So a recent post garnered some comments and reports for being AI art. In light of this we should all have a little conversation about how AI generated images should be handled in the future.
I think we all agree that AI images that are “garbage” or don’t add anything should be removed, but clearly some feel very strongly that all AI art should always be removed.
It should be noted that the rules as written and as agreed on by the community does not blanket ban AI, it merely says AI art should be avoided, while many other rules say no this or that instead.
Things to discuss:
- Does it matter if an image is AI? Does it always matter?
- What about images that are AI generated, but have been modified by a human?
- What about images where it’s hard to say for certain that it is generated? Me and the other mods did not agree on whether the recent image was AI f.ex which makes it hard to make a decision on whether or not to remove it.
- It can be stressful to artists to be accused of having used AI. If we are too militant on weeding out AI art it could be harmful as there will no doubt be some false positives.
- Should AI posts require being tagged in the title? (and of course be required to be of a certain level of quality)
I think a lot of us mods feel that AI should be allowed so long as it is not low quality and serves some purpose (being entertaining f.ex), and that the community should not be flooded with AI. What are your thoughts?
Edit: Thank you all for your input! Most of the others are sleeping right now I think, so nothing is likely gonna happen until later today.
I understand all the reasons why AI is bad, but like… Memes are largely made of remixing popular culture anyway. A Spongebob meme is not an original work, it’s literally using pre-made assets (in a Fair Use manner). Why should AI be dismissed for a throwaway meme/shitpost? Nearly all memes already exist as an exact copy of someone else’s artistic work, slightly remixed.
AI in general is terrible, especially when it displaces the paid labor of real artists, but I feel like dumb shitposts should be the one place it should be accepted since memes are already remixing pop culture anyway. Why should a more advanced remix of pop culture be treated differently? It’s just a shitpost? Nobody is making money off of it (at least if it is generated locally and not via a paid service), it is not displacing artists. Why treat it different than memes that crib popular culture already?
I don’t have much opinion myself since I’ve never used it, I feel like if it’s not low quality and is properly tagged as AI it should be allowed. Maybe it should only be allowed on specific days too. Since people can pump out a lot of it. Probably should be limited to less of it if we’re going to have it at all.
Maybe also make it so only base images can be AI, but you shouldn’t generate whole memes with it, since that way they would at least still be original memes to an extent. Not really sure, though the witch-hunting and tribalism and lashing out at people needs to stop regardless. It makes this community feel unsafe to be in.
I’m personally of the belief that there is so much AI art generated with stolen art data that I’d rather we not post it.
OK, I seem to have the wrong opinion here, but I personally don’t mind AI stuff. It can make the weirdest ideas into an image, which can be often funny. Also some AI image prompts may be quite complicated. I remember someone posting the prompt for some image and it was like a whole sheet of paper worth of keywords. I remember it because the negative prompt included “fused anus”, which really caught my eye.
I never worked with it though, I have no idea how it really works, apart from using simpler tools like Gemini.
Late reply but I’ll give my input. This is probably a controversial one but I don’t think we should allow AI in this community or in !196@pawb.social. Maybe people might think that’s weird since I run an AI community on dbzer0 but AI generated content has a specific time and place I don’t think this community is one of them. If there is demand for AI memes I think there should simply be a dedicated community for it and if people don’t like it they can block that one.
That said I don’t agree with the hostility I’ve seen towards others in this community over use of AI (intentional or not) and trying to defame or harass them. This is disgusting and inexcusable.
One thing I do worry about when policing AI content is that this is a reposting community and people posting AI content on accident is almost guaranteed. For that reason I think that we need to be careful with how it’s enforced and also how people behave around it. The flaming, harassment, and defamation that has been a typical response is unacceptable.
Yeah, I guess if most people here still aren’t OK with AI-generated images, then so be it. 🤷 Even if I disagree with them.
Personally I feel like AI should be allowed if the memes and content are high quality and that they aren’t being spammed rapidly.
What I do think should be done regardless of the outcome to ban AI or not is heavy policing on anti-AI harassment, trolling, witch-hunting, and bad faith arguments. I was just harassed by an idiot and still haven’t fully recovered but this shit is unacceptable. So if we ban AI or not we need to ban the idiots trolling and trying to hunt down people they suspect of using AI. These people are toxic to the community and will hurt the community more than even low-effort AI spam will. I’m not going to provide names of people because they will accuse me of harassing them and probably harass me in return (just like the idiot earlier).
yeh agreed on the harassment thing, pointing out that something is ai or respectfully discussing is fine but attacking people over it is absolutely not
btw if that happened in this community u can report the comments or dm me or another mod the details and they would be moderated as needed
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Until there are viable options for ethical AI generation (that is, all training data is used with the authors’ and artists’ explicit permission), I’d suggest banning it, but erring on the lenient side when people aren’t sure whether an image is AI-generated.
I don’t agree with this. Copyright and Intellectual property arguments like this are the modern day equivalent of “Think of the children” but with IP holders instead of children. I’m an avid believer in piracy and information access and this sounds like pro-copyright dogma to me.
What I think is a better solution is to have open-source and self-hostable models like AIhorde which aren’t corporate in nature and don’t make money. They are open-source projects that anyone can run or contribute to. But screw copyright and screw IP gatekeeping, I’m not going to justify or rationalize this with what are ultimately the same slippery slope arguments used against piracy
No, AIHorde still uses corporate models. The only open source part is distributing the computation.
What are the large corporations being hurt by AI copying the artists they hired art style that would make that argument similar to “Think of the children” argument?
You sound like a troll, for the record I didn’t distinguish between large companies, I said that pro-copyright sentiment and anti-piracy arguments of any kind are modern “think of the children” arguments. All pro-copyright sentiment, no discrimination here. The fact that you’re trying to put words in my mouth proves you aren’t and never were arguing in good faith.
The fact that you’re trying to put words in my mouth proves you aren’t and never were arguing in good faith.
It proves that i misunderstood your point
Most arguments i have seen for copyright are ignoring how it can and is being exploited by large corporations. The original argument, however, is against the morality of AI, not for current copyright law
Could you please explain why you believe this specific argument is similar to “think of the children”?
Do I need Stephen Hillenburg’s permission to post a Spongebob meme?
It feels like splitting hairs to me when it comes to memes, specifically, which are explicitly made from other people’s art as source material.
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Should AI posts require being tagged in the title? (and of course be required to be of a certain level of quality)
This, at the very very least. I support a full ban though.
i support a full ban on AI-generated art. however, I think the moderation should be lenient and allow art when it’s not certain if it’s AI-generated or not. IMO letting some AI art through is better than over-moderating and hurting real artists.
at the very least, making it possible to filter out AI art would be a good thing as well.
Fully agree here!:)
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I agree, I think attribution (describing to viewers your sources, and how your post differs from the source) is more important than attrition (avoiding AI as a sourve).
Crudely drawn Yu-Gi-Oh! Card saying “No”
How about instead of using a corporate investment scheme to make a meme… just write it? Or use memegenerator, or paint? It honestly doesn’t take more effort than using AI. Hell I think sometimes AI would be more effort (and shitty use of energy) - to make the same thing you could use a template for.
Or just share cool shit - Like this!
I’m on the side of banning AI, but I think that creative uses of it should still be permitted. You should still be able to use an AI generated image if the joke you are trying to make requires that specific image and specifically requires it to be AI generated (maybe pointing out how AI copies some art, idk) or if it is something genuinely novel or cool involving actual technical or artistic effort (something like DoodleChaos’ AI music video maybe).
I think that AI itself is not the problem. The problem is
- Artists are not respected (i.e. big models by big companies that don’t respect artists are the problem)
- AI art is extremely low-effort and the results are boring and unoriginal. Posts that don’t infringe on those things should still be permitted in my opinion.
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I think memes are like the one place ai works for. I don’t care much either way, just please lean on the side of allowance when it’s hard to tell.
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A lot of good reasoning is going on already so I won’t repeat what I’ve upvoted already.
What I’ll add is that from a purely emotional perspective I am systematically turned off by AI output. It repulses me like a pond swarming with existential leeches. It bears a mark of contempt towards the human experience.
Same, seeing that anything is ai makes me feel repulsed for some reason.
a human manipulating a generated image still doesnt make it art. it can be a nice picture and the tech behind making it can be neat, but it’s not art. that said i just dont engage on posts i know are ai content. presenting a generated image without being clear about it is just being a dick. it dosesnt have to be in the title but it should be aknowledged. i dono if a full ban is needed but if i wanted my feed full of slop i’d be subbed to communites for ai, or .world’s 196. this place seems more about snark and joy, which ai rarely brings out.
