AI PBs
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@bear_necessities I’ve been arguing primarily in response to the posited idea that generative AI is less harmful or objectionable to the involved creatives than using existing imagery.
I don’t like the growing prevalence of AI imagery in the hobby, but that’s not a crusade I’m particularly willing to take on, and hasn’t been the point of my arguments. I’m just arguing about the framing that’s been centered on “AI is less exploitative to the creatives.”
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The problem with that theory is that most of the current generation of LLMs only work at scale. Unless you had a gazillion of your own photos, or had written an entire series of novels, it’s unlikely that you could train an AI model just on your own work and have it work effectively.
I don’t think it’s possible even then. Even if you it was solely trained to replicate a single artists style, I believe we’d only end up with something that worked within the limited variety of the artist’s work, and attempting it to produce something outside of that would produce non-useful, though perhaps morbidly entertaining results. There would still exist a need to train it on a library of stock images to allow it a wider breadth of subject matter.
For example, if we fed an LLM only the entire catalog of Van Gogh’s art, and asked it to produce an image of an sports car, it would probably either fail to produce anything, or just produce something random and call it a ‘sports car’.
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@MisterBoring That’s an interesting point. There do exist models for SD that are fed on images in public domain, but I’m curious how well they really hold up because of the sorts of examples you mention.
@bear_necessities said in AI PBs:
I’m thoroughly confused by what the argument is at this point. Is it ok to use AI as long as i acknowledge it’s harmful to artists?
It’s okay to use AI. Maybe it’s not perfect, but fuck it. I use AI, but I acknowledge the technology has some real flaws, and I don’t try to pretend that it is ethically better than alternatives. I’ve used AI for images and AI for code. I’ve even used AI to help me figure out why an update failed for BMD, so abandon ship if that’s a problem!!
I use it. I do sometimes think about whether I should buy carbon credits or something to feel like I use it ethically, but on the other hand, I don’t worry about the carbon credits I burn playing video games. I don’t know. On my fucks given scale, it doesn’t really rate, but it does sometimes itch.
In this discussion, I find the approach that AI PBs are ethically preferable to using PBs of existing persons hard to swallow.
What is the line of thinking? Many of these models have used those very same images in their training data. Like, you’re just using the exact same images with an extra layer of ‘and also other copyrighted works’, in a way that is still very much under debate for how much actual harm it causes.
Then there are some harmful beliefs out there which make people blind to potential issues:
Secondly, if the model is made for a for-profit system like Midjourney, then they already have the requisite rights and permissions. That’s part of what you’re paying for when you buy a license for Midjourney.
That’s just incorrect. Make your judgments on the matter based on fact, at least.
she/they
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How can I solve a problem in a complicated way that’s already been solved two simple ways 40 years ago? -
In this discussion, I find the approach that AI PBs are ethically preferable to using PBs of existing persons hard to swallow.
This is where I’m at. I don’t care for how Midjourney stuff looks, but I also don’t care if people like playing with it as a toy, even if the company sucks and the whole industry needs to pay the contributors it sucks inspo from and also be regulated. A lot of MUSHing exists in a fair use gray area, I’m not going to clutch my pearls about a new toy just because I don’t like it.
The whole ‘AI is more ethical actually’ thing just feels like false equivalency bullshit, though, given the many ways it is…demonstrably not.
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@Third-Eye said in AI PBs:
I also don’t care if people like playing with it as a toy, even if the company sucks and the whole industry needs to pay the contributors it sucks inspo from and also be regulated.
Yeah I mean… in the grand scheme of the AI industry, is MUSHing going to be the make-or-break thing? Obviously not.
It just bothers me. These tools are literally destroying the livelihoods of people I care about right now and threatening to do the same to more people in the future. So it just really hurts to see people shrug and be like: “Eh, whatever, I’m gonna still play with it because it’s a fun toy.” I wish more people would take a principled stand against it, because that can actually make a difference to their bottom lines.
Most of us are old enough to remember Napster. Imagine what would have happened to the music industry if that had been Apple’s model instead of some little indie that could get crushed by the big corps. If they had just said: “Yeah we know it’s illegal, but we don’t care. Come sue us. By the time it gets through the courts, we’ll have a monopoly and nobody will be able to stop us.” I don’t really like that image. Yeah, I know the current streaming services aren’t great to musicians either, but it could have been a lot worse.
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me. These tools are literally destroying the livelihoods of people I care about right now and threatening to do the same to more people in the future. So it just really hurts to see people shrug and be like: “Eh, whatever, I’m gonna still play with it because it’s a fun toy.” I wish more people would take a principled stand against it, because that can actually make a difference to their bottom lines.
Honestly, I don’t know how you can say this and then also say
I purchase from Amazon and thereby enable corruption and exploitation. I have reasons, but they’re kinda selfish. I can at least admit it.
when the exact same argument could be made for Amazon and I would argue those very real people being exploited are being hurt a bit worse here.
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@bear_necessities said in AI PBs:
when the exact same argument could be made for Amazon and I would argue those very real people being exploited are being hurt a bit worse here.
The relative evils of Amazon vs. GenAI is a valid debate but pretty off-topic. Unless your argument is that exploiting artists is OK because Amazon also exploits workers, it feels ultimately irrelevant.
Also did you miss the part where I admitted my reasons were kinda selfish? If someone wants to rail at me for being an imperfect human with inconsistent priorities, that’s valid. But at least I’m not going to try to argue with them that buying from Amazon is completely innocent.
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There’s no ethical consumption under (late stage) capitalism, we all vaguely know this. Nobody in this thread is anyone else’s moral superior, and anyone trying to be should be roundly mocked.
The use of AI feels worse for a lot of us because we’re creatives, or move in creative circles, and that’s what generative AI is directly impacting right now. And that’s a perfectly valid feeling, especially if it mitigates one’s own consumption.
ETA: That isn’t to discount the feelings of everyone involved, simply an explanation for those who don’t understand the seeming hypocrisy and/or double standards.
He/Him. Opinions and views are solely my own unless specifically stated otherwise.
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I think it’s a better use of time to push for reining in the corporations, rather than dissuading the average joe twelvepack (the AI gives him more abs).
Game-runner of Silent Heaven, a small-town horror MU.
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@Jumpscare said in AI PBs:
the AI gives him more abs
If an AI could improve my fitness and physique without me having to put in any labour my ethics and morality would go out the window as fast as I could type “make me fit and sexy please” into FitGPT.
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The use of AI feels worse for a lot of us because we’re creatives, or move in creative circles, and that’s what generative AI is directly impacting right now.
That is true, but also not the whole story. GenAI is causing widespread disruption in everything from the fundamental business model of the internet to critical thinking skills. It may be impacting entry-level jobs, hurting an entire generation because companies are too short-sighted to realize that today’s entry-level people are tomorrow’s senior people. It has profound implications for propaganda, which is increasingly dangerous considering the threat of authoritarianism. These impacts are not limited to the creative fields.
And that’s not even touching on the alignment issues that make generalized intelligence (which we do not yet have but these grifter companies are trying desperately to build) so dangerous. My favorite thought experiment is the rogue stamp collector AI because it’s pretty hilarious yet illustrates the problem very well.
I am not saying that all machine learning is bad, but I personally see GenAI specifically as a threat on par with climate change in its ability to really screw up society. Amazon is bad, but GenAI is way worse IMHO.
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@Faraday One could certainly make all those arguments about the internet itself. It’s just all happening all at once like a rolling boil rather than turning the heat up slowly.
Which isn’t an excuse or a “so don’t worry about it.” We have to direct our energies outwards towards forcing our representatives into heavy regulation, etc. For everything else I’m just fatigued in my concern.
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@MisterBoring The people stressed are the ones trying to maintain their ethics. But I respect and exhort that. What’s the alternative, spreading cheeks for our AI masters?
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@Muscle-Car said in AI PBs:
The people stressed are the ones trying to maintain their ethics.
That’s what I was getting at, that attempting to consume ethically largely fails to have any impact on the continuing economic system, inevitably causing people doing the ethical consumption more stress as they watch the system continue to grow and exploit itself.
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@MisterBoring said in AI PBs:
- Use stock photos or other art published online for free under a Creative-Commons (or similar) license.
I actually did this once, way back when in the Haunted Memories days for a character. Though it was less an ethical reasoning and more that I just happened to find some stock photos that were so perfect for what I envisioned that I had to use them, so I paid a few dollars to remove the stock image watermark. It did feel kinda good though.
I did the AI thing when Midjourney first came around and before I knew better (I didn’t really look into anything around it I just went ‘oh cool AI images’ like so many people). I wouldn’t touch that sort of thing now.
I’m kinda in the same boat as some others have echoed, I kinda dislike PBs in general. Most of the time it’s the last step on the process and I rarely find something that truly matches what I was thinking of.
