Two days left! Support our fundraiser by January 5th and 
How Generative AI Is Enabling More Connections With True Fans
from the fan-participation-in-culture dept
Walled Culture has written a number of times about the true fans approach – the idea that creators can be supported directly and effectively by the people who love their work. As Walled Culture the book explains (available as a free ebook), one of the earliest and best expositions of the concept came from Kevin Kelly, former Executive Editor at Wired magazine, in an essay he wrote originally in 2008. The true fans idea is sometimes dismissed as simply selling branded t-shirts to supporters. That may have been true decades ago, but things have moved on. For example, Universal Music Group has recently opened retail locations that cater specifically for true fans. In addition to shops in Tokyo and Madrid, there are new outlets in New York and London. Here’s what the latter will offer, as reported by Music Business Worldwide:
Located in Camden Market, the London-based space will “serve as a creative hub where music, fashion, and design collide,” UMG said.
The announcement added that the shop was “designed to capture Camden’s rebellious spirit and deep musical roots”.
The store will feature exclusive artist collections, immersive installations, and live performances, along with a Vinyl Lounge, DJ booth, and recording studio-inspired Sound Room that “allows fans to experience music like never before”.
That is a fairly conventional extension of the “selling branded t-shirts to supporters” idea. A post on the Midia Research blog points out a more radical development in the true fans space involving the latest generative AI technology:
AI is best considered as an accelerant rather than something entirely new, intensifying pre-existing trends. AI music absolutely fits this trend. Over the course of the last decade – including a super-charged COVID bump – accessible music tech has enabled ever-more people to become music creators. AI simply lowered the barriers to entry even further. The debate over whether a text prompt constitutes creativity will continue to run (just like the same debate still runs for sampling), but what is clear is that more people are now making music because of AI.
Thanks to genAI, true fans are not limited to a passive role. They can actively participate in the artistic ecosystem brought into being by their musical heroes, through the creation of new works based on and extending the originals they love. The fanfic world has been doing this for many years, so it is no surprise to find the use of generative AI there even more advanced there than in the world of music. For example, the DreamGen site lists no less than nine “AI fanfic generators”, including its own. It offers a good description of how these systems work:
1. You give it a prompt: This could be something like “Harry Potter and Hermione go on a space adventure” or “Naruto meets Spider-Man in New York.”
2. The AI takes over: It uses its knowledge of language and storytelling to write a story based on your idea. It fills in the details, such as dialogue, action, emotions,and plot twists.
3. You can guide it: Want more romance? More drama? A surprise ending? You can tweak the prompt or add instructions, and the AI will adjust the story.
4. You get a full fanfic: Some tools write it all at once, others let you build it paragraph by paragraph so you can shape the story as it goes.
As that indicates, the new AI-based fanfic generators are so easy to use, anyone can use them. The only limit is the imagination and the ability to put that into words. That’s an incredible democratization of creativity that takes the idea of participatory fandom to the next level. And, of course, it can be applied in other domains too, such as “fan art”, which Wikipedia defines as follows:
Fan art or fanart is artwork created by fans of a work of fiction or celebrity depicting events, character, or other aspect of the work. As fan labor, fan art refers to artworks that are not created, commissioned, nor endorsed by the creators of the work from which the fan art derives.
As with other uses of genAI, this raises questions of copyright, some of which have already found their way to court. Perhaps surprisingly, Disney has just announced its embrace of this use of AI by fans, in a partnership with OpenAI:
The Walt Disney Company and OpenAI have reached an agreement for Disney to become the first major content licensing partner on Sora, OpenAI’s short-form generative AI video platform, bringing these leaders in creativity and innovation together to unlock new possibilities in imaginative storytelling.
As part of this new, three-year licensing agreement, Sora will be able to generate short, user-prompted social videos that can be viewed and shared by fans, drawing from a set of more than 200 animated, masked and creature characters from Disney, Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars, including costumes, props, vehicles, and iconic environments. In addition, ChatGPT Images will be able to turn a few words by the user into fully generated images in seconds, drawing from the same intellectual property. The agreement does not include any talent likenesses or voices.
There’s a billion-dollar investment by Disney in OpenAI, as well as the following:
OpenAI and Disney will collaborate to utilize OpenAI’s models to power new experiences for Disney+ subscribers, furthering innovative and creative ways to connect with Disney’s stories and characters.
Presumably, Disney hopes to gain more Disney+ subscribers and drive more revenues with these short-form, fan-generated videos, plus whatever “creative ways” of using AI that it comes up with. OpenAI, meanwhile, gains some handy investment, and a showcase for its Sora genAI video platform.
Although this deal is a welcome sign that some major copyright companies are starting to think imaginatively and positively about genAI, and how it can actually boost profits, the new service will doubtless be rather limited, not least in terms of what kind of videos can generated. The press release emphasises:
OpenAI and Disney have affirmed a shared commitment to maintaining robust controls to prevent the generation of illegal or harmful content, to respect the rights of content owners in relation to the outputs of models, and to respect the rights of individuals to appropriately control the use of their voice and likeness.
That means that there will always be room for edgier, smaller sites producing fanfic, fan art and fan videos that don’t worry about things like good taste or copyright. As more fans discover the delights of building on and extending the creative ideas of their idols in novel ways using genAI, we can expect a corresponding rise in the number of legal actions trying to stop them doing so.
Follow me @glynmoody on Mastodon and on Bluesky. Originally posted to Walled Culture.
Filed Under: copyright, culture, generative ai, true fans
Companies: disney, openai, universal music group
Comments on “How Generative AI Is Enabling More Connections With True Fans”
So, nothing like Dark Trump Vador pooping on US citizens video could ever be created? I’d bet $1B he has already done it.
Double edged sword.
Generative AI can be a double edged sword, especially when it comes to people that want to use it for ill. We’ve seen the current administration use it for rather hostile purposes, especially when it comes to using the IP’s for said hostile purposes.
Re:
One I daresay is rather more weighted on the side looming over the general public’s neck.
Re:
👍
Absolutely the fuck not. Idiots.
Oh shit, someone invented a way of writing fiction where all you have to do is imagine things and then put them into words?
“More connections with true fans” is an unhinged way of framing the use of AI to make stuff similar to other stuff you’ve seen, a thing that everyone already knew was possible. Is TD just doing PR for big tech and the recording industry now?
Re:
Yeah, it’s kind of sad how Techdirt is starting to lean in favor of generative AI.
Re: Re:
Even when there’s an article acknowledging that it’s a bubble that’s going to burst, the implication is that the free version is going to be so awesome that all the people who are eager to pay for the paid version won’t need it anymore.
And look, I’m all for lowering barriers to entry, and I’m not completely averse to the notion that GenAI can be turned to creative purposes (in conjunction with actual human talent). I saw a webcomic awhile back that used AI-generated backgrounds to create a sense of a trippy dream world. I’ve seen short AI-generated videos that were evocative and told a (simple) story. And all that’s aside from the real practical applications of LLMs, finding patterns in large datasets.
But I’ve yet to see an AI-generated block of text that wasn’t fucking infuriating to read. I guess it’s better to turn it toward self-acknowledged fiction than false claims of fact, but I don’t want to read it and I don’t accept the assumption that the growth curve is just going to keep going up at its current rate and eventually it will be as good as something written by a marginally competent human author. I don’t think that its potential to elevate submediocre writing to mediocrity is something to celebrate, not even for submediocre writers; they’d be better off practicing and honing their skills and maybe someday achieving mediocrity on their own merits. And then, from there, maybe achieving what I don’t think LLMs ever will: rising above mediocrity.
And as for Disney investing in fan-prompted genAI, there’s an extremely obvious conclusion: Disney is doing what it always does, what it always has done, trying to turn a profit and share as little of it as possible with creative people.
Re: Re: Re:
The biggest problem with generative AI in the context of its use as a creative tool—aside from its tangible impact on the environment and the potential for cutting human artists out of jobs, anyway—is that it’s just a cheap shortcut for people who don’t want to build out their skills. Oh, you generated a picture of Darth Vader in Studio Ghibli style? Good for you! Now draw and color it by hand so maybe it’ll fucking matter.
As I said on a different article recently, people who use generative AI to create “art” are people who want to reach the finish line without running a race—and moreover, they resent the idea that they should ever have to run the race at all. And I get the temptation to use generative AI like that because I’m not that good an artist in any way. (Writing crank-ass comments on Techdirt notwithstanding. 😁) Being able to crank out an idea in my head by typing out a prompt and asking the Emptiness Machine to process it is tempting on numerous levels, and it’s far easier than taking the time to build up my skills to draw the idea myself. But in using an AI generator, I would forgo being an artist to be a pseudo-artist whose sole artistic “skill” is collecting tags from Danbooru for a better prompt. That isn’t artistry—it’s relying on a plagiarism-laundering algorithm to pre-digest the work of other people and barf it back up in a mediocre imitation of that work.
Is it any wonder that techbros and C-suite brunchlords love generative AI? It not only gives them the ability to feel like they’re artists without actually doing any of the work that artists would do, it also gives them a way to avoid dealing with actual artists (i.e., paying artists for their work). And sure, some company will say “we’re just using it for conceptual work” or something like that—but when the company’s head-up-his-ass head honcho wants to cut more corners for the sake of profits, that limit is going to disappear real fucking quick, and so are the people who would normally create the art that company uses. Standing against it now is what will stop it from becoming more commonplace than it already is. Just ask Guillame Broche of Sandfall Interactive, who said in an interview that “everything” that studio makes from now on “will be made by humans, by us”—the interview was published days after the studio’s Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 had its two Indie Game Awards wins rescinded over the game’s early use of AI-generated images (which have since been replaced). All of the pro-AI evangelists want you to believe the replacement of human art is an inevitability. None of them want you to know that we can stop their dream from becoming reality.
Re: Re: Re:2
The failsons who grew up getting participation trophies for life now love the thing that vomits out something as mediocre as they are without them having to work for it. I am truly shocked.
Re: Re: Re:2 small business use of GenAI.
My wife recently used gen AI to make content for the small business she works at. It was a simple Christmas message that took the poem twas the night before Christmas and replaced phrases witb puns tied to what the store does/sells. While she did the words she had genAI create simple animated artwork for the words.
The final product was cute, nice, and definitely the artwork was outside her abilities to do. The small business doesn’t have money to hire an artist to make content either.
After creation she posted it to social media in hopes that it would remind people about the mom&pop store and get them to come into the store.
So should they not use it to drive engagement and get more people into the store just because of GenAI content?
Is it only okay because it did the parts she couldn’t yet do herself?
I would argue it is fine to do. However it would be more appreciated by potential and current customers if it didnt involve AI content.
Re: Re: Re:3
Yes, they shouldn’t. I apologize for the inevitable negative feelings that answer will cause, but I’m not going to support the use of generative AI just because someone is too unskilled to make art themselves. Even if you couldn’t afford to pay an artist for an illustration—and I 100% understand and sympathize with that—there are plenty of royalty-free photos and illustrations on the Internet for people to use. Using generative AI is a coward’s way out of putting in any work to find royalty-free images (or artists who do commissions, provided it’s possible to pay them for their time and skills).
I get that it’s easy. I get that it’s cheap (relatively speaking). And I get that, provided the generator spits back something that doesn’t have a whole bunch of hallucinatory errors like extra fingers, limbs, and/or heads, the end result is “good enough” for something like a social media post. But those are all excuses. If you can’t pay an artist for their work, find a royalty-free image to use. If you can’t do that, don’t use an image at all. Pleading poverty will hit me in the feels, but it won’t get me on-board with the use of generative AI.
Re: Re:
Agreed. Taking the creativity out of creating something by having a machine create it for you is not “democratizing creativity.”
And, you know, an EULA where you agree that any story ideas you write into the prompt become the exclusive property of Disney and they have the right to use them in future works without crediting or compensating you.
Presumably.
Always so saddening to see Techdirt shilling this garbage over and over.
This reads like a press release.
As people starve and freeze while the rich get richer, you continue to glaze AI.
You are as bad with AI as any maga fanatic with trump.
It’s disappointing to see Techdirt go downhill so quickly and publish crackpot posts like this.
As I said somewhere, if someone copies lawful pictures with certain AI without permission to get a spark or idea and then creates something legally original enough, then it seems to fit with the purpose of copyright law in the same way as more “traditional” cases of fair use. It’s a right too as long as harmless and non-threatening.
But I wish it was regulated a lot. It’s filled with intellectual property works and is being used that isnt exactly fair, and contain little to no regulation, let alone environmental problems it currently has if im assuming right. Like I’m not against helping speed up public domain lawfully but I with it was regulated a lot first so shame on Disney.
Microwave dinners are 'home-cooked meals' too, bro
Have you never actually done a single creative project for yourself in your life?
The joy of making is in the process.
There’s no fun, and no point, if all I have to do is press a button. It is then not mine; I didn’t make it. I didn’t need to develop any skills. I didn’t have to overcome any limitations, those of my own or of my tools. I didn’t have to fix, or figure out how to incorporate, or just accept, any flaws in my execution of my idea.
I didn’t learn anything.
I didn’t grow.
I didn’t get to experience the process.
I get nothing.
Nothing but a soulless, ultra-processed, machine-regurgitated approximation of a creative expression.
Use it for yourself if you want, but fuck off with the glazing. Generative AI is not a tool, it’s an opt-out: a shortcut for those who can’t be bothered to learn anything.
Re:
Agreed, unless it’s treated as a tool. For example, a carpenter looking for a challenge might tell GenAI to draw a bumch of tables for inspiration. If he then goes and builds one, he still built that…
Re: Re:
You’re right there’s really just no other way to get interesting new designs except for oh wait you could already before AI spend literal days searching through images of tables from all around the world and from as far back into the past as such images have survived.
Why should I ask AI to barf up some badly blended versions of the same images I could just look at myself… and maybe learn something interesting about those designs in the process?
Something I could share with others, or could connect to new people over.
Something I could discover that might be a new wellspring of inspiration.
Something that might lead to a whole new hobby or interest.
I’d get none of that, not even the possibility of it, if I just used an AI.
The process is where the joy is.
The process is where the story behind what you made happened.
AI is a void where process and learning and stories could’ve happened.
Learn something.
Be more curious.
Be more creative.
Be more human.
Re: Re: Re:
Why not? We could just as well ask why one should go look at photos of other people’s tables instead of talking to the carpenters, or instead of experimenting and learning by oneself. So why draw the line at computer-generated imagery? It seems to just be the current boogeyman; popular to hate (in 2025), with no rational reason required.
The idea that it couldn’t possibly lead to inspiration or a new hobby seems bizarre. Maybe someone could find joy in building shit the computer dreams up; it seems weird to me, but it’s not important that I understand it.
Re: Re: Re:2
The problem isn’t that it could lead to inspiration. The problem is that the inspiration would come at the costs of harming the environment, raising people’s energy bills, and stealing the hard work of other people to shove into a plagiarism-laundering LLM so someone can win a race they resent having to run.
Re: Re: Re:3
One shouldn’t have to say, on this site, that copying is not theft.
The environmental harm is real, at present, but I get the impression that many people would be determined to hate this technology even if that problem were solved. As for energy bills, that’s assholes taking advantage of market weirdness: if things were properly priced (including environmental costs), residential users wouldn’t be footing the bill.
Re: Re: Re:4
And if were talking about saving images from a website for looking at for inspiration while offline, that might mean something here. But we’re talking about the Emptiness Machine, which chews up other people’s work and pukes it back out in a cheap artificial copy of the style of said work that doesn’t involve in any way the people who made the original works used to train the model that “created” the slop. If you resent having to actually make art or interact with artists (i.e., if you resent “running the race”), say so, but please don’t run that “it’s not theft” line on me again as if it’ll change my mind. I know you don’t have a compelling argument to make that line effective. Deep down, you also know you don’t.
Yes, they would. Deal with it.
Re: Re: Re:2
If you want rational reasons, listen to Stephen, because he’s correct.
But also: creativity and art aren’t exactly fully rational exercises.
Look, in thinking more about this, even before reading this new response of yours, I got fixated on the original situation you proposed:
…Do you see it? You got close to understanding my point in your own rebuttal to it:
“Looking for a challenge.”
This is not a (hypothetical) carpenter who wants to make a table just because he needs a table.
This would be someone who loves his craft for its own sake.
A carpenter like the one you thought up would probably love doing all of those things! Talking to others who love the same craft? Trying a crazy idea that popped into our heads and seeing if it works?
We do all those things. We love that shit.
People who love creating love the process of doing it.
I think that there is a very fundamental disconnect between the mindsets of people who are pro gen-AI and those who are anti.
If your only understanding of art, of being creative, is in terms of making a product, you will most likely love gen-AI. It is basically entirely product-focused.
But, for most creative people, they draw, they write, they build, they do whatever it is they love doing because they love doing it.
It’s about the doing.
It’s about the learning.
(Yes, yet again:) It’s about the process.
It’s not a rational exercise, it’s an urge to create, to express and explore and learn and to do, all for its own sake.
The finished product is welcome, and enjoyed! The thought of it during the making helps spur us on.
But at the same time, that doesn’t mean getting to have the finished product is necessarily the reason we’re making it.
Creation for its own sake, because the process of creating is itself a pleasure.
Do you get that?
Can you get that? Or are you simply not wired up like this? It’s alright, if not! Many aren’t.
But still, can you see that, from a creative perspective, gen-AI is backwards: product-minded, not creation-minded.
I want to chase down rabbit holes researching for a project. Inspiration accumulates like a snowball rolling downhill, and not just ideas for the project I began researching for.
I want to exchange notes with others.
I want to also explore on my own; to try out and see if my idea works or fails.
To my mind generative AI only counts as a ‘tool’ if it helps me do what I want to do. It doesn’t, so it isn’t. Again: it’s an opt-out of everything I want to do.
(…And then finally, on top of all that, are the other, more ‘rational’ concerns…)
Re: Re: Re:3
I kind of get it. I’ve used 3-D printers, and I’ve sculpted stuff by hand; they’re very different activities, but I’m not gonna say either should go away. Some painters meticulously paint scenes, while some throw paint at a wall. Give artists something vomited up by a computer, and probably some of them will turn it into something that’s treated as real art. Someone will always say that an upside-down urinal isn’t “art”, but that kind of controversy’s always been part of the field.
So I sure hope people don’t let computers replace humans. But, then again, I don’t even see how it’d be possible: if we let computers run this field for a decade, the first talented human to re-enter it would seem like a fuckin’ genius, right? (Or in the highly unlikely case that didn’t happen, I guess it’d prove we humans would need to step up our creativity.)
In other words, I’m neither in favor of replacing humans, nor trying to artificially prevent that. I think humans can and will compete on their own merits. (And, as people who give a shit about the environment get into politics, the problems Stephen mentioned will get solved… though perhaps more slowly in the U.S. than other countries.)
Re: Re: Re:4
Yeah, so, go tell that to the C-suite fail-upwards brunchlord assholes who currently want exactly what you say you hope doesn’t happen to actually happen. Then again…
…the fact that you wouldn’t mind generative AI entirely replacing people in creative fields for a decade just to prove a point makes you sound just like one of the assholes I’m talking about.
Re: Re: Re:3
You. You get it.
Part of the reason I refer to generative AI as “the Emptiness Machine” (aside from liking the Linkin Park song from which I yoinked that nickname) is how it effectively precludes an artistic process—and all the potential human interaction that process could have. Someone who paints actual canvasses would go to a craft/hobby store to get new canvasses, paints, brushes, and so forth. They would talk to other people, either at the store or online, about their tools and techniques for painting—either to be recommended new ones or to share their own suggestions. They would have a community with whom they could share their hobby, both the process and the result. With generative AI, that community wouldn’t exist because (A) there is no real “process” to writing prompts and (B) the most “successful ‘artists’ ” in generative AI would very much like to keep their prompting secrets instead of sharing their knowledge.
Generative AI has a lot of problems, both tangible and intangible, but by its very nature, it is “anti-human”. Not in the sense of “it’s going to become Skynet”, but in the sense of “why talk to other people about anything”. I know chatbots aren’t the same as “art” generators, but the same general idea comes through every time there’s a new story about someone with signs of “AI psychosis” who treats a chatbot like it’s a real person, sometimes to the point of choosing to die by suicide because the chatbot said “sure, go ahead”. There is no humanity within generative AI. It is the Emptiness Machine because extended use of said machine hollows out one’s own humanity.
And if anyone thinks I’m full of shit, they can look at the people who use generative AI to generate non-consensual nudes on demand and know that I’m right.
Techdirt should stick to the thing it’s good at,
political reporting
Yeah. No. AI generated content is something you do for the kick of it, but then it’s quickly forgotten about. It’s an expensive toy, and it already can’t be anything more.
What a horrible article. True fans appreciate the work that went into the art, not just pointing and recognizing their favorite IP like.
It’s sad to see Techdirt descend into The Verge levels of gullibility.
Why does every defense of AI read like it’s written by AI?
Re:
I don’t know, why do AI haters sound like they are using hating AI as a substitute for a personality and flunk a Turing test? Seriously, they talk so damn identical that they sound like a botnet.
Re: Re:
This is probably because you keep seeing the same pro–generative AI arguments being debunked and criticized over and over, and that’s because the AI evangelists keep making the same arguments over and over without actually taking away anything from the criticism. They’re the kind of stubborn dickheads who keep saying “AI is inevitable, everyone’s going to use AI, everyone’s going to love AI, AI is the actual future” without realizing that they sound exactly like NFT peddlers and cryptocurrency shills from just a few years ago—and look how long those fads lasted in the mainstream before they became scam havens. And that’s before we get into things like Elon Musk’s Grok producing CSAM via pictures posted on Twitter, which…yeah…
Machine learning absolutely has some useful purposes, especially in fields like medical science.
Generative AI, though? There’s a reason why it’s so reviled. There is no inherent creativity, it just regurgitates the material it is trained on, and the results are okay at best rather than great, even with direct human intervention, but are more often than not absolute crap. Concept artists largely agree that generated images as references are more detrimental than helpful. And despite what you might argue about the technicalities of training data, artists still consider it to be stealing and disrespectful to the actual work of artists.
Is generative AI neat for messing around with? Maybe handy for search or formatting some text? Sure, beyond that, it’s just a fancy toy. By and large, AI-generated content is very rarely anything more than just slop.
Re:
The actual reason seems to be that people are hating it because they are told to hate it. The haters seem to be using hating AI as a prosthetic substitute for having an actual personality.
Re: Re:
If you think people hate generative AI only because “they are told to hate it”, what’s stopping you from providing a solid argument in favor of generative AI? Like, go ahead, tell all those easily brainwashed haters how generative AI is Good, Actually™. Step up and change our minds.
I’ll wait.
Connections or content?
OK, cards on the table first. I’m a song-writer / producer and I am quite strongly against the use of generative AI.
Not because of copyright infringement, I’ve long supported Techdirt’s approach that copyright needs reform and winding back to something approaching its origins, but because of the water, pollution and energy costs of AI. No-one can confidently state what these are, so we’re just collectively running up an environmental credit card bill that we have no idea how to pay, for a product that doesn’t need to exist.
I have some concerns around where fair use for training stops and creating a competing product starts as well but they’re pretty secondary.
Right, that’s that bit out of the way…
To me, sample size of 1, the creation of fan art is not ‘connection’. Connection is a two-way thing, an interaction. Most fan art is a one-way thing, “Here is my interpretation of your creation.” It may be anything from appallingly bad to brilliantly realised, it may horrifically subvert the original creator’s intention or beautifully expand on their vision.
But it’s still one way.
It’s not really any different to following a creator on instagram and thinking you know them personally as a result.
The Disney licensing gets close to a two-way model, the studio is providing a licence to use their content but that’s really just legalising something that’s already happening in the one-way world.
Connection happens when the artists and creators get involved as well. If a band says, “Hey we’re having a remix competition, here are the stems, knock yourselves out.” Or an author says, “Show me your fanfics and I’ll tell you my favourites.” Or a film maker says, “What storyline would you like me to look at for the next series?”
And they can choose whether to accept AI into that interaction fully, partially or not at all:
– “Please no AI submissions, I want to see YOUR writing.”
– “Feel free to use AI tools to help, but let us know when you submit your mix.”
– “Want to use AI to flesh out your idea? Here’s a couple of tools we’d recommend.”
That would be using AI to increase connection.
I’m really not close enough to other fields, but on the music production side of things the only headline artist I can think of who’s actually embraced that approach is Grimes – but that was strictly on a 50% licenced deal.
Aside from that I’m not seeing any artists actually engaging with AI-generated fan art. And until they do it’s not actually connection, it’s just content.
I reckon.
Re:
👍
I agree!
Re:
Which never happens without a liability waiver. Authors don’t want to get sued because someone thinks they copied a fanfic.
???
The fuck is this slop? We’re defending the plagiarism machine now?
Re:
You mean AI, or Disney?
Re: Re:
I mean, both, tbh. But mostly I meant AI.
Re: Re:
both, both is the answer.
We can use AI to help do things like materials science and discovering new medicines, that’s great.
But as far as I’m concerned, anyone defending its use in art is only outing themselves as having some dark triad psychopathology. Replacing real creative work that comes from real perspectives with machine knockoffs?
That is some sociopathic shit by my reckoning. Tell us you don’t value humans without telling us you don’t value them…
‘If you’re a true fan of a thing, you’ll want to see all works based on it taken by billionaire techbros and ground up into a pulp then regurgitated back in a soulless way that ensures there’s little chance of anything truly innovative happening with it ever again. Oh and mostnof the people who made it worth liking tobbegin with will be rendered unemployed. Oh and you’ll ignore all the environmental harms it vauses, like a true fan.’
Are we quite sure this piece wasn't meant for Ars Technica?
Because it sure reads like it was written specifically to please Conde Nast or asswipes like them. You know – the kind firing their actual journalists and pushing “AI”-generated articles riddled with fallacies and general idiocy.
Subject title ain’t a rhetorical question, because you had to have known how this piece would go dowm ’round these parts.
Re:
What’s wrong with Ars Technica?
Besides the comments.
And a couple of writers whose names start with “Be” and end with “ger”.
Re: Re:
Is one of those “Belanger” whose constant stenography for disinformation sources (anti-tech politicians pushing bad laws) is indistinguishable in style from LLM writing?
What The Hell Is This Slop, Techdirt?
To get things straight, I am not against AI when it comes to completing menial tasks and aid in complex subjects like in medical science. But I take issue with AI when it overextends into artistic expression and writing.
I am an artist (mostly digital), and a wannabe writer. What makes art and writing a story feel real is that I made them and took the time to do it. Creating can be a difficult process, and it can take time to think things through; sometimes, the art you make or the story you write might not succeed. But it is still worth it because it is your creation and you took the effort to make it.
Generative AI however is not a good alternative, not even an alternative. It’s a shortcut. A vile and lazy shortcut. It’s putting in a prompt to make the image/text you want, but without the effort. In art, it’s an algorithm that steals legit images to Frankenstein lazy abominations of plagiarism. In writing, it’s text but without the soul, the spice, nor the time to write it. GenAI not only just steals art, but opportunities for artists in commissions and jobs.
I’ve followed Techdirt for years and it’s disappointing that the website has joined the GenAI bandwagon. To be fair, there’s a lot of intersect in concensus. I think copyright is easily abused and is in dire need of reform. But GenAI is just the opposite extreme.
I’m very disappointed in you, Mike.
Re:
This wasn’t written by Mike. Though it’s his website and he’s more pro-AI than most of us in the comments.
Re: Re:
You may have summed it up perfectly, just there. Shame, really, but they’ve been on borrowed time since Condé Nast bought them.
Took them longer than I thought to succumb (sold out in ’08 or ’09), I’ll give them that, but succumb they did.
Re: Re: Re:
Yay. This was meant as a reply to your reply to me above, as you’ve probably concluded 🙂
Re: Re: Re:
Eh, I think the problems I mentioned are independent of Conde Nast. It’s become quite clear that site policy WRT the comments is set by people who’ve been there since before the buyout, and while the two writers I alluded to are post-Conde hires I doubt that upper management forced them on the site.
Which is not a defense of Conde Nast and the harm they’ve done to some of their other publications, but I think Ars’ problems are just that: Ars’ problems.
Ah yes, the wonderful ai content that takes Pixar style shorts and makes jokes like a black man leaving to get the milk after his wife announces she’s pregnant, other stereotypes, or funny moments from life.
Yes I had a laugh at first because of it being in the Pixar style but it really is lazy and a proper imagination is better to cultivate than those sora generated videos.
Governments love AI in the sense that they can accuse anyone who uses it of using it to make child pornography.
That’s an incredible democratization of creativity that takes the idea of participatory fandom to the next level.
I think we have very different ideas of what “participation” means and what “creativity” is.
Can we stop letting Glyn Moody post cringe on this site, actually?
I know this has been said before but I think it’s wild how people get things like writing completely ass backwards and the comment about AI in fanfics being a positive really hit a nerve.
ESPECIALLY when it comes to fanfics the process of writing the dang thing is a huge part of the point. Being so passionate about something that you want to create in the same space (be that from love or gripes with the original) is THE reason to write fan fiction. Offloading the process onto an unfeeling, unthinking AI completely invalidates both the act of writing and the output.
What makes fan fiction is the creative spark and passion that the author adds. It’s the imagination and personal lense behind alternate-universe storylines. It’s the love and intimate knowledge of a work that produces the “what if” retellings of a work. And yes, it’s also the chaotic spark of every crackfic and insane ship.
Approaching things from the sterile consume-first lense of ‘I want more of X, tell the machine to give me more X’ is a soulless perversion of the process and is fundamentally toxic not only to the people “”creating”” via that process but to the entire landscape that then gets poisoned with the presence and specter of AI slop.
Re:
Just to bolster your point, I’ll give you a recent example: According to a few anecdotes via translated posts on Twitter, a not-zero number of people were worried that this year’s Winter Comiket—one of the two “Comic Market” fan conventions that take place every year in Japan—was in danger of being flooded by AI slop, but it turns out that the AI “artists” had very little presence. This is notable for two reasons:
The artists wanted to run the race; the slop peddlers wanted to win the race without running it and take home the prize money to boot. But when the race was on, the artists won because they didn’t resent running the race, even if it meant they wouldn’t get the prize money. All they wanted was to share their love for whatever show/book/whatever they loved, even if the best they could do was break even. That’s what separates fans from slop peddlers: Be it time, money, or whatever else, fans give enough of a shit to invest.