3 ms·

I think the communities involved here like digital artists, furries etc got a lot of attention hating on NFTs last year, so they are doubling down with the anti

by firasd 4y ago

I think the communities involved here like digital artists, furries etc got a lot of attention hating on NFTs last year, so they are doubling down with the anti-art-generator movement. But I don't think this one will be so successful. Like sure, maybe art community sites could require you to tag prompt-generated art just as a way to label things, but in terms of widespread usage the cat is out of the bag. Whenever I get on Twitter and see someone incoherently angry about people using Stable Diffusion I'm reminded of that quote from an Android in Blade Runner 2049: “You tiny thing. In the face of the fabulous new, your only thought is to kill it? For fear of great change? You can’t hold the tide with a broom.”

eat_veggies 4y ago
Sure, AI generated art is probably out of the bag, but to lump it in with NFTs and such is an interesting rhetorical move, since the only thing that really links them is their new-ness. That Blade Runner quote can be used to shut down any critique of an emerging technology precisely because it fetishizes new-ness for its own sake, and assigns it an agency of its own, inevitable like the tide. It becomes a cause that generates effects in our lives, and the only question is how we react. This robs us of our own agency as social/political/historical actors who can kill/change/improve/use/abuse technologies and decide how to incorporate them in our lives. People invoked the same language about things like television, and I find Raymond Williams's critique helpful: > If the effect of the medium is the same, whoever controls or uses it, and whatever apparent content he may try to insert, then we can forget ordinary political and cultural argument and let the technology run itself. It is hardly surprising that this conclusion has been welcomed by the 'media-men' of the existing institutions. It gives the gloss of avant-garde theory to the crudest versions of their existing interests and practices, and assigns all their critics to pre-electronic irrelevance (1974, 128)
- firasd 4y ago
  Well in this case the link between NFTs and AI art wasn't made by me, I'm just observing the overlap between the same online influencers/groups doing the same type of activism against two different phenomena. Sure I think there's always a conversation to be had about how to incorporate tech. Like Reddit banning celeb deepfakes is probably the choice I would have made as well if I set policy on the site. But what I'm noticing is over the top anger at usage per se. (Someone linked the 'reverse monet' tweet elsewhere in this discussion and the quote tweets there are unhinged.) That's what I'm saying can not be 'killed'--these breakthroughs in large language models
- Bakary 4y ago
  NFTs and AI art feel pretty similar in that it was obvious from their very inception exactly how they will be abused: relentless opportunistic spam.
Akronymus 4y ago
One of the biggest furry art archives has always banned art without much, if any, actual input from the human who created the artpiece. For example, game screenshots are banned almost universally, picture generated art is as well (something like picrew) 3d models aren't, assuming there is posing and such and so on. It seems a perfectly fine continuation to the existing rules to ban ai generated art.
- hadlock 4y ago
  Also, Art AI can't click on ads, which is probably, ultimately their main concern. If you replace all the monetized users with AI that can't buy things, the economic incentive to keep the website running disappears.
  - Akronymus 4y ago
    Oh,the website is mainly for hosting art and people looking at it. So, AI generated art wouldnt dirrctly impact ads.
henriquecm8 4y ago
Yesterday I saw a guy saying that Outpaint is nothing new, that photoshop was able to do it for years, I pointed it out that what photoshop does is extremely limited, and the results only look okay in small scale, the difference is night and day.

by firasd 4y ago

eat_veggies 4y ago

Sure, AI generated art is probably out of the bag, but to lump it in with NFTs and such is an interesting rhetorical move, since the only thing that really links them is their new-ness. That Blade Runner quote can be used to shut down any critique of an emerging technology precisely because it fetishizes new-ness for its own sake, and assigns it an agency of its own, inevitable like the tide. It becomes a cause that generates effects in our lives, and the only question is how we react. This robs us of our own agency as social/political/historical actors who can kill/change/improve/use/abuse technologies and decide how to incorporate them in our lives. People invoked the same language about things like television, and I find Raymond Williams's critique helpful: > If the effect of the medium is the same, whoever controls or uses it, and whatever apparent content he may try to insert, then we can forget ordinary political and cultural argument and let the technology run itself. It is hardly surprising that this conclusion has been welcomed by the 'media-men' of the existing institutions. It gives the gloss of avant-garde theory to the crudest versions of their existing interests and practices, and assigns all their critics to pre-electronic irrelevance (1974, 128)

firasd 4y ago
Well in this case the link between NFTs and AI art wasn't made by me, I'm just observing the overlap between the same online influencers/groups doing the same type of activism against two different phenomena. Sure I think there's always a conversation to be had about how to incorporate tech. Like Reddit banning celeb deepfakes is probably the choice I would have made as well if I set policy on the site. But what I'm noticing is over the top anger at usage per se. (Someone linked the 'reverse monet' tweet elsewhere in this discussion and the quote tweets there are unhinged.) That's what I'm saying can not be 'killed'--these breakthroughs in large language models
Bakary 4y ago
NFTs and AI art feel pretty similar in that it was obvious from their very inception exactly how they will be abused: relentless opportunistic spam.

Akronymus 4y ago

One of the biggest furry art archives has always banned art without much, if any, actual input from the human who created the artpiece. For example, game screenshots are banned almost universally, picture generated art is as well (something like picrew) 3d models aren't, assuming there is posing and such and so on. It seems a perfectly fine continuation to the existing rules to ban ai generated art.

hadlock 4y ago
Also, Art AI can't click on ads, which is probably, ultimately their main concern. If you replace all the monetized users with AI that can't buy things, the economic incentive to keep the website running disappears.
- Akronymus 4y ago
  Oh,the website is mainly for hosting art and people looking at it. So, AI generated art wouldnt dirrctly impact ads.

henriquecm8 4y ago

Yesterday I saw a guy saying that Outpaint is nothing new, that photoshop was able to do it for years, I pointed it out that what photoshop does is extremely limited, and the results only look okay in small scale, the difference is night and day.