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the rapture has already happened and only a singular starfish (most innocent) was sent to heaven in 632 AD

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These authors are being accused of breaking China's pornography law for "producing and distributing obscene material". Writers who earn a profit could be jailed for more than 10 years. The law targets "explicit descriptions of gay sex or other sexual perversions". Heterosexual depictions often have more leeway - works by acclaimed Chinese authors, including Nobel Laureate Mo Yan, have graphic sexual scenes, but are widely available.

This is what you are headed for if you are in favor of censoring fanfiction because you think it's content is not appropriate for whatever reason.

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Lil nas x getting charged with 3 counts of battery against a police officer and resisting arrest as a black man going through a mental health crisis where the police approached aggressively and tackled him to the ground is depressingly par for the course for police and specifically the lapd and it should piss people off and instead people are making jokes about it in instagram comments :/

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do yuo guys want to see my invention

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The irony of this new breed of self-righteous AI hunters on AO3 is that they're all just copy and pasting peoples fics into AI detectors, which are all operated by AI and therefore THEY are feeding people's work into the algorithm without their consent and in some cases no doubt circumventing the locks people put on to avoid getting scraped...

Don't copy and paste anyone's AO3 work into third party websites, you're not the good guys in this situation?

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Every time someone comments on my old fic, i feel like I'm an old actor getting paid residuals. Appreciate you, old-fic-commenters. Key source of emotional income, tbh.

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Xenomorph frogs - Sculptures by Li Changchun

2018

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Looking at some of your work, it is stunning but it is very similar in style to AI artwork, do you have any recommendations for how to tell apart photography like yours from AI.

I've been thinking about this. And this may sound controversial at first, but I'm hoping people will hear me out.

We should stop trying so hard to detect AI art.

I think we should all lift that burden from our brains.

I have often talked about "woke goggles." Where conservatives have lost the ability to enjoy anything because they are hypervigilant about detecting anything woke. They've cursed themselves into just hating everything. All they have left is the "God's Not Dead" Cinematic Universe.

And I worry people are getting AI goggles now. They are so concerned about accidentally enjoying robot art and hurting artists that they have overcorrected to the point where they are hurting artists.

One cannot say "AI is all soulless slop that always looks bad" and then accuse a real artist of making something that looks like AI and not hurt them. By doing so, it includes the baggage of all of the "slop" comments along with it. This crusade is having collateral damage to the very artists we are trying to protect.

Yes, we need to be cautious about malicious AI images. Misinformation and deepfakes are going to be a big problem. People using AI imagery for profit is already a mess. But if you are cruising your feed and like a cool sci-fi robot gal or a photo of a waterfall and it turns out to be AI... that's fine.

It was trained by real artists and AI is going to create some cool shit because of that.

Honestly, I think a lot of the worst slop is because the dipshits creating the prompts have no artistic taste. People keep blaming the AI for how bad it looks and often don't consider it is a product of the loser who published it.

There is plenty of non-slop out there that has fooled me. And, like it or not, it is going to get harder and harder to tell what is AI. Until there are better tools or better regulations, I don't think there is much we can do to avoid enjoying AI art every once in a while. If only by accident.

Current "AI detectors" are mostly a scam. Even the best forensic-level AI image detectors struggle to stay above 70–80% accuracy across a wide range of models and image types. And that's in controlled lab conditions.

Free online tools often drop to near coin-flip accuracy (50–60%), especially with newer image generators and post-processing applied.

The best way to avoid AI imagery is to look at an artist's body of work. It's much harder to create consistent, non-obvious fake images in a large sample size. That is usually enough to have confidence in authenticity. Plus, if they have posted similar art before 2022, you can pretty much rule out any shenanigans.

Otis literally died before genAI was available.

But images you see in the wild, just let yourself enjoy them if that is what your brain wants to do. It'll be okay.

I just think we are attacking this backwards. If we want to protect artists, we need to support them.

Calling out random AI art does not support them.

It does not put money in their pockets.

It does not grow their audience.

Over a decade ago I tried to lead a fight to create better systems of attribution on websites like Reddit and Imgur. I even spoke to the Imgur team after an article was written about me.

I asked them to allow sources on their posts and to develop tech that would help people find where an image came from. They said they were "working on it" and it never manifested.

IMAGE SHARING SITES STEAL MORE FROM ARTISTS THAN AI.

But we just kind of accepted it. No one really joined me in my fight. The prevailing defeatist attitude was, "That's just the way it is."

I think now is the time to demand better attribution systems. We need to be vigilant about making sure as many posts as possible have good sourcing. If an image on Reddit goes viral, the top comment should be the source. And if it isn't, you should try to find it and add it.

Just to be clear, "credit to the original artist" is NOT proper attribution.

And perhaps we can lobby these image sharing sites to create better sourcing systems and tools. They could even use fucking AI to find the earliest posted version of an image.

And it would be nice if it didn't require people to go into the comments to find the source. It could just be in the headline. They could even create little badges "made by a human" for verified artists.

Good attribution helps artists grow their audience. It is one of the single most effective things you can do to help them.

I literally just got this message...

There are maybe 10 popular artists who I helped grow their audience early on. Just because I reblogged their work and added links to all of their social media. I even hired my best friend to add sourcing information to every post because I believed so much in good attribution.

Calling out AI art may feel good in the moment. You caught someone trying to trick people and it feels like justice. But, in most cases, the tangible benefits to real artists seem small. It impedes your ability to enjoy art without always being suspicious. And the risk of telling someone you think they make soulless slop doesn't seem worth it.

But putting that time and effort into attribution *would* be worth it. I have proven it time and time again.

I also think people should consider having a monthly art budget. I don't care if it is $5. But if we all commit to seeking out cool artists and being their collective patrons, we could really make a difference and keep real art alive. Just commit to finding a cool new artist every month and financially contributing to them in some way.

On a bigger scale I think advocating for universal basic income, art grants for education and creation, and government regulation of AI would all be helpful long term goals. Though I think our friends in Europe may have to take the lead on regulation at the moment.

So...

Stop worrying about enjoying or calling out AI art.

Demand better attribution from image sharing sites.

Make sure all art has a source listed.

Start an art budget.

Advocate for better regulations.

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tumblr don't screw this up for me

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things you DO NOT need to be a man

a dick

he/him pronouns

XY chromosomes

things you DO need to be a man

the swiftness of a coursing river

the force of a great typhoon

the strength of a raging fire

the mysteriousness of the dark side of the moon

^this post was brought to you by LGBT^

Let's

Get down to

Business

To defeat the huns

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hot take possibly? but i actually think it’s okay for things to be marketed for adults. it’s literally okay if things aren’t suitable for children. i feel like we are losing the plot

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Showing the rings of Saturn to Bronx street sex workers, Via.

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Feel free to print and distribute this image

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I will NEVER let ppl forget that Brad Pitt terrorised and beat Angelina Jolie and their kids so bad on a plane ride that a report was filed by the FBI with multiple witnesses. And I will never forget that Angelina Jolie filed for divorce from him almost immediately after that incident in 2016 and it wasn't until THIS YEAR that Pitt agreed to it after ALMOST A DECADE of dragging her and their kids through bullshit defamation court proceedings. But you'd never know because that fucker is everywhere with his fake racecar movie and shitty cheek fillers and everyone just eats it up. So many people warned that the Depp v Heard case would light the way for famous abusers to be rehabilitated in the public eye and it did. It proved to abusers that they don't even need to be sorry or acknowledge what they did they can just keep showing up, smear their victims behind the scenes with astro turfing and let the fans and industry do the rest. brad pitt, Kevin Spacey, James Franco, Ezra Miller, Johnny Depp etc. all of them are thriving in the spotlight rn and being invited to major industry events and even winning awards despite documented incidents of abuse. It's so fucking depressing.