Mastodawn

https://bsky.app/profile/scalzi.com/post/3mj6q3pdblc2y

@davidgerard I think tools vs genAI also muddies the waters.

Like I use AI tools - noise reduction is one where a) the wind doesn't need royalties and b) it isn't being ripped off and c) genuinely useful. My hiking videos rely on it, cos however well mic'd you are, wind is gonna wind.

But genAI, that's when I can't see many or any good uses for it. My work - writing and artwork - has been used in models - the LAION5B scraped my artwork (yes I opted out of the ones I found) and Anthropic trained off a book I contributed to. That's shitty...

And for a while I was 'well I'll get my lack of money's worth' and tried using the free versions to create stuff, but it was never that good without a lot of work...the 'presets' ripped off living artists, which I avoided as much as possible, using dead artists for inspiration. But still, not impressed.

So now I am of the view genAI - NOPE, AI tools - can be OK if not exploitative.

There needs to be a lot more transparency though re: training, might need legislation.

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Tim

@davidgerard and what stung about the training of my work is I never got paid for that chapter I wrote, I never sold those artworks.

If I had gotten previously paid for that work, or got some micropayment royalty when my work appears in a result, I'd probably be less salty about it.

But the idea that my work is good enough to be stolen, but apparently has 'no value' when I say 'hey I should get paid for that' had the opposite effect from what they wanted.

I stopped painting, I stopped posting it online. There are other reasons for that, but certainly the feeling I was 'working for the man' to steal my work without getting any benefit is partly why.

This will happen more and more, artists will switch to things that can't be stolen or just stop.

Why bother?

But if they'd not been so greedy and worked out a royalty/opt out system first off, then it might have been a new renaissance. (And of course sorted out the environmental issues, bitcoin could never do that either....)

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David Gerard 1d ago

@radioclash "AI" is a marketing term, but "AI" on its own these days tends to mean the genAI.

"what about the other AI" yes but that wasn't the obvious context, was it

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Tim 1d ago

@davidgerard obvious context? It's not like 'GenAI' is only 3 extra letters or anything.

And yes in a textual medium with no other cues accuracy in communication rather than assumption of context is slightly important.

Ass of U and Me after all. *shrugs*

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David Gerard 1d ago

@radioclash yeah that's great thanks