Uh, yeah. Read through the entire other thread before saying anything else.

Congratulations, though. You've just vomited up the main three or four dipshit arguments in favor of helping yourself to others' work.

And no - not a fucking thing like Photoshop - but I'm guessing you don't know how to use Photoshop, so I can't fault you for not knowing what you're talking about.

The point is that it's theft, disposable garbage, and a debasement of human creativity. For those reasons, you may or may not be getting the picture that these images aren't welcome here. But I don't speak for everyone and I'm not going to make a determination about whether or not they're allowed. Me, personally, I think it's bullshit, and I look down on anyone using it.

most people i've shown ai art to are welcoming, just a few angry vitriolic people such as yourself seem to have a problem, so Ill keep posting my ai art, please and thanks. its an art revolution.

heres a few pics i made based on your profile pic, feel free to replace it, enjoy

And you're gone. Goodbye.

EDIT: That was just beyond the pale, I'm sorry. My avatar isn't my art, but it is someone's, and this guy doesn't get to jack it for some kind of revenge porn power move.

And so, he won't be coming back here anytime, ever. That's no one you want around.

This type of energy and reaction is completly unacceptable Bill / Trav. I will make sure this is brought up with all the core members, seniors and other all admins.

Bring it up to whomever you please. His last post crossed the line.

I'm not going to tolerate anyone's petty and malicious weaponization of their $3 Midjourney subscriptions. AI goofs think it's acceptable to post images online that are trained on an artists' work - as payback for taking public anti AI stances. It's a thing, whether you know it or not, and it isn't happening here.

He crossed the line and he's gone. That's the end of the story.

What, so you perceived his post as a "revenge porn power move", then you show him by doing the ultimate butthurt power move?

I know how strongly you feel about this machine learning art craze. I agree that feeding it your avatar was disrespectful. And i know that you can basically do whatever you want here, however you want it.

I just think it's a total kindergarten move to permaban someone over this. Completely out of proportion. You could've banned them for a week or a month, showing the same amount of authority but less of a dictator personality.

Damn, this got out of hand pretty quickly. I understand his approach wasn't the friendliest of all, but is banning him the best way to go forward Bill? While I share a lot of your sentiments on this type of ML-generated content, I do have to admit psychosomaticon made a good point about disabled people now having access to this type of a creative outlet which has been hitherto inaccessible to them. Some people find a life-saving escape from reality in art, and that's a delicate issue that has to be discussed in more depth before dismissing it completely with a permaban.

It hurts me to see such negative energies floating around here. The Nex has always been a warm, welcoming place for me, and I really hope all the mods and Trav can sort out a clear direction for the future in that regard.

Love & Light

A gentle reminder. Bill was intentionally antagonized by a "kindergarten move" and responded in kind with a "kindergarten move." I'm not sure why we're surprised. I also don't blame him. It seemed a bit petty to feed his avatar image into the AI art platform, and they went out of their way to do it and then share it.

While I think it's a little harsh, I won't be attempting to change his mind.

Also, if we're beginning to view this whole AI art trend as a form of plagiarism, then why are we defending it being here at the Nexus?

One love

Edit:



While I agree and support the expression of disabled individuals, this is unfortunately a red herring that detracts from the issue at hand.

FWIW (probably very little) I also think the ban was pretty overboard. It'd maybe be one thing if Bill's avatar wasn't just a Gravity Falls screenshot and was being used to like, impersonate or maybe degrade Bill making it obscene somehow, but it's literally just a couple abstract reimaginings of a photo that doesn't even belong to Bill himself.

Though I also personally don't see AI art being any more plagiaristic or bad than an individual training themself on various artists styles. It's essentially the same thing but faster, maybe devoid of a human touch but if anything that should make it a bit less threatening when it comes to quality. Not to mention, it currently can't even be copyrighted (and that should remain as such).

If anything, it seems like quite a novel tool that opens a large door for novices and disadvantaged peoples to generate reference pieces and assets for use in larger personal works. Any threats that AI art presents towards more established artists seems more emergent from the reality of capitalist wage-slavery that doesn't provide for artists' (or anybody's) basic needs without those people being sufficiently and "superiorly" "of value", rather than the utilization AI. Unless it's literally calling for the harm of others, art should never be considered in and of itself a "threat". But that's just my 2 cents. Sorry if I broke the "no politics" rule, at the end there, but I'd argue that any debate on AI art like the one had here is inherently tied to our political and material reality.

Bill is quite literally the guard dog of the Nexus. Doesn't matter what any of us thinks about it except Trav.

If a person taunts a guard dog with a steak and the dog bites them, who is responsible...?

Locked

One love

Fine, whatever. He can come back in a month. But trust that the next time he pulls some bullshit like this, he won't be coming back.

Ok guys, here´s my take:

Bill Cipher is an artist, who has spent a long time perfecting his craft. He is obviously affected by the whole AI art thing, and it´s understandable he doesn´t like it and wants to voice his opinion on it.

At the same time, we do have a thread already where the whole idea of AI art, and the fact that it ´steals´ from a lot of different artists, is discussed. I think we should keep the philosophical/ethical discussion to that thread.

This thread was started by psychosomaticon to share some of the images he comes up with using AI. Ethical discussion apart, some people may be interested in it. Also, unless The Traveler says this is banned in this forum, this is ok to post. I personally wouldn´t want this subforum to be flooded with AI images but this is not the case.

As for psychosomaticon, his snarky post was IMO unnecessary, if he knew Bill Cipher is personally affected by the whole AI imagery thing, to use his own avatar for it in such a way, it´s obviously a combative thing, which is against our attitude. That being said, I personally think it deserved a warning, not a ban... But how moderation here works is that each mod has the liberty to act as he sees fit and then we can have a discussion afterwards and decide if there needs some course correction.

I will talk to other mods about it but my take on it is to reduce psychosomaticon ban to just a couple of days, then remove all the discussion posts from this thread (including this one) and open it back up. Bill Cipher should imo avoid checking this thread if he doesn´t like it, and also taking in account his opinion is already pretty clear on the subject matter, and at the same time psychosomaticon should avoid being snarky and poking the wasp´s nest, since combativeness is not needed here. Then we can all live happily ever after

At work so this will be short: If we can see and agree that this is plagiarism, then should we be promoting its use and sharing on the nexus?

One love

Just to be 100% clear here, I did not ban anyone for posting AI "Art". I banned this member for going out of his way to take my avatar (again, not my art, but it is someone's) and run it through his AI jukebox - completely out of spite and with the intention of shutting down any dissenting conversation.

It's a popular move amongst AI fuckheads. It's a malicious and implicit threat that says "shut up, or I'll flood the internet with disposable bullshit that looks just like your work". I don't play that shit. I don't tolerate it, and if I'm in a position of showing the door to assholes who engage in this obviously toxic and disgusting behavior, I will every single time.

But whatever. I thought the Nexus position was to not support plagiarism and copyright infringement, and I would think that the community could agree that engaging in these things completely out of spite never has a place here.

That's a very good question. And also a difficult one. I mean, promoting is one thing obviously, but i think we're now moving towards whether it should even be allowed here or not.

If at some point people would start using bots like chatGPT to make comments here, we would probably all agree that they'd be crossing all the lines.

But these images will likely start circulating all over the internet and at some point someone might share a picture with us he saw somewhere, not even knowing that it's AI generated.
Or some AI images may become popular memes and a part of our collective memory, in wich case a ban on them would be quite futile.

So if i rephrase your question as:"can and should we ban the use of these images here alltogether?" then i must say that i just don't know.
We could ban them from the art/music/literature section of this site, because plagiarism obviously isn't art.
But the site as a whole...that's realy a tough question.

I don't see it being decided yet anywhere. If that is the right thing to do I'm sure you people will figure it out. If need any help or discussions, we can do that in a healthy manner aswell.

Some replies here state that we are defending Midjourney, and I don't really see that. Just a lot of ppl like a peace of mind. Most of the pm's I've gotten about this were asking for us to prevent something like this from happening, instead of letting it escalate than act on it. Lot's of ppl have a passion for this place

As a side question, before I get erased here, do you people think torrenting, or sci-hub like websites fall under the same umbrella as midjourney?

Agreed.



I'm not really saying to ban it. But show and tell why we have ethical issues with it. It's hard to just "let it be" though, hence why I shared the discussion of the other Midjourney thread with the OP.

And I understand there's a high potential for all of this start making its way more and more through the internet and life in some ways, but I don't think that precludes us standing by our principles to say something about it.

All the same, there are no easy answers here, and I definitely realize that.



In ways they are similar; theft is theft, but I think a bigger implication in the overall issues raised with AI art are the "big guy vs little guy scenarios" in which independent artists are up against corporate and hedge fund moguls.

One love

https://wiki.dmt-nexus.me/Attitude_Page

You guys know how this is stealing from artists, and destroying creatives careers, and you just don't care. At least people like Bill understand how bleak of a future AI is for us creatives and are far better at articulating it than I am.

That was a deliberate attempt to obsfucate the reality of the situation by invoking a protected class- and I am going to venture a guess that they are neither a member nor an advocate of that population- and it is a straw man. I took that as a sign of the OPs character, and not in a good way. Honestly it was that statement that caused me to write the OP completely off as having anything worthwhile to discuss in any rational way.

But regardless of that cheesey move, let dude come back,and let them post their garbage, we can respond in kind and maybe eventually they will get sick of not being applauded and for being called out as a art thief and stop doing it. Or not. Maybe karma will get em and someone will steal their jpegs from here, run em through MJ and sell them to phish or something for a million bucks?

Fair point, I agree he seems to have used it with that intent. However, it is still a topic that merits some discussion that is completely detached from OP and this thread entirely.

On the other hand one can argue these people have been dealing with this kind of limitation for a very long time now, they can hold on for a bit longer until a valid and working artist compensation model is implemented.

I'm on board with you and the rest that expressed a similar POV. No point in beating a dead dog I guess.