[Source of this Creative Commons Licensed image]
Click here to participate in the community vote
You have probably seen my previous post about the fact, that the banner of this community is currently AI genereated. My suggestion in that post was, that it would be pretty cool to replace that banner with a human drawn or photographed one to highlight and celebrate artist and the human spirit of this community. I honestly didn't expect it to blow up in the way it did, but it seems to be an issue, not only I, but many other people seemed to care about. So I think everyone would agree, that it would be a good idea to let the community on here decide what happens with our banner.
My idea would be, that we first have a general vote, if you as a whole community are interested in a banner change. Then, if enough people care about this vote and vote for yes, we can host a general art competition across the whole of Lemmy where artists, who care about this community can propose new banners, which they created themselves. The point in this challange would be to celebrate the creativity of specifically the human Lemmy community, so AI suggestions would be disallowed there. Then, all of you could vote on the banner and we could suggest the banner with the most votes to the mods of this community.
The vote is hosted on Mastodon, because it is not possible to do that on Lemmy. I have no followers on my Mastodon and I am posting the survey as a silent post, so other people probably won't interfere much here.
It's not about anyone getting paid, it's about affording basic respect and empathy to people and their work. Using AI sends a certain message of 'I don't care about your consent or opinion towards me using your art", and I don't think, that this is a good thing for anyone.
Well, obviusly I care. I joined Lenny today, yes. I joined this sub and was immediately a bit disgusted by the banner. So I made a post about it. Why do you care if I care then?
Well, you didn't even make it or anyone, an AI made it. Kindness towards artists and not kindness towards people using their art without consent.
Yes it does, for the reasons I mentioned
Uhm, yeah... That was the whole point, I was making.
Yeah, maybey it would be a good idea to have a new community vote. Can I just start that or do I have to ask the mods or something? I am pretty new to Lemmy, so I am not really shure how this works.
Well, I guess you don't have to. I just think it's a bit depressing and also pretty disrespectful to artists (I think, I laid out pretty clearly, why I think that). Now, if you don't care about any of that, I can't stop you, I guess, this was just meant to be a friendly proposal.
OK, so why do you still have the AI banner then?
Are you sure that's happening? Under the previous mode of capitalism, what kind of companies were hiring artists?
Movie studios, VFX houses, advertisement agencies, should I keep going? It's not that all of these people will or can be replaced, but the studios are already hollowing out their staff and the abstract threat of AI gives studios much more power in negotiations with artists. Since AI, much less people are willing to contract artists online, which many young and alternative artists depend on to survive. Why do you think, the Hollywood strikes are happening?
I agree, that copyright shouldn't have to exist in an ideal society, but we still live under capitalism. Imagnine, if Disney could just scoop up all the good indie movies, and redistribute them under their own name with massive marketing budgets, taking all the profit and pretending, it's their own work. The original creator would go bankrupt and not be able to make another great movie.
In my opinion, generative AI is doing exactly the same thing, but indirectly. If Disney were to release a fully AI generated movie, they would still have profited from the work of a bunch of unconsenting and uncredited independent artists.
AI "art" is also not art, because real art requires a concios and self aware being to observe the world in a unique way and get inspired to express a new idea in their art. AI is not conscious and therefore cannot observe the world or get any new ideas. There will never be good AI-"Art", because AI can only recreate and recombine the existing (and yeah, I know, that AI images are technically unique, but they are still only derived from what the AI was trained on). The best, an AI could do, is imitate a human as well as possible. It cab only succeed in decieving us, letting us think, there is some person behind this art, but there will never be anyone behind it.
Yeah, and I don't expect you to. You are still profiting from artwork, that was involuntarily stolen from artists to train this AI. You are not directly copying them, but you are indirectly using their work without their consent. Like I said, I don't expect you to pay any money for the banner, but you can either search for existing artworks on the internet, that is creative commons (like on pixabay), or if you find something else (from an actual artist, that fits, just ask them nicely and I am shire they would be happy to let you use their artwork for such a purpose for free. I would also be happy to search for something like that myself and suggest you one, if that's OK for you. It's not about paying a bunch of money, my point is just, that we should respect artists a bit more.
In my opinion, AI just feels like the logical next step for capitalist exploitation and destruction of culture. Generative AI is (in most cases) just a fancy way for cooperations to steal art on a scale, that hasn't been possible before. And then they use AI to fill the internet with slop and misinformation and actual artists are getting fired from their jobs, because the company replaces them with an AI, that was trained on their original art. Because of these reasons and some others, it just feels wrong to me, to be using AI in such a manner, when this community should be about inclusion and kindness. Wouldn't it be much cooler, if we commissioned an actual artist for the banner or find a nice existing artwork (where the licence fits, of course)? I would love to hear your thoughts!
What a cute little dinosaur
Yeah, it's like that for some torrents, but some also work fine. And the ones that don't work, you can revive by manually downloading the zip file from their servers, I guess.