the most frustrating thing about AI Art from a Discourse perspective is that the actual violation involved is pretty nebulous
like, the guys "laundering" specific artists' styles through AI models to mimic them for profit know exactly what they're doing, and it's extremely gross
but we cannot establish "my work was scraped from the public internet and used as part of a dataset for teaching a program what a painting of a tree looks like, without anyone asking or paying me" as, legally, Theft with a capital T. not only is this DMCA Logic which would be a nightmare for 99% of artists if enforced to its conclusion, it's not the right word for what's happening
the actual Violation here is that previously, "I can post my artwork to share with others for free, with minimal risk" was a safe assumption, which created a pretty generous culture of sharing artwork online. most (noteworthy) potential abuses of this digital commons were straightforwardly plagiarism in a way anyone could understand
but the way that generative AI uses its training data is significantly more complicated - there is a clear violation of trust involved, and often malicious intent, but most of the common arguments used to describe this fall short and end up in worse territory
by which I mean, it's hard to put forward an actual moral/legal solution unless you're willing to argue:
Potential sales "lost" count as Theft (so you should in fact stop sharing your Netflix password)
No amount of alteration makes it acceptable to use someone else's art in the production of other art without permission and/or compensation (this would kill entire artistic mediums and benefit nobody but Disney)
Art Styles should be considered Intellectual Property in an enforceable way (impossibly bad, are you kidding me)
it's extremely annoying to talk about, because you'll see people straight up gloating about their Intent To Plagiarize, but it's hard to stick them with any specific crime beyond Generally Scummy Behavior unless you want to create some truly horrible precedents and usher in The Thousand Year Reign of Intellectual Property Law
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Do you guys notice how when Shawn Fain, president of the United Auto Workers union, started planning a general strike, he did it by a) targeting his messaging towards unions with the ability to safely and effectively strike in large numbers, b) laid out a clear, actionable plan for those unions to follow (setting contracts to all expire at the same time, since many unions cannot strike while under contract), c) is using union contracts to set clear, actionable demands that can be met in order to gauge success and provide an end goal, and d) started organizing FOUR YEARS before the proposed strike date to give people the chance to plan accordingly, because it takes a really freaking long time to get tens of millions of people organized?
You notice how he didn't do it by slapping a message on Twitter saying 'hey nobody go to work on Monday, that'll really show 'em'?
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Actual Phone Conversation I Had With A Girl Absolutely Going Through It This Morning:
me very quickly: hi this is dylan from x. how are you today? is now a good time to talk?
girl on the phone: what? oh you know! it's just work, work, work.
me: haha yeah! Just another busy Monday :)
girl on the phone i have known for exactly 11 seconds: sometimes i wish it would just stop. it's relentless. and it's every week! how many mondays can someone go through?
me trying to do my job: ha ha i know right? so I'm calling--
girl on the phone i have known for exactly 16 seconds: i'm so tired. i'm soooooo tired. shelby kept me up all night again. she will not get over keegan. they keep calling each other just to yell i swear to god.
me: only 4 days till the weekend and some sleep! :D
girl: yeah. but she's sleeping with me. at my house. didn't he tell you? who is going to get the dog? or the fucking 300 dollar blender I got them?
me: unfortunately no! so i would love to know more but the reason i'm calling is to get you scheduled for x job interview are you still interested?
girl whispering: what?
me awkwardly: it's...i'm dylan. from x. the x job you applied for. we would like to interview you for it.
girl: oh my god. no. oh my - I am so sorry. I thought you were my friend--I cannot believe--I told you work was relentless. I don't really mean that! I talked about blenders!
me: no, no I totally get it. It can be. But that's why you're interviewing for somewhere better! Tell Shelby to apply too! Do you have any availability on Thursday?
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I’ve said this before, but I always found stories that frame heaven as “evil” and hell as “good” (or less bad) to be genuinely boring. I like more nuanced approaches to each realm.
I understand that for a lot of people, Christianity is a religion they like to criticize and mock, but I feel like if you don’t even understand the fundamentals of the religion, why even attempt to critique it?
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I think it's funniest if Luke and Anakin have completely opposite opinions on sand actually
Anakin: I don't like sand, it's course and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere UGH
Luke: I like sand. Reminds me of home. The good old days when all I had to worry about was not being allowed to go to tosche station to pick up some power converters :') I would happily take a sand bath
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