TheArtificer

Patreon has, apparently banned feeders from the site.

If not for the actions of certain "artists" over the last week or so, I would be upset about this, even if Feederism really isn't my thing. I, after all, try to defend the over all expansion community, and have done so for decades.

The problem is, that either I've been too good at my job, or some expansion creatives are the sort of ungrateful, unaware shits that used to harass *us*, some of whom, on this very platform.

I am *deeply* not OK with people who harass and threaten others with violence, over Art. (There are plenty of things I *have* done violence over, but that isn't one of them)

This week, with the death of Akira Toriyama, much of the Internet paid tribute, including Synthographers.

It turned into, quite literally, a brawl at a funeral. This was disrespectful toward Mr Toriyama (who, while I don't know his specific opinion on AI Art, seemed to have a positive opinion toward AI, in general. People forget that the Dragonball Androids were not the only android and robot characters he created). The amount of threats of death and other forms of violence, some of it sexual, was far and away 'Beyond Acceptable".

The person who sparked me writing this, probably didn't deserve my knee jerk response after that.

The issue was that they started posting that it was unfair that a segment of our community was being barred from Patreon, while sporting a tag calling for the VERY SAME FUCKING THING for AI users.

This wasn't some new person, either. This was a poster old enough to have known better and remembered how bad it was for us in the old days. That such a person would be so self-centered to have forgotten that such behavior is *wrong*, regardless of who does it, is baffling to me.

It's fine to not like someone else's work. It's fine to no like someone esle's technique, tools, etc.

The problem is that in this community, we've been committing all the same sins that everyone complain that AI does. How many morphers have failed to get permission from the original artists, for example?

The hypocrisy around the issue of AI runs deep in the Expansion community. And it makes me sick.

In my lifetime, I've seen 'the end of art' more than once now. The first, though, these days most of you are too young to remember it, was the advent of digital art. Photoshop (and programs like it) would, supposedly, bring about the 'end of art' by putting creative power in the hands of people who didn't go though the process to become creators the previous generation had.

I remember being actually SPAT ON by one particular painter, because I was an agent of the End Times who was taking away jobs from 'real' artists.

Needless to say, Art did not 'end' at that point. Things changed, new art forms emerged, and art rolled on. Some of us adjusted how we made art and did business, and that was all that, ultimately. happened.

This is not a new thing. In fact, I deeply offended one of the moderators on a group I run, when told I them that: most of the arguments against AI art that I heard were recycled from arguments against Photographers being 'artists'.

I think the, frankly, panicked, response to the whole thing says more about our insecurities as artists than the real level of threat AI poses to our livelihoods. Some of the reactions and justifications for those actions shows a staggering amount of misinformation about everything from Copyright to how AI actually works. Now, I'm not a lawyer, so, take with a grain of salt, but here's the high points.

1) Not getting your permission to use you art to train an AI is NOT a violation of your copyright. This case has (effectively) already gone to the courts, with Author's Guild v Google in the US, and in the UK (Where noted Art AI developer Stability AI is based), it's always been legal, as long as it's not for profit, and soon will likely be legal even for profit.

2) The theoretical jobs lost will ultimately be a wash. While this technology does, effectively, mean that a company can employ fewer artists, it also means that you, personally, have more production capability that you have currently. You can put these AIs on a home computer and make art there. You can train them on whatever you see fit and use them however you choose.

Maybe we're all so used to being slaves to studios and game companies that the idea that this gives us power too doesn't occur to us. But it's there. The question is, do you use it?

Going to try an idea I had, where I use AI to generate an image, and then write a story based on that image.

Sorry Folks, but this Halloween is a bust. I had planned on putting up some stuff here this year, but I didn't get shit finished. It's been non-stop overtime to try and deal with the massive backlog from COVID, and I had just a night and a day to work on anything at all. Including some stuff that had priority, like my house.

I'll see if I can get something out by next weekend.

Happy Halloween, everyone.

I can't help but notice several expansion artists have been recently banned here on dA.

Anyone have any ideas what that's about?