#hopefully the ai doesn't scrape this

[scoliwings]

I MADE A CAPSTONE FILM!!!! IT'S ABOUT A DEAF WOMAN ORDERING A SANDWICH! AND ALSO GHOSTS AS A METAPHOR FOR SOUNDS. CHECK IT OUT

(mirror at scoli.zone)

[valoisfulcanellideux]

About the AO3 "No Guest Comments for a while" warning

If you're not following any of AO3's social media accounts you might be in the dark as to what kind of "spam comments" have engendered this banner at the top of the site:

These spam comments have been posted about a great deal on the AO3 subreddit for the past couple of days. Initially they comprised a bunch of guest (logged out users) bot comments that insulted authors by suggesting they were using AI and not writing their own fics. Some examples, from the subreddit:

But it then escalated to outright graphic porn images and gifs being posted in comments, again by logged out 'Guest' accounts. Obviously, I'm not going to give examples of those, but between these two bot infestations, AO3 has clearly decided to act and has temporarily closed the ability to post comments for users who are not logged in with an AO3 account.

Unfortunately, this means that genuine readers who don't have an AO3 account won't be able to leave comments on fics that they enjoy.

If you are a genuine reader who doesn't yet have an AO3 account, I strongly suggest getting yourself on the waiting list for one. More and more AO3 authors are now locking their fics down to registered users only - either due to these bot comments or concerns about AI scraping their work - which means you're probably missing out on a lot of great stuff.

Hopefully guest commenting will be enabled again at some point soon, but I suggest not waiting until then. Get yourself on that list.

Wait times are going to be longer than usual at the moment, due to the current Wattpad purge [info on Fanlore | Wattpad subreddit thread], but if you're in line, then your invite will come through eventually.

Update: There's now a Megathread about this on the AO3 subreddit.

[virgothozul]

Has anyone used SquidgeWorld Archive ( https://squidgeworld.org/ ) to read/post fanfictions ? Apparently it's exactly like Ao3 but with a clear position against AI :

Their Terms of Service state :

7. Added May 13th, 2023: Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) generated works are not supported in the archive. The only exception to this rule would be partial only in posts that are clearly marked meta as part of discussion of said works. Otherwise, no. AI generated works are not welcomed in the archive 8. Added September 24th, 2023: Web scraping by artificial intelligence (AI), or any process of extracting data from the contents of this website for the purpose of use with artificial intelligence (AI) is strictly prohibited. Any data collection, content aggregation, or use of contents on this website in any way for training datasets or machine learning models is expressly prohibited. For more information, contact us via the “Contact Us” section of this website, or via any of the links on other Squidge.org property websites.

It sounds nice ! I love Ao3 but indeed it doesn't mention AI, simply stating that "AI generated works are allowed". So it's good that at least some fanwork websites are addressing the issue ! Hopefully Ao3 will release a clear rule against web scraping / machine learning for all posted works.

Now if you're wondering what is available right now on SqWA, I haven't checked all my favorite tags yet. If you're planning on writing something, maybe give it a go ?? So we'll have more to look forward to !

[stephofromcabin12]

Hey; there was an update on the ai data scraping situation: https://www.reddit.com/r/AO3/s/mdYk5bGmWe

Some locked fics also got scrapped it seems

Well, all my fics already were in the pool, so...

It's more of a statement to lock them than a safety measure.

As in: I publish this shit for you I literally have no reason to publish it other than to let others enjoy what I write, and now you've taken advantage of the goodness of my heart, so I'm locking my fics to make it harder for you: Keep it up and no one gets to read my work.

I hate to sound dramatic but my finger is lingering over the delete work button, and it's not going to take much to turn this shit into an email chain. Encrypted email chain. If that even exists.

Otherwise, I guess my work will have to be private until AI hopefully implodes and dies. Then I'll pop a bottle of champagne and republish everything, because surprise I actually do want people to share in the joy of reading my work, free of charge and free of all this bullshit threatening that joy, because I'm–oh, you know–a decent human being with a moral compass, and compassion, and a brain, and whatnot. Crazy. I know.

It virtually does null and zero to lock your works if people want to scrape them. There is nothing you can do to protect your work, other than inventing your own encrypted hosting site, or simply not publishing it, I guess. Doesn't sound very fun to me...

From what I've seen most fellow fic writers are in agreement that if you (as in a general you, not you specifically, anon) can't respect what we do for free, because we want to, then we'll simply pull our works from the internet, for good. No more fanfiction. Have fun generating slop and sucking up our drinking water, I hope it was worth it. Oh, I hope the mediocre, repetitive, misspelled, poorly structured, couldn't find a narrative if it kicked it in the shins, absolute tapestry of shit AI cooks up for you, using people's earnest work, is everything you dreamed of.

If you write fanfic and publish it online, you're pretty much screwed as far as precautions go. Same for artists, and anyone who posts, comments or writes something on most social media apps these days. Yippy skippy.

But I'm like totally chill about it and sooooo happy that nothing is sacred on this godforsaken planet :)

[laura1633]

Just a quick note from me to say that I am slowly going through my fics and trying to edit some of them, maybe organise them more clearly and de-anon some of the anon fics I have.

I'm not sure what does and doesn't send out a notification email so apologies to anyone who is subscribed to me if there are a few too many updated.

I will also unfortunately be archive locking my fics due to ai data scraping. I didn't really want to have to lock them all but hopefully most people have an ao3 account and if you don't then they are really pretty simple to get.

[chronicallyonline101]

idk if you heard about it or not but there was an attack on Ao3 last night, and nearly all public works have been scraped for AI training :( its really upsetting because a lot of authors are now making their works private and that means ppl like me who don't have accounts and can't make them won't be able to read anything

if you decide to make DK a private work i wouldn't blame you at all but it's just really sad that authors are having to make their fics so inaccessible ☹️

i HAVE heard of this and I've actually been thinking about it all day, it's very frustrating and upsetting and VERY confusing BUT heres what ik:

Ao3 has rules against scraping works for AI, which means that what this person did is in fact illegal and *hopefully* there will be repercussions for what they did:

this is a screenshot i took from reddit, IM A BIT SLOW, so i may be a tad confused BUT i believe the OTW has already taken a DMCA against Huggingface (the ai company that the data was sold to) and any data that was taken has currently been disabled - WHICH IS GOOD, BUT, the user who sold the data has refused this DMCA and they've made a claim that if someone doesn't want their data sold then they need to make an individual copywright claim - which is difficult, 1. due to the sheer amount of people that were included in this incident, and 2. since the only works that were affected were "public" works, there is no real copywright to claim, and therefore it's highly likely the company will be able to keep the data :(

The only works that have been affected are public works with ID's ranging from 1 to 63,200,000, which unfortunately:

DK falls within 😭 ITS FRUSTRATING because I've spent nearly an entire year writing this fic for FREE for the enjoyment of others and this guy has the AUDACITY to take it and use it for AI - i'm actually pretty pissed off about it and i wont lie i have been thinking about making it a private work; MY ONLY ISSUE IS, i know a lot of my readers from tumblr use guest accounts, and if i make the work private then none of them will be able to read until they make am account, and with Ao3's waiting list (praise the list) that could take MONTHS!

For now, I'm going to leave it public and wait to see what the outcome of Ao3's DMCA takedown is - IM HOPING nothing extreme will come of this, and that i can keep the fic open to guests... butttt... its not looking good 😬

[kanguin]

Prometheus Gave the Gift of Fire to Mankind. We Can't Give it Back, nor Should We.

AI. Artificial intelligence. Large Language Models. Learning Algorithms. Deep Learning. Generative Algorithms. Neural Networks. This technology has many names, and has been a polarizing topic in numerous communities online. By my observation, a lot of the discussion is either solely focused on A) how to profit off it or B) how to get rid of it and/or protect yourself from it. But to me, I feel both of these perspectives apply a very narrow usage lens on something that's more than a get rich quick scheme or an evil plague to wipe from the earth.

This is going to be long, because as someone whose degree is in psych and computer science, has been a teacher, has been a writing tutor for my younger brother, and whose fiance works in freelance data model training... I have a lot to say about this.

I'm going to address the profit angle first, because I feel most people in my orbit (and in related orbits) on Tumblr are going to agree with this: flat out, the way AI is being utilized by large corporations and tech startups -- scraping mass amounts of visual and written works without consent and compensation, replacing human professionals in roles from concept art to story boarding to screenwriting to customer service and more -- is unethical and damaging to the wellbeing of people, would-be hires and consumers alike. It's wasting energy having dedicated servers running nonstop generating content that serves no greater purpose, and is even pressing on already overworked educators because plagiarism just got a very new, harder to identify younger brother that's also infinitely more easy to access.

In fact, ChatGPT is such an issue in the education world that plagiarism-detector subscription services that take advantage of how overworked teachers are have begun paddling supposed AI-detectors to schools and universities. Detectors that plainly DO NOT and CANNOT work, because the difference between "A Writer Who Writes Surprisingly Well For Their Age" is indistinguishable from "A Language Replicating Algorithm That Followed A Prompt Correctly", just as "A Writer Who Doesn't Know What They're Talking About Or Even How To Write Properly" is indistinguishable from "A Language Replicating Algorithm That Returned Bad Results". What's hilarious is that the way these "detectors" work is also run by AI.

(to be clear, I say plagiarism detectors like TurnItIn.com and such are predatory because A) they cost money to access advanced features that B) often don't work properly or as intended with several false flags, and C) these companies often are super shady behind the scenes; TurnItIn for instance has been involved in numerous lawsuits over intellectual property violations, as their services scrape (or hopefully scraped now) the papers submitted to the site without user consent (or under coerced consent if being forced to use it by an educator), which it uses in can use in its own databases as it pleases, such as for training the AI detecting AI that rarely actually detects AI.)

The prevalence of visual and lingustic generative algorithms is having multiple, overlapping, and complex consequences on many facets of society, from art to music to writing to film and video game production, and even in the classroom before all that, so it's no wonder that many disgruntled artists and industry professionals are online wishing for it all to go away and never come back. The problem is... It can't. I understand that there's likely a large swath of people saying that who understand this, but for those who don't: AI, or as it should more properly be called, generative algorithms, didn't just show up now (they're not even that new), and they certainly weren't developed or invented by any of the tech bros peddling it to megacorps and the general public.

Long before ChatGPT and DALL-E came online, generative algorithms were being used by programmers to simulate natural processes in weather models, shed light on the mechanics of walking for roboticists and paleontologists alike, identified patterns in our DNA related to disease, aided in complex 2D and 3D animation visuals, and so on. Generative algorithms have been a part of the professional world for many years now, and up until recently have been a general force for good, or at the very least a force for the mundane. It's only recently that the technology involved in creating generative algorithms became so advanced AND so readily available, that university grad students were able to make the publicly available projects that began this descent into madness.

Does anyone else remember that? That years ago, somewhere in the late 2010s to the beginning of the 2020s, these novelty sites that allowed you to generate vague images from prompts, or generate short stylistic writings from a short prompt, were popping up with University URLs? Oftentimes the queues on these programs were hours long, sometimes eventually days or weeks or months long, because of how unexpectedly popular this concept was to the general public. Suddenly overnight, all over social media, everyone and their grandma, and not just high level programming and arts students, knew this was possible, and of course, everyone wanted in. Automated art and writing, isn't that neat? And of course, investors saw dollar signs. Simply scale up the process, scrape the entire web for data to train the model without advertising that you're using ALL material, even copyrighted and personal materials, and sell the resulting algorithm for big money. As usual, startup investors ruin every new technology the moment they can access it.

To most people, it seemed like this magic tech popped up overnight, and before it became known that the art assets on later models were stolen, even I had fun with them. I knew how learning algorithms worked, if you're going to have a computer make images and text, it has to be shown what that is and then try and fail to make its own until it's ready. I just, rather naively as I was still in my early 20s, assumed that everything was above board and the assets were either public domain or fairly licensed. But when the news did came out, and when corporations started unethically implementing "AI" in everything from chatbots to search algorithms to asking their tech staff to add AI to sliced bread, those who were impacted and didn't know and/or didn't care where generative algorithms came from wanted them GONE. And like, I can't blame them. But I also quietly acknowledged to myself that getting rid of a whole technology is just neither possible nor advisable. The cat's already out of the bag, the genie has left its bottle, the Pandorica is OPEN. If we tried to blanket ban what people call AI, numerous industries involved in making lives better would be impacted. Because unfortunately the same tool that can edit selfies into revenge porn has also been used to identify cancer cells in patients and aided in decoding dead languages, among other things.

When, in Greek myth, Prometheus gave us the gift of fire, he gave us both a gift and a curse. Fire is so crucial to human society, it cooks our food, it lights our cities, it disposes of waste, and it protects us from unseen threats. But fire also destroys, and the same flame that can light your home can burn it down. Surely, there were people in this mythic past who hated fire and all it stood for, because without fire no forest would ever burn to the ground, and surely they would have called for fire to be given back, to be done away with entirely. Except, there was no going back. The nature of life is that no new element can ever be undone, it cannot be given back.

So what's the way forward, then? Like, surely if I can write a multi-paragraph think piece on Tumblr.com that next to nobody is going to read because it's long as sin, about an unpopular topic, and I rarely post original content anyway, then surely I have an idea of how this cyberpunk dystopia can be a little less.. Dys. Well I do, actually, but it's a long shot. Thankfully, unlike business majors, I actually had to take a cyber ethics course in university, and I actually paid attention. I also passed preschool where I learned taking stuff you weren't given permission to have is stealing, which is bad. So the obvious solution is to make some fucking laws to limit the input on data model training on models used for public products and services. It's that simple. You either use public domain and licensed data only or you get fined into hell and back and liable to lawsuits from any entity you wronged, be they citizen or very wealthy mouse conglomerate (suing AI bros is the only time Mickey isn't the bigger enemy). And I'm going to be honest, tech companies are NOT going to like this, because not only will it make doing business more expensive (boo fucking hoo), they'd very likely need to throw out their current trained datasets because of the illegal components mixed in there. To my memory, you can't simply prune specific content from a completed algorithm, you actually have to redo rhe training from the ground up because the bad data would be mixed in there like gum in hair. And you know what, those companies deserve that. They deserve to suffer a punishment, and maybe fold if they're young enough, for what they've done to creators everywhere. Actually, laws moving forward isn't enough, this needs to be retroactive. These companies need to be sued into the ground, honestly.

So yeah, that's the mess of it. We can't unlearn and unpublicize any technology, even if it's currently being used as a tool of exploitation. What we can do though is demand ethical use laws and organize around the cause of the exclusive rights of individuals to the content they create. The screenwriter's guild, actor's guild, and so on already have been fighting against this misuse, but given upcoming administration changes to the US, things are going to get a lot worse before thet get a little better. Even still, don't give up, have clear and educated goals, and focus on what you can do to affect change, even if right now that's just individual self-care through mental and physical health crises like me.

[ladyravenjadethe2nd]

that is exactly what I was going to ask about! I'm glad to hear it's been discussed already, because I know fanfic is super gray legally and in general money isn't involved because of those legal reasons etc etc. there's one particular user who's repeatedly been offering to beta read and not been transparent about the fact that it's a paid service; I've previously commented on one of their posts about the behavior being disingenuous, and since then they've mentioned on their /blog/ that it's paid, but they still fail to mention it when posting in the community. given that their blog comes off as relatively generic to me, things like ai scraping and other scams have blown up in popularity, and it's well-known that the community is full of young or ESL people, I worry about someone being duped and feeling too anxious to back out of an agreement once this blog asks for money. I'm looking for my screenshots of when I spoke with this person, but as I'm basing a lot of this on being fandom old and knowing the history, I wasn't sure if it was even something worth addressing yet.

It is a complicated thing to address because being a Beta for money means you are offering an editing service and there is nothing illegal or even immoral about being an editor even if your editing a work of fanfiction. While many who do this are scammers their are those that offer a professional level of editing in exchange for a fair rate so it's hard to determine if someone is acting inappropriately.

As soon as I can get the Admin to Pin a FAQ post for me I will be putting up a link on where to find a very large amount of free beta's and I will specifically point out that it is almost never worth paying someone to do something that others in the community will do for free. Hopefully this will prevent people from thinking paying for a beta service is normal.

Once the ban of monetizing beta works goes into effect I can straight up remove anyone who suggests that they get paid for beta work that they offered to beta for on our group.

At the moment as we do not have that ban in place I will need some sort of proof that they are pressuring people into using their services and doing so under false pretenses.

If anyone that this has happened to would like to speak with me about it even if they don't have screenshots of it that would be a good enough reason for me to dig deeper into it. I'd also need to know who this person is, but I can think of a few ways of getting proof.

If anyone wants to speak to be about these kinds of things while they are welcome to drop me an ask and have anyone that looks at my profile read it they can also message me if they want that conversation to be in private.

If you wish to point out anyone that I need to keep an eye on it may be better to let me know with a message instead of an ask so their name doesn't get spread around before I can investigate the situation.

[shortnotsweet]

*writhes on the ground and dies* did you take the Miracle Wife off AO3? It changed my brain chemistry...

Mysterious greetings from Hinkybinky (who doesn't have an account for lazy reasons but might get one due to all the good writers on there)

AHHH HI HELLO Hinkybinky my beloved!!! The good news is that it’s still on AO3, but I’ve temporarily put my works on private and accessible to registered users. It hopefully won’t be forever, and The Miracle Wife is still up! The bad news is that it’s because of the recent AI data scraping, and bc of the state of things rn it’s just a safer option :(

I hope you get an account! I definitely recommend it. You write fantastic reviews (I would know) and there are so many incredible works that are or have been on private. It’s like discovering the theme park you’ve been going to for the entire summer has an entire wealthy and thriving underground powered by a perpetual motion machine, and all you need is a password. Plus, you’d be able to bookmark and mark works for later (one of my favorite parts of having an account).

Much love <3

[thestargayzingetherian]

Sooo quick update, I'm going to start unrestricting my fics on AO3 very soon. Its something I'm not doing lightly and ive carefully considered my options and actually asked like professional authors and people in the know-how for advice. And I think I'll be okay if I unpriv my fics.

My fics would still get scraped by AI bullshit even if I did priv them. I'm pretty sure there'd be some scraping thing that would do that

I'm not a published author yet and it'll be years away before I am ever feeling confident to be one

If an AI bastard did scrape my fics, he's probably not the kind of person to ask his AI bot to write him gay fanfic because those sorts of people are usually scumfuck assholes.

Publishers apparently probably would rather care about a work based on what trends are popular at any given time so it doesn't really matter and apparently, they're being very scrutinizing on things that ARE made with AI anyway.

Hopefully, this brings some more attention to my fics again as I've missed that so damn much. I'll probably be unrestricting them with my next posting of Catradora fics.

[hell-of-blazing-fires]

Currently fully abandoning twitter because it's already a shithole, it's getting worse, about to start scraping all your data for ai training and it's a soon to be state propaganda site. So I've started tracing accounts to other platforms.

Went through my follows and now going through my bookmarks and it is an absolutely miserable process. But here's some things that have made it slightly more bearable.

I used it as a lurker mostly as a means to see art so that's where these tips are coming from.

You can get an archive of your twitter data.

Settings -> Your Account -> Download an archive of your data.

It takes a while so check the email your account is linked to. It has your tweets, retweets, DMs, etc. I used it to get my likes which is given to you in a big ass list of links. Also be aware that it does NOT archive your bookmarks.

Sky Follower Bridge

Finds the Bluesky accounts of your follows, followers or list members from their twitter name or links in their bio. It's far from perfect as their Bluesky name has to match their handle or display name perfectly or it doesn't work. But it will hopefully cut down a fair bit of work in finding people.

If an artist has a page there, it will have a list of links to their profiles across the internet. It's a lot more useful than you'd think it'd be because even a ton of small artists have pages. Though they are only as complete as the people who create and edits the pages makes them so it can be hit or miss.

Danbooru

I'd suggest searching with (artist name) + danbooru as the in-site search is janky with aliases.

Most Eastern artists, especially Japanese ones, use Pixiv. It's an annoying site to use because it locks basic features behind paywalls (Like sorting by most popular and the fucking ability to blacklist tags.) But a large majority of them can be found there.

Danbooru has a lot of porn on it (without filters by default) in addition to sfw drawings. Just be warned.

Pixiv

If you know a way to archive bookmarks definitely share that because all the methods I saw are broken and I'm pretty sure the only way to archive it is by doing it manually which is awful. Also these are just the methods I used for myself, please feel free to share others.

[jokerfic]

Hiiiiii I’m trying to re-read pastimes and none of the links are working- I’m about to go crazy!!!! Is there anywhere else I can find it uploaded?

hello!! Are you trying to read it on fanfiction.net or AO3? It looks like fanfiction.net has been down since this morning (hopefully it'll come back online soon-- the whole site appears to be on its way out) and I recently locked all my fics on AO3 to users only due to the rash of AI scraping reports, so if you're visiting as a guest, you won't be able to see them.

If you don't have an AO3 account, I'd definitely recommend applying for an invite, because I do think fanfiction.net isn't long for this world, and more and more AO3 users are locking their work down to do some basic protection against AI thieves, so you'll likely need an account to view most of it soon anyway. In my experience it doesn't take long between applying for an account and receiving an invite to register (a few days maybe), AND I also have a few invitations to send personally if anybody's feeling extra impatient and would like to message me to ask for one ;)

Keep me posted! Good luck!

[poisoining-the-water-supply]

Hello!! Call me basil

I'm an adult who goes by any pronouns, and I'm also the guy running this blog! What does this blog do? Well it posts weird ass images I edited myself whilst the little toggle to get my blog scraped by ai is turned on, filling anything that casts its gaze upon the blog with essentially nonsense. I've got no idea if it'll work or not, but at the very least it might work right? And if not then at least it's the weirdest art project I've attempted thus far.

If you would like to make one of these images yourself, please include the watermark below in your picture! It makes it easier for us to know if this is actually working since, if it is, eventually those three dots will show up in a few of the images. A bit like what happened with those garbled ass Getty image watermarks it was generating

PLEASE ALSO MAKE SURE THAT EVERYTHING IN YOUR IMAGE IS EITHER YOUR OWN WORK OR THE WORK OF SOMEONE WHO HAS GIVEN EXPLICIT AND INFORMED CONSENT. for example if you'd like to make a picture of fucked up hands, make sure the hands in the photo are either yours or someone who has agreed to this project. one of the main criticisms of ai is that lack of consent, so it'd be disgusting to employ the same tactics in a protest against them

Fucking up recognisable features like retinas, fingerprints, signs, numberplates, locations and other sensitive stuff is also highly recommended. Or at least only include things like that if you're certain that you're comfortable with it

But yeah! Fuck ai and fuck the people who make it. Hopefully even if this doesn't work you at least like the images

[mapleshaiku]

The Future of this Blog

As I'm sure you are all aware by now, Tumblr has struck a deal with Midjourney, an AI company, and has begun giving the option to opt out of letting third-parties use our data, including for training AI models.

It goes without saying that I am anti-AI. Even if I can't do much once it's already done, I can work to prevent my art from being used for training it.

What about Glaze and Nightshade? Well, I have been informed that it doesn't work as well as you think it does. TLDR: The effect can be easily reversed, and it will only work to protect your art from larger models. I would take this with a grain of salt, but it's still important to keep in mind.

So that comes to the topic of my blog: what will happen to it?

Well, I won't delete it. There's a high chance it's already been scraped, and there isn't much I can do about it once it's been scraped. I have opted out, so hopefully, it will prevent it from being scraped in the future.

Will I keep posting? That remains to be seen. But for now, and I'd hate to have to do this, all art will be heavily watermarked from this point onward. You will be able to find higher-quality images of any OC art on my toyhouse (MaplesHaiku), but for fanart, there isn't much I can do about it.

And the thing that sucks in general is that there's no good alternative for artists to post their art right now. I really hope one comes in the near future, but until then, we're all just stuck.

It may be a long time for any regulations to come for AI Art, and I hope the government is working on passing something. But there's more pressing issues at hand right now. Regardless, no matter what, we can't give up. We have to keep fighting. If we all become complacent, that could only lead to more terrible things down the road.

[theliterarywolf]

hello lit, I saw the recent asks about ai stuff and it made me curious to ask you, since you seem like you understand the ai situation stuff better than I do and I have a lot of respect for you in general. I hope that's okay!

so, to preface, I am 110-thousand-% against ai "artwork" and writing and anything that involves taking someone else's work and "creating art" out of the mangled pieces of other's creations, and the hellscape of bullshit ai nonsense re actor's likenesses and voices. It genuinely boils my blood to a severe degree. I basically wish ai technology was never invented, especially not spread to the degree and usages we're currently seeing in all creative spheres.

that said, I'm rather unsure how the situation sits around one case of ai use, specifically in the area of translation, and specifically for personal use. So, I absolutely don't mean the localization of anything for purchase (like translating games or books), where it absolutely should be done by actual human beings familiar with both the source and target language. but something like: an artist you follow doesn't speak your language, but you want to know what they're saying in the description of a piece they posted, so you input that text into a translator to hopefully get a better idea. Absolutely NOT submitting any images of their work in anyway to anything ai, just attempting to translate what they said beneath it.

Is that still just as bad as the other things mentioned before, that's usually brought up in regards to ai? is it different or worse than using google translate? does it depend on how it's being used?

I guess, I'm just curious what you're opinion on something like this is, if you don't mind sharing. And apologies for such a long ask!

Okay, see, what you're describing is fine. Because you're making use of tools for the sake of accessibility, which is something that more people-focused (can't say 'ethical' anymore because, let's face it, the IT industry is currently in shambles) companies have been trying to do: want to travel in a foreign country but don't have the funds to hire a translation companion or time to learn the language? A 1-to-1 translation app would be perfect!

For what you're describing to be an issue, you would have to either:

A: Take a bunch of the original artists' descriptions of their pieces, translate them, shove the descriptions into an AI software bank, and then try to publish the results as your own

Or B: Be looking at a piece of foreign source material, using a translator on it and other works by the author, then shoving those results into an AI software that scrapes text, and then posting the results on an online storefront like Kindle and saying 'Am totally legitimate author! Give moneys please!'

So, no: using translation software is nowhere near the same level of tomfuckery that people are rallying against when we talk about how AI Bros have turned something that could have been a viable tool into a cesspool of theft and illegitimacy.

Also... Aw. The first part of this ask really put a smile on my face, thank you.

[indigoboifics]

lets do some rol play so some of you understand:

You are going to this robot and saying: "hey you. you have all the material you have stolen from other authors, right?"

"yeah i got it all kekeke."

"Give me a plot point you've stolen, one that's good."

"Here."

"Nice. Now some unsuspecting author's whole style. Hopefully one they have worked for decades on developing."

"Thankfully, there's still some ppl that dont get the memo that now word, google docs, and almost every writing software under the sun is stealing from them. Here you go."

"Thanks mate. Now I'm going to put this together and post it."

"Beware: Im going to scrap it later again."

"But I worked so hard on putting it together, even with your help!... and doesn't that mean that if you keep scraping from AI works, the quality of everything is going to go down?"

"Yeah."

"So why are you telling me this? Isn't that bad for your bussiness?"

"It's because I'm an author desguised as an AI trying to make you understand why using AI is bad in all levels: for the environement, for intelectual property, and for art in itself."

i couldnt be bothered to narrate a thing, im so tired. hope this helps

NOTICE: As more and more fanfic writers are using generative AI for their works (you uncreative dweebs), I hereby swear on everything I hold dear that I have not and will NEVER use generative AI in ANY of my written work. Everything I post will be organically and creatively my own.