#AI can never replace good writers

[the-kipsabian]

its a sad day when you see a person you know is good and creative to use ai tools to make art

[2005noroithecurse]

it does worry me that ppl are starting to ask chatgpt to write fics for them & soon writers on here might be accused of ripping off an AI generated fic/having their works ripped off into an AI generated fic

[nowoyas]

Trying to make sense of the Nanowrimo statement to the best of my abilities and fuck, man. It's hard.

It's hard because it seems to me that, first and foremost, the organization itself has forgotten the fucking point.

Nanowrimo was never about the words themselves. It was never about having fifty thousand marketable words to sell to publishing companies and then to the masses. It was a challenge, and it was hard, and it is hard, and it's supposed to be. The point is that it's hard. It's hard to sit down and carve out time and create a world and create characters and turn these things into a coherent plot with themes and emotional impact and an ending that's satisfying. It's hard to go back and make changes and edit those into something likable, something that feels worth reading. It's hard to find a beautifully-written scene in your document and have to make the decision that it's beautiful but it doesn't work in the broader context. It's fucking hard.

Writing and editing are skills. You build them and you hone them. Writing the way the challenge initially encouraged--don't listen to that voice in your head that's nitpicking every word on the page, put off the criticism for a later date, for now just let go and get your thoughts out--is even a different skill from writing in general. Some people don't particularly care about refining that skill to some end goal or another, and simply want to play. Some people sit down and try to improve and improve and improve because that is meaningful to them. Some are in a weird in-between where they don't really know what they want, and some have always liked the idea of writing and wanted a place to start. The challenge was a good place for this--sit down, put your butt in a chair, open a blank document, and by the end of the month, try to put fifty thousand words in that document.

How does it make you feel to try? Your wrists ache and you don't feel like any of the words were any good, but didn't you learn something about the process? Re-reading it, don't you think it sounds better if you swap these two sentences, if you replace this word, if you take out this comma? Maybe you didn't hit 50k words. Maybe you only wrote 10k. But isn't it cool, that you wrote ten thousand words? Doesn't it feel nice that you did something? We can try again. We can keep getting better, or just throwing ourselves into it for fun or whatever, and we can do it again and again.

I guess I don't completely know where I'm going with this post. If you've followed me or many tumblr users for any amount of time, you've probably already heard a thousand times about how generative AI hurts the environment so many of us have been so desperately trying to save, about how generative AI is again and again used to exploit big authors, little authors, up-and-coming authors, first time authors, people posting on Ao3 as a hobby, people self-publishing e-books on Amazon, traditionally published authors, and everyone in between. You've probably seen the statements from developers of these "tools", things like how being required to obtain permission for everything in the database used to train the language model would destroy the tool entirely. You've seen posts about new AI tools scraping Ao3 so they can make money off someone else's hobby and putting the legality of the site itself at risk. For an organization that used to dedicate itself to making writing more accessible for people and for creating a community of writers, Nanowrimo has spent the past several years systematically cracking that community to bits, and now, it's made an official statement claiming that the exploitation of writers in its community is okay, because otherwise, someone might find it too hard to complete a challenge that's meant to be hard to begin with.

I couldn't thank Nanowrimo enough for what it did for me when I started out. I don't know how to find community in the same way. But you can bet that I've deleted my account, and I'll be finding my own path forward without it. Thanks for the fucking memories, I guess.

[autisticandroids]

i've been seeing ai takes that i actually agree with and have been saying for months get notes so i want to throw my hat into the ring.

so i think there are two main distinct problems with "ai," which exist kind of in opposition to each other. the first happens when ai is good at what it's supposed to do, and the second happens when it's bad at it.

the first is well-exemplified by ai visual art. now, there are a lot of arguments about the quality of ai visual art, about how it's soulless, or cliche, or whatever, and to those i say: do you think ai art is going to be replacing monet and picasso? do you think those pieces are going in museums? no. they are going to be replacing soulless dreck like corporate logos, the sprites for low-rent edugames, and book covers with that stupid cartoon art style made in canva. the kind of art that everyone thinks of as soulless and worthless anyway. the kind of art that keeps people with art degrees actually employed.

this is a problem of automation. while ai art certainly has its flaws and failings, the main issue with it is that it's good enough to replace crap art that no one does by choice. which is a problem of capitalism. in a society where people don't have to sell their labor to survive, machines performing labor more efficiently so humans don't have to is a boon! this is i think more obviously true for, like, manufacturing than for art - nobody wants to be the guy putting eyelets in shoes all day, and everybody needs shoes, whereas a lot of people want to draw their whole lives, and nobody needs visual art (not the way they need shoes) - but i think that it's still true that in a perfect world, ai art would be a net boon, because giving people without the skill to actually draw the ability to visualize the things they see inside their head is... good? wider access to beauty and the ability to create it is good? it's not necessary, it's not vital, but it is cool. the issue is that we live in a society where that also takes food out of people's mouths.

but the second problem is the much scarier one, imo, and it's what happens when ai is bad. in the current discourse, that's exemplified by chatgpt and other large language models. as much hand-wringing as there has been about chatgpt replacing writers, it's much worse at imitating human-written text than, say, midjourney is at imitating human-made art. it can imitate style well, which means that it can successfully replace text that has no meaningful semantic content - cover letters, online ads, clickbait articles, the kind of stuff that says nothing and exists to exist. but because it can't evaluate what's true, or even keep straight what it said thirty seconds ago, it can't meaningfully replace a human writer. it will honestly probably never be able to unless they change how they train it, because the way LLMs work is so antithetical to how language and writing actually works.

the issue is that people think it can. which means they use it to do stuff it's not equipped for. at best, what you end up with is a lot of very poorly written children's books selling on amazon for $3. this is a shitty scam, but is mostly harmless. the behind the bastards episode on this has a pretty solid description of what that looks like right now, although they also do a lot of pretty pointless fearmongering about the death of art and the death of media literacy and saving the children. (incidentally, the "comics" described demonstrate the ways in which ai art has the same weaknesses as ai text - both are incapable of consistency or narrative. it's just that visual art doesn't necessarily need those things to be useful as art, and text (often) does). like, overall, the existence of these kids book scams are bad? but they're a gnat bite.

to find the worst case scenario of LLM misuse, you don't even have to leave the amazon kindle section. you don't even have to stop looking at scam books. all you have to do is change from looking at kids books to foraging guides. i'm not exaggerating when i say that in terms of texts whose factuality has direct consequences, foraging guides are up there with building safety regulations. if a foraging guide has incorrect information in it, people who use that foraging guide will die. that's all there is to it. there is no antidote to amanita phalloides poisoning, only supportive care, and even if you survive, you will need a liver transplant.

the problem here is that sometimes it's important for text to be factually accurate. openart isn't marketed as photographic software, and even though people do use it to lie, they have also been using photoshop to do that for decades, and before that it was scissors and paintbrushes. chatgpt and its ilk are sometimes marketed as fact-finding software, search engine assistants and writing assistants. and this is dangerous. because while people have been lying intentionally for decades, the level of misinformation potentially provided by chatgpt is unprecedented. and then there are people like the foraging book scammers who aren't lying on purpose, but rather not caring about the truth content of their output. obviously this happens in real life - the kids book scam i mentioned earlier is just an update of a non-ai scam involving ghostwriters - but it's much easier to pull off, and unlike lying for personal gain, which will always happen no matter how difficult it is, lying out of laziness is motivated by, well, the ease of the lie.* if it takes fifteen minutes and a chatgpt account to pump out fake foraging books for a quick buck, people will do it.

*also part of this is how easy it is to make things look like high effort professional content - people who are lying out of laziness often do it in ways that are obviously identifiable, and LLMs might make it easier to pass basic professionalism scans.

and honestly i don't think LLMs are the biggest problem that machine learning/ai creates here. while the ai foraging books are, well, really, really bad, most of the problem content generated by chatgpt is more on the level of scam children's books. the entire time that the internet has been shitting itself about ai art and LLM's i've been pulling my hair out about the kinds of priorities people have, because corporations have been using ai to sort the resumes of job applicants for years, and it turns out the ai is racist. there are all sorts of ways machine learning algorithms have been integrated into daily life over the past decade: predictive policing, self-driving cars, and even the youtube algorithm. and all of these are much more dangerous (in most cases) than chatgpt. it makes me insane that just because ai art and LLMs happen to touch on things that most internet users are familiar with the working of, people are freaking out about it because it's the death of art or whatever, when they should have been freaking out about the robot telling the cops to kick people's faces in.

(not to mention the environmental impact of all this crap.)

[ginnyruin]

i'm sorry but the nurchie "art" is clearly AI generated??? can we please stop sharing and praising shit that some algorithm spat out without ever asking the original creators whose work it steals and regurgitates for their permission

- sincerely, a pissed-off artist

Hello,

I’m going to set the record straight, and I’d suggest you read carefully before making any more baseless accusations. Nurchie is an actual artist—a trained one, with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in digital art and two-dimensional studies (drawing and painting) from a prestigious university. She has 16 years of professional design/digital art experience, and a publicly documented portfolio going back well before AI art even existed.

go look at her earliest work on Deviantart and you'll see how precisely detailed she draws hands, fingers, and clothing. Everything, really.

If you had bothered to do any homework, you’d see that her work reflects thousands of hours of dedicated practice and the expertise of a seasoned digital artist.

Calling her work AI generated is BEYOND insulting. it’s lazy, dismissive, and downright disrespectful to a person who has spent years honing her craft.

She doesn’t ask for clout, she doesn’t do commissions, she doesn't have a patreon or Kofi. She only made a Twitter years ago because I asked her to share her talent with the world or she wouldn't even bother.

This tendency to label any polished work as “AI” just shows ignorance, plain and simple. Real artists deserve better than to have their skills lumped in with AI machine-generated content by people who can’t tell the difference.

Each of her digital paintings takes anywhere from 30-80+ hours. For Altered State specifically, she's been working on all these art pieces for months while I've been on a posting hiatus. Her incredible work keeps me inspired; I would have literally quit ages ago. We go back and forth on details from the writing in the fic and I see these changes she makes in real time.

She paints in her limited free time for these niche fandoms because she loves the stories and wants to support the writers in it. In a world where fandom is becoming increasingly commodified, she is a rare gem.

I didn't even want to bother Nurchie with this silly comment of yours, but she's such a good sport she just laughed at the idea that anyone could accuse her art of being AI generated. She uses a combo of adobe CC suite and clip studio to draw.

nurchie messaged me this, and I asked for her permission to share it: [I just think they are probably some struggling artist, upset that they feel replaced by soulless AI and are lashing out any time they think they see it. I'm sympathetic to their feelings, and understand the annoyance. I've been battling the improper usage of it in my workplace. AI is not AI but just a data collection tool, and I completely agree that the human eye could never be replaced by it.]

yeah, she's the most chill, sweetest person ever, too. So maybe think twice before throwing around accusations you clearly can’t back up. You're trying to hurt a real artist.

-sincerely,

A writer who knows a real artist

https://www.deviantart.com/nurchie/gallery

edit: also accusations like this drive away real fanartists. Why should they bother sharing their work if their talent and skill are being dismissed as some algorithm's output? it's toxic. fandom spaces will be flooded with AI-generated content in the future because all the true artists will have left.

[the-nyanguard-party]

so i'm guessing you don't give a shit that ai is built on theft and people are trying to replace artists' and writers jobs with ai since ai (something unnecessary to society) uses the same resources as things that are necessary to modern society

i am a big fan of how your takeaway from my post is that i'm saying exploitation and waste of resources is good and we should never do anything about it. i literally ended the post saying you should become a marxist instead of becoming a luddite for this one specific technology and not looking at the whole of capitalist production and trying to figure out what can actually be done about it

anyway tumblr is unnecessary to society so you should log off forever

[alicepao13]

Hudson and Rex S07E03

Okay, it didn't have the dynamic that most of us tune in for but it wasn't bad. I didn’t like the AI b plot and that’s coming from a person who is not fully anti AI. Wherever one might stand on the issue, what's completely unrealistic is that for a machine to be trained to “think like a cop”, you have to throw so much money at it that the SJPD would have a hole in their budget for the foreseeable future.

Joe thinks he's going fishing. You shouldn't have brought Rex with you, buddy. He will manage to find a body somehow.

Charlie: *calls* Sarah: *drops everything, literally* (That was really funny.)

Damn, Charlie’s brother disappeared in Mexico? And Charlie is down there being a cowboy? I bet the federales will love that. (I know we won’t get to see it but I’d have loved to.)

I did not expect I’d have to worry about Jack’s safety this season, by the way. I hope the writers don’t come up with any stupid ideas like killing him.

Charlie and Sarah said I love you over the phone. This time not while one of them was undercover. That’s some improvement.

I think we could all tell that that’s not Diesel. Again, I wish I was ten years old so that I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.

I like Sarah as an investigator. And Sarah with a badge. And Sarah interrogating.

Had to google Elisha Cuthbert. Jennifer Garner, I know, obviously.

Don’t make fun of Jesse having an AI girlfriend. Do you have any idea how many real men are dealing with this right now? Actually, forget the men. I read in a NY Times article about a woman who is spending $200 per month to have her own AI boyfriend via ChatGPT. And I understand this only a bit more than the men who do it because an AI boyfriend can't murder you. Yet.

If they want to get the AI to do something useful, by the way, why not train it to be able to translate dog barks? And all the profanity that is the result of Rex often being unable to get his humans to understand exactly what he means.

That St. Pierre seems like Gotham 2. St. John's is obviously Gotham 1. I guess it’s a better place to make a crime show than I thought.

If they keep going with the use of orange, I’m going to start confusing this show with NCIS.

I know the guy that plays the chef from so many things.

Silicon Sherlock. Good one.

Sarah said what I've been thinking, that Jesse is basically training the AI that could replace his own damn job.

Sarah Truong, shaking hands and kissing babies. Well, just the hands for now. Like, a lot. Cops might shake hands on occasion but when you enter an unknown situation and you don’t know who you’re dealing with, you need to have your gun hand free. In a murder investigation, it's quite possible that one of the people you're interviewing is a killer. Again, one thing that I assume at one point was taught to John Readon for his role (I’ve seen Charlie refusing handshakes plenty) but not the others? I don't want to be unfair, he’s probably shaken some hands too but a) he’s left handed so his gun hand is his left hand, most people shake hands with their right hand, b) they go out of their way to show Sarah initiating the handshake, which… I guess they’re trying to make her seem friendly? As a female cop, it’s the last thing she needs. She’s already being perceived as less of a threat due to gender stereotyping, stature and musculature.

Dogs can't eat raw oysters but raw meat is fine? Interesting. I wonder what the verdict is on sushi.

Covid? There must be a mistake, sir, we never had Covid in this world.

I don’t know if in an episode where your lead investigator is absent you should be passing throughout the whole episode the messaging that an AI can do a lot of the investigative work that a human does. And then at the end of said episode, announcing, without much reason for it since you don't show the AI making any mistakes, that investigations are a human's job when at least half your show is about a dog having a significant role in every investigation.

I’m confused as to where the morgue is. And what kind of morgue is just an empty room with a gurney in the middle. Also, it's good that they realized that they needed an ME or an assistant or whatever, otherwise they'd have Sarah do the testing part and monologue the findings to herself.

I thought the son had done the murder and then turns out that almost everyone of the suspects was involved in the murder one way or another. But I was right.

There was an ad on my episode copy about pizza. Don’t show me the pizza if I can’t get the pizza.

Charlie and Sarah's house seems... kinda huge? From the outside, anyway. I'm not sure where all these rooms are on the inside lol

I honestly can’t judge this episode harshly because I can imagine them trying to come up with ideas with John Reardon being unavailable and I also wonder how much of that also had to do with them not showing Diesel much. I don’t mean that Diesel couldn’t work with the others, maybe they took it as an opportunity to rest Diesel and use some of the younger dogs more since that level of chemistry that John Reardon has with Diesel wouldn't be there either way.

For me, it is pointless to compare the dogs. We knew that if the show goes on long enough, the time would come where Diesel would be shown less and eventually be replaced. I've gone through this many times now so for me it's not something new or unnatural. As a kid I didn't notice, but by the time I got to the Italian Rex episodes, I was old enough to easily tell the difference between the dogs (plus, sometimes they didn't even bother to find one that looked like the previous one). It won't be easy to find another Diesel, though.

Two things I would have liked to see: Rex reacting to Charlie's absence. I mean, when Sarah was away, Rex took her shirt. When Jesse was shot, Rex sat mournfully under his desk. When Joe was going on vacation, Rex hid his suitcase to prevent him from leaving. I was expecting something on that front. And the other is related to that, I was expecting Rex to run to the phone at the sound of Charlie's voice in the end scene. Instead, he seemed... preoccupied with the puffin plushie. Either they didn't even sit down to think how Charlie's absence would affect Rex, at least when he wasn't working because we've established that Rex is a very professional dog, or they didn't have time to train the dog to do these things. I don't know which one it is, so I can't really fault them for that.

Next phone call better be Charlie asking Sarah what she’s wearing. (I will continue being delusional, don’t mind me.)

The situation regarding episode info is chaotic. And I’d very much like to know who adds the information on IMDb because while they seem to be from the production (all the information about guest stars has been accurate), they don’t seem to know when and in which order the episodes will air. Meanwhile, other websites which are usually more accurate, are also wrong.

Promo: So the next one is not the bee episode? I don’t get it. This episode has already changed number twice. Also, looks like Charlie is going to be searching for his brother for the foreseeable future.

[no-face-no-shame]

The worst part about ppl who support all of that AI bullshit is that at the end of the day they don't care. They don't care about artists. You can give them all of the best arguments and once they can't argue anymore, they will just shrug and go get ChatGPT to write their essay. They don't give a single fuck about the ethical part of the situation, about artists' frustration with their work being stolen and them being replaced. You can't reason with them because in the end they just don't care. Or tell you that you "can't be forever opposed to AI because this is the future."

Cool. I don't want this future. I don't want stupid, soulless machines to replace human creativity through stealing human work. I study IT directed specifically at AI, so I know how it works from the kitchen. I'm also a writer myself and I know what it takes to write a good story. A lot. AI should never be allowed to replace writers and artists.

If this is the future, then we can change it. Future is purely dependent on what we choose to do right now

[cupcraft]

"AI won't compete with talented artists"

Is my least favorite argument around AI art/writing/etc.

Firstly it poses these big issues for me: you don't understand how making art works and that people develop as an artist, that there's an easy way to place the line of who are "good talentrd artists". But there's one I want to go into more than these two issues and thats the by saying this you assume capitalists and the system we have gives a shit about "real good artists".

Capitalism doesn't care if artists can be talented or good at what they do. They don't care if the artist had a large portfolio, has worked on big named projects, is highly revered or respected, or even that they're resume is longer than most. They don't. The goal of capitalism is profit which relies heavily on worker exploitation. And with the advent of the unionization Renaissance and the writer actors strike plus much more, you can kind of piece together why talent isn't going to matter with ai art. Unionization and worker solidarity is the anthesis to workers exploitation. Solidarity is an attempt to remove power of capitalists to exploit. So, why did the execs during the writers strike/actors strike want ai so bad and kept putting their feet down? Why is ai art so promising to capitalists?

Well here's an article describing the excuse of why they want ai art

But in reality this really translates to "instead of exploiting workers (ones that will unionize/go on strike) we can replace and steal their work and avoid issues with a human worker". The propaganda is always "it will help innovation and creativity" the company line of all capitalism. But capitalism doesn't actually want to advance or be transformative or even innovate (source is general topic not just ai art). They want to maintain power and profit.

Talented artists (if you can even pick a definable line for that) will not survive in a world that does not carefully regulate AI and protect their creative property. They just won't. Automation of work can never work under a framework of capitalism where peoples jobs are tied to their Healthcare and livability.

People assume that business has their best interests at heart and many assume "well it doesn't affect me ofc bc I enjoy making ai art,". And it's a fools errand. The foot in the door to art, to automating and ridding human artists in the pursuance of profit and cheap efficiency is bad and it will get worse. The foot in the door with no regulations will affect other jobs, other humans, other fields. (Take ridding cashiers at grocery stores as a recent example. The source is a bit pro in its tone sadly, but I thought it a good article to read about the concept. And how ai forces customers to be free training for the ai so they can sell u more shit lmfao). And as more and more jobs are replaced with no regulation or power given to workers, economic disparity will get worse. And you having fun with ai art don't see that the foot in thendoor is dangerous and you don't care bc it currently doesn't affect you.

And this isn't to fear monger. Or to say technology is bad. What it is to say is stop placing your trust into businesses whose goal is efficiency and profit and exploitation above all else and stand in solidarity with your fellow human. Beg for regulations and control and protections for their sake and yours.

[pingnova]

I think one of the key things to learning to appreciate art and media is recognizing intention. it's very easy to dismiss things in a day and age of just constant blasts of media to your face, and now even with machine learning ("ai") companies trying to position themselves as replacements for artists. when you learn about art it isn't done from 10 feet away, looking at the whole of the image, and asking whether it's to your tastes. it's looking at things under a microscope, each brush stroke and word, all of the little things intentionally done to create the larger piece. additionally being in a capitalist society, art is frequently impressive for its rejection of that, sometimes even to the point of the artist sacrificing their own livelihood for it. you have to go out of your way in this kind of society to make stuff that isn't economically assured, that you may have no return from. one of the most helpful things I learned re: the intentional detail was from a wacky conservative cinema professor who was also obsessed with gay subtext (like, I'm gay and he saw gay in places I absolutely did not) (never sure if this was a good or bad obsession). he told us to watch each frame of the film as if it was a written page, where every element of the frame had meaning and was intentionally placed - like a word might be in a book. the color, angle, theme, dialogue, etc. when you look at all art like that, like it's trying to talk to you in another language, intentionally created to convey meaning to people who don't even speak that language, you get a lot more out of it. and while I didn't have that framework before the cinema course, that idea was already where a lot of my appreciation for fanfic and fanart came from. someone sat down, rejected doing something else they needed to survive, wrote and agonized over every word or brush stroke in this, and then on top of that, shared it with the world. there's both the textual story and the subtextual story underneath that make it so awesome. not to say that authors or writers feel this as they do it, but from an outside perspective regardless of their own thoughts, that's certainly one way it can be analyzed. and for me personally this makes enthusing at length about a fic very easy. I have similar reactions to Van Gogh and Monet. It's just one inanimate thing, it seems maybe small and limited in its interpretation, but if you have the passion and the willingness to lean wayyyyy in, it's absolutely bigger than anything. I can easily write whole papers for my legal class or in fic comments. really understanding this way of perceiving helped me a lot with random life stuff and made it a lot fuller, I wish we could somehow do better teaching people to open up this way. art deserves that kind of understanding, fanart especially.

[kaibacorpintern]

given all the commotion lately around AI and programs that, on their face, "act" and "speak" in human ways, as well as the looming threat of AI replacing artists and writers, i was thinking again about Kaiba's Atem hologram in DSOD... and how despite his detailed recreation, and his ability to control every aspect of the hologram, the hologram is ultimately less satisfying than the real Atem.

on one level, it points to a change in Kaiba's character - a character who finds it extremely difficult to trust anyone, who has been taught it's safer to be alone and keep other people out, abandons a version of Atem he can control from top to bottom, from algorithms to pixels - in other words, a "safe" version of Atem - in search of the real Atem - the Atem who is human like him, an Atem who is Other in relation to Kaiba's Self, and therefore ineffable, mysterious, unknowable, and "unsafe." An AI chatbot/digital avatar is safe; it will never hurt you. Your best friend is a full person with thoughts and feelings of their own; they might or might not hurt you someday, on purpose or on accident. Kaiba choosing the dangerous and the mysterious over the safe and controllable - for a relationship - is a step forward for him, a step that takes him further down the path he started on at the end of battle city, when he chose to put his faith in #friendship to help Yami win against Yami Malik. DSOD kaiba is deliberately and purposefully exposing himself to the possible pain of the Others - by pursuing a meeting with the real Atem, instead of a fake Atem.

in addition, "actually, technology isn't good enough to replace the real" is SUCH an interesting direction for a character who's made his mark on the world via science fiction tech genius inventions like lifelike holograms and neural networks and such. like. what other "tech"-y character! none lol!

[mekkatoniks]

Alright y'all, first Sunnyblr post but this one is real important to me because it includes both something that is threatening TO ME as a writer and also something I see as mischaracterization which is something I despise. My apologies if I can't put this together in a better way, I feel real anxious right now lmao. You may have seen the clip, maybe two, of Glenn talking about AI. This has caused a major reaction, originally down on Twitter (bcs. of course) and I guess I'm here to provide the whole thing, in writing.

First thing's first I wanna reassure you that Glenn did not use AI in the writers room. He views AI as a threat.

I watched the whole interview when it came out and here's the summary: He says he was personally surprised by the quality of the AI at writing jokes, some time after Matt expresses that he doesn't view ChatGPT/AI to be "good enough" to really interfere with writers (may have to check up on this wording). They did not use this material in the show. Charlie and Glenn did this only to test it. This follows by him saying he thinks we're gonna get to a point where eventually we'll have to accept the way things are going (at the point we're at already I think we can't really fight AI here, but put protections in place for writers against AI and its improper usage, so using it to solely generate ideas, using it as a replacement for writers as a whole, etc), that it's a tool people will have to learn to use, but that ultimately there'd still need to be at least one human in the room to curate it all because there's never really going to be a fully finished product (which isn't an endorsement of that type of heavy AI usage, seems more like an observation and that AI will always still have limits).

Jay continues from this saying that even if it does create a fully finished product, there'll still be the appetite for people to tell stories to other people, and that for every big shift it stays the same. Jay is also in agreement that it'd be a tool but that it isn't something to be scared of, just more aware of; he doesn't view it as a threat. Glenn replies that he does view it as a threat and continues to talk cynically about it, saying we could be close to having just one guy and then your writers room is entirely chatbots (this is not spoken as a good thing obviously. It's kinda comedic but there's truth in it especially for cynical people I suppose). Matt makes a joke about that being Glenn's dream and Glenn laughs about it (it was pretty fucking funny) and is like "i'm a bit misanthropic ur right lol". When Matt begins speaking again Glenn jumps in to say that he is not saying that it's a good thing, which is more likely to be in reference to AI as well. At the end of the question Jay says he stands with the WGA and Glenn agrees. That is all that is said in that portion of the interview. So I suppose the end point is... he doesn't support AI, certainly not to the extent some are making it seem.

I get major anxiety when it comes to things like this - as in, people reacting to something in a way that indicates they have misinterpreted or don't have the full thing or anything like this, it legitimately makes me feel sick. I can understand people's reactions at least because AI is a threat! That's why the WGA wants protections for writers from the improper usage of AI, because they've drawn similar conclusions and want to prevent it. Fuck, I'm a writer. I of all people would understand how this affects anything. But this specific situation is not one that really calls for the type of reaction it has received? It's gotten to a point where people have started attacking him for real petty reasons like appearance because of it. It's immature, unnecessary, and really just low.

If I've had the most uncritical thinking moment in the whole universe and you think there's something really wrong with the way I have viewed the situation, that I've been the one to misinterpret it, then please be civil about it. Or even if there's a point you want to just bring up. Due to issues I have, I avoid posting about a lot of things because I'm always focused on getting things right and the idea that I may be getting it wrong, in a space where people can see (and let's be honest there's always a chance of seeing the most vile shit in response and I feel anxious over it for days which is unhealthy), is distressing to me. But I'm slowly putting myself out there lol, I mostly just came here to give comfort to anyone or assuage much of their anxiety as possible. I do not at any point want to look like I'm dickriding but this is something I feel has truly been perceived wrong by a lot of people! I think the timing of everything, being asked that question and answering it during the strike, has definitely contributed to a lot of this and tension is high for a lot but I genuinely think Glenn's answer as well as Jay's were nuanced for the time they had to answer it (they can't go on too long) and I appreciate that. Thank you for reading!

[xannador]

Please don't give up. I'm sure this is just a bad trend that will go away like NFTs.

I'm afraid that's not the case.

NFT's were intrinsically worthless. Their value was derived from there always being a bigger idiot to buy them from you. Once they ran out of idiots, the pyramid scheme collapsed. AI actually has a variety of different applications that can create value. Not all of them are bad. It can and will be used in the medical industry to find and recognize diseases and other afflictions much faster. It has its uses in software for programmers to write their code more quickly and with fewer mistakes. And so much more, no point in listing them all off.

It is just a pattern recognition software. But it is extremely powerful. And it is going to reshape almost every single industry, not just the media. It will do some good. And it will also cause an incredible amount of damage.

So no, this shit is never gonna go away. Not unless a solar flare fries all our technology in a single cataclysmic event. But until that happy day, we're going to have to deal with it and protect ourselves from it.

I think the people who create art or write for no reason other than the joy of it have nothing to worry about. Photography didn't stop people from painting either. But if you want to make a living from art/writing/animation or want to grow an audience... yeah you're probably fucked. You'll be forced to learn to use it or be left behind.

For what it's worth, the one thing technology has never been able to replace, and never will, is humanity itself. You cannot form a fulfilling social connection with a robot. AI can't replace communities. And tech bro aren't interested in infiltrating tiny fringe niches and fandoms with their piece of shit bots.

AI isn't able to entirely replace us artists and writers just yet. I have played around with AI to see if I could use it in any shape or form. But the moment you ask it to do something specific and be consistent in any way, it just completely falls apart. It can't generate consistent character designs or settings or props. It doesn't understand camera angles or perspective at all. You can't make edits or small/specific changes either. Cause it doesn't fucking know what it's doing or making.

This might change. The technology is getting better and better everyday. I think it is inevitable before AI can generate images of characters/environments in any style, from any angle, with any expression, etc. And we'll be fully redundant. It might take a month. Maybe a year, maybe longer. But it's coming.

Just not today. So I say enjoy whatever time we have left.

[dross-the-fish]

Thoughts on AI I was talking to some people about AI and generally I've been pretty neutral on AI as a tool. I've seen people bring up that it could be used as a good way for disabled people or people who generally aren't good at art to bring their ideas to life and honestly I'm pretty ok with that on principle. I am pretty firmly against AI being allowed to indiscriminately scrape the work of artists without their input or say so and I'm against Ai being used by the entertainment industry as a replacement for actual artists and writers. However what I really want to talk about is the use of AI as a tool, assuming it can be used ethically. I really hate the argument of "It's soulless," or "It's cheating" (used ethically it's just anther medium like photography or collages. Art is not measured by the amount of effort or the tools used. I am really tired of that take) and a particular scaremongering argument I've had directed at myself "It will replace you."

Because I do draw that's the one I get leveled at me the most. That AI will do what I do and do it better so there will be no point to me or what I make. They like to paint artists vs AI as John Henry vs The Machine and I just do not care for it. I think it's reductive to art and to artists to frame the value of art as a matter of effort vs quality of product. AI cannot make what I make because it's not me. It won't create my characters, it can only output what it's fed. The work it creates may be of better quality, more complex in texture and composition, more precise or more detailed but it can never build my characters because it doesn't know my characters like I do. I got curious and tried to use an AI image generator to see if I could make art with it and I could not. I have no idea how to input the fucking prompts in a way that makes something worth looking at and I lost the motivation to learn how to do so very quickly. As a creative outlet there was something so joyless about it. I felt like I was doing paperwork or coding and that's the shit I regularly get paid to do at my soul killing day job. I don't want to do it for fun. Also the intimacy was gone? I didn't feel like I was spending time with my creation and there was no sense of bringing something to life. None of the pleasure of watching a face take shape line by line and filling in the details until my character was looking back at me, imperfect due to the limitations of my skills but still fully realized and in some strange way "alive". Working with an AI generator felt so tedious. Even if I could learn how to use this tool and do it properly so that I get "better" looking results I don't want to. I feel so disconnected from the end product that I can't envision it ever bringing me any kind of fulfillment to make use of this tool. But I think, again, assuming it can be used ethically, as just another tool for making art it deserves to exist and be accessible to people who might enjoy using it to be creative. It's not the process or the software that's the issue, it's the way it's being abused and no amount of people trying to scare me with "AI could do it better than you" is going to frighten me away from preferring to draw by hand.

The point of art is not to be good, it's to create, it's to make something and to bring ideas to life. As much as I have my criticisms about AI I feel like a lot of the language used to condemn it presents a narrow view of what makes art "worthy" and it sets a goal post where none should exist.

Everyone should be allowed to create, and they should have access to whatever tools they are comfortable using and when we talk about AI vs Artists we should focus less on the quality and ease of use and more on the dilemma of using other people's work without consent and the potential for mass production of cheap and lazy products for profit from the entertainment industry at the expense of employing writers and artists.

[neoyorzapoteca]

It is a piece of sage advice, a writer’s mantra, that I have made good use of through the years and that I now pass on to you: Ah, fuck ‘em. Use it whenever someone suggests that writing stories is not a real job. Or when you hear that print is dead. Books are obsolete. AI will replace us all. “Ah, fuck ‘em.” Whisper it whenever you’re told: You can’t say that. You can’t write that. You can’t sell that. Say it whenever someone tries to suggest that there are prohibitions to our art: that you’re not allowed to imagine yourself into certain worlds, or certain characters, or certain cultures. That you are barred from creating situations that you haven’t actually lived. That you are barred from borrowing too much from so-called “real life.” Say it when you’re told you are too late with your fictional premise—it’s been done before. Or too early—it’s never been done before. “Ah, fuck ‘em.” Say it with a laugh. Or a shrug. Say it kindly, in the same way you might mutter, “Poor fool,” or “Oh, well,” or, like a dismissive Southern lady, “Why, bless your heart.” Or say it patiently, ruefully as the Irish might say, “God help us.” (...) Say it as you begin your writing day, as you turn your back on all the people and voices that do not belong in your writing room: parents, siblings, spouses, critics—online or otherwise—opinionated friends and neighbors, the latest big book, the hottest new writer, some Tik Tok thing, the graduate school classmate who just scored a billion dollar deal with Netflix. Ah, fuck ‘em. Leaving—as Faulkner said—no room in your workshop for anything but the authorities and truths of the human heart. And after you’ve had your Night of the Living Dead moment, closed the door on the groping hands and the ghoulish faces of all that keeps us from confronting, unfettered, those authorities and truths—without which, Faulkner said, any story is ephemeral and doomed—look in the figurative mirror and say it to yourself. * Say it to your doubts, your hesitations, your worries about getting a real job. Ah, fuck ‘em. Say it to your fears about writing the wrong thing: the wrong phrase, the wrong character, the wrong genre, the wrong subject or sentiment. The story that dies on the vine. I mean, fuck those fears. Say it to every sensible, depressing, cowardly notion that visits your swirling brain, to all the things that paralyze your freedom to write. Ah, fuck ‘em. Same goes for your Cinderella fantasies of winning a big literary prize, as well as your Eyor-esque certainty that your work will never see the light of day. Fuck ‘em both. You will fail, of course you will. You’ll make mistakes. You’ll write some lousy sentences, unnecessary scenes, stories that run out of steam and novels that are not, perhaps, your best work. * It is, my friends, the occupational hazard inherent in choosing a profession—the storyteller’s profession—that keeps you, despite how many years you’ve labored at it, forever a novice, a debutante, a lone explorer setting out to define a new world. A profession that keeps you at the beginning, just the beginning, of your great career, because there’s always a new story to write, a new sentence to compose, a voice, made of words alone, that has not yet been heard, that only you can discover.

Alice McDermott’s Writing Mantra: “Ah, Fuck Em.” ‹ Literary Hub

[monkey-network]

Good Stuff: Best Movies of 2023

This was NOT a great year for blockbusters, huh? This was probably Disney's worst in years, multiple flops including what was meant to be their centennial anniversary film. It looked remarkably by the numbers, but think of the conglomerate's losses... Anyway, this to me was a pretty great year for films. Like 2022, I'm amazed at the variety we got that says more about the shifting tides of people's interest in movies. It was the most times I've been to the theater. We got a big worker's strike over the summer, especially large push back against degenerates trying to push AI to do more than just shitposting. And it was enough for me to know Adam Sandler, Godzilla, and Hayao Miyazaki could get the better of Disney. With this said, let this be a first for Good Stuff and count down my favorites of this year.

12. Renfield

My suspicions were on the money and I'm glad I gave this a shot in the theaters. Cage was the best Dracula I could've asked for in what you might say was an Adult Swim-esque dark comedy. It definitely has that style of gruesomeness and humor given Robert Kirkman and the Writer/Director behind Moral Orel made this. Unfortunately, Ben Schwartz stuck out like a sore thumb even if he fulfills his purpose in this, reminding me of Christopher Mintz-Plasse in KickAss; I feel he or Jason Schwartzman would've been better suited. Plus it can feel all over the place, an identity crisis that you can't even grasp after it finishes. Then again, I just had fun watching and would gladly rewatch for Cage and Hoult who are the highlights of this.

11. Migration

Call it blasphemous, but I enjoyed this more than the Mario movie. It's essentially Rio mixed with National Lampoon's Vacation, with a lovable cast, solid animation, and an eazy breezy road trip story. I've always looked to Illumination for simple enjoyable romps and I got what I expected here. Gave me Amphibia vibes in a way, replace frogs with birds. Everything surrounding the villain is my only real issue, he was an obvious and very nothing bad guy, but it's overall better paced than Super Mario Bros where it felt like you watched an eternity in 3 minutes. Still don't get the air of folk looking down on this for just being serviceable when it's honestly become my favorite Illumination movie next to the first Despicable Me.

10. Killers of the Flower Moon

Sad to say this is the weakest Scorsese movie for me, mainly because it felt like we're following the wrong main character. Lily Gladstone is incredible in this, among the other great performers, but she felt sidelined in favor of DeCaprio and De Niro's perspectives. It's like if in 1995's Casino, we just follow Ginger throughout the moment Sam introduces her. I liked the turmoil Leo's character goes through, but it paled in comparison to Mollie who was more affected by his and Hale's actions. That does not mean it's all bad. This can be a beautiful, dynamic, and ruthless movie that just made me feel bad for watching it; running with the words "harsh reality" throughout the 3 and a half hour runtime.

9. Good Burger 2

I watched Good Burger 1 & 2 this Thanksgiving weekend, and just had a blast. These are the kind of movies that are charmingly stupid but not insultingly so. Kel Mitchell's Ed is emblematic of how much dumb fun this duology is where he's actively comical but not smoothbrained to ruin your time. This I say is like Home Alone 2 where it is just beat for beat the 1st movie with minor developments but that doesn't really matter when it's just as well put together. It never feels like Kenan nor Kel missed a beat and the drama not overstaying its welcome. It is just "Good Burger Again" without it feeling like diminishing returns compared to other rehashing sequels.

8. Leo

Can you believe this got better publicity than Disney's Wish? Even YMS could appreciate this movie, that's how you know Sandler has his recognizable game when you least expect it. But Leo is a surprisingly good comedy that has actually sincere moments. Being Happy Madison's 2nd ever animation, it's like Adam waited to refine the production as opposed to putting a cash grab together like one would expect. It's not all good, especially trying to be a musical, but seeing it once you'd be impressed how much good it does with the risks it takes.

7. Nimona

Like Migration, everything surrounding the villain is the one big issue I have with this, especially when it comes to affecting the film's message. At the same time, she pales in comparison to the dynamic pairing of Ballister Blackheart and the titular shapeshifter. Nimona is my favorite character of 2023, her energy and confidence matched by the struggle she bears existing alone and the facade made to band-aid it. Her and Ballister's journey alone made me glad this got out of development hell, being Blue Sky's final production posthumous. To me it wasn't about being a take that to Disney, it was about the fact a movie like Nimona got to exist as great as it did. Hoping Stevenson is satisfied with their adaptation, because it definitely earned its flowers.

6. Emesis Blue

Offhand, it openly sucks that Letterboxd refuses to let this stay on the site to log, but it can't be overstated how much of a marvel this was. Repurposing not just the characters, but the lore and mechanics of Team Fortress 2 into a feature length horror thriller. The animation's top notch where it can have godly framing that was on par with the known legends of horror film making. SFM animations can be beautiful on their own, shitpost or otherwise, but Emesis Blue goes a step beyond by having a compelling story fitting for the universe on top of, again, every frame being a painting.

5. Shin Kamen Rider

I've never really saw any Tokusatsu shows. Not that I hate the genre, just could never get into it while recognizing the glorious looking chaos found in clips. Knowing Hideaki Anno directed was what got me into seeing this film and it opened my mind quite a bit. This was the legacy film that definitely had Anno's touch in both the action and drama. While the climax can notably drag, you never feel left out of what was essentially the original Kamen Rider's origin story. It doesn't have the complex VFX of stuff like Marvel, but the costumes and fight scenes makes me wish we got more of this in America beyond Power Rangers.

4. TMNT Mutant Mayhem

Advertising before release really didn't make this appear like a promising film. If there's anything I learned from this year though, appearances can be deceiving. Like Nimona was for her movie, the creative choices for this made it the TMNT movie I never knew I wanted. To me this felt akin to the Lego Batman movie where it's not only a good love letter of the franchise for more than its fanservice, but this spin on the characters is able to have a new sincere view of them without overhauling everything about the TMNT. That and it has the greatest needle drops I've had in a long while like how do insert He-Man Fabulous Secret Powers and expect me to hate this?

3. Godzilla Minus One

I call this a great year for films because it marks the first time I got to see a Toho produced Godzilla, with subtitles, in an real movie theater. Needless to say, it felt like I got to enjoy the 1954 film again anew. Not a remake mind you, but the parallels were uncanny and this spins here work just as well, if not more here than with the original in a couple places. Both are still strong movies nonetheless. Minus One is a refurbish that dishes out what people always wanted and uniquely giving a little more while never sacrificing why the OG is that timeless. With it getting more than a limited release, I'm glad this got to be more than a niche celebration of the kaijuu king.

2. Oppenheimer

This film's been meme'd to heaven, hell you could say it got meme'd to success thanks to its dual release with Barbie, but it didn't undermine getting hooked to watching this anyways. This really has become my favorite Nolan film, a compelling biopic that doesn't exactly herald its titular lead in the best light thanks to the paradoxical storytelling. Oppenheimer gives us the largest ensemble I know, and delivers in the most breathtaking moments I never knew I could get. Cillian killed it among the many who made the three hours of people sitting and talking in rooms actually tense and intriguing to thread. Plus it gave us the beauty of Josh Peck being the guy to detonate the test bomb like cherry on top of this cinematic cake.

1. The Holdovers

I remember watching Alexander Payne's Sideways with Paul Giamatti as a high schooler but couldn't appreciate it until rewatching this year. It's one of the best mid-life crisis comedies you could see, still fresh in its easy going presentation and music. The same can be said for this film, made to feel like it came from the late 70s or 80s with the old opening logos that I didn't think you could do in these times. Out the gate, this was the holiday story I was shocked would be as relatable as it was, with the trio of Giamatti, Randolph, and Sessa each having their story that resonated with me strongly. With the right amount of time, Payne offers an remarkably cozy, down to earth movie where from reserved to outgoing, it did a lot for me emotionally. Like Netflix's Klaus, I kinda want this to be a traditional rewatch for the holiday seasons. One that everyone should try at least once, especially if they feel the disillusionment of the season where this might lift their spirits one way or another.

If there's anything to learn from this year, it's that the meta has definitely shifted. Even when the many on my list didn't make billions like the Avatar films, the variety and risks made spoke more than the big dogs like Disney and WB putting out unprofitable blockbusters that ranged from very by the numbers to you don't need to see The Flash to know how god awful it just was. More people are & should branch out beyond the major mainstream names. Not that the big dogs aren't ever gonna make great films in the coming years, but we should appreciate more than the big budget features you can tell are playing it safe. Time can be patient for great cinema, sleeper hits or not, so take advantage while you're young.