DefendingAIArt is a subreddit run by mod “Trippy-Worlds,” who also runs the debate sister subreddit AIWars. Some poking around made clear that AIWars is perfectly fine with having overt Nazis around, for example a guy with heil hitler in his name who accuses others of lying because they are “spiritually jewish.” So we’re off to a great start.
the first thing that drew my eye was this post from a would be employer:
not really clear what the title means, but this person seems to have had a string of encounters with the most based artists of all time.
also claims to have been called “racial and gender slurs” for using ai art and that he was “kicked out of 20 groups” and some other things. idk what to tell this guy, it legitimately does suck that wealthy people have the money to pay for lots of art and the rest of us don’t
I really enjoyed browsing around this subreddit, and a big part of that was seeing how much the stigma around AI gets to people who want to use it. pouring contempt on this stuff is good for the world
the above guy would like to know what combination of buttons to press to counter the “that just sounds like stealing from artists” attack. a commenter leaps in to help and immediately impales himself:
you hate to see it. another commenter points out that well … maybe these people just aren’t your friends
to close out, an example of fearmongering:
That place is an absolute fucking cesspool.
May I suggest /r/artisthate which is Sneer Club for artists sneering at exactly this type of content, and it’s hilarious sometimes (albeit quite large at this point, so your fair share of doomsday rats have sneaked in trying to co-opt the movement).
fair share of doomsday rats have sneaked in trying to co-opt the movement
There’s a group called “Pause AI” that is exactly this, EA funded (iirc) org trying to astroturf artists against AIart.
Yep, exactly the ones I was thinking about. They lobbied over there a while back with “prominent supporters” like Yud and Hinton. Luckily the general consensus was that they were full of shit, so the mod shut it down.
These guys are simultaneously hanging out with literal Nazis and also, “are symbols against AI as hateful and bigoted as swastikas? Certainly they are. In this essay I will,”
i couldn’t resist
at least when this rhetoric popped up around crypto and GameStop stocks, there was a get-rich-quick scheme attached to it. these fuckers are doing it for free
> “(Redditors always glom on to the absolute worst things)”
> is a redditor describing how he glommed on to a thing
“(Redditors always glom on to the absolute worst things)”
is a redditor on a sub in support of a bubble technology that runs on plagiarism, exploitation of highly vulnerable workers, and infrastructure that causes climate change, and also the sub is a Nazi bar
the aristocrats!
haha I’ve asked dgerard what I should do about my habit of digging up stuff like this. before I left twitter it was almost a full time hobby. definitely have thought about starting a podcast
I don’t know of any podcasts or YT channels that focus on doing this kind of thing, but I think a lot of episodes of the QAA podcast fit this mold
DefendingAIArt is a subreddit run by mod “Trippy-Worlds,” who also runs the debate sister subreddit AIWars. Some poking around made clear that AIWars is perfectly fine with having overt Nazis around, for example a guy with heil hitler in his name who accuses others of lying because they are “spiritually jewish.”. So we’re off to a great start.
loves generative AI, encourages debate, fine with having nazis around the place. it’s like someone saw our instance and wanted to make the exact opposite of it, and the predictable disaster that resulted from that decision only really succeeds at making the AI fans look even worse