Raw LLM Responses

I'm a programmer who took an interest in machine learning as a teenager long before ChatGPT or midjourney existed. When image generation AI first became available, I was immediately playing around with it. That awakened a passion for creating art, and now I do both AI art and traditional art, with an emphasis on incorporating both into my artistic process to create something better than I can make with just one or the other. I've been pretty disgusted at how this technology is now being used, with corporations pushing it into everything and art sites being flooded with zero-effort images generated by AI. It feels like this fun little niche thing I've always been passionate about has been turned into something grotesque. I'm at this weird place where AI is a crucial element of art for me personally, but I also hate how it is being used generally. I often find myself fighting on both sides of the "war against AI art," so to speak. I have a sort of unusual perspective on this topic, so I'd like to share my thoughts on each section of the video. Nightshade / "doesn't work" Seems like you've done your research. I've been wanting to test out nightshade for a while now and see how well it holds up against different types of AI training, I'll post a video about the results if I get around to it. I'm glad people are making this kind of thing, though. AI for reference I use AI to create reference images a lot. Part of it might be because my interest in art evolved from my interest in AI in the first place. The AI art you show in this section is what I usually refer to as "AI slop," and certainly not something I would ever use as a reference, but generative AI can be used to make excellent reference images if you know what you're doing and put a tiny bit of effort into the process. You're just afraid of tech! I do think some of the fire behind the aniti-AI movement comes from a fear of technology or becoming obsolete, but tech bros who try to blame the hatred for AI art on this are missing the core issues that artists actually have with it. AI is accessible I'm colorblind, and I do actually find AI to be a huge relief when coloring. Often I'll draw something by hand (usually graphite sketch), then scan it and apply some basic colors digitally, then run it through AI to make the colors/shading look good for folks with normal color vision. I would never try to use my colorblindness as an excuse for generating "art" from a prompt with no effort on my part, though. AI is inevitable I've written a paper about this! Basically you've got the right idea when it comes to major tech companies or online services like ChatGPT or midjourney. They're operating purely on investor money, and are promising a product everyone will use when in reality most people don't have a day-to-day use for it. On the other hand, I only ever use open-source stuff that I download and run on my own PC - it doesn't cost me anything. People like me who run generative AI on our own instead of relying on companies like OpenAI won't be affected when the AI bubble bursts. We are inevitable. AI is an art tool This part was painful for me to watch. I genuinely do use AI as an art tool, and my process is much more detailed and complex than simply writing a prompt. But what midjourney and the likes are best at is allowing people to generate large quantities of low-quality slop, so most people assume that's all the technology is good for. More complex applications that incorporate actual artistic abilities of the user aren't really marketable compared to "easy instant art!!!", so the only way to actually use AI as a tool in the artistic process instead of a replacement for it is to set everything up yourself. That's not a problem for someone like me who's been programming with neural networks for over a decade already, but most folks only see what you've seen - sites where you enter a prompt and get randomly generated garbage. AI has *enormous* potential as an art tool, but between digital artists who shun it unconditionally and AI "artists" who just want it to do all the work for them, people who actually want to realize that potential are few and far between.