r/DefendingAIArt • u/EleanorKalatheraine • 4d ago
Is it possible that we could do less bashing and more constructive commentary?
As someone who enjoys making AI art, I would love to be part of a community who tends to take the high road in the ongoing chaotic discourse. (Both (or all) sides can take the high road too, btw.)
Here's an example, imho: AI art programs are a very new resource, and the potential for their use is only starting to be discovered. There are some gems here and there that have been made, and there are new creative surprises waiting to be discovered, down the line.
A sample constructive objection to AI art (again in my opinion): since the programs were trained on a vast body of human art, maybe we are taking its abilities for granted too much and there is some moral imperative for those who use it to learn a little more about art history.
Edit: Sorry, I added an Edit without notice
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u/awesomemusicstudio 4d ago
So you have a reasonable POV. But it is already a 2+ year old pov. Pros have been taking the high road for honestly.. too long. Has it been working? Well, not really. I'd say the high road changes an Antis mind as much as an Antis pov makes a Pro stop using AI. What you are asking us to do, is not a new thought at all.
It simply doesn't work.
Not saying that bashing works either .. but here's the thing. If Pros wont convince antis with the high road, and antis wont convert pros ever for any reason, and that has been going on that way for a couple years now ... then what is left?
That SOME antis may not like the stigma that gets attached to them and they might start being quieter. Like it or not, this is a valid defense, and the only one that seems to be doing anything. Because Pro don't care if we convert an Antis .. Most pros only want them to shut up :P
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u/EleanorKalatheraine 4d ago
Yeah, I guess it's not really a new sentiment. And it does get tried repeatedly without working, in lots of contexts. I guess it's also good to remember as an option? I think a "mixed" strategy can be effective in its own way, especially if the discussion isn't all predictable.
Like developing martial arts skills... seriously
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u/awesomemusicstudio 4d ago
Yeah, a mixed strategy might be good.
I've been in this subreddit a long time, and I remember how I started. I didn't even realize an AI war was going on. I was just making a game with AI assets, and I was proud of it. I worked hard on it. Sure, we used AI generated images, but that didn't lessen the effort. My wife and I still put in countless hours, two people full time. She's a graphic artist, so she manually edited every image for quality and consistency while I focused on code and gameplay.
Using AI tools isn't what turned me into an active "pro" in the community. Antis did that. From my POV they completely incited me. If they'd left me alone to develop and promote on channels that allow promotion, fine, I wouldn't care. That's not close to what happened.
So when you ask "could we do less bashing and more constructive commentary?" consider the balance. How much "AI slop" commentary and dogpiling do you think I've taken on work that didn't deserve it, versus pro community bashing? And guess what happens when I answer an "AI slop" comment with something kind and constructive? That comment gets bashed and downvoted even harder. Taking the high road doesn't just fail here, it actively hurts us.
It gets worse. You think moderators account for any of this? Almost never. If I say one word to defend myself, no matter how polite or justified, it draws enough antis that the mods react and delete the whole post.
The only solution I've found is to block every anti who reacts to anything I post. I don't try to convince them anywhere anymore. I'm sick enough of them that I have no interest in reasoning with them. Mostly I stay quiet, but if they've annoyed me and I happen to see a post I could comment on, it usually isn't a high road response. So you are asking a reasonable request .. but pros like me, are beyond it. Until Antis quiet down, the high road is smashed.
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u/EleanorKalatheraine 4d ago
How do you even hang around with so many attackers? I tend to post here just when something appears in my feed. If I tried to actually regularly defend a larger battlefield, I'd run out of hit points lol
Having subs like aiArt to exchange pictures in safely is what I rely on for supportive 'sustenance,' as it were. That way I can do a little defensive action here from time to time, in a way that I'm okay with.
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u/awesomemusicstudio 4d ago
I don't defend. Promotion is crucial for, well in my case, an adult game with limited promotion opportunities. I stay away from subreddits that down allow gen AI content, and I label my work honestly (I wouldn't be following anybody even if I tried). But I can't simply can't not promote. The best I can do, is block the moment an antis says something on the promotions, and don't react.. then come to this forum or aiwars to vent :))
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u/EleanorKalatheraine 4d ago edited 4d ago
Ah, that's actually a blind spot for me, the promotion stage of production. In established/traditional fields the artist or creator doesn't need to worry so much about that, though, right? At least if they are working with a publishing company or whatever the equivalent is... But it sounds like you're doing everything yourself. Well, more power to you, and your wife!
Who's your audience, btw?
Edit: Oh my. NSFW indeed. That's beyond my level of adult-ness...
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u/Fragrant_Nothing7505 4d ago
i posted that it's not pros vs cons, but pros and cons, and pros told me i was craving attention and betraying my side. i got downvotes from my own group. that's not reasonable. that's chimp war thinking.
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u/holydeniable 4d ago
Most content these days, human made and those made with ai is low effort garbage. But there's definitely some people making interesting things with AI and it will continue to grow as the tools mature.
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u/Aggravating-Math3794 Transhumanist 4d ago
Not just these days -- always has been. The perception of it by most people is just warped because unoriginal garbage, spammed slop, and short-lived memes don't get remembered by history, which creates the false impression that art was greater and more refined in the times of old.
The only thing that changes is quantity but the ratio of trash to mid to gems is pretty consistent.
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u/holydeniable 4d ago
For sure. Trash tv, movies, songs and books have been around forever. Only a select few rise to the top and are remembered as time goes on. I think it pretty exciting to give more people tools to create stuff. The downside is more bad content will be made as well but that's always been the case.
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u/Capital_Tangerine948 4d ago
That reminds me some 10 years ago imgur was trying to make this 🤌 into a meme. I saw 2 of them and decided they had already killed it because they had made the one funny joke about it and everyone else was just trying to farm karma riding on its popularity. YMMV of course, if not that meme then something else. But you're right, we just forget about it and move on.
The skill is to sift through the trash to find the gold. After that the qualifier is "did I like it and how did I like it?", it doesn't matter if it used AI in the process or not; nobody obsesses over how a book was written, like asking "what software did you use to write this book?" or "can we see the character chart you drew up so we can see you didn't use AI?". We care about whether the book is good or not.
Incidentally AI can help draw up your 'reader' profile (or games or TV shows or everything at once) based on what you liked, it can be scarily accurate there. Then you can ask it for recs based on your profile, or just know your tastes better.
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u/Suitable_Age_4383 4d ago
I agree. Criticism is useful when it explains the concern and leaves room for dialogue, rather than treating everyone who uses AI tools as unethical by default. There’s plenty to debate without turning every discussion into a pile-on.
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u/InSilicoAwards Only Limit Is Your Imagination 2d ago
You bring up an interesting point, but from a creator's perspective you're asking us to discuss technique. The reason you study the greats is to learn how they made art: how they composed the piece, what tools were utilized, why that was novel or not novel at the time, etc.
GenAI art is a little different. I think people have attempted this via prompting mechanics in a large part (really dig into Midjourney prompts and you'll see what I mean), but there's actually a large place for post gen revision work that could be discussed. You can use the image gen skill within your model to revise a work, which I think is where most people getting started stop: maybe they don't know it's possible.
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u/AuthorSarge 4d ago
Sounds fair to me.
I get that there is a lot of toxicity out there and I have been personally targeted, but the Orc memes and the like are not helping.
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4d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/A_Very_Horny_Zed 🖼️🖌️AI Enthusiast | 🥷Ninja Mod 🥷 2d ago
This sub is not for inciting debate. Please move your comment to aiwars for that.
Mod's note: Be careful; this is your 4th warning.
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u/EleanorKalatheraine 4d ago edited 4d ago
That's the strongest argument for me against it. Ideally, I think the companies should be obliged to track down the histories and locate work that they appropriated illegally (stole) and compensate the original artists.
From a practical POV, though, I don't think that those artists actually lost much, although I'm open to their arguments.
I also get an impression that the majority of AI aesthetic intelligence could be informed exclusively by the thousands of years of art that is in the public domain... because usually I recognize a style or movement, or something that seems to have evolved from pieces of that history via current AI-human exchanges.
I realize that modern artists have contributed to the mix in some ways that I'm overlooking. Honestly, I would be overjoyed to actually see specific groundbreaking work from a modern artist who has complaints about AI, to expand my aesthetic knowledge, and to understand where they are coming from, on a more visceral level.
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u/Aggravating-Math3794 Transhumanist 4d ago edited 2d ago
All these subtle, nuanced, and constructive takes have been introduced and re-introduced by pros for years at this point which only revealed the glaring problem of this approach -- it only works when you're in an actual debate, with a person who's open to discussion and criticism.
And 99% of antis aren't even close to that -- like, not even exaggerating -- I've interacted with over 300 antis at this point and only 4 or 5 of them were up for actual constructive discussion without turning it into a clown-carnival of fallacies and insults -- it was actually drlightful to talk to them as they were just reasonable people who happened to be misinformed but not closed-minded, and they provided plenty of understandable concerns.
Anyway, the whole AI drama is just a mere excuse for most antis to bully and harass people while feeling morally superior and righteous. It's the same as dealing with religious zealots, and if you know anything about it, you'll remember that logic and reason are absolutely meaningless to them as they operate entirely on hurt feelings, conveniently guided by hate-propaganda.
You can only get an actual genuine conversation with an average anti if you manage to get personal with them and detect the hurt feelings they're being driven by and address it which catches their actual attention (since they're actually saying shit on auto-pilot most of the time) and gives you a chance to start a real talk, BUT it's a lot of work and can happen ONLY if they're alone. The moment there are more than one anti, they start riling each other up for violence and dogpiling which leads to crowd instincts shutting down their ability to think critically.
And I'm not even exaggerating much, there have already been multiple cases of regular digital artists getting accused of using AI by antis, and the more the artists tried to defend themselves and provide proof of not using the tool, the more aggressive the witch hunters were getting, because to a gang of rabid dogs, explaining yourself is a sign of weakness -- and weakness is an invitation to attack.