#we stand against ai theft!

[lucifersimp]

someone on reddit used an AI to generate a Supernatural script, and the result is so ridiculous dfjdk

Sam's father... LANCE ARMSTRONG

RIP Michael.

Dean listens to some quality music, when he's not having interesting dreams:

or destiel drama:

which turns into sastiel (wincestiel?) drama halfway through??

Kevin has one (1) line and still manages to get bullied:

As always, he deserves better.

A girl named Marie (@quietwingsinthesky's Marie now) shows up and gets punched, runs away from a monster, gets a bike, gets the Samulet - and gets a girlfriend, I guess. Good for her. This is how lesbians flirt ↑

Marie probably looks like Sam because Dean calls her Sammy:

(let's unpack that later)

Bobby just wants Anna back. Me too, man. (Bobby's also the boys' sister now). He also plays golf.

(yeah, Ruby is here too. Her role in this episode seems to be Sam's therapist/girlfriend/giver of nonsensical but passionate inspirational speeches)

andd final fun fact: when I tried to post this the first time around, tumblr broke because of this quote.

[ljandersen]

hey girl 😭,

I just finished reading ur fanfic sideways and i was just wondering when part 5 is coming out, cos that cliffhanger left me ispeechless and i NEED more 😭😭😭💔

I'm so glad you enjoyed Sideways! I wrote it with so much love and emotion. I'm so gratified when readers are moved by it too!

For an update on Sideways Part 5, it's not currently on my front burner. That's not to say I'm no longer writing, and I haven't forgotten about it. In fact, my current project is distantly connected, so Sideways is never far from my mind.

There were many factors that influenced my decision to shift priorities. I spent two years writing Sideways. I spent an additional two years, not writing anything new, simply editing. And I hate editing.

Each part of Sideways has become progressively more labor-intensive. Part 5 will require the most work by far. It requires adjusting storylines, writing new scenes, and rewriting old scenes. I have to type it up from handwritten notebooks.

As the editing has grown more demanding, the fandom has grown more quiet (broadly speaking). It's only natural post-lockdown and MELE hype, but it's discouraging.

I came to the point where I was burned out. Having my work stolen and published on Amazon pushed me past the tipping point. I needed a break.

On the flip side, with the AI revolution, it felt like I needed to follow my dreams. If it's not now, it will literally be never.

Who knows where we'll be in five years or even just one? Will authors be displaced by prompt writers? Instead of devotion to craft and intricate storytelling, someone will push a key and churn out hundreds of novels from an algorithm? Quality is easily overwhelmed by quantity in the marketplace.

I've dreamed of being an author since before I knew how to write my first word. It's upsetting to fail at a dream, but what happens when that dream simply ceases to exist?

For those reasons, I chose to reprioritize my project. While I love Sideways and the readers who support me -- I miss them! -- I knew it was time to shift focus. I need a chance to write something new instead of only editing. Most important of all, the window for my dream is closing and I need to be there for it.

I have my first draft of Part 5 in a safe. It's waiting for me, and I'll be back for it soon. For now, I think about it every day and have every intention of finishing it.

[sainamoonshine]

A note to all creatives:

Right now, you have to be a team player. You cannot complain about AI being used to fuck over your industry and then turn around and use it on somebody else’s industry.

No AI book covers. No making funny little videos using deepfakes to make an actor say stuff they never did. No AI translation of your book. No AI audiobooks. No AI generated moodboards or fancasts or any of that shit. No feeding someone else’s unfinished work into Chat GPT “because you just want to know how it ends*” (what the fuck is wrong with you?). No playing around with AI generated 3D assets you can’t ascertain the origin of. None of it. And stop using AI filters on your selfies or ESPECIALLY using AI on somebody else’s photo or artwork.

We are at a crossroad and at a time of historically shitty conditions for working artists across ALL creative fields, and we gotta stick together. And you know what? Not only is standing up for other artists against exploitation and theft the morally correct thing to do, it’s also the professionally smartest thing to do, too. Because the corporations will fuck you over too, and then they do it’s your peers that will hold you up. And we have a long memory.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking “your peers” are only the people in your own industry. Writers can’t succeed without artists, editors, translators, etc making their books a reality. Illustrators depend on writers and editors for work. Video creators co-exist with voice actors and animators and people who do 3D rendering etc. If you piss off everyone else but the ones who do the exact same job you do, congratulations! You’ve just sunk your career.

Always remember: the artists who succeed in this career path, the ones who get hired or are sought after for commissions or collaboration, they aren’t the super talented “fuck you I got mine” types. They’re the one who show up to do the work and are easy to get along with.

And they especially are not scabs.

*that’s not even how it ends that’s a statistically likely and creatively boring way for it to end. Why would you even want to read that.

[trans-elrond]

Petition: establish AI regulations

EU people (but possible to sign from elsewhere in the world) please add your name to this petition for human-centric and culture-friendly AI regulation. Needs 47,000 more votes as of the time of posting. From the petition:

'Summary: In an open letter, the Authors' Rights Network (Netzwerk Autorenrechte) calls on the German government as well as the French and Italian leaders to reconsider their stance on the (non-)regulation of AI, to take a stand against the massive damaging effects of unregulated AI applications based on theft, to protect people and authors from data theft and disinformation and to reflect on values such as trust, democracy and justice.

++ Open letter on the subject of France, Germany's and Italy's position on the planned EU Artificial Intelligence Act ++

Dear Chancellor Olaf Scholz (Germany),

Dear Federal Minister of Economic Affairs and Climate Action Robert Habeck,

Dear Federal Minister for Digital and Transport Volker Wissing,

Dear President Emmanuel Macron (France), 

Dear Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni (Italy):

It is with great concern that we, the members of the Netzwerk Autorenrechte which represents authors and translators in the book sector from 15 organisations in the D-A-CH region, observe Germany's, Frances and Italy's new position on the AI Act proposal. This new position runs counter to the consensus previously reached by EU Member States on the legal regulation of AI, in particular with regard to transparency and liability obligations for developers of generative technology.

According to reports from Euractiv on 19 November 2023, Germany – under the lead of the Digital Ministry and the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, and together with France and Italy – wants to push for "obligatory self-regulation" instead of legally binding regulation. There are no sanctions for saftey incidents such as copyright, authors’ rights and data protection violations, insufficient labeling, or circumventing ethical standards in the position of these three countries.

Reason

Dear Chancellor, dear Vice Chancellor, dear Federal Minister,

dear Mr President of France, dear Prime Minister of Italy:

We urge you to change your position, which currently favors supposed economic advantages to the detriment of sustainable legal rules. Your position sends a fatal signal to everyone in the cultural sectors and to all people in Europe: namely, that you're willing to protect the same tech companies that illegitimately make use of cultural works and citizens data for their own profits – rather than protecting the people whose work and private data have made these foundation models and generative applications possible in the first place.

The consequences of your position would be devastating. Generative technology is already threatening numerous jobs. We can already observe several harmful “business models” based on AI products and an increase in disinformation. It's been proven that generative AI uses unlawfully obtained works without the knowledge or consent of the works' authors. Without legal regulation, generative technologies will accelerate the theft of artistic work and data. They'll increase discrimination and the falsification of information, including damage to reputations. And they'll significantly contribute to climate change. The more legally deregulated generative products reach the market, the more irreparable the loss of trust in texts, images, and information will become for society as a whole.

We urge you to return to the values of trust, democracy, and justice. We're standing on the threshold of an evolution, of one of the most decisive moments in history. Will we regulate the machines that are using humans in order to replace them? Or will we choose the short-sighted ideology of money?

We trust you have the political resolve to do the right thing.

Berlin, 24 November 2023'

[soft5ku11]

The discourse around palworld is not and has never been "we need to feel bad for Nintendo! Justice for Gamefreak!"

It's about artistic integrity and setting a president for dealing with obvious plagiarism.

All the people who spent the last few months allegedly on the side of artists against AI better put your money where your mouth is, unless you only took part in that whole conversation because you wanted someone to attack mindlessly on the internet and stupid AI shaggers were the most popular and low hanging target to get your superiority complex fed.

If you actually care about artists and protecting art and artist rights, you'd make it known now, but a lot of you aren't. You're too busy playing The Funny Pokémon Gun Game in your own little bubble of "this doesn't affect me" to give a shit.

Guess what? If we let Ai generated images become the norm online, all the """art""" of your favourite characters and series will look the same.

All the same.

Never innovating.

All the same.

Always the same.

Because AI image gen doesn't and never has had the ability to create, only to sift through an alarmingly huge box of stolen works, rip them apart and blend them together into something a little different. All it does is replicate.

If we let lazy and blatantly scammy art theft and plagiarism like this go unchecked without consequence, guess what again? Shit's gonna get stolen way more often.

But you don't care, you're not an artist.

You will care though.

It's extremely discouraging for creatives to continue creating when they know their hard work is going to be stolen and trivialised by some lazy cunt who wants to make a quick buck or gain attention and followers online from plagiarism. Your favourite artist might just have had enough. You never know which theft or ""drama"" will be anyone's final straw.

Your favourite artist may have had enough. They'll give up on their passion for art.

All we ask for as artists is respect. If you respect artists, you'd call this shit out when you see it. Make a riot. Stand up because not every artist has the power that Nintendo might do to sue the pants off people.

Supporting this practice of plagiarism monetarily by buying palworld shows not only these developers, but the greater creative industries as a whole, not just video games, that this shit is easy. It will be rewarded. They can do it and get away with it.

It's disgusting.

I know this devolved into something else than my main point, but I believe it's the root issue. Sitting back and letting this shit happen only perpetuates the issue. It allows it to happen again because thieves think they can get away with it.

[homemadehorrors]

I don’t have a lot of patience for people who want to make edgy lil jokey jokes about the AI issue. If you don’t understand why this is important, do some reading. Many artists have summarized the issues with AI far better than I ever could, and if after having read those, you still feel like complaining about people trying to protect their livelihood against theft on an unprecedented scale... well, there’s the door. We exist in a world of media, our lives are touched thousands of times a day by artists, so if you’re not willing to stand with the people who are responsible for some of your favorite things maybe at the very least, zip it.

[whumptober]

Sorry to bother (and sorry if I come across as hostile, this is very /nm) but I'm confused about the AI policy. You guys rightfully point out that feeding another person's work into an AI and posting the result will be disallowed because it's theft. But other AI works will be allowed, even though every single AI that's currently publicly available to people is trained on works (art or writing) that are scrapped without the creator's consent. Even AI that people use to just 'enhance a work' as you guys put it, does so by comparing said work to the scrapped pieces the AI was trained on. Which were stolen.

So what you're basically saying is people aren't allowed to steal themselves, but they're allowed to use a tool made from stolen works? Where's the sense in that?

I'm honestly very disappointed. In the past year, fancreators (and creators in general) have needed to jump through increasingly tight hoops to keep their work from being fed to AI against their will, and it still happens a lot. And now there's this big event that is supposed to stand in solidarity and be /for/ creators, and you're going to allow people to use a tool that in its current structure is inherently amoral and exploitive of other creators?

Why make the decision to not reblog it, but still allow it in the event/tag/collection on AO3? Why not say it's not allowed at all and block everybody who does put it in the tags? I /gen do not get why. You say it's nuanced but I do not get what's nuanced about "every AI currently available is trained on scrapped works"?

I've been participating in Whumptober every single year since 2015 and I'm very sad that if this is the mod's decision I will not feel safe as a writer to participate this year, knowing people in the tag/collection are allowed to post works that involve AI. I really just want clarification as to what is the 'nuance' that led to this decision???

AI tools are used in visual art to create effects, backgrounds, and other enhancements, so to say we're banning AI is like saying we're banning use of Photoshop. AI is used for the predictive text and spellchecker that's running while I type this reply. Accessibility tools rely on AI. People train their own bots on their own works to produce conversations with characters or role play a situation before writing prose. These are all legitimate uses of AI tools that we feel allow inclusivity to this event.

The mods cannot and will not police every single posted work for AI involvement. You don't have to post your work to be a participant. You don't have to prove you created 31 fanworks in October. You don't have to include your work in AO3 collections, or tag it, or strictly follow the prompts, or anything really. This isn't a contest and there aren't cash prizes. This event is about challenging oneself and being part of a community of fans all doing a fun fan thing together across different fandoms.

This mod is an English teacher and LOATHES ChatGPT as cheating. I agree with you that bots are trained by unscrupulous people scraping text without permission and it's shitty behavior. But we can't stop that, nor can we undo damage already done, and banning AI use (especially since we can't enforce it) is an empty stand on a hill that's already burning, at least in our view of things. And it alienates those who use AI tools for accessibility or any of the reasons cited above.

Once again, you do not have to post anywhere to participate. If you're worried about scraping and you don't want to lock your work, don't post it. It's always been the case that if you post something on the internet it can be used by others in ways you neither intend nor condone. It sucks that people are like that, and you have to do what makes you feel safe and comfortable, and that's OK.

If this stance is disappointing, we're sorry you feel that way. If you have a policy that is effective and still inclusive to all participants, we're happy to hear it.

[gwynndolin]

So I don't really agree with you but I also don't really know what your stance is. So I'm curious, given we can GENERALLY agree that the current state of AI art is hurting artists in at least some ways, do you think there is a solution at all? This Pandora's box isn't being closed again now that mega corporates are on it, but surely there's some legal thing we can do to curtail the worst of it (such as opt in databases with a payment for doing so, or something)

I feel like mitigation is an extremely slippery slope, especially in regards to something as "intangible" as art. I think a lot of the proposed solutions like tighter restrictions on IP laws are actually actively bad and would only serve to hurt the people they claim to protect and you would still see ai art anyway (which people don't like to even see apparently).

I don't disagree that there shouldn't be attempts to limit the scope of the sort of programs; and the idea of opt in databases is probably the kindest option though the problem herein lies, "what if someone uploads works they don't own", and you would have to have some rigorous vetting process that wouldn't be perfect at all and you kind of just go back to the very basics of protecting against art theft. I think it would be really funny if the only way you could submit art to those databases was through an embedded paint-like app on their site. Then we could start worrying about art forgery into AI training. It would be like, multitrack drifting but for moral dilemmas.

To answer your question, do I think there's a solution? Uhhhhhhhhhhh....... Probably not one anyone would like. Like I've said before, the gnarled roots of this problem lies within current societies perspective on art as whole, and as long as people stand to make money off of art they're gonna do everything in their power to make sure that they can keep doing that. And I don't trust our politicians to really believe in the Pure and Beautiful Sanctity that non generated art holds enough to work to build a solution that perfectly protects people like you and I. I think eventually we'll get to the point where AI programs aren't obviously stealing art from google or something, but I think that will lead them to developing some more dubiously legal way of training ai art.

Again, not saying we shouldn't at least try to do something I just think we should be careful.

[lediableblancdotcom]

It is long...but read it....

Future of LeDiableBlanc.com

Here is the lowdown on what is going to happen with LeDiableblanc.com. Over the last month or so I have been playing around with new ideas for the site. The reasoning behind this mucking about is nothing short of I am getting old and so is the site and it needs to slow down along with me. I have been running this website alone for almost 30 years now, and I am approaching the big 50 myself, and we are in need of a smaller workload. It has been a labor of love and still will remain one, just a little slimmer, just cutting the fat. Here are the changes that I know are going to happen moving forward in the streamlining of the site:

Appearance Database:

The Appearance Database is the heart and soul of the site, so it is going nowhere. It will change (hopefully for the good), but will remain housing the same idea of collecting all of Gambit’s comic appearances. I did a quick rehaul of the “A” section in the Appearance Database, that shows how the new database will be absorbing the other information from the site. The main page of the Appearance Database will stay the same, cover and basic stats of the comic for quick reference, but by clicking on the cover you will get not only the variant images as before, you will also get any other Gambit related information from the comic as well. The database will absorb the information normally found in: Friends & Foes, Family Tree, Uniforms, Charged Items, Stolen Items, Quotes, Crossovers, Major Reads, and even some sections that never made it to the site itself and these stand alone sections will be removed from the main menu. I feel this will be be an easier way to keep that information available, but less workload on getting this information up on the site. I will also keep the Printable Master List updated regularly and available.

Sections getting the Ax:

Some areas of the website will be getting the ax all together. Most of the these sections are now redundant or out of date. Getting the ax will be Bang your Dead, Fashion Police, Wolverine Gallery, Wallpaper, and Ads. I will also be taking down Fanart, due to art theft and the AI issues of today, it is not a mess I want to step into anymore. With artists having their own social medias and websites, I feel there will be no great loss to this area leaving from the my site. The merchandise database will be coming down too, it is out of date and impossible to keep updated. Disney is very loose with their licensing, so the amount of goods coming out is too large to keep housed. Also, most new merchandise is immediately posted on the Facebook Groups much faster. I will make sure to post some of the older, more unknown goods to the Tumblr “Obscure Gambit” page, so that older stuff doesn’t disappear completely.

Sections on the Fence:

I will be keeping the Non-Sport and Game Card databases. They are relative to Appearance, in my opinion, and will remain and updated as much as possible. Saying that, I am on the fence with the Sketch Card database. It is technically an appearance, but the cards are not available to everyone and the database can never be completed because the actual amount of cards are unknown and are constantly being made. I am also on the fence about keeping the media outside of comics, like movies, animated tv, and video games. They are technically not anything I have to update a lot, because the information is complete for now, but eventually new episodes/games will be made, and I am not really into the other media, so I usually am unaware. So I may leave them for now and decide later on those. I am really debating on taking the site back to it’s comic only roots and removing those sections.

I would really like any feedback, for or against these leaving the site. So please let me know your opinions.

Galleries: As I said above, the Fanart, Wallpaper, and Wolverine galleries are being axed. I am going to keep the Edits, Original Pages, and the Cover galleries on the site. They may not get as many updates as usual, but they are not time sensitive, so it should be fine. Those are highly used galleries, so I don’t want to take them away for now.

Social Media/Domains:

The LeDiableBlanc.com Facebook Group and the two Tumblr (lediableblanc.com and Obscure Gambit) pages will remain and operate as usual. I will not be using Reddit (why so much hate for Reddit?), Instagram never got used much anyway, and will be discontinued. I will never open a Twitter/X, so don’t ask. I am willing to take any suggestions on other social media, but no promises. I will not be renewing some of the domain names that mirror the site. I will always keep lediableblanc.com and remylebeau.com, but iheartgambit.com, xmengambit.com, xmenlebeau.com will most likely not be renewed as site mirrors. They are rarely used and the money spent on their renewal can go towards the annual server fees.

Patreon, I am going to remove at the end of the rehaul. I thank everyone who donated, it helped more than you know. If you want to donate one last time, I will be forever grateful, server fees are not cheap, but with the downgrade of the site I don’t expect anyone to do any kind of monthly support. I may go back to the annual begging, so prepare for that, but I don’t expect anything from anyone but enjoying the site.

If you have any questions, suggestions, or feedback of any kind, PLEASE let me know. Reply to this message or email me at remylebeau@yahoo.com. You can message me through the Facebook group or on Tumblr as well.

It will probably take me a few months to get the Appearance Database up to date and the other information added, so not many changes or updates may happen until that is completed. So the soon to be removed areas will remain until it is done and uploaded.

Thanks, everyone for your support and I hope it will continue through the mess to come.

[ailesswhumptober]

How are you going to actively enforce the "disallowing"?

Thank you for the ask!

The main issue that a lot of people (including us) had with the original Whumptober event was not that they couldn’t check every submission. That is unrealistic, especially since multiple AI detection sites provides false positives and are inherently biased against non-native english speakers. The issue is that Whumptober refused to call AI what it is — art theft. And they proceeded to say that even if people are planning to use AI, they want everyone to participate, even people that are using tools that actively hurt other creators. We want this event to be a safe space for creators, and not a safe space for people who are using scraping tools and stealing other people’s content. It’s why we are so anti-AI, as well as why we’re advocating for glaze. It’s not just about what you can actively do, it’s also about what you’re standing for, allowing, and advocating.

I hope that answers your question! — Mod Missy

[generalsnivy]

A cute, little Espeon, but it's not AI-generated and is instead, drawn by a human being using a digital tablet connected to a laptop computer that can barely run Windows 10 due to how ancient the hardware is under the hood and is able to use Krita to draw this in a couple of days.

For context as to what's going on, it is best summed up by Glacytale_ on Twitter in their own Espeon redraw here:

As for my own interpretation of these events, an "artist" on Twitter started passing off some Pokemon fan art as their own "art" that they took time to create. When they posted fan art of Espeon, it was found out by an actual artist that this fake "artist" used AI (Artificial Intelligence) to generate the fan art of Espeon and they failed to disclose that it was AI-generated. When I dug into the "artist's" Media tab, I saw that they only posted two other drawings at the time that they were called out/caught and after some close examination, they too, were AI-generated. So, to help spread awareness of this fraud of an artist, many actual artists, including myself, have been taking the AI-generated art that this person posted, used it as a reference, and redrew it ourselves to show this person that if one takes the time to learn how to draw properly either digitally or traditionally with a pen, pencils, papers, etc. that they can recreate their AI-generated art properly. It's not that hard to get started on learning how to draw and it's not overly expensive either. The other reason why we were (or still are) doing this, is to call them out for their mistakes and teach them a lesson that using AI to generate are is not ok as it steals from many, many artists to generate their images. Using AI to generate art hurts every single artist, both living and deceased, due to how it was trained, ie; art theft. Worse yet is the fact that as of the making of this post, they are not only continuing to post AI-generated "fan art", but they are practically rubbing it in our faces and seeing our criticism as more of a challenge than proper feedback. (Sounds a lot like a certain Call of Duty developer studio that WARDS our feedback and throws it into a black hole expanding to INFINITY and beyond.)

I intended to finish this drawing sooner, but some things happened in my personal life that really got in my way and have impacted me, emotionally over the past week. Regardless, I wanted to throw my hat into the ring and hop onto this Espeon redraw trend to take my stand to say that I am 100% against AI art generation and the entire system needs to be nuked and restarted from the ground up, using royalty-free and stock images to train it rather than train from all art from all across the internet. Despite the personal issues that I've encountered over the past week, I still had fun putting this together and although it took a while to finish, it was worth it in the end, at least in my opinion.

[littlegrrl7]

Stop Faking It

AI art is theft and as an author, I’ll never use it for anything. Not to “visualize a character concept” or “give a cover artist an idea of what I want” or even “just for fun” and here’s why:

It supports the theft of the intellectual property of other artists. Full stop. Every time you use it “just for fun” you are complacent with that theft. The artists haven’t given their permission for their art to be used, and as artists—no matter the medium—we should all stand together. If we don’t, we are looking at a world where every stolen bit of creativity is mashed together until the artists/writers/musicians are gone and all that is left is a monotone puree of what looks, sounds, and reads the same.

I thought it was cool in the beginning too until I found out how the AI learns. It’s by nature scrapping years of hard work from artists, voice actors, writers, and musicians, then lining the pockets of tech bros and others unwilling to put the time in to learn a medium and put their whole heart into it. In the end, the soul that makes art is lost in the grind of money and machinery. As an artist, I personally made the conscious choice to stand against that, and I hope you will too.

Keep making great art that comes from your personal creativity and take pride in the time it takes to perfect your craft.

[blueberry-lemon]

[blog thoughts] artists can't catch a break lately

The past 12 months have not been a fun time for professional artists. Whether you're working as a freelancer or trying to get your portfolio out there for employers, every few months seems to bring a new infuriating obstacle for your future career.

Let's review the past year:

1. Ever-shifting tweaks to social media algorithms that are opaque and seem to punish posts that link to to external sites (stores, crowdfunding).

2. An attempt by crypto-bros to lure artists (and consumers) into commoditizing art into crypto tokens that exist solely to fluctuate in value and be flipped for profit.

3. The emergence of popular AI-powered art generators that learn by being fed hundreds of samples of stolen artwork. People found them hilarious at first (DALL-E memes) but they're quickly getting much, much better and are being used to intentionally emulate living artists.

4. Massive layoffs and cancellations for various TV animation studios as CEOs struggle to see streaming services as profitable.

5. Major social media platforms, which have become integral to making a living as a freelancer, being completely sabotaged by the decision-making of their owners. Notable with Instagram pivoting hard to short-form video, but now even more evident with the crumbling in trust at Twitter.

I think it is very easy for people who are outside of this world to shrug it off. Success on social media isn't a human right, obviously, and people "got by just fine" before these platforms existed. But let's be real, that's not gonna cut it.

The world of art, design, crafts, and independent work is much more competitive now than it ever was. Yeah, maybe a local freelancer in your town used to stand a chance selling their work for the holidays in 1998, but now every creator is competing with Amazon, Etsy, Target, and every other site and service that has online shopping and delivery. Consumers are, naturally, swayed by convenience. It's much easier to One-Click buy a print or pillow on Amazon than to even bother seeing what freelance artists have for sale.

It's also a constant competition for attention.

Yeah, your webcomic might have done pretty well in 2004 with a Paypal Donate button on its website and a few links of creator friends who share your affiliate link. Now, you're fighting in a sea of thousands of comics. Even worse, you're not just competing with fellow webcomics. You're competing with Marvel and DC's digital comic apps, you're competing against Netflix and every other streaming service, and you're competing with TikTok, Instagram, memes, video games, everything a person could be doing with their free time.

There's really only like three ways you can succeed as a freelance creator these days.

1. Get funded or supported by some sort of person or group or publisher who has wealth to spend.

2. Amass as many followers and views as possible.

3. Cultivate a small subset of your following that is passionate enough to be willing to spend money on you.

And these things are really not easy. If Twitter folds as a company (or becomes nearly unusable) it'll be even harder. Tumblr allows for virality, but doesn't allow for as much ownership over your posts or for easy networking and socializing with your peers. Cohost implicitly discourages virality for a more personal blog. Instagram has strict rules about content (must be image or video) and strict rules about linking to external sites. TikTok and Youtube, obviously, require video-producing and video-editing.

This doesn't mean hope is lost. This doesn't mean that we should give into despair.

It just means that we need to adapt. We need to post across multiple platforms, and tweak how we post to fit the culture of that platform. We need to stand against art theft and art as a speculative financial asset.

Most importantly, we need to lift each other up. When you love someone's work, let them know. Let the world know. If you've got money to spare, check out your favorite creators' Patreons or digital tip jars.

We don't know if we can depend on the virality of massive platforms anymore. We might return to the old, fragmented web, like boats pushed to distant islands. We'll need to take things into our own hands.

Make art, make rent, help others do the same.

[aseriesofunfortunatejan]

To be extra clear....... Because this is the "listen to my opinion (unasked for)" website so I'm worried that if I keep to myself I'll be misconstrued........ Like I mentioned, I think the staff announcement about third party sharing is as transparent as it can be. And I hope staff communications continue to strive for more and more clarity like this. That is a positive.

However, it's not the end of the story. I have made peace with the fact that our data has already been scrapped. Because there's just no use getting too upset about it - I'm already out there Surviving. Because I'm also in a position wherein I don't have the type of skill and popularity that would lead my specific artstyle and work to be targeted, so as it currently stands, I'm bummed at worst.

I've posted my art to Twitter, pixiv, tumblr. I have very recently removed a bunch of my art from Fandom. When NFTs were all the rage, I removed all of my old art from deviantArt. You can find some of my art - OC or fanart! - from a Google search. I have no doubt that it's in one too many data dumps that I wouldn't have thought about twice a few years ago. This is why I'm not completely shocked that tumblr is one of those places.

I'm not happy about it. I think the current state of AI image generation is absurd, a misuse of the technology, and a small part of a larger story of disrespect towards artists. I've always fought hard against art theft. I miss the time when a well placed signature on your art would deter a good chunk of art thieves (even though it was never all of them).

I just don't have the time and resources to poison ALL of the art I've posted before, and it would likely be a waste of time because it's too late.

What I'm wondering is - if tumblr's transparency about the matter, as much as it's bringing this upsetting topic to our attention, isn't going to protect us in the long run. I genuinely don't know whether or not it can be the case, but just by looking at the toggle as it is, I don't think it's completely bad that companies are starting to give us an option to opt out. This one might be too late and imperfect, but I'm wondering if we can hope that this is the beginning of a better standard for the future. That a platform would let you opt out is, on paper, a positive draw to the contract.

[flammedoudoune]

One thing I’ve been seeing a lot about the AI art discourse that kinda rubs me the wrong way, is people saying that no matter how impressive an AI art piece is at first glance, you can tell just by looking at it that it’s soulless and boring.

I kinda get where people are coming from with this take, like yes, it’s art made in a few seconds by a machine, by definition it has no soul, noone spent time and effort in creating it, I agree it’s not as valuable as art made by a real person.

However, I gotta be honest, I’ve seen some AI art that looked really good, or that made me feel something, either because of the composition or colors or themes. I’ve seen AI art that in my opinion looks better and more interesting than what I and other real artists I know can make. I’ve seen AI art I wouldn’t have guessed wasn’t made by a real person until someone pointed out it was AI made.

Seeing people going on about how they can tell just from looking at a piece that it’s AI made because it looks bland and uninteresting feels weird to me. Because the thing is I’m an artist, but my artstyle isn’t super unique or interesting. I mostly draw characters in a semi realistic style just standing there with a basic viewpoint, basic lighting, basic colors, no backgrounds. I’m not saying my art is bad but it’s just not that impressive. So thinking of this issue as a “real art (considered technically impressive, evokes strong emotions for the viewer) vs AI art (considered ugly, bland and soulless)” discourse, I just don’t know where that leaves artists like me who are not that good.

Will AI art stop being an issue once it can create flawless masterpieces? Will it be considered real art then? If we get to that point, will real artists just have to pack it up and do something else?

I’m not here to discuss whether AI art is real art or not. People have been asking what is art for centuries now, there are a hundreds of different answers out there.

No, the problem with AI art is not that it’s not real art or ugly art or boring art. The problem with AI art is that it wouldn’t exist as it is if the AI wasn’t trained with art from real living artists who do not benefit from this at all and who never gave their consent to have their work used like this in the first place. AI art is art theft, and it’s using artists’ work against themselves and their livelihood, that’s the issue here.

[sapphiconoclast]

I had a hard time understanding the current wave of vitriol against AI art and I think I understand now so I wanted to make this post in the hopes that it would help anyone else who is struggling.

AI art is not inherently evil. everything is a permutation of everything else and the degree to which any one work of art within an AI art generator's dataset is included in the final product of AI art is so incredibly small that for an artist to declare that something was "stolen" from them is ludicrous. I liken it to taking a picture of the new york city skyline and being sued by a person who lives in a building included in the image because a work of art they made and hung across from their window is fully visible (albeit incredibly small) in the photograph.

however,

the way in which it is being used is evil. AI art as it stands currently is the byproduct of the process of theft, not necessarily of the art itself but of the opportunity to be paid for art. the art is created because of supply and demand, and that fulfillment of demand here means a lack of demand elsewhere. in this case, as in many others, you cannot divorce the art from the context in which it was made. This is like if sales of my new york city skyline picture suddenly caused demand for the artist's actual work to go down.

if you find yourself engaging in moral panic over AI artwork to the point where you begin to demonize the process of machine learning as a whole, I beg you to consider where this moral outrage was months or years ago when such sites as this cat does not exist were published. art always is, always has been, and always will be a tool. a hammer is a tool that can be used for construction and destruction, we don't demonize hammers for being able to do both. why should we do the same to an artistic process?