TheRealKuni

Isn’t DDG also tied to Bing? I could be mistaken.

Honestly most of what I've learned about how to use SD comes from seeing what other people have done and trying to tweak or adjust to get a feel for the tool and its various models. Spend some time on a site like CivitAI to both see what can be done and to find models. I'm very much a noob and cannot produce results nearly as impressive as a good chunk of what I find on there.

The most important thing I've learned is how much generative AI, especially SD, is just a tool. And people with more creativity and a better understanding of the tool use it better, just like every other tool.

I do like the idea of using it in GIMP as an answer to Adobe's Firefly.

you can't really fit full image generation AI on iPads - for example Stable Diffusion needs at the very least 6GB of GPU memory to work.

You can currently run Stable Diffusion and Flux on iPads and iPhones with the Draw Things app. Including LoRAs and TIs and ControlNet and a whole bunch of other options I'm too green to understand.

Technically the app even runs on relatively old devices, though I imagine only at lower resolutions and probably takes ages.

But in my limited experience it works quite well on an iPad Pro and an iPhone 13 Pro.

That is essentially the car version of the Sam Vimes “Boots” Theory of Socio-Economic Unfairness.

The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

-Men at Arms by Terry Pratchett

The issue isn't the final, individual art pieces, it's the scale. An AI can produce sub-par art quickly enough to threaten the livelyhood of artists, especially now that there is far too much art for anyone to consume and appreciate. AI art can win attention via spam, drowning out human artists.

This is literally what people said about photography.

And they were right, painting became less prolific as photography became available to the masses. People generally don’t get their portrait painted.

But people also generally don’t go to photo studios to have their picture taken, either, and those used to be in every shopping mall. But now we all have camera phones that adjust lighting and color and focus for us, and we can send a sufficiently decent picture off to be printed and mailed back to us. For those who want it done professionally that option is available and will be higher quality, just like portrait painting is still available, but technology has shrunk those client pools.

Technology always changes job markets. Generative AI will, just as others have done. People will lose careers they thought were stable, and it will be awful, but this isn’t anything unique to generative AI.

The only constant is that things change.

Generative AI is a tool. It is neither a creator nor an artist, any more than paintbrushes or cameras are. The problem arises not with the tool itself but with how it is used. The creativity must come from the user, just like the way Procreate or GIMP or even photography works.

The skill factor is certainly lower than other forms of artistic expression, but that is true of photography vs painting as well.

I am not trying to say all uses of generative AI are art, anymore than every photograph is art. But that doesn’t mean it cannot be a tool to create art, part of the workflow as utilized by someone with a vision willing to take the time to get the end product they want.

Generative AI doesn’t stand on the shoulders of giants, but neither does a camera.

When I was in Chicago back in May, a local told me Trump’s name would have to come off the building if he were convicted of a felony, because Chicago has a mob-era law that criminals cannot have buildings named after them.

I’ve done some searching and haven’t been able to find anything to back this up. Does anyone know if this is true, or was this gentleman engaged in wishful thinking?

If someone didn’t prevent their aircraft from moving they kind of deserve the expensive lesson. Aviation is about following procedures, and anyone who doesn’t follow procedures either needs a wake-up call or to leave the hobby/career. Those checklists are written in blood.

I feel you on this fear, but that fear can be aired in therapy. Therapy is ENORMOUSLY helpful. And, not to play the What-If game, could potentially have salvaged your romantic relationship had it been brought in earlier. (I do not say this to make you feel shitty, but so anyone else struggling may see it.)

My wife and I started therapy at the first of our communication problems. We figured we have our car in for regular tune-ups, why not our marriage? And our therapist was thrilled. He said he wished more married couples began the process when they still got along well, because it’s easier.

But it’s definitely worth it even late in the game. Getting an outside, trained perspective on navigating the issues you have as a couple can dramatically improve quality of life. Even if you never expect to be romantic partners again, it can make you work better as a team for the reasons you mentioned.

I cannot recommend couples’ therapy enough.

She went easy on the weirdo.

He's also a racist pedophile rapist bigot lying treasonous traitor convicted felon.

Well sure. It would be hypocritical to say her opponent focuses on the faults of others rather than the strength of his policies and then do the same.

We all know he’s those things. She doesn’t need to say it.

I'd love it if she said "What are you, yellow?"

“No, I’m orange!”

Bramblepelt