The Duality of XanThe best way to protest AI "art" is to commission artists.
Fuck AI "art". Just hire independent artists. There's a whole world of them out there, and many of them keep asking for commissions. Supporting artists is an act of solidarity.
I think we authors should make a point of showing solidarity in this. The covers of our books help them get noticed, and once the book gets noticed, everyone sees the cover. Seems to me, that should be a mutually beneficial relationship.
Not to mention that with the tech bros trying to make AI writing a thing, we writers are next.
To be fair, it's going to be a lot harder to make AI writing sound convincing. An AI doesn't know anything about structure, or even what words mean. It has no idea what it's writing. But I can imagine surrealist writing being the first thing an AI manages to replicate. It's not inconceivable that an abstruse piece of AI-generated prose might find its way into one of the more pretentious litmags sometime.
Nick Kearney@XanIndigo while I fully support what you are saying, I fear you might be underestimating the capacity of AI, they are mimicry always will be, but they mimic exceedingly large data bases, not enough monkeys or typewriters just yet, but increasingly they will fool a lot of people a lot of the time 1/3
@XanIndigo this raises two issues, first the idea of writing as a job, what Ai threatens is the writing as work, x needs a text, writer does it, usually to keep the lights on while they write what really drives them, AI is going to mess with that model 2/3
@XanIndigo the other issue is a moot point, the creative writer, AI will produce stuff that competes with any "airport" novel, if you write to a formula, then AI will be competition. AI may make creative writing more a craft activity, sold locally, possibly oral. But great writing will out, and there will still be space for it. It may be analogous to the way translation has changed. The software does the spade work, but people still need human translators..fewer but they need them.3/3
Lacci 🐇@XanIndigo
It also will allow AI assisted writing where someone can use an AI to flesh out an outline and do most of the writing and rapidly drown people in lots of not very good work that panders to things with a lot of appeal to readers and seems at first glance to be better written than it ends up being.
It also will allow AI assisted writing where someone can use an AI to flesh out an outline and do most of the writing and rapidly drown people in lots of not very good work that panders to things with a lot of appeal to readers and seems at first glance to be better written than it ends up being.
@XanIndigo
That could lead to something like what's happened to Google search results that involve product reviews where the effort required to wade through the algorithmically generated stuff is so large that it drives people away from seeking out material from authors they don't already know.
That could lead to something like what's happened to Google search results that involve product reviews where the effort required to wade through the algorithmically generated stuff is so large that it drives people away from seeking out material from authors they don't already know.
@Lacci A good point. There are already plenty of writers (read: grifters) who do this kind of thing by being horrible clients for ghostwriters. Like the people in this one recent Folding Ideas episode.
Contrepreneurs: The Mikkelsen Twins
@XanIndigo
Ugh. Yeah. That's a really nasty thing to do.
Ugh. Yeah. That's a really nasty thing to do.
Keptn.qui aka. Julian Reichel@XanIndigo you would be surprised what they already can write. But i am not afraid. Ai won’t take over our jobs. And if so…well..it is what it is.
Maybe this ai stuff will be a tool for us artists to speed things up a little and outsource stupid lame ass jobs to a machine.
Maybe this ai stuff will be a tool for us artists to speed things up a little and outsource stupid lame ass jobs to a machine.
João Pinheiro@XanIndigo AI might be useful in some areas, but I'm sure that it would be better to invest our precious time, expertise and money in human beings!
Prehistoric Goth@XanIndigo I miss illustrated book covers a lot
CurrentBias@XanIndigo this but the people that will rely on AI art for being cheaper than indie artists were never going to pay indie artists fairly anyway so it's a thing that will end up existing in its own bubble like the youtubers who reuse the same royalty free music over and over
@currentbias Perhaps. And perhaps that's even more of a reason to protest by actually promoting artists. Because for every person who was never going to hire an artist, there's at least one more who's never actually thought about it before and is just going to follow the crowd and do the new popular thing.
ck love 🦋 🐘 🐳@XanIndigo I totally agree. I am mortified to think that one day we'll be seeing these horrid illustrations of weird looking people and soulless environments. And all the artists who have beautiful souls will be begging on the streets just to save a few bucks. And the worse part? Is that these people who use AI for their book "covers" think they're the artists now. It's truly maddening.
@cklove it honestly saddens me. In over a decade on social media – Tumblr, Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon – I can’t begin to count the number of talented artists I’ve seen, or the number of them who’ve been pleading for commissions so they can pay their bills and just live.
@XanIndigo Yeah. It's incredibly sad.