#I have seen some real fucking nonsense share on this hellsite recently

[elminx]

Things that I have learned this weekend:

Almost nobody talking about AI right now understands how AI works or how to read a Terms of Service agreement.

Ai is absolutely terrifying and I suggest you don't use it since it is almost all propogated by stealing from other people. That part is true.

But every system that uses AI or offers AI is not stealing your data and feeding it to their AI. A lot of companies that are currently offering an AI option aren't creating their own AI, they are licensing from an existing AI made by a third party.

If their user agreement says that they don't share your data with third parties, they aren't using it to feed an AI because the AI they are associated with is a third party. (unless you want to believe their Terms of Services is not true...and let's be real here, that gets into conspiracy theory territory really damn quick)

If you don't want your work fed into an AI, there are a couple of things that you can do RIGHT NOW to stop that.

Set every single thing shared on a Meta platform (Insta, Facebook, Threads) to private. Their Terms of Service says they will feed PUBLIC content to their AI.

Stop using Cloud Storage and store everything on your own hard drive. Some cloud storage seems to be safer than others - Docs does scan your writing to improve its suggestions to you, for example. But Adobe says it scans ALL items on its cloud. They say it's to check for illegal content. What you do with that information is up to you.

Change your Tumblr settings so that Tumblr can't share with third parties - Tumblr is selling your data, but there's an opt-out button. This is by far the best I've seen out of any of the "major" media options online right now. Tumblr already protects our work from being crawled by AI which is far more than other platforms are doing.

Read the Terms of Service on any sites you use. Yeah, this sucks. But that's where you are going to find out the truth of things. There's a reasonable chance that I could be wrong about something, or that information may have changed since I wrote this. You are responsible for your own data and making your own decisions. If you don't understand the legalese, find a reputable (that part is important) source that explains it well. TikTok is not a reputable source.

Remember that anything you put out on the internet can be stolen or copied - this has always been the case. If you really want to keep it for yourself, you need to keep it off of the internet.