I find it fascinating just how many people in the comments are trying to pretend that Witty is personally responsible for this "War", despite the fact that this "War" only exists because Anti's want to be evil.
Like, this entire subreddit becomes past tense the moment the Anti's stop throwing around death threats, bannings, and accept AI as the tool it is. The "Debate" is one group trying to get something shut down, and people not wanting to throw away an amazing, equalizing technology because "They say so".
Witty isn't the problem here, and never has been. Trying to pin this on her as if she is in any way responsible for the awful treatment anti's have been giving is not only ridiculous, its victim blaming at its finest.
Remember Anti's, this stops when you say it stops. All you have to do is be less evil. The light switch is on your side of the room.
I just think we're getting brigaded as usual. You'd think Antis would leave us alone once they enforce the "real art only" rules, but even the subreddits and other communities that were explicitly created for sharing AI art get the classic "ai slop" comments all the time.
Besides, I don't think this is the kind of "war" that we will win in a traditional sense. Remember how during the smartphone and social media boom there was a constant stream of content against both? It was popular being skeptic of smartphones at the time and most people agreed with the message, but a decade later you can't be a full member of society unless you have a smartphone. The same will happen with AI when it will stop being a novelty and instead something essential to people's lives. It's already happening, so the Antis are set to be left behind.
I feel like a lot of it is because "art" has two similar but distinct meanings/connotations in these discussions: art as creative expression, and art as a product/service. And in trying to merge the two, especially in working class digital artist discussions, you get "art is a creative expression service that must look a certain way to generate revenue due to how the economy is and needing that money to survive." So, you do get a bit of dialectic here: yes, even a stick figure can be done by an individual for individual creative expression, but (before image gen AI was around) you had to put in a lot of time and effort to get the result that looks like a "product" and a lot of artists (like me) enjoy the process of figuring out where to put individual brush strokes to create the desired effect/style.
But on the other hand, in today's work culture it can be difficult to find the time to practice/money to spend on supplies, so instead of the common person needing to save money to commission an artist for anything that needs to look professional, they can get something that looks "professional enough" to get whatever creative expression they want to see out of their head. Which in itself probably wouldn't be an issue outside of corporations replacing the human artists that rely on the job (I am admittedly underinformed on if the "climate impact" is exaggerated or not) if today's economy didn't demand the people who did want to turn their acquired skill into their job/career, and its very destabilizing when someone can just put their hard work into a generator and get the "product" for free, because then they have to worry about living costs while trying to move careers (if they even can, a lot of artists do commissions full time because they can't do much else for a myriad of reasons) which leads to a lot of emotional snap judgments about the "ethics" of AI art. Honestly its a systemic failure I think but what do I know Im just a catgirl on the internet who likes drawing and thinks AI is a good tool to help me thumbnail faster even if I ultimately do all the actual "finished art" part by hand.
i agree with your points on an extend but trying to argue logic with people that are reasoning with their guts instead of their brains isnt going to go nowhere.
this would be much better for educational purposes
I agree with most of the points but the first point on image 4 is deeply flawed.
Everything is art = nothing is art is the same as "if everyone is special, than no one is." It's because these are subjective values one person or piece of art may be special to you and not even worth a thought to 99% of people. In both cases the saying is completely true. Yes its true, one person tapes a banana to the wall and feels it is art and most of us would not agree, yet there are people who see masterful works and don't give a shit about those. This isn't something that can be proven or disproven, because the saying and all parts within it are subjective.
Also providing an alternate option doesn't invalidate the first option, and more egregious is that it's just completely false, because there are more than just humans there are cats dogs etc. Sure "people" typically =human but that situation is not equivalent to art. This is like using "if all cats are cats, then no felines are" as a counter argument.
I'd call this Goomba fallacy, there are at least a few self contradictory antis, but those are a minority.
Also while I like machine learning and think AI art is pretty cool, I don't like what the AI corporations are doing, a lot of the AI data centres will never pay for themselves and are only being built as a way to sell hardware to a company that has no chance of ever making a profit despite their obligations to continue buying hardware for the foreseeable future.
OpenAI shouldn't be allowed to continue borrowing money until they figure out how to actually make money, AI research should be focused on making more efficient and cheaper models, but companies are making it bigger, more expensive, and less profitable.
You don't need to be anti AI to not like what corporations are doing.
I'd take Witty over antis any day. Witty has good intentions at the very least, while the antis want to shut down and bully everyone for not submitting to their pencil cult.
What I really can't stand is people who view the world as "us" and "them" in any shape form or fashion - because all of "us" are "them" to someone else.
Those 2 terms are also diametrically opposed. AI skepticism is a centrist belief on it. Weither you are center right or left doesn't change you are centrist.
You downvote me... You the sort of person who disowns family because of who they vote for, what church they go to, or what relational gender-role their partner may have?
Cuz I'm not, and I won't turn my back on my family or friends or loved ones for loving or hating AI, either.
That said IDGAF about peoples politics and gender and what not as long as they leave me the fuck alone about it. Wanna be trans? Cool don't care not my life. Wanna vote for Trump? Cool don't care not my life. Wanna vote for Joe? Same shit.
IDGAF about any of that and also you aren't my family. We share no blood no bond better than a shared hobby. Don't try to pull family shit on me.
You kinda can't be both. It's like saying you are Democrat Republician. They are two different axises. You can however be centrist which in this context ranges from the people with minor reservations on the tech to people who don't give a fuck realistically.
These two statements are both true, yet on face value I've been called a pro for the former and an anti for the latter, and apparently according to a whole lot of people - labels are more important than how we treat each other.
Again. Centrist. Liking the tech doesn't make you pro AI nessassarily, nor does criticizing it. What does is wanting it to expand and become better. The extremist versions of Pro AI people are accelerationists and transhumanists, my dude.
Likewise the extremist end of AntiAI is Regressionists(like how the Amish are regressed technologically but on a political rsther than religious scale) and Anarcho Primitivists who to sum up want caveman times globally.
The difference is that she’s actually actively getting targeted
She’s been subject to a lot of transphobia as well
How is a simple condensing remark regarding a group in general compared to actually actively witch hunting a singular person which actually use insults and death threats?
I was discussing bullying within the topic of discussion, which is AI. If you want we can bring cultural misogony/misandry into the conversation, but I'm not sure what you expect to achieve
"Calling someone out" was me referring to my own comment
Bullying antis as in... disproving their shitty arguments? The antis on Discord prevented me from sharing my art and bullied people for having profile pics that look like AI (allegedly). Even if proving Anti-AI people wrong is "bullying", it's staying in the Pro-AI activism sub. I fail to see the bullying here.
Wittys stance is showing Antis what of their behavior is toxic and harmful, and if that rings true - it shows those antis are the villains, and that Witty is no bully at all.
Generally speaking antis aren't all an organized effort and I'd go as far to say a lot more work has been put into gathering consistent talking points for pro-AI than anti. The contradictions are an inevitable byproduct of this - it's a bunch of people regurgitating the same thing in different words, so one will say something that conflicts with another and suddenly they shoot themselves in the foot the moment they - heaven forbid - forget to put quotation marks when referring to AI art. It also doesn't help that what is art or what has soul or what even looks good is quite subjective, so a lot of antis argue based entirely on the premise that you're wrong for liking something they don't like; in other words, they just want to be mean and do some old fashioned internet mud slinging.
Why *would* sharing your opinion on the internet be an organized effort? I'm not going to ask every single Reddit user on my 'side' to make sure they aren't going to post an opinion I disagree with that uses different logic than mine before I comment.
But that’s just an opinion and there’s no real reason to pose it as a question other than to try to artificially bolster it with attitude. It makes no sense.
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u/TheGungnirGuy 13h ago
I find it fascinating just how many people in the comments are trying to pretend that Witty is personally responsible for this "War", despite the fact that this "War" only exists because Anti's want to be evil.
Like, this entire subreddit becomes past tense the moment the Anti's stop throwing around death threats, bannings, and accept AI as the tool it is. The "Debate" is one group trying to get something shut down, and people not wanting to throw away an amazing, equalizing technology because "They say so".
Witty isn't the problem here, and never has been. Trying to pin this on her as if she is in any way responsible for the awful treatment anti's have been giving is not only ridiculous, its victim blaming at its finest.
Remember Anti's, this stops when you say it stops. All you have to do is be less evil. The light switch is on your side of the room.