#pecuniamamo

[elhnrt]

Hey! I'm writing again, and I even feel embarrassed about it, but I'm really interested in your opinion.

How do you feel about the fact that some have started using artificial intelligence capable of drawing, not only for fun, but also in all seriousness? I quite often see authors on various sites whose fanfiction covers are generated by AI. As far as I know, some artists find this offensive — the fact that people prefer neural networks to them. What do you think about this? As a person who sincerely admires your work, I really want to hear the answer.

'grats on picking up the pen again! no need to feel embarrassed, i'm just flattered you'd come to me for my take on the situation. which is simple: aside from the horrendous environmental impact of generated dog shit, which it is, why should i even give the time of day to something someone couldn't even give a shit enough about to make themselves in the first place? like why would i spend my recreational time on something so effortless. let's be real here: it's just barrel scraping for the common denominator. and i have standards.

[elhnrt]

u know i was thinking about this a little more and i wanted to add a little bit more on my approach to this all, wherein ultimately i do think generative works are a trend like crypto and ultimately will die out thru these means and fingers crossed environmental regulations slapped on them, but i approach it the same way i do with all other art, specifically movies and visual art itself

who is this for

what is its intended message

what is the purpose of its existence

schmucks like to go shit on artists like klee or picasso or basquiat or rothko like, oh i could do that, AI can do that, the former of which haha yeah you didn't though you asshole, and the latter yeah AI can do that, while sucking up our remaining vestiges of water and non-renewable resources, but ultimately as a medium it winds up being just totally worthless.

guernica 1937 answers all three:

1. globally disseminated the events of one of the most horrific events that occurred during the spanish civil war, which is in and of itself an under-discussed yet catastrophic event in the interwar period in early 20th century europe, all under the shadow of an encroaching fascist umbrella that described modern art - in this case, surrealism - as 'degenerate' art (sidenote, so think about how you sound the next time you decide to scoff at surrealism/cubism/minimalism/experimental etc art on principle, if you're that type)

2. to showcase the horrors of indiscriminate bombing on a civilian population, mostly of women and children and their goods considering it took place during a day where everyone would be in the town, not to mention how fascistic alignment winds up being deadly to even the far reaching vestiges of society

3. the size of the canvas takes up the length and height of an entire museum exhibit's wall at 349.3 cm × 776.5 cm (137.4 in × 305.5 in) and is thus not something to be ignored, and being that picasso was originally from spain and antifascist as well, the piece is both a humanitarian, historical documentation and an espousal of antifascist belief

but of course to compare fanworks of an anime series to a tragedy like guernica is disrespectful, but i wanted to give a more solid answer as something to reflect upon in any future debate. swinging back around to the original point: fanfic authors who use AI to generate covers for their work

who is the work for? - primarily the creator themselves. the audience, as i find, could not give less of a shit about the cover work unless it's on a shelf, and even then...

what is its intended message? - 'to entice' is the obvious answer, but shouldn't the merit of the work be the main enticement?

for example, this is the cover of my very beat up and overly worn copy of 1984 that i've had since third grade. it is a majority white cover. there is nothing else to say about it, but still satisfies my three requirements in its own way. and not only that, the merit of the work on its own carries itself: "big brother is watching you". there's even memes about it with quotes from the work itself.

3. what is the purpose of its existence? - supposedly to entice, but let's be real: generative work winds up being a monolith of the same stylistic rendering because, as i mentioned before, artificially generated work scrapes together the most common denominator to try and imitate mass appeal without understand what that appeal is. and, sorry to say, mass appeal is usually a. bought b. nostalgia-based and/or c. mass marketed in that it's pummeled into your eyes and ears and brain on the daily so you can't escape it and therefore completely saturates the scraping grounds.

a big gotcha i see toward artist wariness over generative works is like, haha ohhh yeah i'm just gonna commission someone to draw pregnant seinfeld giving birth to a gray alien yeah sure, which is like, not even close to what i'm talking about, generating meme phrases visually is just pure ridiculousness, and i don't even mean that as an insult, like memes are ridiculous and redundant on their own. i'm obviously talking about people who are supposedly taking their craft seriously but can't even be assed to put in the effort to show the supposed love they have for the story they want to tell and instead just go computer! show me this concept of this thing i want to make but i don't give enough of a shit about to sink the time into perfecting it! well i don't give enough of a shit to sink my time into reading/looking at it. i will scroll faster every time because it looks like everything else i'm forced to look at every day and hate already so i'm not even going to bother lol. i don't entertain artistic laziness

Hey! I'm writing again, and I even feel embarrassed about it, but I'm really interested in your opinion.

How do you feel about the fact that some have started using artificial intelligence capable of drawing, not only for fun, but also in all seriousness? I quite often see authors on various sites whose fanfiction covers are generated by AI. As far as I know, some artists find this offensive — the fact that people prefer neural networks to them. What do you think about this? As a person who sincerely admires your work, I really want to hear the answer.

'grats on picking up the pen again! no need to feel embarrassed, i'm just flattered you'd come to me for my take on the situation. which is simple: aside from the horrendous environmental impact of generated dog shit, which it is, why should i even give the time of day to something someone couldn't even give a shit enough about to make themselves in the first place? like why would i spend my recreational time on something so effortless. let's be real here: it's just barrel scraping for the common denominator. and i have standards.