What is your opinion on Generative AI?

[VibrantFox]

i could go into a long winded rant which i had before deleting and retyping for the third time in a row but i hate it and wish not just individuals but corporations would get their shit together and drop it

"thats just how the system works" gets old fast which is why there's so many labor unions desperately trying to fight this stuff but for whatever reason there's an equal if not greater number of folks insisting we "just go with it coz there's nothing we can do" or whatever

i think it's making people lazy in that these people wont take time to learn the basics build their foundations and try to make things on their own or at least not give up after a few tries coz it "looks bad" but again it's just "go with the flow" coz it's 'easier'

you've got people doing twice the amount of labor than before because ai is being introduced into certain workflows, the stuff it makes is not good, and it's theft is actively undermining it because the people who made it know that they wont get that cold hard cash the want because their machine only works if they keep stealing rather than paying people as they ought to and there's articles about it to prove it

like we can talk in circles forever until the end about good, bad, moral grey or whatever else but it's crap and i wish we could go back in time and eliminate it or something but we cant so we've got to deal with this ceaseless loop or mess until something gives in

[BoomerZ]

I have a very different take on this. This is going to separate the the meddling artist from the good artist. Artist like Jim Lee and writers like J R R Martin will not be affected by this in the slightest. Good movie writers will still have a job. Good artist will still have a job. But there will be no room for "C" grade work anymore as you can be replaced by "C" grade AI. And there is no stopping it. No appeal to morality or ethics will stop someone from using it. This falls into the same category as artist using 3D models to trace over. Old school artist hate it, but most of tapas does it. Drag and dropping a 3D background into your comics is no different. It's the reason we have 3D animation as the norm now instead of 2D, it's easier. This won't stop the best in the industry from working and making a living. But there will be no room for middle of the road stuff as you can now be replaced.

[VibrantFox]

i feel like the irony of this is that even "average quality" art or writing or news media or anything else really still trumps the slop pumped out by ai and half of the stuff that actually "looks good" still had to be edited and cleaned up by those same human artists so it's this weird lil fallacy that "mediocrity" is being replaced when in reality the trash machine still makes trash. go figure : )

[arcaneer99]

Greetings!

AI has it's fair share of uses. When it comes to comics and novels though, there has to be boundaries. It may be good for a piece of art or a direction a story will go, but there has to be a line in the sand for individuality. I get the sense that that organic spark of uniqueness would end up being a flickering lightbulb; if we became too dependant of AI. I'll tolerate it to a few extents for my writing journey.

[KevinReijnders]

If there's anything I've learned from my journey in the animation industry, it's that 3D animation is definitely not easier than 2D animation.

I'd say it's overall more cost-effective, if the production pipeline is tailored to properly handle it.

[UrMom]

It can be good for color picking and vague thumbnail concepts. I've also seen artists put their own art through to quicken drawing time (Not trace over it, or use as replacements, but similar to concept stuff or using bits to add to a drawing.), I've also seen people with no artistic abilities use AI images for personal mental health venting or therapy "art". It's also great for memes/shit posts, I admit to delving into the occasion AI generated McDonalds ad, weird country songs (Glue Balloons is pretty funny.), or Super Mario videos.

It has some uses. If it were ethically sourced from free stock images, assholes didn't use it in an attempt to replace actual art/literature, if it weren't used to spread possibly dangerous misinformation like the recent AI generated mushroom identification book that got a family poisoned, I'd be all for it. That ain't how the world works, though, so while I'm certainly not going to dictate how someone expresses their mental trauma or how someone has fun (Will probably have a laugh or two myself.), my viewpoint on AI is leaning more on the negative.

[LWriter]

Burn it with fire and anything else that burns when it comes to generating art or writing. My two cents.

[skidiggy]

I'm not a big fan of it, to be honest. I don't see a place for it in my artwork, writing, or any facet of the creative process. Many jobs may find a use for it, but I won't have it in any part of my stories/artworks. I've seen some applications using AI in general that could be useful (medical research, agriculture, etc.), but none include "making art/literature."

[ButterflyEmpress]

If I could wipe it from existence I would.

It's only beneficial for the greedy, dishonest, and lazy. Those who want to get by without trying, no matter who is hurt in the process

• If AI doesn't know something it'll regurgitate misinformation anyways. There were AI books on Amazon about foraging that could get people killed
• Social media and online stores are being flooded with AI generated content. Since algorithms prioritize quantity over quality, anything human made is drowned out unless you're already a big name
• It will be used for fraud. Revenge porn, falsified evidence, scams, you name it
• Many jobs are lost. Duolingo, an app that helps humans communicate with other humans replaced a huge chunk of its human staff with AI. Artists, authors and journalists have lost work as well.
• The fact that people have to lie about their content being AI generated means that they know the tech is frowned upon

[JoshRaed]

AI can't make new ideas because it's an amalgam of things it's seen before, but specifically the most common ones in the most common patterns.

AI can't provide feedback on your writing because it doesn't actually know anything, it's just saying something that resembles what other people might say.

[kitschensyngk]

One of my characters has a very clear view on it:

Read Words. :: #149: A.I. | Tapas Community

As for me, I don't trust it. It gives lazy people a false sense of accomplishment and businesses an excuse to not pay artists and writers.
I have too much of an eye for detail to enjoy it anyway. I'm too busy noticing the extra arms and six-fingered hands and "text" that looks like someone threw up the Cyrillic alphabet.

Art is created, not generated. A computer cannot create art; it can only copy what it sees.

And people actually think AI will democratize art? Art's already democratized. If you have a pencil and paper, you can make art.

[WildMoonCrow]

Gen AI doesn’t really have a single good use. Aside from all the unethical use of other people’s art, its use of resources is horrible for the environment, so I won’t even touch it for anything.
I’m kind of tired of the whole Gen AI discussion so that’s all I have to say.

[Lensing]

It´s a pro tool for stealing and it is unstoppable

It´s unethical, but that´s how capitalism works, being unethical is not
an argument for a consumer

[VibrantFox]

one thing i keep thinking about is how there was an article mentioning that they'd asked rice farmers to stop growing food coz they needed the water for the tech behind this stuff. so we're prioritizing trash machine over things we need to exist.

like there's so many replies that have that same "oh well thats life" thing and i feel like we're just infinitely trapped in this one calvin and hobbes strip

like it's painfully similar to "kids dont wanna work" when kids are saying "no we do but not for peanuts" but rather than increase pay they just keep trying to beat us over the head and get us to accept peanuts and in this case (referring to the ai discussion) and a lot of others too many people are accepting the damn peanuts

like i feel like this guys dad looking at it

it's embarassing. no one using buying power to make a point, no one joining the people who do bother to dissent loudly to make those voices even louder so they can't be ignored, just bending over and taking it coz "oh well thats just life"

[Lensing]

I´m a musician, since 1983, and I learned audio engineering + music publishing
I have been through cd-burning, filesharing, downloads and streaming.
Oh well that´s just life capitalism took all my chances to work in the field that I
wanted to work in.

It also made me kind of bitter / sarcastic
and that comes through when people talk about ethical consumers

Consumers are not ethical, we are all not ethical and this is "oh well that´s just life"

[VibrantFox]

and i'm a college dropout watching the art industry fall apart. i'm not unsympathetic but i also know that small changes add up and there's still more to do it's just a matter of action. i'm no paragon of gung-ho go getter spirit and i can relate to feeling bitter but i'd rather make effort out of spite and try to encourage others to do the same than go "oh well guess i can't do that anymore"

at this point tapping out but i'll drop this

“No Ethical Consumption Under Capitalism” is a Thought-Stopping Cliche

[Lensing]

I found my offline way to live on art.
One part of it is teaching kids how to draw with pencil and paper.
It gives me piece of mind and also hope for the future

[tacticalglasses]

Exactly.

The world is more intertwined than we'd like to admit. It's the same as 'boycotting' products from certain countries, not realizing that most of what we use come from raw materials from at least half a dozen areas. Any product, any company can have deplorable connections with a source material that's either sourced badly or made with inhuman labor practices; it's naive to think otherwise. People didn't stop buying phones even when the lithium in their batteries came from abusive mines, or when the factory workers that made them have frequent suicides. They didn't stop buying in-season clothes and shoes made by kids in some far-away sweatshop.

Web services, banking, apps… you're probably already using AI in one form or another, you just aren't aware of it yet. Partial code written and updated by AI. Some programmers would tell you that a beautifully written piece of code can be considered 'Art' as well. Sorry to break it to you, but if you have been using any social media or any of the majority of websites on the web powered by Microsoft Azure servers or AWS, you HAVE been using AI.

---

When push comes to shove, loud voices will always be drowned out by consumer choices. People are hypocrites. People won't just stop using social media just because they're using them in their code.

Older families members won't stop using facebook/ messenger/ instagram just because of Zuck's Llama AI model is being trained on their sites, nor people would stop complaining on twitter/ X just because of Elon's Grok model. Young people still uses Tiktok even with privacy concerns in their EULA. People and corporations would still use Windows and Mac computers, even if their design and code are now done with help from machine learning.

People talk the talk, but have shown time and time again they'll keep using and buying things that are convenient for them. Even when those companies are already saving money by hiring less people due to those models. History proves that.

[korivernon]

I honestly hate all this AI nonsense. I'm hoping it's just a fad that ends up dying a slow and painful death. Everything about it is so lifeless and everything (people seem to be catching on to that so maybe there's hope that it may no longer be a thing)

[KevinReijnders]

History also proves that when people band together things can actually change for the better. All this cynical "it is what it is" rethoric is so damned tiresome.