What is your opinion on Generative AI?

I usually just block people when I see continued interaction as pointless. But that option isn't available here so walking away is a valid option IMO. Good luck with your next message board.

Personally, I'm really split between fearing ai and not taking it seriously. I feel the only 'impressive' thing AI has done is generating art. As an artist, I morally cannot support ai art in anyway due to the potential for companies to phase out real artist with crap that looks pretty to the untrained eye, but I will say it is impressive that ai can do that. Outside of that, I feel like AI is more of a fad, hyped up by tech evangelists and Silicon Valley as THE MOST REVOLUTIONARY THING TO OUR SOCIETY, when in reality it wont really add anything in the long run. Like, whenever I hear that statement, I always go back to stuff like Google's Gemini which they've shunted into their search engine (and honestly have made it worse), which tells you to use non toxic glue to keep cheese on pizza, drink you're own urine to pass a kidney stone quickly, or that Sandy Cheeks from SpongeBob died by unliving herself and was found with cocaine in her bloodstream by the Johannesburg Police Department.

Now I'm probably missing stuff that AI does that could actually benefit our society in a way that doesn't fuck over workers but in my opinion, I see AI as nothing but a trend that companies are trying so hard to push on us as being the "next big thing" but in reality only appeals to those who are obsessed with tech. Like with NFTS a couple of years back. And in regards to AI art, I really do think that stuff should be regulated in someway so that all artists aren't out of a job, because it does have the potential to screw us over. But in order for that to happen, its up to us artists to make sure these companies don't try anything funny

It's a little more nuanced than being able to just run over protestors....

I won't use AI, simply because it tends to farm content from writers and artist that didn't consent to their works being used/modified. I consider it copyright infringement, violation to the preservation of a work, and completely untrustworthy since it farms mostly from the internet indiscriminately at the point of commiting incest with itself.
If I want to generate ideas, I simply connsume media: Books, movies, cartoons, music, comics, art forms from other, real artists.

If I want a proofreader, I hire one
If I want an artist, I hire one (I'm the artist)
If I want a writer, I hire one (Tho, I'm dating one)
If I want a musician, I hire one

While I don't hate it, my ideal is that if you want to use AI, you have to feed it, be it drawing or creating from the software, so you are the model who has to craft IRL in said program so you can later use it.
Like filming yourself drawing and then using said video for promotional, educational, register all in one and its just yours.

I prefer the content I use belongs to either me or the person I've hired, I don't want to deal with lawsuits, DMCA claims or similar.

While it is still fresh

We also want to be clear in our belief that the categorical condemnation of Artificial Intelligence has classist and ableist undertones, and that questions around the use of Al tie to questions around privilege.

Remember guys to repent for the privilege of being able to create art by yourself; for the sins of disrespecting the creativity-deficient and disciplinary-challenged. Let the blood of our dying body cleanse the earth so it is ready to be transformed by the machine and its benefactors.

Personally I think genAI has a potential to help people (not only artist), but of course not in the way it is implemented and regulated now.

Generative AI is dehumanization and the degradation of culture and thought, simplifying complexity and watering down nuance into... well, nothingness and meaninglessness.

Maybe it should be called Degenerative AI hahaha... ha.... get it?

Food for thought:
https://www.tiktok.com/@eleanor.stern/video/7410457972779846942?_r=1&_t=8pSMFpFwXTW1

(I would've sent the article link, but I don't subscribe to the New York Times. She narrows down a few points that Chiang makes, so I think it was good enough points to get across. Also... I don't have tiktok--a friend sent me this--and now I'm not allowed to view this anymore. lol)

So I hate when people use it to completely do the work for them. HOWEVER, I am an artist and writer, so I love to use these platforms to help give me ideas, but once i start the work it is all my own. Every brush stroke, every line in my writing.

I also use writing AI just to help double check my spelling/sentence structure but that’s about it.

I think it is really unfortunate to writers and artists when people use AI as their own work, because it diminishes the actual effort that is put into something.

edit when I say I use it for ideas I mean like if I need to draw a riverbed, but I’ve never drawn one before, i might ask AI to show me some fantasy River beds. It helps me to see how something like that might be drawn and then I can incorporate some of the ideas (like maybe how the leaves are drawn) into my own work.

Confessions that will make a lot more people despise me even more:

I have begun to feel distant and even dissociating from the more 'artiste' types. The types that at every turn would thumb people down for taking 'shortcuts' from what they deem as inappropriate from the traditional ways of skillful art. And that's sad, because they're the types of people I hung out most with during my earlier years.

Now hear me out first, this might sound crazy: Have you ever considered that to a lot of people, 'Art' was never about showing off skill, nor caring about whatever lazy technique it was to copy something?

And that they just wanted to recreate whatever it was because it looked or sounded cool. Or to a lot of them, it was just merely a way to express themselves. Haven't you as a child copied or traced something from your favorite books or characters? Let's be honest, sure it felt nice to be complimented on your skill as a kid, but to a lot of other kids, it was just about participating and not being left out.

How did it come to this?

Just a while back, my little niece posted an image in a group about her favorite show/ characters. (am unfamiliar with it, I'm afraid). It was made from an image generator, and at no point did she say she made it. Note that she didn't use the word 'art'; since even at her young age, she already knew how people would respond if she mislabelled it as such. She just wanted to share something as a fan. And let's just say it got real toxic, real fast. 'Colorful language' with profanities that could have merited an age-rating. And from the avatars, it came from fully grown 'adults' too.

There was a time, once upon a time; when a portion of art was just about the freedom of expression. Nowadays, it sometimes feels that everything has to be gatekept under the pretense of 'skill' or 'everything should be done manually or traditionally'

Have you ever considered that a lot of regular people have also grown tired of these 'artiste' superiority attitudes as well? Posts like "My art isn't that good, but it sure is a 100x better than whatever garbage you just posted" won't win people over to your cause.

And they just seem to be making even more enemies. At first, it was the terrible AI hands; but that got fixed or easily fixed now with LoRA Diffusion models. Same with automatically changing the poses of characters in your own original artwork. Now, programmers have coded automated 'process videos' in 'creating' an artwork. (it's still not that good… yet) And unlike actual aesthetic improvement, they simply did it out of spite to 'holier than thou' artiste.

How could these 'artiste' not see ? That for every infographic and post they make on 'How to spot AI', they're just actually speeding up machine learning.

My first 'disconnect' with art was during an animation elective. Nothing fancy, just the basic bouncing ball, walking, and talking mouths. Long ago, when dinosaurs still walked the earth, there was this hot new thing called Macromedia Flash. Me and a couple of other students wanted to show our teacher this fancy new automated in-betweening (tweening) feature. We were actually surprised at his hostile reaction to it. Even when we said that students should learn the basics first and how to do manually.

Fast-forward a couple more years, and I've seen a fair share of my artist friends get viciously harassed and ridiculed for a myriad of things: photo references for hands, using a grid system is 'tracing'. Tracing over poses of blank 3d characters. Tracing over 3d backgrounds. Using 3d backgrounds. Manipulated photos for backgrounds. Utilizing distort/skew/warp instead to redoing the lines, Using the symmetry tool to automate the other side. Am seeing the same pattern for personally-trained AI models and pose editors now.

And the worse part is? Most of these attacks came from artists not even better than them to be honest.

To make it clear once again, this is not about using other's people works to train your own model and passing it off as your own. That's just stealing. And Tapas is very clear that you can't use any generations in your artwork.

If people actually took the time to learn, they would see that you don't need a fancy server to train anymore. You can train and generate offline and locally, on your own pc, using only your artworks. Outputs are even better and more consistent this way since the only inputs are your own.

It's true, a lot of generated images are trained from stolen artworks. But always remember, there are those who use it that are personally trained models… or they may just be regular folk that wanted to share or express themselves.

People conveniently forget that humans and artists learn and improve from copying other things. And now that the machines started its first baby steps in copying, it either disgusts or terrifies us. A bit hypocritical there, but that's just humanity.