#this is about the midjourney deal thing but
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The thing about tumblr is that there’s a panic about how the site is dying and falling apart literally every other week so eventually if you’ve been here long enough you just get zen about it. Like if anything specific is your breaking point do whatever you want but personally they’re gonna have to pry me out of the vents like a feral raccoon before I leave. Anyway if you’re new here and you see people talk about how something is the end of tumblr and you’re afraid they’re correct I just want you to know I’ve been here through probably like 300 ends of tumblr. I’m not saying it will never happen for real but statistically I remain skeptical.
#this is about the midjourney deal thing but#if it breaks containment and starts circulating every time smth happens I’m gonna laugh#anyway: yeah sure it’s scummy on tumblr’s part. but like.#I don’t honestly believe there’s a site that ISN’T getting scraped by ai and data mining these days#so what are you even really losing#yeah yeah I toggled off the data sharing whatever#it’s just not nearly the scummiest thing tumblr has done#and not even close to the scummiest thing a major social media platform has done#so people seeing people be like ‘WELL I’M LEAVING OVER THIS’#I’m just like. lol okay.
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Shit. Well even if I delete all my arts or replace them with tiny little previews for cohost, the rbs are still gonna exist arent they?? That's a redundant question, I know for a fact they will
I hate everything rn
#yes this is about the midjourney thing#tumblrs (supposedly) gonna do a deal with midjourney and all our art is gonna be used for shitty ai art#if ai art was a person i would break their kneecaps
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I said this elsewhere but
not to be That Guy but I don't really see the point of moving platforms anymore.
There is no where we can hide on the internet from the silicon valley bros. There just isn't. Patreon is VC-funded and could announce tomorrow that oh of course they've been partnered with Midjourney for months already. Twitter actively scraps everything for AI learning. And even if you trusted the other big players like FB/IG to tell the truth about shit, people are going to use these platforms for datasets anyway. They'll just do it quietly and hope no one notices.
And places like cohost or whatever-- honestly, if it makes you feel safer/better, go for it, but I don't think cohost has the sway or capital to build the type of legal team you need to fight against scrapers. Hell, you wanna retreat into private discords? Discord wants in on AI too.
Everyone big is already dealing in AI, and everyone small doesn't even have a seat at the table. In my opinion, we are all collectively holding out for Brussels or any of the many court cases to do something about this shit, because it's no longer a thing we can just hide from.
I'm going to keep my writing on the AO3 because they are the odd case of having an actual legal team in place for this shit. For artists, I have nothing but sympathy. I suggest glazing and nightshading literally everything you post.
But beyond that, I'm unsure what we can do. This is a matter for legislation. Silicon Valley doesn't care if we all go to cohost, and even less scrupulous data-crawlers will just grab our shit from there too.
So I'll be here.
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AI Sellout
Used an email mask to read the whole article, pasting it below the cut.
Quick important points:
The tweet content is a list of things that are currently included, but were not SUPPOSED TO BE, and engineers are working to scrub it.
Automattic is supposedly going to add an opt out option.
Automattic did not respond to a question from 404 Media about whether it could guarantee that people who opt out will have their data deleted retroactively.
Tumblr and Wordpress are preparing to sell user data to Midjourney and OpenAI, according to a source with internal knowledge about the deals and internal documentation referring to the deals.
The exact types of data from each platform going to each company are not spelled out in documentation we’ve reviewed, but internal communications reviewed by 404 Media make clear that deals between Automattic, the platforms’ parent company, and OpenAI and Midjourney are imminent.
The internal documentation details a messy and controversial process within Tumblr itself. One internal post made by Cyle Gage, a product manager at Tumblr, states that a query made to prepare data for OpenAI and Midjourney compiled a huge number of user posts that it wasn’t supposed to. It is not clear from Gage’s post whether this data has already been sent to OpenAI and Midjourney, or whether Gage was detailing a process for scrubbing the data before it was to be sent.
Gage wrote:
“the way the data was queried for the initial data dump to Midjourney/OpenAI means we compiled a list of all tumblr’s public post content between 2014 and 2023, but also unfortunately it included, and should not have included:
private posts on public blogs
posts on deleted or suspended blogs
unanswered asks (normally these are not public until they’re answered)
private answers (these only show up to the receiver and are not public)
posts that are marked ‘explicit’ / NSFW / ‘mature’ by our more modern standards (this may not be a big deal, I don’t know)
content from premium partner blogs (special brand blogs like Apple’s former music blog, for example, who spent money with us on an ad campaign) that may have creative that doesn’t belong to us, and we don’t have the rights to share with this-parties; this one is kinda unknown to me, what deals are in place historically and what they should prevent us from doing.”
Gage’s post makes clear that engineers are working on compiling a list of post IDs that should not have been included, and that password-protected posts, DMs, and media flagged as CSAM and other community guidelines violations were not included.
Automattic plans to launch a new setting on Wednesday that will allow users to opt-out of data sharing with third parties, including AI companies, according to the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, and internal documents. A new FAQ section we reviewed is titled “What happens when you opt out?” states that “If you opt out from the start, we will block crawlers from accessing your content by adding your site on a disallowed list. If you change your mind later, we also plan to update any partners about people who newly opt-out and ask that their content be removed from past sources and future training.”
404 Media has asked Automattic how it accidentally compiled data that it shouldn’t share, and whether any of that content was shared with OpenAI, but did not immediately hear back from the company. 404 Media asked Automattic about an imminent deal with Midjourney last week but did not hear back then, either.
Another internal document shows that, on February 23, an employee asked in a staff-only thread, “Do we have assurances that if a user opts out of their data being shared with third parties that our existing data partners will be notified of such a change and remove their data?”
Andrew Spittle, Automattic’s head of AI replied: “We will notify existing partners on a regular basis about anyone who's opted out since the last time we provided a list. I want this to be an ongoing process where we regularly advocate for past content to be excluded based on current preferences. We will ask that content be deleted and removed from any future training runs. I believe partners will honor this based on our conversations with them to this point. I don't think they gain much overall by retaining it.” Automattic did not respond to a question from 404 Media about whether it could guarantee that people who opt out will have their data deleted retroactively.
News about a deal between Tumblr and Midjourney has been rumored and speculated about on Tumblr for the last week. Someone claiming to be a former Tumblr employee announced in a Tumblr blog post that the platform was working on a deal with Midjourney, and the rumor made it onto Blind, an app for verified employees of companies to anonymously discuss their jobs. 404 Media has seen the Blind posts, in which what seems like an Automattic employee says, “I'm not sure why some of you are getting worked up or worried about this. It's totally legal, and sharing it publicly is perfectly fine since it's right there in the terms & conditions. So, go ahead and spread the word as much as you can with your friends and tech journalists, it's totally fine.”
Separately, 404 Media viewed a public, now-deleted post by Gage, the product manager, where he said that he was deleting all of his images off of Tumblr, and would be putting them on his personal website. A still-live post says, “i've deleted my photography from tumblr and will be moving it slowly but surely over to cylegage.com, which i'm building into a photography portfolio that i can control end-to-end.” At one point last week, his personal website had a specific note stating that he did not consent to AI scraping of his images. Gage’s original post has been deleted, and his website is now a blank page that just reads “Cyle.” Gage did not respond to a request for comment from 404 Media.
Several online platforms have made similar deals with AI companies recently, including Reddit, which entered into an AI content licensing deal with Google and said in its SEC filing last week that it’s “in the early stages of monetizing [its] user base” by training AI on users’ posts. Last year, Shutterstock signed a six year deal with OpenAI to provide training data.
OpenAI and Midjourney did not respond to requests for comment.
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Someone at tumblr/automattic asked whether requests to opt out of "AI" data sharing would be honored retroactively (which seems important, seeing as tumblr has apparently compiled the user data they're going to send *before* giving any kind of opt-out option) and Automattic's head of "AI" Andrew Spittle responded:
We will notify existing partners on a regular basis about anyone who's opted out since the last time we provided a list. I want this to be an ongoing process where we regularly advocate for past content to be excluded based on current preferences. We will ask that content be deleted and removed from any future training runs. I believe partners will honor this based on our conversations with them to this point. I don't think they gain much overall by retaining it.
And I do not trust midjourney or openai in the slightest--their business models, by their own admission, depend on scraping art they don't have permission to use--so I do not believe that they will honor any requests to remove data already received when requests are made to remove it. So yeah. take that as you will.
Edit
about 20 minutes after I posted this, @staff put out this:
They do not acknowledge that they are definitely actually in the process of selling your data to third parties, but they have a setting which (they claim) will prevent them from sharing information with third parties, including "AI" training businesses.
I've turned it on, but tumblr has burned so much trust that I really don't have faith that tumblr will actually change the package of information that will be provided to these third parties based on the setting: tumblr/automattic must know that "AI" art theft is tremendously unpopular with a huge portion of tumblr, and that having this setting (even with a "you must know about it to use it" opt out setting) will result in a bunch of users setting their unintuitive "don't share with third parties" setting to "on" which will diminish the value of the sale.
I don't think tumblr will honor this setting.
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You’re gonna want to glaze and/or nightshade your posts.
https://www.tumblr.com/salora-rainriver/743031690655596545/what-is-this-about-the-tumblr-staff-wanting-to
This is only rumors but
thanks for looking out for me!
thing is, a deal between midjourney and tumblr is unlikely and would be bad for midjourney. images on tumblr are already indexable, and likely already in datasets. going back to glaze/nightshade art youve already posted would be highly ineffective, as un-glazed versions already exist in reblogs and cant be edited or removed from the servers without doing a dmca takedown.
heres a good post about other issues with glaze and nightshade, that i think is a worthwhile read:
not as important but i (personally; its a contentious topic and i understand others feel differently) am not particularly invested in preventing generative models from learning from my art. if it was gonna ever happen, then its already happening, and im not bothered by it.
i was instead briefly worried about the future of this site, given the recent outbursts from the ceo and the likelihood of a "pissed off forum mod just shutting down the whole thing after a spat with the users" type outcome, but looks like we're in the clear :3 if anything were to change though: you know my patreon, i would be giving any relevant update over there
#tl;dr its all good folks! Nothings Going To Happen#if youre interested in effective ways to protect yr art from having ai models train on it i believe there Are ways to do it!#its just that glaze/nightshade is ineffective and trivial to bypass and extremely energy inefficient
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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.)
-----
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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uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuughhhhhhhhhh
so here's the deal re: this fucking horseshit. god i hate this.
i, personally, have mostly given up on trying to dodge inclusion in AI datasets. the stuff i make generally isn't what they're looking for anyway and there's no real way to 100% avoid being scraped short of becoming entirely invisible online, which would um, lead to me having no money and dying. that's part of the cruelty of all this, but also, in a way, it's the same risk artists online have always taken; if you want people to see your work, you have to post it knowing that some of those people are fucking lowlife piece of shit scumbags who will try to resell it on redbubble or something for a quick buck. AI is just a new and exhausting way for garbagey people to stink worse. i am not in any way excusing that behavior or trying to imply people should not be mad about it or that we shouldn't condemn this move and fight back. "if you don't want your work stolen, don't put it online" is the kind of shitty Internet Tough Guy talk i've always hated since my dA days. it's as useless and heartless as telling people that if they don't want their bikes stolen, they shouldn't leave them at the bike rack. i'm saying that i, personally, will not let a bunch of soulless thieving shitheads drive me offline. i belong here. they belong in a wifi-proof dumpster.
nightshade and glaze eat my artwork alive. they make it look terrible. when you have to sell things on the basis that they look nice, it's a big problem when protective measures make them look like dogshit. my work is not a good candidate for these processes. even if that weren't the case, i don't have the stamina, especially right now while my chronic pain is flaring for the third month in a row and my adhd meds are scarce, to go back and shade/glaze everything, and it wouldn't work on reblogs anyway. given the way midjourney and its equally stinky siblings have already scraped years and terabytes' worth of image data from popular websites, it doesn't seem worth my time. if you think it is worth yours i am not going to like, yell at you. i am just one person. but i want to be clear about the kind of situations some of us are being forced into.
i think some of the doomsaying about AI and what it will do to us has been overblown-- they need you, for marketing purposes, to believe that someday their shitty robot will be as good at "drawing" and as practical to work with as a human-- but the consequences of "AI" (which is not even actually AI) are already real and visible and obvious to anyone paying attention. i unfortunately am not infinitely wise and powerful and therefore do not have an ideal all-encompassing solution to this deeply stupid problem that the Most Unlikeable Manbabies On Earth have imposed on us after NFTs fizzled out.
what i do have is a very large repository of nice anime and game screenshots i've taken, knowledge of many archives of nice public domain images, a computer that can run nightshade overnight or while i'm off doing other things, and, most importantly, near-infinite capacity for pettiness. i do kinda feel like the jury is still out on how well nightshade/glaze will work in the long run, but in the meantime, i suppose it wouldn't cost me a lot to... perhaps... every time i get Mad About AI™, channel that anger into dumping some thoroughly-but-not-spammily-tagged, high-quality, inconspicuous poison onto this godforsaken hellsite via a secret side blog. i could make a batch of poison ahead of time, keep it on my phone, use my Toilet Scrolling Time or my Public Transit Time to post and tag up an image here and there. it could be a fun challenge to try to make some pretty robot poison that some humans will still enjoy.
the other thing we need to poison at this point, IMO, is the word "AI" itself, by being loudly and mercilessly critical of any company that dabbles in it, the same way we all clowned on any company that pushed their luck with NFT/crypto shit a couple of years ago. we need to have every corporation terrified that association with AI will tank their sales and hurt their brand. AI must = number go down and lots of people screaming at you. companies will fuck around. we must provide the finding-out. we shouldn't have to. but we can!
so make sure to let tumblr know you hate this. maybe you could include this interesting link (tw child abuse) about how Stable Diffusion was trained on some extremely serious crime. or these screenshots of Midjourney devs just sort of admitting what their whole thing is, which i got here but which have kinda been spread all over since January.
spite and anger can be forms of hope. that's all i have to say, or at least all i'm willing to type with my left hand tonight.
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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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now that reddit is selling their user's data to google next thing i'm waiting is for tumblr to announce about the midjourney AI deal folks were talking about in the dashboard (this is hearsay at this point but very believable in the current climate).
i registered in cohost.
i have mastodon and bluesky.
and i'm tired folks.
i'm a writer, i want to find a place to share my work and talk to people and be silly and also serious.
i don't know, eh.
and i am angry alright? on the people who don't give a single fuck about shit like this.
on the people who say "well they use our data anyway" and say that we the people who try to find better homes for ourselves are "naive" or we "would never be satisfied".
you know it's really easy to keep a user base satisfied.
don't sell their data to big tech.
ban bad actors to the best of your ability.
and improve the product for users, not for the ad companies.
but yeah, we're the "naive" ones.
i also don't want to blame those people because obviously we all signed up for this but damn doesn't it hurt.
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Potential theory: Matt is having a meltdown at predstrogen on twitter off sabbatical rn to deliberately distract from the fact that tumblr made a deal with Midjourney and is going to sell user data to make tumblr financially viable
Nah, that's giving him WAY too much credit. He honestly believes 1) he's in the right about everything with Predstrogen and 2) that AI is Great For Everyone
Like. He truly loves quick-and-broken releases of AI and if the deal is real (it is currently unconfirmed, but with good evidence) he'll probably announce it with glee thinking it'll be Good For The Platform.
He's also just got the emotional bandwidth of a dial-up modem. Like all rich white men, he is convinced he is the ultimate victim.
At this point, I'm pretty sure he DID personally ban predstrogen over hammer cars and the entire issue of her being a goddamn troll who encouraged the harassment of others is honestly coincidental. This is emphasized to me by his twitter meltdown citing NSFW content as the reason for her ban, even though her NSFW flags were successfully appealed.
No mention of her harassment of other trans people is being made! That, to me, reeks of "he did it for his ego."
I understand the desire to look for a smarter connection between these two things, but the man is a fucking moron. Genuinely.
Don't give him credit for your own cleverness. Just because you would be capable of doing a distraction gambit doesn't mean he is.
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Tumblr's new policy, and updates going forward
Yeah, I bet we all saw this coming, huh.
So, given tungl dot hell(tm)'s new deal with midjourney, I think pretty much all artists on tumblr are, well, not having a great time. Like deviantart, tumblr has provided a way to opt out from having your blog content scraped, but like deviantart, it's a little unclear what has already been shared before the opt-out went into place, and how much they'll actually work to stop machine trawlers from trawling opted-out blogs.
I'll put the tl;dr up front:
King of Shades will not be leaving Tumblr, but due to the new policy, I won't be posting full pages here anymore.
There's no point in taking down all the pages I've already posted. Deleting them from my page won't delete subsequent reblogs, and there's a pretty high chance that tumblr has already scraped them. (haveibeentrained.com seems to think I haven't been yet, at least. I don't think I really have a big enough following for that to happen, although I don't want to jinx it...) But I certainly won't be posting the full-size pages here anymore.
Instead, I think I'll go the Trying Human route and post a little preview of the update (possibly heavily watermarked; my computer can't run glaze/nightshade, unfortunately), so you guys will still get notifications, but you'll have to visit the ComicFury main website in order to read it. I'm very sorry for the inconvenience (although I will say that I think it's a much better reading experience over there)!
Speaking of which:
I have never and will never ask for any kind of compensation (other than your wonderful feedback, which I've just been absolutely blown away by) for doing this. Even putting legality aside, that's not why I'm here! However, if you've enjoyed this comic, ever thought that you might be willing to tip me on ko-fi if I had one, or even just want to continue having an internet that isn't entirely a corporate wasteland, I ask that you consider donating to ComicFury instead.
ComicFury is a relic of the old, good internet: it's been around for at least 15 years, and it's all hosted and managed by one guy (Kyo). Aside from his team of volunteer moderators, everything on this website is done by one person with a passion for supporting artists. I've chatted with him a little, and he's a great dude! Most of his operating costs are paid for out of pocket, and the site is currently hurting a little bit because it doesn't run ads, it doesn't have subscriptions or paywalled content, it doesn't have any corporate interference or monetization of any kind outside of his Patreon. And—perhaps most relevantly for this post:
I will cut right to the chase, we have decided not to allow AI-art based webcomics on the site. [...] As for our reasoning, there are obviously ethical concerns regarding the source images of most commonly used AI image generators (namely them just being scraped off the internet without anyones permission). But even beyond that, another concern is that due to the extremely low effort involved, webcomics of this nature could just over time completely drown out in numbers art by passionate people who put a lot of time into it , which would be a real shame. So we asked ourselves what would be better for the community, and we agreed that banning it would probably be the better thing overall.
—Kyo has been quite firm that he will not allow AI art to be posted to or scraped from any ComicFury domain. While this isn't a protection against huge web trawls or people putting someone's art in individually—there's not a lot anyone can do about that yet, even with tools like glaze and nightshade—it's a little peace of mind that the art posted there won't abruptly be sold en masse to the highest bidder.
The Patreon starts at $2/month, and Kyo has said that he doesn't mind people pledging for a short time and then dipping if they can't afford an ongoing subscription. If and only if this is something you can afford, and you want to continue seeing independent webcomics including King of Shades, please consider donating!
The Patreon is here. There's not much in the way of reward tiers, especially if you're not a member, but I posit that the real reward is being able to read free webcomics done by real humans as labors of love, without being advertised to or sold as the product. And also maybe the friends we made along the way. Or something.
Once again, there is no pressure, and no shame if you're not willing or able to give money. But if you've ever thought you might be willing to tip me for what I do, consider passing it along to the guy who makes it possible instead.
Thank you for your time!
P.S. Page 64 is coming, I promise! Recent developments kind of kneecapped my motivation for making online art 🙃
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[sighs tiredly]
WELL.... obviously im not thrilled about the AI deal tumblrs involved in, or the fact that you have to opt-out manually rather than existing accounts being automatically opted out.
I understand the idea of leaving/deleting in protest, sending the message that this kind of behaviour will discourage people from putting content on your site. And I respect that, I don't think it's necessarily misguided. Here's my cohost, for people who'd like to find me elsewhere! At the same time, protest seems like really the only reason to do that -- like, I don't think doing so preserves your stuff. My art is likely in the machine already, not because automattic made a deal with midjourney, but because my tumblr posts come up on google image searches -- they are not hard to snag. AI companies have already pulled content that was freely accessible and put it into their machines without asking; that's like 80% of my problem with AI art in the first place!
So, like, if I go "I'm moving to my own site" or "I'm only posting on cohost from now on!!" then is my data or my work any safer, beyond security through obscurity? It's wrong to use my work without consent, but practically, I'm not gonna be able to track down every generative model that uses my data to train without asking. As much as "we're making a deal to give your data to an AI model" sucks, especially when it's done so sloppily..... a situation where there's an explicit contract in place where the AI company (theoretically) has to get your agreement to use your data IS... WEIRDLY, a tiny step closer to what I want to happen???? Like it's not... GOOD..... but I dunno if it's actually Worse Than It Was Before? IDK....... just turning it around in my brain while I try to decide and I can't make a strong case for packing it up atm
I'm not a professional artist rn, I'm just here for fun, and I've opted out all my blogs, so for now I'll probably stick around and just keep an eye on everything and see how things go. BUT YEAH, if you're skeedaddling and want somewhere else to follow me, my cohost is shazzbaa and I have a carrd over here that I try to keep updated, so feel free to find me there too!!
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I saw some posts from ex-staff about Tumblr making a deal with midjourney (presumably to sell data and train AI). So that got me thinking, would you/do you protect your art with things like Glaze or Nightshade?
no because as it's been pointed out, the ai will just get better at interpreting it and it's an arms race i can't be bothered with. it's already a pain in the ass to upload my work to six different websites, i'm not adding another step
i, personally, am not threatened by AI in any aspect of my work, so it's not something i need to take countermeasures for. people that would jerk off to ai porn are not an audience i care about courting or theoretically losing
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The thing about generative AI stuff is that you probably don't need to expand copyright law to deal a significant blow against it? Like, famously, Midjourney got angry with Stability AI for taking their data (x) so like, pretty transparently even the big players in the field understand they're working off the "move fast and break things" approach of "better to seek forgiveness than ask permission".
Like, the big players are simultaneously saying the business model doesn't work unless they're allowed to take all this data without asking, but also that you can't take their data without asking.
Transparently, it's total bullshit.
Of course, even if that's true, it wouldn't stop (for example) Disney building a big image generator trained on Disney's own IP. But even copyright law can't save us there, that's more of a "hey, that's a dick move, pay your fucking artists" situation.
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the whole using tumblr images as a resource for ai image training wasn't initially that alarming to me simply because i think midjourney is making deals like this out of fear of lawsuits (stupidass move to have a deal with tumblr then but ok), image scrapers have been over anything posted in public already, it is, essentially, too late to get your work out of the machine.
but!!! This bit of information is just bizarre and entirely impossible to justify. First of all why is tumblr even holding on to things like private posts and private messages on deleted blogs? But secondly to hand that to another company in such a careless way is just awful. The very carelessness demonstrated in this latest oopsie does not inspire a lot of confidence in their even just anonymising the data in any meaningful way at all.
This just sounds like a disaster in the making. If tumblr was this careless, how easy is it to gain access to that data? Lots of people talk about entirely private things in private asks. Back in the day i exchanged adress info with people through private asks. I don't live there anymore but obviously i don't want my actual name attached to any old blogs.
And the idea of whatever was going through my mind during a deeply upsetting period of time when i already used tumblr too much like a diary and sometimes used private posts to vent about things i didn't want anyone else to see (but writing about it, especially in a different language, was helpful) is just... really awful.
I understand it was stupid to use tumblr that way to start with but yeah. Take that up with my mid 2010s self. i don't agree with her decisions either.
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