mmhhkk

joined 3 years ago
[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

There is a difference. You're a human, not a machine. Don't compare yourself to one. We artists don't compare ourselves to them, either. But you're right in that, to a layperson, AI art seems to evoke the same emotions as human art. But you know why that is? Because AI art is also human art, just remixed by a machine. The problem is that the machine can't tell you its sources because either the programmers didn't care about coding in credits and only took copyrighted artwork in bulk as raw material, or it's very hard for the neural network algorithm to tell you how it came up with an output.

On the topic of inspiration, we as artists love it when other artists are influenced by us. "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" as they say. If another artist likes us they're also a fan. That's great. But we're not fond of an AI pretending to be us in front of non-artists, because 1. it's just a program that took our art (without permission) from its database because it was tagged as appropriate, and 2. it doesn't even give us credit. I mean, as far as we know, the programmers who coded the AI didn't even take one look at our art, they just mass downloaded whole websites and our art came along with them. We don't like that.

Edit: Whoever downvoted me, at least refute my points.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I think the problematic AI tool here isn't AI that helps artists finish artwork or automate menial tasks, but AI that has been fed with every copyrighted artwork on the internet and is sold as an artist-replacement tool.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (4 children)

Sucks if you’re an artist but the automobile and steam engine sucked for those whose profession was stabling and shoeing horses too, yet we can’t hold back progress. People will still commission artistic works, it’ll just revert to being very skilled artists and very wealthy people.

Can't believe I'm reading this take on a communist website. If you're arguing from a capitalists' standpoint, then there's the counterpoint that the existing art generators are full of copyrighted artwork taken without the authors' permission, and so they should be deemed illegal (this would be true under socialism as well tbf). Then further generators would only be allowed to use either public domain or properly licensed artwork as its training set, which will inevitably lower the variety and quality of the outputs (sorry programmers).

From a communist standpoint we should stand in solidarity with the artists whose livelihoods are being put in risk and oppose unethical AI art.

Capitalists are not about to allow banning of a cost-cutting measure any more than they would have allowed banning the steam engine or mechanical factories to save the jobs of workers. They’re just not.

This is fundamentally different because the generators were fed basically every artwork on the internet, no matter if they were copyrighted or not, in order to make the thing work. They should have never been able to become public services, much less PAID services, and should have been restricted to academic circles as proofs-of-concept, due to the blatant and massive copyright infringement taking place. This is allowed to go on because artists are usually poor and have no individual leverage, but say, if tomorrow an AI movie generator was released that was fed every Hollywood movie ever and could output a Marvel-quality blockbuster with just a prompt and enough time, believe me, shit would be sued to destruction in days.

Artists should be collectivizing right now and preparing a lawsuit against those operating AI art generators fed on their copyrighted artwork. So yes, the proverbial machine can be smashed in this case, if only because it infringes copyright law in such a massive way.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

As a non-American I find it amazing how, in [current year], after 30+ years of the USSR's defeat, communism still lives rent free on everyone's head. I know, I know the State Department is trying to build up this new see see pee bogeyman, but still, you'd think Americans would be more confident about their system being the best and gommunism being dead and buried? The way everyone there hyperfocuses on whatever is going on with official state enemies and no other countries is pretty funny as an outsider.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Could have been worded "Canadian pop singer Kris Wu sentenced to 13 years in China for over 30 instances of rape including minors" but they chose to make China the active subject because that's more important than the actual crime, apparently.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

To anyone who wants to embark a large-scale piracy project: remember this has happened since the dawn of digital piracy. Copyright capitalists don't take things like this lightly. It happened to the creators of TPB, it happened to numerous warez and media piracy groups; this is always an occupational hazard. Stay safe, and don't trust the west.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

This is what I was gonna say. What the fuck

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

What the actual fuck, NSFL warning on that first link (it's not a picture but the description is graphic as fuck). I swear I learn about a new US atrocity every other day here, each more horrific than the last.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Racist fuck

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Lol I love this interview. Basically told them to cope and seethe lmao

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Glad he unclowned himself

 
 

Correct me if I'm wrong. The vanguard party theory states that evidently, not every single proletarian will have class consciousness at the point of the revolution, therefore the class-conscious proletarians should lead it, no matter if it's a relatively small group, right?

There are so many radlibs despite worsening material conditions that sometimes I wonder if these people will ever be able to gain class consciousness. As far as I understand, the whole point of a vanguard party is that we can do without these people on our side, right?

 

Aside from the proverbial legal use of "linux ISOs", file sharing software is best known for the facilitation of digital piracy. I'm not gonna lie, as a third world person who grew up in the days of dial-up internet, before YouTube and legal music streaming were even concepts, my cultural horizons would have been much more narrow without P2P software growing up. Radio stations only played (and still play) whatever was popular at that moment, in that place; CDs were expensive, and stores didn't allow you to preview music before purchase other than a few high-charting albums; my family was poor and we were unable to afford video games, and so on.

Piracy via P2P software allowed me to get my hands on a vast amount of music, games, software and movies that I wouldn't have even known about without it. It shaped my life beyond belief, and that's just my personal experience with it. Legal streaming services wouldn't have appeared if the traditional business models of the entertainment industries hadn't collapsed due to P2P piracy. My cultural enrichment experience was certainly not the only one in the world, and there are quite a few popular musicians out there who credit music piracy for introducing them to tons of music they wouldn't have found otherwise.

That said, from a workers-centric Marxist perspective, the collapse of the music industry in particular only worsened material conditions for every musician and band that wasn't a superstar already, as they were no longer able to make a living off selling albums, since sales plummeted directly as a result of P2P file sharing becoming so popular. While the immediate adaptation of the music industry in the early 2000s (iTunes) did try to get on with the times and offer the purchase of individual songs for 99 cents and albums for $9.99 from the comfort of your computer, it did not end piracy, and only the arrival of the streaming model managed to do that.

The streaming model, however, has devalued music more than ever before in history:

On the other hand, listeners love the fact that for only $10 a month they can instantly enjoy all the music they can listen to, legally. But aside from the streaming services themselves, only huge artists benefit from this deal. All in all, this represents an absolute worsening of material conditions for the vast majority of artists.

There's this essay here that explains the reasons way better than I can (tl;dr it's the capitalists' fault, both the streaming services and big record labels): https://medium.com/@michaelcbrook/this-is-why-spotify-pays-so-little-how-to-fix-it-1e0c0e1ef860

Now, my questions are: did this devaluing of music really begin with P2P file sharing, and did it directly lead to today's terrible conditions for artists, or is it only capitalism's fault for "locking in" that devaluation by offering unlimited music to customers for the price of a single album a month with a model that benefits the biggest labels over the actual artists? (my personal opinion is that this could be overcome with a different royalty model, as the one proposed with services such as resonate.coop)

But most importantly:

  • Has the revolutionary potential for P2P file sharing been exhausted as of 2022?

  • Is piracy still revolutionary? Was it ever?

  • What is revolutionary software now?

I know I'm focusing on music in this post, since as a musician, that's the field I have the most first-hand experience on, but I'd like to know if the P2P file sharing phenomenon had a similar effect on other industries. Let me know guys if you have any experience on that.

1
Rule (lemmygrad.ml)
 
view more: next ›