AI Haters, Please Read to the End

I see people celebrating every time something bad happens in the AI art world, and that makes me very sad. Because I am partially colorblind, and have ADHD, clinical depression, and other health issues that I'm less comfortable talking about. Because I can't work, and rely on family for housing and government assistance to afford essentials. For someone like me, the barrier to entry on art is high. I'm never going to own a drawing tablet, I can't get professional lessons, my focus sucks to the point where it's hard to follow tutorials no matter how much I want to, and even if all of that could be sorted, my own eyes are against me.

But I still have ideas. I still have pictures in my head that want to get out. Characters that want faces, scenes that want to be expressed, and the like. I'm still creative. I just can't properly express that creativity. Nor can I pay someone else to express it for me. However, I can tell an AI what I'm trying to depict. I can tweak the settings, make small changes, spend hours on end generating and re-generating, tweaking and re-tweaking, and making small edits that are within my power to do, until I have a picture that satisfies my need to bring the thing in my head to life. That's not "stealing". It's not pushing a button and letting the computer do the work for me. That's me having my own ideas, and trying to use the tools at my disposal to turn them into something that other people can see.

Plus, there's one other thing I can do. This is a picture I generated with AI that I'm actually quite proud of.

And do you know why? Because it started as this.

I fed my terrible MSPaint rough as hell doodle into an AI, and told it what the picture was supposed to be. And I tried again, and again, and again, until I was able to refine the result into something that I was happy with - which took a whole lot more than just pressing the button again, let me tell you.

This is my idea, from start to finish, and my shitty art became something that actually looks halfway decent. Yeah, I'm aware of the wonkiness and AI jank. I know the jawline's weird, his eyes don't match, and there's something up with his ear. It's not perfect, but it's a whole lot better than what I could do on my own.

Look, when it comes to stopping the commercialization of AI art, I'm right there with you guys. Fuck corporations that want to replace their whole art department. Fuck people who want to impersonate other artists, or take commissions to turn someone's description of what they want into a prompt. Hell, fuck the people who take the first result they're given without trying to refine it at all!

However, I don't want AI to die. AI is an accessibility option. AI is a tool that lets me go from saying for years, "I wish I could have art of my first D&D character, I have so many fond memories of him." to having that one picture. It lets me stop stealing every time I want a character portrait for a new TTRPG that I'm starting up. Because you know what? I don't have the ability to be a "real artist", and I never will. There's too many barriers for entry.

...and my situation is mild compared to what some people have to deal with. Sure, there are people who find ways to make traditional art despite disabilities, but that's an exception. It could be the rule. Why shouldn't it be?

As far as "theft" goes, I have yet to hear one explanation of why it's okay to use references, but not AI, that didn't boil down to "it's different when we do it". And what about collage? Is a collage art, or is it "theft?" What about sculptural works that use reclaimed objects? They didn't create that. They just decided how it would be arranged. Hell, what about pieces like "The Fountain" for that matter? That's a big problem I have with all this hate. If you applied the same standards to other things as to AI, then there's a lot of things that currently are art we'd have to say aren't any more.

If you have a problem with AI, why not work to make it better, instead of trying to deprive people who rely on it for self-expression of a creative outlet?

AI tools for the neurodivergent brain

As AI application starts to expand rapidly in it's uses and abilities, there is an understandable amount of scepticism and discussion about how it can negatively impact how our society develops.

On the flipside of this, I'd like to share a couple of AI tools which I've found incredibly useful. As someone with pretty severe executive disfunction, I've always dreamed about being able to have a personal assistant to help me out when I am struggling.

If you haven't already tried it out, take a look at goblin.tools

This AI tool helps me in so many ways. From finding the right words, assembling ingredients into a meal, checking how my tone comes across in a message, to breaking down overwhelming tasks into manageable steps.

I also really like mymind

It's like a pinterest board, bookmark manager and general braindump tool that has helped me organise all the different projects, ideas and general digital hoarding into one place - that I can actually search and find all the relevant things without agonising over file organisation and bookmark labelling.

If you have trouble with keeping a hundred pinned tabs on your browser like I do, this tool can actually really help letting go of the anxiety of losing those things without the fear you will never come back to it again.

As much as I share some of the trepidation about this powerful new tech and we should definitely keep questioning how it is being rolled out into every facet of our lives - it can also be a very real accessibility aid for neurodivergent folks.

No amount of notebooks, lists, alarms and calendar reminders comes close to how these have helped me with ADHD symptoms.

I'd hate for that to be overlooked in all the backlash against AI in general.

alright. look, we're going to go into this because i genuinely want to think you didn't mean harm by this, but it's unacceptable to use this sort of manipulative phrasing. especially with strangers, some of whom are kids.

this is not a call-out. i've hidden all names except my own. i just need to address this post i was tagged in, and don't want to add it onto the end of the original post. i could also have done this privately, but i want this to be here for the other folks who were @'d. i won't @ anyone else who was mentioned in this post, but many of us are mutuals, so if you see this post and you're feeling at all stressed out or bad, i recommend just clicking through because i'm going to go into this.

firstly, and i'm going to make this transparent, person who @'d me: i don't think you're being malicious or did anything purposefully bad. i don't think you intended harm or that you are "a bad person". i don't have a single negative thought about you as a person. i don't make this post to be mean. i truly think you made an earnest mistake that could easily have hurt others, and i am stepping in with the hope this can be avoided in the future! per my usual boundaries on reassurance seeking, i will not reassure about this further.

secondly, the post that you tacked this onto IS important and a helpful resource, and it is great to bring attention to it. we should be doing everything we can to not only defend against, but actively fight back against generative AI. many people cannot access the most commonly recommended tools (myself included), so a resource like this is fantastic and i'm glad to learn about it and share it! i don't speak for anyone else, but i've said before that i personally don't mind being tagged in resources that could help me or others and i'm usually happy to share them, especially if i think the latter

but, assuming that you are genuinely well meaning and don't know better, you need to know that this is not the way to go about it. i don't mean mass-tagging, which is fine in times like this imo, i mean your written add-ons that actively guilt trip every single person you tagged.

"if you weren't convinced by the idea of being a good person" and "I do hope anyone I @'d isn't a bad person" in particular.

you may not have realised, but these are profoundly manipulative and cruel things to say. regardless of how you intended them, they are inciting guilt in the reader, and especially in the people who you actively called to come and look at it. here's what it sounds like:

"hey! you! yeah you! come look at this!! come closer! now, do what i ask you to do, or you're a bad person."

there are a million and one reasons someone might not reblog something. being tired, offline, anxious, even needing to run a specifically professional blog with exclusively your art on it for your own financial survival which makes it hard to reblog important posts like this; none of those are bad.

in this case, only one thing makes them a "bad person", and it's "they're pro-generative AI and did not reblog because they want to hide this information to ensure they can continue stealing from creatives".

i'm fairly confident you don't actually think anyone you tagged here has that point of view, or that you really have any doubts about their stances on generative AI. in fact, of the folks i recognise here, they're all independent creatives, sharing artwork with fandom for free on the internet. they are the victims of generative AI, and like most of us, are facing a terrifying future and are already desperate to find a way to defend/fight back.

you do not need to use manipulative language like this to get us to care about this sort of content! this affects us all, content creators and content consumers alike!

in future if you want to direct folks to something like this, which is super helpful and it was good of you to do!, you can just @ them so they see it. you can even say something like "this is important and some reblogs would sure help to boost it!". this is still a call to action, but without the manipulative phrasing, just in case they cannot act for any reason.

in the end, guilt tripping people like this, intentional or otherwise, is dangerous.

at best it will make them feel like shit and they'll feel forced to reblog + share from you out of guilt rather than just believing in the cause. and sometimes it feels like it's most effective, especially when things are urgent; but in my opinion the risk of harm is just too high. because at worst, you could accidentally send someone into a negative thinking spiral. you can never know what people are going through offline, or outside of your spaces, and how something like this will hit them.

guys do you remember when ai was fun??? Do you remember when it was fun and not taking away jobs

I remember

As a disabled artist who has chronic pain which greatly impacts their ability to make art, I understand the conversation around AI art and its connection to disability and disabled artists and related work is complicated.

However.

Nowhere in that conversation should it be ignored that Generative AI (not AI art tools) utilizes Plagiarism in their core builds.

Plagiarism.

AI can in fact be used to make art more accessible, but Generative AI itself is merely plagiarism software. It steals from creators, doesn’t credit them, doesn’t ask for permissions or consent, does not provide royalties or otherwise pay the artists for their work, and so on.

I don’t think I should have to explain how plagiarism is not the route we disabled artists should be following in the name of increasing accessibility.

I was thinking about this bc I saw a post about it

Someone saying they didn’t like a big mod for a video game because it used AI for the voice acting—

People have been doing that in modding for a while, actually. Before this big AI boom where companies started trying to do it for profit. I remember hearing about how you could do it for skyrim modding years ago.

I just don’t see how a fan project that is by definition not for profit compares to big studios doing it to avoid paying actors and put them out of work. The modders were never going to hire those actors! They’re never going to make any money!

Unfortunately all chatgpt is good for is interview/job application stuff which I think says a lot about the hiring process as a whole

periodically people have to be reminded that you should be against these large generative ai models because its aggregate content theft and not because of like "laziness" or whatever

I will not speak to AI art as a disability accessibility tool but I WILL say that most of the arguments about AI making art 'accessible' aren't about providing assistance to the disabled but rather making it more 'accessible' to break into the art market and make a boatload of money without having to. yknow. learn how to make art or anything about the creative workflow

i'm tired of AI images and tired of AI voices i'm tired of reposted art i'm tired of gambling commercials i'm tired of outrage farming i'm tired of people in power advocating for genocide i'm tired

Legitimately there is some good faith argument to be had about the use of ai and whatnot, but then you hit the wall known as “the average person who supports ai is completely insufferable and doesn’t live in any sort of comparable reality”

So, I keep seeing a lot of posts about AI and how capitalism and a bunch of tech companies are doing massive ethics violations, and I do agree that we should be talking about these things!

But I've also seen people go a bit too far and just kinda not get why those things are bad. The problem isn't AI as a concept, it's how they were implemented and how they're being used.

For example, did you know that phone calls are AI powered? Yes, really. It's not even a new development, they've been using AI / ML models since at least the '70s. VoIP calls like Discord, Google Meet and Zoom use more or less the same technology, so this applies to them as well.

Realistically the only reason they've never been marketed as AI powered is because they come from a time where AI wasn't a giant household buzzword (and in some cases, it was after the first major AI crash, so AI was actively a dirty no-no word if you wanted to get funds). AI really just means "inputs a big ball of data, outputs a crude, but smaller, approximation" - it just so happens that for a bunch of problems, we've found very good small approximations. Which means that please, for the love of all that's unholy, DO NOT harass someone using something that has AI or Machine Learning or terms like that attached, without considering whether that technology in question is actually harmful.

Linear interpolations (any interpolations really, linears are just the most common and banal of them) are technically AI, and yet they're a staple of pretty much every 3D rendering engine. Sometimes they're a cheap hack that makes whatever extremely easier and cheaper to make without compromising on visual accuracy, sometimes they're just *The Right Thing To Do*, and sometimes they're just saving an animator / modeler / etc. that's probably already overworked anyways from doing extra busy work. And yet there have been sightings of people harassing animators because they mentioned using some kind of interpolation during the animating / rigging / modeling process, someone mentioned (correctly in a pedantic sort of way) that it was AI to them before, and they just saw "thing that is AI" and "art" in the same general space and went full "fuck AI mode" on the overworked artist.

The problems with AI we're seeing right now are ethical, but there is ethical usage of AIs (and in fact there is a non negligible amount of accessibility devices that are AI powered), and sometimes that includes industries where there have been the biggest violations so far (generative images, generative sound and generative text). If you don't know enough about the kind of AI / ML model that was used, how it was used in the workflow, how it was trained, etc. Please look into that before going around throwing accusations and making call out posts, because there's a fuckton of things that are technically AI in stuff you use everyday and there are people in the Internet ready to start drama just because it's Tuesday or because the partner of a cousin of a friend of a classmate of their roommate's gym buddy said so.

I'd like to share something with you, Tumblr.

When I first played D&D 3.5, many years ago now, I played a bard named Wren, using a homebrew race that you could find on the official Wizards forums around that time called the Kassuri. He was a goofy little manlet with the ears and tail of a fox who knew no fear. He got to ride on the back of a luck dragon.

He tamed a shocker lizard and named it Tazer. He once drank a whole bucket of dwarven ale without getting drunk, and then shouted, "I said a large glass!" and another time bluffed a group of elven soldiers that the Half-orc paladin was his pet. When a demon killed his mentor, he avenged them and made a coat out of the demon's wings.

He fought his former friend turned enemy, almost died, and won. He got knighted by his king after starting the campaign exiled from his homeland, and then prayed so hard to be a better person that his alignment shifted right before going to face the final boss. When he realized the BBEG was sensitive to sounds and played a heavy metal lute solo so sick that it literally caused their Fortress of Evil to collapse.

It was a silly game, played fast and loose by a group that only half understood the rules, but it was a blast to play. After having some not-so-good experiences with AD&D (may I never forget The Exploding Cleric), it was the first game I ever played to the end of a campaign. I loved the game, and I love my group from back then...Hothgoth, Lios, Pixie, Elena, Leif, and even the others who came in later and didn't stick around as long. I've held onto those memories, and my beloved "first successful character", ever since.

Until the tail end of last year, I never had any decent art of him.

This is Wren, almost perfectly as I envisioned him all those years ago.

The sad truth is, unless you're an artist yourself, it can be hard to get character art for TTRPGs. Most people I know in the hobby don't have a lot of money, and even if they do you never know how long a character may last before getting killed by bad rolls. Back in the day, for the game Wren is from, we just used a text description and imagined the character. These days, most people I know use a virtual table top. Characters need tokens (and usually profile pictures for when other players check the sheet), and for hardcore players like me that are in several games a week, that's a lot of art that could need swapped out on a moment's notice.

The sad truth is, people just steal it. Even the people I know who are artists steal art, only really drawing characters they get attached to. We discuss what images would be good for characters, show one-another what we've found, and it's not uncommon to decide details about a character based on what kind of a picture you can find for them. So...when AI art started becoming a thing, I got excited.

Artist Tumblr probably noticed right away that the picture up there is AI generated. It's a pretty good output, but there's still telltale signs. Yes I notice them, and no they don't bother me. It's better than any of the attempts I ever made at doing a picture myself, and even if I could afford a picture of that level of quality, who knows if the artist I found would be able to fully understand my description the way I see it in my head, or if they would be willing to put in the time and effort to revise it to my satisfaction. It was going to be imperfect either way, but I was able to take time (a frankly ridiculous amount) to tweak things and start over and try different approaches until it was to my satisfaction.

...and like I said, I make a lot of characters. Now, instead of just finding some picture I like and stealing it wholesale, I end up generating a lot of character art. It's just for my personal use either way, and thanks to AI, I get to express my own ideas.

I know some people out there are abusing the technology to make a quick buck, but please remember that's a fault of those people. There are people abusing just about every technology out there. For other people, who are only trying to use it to express themselves or to do things without needing an additional skillset they don't have, AI art is a godsend.

I was thinking while watching this like- as a trained 2D handdrawn animator who because of my RSI can't actually, physically 2D animate anymore (even if there had been jobs in it rip) and is now going into film instead, it would be neat to be able to animate from footage like this, but also at its current state this would literally drive me insane over tiny differences between frames, like- once we get to the point where the AI can spit something out in vector lines, on separated layers, where I can go in and futz with the lines and colours individually (or until then, using it for auto-inbetweening, which seems to be the direction it is evolving in with this new warp program they used in this one), then I will probably learn this stuff to use for myself and with my art cause it's getting to a point where I can see that being the future (and it would provide A future for my own animations they will not otherwise have)

A small reminder that you don’t have to put a disclaimer or say where you got refs for whatever drawing or artpiece you’ve done.

Don’t play by the rules set by a nobody who thought they were in the right when they were not.

You don’t owe anything to anybody.

Listen I hate ai art as much as the next guy and in its current state and likely future states I do not support using it, however some of us Need to stop arguing against it saying shit that ableists say to disabled people

“Oh ai art could be an accessibility tool? Disabled people CAN make art, here’s a video of a disabled person doing something incredibly difficult, time consuming, and likely painful for them. Why can’t you just do that instead? Why are you Lying about your ability?”