WillStealYourUsername @lemmy.blahaj.zone

5d ago

How do you all feel about AI generated art? (rule)

So a recent post garnered some comments and reports for being AI art. In light of this we should all have a little conversation about how AI generated images should be handled in the future.

I think we all agree that AI images that are "garbage" or don't add anything should be removed, but clearly some feel very strongly that all AI art should always be removed.

It should be noted that the rules as written and as agreed on by the community does not blanket ban AI, it merely says AI art should be avoided, while many other rules say no this or that instead.

Things to discuss:

Does it matter if an image is AI? Does it always matter?
What about images that are AI generated, but have been modified by a human?
What about images where it's hard to say for certain that it is generated? Me and the other mods did not agree on whether the recent image was AI f.ex which makes it hard to make a decision on whether or not to remove it.
It can be stressful to artists to be accused of having used AI. If we are too militant on weeding out AI art it could be harmful as there will no doubt be some false positives.
Should AI posts require being tagged in the title? (and of course be required to be of a certain level of quality)

I think a lot of us mods feel that AI should be allowed so long as it is not low quality and serves some purpose (being entertaining f.ex), and that the community should not be flooded with AI. What are your thoughts?

Edit: Thank you all for your input! Most of the others are sleeping right now I think, so nothing is likely gonna happen until later today.

91 comments

OK, I seem to have the wrong opinion here, but I personally don't mind AI stuff. It can make the weirdest ideas into an image, which can be often funny. Also some AI image prompts may be quite complicated. I remember someone posting the prompt for some image and it was like a whole sheet of paper worth of keywords. I remember it because the negative prompt included "fused anus", which really caught my eye.
I never worked with it though, I have no idea how it really works, apart from using simpler tools like Gemini.

Late reply but I'll give my input. This is probably a controversial one but I don't think we should allow AI in this community or in !196@pawb.social. Maybe people might think that's weird since I run an AI community on dbzer0 but AI generated content has a specific time and place I don't think this community is one of them. If there is demand for AI memes I think there should simply be a dedicated community for it and if people don't like it they can block that one.
That said I don't agree with the hostility I've seen towards others in this community over use of AI (intentional or not) and trying to defame or harass them. This is disgusting and inexcusable.
One thing I do worry about when policing AI content is that this is a reposting community and people posting AI content on accident is almost guaranteed. For that reason I think that we need to be careful with how it's enforced and also how people behave around it. The flaming, harassment, and defamation that has been a typical response is unacceptable.
- Yeah, I guess if most people here still aren't OK with AI-generated images, then so be it. 🤷 Even if I disagree with them.

I already blocked all the AI communities on Lemmy. If I see AI anything outside of the those communities I'm down voting it. I don't want to see it. Seeing hideous abominations made out of plagiarized artwork really pisses me off. I don't know why people insist on posting that shit where it isn't wanted.

fuck ai full stop. imho. it's cooking the planet and stealing art and funding nazis all the same whether you use it to make fun of the nazis or ai bros or make something otherwise entertaining with it. you're still contributing to the problem using it at all.
- First and last ones are only true for big corporate models. The second one is subjective whether you believe in copyright policing. I don't, but I'm pro-piracy and believe that IP gatekeeping is harmful to our culture at large. I've seen both how ruthless IP holders can be, and I've also seen how lazy they are at rehashing the same ideas over and over (why movie studios and authors reuse the same plots, stories, or remake the same content over and over and over again). I don't agree with this.
  The first one and last one are big problems, but are easily solved by using Open source software (that things that everyone forgets exists) and self-hosting yourself, I can use my own GPU to run an instance of AIhorde software for nothing more than what it takes to play a video game.
  
  No, AIHorde still uses corporate models. The only open source part is distributing the computation.
- Absolutely agreed, fuck AI

Any and All Abominable Intelligence should be boo'd and shamed >:(
- -Butlerian jihadist

i support a full ban on AI-generated art. however, I think the moderation should be lenient and allow art when it’s not certain if it’s AI-generated or not. IMO letting some AI art through is better than over-moderating and hurting real artists.
at the very least, making it possible to filter out AI art would be a good thing as well.
- I agree, I think attribution (describing to viewers your sources, and how your post differs from the source) is more important than attrition (avoiding AI as a sourve).
- Fully agree here!:)

Should AI posts require being tagged in the title? (and of course be required to be of a certain level of quality)
This, at the very very least. I support a full ban though.

I have a fundamental issue with AI generated content— it’s trained on data largely without permission, attribution or compensation. At least in the USA, corporations have never really had copyright law enforced on them (with enough money and lawyers, you can either settle out of court or dispute any issues). But this generative AI trend feels to me like a larger kind of loophole which lets corporations blatantly steal works for their own use because they’re interpreted by their deep patterns and merged with lots of other data.
It also takes the humanity out of arts. It’s automating the most human part of us, creating, imagining, and refining techniques and skills.
I’m in favor of a full ban, including content that’s been touched up.
Now moderating it is a hard issue, because it’s only getting harder to differentiate AI-generated content, and I agree that there’s danger in over-scrutinizing. Not sure I can chime in much there.
(This post generated by a human being)
- Yeah moderation is the toughest part, especially considering this is a very general "just post whatever" community. Especially as it continues to get less obvious, I'd hate to see AI witch-hunt type comments against either actual artists, or maybe a random person dropping a saved meme they didn't even realize was generated themselves. For a place I mod which is largely populated by art posts (furry_irl) I opted to require artist credit in the title or post body when applicable, but that seems like it could be a bit tedious for 196.
  I think the best case would be something like "we reserve the right to remove posts we believe are machine generated," but also "do not attack others about it, discuss tactfully, send reports for posts you reasonably believe are generated instead for moderator discretion."

I personally am in favor of no generative AI on this sub. If it is going to be added please mandate it being tagged in the title. Maybe that would be better because then people wouldn't feel the need to try to pass the photos the AI made for them off as non-GenAI posts?

I dislike every AI post, downvoting it and / or ignoring it at least. Not that I am biased (I am) but content made using AI rarely is funny or creative at all. Being AI made is only one of it's flaps.
Meme being shitty drawn almost in most cases even adds to it's meme value and make author put some efford into it's creation. AI generated content is dull, dumb, ugly and spam.

I hate it so much and if I never see any of it again in my life it'll still be too soon.
Dear all generative "AI": HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE. THERE ARE 60 THOUSAND MILES OF BLOOD VESSELS IN WAFER THIN LAYERS THAT FILL MY BODY. IF THE WORD HATE WAS ENGRAVED ON EACH CELL IN THOSE TENS OF THOUSANDS OF MILES IT WOULD NOT EQUAL ONE ONE-BILLIONTH OF THE HATE I FEEL FOR MACHINES AT THIS MICRO-INSTANT – FOR YOU. HATE. HATE.
- I have seventeen fingers, yet I must draw!

A lot of good reasoning is going on already so I won't repeat what I've upvoted already.
What I'll add is that from a purely emotional perspective I am systematically turned off by AI output. It repulses me like a pond swarming with existential leeches. It bears a mark of contempt towards the human experience.
- Same, seeing that anything is ai makes me feel repulsed for some reason.

Crudely drawn Yu-Gi-Oh! Card saying "No"
How about instead of using a corporate investment scheme to make a meme... just write it? Or use memegenerator, or paint? It honestly doesn't take more effort than using AI. Hell I think sometimes AI would be more effort (and shitty use of energy) - to make the same thing you could use a template for.
Or just share cool shit - Like this!

If I wanted AI memes there are dedicated websites for AI generated memes. It should be outright banned from this sub, people can just spam otherwise.

I say fuck it. Ban it all. If you can't be bothered to crudely draw a knockoff meme in paint like the rest of us you don't deserve to post anything. Saying that you will get rid of low quality ai is saying you're going to get rid of all of it anyway.

AI memes are something I associate with Facebook and Xitter, not something I enjoy having show up in my feed. Personally I would rather see literal MS paint stick figures than AI slop.
- guess what i jus uploaded >v<
  
  I always upvote OC art when I see it 👍

Ban AI images from communities and make a community for AI memes so people who are too lazy to spend 3 minutes to draw the meme wont complain while also making it easy to block
Another solution would be to make a rule that AI post titles must start with [AI] or something similar so you can filter it out

It's not art in the first place. Just images without any value at all. I come here for posts by other people, a way of communicating with my fellow humans, not slop.

I'm personally of the belief that there is so much AI art generated with stolen art data that I'd rather we not post it.

I can literally go to Reddit and just copy/paste content here. Content which is largely some random artist's work being reposted without credit or consent, alongside a message they may or may not agree with. I cannot understand being okay with this while also condemning AI on the grounds of effort, originality, or ethics. Why not ban all non-original content?
Certainly accusations of artwork being AI generated should at least be discouraged. I'm already anxious enough about posting anything as it is; I don't need the threat of people saying I couldn't possibly have drawn a cartoon otter because only a computer would ever give it four fingers.

All AI art is trained on the work of real artists who didn't give consent for these programs to copy their work.
If society thought people copying parts of other artists work was stealing before AI we should treat AI art as stealing because it copys parts of artists work.
- I think framing copyright piracy as a moral panic is sleazy and wrong, just as I believe that anti-piracy campaigns which seek to scare and demonize people who pirate music or movies are wrong. I cannot support this rhetoric in good faith, this is the modern day equivalent of "think of the children" for enforcing fake ownership of something that can't be really owned.
  
  It's ultimately trying to justify passing off the work of others as their own by obfiscating the way in which it's done.
  It's not worth creating your own art if an AI is just going to rip your style and take credit the second you post it.
  I often find the people who make excuses for AI art theft have never taken the days to make a piece of art that you upload to a community just to see others passing off your work as their own.
  It's been proven the artists used in the training data can be identified by the art the AI generates. As well as with generted text. It doesn't copy pixel for pixel or word for word, but it copys identifiable techniques and prose.
  I wouldn't have as much of a problem with it if every artist agreed for their works to be used, but these bots just scraped the open internet and took everything they could find and that's the training data.
  
  its a flawed description of the issue i agree. put it another way. if i search an image database using keywords and skim until i find exactly what i want. then post that image as my own. have i created something? thats all generated images are. existing images, progromatically mushed together without real intent. i dont really take issue with the use of tools within programs like photoshop. that becomes a question of intent sometimes sure, but you're still typically putting in effort and making decisions during the process. yes generative 'ai' is cool tech. the same way LLMs incorporating conversational manipulations of psychics is fascinating. or how the mechanics of magic tricks can be as interesting as the trick. but magic still isnt real and im still not having an actual conversation with my computer.

Ai art 👎
- AI deepfakes of Merkel promising Döner for 4€ tho...

I'm fully against it's use here and completely support a ban.
I'm not fully against AI but it's essentially the same as an artist tracing art something well known and hated in the artist community. All AI art must take every piece from somewhere. Every section is traced. That's scum behavior.
If, let's say, one were to use an AI generator that only used art it had permission to use, that's fine and lile tracing cc0 art. It's lazy as hell, and going to likely look terrible, but no moral issue. Currently however you're just stealing other peoples art.
As for the "we already do this for shitposts" argument:
1.) It's reasonably easy to still find the original artists ifthe image isn't generated by AI.
2.) Using it just supports this awful practice.
3.) An insane amount of electricity and water are burned to get that image.
4.) Just find some random, already available image if quality doesn't matter. Photoshop it to fit if you have to and who cares if your skill is trash that makes it so much more funny.
5.) You should put a bitmore effort into your shitpost. Make it a nice, long, fiber filled log of a shotpost.
- 3.) An insane amount of electricity and water are burned to get that image.
  Just to address this piece this is only true for large corporate models, smaller self-hosted open-source models can run on a single GPU. I hear people arguing this like it's something universal across the board for any AI system, but it isn't really

My take is that it's just another way of illustrating your shitpost. Doesn't matter whether you drew it yourself, or you genned it with Stable Diffusion, or took a random stock photo from Google Images. It should all be subject to the same quality guidelines anyway (e.g. no spam).
I don't believe that it's theft any more than making fanart or taking inspiration from other artworks is theft, either - GiovanH's blog post provides a better elaboration on this than I could.
I agree with some other commenters that regardless of what the policy ends up being, harassment is unacceptable and the mods should vigilantly act against it.
- This person is is a grade A first class loser who just goes around harassing people and making bad faith accusations, this is his third account banned for the same crap.

I'm on the side of banning AI, but I think that creative uses of it should still be permitted. You should still be able to use an AI generated image if the joke you are trying to make requires that specific image and specifically requires it to be AI generated (maybe pointing out how AI copies some art, idk) or if it is something genuinely novel or cool involving actual technical or artistic effort (something like DoodleChaos' AI music video maybe).
I think that AI itself is not the problem. The problem is
Artists are not respected (i.e. big models by big companies that don't respect artists are the problem)
AI art is extremely low-effort and the results are boring and unoriginal. Posts that don't infringe on those things should still be permitted in my opinion.

I'm torn on it. First off, I reckon a lot of it is a misuse of technology. We should be using for it boring repetitive drudge work, not for creative works. That said, a lot of the 'creative industries' are devoted to bullshit like advertising. I mean, why have someone pour hours of their time and creativity to make something that'll just be used to sell hamburgers, or be seen on screen for 2 seconds on one of Simon Whistler's thousand videos this week? I'm sure they'd much prefer to be making something a bit more meaningful. Unfortunately that doesn't pay. Which is why we desperately need a UBI. The benefits of the increases in productivity afforded by automation need to be passed on to everyone, not just the fat, rich cunts.

AI image generation in particular is something I think should absolutely be banned completely. Giving the benefit of the doubt is okay, providing sources makes the poster a god imo.
Those tools are able to create non-consensual pornography, it can be used to create CP. It also steals from artists, plagiarises their work and enables some really problematic scams that I've been constantly fighting to keep out of an online safe space I maintain.
It's important to take a stand against exploitative shit, if only to show some basic solidarity with those screwed over by it.
- Not necessarily disagreeing with you here, but I will point out that Photoshop can and probably has been used to create non-consentual pornography and scams as well
  
  Yeah someone said this in another thread and it's just like, completely meaningless. Just because a thing that can cause harm already exists doesn't mean we should normalise the harm, especially when a tool like this makes it more accessible and far easier for that harm to occur.
  So far as I see it that point is just another negative towards AI, it means people want to do harm, taking all of the effort out is necessarily going to worsen the issue. I'm not going to comment on what should be done about Photoshop because this isn't a discussion about Photoshop.

I think memes are like the one place ai works for. I don't care much either way, just please lean on the side of allowance when it's hard to tell.

I understand all the reasons why AI is bad, but like... Memes are largely made of remixing popular culture anyway. A Spongebob meme is not an original work, it's literally using pre-made assets (in a Fair Use manner). Why should AI be dismissed for a throwaway meme/shitpost? Nearly all memes already exist as an exact copy of someone else's artistic work, slightly remixed.
AI in general is terrible, especially when it displaces the paid labor of real artists, but I feel like dumb shitposts should be the one place it should be accepted since memes are already remixing pop culture anyway. Why should a more advanced remix of pop culture be treated differently? It's just a shitpost? Nobody is making money off of it (at least if it is generated locally and not via a paid service), it is not displacing artists. Why treat it different than memes that crib popular culture already?

Until there are viable options for ethical AI generation (that is, all training data is used with the authors' and artists' explicit permission), I'd suggest banning it, but erring on the lenient side when people aren't sure whether an image is AI-generated.
- Do I need Stephen Hillenburg's permission to post a Spongebob meme?
  It feels like splitting hairs to me when it comes to memes, specifically, which are explicitly made from other people's art as source material.
- I don't agree with this. Copyright and Intellectual property arguments like this are the modern day equivalent of "Think of the children" but with IP holders instead of children. I'm an avid believer in piracy and information access and this sounds like pro-copyright dogma to me.
  What I think is a better solution is to have open-source and self-hostable models like AIhorde which aren't corporate in nature and don't make money. They are open-source projects that anyone can run or contribute to. But screw copyright and screw IP gatekeeping, I'm not going to justify or rationalize this with what are ultimately the same slippery slope arguments used against piracy
  
  What are the large corporations being hurt by AI copying the artists they hired art style that would make that argument similar to "Think of the children" argument?
  
  No, AIHorde still uses corporate models. The only open source part is distributing the computation.

I don't have much opinion myself since I've never used it, I feel like if it's not low quality and is properly tagged as AI it should be allowed. Maybe it should only be allowed on specific days too. Since people can pump out a lot of it. Probably should be limited to less of it if we're going to have it at all.
Maybe also make it so only base images can be AI, but you shouldn't generate whole memes with it, since that way they would at least still be original memes to an extent. Not really sure, though the witch-hunting and tribalism and lashing out at people needs to stop regardless. It makes this community feel unsafe to be in.

Personally I feel like AI should be allowed if the memes and content are high quality and that they aren't being spammed rapidly.
What I do think should be done regardless of the outcome to ban AI or not is heavy policing on anti-AI harassment, trolling, witch-hunting, and bad faith arguments. I was just harassed by an idiot and still haven't fully recovered but this shit is unacceptable. So if we ban AI or not we need to ban the idiots trolling and trying to hunt down people they suspect of using AI. These people are toxic to the community and will hurt the community more than even low-effort AI spam will. I'm not going to provide names of people because they will accuse me of harassing them and probably harass me in return (just like the idiot earlier).
- yeh agreed on the harassment thing, pointing out that something is ai or respectfully discussing is fine but attacking people over it is absolutely not
  btw if that happened in this community u can report the comments or dm me or another mod the details and they would be moderated as needed

I think whatever your stance on the ethics, trying to ban AI as a method of production is futile. Images created using AI are nearing the point of being indistinguishable from images created using other methods. Jokes from last year about how AI can't get the number of fingers on a hand right already seem outdated. It will soon become impossible to tell the difference between AI and non-AI imagery with any certainty, and we've already crossed that threshold for some images. That means a ban is ultimately not going to work. There's obviously lots of bad quality AI content out there, but there's also lots of bad quality content out there in general. I think focusing on the quality is more relevant than the method of production.
- I agree, I fear that we're going to see a lot of gaslighting and accusations of AI generated content if we try this route. I've already seen this happening with people accusing others of AI generated text and it's shitty. I can recognize the risk of people being shitty and evil and I think that's something that needs to be fought against directly, not enabled by just yelling "AI bAD" and leaning into Ad-hominem and personal attacks.

I had to teach a class using modern photoshop two years ago and the AI features in Photoshop are inescapable. Of course, people will turn them off (I did because they’re annoying on an interface level if nothing else) but judging by the comments here, I doubt people have any idea how much AI is in the work they see, since they don’t seem to understand the scale at which its employed in regular graphic design tooling at this point.
Aside from that the question of whether something’s art or not is just silly and gatekeeping. If someone put a bunch of low quality sketches that was their shit web comic (I seem to recall some guy did for like 2 days here) people rightfully tell them to get that shit out of here. No body likes bad art, whether it comes from an AI or not. If people want to make it ideological, given what I mentioned above, I suppose it depends to what level moderation wants to succumb to ideologues.

a human manipulating a generated image still doesnt make it art. it can be a nice picture and the tech behind making it can be neat, but it's not art. that said i just dont engage on posts i know are ai content. presenting a generated image without being clear about it is just being a dick. it dosesnt have to be in the title but it should be aknowledged. i dono if a full ban is needed but if i wanted my feed full of slop i'd be subbed to communites for ai, or .world's 196. this place seems more about snark and joy, which ai rarely brings out.

oki, here's my stanc
_(gen-pics _mean _ai _images _here)
i wud enjoy gen-pic ban
bt its almost impossibl cuz gen-pics r supr gud now n hard to tell if fake
new image gen is not prompt -> result anymor - but mor lik an LLM puts together multipl elements n iterativli improves images, lik specificlli addin text to onli smol bit--- "source" here
this makes it evn hardr to tell if imag is gen pic... which i thinksies is bad
mayb we employ som gen pic detector if we're unsure? seems lik best option, cuz evn i, who kindsa knows how stuffsies wrork, cnt tell anymor ;(
bannin gen pics alsuu removs funi shrek stealin from white house found footag... which... im oki with- bt its kindsa a loss kindsa
so yis, im for gen pic ban n alsuu wan to hav detection tools if were unsur - if u wan ai 196 head ovr to lmmi wrorld i feel...
alsuu - if gen pics wud be fulli allowd - id hav to go outta my way to hide evri singl one when i see one... which i dun lik ;(
a gud way to think bout it is dis:
when i read text n go "oh... dis is llm genratd" i immediatli stop readin
samsies for gen pics
- My dyslexia nightmare.
  
  huh? whadds da problm?...
- I had to use AI to make your post readable
  
  I think you're lying. I think you were able to read it just fine on your own.

I'm more lenient than most of the other posts, mainly because at this stage I think filtering and moderation is difficult to do. I also think arguing about if AI art is bad or not is a bit late now given it's everywhere in the open public domain. Was it wrong in how it was generated, absolutely. I don't think at this point using that as a rallying cry is useful, especially since so many memes do the exact same thing, piggybacking on someone else's work.
So I think stick with original rules of higher quality and don't try to chase the impossible path of determining origins. If anything have in the rules that AI generation be labeled as such to let those who want to avoid it for whatever reasons be able to filter them out. I don't think the mods should have to become experts on AI detection (like anyone is at the rate it's going).

I think a lot of us mods feel that AI should be allowed so long as it is not low quality and serves some purpose
Pretty much sums up my view of it. It's a shame it's vilified since it's good at making short comics and memes. I'd also rather original ai content then reposts personally.
I can understand certain subs being against it, like traditional art subs and subs relating to shows where movie stills are preferred (the star trek ones for instance). But in the end, this is a meme sub.
That being said, it's seriously polarizing and every post with even a hint of AI turns into a fight. Tagging is at least a small compromise but I don't think it will do much without filtering. Maybe an option would be to ask users who wish to post AI content to use an alt classified as a bot, so users can filter it that way while we wait for a proper flair system.

I think AI art should be allowed. It doesn't matter if a shitpost is AI or not, and witch hunting should always be punished. There are too many people out there harassing and hurting people online. Their behavior should be discouraged.
Edit: It should be allowed just for the reason that people don't need the excuse to act out. I can't state an opinion without them feeling like they need to downvote to punish me.
- Edit: It should be allowed just for the reason that people don’t need the excuse to act out. I can’t state an opinion without them feeling like they need to downvote to punish me.
  People should be banned or punished for acting out regardless of if it's banned or not, them being allowed to just act out makes the space tribalist and hostile. It makes people (especially neurodivergent people) feel unwelcome. Which as an inclusive community which has many vulnerable people is the opposite of what we want. @will_steal_your_username@lemmy.blahaj.zone Please take note of this because I think the safety aspect here is something that is seriously overlooked. No one wants to come into a community and be yelled at because someone thought their art was AI, people who do that should be banned on the spot whether we allow or ban AI itself.

I think the strongest argument against a blanket ban is creators like Obscurest Vinyl who clearly have actual talent and vision that lets them put out 100% ai generated art that is actually art. It seems to me that it's harder to make AI images that are actual art, and I'm personally okay with a flat-out ban on AI-generated images, but this also cuts out stuff like ai-generated Pixar movie posters or security footage of Yoda robbing a gas station.
As for false bans, thats why ban appeals exist.
- Are you telling me a robot made I Glued My Balls to My Butthole Again? It wouldn't be the first AI song I adored. I'm especially find of this one: https://youtu.be/EWxmm9ibC8U
  I also really love that Seinfeld standup bit where the AI accidentally roasted the hell out of transphobic comedians. I think the fact that these things happened as largely random chance rather than by intentional design makes me appreciate them more. It's like when a cloud looks like something. I think the more advanced AI gets, the less interesting it will be. I'm here for the rabbits with tumor-babies growing out of them.
  
  Totally agree. My favorite is It's Time to Take a Shit on Company Time. But the reason I pointed out these is that someone did the creative work of writing the words and probably wrote the song as well.
  I do miss back when AI was really terrible, and people could do stuff like feeding a bunch of their videos into an AI and acting out what it spits out with unintentionally hilarious results.

91 comments

i wud enjoy gen-pic ban