#instead of having some program plagiarize my work

[lz-01]

since you can’t have nice things, i’m now hiding all my works on ao3 til this craze of feeding people’s fics into AI generators like ChatGPT dies

i don’t want my writing -- pieces that i’ve spent hundreds of hours of my life working on -- going to feed some fucking AI so piece of shit rich fucks can use ChatGPT to generate stories and scripts instead of paying writers a fair fucking wage

get your heads outta your collective asses

[natsgrave]

THE PHOTOGRAPHER AND ACTRESS | scarlett johansson

big reputation, you and me, we'd be a big conversation. it's like your eyes are liquor, it's like your body is gold. you've been calling my bluff on all my usual tricks, so here's the truth from my red lips. i do not give permission for my work to be copied or translated on other sites. plagiarism is a crime!! masterlist whispers of heartache m.list

Y/N'S POV

I'm here today taking pictures for an event, at the red carpet.

My bestfriend is a famous actor and well me, I'm a professional photographer.

If you're wondering who's my bestfriend is, it's the Scarlett fucking Johansson. we met—well, bumped into eachother a few years ago causing her to accidentally spill the coffee she's holding all over my shirt and keep apologising even I told her that it was okay.

She took me out for dinner as apology. I declined at first but she kept telling me that even if I don't want to, she's still gonna take me out. so I said yes, and after that we just instantly click.

Now, we're bestfriends.

Oh, oh, wait, let me tell you a secret. She's also my girlfriend, cool right? I know!

Everyone knows that she's in a relationship but we actually didn't tell the public except our close friends and family that it was me, the public knows that we're just really close friends.

As I keep taking pictures of other celebrities, she finally arrived.

Fucking goddess. She looks ethereal and she's mine. My scarlett, my girlfriend.

She keep looking around until her eyes landed on me and gave me her gorgeous smile. I could die now. Right here, right now.

She walked towards the middle and everyone starts shouting her name.

"Over here, Scarlett!"

"Look to the right!"

"Scarlett, look over here!"

"To the left!"

There's lot of people shouting her name but she just stood still and look into my camera. Posing for only my camera, for me.

What the fuck?

All the other photographers are now looking at me. I took the camera away from my eye and glared at her before I mouthed 'stop.'

But instead of stopping and posed for others, she just smiled before walking away. I heard everyone whispering and some look at me and mutter a 'what the fuck.'

"I'm sorry." I smiled and start packing up.

"I'm gonna beat your ass, motherfucker." I muttered as I go behind the red carpet.

I passed a security and asked me what I need, "Hi! Sorry, I just need some photos with miss Johansson for our program, is that alright?"

"Wait here." He said and walked towards Scarlett who's standing with some friends.

The security talked to her until he pointed at me, smile form into her face before walking over, "Thank you, sir." I said before pulling Scarlett to the corner, out of anyone's eye.

"What was that back there!?" I whisper shout.

"What? I was posing." She casually said. "Yeah, for me. Only for my camera! You can't—" I didn't even get to finish my sentenced when she kissed me. How rude.

"You can't blame me, you're the only one I see." Scarlett said before kissing me once again.

"Stop kissing me, someone might see." I said and playfully gave her a glare.

"Alright, okay, fine. Can I atleast have a hug?" She asked, giving me her best puppy eyes and arms wide open.

I rolled my eyes and hugged her. I felt her pulling me even closer and pressing me to her body.

"Scar?" I whisper.

"Hmm?"

"You're hugging me because you want to feel my boobs, right?"

"Yeah."

very short one. feedback and reblog is highly appreciated!

[chaos-in-deepspace]

Can't believe I gotta do this, but okay...strap on in guys because this isn't only a rant, but informational. Gonna show you how to clock AI writing, why it's bad, how to abuse AI for writing, and how to prove something was written using a chat bot.

Have you ever read a fic and had to pause for a moment? Contemplate a few things? You almost feel like a few times you just couldn't figure out. Or perhaps you saw something that just read super awkwardly.

If this describe you reading some fics, then you might've fallen victim to "AI Writers". Yes, that's correct! A writer who uses AI to help them write their fics. Mind you most people when using this method actually use chatbots! So it's not like they just run into ChatGPT, give it a prompt, and then post it. Oh no. They RP it, maybe clean it up a little so it reads more like a fic, and then they post it.

If any of you are use to RPing with Chatbots like Janitor.ai, or even C.ai, then you might occasionally read a fic and realize it's strikingly familiar to chat you read in your own chats. I, for one, dabble in RPing with bots when I get bored, which is how now and days I can read a fic, see certain lines, and just know.

Now I'm certain I don't need to sit here and explain why this is so bad. However, I'll explain anyways if you'd like to hear my opinion, as well as many other artists and writers:

AI is Plagiarism!

Ya, this is plagiarism. How do you think it's generating responses? Or for artwork, where do you think it's grabbing the images from. It doesn't do it itself. AI is basically giving a program information so it can generate things. A lot of programs that uses AI, as well as websites, uses that written information to generate your responses. You know Google Docs? Ya, it can take information from your writing there. Archive of Our Own? Bingo. Tumblr? Ya, it takes writing from here as well. That means the people who have spent a lot of time on their writing, spending years honing their craft, are having their writing styles and voices stolen from AI in order to make those generated responses. Now when it's just you RPing something, pop off. It's just you and your bot. Share it with a few friends, sure! If you post it online though, those words are a mashup of millions of stories written and posted online. So it's plagiarism. Plain and simple.

2. It sets you back as a writer

Ever wondered why some people can write the most amazing things ever? It's because they wrote. They learned. They practiced. It took time and effort in order to build up those skills. They got there by writing. So how is using AI affecting your writing? Easy, you're not writing. At least...not a lot. If you use a chatbot to write half the things in a fic, you're only doing half the work. You're also bouncing off the idea from your bot and going with it, instead of using your writer brain to figure out how this scene would best be executed. Imagine it like this. Someone uses AI to draw an image for themselves. Then they trace over it, add a few of their own touches, and color it the best they can. Did they suddenly learn how to draw? No. Because they didn't take the time to learn why something is placed like this, how the composition works, etc. Same thing with writing. If you're using AI to do all the work then you aren't learning, and you're not going to be getting better as a writer. If that's the case...why are you writing? It should be a fun experience to write, after all. It should be something you want to get better at. So why are you just having AI do it? Attention? You realize your fics need to be pretty well written to garner attention, right? That brings me to my third point.

3. We can tell...and it's not fun to read

Today a friend showed me an paragraph from a fic he found here on tumblr. I saw it. Without even having to ask I knew it was written by AI. Nobody talks like that except a robot. The wording? Repetitive for AI to use. "Their bond grew with every passing moment." | "Their shared connection." | "His voice was barely above a whisper." | "It was a testament to their relationship." | "He's determined to face this challenge with her, hand in hand, and to make the most out of the second chance he's been given." | "A renewed sense of purpose." | "He's determined to face this challenge with her" If I see these lines, I clock it as Janitor in a heartbeat. Sure, not every time it's used is AI, but those are the most common things I see in every RP with a bot, and I actively need to correct the bots or else they'll use it in every fucking reply. Another thing is...RPs read differently from a fic. They're not made to be read like a narrative story. It's a bot replying to someone, so when you do that things get weird. Not to mention sometimes clothes appear and disappear, a position is changed, etc. It's just not good writing...

4. It's lazy

Simple as that. It's fucking lazy to get AI to write a fic. Trust me, I am one lazy motherfucker. I hate doing things. I want to sleep for literally a solid week. However I made the decision to write things, so I write them. I put in the effort. Other writers who don't use AI? They put in the effort. I know at least 20 people who are depressed as all hell, can barely get out of bed unless it's to go to work, who decided to still write. Not everyone is going to be a fast writer. Not everyone is going to find writing easy. If you're going to commit, though, commit to it. Write it. Don't use AI.

With these points being made, I'm sure you can see why in the writer community, it's frowned upon to use AI as well as bots for your writing...especially when you don't disclose it. I could probably put everything aside if you just said it was written using AI. Honesty is the best policy.

People might not want to read it then, but at least they know that you used AI. At least you admitted to it. Using AI and then passing it off as completely original is disgusting.

So you clocked something as AI written. You’re pretty freaking sure this was written with a Chatbot. So you plug it into an AI checker and what? No AI detected? No fucking way.

Yes fucking way.

The detectors use a range of things like: Language Model Comparison, Repetitive phrases and structures, contextual awareness, among a few other things. Now look at the "Language Model" part. What if a Chatbot doesn't have the most common language models? It doesn't detect it as easily, that's what.

Where does that leave Chatbots? Well, it means it’s not really checking for things like Janitor or C.ai. A lot of times it flies under the radar because of this. I have found that there is at least one site that doesn’t do this. Instead of more or less checks the context of the text to see if it was written using AI, rather than relying on ai models.

Quillbot

This is what I use to check. I also did run it through some tests. Mind you, not every program is going to be completely accurate. This just happens to, after thorough testing, be the best at being able to tell if a chatbot was used.

As you can see here, the one on the far left is a fic that I ran through that was my own writing. In the middle I had copy/pasted my own responses, and my bot responses from Janitor. On the far right I pasted only Janitor responses. While it’s not accurate, it could still detect human written from a chat bot!

In comparison to me running it through other AI Detection softwares (one of them being Grammarly), where they detected nothing in the post that were written by both me, and the bot.

The entire reason I’m even making this post is because I happened to come across a fic that seemed like it was written using AI, so I was curious and ran it through. Mind you, the detection software only lets you paste 1,200 words of the writing, so this was just a snippet. The same size snippets that I had put for all of my own tests. This was the result:

So we can make a good guess that this was…probably written by AI. If you’re wondering, no. This isn’t a call out post. I won’t be stating the user who I did this. I ask you not to speculate in the notes of this post either. I don’t want to cause unnecessary drama, because honestly the writing community for this fandom already has that.

I will say, to the writers who are using AI, I’m not the only person who will probably get curious. If you’re going to use AI for your writing, at least state it in the description. It’s manipulative and wrong to not state it.

I know I said AI is bad, but it's also like Thanos. It's inevitable. I fully think we should abuse the hell out of it and make it our bitch. Now how to do that without using it to actually write? Easy.

Force it to give us ideas. Once upon a time I wanted to do some writing, but couldn't think of anything I wanted to write. Sure there's prompt lists out there, but a lot of them didn't fit what I needed. So I grabbed ChatGPT by it's lil grimy throat. I whispered in it's ears "Write me some prompts."

I then took said prompts to jog some ideas in my head, then wrote my own original content. I used AI to help give me a basic idea for my writing and then came up with my own stories. That's a simple way of doing it.

I know people who will RP with a janitor bot because they have a plot in mind for a story, but are uncertain with how they'd want to execute it. So they RP with a bot first, and then once they have an idea, they write a fic based off their RP. They don’t take what the bot said, copy/paste it, then say it’s their fic. They use it as a tool to help them with their ideas. Sometimes if the bot has a really good line, they might take that singular line from it as well. That’s not taking the entire story, it’s just a line that they knew would flow with the fic, and half the time they edit the line as well.

You can also use it for story titles. Can’t come up with a title? Tell ChatGPT the synopsis of your story and then ask it to generate 10 titles for it (actually I just tried to this see the results and am currently laughing my ass off, maybe don't do this).

Don’t forget things like Grammarly. That’s also AI! You can use it to check your grammar and fix awkward wording in your writing.

There’s ways a writer can use AI as a tool. In my opinion, it’s no different from an artist using the symmetry tool for their art. Or using a 3D model to help them make a pose for a drawing in their program. It’s a tool that should be used to help and improve your own content.

[hms-no-fun]

your last answer was very good, its really great to see someone actually talking about "AI" as a labour issue instead of complaining about "plagiarism" and saying we need to make copyright stronger lol. my question is completely tangential to that, but i'm really curious what you mean by making a distinction between a communist future and an anarchist future- what in your mind would be true about a communist future that would be undesirable and not true about an anarchist future? in my experience theyve always been largely equated, albeit generally with some differences mostly stemming from the differences in socialist and anarchist perspectives on the whole issue

i'm so glad you asked this question!

i tend to focus a lot on democratic socialist policies in my writing, your public option and affordable housing etc etc. i do this because they are tangible, relatable necessities whose impacts would be of incalculable benefit to the working class. but i don't see them as the end goal. for me, getting those programs in place and future proofed is step zero. barring a full scale organized revolution, this seems the most likely path forward.

step one from there is to build communism. this means more than unions, more than socialized healthcare, more than high taxes. this means seizing corporate firms and nationalizing them. this means worker ownership of and democratic participation in those firms. and it means a million other things.

if you asked me the right way to build communism, i'd have a few shrugged suggestions and then say "i don't know." the question of how to build communism will be answered in the doing. mistakes will be made. people will get hurt. but people are always already getting hurt, and we must remember that our task here is not to build a perfect society, but a better one.

yet this pipe dream itself is not the end goal. i think state communism is perfectly capable of falling to rot in its own ways, even in a world where there are no capitalist superpowers waging economic warfare against them. to my mind, the ultimate goal of state communism should be to make itself redundant. this is almost certainly beyond our lifetime in even the rosiest of scenarios. we're talking generations of very deliberate work. but let's say we've arrived at the equitable future. a truly classless, borderless world of the proletariat may yet have little need for states. i struggle to imagine such a world without the abolition of hierarchical organizations as we know them, because hierarchies manufacture class dynamics.

what i imagine then is a form of anarchism in which governing bodies emerge out of necessity or ingenuity, serve their function, then dissolve as a matter of course to avoid the re-entrenchment of imbalanced power dynamics. don't ask me to elaborate further on the practicalities of that future, because i honestly haven't got an answer for you. anarchism is a beautiful hypothesis which cannot be proved in a lab.

i see socialism, communism, and anarchism not as competing ideologies but stages along a spectrum of societal development. the conflict between these schools of thought seems to emerge out of disagreements over which one we should build first, which one we should never build, and the order in which one may then build up to another. you don't have to agree with me on that assessment, but from where i'm sitting in the 21st century united states, socialism -> communism -> anarchism makes the most sense. you can't dismantle the state without controlling the state, and you don't truly control the state until you control the means of production, and seizing the means would probably be a hell of a lot easier under a democratic socialist state.

that's the theory, anyway! i am not particularly dogmatic about this stuff because i can imagine plenty of scenarios where we hopskip socialism or jump a curb somewhere into anarchism. and of course it's not gonna be the same order, the same process, the same logic in every country, nor will it happen all at once. we're most likely talking about a project of centuries, even as i believe in the transformative immediacy of revolution. hence my focus on democratic socialist policies, whose necessity are paramount regardless of your political disposition or prescribed solution to the problems of the world today. i'm sick of debating the hypotheticals of a system we are not even remotely close to activating in the real world, i want to put my energy towards a project that feels genuinely achievable and that would immediately change a lot of lives for the better overnight. beyond that, i simply try to emphasize that this is one step to take on a long path, because i think it's healthier to take the long view. shrug!

[asurrogateblog]

Cannibals, Pirates, and PhDs: How Did I Get Here?

I mentioned in some tags earlier that I’ve only actually been a real fan of Pink Floyd for under a year, and that the confluence of events that led up to it is pretty absurd. Some interest seemed to be taken in this, so I though I’d elaborate.

I didn’t know how to shorten this timeline and have it make any sense, so it’s... long. But idk, I think it’s pretty funny. If you’re nosy like I am this is for you.

My Backstory Timeline:

early childhood: my parents essentially mainline me and my little sister with The Beatles. I know almost no songs written past the 70’s until at least sixth grade. I develop a childhood crush on Paul McCartney, a joke that the universe really decides to play the long game on.

2014: my dad calls me over one night, and gravely tells me he’s been waiting to share something until I’m old enough. I brace myself to be told about sex or secret half-siblings. Instead, he tells me I need to listen to The Wall. Irritated at the idea of wasting an hour and half of my night, I nevertheless comply and go up to my room and put it on. I do not come back from this, clearly having inherited some sort of generational curse.

Around the same time, I am also secretly watching Hannibal every time my parents send me upstairs because Game of Thrones is “too gory”. This will trigger three important things: an interest in psychology, a love of horror media, and a classical music phase will train my attention span to last well past the three minute mark.

2014-2023: Over the intervening years, I become a casual fan of Pink Floyd, but make a deliberate point not to learn anything about the band. I like being able to imagine my own meanings for the songs. Also, I am motivated against this by a childhood memory of being deeply frightening by a picture of old Paul McCartney (LOL). I do not want that to ever happen again, so no learning.

Cut to April of 2023: I am finishing up my first year of my PhD program studying media psychology. I am in a bad place mentally, and am going through another horror movie phase to fill the hole. As a result, I get very into American Psycho. The main character, Patrick Bateman, is a fan of superficial 80’s pop music, particularly Genesis. I decide to start listening to Genesis to see if I agree with his tastes. While researching “best Genesis albums”, I come across The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. I listen to it, and am blown away. I had no idea that the Phil Collins band made music like that. This sends me down the prog-rock rabbit hole. I still won't learn any lore.

Summer of 2023: MEANWHILE, I am also going through another pirate phase. I have a fairly encyclopedic knowledge of 18th century piracy (and am still quite active in the Black Sails fan community). Around this time, I get really obsessed with this one random guy named Dennis McCarthy who was hanged in 1718.

I decide to work poor Dennis into a science fiction story I’ve been working on. The premise is essentially that the universe is an abandoned simulation, and a ‘glitch in the matrix’ starts to, among other things, bring people from the wrong time periods back to life. The format of the story is vaguely monster-of-the-week, in which the characters have to solve various problems caused by mistakes in the code. I think, “hey, you know what would be perfect for this? that fanfic I wrote about The Wall in high school.” Said fic (which that stupid fucking beatles movie stole from me) is about a world in which Pink Floyd never existed, but a wannabe rock-star discovers a box full of their records and decides to copy them. While he is touring his plagiarized version of The Wall, he realizes that the events of the album are starting to happen to him in real life. By working this concept into my new story, I go through another one of my periodical The Wall phases. It's in full swing when fall rolls around.

September of 2023: This semester, I take a grad-level narrative theory class in the English department. I decide it would be helpful to follow along with a specific example, so I choose The Wall. Using the terminology I am learning in the class, I start to realize that The Wall is…. incredibly narratologically fucked up. To help orient me, I watch the bootleg concert recordings, and the trick with the surrogate band sends me so out of my mind that I decide I must break my rule about never learning band lore.

This is where the two plot-lines converge. I don’t remember which came first, but around this same time, I think to myself “hey, if Genesis was hiding such an incredible album under the 80’s pop, what must Pink Floyd be hiding?” On that whim, I put on Piper at the Gates of Dawn, which equally sends me so out of my mind that I decide I must break my rule about never learning band lore. I needed to know what the fuck happened to get them from Piper to The Wall.

September-November: In the two months between the onset of this and finally making another sideblog, I dedicate all of my free time to learning as much about Pink Floyd as humanely possible (and writing a 20 page essay for that narrative theory class). As you can imagine, this is a lot to unpack all at once for someone who didn’t even know who Roger or Syd or any of the rest of them were. Luckily, I am over-educated enough to be a very fast learner. Aside from the band lore itself, I of course also fall in love with the rest of Pink Floyd's discography musically-speaking. Having this interest to latch onto genuinely pulls me out of my depression.

Cut to February 2024: I am really enjoying myself, and want to keep this going as long as possible, but I am starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel on Pink Floyd lore. I decide I need to feed the fire by supplementing with lore from another band. The Beatles seem to have a strong fan presence on tumblr, why not revisit a childhood favorite? The universe laughs at my expense.

That about brings us up to date. I have gone through so much character development over the last eight months, it’s crazy. Pink Floyd is definitely one of those things that is less of a “phase” and more of a permanent part of my mindscape. Weirdly enough, since I am studying media psychology, all of this has also been really good for my career? I never took an interest in -real- media figures (as opposed to fictional characters) before, and I feel like I have a much clearer sense of things now. It's definitely influenced my research, so whatever domino effect this has on my future is bound to get even funnier.

Anyway, that’s my backstory!

[steadycoffeeflow]

I'm coming out of my cage and things are not fine, I'm screaming at NaNo "WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS?!"

If you haven't already been made aware how borked NaNoWriMo is, in the past 24 hours they've released an endorsement of AI after partnering with an AI software program.

The problem is, much of what they're saying is outright bullshit, and I don't even need to get into the nature of belittling the very writers they claim they're sticking up for by talking over them. It's an exploitation of a community, using them as a PR meat shield.

Because it should be awfully apparent NaNo's goal isn't to foster a healthy writing community. If that were the true goal, their missteps for the past year following the child harm allegations wouldn't be happening. Rather, instead, it's more likely the reason every company has relentlessly pursued and pushed AI: $$$

I don't think I'm entirely off base to say money is the reason AI is mucking up much of our creative spaces. At the peak of this fervor, you could load up some listicle titled '5 Ways AI Boosts Your Side Hustle' or some YouTuber claiming to make thousands a month with their AI writing, as if it were that easy to make a living writing and silly authors have just been leaving money on the table.

The mad gold rush that followed impacted literary magazines and publishing spaces, such as Clarkesworld Magazine freezing submissions as they were inundated with poorly written nonsense. The people behind NaNoWriMo, however, apparently believe Clarkesworld Magazine is just being classist and ableist in their anti-AI stance. Yes. Certainly because of those reasons.

And not because their submissions jumped an untenable amount, almost 500% from their usual submission intake, and cost the lit mag staff untold amounts of mental harm (as well as a very real number amount of staffing hours and financial costs to combat this problem).

But to that, NaNo Org argues that AI is cost-effective, actually!

Which, we're back to the opening argument that NaNo is full of shit (in case you didn't realize that citation link was sarcasm and not evidence in support of NaNo's stance). It may be free to the end user to access AI, notwithstanding the many many models one can buy including NaNo's own sponsor, but the financial damages being incurred by the use of this tech is anything but. The fact NaNo glosses through this in three little bullet points is insulting.

But what really has gotten me to write off about this on a mostly dead Tumblr blog, is that I've worked in the publishing industry all of my adult life and I've been a part of the creative writing community about as long as NaNo claims to. Hell, part of my contract freelance work has been to go through slush piles and evaluate, by hand, if the submission utilized AI or not. Full transparency, that work has helped me get through medical bills this year.

Yet that's my point. Someone had to rearrange their budgets to hire many people like me to combat rampant AI-generated submissions, from college admission offices to literary magazines to other publishers. What could have gone toward the print run of a special issue or increasing the marketing budget of a debut author now has to go making sure illegal, plagiarized work isn't being unwittingly published and endorsed. It's not classist to take a stand against a technology that's disruptive enough to put people out of business, but NaNo takes aim and fires off some bullshit claim they're pro-indie authors.

You might be thinking, "But Steady, if the business can't adapt to the market, they shouldn't exist!"

And to that I say, not every single little thing needs to have a financial commodity price tag slapped onto it. Not everything needs to make money. Things have a right to exist without a price tag stickered on them. The onus of this situation is because NaNo partnered with an AI sponsor. They're outright seeking to make money out of this. Because they're well aware of the PR fiasco, they're high-grounding the situation by claiming they're sticking up for the little guys, while outright taking money from a harmful billion dollar industry.

Meanwhile, the little guy will find no publisher will touch their work, that their writing has no copyright protections attached to them, and they'll be blacklisted by those they stole the work from. NaNo claims this is unfair; sorry folks, that's just how it works. Stealing from your fellow writers tends to get those same writers to rally against you.

I don't need to be told that the publishing industry has issues, that fanfiction writers are made fun of and lambasted. But most of those issues stem from and feed right back into the very problem NaNo is claiming to stand against: The financial commodity of writing.

NaNo has everything to gain by you believing them and using their sponsorship coupon so you can generate works as a writer that have no copyright protections and likely violated the copyrights of fellow writers works in doing so (I can play the bolded words game too, you pricks (see their update in response to the massive backlash this stance has generated online)).

The final point I have to say, is that in NaNo's defense they claim their online workshops are just full to the brim! See the demand! Look, look with your special eyes how popular AI is!! You fools, this is the future at hand!!!

Except, I, an avid anti-AI writer and publishing professional, attend webinars about AI all the damned time. Mostly to understand what new angle or developments we'll have to defend against. Every single one of these publishing industry or writing webinars are, in the end, a sales pitch to get you to pay them rather than a fellow freelancer.

Notwithstanding, it's a marketing and sales 101 faux pas to mistake interest in a thing, eyes on screens and butts in seats, for tacit endorsement in said thing. Besides the obvious point that people most impacted by this tech would be interested in learning more about it, there's the very real possibility that the same crowd who drives clicks to Forbes and YouTube videos is partially the same crowd that flocks to these NaNo webinars seeking to make a quick, effortless buck.

So, in the end, NaNo isn't speaking to writers. They're speaking to people looking to exploit a blind spot in an industry in order to make $$$ in our Capitalist Hellscape. And in NaNo's rush to join that race, they're trampling over the community they've grown and fostered for over 20 years.

The insinuation of this entire statement is that NaNo is standing tall for the "little guy" that the writing community has just let wilt and suffer for years, neglected and unheard. And it's totally not that NaNo nuked their own forums, a free, accessible resource for such writers to utilize, and without warning fired all of their volunteer staff all because they dropped the ball in moderation and safety checks (I'm not touching on whether the groomer is still working for NaNo since that situation is tainted by rumors, sensationalism, and directly conflicting stories).

And topping this all off with a pithy little cherry on this shit sundae: "For all of those reasons, we absolutely do not condemn AI, and we recognize and respect writers who believe that AI tools are right for them. We recognize that some members of our community stand staunchly against AI for themselves, and that's perfectly fine. As individuals, we have the freedom to make our own decisions."

So not only does NaNo condone plagiarism and theft, they're quick to both-sides the issue, only to immediately say "we're all free to make our own decisions!" Not said is the heavy implication, "oh but if you stand against AI you're a classist, ableist dickhead!" Which, if it wasn't obvious, is so far removed from the truth it's insulting.

In short, fuck NaNoWriMo.

Also what the fuck does "further-proof" mean.

[bryan360]

No "On This Day" posting I'll be focusing today.

Also….

(NO COPYING OR PLAGIARIZING FROM ME AND ONE OF MY CLOSEST FRIEND’S WORK! THAT INCLUDES OUR CHARACTERS, DESIGNS, STUFF, ETC. IMPOSTERS AND SEXBOTS ARE NOT WELCOME TO FOLLOW MY BLOG WHATSOEVER! 😡 That will be all….I mean it.)

2024 Review - Seagate 2TB Portable Drive (Second Half - Installing and Formatted)

Hey, guys! Sorry for keeping this waited from past weeks that I’m trying to write I got. Nevertheless, it’s time for the second half part of my portable drive topic review without leaving behind. Last time where I’d covered the unboxing portion during the first half, I’m now moving onto to install with my gaming system which I’d did awhile back. Before I can show you around, there’s something I wanted to bring I’d kept secret from past years. I should’ve brought it sooner if I had such time left til now. Nevertheless, it’s for my gaming console itself as a previous upgrade that my family give me.

(From January. 6th; 2:29 to 2:30 P.M.)

This here’s my actual Xbox One S console (not the Xbox Series S/X, though). It happened back in December. 16th, 2019 that my family give me as a late Christmas gift by surprise. Well, a surprise for me back then from before. There’s also a second gift that would be save for another time. Anyways, It’s been past 6 years later after decided to move on with my Xbox One S system. Its longevity usage runs well of playing games I have; which I’ll get to that for my final part soon. As for what happened to my original Xbox One, the one I got from April 2015; is thankfully kept into my closest that doesn’t have scratches. Don’t worry, I still got everything for my Xbox One S system with its data that was originally carried from my original gaming console.

(From 2:32 to 2:56 P.M.)

So anyways as I continue on, we’re bringing you this step where I installed with my portable drive and its USB cable. Took about few seconds to connect with both items together, but finally got it of what’s on screen display right after turning my gaming console. As you can see, there’s a front USB slot down left corner below where I’d placed there. It was my second attempt when my gaming console recognize not too long ago. Of course there’s some USB slots on the backside I’d tried to get around minutes before that. I don’t know why or if I would’ve paid attention closely, but the front USB slot is one way to go. Now, I went to options setting to manage storage devices; where you can see I could select on either media and for games with my portable drive. Obviously, I’m here to formatted any games I got. As of now though, it read about 1.8TB instead of 2TB from what the box advertised. It does happens for other hard drives, so that’s alright.

(From 2:58 to 3:01 P.M.)

Just holding on til I'd promised I can finished off for the final part soon. In the meantime, I've given to formatted my portable drive that didn't take long to complete. I'd given its name of "My Games" first during this recording. Looks good so far as I'm moving to store with one of my games I got. That said, that's gonna be it for this second half part of my portable drive review. I’m sorry that things weren’t according as planned I’d would’ve do more for this month. I’m just having some trouble scheduling while I’m stuck doing at the program for weekday mornings. Even though I would be doing during the weekends by any point, I’d tried my best to write some stuff. Nevertheless, at least I’d gotten with this second half covered; especially finally showing my previous gaming console after years later.

My Overall Thoughts (so far):

As of now, It’s nice to installed with my portable drive and its 3.0 cable to my gaming console in respond. So far, I’d went through formatted with my device before I can move on with my other games to store later. And I just had one game that deserved to start up for my final part soon. Hope you’ll be ready for this. 👍

Reveal - Link Here

First Half - Unboxing Impressions - Link Here #2

Tagged: @murumokirby360 @carmenramcat @alexander1301 @rafacaz4lisam2k4 @paektu

[captainsophiestark]

Hey guys! So I haven't been on Tumblr like, at all for the past few weeks because of this ask I got:

I'm not gonna lie, I've been pretty much furious since I first read it, and so I decided to take a break from the internet while I worked through my feelings and decided how I wanted to respond to this. If you're reading this at all, please do me a favor and read all the way through this post. It's a little long, but it's also very very very important.

First of all, let's get one thing straight: I will NEVER consider using AI to write my stories or otherwise for about a thousand reasons, two of the big ones being respect for myself and my fellow creators, AND the fact that it "learns" to write stories and spits out responses based off of plagiarized work. Like mine, which was taken and fed into chatgpt without my consent. Using programs like this is not even remotely harmless, and I will never be one of the people putting shit into programs like chatgpt.

Additionally, this is illegal. Beyond the fact that it's ridiculously disrespectful of creators, under US copyright law, the elements of my writing that I created, including characters and scenarios, are my intellectual property. Taking my work and feeding it to the AI without my permission (and no one will EVER have my permission) is a violation of the law and also goes against Tumblr's terms of service.

If you are continuing to use, support, or otherwise feed the AI, seriously educate yourself and stop, or never fucking come near me again.

Right here is a link to a post that includes a legal disclaimer that I'll be putting with all my fics now making people aware that putting my work and my writing into AI programs is not only not okay, it is also illegal. I'm sharing it like this for anyone else who wants to use it too, to educate themselves on the law or otherwise. It's written by a legit lawyer and the sources are cited, so it's not just me screaming into the void.

I've been going back and forth for a while now on what the hell to do about this ask I got, because I absolutely love writing fic and sharing it with all of you. And it doesn't feel right to me that so many of my wonderful readers who have supported me for so long have to deal with the consequences of a few assholes. But I want to write professionally some day, and I am not okay with my voice, style, and words being fed into some machine to be plagiarized by both the people stealing my work and the people running and making money off of programs like chatgpt.

I debated for a while about taking down all my writing and just calling it a day, because as long as it's up I know that it's possible, despite my best efforts to protect my work, that people will still rip it off. However, I truly love writing fic and writing in general, and a big part of that has come from the incredible interactions that I've been able to have with people on here. There's something special about the feeling of sharing a story, and I will not let a minority of assholes ruin that for me or the people who choose to read my work and be good humans about it.

That said, I am going to take a little break from writing. I have no idea how short or long it might be, but right now I'm a little over it all, so I'm going to take a step back from requests and oneshots and everything else for right now. This is hitting in the middle of the Year of Themed Creation and it also came right before an event called Daniel Sousa Appreciation Week, so if you had requests or expectations for those events, I'm sorry. I hope you guys can understand where I'm coming from, and thank you for supporting me as much as you have.

I still plan to be online (I love Tumblr and fully believe it's the only useable social media), I just won't be posting my writing. Hopefully, it'll free up some time for me to do some reading and commenting instead, so I can support my fellow creators!

Tl;dr and a final ask for anyone who read all this: please, please, PLEASE don't feed the AI. Respect your content creators and recognize just how much of what the AI spits out is ripped off of the thoughts, ideas, and words of someone else, often without their permission. Fight for art and the people who make it.

[liminalweirdo]

Idk if this makes you feel any better but the chat gpt assignment bandits in my marking cohort are either:

1) Getting caught with progressively worse academic integrity issues (we can see the AI score in Turnitin now)

Or,

2) Failing out because they've written absolutely nothing of substance

It just really sucks because irl when I'm not being salty about stuff i'm frustrated about online, I think that everyone should have access to university regardless of whether they're "good" at it or not. Like. University should be free and accessible.

But as it stands, it's just so... idk. Depressing. Like on one hand, society requires university (or pretends it does) and I don't know if people feel pressured into going and actually don't want to be there and that's why they use chatgpt to write papers instead of having an original thought? Or?

Or maybe they do want to go for whatever reason but still use chatgpt anyway because they can't handle the stress of the program which indicates that universities need to make things more accessible and need more services available for people who are burnt out/disabled/ND/ etc.

Or maybe they literally just don't want to be there but aren't taking the initiative to make their own life decisions which is indicative of a larger problem, and a person who can't stand up for themselves or their needs and is heading in the direction of being at the whims of everyone with a stronger will? Like that is not gonna be a good life. You're setting yourself up to not be able to think for yourself OR be able to stand up for yourself.

Ultimately, maybe the whole system has to change? Maybe society has to change? (I mean, it definitely does).

It's just like... some people work so hard and care so much about what they're learning about/teaching and the people who don't want to be there or aren't ready to be there or really just don't give a fuck are, in a lot of ways, just wasting everyone's time? The prof or the TA doesn't want to read your fucking chatgpt paper, like what are you paying so much money for????? To be as unoriginal as possible?

I'm so... you know?

Ultimately, I'm glad that people are facing repercussions for plagiarism but at the same time I wish that these people felt that they had more autonomy to choose not to go to university at all and/or felt that they had their own ideas and thoughts worth sharing. We need to stop being afraid of being wrong. Because these chatgpt users probably do have interesting things to say on their own, if they just had the guts to say them.

[nanowrimo]

Back to School: Interview with Mike Fillbrandt, Young Writers Program Educator

NaNoWriMo’s Young Writers Program helps over 85,000 kids, teens, teachers, and families set creative goals and tell stories they care about. We asked some of our amazing YWP educators to share how they take on the NaNoWriMo challenge in their classroom. Today’s advice comes from Mike Fillbrandt, who teaches 9th grade English at a charter school. 

Q: What grade/ age level do you work with? What type of NaNoWriMo group is it (whole class, club, homeschool, elective, etc.)?

A: 9th grade classes, 8-12 grade club

Q: How long have you been doing NaNoWriMo with your students?

A: 5 years

Q: How do you structure the entire project (for example, do you start prepping in October and write in November, do you have kids work on it all year, etc.)?

A: Prep in October (or March depending on the year), and write in November (or April).

Q: What does a normal NaNoWriMo day look like for your students?

A: Brief self-check questionnaire, then the rest of the period to work. Some days are set aside for students to discuss their projects in small groups, to share successes, struggles, and get suggestions. Some days I hold one-on-one conferences with students to give feedback on excerpts of their projects and make suggestions for improving their writing.

Q: How do you set and manage word-count goals?

A: Students need to complete 4500 words for full points. Students who exceed 10,000 can earn extra credit. For students with special needs, I coordinate with their case manager to determine an appropriate way to adjust word goal. Students who do not reach their word count goal receive a prorated portion of the word-count points.

Q: How do you manage grading? Do you grade?

A: Yes, I grade. Grades are based on two required excerpts submitted for feedback, along with their final word count. The first excerpt, students can choose to be graded either on setting descriptions or on character building. For the second excerpt, students can choose to be graded either on plot development or on their use of dialogue. Each excerpt is worth 30 points (60 total), and the word count is worth 40 points, with a possibility of earning 50 by meeting the extra credit goal.

Q: How do you approach revision/ publishing (if at all)?

A: In my most recent classes, I have only been able to give students post-writing suggestions/materials from the packet. In previous years, we were able to use an excerpt for practice with editing/revising skills.

Q: Any NaNoWriMo tips or tricks to share with other educators? Hard-won lessons? Ah-ha moments?

A: Don't try to read every word of every student story - you'll drive yourself crazy. Instead, find a way to get a snapshot of a student's work.

Begin the process of brainstorming ideas well in advance.

Be vigilant for signs of plagiarism and/or cheap tricks to pad out a word count without actually doing any work.

Q: Have you ever run into resistance from your administration about doing NaNoWriMo, and if so, how did you manage it? What do you say to people who don’t see the point of having students write novels? 

A: When I first began, there were concerns over word count goals, which I adjusted in later years.

Q: What are the most meaningful things you or your students take away from the project? What's your best NaNoWriMo memory?

A: Confidence, belief in their own abilities, a stronger sense of time management.

My best memory was the smile on a student's face during an excerpt grading, when I told them how wonderful I thought their writing was.

Q: Anything else you'd like to add?

A: I love this project. I've been doing NaNoWriMo longer than I've been a teacher.

Mike teaches 9th grade English at a charter school. He has participated in NaNoWriMo since 2005, and has had his students participate since he's been teaching. He enjoys reading, writing, video games, disc golf, and attending a weekly writing group. He lives in Minnesota with his wife, daughter, one snake, two cats, along with an imaginary dog and an imaginary raccoon.

[empress-leo]

AI art from the perspective of someone who's degree was based around AI

I realise not many people are going to read this, but want to talk about this because I both need somewhere to collect my thoughts an somewhere to comment on things.

Firstly I want to say, if your gut reaction to seeing the phrase "AI Art" is to get angry and blurt out "AI art isn't real art" or something to that effect then you really should read this, and I would ask you read all of it before you make a comment like that.

Now I'm not generally prone to sharing personal details online, but just to mention some things about my background. My paternal Grandparents are retired Art teachers and professional artists. My grandad in particular taught me how to draw. My father is a computer scientist and has done a lot of work in the field of AI. Myself, I studied art and computer science up to the end of High-School, and for my undergraduate degree I did Computer Science and AI. My entire family is either in the field of Art (My cousins run a firm of lawyers for artists and own a gallery) or computer science (My Uncle worked with banking systems mergers before he retired). It is because of these interactions with Art and Computer science all my life that I consider my opinion on AI to hold a slight bit more weight to it than the layman's.

First off, AI's are tools, no more or less than the paintbrush or digital pen, and just as you cannot ask paintbrushes or digital pens to be responsible for the art they create, nor do I think you can blame the AI. Now what I do think is that you can absolutely blame the user creating Art with the AI. If a user puts a prompt into the AI and selects an image to upload to a social media and pretends they drew it themselves, that is unethical at best. It takes no more skill to do that than a toddler scribbling lines on a paper with crayons. However technically, both are still art as the art (AI creation/Crayon Scribble) was made by someone (User/Toddler) with a medium (AI program/Crayons). Calling AI Art 'not real art' will have major implications for the abstractionists or surrealists, fields which are still considered to be art despite the amount of physical effort that goes into them. Of course the debate about what makes something 'art' is centuries old at best, and if you're not careful with your definitions then people who you didn't intend to be caught up in your campaigns will be. I would posit that rather than calling AI art 'not real art' it should be called 'low-effort Art' instead.

Secondly, I would like to address the 'AI art is stealing' complaint (this section will get a bit philosophical). Now whilst it's true that an AI model is built on hundreds of thousands of sample images (some of the modern ones use millions) the more images get sampled, the harder it is to recognise who the artists that were sampled were. My question to you would be where is the line drawn between an AI sampling hundreds of thousands of images to produce a piece of work, and an artist training themselves on previous artists works and references until they can confidently produce their own work? In the 19th Century the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, the most prestigious art school in the world at the time, had a curriculum which involved copying drawings and paintings from other artists. The students were taught to copy the master's methods of producing light and shading and other techniques. Can it not be argued that this is a more streamlined version of what AI art is doing? And remember, many artists are able to be described as being 'influenced' by certain other artists, because the hallmarks and styles of one artist can clearly be seen in the other's works. One of the biggest complaints with AI art is that it doesn't reference the artists it's sourced from, but under plagiarism law, if you cannot identify any particular part of the work the was expressly copied from your art, then you cannot sue someone for plagiarism. Plagiarism law is doubly complicated in the realm of fine art, as copying a work but labelling it as a copy doesn't necessarily count as plagiarism in most cases, whereas copying an artist's style but not any specific piece then labelling it as theirs and selling it does count as stealing/fraud in most cases. (The specifics vary and I don't have time to get into all the nuances of Art Law here, but it should give you some idea of the difficulty in regulating it.) Now obviously there's a difference when you can clearly tell that the AI art was 'inspired' by some human artist's work. I see this most often in programs that are designed to take a 2D image and make a 3D model out of it. In those situations yes, the AI artist (especially if they're trying to pass it off as their own work) should be called out for their scumbaggery, though again, whether or not it really counts as stealing is dubious.

Regarding copyright, I don't think art produced solely through the medium of AI should count for copyright. Now whilst I acknowledge the existence of the Naruto case, I don't think it's the best long-term solution for copyright law. (specifically because classifying all art done as human or non-human with non-humans not being able to hold copyright will have serious implications for transhumanists and any theoretically sentient aliens that might have developed their own cultures) In my opinion a better solution would be to say that unless a piece of art is reproducible by the artist, then copyright should be withheld until an artist can reproduce the image (with about 5% tolerance). Of course the implication this has is for photographers. If you're taking a photograph of something like a thunderstorm then it's nearly impossible to recreate that image exactly. I admit I don't have a perfect solution for this, though one thing I can imagine is if the photographer takes two photos, then the metadata will show that the two photographs are technically different, but still look the same. Of course this wouldn't work for non-digital photographs, which is why I said it's not a perfect solution.

I would also like to propose two hypothetical situations, and whether or not the AI art would be considered unethical in those contexts.

A community of artists get together and produce enough works of art that they are able to create an AI art Generator based solely on their works. No works from outside the community are ever used in the AI training and every artist in the community agrees to let their works be used for the AI training. Any time a piece of art is created with the AI, part of the metadata includes a list of every artist in the community. Is producing art with this specific AI program still unethical?

You have trained an AI program to produce art based purely off your own work. No other artist has influenced the AI program. Now, anytime you get asked for a commission you simply ask the AI program to create the art for you. Is this unethical?

Now these hypotheticals may be unrealistic, but that's the point of hypotheticals. And frankly I don't think they're that unrealistic.

Lastly, I would like to remind people that the creators of these AI systems did not intend to create this problem. The reason these AI systems were created in the first place (not counting Midjourney and programs like that) was either to test theories about computing, to see if we could create AI that could recognise things we couldn't, and frankly just to see if we could. I can 100% promise you that no-one working on these projects wanted to harm you or your livelihood. To show an example of this let me share with you a short story about one of my friends and classmates who now works for a company that produces system to create AI art.

He initially joined the company right out of university. He didn't apply for the job, a member of the recruiting team came around to see his end of year project during a fair and after a short talk, hired him on the spot (unusual but not unheard of). The company he then went to work for was building AIs for medical imaging, hoping to create an AI that could recognise cancers and other abnormalities faster/better than humans could. He was doing this for 5 years and they were getting fairly far with the prototypes. It had been successfully used to detect cancer that a doctor had missed. They were working on creating a streamlined interface and controls so it could be used with minimal training and (hopefully) minimal understanding of the English language. They were hoping that by supplying this product to third-world countries that have less skilled doctors, they could dramatically increase the detection rate of cancers and thus survivability. They were being funded by a few wealthy backers plus some research grants. Then COVID hit. In order to just keep their staff employed the CEO made the descision to make the company go public. Within days, 51% of their stock had been purchased by a 'serial entrepreneur' and started to make changes. He cancelled the medical detection technology, and instead forced the company to start work on generative systems. (AI Art, AI writing, etc.) He was planning on selling it as a service to mega-corps like Disney so they could cut back on writing staff. However it was taking too long to implement and so in order to recoup the costs hey dismantled the company, selling off computers and data and laying off all the staff. My friend is okay with this. He hated working for the tech bro and hated working on generative systems. (He's currently trying to rebuild the medical detection system with the data he has at the moment).

My point of the story is that it's not always easy to change fields, especially with something as specialised as AI development. I would also like to make it clear (if it wasn't) that the skills needed to build a system to make AI art are the same ones needed to build medical imaging systems, so don't go hating and brigading against anyone involved in AI.

I suppose my overall point would be that AI systems are far more complex and multi-faceted than simply "AI art bad", and anyone trying to get you to rally behind actions based one that one statement alone probably either doesn't know what they're talking about, or are trying to get you to do something much more malicious than simply protect artist's rights. Treat every case you see individually. Some use of AI art is entirely harmless. An artist using it to get a bit of inspiration, or someone sharing some funny images with friends is all completely harmless. Don't just look at the people involved with AI art and immediately hate, that's a horrible way to live and only serves to divide us as a species.

[spikewriter]

I saw another anti-AI post where the first words out of someone's mouth was "Plagiarism!" That is why it's so difficult to have reasonable discussions about these new tools--and how they be useful as tools--because people start screeching, "You're not a real writer!"

The article at the core of the post, however, is worth discussing because, yup, it is exactly what the antis are yelling about. The post, by the way, did not include a link to the article, just a screenshot of Publisher Weekly's Twitter promo of said article. Which is actually a rewrite of a Newsweek article about a man who was about to release his 97th ChatGPT-written "novel." I'll explain the quotes later on.

I've included a link to the original article because it's worth a read no matter what side of the argument you're on. The headline is absolutely clickbait. It's also full of self-aggrandizing bullshit.

Tim Boucher (the article is written by him, or, rather, 60% written by ChatGPT by his own admission) admits to making $2000 over the course of 7 months. Hardly the thousands of the headline. He's sold 574 books as of the article, which equals out to an average 5-6 copies per book, or an average of just under $21 per book. The books are 2,000 to 5,000 words each, so they're not really novels, but serial chapters. He is also, by the way, not selling on Amazon or any other distributor, possibly because some of the stories are too short for them to accept.

It also means he has an extremely small, niche audience who are interested in "dystopian pulp sci-fi with compelling AI world-building." He writes "majority of my readers being repeat buyers, many having bought more than a dozen titles. In one case, a reader has bought more than thirty titles."

I found this paragraph particularly illuminating:

"It's very difficult, for example, to have longer written pieces that maintain a coherent single storyline or character arc. So instead, I've tended to lean into short "flash" fiction slice-of-life collections, interspersed with fictional encyclopedia entries that deliver world-building and backstory, and point the reader towards other volumes where they can continue down the rabbit holes that appeal to them the most."

Right there is the issue with current LLM programs. You can get a coherent storyline and character arc with ChatGPT or Sudowrite, but it takes manipulation on the author's part. It takes being willing to put in the work to revise and massage the outlines. Dear god, don't use it to write scenes, because the quality of dialogue and description is horrendous.

This guy isn't. He's only willing to put in 6-8 hours to create and publish a book, which may include generating the cover and any brainstorming. What he is doing is the tech boy grift of inflating what the program is capable of and his own accomplishments. He's trying to shout, "I am a disruptor! I am the future!" (And taking a look at his website, he's also a conspiracy theorist about underground cities in Antartica.)

Sadly, this is exactly the type of person other tech bros who might be making decisions are going to listen to. And because he's publicity-hungry, he's making everyone else who is trying to use these tools to assist, not replace, the process look like a grifter as well.

Oh, and I can't help including this article written in response to the Newsweek one.

[amiryllisthorn]

So one of my friends is into ai gen content, because he is a researcher that does a lot of work with how people interact with machines, robots, programs etc, and so its a subject that is kinda up his alley.

Last night we were talking and he mentioned how a coworker of his was like "yeah i can just have something just generate a coloring book for my kid" and that like idk just sounds so incredibly depressing to me? Like I dont have kids and never plan on it, but like having some plagiarism bot make a coloring book to give to your kid instead of idk... finding something the kid is actually interested in? Just seems like a level of parenting where you cant be bothered to deal with your kid in the most basic of circumstances.

But also just how little it feels like some of these people value art/artists in general. Because it isnt about the ethical, moral, or philosophical parts of interacting with art, its just "can it make something that looks passable for what I need" And it just feels antithetical to what it means to be human

[cervidaedalus]

RE: GSHADE MALWARE DISCOURSE

They locked the channels down, but I managed to grab some screenshots of the conversation shown in the crucially lacking in context Twitter screens. I'll share the screens in a reblog because Tumblr keeps breaking when I add them.

So, we all hate art theft, right? We hate when people use our or others' hard work even in bits and pieces (like AI art training) without any credit to us or the artists? We hate when people say "it's online so NYEH" when an artist asks people to respect their work, right? Okay, good.

Gshade is an "improved" version of the Reshade overlay program that makes it super easy to adjust, make, and switch between presets in the game, as well as simplifies the installation process, and adds a few extra features.

However, there was some Twitter outcry about a week ago due to how updates work in Gshade (which was, admittedly, annoying). Another dev decided to break GShade's EULA regarding assets usage because they didn't like some of Gshades functions like the updates.

In my own, personal opinion, both parties aren't great people. If you read the other person's blog post on all this, it's riddled with cockiness and your garden variety internet kid arrogance and seems to boil down to "I don't like Gshade, it sucks, I can do better." They link an archived Twitter where a popular preset creator politely asks for their presets to not be used for this project, they push back against this creator's request, the creator makes a vague and innacurate legal reference in an attempt to try and convince this dev "hey, I said don't use my stuff". The dev mocks this person in their blog post claiming that they're allowed to use the presets because they're in a GitHub repository.

In order to prevent plagiarism of any of Gshade's assets (INCLUDING the presets themselves), the dev added a "killswitch" essentially that, when any attempts were made to access Gshade, its installer, presets, etc without the dev or preshade creators' knowledge or permission, would cause a force-restart. For anyone who doesn't really use Gshade- I feel the need to add that some presets use original art assets and overlays so it isn't just people playing around with sliders. This is actual art that some artists have politely requested doesn't get re-used elsewhere without permission. And no- this isn't like major game companies like Ubisoft implementing DRM, which in context is about big rich corporations trying to prevent piracy. This is like online game anti-cheat software except instead of bans you get a restart.

You cannot trigger this force-restart with Gshade on normal use, it will ONLY happen when trying to run something that accesses and utilizes Gshade or its assets (again, including people's presets). Likewise, from the sounds of it, the killswitch was already regretted and removed in a patch on Saturday- two days before this whole thing blew up today- and it was changed to a line of code that just closes the program.

There is nothing within Gshade which will harm or remain on your computer. There are no keyloggers, other spyware, covert mining, or anything else that remains on someone's computer with the express purpose of doing harm to it. While you can argue semantics here, imo "Program does bad thing if you go out of your way to use it improperly" isn't "malware" or else World of Warcraft and any other online game with an anti-cheat could also be considered Malware.

If you don't want to use Gshade because of the moral implications of the dev taking such a grandiose measures, that's a personal choice. It's 100% understandable to see this as a breech of trust-

-but please stop spreading word that the app intentionally has Malware intended to affect the common user. This was literally an anti-theft measure taken way overboard. To summarize: -Cocky dev personally dislikes some of Gshade's functions and wants to make their own version of it, but use Gshade assets including presets (some of which contain original art) they don't have permission to use using the same busted "well it's on the internet" logic people use to justify art theft and plagiarism. -Gshade devs try to stop this, other dev self-admittedly "trolls" them for a while and ignores preset artists saying "hey I don't consent to using my stuff". -Gshade dev includes a line of code to force-restart the PC of anyone who tries to access any Gshade assets, specifically to fight back against this user. Regrets it and removes it. -Two days after its removal, word gets out that Gshade has this force-restart command. -Gshade dev admits in the Discord that yes, this command was in there briefly. A single screenshot of this admission makes it to Twitter, and the entire program is branded as Malware.

I'll repeat again, neither side was perfect in this, and to add such a harsh command line even if it was targeted at one person in particular was a gross misuse of power. It's perfectly understandable to not want to use Gshade anymore if you don't trust the program, but it's also important to release this overstep wasn't made purely in impulse, and was an attempt to stop someone who was actively trying to disrespect artists and preset designers. I think that's the huge part of all this that's being missed and it's resulting in a lot of people zero'ing in on the Gshade dev and Discord mods as if they're the defacto villains in all this and need to be harassed and ousted from the community.

[zoey-angel]

Okay so. I hate AI profoundly. I think the ability of AI to steal art, faces, voices and generate images and deepfake is deeply disturbing and probably dystopian in the long run. BUT.

Literally like. Chat GPT is a good tool. It's not good for people who don't know how to fact check, because it's flawed, and can be stupid + make mistakes and insist on them. But if you make the extra step of, I dunno, thinking for yourself? Verifying the info with google? You can use it and it'll help you.

The fact that some lawyer asked chatgpt to defend their client and it came up with bullshit is the lawyer's fault. That's not how you use chatgpt... The lawyer should have asked "what does the law say about x in my state" And then ask for specific passes supporting the answer, and THEN go OPEN THE PASSES which are available online. Read around them as well, look for loopholes etc, and for his own defense.

Chatgpt should've been used as a librarian, finding what could be useful for his case, to save him from having to flip through countless law files in search of anything relevant!

Maybe to expand on that, ask chatgpt if there are any past similar cases he can refer to, and then look them up online to verify chatgpt wasn't making shit up, and actually read all that is to be read on those 😵‍💫

The greatness of the AI here is not that it can create stuff, rather that it can look for things for you.

I recently used it in a paper. For what, you ask? Shakespearean literature. I wanted to draw examples from the text, but, I don't have every scene from every single shakespearean play in my head? And I didn't want to google "list of x demonstrated in plays by Shakespeare" because firstly that's a niche search, secondly if I did find someone else's summary and drew exactly their examples it would feel like plagiarism, thirdly because there's no promise google would come up with an extensive list, and unlikely google, I could tell chatgpt "how about ones where x ends in y?" And it gave those to me right away.

So... I went and opened the plays, where chatgpt said I could find my examples, and lo and behold they were there. I read over the scenes again, and chose what was relevant for my paper. Perfect!

Did I ask chatgpt to write me the entire paper? No. That's not how you use chatgpt.

I use chatgpt for programming too, because anyone who wants me to start diving into stackoverflow for a Hunan's explanation of the syntax I should use in my particular function, doesn't understand even remotely how time consuming that can be. If I need to build a program with x y z f g m l k and something that makes sure there's no overflow and another thing that checks if the input is valid and ANOTHER which reacts if it isn't valid and- no. How many hours am I meant to spend googling? I won't.

Instead of all that, I ask chatgpt what a function checking x would look like in my programming language, and then gently guide and correct it. "What if the input is over y bits?" "How do I do the same thing for strings?" "Oh you shifted the string left here. Why?" Etc. Then I run the code in VS and it's fine! It works.

In some time I'll be less of a noob, I'm still learning how to code... So far I know a manageable amount of python and C, but C is HARD aight? And so is fucking assembly which I'm forced to study for uni. I'm also occasionally required to work with matlab, rarely java or html, all of which I NEVER studied, and I can't start pulling all of it out of my ass directly, I need some coaching which chatgpt does.

Tl;dr great tool, people don't know how to use it. It's a screwdriver people are trying to hammer nails with.

[bryan360]

Here’s my note before I’ll get started….

(NO COPYING OR PLAGIARIZING FROM ME AND ONE OF MY CLOSEST FRIEND’S WORK! THAT INCLUDES OUR CHARACTERS, DESIGNS, STUFF, ETC. IMPOSTERS AND SEXBOTS ARE NOT WELCOME TO FOLLOW MY BLOG WHATSOEVER! 😡 That will be all….I mean it.)

2024 Review - Seagate 2TB Portable Drive (First Half - Unboxing Impressions)

No “On This Day” posting once again, but might be the right time to focus on this instead. It’s been a long waited time for me; especially for what was my most “limited” experience when trying to complete my art trades in time. Though thankfully I’m keeping it cool to get through my friend’s request for January 2024; without having to rush as I’d developed my art skills for sometime. I’m lucky enough to get those done despite giving some multiple details if I wanted to keep it going. Other than that, I’ve been secretly supported my DeviantArt page with two recent fanarts I’d saved. At least that counts for something while I’m not too busy on my friend’s art trade requests this hard. 😅

Just needed to squeeze one more for the last week of January 2024. But for today, I’m now about to bring you my first half review for my Seagate 2TB Portable Drive I was looking forward. Keep in mind, this will be the focus for an unboxing part I’d taken. Do forgive myself that I would’ve like to continue on by installation and progression, but that’s gonna be for February posts hopefully. So anyways, here’s my unboxing impressions for this latest item after my mom ordered from Amazon.com. Link Here

(Dated: Jan. 6th, 2024) (The time I’d recorded myself when unboxing my package)

Let me just say it does bring my excitement regardless this is suppose to be my last year’s Christmas present request. (And the second one which yet to be revealed.) Well, we can’t expect anything to arrived in time for that matter. So as I get into my package, it came with the main item, a USB 3.0 cable, and two other books. Nothing too much, but exactly what it needed like if I wanted more. Besides, this is good enough of having two items to install with my gaming console; which I’ll get to reveal soon.

(Dated: Jan. 25th, 2024) (Just after setting up with my external portable drive. Sorry if I would’ve included from the beginning.)

Here’s a closer look of my portable drive while I’m holding. It seems small enough to fit in your pockets, but best if you don’t do this by accidental breaking. I’d looked up for the product details from Amazon.com that was about “4.6 x 3.15 x 0.58 inches and 6.72 ounces.” Just making sure if it can fit anything other than pockets from your pants. For as the USB 3.0 cable was obviously needed to transfer with. It’s about 18 inches and hopes of high-speed connectivity. If I ever lost it, then preying myself when checking some similar USB 3.0 cables that should work to transfer connection.

My Overall Thoughts (so far):

I’m very happy to unboxed this without some issues. There’s plenty other hard drives to looked from, but the Seagate one is the first way to go. I would imagined if I can planned more on hard drives for other of my devices. Since it didn’t have with my own laptop/computer desktop, my gaming console is the closest way I can get. Either way, this portable drive of mine is something to look forward to.

Hope you guys enjoy this first half review I’d going through, but promised be back for more during February 2024 for free time. I’ll be coming back for another weekdays at the program through Mondays and Fridays as always. What that being said, at least I got this first half review in time….just before going to bed though. ^^* See ya, guys.

Tagged: @murumokirby360 @carmenramcat @alexander1301 @rafacaz4lisam2k4 @paektu