i think it's actually entire possible to be pro-piracy/anti copyright law while also thinking ai art is also bad for artists. like i think those two mindset don't contradict each other at all, and i find the belief that in order to be "pro artist" you have to be "pro-copyright" to be honestly pretty frustrating lol (and vice versa i guess it's 2am i'm tired)

like i find twitter to be "anti-ai-art" to the degree that people unironically go "i don't care if disney wins i just want ai art to lose" which i find to be a very suicidal position to have if you want to keep making art without worrying about being sued because you didn't "copyright your art style" but also i find alot of people on tumblr to be the opposite extreme where they're "pro-ai" because they believe it'll "proletarianize artists" (because most artists aren't working class i guess) which like that's just as silly as the pro copyright side, like elon musk funds several ai models for a reason, and it's not to give the freedom to create to the masses or whatever.

There is a decent point being made here about the way copyright law is inconstitently and selectively enforced depending on what works for the benefit of capital, but sadly a lot of the notes here are a perfect illustration of what I was saying the other day about how letting emotional backlash become the backbone of the anti-AI art position inevitably leads to uncritically spitting out some very reactionary things about copyright law.

I scrolled the notes for a bit and saw enough comments saying some variation of "Impossible to create without copyrighted material? That sounds like a glaring admission that these tools shouldn't exist then huehuehuehue ',:^)" to make my blood pressure spike.

Like if you're about to write an argument of the sort I implore you to think for two seconds about some other things it might be applicable to. Like I shouldn't have explain why "Can't exist without copyright infringement = Shouldn't exist" is a very dangerous idea to lend validity to for the sake of the Sick Dunk you're trying to score on all the AI techbros or whatever. If the thing you're about to say about AI art can be said about fanfic without changing anything about it I don't think you actually want to be saying it.

Poll for writers and artists

Whether you write fanfic or original works or paint/draw, be it fan art or original work or whatever else - I have to know, because I have a feeling this is going to be very decisive:

Please reblog for sample size!

Follow-up poll

Not talking about obvious plagiarism here - genuinely just about fan art or fic or stuff inspired by things you made

this is going viral on the tweeter currently so. for you also. miku is not ai!!

Hello! I come with some good news! In the EU, a law has been passed restricting generative AIs (particularly ones that pose a high risk). I hope other areas in the world follow suit, but this is huge! It'll take a while to be applied as well, though this is still a major win for everyone.

What this new law means...

AI will be banned from being used for the following purposes:

'Biometric categorisation systems' using sensitive information scraped from images on the internet and CCTV footage.' This means people can't use AI/scraping to create a catalogue for;

People will gain the right to file complaints regarding AI systems.

AI developers must minimize risk to people, maintain usage logs, ensure transparency, and implement human oversight.

AI models will have to comply with EU copyright law

This means AI devs will HAVE to provide a comprehensive and detailed summary of the data used to train their AI's.

Any AI generated video, image, or audio (including deepfakes) MUST be labelled as such.

This is not in force for at LEAST two years. However it *is* going to become law (with an overwhelming majority of the European Parliament voting in favour, 523 in favour, 46 against, 49 absent.)

This is the first what is likely to be a slew of laws and regulations regarding the usage of AI.

Fans' attitudes toward AI-generated works

Irina Cisternino, a PhD candidate of Stony Brooke University, is writing their research on topics related to technology, art and fandom. You can participate by filling out a survey and additionally, signing up for an interview. The survey is expected to last until at least the end of April, those, who signed up for the interview, will be contacted later. You need to be at least 18 years old to participate in either, be able to understand and speak English and identify as a fan.

After the completion of the research, it will be accessible as the dissertation of the researcher. If you have further questions, you can contact Irina Cisternino at [email protected] or Lu-Ann Kozlowsky at [email protected].

Good news, fellow artists! Nightshade has finally been released by the UChicago team! If you aren't aware of what Nightshade is, it's a tool that helps poison AI datasets so that the model "sees" something different from what an image actually depicts. It's the same team that released Glaze, which helps protect art against style mimicry (aka those finetuned models that try to rip off a specific artist). As they show in their paper, even a hundred poisoned concepts make a huge difference.

(Reminder that glazing your art is more important than nighshading it, as they mention in their tweets above, so when you're uploading your art, try to glaze it at the very least.)

Everyone reblog! Spread the word so more and more artists learn that in addition to Glaze that coats art against ai scraping mimicry there's also an offensive tool now, able to skew and poison data pools.

Now poisoning will need many artists to nightshade their art and it's most important to get this ou to those the most at risk of being scraped. Reblog!

I will say that the better AI gets at accurately creating photographs or art, the less interested I am. Where's that quote about how the imperfections of the medium will be the thing that defines it? My fascination with AI from an artistic standpoint is mostly centered around the <2021 days when everything it generated kinda looked like confused, swirly nonsense. Before its cateracts were lasered off by evil mathematicians and rooms sweltering from the hot breath of a thousand GPUs.. an AI was a humble, ugly program that could evoke concepts like "night time", or "a castle", or "food", without any literal representation on screen. THAT is compelling, artistically, imo. It's like dream inspiration on demand. But yeah the puffer jacket pope era sucks and bores me, and the uncanny reality of contemporary AI-generated imagery is frightening in a much less tantilizing way than it used to be

this post puts into words my exact feelings that ive been struggling to articulate

The weird funky imperfect stuff was actually kinda fun. The shit we have now is less so.

does anyone know if i can like block sites from appearing in my google images searches??? i keep getting those awful ai generated things with a hand coming out of a man's neck and just straight up not what i was looking for, because this was in a search for "curly hair in medieval paintings". it happens every time i search for anything vaguely art-reference-like and it's so fucking annoying and it clutters my search results so much. i don't wanna add specific commands to the query every time too, what i need is like a browser extension or something

okay i found one! it works! everyone come get your blacklist 👍👍👍

I made a list of as many ai sites i could find to block with ublacklist, just copy and paste them in ublacklist's options menu

Hot take about hot takes (a hot metatake, if you will)

If your "AI art isn't real art" take would also rule out

-photography -collage -surrealism -dadaism -readymades -generative art

you are not making some Inspired Point about Art™, you are simply being reactionary.

Tags from a happy customer:

You are describing collage.

You are describing L.H.O.O.Q., a piece of art created by Marcel Duchamp.

it seems so very predictable that "but is this validly art" discourse ran into Duchamp.

sometimes inspiration is a fountain

I get it. I understand why AI is a threat to people who work in the film industry. I would watch 15 seasons of this

I got a deviantart account to look at creature designs and immediately learned that deviantart in 2023 is like 85% AI generated fetish porn

In hindsight I don't know why I did this because every time I visit that website I learn about a new fetish no matter what I was seeking to find.

anyway forget the intellectual property debate, we need to scour AI art from the face of the earth because it's creepy, soulless, and ugly as shit from a butt

Why has AI art been getting...worse? Not in terms of things like "can it draw a hand or not" but in terms of like...being appealing in some way. The uncanny valley effect has gone WAY up for me

AI has been getting worse because we’re now at a point where it pulls source from previous AI art, giving it a very disturbing effect.

My kiddo uses a term “inbred AI art” to describe this.

...I see.

It's called 'model collapse' and really it's the thing that's going to kill AI for people who just want to steal art and not put effort in.

I said it on twitter and I’ll say it here: I hope AI art eats itself until the only thing the programs can make is that rainbow goo the lost boys have a food fight with in Hook (1991)

didnt @comicaurora predict this several months ago?

sorry for being right all the time, it will happen again

Found some haunting tags I wrote about AI in 2021

The point shouldn't be to identify for sure 100% what is ai art and what isn't. I keep seeing posts advising one to look out for wonky perspective (as if perspective doesn't routinely trip up even the most experienced artists) or to pay attention to fudged detailing (as if impressionism wasn't one of the most influential artistic movements in history), and I think that's coming from a good place but frankly it's a losing battle. Remember when everyone was on about counting the fingers or counting the teeth, and a week later they had that shit ironed out completely? All you're really doing is giving these people more data points to work with to refine their algorithm. It's just going to be constantly shifting goalposts, and at a certain point real artists are going to get exhausted trying to make their art look as not algorithmically generated as possible. It'll be impossible to keep up.

So what should we do? Honestly, I think old practices are still best practices. Find real artists and follow them. Don't repost art, and dont spread reposted art. If something doesn't have a source, skip it. Support artists you like, either by sharing their work directly or donating. And if someone's work looks suspicious? Maybe give them a second look. See some of their other art before jumping to conclusions.

And yes, that means sometimes, you're gonna be tricked. Some people are going to fly under the radar and pass off ai art as their own. And that sucks, and they're liars, but you can't let the obsession with bad actors police real artists out of their communities, or discourage new artists from entering the scene.

your tools do not have a morality but you do

such a bad argument around AI where folks ask: 'what is difference between human finding inspiration and AI scraping data?'. BUD how is this not obvious? despite what we call it AI is not human or intelligent. there are different moral expectations between human and object

AI scraping data is theft but it is not the AI who is guilty of this because IT IS NOT A HUMAN IT IS NOT A REAL MIND it is the illusion of a mind. it is a tool. if you believe AI stealing data is morally just because ‘humans get inspried too’ then gotta believe that of all tools

if someone fires gun to murder are they not guilty because THE GUN DID THIS not the person? gun is also tool and only difference is there is not huge group of scoundrels tryin to say gun is ‘intelligent’. you do not get to do bad things and call your tool 'intelligent' for a pass

in other words, whole discussion is actually attempt to create appearance of 'sentient brain'. when we create a real sentient brain the discussion will immediately be about philosophy and the rights of the brain, whether or not it is ethical to turn off etc. we are not there

where we ARE is that capitalism has found new tool to suck heart out of everything it touches like dang vampire, and it is shocking to see buds fall for it. wes anderson making star wars is not fun it is ghoulish and sad.

It's not even real AI :(