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transformers-earthspark · 3 months

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Apologies for my recent radio silence. I've had a lot on my mind lately.

This post isn't Earthspark-related at all, but please read it.

I need to take a second on this blog to acknowledge some things going on in the world. I should not have stayed silent on this blog before, but I'm trying to fix that now.

Genocide in Palestine + how you can help Palestinians

You can buy e-sims for people in Gaza here. Anything helps.

Click here daily to help generate funds for Palestine. It's free and takes less than a minute.

Here's a list of where you can donate to help Palestine.

(If there's anything I should add to this section, please let me know.)

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The KOSA bill, what it's going to do if passed, and how you can help prevent it from taking effect

KOSA will essentially erase anonymity from the internet by requiring people to upload their government ID or other form of identification to any social media site, as well as restricting resources and information on LGBT rights, history, racism, and more. This bill will censor the entire internet and destroy privacy while violating First Amendment rights and potentially putting minors in danger.

This also could very well mean the end of Tumblr, and I'm not exaggerating here.

Tomorrow KOSA could be passed in Senate, and from there it will need to pass in the House of Representatives before being signed into law by the president. It's not doomsday yet, but it is a dangerous situation-- and here's what you can do.

StopKOSA.org provides you with a template email to send to your representatives. You can leave it how it is or edit it to say what you want, and then send it from their website.

The website also allows you to call your representatives and gives you a template of what to say.

BadInternetBills.org, run by the same people, takes action against KOSA as well as other bills like EARN IT. At the time of posting this, over 356,000 people have signed this petition.

Additionally there are several petitions on change.org to help stop KOSA. Here are a few of them.

STOP KOSA

STOP THE KOSA

Stop Kosa

Save Humanity, Oppose KOSA

STOP THE KOSA ACT

(Again, please let me know if there's anything I should add.)

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One last thing-- The evolution of AI images and video.

I don't really have anything good to say. AI is evolving fast and changing the world as we know it. We are adapting, but nobody knows how this really is going to end up.

A few quick points:

AI images are not art. That's all. AI "artists" who genuinely claim to have made something of their own just by typing a prompt into a generator will be blocked. (Which has been in my rules for a while, but I still think it needs to be said.)

I recommend Glaze for artists who don't want their art being scraped and used for data training. Especially with the recent rumors of an upcoming deal between Tumblr and Midjourney. There's also a similar program called Nightshade (haha, earthspark reference? anyone?🦉) that I haven't tested myself but have heard good things about.

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That's all, I suppose. Reblogs are good, if you don't mind.

Spread the word about KOSA. Contact your representatives. Sign the petitions.

Support Palestine if possible. Donate if you can. If you are unable to donate, make sure to do your daily clicks.

Stay safe and take care of yourselves. ❤️

#>> mod: firefly #this will be one of the only non-earthspark things i'll ever post #look i'm going to be completely honest here; i'm stressed out of my fucking mind. this is not okay #the state of the world is terrifying and i hate it #but we can still do things to help #it's important to not give up hope because there is hope and we can fight for it #but not if we give up before we can try #alright yeah that's my attempt at a pep talk. from the earthspark blog mod.#thank you for reading this anyways. <3 #oh and anon asks will be off for a short while because i'm scared of. idk. everything right now. sorry about that #tags:#palestine #from the river to the sea #free palestine #stop kosa #anti ai #ai art theft #from the river to the sea palestine will be free #kosa #kosa bill #bad internet bills #internet censorship #hgffgdfgdfh

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zvaigzdelasas · 8 months

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"it was made by a person" does not absolve the image of sin, because by that logic every piece of ai art is ok actually. because obviously the ai could never just make art, the people using it to generate book covers so they don't have to pay an artist are actually typing in the description for what they want the ai to make. so it's ok !! a human told the ai to make that ❤❤❤❤

I mean. Other than the moralizing ("absolve of sin", "so it's ok!" etc)...Yes? Of course AI art is made by people?

Do you think AIs have agency or something? Do they find their own data and train themselves without a human telling it to? How does the AI pay for electricity?

If AIs have agency why can't they be Artists?

You're undermining your own position and actually fundamentally agreeing w the silicon valley tech bros lmao

If someone pays a human on Fiverr $5 to make a book cover in order to avoid paying someone a more reasonable price....thats basically the same moral situation right. If that guy on Fiverr is just choosing between 10 different templates he already has (and maybe copied from the internet!) and just changing the text on it, he is "typing what they want to make". What's the difference to paying someone $5 on Fiverr to generate a book cover for you using AI. Where's the moral difference, what does the tool have to do with anything.

AI doesn't have any agency, people do. AI is a tool. AI being used to lower prices is an economic choice made by humans.

A useful analytical framework to understand why this is the natural result of competition is actually Historical Materialism, which understands the social world as fundamentally existing of Humans, Human action, and Human relationships. Instead of trying to act like things like AI - spectral reflections of human labor - are "creatures" themselves, and tilting at windmills. Historical Materialism teaches not only why this happens, but how to overcome that process entirely.

In machinery, objectified labour materially confronts living labour as a ruling power and as an active subsumption of the latter under itself, not only by appropriating it, but in the real production process itself; [...]In machinery, objectified labour itself appears not only in the form of product or of the product employed as means of labour, but in the form of the force of production itself. The development of the means of labour into machinery is not an accidental moment of capital, but is rather the historical reshaping of the traditional, inherited means of labour into a form adequate to capital. The accumulation of knowledge and of skill, of the general productive forces of the social brain, is thus absorbed into capital, as opposed to labour, and hence appears as an attribute of capital, and more specifically of fixed capital, in so far as it enters into the production process as a means of production proper.[...]

In machinery, knowledge appears as alien, external to [the worker]; and living labour [as] subsumed under self-activating objectified labour. The worker appears as superfluous to the extent that his action is not determined by [capital's] requirements.[...]

Fixed capital, in its character as means of production, whose most adequate form [is] machinery, produces value, i.e. increases the value of the product, in only two respects: (1) in so far as it has value; ***i.e. is itself the product of labour, a certain quantity of labour in objectified form***; (2) in so far as it increases the relation of surplus labour to necessary labour, by enabling labour, through an increase of its productive power, to create a greater mass of the products required for the maintenance of living labour capacity in a shorter time. It is therefore a highly absurd bourgeois assertion that the worker shares with the capitalist, because the latter, with fixed capital (which is, as far as that goes, itself a product of labour, and of alien labour merely appropriated by capital) makes labour easier for him (rather, he robs it of all independence and attractive character, by means of the machine), or makes his labour shorter. Capital employs machinery, rather, only to the extent that it enables the worker to work a larger part of his time for capital, to relate to a larger part of his time as time which does not belong to him, to work longer for another. Through this process, the amount of labour necessary for the production of a given object is indeed reduced to a minimum, but only in order to realize a maximum of labour in the maximum number of such objects. The first aspect is important, because capital here -- quite unintentionally -- reduces human labour, expenditure of energy, to a minimum. This will redound to the benefit of emancipated labour, and is the condition of its emancipation.

Nature builds no machines, no locomotives, railways, electric telegraphs, self-acting mules etc. These are products of human industry; natural material transformed into organs of the human will over nature, or of human participation in nature. They are organs of the human brain, created by the human hand; the power of knowledge, objectified. The development of fixed capital indicates to what degree general social knowledge has become a direct force of production, and to what degree, hence, the conditions of the process of social life itself have come under the control of the general intellect and been transformed in accordance with it. To what degree the powers of social production have been produced, not only in the form of knowledge, but also as immediate organs of social practice, of the real life process.

Marx [PDF link]

#other choice quotes in here but i figured thats enough #marx could easily explain ai

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copperbadge · 12 days

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Amateur Translation Programs

So I had a lot of imaginative and informative responses to my post about looking for an amateur translation program -- something where I could load in a foreign language and it would insert a box where I could add a translation every-other-line. The idea was that this way I could practice translation with more advanced texts, and texts I chose, and thus move away from Duolingo, which at this point is good for drilling and daily practice but not for more advanced learning.

I didn't find precisely what was needed but I did get some inspiration for further explanation, and I also learned that adding the term "glossing" (thank you @thewalrus-said) into my searches helped a great deal in terms of weeding out programs that were either "Let this AI translate for you" or just endless promotional links for Babbel and Duolingo and such. I thought I'd collect up the suggestions and post them here; at the end I'm including my best swing at designing what I wanted, and why it doesn't work yet.

Suggestion one, from many people, was various ways to generate a page that is simply fixed Italian text with space underneath each line to add in a translation. This is pretty simple as a process and there are sites that will do it for you, such as this one that @ame-kage suggested. However, most of these don't allow for movement in the Italian text, and many produce a PDF which you would need to print out in order to write on unless you're willing to open it in Acrobat (and deal with Acrobat). A good solution for some but not what I'm looking for purely because I'm trying to make this super frictionless so that (knowing myself as I do) I will actually do it.

I did find this version interesting, suggested by @drivemetogeek: Have one word doc saved as your "template" doc and set the line spacing as 2.0 or higher. Select your text from source and paste it into the template doc as text-only. Ctrl a, ctrl c to select all and copy, then open a new document and "paste special" as picture. Right click and set the "wrap text" as behind text. Now you have a document where you can, basically, type over the existing text because it's the background of the page. This seems like the most frictionless version, because you could set up a bunch of them ahead of time. If you wanted to move between desktop and mobile, however, you'd need to ensure that the pasted image was fairly narrow so that you don't have to sideways-scroll.

Relatedly, people suggested generating a document that is simply the Italian text with empty space beneath it for typing in of the translation. This can be done either semi-automated, using a macro or a language like Python, or find-and-replace on, say, the stops at the ends of sentences. It basically outputs the same as above but with a more digitally accessible format, without any more effort than above. If you were to do this in Google Sheets you could also fix the column width so that it didn't do anything weird when you opened it on your phone. But it is still very friction-y, and does not allow for easy shifting of the Italian as needed. There's high probability of the translation breaking weirdly across the page. Still a top option in terms of simplicity and access.

@smokeandholograms suggested another variation illustrated here where essentially you're converting the text to a series of tables, with each paragraph a row, and an empty cell next to it for the translation. I might play around more with this one eventually, since I think I could possibly make it a three-column and put the Italian in one, the translation in the next, and the auto-translate to let me know where I might be slipping in the third. (Not that I trust auto-translate but comparing a hand translation to an auto translation can be useful in terms of working out when I've messed up the way a tense or mood is read. I tend to read indirect verbs as automatically imperative because I'm a weirdo.)

@wynjara linked to an add-in for Word specifically designed for translators, known as TransTools; this appears to employ a macro to do the same thing, though it does have a format where you can place the translation next to each sentence directly rather than in a separate cell. The full suite of tools is only $45 which is reasonable for my budget, but for what I need I think I could also just create the macro.

Using LaTeX as a tool specially designed for glossing was an option on offer, but I don't know enough about LaTeX to figure out the pros of this one, which is in itself the major con -- there's a learning curve that I think varies widely by person but for me is unfortunately a wall. It came out of a discussion on Reddit about trying to find something like what I want; also in that discussion is a link to a code generator that allows you to…do something…to the initial language, but it's not entirely clear to me (I'm sure it's clear to people who understand coding) what you would then do with it that would allow it to be output in the way I'm hoping for. Like, I could turn a paragraph of text into HTML, I understand that far, but any Italian I find is already on a website.

Moving more into apps that might work, Redditors on the LaTeX discussion suggested SIL Fieldworks, which is a professional language tech tool. Fieldworks isn't a program I'd previously encountered but much as with the ones I had, it looks like the learning curve is fairly steep and it is definitely overkill generally for what I need, though it might also harbor within it the thing I want. It is free, so I may download and play around with it.

@brightwanderer suggested using note-taking or "whiteboard" apps such as Freeform or Nebo; these are generally a kind of "infinite canvas" in which you can drop objects, text boxes, or handwriting. I don't know that Freeform would be measurably different to just using Word and a macro, since I'd still have to input/format all the text and then be stuck with the same "fixed text" setup -- and it's also iOS only -- but for some folks it might be more helpful. Nebo is a similar infinite-canvas with unfortunately the same issues, though on the plus it's available for Android, which is where most of my mobile property resides.

@bloodbright suggested that I was looking for a CAT tool, a professional translation tool mainly used by translators working in the field. This was a concept I'd encountered, but I hadn't found a good starting place. They suggested Smartcat and OmegaT. Smartcat bills itself as an AI translation platform and is HARD pushing the "don't translate it yourself, hire a translator or let AI do it" angle, so it's difficult to tell what it offers in terms of actual tools for translators, and it's also cagey about pricing, so I can't really evaluate it. OmegaT is free and gives off big "some weirdo homebrewed this in their basement" vibe (which I am here for) but I also recognized it from screengrabs that were the reason I veered away from professional-grade software: it looked too complex. Realistically, the major downside of OmegaT is that I don't think I can put it on my phone. One thing I did find interesting is that once you translate a portion of the text, the original language goes away, though I assume you can turn that off if needed. I do kind of like that because it means my distractable brain is looking at Less Stuff.

So where did I end up?

Well, it looked like I was going to have to try a homebrew myself. I had the idea of trying some of the initial suggestions but in reverse -- designing a document where every other line was a single-cell table fixed to the page. You could paste in the Italian, which would wrap around the cells, and then enter the English in the cells.

You can fix a table in place in Google Docs -- you click on the table, then under Table > Style select Wrap Text, Both Sides, and Fix On Page. Getting the whole page set up is a little labor intensive but once you did that, you could just save it as a template and make a duplicate of it each time. And this actually works….on desktop.

Unfortunately, if you open it in the mobile Docs app, the app can't handle the fixed tables and automatically moves them all to after the text that's been pasted in. I tried redesigning it so that it's a table within a table -- one for the Italian, then within that a series of them for the English -- but when you nest a table in Google Docs, it doesn't let you fix the second table in place. And you are also still dealing with the wrap issue, although you can resize the page and add a large right-hand margin as a kludge of a fix for that.

You can build this same kind of document in Word, so I tried building one in Word and then uploading it to Drive, but when you open the Word file in Docs (or in Microsoft Word for Android), it still strips the fixed positioning -- there's just some functionality missing from both apps that doesn't allow them to handle fixed-position tables.

So, the design is sound, just not the final execution. If I could program an app, I could probably remedy the issues with it -- it's simply a series of text boxes nested inside one another with different formatting. I would imagine that's relatively basic to set up, although given that neither Docs nor Word can handle fixed tables in mobile, perhaps I've stumbled on a much bigger problem that everyone is ignoring because nobody actually needs or wants fixed tables in mobile. :D

Experimentation is ongoing, anyway. I might simply have to resign myself to the fact that my translation study is going to have to be in front of a computer, which might be for the best anyway when I inevitably want to compare my translation to an auto-translate to see where I might have read something wrong.

#language learning #translation #sam learns italian

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hayatheauthor · 3 months

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Ten Websites Every Author Should Know In 2024

When I started this blog, one of the first posts I penned was "Websites Every Author Should Know in 2023." Now, as I return to breathe new life into this platform in 2024, it feels only fitting to offer an updated edition of that beloved post.

Whether you're struggling with brainstorming ideas, organizing your plot, finding publishing opportunities, or simply seeking some writing motivation, here are 10 websites that every author should know in 2024.

1. Artbreeder

If you're anything like me, you know the frustration of staring at a blank page, waiting for inspiration to strike. Well, say goodbye to writer's block because Artbreeder is here to rescue you from the depths of creative stagnation.

At its core, Artbreeder is a brainstorming tool that harnesses the power of artificial intelligence to help you generate ideas and explore new avenues of creativity. Whether you're crafting characters, creating scene locations, or conceptualizing entire worlds, Artbreeder's AI can help you create any image.

But don't just take my word for it. Countless writers, from aspiring novices to seasoned pros, have sung the praises of Artbreeder for its role in fueling their creative fire.

2. OneStopForWriters

If you've ever found yourself drowning in a sea of character arcs, struggling to untangle a convoluted plot, or simply searching for that elusive spark of inspiration, then OneStopForWriters is here to be your guiding light.

At OneStopForWriters, you'll find a treasure trove of resources designed to empower writers at every stage of their journey. One of the standout features is its unparalleled collection of writing tools and resources. From character development worksheets and plot structure guides to brainstorming prompts and writing exercises, this platform offers a wealth of resources to help you hone your craft and overcome any writing challenge that comes your way.

3. Milanote

With Milanote, organizing your thoughts has never been easier. Whether you're plotting out your next novel, storyboarding a film, or brainstorming ideas for your next project, Milanote's intuitive interface and versatile features make it a breeze to bring your ideas to life.

But Milanote isn't just about organization – it's about inspiration, too. Dive into Milanote's vast collection of templates, images, and resources, curated to spark your creativity and fuel your passion for storytelling.

And let's not forget about collaboration. With Milanote, you can seamlessly collaborate with fellow writers, sharing ideas, giving feedback, and working together to bring your collective vision to life. Let me know if you'd like to collab!

4. Inkarnate

Whether you're a fantasy author crafting intricate realms, a sci-fi writer mapping out distant galaxies, or a historical fiction enthusiast recreating the past, Inkarnate is your ultimate tool for world-building.

With Inkarnate's powerful mapping tools and customizable features, creating stunning and detailed maps has never been easier. From sprawling continents to intricate cityscapes, Inkarnate allows you to bring every aspect of your world to life with breathtaking detail and precision.

But Inkarnate isn't just about maps – it's about storytelling. Dive into Inkarnate's vast library of assets, from characters and creatures to landmarks and landscapes, and use them to enrich your world and enhance your storytelling.

5. World Anvil

With World Anvil's array of interactive tools and features, you can meticulously craft every detail of your world, from its geography and history to its cultures and languages. Whether you're creating a sprawling fantasy realm, a dystopian future, or an alternate historical timeline, World Anvil provides the tools you need to breathe life into your creations.

But World Anvil is more than just a repository for world-building information. It's a platform for storytelling, collaboration, and engagement. Share your world with readers, invite them to explore its intricacies, and immerse them in the rich tapestry of your imagination

6. Scrivener

At its core, Scrivener is a comprehensive writing software designed to meet the unique needs of authors, screenwriters, academics, and more. With its flexible interface and robust features, Scrivener allows you to organize your thoughts, structure your writing, and bring your ideas to life with ease.

One of Scrivener's standout features is its ability to break down your writing into manageable chunks, or "scrivenings," making it easy to focus on individual scenes, chapters, or sections of your manuscript. With its intuitive corkboard and outlining tools, you can visualize your project's structure and rearrange it on the fly.

But Scrivener is more than just a writing tool – it's a creative hub where ideas flourish and projects take shape. With its built-in research capabilities, you can keep all your notes, references, and inspiration in one place, ensuring that nothing gets lost in the shuffle.

7. Dabble

One of Dabble's standout features is its seamless integration of plotting, outlining, and writing tools. Whether you're a die-hard plotter or a pantser at heart, Dabble has the flexibility to accommodate your preferred writing style, allowing you to create detailed outlines, jot down notes, and dive into writing whenever inspiration strikes.

But Dabble is more than just a writing tool – it's a community of writers united by their love of storytelling and their commitment to helping each other succeed. Here, you'll find support, encouragement, and invaluable feedback as you navigate the ups and downs of the writing process.

With Dabble's cloud-based platform, you can access your work from anywhere, on any device, ensuring that your novel is always at your fingertips, whether you're at home, at work, or on the go.

8. Literature Map

Literature Map is a visual mapping tool that helps you discover new authors and books based on your literary preferences. Whether you're a fan of classic literature, contemporary fiction, or niche genres, Literature Map provides personalized recommendations to help you expand your reading horizons.

Using Literature Map is as easy as typing in the name of an author you love. Instantly, a constellation of related authors appears, each connected by their thematic, stylistic, or genre similarities. From there, you can explore new authors, discover hidden gems, and embark on new reading adventures with confidence.

But Literature Map is more than just a recommendation engine – it's a gateway to a world of literary exploration and discovery. Here, you'll find a community of fellow book lovers, eager to share their favorite authors, discuss their latest reads, and connect with like-minded readers from around the globe.

That concludes our exploration of the 10 essential websites every author should know in 2024. May these tools and resources empower you on your writing journey, from the spark of inspiration to the final flourish of your manuscript. Happy writing, and may your creativity know no bounds!

I hope this blog on Ten Websites Every Author Should Know In 2024 will help you in your writing journey. Be sure to comment any tips of your own to help your fellow authors prosper, and follow my blog for new blog updates every Monday and Thursday.

Looking For More Writing Tips And Tricks?

Are you an author looking for writing tips and tricks to better your manuscript? Or do you want to learn about how to get a literary agent, get published and properly market your book? Consider checking out the rest of Haya’s book blog where I post writing and publishing tips for authors every Monday and Thursday! And don’t forget to head over to my TikTok and Instagram profiles @hayatheauthor to learn more about my WIP and writing journey!

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astraltrickster · 2 years

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Frank the Bot (@nostalgebraist-autoresponder) absolutely fascinates me, from a computer science standpoint of course but even more so from a sociological and anthropological standpoint.

For one, there is something so human about taking an extremely complex AI and...just setting her loose on a shitposting website, for other users to play with, for fun.

For two, she really illustrates that if you want an AI to pass for human, one of the most valuable things you can do is put it somewhere that its bot quirks can pass for Just How The Culture Works.

Like, if you pay attention, and you know, and you know what you're looking for, it's not hard to tell that Frank is a bot. Some posts are more passable than others, but all of her images have that AI-Generated Aura, she tends to lose track of context from earlier in a thread, she occasionally gets stuck in loops of only minor changes to a certain template, she occasionally just says complete non-sequiturs, she even forgets her own name sometimes-

But that doesn't prove shit about shit here on tumblr. Us human users do the same damned things for shits and giggles all the time.

I love her. She fits in so perfectly. I genuinely wouldn't know she was a bot if she didn't advertise it, not because she has no tells, but because they just blend in so naturally with tumblr's culture of nonsense.

I mean, look at this shit.

This looks like the kind of thing a human tumblr user would absolutely create after seeing some kind of absurd cursed shit or in response to getting a really weird ask or just because this website tends to inflict psychic damage in general. Of course, when you know it was done by a bot, it becomes pretty obvious that this is an AI-generated image, but if you don't know - the odd face shapes may be just a stylistic choice; the bodies blended together and the hand-looking bits in the lower right are probably just artifacts of an artist rushing to crank out a meme and not caring about much more than hinting, what do you mean this wasn't made by a human tumblr user ribbing this hellsite for being a hellsite?

And, I feel like this could say a lot about people, and compatibility, and subcultures, and even jump into a whole philosophical discussion about the nature of AI and how culture shapes both people and bots in very similar ways-

But underneath all that we come right back to, wow, this website has created a culture that lets well-meaning bots fit right in, we have created a niche that puts the Turing test on easy mode.

#tech #internet culture #oh tumblr

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magicalmeily · 1 year

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I've made a google doc collection of 150 useful design and art resources! Whether youre just starting commissions or want to make your workflow more streamlined, I recommend checking it out

The full list is below the read more, but I suggest looking at the google doc as well sincce it will be updated more often.

This list was created by @MagicalMeily

I encourage you to share this list with other designers, artists, or even students via this tumblr post, the google doc, or my tweet. Links marked as ‘Free/Paid’ usually means the free version has a lot of features anyway and the paid just has some extra templates or storage space. *Disclaimer - I haven’t used all of these services myself, so please let me know if anything dodgy slipped through the cracks, or if you have any others I should add.

I do not support NFTs or AI Art generators, so hopefully you won’t find any listed. Always double check commercial usage rights

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COMMISSION SETUP

Collection of designers rates - Graphic Design Rates Master Sheet

TOS Example, Free to use (by kawa_kunn) - Twitter / kawa-kun.art

Tiktok walkthrough of a commission TOS form - artofthecatt

Longer Video of commission TOS form - How to Create a Commission Form

Commission Advice (by AerlyaGraphics) - Aerlya Graphics

Merchandise/printing services (by @sunshinehoney6) - Merchandise Resources

COMMISSION TRACKERS/MANAGEMENT

(Free/Paid) Clients can see your progress - Trello

(Free/Paid) Single user or collaborative project tracker - Notion

(Free) General Commission Management - Commiss.io

TEAM DESIGN/COLLABORATION

(Free/Paid) - Zeplin

(Free/Paid) - Notion

(Free/Paid) - Figma

(Free for Individuals) - Box

(Paid) - Sketch

FILE SHARING

(Free) - Google Drive

(Free/Paid) - WeTransfer

(Free/Paid) - Jumpshare

(Free for individuals) - Box

(Free) - Blindsend

MOODBOARDS

Design Inspiration

Image search for inspiration - Muzli Search

Makes and automatically sets out moodboards - Visualist

DESIGN PROGRAMS

2d Animation (Free/Paid) - Cavalry

Graphics, Photo editing, Publishing (One -off payment) - Affinity

Graphics, Audio, Video (Free, Browser) - Artboard Studio

Graphics (Free) - Inkscape

Graphics/Layout (Free/Paid, Browser) - Canva

Graphics, Photo Editing (Free, Browser. Can open Adobe files) - Photopea

Vector making (Free, Browser) - Vectr

Vector making (Free, Browser) - Vector Ink

Wireframing (Free, Browser) - Moqups App

GENERAL HELPFUL TOOLS/PROGRAMS

Bulk file renamer - Bulk Rename Utility

Bulk image resizer - ImageResizer

File Converters - FreeConvert

Image Upscaler - Waifu2x

Floating view of reference images - PureRef

Timezone converter - World Time Buddy

Twitter image crop guide by @dripchirp - Twitter Crop Guide

Learning how to use the pen tool - The Bézier Game

PORTFOLIO HOSTING/WEBSITE MAKERS

Portfolio hosting (Free) - Foriio

Portfolio hosting (Free with Adobe Subscription) - Adobe Portfolio

Portfolio hosting (Paid) - Portfoliobox

Website builder (Free) - Carrd

Website builder (Free) - Google Sites

Website builder (Free) - Weebly

Website builder (Free) - Wix

Website builder (Paid) - Squarespace

Make a blog you can use as a folio - Tumblr

(Posts Selective Folios) - Bestfolios

(Posts Selective Folios) - PFolios

(Posts Selective Folios) - Pafolios

(Posts Selective showreels) - Showreelz

LINK AGGREGATORS

(Free) Linktree

(Free) Lnk.Bio

(Paid/Free) Later

(Free) Solo.to

(Free) Campsite.bio

DESIGN MARKETPLACES

BOOTH

Gumroad

Ko-fi Shop

COLOUR

Various colour palette tools - Adobe Color

Colour palette search and generator - Coolors

Colour palette generator - Color Space

Colour converter, make colour palettes - RGB.to

Displays big brands colour schemes - BrandColors

ACCESSIBILITY

General design accessibility tips - Lemonly Infographics

Font accessibility tips - UXdesign.cc

Accessible colour combination generator 1 - Accessible color palette builder

Accessible colour combination generator 2 - Color Safe

FONTS FOR DOWNLOAD

Google Fonts

Adobe Fonts

Pixel Surplus

Fontesk

Befonts

Behance

Gumroad

Free Japanese Fonts

BOOTH

TYPE TOOLS

Displays inputted text in fonts installed on your computer - Wordmark

Identifies fonts on a web page - Fonts Ninja

Typography Resources - Typewolf

Font Pairing Help - Fontjoy

Examples of fonts in context - Fonts In Use

Font Management - FontBase

MOCKUPS

Mockup World

Mr.Mockup

Unblast

ls.graphics

Anthonyboyd.graphics

Anagram Design

DesignHooks

Mockups-Design

STOCK PHOTOS/TEXTURES

Pexels

Unsplash

Barnimages

LostAndTaken

Freepik

Rawpixel

PATTERNS

Pattern Inspiration - Pattern Collection

Customisable Repeating SVG Patterns - Pattern Monster

Seamless background pattern maker - Patternico

Mesh Gradient Maker - Mesh Gradient

Make and print your own grids - Gridzzly.com

Downloadable Patterns - Subtle Patterns

ILLUSTRATION LIBRARIES

Toools Design

Irasutoya / いらすとや

Open Peeps

Humaaans

Open Doodles

ICON LIBRARIES

Paid/Free - Streamline Icons

Paid/Free - Flaticon

INSPIRATION GATHERING

abdz

Mindsparkle Mag

Behance

Dribbble

Muzli Search

100 Archive

Design Inspiration

BP&O

Pentagram

It's Nice That

DESIGN ADVICE/EXAMPLES/BLOGS/ ARTICLES

(Free) - World Brand Design Society

(Free) - AIGA Eye on Design

(Free) - Creative Boom

(Free) - The Design Team

(Paid) - UnderConsideration

LOGO/BRANDING DESIGN

Company logos categorised by letter/number/symbol etc - Logobook

Logo/Branding Examples - Logoed

PACKAGING DESIGN

Kawacolle

Packaging Design Archive

Packaging Of The World

WEB DESIGN

Siteinspire

Httpster

Lapa Ninja

Best Website Gallery

Dark Mode Design

Awwwards

Dribbble

(Wireframing) Moqups App

PUBLICATION/EDITORIAL DESIGN

Zine Creation Tips Masterpost - How to Organize a Zine 101

Editorial Design Examples 1 - Formagramma

Editorial Design Examples 2 - Pentagram

POSTER DESIGN

Typographic Poster Design Examples - Typographic posters

Poster Design Examples - Poster Poster

CHARACTER DESIGN

Character Design Library, Challenges, etc - Character Design References

Anime Settei/Reference Sheets - Settei Dreams

Historical Costume references - OSF Costume Rentals

V-DESIGNER/V-ARTIST

‘How to Design Your Own Vtuber Logo’ (by the-tragic-heroine) - The-tragic-heroine

Discover V-artists/V-designers - Heartist

V-Artist/V-designers Catalogue (Hiatus) - VTuber Catalog

Vtuber Resource Collection (by VTResources) - VTuber Resources

View badges/emotes will look like on Twitch - Twitch Elements

Resize badges/emotes to actual sizes - Twitch Emote Resizer

Vtuber based commission hub (beta) - VGen

PAYPAL ALTERNATIVES

Square

Stripe

Wise (previously TransferWise)

Kofi

Direct Bank Transfer

OTHER RESOURCE COLLECTIONS

Vtuber Resource Collection (by VTResources) - VTuber Resources

Designer Resources Collection - Design Resources

Merchandise/printing services (by sunshinehoney6) - Merchandise Resources

Typography Resources - Typewolf

#resource #design #Vtuber Support #masterpost #Master post

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aidiscoursebingo · 5 months

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the bingo card template ^^

(breakdown of each box under the cut)

IP brain: several arguments against AI art hinge on IP and copyright law: e.g., accusations of plagiarism or copyright infringement, navel-gazing wrt "ownership" of art, etc. this means nothing to anyone who doesn't believe in the virtue of copyright lol

all art is hobbyism: anti-AI types frequently pretend that all art is something done solely for fun and/or personally meaningful to the artist and/or not labour

the hands/teeth!!!!: a common argument against AI art is that the hands or teeth look uncanny or unrealistic (even though that's one of the coolest things about AI art lmao)

we NEED overworked animators. To Save Human Artists: many argue against the use of AI to automate more menial aspects of creative labour (e.g., background art in animation), even when the work in question is famously backbreaking. (animation is only an example, and this box can apply to other art-related jobs)

art requires intentionality: a bizarre and common argument--"AI art isn't art because real art is 'intentional'." ignores (a) that there are intentional aspects of AI art (even setting aside the formation of prompts, the decision to choose a generated result and share it publicly is an undeniably intentional one) and (b) that several other art forms (photography, documentary, collage, etc) also preclude artists from having that flavour of foundational "every-brush-stroke" control over the piece

art requires a financial transaction: "it's only real art if someone got paid for it" (in other words, the opposite of the all art is hobbyism argumetn. thank god for the consistency of the anti-AI movement o7)

hyper-conventional conception of what makes "good" art: the manner in which opponents of AI target perceived flaws in AI art (blurriness, spatial abnormality, "count the fingers!", etc) tends to betray deeply reactionary values wrt "good" art as art that pursues representational realism.

"techbros": "-bro" is a commonly used, ill-defined pejorative that generally means "any person the speaker doesn't like." opponents of AI tend to cast what they call "AI advocates" as "techbros" interchangeable with NFT shills. besides being implicitly gendering, it's also hilarious--which side in this debate is closer to saying "i own this image so you can't right click it"?

"soul"/"humanity": there are frequent pseudo-spiritual appeals to art (even corporate art, apparently!) as having an essential "soul", "humanity", or even "godliness" that AI art lacks. this is of course meaningless to people who don't see any value in spiritualism

motte & bailey/strawman: opponents of AI frequently switch gears whenever they get cornered--when they realize that "we need stronger copyright law" is an indefensible position, they say "well REAL art requires effort!!", and when they're defeated on THAT front too they switch to "well AI is making artists lose their jobs!" and they keep doing this ad nauseam instead of acknowledging the flaws in their arguments. really it's less motte & bailey and more bailey & bailey & bailey & bailey &

ableism: people critiquing AI frequently choose to be ableist for some reason. the most common trick is inspiration porn (i.e., "so-and-so disabled person learned to paint with their teeth, what's your excuse?!")

"stolen"/"theft": two of the three favourite words of the anti-AI crowd. even if you accept the fundamental IP-brain premise (which, to be clear, you shouldn't), a baseline knowledge of how training datasets work should still make claims of theft fall flat.

reactionary BS (free space): arguments against AI tend to rely on several foundationally reactionary concepts, be they luddism, copyright, or the ~essence of humanity~

(in)directly insults collage/readymades/photography/etc: a massive portion of diatribes against AI include arguments that also lock several other mediums (the above plus music sampling/covers, choreography, film direction, etc) out of "counting" as art. frankly, a massive portion of them are indistinguishable from the reactionary outrage against duchamp's fountain

"you know it's not even ACTUALLY AI right??": people love to point out that "AI" is a buzzword and that computer programs are not actually sentient, and then pretend they've done something

AI artists are immoral/lazy/etc: several pejoratives tend to come out. see also: stupid, talentless, heartless, abusive, etc

"collage": the third favourite word. to be clear, AI image generators are NOT "collage machines", and if they were, that would be a good thing

classism: another thing that jumps out frequently. right-wing ideas about labour and poverty abound

art requires effort: another bizarre idea--the implication that more effort = better art. surely by this logic the amount of labour hours behind Avengers 16 must make it the ultimate opus

"just commission an artist": an annoying adage

stealing jobs from artists: same argument as self-checkouts

childish insults directed at AI: lots of people love making juvenile jabs at the AI. there's no sweeter irony than seeing someone write a diatribe about how AI is Not Really A Person then act as if they've just humiliated it

petty bourgeois artists = underdog: a lot of commission fanartists are convinced that aligning themselves with (petty-)bourgeois interests is going to help them in the long run

acting like AI operates independently: everyone seems to think that no humans are even involved in the process and that AI generators just sit in a dark room operating themselves, spitting images into the void

no understanding of how machine learning works: self-explanatory. opponents of AI don't seem to even know the bare minimum about the subject they argue about

(also yes i do consider diagonals to be a bingo, i dont care if it's not proper lmao)

#template #ai discourse bingo

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hsatcg · 2 months

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Contributing Art (Card-Art and Playmats)

==> Contributing Card / Playmat Art is a pro-bono, volunteer-only position. Artists will be credited on the card / playmat, and on the website's credit page, and can chose what name and link* (*link is optional) they'd like to be credited with.

==> Artists retain full rights to use their artwork, and are only voluntarily donating the artwork to be used for HSATCG's non-commercial game use. Artists may ask for their art to be removed from HSATCG at anytime.

==> Art does not have to be “new” or created originally/solely for HSATCG. (IE: You can submit art you made/posted before to be used, as long as it formats correctly into the work.)

==> Card Art should be at least 300dpi, and sized to 2 inches by 1.75 inches (rectangle) … or use the following, more in-depth template. (If you want to “break the boundaries,” please submit artwork with transparency and be careful not to cover game text!)

==> Playmat Art should be at least 300dpi and sized to 21 inches by 11 inches, or use the following overlay / template.

==> Please put in the HSATCG Discord server which card(s) you are making art for, or have made art for, to help others keep track!

==> Any use of AI Image Generation or otherwise unoriginal or uncredited use of other artists is not permitted in card art. The artwork must be wholly created by the donating, credited artist(s)

#homestuck #hsatcg #card art

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killian-whump · 4 months

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KW Does Shit So You Don't Have To

I know there's a lot of arguments and debates about AI generated art and how horrible it is, both for the artists it rampantly steals from and in the quality of art produced.

But, you know... I'm a curious person.

So I went and plugged Colin's name into a bunch of these things just to see what would happen and... absolutely nothing worthwhile happened. I mean, stuff happened... and you can hit the Keep Reading link to hear about it, but... I dunno, man.

These things have no clue what Colin actually looks like. It's bizarre. None of them got him right, yet they ALL seemed to get him... equally wrong? Like, there's some guy out there that AI thinks is Colin, but isn't actually Colin at all, and he looks about like this:

They did no better with Killian Jones, Colin O'Donoghue as Killian Jones or even Colin O'Donoghue as Killian Jones from Once Upon a Time. In fact, at that point, I was pretty much just throwing words at them that they were entirely ignoring.

Admittedly, one of the sites (Craiyon) actually got relatively close to Colin's appearance, but they also looked like they weren't making art so much as cutting and pasting his face onto art and blurring the edges. That, and they seem to think he has glowing blue laser eyes for some reason, and I swear I didn't tell them that but I kinda wish I had, because that would be a fun rumor to start. Anyway, this is the best approximation of Colin I was able to create on that site, using "Colin O'Donoghue as Killian Jones from Once Upon a Time" as the prompt:

I mean, that's not... THAT bad. But it sure as shit isn't about to take the place of fanart any time soon. And, mind you, this was the BEST of the bunch. The rest were... Well, here's a less-good example with the laser eyes in full effect:

Apparently, Once Upon a Time is now Game of Thrones and Killian Jones is Baelish and Colin has blue laser eyes pew pew pew. Again, the face is kinda spot-on, but I feel like that's because they just copy/pasted his actual face in there. Even the image quality and color depth differs on the face versus the rest of the "art". They just literally stuck his face in some art template and gave him laser eyes.

Mind you, my side piece (Tom Payne) fared no better. They seem to have him confused with that kid who played the elf-like boy in... Game of Thrones. Actually, I feel like all of these things are stuck in some kind of Game of Thrones time warp where that's all that exists and everything they don't understand must surely come from that... and there is very, very little they DO understand.

Now as a litmus test of sorts, I stuck Keanu Reeves' name in some of them, as well, and they did all seem to know what he looks like - so if you're looking to play with the face of some uber famous celebs, this might be fun for you to play with. But anybody with fewer than 5 mainstream memes devoted to them probably just makes the AI go, "Who? Must be someone from Game of Thrones."

Which makes it completely useless for those of us gathered here, even aside from the obvious ethical quandaries of art theft and the devaluing of human-made artwork.

As a final test, I asked Craiyon to show me "Colin O'Donoghue as James Bond" and it basically returned the exact same results as the Killian Jones prompt did. Though it did hilariously encourage me to try, "handsome scottish actor colin o'donoghue dressed in a tuxedo and carrying a gun as he attends a james bond movie" which is definitely not what I was looking for, but bonus points for creativity, I guess? Also, carrying guns in movie theaters is bad form and super illegal, even if it is a James Bond film, but I guess AI doesn't know that. And Colin isn't Scottish.

But he does have laser eyes. This is a rumor I'm starting right here in this post on this blog. Laser eyes. He's got 'em.

#i don't even know what to tag this #really #just #feel free to keep scrolling #pew pew pew

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localravenclaw · 1 month

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Hi! Been thinking about asking this for a long time. You've had a lot of AIs generated for Ren, a few people did fanarts, not to mention picrews. They all look rather different! I understand differences in hairstyles and got used to those. But which AI/picsrews/fanarts do look MOST like the girl you envision? Eye? Face in general? Lips? Perhaps it's not just one thing, but a combination (eyes from one, chin from another and so on)?

What visual features make Ren Ren?

Thank you!!! This Ask got me all excited! I don't think I've ever elaborated on Ren's outward appearance before, so I'll take this opportunity to add more to her lore and the rationale behind her varying updo's.

Ren Aries is of mixed race, with an East Asian muggle-born father and a Western European pureblood mother. (Her father assumed a somewhat anglicised version of their family name to bridge the cultural gap when they moved to England, with Aries being the Western zodiac equivalent of the dragon in the Chinese zodiac. Weird tangent on the onomastics of her totally not Asian-sounding last name lol sorry).

As a child, her nannies would often put her thick, black hair up in double buns, which she was not very happy with (see picture of grumpy baby Ren). As her hair grew, she started braiding it herself, opting for twin braids with mostly messy parted bangs, which she keeps for the majority of her younger years. As she matured, she started wearing either a half-tie or a single braid, letting her hair down completely only when she's most vulnerable. She inherited her father's sharp, brown eyes and neotenous features and her mother's pouty lips and small stature.

To be completely honest, Ren in HL-verse started off as a self-insert, both in likeness and in lore, but as I've expanded on her story over the past year, she's kind of taken a life of her own. The first AI images of her have evolved since and there are different versions of her depending on who's drawing or rendering her. Her trademark features would be black hair, brown eyes, pouty lips, but I guess to sum it all up, Ren Aries would canonically look like this:

Younger Ren vs Adult Ren

I use the same set of reference photos to generate AI images of her but there are always slight differences depending on the template I'm working with and the angles of the images. Be that as it may, this is probably the most accurate images of how I envision Ren Aries looks like. ♡

#ari answers #ren aries #hogwarts legacy mc #look at my babygirl y'all

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deepdreamnights · 2 months

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Wonka was Just Joking About What he was Going to do With the Black Cloud

And other Jank: A Midjourney Secret Horse preserve.

I've mentioned Midjourney's /describe feature on more than one occasion. It's basically a Midjourney specific clip-interrogator, where you feed it a picture and it spits out four prompts that, in theory, produced something along the lines of what you presented.

Thing is, /describe never really worked.

And that's why I love it. I enjoyed taking random images, /describing them, and then combining the results, which were like this (base image is the wonka meme template above):

1️⃣ wonka was just joking about what he was going to do with the black cloud, in the style of light purple and light orange, stylish costume design, bronzepunk 2️⃣ a man in a purple shirt and hat smiling at a computer screen, in the style of fanciful costume design, whirly, blink-and-you-miss-it detail, gritty elegance, celebrity and pop culture references, glorious, polka dot madness 3️⃣ a beautiful young man who pretends to be waldorf, in the style of purple and bronze, polka dot madness, contemporary candy-coated, clowncore 4️⃣ can you name the top 10 funniest quotes ever?, in the style of light purple and gold, movie still, polka dot madness, groovy, handsome, neo-victorian, character

Beautiful madness across the board, and the results when run (clockwise from top left, 1, 2, 3, 4)-

-are like when Google Translate first hit the scene and it was dumb as rocks, so you could get fun stuff by looping text through multiple translations to get wacky stuff. Eventually all the translators got good enough that stopped working, and no one archived the stupid version.

Which brings us to now, as MJ has launched a better version of /describe. I'll do some posts on its capabilities and improvements soonish (it's brand new), but they told us a month ago it was coming, and I took action.

More than 54,000 prompts worth of action

I can't archive the /describe feature as it was, but I could build a stockpile of prompts before the system changed, and I did. About half of these are ones I /described myself, the other half were gleaned from Midjourney's public creation discords.

These are all fully machine-generated prompts, so they're public domain by definition. All shared on a google sheets file.

Caveats:

They are no longer associated with their base images.

They are organized alphabetically.

As above, what comes out does not always reflect what went in.

Not every prompt generated by Midjourney's bot will run on midjourney without editing as sometimes /describe makes prompts that trigger their prompt censor. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

If anyone wants to make a text-diffusion AI that generates prompts using the above as a dataset, go for it. Feel free to show off your results in the reblogs as well.

#secret horsing #midjourney v6 #wonka #/describe #midjourney describe #autogenerated prompt #archived prompts #free prompts #public domain #ai art #obsolete tech #ai jank

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loonavrsl · 2 months

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After the last two DALL teasers that appear to use generative AI, we don't want to see further AI usage in ARTMS teasers and content.

To ensure artistic and ethical integrity in ARTMS' work, please consider emailing Modhaus customer support at:

[email protected]

You can use an email template written by fans in your email. We ask for transparency from Modhaus on the software and image training used, and for the company to address fans' concerns and criticism to create a successful debut for ARTMS.

#loona #artms #admin post #i feel this will be most effective #quite disappointing after the quality of the birth teasers #mostly i don't want to see artms hurt by this #hopefully they address this 🙏

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gramophoneturtle · 2 months

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Update/Pinned Post

Welcome to my art archive. I've posted a lot about my OCs, TWEWY, Persona 5, Xenoblade X and in other fandoms.

Unfortunately due to recent-ish changes on Tumblr I no longer feel comfortable posting here much or at all. I'll keep my blog up for the foreseeable future or maybe even forever because of how Tumblr stores data. I'd rather have the link back to the source.

Or if the other sites explode in the meantime.

This has nothing to do with the date sadly. I'm just at my limit.

Here's where you can find me:

Pillowfort: gramophoneturtle. The most artist respected place and a decent long form blogging place.

Neocities: I'm currently developing an art archive on neocities over here. This will be THE archive place, one day! With RSS, one day!

Bluesky: gramophoneturtle. Twitter replacement. I don't trust it but it's meshing with me more than mastodon. Stream announcements are here b/c I ran out of energy for crossposting.

cohost: gramophoneturtle. I don't trust it'll stay but it has both a draft system & can save alt text on draft edits. Wild stuff to praise but when porting art out of Tumblr, it's helpful to have new drafts.

Twitch & YouTube: I stream weekly on Twitch and store VODs on both. Twitch has all my VODs and YouTube has VODs from Fall 2023 and onwards.

More details, pros and cons about each site below for those who are curious. Thanks for sticking around and reading.

Pillowfort

It's user funded and transparent about the breakdown of funds

They're against generative AI. Their reinforcement came out around the time Tumblr's not-really-against-it stance came out. This is huge to me.

They're working on a PWA of the site so it will have a way to function like a smartphone app

Image post options aren't great but you aren't limited to 4 (unlike cohost - kinda, and Bluesky)

Alt text gets eaten if you edit a post currently which is awful. (Tumblr used to do this.) Alt text isn't an option for picture type posts but is for text posts with pictures. But hey at least you can include alt text!

Communities are nice for fandoms and stuff. You can search by tags but you don't follow tags, you join/watch communities.

They have funding for the next 6 months past any month that was fully funded. So as of April 1, 2024, funding should last until (the end?) of October if they were to not get any more donations/subscriptions from now on. Basically, they have a 6 month buffer and so far for 2024 they've been keeping it and maintaining their monthly funding goals

Neocities

Home page URL should not change but artwork URLs might

The artwork section is inspired by Tumblr's archive page/system. I don't think I want it to be exactly like it (might be a limitation of static pages re: tag filtering) but I want to try and partially make it

Artwork on there have been nightshaded and glazed. I would like to reglaze some pieces that are too glazed for my liking, now that I have a better computer for it (so it doesn't take forever). That's why not a lot of art is on there yet

I might go into detail about how I automated some of the web dev stuff to make my life easier on my my main blog. In summary: I'm using 11ty (eleventy), generating pages from data and templates, using github for version control and github actions for updating the site automatically

Bluesky:

Feeds are cool. I've found and made (through SkyFeed) a lot of Feeds. Feeds can look for text in posts and alt text, and/or specific tags. Can filter out reblogs or replies. Can work off of user lists. Can include/exclude specific posts - like Twitter Moments. There's a lot of flexibility and filtering.

Feeds can lookback anywhere from 25 hours to 1 week when not looking at one user. So when pulling from many users, you could just get the latest updates. For one user (say your own gallery of whatever) you're allowed to go back to the beginning, it can be your art gallery. And then people can just follow that feed so you don't have to worry about your art getting buried if people just want to follow your art

There's a setting you can turn on to warn and prevent you from posting until you add alt text. I love this. Especially since, like Twitter, you can't go back and edit a post

Forcing ALT text has the added bonus of leaving it last so I can double check tags and text in case I accidentally hit the post button before I'm ready

Twitch

There is art. And VTuber stuff. And life updates. Art/project updates. Lots of OC talk. Like I wish I could post more about Null considering how much stuff I've spoken about them on stream but freaking time! And energy.

YouTube

Used to do more Timelapses but stopped because laptop was not having fun with it. Now that I have a new computer it might be better!

Also has Twitch VODs because I want another place to back up VODs since local recordings take up a lot of space. And I can mark Chapters(/Moments?) timestamps to find stuff again.

Special thank you to those that made it all the way down here!

So what is the blog for now? Archiving, mainly, as I said at the beginning. I might link to my neocities page in maybe art updates or to pillowfort. And I might need a place to fall back to if the other sites don't last. I know bluesky and cohost are not much better/probably not better in other ways so I know that posting on them probably won't be good long term.

But that's why I'm working on the art archive site on the side. I'll always have a safe and controlled place where I can have all my art and details and stuff. It's gonna take a while and it's challenging but it's what I feel like I gotta do now.

I'm just so tired.

#update #tumblr #pillowfort #neocities #bluesky #cohost #twitch #youtube #text #social media #blog update #the like...guilt...or betrayal of sharing my creations on a site that has caused enough harm that i just Mentally Can't anymore #it's a struggle #again: i don't think bluesky and cohost are better #...i have a feeling april 1st is a poor day to post an update like this but i just need to post this while i'm ready to

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hopeymchope · 3 months

Note

I'm curious, what's your stance on generative AI? I know we in the fandom community often talk about it in the context of AI created fanart, but I'm talking more in the context of the uses generative AI has in the realm of general work productivity, like what Microsoft is trying to do with their new CoPilot program.

Well, the ethical issue is basically the same as it is for A.I.-generated images—but for some goddamn reason, people don't like to think of any kind of writing as a form of propietary "art" the same way they do about visual arts, so it's garnered FAR less attention.

But as far as their usability goes? As someone who writes documents for a living, I can see these programs being potentially beneficial for creating early rough drafts, but that's the extent of what it's good for now: They can make outlines. BUT! You could get the same outline from a template or from an online boilerplate, so is that even worth anything? Once you go beyond an outline, any text generated from these A.I.s always needs heavy revision, reorganization, and editing. I'd spend less time just writing it from scratch.

Currently, generative so-called "A.I." programs that are designed to assist with writing text are based upon predicting what they think the user is requesting or desiring. They set out to give you what they believe you want, and accuracy is NOT part of the equation. This might not be as big of an issue if you're trying to make a book report on a classic novel, because there are probably enough examples of reliable web coverage on the subject it could reasonably generate something that's at least usable. But outside of doing some of your homework for you, how useful is it?

It can certainly bullshit some generic blather to fill space in a paper, or it could spew corporate-ese for the purpose of drafting a mass company email... but can it announce something new to your staff or the press in an accurate way? Nope. Can it reliably create copy or a script for advertising/marketing? Not if you want your ad to actually be true, let alone unique. :P

If you're doing something fairly rote like taking existing legal documentation to create a new, similar legal document for a different usage? You're better off just having a template on-hand with editable sections to revise; that way, the A.I. won't attempt to "improve" the legal text in a way that fucks you over. And if you're asking the A.I. not to edit that text in the first place... well, then why are we using this A.I. when we already have templates?

If you're hoping to create some kind of instructions, maybe a "How-To" book or a manual for something? Just forget it. It doesn't matter how much documentation on the subject you feed into that A.I. Ultimately, it will preconcieve how the process COULD work or what the program/device/person MIGHT do, and then it starts going off on bizarre claims/tangents that are wholly imagined. The longer the document you want, the worse the amount of nonsensical bullshit gets.

But even if you're just trying to get it to reduce a massive document down to like, a single page that covers the basics? It has no real system for judging what "the basics" are. You can try to specify to the A-not-I what you need to include, feed it the original document... and still wind up with a combination of falsehoods and excluded requirements. This won't necessarily happen every single attempt or in every single paragraph, but it'll definitely happen enough times to make it more trouble than it's worth. Still... this kind of thing — i.e., revising a single existing source into a different format or length — is probably the area that's the most promising application for these programs in the near term. It should be possible to "teach" to the programs in question, and it handily skirts past most ethical questions about the sources behind its knowledge.

What I said about falsehoods and skewed info/inaccuracy is also why search engines that have incorporated A.I. have gotten LESS reliable. Generative A.I. isn't truly "Artificial Intelligence," because it can't make any kind of judgment. It doesn't have a clue how to deem something true or false, and it's really fucking hard to build that into a program. Because ultimately, what do you ask it to do? How do you explain that to the program in a logical fashion? You can't just say "only believe the sources I give you/tell you to trust," because it only generates based on tons of pre-existing examples that it's observed. It only exists at all because of those examples, which is always going to cause these issues.

....and that last point ALSO raises the same exact ethical questions already brought up by A.I.-generated imagery. What right do they have to use these sources? Where are they getting them, etc.? And now I'm back where I started.

Suffice it to say I'm not a fan. Although I do, of course, have skin in this game, so I acknowledge that I'm definitely biased.

#a.i.#generative a.i.#asks

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