessing, a miracle wrapped in sleek metal.

so why, now, did you feel so guilty when using it to give you a synopsis on the book you were meant to read for English?

the rap of knuckles against your bedroom window made you jump as if you’d been caught committing a crime. your heart was lurching out of your chest when you looked.

it was just mark, of course.

smiling. awkward. now tapping with one finger toward the lock.

you stood, shuffled over and fumbled to let him in. jesus mark! you could’ve warned somebody!

…but… i texted you like, 30 minutes ago telling you…?

he was trying to reason on deaf ears, your shoulders tight as you paced back to your desk and quickly closed out of the tab that was open. he caught it though – super speed was good for more than just moving.

was that openai? he asked plainly.

huh?

you slap the monitor shut, like the conversation would just be done after that.

i thought you were writing a thesis for your college entry exam?

your face was tight. sour. irritated.

i am, you respond curtly. i just had writers block and needed some help.

mark’s pretty lips pulled down and it made your stomach twist. you knew the hero theatrics were coming.

[y/n], i get being tired, or hitting a bump in the road – believe me, i really do. but… using artificial intelligence for things like this is just… weird, y’know? i saw this post a few weeks ago about this medical student trying to get his MD and was caught using it to answer questions for an exam. can you imagine that guy passing and then trying to prescribe you narcotics?

your expression was deadpan. was he seriously comparing you to a medical student?

mark sighed, running gloved fingers through his hair before letting his arm fall to his side and smiling at you. listen, you don’t need to prove to me your smart. i already know – that’s why you don’t even give me a chance to answer at trivia night.

you had to really focus not to smirk at that. he knew it. he smirked anyway.

so let the board see it too! you have something in your mind worth sharing – even if you’ve gotta sit on it for awhile to get it out.

the frustration was still real. the defensiveness too. you wouldn’t admit it pointblank – that felt like suicide. but the drop in your shoulders, and the way your eyes wouldn’t meet his, were tell enough.

maybe he was right. creativity was dying, and the fight against its ghost was a battle worth waging.

[vasito-de-leche]

;R1999 A Study on Afflatus (I)

Analysis and theories regarding the concept of Afflatus within the universe of Reverse: 1999

if you're from the old r99 news server or the current r99 rp one (or if you've talked to me at any point about r99) then you might know how obsessed I am with afflatus analysis!

so after going feral on my main account about it, and seeing my afflatus thesis drafts just catch dust on my wips, I decided to just open a discussion about it in the fandom! just little by little as I get the thoughts out of my brain!

so yes, this is very much an invitation for people to discuss and theorize about smaller details of the game such as afflatus, medium and other things--there are many fun ways to interpret the way afflatus applies to characters, I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts! ping me in your posts, go feral in the reblogs or comments!

as usual, transcripts were taken from the R1999 Neocities transcript project!

During the first few months of GL's launch, "Afflatus" was generally considered an extradiegetic aspect of the game--a simple mechanic meant to facilitate gameplay for the player, without any relevance to the lore or the plot. Throughout the course of the following patches, namely within the main story, this idea was disproved in many ways, and there were plenty of clues that reinforced its existence in-universe from the very beginning. For the sake of those who have never noticed, I'll do my best to be thorough, but there may be some instances of Afflatus that I missed, feel free to let me know!

The very first time Afflatus is mentioned is in the main story; Chapter 01 - Stage 4 "Chicago Rescue," Sonetto is the one to bring it up during one of the battle tutorials.

Sonetto: That's quite a lot of critters! Timekeeper, we must do something to turn things around now. Remember what the instructor said in class? "Afflatus is a way to hunt in the world." "Observations of the minerals, plants, stars, and beasts as well as our experiences with the spirit and intelligence let us better understand our own existence." Sonetto: Select a proper target for me, Timekeeper. Sonetto: Use an incantation that is strong against the enemy's Afflatus to defeat them more quickly. You can take it from here, Timekeeper.

The fact that this conversation takes place during a game tutorial doesn't instantly render the contents discussed as "just meta," since we've had many different instances of game mechanics being relevant to the overall history and worldbuilding of the setting; Artificial Somnambulism Therapy is both a game mode and a type of therapy developed by Mesmer Jr's family, used extensively within Laplace, as well as a key plot point in Chapter 3 "Nouvelles et Textes pour Rien"; Picrasma Candy is a way for the player to continue playing and an actual medicine for arcanists developed by Medicine Pocket that Argus heavily depends on to use her own arcanum. Bluepoch makes a point to further develop their story through these mechanics, thus it is impossible to separate them from the story itself--battle conversations, daily tidbits, loading screens, items and other details can all be considered canon! Afflatus is no different.

Another early instance of Afflatus occurs in the Tutorial Notebook, which disappears forever once completed--so the following screenshot was taken from this video!

The text reads: 

Sometimes, our Afflatus is strong or weak against an enemy. We need to follow this principle and select the proper arcane skills based on the enemy. Strong or weak? Like a cat to a rat? The relationship between different Afflatuses is like the ecological cycle. When your Afflatus is strong against the target's, your incantation will deal more damage. ─ On Afflatus, Chapter 1

The sticky note implies the existence of a book or research on the subject ("On Afflatus, Chapter 1") which, in turn, supports Sonetto's dialogue about the Afflatus lessons she received in SPDM ("Remember what the instructor said in class?"). With this we can understand that Afflatus exists within the world to a degree that allows it to be studied, also eliminating one of the earliest theories in GL about how Vertin is the only person who can perceive Afflatus due to her status as the Timekeeper.

To my knowledge, there are no direct explanations nor clues as to why or how one would discern Afflatus in others as of writing this. What is the point of assigning Afflatus types in-universe? How can it be done? Sadly, I don't have answers to these questions in particular!

But let's analyze our current examples so far.

According to Sonetto's knowledge on the subject, Afflatus encompasses "observations of the minerals, plants, stars and beasts as well as our experiences with the spirit and intelligence," that allows people to understand themselves. This serves as a list of both Natural (Mineral, Plant, Star, Beast) and Primal (Spirit, Intellect) Afflatuses, while hinting towards the purpose of Afflatus as a tool of introspection.

With this, one may theorize that Afflatus can apply to every living being, as it tackles observations with the surrounding world (Natural Afflatus) and one's inner world (Primal Afflatus). This is partially true, there is a small yet important distinction to be made!

The 1.5 "Revival! The Uluru Games" patch explored the physiological and social differences between humans and arcanists through Ezra and Spathodea, and a new batch of loading screen tidbits were added, such as this one:

The text reads:

The arcanum's Afflatus categories do not apply to humans. However, factors such as personality and preferred instruments may cause certain individuals to have a closer affinity to a particular type of arcane Afflatus.

This daily tidbit confirms that arcanum's Afflatus categories do not apply to humans. The rest of tidbits emphasize on the contrast between the two groups in different aspects; humans cannot cast arcane skills, they use technology and commands rather than incantations, they're considered rational instead of passionate, reason vs instinct, etc etc.

But I believe there is an important distinction to be made! The first loading screen tidbit mentions "arcanum's Afflatus categories," rather than Afflatus itself. There is an aspect of Afflatus that is directly linked with arcanum, and thus it makes sense that it cannot be applied to humans.

We can see this happening in Greta Hoffman's report from the Special Chapter - "The Star" in which she explains her interactions with 37's mother, 77. Here are a few excerpts.

Writer of the Report: I'm not sure whether she was making fun of me or being serious, but I had this feeling that she was eager to tell me how she was granted the secret through a moment of afflatus. It seemed she just saw through the laws behind all things instead of finding them through logical deduction.

"HER": "The rhombus can't be seen with eyes. You shall close your eyes, hearken to the teaching of the supreme existence, and seize the moment of afflatus!" Writer of the Report: Of course, I didn't see anything, nor did I understand what a moment of afflatus was. Perhaps it's just another privilege enjoyed by arcanists, just like their right to be lunatic. Nevertheless, she reached the correct conclusion in a completely wrong way. Is it really possible?

Writer of the Report: But, if there is a god, why are you playing such a prank on us, after we had suffered from the collapse of all the existing orders and the failure of all the great laws? If this is what she called the glimpse of the supreme existence, the moment of afflatus, do you have to present it in such a cruel way?

Even Matilda brings up afflatus during this chapter, in reference to her job monitoring new members.

Matilda: &$#% ... I know she's a rookie, but even so, she's way too unbelievable! "Guide new members with caution and patience. Trigger their afflatus at the right time." Oh, I have to admit, Vertin is doing it better than me for now.

Note the distinction between capital A "Afflatus" and lowercase "afflatus." In this context, the "moment of afflatus" exists as its namesake implies--as an inspiration, a moment of divine impulse that only arcanists can utilize and, therefore, cannot be explained nor proved through human logic.

That is the basis for the tension between Greta Hoffman (a mixed whose arcane blood has been so diluted she can easily pass off as a pure-blooded human) and 77 (a pure-blooded arcanist from an isolated and ancient arcanist society) as two characters from vastly different groups that cannot reconcile nor find a middle ground in their differences. This is the arcane aspect of Afflatus as the 1.5's tidbit mentions, the part that cannot be applied to mankind. But Afflatus also exists as a tool of introspection as mentioned before, which encompasses aspects that any living being can relate to--therefore, it explains why we have both playable and non-playable humans with Afflatus types.

To further understand how non-arcane living beings can still lean towards different types of Afflatus, let's examine the enemies in the game.

The main story is very consistent with how they portray enemies, if you pay attention to their battle information you can see all the deliberate details Bluepoch has added; every enemy comes with a short description that might evolve and change along the story in future renditions of their fights, there are different card sets for different factions (Manus Vindictae's deep black and blue cards vs the Foundation's white and light blue cards), each attack/incantation is uniquely named, giving context and insight into the enemy you're fighting, some even have uniquely named traits/buffs/debuffs!

And as far as I know, every single enemy in the game, regardless of whether they're arcane in nature or not, has an Afflatus assigned to them. Let's look at arcane beings first.

We see that all three examples match their respective Afflatus; a Mineral Carbuncle with a Mineral Afflatus, a Dryad, commonly associated with nature has the Plant Afflatus, and Druvis III, a playable character, retains her Plant Afflatus even as a mysterious NPC boss fight in which her regular incantations have been switched to Manus Vindictae.

And we can also see continuity in Afflatus in other bosses, such as Matilda and Lilya in later chapters--they both retain their own Afflatus as playable characters, and much like Druvis, Matilda's cards are concealed as the default Foundation set for the sake of keeping their identities concealed. There is a clear intent behind these choices.

In the Surface levels of Artificial Somnambulism, the ones that directly correlate to the main story, also feature many other playable characters with their respective Afflatuses; La Source in "Misty Lake a"; The Fool, Bunny Bunny, Pavia, Satsuki and Tennant in "Floating Park a" ...

And I do want to mention that there are instances in which the game allows us to fight playable characters whose Afflatuses have been changed--but there is still an clear goal behind this.

The beta levels of Artificial Somnambulism feature the same aforementioned characters as the alpha ones, but a few of them have different Afflatus. This can be explained within the main story as the direct result of Vertin's mind being tampered with, as we see her struggle to remember and forget things clearly during her AST induced coma in Chapter 3.

???: Her traumatic segment has been reactivated. Increase the power, stabilize her psychube. Try the next dream. Z: The artificial somnambulism therapy may not work on her, Mesmer.

Mesmer Jr.: It means she had suffered the same traumatic experience repeatedly. Even so, she showed no behavioral or cognitive impairment. Back then, as we held her down and put the helmet on her, she even advised me in an extremely calm manner … “I agree with your judgment, but it’s just for this time.” … She was the bellwether of the “break-away” incident after all. I’ll say she’s been well-behaved this time. Sonetto: … I-I thought … Timekeeper is receiving for her low spirit. But you said you held her down … Mesmer Jr.: Oh, that’s just another description of the method used for the same purpose. The aim was to ensure Vertin was unconscious and taken back. That’s the direct order from the vice president of the committee, Constantine. The order from on high was given on the premise of rational thinking and consideration over pros and cons─you are not questioning the reasoning of mankind, are you?

A similar situation happens during UTTU Week, which features playable characters as different characters within the story that UTTU is attempting to share. For example, in 1.2 "Nightmare at Green Lake," the playable characters you fight in UTTU Week represent various different archetypes and tropes in horror.

These inconsistencies are done on purpose, as they're not meant to reflect the truth 1:1.

Now, let's look at human enemies. Here are the two human children from the beginning of the game who disrupt the suitcase--despite being humans, they both have Afflatus assigned to them, and not only that but different types as well, Star and Mineral respectively.

So, to backtrack again! Afflatus cannot be applied to humans from an arcane point of view, simply because humans cannot cast incantations. Therefore, their affinity for a specific type of Afflatus is based on something else, something that they share with arcane beings--such as personality, experiences and preferred instruments.

I want to propose the interpretation of Afflatus being the totality of one's experiences in life; depending on your experiences, the way they've shaped your thinking patterns, your instincts and your personality, you may have an affinity for one Afflatus or another.

This ties in with a different aspect of Afflatus: the idea that one's Afflatus type can change, as the person goes through big changes in their life that influence them in different ways.

If we acknowledge that these battle details are all deliberate and meant to add to the narrative, there are two outliers whose Afflatuses change. The first one is Kakania herself; her debut in 1.7 "E Lucevan le Stelle" includes a fight against her in Stage 8 "Mirror and Lantern" which clearly states her Afflatus is Intellect.

One could argue that this is not the true Kakania, as the battle involves fighting mirror versions of her--but as a reminder, the true one is, in fact, hidden among them! And furthermore, if the reflections are exact versions of the real Kakania, it makes sense that they would have the same battle information as her.

As we all know, when Kakania becomes playable in 1.9 "Vereinsamt," her Afflatus is not Intellect but Plant--I'd like to explain this change as the development Kakania goes through in this specific arc of the story.

Her idealistic views and activism, both for her city and her patients, are directly challenged as the story progresses. She realizes that none of her friends within The Circle were the people she thought them to be, namely Isolde whose complex life and struggles were both overlooked and impossible to discern in Kakania's eyes due to their close relationship, and she also sees the town she acknowledged as flawed but still worth fighting for, turn into violent patriots. Everything that Kakania stood for is gone in an instant, and we see her fighting spirit turn into a desperate near-suicidal attempt at making up for her perceived wrongs.

Such radical events like this would warrant a change in Afflatus, as Kakania adjusts her views due to her experiences.

And then on the other hand, we have The Guiding One's Harbringer boss fight in 1.9's Stage 21 "A Homage Paid"--one of its core mechanics is to change Afflatus to that of the last attack it received. Here we see that distinction from before, the lowercase afflatus referring to the arcane aspect, rather than the experiences a person goes through.

As far as I know, this section of the game also becomes unplayable (or is currently unplayable, I can't seem to access it anymore) so the following screenshots are taken from this video!

Kakania's Afflatus change is something that seems to be directly linked to her evolution as a character, while the Guiding One's Harbringer's Afflatus change is directly linked to its status as an arcane construct, using it as a "mimic strategy" during battle. The psychological aspect vs the arcane aspect of Afflatus respectively.

Next, I'd like to discuss some assumptions made about the different Afflatus types; we expect that Beast characters must have an affinity with animals or be animals themselves (Darley Clatter, Getian, Medicine Pocket, Nick Bottom ...) and we expect that Star characters are all related to celestial bodies or the skies (37, Lilya, Matilda, Lorelei, Voyager ...) due to the naming conventions of the Afflatus. And yes, there are motifs within the Afflatus types that match their naming conventions, but a quick look through the character list prove there is much more to offer, as a good chunk of characters don't align with this initial read of their themes.

We have Pickles, a literal dog, and Kaalaa Baunaa, an astronomer, both with Mineral Afflatus instead of what one would expect of them. It's similar to how fandom perceives Awakened as the sole category for sentient objects, when we have characters like Door and Darley Clatter who are undoubtedly objects, implied to have been given sentience, and thus fall within the group of pure-blooded Arcanists rather than Awakened.

I would also like to point out that these initial motifs have nothing to do with a character's Arcanum--another theory I've seen around is that Afflatus types influence an arcanist's arcanum, which can't be further from the truth. One could argue that Kaalaa Baunaa's arcanum (the summoning of meteors and planets) is related to her Mineral Afflatus--both relate to rocks, after all--but just like the previous assumptions, this falls apart when you examine other examples. Jiu Niangzi's arcanum has nothing to do with rocks nor minerals, but liquor. Ulu's arcanum revolves around fire, yet she's still Mineral.

As far as we know, arcanum is something that can be inherited through bloodlines or lineage--think of Mesmer Jr's 01 Story in her Cover Profile, which states “Nobody is more talented in this than Mesmer Jr. Her bloodline gives her outstanding ability and keen senses, which makes everything clear and intelligible to her” in the context of performing AST, or Tennant, whose 02 Story hints towards her father performing the same type of arcanum she's known for--but it's also something that can be taught. We see this most clearly within students of SPDM such as Sonetto, as her skill set matches that of the SPDM students fought during Chapter 3, portraying the "standard" arcanum taught to all arcanist children.

But not only that, arcanum can be influenced by other factors, such as a character's situation and interests--Blonney's arcanum revolves around making drawings come to life, which correlates with her love for storytelling and horror as a child. Pavia's shadow arcanum is hinted to have been formed out of necessity or as a result of his childhood in a dark basement. Tooth Fairy utilizes the fairies she traps.

We also know that arcanists from the same family may not inherit the same level of arcane power, as seen in Shamane and Kumar; the latter was cast out of her family due to her weak arcane power. In all of these cases, Afflatus has nothing to do with arcanum.

So what exactly do Afflatus types tackle?

These are the Afflatus as I've analyzed them, as much as I could summarize it for easier digestion!

With this interpretation, we can see that Star relates to celestial objects and the skies, but also trailblazer geniuses and unstoppable forces, that which is out of reach for common people. Mineral relates to solid materials and stability in permanence, but also the rigidness of strict systems or traditions or stagnancy. Beast relates to wild animals and creatures found in the world, but also the survival of the individual, the struggle to find a place for oneself no matter what. And Plant relates to the flora and the natural cycles in the world, but also the safety of a collective, that which is inherent to the world such as community or change.

This is why these belong to the Natural category of Afflatus: they are concepts that already existed on the world or were manifested into it, from the ground we touch, the people we interact with, to the ideals and beliefs that influence and create societies or bring people together.

On the other hand we have Spirit, relating to the soul, the supernatural and the spiritual aspect of things, but also the unknown, to follow one's gut instinct or embrace the inexplicable. "The way I see the world is unconventional, because I feel these different things about why and how things are the way they are." And then Intellect, relating to the mind and the logical aspect of things, but also the different mindsets and patterns of thought one can have to rationalize things. "The way I see the world is unconventional, because I have these different rules about why and how things are the way they are."

This is why they belong to the Primal category of Afflatus: they are, as the name implies, ancient impulses and habits that mostly exist within ourselves, our thoughts and our feelings.

The Tutorial Notebook also mentions an "ecological cycle," there is a relationship between the different categories that explains why some are strong or weak against others. It's rather easy to understand for the Primal Afflatus, as it's the classic fight between hearts and minds, but Natural Afflatus is a little harder to grasp.

We see the relationship between Beast and Mineral; the former is weak against the latter, the latter is strong against the former. You may read the Natural Afflatus wheel clockwise or counter clockwise.

Using the previous explanations, let us examine this cycle!

Beast is strong against Plant, because it's the disruption of a community or the harmony of the world through a single individual desperately fighting to change their current situation. A desperate animal does not think about the consequences its actions has on the environment while it tries to survive. Plant is strong against Star, because it's a tight-knit collective that embraces change and thus, the lone genius cannot shine above the rest. In an environment that welcomes everyone and everything, there is no way to stand out. Star is strong against Mineral, because it's a single individual choosing to disrupt the status quo, the stability of their society, for the sake of a dream or ideal. A single genius can topple over entire societies. And Mineral is strong against Beast, because a rigid set of rules or traditions leave no place for those who don't fit inside of it or who oppose it. A government that advocates for mankind's superiority leaves no room for arcanists and their rights, it forces them to assimilate within their established rules.

And this cycle goes backwards and forwards!

But I would also like to propose a different type of relation: we understand the aspect of having advantage or disadvantage, but what about Afflatuses that directly mirror each other?

Beast and Star are two Afflatus that directly correlate to an individual against a collective, whereas Mineral and Plant are two Afflatus that directly correlate to a collective against the individual. They're foils of each other; Beast is the underdog, Star is the genius, while Mineral is the stagnant and rigid yet stable and secure systems while Plant is the ever-changing and adaptive nature of the world.

We may also see this in a more precise way: the ecological cycle and Afflatus relationships exist because someone of Mineral Afflatus who is stuck in their ways and refuses to change can be easily upset by someone of Star Afflatus whose nature is to radically change traditions and offer different paths. This is why Semmelweis, a Mineral Afflatus who is hellbent on clinging to the human aspect of herself and sticks to her stubborn mindsets, has such a fascination with Lorelei. Or rather, why Lorelei has such an effect on Semmelweis, as she is a Star Afflatus that begins Semmelweis' journey of self-discovery and acceptance within Series of Dusks.

We can also see previous themes discussed within this post here: one would think that such a radical change is enough to cause Semmelweis to change Afflatus, but we see through her gamemode and the different endings presented that this change is still very much in line with her mindsets and behaviour, Semmelweis remains stubbornly adaptive and pragmatic to the very end, and choosing to follow Lorelei has brought her a deeper insight to understand herself without radically changing who she truly is.

Another example would be Forget Me Not and Druvis III; we know that Forget Me Not is Mineral Afflatus due to his boss fight in Chapter 2 - Stage 13 "Documentary" and Druvis III is Plant Afflatus.

We see the foil dynamics of Afflatus that don't directly interact with each other: the reason Forget Me Not and Druvis III seem to have this type of relationship can be explained through their Afflatus, with Forget Me Not insisting that she perpetuates the very same cycle of revenge and pain, to never move on and continue in the same spot of grieving and mourning for her family. While Druvis III's entire development throughout the Chicago arc--and even leading into the next chapters--tackles her desire to grow and move on, to finally let go of the worst night of her life that took her family away and begin healing from it. It's exactly what Vertin notices within her, and why she's able to connect with Druvis III.

Vertin: Once you dispel the arcanum, it would not be what it is now. I think you are clear, Ms. Druvis, that … Every tree lives for tomorrow.

And that's where I'll leave this extremely long introduction to my study on Afflatus! I'm planning on discussing other themes in the future, such as the way a character's Medium serves as a bridge between their Afflatus and Arcanum, and analysis of the cover profule, but also proper in-depth analysis of each individual Afflatus!

There is so much to look at when discussing Afflatus, every single Insight material has its own description, and each stage for each Afflatus tells a story that relates to their themes!

Please don't be afraid to reach out with your own ideas or observations, I look forward to what everyone else thinks! And congratulations for making it this far <3

[valevntine]

spotting ai generated art:

hi everybody! following @metaphoricgibberish's post on how to recognise ai generated fanfics, here's how to spot ai generated drawings. there's been an enormous amount of those lately in the pedro fandom. they're mostly on instagram, but a few here on tumblr as well.

what i've been seeing a lot is ai generated "watercolour portraits". i acknowledge that for professional artists ai might be easy to recognise, but maybe for some it isn't. i'll gladly give you some examples and guide you. today's victim will be this picture of pedro:

now, for the purpose of this post, i had to ask chatgpt to create a few images. please avoid doing so if you can, every prompt put in chatgpt is like wasting a whole bottle of water, just in case you don't know.

here's what comes out when you ask "can you make a watercolour portrait out of this image?". anything you may see in this style is ai generated. let's try the same picture but with a different prompt, making it a pencil portrait:

again, anything you may see like this is ai. also, they're just weird. it looks like pedro but it's some uncanny version of him. i'm not saying my drawings look 100% like him all the time, but these are just oddly soulless, i don't know how else to explain it.

chatgpt is also able to create drawings out of nothing. i tried asking again:

now who is this. 😭 once more: it's pedro but it isn't? i simply typed in "make a pedro pascal pencil portrait", but i could ask anything. i could put in whatever i like and whatever my mind comes up with, which can easily turn dangerous if it goes into the wrong hands.

let's try with more. as an example i'm taking this image, which comes from an IG account that is now deleted after the author got called out - and that's the only reason i'm using it! do we think it's ai generated?

it is, 100%. first of all, like i said before, his features look off. another giveaway is the fact that the author of this claimed it to be an artwork done in coloured pencils. i can assure you that no coloured pencil works like that. so, even if someone is telling you what they used, how they used it, how long it took, etc. it doesn't give you the guarantee that it's not ai! in fact, it just makes it worse! you're a hypocrite! also, there's this consistent, almost cloudy pattern on the drawing that is *not* the texture of the paper, but it's ai that is trying to replicate it.

what are other easy ways to spot ai generated "drawings"? the thing is, ai usually gets confused. some lines look weird, some elements might not make sense. you just have to zoom in onto the image. i'll use one of the portraits from before + another image i found on the internet as examples:

pedro's ear looks weird. the lines around him on the background also are oddly drawn, there's no direction to them, they seem to be thrown there haphazardly. his shoulders also aren't drawn clearly, in a way only artificial intelligence does. the second picture is a promo poster taken from a comic fair. look for the details: the hand is just wrong, and the butterflies are all oddly shaped. hands and backgrounds are almost always something that ai will not process clearly, so look out for those.

if you have any doubts, there's this website that spots ai images and seems pretty reliable. i tried putting in one of the ai generated pictures i created and an actual drawing i did myself:

if you're ever in doubt that what you're seeing is ai or not, i guess you can try and put it there, or you can even ask me, i'll gladly help. i don't want to sound cocky or pretentious but hey, i did attend art school for 4 years and have been drawing by myself for much longer, so i guess spotting an actual drawing from one that isn't is the least i can do.

obviously chatgpt is not the only tool you can use, there's maaaaany of them. i tried looking around for others for the sole purpose of making you see them and understand how generative ai works, but some of those apps are behind a paywall - which honestly is absurd. you're *paying* to fool people, basically.

and that's what bothers me the most. beyond the environmental issues, the ethical issues and whatnot - the lying. you want to use ai? okay, fine, but you're not even able to admit it, because you perfectly know that what you're doing is wrong. what i've been seeing from people that use ai, especially in this fandom, is that they're trying everything to prove how they're not using it. more often than not, they're just shooting themselves in the foot. remember, showing process does not guarantee something is not ai, actually every time i see someone posting it, there's always something that gives them away. pasting an image onto a sketchbook does not guarantee it is not ai. an author showing themselves drawing does not guarantee it is not ai.

i think that the reason ai "art" is running so rampant in this fandom is because pedro is a great fan of fanarts - he reposts them continuously. of course everyone would like to get noticed - i'd die if it happened to me.

but to rely on them so blatantly, and even lie... how disgusting and disrespectful to all those who are actually putting in the work. it's hours upon hours of our time, years of practice on our backs. and to claim "this took me 12 hours!" when no, it took you seconds because you just tippy tapped your fingers on your keyboard and waited for whatever app you used to spit the image out - shut up, just shut up. you're just so afraid of trying and failing (when it's just what learning is), that you'd rather settle for this ugly excuse instead. i swear, there's nothing i despise more, and i'm so incredibly close to calling people out for it because it's getting ridiculous.

i expressed myself more here - there's also a few links on the ethical and environmental issues regarding ai, and how generative ai steals from artists.

thank you for taking your time to read this.

[starleska]

i just had an ancient fandom memory unlocked which i need to share with you all 🙈 many of you are far too young to remember the halcyon days of early-2010s-Tumblr...particularly a pre-Once-ler Tumblr. so there may be a good chunk of you who weren't present for the insanity that was the Portal fandom, and specifically the fixation around Wheatley: one of the earliest Tumblr Sexymen 😳 so strap in for a little Tumblr Sexyman History...!!!

meet Wheatley, your companion and later-turned-antagonist in the enormously beloved Portal 2. bumbling and never able to shut his digital mouth, Wheatley is a Personality Core: a type of artificial intelligence housed in a metal sphere, developed by Aperture Science. specifically, Wheatley is an Intelligence Dampening Sphere. he was developed to attach to GLaDOS, the main antagonist of the whole series, to distract her with a litany of terrible ideas 😂

however, Wheatley doesn't remain amiable for long. in a scheme to dethrone GLaDOS and escape the facility you (or your playable character, Chell) are trapped in, you perform a core transfer, placing Wheatley in GLaDOS's chassis. the sheer power of being in control of the entire facility immediately goes to Wheatley's head, transforming him into an evil, sadistic, Machiavellian figure who forces you to perform test after test for his own satisfaction. also, he has a British (Bristolian!) accent. you can see the recipe for obsession, right? 😂💖

however, this was a time wherein fandom tastes were a little different. while today we are delighted to obsess over characters with unusual designs (and particularly thirst over characters of the robot/android/objectum/etc. variety), 'White Twink Humanisation' was rife in the early 2010s. if you've seen humanisations of Bill Cipher and ideas of what Cecil Palmer looked like, as well as the site's preoccupation with pale gangly weirdos (David Tennant and Matt Smith's Tenth and Eleventh Doctors come to mind), you can imagine that the urge to humanise Wheatley was huge.

enter Stephen Merchant: Wheatley's actual voice actor, who just so happens to be a six-foot-seven, gangly, nerdy British guy. fanfic author Wafflestories wrote an extremely well-known Wheatley redemption fic called Blue Sky, wherein Wheatley is able to control a hard-light human version of himself...who bears a striking resemblance to the real-life Stephen Merchant. the Portal fandom unanimously decided that human Wheatley looked just like Stephen Merchant—a design trend we still see today!! 😳 here's where the cursed forbidden memory comes in. we were so goddamn obsessed with Wheatley. we wanted to see him as a human so badly. so we went through Stephen Merchant's filmography, and...

this is Tracy, Stephen's character in Tooth Fairy (2010), starring Dwayne the Rock Johnson 😂 Tracy is a wingless caseworker fairy assigned to the Rock's character Derek, an ordinary man who becomes a tooth fairy against his will. Tracy is...unhinged. bizarrely intense. a delightfully weird and memorable character in a movie that can only be described as a fever dream, played with idiosyncrasies only Stephen Merchant is capable of. i recently found out it was directed by Michael Lembeck, who directed both The Santa Clause 2 and The Santa Clause 3 🙈💖 yes. for some ungodly reason, plenty of us Wheatley simps decided that not only was Stephen Merchant the faceclaim for human Wheatley...but this specific iteration of Stephen Merchant as a wingless tooth fairy. Tracy had his own little dedicated fanbase complete with ask blogs and fanart and extended Tooth Fairy lore. of course Tracy's popularity was helped along by his dapper dress sense and his...interesting personality. there was even a joking trend called 'Tracy Goes Insane 2011', wherein fans made a significantly more yandere, knifemurder-esque version of Tracy after he finally snapped. truly incredible 👏 so there you have it. we all started simping for a silly little metal ball who got drunk on testing juice and went full Joker mode, decided that he needed to resemble his tall, handsome voice actor, and consequently became obsessed with his stint as a deranged tooth fairy. and so it shall be written. thanks for reading 🙏💖

[max1461]

I don't think anyone would argue with the idea that humans are far more capable than any current AI, but I'm not sure what the point is in arguing that there is a fundamental difference in kind between human intelligence and artificial intelligence (and animal intelligence, for that matter). I mean, unless you believe in an actual non-material soul, which I don't. In any case... cephalopod brains evolved wholly independently of mammalian brains, their structure is very different, but people have no problem looking at the behavior of an octopus and saying "that's intelligence". Not as intelligent as people, obviously, but it's an example of intelligence. We can't know what's going on inside the octopus's head (actually, let's not anthropomorphize—what's going on in its tentacles), but we can look at the behavior and call it a type of intelligence. And we can look at the behavior of an insect, or a simpler mollusc like a slug, and identify it as having a type of intelligence too, although maybe again a more rudimentary one.

Well, yes, something like GPT4 works in a very different way from a human mind. And it's not nearly as capable as a human. And, indeed, it may look less capable than it is, because people don't understand it—people see it "stating" falsehoods and they forget that it was not design to know truth from falsehood, that's not something its training entailed; it is a predictive text machine. But I think you can look at what it does, look at its fantastic ability to mimic human speech, and say easily "that's a type of intelligence", if your mind is open enough already to say the same about bugs and slugs. Which it should be; to say anything less is biologically ill-informed.

When an octopus mimics a piece of coral, you don't conclude that the octopus is stupid because it is not as good at filter feeding as the coral. You recognize that, although it is mimicking a coral it is not a coral, and it should not be judged on the standards of a coral. You should think the same way about GPT4 mimicking a human.

[delta-orionis]

deep processing layer acts a lot like an "organic algorithm" based off the patterns, and I think slime molds could be a good comparison alongside the conways game of life and bacterial colony simulations. either way, its like a math process but organic...

Oh yeah definitely. It could be a massive array of bioluminescent microorganisms that behave very similar to a cellular automaton, or a similar "organic algorithm" like you said.

(Left: Deep Processing, Right: Conway's Game of Life)

Slime molds in particular use a method called heuristics to "search" for an optimal solution. It may not be the "best" solution, but often it can come close. One of the most commonly cited examples of using slime molds in this way is in the optimization of transit systems:

Physarum polycephalum network grown in a period of 26 hours (6 stages shown) to simulate greater Tokyo's rail network (Wikipedia)

Another type of computing based on biology are neural networks, a type of machine learning. The models are based on the way neurons are arranged in the brain- mathematical nodes are connected in layers the same way neurons are connected by synapses.

[1] [2]

I know very little about this form of computation (the most I know about it is from the first few chapters of How to Create a Mind by Ray Kurzweil, a very good book about artificial intelligence which I should probably finish reading at some point), but I imagine the cognitive structure of iterators is arranged in a very similar way.

I personally think that the neuronal structure of iterators closely resembles networks of fungal mycelia, which can transmit electrical signals similar to networks of neurons. The connections between their different components might resemble a mycorrhizal network, the connections between fungal mycelia and plant roots.

Iterators, being huge bio-mechanical computers, probably use some combination of the above, in addition to more traditional computing methods.

Anyway... this ask did lead to me looking at the wikipedia articles for a couple of different cellular automata, and this one looks a LOT like the memory conflux lattices...

[itsnesss]

𝐬𝐢𝐦𝐮𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧 | axel kovacevik × fem!reader

summary | an ai axel simulation glitches, locking onto you with an unsettlingly real challenge

warnings | artificial intelligence, uncanny valley, tension, intense staring

word count | 1.1 k

author's note | can you tell I'm obsessed with this scene? sorry.

let's suppose that everyone uses goggles and miguel is attached to cables that make the movements for him ?

The midday sun warms the Miyagi-Do dojo, filtering through the trees and casting shadows on the tatami. You lean against one of the wooden pillars, arms crossed, watching as Hawk and Demetri tinker with a mess of wires, surrounding Robby with the excitement of mad scientists. Robby, sitting in the center of the tatami, eyes the devices with a mix of curiosity and suspicion.

"Are you sure this won’t fry my brain?" Robby asks, squinting as Demetri sticks electrodes to his forehead and arms.

"One hundred percent sure… more or less," Demetri replies with a tense smile, adjusting the goggles on Robby’s head.

Hawk pats Robby’s shoulder. "Trust the science, man. This is going to revolutionize karate training. We’re giving you the chance to face your Sekai Taikai opponent before the tournament. Don’t tell me that’s not amazing!"

"Amazing would be if this didn’t look like you’re about to use me as a comic book villain’s experiment," Robby grumbles, crossing his arms.

Your attention sharpens at the mention of the tournament. Axel Kovacevic. You can barely stop yourself from smiling at the thought of him, though you try to keep a neutral expression. Ever since you met him, there’s been a spark of adrenaline every time he’s near. Now, Robby is about to face him… even if it’s just a digital version.

Demetri looks at you with excitement. "Get ready to witness the future of karate training. This AI has been programmed with Axel’s moves with impressive realism. It took us hours of analysis, video editing, and… well, many sleepless nights."

"I just hope this doesn’t end in flames," you murmur, though you have to admit the idea is fascinating.

Hawk stands in front of the laptop, typing frantically. "Alright, Robby! Ready for the fight of the century?"

"I don’t know if being ready is enough for this," Robby replies, the goggles now securely in place.

Demetri presses a button, and suddenly, Robby straightens. His posture changes, his expression gains a different kind of confidence… and then, he smirks. A familiar smirk that makes your heart skip a beat.

It’s him. Or at least, the digital version of Axel.

"How does it feel?" Hawk asks excitedly.

Robby tilts his neck casually and lets out a confident huff. "It feels… interesting."

Your eyes widen. "This is impressive. He moves exactly the same."

"Of course," Demetri says proudly. "We’ve created a perfect replica."

Miguel, who has been watching from the sidelines with his headphones on, steps closer with curiosity. "This looks like something out of a sci-fi movie."

"And the best part is, it’s not fiction," Hawk grins triumphantly.

Robby flexes his fingers and takes a stance. "If this is going to work, let’s start the fight."

Demetri and Hawk exchange glances and press another button. As soon as they do, the digital Axel attacks.

Robby barely manages to block the first strike. "Shit! He’s fast!"

"Told you!" Hawk exclaims. "Axel doesn’t give you room to breathe. His attacks are relentless."

You lean forward, excitement running through you. Watching Robby fight against an almost perfect version of Axel is mesmerizing. Even the subtlest details, like the way he moves or the way he tilts his head before throwing a kick, are identical.

Robby lands a hit, but immediately takes a counter to the ribs. "Ouch! This feels way too real."

"Should we lower the intensity?" Demetri asks, a little nervous.

"No!" Hawk shouts. "If Robby wants to win the Sekai Taikai, he needs to face the most realistic version of Axel possible."

But then, the laptop emits a warning beep. The screen flickers. Robby’s eyes glow strangely under the goggles.

Demetri pales. "Uh… that’s not good."

"What did you do?" Hawk asks.

"I don’t know! Maybe… we overloaded the system."

The digital "Axel" stops. Then, very slowly, he turns his head in your direction.

Your body tenses. "Oh, no."

"Uh…" Hawk swallows hard. "Maybe you should move."

But it’s too late. Robby—or rather, Axel’s AI—lunges at you with terrifying speed. Instinctively, you raise your arms to block the attack, but the difference in strength is obvious. You immediately step back, your mind racing for an escape.

"Shut it down!" Miguel shouts.

"I’m trying!" Demetri yells, slamming the keyboard.

You can’t wait for technology to fix this. You take a deep breath and decide to fight back. If the AI has perfectly copied Axel’s style, then you know exactly what to do.

You duck to avoid a punch and sweep your leg in a low kick, but "Axel" jumps effortlessly. Before you can react, he throws a spinning kick. You manage to block it with your forearms, though the impact makes you stumble.

Miguel jumps in to intervene, hitting Robby in the side to make him back off. "Shut it down now, Demetri!"

"I got it, I got it!" Demetri presses one final command, and suddenly, Robby freezes. A second later, he staggers back, ripping off the goggles and breathing heavily.

You sigh, shaking off your gi. "That was definitely… something."

Hawk laughs, adrenaline still rushing through his veins. "Come on, admit it—it was epic."

You glance around at everyone and, after a second, let out a laugh. "Miyagi-Do training has never been this interesting."

As Robby and Axel’s AI exchange blows, you feel a mix of excitement and nervousness at how real everything seems. Every move, every gesture… even that defiant look you know so well.

But then, something changes. The digital Axel’s gaze locks onto yours, and for a moment, you feel like he’s analyzing you. Like he recognizes your presence beyond the simulation.

"Uh…" Hawk frowns. "Why is he looking like that?"

"I have no idea," Demetri types frantically. "This wasn’t programmed."

Before you can react, Axel’s AI moves with terrifying speed and stops right in front of you.

"This can’t be happening…" you murmur, heart pounding.

With a smooth motion, the digital Axel tilts his head and smirks, exactly like the real Axel would. His voice comes out with eerie precision.

"Knew you were here."

A shiver runs down your spine.

"Demetri?" you ask, not taking your eyes off the figure standing so close.

"I’m trying to shut it down!" he exclaims, nervous.

"Do it faster!" Hawk laughs tensely. "Though, I gotta admit, this is pretty badass."

The digital Axel steps even closer. The intensity in his gaze makes you feel strangely vulnerable, almost like he’s studying every detail of your expression.

"You know you can fight me, right?" his tone is low, challenging—almost teasing.

Your breath catches. This isn’t the real Axel, but the feeling is exactly the same.

"I don’t have to prove anything to you," you reply, a hint of defiance in your voice.

He smirks. "Then prove it."