NOTE: I am NOT defending AI or it's usage or anything like that. So just tie that horse right back up at the kitchen sink. I don't like the whole AI thing. This post is not about AI.

I get that it was necessary at first, but now whenever there's any hint of AI, there's a great chorus of everyone saying the same thing 'AI slop bla bla bla' like a gaggle of sheep jerking their knees.

It's not fucking helpful. It only sows even more division among the peasants, while the oligarchs take zero notice and continue on as usual. The correct way to engage with AI content you don't like is just not at all.

Examples:

Recently I watched as a post for a community event was removed, because it had an AI image. The image was not requested or created by the organiser, it was provided to them, and had information in several languages. But the post was removed because AI slop and now there is less human connection happening. Yay. Well fucking done. You literally are helping the AI overlords now.

I've seen many actual legit digital artists getting hit with the cries of AI slop and even banned, when they have been making art for years before AI was even a thing. People actually can't tell the difference half the time when they think they can, and end up hurting real artists.

Now is not the time to be attacking each other over using AI to generate some stupid meme. There are much, MUCH bigger issues at stake right now, and calling everything AI slop does nothing to help.

/rant

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[–] -4 points 15 hours ago (9 children)

Now, you could wish that reality were different, but it’s not a big burden to say hey, don’t have AI make the poster, just make it yourself. It’s really not that hard.

What the flog is wrong with having AI make a poster as long as it's reasonably clean, professional, and free of slop content? Indeed, much of what AI can do in those situations is little more than automation acting on PhotoShop-like sets of tools.

Make all the AI content you want, says I, but here's a tip-- don't make it obvious that AI was used in its production. Bam, problem solved.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 13 hours ago (5 children)

    If it uses one of the online services, then it's a problem (environment, water etc).

    You could somewhat make that argument for local models. But not many people are going to have any conception of that

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  • [–] -2 points 13 hours ago (4 children)

    Metrics are needed. Based on an article that Rimu shared a few days ago, I didn't get the impression that stuff like simple graphics work needed for a poster particularly added much strain.

    There's also the simple fact that it's too late to be herding cats on this one. Most people who've gotten used to using AI for various tasks aren't going to give it up very easily. While I agree that it can be useful to talk up and spread the word about the destructiveness of AI costs, that energy and pressure ultimately needs to be funneled to lawmakers in order to draft and pass appropriate legislation.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 hours ago (2 children)

    It's also an issue that every person that complains about AI has absolutely no fucking idea what it is, how it works, how to differentiate different models/forms, or even why it's a special unique technology that is inherently bad. Unlike things like alcohol, X-rays, methamphetamines, gunpowder, oil, nuclear, mining, farming, etc, etc, that are only harmful when used/done wrong.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 hours ago (1 child)

    ...has absolutely no fucking idea what it is...

    I don't understand how that could be at this point, but it would help explain the paranoia. To me, there's a huge difference between a simple, clean, low-cost use-case in which little or no trace of AI tools is detected, versus obvious AI slop media, versus having an LLM do extensive programming which winds up being filled with spaghetti code and whatever inefficiencies. The latter two involving a tonne more queries and tokens used.

    It's all the same thing to a lot of people, I guess.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 hours ago

    Because it has become a purity signal and tribal call rather than an actual coherent position. I've seen people get angry at researchers using AI to develop new drugs, and novel bacteriophages. I've seen people get angry at "AI" in word processing and image editing, claiming there's no difference between ChatGPT and the algorithms than have been used for decades.

    There is such a idiotic mix-up between the horrible corruption of OpenAI, and the term "AI" itself, that morons with no understanding of anything are waving torches and grabbing pitchforks at the word itself, without any comprehension of what they're angry at.

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