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AI slop is the output of all generative AI, full stop.
Slop itself is anything produced for the sake of being produced. Something without feeling or soul, just more content for the content machine.
Like, yes it does take some level of skill to "prompt engineer" the AI and get it to show you the thing you want, but it's still not a distinctive style, it's still not your style. If you say, "sloth astronaut" I can imagine that in my head in my own way, there's no value in producing an AI image. As far as I'm concerned, an AI image narrows down all the possibilities of my own imagination into the specific piece of slop from the slop machine. If I wanted to see it, the point would be to see an interpretation in someone's style.
I can't remember where I saw this argument recently, it was something coming out of Capcom saying they'd use AI for background details and people citing specific examples from Pragmata maybe? Things like vending machines and environmental details that could be streamlined with the help of AI. But even these small details are places for environmental artists to shine. Show off their skills, hide small details and world building, and little in jokes. It may not be much but it adds to the overall texture and flavor of the product. It does matter.
AI is slop, is slop, is slop. There's absolutely no reforming it and if I detect even a whiff of it, I'm out.
*slothstronaut
i agree with you, but i'll give you a counterexample.
i generate ai images for me. i use only local models and i never share it publically because the output is not really the point, the process is. here is my process:
i come up with a concept, usually a person or a scene. i then take random images from the internet, cut out the parts i think fit together, and add them as layers in a client called "invoke ai". if needed i color match the parts in krita first. then i describe the scene i've made in a prompt, adding the normal positive and negative keywords to steer generation. i also pull the "blur image" ratio down to 40%.
the model then makes an image with my digital scrapbook as a base, melting together disjunct elements into a scene. invoke then allows me to move all the elements around and regenerate the scene, or select a few specific elements to regenerate, or paint on top of the scene and generate something new from that, or select part of the scene and change the prompt for that area. it's a fun little game, and it feels like collaborating with people who know lighting and perspective better than i do.
most time i've spent doing this is half a day, just iterating and tweaking and filling in details. i'm in no way an artist, i'm playing around. it's basically as resource intensive as playing a video game, and i'm not one to share gameplay footage either.
That sounds like plagiarism with extra steps, and it all starts here:
plagiarism implies a benefit to the plunderer, though. It's perfectly legal to take images from the internet for your own use - e.g. a sonic the hedgehog themed birthday party for a kid.
It is the AI companies who used the images for training in the first place who are the plagiarisers. People using the AI are just using a plagiarising tool made by plagiarisers. Whether they are fine with that is entirely up to their own conscience.
If that is truly the case, then it wouldn't matter what anyone else thinks is or isn't slop.
I mildly disagree. I think its an interesting discussion.
i also think that. and i love having that discussion with people. like, remember the google robot that drew dogs on every picture you fed it? deepdream, i think it was called? was that evil? because it's the same tech, just trained on... dogs.
That's okay, you can disagree if you like. It's not like you're responsible for the creation, upkeep, and various abuses resulting from, this modern pseudo-AI stupidity. You're just a useful idiot to them.
i don't think you should start calling third parties useful idiots, i'm the one who started this.
I'm not calling them anything. That's just how the techbros view anyone who uses and defends their slopmachine scam.
surely a useful idiot is one who furthers the message and aids in its spreading?
Correct. If you "mildly disagree" that using the mass-plagiarism-powered so-called "AI" is plagiarism from the getgo, you're being an idiot and advancing the techbro oligarch agenda. I will not respect it. I will not have an overtly polite conversation about it. They are fucking destroying the environment and our living spaces with this shit. Stop using it. Stop defending it. If you disagree, I don't want to hear from you. There's nothing to discuss.
i mean i agree about all the stuff about plagiarism, concentration of power, usage of limited electricity and water and land, mental effects etc. i've expressed as much before. the thing i think is interesting to discuss is that, given that there's already a generation of old pre-trained models, and that there's no fossil fuel generation in my country, and that i'm doing this rather than playing a game, which uses the same amount of power, and that i'm not sharing results, just making personal scrapbook stuff... is that more immoral than just pirating movies or music?
that's not supposed to be a trick question, i genuinely don't know. i've always been of the opinion that media empires shouldn't make money from me but artists absolutely should, and that's why i generally pay indie artists but not big labels. here, i use three- or four-year-old model files which i've not paid for, on my own hardware that's completely offline so no data is provided to the big companies. i always recommend against using online commercial models and i refuse to do it myself because of the things you mentioned, but... is what i do the same?
well yeah, sure. not denying that. but i don't do it for people to see it. i think of it a bit like cutting stuff out of magazines and gluing it together. it's remix culture.
i'm not a creator in any way, i'm a consumer. i just like blending things together.
I would argue that it is some sort of creation
i don't really want to class it as such in the current climate.
yeah I can see that, there's a lot of connotation
Your local chat bot is still trained on data stolen at an astronomical scale, and, even if we accept your use case as 'less' bad, it still drives demand for 'worse' chat bots owned by oligarchs that want to destroy the world.
The tool is evil even if it has interesting niche applications.
correct. though stable diffusion was initially trained on LAION5, which is a free and open dataset compiled for scientific research which in itself had copyrighted material in it. that didn't come out until after the model was out there because it didn't matter to anyone before. scientists had used it for deep learning tasks for years at that point.
and the source images i take i also do without payment or copyright acknowledgement. as is the shows i watch on my jellyfin server, and some of the computer games i play, and the music i used to record off of the radio onto cassettes, and the comic characters i used to cut out of magazines as a child to make my own comics with.
i'm not saying those things are all equivalent. i'm saying that this problem isn't new. i'll stand up and defend small artists against big corporations any day, and i'll gladly pay people for their time. my patreon bill alone is proof of that. i've canceled netflix and spotify over their unfair treatment of artists. i've written to my members of parliament, both local and in the eu, about how the copyright system is broken, how the slogan "information wants to be free" doesn't automatically mean that meta can leech eighty terabytes of copyrighted material or that the us government can use any work they want in their propaganda material without paying. i've driven discussion about rightsholders and the unfairness of payouts to the little guy both at work and during my off time. i've voted against corporate control of media for years. i've voted pirate. i've voted socialist. i've voted green.
but sometimes i just want to dick around.
believe you me i've thought about this.