#discuss AI

[ai-archive-for-all]

𝐖𝐡𝐲 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐰𝐞 𝐭𝐚𝐥𝐤 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐀𝐈?

In the last 2 years or so AI generative platforms have become a hit. A huge boom that is used to create all sorts of knowledge, content, companionship etc. Some of it however has turned out bad, wrong or even downright evil, while other has actually brought comfort, and care to the users and overall generally good stuff.  Think ChatGTP, You.com, Gencraft, Lummini, Midjourney are just samples in the grand scheme of AI tools on the internet. And since their creation the AI art, writing, bots, deep fakes etc such have expanded tremendously. 

AI stuff is everywhere; whether you know and like it or not. 

But, like everything out there, especially a new piece of technology, it has raised mixed feelings. And justifiably so. A lot of the generative sites mentioned above use models such as DALL-E 2, Stable Diffusion and other models . Which exact data sources these models build on is however unclear (See Dennis, 2022). Which is the biggest ethical issue with AI art (and to a certain extent AI Writing). This data could come from open source data and data submitted and willingly for the AI to be trained on, but a lot of the time it is trained on art from real artists and authors who have not consented to it. This makes AI art and content problematic since it is used for commercial use.

However, if I may be the devil's advocate. I think this is a much bigger issue for original works and published creations and in commercial setting than Tumblr and fan creations at large. Why? Because legally speaking (although it depends where you are of course, I can only speak from European context at large) but fanfiction and fanart by itself can be seen as copyright infringement into the original works copyright. By legal definition, copyright infringement occurs when:

Too much of the original works elements are copied, uses the characters or distinct elemets from the original work or that the new works characters or distinct elements are too similar to the original work, alternatively that the new work competes on the same market as the original work (AI Archive translation & simplification)

So, in other words, basically the entire fanfiction and fanart community could be and would be shut down if the original works creators wanted it to. Still it is (mostly) allowed to exist because we don’t claim to own the works, we don’t compete with the original creations market (aka do it not for money) but rather try showing appreciation for the original works art. It’s a thin line to say the least and even with that thin line, only, maybe a handful of works would be considered individual enough not to be copyright infringement. 

Do you get where I’m going with this? If we cry too much, especially in the fandom community about AI infringement, what is to say that governing institutions will not make another serious purge attempt at us all, AI and non AI creators that breach the strict definition of copyright (I doubt it will happen). Rather on a deeper level, I don’t think the issue is so much about AI itself, but rather how it is used. 

More precisely, the problematic issue when a fanfiction/fanart creator uses AI content and do not declare their AI use (which is also something Dennis mentions). For example omitting the information all together anywhere on their blog, or, worse yet, denying that they used AI to create their content such as a fic or picture. I know I am guilty of including it on the blog but not under every post where AI had a small insignificant part of the total work (part in a banner for a fanfiction) and I’m definitely going to be even more transparent about it in the future. 

I encourage you to do the same, while also considering that, maybe, within the context of tumblr and fandom work we shouldn’t be talking about ‘good creator not using AI’ or ‘bad creator using AI’ but rather be open and honest about how and why AI was used in our works. And on a larger field advocate and motivate companies to create data sets that do not infringe into content creators rights, but instead create a possibility for writers, authors and artists to submit their pieces into the data set to create a more ethical use of it. 

Because only when we’re honest about how and why we use AI can we start tackling all of the underlying issues AI has.

See Sources & Additional info below:

Steve Dennis (2022) "The AI Art Debate: Excitement, Fear and Ethics"

Kavya Goyal (2024) "Exploring GenCraft.ai | An Overview"

𝐌𝐚𝐢𝐧 | 𝐀𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 & 𝐑𝐮𝐥𝐞𝐬 | 𝐌𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭 | 𝐔𝐬𝐞𝐟𝐮𝐥 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐜𝐞𝐬 & 𝐎𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐤𝐬

[hamletthedane]

I was meeting a client at a famous museum’s lounge for lunch (fancy, I know) and had an hour to kill afterwards so I joined the first random docent tour I could find. The woman who took us around was a great-grandmother from the Bronx “back when that was nothing to brag about” and she was doing a talk on alternative mediums within art.

What I thought that meant: telling us about unique sculpture materials and paint mixtures.

What that actually meant: an 84yo woman gingerly holding a beautifully beaded and embroidered dress (apparently from Ukraine and at least 200 years old) and, with tears in her eyes, showing how each individual thread was spun by hand and weaved into place on a cottage floor loom, with bright blue silk embroidery thread and hand-blown beads intricately piercing the work of other labor for days upon days, as the labor of a dozen talented people came together to make something so beautiful for a village girl’s wedding day.

What it also meant: in 1948, a young girl lived in a cramped tenement-like third floor apartment in Manhattan, with a father who had just joined them after not having been allowed to escape through Poland with his pregnant wife nine years earlier. She sits in her father’s lap and watches with wide, quiet eyes as her mother’s deft hands fly across fabric with bright blue silk thread (echoing hands from over a century years earlier). Thread that her mother had salvaged from white embroidery scraps at the tailor’s shop where she worked and spent the last few days carefully dying in the kitchen sink and drying on the roof.

The dress is in the traditional Hungarian fashion and is folded across her mother’s lap: her mother doesn’t had a pattern, but she doesn’t need one to make her daughter’s dress for the fifth grade dance. The dress would end up differing significantly from the pure white, petticoated first communion dresses worn by her daughter’s majority-Catholic classmates, but the young girl would love it all the more for its uniqueness and bright blue thread.

And now, that same young girl (and maybe also the villager from 19th century Ukraine) stands in front of us, trying not to clutch the old fabric too hard as her voice shakes with the emotion of all the love and humanity that is poured into the labor of art. The village girl and the girl in the Bronx were very different people: different centuries, different religions, different ages, and different continents. But the love in the stitches and beads on their dresses was the same. And she tells us that when we look at the labor of art, we don’t just see the work to create that piece - we see the labor of our own creations and the creations of others for us, and the value in something so seemingly frivolous.

But, maybe more importantly, she says that we only admire this piece in a museum because it happened to survive the love of the wearer and those who owned it afterwards, but there have been quite literally billions of small, quiet works of art in billions of small, quiet homes all over the world, for millennia. That your grandmother’s quilt is used as a picnic blanket just as Van Gogh’s works hung in his poor friends’ hallways. That your father’s hand-painted model plane sets are displayed in your parents’ livingroom as Grecian vases are displayed in museums. That your older sister’s engineering drawings in a steady, fine-lined hand are akin to Da Vinci’s scribbles of flying machines.

I don’t think there’s any dramatic conclusions to be drawn from these thoughts - they’ve been echoed by thousands of other people across the centuries. However, if you ever feel bad for spending all of your time sewing, knitting, drawing, building lego sets, or whatever else - especially if you feel like you have to somehow monetize or show off your work online to justify your labor - please know that there’s an 84yo museum docent in the Bronx who would cry simply at the thought of you spending so much effort to quietly create something that’s beautiful to you.

[cleoppas]

[bixels]

Just gonna have to wait and see, right? Just wait and see! Just gotta wait and see! Who knows, we'll just have to wait and see! It's anybody's guess, we'll just have to wait and see! The future is exciting, we just gotta wait and see!

[sexy-stable-diffusion]

If you feel like it, you can support me :) https://www.buymeacoffee.com/sexystablediffusion https://www.patreon.com/sexy_stable_diffusion

[clandestinegardenias]

The whole AI…debacle always makes me think of this thing we have in knitting communities called “process or product” where like, you’ll ask a knitter (or other fiber artist) if they are a Process Knitter or a Product Knitter.

The difference being, a Product Knitter’s primary goal and interest in knitting is the product they get at the end of it. They knit a sock because they want a nice knit sock.

A Process Knitter, by contrast, has the primary goal of enjoying the process of knitting something. They don’t necessarily care all that much about the resulting object, so much as they enjoy the planning and movement and steps to make it. Classic example, my best friend in high school crocheted the same blanket with the same yarn like 4 times—when she ran out of yarn she’d rip it all out and start over cause she didn’t even necessarily want the blanket, she just enjoyed the process (and yarn is expensive).

And obviously those are extremes and people tend to fall on a continuum blah blah blah, but I think ALL knitters to a certain extent value the process. The work and effort that goes into it is PART OF THE ENTIRE POINT. Yes, it can be hard! And time consuming! And sometimes frustrating and it takes a lot of mental energy and practice and creativity!

BUT THAT IS THE POINT.

That’s part of what makes it so enjoyable and rewarding, regardless of the outcome (though that’s great too! Love me a nice hand knit hat)

And idk, I think there’s something to say about AI and the desire for a product with no process. Maybe I’m just old and crotchety but I can’t help thinking that anything “created” by AI is missing at least half the point

[a00zmtisay]

[ms-demeanor]

Hey if you're looking for some decent leftist critiques of AI that don't tip into scaremongering and are much more realistic about the state of the industry that I think a lot of the people discussing this stuff on tumblr are, Citations Needed and It Could Happen Here both had recent episodes about this that are pretty reasonable in their approach (their approach broadly being that the problem is capitalism and also media narratives about AI either being the end of the world or replacing all creatives are both pushed by grifters).

[podicum4]

[enden-k]

i know some fuckers reupload my art without a care in the world, im fighting w this for years now and it was a major reason why i deleted my previous art blog and stopped posting art for a long time. i dont hunt the internet to catch everyone tho, even if it pisses me off greatly.

BUT if anyone ever sees my oc art reuploaded, let me know so i can deal with this. one of my biggest fears is people stealing my ocs/worlds or claiming them, i saw that happen to someone once and its scary as hell. i wont tolerate that w my ocs. literally fuck you.

and regarding the AI ask just now; please dont use my OCs for things such as roleplay or anything.

also i rb sm abt it and thoughts its obvious - especially as an artist - what my stance on AI is and what a deep hatred i have for it. do NOT use my things for ANY of that shit.

and, in general while were on the topic of AI bc i see this SO OFTEN: you cant be anti AI and then turn around and use AI writing programs, its all scraped and based on stolen shit. please protect writers as much as artists and VAs.

[2dpocketgirls]

Camula's all green

[rain-kaly]

Nocturne

More at: www.patreon.com/RainKaly634

My other social: https://www.deviantart.com/rainkaly

[gamerwoman3d]

FROM NOW ON, A.I. STANDS FOR AUTO-INCORRECT.

Thank you.

[cleoppas]

[sexy-stable-diffusion]

If you feel like it, you can support me :) https://www.buymeacoffee.com/sexystablediffusion

[prokyon]

if i ever reblog/like any fucking ai "art" i promise it is an accident and i want to be notified immediately to remove that stench from my blog, please and thank you