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aspensmonster ,
@aspensmonster@lemmygrad.ml avatar

Meanwhile, BOINC is right there, with far more useful work for your idle GPU to do.

egonallanon ,

Always been a folding@home guy myself.

Agora ,

Boring Dystopia

Omega_Haxors ,

100% that porn is not legal. It’s also pretty easy to tell which demographic they’re targeting with this.

Raiderkev ,

You would think they would do this to mine Bitcoin too.

Omega_Haxors ,

Whose to say they aren’t doing that on the side?

PDFuego ,
@PDFuego@lemmy.world avatar

If I’m reading this right, it’s a program that users sign up for to donate their processing power (and can opt in or out of adult content), which is then used by client companies to generate their own users’ content? It even says that Salad can’t view or moderate the images, so what exactly are they doing wrong besides providing service to potentially questionable companies? It makes as much sense as blaming Nvidia or Microsoft, am I missing something?

fidodo ,

so what exactly are they doing wrong besides providing service to potentially questionable companies?

Well I think that is the main point of what is wrong. I think the big question is whether the mature content toggle is on by default or not. The company says it’s off, but some users said otherwise. Dunno why the author didn’t install it and check.

PDFuego ,
@PDFuego@lemmy.world avatar

They said they did.

However, by default the software settings opt users into generating adult content. An option exists to “configure workload types manually” which enables users to uncheck the “Adult Content Workloads” option (via 404 media), however this is easily missed in the setup process, which I duly tested for myself to confirm.

Honestly, and I’m not saying I support what’s being done here, the way I see it if you’re tech savvy enough to be interested in using a program like this you should be looking through all of the options properly anyway. If users don’t care what they’re doing and are only interested in the rewards that’s kind of on them.

I just think the article is focused on the wrong company, Salad is selling a tool that is being potentially misused by users of their client’s service. I can certainly see why that can be a problem, but based on the information given in the article I don’t think it’s really theirs. If that’s ALL Salad’s used for then that’s a different story.

fidodo ,

Ah thanks I think I forgot that sentence by the end of the article and thought it was just a user report that it was checked by default. I really don’t think that it should be checked by default, depending on where you are it could even get you in trouble. App setup for this kind of stuff isn’t necessarily only for power users now, it has gotten very streamlined and tested for conversion.

bane_killgrind ,

It’s Roblox stuff you can buy, it’s not power users that are the target demographic

Cethin ,

Based on the rewards, I’m assuming it’s being done by very young people. Presumably the value of rewards is really low, but these kids haven’t done the cost-benefit analysis. If I had to guess, for the vast majority it costs more in electricity than they get back, but the parents don’t know it’s happening.

This could be totally wrong. I haven’t looked into it. This is how most of these things work though. They prey on the youth and their desire for these products to take advantage of them.

PDFuego ,
@PDFuego@lemmy.world avatar

Right, so it’s not like they’re being tricked into generating porn or anything. It’s not some option that they would have turned off if they’d known about it, they just don’t care what’s happening because they only want the reward. Again I’m not saying I agree with it or that Salad’s right to do it, but if they say that’s potentially what it can be used for (and they do because the opt-out is available) then the focus should be on the client companies using the tool for questionable purposes.

CheeseNoodle ,

Honestly what roblox kids are willing to do for pitiful pay is scary, if you work in any kind of creative digital medium those kids will do days of your job for a fiver if any real money at all. It won’t be industry quality or anything but damn we got a whole digital version of sending kids down the mines. (And some of these roblox games can have unexpectedly big players behind them exploiting kids)

istanbullu ,

I don’t get the hate for AI porn.

Silentiea ,
@Silentiea@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

On its own, it’s just the same as hate for porn. But there’s also deep fake porn, ai porn of real people, and that’s potentially far more problematic.

Daxtron2 ,

But that’s the same issue of making fakes that we’ve had for 30+ years since digital manipulation became feasible.

foo ,

Yeah sure except now to make deep fake porn you just need to go ‘famous star naked riding an old man’s cock’ set 8 images for each seed and set a job of 100 images, turn the air con to antarctic and make misogynistic videos about why movies are woke while the job slowly cooks your studio

Then when you finish you probably have some good images of whatever famous star you like getting railed by an old man and you can hop on YouTube and complain that people don’t think you are an artist.

It requires almost no effort or talent to make a boatload of deep fake material. If you put any effort in you can orchestrate an image that looks pretty good.

Silentiea ,
@Silentiea@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Add to that the fact that before ai, unless you’re already pretty famous, no one cares enough to make nonconsensual porn of you. After, anyone vaguely attracted to you can snap or find a few pictures and do a decent job of it without any skill or practice.

Daxtron2 ,

Ease of creation shouldn’t have a bearing on whether or not the final result is illegal. A handmade vs AI generated fake nude should be treated the same way.

foo ,

I didn’t argue that it shouldn’t. The difference is the ease of creation. It now requires no skill or talent to produce it so the game has changed and it needs to be addressed and not dismissed

starman2112 ,
@starman2112@sh.itjust.works avatar

In my case it’s just the same as hate for AI generated slop

Silentiea ,
@Silentiea@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Do you hate all amateur art, or just when it’s made with ai tools? Does a kid’s drawing, produced in scant seconds and with no training and remarkably little skill hold negative value to you, or is it worth something?

What about art produced with hours or days of effort and a specific goal in mind, but don’t so using primarily ai with perhaps a few finishing touches?

frauddogg ,
@frauddogg@lemmygrad.ml avatar

Whataboutism and JAQing off. AI models are trained off blatant mass theft; as long as the originators of the training material (1) haven’t given consent to their being scraped and (2) aren’t getting paid for said already-done scraping, then the generator is unethical and deserving of hatred. You can’t have it both ways-- if capitalism is the game that must be played, then the originators of the training data need to give their consent and they need to be paid for every byte of training data that’s been stolen from them.

starman2112 , (edited )
@starman2112@sh.itjust.works avatar

I love it when people get hyper defensive about this for no reason at all. Aesthetically, AI art is obviously better than a child’s scribbles, but the problem is that AI art is pure aesthetic, with no meaning behind it at all, and if you engage with art purely for the aesthetic, then you fundamentally miss the point of it. AI can’t mean anything when it produces art. It just spits out a series of 1s and 0s based on whatever nonsense you shout into it.

It doesn’t matter how many hours you spend working on a piece, if you use AI (Edit to clarify: if you use AI to generate the art in its entirety), then the AI made the art. An AI cannot answer questions about artistic decisions it made, because it made no decisions. It’s worse than tracing—at least an amateur artist can answer why they decided to copy another artist’s work.

Because charitable interpretation is dead, I have to clarify. I’m not saying that there is no valid use case AI generated art, nor am I saying that all human-made art is good. All I’m saying is that human-made art can have meaning behind it, while AI art cannot. It’s incapable of having meaning, so it isn’t really art.

Silentiea ,
@Silentiea@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

It doesn’t matter how many hours you spend working on a piece, if you use AI, then the AI made the art.

Except that artists can use ai as a tool to make art. Sure, the ai can’t say why that pixel looks that way, but the artist can say why this is the output that was kept. They can tell you why they chose to prompt the ai the way they did, what outputs they expected and why the ones that were kept were special, let alone what changes they may have made after and why.

If Jackson Pollock can make art from randomness by flicking a brush, why can’t someone make art from randomness by promoting an ai? Is there a lone somewhere that makes it become art, in your opinion? I don’t think it would be uncharitable by interpreting the above quote to mean you don’t believe it is possible at all to use ai as a tool in the production of the art.

If ai is the only tool used, it never makes an image, let alone art, because there was never even a human using language to prompt the ai. But from that obviously ridiculous extreme there is certainly a long spectrum ranging through what I described above to something as far removed as a human generating landscapes for a storyboard before fully producing a movie that doesn’t include the air outputs in any physical way. I’m sure you would claim a line exists between there, and I’m curious where.

starman2112 , (edited )
@starman2112@sh.itjust.works avatar

There’s a couple of orthogonal arguments here, and I’m going to try to address them both: are you an artist if you use AI generated art, and why do I hate AI generated art?

Telling a machine “car, sedan, neon lights, raining, shining asphalt, night time, city lights” is not creating art. To me, it’s equivalent to commissioning art. If I pay someone $25 to draw my D&D character, then I am not an artist, I’ve simply hired one to draw what I wanted to see. Now, if I make any meaningful changes to that artwork, I could be considered an artist. For example, if I commissioned someone else to do the line work, and then I fill in the colors, we’ve both made the artwork. Of course, this can be stretched to an extreme that challenges my descriptivism. If I put a single black pixel on the Mona Lisa, can I say I collaborated on the output? Technically, yes, but I can’t take credit for anything other than putting a black pixel on it. Similarly, I feel that prompt engineers can’t take any credit for the pictures that AI produces past the prompt that they provided and whatever post-processing they do.

As for why I hate AI art, I just hate effortless slop. It’s the exact same thing as YouTube shorts comprised of Family Guy clips and slime. I have a hard time really communicating this feeling to other people, but I know many other people feel the same way. Even aside from the ethical concerns of stealing people’s artwork to train image generators, we live in a capitalist society, and automating things like art generation and youtube shorts uploads harms the people who actually produce those things in the first place.

Silentiea ,
@Silentiea@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Telling a machine “car, sedan, neon lights, raining, shining asphalt, night time, city lights” is not creating art. To me, it’s equivalent to commissioning art.

When art is commissioned, art is produced. If no human produced it, an ai did. If ai cannot produce art, then a human must have.

Similarly, I feel that prompt engineers can’t take any credit for the pictures that AI produces past the prompt that they provided and whatever post-processing they do.

I suppose I don’t understand why engineering a prompt can’t count as an artistic skill, nor why selecting from a number of generated outputs can’t (albeit to probably a much lower degree). At what point does a patron making a commission become a collaborator? And if ai fills the role of the painter, why wouldn’t you expect that line to move?

As for why I hate AI art, I just hate effortless slop.

I’m with you there. And I would brook no issue with completing about the massive amount of terrible, low-effort ai art currently being produced. But broadening the claim to include all art in which the most efficacious tool used was ai pushes it over the line for me.

starman2112 , (edited )
@starman2112@sh.itjust.works avatar

When art is commissioned, art is produced. If no human produced it, an ai did. If ai cannot produce art, then a human must have.

Right, so this is what I mean when I say that charitable interpretation is dead. Taking my earlier assertion that AI generated art isn’t real art, along with my assertion that providing a prompt to an AI is essentially equivalent to providing a description to a human artist for a commission, should not have read as an argument for or against AI generated art being real art. Taking those statements together, the only reasonable conclusion you can make about my position is that prompt engineers aren’t artists.

I suppose I don’t understand why engineering a prompt can’t count as an artistic skill, nor why selecting from a number of generated outputs can’t (albeit to probably a much lower degree). At what point does a patron making a commission become a collaborator?

Never. It’s not an artistic skill in the same way that providing a description to an actual artist is not an artistic skill, which was the point of that paragraph. They become a collaborator the moment they make changes to the work, and the level to which they can say they’re an artist depends on what changes they make, and how well they make them.

Silentiea ,
@Silentiea@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Right, so this is what I mean when I say that charitable interpretation is dead. Taking my earlier assertion that AI generated art isn’t real art, along with my assertion that providing a prompt to an AI is essentially equivalent to providing a description to a human artist for a commission, should not have read as an argument for or against AI generated art being real art. Taking those statements together, the only reasonable conclusion you can make about my position is that prompt engineers aren’t artists.

That sounds like the interpretation I’m responding to. It either doesn’t follow from your premises, or it begs the question. Yes, if ai art isn’t real art, no art produced with ai is real art, but that’s a tautology. I’m trying to get at why you believe ai inherently makes something not art. Low effort was a reason you gave, but you also said no amount of effort could change it.

Never. It’s not an artistic skill in the same way that providing a description to an actual artist is not an artistic skill

But providing a description to an “actual artist” is an artistic skill. If you have a particular vision in your head for a character, writing that out is art the same way any kind of writing can be, no? Writing something in a way that gives another artist a mental image that matches yours takes creativity and skill. Why doesn’t the work created by that creativity and skill count as art? It seems unnecessarily gatekeep-y.

petrol_sniff_king ,

But providing a description to an “actual artist” is an artistic skill.

Ohhh, so this is why people tag their images by popular art commisioners. Here’s another one asked for by XanthemG—you know he asks for good stuff.

Wait, that doesn’t happen.

why you believe ai inherently makes something not art.

For the same reason ChatGPT can’t make you any less lonely.

Silentiea ,
@Silentiea@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Okay. Got it. Charitable interpretation is dead.

Ohhh, so this is why people tag their images by popular art commisioners

There’s a point where writing becomes art. You either agree with that, or you don’t believe any kind of literature or poetry counts as art. In the latter case, that’s a bit of an extreme take but I guess you’re welcome to your opinion. In the former case, there’s a lone somewhere between Tolkien and XanthemG where something starts being art.

For the same reason ChatGPT can’t make you any less lonely.

Only insofar as neither can a book. And yeah, there’s obviously a difference there, but the difference isn’t inherent to ai. Ai isn’t a person, it’s a tool. Dismissing anything made by the tool because the tool was used to make them is the position that I think is ridiculous. I’m not claiming that all of the “ai art” people are posting everywhere is definitely "real art"and needs to be taken seriously. I’m claiming that it’s possible for an artist to use ai in the production of real art.

petrol_sniff_king ,

There’s a line between a cup and an ocean. I don’t see what that has to do with anything.

I’m claiming that it’s possible for an artist to use ai in the production of real art.

As an artist can use a guitar instead of their own mouth. But can an artist’s art be the guitar playing itself… hm. A book in a library is art. But can choosing a book from a library be art? Ah, but what if it takes a long time. Wow, philosophy is interesting.

The argument here hinges on the definitions of inherently vague words. “Hm, you say a chair must have at least three legs and a seat, but this rock is a place people sit. Hm, what if the rock was sculpted, does it count then? Yes, yes, I am very smart”—This is boring and I don’t care.

If the script for your movie wasn’t written by people, then I don’t care about it. It’s trash. It’s garbage. I would rather watch one made by people who care. I want people to talk to me with their art. When an AI becomes sentient enough to intend to make something meaningful, then we can revisit.

Oh right, but you mean the technical caveat for the use of AI tools.

Joel Haver uses an AI filter to do his rotoscoping. I like Joel Haver just fine.

The mere presence of an AI filter in his work is not what I consider artful, though.

Silentiea ,
@Silentiea@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

As an artist can use a guitar instead of their own mouth. But can an artist’s art be the guitar playing itself… hm.

Absolutely it can. Numerous artists have created work that unfolds itself into something beautiful through their planning but not through their power.

But can choosing a book from a library be art?

Choosing a urinal counts as art. Of course choosing a book can.

The argument here hinges on the definitions of inherently vague words.

Art is an inherently vague word.

I would rather watch one made by people who care.

This right here is the crux of my argument. What about art made by people who care, but made with ai? Is it so impossible that people might care about something and use ai to make it?

I absolutely do not contend that using ai makes something art. I merely contend that using ai (even as a major part of a work) is not sufficient to make it not art. To whit,

Joel Haver uses an AI filter to do his rotoscoping. I like Joel Haver just fine.

It sounds like you agree with me on that, at least in principle.

petrol_sniff_king ,

No, because amateur art is interesting.

Hours of effort to what, exactly?

Silentiea ,
@Silentiea@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Hours of effort to create prompts to maneuver the models output until it looks closer to what you wanted, possibly with the addition of touch-up or addition steps at the end likely needed for certain kinds of image to clean up things the ai struggles with (like, say, hands) or to add something in particular the ai didn’t understand (like, say, a monster of your own invention or something).

It’s easy to say that doesn’t count, that the prompt engineer could have just come up with their final prompt in the first place, but then does it count when a digital painter sketches an outline a dozen times before deciding it’s where they want it? After all, the digital artist could have just drawn it the way they wanted at first blush. But I’d bet you’ll say the time the digital artist spent “counts” as time spent working on an art piece, even if you might be inclined to say the prompt engineer’s time doesn’t. I’d be interested to hear your take.

petrol_sniff_king ,

Dude, I don’t care how many iterations a person goes through. I care that the piece contains a bit of their soul.

The argument you’re making fails to appreciate why two images, one made by gen AI, one by a real human person, both exactly identical pixel by pixel, could possibly be valued differently.

If you want to know why I seem to lack respect for the prompt artist who spends a 3-month chunk of their life toiling over their latest piece, making everything just so, because some part of them desperately needs to say something and this piece is the only way they can—I would ask you to show me one.

But further, the prompt artist doesn’t even make it. Even if they did spend the time, credit goes to the AI. The prompt artist is welcome to claim their prompt, I guess, but I don’t often see them sharing those around. Would that even be entertaining?

Silentiea ,
@Silentiea@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Dude, I don’t care how many iterations a person goes through. I care that the piece contains a bit of their soul.

the prompt artist who spends a 3-month chunk of their life toiling over their latest piece,

I’m curious what could possibly convince you that someone put their soul into their work? Or why the assumption is always that ai is the only tool being used.

Here’s a list of artists using ai tools in their work.

But further, the prompt artist doesn’t even make it.

Again, ai is a tool. That’s like saying digital artists didn’t make their paintings, the printer did. Or maybe it’s like saying the director didn’t make the movie, the actors and cameras did. Actually, I really like the director analogy. They give directions to the actors as many times as they need to get the take they want, and then they finalize it later with post production.

petrol_sniff_king ,

When it contains their soul, I already said this.

Actually, I really like the director analogy.

Yes, it’s very quaint.

Does the director take credit for their actor’s acting, though? Usually, the actors win the award for best acting.

Silentiea ,
@Silentiea@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Does the director take credit for their actor’s acting, though? Usually, the actors win the award for best acting.

So an ai artist shouldn’t earn any awards for best painting. Directors are still credited as artists. I’m not saying using ai makes you a painter, or any other kind of artist. I’m just saying that “ai” doesn’t magically make a creation “not art”. And yeah, it’s possible to create zero effort slop with ai that can look a lot more interesting than the zero effort slop you can make with just paint, but a kid splattering paint everywhere doesn’t make Jackson Pollock not be an artist.

istanbullu ,

deepfakes predate the ai boom. you don’t need ai for deepfakes

Silentiea ,
@Silentiea@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Well, the word deep fake is literally from the ai boom, but I understand you to mean doctored images to make it look like someone was doing a porn when they didn’t was already a thing.

And yeah, it very much was. But unless you were already a high profile individual like a popular celebrity, or mayyybe if you happened to be attractive to the one guy making them, they didn’t tend to get made of you, and certainly not well. Now, anyone with a crush and a photo of you can make your face and a pretty decent approximation of your naked body move around and make noises while doing the nasty. And they can do it many orders of magnitude faster and with less skill than before.

So no, you don’t need ai for it to exist and be somewhat problematic, but ai makes it much more problematic.

Katana314 ,

One ethics quandary is AI child porn. It at least provides a non-harmful outlet for an otherwise harmful act, but it could also feed addictions and feel insufficient.

Omega_Haxors , (edited )

You clearly haven’t seen it, nor know anyone affected by it. It’s like 99% noncon shit from people who are too creepy for artists to work with.

EDIT: Sums it up www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aS97RKjEdI

gap_betweenus ,

Porn will be one of the first applied “arts” completely replaced by AI (including onlyfans like pseudo social interactions), which is great since in general it’s a rather horrible industry.

frightful_hobgoblin ,

I love the industry tbh

gap_betweenus ,

I enjoy the product, but the industry is pretty fucked.

frightful_hobgoblin ,

I’m the inverse; I find the product boring but the industry is mad fun.

Mango ,

Great. Now we’re trading pre-made traditional artwork to kids in exchange for fresh robot porn!

melpomenesclevage ,

and the kids are getting the traditional art! would not have called it.

Flyberius ,
@Flyberius@hexbear.net avatar

I remember when GPUs were used to fold proteins…

Snowyday ,

I wore an onion on my belt

SturgiesYrFase ,
@SturgiesYrFase@lemmy.ml avatar

As was the fashion at the time

cygon ,

So… this AI company gets gaming teens to “donate” their computing power, rather than pay for render farms / GPU clouds?

And then oblivious parents pay the power bills, effectively covering the computing costs of the AI porn company?

Sounds completely ethical to me /s.

fidodo ,

No no, they’re getting copies of digital images out of it. It’s a totally fair trade!

redcalcium ,

So, it’s like folding@home, but instead of donating your spare compute to science, you sell it to generate porn?

Someonelol ,
@Someonelol@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Porning@home

petersr ,

Can we at least see it?

nucleative ,

This… This was inevitable.

fidodo ,

“Selling” it for digital copies of images and some variable tweaks

makingStuffForFun ,
@makingStuffForFun@lemmy.ml avatar

Imagine reading that headline 20 years ago.

Demdaru ,

God that would sound so dystopian and futuristic…but to be honest, most articles about AI today would sound like that back then. Damn people would freak out about privacy.

melpomenesclevage ,

pretty sure they didn’t.

catloaf ,

BOINC came out 21 years ago, so it wouldn’t be that unreasonable.

DestroyerOfWorlds ,

explain this to a person in 1998

foo ,

Imagine collecting the smartest people on the planet from 100 years ago and explaining this.

CliveRosfield ,

Eh I agree with the reasonable takes here. Nothing wrong with generating that sort of stuff until it starts resembling the likeliness of a real living person. Then I think it’s just creepy; especially if for some reason you are sharing it 💀

SSJ2Marx ,
@SSJ2Marx@hexbear.net avatar

wow. Imagine burning out your expensive GPU for a fortnite skin.

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