On this day 85 years ago the last known thylacine, ‘Benjamin’, died of exposure in Beaumaris Zoo, Tasmania. The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (NFSA) just recently released a restored and colourised version of footage taken of Benjamin at the zoo, it’s amazing to watch, I used it as a reference for painting these two quick little illustrations.
Lyrics are from the song ‘Deuteronomy 2:10’ by The Mountain Goats.
Some additional comments about Sudowrite, hopefully of use to people.
1. There’s not a lot of point in locking your works. The AI has been trained. It’s done. Not only that, but the data itself remains archived and can be reused.
2. The algorithm in question is a bigger project called GPT-3, which gets its training data from a resource called Common Crawl. Common Crawl basically trawls everything on the web and is how search engines (including Google) index content. So it’s probably not that the people behind it have intentionally targeted AO3, though I am fascinated by the high specificity of fandom content in my results.
3. That’s going to make things difficult for AO3 staff to prevent, though, because as mentioned, if you make it so Common Crawl can’t look at the site at all, pages will no longer show up in searches at all.
4. This is understandably creepy as all hell, but my personal opinion is that locking my fanworks will do me more harm than leaving them open.
5. Action is needed to address the root problem of these AI training datasets in all fields, but I don’t think focusing on the ethical or artistic arguments is the way to change things. I think we should be leaning hard on IP and copyright law here. You can’t copyright a sentence or a phrase, but once you get enough individual factors together (character names, similarity of narrative, concepts) it starts to get dicey. So for example, if Sudowrite always gives a character named Harry glasses and black hair… well we all know why that is but it’s unlikely to be actionable.
If Sudowrite always associates a character named Harry with characters named Hermione, Neville, and Sirius, and consistently produces concepts like wands, potions, schools, etc… it starts to look like the kind of problem IP holders may take an interest in. Sudowrite claims that all its text is original and not directly lifted from anywhere - which may be technically true - but ironically, copyright and IP law is based on the whole of a work and its context… and if the AI can’t help but imitate those works and contexts, things are going to get interesting.
6. While Elon Musk is eminently blameable for all things, he doesn’t have any personal involvement here as far as I know, these people have just got some of his money.
So, Zed Edge made this really good graphic the other day about how the whole “AI is referencing just like a person would!” argument is bullshit. His graphic is mainly referring to visual art, but it applies to any sort of art, including writing:
So with Sudowrite, it CAN’T just be “referencing” other works. It cannnot create without those other works, without that dataset. But take a human who, IDK, grew up stranded alone in space with no contact with people or any sort of culture, and he’s still going to make up stories.
this is important: “ The AI has been trained. It’s done. Not only that, but the data itself remains archived and can be reused.”
and this: “ if you make it so Common Crawl can’t look at the site at all, pages will no longer show up in searches at all. “
so really the only solution is for OTW (AO3′s parent nonprofit) to have the TOS say “do not use this to train AI.” and then go after anybody who does it anyway.
I think first prize goes to everyone except that guy bc god knows how much stolen art those shitty little algorithms are based on, like yes that’s art but the cunt who typed in a description sure as fuck isn’t an artist.
Thank you for articulating what irks me about this
it’s performance art with a digital component at BEST.
entering a baking competition by ordering a grocery store sheet cake and throwing it in a blender. it would be art if you had a discussion about what it means to be a cake and whose labor is valued over someone else’s in evaluating the final product and whether the product of a performance or the documentation of a process contains more of what that artwork is
but you know this fool isn’t thinking about any of those things, and it should absolutely be disqualified from the contest category of digital art.
*bites you platonically* *bites you platonically* *bites you platonically* *bites you platonically* *bites you platonically* *bites you platonically* *bites you platonically* *bites you platonically* *bites you platonically* *bites you platonically* *bites you platonically* *bites you platonically* *bites you platonically* *bites you platonically* *bites you platonically* *bites you platonically* *bites you platonically* *bites you platonically* *bites you platonically* *bites you platonically* *bites you platonically* *bites you platonically* *bites you platonically* *bites you platonically*
People in america need to wake up to the fact they’re trying to kill us on a daily bases feeding is things that are illegal in most countries
It probably wasn’t pesticides. It was more likely a difference in the amount of gluten in the bread.
North American bread has a much higher gluten content, because there is a higher gluten content in North American wheat and other grains. This is because the grains need it to survive the generally colder climates of North America, so they’ve been bred to have a higher gluten content, which helps insulate the grains from the cold.
So it’s not that the higher amount of gluten is illegal in other places, it’s simply just not necessary, and so it’s not there.
And so North American people who have gluten intolerances often see relief when they eat European bread, due to it not containing the extra gluten.
This is an incredibly common phenomenon.
If you are a North American with a gluten intolerance, now doubting the legitimacy of that because of this video or screenshot, I promise they aren’t poisoning you, they’re just trying to make sure that people in North America can have their own wheat, flour, and bread without the logistics and high price of shipping it across the Atlantic Ocean.
saw this rbed without this addition (i already knew this but u can look it up if ur unsure) n you guys should rb this version instead! our (meaning American ) government sucks but not EVERYTHING is a conspiracy some things are the way they are for many different reasons and it sucks but it is what it is i promise u American bread isn’t being poisoned by the govt .
My friend got pregnant at 17. Deeply religious family (she would be kivked out if they found out), one night stand, she just could NOT have the baby. Thing is we live in a country where abortion is illegal. Our only option was to illegally buy some pills online and hope they worked and we didnt go to jail
But these are hecking expensive and we needed to rush
So i set up a twitter/fb/insta/furaffinity/etc account and advertised my furry art EVERYWHERE. Im not that good but i said id draw basically anything no matter how weird (not cub art or anything illegal). I got a lot of weird coms (vore, scat, inflation and some i dont even understand) and for two weeks i did nothing but draw weird shit all day. My hand hurt so bad, but i got the money.
We spent a week afraid we'd been scammed and afraid we'd get caught, then a weekend afraid my friend might die once we did the procedure in my house. But it worked
I never told her how i got the money and i never will. Id rather die than tell her i funded her illegal abortion by drawing the wolf from robin hood swallowing robin through his belly button. Im pretty sure she thinks i was a prostitute for those two weeks and id rather her think that
To this day i gift her condoms on her bd as a joke bc im never doing that again
