#i don't think i'm inherently against 'ai' *but* I don't think it can exist in the world we live in now

[uncanny-tranny]

I think it's a mistake to assume that computer generation (so-called AI) is the only manifestation of the exploitation that workers (especially in artistic fields that are already considered lesser) experience. The problems that they experience are, I think, exasperated by computer generation, but it isn't like there were no problems with compensation, theft, or other forms of exploitation.

The problem is the exploitation, and I think sometimes, people lose sight of that in these conversations.

[dreadark]

wanted to make some long post talking about vocaloid and AI voice covers but then I realized I don't want to be that coherent so here's a disorganized rant

vocaloid uses AI. stop saying it doesn't. what's even the point of this you can literally google it man

so do synthv and cevio and etc

this is okay because the usage of AI isn't inherently bad is this a hot take...? you know AI is used in medical tech right? do any of you guys know what AI actually means??

but AI voice covers have 2 main problems, one is of course that someone's voice is being used without their permission

(and the real danger here is deepfakes, which should be obvious, but I'm talking about vocaloid here so...)

the other, which I think most people don't realize, is that someone else's singing is also being ripped off like... AI can't figure out how to sing a song. it just makes an approximation of the voice it was trained on sound like something that already exists for AI covers of vocaloid songs specifically this means they're definitely ripping off a utaite cover, and you can bet the uploaders won't mention who...

this is why vocaloid takes more effort, the person tuning the vocaloid has to decide how it will sing each note newer AI vocal synths do some of this automatically but by assuming what would sound natural (roughly) (and with mixed results), not by ripping off someone else who already sang the song

which is why people call vocaloid an instrument. it's a digital instrument. you have to decide what notes to play

so please stop trying to argue AI is bad just because it makes things too easy like are you going to argue against digital art next?? there's 100 other valid arguments why this

why did I make this bullet points and then talk in sentences...

[quirkless-fanboy]

my rant on complex characters

Unpopular opinion, but I'm sick of people calling complex characters "problematic", and I'm sick of problematic characters being viewes as a negative, because:

Most of the time they aren't actually even actually problematic, they're just realistic as in they make mistakes and do things they shouldn't, quite often growing from this.

You can be complex without being problematic and vice versa. If you think a character is problematic, think about why you think that, and then why you think it matters. If problematic people exist in the real world, they should exist in fiction, too.

What's the point of art if not to explore the world/reality, INCLUDING problematic themes and characters?

A lot of people with trauma and/or OCD benefit a lot from reading/watching/creating things you find problematic, as it's a safe way to experience certain topics and deal with the emotions they bring up. It can be [retty cathartic, and it's never okay to villainize someone for that.

It's FICTION. It's not going to hurt you, I promise. Worst case scenario, you get upset and have the choice to stop reading/watching.

Good writing is often inherently controversial. Some of the greatest books in the world are banned in Texas (including certain dictionaries). You're not going to change the world by being polite and socially acceptable.

Art has always been a conversation (insert all the million reasons why AI art is bad). It's not even about being right or wrong, it's about having a place where we can talk about things that aren't deemed "nice conversation" in any other context. Art gives us a place to process and to learn about things that are often considered taboo without art to begin the conversation.

Telling people what they can or can't read/write/watch is a slippery slope, and can always come back to get you.

You don't have to like everything, and that's okay. You aren't always the target audience, and if you don't like something, it's perfectlu alright to just stop reading/watching it.

It is NEVER okay to harrass someone, no matter how much you disagree with them. You can hate morally grey characters, you can hate problematic themes and dark stories, but there is never a good reason to harrass someone. The only thing you should ever be pointing out (aside from requested concrit of course) is if someone left out an important tag or trigger warning, because that's a safety issue. Other than that, just don't engage with content you don't like, it's already hard enough being a writer/artist without that.

I'm not saying that every piece of media ever created handles complex characters well, because there are definitely books and shows that don't ever hold characters accountable for their actions or even acknowledge that you shouldn't behave like that, but that can be done well, too, because guess what? Bad people don't always change or apologize in real life. Sometimes they get away with it and everyone loves them.

Also not everything in existence has to teach a lesson. You should be able to be a good person even if you read something about morally grey characters. If you're that influenced by what kind of content you engage with, it's your responsibility to filter that, not other people's responsibility to stop creating art you can't handle.

We need to fight back against purity culture, because real life is messy, and we need art to express and understand that. Burning books and censoring ourselves and each other isn't going to make anything better, it's just going to make us all struggle alone instead of together.

Remember to eat, drink, and sleep today!!!

[mistysblueboxstuff]

i have really bad anxiety so i usually would never do this, but. your art is some of the most beautiful i've ever seen. it's more than simple portraiture, there's so much love and personality in it. your art looks joyful and i truly believe it's bc you're notably in love with your craft.

art is nothing without soul, imagination and the ability to be inspired. art comes from who the artist is, how they've experienced and viewed life and all the ways that manifests mentally, emotionally and physically. you can't program technology to have an organic imagination or to get inspired from said nonexistent imagination. it can only ever steal from the imaginations, creativity and hardwork that already exists.

it's not new for people to devalue other human beings in an attempt to fill some personal void and it's not right, and it should always be argued against. life becomes miserable when people stop being able to connect with each other and we often do this through art. it's a way of trying to reach each other or to simply make others feel something.

when people don't value themselves, they cling to what they can do to compensate for what they think they can't or hadn't been able to. this debate on the moral and legal integrity of ai art stems from built up internal frustrations where one side (pro ai art) think they've finally found a way to make themselves valuable (under capitalism) and feel personally attacked by those (anti ai art) who they believe already possess inherent value bc of their ability to contribute to society via a notable skill.

our current social economy sees to it that there's an entire generation that feels behind due to the pandemic. they think that this is a good way to catch up or a quick and easy way to feel good about themselves. so when you tell them ai art is bad (bc it is), they lash out thinking that their ability to catch up or feel valuable is being taken away from them or that you're trying to tell them that they're undeservering of feeling good or valuable (even tho you're not).

it's not a justification, but in order to argue against anything, you have to understand why such a bad thing is so persistent in the first place and why people defend it.

artists are so fucking valuable, it's undeniable and ai art wouldn't exist without any of you. you all have every right to be outraged and to talk and vent about it bc you all deserve more respect than this. capitalism fucks everyone over in the end, some people will be very slow to willingly realize how this has applied to them and their sense of self worth.

you've worked incredibly fucking hard to get where you are. don't let people on the internet make you want to tear your hair out. doing things to build community and human connection is still valuable. some people — living under capitalism — see everything as monetitary and can't fathom how harmful this is when applied to art and other human means of building connection, community, etc.

life should not be dog eat dog and i promise you, your art is one of the most beautiful and necessary contributions to life you could every make. you're doing a wonderful job and i really want you to internalize that.

(this was written to support misty and all other artists against ai art, this isn't for anyone else. if you decide to be argumentative, argue with your bedroom wall. i'm not responsible for how you interpret, process, react or respond to anything not addressed to you. neither is misty or any other anti ai artist. i'm not arguing with strangers over the internet. cope and seethe.)

thank you so much for such a wonderful, insightful and supportive message, nonny. i can't tell you how much it means to me and I'm sure other artists will appreciate it as well. thank you so much ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

[self-loving-vampire]

In my own argument against AI art I acknowledged that it making art more accessible was a good thing. I just don't think it's worth the cost of rendering artists worthless at their expense. Because it is at their expense. AI art needs a learnset that is neither consensual nor compensated. Even if it's considered fair use and totally not for profit, it can't exist without the work of artists it's based on. It is inherently harmful in this regard.

I don't need to make backwards thinking arguments or excuses for disliking AI art. I don't like it because it threatens the last shred of monetary value artists can cling to, and none of the arguments for it seem to have an answer to this problem; they just (rightly) point out how any proposed 'solution' does more harm than good. But so does AI art, if artists themselves have any value.

Any pro-AI art argument that doesn't take the impact on the artists that made it possible into account basically sounds like 'art isn't worth compensating, and therefore it's okay to devalue artists'.

Regardless of what might be gained from devaluing artists (more accessibility to art, protection from IP law, both of which are good things), it cannot be gained without devaluing artists. I take it most artists aren't okay with this. I'm certainly not, and I'm not making any money from my art in the first place.

The part that's odd in terms of people flipping moral stances over this can probably be chalked up to rationalization. People who are pro-artist enough to be anti-AI art seem to be determined to justify that AI art is inherently wrong in a way that is easier to swallow than the choice between artists and fan works/disabled people/etc.

I made the argument that it's a false dichotomy, but because it's a lose-lose situation, rather than the zero-sum game it's made out to be. People seem determined to believe that their side of the argument must be the correct one, and therefore it must also be the 'morally correct' side. Because of course they would only support the obviously morally correct argument, rather than admit the concept of having a personal stake exists. I'll admit it's odd it's happening with this discourse in particular, but people rationalize things rather than examining their thought process all the time etc.

I don't consider my stance against it 'morally correct' (at least not in the same moral absolutist sense I just referred to; I'm still following my personal values here); I'm personally against AI art because it can't do good without inherently causing harm, simple as that. I'd rather stop the train before it hits than be forced into the trolley problem when the real issues are more systemic than most people involved in this discourse are willing to address. Universal basic income would make it so artists could be artists without worrying about AI art threatening their livelihood. But that would mean admitting that people deserve to live whether or not they're considered productive, and the powers that be don't like that idea. 'People shouldn't have to be productive to survive' is a good argument; 'Artists should just get a day job' isn't. (You've acknowledged the potential economic impact at least and even if we ultimately disagree I appreciate that.)

I'm opposed to IP law too, btw. I think preservation of content is as important as it is overlooked, and the proponents of IP law are the same reason AI-art poses a threat to artists in the first place. But since I do have a personal stake in the argument, the pro-AI art stance doesn't feel like the lesser of two evils, it feels like no matter what happens I lose, and I'm powerless to stop it.

The economic argument is definitely one of the better ones, though I also have a few issues with that one as well. I 100% agree that the ultimate solution that we should be working towards is UBI, though.

Even if the situation for artists did not change in the least, there are already a lot of other poor people working multiple minimum wage jobs who don't really have the opportunity to create as they wish or learn new skills because they are already in the situation that artists could potentially find themselves in.

Those people also need help, and I think the focus on trying to do something about AI while treating UBI as an impossibility is both mistaken and kind of overly narrow. There's already a large underclass of poor people doing exactly what artists are afraid they'll have to do if AI takes their job. It's already a problem worth solving.

(Personal tangent but I know that master, for example, has tons of creative ideas and has even taught himself various skills to pursue them but is still kind of held back from fully devoting himself to them because of work. UBI would help even people who are not currently artists to create things.)

Anyway, on to some issues I have noticed.

For one, I feel like Luddism as a whole is kind of a doomed proposition. It is not really realistically possible to undo useful technological advances without offering an even better alternative. Even the original Luddites completely failed in stopping the advancement of textile technology that would harm their own economic interests as skilled craftspeople.

It seems like a "you can't un-ring a bell" type of situation where I can't really see a way for it to be undone as long as it remains profitable, and efforts to get copyright giants like Disney involved are likely to just result in either everyone getting screwed over or those companies gaining a monopoly on the technology.

But aside from that, I feel like a lot of people are treating this instance of automation and industrialization potentially threatening a group's income differently from all the previous automation efforts that they already pretty much accepted without complaint.

Think, for example, of skilled toymakers, clothiers, furniture makers, and so on. If you have read about the history of pre-industrial clothesmaking as I have, you might be aware of just how a ridiculous amount of time was spent on this before modern technology changed the game.

The industrialization of textiles changed the economic angle of this, obviously. If clothing becomes cheap and accessible because a factory can make it much more efficiently then you can't make nearly as much of a profit by selling whatever surplus certain circumstances may afford your household.

People did lose work (and by extension money) over this, and reacted by destroying industrial machinery.

And yet this same accessibility and plenty had largely positive effects on the net. It's a good thing that half the household doesn't have to spend every waking moment making clothing, and the free time gained from this enabled the pursuit of other things.

Enabling greater access to artistic creations will not have a remotely comparable effect on free time, but it does have its own economic benefits that are easy to overlook if one looks only at artists in isolation and not other kinds of creators.

Consider, for example, an independent game developer with no budget working for their bedroom (not purely a hypothetical even in this day and age, Jeff Vogel is still going). They are basically treading water because their projects are kind of niche and don't look nearly as appealing as other games visually, since their budget won't let them spend that much on that side of things.

AI art enabling such developers to create high-quality art for their projects at an affordable price means that developers like that can keep going more easily and so create things that would otherwise not exist.

The technology would be putting some people out of work while at the same time allowing other people to create beyond the possibilities that previously existed.

This means that the calculation of the costs and benefits is already upon us, and when you factor in the fact that a lot of the more serious propositions for actually doing anything about AI art in practice involve IP expansions then I am not convinced that the anti-AI position is the one that leads to the best world-state.

I sympathize with the difficulty this creates for the people put in that position, though. I think unless an asteroid hits the earth or something then practically everyone will end up in the same situation in the long run as more and more jobs become automated.

The really tragic part is that this would just be an unambiguously good thing if not for the perverse way in which people are expected to "earn" their continued existence through paid labor.

A world with less scarcity and in which no one needs to work would be downright utopian if the increased productivity was shared equally, but it would also be kind of dangerous if all the gains were monopolized by a small elite and everyone outside of it was just rendered irrelevant and left to die.

It really does not have to be like that, and I am optimistic that with the right focus it may be possible to gather support for stronger social assistance as automation advances and more jobs disappear. After all, an actual majority of the world may find itself in that situation within the next century.

I guess the better good news I think I can give you in the short term is that it's probably going to be a while longer before AI really reaches the point where a lot of people prefer it over human artists for at least some purposes, and there's other situations where the people benefitting from AI art would not have hired an artist to begin with so there's no actual income loss there (for example, the median D&D player probably won't be paying someone big bucks to draw their OCs, especially when they can use stuff like picrew and video game character creators instead).

[r34der]

I was literally a few minutes ago, having a random conversation with ai. Tell me why the hell ai brings out my cynical side??

Anyways, so what I mean by that is that I think something along the lines of everything is inherently evil. Millions of others probably think the same thing tbh but then the discussion goes to how even good things will be corrupted by the world. The world always punishes the good ones rather than the bad ones, like how people constantly get away with crimes and so on. And my argument is that everything with a consciousness is evil or eventually will be evil over time unless eliminated beforehand. Like a baby, killing the baby will mean it was good all the way to its end. But raising the baby will influence whether it is good or not. And even if you raise it well, society may change it so there is that. And then there's hoping that they also have good luck and don't have to resort to petty crimes just to get by. And then there's hoping it doesn't have too good luck and becomes drunk and evil on that. And then there's the whole other ordeals the world sets out for baby.

And if the baby was raised wrongly it was evil from the beginning. Or Insecure to the point it was evil but don't sweat the details. You can make a good man desperate enough to commit any crime for success, so in the end said good man isn't good in the end. And that also makes you evil in hand. And it's difficult to fight against this idea, but probably not impossible considering how many smart people there are in this world. Anyways, taking it a step further, anything with free will is or will be evil. Free will is what allows anyone to think evil and therefore do evil. I also forgot to mention thoughts, no matter how good a person acts their thoughts will always have something evil in them atleast once. Like as a child there'd be that one time you thought, 'Oh I wish this person was dead or would die!', and you could argue that you're a child and didn't understand the significance of what you said, like insulting someone accidentally cause you're a child who doesn't know much. Obliviousness doesn't forgive the crime, but in this context you probably could forgive it since it was a thought or exclamation. But now take that and replace it with an older person who knows what the significance is. They think they want someone dead and technically it is a minor evil, even if nothing is acted on. Like an adult can still be a pedophile if they sexualise children even if they don't talk about it or act on it. And then it's still a bad thing, even though its only their thoughts and mind.

I don't know what I'm ranting about anymore but yeah.

Anything with free will is evil. As long as humans exist, there will never be peace and all that.

I can't wait to be proved stupid on Internet, don't doxx me, and I like having friendly discussions. Someone explain to me a positive viewpoint before I go on rants about how to exterminate humanity or something...

And lastly, if anyone reads this, please tell me if I've accidentally offended anyone through this random post of mine. I want to apologise if I've made any negative impacts.

[codeforsomethinggay]

can i ask why you didn't like rise of the tomb raider? not arguing, just curious! (if you don't mind, cause i'm interested in your opinion)

I don’t mind at all! Actually, thanks for asking, because I love to rant ;).

i think my biggest issue with Rise comes from an inherent difference in what i was expecting and wanting from a tr 2013 sequel, and what the Rise people actually wanted to make. I think the people behind Rise wanted to make a classic tomb raider game, but Modern and open world (which, just personally, are strikes 1 and 2 for me, since i don’t particularly care for classic tomb raider or open world games). What I (and I think most of the fandom) was wanting and expecting was … well, an actual sequel for tr 2013. 

And yeah, mechanically, Rise succeeds in that. The platforming and playstyle is essentially the same with a few fun new tricks (tho I would argue that the controls are a little screwy and the ai finicky in this one (i was stuck on one platforming puzzle for around 40 minutes because lara just wouldn’t grab the exact part of a platform the game apparently wanted her to, though i can’t say if this is more a problem between xbox/playstation, as this remains the only xbox game i’ve played)) and the light crafting system and sandbox of tr 2013 is hugely expanded (again, a personal pet peeve, but also a strange decision for a tomb raider game and kind of a transparent attempt at modernization bandwagoning. hell, apparently even god of war is crafting/open world now). Combat is improved. I don’t really have an  issue with any of that. The play is by far the best thing about Rise. And that’s really my problem.

It just doesn’t feel like an actual continuation of the story told and characters molded in tr 2013. And a huge fucking part of that is that of the four survivors of the Endurance, only two appear in this game. And one of those two is Jonah. Now, I like Jonah. If Reyes and especially Sam actually had any sort of presence in Rise, I would appreciate his presence as well. But, and really this is the biggest thing, they don’t. The first game was, frankly, just as much about Sam as it was Lara. The official, canon comics make it very clear Sam’s story isn’t close to finished. Yet, Rise mentions Sam a total of one (1) time, and that single mention doesn’t even jive with comics canon (which it really should, as the comics are really doing the heavy lifting story and character wise). And Jonah just straight up does not have the narrative or emotional connection to Lara that both Reyes and Sam do. 

Anyway, Jonah aside, the other survivor of that horrific trauma is Lara. But, honestly, you wouldn’t know it. The teaser those gifs came from showed us what we thought was a deeply traumatized, suffering, ill woman who doesn’t know what to do or how to be after she Survived. Not long after this perception was largely known and accepted, someone on the Rise team (and i can’t remember exactly who) straight up said they were surprised at this interpretation, and that the teaser was supposed to show how impatient Lara was to Get Back Out There and Discover. And I guess that’s the crux of the problem. That latter interpretation is the one present in Rise. Despite this pretty explicitly going against both tr 2013 and the comics. And despite the fact that that interpretation is fucking boring. It’s boring, disappointing, and just so fucking common. 

Actually, now that I read all that back, I think the Rise team and I had at least one problem in common: the comics. As I said, I think the story and character is far more present in the comics than the actual game itself. And this is also my problem with games like dragon age: inquisition and final fantasy 15 and blizzard: You cannot (or should not, I suppose, since they definitely do) rely on outside media that most of the players are not going to consume to make sense of (or, in the case of Rise, straight up tell) the story for you! Jonah’s arc exists just in the comics (again, unlike Reyes and Sam, who went through actual arcs in the original game). Lara’s emotions and tr 2013 personality and relationships exist just in the comics. Trinity, the main bad guys, are really only introduced in the comics. Sam pretty much just exists in the comics. The big problem I have here is that Rise relies on the comics for things like investment in Jonah’s character, Lara’s character development, and explaining Trinity. And then the game completely disregards the comics when it comes to Sam and overarching plot. 

The comics and game just don’t know how to coexist. The game doesn’t want to tell the story the comics are telling, and the comic has to contort itself to serve the game. I mean, the arc leading up to Rise was all about Himiko taking over Sam and Lara being there for her! And then, out of fucking nowhere, to justify why Lara would go on this ~adventure without Sam, they throw Sam in jail and have Lara ~realize she was just using Sam as an excuse to not go.Really, the plot of Rise should have been the some of the Ana + trinity stuff combined with the Choice and Sacrifice (trinity experiments on Sam, bring Himiko out, Himiko goes on a rampage throughout europe and collects followers). arc in the comic. Now that is a game I would have loved. A direct follow up to tr 2013 that wasn’t a retread, involves the original big bad with the new one, an interesting concept, a continuation of the comics that doesn’t make having read them necessary, and giving both Lara and the audience immediate emotional investment. Ah, but now I’m getting into what should have happened instead of what did.

Anyway, some smaller things: Jacob. Everything about him. The typical, boring messiah. The fact that he’s an ancient Syrian but is still white (like, his daughter is a fucking redhead). The fact that Lara cares more about him than the woman who is essentially her stepmother, and the audience is expected to as well.Which brings me to Ana! What a waste of a charcter. And the fact that she was killed post credits? Jesus.Plus Sofia, whose name I actually had to look up she’s such a nonentity. The treatment of men and woman in Rise is … bad. Especially following a game that has the tagline “a survivor is born” in which 3/4s of those survivors are women.

In the end, how I ultimately feel about Rise will depend on if we actually get an end to the trilogy, and how it’s handled. If we don’t or it’s handled poorly, I could end up seriously hating Rise for for being a poor ending/starting a downward spiral; or i could end up really appreciating it more! If we do get a final game and it’s satisfying, I’ll probably just resent Rise for wasting a game in a trilogy, and for making the lead so ooc and obscenely, disgustingly selfish.

…Sooo that was long and like, hopefully not preachy lol. Thanks for asking/sorry for this essay.