Hey m@tes, as y'all know, this instance has been anti-corporate GenAI positive since it's creation and as such we've typically allowed such content to be posted freely. However in the last few weeks we've had a bunch of drama from GenAI haters who insist on coming into our comms and starting slap-fights. This caused us to vote on a new rule to have the mandate to clear out this constant friction. This worked to an extent, but I think we can help foster a better community with the larger threadiverse.
One issue a lot of anti-GenAI people keep bringing is that while they can block dedicated comms like !stable_diffusion_art@lemmy.dbzer0.com, they don't have an easy option to avoid GenAI content in random other /0 comms as there's no way to filter it out. This kind of content has been seen to cause a lot of strife, because people complain about its existence, while /0 admins and mods based on the above rule, tend to sanction those complaining. This then causes drama loops with /c/YPTB and /c/FuckAI etc.
There is a good point to be made here that while we don't mind GenAI content in /0, there isn't a reason to not help others avoid it. So we want to institute the following soft rule by now:
Simply tag your posts which consist of primarily GenAI content with the [GenAI] tag in their title. Not only will frontends like Tesseract will natively parse this as a tag and display it accordingly, but people who dislike such content, can simply filter it out of their feeds. Eventually lemmy will add tags which will make this tagging more seamless, but for now a manual tag in the title will suffice.
This rule only applies to posts in non-explicit GenAI comms. The assumption is that people can simply block those comms completely anyway.
As I said, this is a soft rule for now. Soft in the sense that you're not going to be sanctioned for forgetting it, but we hope people will remind you to do so. This is a good-faith attempt by us to co-exist and help others avoid what they don't want to stumble onto, much like [NSFW] tags. So I hope you'll add do a good faith attempt to help us in this. Furthermore, people who come to posts tagged as GenAI explicitly to scold and start slap-fights, will give the admins and easier justification to clean up, since they could have just filtered out that content in the first place.
Cheers
I mean...
I can imagine how artists struggling to make ends meet might be angry that work they'd spent years learning and honing their skills to produce was and is being crawled by tools made by a bunch of silver-spoon-chomping techbros who are marketing their products to businesses who employ artists as a way to employ less artists, and pay peanuts to those they do hire to wrangle prompts and fix AI mistakes instead of actually getting to make art.
And I can imagine how frustrating it is to see people minimize that struggle when it often benefits oligarchs and C-suite ghouls.
This isn't exactly a capitalist tech-bro instance. So while I agree with there being a problem here, the problem is less genai and more about capitalism IMHO.
Which is why it can seem a bit silly to me to go after this instance of all things when it comes to genai.
That said, as always, I think db0's soft rule is a really great good faith effort to be accommodating to others, while staying true to the core of what the instance is about.
So I hope you'll see that part of things and tone it down in kind.
Sorry, what exactly do I need to tone down?
Pretty sure this is the first time I've ever commented on the issue here or elsewhere on Lemmy.
I see anti-AI sentiment all over the fediverse, but nothing in the original post that would indicate that these users are exclusively targeting db0 communities, just that the admins here have chosen to address it; and I agree it's a good way to handle the situation.
I think there are good and valuable use cases for AI, including generative AI.
But I also think a lot of the costs are hidden because the tools are free and easy to access, and because those coats often pretty abstract and wide-ranging so as to be difficult to observe, quantify, and attribute to an emerging technology. So I think there are a lot of really valid reasons to question casual use of those tools because they do not exist outside of capitalism.
The point of my earlier post wasn't meant to be that all use of AI is bad or that somebody using it to make a meme or art of their big-titty anime waifu is directly putting artists out of work, but I also don't think that those things are entirely separable, either.
And since I was replying to a user whose comment made a blanket claim implying that casual use of generative AI is trivial, well... no, I don't think it is.
I've done all sorts of art in my life. Sometimes as a job. And it's personally pretty disheartening to see comments like "it just looks like AI, human-made art doesn't look like that" because yes, it sometimes does, even if the poster has never seen human-made art like that.
But I've also spent the last few years watching dozens of friends and former coworkers lose their careers and their livelihoods en masse for no reason other than naked greed.
I think that making art more accessible through AI can be a really cool and pretty liberating thing for a lot of people, but as it's being employed by the big corporate players, it does have big serious negative externalities for working artists and for cultural products writ large, and I think that's worth bringing up.
But that's not going to change. At all. No amount of boycotting or yelling about it on Lemmy is going to change it. Guess what, before artists, factory workers got taken over by new tech. Textile workers got taken over by new tech. Candle lighters got taken over by new tech. Horse and buggy makers got taken over by new tech.
Artists aren't any more special than any other industry. I was a professional artist for 35 years. Worked in marketing depts almost my entire career.
Adapt or die. But being upset about it doesn't change the tide. I jumped right in and I love AI art. Even tho it took over my industry. :)
What do people on Lemmy think their outrage is gonna do? It's already here. It's already in the vid games you all play. It's already in the DnD manuals you all read.
The Luddites here amaze me. If you feel so "sad" for those people, well then be sure to buy some of their original artwork. Nothing is making them stop. They just will have to do something else for a living. MOST people don't love what they do for a living. Artists are some precious group that needs to be protected. They can still do their craft.