What is your opinion on Generative AI?

Putting aside all other usages of the term AI (ie the genuinely useful pattern recognition kind for croissants/cancer cells), there are absolutely no merits to the way generative ai works. I’ve seen some people propose that in order to differentiate it from useful varieties, they call the kind that is causing such a controversy a Plagiarized Information Synthesis System instead of Artificial Intelligence, which about sums up my views on it as well. Anyone who says it’s useful, morally decent, original, or, most frustratingly, when they imply a robot created art instead of an algorithm barfing up some approximation of stolen images, doesn’t know nearly enough about it to be worth listening to. Unfortunately such clowns are extremely common among people with too much power in the social media/art program scene, I’m so grateful tapas has banned it (although it unfortunately often finds its way onto novel covers, despite that).

I don't like it, and I think most writers/artists here would say the same. It's disingenuous to make "art" using AI and claim it as your own. At the end of the day it uses algorithms that steal from other artists, and takes no real effort for a person to produce. It's a slap in the face to creators who have spent years practicing their craft.

I believe it's just a tool that's here to stay. You can use it ethically or unethically. A knife can cut someone or make a delicious meal. Will I use it to create art based from other people and pass it off as my own? No.
But will I use it when I'm tasked finishing a 5-page storyboard and was just given 20 minutes to finish it? Hell yes.

Corporate doesn't really care if something is AI generated for internal materials. Peg/Mood/Inspiration boards, storyboards, mockups, and starting templates are usually done as fast as possible with ever-shortening deadlines. They aren't released to the public most of the time anyway. Of course, the final output is still done as before manually with their best artists and given the proper time to finish. But a lot of the previous assistants are reduced now.

It's not a fad. Already had artists, writers, and programmer friends that had their company restructured in one way or another because of AI. In-house creative teams are already downsizing all over.

The truth is, for preliminary/ planning materials like these, most companies would pick the fastest that's 'good enough'. That's just how capitalism works, unfortunately. And because of that, I'd rather be the employee who knows how to use it than those who don't. Even programmer friends admit to using them now for debugging.

Am not that much of a hypocrite that will say I'll never use AI, when a lot of the web services we're using right now already have background processes run by them. Same goes for banking and other industries. Don't be surprised to learn that your credit rating is already evaluated by AI to some degree. Or an app you use every day, having their code and updates written partially by AI... why did you think there were mass firings in the tech sector recently? It's just incredibly naive to think you can avoid all forms of AI when you're probably already using it in one form or another, you just aren't aware of it yet. 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 your boss gives you unreasonable deadlines for internal materials, it's literally your job to use all available tools they allow to finish on time.

Besides, with regards to art; no matter what you'll do, you'll end up getting criticized by a lot of people anyway. Since by its very nature, it's highly subjective and it's value will differ with everyone.

Still remember the times when amazing artist friends would get criticized for using photo references for hands. Or how some would shout that a grid system is tantamount to 'tracing'. Some friends would get ridiculed for using 3d models to help with posing (you just traced the pose over them!). Or even the story of how an artist was witch-hunted because their style looked like AI, when it was their style to begin with.

Old enough to remember people mocking some mangas with photo-manipulated backgrounds to speed up their process, or how a lot of manwhas nowadays use the same 3d castle asset from clip studio paint in their backgrounds.

A lot of people also don't seem to realize that you CAN train your own model based ONLY on your works. You don't even need an uber online server anymore, and you can do it locally on your own PC. They're even free and open-source. Outputs are actually much more consistent that way, since the only inputs are your own artworks.

There was once a poll that asked readers if what they would think if their favorite manga artists would use AI (trained with their own mangas) to help them finish their works. Since they all knew that the schedules of mangakas were debilitating, and many were having multiple hiatuses due to health reasons. The majority were positive about the use as long as it would help their favorite artist. It was recognized as a tool, which is something you can't gatekeep for one set of people and not the other. It's something opened from a Pandora's box; either it exists for all or not, with all of its pros and cons.

Also, a lot of new art 'functions' have been slapped on with 'AI' recently since it's the new buzzword, when they're closer to automated processes. Let's say you're using an art app on your tablet. Still remember when people would decry artists who would use the distort/skew/warp tool on mistakes on their line layer or whatnot… Something about being 'not genuine' and they 'preferred' digital artworks done 'traditionally'. Am seeing the same thing happening right now with pose editors. You have your own existing artwork, then by automatically adding code bones to it, you can change the pose of the artwork as if you're moving a paper doll. Essentially, they're just a more advanced and automated version of that.

As a tool, you can use it when it's allowed (Tapas is very clear that it's not allowed), or not. The choice is yours.

Let me be very clear that I do NOT condone using other people's artworks for training your 'own' model. Especially passing it off as your own. But using it for your own artworks, speeding up iterative processes, have at it.

Don't fret too much about what other people might say since people have been scrutinizing artists for references photos, grid techniques, tracing, 3d posing, copying a particular style, using photos for backgrounds, using 3d for backgrounds, whatever since time immemorial. People will like what they like and dislike what they dislike. Don't lose your sanity trying to convince entrenched people otherwise.

A lot of the tools we use today comes from “bad things”. That's just how it is with any new technology: they're often abused first, that's the nature of our species. Even more started out for less benevolent purposes, like war and the military. Nuclear power, GPS, jet engines, canned food, knives, even this very internet we're using to discuss. But now they're just ubiquitous things that most don't even bat an eye about.


People always seem to forget that a large part of 'Art' throughout history is started from copying something else. And that's how most learned how to improve their own art as well. Anyone who says otherwise is a liar.

"Good artists copy, great artists steal"
- Steve Jobs
That's capitalism for you.

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

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.

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 : )

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.

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.

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.

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

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."

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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"

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

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

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.

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)

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.

Honestly can't remember when that happened though, especially when it comes to consumer products and services. And with companies being able to slash off expenses.

Like I said, even though there were condemnation at the start with sweat shops, terrible labor practices, shady material sources… people didn't stop buying tech and clothes made from them. All companies like Apple, Nike, Nestle, Amazon had similar controversies before. They didn't care then, they sure won't care now. And they've just been chugging along just fine, and most people still patronize their products.

Would you honestly stop using social media just because they're using AI in their code or having everything you post on them being scraped for training for their own models? Most wouldn't even consider dropping them.

They would still use their electronics made with batteries from lithium mined by minors, they would still wear their levi's, shein's & nike's made from sweatshops. People would cry out loud against amazon and their anti-union rules, but are still eagerly awaiting their next prime delivery package.

Therein lies the hypocrisy of the common man.

Would be glad to be proven wrong from my cynical views, but things actually reversing like that are either few and far between and often only temporary until the heat dies down.

Am old enough to remember when a lot of our consumer electronics were actually repairable, when software were one-time payments and not subscriptions, when buying something means actually owning the item and not some weird lease to use agreement.

But you don't see them going away anytime soon, do you? Neither do companies.

Coming out of my cave a bit, I wanna drop my view about Gen AI because I wanna get this out. In the wake of what is going on with NaNoWriMo at the moment, I mostly lean on the negative side. Don't get me wrong, there are some uses for it but at the current state, unless there are regulations. It is going to be a constant issue.

Talking about in a writer's view, I know when I experimented with Gen AI stories ( never posted them) just to see how good the tech is. Each test story I put it through, it felt like it's not a story that I would write or feels mine. Unless you kept on generating different outcomes, it felt more time-consuming rather than if you just wrote yourself. Plus, it would not help you understand your characters and lore. To put it simple, you can't really call it your story if just press the button and generate it. It's not enough to generate the story. You have to understand it inside and out.

That's just in my opinion. The artist's side is probably the same view. You can make the "perfect" AI art, story, or music. But it will never feel like yours at all. It takes away the sense of process and accomplishment.

Using AI to write your stories or create your art is like putting a Joe Satriani CD in the player and saying that you’ve created music.

Ordering a pizza, not paying and then calling yourself a chef

just coz it didn't happen for you or in the way you wanted doesn't mean its never happened.

It did happen in history, people went on strikes when their business was affected

and you are just proving my point that people don´t care about it and you just said
"it is what it is" to me with your comment and showed me that you don´t care

no coz my issue is what feels like an acceptance and loss of fight. like okay it didn't work out but why not keep at it. to say it didn't work it's never gonna seems dumb or at the least counterproductive. i'd rather keep making art in whatever way i can till i die than just go "ah well this exists now so guess there's no point' coz even prior to ai there's still the whole "oh well there's always someone better than you" and even in those instances i still kept at it out of pure spite and determination to prove that i and the things i care about are worth a damn.

i'm not trying to talk down but i hate the defeatist mindset that keeps cycling around and cant wrap my head around the idea of quitting coz something went wrong. i'm literally already actively in a phase where i once again hate everything i'm making and am constantly questioning if i even wanna keep at it even tho i loathe the idea of being stuck in some other job i hate so even tho i struggle with things like visibility or getting any kind of finance from i art i refuse to just drop it because "other people or a computer can do it better"

maybe its coz so much of the media i consumed growing up insisted on never quitting till all options have genuinely been exhausted and that it aint over till your heart stops beating but i refuse to bend to the mindset of it is what it is coz yeah life sucks but what can i do but keep on pushing and if i can get that concept through at least a few thick skulls than maybe that makes the effort worth a damn

I´ll never give up until I die, I have been making music and drawing since 41 years,
first live concert in 1983 and that was also the year I started drawing.

I always fight my way through but I´m also a realist, there is no banding together

well i guess that just makes me the irritating optimist coz that mindset sounds draining and lonely but if its your path good luck