Discussion about A.I.

[DavidTX]

I can understand the disdain for the medium, but I strongly disagree with the notion of hating anyone who uses it.

I do not have a disdain for the medium per se. It's everything surrounding it that's messed up, and thus I stand by what I wrote. In its current form generative AI inherently sucks and people who use it can go fuck themselves. It is built upon theft and exploitation. The sad thing is, it never had to be like this. Midjourney's David Holz famously said "There isn’t really a way to get a hundred million images and know where they’re coming from." which is - plainly put - complete and utter bullshit. He acts like simply asking for censent or licensing training data is somehow an impossible task. There are public domain datasets being put together this very moment, but they won't be able to compete with the already existing datasets and they're obviously coming way too late.

I signed up with cruxforums just yesterday. I had two reasons to do so: 1) I had been searching for stuff by montycrusto and saw he had an account here, and 2) I was thinking about posting some of my own pics here.

I quickly realized some of my work had already been posted here, which doesn't bother me much, but instead of finding more of Montycrusto's work, I see he's left the board because of a disagreement regarding AI. And some idiot reacted to the latter by basically telling him to shut up and do more of his art instead of complaining about AI (I'm obviously paraphrasing, but the message is the same).

People don't realize the more pictures artists create, the more of their work will be used for AI training. Artists are having their own work literally used against them. The one and only way artists can effectively protect themselves from having their work scraped and used for AI datasets is to not post their stuff online at all. If you want to see more from folks like Monty or other illustrators, then don't support AI. It's that simple. If you want to see AI slop fucking everywhere (and it feels like we're already half-way there), then go support the multi-billion-dollar companies behind the tech and its users that don't give a damn about how this shit came into existance.

 

[fallenmystic]

I do not have a disdain for the medium per se. It's everything surrounding it that's messed up, and thus I stand by what I wrote. In its current form generative AI inherently sucks and people who use it can go fuck themselves...

It's been a while since I last engaged in a discussion like this in this thread, possibly because AI art has become an integral part of the community since then.

Before, we had our share of people who were suspicious of and even downright hostile toward AI art. I suppose most of them by now see that AI hasn't driven off artists (except for a few, like Montycrusto, of course), as many suspected, but it has allowed more people to express their creativity in a different way.

If you have such a disdain for a specific medium of art, it's your loss that you can't enjoy it as many of us can. But I certainly have no right or intention to change your mind about that. It's not like when Stable Diffusion was first released. So, if you're still adamantly against anything related to AI despite many people creating and sharing good art with it, I doubt you'll ever change your mind about the subject.

However, I'll have to remind you that CF is not a community reserved for those who hate AI. Rather, it's a place where anyone can discuss and share content about certain kinky art, which includes those made or enhanced using AI tools.

I don't care if you think only those who don't use any AI tool are "true artists". But if you go further and express your hatred against people who don't share your prejudice against AI like that, I don't think CF is the right place for you.

If you want to see AI slop fucking everywhere (and it feels like we're already half-way there), then go support the multi-billion-dollar companies behind the tech and its users that don't give a damn about how this shit came into existance.

It's an amusing statement, considering that Daz3D artists use a specific product from a proprietary company and purchase most of their assets they use from someone else, whereas both Stable Diffusion and Flux are open-source tools backed by a much larger community that shares their works for free.

 

[Nyghtfall3D]

It's everything surrounding it that's messed up, and thus I stand by what I wrote.

So it's the ethical debate about how the tech works that remains a barrier to acceptance for you. That's completely understandable, and no one can fault you for that.

There's not a moment that goes by when I'm enhancing a Daz render or generating something solely from text prompts that I don't find myself wondering where Flux pulled the data from. On the flip side, a growing number of artists are finding it impossible to deny its usefulness in creating images or enhancing their own work in ways that would otherwise be difficult, if not impossible, for them using other mediums. Consequently, the ethical argument against AI has been reduced to an unfortunate caveat of using it.

 

[DavidTX]

Before, we had our share of people who were suspicious of and even downright hostile toward AI art. I suppose most of them by now see that AI hasn't driven off artists (except for a few, like Montycrusto, of course), as many suspected, but it has allowed more people to express their creativity in a different way.

Let me guess: You are not affected negatively by AI in any way. Because if you were, you likely wouldn't be posting such stuff here.

I can assure you: Artists are greatly impacted by AI. It is taking away jobs and driving away artists. I have illustrator friends who are terrified because they are hardly getting any more commissions and are struggling to make ends meet. I have friends whose names are on Midjourney's infamous 16K artist list.
There are a couple hundred of my own illustrations (not my NSFW 3D stuff, but paintings I poured thousands of hours of work into) in AI training sets. My RL name is being used as a prompt and AI garbage with my name attached to it is slowly displacing my art in search results.

The fight over AI is not a fair fight. Those that are pro-AI usually have nothing to lose and everything to win. Those who oppose it have everything to lose and nothing to gain. Frankly, if you are in the former category, your opinion is worthless to me. It's like asking a thief whether they're pro or con shoplifting.

If you have such a disdain for a specific medium of art, it's your loss that you can't enjoy it as many of us can. But I certainly have no right or intention to change your mind about that. It's not like when Stable Diffusion was first released. So, if you're still adamantly against anything related to AI despite many people creating and sharing good art with it, I doubt you'll ever change your mind about the subject.

Once more, it's not the medium per se. I thought I had made that clear. That being said, I do think AI generated content is generally of low quality. Even the better stuff only appears great at first glance. It tends to fall apart if you go into the details. The amount of really good AI art is shockingly little compared to all the slop out there.

It's an amusing statement, considering that Daz3D artists use a specific product from a proprietary company and purchase most of their assets they use from someone else, whereas both Stable Diffusion and Flux are open-source tools backed by a much larger community that shares their works for free.

The DAZ marketplace is very simple: You want to use something that other people created? You pay for a license. That's how it's supposed to be. It's a win-win situation for both the users of DAZ and the content providers. What's free was made free by those who created it.


Stable Diffusion, Flux and similar models are powered by stolen content. These open-source "tools" are completely useless without data that is very much NOT theirs to share. - It's like donating a kidney that isn't yours. While great for the recipient, it's terrible for someone else and the "donor" deserves absolutely no praise.

 

[Wragg]

Let me guess: You are not affected negatively by AI in any way. Because if you were, you likely wouldn't be posting such stuff here.

I can assure you: Artists are greatly impacted by AI. It is taking away jobs and driving away artists. I have illustrator friends who are terrified because they are hardly getting any more commissions and are struggling to make ends meet. I have friends whose names are on Midjourney's infamous 16K artist list.
There are a couple hundred of my own illustrations (not my NSFW 3D stuff, but paintings I poured thousands of hours of work into) in AI training sets. My RL name is being used as a prompt and AI garbage with my name attached to it is slowly displacing my art in search results.

The fight over AI is not a fair fight. Those that are pro-AI usually have nothing to lose and everything to win. Those who oppose it have everything to lose and nothing to gain. Frankly, if you are in the former category, your opinion is worthless to me. It's like asking a thief whether they're pro or con shoplifting.


Once more, it's not the medium per se. I thought I had made that clear. That being said, I do think AI generated content is generally of low quality. Even the better stuff only appears great at first glance. It tends to fall apart if you go into the details. The amount of really good AI art is shockingly little compared to all the slop out there.


The DAZ marketplace is very simple: You want to use something that other people created? You pay for a license. That's how it's supposed to be. It's a win-win situation for both the users of DAZ and the content providers. What's free was made free by those who created it.


Stable Diffusion, Flux and similar models are powered by stolen content. These open-source "tools" are completely useless without data that is very much NOT theirs to share. - It's like donating a kidney that isn't yours. While great for the recipient, it's terrible for someone else and the "donor" deserves absolutely no praise.

I understand the passion of your views. Like @fallenmystic and others I am not going to argue with you because there is very little point in doing so. I must gently point out that nobody on this site has gone out thieving your data or anyone else's, so be very careful about making personal attacks on the AI users on this site.

On to a more general point, the source material for AI is material available on the internet. We require users to post images as thumbnails to reduce bandwidth costs, but, particularly if your views align with those of DavidTx, it does also mean that only the thumbnails are available to the AI bots crawling all over the internet.

I can't promise, of course, that nobody will repost it elsewhere in which case it may indeed come to form part of the zillions of megabuckets of data which the AI engines then regurgitate back to us, in which case I am sorry.

Whether or not that equates to 'shoplifting' I am happy to leave for others cleverer than me to discuss civilly and ideally without too much hyperbole.