#genslop

[chaoskirin]

Don't Use GenSlop on your Book Covers!

I am absolutely baffled by the number of AUTHORS willing to use AI art on their book covers. This seems counter-productive. I will not buy a book that uses AI on the cover because it VERY STRONGLY suggests that the writing content is also genSlop. 

Like, why shoot yourself in the foot like that, when there are literally SO MANY WAYS to make an amazing book cover without compromising your integrity? 

It's not just indie authors I put on the shitlist, either. Paolini is on there for the cover of Fractal Noise. He's arguably the one who opened the door to these creativity leeches, because his book was the first.

And there's so many authors who are proud of "taking down" artists, like we were ever on a pedestal to begin with. Dude. We never made enough to survive. By taking us down, you're taking us from "barely scraping by" to "dead in the gutter." The truth is, extremely successful artists will be fine, because their names carry them through and get them work. People want art in Michael Whelan's style, for example. The people GenSlop will hurt are the artists that didn't even make $15K/year on their artwork. 

The most frustrating thing I've seen going around is the whole "LOL artists will need to get a real job now!" and this just reeks of the gutting of arts programs in schools in the 1990s and 2000s. It means that little boys consider "football" a career to aspire to, but not "book cover artist." To me? FOOTBALL is the hobby, and the people who play it professionally get paid WAY too much to do it. To me, art is ten THOUSAND percent more valuable. 

But I'm not going to go around hoping NHL players get "taken down a peg." Even if wishing for that is INFINITELY less cruel than hoping artists go hungry because you think they're gatekeeping. 

I will not buy your book if the cover is AI. I will not buy your book if you even HINT you're supportive of AI. I will not buy your book if you decide you need to be "devil's advocate" or say something like "the AI debate isn't black and white." It is. AI is bullshit. Use of it is theft. You are a fucking criminal in my eyes if you use gen AI on a book cover, and I will assume your writing is AI-generated, too. Full stop. 

There are so many ways to get a quality book cover without breaking the bank or underpaying artists. Those ways existed BEFORE GenAI, and they exist now. You have no excuse for that shit. Knock it off. 

[plurinerd]

Talk about overreaching. Some of the writer tubers I followed this year were participating in nanowrimo.

watching @nanowrimo within a single hour:

make an awful, ill-conceived, sponsored post about "responsible"/"ethical" uses of ai in writing

immediately get ratio'd in a way i've never seen on tumblr with a small swarm of chastising-to-negative replies and no reblogs

start deleting replies

reply to their own post being like 'agree to disagree!!!' while saying that ai can TOTALLY be ethical because spellcheck exists!! (???) while in NO WAY responding to the criticisms of ai for its environmental impact OR the building of databases on material without author consent, ie, stolen material, OR the money laundering rampant in the industry

when called out on deleting replies, literally messaged me people who called them out to say "We don't have a problem with folks disagreeing with AI. It's the tone of the discourse." So. overtly stated tone policing.

get even MORE replies saying this is a Bad Look, and some reblogs now that people's replies are being deleted

DISABLE REBLOGS when people aren't saying what nano would prefer they say

im juust in literal awe of this fucking mess.

[argyle199]

Ohh fuck I think the algo associated me liking *robots* with me liking *ai* and now it's showing me nonstop genslop of the moat boring, broad-appeal "robot women" humans

Gross!! Ew!!

[chaoskirin]

Glaze Your Art!

I recently got Glaze and I've been running some tests on my art and style to see how it affects images. It's much better with highly detailed pieces... On cartoons, you can definitely see artifacts like it's got a JPG compression layover over it. But it prevents your art style from being stolen. The makers of Glaze have also developed Nightshade, which will start poisoning datasets if your art is stolen without consent.

Here's a few of the pieces I've tested Glaze on, and I'm happy with the results. While I used to like posting my ultra-high quality art for people to enjoy, I'm now finding that's no longer an option with all the theft happening lately. But this will do.

You can actually download Glaze and run it yourself with your own resources, but I was very opposed to having the AI dataset present on my computer (which you need in order to pollute your data). But they've come out with a web app that you can request to use with the form on their site, or you can message them on Twitter.

Protect your art!

[chaoskirin]

OK, I Need some Plumbing Work Done.

So I'm going to call like, 50... no. 70! plumbers and have them all come over at once to remodel my bathroom. But I'm not going to pay any of them because the finished product isn't actually any one person's work. It's derivative of all their skills.

And if they argue and say they deserve compensation for their part, I'll be like "look, it's impossible to tell who deserves what, because the finished product is a new thing." I mean I know you all put your work in, but you can't prove it. Point to the thing you personally did. What, you put an o-ring there? Well who cares, the o-ring itself doesn't do anything functional. It's the combination of everything that really makes it work.

And besides, the result is mine now. My vision. I gave you all like, 20 words to tell you what I wanted and you did it. So technically... I did it. It's my vision and my work. So I don't owe you anything. This beautiful remodeled bathroom was created by me.

No, man. I just democratized plumbing. Now everyone can design the bathroom of their dreams and not have to pay for it. And if anyone asks who did it, I don't have to credit any of you either. I'll just say I did it. Because I had the vision.

But I'm not gonna tell anyone the words I used to get you to do this. I wouldn't want people to rip off my design for their own remodeled bathroom. Because if someone out there wants a bathroom designed like mine, I want them to come to me to get it. And pay me. Because I did the work.

Man, I'm so good at plumbing.

[plurinerd]

They are also an artfcl intllgnc art user, if that matters to anyone else.

so i'm not gonna make along post about this but-

@/irimori is actively defending doctor disrespect (the man who was banned on twitch for inappropriate messages with a minor, so much so that twitch submitted the information to the national services dedicated to handling child pedophilia cases) in their twitter replies.

so uh. yeah!

[chaoskirin]

Have you found that you’ve been less motivated to create art now that AI has become so good?

I don’t really draw anymore because whenever I start a new drawing, I’m immediately plagued by thoughts like, why even bother? This piece is going to take hours when, theoretically, I could ask Mid-journey to do it for me and it would take about 10 seconds and probably look way better. So like, why should I even try?

I’m at college getting a degree in illustration but I’m afraid that by the time I graduate and get out into the field, I won’t have any job prospects. Human artists are becoming increasingly obsolete in the corporate world and I feel like nobody is going to want to hire me. I mean, from a shitty CEO’s perspective, why hire human artists when AI is right there? It’s faster and cheaper. Many established studio and corporate artists are already being fired in droves. We’re seeing it happen in real time.

I feel like I’m fighting a losing battle. AI has drained me of my creativity and my future job security. I’ve lost interest in one of my dearest hobbies and my degree may end up becoming completely useless. I loathe AI for the way it has stripped me of something I’ve dedicated so many years of my life to. Something that was once so precious to me.

I feel that I’ve spent thousands of hours honing a now useless skill. And that really sucks.

Sorry for ranting in your inbox, I hope you don’t mind… but since you are a working adult and do art and writing (of course writing AI has gotten stupid good as well and I’m bitter about that too) professionally, and as a hobby too, I figured that you would definitely understand.

Hey! This is a great question, and I have what I hope is a very hope-filled answer.

By the way, I don't call image generation "AI." It's not. There's no actual intelligence involved. It's an algorithm that averages images and combines them into something new. I refer to it as GenSlop.

First, the reason you're seeing such a proliferation of image generators attaching their dirty little claws into every website on the internet is due to what I call "just-in-casing." Rather than develop an ACTUAL ethical image generator (which would only use images from creative commons or pay artists for their use) generators like Deviantart's DreamUp and Twitter's Grok (?????? wtf is that name) have just stuffed LAION-5 into their code and called it a day.

Why? Why not wait and create an ethical dataset over several years?

Because it's become more likely than not than image generation is going to become strictly regulated by law, and companies like DA, Stability, Twitter, Adobe, and many others want to profit off it while it's still free and "legal."

I say "legal" in quotes, because at the moment, it's neither legal nor illegal. There are no laws in existence to govern this specific thing because it appeared so fast, there was literally no predicting it. So now it's in a legal grey area where it can't be prosecuted by US courts. (But it can be litigated--more on that in a bit.)

When laws are passed to govern the use of image generators, these companies that opted to use LAION-5 immediately without concern for the artists and communities they were harming will have to stop. but because of precedent, they will likely have their prior use of these generators forgiven, meaning they will not be forced to pay fines on their use before a certain date.

So while it seems they're popping up everywhere and taking over the art market, this is only so they can get in their share of profits from it before it becomes illegal to use them without compensation or consent.

But how do I know the law will support artists on this?

First, litigation. There are several huge lawsuits right now; one notable lawsuit against almost every major company using GenSlop technology with plaintiffs like Karla Ortiz and Grzegorz Rutkowski, among other high-profile artists. This lawsuit was recently """pared down""" or """mostly dismissed""" according to pro-GenSlop users, but what really happened is that the judge in the case asked the plaintiffs to amend their complaint to be more specific, which is generally a positive thing in cases like this. It means that precedent after a decision will be far clearer and have a longer reach than a more generalized complaint.

I don't know what pro-GenSloppers are insisting on spreading the "dismissal" tale on the internet, except to discourage actual artists. What they say has no bearing in the court, and it's looking more and more likely that the plaintiffs will be able to win this case and claim damages.

Getty Images, a huge image stock company, is also suing Stability AI for scraping its database. I'm not as well-versed on the case, though.

The other positive, despite what a lot of artists are saying, is the new SAG-AFTRA contract.

It's not perfect. It still allows GenSlop use. But it does require consent and compensation. Ideally, it would ban the use of artist images and voice entirely, but this contract is far better than what they would have gotten without striking. If you recall, before the strike, the AMPTP wanted to be able to use actor images and voices without any compensation or permission, without limitation.

And you can bet your ass that Hollywood isn't going to allow other organizations to have unregulated GenSlop use if they can't. They might even step in to argue against its use in front of congress, because their outlook is going to be "if we can't make money stealing art, no one else should be able to, either."

TL;DR: the huge proliferation of image generators and GenSlop right now is only because it's neither legal nor illegal. Regulations are coming, and artists will still be necessary and even required. Because the world is essentially built on a backbone or artistry.

I personally can't wait to drink the tears of all the techbros who can't steal art anymore.

[chaoskirin]

I have downloaded Nightshade! I'll be using it on all my art going forward, but I WON'T be noting it on anything else, because now I HOPE techbros feed this poisoned art into their genSlop machines. Here's a sample of what it looks like on default:

I'm really excited with how amazing this looks. All artists who follow me, PLEASE download Nightshade. It's extremely simple to run, and poisoning the well is the only way to make techbros understand that this art is NOT for stealing. If you need help, ask!

[plurinerd]

To be honest, I just follow so many great people that I don’t have to bother with those tools (except for genslop and sacm accounts) as my feeds are fairly excellent across most platforms.

That said, this is totally valid

i love you content filters. i love you mute options. i love you block function. i love you hide tools. i love you things that allow me to hide anything that annoys me.

[chaoskirin]

Hey @eileen-crys you're right. I did a quick visual analysis (lol that sounds so professional) and there's a lot of weird shit. The worst is the back leg, I think.

I was looking at this story on Twitter earlier and I was kinda horrified about what this means for the people who juuuust missed the top 300. Will the genslop be eliminated and the people next in line bumped up? Or will the competition just consider a winner from a smaller pool?

What a fucking joke.

ETA: I noticed this after I posted, but there's stars drawn inside the moon, which is something an artist with this skill would never do.

So... Pokémon has officially revealed the Top 300 quarter-finalists for the TCG illustration contest. I myself have participated, but unfortunately, did not make it. There were many awesome artworks!!

However... there has been a noticeable suspected case of an individual who entered with multiple identities (similar initials) with AI generated entries. - V.K show up in 6 entries. The weird and unnatural proportions, position, angle (look at vaporeon for instance) all give away indications of AI too.

The rules have clearly outlined multiple identities to lead to disqualification, yet the judges failed to take account into the suspicious number of similar styles appearing more than three times (surprassing the maximum number of 3 entries) with the initials.

"The rules in the contest affirmed that: submissions must be submitted by the Entrant. Any attempt, successful or otherwise, by any Entrant to obtain more than the permitted number of Submissions by using multiple and/or different identities, forms, registrations, addresses, or any other method will void all of that Entrant's Submissions and that Entrant may be disqualified at Sponsors' reasonable discretion."

This is very disappointing, Pokemon TCG. Not even just disappointing, this is very shameful and distasteful to artists who did not make it.