The Great Generative AI Discussion

[NatalieBayer]

I've noticed a lot of topics here keep veering straight into the AI discussion. So, instead of clogging up a thread about someone's work or other topics, I figured we could consolidate them all into one place, right here!

So, for the record, the Admin staff her still agree that we are not going to allow AI Generation on the forums or the wiki. This isn't because we don't like AI generations or anything like that, merely that there is still too much of a legal and ethical grey area to allow it across the board. Once better legislation and a more full understanding of the ramifications of AI generations comes to light, we may reconsider.

So, with that in mind, please feel free to continue your discussions here, just remember to be civil.

[Lithorien]

Thank you for disallowing the blatantly artist-hating, unethical, and illegal AI generated images. I'm glad this is a place where people who put actual effort into their work can come to share it with an appreciative community.

[Extyr]

I fail to see the moral distinction between AI artwork and photomanipulations. Both rely on mixing stuff without authorization.

[BA2]

I mostly agree - no moral distinction.

I think the difference is to do with volume of output. Painstakingly combining and shopping a dozen or so manually searched photos to create an image doesn’t threaten the livelihoods of artists, but being able to request any image at the push of a button does.

We could make some sort of spurious moral case to support manual photo manipulation on the grounds that we are adding further artistic effort into the ingredients to add value and create something new. I’m not sure AI can be said to be doing that even if it gets similar results…

[href]

Did a manip last night, first one for a while. That either double sentences me to damnation, or offers some salvation for my view.
Much as the above, they are the same to me. I feel there is a place for it, a separate place, that adds to, not excludes, other creative works and creatives. The pace of ideas and innovation could only be enhanced.
I only want to make a positive case for this, and I respect the counter view and admin rules.

BA - your stuff is just awesome, I'd love to be able to do half of what you can.

[Kube²]

I think that today 20 % of artists are "prompt" artists that relies on IA and 80 % are old-fashioned artists with old fashioned technics (3D, drawing...). I'm afraid that in 10 year the ration will be the opposite : 80 % "prompt" artist and 20 % old fashioned ones.

we should be more welcoming to this generation of new artists as they are the future of this community.

[Svengli]

I'm all for prevent AI from appearing anywhere where artists are paid to create art. I don't have a problem with that. On the other hand, there's a lot of "vanity" image creation here and elsewhere that isn't paid and I don't think AI competes with by-hand manipulations, we can consume both.

The problem I have with AI is slightly different. It just tends to have a very predictable aesthetic. AI can quickly become tiresome since kind of all feels the same. Essentially, it seems like AI generators can't satisfy specific requirement because the technology is based on averaging. But I could be wrong, I only played a little with image generators when they first came out and I'd assume they've gotten.

So, a QUESTION. Suppose I want an image generator to generate something like the party scene in The Stepford Wives but more pornographic - there are no women left to convert and so some percentage of the wives are giving blow jobs out in the open and all of the women are beautiful and scantily clad as well as being doting Stepford Wives. What would be a more specific prompt to get something like this?

[Kube²]

I would just like to share my experience IRL.

I have long been a semi-professional musician. (guitar player, drummer, singer and composer).

When electronic music and computer music arrived 20 years ago I refused to learn it and use it, I claimed to anyone who would listen my shitty advice that computer music sanitized music and that computer musicians users were not no real musicians. Today no one would claim that Daft Punk are not real musicians and to record my latest album my label forced me to work with guys that use that technology and I have become dependent on them. Today I deeply regret my initial position on the subject.

[Lithorien]

The trick, Kube, with what you were facing vs. now is that generative AI quite literally uses theft - it would be no different than if you were to, say, take riffs from 100 different musicians and smash them all together, then write a prompt to "create" something from them. There is a vast difference between a new technology that is simply a tool for creation, and a new technology that is a vehicle for blatant theft.

Don't feel bad about your initial stance, but also, don't be afraid to push back against things that are real threats to people who actually put time and effort into creation, rather than just writing a prompt and going "I'm an artist now!" of whatever caliber that is - visual, aural, written, or any other form of creative endeavor. This is a new situation and this is much more than a new tool; this is an actual threat to real creators who provide actual, legitimate works that are not built on theft.

[Edit - Law hat ON]

To address comments like "There's no difference between prompt writing and manipulation," even the law (in the US at least, other jurisdictions vary) disagrees. The understanding of transformative works in copyright law boils down to, "You can't just take someone's work, mash it with someone else's work, and call it your own." There has to be some kind of human element of creation involved in the process - photo manipulations are generally accepted under copyright law because there is a creative human element involved. You have to decide what to alter and how, you have to create the alterations, and there's an element of judgement that exists.

Opposed to this is generative AI, where the only input a person has to the process is a prompt that is fed to an algorithm to do its statistical analysis on and spit out a result of various bits of its training data mashed together. There's no human element or creativity involved - copyright does not allow for a machine to just do all the work of muxing together copyrighted works to spit something out. This is why you are seeing the lawsuits from authors, artists, and musicians across the US where they wouldn't otherwise have standing - the crucial, legal distinction between a transformative work and a work that merely "scrapbooks" stolen works together is a real, valid distinction that courts recognize.

Does this mean that distinction will always exist? Of course not; the courts often change up interpretations of settled law when it suits them - we've seen that all over the place, especially in the last few years. But currently, that distinction does still matter and can't, and shouldn't, be hand waved away.

[Edit #2 - Ethics]

I suppose I should note: IF a generative AI solution is made where the training set is copyright-clear images (donated, public domain, etc.) then there's no problem with using it. The only issue we hit is that, at least right now, that training set does not exist. I do hope that in the near future, that statement is no longer valid, and that there are generative AI solutions that are ethically and legally trained - then people get the best of both worlds, so to speak, as while real artists will still face competition, at least it won't be competition from a source that literally stole from them and can generate perfect replicas of their style because of the theft.

[33cl33]

So, a QUESTION. Suppose I want an image generator to generate something like the party scene in The Stepford Wives but more pornographic - there are no women left to convert and so some percentage of the wives are giving blow jobs out in the open and all of the women are beautiful and scantily clad as well as being doting Stepford Wives. What would be a more specific prompt to get something like this?

Been testing tons of different generators - and I don't think any of them are there yet, for a scene like this. In my experience, they all fail pretty terribly at putting more than a couple of people in a scene, and having them look / pose in different ways. They just aren't nuanced enough to parse prompt sections that refer to one person vs another. I imagine at least in part because they have to be able to tolerate an array of wildly different language skills of users entering prompts. IE: a broken English prompt will spit out pretty similar results to a well-written, grammatically-correct prompt with similar descriptors.

Back to the main topic - I'm all for the policy, specifically on image generative "AI," for the reasons stated above. Though I'm definitely experimenting with it, because it's interesting to see how it works. And if an ethically trained model were out, I'd still be in favor of requiring flagging when AI is used.

[Condor621]

These newfangled motorized automobiles are going to put all if the buggy whip craftsmen out of a job!!

Rap isn't music!

Sampling is stealing!!


Using that fancy new ibternet thingy instead of going to the library or opening the Encyclopedia Britanica is cheating!


Make your robot porn the old fashioned way! Grab an image of a woman you don't know from somewhere you don't credit, dont ask permission to alter the image, and Manip away...

The high horsery on thus topic is reaching frenzied levels.

The last thing anyone HERE should be is a Luddite.

[NatalieBayer]

Just a reminder to people to please keep things civil. Discussion and debate is welcome but name calling and overtly sarcastic quips will get this topic (any likely others) locked down.

[Kube²]

Maybe add a checkable box "I certify to have manually edited that picture" would be a solution ?

[Lithorien]

These newfangled motorized automobiles are going to put all if the buggy whip craftsmen out of a job!!

And they did. But that's not the issue here; motorized automobiles did not steal directly from craftspeople. Technological advancement on its own may be difficult to adapt to, but it's also generally not unethical or illegal on its face.

Rap isn't music!

...How is this relevant? Subjective tastes in music have nothing to do with its creation and the ethics and laws around that.

Sampling is stealing!!

Sampling requires transformative actions to be done with it or yes, under the law, it is. But sampling as widely used, such as in hip-hop, is allowable and ethical because it's transformative on the samples used - that is to say, those samples are not just taken and shoved into a piece of music at random, but human judgement is required to place them in such a way where they become a coherent part of a larger work.

Using that fancy new ibternet thingy instead of going to the library or opening the Encyclopedia Britanica is cheating!

Again, relevance? I would love to be generous and assume you're trying to argue that the Internet somehow killed libraries and encyclopedias, but this goes back to the car thing - even if that argument was true, the Internet was not built on stolen materials from libraries or encyclopedias. Even more to the point, encyclopedia publishers have won lawsuits when editors did steal from the encyclopedias and post the text and images on Wikipedia or other places.

Make your robot porn the old fashioned way! Grab an image of a woman you don't know from somewhere you don't credit, dont ask permission to alter the image, and Manip away...

Yes. This is how transformative works exist under the law. As stated before, copyright law respects exceptions for transformative works, but those works require some kind of human judgement and intervention.

The high horsery on thus topic is reaching frenzied levels.

The last thing anyone HERE should be is a Luddite.

Nobody here is advocating for the philosophy of the luddites. Even I, likely the most anti-generative AI person on this forum, admit that if a generative AI was trained on data that respected copyright and was provided willingly by the actual creators of artistic works, there'd be no issue with it. None of the arguments against generative AI that hold up to any scrutiny are, "oh, generative AI is forever bad and wrong," but instead, "generative AI depends on the wholesale theft and replication of creative labor of artists who are not compensated and are harmed by the prompt writers who use the stolen training data to drive those same artists out of business."

There are currently no generative AI data sets that have been ethically or legally acquired. That is the problem. Creators of all types - visual, written, auditory, etc. - are all facing having our works stolen, shoved into a data set, and replicated or smashed together with absolutely nothing transformative (again: this requires human judgement) done to the works. They're just taken, mushed up, and spit out.

[Condor621]

These newfangled motorized automobiles are going to put all if the buggy whip craftsmen out of a job!!

And they did. But that's not the issue here; motorized automobiles did not steal directly from craftspeople. Technological advancement on its own may be difficult to adapt to, but it's also generally not unethical or illegal on its face.

Rap isn't music!

...How is this relevant? Subjective tastes in music have nothing to do with its creation and the ethics and laws around that.

Sampling is stealing!!

Sampling requires transformative actions to be done with it or yes, under the law, it is. But sampling as widely used, such as in hip-hop, is allowable and ethical because it's transformative on the samples used - that is to say, those samples are not just taken and shoved into a piece of music at random, but human judgement is required to place them in such a way where they become a coherent part of a larger work.

Using that fancy new ibternet thingy instead of going to the library or opening the Encyclopedia Britanica is cheating!

Again, relevance? I would love to be generous and assume you're trying to argue that the Internet somehow killed libraries and encyclopedias, but this goes back to the car thing - even if that argument was true, the Internet was not built on stolen materials from libraries or encyclopedias. Even more to the point, encyclopedia publishers have won lawsuits when editors did steal from the encyclopedias and post the text and images on Wikipedia or other places.

Make your robot porn the old fashioned way! Grab an image of a woman you don't know from somewhere you don't credit, dont ask permission to alter the image, and Manip away...

Yes. This is how transformative works exist under the law. As stated before, copyright law respects exceptions for transformative works, but those works require some kind of human judgement and intervention.

The high horsery on thus topic is reaching frenzied levels.

The last thing anyone HERE should be is a Luddite.

Nobody here is advocating for the philosophy of the luddites. Even I, likely the most anti-generative AI person on this forum, admit that if a generative AI was trained on data that respected copyright and was provided willingly by the actual creators of artistic works, there'd be no issue with it. None of the arguments against generative AI that hold up to any scrutiny are, "oh, generative AI is forever bad and wrong," but instead, "generative AI depends on the wholesale theft and replication of creative labor of artists who are not compensated and are harmed by the prompt writers who use the stolen training data to drive those same artists out of business."

There are currently no generative AI data sets that have been ethically or legally acquired. That is the problem. Creators of all types - visual, written, auditory, etc. - are all facing having our works stolen, shoved into a data set, and replicated or smashed together with absolutely nothing transformative (again: this requires human judgement) done to the works. They're just taken, mushed up, and spit out.

Ok.

[DocHoliday]

Yes, this is such an ironic battle, especially for FembotCentral. And not a good hill to die on. I get it as well, but here are some thoughts:

*Bing AI image generator has more ethical guidelines. *Deviantart allows you to protect your images from ai art.
*We do the same thing with manips (take an image and tweak it)
*It’s a loosing battle to fight it. It’s inevitable.
*Fembot content is hard enough to find, so why not welcome in more. (Content is content)

And BOTTOM LINE: You are missing out on some great material!

I know some of these points have already been mentioned, but I’ve wanted to say something for quite some time.

[DocHoliday]

One more thing:

I understand it is a rule to not share AI art on fembotcentral and the discord. But, is there good place to go where Fembot specific AI art is allowed?

[DocHoliday]

One more thing:

I understand it is a rule to not share AI art on fembotcentral and the discord. But, is there good place to go where Fembot specific AI art is allowed?

[NatalieBayer]

This shouldn't be taken as sarcasm, but, anywhere that isn't the wiki or the forums. Personal blog, an imgur account, whatever you like, just not here.

[JeffCapes]

Robocop girls - DIscord server.

We allow fembot a.i. generated art. We're pretty quiet but feel free to pop along and join us.

[JeffCapes]

https://discord.gg/qJthzqXF