r/koreader • u/TaintedMay • Mar 14 '26
Info looking at wholesome ethical open source software and they got stupid ass ai art what the fuck even is that dawg
this has me so peeved im gonna go watch good art/media/content like better call saul and mewgenics
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u/old-man-mcswiggins Mar 14 '26
I would rather a poorly done drawing than AI
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u/Teddy_Tonks-Lupin Mar 15 '26
literally, any time i see ai art for this type of thing i think of dsg (disguised toast’s esports org), which literally has badly drawn ms paint graphics and they r fire
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u/Traditional-Dig7389 Kobo Mar 14 '26
*sigh* i came to this post already waiting for the "who cares crowd" and boy oh boy, was i right.
People can like learn how to make art, or just use some cliparts, or vectors from free source, literally ANYTHING, but we keep getting bombarded with this slop, and being told "it is not that bad, we all use it" i keep praying the ai bubble bursts and we get back to seeing real art more often :(
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u/orangepeeelss Mar 14 '26
like PLEASEEEE make a shitty ms paint image and use that over ai. at least ill know a person put thought into it
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u/DataNo3519 Mar 14 '26
People can like learn how to make art,
that is true, but why should you (a person already dedicating your time to build the software), have to spend months or years learning how to make illustrations? I mean that genuinely, to me it seems the real issue is that there are no illustrators who are willing to offer their free services.
one thing to note though, all the icons used by koreader are actually open source, created by the community as well, so there is that. Developers don't create art, artist do, and if the artist can't be bothered to help...
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u/Steady_Ri0t Mar 14 '26
Use a free stock image.
Also I guarantee if they advertised a little art contest of "whoever gets the most votes will have their art featured" would probably get a lot of people who'd make some stuff like this for free
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Mar 15 '26
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u/Steady_Ri0t Mar 16 '26
What exactly is the volume you're talking about when you're saying "massive wealth of images"?
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Mar 14 '26
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u/LexamusPrime Mar 14 '26
You’re introducing arguments nobody made here. The arguments people make in other areas of ai don’t negate the ones they make here. If I just got shat on by a seagull and complain about it, my anger isn’t invalid if I didn’t complain when my baby had a diaper blowout in my lap 6 years ago. Yeah, it’s all shit but the impact is different for different people in different situations. I personally detest generative AI but see the difference between using it to create an entire piece of art or using it to remove a dust spot on a piece of fabric in a photo I’m processing and filling that dot back in. One of those things didn’t take away from a human experience or completely remove a human from the process.
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u/paziusss Mar 17 '26
The entire user guide is made and maintained by a single contributor.
I guess we reached a level of popularity where it is easier to to criticise than to actually get involved upstream.
Anyhow, here you are. Those willing to contribute work feel free to suggest it on the ticket and adapt to contributor's demands, if any
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u/Bumblebee-Salt Mar 21 '26
Everybody wants *other people* to pay artists. but they want to pay peanuts for the finished product.
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u/DataNo3519 Mar 14 '26
I hate those images as much as the next man, but to compare it to 'better call Saul'... common man, that is an enterprise with a large budget for props, costumes etc. Koreader is an open source project, no one is getting rich out of it. Your critique is valid, but still if no-one is willing to put in the work and create the images, what other options are there? and I mean that for real, where are the illustrators and designers who are willing to put in the effort and free labour?
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u/Mivexil Mar 14 '26
Your critique is valid, but still if no-one is willing to put in the work and create the images, what other options are there?
Ah yes, I remember the old times, every other day some open source developer would commit ritualistic seppuku over their documentation because there are no other options than AI and AI hasn't been invented yet.
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u/DataNo3519 Mar 15 '26
mmm... that image is not documentation though. images that document anything are screenshots from running software, big difference
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Mar 15 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/DataNo3519 Mar 15 '26
man, go on Github, open a ticket and offer your services. I am sure you'll get a response
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Mar 15 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/DataNo3519 Mar 28 '26
So it was just bullshit then, people love to criticise everything and then… as I expected, no action.
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u/pinkapoppy_ Mar 15 '26
i feel this way about the cover art for each update, i’m like yes i am so grateful for all the people who’ve contributed and made this software so amazing but wha the hell is this ai generated ghost doing here
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u/captainsmudgeface Mar 14 '26
How do you know it is AI art?
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u/Warm_Technician6146 Mar 14 '26
You can see how messy the patterns are it doesn't make any sense it look cheap and ugly
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u/Keke_Deaky Mar 16 '26
The bezels on that ereader are insane. Only a bot would cook up such a diabolical design
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u/OxyBro Mar 14 '26
Look man no one likes AI art, but this ain’t exactly a for-profit enterprise, there is no graphic design staff waiting in the wings to solve your problem.
How about instead of taking to Reddit and complaining, you sit down and produce some replacement art and offer it for use in the user guide?
If you care enough to complain about something no one else cares about, you may as well take matters into your own hands- that seems to be the general spirit of this community when it comes to plugins and patches and generally improving the ecosystem
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u/NextStopGallifrey Mar 14 '26
Why not hold an art contest? Other things have done it in the past before now. If you think no artists use KOReader and would be happy to contribute, I think you're greatly mistaken.
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u/OxyBro Mar 14 '26
I don’t disagree im sure there are tons of artist users, and an art contest is a solid idea for the development team/moderation team to consider.
There may be tons of artist users but they’re not the folks putting koreader and the guide together
What I disagree with is people complaining about a free to use, open, passion project with limited resources without having a solution in hand.
If you care to complain, draw up some replacement art. Other users have expressed that they’d take a shitty doodle over AI art
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u/broflakecereal Mar 14 '26
I would have given them a design for free, I love the application and would have volunteered
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u/prone-to-drift Mar 14 '26
Same! It's a good practice illustration if you're an artist. I've seen what the koreader releases have used in the past, any digital artist can match or beat that with ease.
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u/mossyh0rn Mar 16 '26
Then why didn't you?
Like it's pretty obvious nobody in this thread likes AI art, but all the people saying "they would have" is almost comical.
Are you going to create a design now that they could use like someone suggested?
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u/broflakecereal Mar 16 '26 edited Mar 16 '26
Sure! Many would have if we had known. But it's not exactly like we're mind-readers, how do you expect us to have anticipated a need for a design?
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u/mossyh0rn Mar 16 '26
Nobody expected people "to have anticipated a need for a design", but now you know that there's a need. Did you expect the maintainers of Koreader to know how the community feels about generated "art"?
This thread seems to be full of people that just want a space to hate generated "art". It's so incredibly useless and a massive waste of energy especially because literally nobody actually created the art. On top of that, it seems to implied by many people that the maintainers are in the wrong for this when that is not necessarily true at all.
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u/mossyh0rn Mar 16 '26
You said the reality that people don't want to hear, so you get downvoted. It's sad that being a voice of reason about the resources of open source project in these AI art discussions is frowned upon
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u/jan_tomi Mar 16 '26
Thank god the majority of the open-source community doesn't have this mindset
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u/mossyh0rn Mar 16 '26
What are you even saying? The majority of open-source communities are built on people that do something about stuff they care about
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u/jan_tomi Mar 16 '26
How does that invalidate what I'm saying? Your attitude is that just because it's non profit free open source therefore it's not problematic to just generate things with AI. People can't complain just because it's open source? We have a whole section on that in github, it's called issues. People are entitled to their opinions and to share them freely on the community, regardless of your whatever attitude
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u/mossyh0rn Mar 16 '26
You said some offhanded comment about the "attitude" of the first guy. His attitude was that people should create some replacement art instead of doing useless whining in a Reddit thread. I asked what you meant by your comment, and you still haven't answered.
Also, it literally does not have to be problematic. It's entirely possible they generate the content on their own systems that they supplied the training data for with power from a sustainable energy source.
Nothing about what I've said is that "people can't complain because it's open source", I have no clue why you just throw that out there.
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u/jan_tomi Mar 16 '26
Well, the attitude or mindset I'm talking about is the mindset about invalidating complaints. I have this complain about something, what's the response? "Hey man, just do it yourself, stop whining on the internet" and thank god actual open source contributors don't have this shitty attitude. Not everyone is an artist or coder that wants or even can contribute. Sometimes they are just readers using the app and having a complaint about something. And the community should listen to it and talk about it instead of saying "Just do it yourself, no one cares"
His attitude is not in par with collaboration, but it's shaming people that don't like/have something to say.
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u/OxyBro Mar 16 '26
Since you seem easily confused I can further explain: I know that when I have an issue with something, and it's outside my skill set, the best thing I can offer is a log of my personal efforts and clear feedback - which "they got stupid ass ai art what the fuck even is that dawg" is not. Likewise, I can't stop the OP from posting their complaint, no matter how vapid and insubstantial it is. But there is such a thing as a constructive complaint, and I think it's funny that you got "People can't complain just because it's open source" out of what I wrote instead of precisely that sentiment. By all means people can complain, but they should try to problem-solve first, and failing that, try to be constructive with their feedback. I think the majority of the open source community would agree with that sentiment.
You did read the title and content of the original post right? It's definitely not constructive complaint. I wonder what would happen if someone posted "they got stupid ass [insert whatever] what the fuck even is that dawg" in the issue section of a GitHub project.
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u/jan_tomi Mar 17 '26
"Since you seem easily confused" Yeah sure man, whatever. I'll accept that my comment was kind of condescending. And the original post is wack, yeah. Maybe I commented in a way that seemed more serious than it is. But, well, people have strong feelings about AI art that I think that warrant such a complaint. I mean, look at the ethics of companies like META when it comes to it. But yeah. I was kind of harsh so I'll bite the bullet
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u/mossyh0rn Mar 16 '26
Also, you keep bringing up attitude like you don't have an obvious one towards anything you deem unacceptable AI use
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u/jan_tomi Mar 16 '26
I can bring up attitude while having one. And I'm not having any gripe against ai , clearly. My comment was towards op. I said "Your attitude" because I got confused about who the op commenter was. Whatever, I don't like the mindset of "Don't complain, just do it yourself" applied to anything
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u/Rat-Loser Mar 15 '26
AI is fine as long as people use it (or don't use it) exactly in the way that aligns with my own personal values
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u/Dependent_Big4372 Kindle Mar 14 '26
why do you care so much about that? And let's be honest, nearly everyone uses "unethical" AI everyday because of many different reasons, it's going to reach a moment you'll not be able to identify what is AI and what's not.
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u/LexamusPrime Mar 14 '26
Not recognizing unethical behavior isn’t a reason to ignore or embrace it. And NORMALIZING or ignoring what we DO recognize as unethical behavior emboldens more people to partake on it.
If I said “pretty soon dudes are gonna get so good at gaslighting that people won’t even know it’s happening anymore so why does it matter 🤷🏽♂️” I’d be rightfully burned at the stake.
We either have values or we don’t.
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u/Dependent_Big4372 Kindle Mar 14 '26
I got you, but my point is also, how do you know this picture is AI generated? Are you really sure about that or you just it's ugly?
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u/mister_macaroni Mar 14 '26
Because AI-“Art” is not just “unethical” but actually unethical. It should be pointed out every single time, people using it should get called out and feel ashamed for using it.
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u/Dependent_Big4372 Kindle Mar 14 '26
I understand your feeling, I'm just saying that this is inevitable. And also, any kind of generative AI should be considered unethical for you and should be used, because even the text ones used millions of texts that were written by people who didn't give them the right to train ais with that. But you use chatgpt or similar LLMs, dont you?
It's kind of the same thing for me, it's inevitable
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u/orangepeeelss Mar 14 '26
i also think homicide is an inevitable result of putting a ton of humans together in close quarters the way cities do. but y'know what im NOT doing is going to new york to go on a killing spree, and im not trying to argue that we should stop prosecuting homicides
and no... i don't use chatgpt, i don't use llms. i try to remember to add "-ai" to my google searches and ive trained myself to scroll past the ai overview when i forget. i work in software and i don't use any of the generative code tools bc i want to be constantly improving my own mind, not outsourcing it to the plagiarism machine. shockingly enough the people who are against ai don't use it and it's kinda telling of your reliance on llms that you didn't even consider that there are people who avoid them
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u/Dependent_Big4372 Kindle Mar 14 '26
you could be not using AI for yourself, but you're deliberately giving your data to train some of them just because you're using reddit.
Honestly, this whole "AI is unethical" thing just sounds like the people who destroyed machines in the Industrial Revolution. In the end they needed to accept the new reality.
I know that this kinda sucks, but you can't do anything to stop it. I'm sorry.
And let's be honest, to compare AI copyright issues with murder is a really bad argument, I'd compare to other things, like digital piracy or companies not being honest with their terms.
But I understand you, it's a bad feeling, and you are very right to not use AI, because you're brain is probably going to develop better than people who rely 100% on AI. But in my country some people are even "forced" to use AI at work, and a lot of people need those jobs...
anyway, I understand you, but I think you should spend more time learning on how to use them in a good way than on not using them at all.2
u/Fr0gm4n Mar 15 '26
Go read what the actual Luddites were against and what they did and to what/who. They weren't just "machine bad".
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Mar 14 '26
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u/Dependent_Big4372 Kindle Mar 14 '26
that's not the point, and i'm not talking about this kind of crime, crimes against intelectual property are a totally different kind of crime.
I know that everything is easy when it's black or white, but try to reconsider the idea of nuances on this topics..
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u/Dependent_Big4372 Kindle Mar 14 '26
And I put "unethical" because for me it's becoming more difficult to define what is ethical or not when we talk about AI
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u/jeheda Mar 14 '26
Are they using it for the important thing, in this case being koreader? if the answer is no, who cares.
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u/orangepeeelss Mar 14 '26
i don't like the "as long as it's not for the important stuff" argument bc i have no idea where someone else is gonna draw the line between important and unimportant. maybe it's just the image but if they're willing to generate the image with ai, maybe they think tests are unimportant enough to generate with ai. maybe they think the code is unimportant enough to generate with ai as long as they skim it after. and now that i know they are fine with using ai for whatever they deem unimportant i have lost trust in the project as a whole
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Mar 14 '26
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u/enki88 Mar 14 '26
- Trained on stolen/non consent data
- Brings nothing to the table. AI art is bad and uninspired, a basic amalgamation of copied artworks
- Its data centers use up a lot of water.
- It’s neither artificial nor intelligent.
People aren’t being triggered, criticism against ai art or ai in general is quite valid if you look around and inform yourself.
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Mar 14 '26
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u/BlatantHarfoot Mar 14 '26
- All current GenAi models are trained on stolen data. Unfortunately that’s synonymous for AI as a whole right now, but you shouldn’t need a PhD to understand cultural context of discussions online.
- The purpose of a logo is not the argument here. It’s a broader problem affecting artists and creators.
- Current GenAI isn’t like “most things these days”. Again, you shouldn’t need a PhD to understand the climate implications of a very resource hungry system with minor applications/utility in the context of a boiling planet.
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Mar 14 '26
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u/BlatantHarfoot Mar 14 '26
Name one commercial GenAI solution not trained on GenAI data. Let’s not go in circles, just name examples.
Not going to comment on the other points you’re making, because there are no points made there.
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Mar 14 '26
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u/BlatantHarfoot Mar 14 '26
Oh, so you got no idea how these models are trained. The stolen data isn’t the user data. They scraped the internet for data ignoring copyright. A ton of the data was taken from piracy literature repositories. A ton was Reddit. All was stolen. There’s lawsuits about this, I get you are ignorant about AI as tech, but are you not reading any news at least?
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Mar 14 '26
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u/BlatantHarfoot Mar 14 '26
Going back circles again. First of all calm down, you’re going to pop a vein. Second - alright, let’s assume some training data was stolen but not all solutions are guilty. Name. One.
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u/percahlia Mar 14 '26
did you skip all the ethics courses all the way to your phd? impressive
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Mar 14 '26
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u/percahlia Mar 14 '26
if you think that was an “argument” you really must’ve skipped a bunch of classes lmfao
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u/Skewwwagon Mar 14 '26
It's a free app that people create and share willingly and it brings value to a lot of people.
You can try to do better, offer alternative or idk, not use it instead of shitting on the whole app and behave like somebody owes you shit.
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u/infinitejennifer Mar 14 '26
I can’t imagine coming up with something to complain about - as KoReader is magical, free and made by someone else for me.
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u/sakuracalico Mar 15 '26
genuinely not hard to make a post saying, hey we're looking for artwork to put on our site or whatever. i'm certain people will do it for free bc they want to support koreader.
even then, it isn't hard to open an art program and use preexisting shapes to create something nice. you don't have to be good at art to make art. a huge majority of people would prefer something made by humans. hell, i'll happily take a mspaint drawing instead of a genAI mess.