#it is ALL trained on work used without consent or compensation
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It's hilarious that the same group of people who cried that digital painting isn't Real Art because anyone can "Just Press A Button" are now upset that generative ai can't be copyrighted or recognized as original art because it is, quite literally, just pressing a button.
It's less hilarious that those people don't care about the inherent copyright infringement that comes with generative ai because they never valued artists' work to begin with! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
#negativity cw#I know that ai can be a valuable tool!#but currently and i cannot state this plainly enough THERE IS NO ETHICAL GENERATIVE AI#it is ALL trained on work used without consent or compensation#And it's 10000% not being used to make life easier on professional artists#It's being weaponized against them#and if you're bemoaning that? If you're crying over fanart instead of supporting artists protect themselves and their work?#THEIR WORK?? THEIR STOLEN WORK THAT MAKES YOUR PRECIOUS GENERATORS POSSIBLE??#Fuck you quite frankly#“You didn't listen to us and now this is happening” shut up#You didn't listen to US when we told you to stop reposting and cropping and tracing and altering our shit without our fucking permission#editing out our watermarks and erasing our names and removing our comments and links for your precious Aesthetic and Curator(tm) clout#reap what you sow jackass#I hope your follower count was fucking worth it
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Hey, it's been a minute
Life's been busy, of course, but that's not really the reason I haven't been posting here. In case you missed it, staff have at this point confirmed that they'll be selling user data to Midjourney for use in generative ai training datasets. While I have opted out of third-party data sharing in my blog settings (and you should do that too if you haven't!!), I'm still not terribly satisfied with this platform's handling of the situation.
Tumblr has, over the last year especially, demonstrated a complete lack of care or respect for the human beings that use their site. In this light, I do not expect them to follow through on this new venture with any regard for ethics or artists. If they cannot manage to moderate poc or trans women's blogs with the respect and gravity folks deserve on such a fundamental level, I cannot imagine the pattern will suddenly shift to value any one of us over marketability and profit.
I'm considering this development the final nail in a coffin that's been pretty much built for a while now.
My art on this blog will remain up, as an archive, because I consider the damage to be done. I will not be posting additional work here in the future. My sideblog might remain active to some extent (In case staff invents more hidden switches to flip without telling anyone), but I'm disinterested in my intellectual property being farmed for content generators without my consent (which I have not given) and appropriate compensation (which I have not received).
If you like my stuff, and want to see more, I'll be over on cohost pretty much exclusively, so feel free to come say hi. There's hot new art over there that neither you, nor Midjourney, have seen from me yet.
If this is where we part ways, thank you for all the kind words, rbs, and likes over the years. tumblr was my first experiment with posting my art publicly, and while it truly sucks for things to end this way, I'm happy for the time I've spent on here, and the friends I've made along the way.
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want to give my two cents on the AI usage in the maestro trailer--
i think seventeen doing a whole concept that is anti-AI is very cool, especially as creatives themselves i think it's good that they're speaking up against it and i hope it gets more ppl talking about the issue. i also understand on a surface level the artistic choice (whether it was made by the members, the mv director, or whoever else), to directly use AI in contrast to real, human-made visuals and music in order to criticize it. i also appreciate that they clearly stated the intention of the use of AI at the beginning of the video
however, although i understand it to an extent, i do not agree with the choice to use AI to critique AI. one of the main ethical concerns with generative AI is that it is trained on other artists' work without their knowledge, consent, or compensation. and even when AI generated images are being used to critique AI, it still does not negate this particular ethical concern
the use of AI to critique also does not negate the fact that this is work that could have been done by an actual artist. i have seen some people argue that it's okay in this context because it's a critique specifically about AI, and it is content that never would have been done by a real artist anyway because it doesn't make sense for the story they're trying to tell. but i disagree. i think you can still tell the exact same story without using AI
and in fact, i would argue that it would make the anti-AI message stronger if they HAD paid an artist to draw/animate the scenes that are supposed to represent AI generated images. wouldn't it just be proof that humans can create images that are just as bad and nonsensical and soulless as AI, but that AI can't replicate the creativity and beauty and basic fucking anatomy that's in human-made art?
it feels very obvious this was not just a way to cut corners and costs like a lot of scummy people are using AI for. ultimately it was a very intentional creative decision, i just personally think it was a very poor one. and even if some ethical considerations were taken into account before this decision, i certainly don't think all of them were. at the very least i feel like the decision undermines the message they want to convey
i would also like to recognize that i myself am not an artist, and i have seen some artists that are totally on board with the use of AI in this specific context, so clearly this is not a topic that is cut and dry. but generative AI is still new, and i think it's important to keep having these conversations
#melia.txt#also want to add that as musicians svt are more directly threatened by AI generated audio than they are by AI generated images#and yet AI generated images is what was used in the video#and i guess the MV director/production company are the ones directly responsible for putting that in there#whether it was their initial idea or not#and they work in a visual medium so perhaps that makes it more 'fair' but idk it just feels like#the commentary is around music. which makes sense. and using human produced music/sound#but then taking advantage of AI images#idk just feels weird#i mean i don't like it either way#like i said in the main post i understand the intention behind the creative decision#and i'm still happy svt are speaking against ai at all i do think overall they're doing a good thing here#i just don't agree with the creative decision they/the production company/whoever made#edit: deleted the part about not boycotting svt over this bc ppl were commenting about boycotting bc of the 🛴 stuff#i meant specifically /I/ am not calling for a boycott because of specifically the ai stuff#was just trying to make a general point that im not making this post bc i want to sabatoge svt or whatever#bc kpop fans love to pull that catd whenever u criticize anything#so yeah just removed that bit bc i dont want ppl getting confused what im talking about#respect ppl boycotting because of scooter/israel stuff but thats not what this post was intended to be about#edit 2: turning off reblogs bc im going to bed and having asomewhat controversial post up is not gonna help me sleep well lol#may or my not turn rb's back on in the morning
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bi-han and affection
pairing: character study; no pairing
genre: angst; no comfort
warnings: intergenerational trauma, death
hi there! this was just something i wrote in a hurry because i desperately need more bi-han characterization/character studies. also, yall can snatch autistic!bi-han from my cold, dead hands. hope you enjoy!
bi-han is not a conventionally affectionate person.
as far as he recalls, he never was. bi-han doesn't dwell on childhood memories as much as his brothers do - he doesn't see the usefulness of reminiscing, especially on memories he sees as useless. but, as far as he recalls, he's always been distant, even in the beginning of his training.
(bi-han doesn't have any memory from before he began his lin kuei training; his oldest memory is holding a bo and learning how to use it as a weapon by his tutor. he was 7).
he does not enjoy physical contact. he never enjoyed it, even as a kid - being touched without consent is something bi-han despises with a fiery passion. the cryomancy does not aid in that aspect; the warmth of the touch is bothersome and sometimes painful. but it feels uncomfortable in a different way, almost as if his bones ache inside his body once people touch him without consent or warning. it often leads to an angry discussion or someone leaving with a broken nose. kuai liang tends to deal with the situation for him, especially when the perpetrator is an important figure or of interest to the lin kuei. but sometimes his reaction time gets the best of him - and confrontation is inevitable.
at the same time, bi-han is not verbally affectionate. when necessary, bi-han can lecture his students on fighting techniques, on weaponry, on war strategy and philosophy. he has done it before countless times, each time more eloquently than the last - bi-han is an excellent teacher, even though he lacks patience most times. but when it comes to interpersonal relations, bi-han is a complete disaster. surely, he can converse with other clan leaders, can discuss politics and trade deals, can and has secured alliances with other clans ever since he became grandmaster. he looks smooth - but, in private, bi-han falls flat every single time he has to interact with someone. it feels odd and weird and uncomfortable, both for the person and for him. it feels just like being touched, like his bones creak under his muscles once the awkwardness sets in - it feels physically painful.
so he refrains. he refrains from most celebrations or social gatherings, he does not interact with people outside of work or training. he leaves his bedroom in the early morning, works and trains until exhaustion and, once he's satisfied with his productivity, returns to his chambers to bathe, eat and sleep. that is, if he doesn't sleep at his table, in the grandmaster's office - kuai liang finds him unconscious on top of stacks of papers, sleeping over lin kuei documents and mission reports.
(on those nights, either kuai liang or tomas leave him a cup of tea and some food for once he wakes up. bi-han never thanks them for it, but they know he appreciates the care).
even before he became grandmaster, bi-han had the exact same routine: wake up, train, classes, train again, eat, bathe and sleep. his cryomancy interfered severely with his sleep - something about his metabolic rate trying to compensate for the cold, so he feels constantly awake. insomnia has accompanied him for years and the easiest way to sleep is to just exhaust himself enough that he passes out and sleeps until the next morning. it doesn't always work - but it does the trick on most nights. his mother was desperate seeing her son exhaust himself to sleep, but they had no other solution to the issue.
his mother worried about him. she knew bi-han was the most dedicated of all her sons, even though kuai liang and tomas have always been as devoted to the clan as the eldest. but bi-han's obstinate nature worried her. it worried her that bi-han would exhaust himself to the point of death to fulfill his father's demands. the lack of physical contact and verbal communication, even with his own family, terrified her; and realizing how closed off bi-han had and would always be made her worry for his wellbeing even in her last days.
kuai liang and tomas don't talk about it. they know trying to argue with bi-han is futile - and would end badly for both of them. tomas knows bi-han is closed-off because he feels uncomfortable and would rather die than force his brother into an uncomfortable situation. kuai liang still worries and wishes his brother would open up more, even if only with his brothers, but he also knows bi-han is not the type of person to verbalize concerns or issues. his brother is practical and methodical; the type of person to solve the issue before telling anyone about it. so he knows that, if someone were the matter, he would know sooner or later; but his mother's worry rubbed off on him.
bi-han may not be verbally or physically affectionate, but one can clearly tell when he is worried. bi-han cares for very few people in this world and he unconsciously dotes over them a little when worried - which is a lot, considering bi-han does not dote on anyone in normal circumstances. questioning on their welfare and wellbeing is a very clear sign bi-han is worried (at least for his brothers, who are often at the other end of the question). tending for wounds and aiding with training unprompted are also possibilities, while less common. openly admitting worry is the final and rarest event, only reserved for his late mother.
for bi-han, worry and doting are a display of affection. not that he realizes it consciously, since he rarely dwells on the reason why he acts like this with specific people. but ensuring their safety and wellbeing is how he shows people that he cares, even if he can't verbalize it properly. (he doesn't verbalize it at all; bi-han does not do feelings).
bi-han may not be conventionally affectionate - but he worries plenty for the ones he loves. and that is enough, at least for him.
(c) fandomiplier. do not repost.
#autistic bi-han#bc i said so#tomas vrbada#mortal kombat#sub zero#subzero#bi han sub zero#bi han#bi-han mk1#kuai liang#kuai liang mk1#mortal kombat 1#mk1#character study#just something i wanted to write bc i love projecting my traumas onto other characters
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tumblr is not currently selling your art to midjourney. the deal has not been made. even if it had, the data is currently unusable. i am begging you all to chill and stop sharing posts promoting nightshade and glaze as the last bastions of artistic integrity against evil tech companies.
i think what annoys me about a lot of the ways people online talk about AI art is that a lot of the proposed "solutions" i see championed are functionally just riding on the idea of un-opening pandora's box, which means they're incredibly ineffective because that's just not something we can do at this point. and worse, that sentiment is exploitable.
sure it makes you feel like you, personally, as a creator, have control over this new development threatening your livelihood. but that's not a good thing! glaze is a grift that uses the exact same technology as stable diffusion and straight up doesn't work as advertised, the creators bank on you feeling that way. it doesn't protect you against anything, it just makes you feel good, meanwhile the creators gets money and exposure out of your fear.
if you didn't know, the same developers who made glaze are also behind nightshade. and what do they do with nightshade's popularity? well it's simple, they've studied the effect it has on AI art algorithms. and then they sold the research.
and you must understand, even if everything i've said wasn't the case, making the pictures these algorithms produce compatible for training algorithms again is as easy as running them through a de-noising upscaler.
and i'm an artist myself. i do not want my art used in that way. i do not want to be in midjourney's training data, i don't want someone to make a LORA of my work without my consent, i don't want any of that. but still, ask yourself: who benefits from making us panicked and afraid every single time a new AI deal is mentioned? because it's not you or me. there is a problem, and no problem has ever been solved through fear.
which is also why i'm not here to say you're evil for using these tools, or that they are secretly worse than the companies you're trying to combat by using them. it's not wrong to want to feel safe, you are perfectly within your right to do what makes you feel in control. you can keep using them if that's what you want! but please, be aware of what's going on here.
there is no going back. the technology exists, we have to accept it. because the sooner we accept this is the reality we live in, the sooner we'll be able to fight it. but i am begging you all to stop pretending easy solutions exists to this problem, there are none.
demand transparency. demand control. demand that this things be opt-in. demand compensation.
you will not be saved from companies trying to profit from these algorithms by simply going to their competitors.
#shut up sender#ai#midjourney#tumblr#long post#this one has stayed in the drafts for a WHILE#kinda scared to post it but it's been bugging me especially the past few days#guess im getting controversial on main again
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I once saw someone try to say that Ai art was anti-capitalist and I just-
Ai art is straight up capitalism!
Literally can't get more capitalistic than outsourcing the most basic form of human expression to a machine that is only able to produce anything because it devoured the work that human artists spent hours, days- months even- creating, all without their consent!! All just so the company behind the tool can rake in a ton of money from the users who pay to use the tool to generate their images!!!
The companies behind the Ai tools straight up profit off the labor of human artists to train their Ai, without consent of or compensation to those artists, for the company's own profit.
That's 100% capitalism. Profiting off of the labor of others is capitalism.
Hell world. We're in hell.
#anti ai art#anti capitalism#ai#ai art#no ai art#ai art debate#ai art theft#ai is theft#support human artists#artists on tumblr#art
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Yeah, as long as the kid is fine with it, and it doesn't become some weird commercial thing, the AI is fine in that case, and it's fine as like "proof of functioning" for ethical stuff like training an AI to detect cancer cells or something (they did announce something like that which they discovered whilst trying to teach an AI to recognise different pastries to speed up checkout in bakeries if I remember right). I just don't trust society/capitalism as a whole with AI 'art'.
I try not to get into it about AI shit because people are so damn aggressive about all of it to a level that I think is totally bonkers, but like... yes. The issue with AI art right now is the training of bots using artist material without consent or compensation imo. AI art is here; the cat is out of the bag. I think training an AI on your own work in order to use it as a tool is probably going to be a useful tool for artists in the future. I think training it to make art like your kid makes is a sweet way to connect with your kid about their interests and your own.
A lot of criticism of the way AI art is being rolled out right now and concern about the possible other uses of the tech for e.g. facial recognition are super important. But a lot of people are taking the presence of legitimate concerns as an excuse to aim their anger and vitriol at "acceptable" targets. Which is just what Online is a lot of the time lol, but I think its worth pointing out and thinking about. I think the knee-jerk ALL THINGS MADE USING THIS TECH ARE EVIL AND YOURE EVIL FOR DOING IT stuff is a pressure release valve for a lot of really intense stress and anxiety and anger that people are feeling about life in general right now, which is scary and stressful and enraging! But like... idk. My feeling about this instance is... don't be so Twitter about it lmao. We will make fun of Twitterers for blowing up the lady who likes to drink coffee in her garden with her husband but then also... this.
I feel like it is kinda coming from the same place of paranoid readings and bad faith.
#also my understanding is that the guy had to delete this tweet bc ppl were being so horrid about it#which is a bummer and sucks. imo.
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If u think losing a gig to an AI is hard, try losing gigs because your bosses are racist or xenophobic or homophobic or sexist, or try not getting gigs at all because bosses dont think your work is as legitimate as the dude who can draw 100 identical spidermans.
There are serious structural issues with pay-to-play AI services like Dalle2 and it’s centered on how these companies data laundered copyrighted works using fair use laws and research institutions to privatize a tech that should be considered public infrastructure for everyone.
But AI Art itself isn’t evil, its a tool that has been used by new media artists for at least a decade. There’s obviously ethical ways to create AI art: train your own models, create outputs based out of your own works, attribute the artists you use in your prompts, etc.
But suddenly caring about copyright like you are now team disney and team nintendo is weak. And seriously, most of your artstation works aren’t original either. Yall living off of borrowed aesthetics from 100 years of comic books and cartoons and illustrations.
AIs can’t plagiarize the way humans do. You are seeing a calculated average of images. The reason shit looks like your favorite illustrators is because a lot of these illustrators make similar art, and most people writing AI prompts have similar basic tastes. Making great AI Art from prompts takes time and patience and a keen sense of poetics.
But seriously, y’all don’t hate new tech, you hate capitalism and the corpos and bosses who are out to expropriate you.
AI Art, if anything, is the new folk art. Same repeated motifs made by anyone with a clue. This is a wonderful mingling of collective creative energies. Embrace it!
Addendum for all the reactionary responses out there:
~~~~~~~~
Artists should be getting royalties from OpenAI, Midjourney, et al. And they should be able to opt in or out of having their work included in training models. This is a given and I would never argue against compensating artists!
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This isn’t about defending these corpos either, but machine learning tech has been around before these companies started their thing and experimental artists from around the world have been using machine learning to make great art.
Another thing: the moment you post your digital art to a platform, you sign away much of your consent w/r/t how your art is used. Thats what those really long TOS are about.
ArtStation and istock were scraped for data under the pretext of Fair Use, which allows or mass scraping internet data for research purposes. Fair Use is like the one law that for the most part, protects artists from the disneys and nintendos of the world. I wouldn’t be able to glitch video games without it. Emulated videogames wouldnt exist with out it either
So the question is, why are corporations allowed to use Fair Use as a cover for developing privatized pay-to-play services? People who know a thing, will point out that Stable Diffusion is open source, and that’s great, but why are privatized services allowed to be built on open source infrastructure? Especially when this tech hasn’t been properly vetted for racial biases, pr0nography, etc
Yes its shitty, but these arent arguments against AI tech but against juridical structures under capitalist regimes.
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Details on the SAG-AFTRA negotiations
Wanted to share from the SAG website what exactly it is that negotiations were like, what was proposed and what exactly this fight is about
Performers need minimum earnings to simply keep up with inflation.
Us: We need an 11% general wage increase in year 1 so our members can recover from record inflation during the previous contract term.
Them: The most we will give you is 5%, even though that means your 2023 earnings will effectively be a significant pay cut due to inflation and it is likely you will still be working for less than your 2020 wages in 2026.
Performers need the protection of our images and performances to prevent replacement of human performances by artificial intelligence technology.
Us: Here’s a comprehensive set of provisions to grant informed consent and fair compensation when a “digital replica” is made or our performance is changed using AI.
Them: We want to be able to scan a background performer’s image, pay them for a half a day’s labor, and then use an individual’s likeness for any purpose forever without their consent. We also want to be able to make changes to principal performers’ dialogue, and even create new scenes, without informed consent. And we want to be able to use someone’s images, likenesses, and performances to train new generative AI systems without consent or compensation.
Performers need qualified hair and makeup professionals as well as equipment to safely and effectively style a variety of hair textures/styles and skin tones.
Us: How about consultations with qualified hair and makeup professionals for all performers on set to ensure equity for performers of color, and a requirement to have the proper tools and equipment?
Them: Begrudgingly, we will do this for principal performers, but background actors are on their own.
Performers need compensation to reflect the value we bring to the streamers who profit from our labor.
Us: Consider this comprehensive plan for actors to participate in streaming revenue, since the current business model has eroded our residuals income.
Them: No.
All performers need support from our employers to keep our health and retirement funds sustainable.
Us: Contribution caps haven’t been raised in 40 years, imperiling our pension and health plans. Would you consider raising the caps to adjust for inflation and ensure that all performers, regardless of age or location, receive equal contributions?
Them: Here are some nominal increases nowhere near the level of inflation that won’t adequately fund your health plan. Also, background child performers under 14 years of age living in the N.Y. zone don’t deserve pension contributions, which is why we haven’t paid them since 1992.
Principal performers need to be able to work during hiatus and not be held captive by employers.
Us: These timelines we’ve proposed help series regulars by limiting the increasingly long breaks between seasons and giving them some certainty as to when they'll start work again or will be released.
Them: Take these select few improvements that will only help a select few.
Principal performers need to be reimbursed for relocation expenses when they’re employed away from home.
Us: Drop the ruse that series regulars are becoming residents of a new state or country when they go on location and adequately pay them for all of their relocation costs.
Them: Here’s some stipends which don’t realistically reflect the cost of relocating to an out-of-state or out-of-country production.
(A chart with a full breakdown here)
This was particularly heinous
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I just...
My art is posted to Tumblr for free for the explicit purpose of other fans looking at and appreciating it. I post for other fans to spread around pictures of their blorbos.
In 2022 the internet was scraped for artwork to train AI. When I posted art in the Harry Potter fandom in 2017 the idea that I would ever have to worry about that art getting stolen and used to train a machine never even occured to me to worry about. I had worked for 7 hours on a piece of art and I wanted people to see it. That's all. But I know the artwork I made when I was 16 years old is out there unprotected in any way from that sort of data scraping. So is much of the art I've made since then.
It's absolutely fucking gutting to know that art I made was used without my knowledge or consent to contribute to training a machine that Disney is currently using to avoid paying animators.
For all intents and purposes I have done countless hours of unpaid labor which Disney exploited from me and so has every other artist on the internet including actual children. That's how we need to think of this. This isn't an intellectual property dispute. I don't want ip law to change. I want to be compensated for my fucking labor. I want control over what projects I work on. This is about unpaid non consensual and occasionally child labor.
Like I was fine with doing that work unpaid when I thought it would never be making any money but now that it's been used without my consent like this in order to put money in some fat cat's pocket while I'm fucking struggling to pay rent I want to see a fucking paycheck I want every artist on the internet who's art was used in this manner to have a fucking 401k plan and dental courtesy of Walt Disney corporation and every other dick head who doesn't want to pay animators.
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Tumblr, AI, and The Impossible Year
I'm very disappointed by the news that Tumblr's content is going to be used to train AI. with a default Opt-In and questionable means of opting out.
As an artist, this is something I cannot abide.
From January 1, 2012 to January 1, 2014 I shot and posted a Polaroid photograph a day to this site, and when the pandemic hit in 2020 I resumed in April of that year and carried through (although less strictly) until May of 2021.
This was all posted to theimpossibleyear.tumblr.com / theimpossibleyear.com.
It was a personal blog, and a deeply personal project. I showed what I was doing every day for multiple years.
There are literally hundreds of people featured throughout this project. Friends, family, colleagues, some of whom I had fallings out with, and some whom have since passed away.
These folks did not consent to have their likenesses used to train facial recognition algorithms or AI image generators.
According to US copyright law, I am the owner to the photographs, and I can sublicense them however I want. I'm not keen on Tumblr doing the same. And while social media sites like Tumblr always had the rights to do things like this in their privacy policies, tools like Dall-E and Midjourney didn't exist at the time, and I never conceived of such a thing.
My personal views on AI aside, I don't think allowing the likenesses of these folks to be bought and sold in such a way without their consent is ethical. Hypothetically I could reach out to every single one of them (or at least those still living) and ask for their consent, but aside from the tedium and awkwardness of having to repeatedly have that conversation, including with some folks I no longer associate with, I simply don't want to.
Additionally, I don't believe most folks really understand machine learning algorithms, large language models, and AI image generators, and I think honestly, it would be extremely hard to get informed consent for such a matter, and I sincerely believe most people would say 'No' if they understood it.
I believe artists should be compensated for their work, and I believe when that work is used for profit that the subjects of such work either need to have consented to that first. And, through that lens, the entitled beliefs of the people behind corporations like Open-AI and Midjourney, that they should be able to train off this work for free absolutely disgusts me. And I am disheartened to see Tumblr go the same route.
I do believe there are positive sides to AI, I do believe it is somewhat inevitable, but I do not believe the ends justify these means.
While I believe strongly in the public domain and creative commons, and I think US copyright law is deeply broken, I also know how hard it is to make a living as an artist. I will not I cannot sit by and just allow my own work, my own memories, my friends, family, and loved ones to be used as a tool to enrich billionaires at the expense of small creators.
I used to think that when I died I wanted all of my creative works to be willed into the public domain for the good of everyone. Now I'm not so sure.
As such, I will be removing my content from Tumblr in the coming weeks. As I write this I'm importing the content of theimpossibleyear.tumblr.com to a self hosted server and theimpossibleyear.com is redirecting there. Once I am sure it's been successfully migrated I'll remove all of the content from Tumblr for good.
I know relocated content can still be scraped by AI bots against my will. But I'm considering ways of disabling crawlers, making it password protected and/or parsing all of the images through Nightshade or some other tool. At the very least I’ll have made my terms clear.
I'm still figuring out what to do with this blog. It will eventually go away, but I have yet to decide what will happen with the content.
Either way, this sucks. I am so tired.
#ai#midjourney#tumblr#polaroid#open-ai#ai art#theft#matt mullenweg#automattic#subism#the impossible year
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Genuinely on the verge of deleting my Twitter account and I'm really sad about it. I've been on that site since 2009 (longer than I've been on Tumblr!); I remember when you couldn't retweet except manually and pictures had to be uploaded to TweetPic rather than directly. It remains my main connection to the academic world, and although many writers I'm friends with are active on Instagram as well, I find that a far less accessible platform, so it's my main connection to the book world too.
Mostly, though, I'm frustrated at the idea of having to scrub 14 years of my posts because a pathetic manchild has decided they're his to do what he likes with, and despite all my settings revoking consent for third-party use, I am in fact unable to stop him using them to train AI if he wants to (among other things). I don't want to delete all my weird nerdy threads and random An Táin Bot commentary; screenshots just aren't the same. But I'm also not down with my work and my words being used without credit or compensation, and I feel like I've hit the point where I don't want to stay there anymore.
I know it's popular on Tumblr to hate Twitter. But I am going to really miss it. I am going to miss the friends I've made there, and I'm going to miss the professional opportunities I've gained from there (I found my agent on Twitter! I found my mentor on Twitter! I was on Motherfoclóir because of Twitter! I've heard about conferences and calls for papers via Twitter!).
And there isn't an easy alternative. The writing community seems to have fled to BlueSky and Threads; the academic community to Mastodon. I can't maintain a presence across three platforms even if I wanted to, because I don't have the energy, but whatever I choose means I'll be losing connections to people I would have preferred to stay connected to. I know I'm not joining Threads, and I don't have a BlueSky invite, so I guess that leaves Mastodon...
This whole thing sucks, to be honest. The centralised internet was great for bringing people together... but only as long as it lasted, and centralisation means total loss when it goes down.
I'll probably make one of my periodic returns to my blog, when I have more time and spoons, but that feels one-way these days, not like a conversation the way it was back in 2010-2014. Maybe people will start commenting again, or maybe nobody will find my posts at all because they used to spread primarily through Twitter. I don't know. I'm sad. I'm gonna try Mastodon to see if I can at least find/maintain some academic community there. I'll probably try and post a bit more regularly on Instagram because it's the only platform I've got left where I can Be An Author, really (I try and do it here, but it doesn't work very well).
Twitter was deeply flawed, but that doesn't mean the loss of it isn't a loss. And I'm really feeling that loss at the moment.
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'Hollywood Is on Strike Against High-Tech Exploitation' - by Alex N. Press
"LOS ANGELES — Before she appeared on HBO’s White House Plumbers and Fox’s New Girl, Stevie Nelson hosted a television show on Nickelodeon. On Crashletes, she and her cohosts, along with an audience of kids, reacted to viral videos of people failing at sports. The production ran for three seasons, wrapping at the end of 2020 with a total of sixty episodes.
Nelson worries that soon, a studio could use that body of work to train artificial intelligence (AI) to create a likeness of her to be used in perpetuity: a digital Stevie Nelson, doing things that she has never done, saying things that she has never said, yet indistinguishable from the real Stevie Nelson, based on her past on-screen work.
“There’s enough footage of me that they could technically have me host other shows for the rest of my life without ever having done it, and I’m sure I would not be fairly compensated for it,” said Nelson. “The idea of not a real person hosting shows is scary. The magic of acting, and of hosting, is its impromptu nature. I can’t imagine how soulless it all would be to replace it with AI.”
Nelson and I were speaking on Monday, July 17, a few feet from the picket line outside of Netflix’s corporate office in Los Angeles. She’s a member of the Screen Actors Guild–American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA), one of 160,000 such members who were then on their second day of a nationwide strike. In walking out, the performers joined roughly 11,500 members of the Writers Guild of America (WGA), who have been on strike since May 2. The last such double strike was in 1960, when Ronald Reagan was SAG’s president.
Unlike less accessible studios in the Los Angeles area — the standout being NBC Universal, which currently lacks pedestrian walkways and shade thanks to studio machinations — Netflix is in the heart of Hollywood. On Monday, morale was high: hundreds of union members picketed while music that sampled news coverage of the strike blasted from stereos and union staff supplied workers with beverages, snacks, and sunscreen as the temperatures soared above 90 degrees.
Nelson’s fears that an avatar of herself will host television shows indefinitely in a digital purgatory might sound far-fetched, an idea more fit for a Black Mirror script than the real world, but such a possibility is central to what is now the largest strike in the United States. In negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) for a new three-year TV/theatrical contract, SAG-AFTRA is seeking to regulate the use of AI to protect performers like her.
Writers want to regulate the usage of AI in their own negotiations with the studios, but the technology poses an even more immediate threat to performers. SAG-AFTRA proposed provisions that would require the studios to get informed consent from a performer before using her likeness and fairly compensate her for that use. They also offered proposals concerning the use of generative AI for training purposes.
The AMPTP didn’t agree. While the organization called its AI counterproposal “unprecedented,” SAG-AFTRA’s national executive director and chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland characterized the studios’ offer as unacceptable.
“In this ‘groundbreaking’ AI proposal that they gave us yesterday, they proposed that our background performers should be able to be scanned, get one day’s pay, and their companies should own that scan, their image, their likeness, and should be able to use it for the rest of eternity on any project they want, with no consent and no compensation,” said Crabtree-Ireland at a press conference on Friday, July 15, announcing that the union’s board of directors had voted unanimously to call a strike. “If you think that’s a groundbreaking proposal, I suggest you think again.”
“The companies have responded to a number of the proposals we put on the table, but the problem is that the devil is in the details,” explained Crabtree-Ireland on The Town, a podcast about the entertainment industry. “We had reached some agreement on there being a requirement for consent but from our point of view, it has to be informed consent. Consent is not a boilerplate provision at the time you’re first hired on a project that says, ‘The company can create a digital replica of you and use it for whatever purpose they want, forever.’”
[continue reading]
#sag-aftra strike#sag strike#ai#union solidarity#current events#actors strike#fans4wga#wga strong#wga strike#writers strike
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Generative AI Copyright Disclosure Act
Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) introduced the Generative AI Copyright Disclosure Act, a bill to establish transparency with respect to copyrighted works used in building generative artificial intelligence (AI) systems, Tuesday.
The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) is proud to endorse the Generative AI Copyright Disclosure Act – we thank Rep. Schiff for his leadership on this critical issue and for his partnership, inviting the input of IATSE behind-the-scenes entertainment workers in the drafting of this bill.
Speaking in support of the newly introduced federal legislation, International President Matthew D. Loeb said, “IATSE commends Rep. Adam Schiff for introducing the Generative AI Copyright Disclosure Act. Entertainment workers must have consent over the implementation of emerging technologies in their workplaces and must be fairly compensated when their work is used to train, develop or generate new works by AI systems. This legislation will ensure there is appropriate transparency of generative AI training sets, and would empower IATSE workers to enforce their rights.”
The rapid development of generative AI technologies has outpaced existing law, leading to widespread use of creative content without consent or compensation. This legislation introduces critical measures to protect the intellectual property (IP) rights of creators in the age of AI. It mandates transparency from companies in disclosing the use of copyrighted works to train AI systems, ensuring creators are informed and have the tools to advocate for credit where due.
Maintaining strong copyright and IP laws, and prioritizing the people involved in the creative process, is the primary focus of IATSE’s AI-related political and legislative advocacy. As highlighted in the Agenda des questions fédérales de l'IATSE, absent safeguards to ensure consent, compensation, and credit for the use of copyrighted works and IP, and appropriate transparency of training sets, AI will continue to be used as a sophisticated, deceptive tool for content theft.
“AI developers cannot be allowed to circumvent established U.S. copyright law and commit intellectual property theft by scraping the internet for copyrighted works to train their models without permission from rightsholders. The theft of copyrighted works – domestically and internationally – threatens our hard-won health care benefits and retirement security,” said International Vice President Vanessa Holtgrewe in November at the bipartisan U.S. Senate AI Insight Forum on IP and copyright.
We must improve transparency of generative AI training data sets to protect the rights of working people who power the U.S. entertainment industry. The Generative AI Copyright Disclosure Act will do just that. We look forward to continued collaboration with Rep. Schiff to advance this effort and we urge all members of the House of Representatives to cosponsor this important legislation.
Political and legislative advocacy around artificial intelligence and machine learning are part of IATSE’s broad campaign to address the impact of emerging technologies on entertainment workers. Click here to read IATSE’s Core Principles for Addressing Applications of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Technology.
# # #
L'International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees ou IATSE (nom complet : International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, Moving Picture Technicians, Artists and Allied Crafts of the United States, Its Territories and Canada) est un syndicat représentant plus de 170 000 techniciens, artisans et ouvriers de l'industrie du spectacle, y compris les événements en direct, la production cinématographique et télévisuelle, la radiodiffusion et les salons professionnels aux États-Unis et au Canada.
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disaggregated thoughts on generative ai
under the cut if any of my friends are interested in my thoughts re. AI art and other usage of generative AI in creation of things. I am not set on these thoughts and i welcome conversation on the topic (if you know me, you have my discord info). i'm not trying to get into a fight on this, just wanted a place to organize my thoughts that have been floating around.
for simplicity i am going to refer to ChatGPT, Midjourney, other types of AI image and text generation as "generative AI"
General AI thoughts
Basically, the key problem most people identify with generative AI is that people just feed a ton of shit into it (without the authors' or creators' consent) to train the dataset. Then, that generative AI is used to produce content, thereby sidestepping paying real people for the genuine labour of creating that content.
Which is both (1) happening and (2) incredibly bad. (See Duolingo, etc.)
However, the thing that tends to stick in my craw about this topic of generative AI is that it's not the AI's fault that people are using it to shortcut labour, underpay artists (or steal their work), and deprive people of genuine compensation. That's a problem with the mentality of capitalism. It's like saying that photoshop facilitates art theft by enabling you to edit someone else's drawing to match your needs and then you remove their credit without commissioning them. That also obviously happens, art theft is super common (esp on Pinterest), but it's misdirected to direct the frustration at the tools that make it easy to steal rather than the people who are committing theft or using the tech to dodge paying artists.
Like, if I would have gotten a commission of my D&D character and instead I use an AI to generate a character image that I like, that's not the AI's fault, nor is it the fault of the people who use it for freeform creative output. That's because we live in a society that values art but doesn't value artists. (inb4 we live in a society).
Similarly, if I want to use ChatGPT to write, let's say a fanfiction, it is still my fault for not valuing the labour of fic writers enough to actually commission a real fanfic from them.
Moving on from the labour perspective for a second, I think another issue is obviously consent for having your data input into these models. Having your work taken and used in generative AI without your consent sucks but it is just an accelerated version of existing theft and misuse of works. Tracing and stealing others' works, plagiarizing written and video material, that's all still happening. That's why copyright law theoretically exists (even though it usually ends up being abused by corporations). If I want to do a rewrite of your fanfiction but tweak it slightly for my own purposes, I still stole from you, but no AI is needed for me to do that and AI is just an accelerated tool to steal stuff. Banning and rallying against the use of AI is sensible, but its the unethical use of these methods that I think is the real problem, which we can't really legislate.
Use of AI in an academic environment
This section is edited from a response to my partner's articulated class policy on AI usage in a class.
This policy, roughly, is "If you use generative AI like ChatGPT, create an Acknowledgement section stating that you have used AI. Also, provide examples of your prompts and provide a brief assessment as to how useful the results were. Poor use of ChatGPT will count against your grade, so fact check the content and review the policy on responsible use of AI. You do not need to acknowledge use of AI for stylistic (grammar and spelling) purposes."
The class policy on this i think is actually a decent way of approaching AI usage in academia. I think your professor realistically understands that even if they ban the use of AI, clever (or really stupid) people are going to continue to use AI if that's what they want to do. Therefore, your professor has provided an "out" to integrate this into the learning environment by highlighting the concerns about attribution, responsible usage of these tools (plagiarism still happens in academia!) and encourages students using AI to do additional work to explain their usage of AI (provide your prompts, explain how the AI helped you, how useful was it, etc?). This requirement for additional work to be performed supports your professor's approach that users of AI should not be allowed to shortcut their own labour in writing the paper, and so those students will still engage with the topic academically.
If AI was incredibly useful for these students and basically wrote the paper, then that's a sign that the assignment is not a very good one, because ChatGPT is not a very good writer or analyzer, as many people have pointed out. It just strings language together in commonly repeated patterns and semantic constructions. Therefore, a research paper that is analytical and requires synthesis of your findings into a unique and interesting conclusion would not really be able to be shortcut by AI in a way that still merits a good grade.
Furthermore, this allows your professor to train themselves on the use of AI and the phrasing of it, which enables him to better detect the integration of AI into future assignments, and design assignments that aren't easily shortcut by the use of these tools. That will (ideally) make for a more constructive learning environment and better quality, more analytical assignments
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That feeling when one of your long time favourite YouTubers suddenly starts using AI generated art in his videos and you stew for 45 minutes before leaving what you hope is a thoughtful explanation about the ethical issues involved in training AI datasets on artists who did not consent and who do not see compensation, that without those hard-working artists the AI wouldn't be able to even exist because computers can't imagine jack shit, how it's not used as "just a tool" but as a way to replace artists whole-cloth, and yes it COULD be an excellent tool if it was built and used at all responsibly, but it's not and so that's why it's controversial and you hit send.
And then you have to spend the rest of the day going "oh hell I hope he sees it but I hope no one else sees it because 2024 is only 6 days old and it has already not left me with enough beans to handle the shit-takes of the masses even peripherally as I hit the block button on any who might come my way."
I am not good at relaxing on my weekends, my guys.
Maybe I should give in and draw that absolutely stupid idea I had of Heinrich taking public transit after all.
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