Sexually explicit AI-generated images of Taylor Swift have been circulating on X (formerly Twitter) over the last day in the latest example of the proliferation of AI-generated fake pornography and the challenge of stopping it from spreading.
X’s policies regarding synthetic and manipulated media and nonconsensual nudity both explicitly ban this kind of content from being hosted on the platform.
Awesome.
I have an honest question and would like to hear your (and others, of course) opinion:
I get the anger at the models that exist today. DallE, Midjourney and others were trained on millions of images scraped without consent. That itself is legally ambiguous, and will be interesting how courts rule on it (who am I kidding, they’ll go with the corporations). More importantly though, some of it (and increasingly more, as the controversy reached mainstream) was explicitly disallowed by the author to be used as training data. While I don’t think stealing is the right term here, it is without question unethical and should not be tolerated. While I don’t feel as strongly about this as many others do, maybe because I’m not reliant on earning money from my art, I fully agree that this is scummy and should be outlawed.
What I don’t understand is how many people condemn all of generative AI. For me the issue seems to be one of consent and compensation, and ultimately of capitalism.
Would you be okay with generative AI whose training data was vetted to be acquired consentually?
Not if it was used to undercut human artists’ livelihoods.
Hypothetical future where everybody gets UBI and/or AI becomes sentient and able to unionize, maybe we look back at this again.
I don’t think AI has a soul but there no reason it couldn’t be given one.
I’m curious what you mean by soul here, if you’re using it in a metaphorical sense or the religious sense
There’s a difference?
Well I’ve never heard of a religious person claiming AI could have a soul in the religious sense, and “soul” has other meanings than the religiously literal one, so yes?
Well how many and what difference sorts of religious people have you come across?
People hear “religious” and seem equate it with “Abrahamic malarkey it isn’t couth to call folks on.”
“Religiously literal” seems a contradiction of terms a well. There is truth and there is ways to understand and to convey that truth.
My initial position was that AI art would be exciting when a more carefully curated training data is used. … But after some talking with friends, I think we’re living in a world that has minimal respect for copyright already, except when a corporation has a problem with it and wants to bring down the hammer of the law.
It does hurt and its easy to be emotional about artists’ livelihoods being threatened by AI, they aren’t the only laborers threatened by job loss to automation, but this one hurts the most.
So now its just up to AI and artists to make interesting art with it. And for artists to adapt to this environment that has automated art tools.
omg Franzia haii :3
with how easy it is to run these models by now, the technology is certainly here to stay, and people will need to adapt, for sure. It only really makes sense to discuss AI in the broader context of capitalism, imo
Is that hatred, or fear, that I hear in this comment?
That’s “suppressing theft masquerading as art is awesome” you hear in that comment.
Ah, it was the third option, ignorance.
Oh, I’m not at all ignorant of how horrible generative " art " is, but I appreciate you checking on me.
If it’s horrible and it’s also “masquerading” as human art, what does that say about human art?
Are you mad at people who can draw or something?
No, I’m just pointing out the common contradiction I see in threads like this, where people argue that AI is both a big threat to “traditional” artists and also that AI is terrible compared to “traditional” artists. It can’t really be both.
The use of “horrible” in their comment isn’t necessarily about the quality of the art. Judging from context it’s probably more about the ethical considerations. So not really a contradiction.
Oh buddy come on you can’t actually be misunderstanding how they used “horrible.” They’re not saying it’s bad quality they’re saying it’s bad morally
I just notice alot of cheerleaders for this " art " form come from a place of vindictiveness against people with artistic talent and their positions are rooted more in a desire to see people the view as gatekeepers receive comeuppance than an honest defense of an ostensive tool.
It totally can. Take the example of fast food. Simultaneously a threat to traditional cooking and terrible.
Misunderstanding doesn’t make the comment into the type of gotcha you think it is