#and please PLEASE don't use AI

[triaelf9]

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[minamill]

since i've seen people being unaware or uncaring about the catastrophic toll generative ai has on both the environment and the workers behind it here's some information about what that toll is actually like. i'd encourage everyone to read the full articles, but i've highlighted some important parts for convenience

Q&A: Uncovering the labor exploitation that powers AI

Generative AI’s environmental costs are soaring — and mostly secret

How 'modern-day slavery' in the Congo powers the rechargeable battery economy

[inkskinned]

the rise of AI art isn't surprising to us. for our entire lives, the attitude towards our skills has always been - that's not a real thing. it has been consistently, repeatedly devalued.

people treat art - all forms of it - as if it could exist by accident, by rote. they don't understand how much art is in the world. someone designed your home. someone designed the sign inside of your local grocery store. when you quote a character or line from something in media, that's a line a real person wrote.

"i could do that." sure, but you didn't. there's this joke where a plumber comes over to a house and twists a single knob. charges the guy 10k. the guy, furious, asks how the hell the bill is so high. the plumber says - "turning the knob was a dollar. the knowledge is the rest of the money."

the trouble is that nobody believes artists have knowledge. that we actively study. that we work hard, beyond doing our scales and occasionally writing a poem. the trouble is that unless you are already framed in a museum or have a book on a shelf or some kind of product, you aren't really an artist. hell, because of where i post my work, i'll never be considered a poet.

the thing that makes you an artist is choice. the thing that makes all art is choice. AI art is the fetid belief that art is instead an equation. that it must answer a specific question. Even with machine learning, AI cannot make a choice the way we can - because the choices we make have always been personal, complicated. our skills cannot be confined to "prompt and execution." what we are "solving" isn't just a system of numbers - it is how we process our entire existence. it isn't just "2 and 2 is 4", it's staring hard at the numbers and making the four into an alligator. it's rearranging the letters to say ow and it is the ugly drawing we make in the margin.

at some point, you will be able to write something by feeding my work into a machine. it will be perfectly legible and even might sound like me. but a machine doesn't understand why i do these things. it can be taught preferences, habits, statistical probability. it doesn't know why certain vowels sound good to me. it doesn't know the private rules i keep. it doesn't know how to keep evolving.

"but i want something to exist that doesn't exist yet." great. i'm glad you feel creative. go ahead and pay a fucking artist for it.

this is all saying something we all already knew. the sad fucking truth: we have to die to remind you. only when we're gone do we suddenly finally fucking mean something to you. artists are not replicable. we each genuinely have a skill, talent, and process that makes us unique. and there's actual quiet power in everything we do.

[shuploc]

Ai art?

Are you fucking joking?

Sorry, no, it is not and I find it so disrespectful you would even think to ask that. I have not and will NEVER touch anything AI related ever in my life, I think it's so utterly pointless and destructive and it frankly makes me wanna kill myself.

So no, it is not and never will be, and you can safely hold that to me for the rest of my existence. I really hope this is the last time someone asks me this.

[weabooii]

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[thresholdbb]

I can fix him

Except he is a beloved 58-year-old science fiction franchise being smashed into the ground for profit and I am a potato

[cordeliawhohung]

Core!! I have a question about ai!!

So, we know that kids/young teens like animes or shows, right? Back then, we used to use Amino, and most of us got groomed because creeps use that place to talk to young peeps.

If young teens want to roleplay, isn't it better to use character ai or Ai chatbots in general? It avoids the psychological damage, does it not?

or they can just... stay in school and minimize your online time as a child anyway? because screen time isn't great for children? you're trying to compare apples to oranges here, anon.

generative ai (like these roleplaying bots) is bad because it steals from writers, artists, etc.

kids being online and getting groomed is bad because that's gross and a crime.

both can exist. doesn't mean you can ignore one in favor of the other.

also using character ai with all these fucking weirdos talking about ways to roleplay smut is also not good? children being exposed to explicit sexual stuff isn't good? they need to talk to actual human beings, not some AI robot that feeds them garbage. people don't NEED to roleplay. sure, it's fun, but if we're talking about children here, they shouldn't be doing that shit. even on whatever site you're referring to. they can do what's normal and healthy and make up situations in their heads or write fanfiction.

trying to justify "oh but think of the children" for stealing hard work is bullshit logic and i'm not even going to pretend that line of thinking is okay. people will seriously do and say and think anything to justify something that is actively hurting people. especially with all the proof that ai is sapping so much fucking energy, as if we didn't already have issues with consumption.

i promise you, a lot of us grew up without this shit, they'll be okay lmfao.

[rott3nmutt]

artists, reblog with ur favorite piece of art u have ever made ( and why )

I'll go first

I love this piece because it represents how far I've come with my art ! it took me a long time to find my style and this was when I finally was like "holy shit, this is it." I just love this piece, it's so clean and so pleasing to look at. I don't have anything I'd change about it. it's just pretty and nice and I wish all my art could turn out as nicely as this did

[mysandwichranaway]

hey guess who just quit his job and decided to draw gay people first thing after (at midnight of course)

[not-terezi-pyrope]

Do I think language models will replace computer programmers? I think that even the most cutting edge models (looking at you O1) still lack the capacity for longitudinal planning and systems design, meaning that they are far below competence to automate away even a fairly low skill level human programmer.

However the way things are going is that all this means is that I'll be very surprised for a week when in three years OpenAI drops some sort of proto-AGI that bests all of us.

I would be more scared of this prospect, if the implications of that scenario weren't so far reaching that it's a category error to even start worrying about consequences before knowing specifics

(Also I find programmers generally tend to be more "shrug and bear it" about automation threat, because even when it's our own jobs on the line, it's kinda hard to be a professional automator who is ideologically opposed to automation).

[chocolix76]

I feel like Solar Flare and Jack's existence is extremely messed up. In this essay I will.

I want to start off by saying that I absolutely LOVE Solar Flare and Jack and I'm happy they are/were in the show. My problem is the way they were created and why.

Both Lunar and Bloodmoon were originally created to be tools for Eclipse, just as Solar Flare and Jack were created to be tools. The difference is that Lunar and Bloodmoon were created sentient. They both had the ability to recognize that Eclipse was abusing them and were aware of the fact that they were tools. Both of them had the power to actively change their fates, or at least attempt to. Solar Flare didn't have that ability. Jack doesn't have that ability either.

While Solar Flare's existence wasn't at all surprising to me considering what Eclipse did with Lunar and Bloodmoon, it caught me off guard that he wasn't sentient. That's a problem for many reasons considering he wouldn't know he was being mistreated or that he didn't want to serve the purpose he was built for. Yes, he grew more sentient as time went on, but think about it. He was built and then a little while later, Eclipse took over his body and forced Solar Flare back into the headspace where they both later died. Solar Flare never actually got a chance to live.

Jack on the other hand was created to protect Lunar. He no longer has that purpose because he annoyed and angered Lunar when he simply didn't know better. Jack also has the problem where he can't escape his situation and is stuck doing the bidding of others because yet again, he doesn't know better. But what irks me with Jack is the fact that he was created by Solar and was neglected and ignored the same way that Eclipse had done with his creations. In his attempts to please Lunar, Solar left behind his own creation which now no longer has a purpose

[eileen-crys]

I totally feel how bad Brian May might be feeling now, he said he felt "violated" by seeing that AI video of himself.

I know that because it's what artists have been feeling for the past few years as AI stole their work, their art, their essence and yes even their faces. Photographer, model and artists Jingna Zhang found her face being replicated and warped thousands of times in Midjourney's Discord, "Words can't describe how dehumanizing it is to see my name used 20.000+ times in Midjourney. My life's work and who I am - reduced to meaningless fodder for a commercial image slot machine. [...] I've been called ungrateful, arrogant, dramatic, entitled -because I expressed how heartbreaking it is to see generative AI reduce my life, experiences and choices into nothing more than a keyword." (Source)

The illustrator Kelly McKernan found AI images replacing her art when people search for her name on Google and she was forced to open a lawsuit about it.

"Screaming, crying, throwing up (in my heart). Last night, out of morbid curiosity, I searched my own name. There it is - counterfeit AI “art” made by someone choosing to violate my name, my identity, and my unethically scraped artwork.

How am I to compete with these doppelgänger monstrosities, when one person can generate a lifetime’s worth of images with my name in hours? It only took a year for this to happen to me. And I’m far from the only one being displaced by counterfeit art created by stealing my own.

This was supposed to be my 11th year as a full time artist, but I’m sorry to share that I’m not longer making ends meet with my art alone. The timing is not a coincidence.

AI is theft."

So, just to get things right, Brian's case is not an isolated one, and the same thing has been happening for years because of all the endorsment and validation generative AI has gotten, it's out of control. This is why Queen's use of generative AI in The Night Comes Down music video is more linked to Brian's identity theft than you might imagine. They used the same technology that's built on stealing other people's likeness and works, they're enabling, appreciating and validating it. Please don't be nitpicky just because Brian pities you.

[starflungwaddledee]

alright. look, we're going to go into this because i genuinely want to think you didn't mean harm by this, but it's unacceptable to use this sort of manipulative phrasing. especially with strangers, some of whom are kids.

this is not a call-out. i've hidden all names except my own. i just need to address this post i was tagged in, and don't want to add it onto the end of the original post. i could also have done this privately, but i want this to be here for the other folks who were @'d. i won't @ anyone else who was mentioned in this post, but many of us are mutuals, so if you see this post and you're feeling at all stressed out or bad, i recommend just clicking through because i'm going to go into this.

firstly, and i'm going to make this transparent, person who @'d me: i don't think you're being malicious or did anything purposefully bad. i don't think you intended harm or that you are "a bad person". i don't have a single negative thought about you as a person. i don't make this post to be mean. i truly think you made an earnest mistake that could easily have hurt others, and i am stepping in with the hope this can be avoided in the future! per my usual boundaries on reassurance seeking, i will not reassure about this further.

secondly, the post that you tacked this onto IS important and a helpful resource, and it is great to bring attention to it. we should be doing everything we can to not only defend against, but actively fight back against generative AI. many people cannot access the most commonly recommended tools (myself included), so a resource like this is fantastic and i'm glad to learn about it and share it! i don't speak for anyone else, but i've said before that i personally don't mind being tagged in resources that could help me or others and i'm usually happy to share them, especially if i think the latter

but, assuming that you are genuinely well meaning and don't know better, you need to know that this is not the way to go about it. i don't mean mass-tagging, which is fine in times like this imo, i mean your written add-ons that actively guilt trip every single person you tagged.

"if you weren't convinced by the idea of being a good person" and "I do hope anyone I @'d isn't a bad person" in particular.

you may not have realised, but these are profoundly manipulative and cruel things to say. regardless of how you intended them, they are inciting guilt in the reader, and especially in the people who you actively called to come and look at it. here's what it sounds like:

"hey! you! yeah you! come look at this!! come closer! now, do what i ask you to do, or you're a bad person."

there are a million and one reasons someone might not reblog something. being tired, offline, anxious, even needing to run a specifically professional blog with exclusively your art on it for your own financial survival which makes it hard to reblog important posts like this; none of those are bad.

in this case, only one thing makes them a "bad person", and it's "they're pro-generative AI and did not reblog because they want to hide this information to ensure they can continue stealing from creatives".

i'm fairly confident you don't actually think anyone you tagged here has that point of view, or that you really have any doubts about their stances on generative AI. in fact, of the folks i recognise here, they're all independent creatives, sharing artwork with fandom for free on the internet. they are the victims of generative AI, and like most of us, are facing a terrifying future and are already desperate to find a way to defend/fight back.

you do not need to use manipulative language like this to get us to care about this sort of content! this affects us all, content creators and content consumers alike!

in future if you want to direct folks to something like this, which is super helpful and it was good of you to do!, you can just @ them so they see it. you can even say something like "this is important and some reblogs would sure help to boost it!". this is still a call to action, but without the manipulative phrasing, just in case they cannot act for any reason.

in the end, guilt tripping people like this, intentional or otherwise, is dangerous.

at best it will make them feel like shit and they'll feel forced to reblog + share from you out of guilt rather than just believing in the cause. and sometimes it feels like it's most effective, especially when things are urgent; but in my opinion the risk of harm is just too high. because at worst, you could accidentally send someone into a negative thinking spiral. you can never know what people are going through offline, or outside of your spaces, and how something like this will hit them.

[frostbitedoesart]

Just making a general post real quick in response to an ask.

When I say I'm anti-ai I mean I'm against any sort of AI that steals from others or would otherwise be used to put people out of a job. I don't feel like having an elaborate conversation about the positives and negatives of AI and all that, so I'll state this as plainly as possible.

I don't like AI art. I don't like AI voice impersonations. I don't like any sort of AI that has to steal stuff from people without their consent in order to function. That is literally it.

I'm not against ALL AI. I don't think people that are okay with AI in general should be burned at the stake or something. I'm just an artist and writer that doesn't like AI being used in CREATIVE SPACES. That's it.

I didn't think I would have to clarify this but, here you go, for anyone that was bothered.

[becquerelnoir]

A commission of Szatia, and Ismark Kolyanovich (Curse of Strahd) by Tanzanaura on Toyhouse! They were lovely to work with and this piece came out amazing! I am very invested in this ship! <<

Tanzanura was lovely to work with, go check out their work!

[haubaut]

they were getting hungry and restless so I gave them a pool floaty for lunch and enrichment