secret horses manifesto

RIP to @ai_metal_bot, your images used to be so interesting before the AI boom

yeah.. im not a user and i dont think i have ever used any of the old generators and all that but like.. i sorta hate how like everything just falls under "ai" bc i actually love the idea of like using ur own art to have a machine make stuff with it.. kinda the whole thing with like an avatar generator when u set it to random and it picks stuff from the assets it has. i think curation has a lot to do this it.. and purpose and intent.. like a friend had a twitter account that was a bunch of stuff they wrote but like it chose how to mash stuff up from the database or whatever.. how is that really that diff from "ai" writing when "ai" is taking writing from the internet/etc that other people wrote and mashing it up? its just hateful that "ai" is being added to like everything where its making shit worse.. and trying to replace people.. meh its complex

as ai hype starts to die down a bit, i feel that some space lets up for conversations like this. well, maybe it's wrong to say ai hype is dying down. maybe we're all just getting used to talking and thinking about it.

> since when do we all believe in the sanctity of copyright and in the immortal human soul?

it is so unfortunate how "ai" use has been pushed by corporations as a means of cutting costs and accelerating productivity. and im happy that our creative communities have taken such a strong stance against that. at the same time there are genuine ways of artistic exploration using these tools and methods, ones that dont benefit these corps. so yes i agree!

#yup

wouldn't it be crazy if there was another jam playing with the artistic intent of genAI

may we set our bones down instead of picking them in the future with our friends

An interesting perspective, I mostly agree with you. I don't like genAI, or rather what it's become synonymous with... The fast, cheap, cookie-cutter, everything-looks-the-same-now way of making things really appeals to people with no artistic sensibilities and that don't want to pay for assets. I also think a lot of (commonly chronically online) artists pay far too much attention to the «content theft» side of things (which I couldn't care less about) rather than the real issues with the practice, such as the mentioned environmental impact.

I'd be lying if I said AI-generated images/videos of old weren't deeply fascinating to me (nowadays they're commonly referred to as AI hallucinations, which I find to be simply inaccurate as machines aren't sentient, and even if they were how would they be able to perceive the world the same way we do?). But, the community surrounding these things aren't artists nor even art appreciators.

I once learned of an incredibly skilled artist that was once creating his own AI image generator from scratch based on his own images (I believe it was a glitch artist called Rui Martins, here's his Tumblr). My dad, a former graphic designer, had a lot of fun creating things with legacy Midjourney. Then the culture surrounding AI changed because it became mainstream.

I hope I'm making some sort of sense. Without being too much of a hipster, I feel that the only way to make generative AI not suck is to make it uncool, so I'm inclined to side with the «no AI» rule.