Welcome, fellow artists and storytellers, to the vibrant world of Screentones, where the lines between imagination and reality blur with every stroke. Join us as we delve into the colorful palette of comics, exploring the intricate layers of storytelling, character dynamics, and the magic of visual narrative. Whether you're a seasoned creator or an eager enthusiast, prepare to be immersed in discussions, interviews, and insights that ignite your passion and ignite your creativity. This is Screentones, where every pixel holds a story.

So….Generative AI. If you’ve been around social media in the past two or three years you’ve probably heard of the major players in this scene already.

Please note: we here on ScreenTones aren’t experts in this scene, just artists also trying to wrap our heads around this whole explosion. Things change so quickly in this scene that there’s a high chance that in the time between us recording this episode, and when it comes out, things will have changed again. So this episode is not a definitive take by any means, but we’re doing our best to understand what’s going on.

What is generative AI? Why is it an issue for artists? Why is it an issue for everyone else too?

Let's talk about it.

Protection from AI: Nightshade and Glaze and more.

AI lawsuits important in answering the following questions:
Does training a model on copyrighted material require a license?

Generative AI systems make copies of the training materials as part of the training process. Does that interim copying require a license, or is it fair use?

Does generative AI output infringe on copyright for the materials on which the model was trained?

If generative output constitutes a derivative work or infringes the training data's reproduction right, then it infringes on copyright. Courts will need to rule whether similarities in output and training data are derived from protected materials or unprotected materials. Who is liable for copyright infringement when AI infringes?

Does generative AI violate restrictions on removing, altering or falsifying copyright management information?

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act provides restrictions on removal or alteration of copyright management information, such as watermarks. This is exemplified in the Stability AI case, where the watermark reproduced by Stable Diffusion on generated works constituted false copyright management information.

Does generating work in the style of someone violate that person's rights?

This is known as the right of publicity, which varies from state to state. It prohibits the use of someone's likeness, name, image, voice or signature for commercial gain.

How do open source licenses apply to training AI models and distributing the resulting output?

The plaintiffs in the Copilot case argued that republishing Copilot training materials without attribution -- and not making Copilot itself open source -- violates open source license terms.

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Episode Release Date: September 18, 2024

Episode Credits:

Ally Rom Colthoff (@varethane) - she/they, chirault.sevensmith.net wychwoodcomic.com

Kristen Lee (@feathernotes) - she/they, ghostjunksickness.com lunarblight.com

Rae Baade (@overlordrae) - they/them, empyreancomic.com

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The Intro "DO IT (feat. Shia LaBeouf)", and the Outro "It's Good To See You Again!!", both by Adrianwave, have been used and modified in good faith under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Licensed. Edits include: Fade IN/OUT, and a repeat added to the beginning of "It's Good To See You Again!!". For more information on this creative commons use, please reference https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.

Transcription

This transcript is auto generated by our recording software.

01:26.66

Varethane

Hello and welcome to screen tones where we talk anything and everything webcomics today. We're going to be tackling a topic that is pretty big in creative online circles right now generative Ai I'm verthane my pronouns are c they and I make the webcomics Chriault and Wychwood.

01:42.80

Krispy

I'm Krispy. I use the pronouns she/they and I create the comics Ghost Junk Sickness and Lunar blight.

01:56.76

Rae

And I'm Rae. My pronouns are they/them and I make the webcomics Overlord of Ravenfell and On Empyreon High.

02:08.64

Varethane

So generative AI.

If you've been around social media in the past two or 3 years you've probably heard of the major players in the scene already. Before we really get started I want to make a general note that we hear on Screen Tones are not experts in this scene. We're just artists also trying to wrap our heads around this whole explosion and things are changing so quickly that there's a pretty high chance that in the time between us recording this episode. And the time that it comes out things will have changed yet again. So this won't be any kind of definitive take on ai, we're just doing our best to understand what's ah just what's going on. So, what is generative Ai.

02:56.26

Rae

So Generative Ai models generate text, images, videos, or other data using training data. The particular explosion has pretty much meant that you can. Generate pretty much anything but it also really relies completely on a huge model of essentially text images and videos that were taken without permission and.

03:33.67

Krispy

So essentially we kind of have our backs up because like Rae said the images, text, the stuff that is being fed into this training data- I'm making quotes with my fingers- Is stuff that has been taken without permission. It is our stuff that exists on the net that has been basically fed to be trained and to replicate all of this “content”. I am going to use that word in this situation. For you know, easy use of people not- Well essentially just not hiring people to do the jobs proper. A lot of spheres, specifically in our comic sphere, the creative sphere, we're going to be tackling mostly during this episode, have really come under fire essentially with our own works being scraped and used for the profit of those with these machines that are that are taking our art, feeding it through something and creating something quite scary sometimes and there have been a lot of moments for us to be understandably upset with how this is it's sealing our work in a lot of defense of them not properly paying people. Um, saying that quote unquote anybody can do it which is absolute horseradish. And ah, it's she's a problematic topic.

05:25.76

Varethane

I oh boy? Yeah, um, I've seen some arguments from the other side of it that basically boil down to that Ai is like a labor-saving tool that can help artists in the long run by speeding up certain. Processes that might be time consuming. Ah some of the very earliest uses of ai like I think before this whole generative Ai thing was coming out. Um, clip studio rolled out an autocoloring tool where you can basically use your line work and like to run it through. Essentially a glorified filter that would kind of detect where your lines were and fill them in with like pretty shading and like randomized colors or slightly more controlled colors if you gave it a special layer with swatches on it and that was an early form of generative Ai.

06:17.89

Varethane

Ah, which had been fed on a training database of like various coloring styles that were popular among the artists using clip studio and at the time that tool was like pretty popular like a lot of people were like wow this is really cool and fun to play with and like I'm just goofing around like having a good time with this fun little tool. Um, and now. But Generative Ai has taken a much larger space in the scene. Overal, the feelings have definitely been changing towards it. Um, among the creative ah people out there and. Part of the pushback coming from the ai side is still basically saying like but why don't you should like this tool you should be enjoying it because it can speed things up and you don't have to spend so much time on all this like grunt work so we should just give a bit of conversation about what the issues are.

07:14.85

Rae

And yeah, I do think that there might be quite possibly some legitimate uses for ai like that the the problem is is Ai is a very broad term and it can be used for many many things. And some tools are pretty nice for the like labor saving aspects but those often don't use the images themselves and when most people talk about generative Ai being bad for artists. It usually. In regards to actually just making the image off of a few a few typed um prompts and generating the entire image without any work or input from the artists other than touchups.

08:11.47

Krispy

And so you start to run into these problems where there also is a pattern of what has been scraped, a bias that comes into the stuff that is being produced by these things and you know. A lot of issues with falsified information.So a really really good example… Well I wouldn't say good. But an interesting example of the chaos that happens when using these kinds of models that scrape art and steal stuff from folks is something that happened recently with the Willy Wonka's chocolate experience that had happened in Glasgow Scotland where somebody had absolutely scraped stole all this art fed it through the generative ai machine that pooped out um concept art. Um. Events mishmash of texts that make no sense and proceeded to create an event about it. Um and led customers ah to a empty warehouse of absolute nothing. Um I mean scam in the app. Ah, and in the end with all of that stuff.

09:42.88

Krispy

Um, but it was a it was a good example of you know, finding out the the lengths that people are going to be going towards using these kind of things and just stuff to really start paying attention to apparently the um, ah. The the people responsible ah for the willy wonkas chocolate experience um had also made a bunch of venues and events that totally made up everything um that they have done with their body of content I'm gonna say content once again, um, just. Just to make money fast. You know at the end of the day. That's unfortunately what it comes down to is the exploitative nature of this and when people were digging further. They found out that the ah man involved creating this had also scraped hundreds and hundreds of peoples. Ah, books and writings and stuff like that to quote unquote publish. These Ai -generated books um to make quick money so it's it's disturbing all around to see um everything that has been made from this well this this system

11:01.43

Varethane

It's it's pretty like that that whole thing if I like going to actually call it content this time instead of art is like it's so telling because I feel like that's in a way the most insidious thing about this whole Ai explosion because it really is just distilling art back down to content.

11:21.60

Varethane

What we're talking about with Ai it's not. It's no longer a creative vision. It's just content. It can churn out infinite quantities of mindless stuff and that's what it's good for and anything created by this is inherently just going to be regurgitated filler.

11:42.78

Rae

And I agree that calling it content is probably the most accurate term because ah art tends to have themes and a point and tries to communicate where generative Ai can really only. Retread what other um people are doing and a lot of the times because the ai model doesn't even know what themes or you know an artist statement is.

12:07.21

12:18.59

Rae

It will just take from everything So essentially even if you have someone that's like oh super amazing Generative Ai person. They really don't have. The control and finesse of making these choices of what goes where and what symbolism that might have in that itineration to essentially do what artists.

12:53.37

Varethane

And the funniest thing to me is when people who work in generative Ai making graphics get angry about other people using the same prompts as them like this insane amount of creativity required to be like an anime girl with long red hair.

13:11.55

Varethane

Ah, done in art station style trending on deviant art or whatever.

13:17.98

Rae

And yeah, they really a lot of us artists probably are aware of the idea man the one that has a million dollar idea that will make both of us rich. If only we would draw their comic for free. And that's really what a lot of these ai um, wordsmiths feel like and why they're so protective over their prompts because they think it's the idea itself. That has value rather than the execution of it.

13:58.51

Krispy

Yeah, and it's something that we usually cover on like screen tones episodes. So we talk about enjoying the process and having you know that be such a big factor. When you know engaging with creating your story. Writing music everything and and this is the scary part is that having these stable ai open Ai chat gp go after the work and and the process behind that and simply say it is their own. I know one crusty moment. Unfortunately well it's I guess it's not a moment 1 crusty thing of the many crusty things of deviant art is that it's absolutely drinking this up like no one's business because not to put on my tinfoil hat. But unfortunately. As far as the net goes. We're definitely entering an era of content farming and content creating and go go go fast fast fast create. You must go and I fear ah that with these models that say it can make your idea faster than you can produce them that is intoxicating to people that is like oh my goodness I can finally make my really really long story come to life because of this thing and this is what they're going to be advertising with.

15:22.70

Krispy

And you know I look back to what diving art is doing and it's advertising the people who use these content producing machines these art theft machines. Um and winning money for it and getting commissions from it and stuff like that and elevating the Deviantart platform to what it is is just. Hot trash Unfortunately, rest in pieces from the art community and it's Sad. It's sad and scary. I think people have valid validity in saying they don't want to be replaced because the process is a part of you and it is what makes the art. Peace and the journey and and then the stuff that you create in the end.

16:05.59

Rae

And yeah I think that this part about making content fast is kind of really almost disturbing because we are essentially. Already up to our eyeballs in every form of media trying to compete for our own eyeballs. Um, and honestly you can't really compete with that. Even ah.

16:38.80

Rae

Web Tune readers are talking about the number of ah debuts every day is exhausting to keep up with and adding Ai making content fast and effortlessly is kind of. Almost a detriment to people that are already like reader-fa fatigued.

17:03.49

Varethane

I yeah I feel like 1 of the things. Ah I can tell this is a huge topic because for every single point that gets brought up I think of like 3 new things that are totally different that I want to say um, but like on the topic of a racing like the part of.

17:18.87

Varethane

Part of the process I I remember seeing unfortunately I can't remember who posted this tweet but there's a tweet that basically boils down to like well why don't I like get Ai to like read books for me and watch television for me like if I'm going to erase the thing that is actually enjoyable like the the people who are going to benefit.

17:38.64

Varethane

From removing the process of art from art. It's not artists who are going to benefit from that. We're not in this game because we want to not be making art like be nice to have an entire portfolio like just up here.

17:43.29

Krispy

Yeah.

17:56.52

Varethane

Like that that gets you hired or whatever but like what are you going to do with your time then like the art is the point making it is the point. Um, so it's this whole mindset shift where I feel like the people who value the outputs of these kinds of machines.

18:16.20

Varethane

Um, are are not necessarily the ones who want to be creatives themselves personally and spend their time doing and thinking about creative things they want to get that all over with so they can make the money and then get back to I don't know what else do you do with your day when you're not making art.

18:33.33

Rae

And I will say if they think that comics will make money they are very wrong and.

18:41.87

Krispy

Ah, the curse of comics.

18:44.68

Varethane

But you can produce so many animated show pitches anyway. Ah so I think it's probably time to move on to ah sort of the second question. Um, which is kind of what are the issues that pertain kind of to everybody not necessarily just artists. Because it is big It is huge. It's in every field these days. It has vastly out-encompassed the creative sphere both online and in person. So let's talk about it.

19:14.89

Krispy

Let's do a dunkin donuts dive. I've kind of covered this, well, not covered it. But I've mentioned it already before but a lot of the ah. Unethical or incorrect information coming up and now that Google search is just like again eating this? The search engine for Google is so bad. Oh my goodness. Absolutely so Bad. Um I currently use. Firefox is a browser and I love my ublock origin and there is thankfully from the community a list that you can feed through my blocks. Um that filters out all of the ai coming up but but because it's so rampant. Like this stuff is still. It's popping up new every time and feeding you misinformation. Um, that is it's laughable. It's actually really really scary.

20:12.64

Varethane

It. It's kind of wild because it's not even necessarily just misinformation these days but like Google image search has become so full of like Ai generated graphics that if you look up references of things like animals or places.

20:30.80

Varethane

And stuff like that instead of getting real photography or real research often you'll get like fake images that are just generated I remember somebody was sharing. They were looking for a reference if I think it was a tiger or something like that like a very specific species of animal and they were only getting.

20:46.97

Varethane

Like generated results of completely different things and the funny thing with some of these prompts is that um within the online sphere of overall content. Some of it is no longer even being generated by like ah the the machine is feeding itself now.

21:04.95

Varethane

Ah, there's so much aigenerated content out there that the Ai is now also being trained on other Ai -generated content instead of actual photographs and actual drawings and it's getting stranger and stranger because it's just starting to like eat itself.

21:18.83

Rae

Yeah, that's actually called a hapsburg collapse because it's um, essentially getting embred and it's been shown that um, it'll just get worse as time.

21:36.16

Rae

Ah, time goes on because the ai will just keep inbreeding and inbreeding and the results will essentially just become stranger. Um.

21:47.48

Varethane

It. It's funny other there have been these cases where like random bouts of like chat Dpt will start spitting out absolute nonsense for a few days or like the image generators. Yes I remember reading about that.

21:55.94

Rae

1 time it went to spanish for 2 hours

22:04.24

Varethane

And it's funny because for all this talk about like removing humans from the equation when stuff like that happens. It is people who have to go in there and clean that up like.

22:10.61

Rae

Well, that's the that's the thing that's another point that a lot of people don't realize is all our Ai is being curated by real people and they are being drastically underpaid.

22:28.51

Rae

There have been exposes about ah these ai companies using um people in Kenya ah to curate all the um, all the like. Sexual images and stuff like that out of these data sets for only two dollars an hour less. So. There's also a huge labor exploitation beyond the obvious labor exploitation of just firing everyone.

23:03.85

Rae

To save a buck.

23:08.43

Krispy

Yeah, it's honestly it's scary because the other thing that I think about is ah back in the old days when you had to do some paper research and stuff like that even for high school or whatever. You know I remember they were like do not use Wikipedia because you know it's not It's not a credible source or whatever go to the library and stuff like that and then yeah.

23:29.64

Varethane

Anybody can edit it.

23:32.42

Rae

Yeah.

23:34.80

Krispy

And then there was an era where it's just like okay like you know more of it is being curated by professionals and blah blah and it's it's getting sourced in a way that is you know, ah better than it was um I will say and now we're kind of flip flopping back on you know this stuff invading. Um, sources that could have been used and I have many nibblings and I fear some of the things that they have told me that they found out on the internet. Ah, coming from. You know, a lot of this crazy Ai generated stuff that makes absolutely no sense and it's completely just mangled because you know it's that Oroboros eating itself into this weird mess.

24:23.12

Varethane

And oh man yeah, what's even happening to the strange world of weird Youtube videos that mash up Elsa from Frozen with Spiderman Building? I don't know minecraft palaces and having orgies or whatever.

24:38.30

Rae

You know, like ah there is also the um fear the legitimate fear of plagiarism because a lot of these Ai models can be fitted to essentially just outright copy certain.

24:56.50

Rae

Images and texts and stuff and this is especially especially ah, um, obvious when it comes to chat? ah Gpt ah to the point that a lot of teachers have disallowed it but the problem is is a lot of. The tools that use like the detection for Ai are ai themselves and you ah have to remember the um that ai is just built off of training data.

25:33.96

Rae

And you get a lot of false positives because of that because they are using the actual sources that the ai is trained off of. I actually have a nibbling that got accused of using Ai because. The detection software said it was 50% or something like that when you consider the fact that ai is a model trained off of training data.

25:54.29

Krispy

Wow.

26:07.27

Rae

Things like Shakespeare and the bible will come back as 80% Ai generated because it's used so often as a training model. Especially when you're talking about teenagers that are using us like a source.

26:26.47

Rae

Or something and might use words from that actual text and the same can be said for artwork is you'll see a lot of artists with very popular, very commercialized styles get accused of using Ai when.

26:45.52

Rae

They're probably the most common to put into these training Data sets themselves.

26:48.83

Krispy

I Couldn't imagine that.

26:52.52

Varethane

And it is interesting. Oh I've seen artists ah like basically point out like when someone basically recreated their work. Ah. Almost accidentally in Ai, somebody will post like a landscape that was done via Ai and the artist will spot it and be like hang on, that's like exactly my work which it turns out had been scraped and fed into the data set. So it'll use varying proportions of things like essentially the way.

27:24.60

Varethane

These tools work. Um, they're sort of a predictive algorithm so chat gpt is a predictive algorithm for text and stable diffusion is a predictive algorithm for pixels essentially and it'll stitch things together and remix things and blend them together. And it doesn't necessarily know where the boundaries of 1 thing is versus another thing like if you tell it to make a table leg. It's going to look through all of its various pixels that are tagged as table legs and put those together but it doesn't know what a table is so it'll do all kinds of funky stuff with perspective. And then sometimes it'll just happen to find a lot of pieces of table leg that all came from the same image and it'll just spit out that picture almost unaltered. You can't really control whether it does that and you just have to hope that the right person spots. What it's doing and points it out.

28:18.65

Krispy

Yeah I know another issue, one of the bigger issues with using these open ai and stable diffusion and chatchi pt is the energy consumption involved with you know the software. Using and going through its database to spit out this content. Um, and it is worrisome with how much energy it does use. Um you know doing some research on it finding out that one image could. Basically power your fridge for a few hours and stuff like that. I'm just like that's that's so much. That's so much just to steal from someone to create your content and that's how much it used to do that so you can imagine somebody you know content farming a lot more too. Um, make a comic or do the Youtube stuff because oh it's invaded that exponentially um, ah.

29:16.50

Varethane

And man imagine if Nftts were still a thing I feel like they were starting to die just as this got started. But if they were both exploding at the same time like oh I.

29:26.43

Rae

I feel like the Ai thing started because the Nfts lost.

29:27.50

Krispy

Yep, Oh yeah. I think this is just like a definite path of you know, another to make money fast. Yeah yeah, exactly and you know when we talk about making content and using this word to describe what they're doing.

29:37.93

Rae

Get rich so quickly. Yeah.

29:50.86

Krispy

Um, you know it is like Ray and ah thane had said like it's just you're taking the process out. You're taking the the creation out of it. So it's just what what is the point. Well the point is to just get money. But.

30:08.59

Krispy

And from what I mentioned with the deviant art example of you know devian art showcasing this one content creator I'm not going to call you an artist ah content creator as making e I can't even remember I think it was $2500 or $25000 it was just nuts that month on Ai of generated art and I'm like well that's great that they stole from so many people on the same website probably and got to you know, take the walk away with that money essentially and I think on top of the energy consumption. And and the outsource labor and all of this the fear of people who are not as in tuneed with what's going on with this recognizing what generative Ai is um, against like an actual piece of art. Ah, than an artist create and not being able to tell the difference and that's getting a little scary now. Um because it's trained on so much stuff and it's figured out hands that used to be the best way to look.

31:12.95

Varethane

It's figured out hands.

31:17.34

Rae

It still has a hard time with teeth though.

31:22.38

31:22.65

Varethane

And wisps of hair intersecting jewelry.

31:26.38

Rae

Now I will say that one of the concerning things is while there are a lot of companies concerned with cutting costs I do feel like this is ultimately going to bite them because.

31:45.55

Rae

There has been a ruling and Generative Ai images cannot be copyrighted now you are getting a lot of companies that are starting to realize this because if you can't copyright a work. That means less revenue for them. They won't be able to really take any recourse against piracy because you can't copyright that work in the first place. Um, and just. Ultimately, it can be a risky way to lose profit while you're trying to make a quick buck.

32:35.57

Krispy

Which is wonderful to see them get bit in the bum like this because you know, Ah, just you know eating your own kind of thing there. Um, but it. It's worrisome because you know now in the explosion just like how during the Nft stage of just absolute garbage nonsense happening and affecting others. Um, while creating these things to get rich quick ruining. The environment. Thanks guys. Um, it's you could see why it's such a big concern.

33:15.79

Varethane

I It's ah it's definitely had major implications on just labor in general though. Um I I know that it's pushed a lot of people out of jobs not within art but in ah, all kinds of other fields too.

33:28.75

Varethane

Like customer support for any big corporation that has like web-based like chat support or phone support a lot of that now and for the past it's probably been this way for at least a year maybe two now. Ah, all the people who used to be employed to like you know, pick up the phone and answer questions from customers.

33:48.52

Varethane

Have been completely replaced with Ai which is a ah vast number of jobs for that sort of thing and companies like ah I think like uber and doordash and things like that as well as like lyft. Um, they're using these also to like control certain parts of like.

34:07.41

Varethane

Figuring out who gets matched with like what order that sort of thing all of that and if you ever want to have if you ever have an issue with their services and you want to go like to their customer support to find things out, you're just going to be taken in an infinite loop. Um I I talked to ah so I was on a.

34:25.83

Varethane

I was on a taxi ride and I started talking to the the driver of the cab and it turned out that even for employees at the company they were working for if they had issues with their job. Ah, as like people who were like getting a salary they would be referred only to Ai. They couldn't get a hold of a real person. If they were having issues with their actual livelihood which I think is pretty worrisome for everybody involved in that transaction.

34:50.90

Krispy

Yeah, yeah, and honestly, very very frustrating as someone who has definitely tried to call customer support for I haven't even I can't remember what it was for exactly but it was something urgent. It was something either. Ah. Banking related or anything like that and you get put into these calls that are so frustrating to deal with that. It's just like you know are you dealing with this or are you dealing with that and it's like ah no like my my problem is a little bit more nuanced and it'll keep repeating itself until you go through their little questionnaire. To get siphoned into an answer that does not solve your problem and it's it's hard because they also put you through a gauntlet to finally relent and give you a human and that could take like half an hour on top of waiting. So. It's just. I'd rather just be kept on hold. But.

35:47.47

Rae

And and another thing that people need to realize about generative Ai and all machine learning is any programmer will tell you garbage in garbage out a lot of people are treating Ai as.

36:05.78

Rae

A way to be unbiased because how can a robot machine be biased and don't realize it's usually because the programmers are biased or the information that you're feeding them is biased. And when you indiscriminately just scrape everything you'll get that bias and it's also just.

36:38.35

Rae

Thing talked a little bit about surveillance from um, the taxi driver's site or well about not being able to talk to a person but they're also being ah surveilled and.

36:56.61

Rae

Ah, judged by Ai and ah some some places are using it as an excuse to dock pay and I think that's just kind of disturbing. Ah and when you also consider the fact that.

37:15.14

Rae

All this data is indiscriminately scraped from the internet. Ah there have also been people who have found their medical records in the data. Ah, which is a violation of several.

37:33.16

Varethane

So there's a lot of really awful stuff going on in there. which needs me to look there. Sorry.

37:35.19

Rae

Oh yeah, I've I've seen I've seen people say that they found photos that were taken by their roomba. Yeah so you really don't.

37:44.31

Varethane

I've well I've seen Graphics of.

37:45.88

Krispy

Oh my gosh.

37:52.80

Rae

Yeah, you really don't know where all these images come from and that's a little bit disturbing for something that just gets fed into Ai.

38:08.35

Varethane

Is there any hope?

38:12.67

Krispy

Small voice: is there any hope?

38:19.11

Rae

It certainly does seem like a hopeless situation but there are several um lawsuits against nearly every single machine learning right now.

38:36.33

Rae

And 1 is against all these image generative Ai and also deviantart because deviantart did that? Ah so.

38:54.39

Rae

That's probably the main one. That's of good concern to artists but is by no means the last there's some going against chat gpd some going against the ones that are using Programmer data to make New Programs. There's just all this ah lawsuits that will hopefully help guide restrictions that will protect our privacy our copyright and our work.

39:30.79

Varethane

And I think something else kind of neat that I heard about um which like just anybody like any artist who posts work online can make use of is there. There's ah, a company making a couple of tools. Ah 1 is called glaze. Um. Which you can apply to an image before you upload it online and it it basically applies a very subtle I don't want to call it a filter because I feel like it's a bit more technical than that. But basically it it makes very subtle changes to the image that are almost indistinguishable to the naked eye like you can't tell. Just by looking at it with your human eyeballs. Whether an image has been glazed. But if it gets fed to ah one of these training databases. It'll it'll it just won't register. Um, there's also from the same people ah is a program called nightshadede which. Almost does the same thing as glaze except that it also takes it a step further and will start messing up the training database. So this is if you want to ah do something called data poisoning to their training data sets a lot of what these programs rely on in order to create. These images and like text chats that the people using them want them to make um that predictive text thing basically telling ah telling people like is this an image of a tiger or a car or a bicycle or a motorcycle or a dog or whatever like.

41:01.24

Varethane

Basically a massive system of tagging that will connect relevant pixels to the prompts that users type in and Nightshade will disrupt that it'll give it an image that you've fed to it and it'll detect that your image is like whatever is actually in it. It's going to tell the training data set that it is something different and if you poison a data set it means that if somebody types in Tiger they're going to start getting pictures of random other things instead or maybe the same other thing every time maybe now this data set just straight up thinks that a tiger is a puppy or ah like.

41:39.66

Varethane

Refrigerator or something like that. Ah, which could lead to some pretty funny results and probably be very frustrating to the people trying to use it to create reams of content that they can monetize in some way and.

41:51.99

Rae

And I have seen some people very angry about that and being oh why are you ruining this awesome thing and I'm just like you all told us to adapt so we are.

42:09.29

Krispy

Adapt Overcome Ah, it's sad how much this has ruined a lot of you know, opportunities and careers jobs um art. Portfolios many things. This is a damaging Um, you know, kind of endeavor that these well Tech Bros and make money fast schemes really really dive into. I Do believe that in all this kind of I mean it sounds like doom talk but it's.

42:43.95

Krispy

I think that there's just a rise and fall. There's a boom to this ah there ah a bus to this boom? Sorry um and it's coming. I know that it's coming because you know when you talk about these issues when you. Yeah, arm yourself with information and you know learn what generative Ai is actually doing and you know seeing these content farms and stuff like that for what they are is just mindless content for money when you start to get into that and you. You tell your peers your family and make everybody aware of the situation. It's going to lose its luster. These people who are taking thousands of thousands of pieces and whatnot from people. They're they're going to be the losers in the end. It might take a little bit and there are going to be a lot of hurt people along the way but I don't think this is the future.

00:00.00

Rae

Right? So one plus side about this whole AI thing is I do believe a bust is going to happen, because investors have started to lose faith in the product because, well, one the ceos have made grossly inflated claims on what these tools can do, but also because people's trust has been undermined by using AI and also there is just the fact that AI is grossly expensive.

00:37.70

Rae

Both in energy and the cost of curating the data and every time you generate something. It actually tends to lose money.

00:52.26

Rae

Once all the investors abandon it I do think there's going to be a huge bust just like the NFT thing.

01:02.38

Krispy

That's beautiful music to my ears. The downfall of evil. Ah.

01:05.27

Varethane

Hooray.

01:11.17

Rae

But also there is just the fact that for most people, they do want that human connection that art can make, and if you can't really be bothered to even make the thing that you're putting out, most people won't even bother to look at it.

01:30.62

Krispy

And you know what's a really great solution! If You're an idea guy, listen to this. I got something really awesome. It's going to blow your mind. There's these things called commissions and you can take your idea and you can be like, hm where am I going to find these. Artists, musicians, writers, whatever, there's platforms for it. Vgen is a great Example. You should hop on over there and see who's open and see who matches the style that you're looking for, and throw’em some money. maybe tip em! And you can get something that's created by a human. That will feel awesome and it's your idea.

02:11.63

Varethane

Also you can do this amazing thing called revisions where if the first image that they make doesn't look quite right? You can tell a person “can you just like nudge the arm a little, change the color of the shirt,” and they'll be like “okay” and they'll charge you a little bit of extra money, but you won't have to spend hours and hours attempting to regenerate the same image over and over to get the arm moved like two inches to the left or right.

02:36.26

Rae

And also the teeth and eyes will look pretty good. Usually.

02:44.99

Varethane

Oh yeah. Anyway I think this is a roasted red pepper and goat cheese wrap. Thank you all so much for listening, I've been your host Varethane, and you can check out my work at wychwoodcomic dot com and chirault.sevensmith.net

03:02.71

Krispy

And I'm Krispy. You can check out my work at ghostjunksickness.com and lunarblight.com

03:09.32

Rae

And I'm Rae and you can check out my work at Empyreancomic.com, and Overlord of Ravenfell is on Webtoon and Tapas.

03:24.56

Krispy

Yeah, go read those comics. Go get a commission. Go do that support.

03:26.90

Varethane

Well, see you later slappers... You know if I'd been told like a year ago that robots could make art I'd be like, rad! And now I'm like, damn, but they're doing instead of me… That's lame.

03:42.91

Krispy

And they're stealing at the same time. They're not making it!

03:44.82

Rae

Yeah, they could at least make me a latte and so I can draw better and later.

03:54.26

Varethane

Yeah, I want robots to bring me a latte too while I draw.