Let’s start in the crazy corner, just to build a background. In case you forgot just what kind of nonsense it actually IS people who like AI on a hobby level meet out there on the wild internet. Perhaps we can break them down into some stereotypes real quick.
This… this is the “u not woke political anti“. They will write shit like the ‘pro ai are right wing fascists’ – I never quite understood this pretty fucking baseless statement. It is proven time and time again, that political stance, gender and or sexuality has nothing AT ALL to do with your opinion on AI… But a lot of the more shrill anti-crowd people tend to ignore this fact, and just dig deeper into their damn foxhole, facts be damned.
And this, something that is hits close to home for me. The “extremely vigilant anti” who will accuse authors of using AI, will attack authors for using AI covers, or Fanfic authors for using either AI co-writing or AI images in their text as illustrations. You can’t argue with them, because they decided that you used too many dashes, asterisks or like in this case a flowery phrase.
The ‘Factually wrong anti‘ are the ones that will make comments like ‘it’s because of people like you the Amazonas is dying’ (or the C02 argument). Or they will say ‘I hope you like it when people starve because of you’ (the loss of jobs argument). Or like in this case, ‘you help companies steal from small creators’. None of this is true, but you just can’t get through to these people, they believe their urban legends. And a little upvote farming doesn’t help either amirite?
The ‘batshit crazy anti‘ – these are the bullies, and as I said before. I am dead sure they bully their damn peers too. These are the ones that will post ‘kill ai artist’ memes, and dogpile on creators with threats… and if you catch one of these assholes in the wild. Block them, there is nothing else to do. They do not deserve your precious time.
And lastly, the ‘my brother in christ anti‘. These are the ones who will comment shit like ‘don’t use ai’, or ‘unsubs’, or perhaps ‘ai-slop’. They are annoying, often stating the fucking obvious. They are also those who flood subreddits and other places that is available for them, and pro ai, just to tell you ‘ai is wrong’.
Technically these would probably be who you encounter the most, and I seriously think they are actively searching for shit to comment a copy paste message to, feeling like they did their due diligence.
Laugh. Point. Delete. Move on.
So let’s move on to the SANE part of this post. The reason I stumbled across this article, blog entry, call it what you want. is because I was seriously wondering where the pro ai youtube videos, or entries were. Seriously, there is nothing, and I find that very both telling, but also concerning.
My best bet is that if you post a pro ai video on Youtube, you will have you channel copyright struck so fast you have no idea. Otherwise I can’t see why the hell there would be absolutely NO videos speaking for AI. But there are tons speaking against it. Sure there are populism, and algorithm favoritism, but when you actively google it, nothing shows up.
I did find this entry tho, And I think you should go read it in its entirety before I start to pull out what I find as highlights.
And I did struggle with finding someone who was brave enough to express any sane arguments as to why the anti movement is wacked. And listen, as you might know I am not gung-ho ai bro at all, I do see the pitfalls. But I am also really fucking fed up with the weird black and white logic that the anti movement applies to the debate.
So I was absolutely thrilled to find someone who I actually agree with.
Now again, as I said above when I talked about the factually wrong anti people, these are the arguments you find. And it’s wild to me (and to the author of that entry) why they want to die on that hill. It’s just plain dumb.
So I was not impacted by this, the author of the entry was. But I included this highlight because he is right in ‘its a tool dammit’, I know I posted other entries from other people, both indie game devs, authors, and artists who decided to incorporate ai in their process, using it as a tool to both make some things easier, and perhaps better or prettier. But also perhaps to help where you fall short as a person.
I can just repeat myself again, just because you made some assets in a game with ai, doesn’t make your game ai.
This! This so much! I mean, thank you for saying that. I feel less crazy now. This is what I have been trying to say for fucking ever. There is a difference between using it as a tool, and then using it to scam people. Also I believe we ought to live in a world where people would be unashamed and therefore transparent about use of AI, instead of hiding it with corporate wording, or with very small text in the bottom hoping people won’t see, – or in some cases, just not disclose it at all.
And look I understand why people wouldn’t say they used AI for anything, taken today’s internet climate into consideration. See you just open yourself up for harassment, judgement, and in some cases worse – like false flagging, reporting and threats.
So sadly it’s a moot point, because when we agree across the board that it’s right to tag your stuff with ai, and disclose the use of tools. There will always be those who refuse because they are dicks, and the ones who refuse because they are scared. And there will always be the ones who see this tag as an invitation to harassment, and the ones who will just avoid your product.
I am just not sure tagging is the answer. At least not as long as there are forces at play, who are interested in people pointlessly bickering.
But YES, I am all about informed decision… my question is just, how informed is it? because if you think ‘some ai=all ai’, it’s just not very informed. I mean sure you know ai was a part of the process, which is all good and fine, but is it informed? not really.
And this is where I was about to email them and ask them to marry me. Seriously, this is exactly how I fucking feel. It was kinda weird seeing written out by someone else. But they are right, they are absolutely fucking right, and we are many who would get behind this. I know they hide on the KDP forums, and in the Selfpub forums, but we never say anything, we don’t promote anything (because of the above issue).
I do believe I touched this exact issue in this entry
Because that is EXACTLY the reaction I have met, back when I still bothered debating with anyone. I mean the elitism of indie authors run deeper than that, but basically it’s ‘if you can’t get an artist to do your cover, don’t publish’, and ‘all real authors are published traditionally’. This is elitist crap, and also just not true.
And I could bitch all I want, but I really feel bad for the very young authors, who just give up upon meeting this wall of bullshit from people.
Creatives supporting creatives, my ass.
And truer words have never been spoken. This is exactly what I have been trying to explain over and over on Reddit, these tools makes it possible for me to make a damn frontpage that is nice, that’s it.
And that is also why I offer free edits of random themed front pages for free on Deviant art. Because as you know, I just don’t think it’s ethical to claim money for ai generated graphics, regardless of how long I spent editing. Other people can do as they want, but I wouldn’t feel right asking for money for a damn png. But I offer these to other indie authors for free, and yes it’s tagged to all hell, disclosing it’s ai (and sometimes it’s pretty obvious too). Because editing a good front page isn’t necessarily for all, and I think those shit expensive bundles you can buy on etsy is just weird, and slightly unsettling. And so I thought I would at least offer a free option, because I can.
I didn’t use anything besides fucking auto correct to write my book(s), and had two albeit not professional, but still decent people who edited other stuff I wrote before – to edit it.
And yes people seriously need to get off their high horse.
Here are some screenshots of me arguing with one of those ‘your book is ai because you used ai for your cover’ people. But also a genuine wish for a ai-positive creative space for people like me, who use it as a tool in my creative process.
And here is a post about how ‘use another site, it’s not ai – asshole’ kinda backfired in their face, and I got to point and laugh… which i did in my blog, not to their face.
And lastly, as I said earlier in this entry, about the ai positive videos, and me wondering why there aren’t any. When I searched through my *come at me tag, trying to find these posts above (and there are plenty more anti-ai ranting in that tag is that is your jam). I found this
The singular ai-positive video I found, and as the text is in Danish I can tell you it says ‘ this video is no longer available because the youtube account it was associated with is deleted/shut down’ – This is such a shame, she made some wholesome gameplay videos where she talk about a lot of stuff using TTS tools, because she didn’t like her own voice and if I remember correctly she had some speech impediment. This video I linked to back then, was about that. I mean the reason why people use text to speech narration.
And I know she tried to argue with some of the people in the comments back then, but I do suspect she was dogpiled, like I have seen so many times before.
The video was from this entry if you are curious.
DREAMS OF A LOST MOONCHILD 
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