One of the few points I will make in defense of "AI," particularly image generators, is they excel at reproducing (and accidentally remixing) the kind of banal, generic art that was already ubiquitous prior to "AI."
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It's slop, yes, but so was a lot of the art that was available online on which it was originally "trained."
If you've ever used an image generator -- or I should say, tried to use one -- you will know that contrary to what the "prompt engineers" claim, the outputs are arbitrary and severely limited to the kinds of imagery that already existed online. (Some people don't notice this because they ask the "AI" to produce more of that exact same generic shit.) Meaning it can't produce anything truly novel and its ability to generate something even mildly interesting is extremely random.
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If you've ever used an image generator -- or I should say, tried to use one -- you will know that contrary to what the "prompt engineers" claim, the outputs are arbitrary and severely limited to the kinds of imagery that already existed online. (Some people don't notice this because they ask the "AI" to produce more of that exact same generic shit.) Meaning it can't produce anything truly novel and its ability to generate something even mildly interesting is extremely random.
This is a pretty straightforward example of Sturgeon's Law.
In my opinion, "'AI' is ripping off artists" is probably the weakest argument against it inasmuch as you couldn't throw a rock 10 years ago without hitting these kinds of images online.
The number of guys who use "AI" to simulate Instagram videos of young women, for example, when there are already zillions of such videos available.
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This is a pretty straightforward example of Sturgeon's Law.
In my opinion, "'AI' is ripping off artists" is probably the weakest argument against it inasmuch as you couldn't throw a rock 10 years ago without hitting these kinds of images online.
The number of guys who use "AI" to simulate Instagram videos of young women, for example, when there are already zillions of such videos available.
Like, yeah, it's creepy and weird, I'll give you that.
But the biggest sin of this software is that it's unnecessary: we don't really need a system for automating the production of slop, especially one so inefficient.
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Like, yeah, it's creepy and weird, I'll give you that.
But the biggest sin of this software is that it's unnecessary: we don't really need a system for automating the production of slop, especially one so inefficient.
we HAD perfectly good markov bots
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If you've ever used an image generator -- or I should say, tried to use one -- you will know that contrary to what the "prompt engineers" claim, the outputs are arbitrary and severely limited to the kinds of imagery that already existed online. (Some people don't notice this because they ask the "AI" to produce more of that exact same generic shit.) Meaning it can't produce anything truly novel and its ability to generate something even mildly interesting is extremely random.
@gwynnion Right when all this started, I tried the web interface to Stable Diffusion, and I've also suggested some prompts to a friend of mine who uses the ChatGPT image generator. And ... well, I *hated* it. The fact that graphics fidelity has gotten better means nothing to me, perhaps because of the way I think about making images. Sure, it's now incredibly easy to generate "a pixel art butterfly", but it's *extremely* tedious to get the pixel art butterfly I *want*, and fundamentally impossible to get *my* pixel art butterfly.
I ended up feeling so disgusted with the whole thing that I signed up for a pen-and-paper drawing course.
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@gwynnion Right when all this started, I tried the web interface to Stable Diffusion, and I've also suggested some prompts to a friend of mine who uses the ChatGPT image generator. And ... well, I *hated* it. The fact that graphics fidelity has gotten better means nothing to me, perhaps because of the way I think about making images. Sure, it's now incredibly easy to generate "a pixel art butterfly", but it's *extremely* tedious to get the pixel art butterfly I *want*, and fundamentally impossible to get *my* pixel art butterfly.
I ended up feeling so disgusted with the whole thing that I signed up for a pen-and-paper drawing course.
@gwynnion (footnote: Here is the pixel art butterfly I wanted. *Exactly* pixel-by-pixel the one I wanted, because it is mine.)
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This is a pretty straightforward example of Sturgeon's Law.
In my opinion, "'AI' is ripping off artists" is probably the weakest argument against it inasmuch as you couldn't throw a rock 10 years ago without hitting these kinds of images online.
The number of guys who use "AI" to simulate Instagram videos of young women, for example, when there are already zillions of such videos available.
@gwynnion it mostly is a good argument if you contrast it with how a few decades ago teenagers were getting sued into poverty for sharing music on napster or whatever
or basically copyright law mostly serves whoever has the biggest team of lawyers and so we should just burn society to the ground because it sucks
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Like, yeah, it's creepy and weird, I'll give you that.
But the biggest sin of this software is that it's unnecessary: we don't really need a system for automating the production of slop, especially one so inefficient.
As an author, I'd be annoyed if someone fed my works into an LLM to try and produce more stories using my style. But I also realize that a) those "stories" would suck due to the software's inherent limitations and b) I'm not so talented or unique as to be irreplaceable anyway.
I get more upset by people stealing and reselling my work directly because I put actual work into that.
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@gwynnion (footnote: Here is the pixel art butterfly I wanted. *Exactly* pixel-by-pixel the one I wanted, because it is mine.)
@datarama It's nice!
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@datarama It's nice!
@gwynnion Thank you.
Would you like a goat that walks forever?
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@gwynnion Thank you.
Would you like a goat that walks forever?
@datarama That sounds like a very tired goat?
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@datarama It's nice!
@datarama As a no budget self-published author, I have sometimes used image generators for book covers and the problems I have in that regard may sound familiar.
On the one hand, if I wanted to use, e.g., a butterfly, there are already a million stock images of butterflies available for next to nothing I could choose from.
On the other hand, when I need something more specific that represents the story in some way, it's almost impossible to get anything useful because of that specificity.
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@datarama That sounds like a very tired goat?
@gwynnion The struggle itself towards the edge of the screen is enough to fill a goat's heart. One must imagine Goat-Sisyphus happy.
Though I suppose you can click the gif to give him a break.
(I based the walk cycle on a late-1800s photo study of various walking animals that I found on the Internet Archive. I screwed up one of the hind legs a bit, but I'm quite happy with it.)
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As an author, I'd be annoyed if someone fed my works into an LLM to try and produce more stories using my style. But I also realize that a) those "stories" would suck due to the software's inherent limitations and b) I'm not so talented or unique as to be irreplaceable anyway.
I get more upset by people stealing and reselling my work directly because I put actual work into that.
I understand the concern with "AI" creating deepfakes or copying a very noteworthy style such as Studio Ghibli, mainly for creating confusion as to the veracity or provenance of the image, but it's not like artists weren't copying each other already for various reasons.
Again, the bigger problem is the way "AI" automates the production of this stuff, putting it in the hands of people who have no particular use for it, and the resource costs involved in doing so.
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@gwynnion The struggle itself towards the edge of the screen is enough to fill a goat's heart. One must imagine Goat-Sisyphus happy.
Though I suppose you can click the gif to give him a break.
(I based the walk cycle on a late-1800s photo study of various walking animals that I found on the Internet Archive. I screwed up one of the hind legs a bit, but I'm quite happy with it.)
@datarama "One must imagine Goat-Sisyphus happy."
How did I know you were going to say that? LOL.
It's nice, though! Well done!
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@datarama "One must imagine Goat-Sisyphus happy."
How did I know you were going to say that? LOL.
It's nice, though! Well done!
@gwynnion I don't know exactly how big the intersection of the venn diagram of "pretentious nerds who quote Camus" and "goat-obsessed people" is, but I do know that it is home.
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One of the few points I will make in defense of "AI," particularly image generators, is they excel at reproducing (and accidentally remixing) the kind of banal, generic art that was already ubiquitous prior to "AI."
@gwynnion I think I kind of share the same view (at least to some extent). My problem is more with the environmental impacts and rise in electricity costs for surrounding communities. Surely the big giant corporations behind all of this have the money to offset these problems, right?
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I understand the concern with "AI" creating deepfakes or copying a very noteworthy style such as Studio Ghibli, mainly for creating confusion as to the veracity or provenance of the image, but it's not like artists weren't copying each other already for various reasons.
Again, the bigger problem is the way "AI" automates the production of this stuff, putting it in the hands of people who have no particular use for it, and the resource costs involved in doing so.
Almost everything about "AI" would be merely a dumb nuisance if it weren't being pushed on the general public by multiple mega-corporations using it to justify massive datacenter projects that suck up power and water for no reason -- and especially if those companies weren't underwriting the cost in the short term to encourage people to use it.
And I have strong doubts "AI" will ever be able to do what they want it to do anyway.
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@gwynnion I don't know exactly how big the intersection of the venn diagram of "pretentious nerds who quote Camus" and "goat-obsessed people" is, but I do know that it is home.
@datarama Well, I might like to rent a room there, at least.
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@gwynnion I think I kind of share the same view (at least to some extent). My problem is more with the environmental impacts and rise in electricity costs for surrounding communities. Surely the big giant corporations behind all of this have the money to offset these problems, right?
@Aaron_Davis A lot of the problem is just scale and trying to use "AI" for things it's not good at despite the inefficiencies of the system. Like, we already had text summarizers and customer service chatbots. They worked better back then, in many ways!
I wouldn't have much of a problem with the software if it were lightweight and energy efficient to run.
