This, so much! Good find.
every day i miss poorly photoshopped images more and moreā¦
That reminds me, I should work on my latest painting today. Itās an acrylic portrait of my wifeās cherished childhood pets.
AI canāt do that.
Whatās especially frustrating about seeing generative AI artwork on blogs, for instance, is that there are SO many good, free, public domain or open access alternatives out there. It might take a little effort to find something that works, sure, but if youāve gone to the effort of writing the post, might as well take a few more minutes to find something to adorn it with that wasnāt generated by the plagiarism machine.
Two great compilations of AI-free image resources here:
Sorry, I know (Substack), but the info is good.
As much as I 100% agree with your post and I physically shuddered when I saw that Trex abomination, I think we need to focus on the real problem of what we usually call AI āartā - the predatory poaching of visual material that AI companies did when training their model and the complete lack of artistic direction.
In and of itself I think the use of LLMs, if the artist is given 100% control of what is being included and become themselves part of the process, is a tool with its pros and cons. I recently saw some examples of what artists can achieve when given control. Wizardhead for example has been making videos over Meshuggah tracks thanks to personalized models who have been trained on his own works, and they recently collaborated on the song āThey Move Belowā - once you get over the whiplash from recognizing the source, it is actually visually stunning and horrifying. There was also a Facebook page that appeared on my feed which had a sci-fi series with a detailed, Jodorowsky inspired aesthetic that would otherwise require an exorbitant amount of time to make per episode (canāt remember the name and canāt find it through search because, of course, the slop is everywhere).
So yeah, I absolutely will grimace when presented with the usual nondescript, normie slop, but I think we need to refocus our disdain on the actual root of the problem.
P.S.: InfoWars is Onion property now, praised be InfoWars
Sad to say but this crappy AI art is everywhere. People at work use it in presentations just as much as they use it to make memes 
I stopped participating in a lot of genealogy communities because there is both an attitude of āimprovingā peopleās family photos with AI without permission, and a lot of AI generated āwhat would they have looked likeā ancestor portraits. I really think the generations that come after are going to have a hell of a time sorting through the garbage we leave behind.
The convenience of these AI generated images means your every day person will happily jump on the latest starter pack/action figure trend - or whatever the kids are into these days - long before they consider the impact.
I donāt think that will change until the AI bubble bursts - until it becomes prohibitively expensive to run these models - and I sincerely hope it does. I say that as someone who fully acknowledges my own relationship with AI is a work in progress. I donāt use it to generate images or my writing - Iām fundamentally against that - but I have absolutely found it useful to think through problems or brainstorm code implementations, so I canāt claim any better. Iām working on it, but thatās how they get you. They make it just a little too convenient.
I think it speaks to society as a whole that itās incredibly easy to allow ourselves to be so far removed from the results of our actions to have the privilege to not even consider it (and thatās not restricted to AI).
If you have access to a child make use of that.
wish I could use this excuse for my own crappy art
My father is currently digitalizing all of our family photos, recently heās been using an AI filter to colorize and beautify the very old ones. Guess what - the filter started adding smiles to photos from the 20ies, the ones where people usually didnāt smile. I canāt tell you the twisted feelings in my chest. It doctored our ancestorās history. I begged him, on my knees, to at least save the original photos too.
I too hope it becomes too expensive for regular people to use. From what Iāve seen, in good technical hands, it is a tool that can make some very interesting things. Like it currently is presented in the mainstream, though, is basically digitalized meth that is over-saturating what used to be the central hub of human knowledge with nonsense.
My internal Marx and Fromm are screaming at eachother right now.