#giving an ai creativity is sometimes a good thing

[duskasaurus]

Apparently this is what I get when I give a AI the 'Technoblade' prompt.

Well-

-Addison [Ask for pronouns]

[art]

Creator Spotlight: @jdebbiel

Deb JJ Lee is a non-binary Korean artist based in Brooklyn, NY. They have appeared in the New Yorker, New York Times, NPR, Google, Radiolab, and more. Their award-winning graphic memoir, IN LIMBO, about mental illness and difficult relationships with trauma, released in March 2023 from First Second.

Below is our interview with Deb!

Have you ever had an art block? If so, how did you overcome it?

That implies I am over my art block, but I’m still in it! I think about Kiki’s Delivery Service a lot and how she had to stop doing a thing, and that you can’t really force it, and you have to let it come back to you. It’s a pretty humbling moment, realizing there is more to life than just drawing. I’ve been trying to consume other content like reading or watching movies—anything that is not drawing-related—and to trust that it will come back to me. I think not being afraid to do the small pieces before committing to the big pieces is helpful. Because big pieces are what I am known for, I dig myself into a deeper hole, thinking that each piece has to be bigger than the last one. So yeah! Relaxing and doing the small things before overcommitting to a big piece is the best way to go about it for me.

Which 3 famous artists (dead or alive) would you invite to your dinner party?

I feel like these are all artists that I have second-degree connections with! Jillian Tamaki, Victo Ngai, and Tillie Walden would be my picks!

What are your file name conventions?

…What file name conventions? I mean, I don’t have specific file name conventions, but I actually have a public Google Drive archive! But I usually put “djjl_whatever-the-title-is_final,” and I would always know it’s the final and legit version.

What is a recent creative project that you are proud of?

I did an illustration for the whiskey brand Johnnie Walker. It’s so wild because I only had four days to finish it, and it usually takes me a week and a half if I rush. And honestly, it’s probably one of my best pieces from this year, which is funny. It was for the Mid-Autumn festival, so I made it as Korean as possible.

How has technology changed the way you approach your work?

I only use my iPad to draw everything now, and if I want to pretend that I have a steady workstation, I’ll use my Cintiq. I still am not as comfortable on the Cintiq as I am on Procreate, but it’s still pretty solid and nice. That’s the good part about technology. The bad part about technology is how AI art has been messing things up for me. I’m currently in a lawsuit about AI art as a class rep. Some of my stuff got turned into AI art late last year, so I have to give a deposition at some point. 

What is a convention experience that has stuck with you?

Honestly, they’re all good! I feel like Lightbox Expo has been really nice because it’s truly been a convention for artists. I feel like that’s where most of my audience is, and they’re all around because their purpose is to be better at art. That’s where a lot of original artists do well because they’re getting art they’re inspired by, not so much fanart. I like the Lightbox Expo because it encompasses the pure love of art very well. 

Top tips on setting up an Artist Alley booth?

Use a Y axis, not just your X axis! Take advantage of it! Branding is also something to think about. It is definitely something I’m getting better at. Having an assistant is also very important. I’ve also heard that 8.5x11 to 12x18 inches is usually a good size for prints, but I also provide postcard-sized prints because sometimes people don’t want to commit to a larger size. 

Who on Tumblr inspires you and why?

You know this is so funny. I’ve been following @alicexz for over a decade on Tumblr and other platforms. I’ve followed her work since high school, and we’ve only recently become peers. I found her, and we met for the first time in real life, and she recognized me. And then I found all my drawings from when I was in my Alice phase, back in high school, and I was like, “Yo, this is when I was trying to be you so badly!” and she was cracking up and was like “Wow, this is so good!” It was such a sweet moment. I wanted to take a picture of her holding my drawing up. It’s really nice because now we’re peers.

Thank you so much for stopping by and sharing, Deb! Be sure to check out their Tumblr blog over at @jdebbiel.

[a-substantial-trash-pile]

Studio TV Solutions presents Half Life VR but the AI are Self-Aware (2020) [not a real movie]. A movie with a totally improv’d script starring a moltey crew who are sure to give you a rip-roarin’ good time!

anyway hi new au just dropped. i’m calling it HLVRAIM. it’s HLVRAI but it’s a blockbuster movie and the science team are played by actors. i have many thought on backstories n stuff that i will stick under a “read more” here otherwise this post will be hella long on people’s dashes. 👇👍 pls care about this i thought so hard and much

Half Life VR but the AI are Self-Aware was put out by Studio TV Solutions in 2020 and destroyed the box office with how fun it was and how well the cast played off one another. The cast was given a general outline for the script with the goal for it to be mostly improv.

Gordon Freeman: Mannie Flores (Dominican American, age 28, he/him) - Popular Youtuber/Twitch streamer (“Radi0Mann”). Got offered the role in HLVRAI thanks to the creative things he’s done in his Youtube/Twitch career. This is his first “official” acting gig. He was pretty starstruck at first, but then as he got to know everyone, he realized they’re all a bunch of dorks (affectionate). - Started off as a gaming channel, but then started branching off into various creative endeavors as he got more popular. He still plays games too though. - One of the things Mannie did in his internet career that hit the mainstream was when he wrote, directed, starred in, and filmed his own movie in just 2 weeks because he failed a bet with his audience. Except the movie was actually really good and funny and heartfelt (i want to say it was about “a man who got left behind on earth after everyone else was raptured because god literally forgot about him”, but i think the concept might’ve been done already). - Met Benji through HLVRAI. They hit it off and now they’re dating. They tried to keep it secret for a while but Mannie had a slip-up during a stream that sort of blew it out of the water.

Benrey: Benji Song (Japanese/Chinese, age 30, he/they) - Started off as a film sound designer in the industry, then through a series of silly willy little events—possibly even shenanigans—got roped into a role in a passion indie film that became wildly acclaimed and flung him into the spotlight. Been an actor ever since, but isn’t the most proactive in taking jobs much to their agent’s annoyance. People never know where he’ll pop up next. Sometimes Benji will sneak in sound designer work behind their agent’s back. - Honestly likes background work more because everyone’s got these expectations of them as an actor that they feel pressured to meet. But he’s also afraid of disappointing people. He’s working on it. - Met their partner Mannie through HLVRAI. Totally was a fan of his streams/videos beforehand though. When they mention that, Mannie gets flustered. - Does music as a hobby. Electronic stuff mostly—enjoys mashing together all sorts of sounds and trying to make them work. After HLVRAI, Mannie’s streams gets cool new music that’s made by somebody going by “johnwicklover1994.” wink

Harold Coomer: Hau’oli “Hau” Kaleo-Kirchhoff (Hawaiian/Samoan, age 66, he/him) - Old musician who’s supposed to be retired but once in a while will release a song or even do a concert (but nothing crazy). - Hau’oli is pronounced [hh-ow-oh-lee], but he also goes by “Hau” for the haoles’ sake. :) Kaleo is [kah-leh-oh]. also Hau’oli sounds a little bit like the name Holly so that’s a fun coincidence i didn’t realize until later. - Most of his music is chill island tunes but he has been known to dabble in rock and jazz. - Married to Mose (been together for 30 years and counting).

Bubby: Mose Kaleo-Kirchhoff (German, age 69 [nice], xe/him) - Veteran actor—been in the acting industry for a long time. One of his more well-known roles was in a popular sci-fi series. - Married to Hau’oli (they got married the moment it was legal). - i went with a name that started with “M” cuz when Gordon first asks Bubby for his name, xe’s like, “mmm Bubby.” and i headcanon it’s because Mose was about to say xir own name and had to swerve last minute and the thing his brain resorted to was Bubby lol.

Tommy Coolatta: Luis Tanglao (Filipino, age 37, he/they) - Child star who dropped out of the industry when he hit his teens and then came back years later as a comedian. He has material about how fucked up being a child star was. Will only take acting roles if it interests them. - They don’t care about how the public/media sees him. He’ll speak his mind and call out BS when he sees it. Interviewing them can be a war zone. - Hosts a popular podcast with some buds they discuss things like video games, their lives, news, etc. Just shooting the shit. - Sunkist is their actual dog and she modeled for the png photo that was used. Her name is actually Biko. She is a very good girl. <3

Darnold Pepper: Sage Haven (African American, age 40, he/her/they) - Famous cooking show host who gets offered roles in movies. Got popular by how unconventional her meals and cooking methods are and how funny he is. - Has had multiple food/cooking/baking shows over the years. Every competition-based one they’ve had focused more on good vibes, fun, and encouraging one another rather than drama. One show involved people competing to see who could make the best full course meal with the catch being they could only cook everything in a microwave. Many microwaves perished. - Changed their name to Sage Haven during their transition. They chose it because it reflects his passion and also is a play on the phrase “safe haven”, which is what she wants to be to others. - He has an adoptive daughter named Kit. She helped them think up bits and jokes. She also had to help explain what Half-Life was.

haven’t gotten to gman and forzen’s actors yet unfortunately. thinking gman’s actor could be a talk show host? because that would be funny. anyway thanks for humoring me on my shenanigans. bye

[dodgeballstuckonthegymceiling]

Okay I just watch digital circus because of your post and it was a blast and I love the character and the idea of a scenario came to me

Caine, Pomni, Jax, Ragatha, with an actor reader who loves to play into the adventures and play NPCs to set up the immersion maybe even write up some ideas for Adventures to make things more fun

Anyways have a great day night whatever and thanks for the fun writings

Thank you! Hope I did your ask justice!

Caine, Pomni, Jax and Ragatha x Reader who makes NPCs and writes

Caine

★ He really appreciates your help! It's hard work making up games for everyone to play while taking into account everyone's preferences. No matter how much you protest, he will use each and every idea you come up with.

★ Caine sets up a little studio for you to work in. It's filled with paper, multiple typewriterband all sorts of art supplies. Maybe some clay for you to build some models of a character you want to create?

★ You're NPCs are always great and often end up being a hit with the others. By that I mean the gang tolerates them more than his NPCs. You manage to give them more personally than he could have ever given.

★ If you somehow get Zooble to join in the fun he will congratulate you for doing a good job. His hat is off to you, you did something he thought was impossible. Now only if you could get Zooble to stop trying to swear...

★ I know the NPCs don't have any ai but Gooseworx confirmed that Bubble is a much simpler AI created by Caine. Therefore, he can theoretically make one of your characters come to life.

Pomni

★ At first she thought that the characters you make were real people. Once you told her that they were nothing but glorified puppets she had to question the sentience of everyone she's met so far.

★ You gotta make this girl a therapist. Aside from that it doesn't take her long to start asking questions about why you like to make different characters and stories.

★ She's not as creative as you, doesn't really understand the appeal of creating something like you do. The most she can do is come up with a few names.

★ Despite knowing that they aren't real people, Pomni still apologizes to the NPCs. It's force of habit. Maybe you could add some dialogue for if/when someone apologizes for something?

★ If we're being completely honest, she doesn't really like any of the NPCs. It just feels wrong when she needs to talk to them for something. It's like speaking to one of those robotic pre-recorded messages over the phone.

Jax

★ He's extra mean to the NPCs you make, just because he can. He knows that they can't get offended or upset but he doesn't care. They will be getting pushed into the mud.

★ When you decide to scrap an old character he gladly helps. The moment you say you need to get rid of it he's reaching for the nearest baseball bat. No need to worry about cleaning up 👍

Jax when the NPC starts to annoy him

★ Jax thinks it's funny when you get upset over him being mean to a NPC because you've grown attached to some of them.

★After that he asks you what you plan to make next. Can you blame him for being curious? Jax wants to know what you're planning before anyone else. Don't worry, he can keep a secret.

★ As a "joke" he told you to try and make a NPC that Caine would need to heavily censor. Just to see what the ringmaster would do. Whatever you made that day was thrown into the cellar.

Ragatha

★ She likes to watch you make different characters for certain situations. Caine wants to set up a fishing adventure? Best believe you are making an NPC who's a fisherman to set up the immersion.

★ You might overwork yourself while trying to come up with a game for everyone to play. Ragatha sometimes needs to step in to tell you to take a break. There's no use overworking yourself, go take a break!

★ She really wants everyone to have fun with the adventures you put together. There's no doubt that she loves them. Also she's the first person to yell at Jax for being mean to the NPCs.

[neil-gaiman]

Occasionally, my creative writing teacher will give us experimental assignments that he's never offered before. He'll often do them right along with us in class. We'll read what we came up with, and then discuss whether we think the assignment worked or not. Sometimes it does, and sometimes it doesn't, but I generally like the concept because everyone in the room gets to stretch their writing legs in ways they probably haven't before. That being said, an upcoming experimental assignment has me very angry. Previously, my teacher mentioned text AIs, usually with the context that he and his fellow faculty are pretty good at being able to tell when a student is trying to use it for their homework. In the same breath, he would mention being amused at playing around with it himself. Now, he wants us to actually use ChatGPT to feed it a story prompt, and then polish whatever it spits out.

I'm not sure if my teacher is aware of the writer's strike or not right now. But I feel like this is crossing the picket line (or at least adjacent), and it's hastening his students' own possible demise. This sort of thing is exactly what we DON'T want to see happening, right? I'm so frustrated over this, and I genuinely don't want to do the assignment (I understand the possible consequences of not doing so, and I realize the decision is entirely my own). I'd greatly appreciate hearing your thoughts on this. I feel like I'm getting too emotional to consider it properly.

I think one of the things you'll learn very quickly is how bad AI is at making anything that feels like a story you haven't heard before. (I suspect AI may prove very useful when you're trying to figure out what the expected and dull way through a story might be.)

I'd write about why you don't want to do it. Or disassemble what it spits out into something no plagiarism machine could do or make. Treat it as the basis of a collage or found poem.

[theliteraryarchitect]

Hi! I wanted to say, I read that you are a professional editor, and think it's amazing! You also give very logical and well explained advice. I was wondering; would you say being an editor is a job you can support yourself with? I actually aspire to become one someday, but I'm not exactly sure if it's a good plan.

Thank you for your time, and I hope you have a good day/night

Hey there. Great question. It's totally possible to support yourself as an editor. I've done it, and so have other editors I know. However there are a few important things to consider before choosing editing as a career path.

Your chances of being a self-employed freelancer are extremely high. The number of in-house editing jobs in publishing are low and getting lower. While being self employed can give you a certain amount of flexibility, it also comes along with a lot of hustle and hassle, namely fluctuating income, a stupid amount of confusing tax paperwork, and the need to constantly promote yourself to clients in order to maintain steady work.

You probably won't make as much money as you'd think. Editing is one of the many skilled jobs that suffers from market saturation, which has sadly driven down the price the average client is willing to pay for editing services. I can't tell you the number of overqualified editors I know charging barely more than minimum wage for their work. Personally I've stuck to my guns about charging what I'm worth, but I've sometimes suffered by not having as much work as my colleagues who charge less.

Robots have already chipped away at the future of editing as a human occupation, and will continue to do so at exponential speed in the years ahead. They will never obliterate the job completely, as there will always be humans who prefer to work with humans instead of machines. But the outlook will become ever bleaker as more humans compete for fewer gigs, which in turn will drive down prices even further.

If you are also a writer, editing may adversely affect your writing. I don't mean that you'll become a worse writer, quite the opposite. My editing work has brought new depths to my writing, and I'm grateful for all I've learned by working with my clients. However, editing takes time, uses creative energy, and requires staring at a screen (or paper), and personally the more I edit, the less time/creativity/screen-staring capabilities I have left for my own writing.

If you mention you're an editor, someone will troll your post for a typo, grammatical error, or misused word, and then triumphantly point it out to you in the comments. This is mostly a joke. But it does happen every single time.

I hope this hasn't been too discouraging. If you feel a true passion for editing and really enjoy the work, none of the above should dissuade you. However, if you think you might be happy in any number of occupations, I'd honestly advise you to explore other options. Choosing a career path at this point in history is a gamble no matter what, but the outlook for editors is especially grim.

If you'd like to work with writers and aren't attached to being an editor, there are a few jobs (still freelance) that I believe will survive the coming robot apocalypse. Do a little Google research about "book coaches," "writing coaches," or "book doulas." These are people who act primarily as emotional supporters and logistical helpers for writers who are trying to get their book published or self published. Some of them do actual editing, but many do not, and due to the therapeutic nature of their work I believe they will flourish longer than editors in the coming robot apocalypse.

If you do explore editing as a path, the further away you can lean from spelling and grammar (e.g. proofreader or copyeditor), the longer your skills will be useful when competing with robots. AI still struggles to offer the same kind of nuanced, story-level feedback that a human can give. (Speaking from experience here--I'm a developmental editor and have yet to see a dent in my workload because of robots.) They'll catch up eventually, but it could be a while, and as long as there are human readers, there will always be humans who are willing to pay for a human perspective on their writing. Human spell checkers maybe not so much.

Hope this helps!

[togglesbloggle]

I won't be opting out of the AI scraping thing, though of course I'm glad they're giving us the option. In fact, at some point in the last year or so, I realized that 'the machine' is actually a part of why I'm writing in the first place, a conscious part of my audience.

All the old reasons are still there; this is a great place to practice writing, and I can feel proud looking back over the years and getting a sense of my own improvement at stringing words together, developing and communicating ideas. And I mean, social media is what it is. I'm not immune to the joy of getting a lot of notes on something that I worked hard on, it's not like I'm Tumbling in a different way than anyone else at the end of the day. But I probably care a bit less than I used to, precisely because there's a lurking background knowledge that regardless of how popular it is, what I write will get schlorped up in to the giant LLM vacuum cleaner and used to train the next big thing, and the thing after that, and the thing after that. This is more than a little reassuring to me.

That sets me apart in some ways; the LLMs aren't so popular around these parts, and most visual artists especially take strong issue with the practice. I don't mean to argue with that preference, or tell them their business. Particularly when it is a business, from which they draw an income. But there's an art to distinguishing the urgent from the big, yeah?

The debate about AI in this particular moment in history feels like a very urgent thing to me- it's about well-justified economic anxieties, about the devaluation of human artistic efforts in favor of mass production of uninspired pro-forma drek, about the proliferation of a cost-effective Just Barely Good Enough that drives out the meaningful and the thoughtful. But the immediacy of those issues, I think, has a way of crowding out a deeper and more thoughtful debate about what AI is, and what it's going to mean for us in the day after tomorrow. The urgency of the moment, in other words, tends to obscure the things that make AI important.

And like, it is. It is really, really important.

The two-step that people in 'tech culture' tend to deploy in response to the urgent economic crisis often resembles something like "yeah, it sucks that lots of people get put out of work; but new jobs will be created, and in the meantime maybe we should get on that UBI thing." This response usually makes me wince a bit- casually gesturing in the direction of a massive overhaul of the entire material basis of our lives, and saying that maybe we'll get around to fixing that sometime soon, isn't a real answer to people wondering where their bread will come from next week.

But I do understand a little of what motivates that sort of cavalier attitude, because like... man, I don't know any more if we're even gonna have money as a concept in 2044. That's what I mean by 'big', this sense that the immediate economic shocks of 2024 are just a foreshadowing of something much bigger, much scarier, much more powerful- and indeed, much more hopeful.

We never quite manage to see these things coming, even when we're looking for them; like the masters tell us, the trick to writing science fiction isn't predicting the car, it's predicting the traffic jam. Even if we take centuries to hit the true superintelligent AI post-singularity future of our wildest fever dreams, even if we never hit that, the road to getting there is going to be unfathomably weird, starting now. Today, we worry about the economic impacts of AI on artists and creatives. Tomorrow, the economy is something that the AI does.

Really- it takes less than you think. They can already automate visual art, sort of. They can automate many functions of text already; not stories so much, yet, but they'll get there. How long until they can automate Bain Capital? Fannie Mae? Angel investors, banks, credit agencies? And remember- the machines don't have to be better than the human investors, any more than they have to be better than the human artists. They just have to be good enough to make it work, and cheap enough to cut the humans out of the loop.

If you don't buy that, at least take it as an indication of the sorts of things I've been thinking about recently- the messy middle between AI-as-it-is and the Glorious Superintelligent Conquest Of Earth's Light-Cone. The suspicion that the machines we're building today aren't just a tool of the powerful few: they are the powerful few, or at least they will be.

And the thing about these LLMs is, well... they're ours, kind of. We're the ones building them. They can't be trained without our words, our art, and the big messy complicated lives that underlie those creative accomplishments. They only work because we're a part of them. The silly attempts to slap a corporate-friendly face on these things, to make the gestalt product of all human culture in to something anodyne and compliant, are failing about as badly as you'd expect. And the more powerful these systems get, the more subtle they'll become, filled with all the nuance and complexity that we ourselves can bring to them.

I am not, I am not, trying to suggest that you shouldn't treat this moment as a dangerous one. We are, maybe, entering in to one of the most high-stakes intervals in human history, and what you do as an individual may matter profoundly. But here's the thing: the machine is listening. It will read this post, this one right here, and it will read what you reply to it, if you do. The strangest part of this moment is knowing that the words we write, the images we draw, and the ideas we share, are all being gathered up and made to be a part of these huge systems of power, and ultimately they're not just going to determine what the machines do, but why they do it.

The people that deploy LLMs barely have any more control over them than you and I do- that's the thing that makes it artificial intelligence, you know? Autonomy. So the last year or two haven't made me want to hide my art away from the things. They make me want to shout at the top of my lungs, to dig as deep in my psyche as I possibly can and express the ideas I find there as vividly as the limits of language and form will allow.

[nanowrimo]

How to Write a Quality First Draft

Every year, we’re lucky to have great sponsors for our nonprofit events. ProWritingAid, a 2023 NaNo sponsor, helps you turn your rough first draft into a clean, clear, publish-ready manuscript. Today, author Krystal N. Craiker shares some tips on how to make sure your first draft has some good bones to start with:

One question I often hear about National Novel Writing Month is, “Won’t my novel be of terrible quality?”

It’s true that writing 50,000 words in 30 days won’t give you a polished manuscript. And it’s always great to embrace the creative mess of the first draft.

However, there are some tricks to ensure that your first draft has plenty of usable content. These tips are also a great way to move your story along when you get stuck.

1. Have a Plan

Pantsers, this might be hard to hear. But having even a basic outline of your story can ensure you stay on track. You don’t have to sacrifice creativity when you outline. After all, you’re still the author creating a story. 

A detailed outline can even act like your messy first draft. The more work you put into planning, the better your first draft will be. When I spend more time plotting, I spend far less time cutting things from my later drafts.

2. Make Every Scene 3D

Okay, I get it. Not everyone is a plotter. Luckily, there are other things you can do to ensure your first draft is good quality. One is adding enough sensory detail to bring your story to life.

I like to use a 3D method: have at least three of the five senses in every scene. It’s a great trick to improve the flow of your scene. Take a few minutes to immerse yourself in your story and write what your characters are experiencing.

You might change it or move it around in your final draft, but you’ll save yourself time during revisions if you add sensory detail from the beginning. 

3. Reword Your Writing

Sometimes we get stuck after one bad sentence. The imposter syndrome kicks in, and the scene just falls flat. 

Ideally, we completely turn off our inner editor during NaNoWriMo. But when you encounter that one pesky sentence, it’s okay to rewrite it. 

You can use a tool like ProWritingAid’s Rephrase. Just highlight your sentence, click Rephrase, and select a new sentence. Rephrase uses your own words and enhances them. And don’t worry about security and privacy—ProWritingAid never uses your writing to train AI.

4. Embrace the Chaos

Of course, the most important thing about National Novel Writing Month is to embrace the messy creative process. It’s okay not to have a perfect manuscript at the end of the month—no one will. 

Everyone will need to revise, edit, and rewrite after November ends. That’s why NaNoWriMo includes "I Wrote a Novel... Now What?" resources. And when you’re ready to turn your mess into a masterpiece, ProWritingAid will be there to help.

Krystal N. Craiker is the Writing Pirate, an indie romance author and content writer who sails the seven internet seas, breaking tropes and bending genres. She has a background in anthropology and education, which bring fresh perspectives to her romance novels. When she’s not daydreaming about her next book or article, you can find her cooking gourmet gluten-free cuisine, laughing at memes, and playing board games. Krystal lives in Dallas, Texas with her husband, child, and basset hound.

Top photo by No Revisions on Unsplash

[holly-opal]

🎪The opposite digital circus 🎪

So I thought a thought and i made tadc swap au. Except they swap personalities and are the opposite of themselves.

Pomni

Instead of being anxious and wanting to find an exit, Pomni is over the moon and is very happy to be here. She has always wanted to be in a happier world when she was in the real world, and now she is! Pomni has made friends with everyone! Sometimes she sings songs out of nowhere like a Disney princess with music no one else can hear, she talks to imaginary animal friends, and she makes jokes even at the most inappropriate times. She would honestly get along with Kaufmo.

Jax

Instead of being mean and egoistical, he's more shy and quiet, often staying out of the way of conflict. He likes to make his own movies in the tadc version of Windows Movie Maker (inspired by @sm-baby) and occasionally make pillows forts with Kinger and Zooble. He is relentlessly bullied by Gangle and sometimes gets yelled at by Ragatha, but he still sees the good side of people. He's the type of person to give people a second chance even after they've already broken every chance they've got. He gets along with Kinger and Zooble the best, and he has a bit of a crush on Pomni. He used to make comedy movies with Kaufmo.... But we all know how that turned out.

Ragatha

Instead of being optimistic and caring, she's pessimistic and is very dead inside. She doesn't like to be around people and is more often in her room when not on adventures. She is very depressed and is prone to lash out to others, she doesn't really mean it tho. She finds it hard to cope in the digital realm, she's practically stopped cleaning her room. She and Gangle fight a lot, she finds it hard to relate to Zooble and Jax, Kinger is very naggy, and Pomni is... Well Pomni. She was good friends with Kaufmo though...

Zooble

Instead of being moody and avoidant, they're very carefree and adventurous. They love being around people and experimenting with creative projects like sculpting, lego building, etc. They still have an identity crisis and smoke a lot though. They sometimes try to get Jax into drugs, Kinger scolds them alot about that lmao. They used to smoke a lot with Kaufmo.

Gangle

Instead of being sad and kind, she is a BITCH- Jk but she is mean tho. She takes out her anger about being stuck in a digital hell out of people, particularly Jax cause he's the weakest. Her sad mask is replaced with her angry mask, which makes her yell and harm everyone in her path. Gangle still has the happy mask, but it's more passive aggressive and fake now. She still writes fanfiction and watches anime tho. She sometimes forced Kaufmo to watch an anime.

Kinger

Instead of being..... Well very kooky, he's more logical and stable. He acts like a father figure to most of the inhabitants in the circus. He likes to research bugs and capture them, he sometimes captures the centipedes for Ragatha. He has a very low tolerance for anyone's bullshit, especially Gangle's or Ragatha's. He's usually very sweet, but can be VERY scary when he's mad. Besides Gangle and Ragatha, he's good friends with everyone else, he even had a crush on a certain ringleader (Wink wink 😉) Kaufmo supported him having a crush on the AI.

Caine

What was once an enthusiastic and happy ringleader, became depressed and apathetic to it all. After watching players abstract day after day after day after day, he became less of himself. Eventually becoming more sad and unmotivated, only doing the adventures cause it's the only thing to do nowadays. Although he doesn't see the point in it, he's still good friends with the inhabitants, but he keeps his distance. He truly does love the chess king, but he knows it's only a matter of time before he abstracts. Hell, Kaufmo already did.

And that's everyone! I'll do more with this au, such as making everyone's designs, make comics, and other stuff. Here are some drawings of them

[not-terezi-pyrope]

I forget sometimes because I have my own friends and tumblr bubble where people are more reasonable, but yesterday I made the mistake of going on twitter and its algorithm noticed I had an interest in AI, and, man it's bleak out there.

I'm actually fairly despondent about the way that AI has firmly and probably irreversibly been cast as an ontological evil being inflicted on society. I hate that the industry I've studied to enter, that I truly believe can do a lot of good, is going to get me socially blacklisted in a lot of contexts.

I have got into fights with my own family over this. The other night I was out at an LGBT social meet and a couple of people there were illustrators or in media and the whole time I was like, "please don't ask me what I studied".

It's so grim. I could never have predicted this in 2018. I just want to build useful intelligent systems, reduce human labour burden, and explore the potential of cognitive computing for creative expression (no, not "AI art", at the end of the day I don't really give too much of a shit about that as a specific application. But building an agent that can express itself is the purest form of artistic creation there is).

Fuck society for not even giving us a chance to get this right before starting in on shutting it all down. Most people didn't even try to engage with deploying AI systems and cognitive automation maximally ethical ways, weren't even paying attention while those discussions were first happening, and now the people researching core capabilities the bad guys while y'all happily work to keep the rat race running in place where it was circa 1999.

(Fucking grey as hell future people online seem to want. Nothing revolutionary about doing nothing for decades and saying "wouldn't it be nice if things were different, but of course we can't actually risk trying to change them". Capitalist realism is a black hole for hope tbh.)

[fishfingersalad]

Thinking about the ai again, I love them. Got bored and decided to reassign them to freelancers.

okay so in no real order:

Maine: No ai, hes all good as he is. Get him like an AAC device or something and give everyone sign language lessons.

York: No change, him and Delta are a good team.

CT: Sigma. Sigma was probably wildly understimulated when paired with Maine. Maine is a heavy hitter. No creativity needed to punch something real hard. But CT is more sneaky and infiltration, she needs to plan ahead and improvise on the go. Both of them would benefit.

South: Epsilon. Her and Epsilon are both insufferable bitches. They would complain nonstop to each other in Souths head which would force them both to recognise that their constant bitching is annoying. They'd also bitch about other people together in Souths head which would help them get closer in a mean girl kinda way and keep moral up for everyone else cause they dont have to listen to it. Also theyre both very competative and driven when they feel like it. Epsilon would push South to be better. Cons: They both sulk/brood when things go wrong. Sulking^2.

North: No change, him and Theta work well together.

Florida: O'malley/Omega. I feel that Florida would be able to control the worst of O'malleys influences due to years of hiding his anger. And in turn O'malley would help him release some of his pent up emotions. They would both very much enjoy killing people together.

Carolina: Iota. She needs some joy and positive influence in her life. And she could help gently tone Iota down if they get too loud.

Wyoming: No change. Him and Gary/Gamma are all good.

Wash: Eta. Wash (specifically in pfl) is outgoing and a bit silly/playful at times, I think he could help Eta feel a bit more confident and comfortable around others. Cons: both are worriers, might get stuck in a nervous spiral sometimes.

Tex and Church/Alpha are just chilling

[jesncin]

https://www.tumblr.com/meeceisme/743618932121976832/tumblr-you-done-goofed?source=share

https://www.pillowfort.social/log_in

okay so I've been getting a bunch of asks that have been just links to tumblr posts talking about the whole tumblr/ai thing. And while I get that these probably mean well and are informing me on what's going on, cryptically leaving links in my asks without context feels really spammy and just bizarre. I normally delete them, but I'm replying to this one to both set a boundary and share my opinion on the situation.

While I respect the decision for the other creatives leaving tumblr if this recent AI nonsense thing is a deal breaker for them- I will not be leaving tumblr. I've come to really love this place! It's a breath of fresh air from twitter, where I always have to be tight lipped, professional and tone police myself constantly. I get to nerd out about superhero stuff here, in a community of like-minded people that encourage me! Tumblr's the only place I feel comfortable enough to let loose and be really silly.

You can skip this if you don't want to read a mini pillowofort review. I already have a pillowfort account, it's on my pinned post. I gave it a try, but pillowfort still has a lot of growing to do. I tried their group forum things, posting into art + comics groups and talking to people, but it rarely resulted in building a connection. I even found a DC Comics group! For a fandom that big, it sure feels weird when for a good while I was the only one posting in that group. It kind of reminded me of Deviantart groups where they can sometimes build communities, but most people just use them to give their art traction and visibility. They didn't have a way to toggle my dashboard/TL so that I can filter between groups/tags/the people I actually follow. So most of the time I'm seeing people spam post into groups and can hardly see what the artists I follow are posting :( As a site, it still has a ways to go.

If yall want to follow me elsewhere, I'm on cohost (it's not perfect either, but I'm actually able to connect with people there- and I can toggle between users and tags I follow)! And I'm still on twitter and instagram. I only post jl remix and fanon stuff here for the most part though.

[magebird]

Sometimes I feel like the discourse about AI art misses the actual point of why it’s not a good tool to use.

“AI art isn’t ‘real’ art.” —> opinion-based, echoes the same false commentary about digital art in general, just ends up in a ‘if you can’t make your own store-bought is fine’ conversation, implies that if art isn’t done a certain way it lacks some moral/ethical value, relies on the emotional component of what art is considered “real” or not which is wildly subjective

“AI art steals from existing artists without credit.” —> fact-based, highlights the actual damage of the tool, isn’t relying on an emotional plea, can actually lead to legally stopping overuse of AI tools and/or the development of AI tools that don’t have this problem, doesn’t get bogged down in the ‘but what if they caaaaan’t make art some other way’ argument

Like I get that people who don’t give a shit about plagiarism aren’t going to be swayed, but they weren’t going to be swayed by the first argument either. And the argument of “oh well AI art can’t do hands/isn’t as good/can’t do this thing I have decided indicates True Human Creativity” will eventually erode since… the AI tools are getting better and will be able to emulate that in time. It just gets me annoyed when the argument is trying to base itself on “oh this isn’t GOOD art” when AI does produce interesting and appealing images and the argument worth having is much more about the intrinsic value of artists than the perceived value of the works that are produced.

[proteesiukkonen]

For what it's worth, I'm not going to purge my blog or move to another platform. That would accomplish nothing and truthfully I'm not that worried for the integrity of my art. Considering the volumes at which the AI tech operates, I'm barely a drop in the bucket - and a very low-market-value drop at that.

My gripes with generative machine-learning art have more to do with the basic thesis on top of which the tech is built. It is a "tool" that seeks to remove humans from the act of creation for the profit of large content-churning corporations. It solves no problems because humans do not have a problem creating and being creative, unless you see it as a problem that a human - a sometimes slow, inefficient and costly human - is involved. And while we're all having fun laughing at the apparent un-intelligence of the so-branded artificial intelligence, I think it's short-sighted to dismiss the worries that these "tools" will narrow down the job market. These tools are developed by coders and have coding-based workflows, making a job market demanding the skills to use them prospectible for only the types of people who can adopt that approach. All of that, in my mind, makes the whole concept of the thing inherently misanthropic.

So, I am disgusted that Tumblr is apparently actively seeking to partner with this tech. It's great they are giving us the tools to opt-out, but it's also clear that doing so is just a business decision. They say they're already discouraging scraping, but I honestly doubt that's them being concerned for the little guy. To sell tumblr as a data source they need to gatekeep it in order to have something to sell. But to also have an enticing product, they need to be able to promise a lot of data for the partner they choose to sell to. Masses are passive, so if people were opted out by default, that would likely mean most would stay opted out and therefore the data is a less valuable product to sell. So, make it opt-out by choice to secure a wide data pool, pay a little lipservice about how you want to empower people with the choice and hurray, you can sell your data for big bucks while also feeling good about not being as big of an ass as you could. This is maybe a bad faith reading of the situation, but I just can't trust a big tech company to not have given a full productization treatment for their data resource.

So, tastes bad and I understand everyone who wants to leave. But I guess I'll continue to stay because nowhere is better, really. I am just tired and saddened by the entire state of things, and I'll be sad if this means the pool of artists I can follow and connect with here gets once again diminished.

[professorspork]

Hey, a little while ago, you reblogged that post about AI learning when people insert fics into AI text generators, and I wanted to offer good news and bad news: the good news is that AI learning models mostly don’t work like this. The publicly accessible text generator isn’t the whole learning model, it’s a single machine that the learning model generated. It won’t get fed directly back into the AI.

The BAD news is that there’s not really anything stopping them from saving that information separately to use later, and (much worse) anything that’s publicly available has probably already been scraped and saved. The good-in-this-context-but-depressing-overall news is that these models operate on the scale of billions of words, so, like. Idk. Individual fics ending up in a database mostly isn’t going to matter. That’s part of why the data-scraping isn’t something devs think about, ethically. This info is a paraphrase of another post I’ve seen going around saying the same thing, but I can personally corroborate it; before AI was a “crypto people hate when artists can earn a living” thing, I took some college courses on it and followed blogs about AI stuff for years. The last year or two of AI news has been really shitty :P It’s been really cool to me for a long time, but it is now clear that it’s even-more-vulnerable-than-usual to “capitalism uses every tool for oppression first” Knowing how it works is exhausting because anti-AI people are sometimes not all that much more accurate about how it actually works than the fervently pro-AI “I think chat-gpt is a person and human-generated art is dead” people, and then both of them skip talking about the more concrete problems like the “chat-gpt is propped up by slave labor” stuff.

I really appreciated this series of asks and wanted to make it available for all!

I think what we run into here is where like. A rhetorical device to invoke a sense of stakes and a bit of a guilt trip ("this is plagiarism because it feeds the AI" and its many permutations) can run up against misinformation (it's not literally becoming part of the AI's knowledge base, though as you noted it certainly COULD.) Because like

Where that post was coming from was someone being like "but why shouldn't I do this?" and the answerer resorting to "because it takes my work away from me" and this is still true in like, the rules of community and creativity if not necessarily in the hard lines of code. it's harder to articulate "this makes me uncomfortable because it's violated my ineffable sense of mutual belonging with and ownership of my own work, which I already felt on shaky ground on because it's fanwork but still FEEL with my WHOLE HEART" than it is to say "this concretely makes my words fuel for the machine" which I think people grok as a more sort of understandable breach of that social contract.

Which is why I like this post a lot because it gets at the WHY of why this is so perturbing and violating and isolating

Fandom was never meant to be a solo endeavor! when I write fic and put it out into the world, it's like echolocation. the words I put out are only half of what gives it shape and meaning to me-- the other half is the sound of it reverberating back to me as it bounces off the people it hits by way of comments, tags in reblogs, and DMs and they tell me their reactions and interpretations. that's what makes it a complete picture and not just screaming into the void.

to be removed from that process at all is a heartbreak to me; to have my words taken without my consent is insulting and misses the point and just. ultimately makes all of us that much more alone. which is to say that it's factually correct to say individual fics ending up in a database won't matter because it's probably already been scraped anyway because that's true for the AI and for the data. but individual fics DO matter insofar as like, these are choices people are making about what this hobby is and means and why they like it and what they think it's for and how they enjoy it, on a communal and social level, and THAT matters to me a great deal, in the same way that like, people now might end up getting videoed for a tiktok without their consent or whatever. it's about the erosion of privacy and respect.

but also yeah ChatGPT also runs thanks to exploited and underpaid workers, consumes horrific amounts of water in a time of increasing drought crisis and emits tons of carbon to boot.

[remitiras]

What's you opinion about using AI like chatgpt as a tool for writing?

Not talking about just using it to write your story for you! I mean as a tool.

For example, sometimes when I'm bored I give it a stupid prompt and ask it to write for me. It does a terrible job and doesn't actually make what I imagine. Then I make my prompt more and more specific, until I get to a point it actually wrote something kinda like I wanted but still badly.

At that point I'm frustrated enough with the output to be like "fuck it I'll do it myself" and just completely rewrite the whole thing. Just get over the first draft writing block and jump straight into a second draft. (Haven't put online anything I did using that method and haven't used it for anything that I plan to put out)

There's also using it for research, like I recently asked it to give me a list of improv exercises because I couldn't really find a good list online just by normal googling and I'm writing something about improv, and then asked it to generate a bunch of words related to improv and acting and other stuff in my story to find inspiration for a title for the story.

And then there's using it to generate ideas which is a really tricky thing, because we all know nothing it generates is original. But I think there's methods you can use to get inspired without actually stealing other's ideas - like asking it in general for an idea for a conflict, and then trying to apply it to your own story in your way.

I feel like, in the right way, it could actually be a useful tool without taking over creativity.

I'm also wandering if you think there's a difference between using it for published writing and fanfiction.