Oh the Ai art generator has no "soul" and it's soy and reddit? This precious art form (illustrating things that other people pay you to, a medium dominated almost entirely by furries, porn, and furry porn) is being destroyed by the evil AI? I'm sorry that the democratization of art creation is so upsetting to you. I've brought dozens of ideas to life by typing words into a prompt and I didn't have to pay someone $300 to do so.
Hexbear: "Piracy is cool because you can get a copy of a thing while still leaving the original intact!"
Hexbear: "AI art generators literally steal the souls of the artists' work. and leave them with nothing but scraps."
The difference is who gets hurt. It's the reason that Hexbear likes shoplifting but hates wage theft. The problem isn't "taking things that don't belong to you", it's about reinforcing capitalism and hierarchy vs breaking it. Piracy is an individual choice, AI data scraping is systemic abuse of artists for the purpose of replacing them.
Then yeah, that's the problem. But you're talking about the difference between a 1000 employee company replacing their artists with AI and some geek with a computer who wants to generate neat images for their project. AI generators are just a tool, also subject to an individual choice. Our problem is with the end, not the means.
The means are not free from controversy. Many artists did not consent and were not asked whether they wanted their images used for such a project. If the AI were created solely from images the operator owned the rights to or made themselves, or from artists who wanted to contribute to the AI, I would understand your point, but as it is now AI is rooted in systemic theft. It's not that piracy is universally good or even universally neutral, it's more that companies have pushed their luck trying to "prevent piracy" and "protect intellectual property" so hard that it basically fucks everyone else over and piracy has emerged as a kind of push-back. I'm personally not much of a piracy defender, I basically don't pirate any games that aren't console exclusive and from at least 2 generations before the current one, and on PC I buy anything that's still up for sale (I mostly buy indie stuff).
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Pretty convinced that all the people against this are hardcore reactionaries. Ah yes, technological progress, that thing every leftist should be against! :anprim-pat:
Mechanized agriculture is putting so many serfs out of work, we must be against it! :kitty-cri-texas:
Yeah, this thread is frustrating. Like of course all technology developed under capitalism is abused and weaponized against the working class, if only there was some ideological movement fighting to abolish private ownership of the means of production... 🤔
Then you've got threads where people argue that art is subjective and there is no universal standard of judgement, but also AI art is intrinsically meaningless and lazy. You can always tell!!!!! If it's so worthless and empty then what threat does it pose to artists? (Also I swear I've heard that last rhetoric somewhere else, I can't quite put my finger on it... 🤔 )
And how about it stealing from artists? Is this website about to become pro copyright law? If I wake a painting in the style of Van Gogh or Picasso, is that plagiarism? How about copying the style of thousands of artists? If I'm painting an apple and take inspiration from every painting of an apple ever, is that even stealing art anymore, or an I just copying the shared concept of an apple?
I feel like the people carrying on about "experience" are just rehashing the "free will vs determinism" argument wrapped around art.
I mean who cares if the simulation is creating its own simulation?
Strong terf energy in those sorts of statements. :thinking-about-it: Its almost like its reactionary
Certainly has no parallels to trans people being purposefully misunderstood and sidelined for being 'mockeries and fabrications' of 'true women'.
YUP! Exactly. And I know it feels weird to compare real people to tech, but its such a reactionary tactic, both are extracted from some absurd puritanical values of what deserves to be """real""".
Yeah, obviously. I'm trans myself and it does peak my ear when I hear someone saying familiar things. If anything, it shows those people are susceptible to reactionary arguments. Its also telling that a lot of what people are saying relies strongly on mystic terms like 'inspiration' and 'real'. TERFs see cis women through a mystical lens as well.
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The invention of the paint brush is incredible weaponization, the only way to make art is to throw poop at walls.
They're literally stating that the relationship between artists and capital is being fundamentally altered as a result of the introduction of automation which we've seen in countless sectors already where the benefits are not shared amongst the working class but are instead siphoned off by the rich. To state that paint brushes are somehow equivalent to the relationship of workers and capital and that we must throw shit at walls instead is incredibly bad faith.
Your industrial agriculture example also ignores this fact that the problem is not inherently the technology, but the fact that the wealthy are taking any benefit that is gained while workers are left to starve.
I've already stated that holding the tech in common is important elsewhere. There are in fact open source versions of this tech, and everyone should use it.
I agree that it sucks that corporate interests can take art and sandblast the soul out of it to mold into something to generate more profit for themselves. I think remix culture however is based and cool. I think there's a definite line you can draw between the two.