I first dabbled with AI image generation back in 2022 and sprinkled a few such images throughout my worldbuilding project. It was easy to look past all of the flaws with the idea that it was nothing more than a novelty. And I never cared nearly enough about my worldbuilding to pay anyone for artwork of it.
Now that I look back at it, those images are obvious slop, which I’ve grown to dislike as much as the next person. But recent comments I’ve seen here and on other sites have made me wonder if my brain has rotted in the same manner that makes some boomers fall for AI slop. There will be videos where the use of AI is not very noticeable to me, but not with deceptive intent. Maybe an illustration to get the point across or a subtle two-second animation. Commenters will very passionately point it out. To be honest, I don’t see the creator either paying for the equivalent human work or drawing anything better themselves.
Does it really just look that bad? Is it an issue with what AI and the companies that sponsor it stand for? Theft of real artists’ work? Does it change at all if the images were generated locally with the creator’s own hardware and resources? What about upscaling images, like I do with old wallpapers so that they look better on new monitors?
I assume what I’ve just said will attract downvotes, but that was my thought process and I do want to understand where other people draw the line and for what reasons. Should we limit it to quick-and-dirty illustrations, pure novelty, upscaling existing images, a model that only incorporates work if the artist consents, or something else?
I’d rather see MS paint illustrations than GenAI images.
never. ai “art” is theft.
It doesn’t necessarily look bad, but it has a certain look. Once you start to recognize AI’s tells you can’t unsee it.
I don’t think individual use matters that much. It’s slop, but if it doesn’t matter then slop is fine. It’s when institutions and companies and governments are using generated images instead of hiring an artist that it becomes a problem; an artist didn’t get paid for what is essentially stolen work and now that slop will be crammed down our throats.
The worst problem, to me, is that it pollutes our “environment” that is, our cultural environment, our pool of input about the world, with potential corruption, inaccuracies, at worst the intensification of falsities, stereotypes, and mediocre conceptions. Even if you don’t detect them in an AI image, they may be there. A real world image contains details that humans have not already preconceived, and diluting that with the bullshit of what humanity thinks is reality but which may or may not be, will have a greater long run cost than we can imagine.
Morally: never. It’s built off stolen property and destroys the world with its ecological consequences.
Practically: as a placeholder. A real human will always outperform an AI, but if the intent is not quality but to just get the gist across, then it works in a pinch.
To be clear, it’s not just the quality of the final product that matters. An AI-generated product is unmaintainable and uneditable. You can’t make variations of a generated product. It’s technical debt at its most fundamental
Basically NEVER
I think it makes sense as temp assets in my field (video games), but ideally, you get a real artist rather than use AI. Temp can help visualize the intent, but a real artist will always out perform a machine on creativity, style, etc. I’ve used it for image quality upscaling—I don’t know how to do this on my own, but I guess I could learn.
There’s likely other cases that are “visual” gen AI but maybe medical (pattern recognition?) or gap filling for something like architecture (like first pass treatments). I’m completely guessing there.
The cost to generate an AI image is something like 60 ml of water (shot glass?) or 1kWh (like watching 2 HD movies via stream).
Sure, yes, at scale, this stuff is bad. I would say the worst element is corporate profit of public goods: these machines were made with mass theft, and therefore, In my opinion, should be nationalized or universalized. In this reality, that is basically a joke.
At an individual level, and a personal level, I know driving my car is bad, especially if it runs on gas. Running ACs in the summer is also bad. Leaving the water running while shaving is bad. So is a myriad of many things I do. AI use is completely optional, but it’s not an automatic marker of anyone’s moral standing, at least not more than the other cases I mentioned. You can also offset these costs as a way to be more morally just.
For me:
- Use for temp art
- Hire a real human
- Offset as best you can.
One of my favorite shows is the Good Place because it highlights how impossible it is to live a perfectly good, moral life in the modern world. I think ascetics who aren’t using the internet or posting on social media are probably closest. I’m sure as hell not.
I think this is the correct take.
The two uses in my personal life I’ve seen AI used for is easy flyers, and rpg character art.
The problem with AI for personal use isn’t usually the easy one (water/electricity use, intellectual property, etc.) for a single, noncommercial user. Artists aren’t being harmed if you weren’t going to drop the price of a car on character art for all your DnD NPCs, or if the alternative to using AI to make a flyer was spending an hour in canva to do the same thing.
There are other issues. AI-generated character art can have a certain “soulless” quality that I personally hate, which is why I never use it. AI-generated flyers look unprofessional, or sometimes can include visual design elements that give an unintended conclusion or vibe.
It depends on the product. I don’t want to be served slop, designed to generate mindless clicks but if AI is secondary to something being produced by a human, for humans, I’m a little less upset about it.
Examples: SNL used an AI photo as an illustration for a weekend upstate story joke. The star of the show was the news story and the punchline to follow. The illustration helps the delivery, but isn’t the product.
I could also understand (for example) AI-generated background music when creating a video on YouTube, so long as the purpose of the video is worth a damn.
I think it’s always fine to use AI stuff as intermediary material, but almost never as finished product unless you specifically need something that feels samey and average.
For world building it’s pretty cool cause you can finally visualize that city that you’ve spent time imagining in detail, and use that to sharpen your description of it or spot incongruities. And for writing in general there’s nothing wrong with story boarding scenes and characters to ground your writing if you have more of a visual mind. Anything that helps you on your specific craft without bogging down the quality of the finished piece.
Never
I see no issue with locally run models like Z-Image Turbo. They take very little resources to run, so there’s no real issue with energy use here. They produce good results when prompted properly.
The whole theft of artist work applies to commercial models where companies are profiting of other people’s work. However, I simply don’t see the argument when it comes to open models that anybody can use freely, and especially in cases where you’re not producing images for profit.
I’m mutuals with one woman on twitter who keeps generating images of herself as like, a chinese special forces operator with a magical shadow kitty watching over her. They’re all completely benign. She posts other good shit about geopolitics but is clearly completely screen fried. She gets a pass. Everyone else can take a hike
It’s pretty much just this concept × ∞
Learn using image generation properly rather than accepting slop and use it when you need it’s. Just like with LLMs generating text.
These tools are going to stay and they can be useful. Refusing to use them when they are useful for a good cause is not going to help anybody.
Also, problematic aspects of these tools are always related to capitalism. Artists whose work was used against their interests suffer because of conditions of our current socio-economic system. In a system that doesn’t make relationship with art alienated, it wouldn’t exist.
Whenever you want. Don’t listen to these other wankers
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