I’m aware I’m not as active as I used to be, but after a few other users brought it up I figured it was time someone spoke up about it.
I propose that we ban all A.I.-generated content from the discussion board.
Why?
A.I. art is problematic and potentially dangerous for a number of reasons.
It takes money from real artists. A.I. art allows people to create art almost instantly, with potentially accurate results. The problem with it being, first and foremost, that it costs less than, say, a commission from an actual artist. You either aren’t charged at all to use it (the company developing it instead gets money from advertisements) or are charged a (sometimes very large) fee to simply generate images. No matter how innocent it seems, this takes money from real artists- some of which are living off of the money from their art, or using money from their art to escape a bad situation- and pretty much rips you off with deformed features and almost a single art style in some cases.
“In the style of…” In some A.I. art generators, you can enter “In the style of [artist name]” for an art piece that may look similar to a popular artist’s art. This is wrong for so many reasons. First of all, the artist loses money. Second, whether or not this is even legal is doubtful, given copyright laws. This is not like a D.T.I.Y.S. (Draw This In Your Style) where an artist willingly makes an art piece for other artists to draw a similar version of, typically in a contest form. Third, this is no different from art theft, and art theft is prohibited on this discussion board.
A.I. scrapes the web to learn. Once again, the legality of this is doubtful. At one point in time A.I. managed to access private medical documents. If that isn’t scary, I don’t know what is. Additionally, if you look closely on some A.I. art, you’ll notice what looks like a distorted watermark. This is from learning from other artists’ work to replicate it.
A.I. art is unreliable. Even if it continues to grow, A.I. art will always be second best to real artists’ work. From the messed up hands to creepy faces, A.I. art still cannot accurately replicate whatever you typed into the prompt.
I am an artist. I cannot in good conscience allow A.I. art to become a primary tool here. I’m lucky I am a small artist with no reliance on my art. Other artists rely heavily on the revenue from their art to even pay their bills. I saw a case on Twitter where two artists were doing commissions so that one could get out of an abusive family and the other could give their pets an actual home. Yet still companies are bringing in disturbing amounts of money from A.I. art- be it from developing the A.I. or using the A.I. to cut some corners and save some money. Remember that when you use A.I. art for purposes other than a laugh or an experiment, you cost a good person doing their best to feed themself precious cents.
In addition to the above, A.I.-generated content takes the place of user-made content in the discussion board, be it fanart, writing, or otherwise. A.I.-generated content is just the lazy way of getting praise for non-existent creativity.
I recognize that I cannot stop anyone here from using A.I., however, I do not believe that the (soon to be renamed) Sonic News Network would promote or allow A.I.-generated content given how problematic it is.
If you know of a better solution or a compromise that can be made, please tell me, but the way I see it, an almost unnoticeable marking that a post is A.I.-generated is not enough.
