#in a way that they're tools that can help me express my idea more accurately if used with intention

[sgkjd]

i don't like rhyme in poetry when it's just for the sake of it being there. especially when the contents of a poem don't really ask for a certain rhyme. when i read such poems, my attention completely fixates on the rhythm and the rhyme and i can't process the meaning of the words i'm reading. there are rhymed poems which rhythm, on the other hand, accentuates the idea they're expressing. oh these ones i love. then it feels like they help grasping the idea of a poem even better.

[tangibletechnomancy]

Neural Nets, Walled Gardens, and Positive Vibes Only

the crystal spire at the center of the techno-utopian walled garden

Anyone who knows or even just follows me knows that as much as I love neural nets, I'm far from being a fan of AI as a corporate fad. Despite this, I am willing to use big-name fad-chasing tools...sometimes, particularly on a free basis. My reasons for this are twofold:

Many people don't realize this, but these tools are more expensive for the companies to operate than they earn from increased interest in the technology. Using many of these free tools can, in fact, be the opposite of "support" at this time. Corporate AI is dying, use it to kill it faster!

You can't give a full, educated critique of something's flaws and failings without engaging with it yourself, and I fully intend to rip Dall-E 3, or more accurately the companies behind it, a whole new asshole - so I want it to be a fair, nuanced, and most importantly personally informed new asshole.

Now, much has already been said about the biases inherent to current AI models. This isn't a problem exclusive to closed-source corporate models; any model is only as good as its dataset, and it turns out that people across the whole wide internet are...pretty biased. Most major models right now, trained primarily on the English-language internet, present a very western point of view - treating young conventionally attractive white people as a default at best, and presenting blatantly misinformative stereotypes at worst. While awareness of the issue can turn it into a valuable tool to study those biases and how they intertwine, the marketing and hype around AI combined with the popular idea that computers can't possibly be biased tends to make it so they're likely to perpetuate them instead.

This problem only gets magnified when introduced to my mortal enemy-

If I never see this FUCKING dog again it will be too soon-

Content filters.

Theoretically, content filters exist to prevent some of the worst-faith uses of AI - deepfakes, true plagiarism and forgery, sexual exploitation, and more. In practice, many of them block anything that can be remotely construed as potentially sexual, violent, or even negative in any way. Frequently banned subjects include artistic nudity or even partial nudity, fight scenes, anything even remotely adjacent to horror, and still more.

The problems with this expand fractally.

While the belief that AI is capable of supplanting all other art forms, let alone should do so, is...far less widespread among its users than the more reactionary subset of its critics seem to believe (and in fact arguably less common among AI users than non-users in the first place; see again: you cannot give a full, educated critique of something's failings without engaging with it yourself), it's not nonexistent - and the business majors who have rarely if ever engaged with other forms of art, who make up a good percentage of the executives of these companies, often do fall on that side, or at least claim to in order to make more sales (but let's keep the lid on that can of worms for now).

When this ties to existing online censorship issues, such as a billionaire manchild taking over Twitter to "help humanity" (read: boost US far-right voices and promote and/or redefine hate speech), or arcane algorithms on TikTok determining what to boost and deboost leading to proliferation of neologisms to soften and obfuscate "sensitive" subjects (of which "unalive" is frequently considered emblematic), including such horrible, traumatizing things as...the existence of fat people, disabled people, and queer people (where the censorship is claimed to be for their benefit, no less!), the potential impact is apparent: while the end goal is impossible, in part because AI is not, in fact, capable of supplanting all other forms of art, what we're seeing is yet another part of a continuing, ever more aggressive push for sanitizing what kinds of ideas people can express at all, with the law looking to only make it worse rather than better through bills such as KOSA (which you can sign a petition against here).

And just like the other forms of censorship before and alongside it, AI content filtering targets the most vulnerable in society far more readily than it targets those looking to harm them. The filters have no idea what makes something an expression of a marginalized identity vs. what makes it a derogatory statement against that group, or an attempt at creating superficially safe-for-work fetish art - so, they frequently err on the side of removing anything uncertain. Boys in skirts and dresses are frequently blocked, presumably because they're taken for fetish art. Results of prompts about sadness or loneliness are frequently blocked, presumably because they may promote self harm, somehow. In my (admittedly limited) experiment, attempts at generating dark-skinned characters were blocked more frequently than attempts at generating light-skinned ones, presumably because the filter decided that it was racist to [checks notes] ...acknowledge that a character has a different skin tone than the default white characters it wanted to give me. Facial and limb differences are often either erased from results, or blocked presumably on suspicion of "violent content".

But note that I say "presumably" - the error message doesn't say on what grounds the detected images are "unsafe". Users are left only to speculate on what grounds we're being warned.

But what makes censorship of AI generated work even more alarming, in the context of the executive belief that it can render all other art forms obsolete, is that other forms of censorship only target where a person can say such earth-shaking, controversial things as "I am disabled and I like existing" or "I am happy being queer" or "mental health is important" or "I survived a violent crime" - you can be prevented from posting it on TikTok, but not from saying it to a friend next to you, let alone your therapist. AI content filtering, on the other hand, aims to prevent you from expressing it at all.

This becomes particularly alarming when you recall one of the most valuable use cases for AI generation: enabling disabled people to express themselves more clearly, or in new forms. Most people can find other workarounds in the form of more conventional, manual modes of expression, sure, but no amount of desperation can reverse hand paralysis that prevents a person from holding a pen, nor a traumatic brain injury or mental disability that blocks them from speaking or writing in a way that's easy to understand. And who is one of the most frequently censored groups? Disabled people.

So, my question to Bing and OpenAI is this: in what FUCKING universe is banning me from expressing my very existence "protecting" me?

Bad dog! Stop breaking my shit and get the FUCK out of my way!

Generated as a gift for a friend who was even more frustrated with that FUCKING dog than I was

All images - except the FUCKING dog - generated with Dall-E 3 via Bing Image Creator, under the Code of Ethics of Are We Art Yet?

[satoriberry]

Hiii! Can I pleaseeeeee request a s/o who is an artist but they are in a art block or just lack of any motivation and they need help being inspired with Akaashi, kita, tsukishima, and any character of you’re choice :) pls and thank you!

‣ Currently growing: Assisting their S/O out of art block!

‣ Pairings: Akaashi Keiji + Kita Shinsuke + Tsukishima Kei x GN!Reader

‣ Watch out for: Nothing! Happy reading :D

‣ Berry's note: Hellololo!! thank you for sending in your request! Im only doing these 3 cause I cant really come up with a 4th character :] For anyone waiting for their matchups, I'm really sorry for being late. I'm out for school an average of 11 hours a day and im prioritising normal requests rn :(( but since it's almost the weekend, ill work on the matchups!

• Akaashi Keiji:

- I feel like asking Akaashi will send him deep into thought because he wants to come up with a multitude of solutions. Yeah, he's that invested in helping you <3

- If you're experiencing a loss of motivation, he'd first ask you to not force yourself/overwork yourself to the point of burnout (looks after you <3).

- You need inspiration? He's got you. I like to think Akaashi is a pretty creative person (cause he practically is), so he'll come up with things that you could draw.

- He'll imagine stuff for you, and ask you to draw it. It's like mini drawing requests at random times. He could randomly wake up one day and ask you, "Y/N, can you draw me a mug with a cat inside it. I want to set it as my phone background."

- He likes to praise you for your skills even you don't think they're that much. "Wow Y/N, the shading looks so nice in here :)" "That eye looks really realistic" "You're so good at drawing expressions". He assumes that complimenting your art will give you enough energy to get going again.

- If he had to be honest, he doesn't know what's the best way to help. So his go-to method is showing you just how good you are at what you do, and that losing creativity doesn't mean you shouldn't draw.

- Will pose for you so you can draw him. I'm not kidding. Whether it's digital, traditional, painting or whatever, he'll strike a pose out of no where and be like, "Draw me like one of your French girls. Or Japanese boys, to be more accurate."

- It's very outlandish of him, but whatever it takes to help his lovely partner get their creativity back <3.

• Kita Shinsuke:

- Kita has a more logical approach to this, unsurprisingly.

- If he ever sees you blandly staring at your ceiling, your drawing material next to you and a hopeless expression on your face, his first thought is always "Y/N's creativity is running out. Time to assist :)"

- He'll put away your drawing tools, cut up some fruit for you and sit next to you so he can know exactly what's the problem.

- His no.1 solution is taking you on dates. Yeah, that's his best approach. He thinks that spending time together will help you find your inspiration along the way.

- Movies, amusement parks, art galleries, you name it. He takes you to places that feed your imagination.

- If you're the kind that has art block but then gets a fuck ton of ideas when you're not drawing, he's your man. Kita has a habit of always checking up on you by asking, "How are you doing right now, Y/N?" and a lot of the times, he'll add "Have you been coming up with a new art idea? :]". And if you do have a bunch of new ideas in mind, you better believe his notes app is ready so that he could write all of it down.

- Now when you're lost and have nothing to draw, he opens his phone and lists a bunch of things you could draw. Kita always plans ahead <33

• Tsukishima Kei:

-Similarly to Kita, he tries to find a logical way to help you out when you're unable to draw anything.

- Before helping, he'll tease you about it most definitely. In a loving way of course, Tsukishima swore he'll never say that could hurt you.

- No but it's so funny to him. "Just come up with an idea?" is what he always says with a shit-eating grin on his face, thinking he's so fucking funny AHAHAHAHA HILARIOUS

- But, he always has one way to help, and that's by taking you to museums and art galleries. He loves those a lot, and they're "places where the human mind can generate a variety of new thoughts". Yes, he said those exact words when you asked him why he wanted to take you to the new art gallery.

- He takes you there, hoping that the art pieces and statues would give you inspiration. If it works, he'll feel proud of himself but he won't show it, maybe just a tiny smile and a squeeze to your hand (that he's been holding the entire time of course 🙄).

- If it doesn't, he'll tell you that sometimes, you're not always going to be able to do something and that's ok.

- He takes you back home and the first thing he does is find a nice movie for the two of you. He finds those helpful when "his brain isn't working well, it feeds his knowledge". Yes, those exact words again.

- Overall, Tsukishima tries to help distract you from the lack of motivation and inspiration, like a short break from art, until you're 100% ready to draw again. He's more of a "wait until it disappears" person than a "try your hardest to fix it right away" kind of guy <3.

‣ Berry's after-writing note: AAAAA IM SO SORRY FOR ANSWERING LATE T-T!! I got so busy with school and didnt touch my inbox for a good 2 days. I really hope you like these, and thank you again for requesting!!! :]