(no subject)

[olivermoss]

* Guess what old and out of shape idiot jumped onto a high ledge to get a shot last night and then had to be 'okay now how do I get down?' I had to jump because the jeans I was wearing wouldn't stretch enough to let me step onto something that high. It was between my knee and thigh in height and... oh, I could have have like gotten a knee on it and stood up, couldn't I? Oh well, I had to get on my knees and slide off to get down.

Also how the heck did I make that jump?

Anyway, I visited the clones last night. Pictures soon. The problem with shooting them is that one of my pics from 2017 is just so good I don't know if I will ever top it. Still, they are a fun subject matter to try to get various angles and compositions on.

* For people still thinking that the current, trendy AI apps are creating new things because they've 'trained' on data sets, I present this obvious asset mash-up. There are multiple tells going on that the current big art AIs are just plagiarism on steroids. But in fan art spaces with smaller data sets it becomes painfully obvious:



For context, that is the most popular Stranger Things BTS pic mashed onto the background of Eddie's bedroom, with a shitty filter over it. Whether you consider this transformative enough to be art or not, it's fundamentally different from what people are claiming these computers are doing.

There have been other examples that have literally just been other people's fan art with that weird effect on it. I haven't been able to refind those, but it's possible they got deleted for being other people's fan art with a filter over it.

I keep wanting to make a long post about AI and how much of the hype is BS, but I keep feeling like I need to account for everything and I just can't spend the time looking into things. 'AI' gives me the heebie jeebies, but that is nothing compared to how creeped out I get by the way people talk about it, the void-embracing, dehumanizing rhetoric.... The 'this is our world now so you have to accept it' BS. But just one note from the longposts I will keep in my drafts... since 2010 when there is breaking news in the US, the first version of the article that gets published is written by computers. It's then tweaked or re-written by humans a few hours after going live. The people going 'OMG what I just read out loud in this youtube video was written... by a computer!! it's a new age' are clueless idiots and have read computer generated copy before. This is not the leap into FutureShock that people are selling it as.

Comments

[mistressofmuses]

The AI "art" "trend" gets my hackles up in a thoroughly unpleasant way.

And yeah, we can argue 5ever about what "like, art really is, man", but whether something AI generated counts or not, the WAY in which these things have been trained and WHAT the datasets consist of is SUPER FUCKING UNETHICAL. (Even the ones that do more than just putting a filter over an existing image, like your example here.)
The examples where it generates fake watermarks as an intrinsic aspect of "what art is" is... really weirdly dystopian in a sense. I don't know how to verbalize just WHAT about that is simultaneously funny, horrifying, and tragic.

I try not to be a dick about it, because I know plenty of people are just having fun spitting out weird looking images, and I try very hard not to play fun police. But... UGH I FUCKING HATE IT, OKAY.

And the dehumanizing aspect of a lot of the discussion really is deeply creepy to me... sort of the ultimate commodifying of art, taking the human aspect out as much as possible. (Except, of course, the data it's already stolen to train on - and outright declaring that none of the people who ACTUALLY created any of that matter.)

[olivermoss]

I am not going to be a dick to people about it, but they are paying to have a company suck up their data. Nothing about this is good. I just needed to vent a bit because all the info and articles are just so bad in so many ways. I need to stop looking at stuff about it and just be out of the loop.

The people who see this as good, or claim to, are so creepy.

[mistressofmuses]

Yeah. It's a HUGE amount of data already scraped, and even more being fed to it by the people using these programs and offering up their sets of selfies and such.

I've been really frustrated by most of what I've seen about it. I'm in agreement with artists (and some privacy advocates) who are really not happy about it, but every time I see discussion of THAT, it's accompanied by snide backlash shit about how THIS IS THE FUTURE, GET USED TO IT.

My current least favorite was about how this is socialism in art and anything other than delighted adoption of it is unforgiveably regressive. Because previously art was unfairly gatekept by those with the luxury of time and talent, which was discrimination against everyone else, and this finally gives "regular people" the tools to be artistic equals. Barf.

That's a creepy, shitty, soulless view of art. Not sorry to say it.

[olivermoss]

The whole 'this is the future, accept it' is not borne out by history at all. The start of the digital age mean we could all make exact, error-free copies of things and distribute them easily. But it wasn't the end of copyright. Piracy exists, but it's not nearly what it could be. I also have a spicier example involving AIs built to stalk people that are legal in Russia and former soviet states, but are extremely hard to access anywhere else in the world. Sure, some people in the US can still access it but it's roughly one millionth the problem it would be if we didn't decide that it was predatory and should go away. Also, being disallowed most places does kneecap how well the AIs work because they are expensive to maintain. Also, I could make a website with pictures of the insides of people's houses, but it would get taken down and I'd get into trouble.

These programs need a lot of data and money. They only exist if we allow them and feed them.

I am glad I haven't run into the socialism argument, because that is gross. I mean I guess if your idea of socialism is about dehumanizing people instead of creating a world where people thrive, sure. Also, it misses the idea of art as communication, community building or as beneficial to the person making the art.

[mistressofmuses]

That's exactly it... a lot of people just seem to want to believe these programs have sprung forward, fully-formed, truly with no human input... which is just... the opposite of true. Acting like they're some unknowable, uncontrollable force that we have to simply learn to accept is mind-bogglingly weird and stupid.

There is PLENTY of precedent on how these things can be controlled and limited, and how they should be when they start to infringe on other people's rights! I realize people have had a very loose attitude toward creative ownership, and there's a lot of entitlement toward visual art and such... but creative rights do actually exist.

Yeah, the "this is social justice, because "not being a skilled artist" is an axis of oppression" argument was really just the worst take I've seen.

As usual, I know I sound like a fucking hippie or whatever by saying that I think art is MORE, that it has an inherent significance that AI generated outputs lack... It's the worst extremes of the sort of soulless commercial artwork, except at least there was usually a person involved in making those. Art is communication, and community, and expression... and while there are people claiming the same of AI art, I strongly disagree that it is genuinely any of those.