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Sep 2024

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"

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 :slight_smile:

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.

It only hurts people when it´s their own business which is in danger or affected,
otherwise people go with the flow and don´t care.

How much do you think people care and band together for musicians, studio musicians, producers, recording engineers,
small and big record labels and the people who work there, record shops etc.,
they all say "it is what it is"

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 :stuck_out_tongue:

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

Writers and actors went on strike just this past year and instead of showing solidarity the public lost their shit because their TV shows got delayed.

At it bloodiest, the labour movement was only fought by the people most affected. Everyone else thought the protestors were being inappropriate.

The American state of Oklahoma passed a law that protects anyone who drives down a protestor blocking traffic.

Those are just a few examples. It'd be great if the public would show some sort of solidarity for their peers. Even the truth that labour's win is also their win does not sway them. The public simply can't be trusted to show good judgement, and that means their politicians are even more selfish, cruel and stupid.

It's sensible to see all fights for societal improvement as small scale and largely futile because history shows this to be the norm.

What is the optimistic message?

My optimistic message is that I have found my niche and that kids still love to draw with pencil
and paper and that I found a way to keep on making music. I achieved that through my hard
work and made the impossible possible. There was no banding toether involved

Pff it's like with the US elections. The average person would rather believe the news at face value than dig deeper and do research, or directly watch the full campaign speeches from both parties. Studying is too poopy!

Admittedly I don't care as much about Gen AI as the mass majority of artists, but it's because I'm using optimistic nihilism for survival. If I weren't bogged down by two jobs and 4 hours of sleep during the work week, housework, pet care, I probably would have time to care more, since my stuff can get stolen too. (Probably has, wouldn't be surprised.) Still, I do understand the fears and hatred everyone else has, especially artists whose livelihoods have been threatened thanks to AI.

youre talking to a black woman who lives in the southern us if you think i'm ignorant to reality by way of blind optimism then thats quite the assumption to make. i'm not ignorant to any of these realities or the consistent lynchings the recent murders or anything else going on. i'm actively following the animation guilds ongoing strike loosely kept track of what was going on with actors and have been painfully aware of the realities of my own personal struggles but the simple fact is despite it all i'd like to try and hold onto some kind of hope that maybe just maybe shit can get better but if i'm going to have to deal with people still talking down at me perhaps it'd be in my best interest to forgo speaking here in general permanently

I understand everyone who´s livehood is in danger, I´m struggling and dealing with this all my life,
but topics like this just show me how people don´t care about other creative fields and only start
caring when they are affected

While generative AI may assist in writing / proofreading / coding or other areas, when it comes to creativity (writing, art or animation), I am completely against the notion of using computer-generated ideas that (at least in part) replace human creativity.

Example: while AI might help artists / webcomic artists generate stories, the stories would feel off at some point because they lack the intricacies of human emotion. Instead of leveraging AI, I rather like the idea of writers/ artists racking their brains and coming up with stories that show pure human brilliance and the full creative credit goes to the human.

I myself rarely use AI. And I do hate it when AI generates 'art' by pulling and amalgamating various patterns from real artists.

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.

Ho yeah! It's like that with almost everything, the average person genuinely doesn't care about suffrage unless they're the one suffering. Or at least most are oblivious and ignorant to it until they're suffering, it's an animal instinct thing that requires rewiring/empathy training to get out of your system. Not saying our species is apathetic, by default we have SOME empathy, but educated empathy takes effort... sometimes through experience, unfortunately.



Did you stop ordering from amazon because of how they treat their workers, and not allowing to unionize though? Stopped buying clothes and brands made from sweatshops in some third-world country? Are you going to stop from using social media because they're using AI to code, replacing jobs, and scrape all your posts for training data?

Sure, some people may have switched away from Adobe products because of the AI controversy. I personally switched out from them ages ago ever since they went subscription, after v6- early CS days. I made my choice, but that doesn't mean I haven't acknowledged that they're the industry standard still, and that the tools am currently using are niche products in comparison. A lot of people are mad over Adobe's stance on AI but are still using their suite instead of taking the time to learn the alternatives.




Am just being a realist. Most people say they'll the fight the good fight, but like everyone else, they don't have the strength of their convictions… especially when it inconveniences them.

It's amusing to expect that strangers and society in general will change, when they themselves can't even sacrifice the things they use.

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? :cry_swag:

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.

I also use it for this too. For example, I had to write a grant for class (the professor wanted us to use AI) and was unsure of where to start so I asked AI to write an example for me and provide a reasoning why it did it.



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.

It's a fun little thing to do when I'm bored, to see what it can come up with, but I really hope the popularity dies down, because if it doesn't the art and animation industry could be in a lot of trouble. And I hope not since those are the things I'm focusing on in school rn. But, it is also rlly funny to see people not understand what is and isn't AI generated.

...I think the problem with your argument is that ^this IS what it's about for the vast majority of AI champions. =/ The phrase "democratize art" didn't come from nowhere...there are hundreds of people who genuinely believe that being an artist is an inherent privilege rather than a skill/career, and that it's only fair for that "privilege" to be taken from artists, whether they want it or not.

It's true that not all AI is equivalent to generative AI. It's true that there exists assistive AI that simply relies on calculations applied to limited, ethical datasets, which artists can and should use if it helps them in their work.

But that's not what people are upset about right now. We're upset about the generative AI that CEO's are boldly pushing for to replace artists entirely. We're upset about the generative AI that is literally breaking people's websites by constantly trawling for data to steal, even when 'NO' is essentially written into the code. We're upset about the generative AI that has already upended and destroyed countless careers, ruined educations, spread misinformation and harassment, and wasted thousands, if not millions of gallons of water (that actual humans desperately need) just to keep itself running.

...So, y'know, in light of all that, minimizing this to an issue of snobby "artistes" looking down on the underdogs feels disingenuous and insulting, to say the least. T_T

If you just want to make a case for AI that isn't harmful, I think you should just focus on educating people, explaining the differences between 'good' and 'bad' AI constructs. Trying instead to convince artists who are having their work stolen at the cost of the planet itself that they're somehow focusing on the wrong thing (???) does not make sense and will not help you. If people apparently 'despise' you for doing that, it's not because they're "artistes", it's because you sound like an insensitive jerk.

Also, on that note...I would be wary of any generative AI art program that supposedly only trains itself on local data. If an AI only needed a couple hundred or thousand pieces to function well, I doubt companies would be risking legal action by scraping everything they can get their hands on.
I think it's much more likely that such an AI would be referencing local data, while using the larger still-unethical dataset to interpret and modify it. You really gotta read the fine print when it comes to AI products...like it or not, the industry in its current state is 90% built on shameless theft. You have to be able to admit that and reckon with it if you want to be taken seriously when discussing it.





By that very same logic, don't you think that the snarky, snobby, downright hostile comments from 'artiste' are insulting and off-putting to regular people? People that are already apathetic to their plight.



As crazy as this might sound to you: I am actually trying to help. I'm trying to make these artistes understand that they're not doing themselves any favors. That they're not winning people over to their cause (which they could really use more public support to be honest) when they immediately go rabid when normal people, who doesn't really care about 'being an artist' use generators just to share and express themselves.


Regular people label aritste as jerks when they immediately gang up on some little girl that just wanted to share something because she was a fan of a series or character. Somehow, one way or another it always ends up turning into a toxic cesspool, even when posters never labeled them as theirs or 'artworks' for the matter.


And I don't need to make a case. Already said am distancing myself from the more pretentious 'artiste'. You may not believe this as well, but there are open-minded artists that I highly respect, and I'm proud to call friends. They don't immediately go red-eyed just because someone muttered A.I. or go on attack mode if some random person posted a generated image on socials. They don't have a 'nuke everything', 'you're either with us or against us' point of view.


And yes, I fully support actions to prevent data scraping. I have even educated those artist friends on how to use Glaze to cloak their artworks and avoid AI style mimicry.


But your biggest problem right now is that kind of superiority/ privilege attitude to the general public. It's baffling why they can't even realize why they're not having enough public support, when they're openly antagonizing them. Picking on/ shaming regular joe and janes, who doesn't care about being an artist in the slightest; just sharing a generated image for kicks.


Do you really think "educating the public" will work when the ones they're supposed to support are antagonistic to them? . You know better than that.




That's clearly said by someone who has no idea what they're talking about. A lot of local models are now open-source. No company 'owns' them. You can check the code yourself if you know how. Don't let blind hatred for AI prevent you from educating yourself, and that's why a lot of artiste aren't taken seriously either. And the absurd amounts of data needed is ancient, old news. You wouldn't be able to run it offline just on your computer if it still required petabytes of data. They're a blank slate, they can't even run anything unless you feed them something.