If you support unions (DUers should) but still think it's OK to post AI slop, see the hundreds of Bluesky replies

[highplainsdem]

to this post of AI slop. Real anger and outrage from union members and union supporters.

I posted about this earlier but didn't realize, till I saw one of the replies to my thread, that some people here still don't understand that anger and outrage.

I did post a very small selection of the responses, but that small selection really can't convey the backlash that users/supporters of genAI deservedly get from union members and supporters who are focused on the ongoing battle against those who harm and exploit workers.

So I'm posting this separate thread because on a message board where we should support unions, people need to understand just how jarring and disgusting posting AI slop here WILL look to a lot - probably the vast majority - of union members and supporters who are new to this board. Where we've been seeing more and more slop here as if it's harmless entertainment, or somehow effective in fighting Trump. I've been trying to make it clear to DUers that even if it's anti-Trump, it's still pro-AI and pro-exploitation and anti-worker and anti-artist and anti-human.

And if you use it, you undermine your own credibility if you want people to think you oppose all the harm done by genAI. Including to workers.

See the reactions in the replies, and the quote-reposts, to the Bluesky post below, AI slop posted by the head of a teacher's union. Viewing the replies will require clicking on the post to see it on a separate page on Bluesky. If you seem to have run out of replies after reading for a while, look for the link to click for more at the bottom left of the visible replies. If you don't know how to find the quote-repost type of reply where the comments on the message below are above the quoted message, you just click the word quotes below the message you'll see on Bluesky.

And please read ALL of them, if you don't understand why it's wrong to use genAI.

This one was such fun… so I am sharing

— Randi Weingarten 🖇️📚✊🇺🇸 (@rweingarten.bsky.social) 2025-12-25T15:03:54.480Z

[hlthe2b]

1. A lot of AI is ridiculously obvious; but some are not.

While I agree with the point being made--absolutely-- I think there is going to need to be a learning curve for many.

[mike_c]

4. Oops, wrong reply

My bad.

[highplainsdem]

9. I saved my reply to yours, if you want to repost your "don't throw out the baby with the bath water"

message. You'd edited by the time I clicked to preview my response.

[highplainsdem]

6. I know. But we have people here who are knowingly posting AI slop as if it's somehow a plus on a

Democratic message board, and it's important that they understand that it isn't. If they won't listen to me, maybe the hundreds of negative replies to that Bluesky post will finally get through to them.

[KPN]

35. True -- and I'm pretty confident that was the root purpose of this OP.

AI has its positives, but it’s likely that some of it’s consequences will be devastating for some, if not most or possibly even our specie.

[NewHendoLib]

2. So easy to spot, so awful. I've tried a few YouTube short

Documentaries on bands, and the weird voice they use, with the strange emphases and inflections, and errors, make them worthless.

[highplainsdem]

16. And those AI-slop documentaries are flooding YouTube now, making it harder and harder to find real

worthwhile content from humans. Making it harder for human creatives (as opposed to noncreative human AI users) to get the attention they deserve. And the monetization for their videos, if they want that.

[PatSeg]

23. And a lot of the AI slop that we see on social media

is coming from overseas. Just some people online trying to make a buck by baiting naive Americans who keep falling for their crap.

A lot of it is really obvious, but some of it is quite advanced and it is easy for even perceptive people to fall for it. Then it even goes further with people accusing legitimate posts and videos of being AI when they aren't.

I call out AI whenever I come across it and often block the pages they come from, but it is like playing whack-a-mole. It is like being invaded with cockroaches that multiply faster than you can block them.

[mdbl]

30. As far as the ones that are less obvious..

I noticed they use a familiar face and have them talking a mile a minute - like they are reciting something in a classroom. That usually tips me off. Also, the channel name is vague and tells you nothing about the creator.

[PatSeg]

36. That's interesting

I'll have to look for that, though I tend to avoid most videos online these days. Whenever possible, I'd prefer to read an article than listen to someone explain it to me.

Meanwhile, I've spent less and less time on YouTube. The past couple of years, I've been reading a lot of books. Helps keep me sane.

[Renew Deal]

59. Is this video from George Conway real or fake?

[highplainsdem]

63. Fake, and it's labeled "Altered or synthetic content" on the video thumbnail, and the YouTube channel

description has a disclaimer making it clear it isn't George Conway.

But despite the label/disclaimer, this sort of AI puppetry using photorealistic AI should be banned anyway. It's clear from YouTube comments that it deceives a lot of people, and the intent is to deceive.

That YouTuber is using George Conway's AI-generated image to get clicks and sell viewpoints, and it's just as objectionable as it would be if they used his likeness to sell a physical product.

[brakester]

67. This very upsetting, Highplainsdem!!

Made more so by the fact that it comports with what I've learned of Conway's philosophy.

It is also confusing to me, since I don't fully understand AI or how to recognize it if there is no warning label.

I wonder if AI was used just to smooth out his delivery to make it easier to listen to.

I'd like to learn more background on this video. For instance, who added the warning that this was fake and does Conway know about it? If so, what is his reaction to it?

Was it Conway himself who used Ai?

It's made worse by the fact that the information presented about the dire consequences of an unaccountable, out of control megalomaniac playing childish power games to feed his own fragile ego, is obviously true and the news needs to be widely disseminated!
The pedo-prez could crash our whole economy, far worse than the 2008 crash.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

68. That youtube channel isn't affiliated with Conway at all.

[brakester]

84. Disclaimer

https://youtube.com/@georgeconwaypapers?si=c2_eYlH8z7cGvnEJ

If you click on "George Conway papers more" at the top of the page it will give you the info on it.

Even though it is AI, that doesn't mean the content of his speech is fake.

I revere truth and am trying to recognize when I am being fed BS! It is probably the most important skill needed these days! And it is very complex!

I'm a bit surprised that there aren't more in depth comments here about this insidious development. Laws need to be passed to require warning labels on all AI.

Of course nothing will change until every caring person votes in the 2026 election. It looks hopeful that the tide is turning on those who want us all to lose trust in the veracity of leaders, experts and public media!

PLEASE VOTE and volunteer for the Democratic party!

[SheltieLover]

3. Kick

[highplainsdem]

17. Thanks!

[SheltieLover]

21. Yw

[WhiskeyGrinder]

5. K&R. Thanks for your work.

[highplainsdem]

10. You're welcome! Thanks for everything you've posted about this, too.

[MerryBlooms]

7. r&k

[highplainsdem]

18. Thank you!

[progressoid]

8. Excellent responses in that thread.

[ProfessorGAC]

13. I'll Second That!

I read them all and don't recall anything positive.
Just those taking her to task & there were dozens of those.

[highplainsdem]

19. Hundreds. There should be a link to see more replies when you get to the end of the first batch.

Did you look at the quote-reposts, too, which is a separate set of replies you reach by clicking the word quotes under the message on Bluesky?

[ProfessorGAC]

22. I Thought I Did

I hit links for more posts and one post with links to those agreeing with her.

Maybe I missed something.

[highplainsdem]

24. You have to click on her post here

This one was such fun… so I am sharing

— Randi Weingarten 🖇️📚✊🇺🇸 (@rweingarten.bsky.social) 2025-12-25T15:03:54.480Z

to get it to open in another tab or page on Bluesky, and then under her message you'll see info about the number of quotes - 95 quotes currently - and if you click on the word quotes there on Bluesky you'll see the messages from people who commented on her post in posts of their own, separate from replies on Randi's page. They are NOT friendly comments agreeing with her. The ones mentioning "ratio" are using a social media term for posts with very few likes and a large number of negative replies.

The page with the quote-posts does take a while to open fully because Bluesky is gathering posts from lots of different accounts. Here's one:

Posting AI slop should be immediately disqualifying for union leadership.

There's a convention for AFT next year. Teachers should be seriously looking for new leaders informed on the issues of today.

— Tim Ford (@timfordwrites.bsky.social) 2025-12-29T02:25:15.192Z

[ProfessorGAC]

41. I Did

I saw them all.
I grossly underestimated how many I read.

[highplainsdem]

14. Aren't they, though? As much as she upset her own union members and left them feeling betrayed, their

responses are incredibly valuable in showing how much anger there is about genAI, and why it's there.

I hope she learned something from the replies she got, too. If not, that union needs a new leader asap.

[Melon]

11. Generated AI for content is slop...but AI technology is here to stay and will continue to exponentially grow.

[highplainsdem]

12. GenAI is a technological dead end, inherently flawed with hallucinations, fundamentally unethical because of

stolen training data, and with chatbots that pose risks to humans as they simulate conscious and sympathetic beings.

But some types of machine learning also called AI are fine.

[FascismIsDeath]

76. Agreed on the ethics part of it but GenAI isn't going anywhere either. The bubble will burst but there will be survivors

As a software developer, I've been keeping an eye on this stuff since it started and I've seen the massive leaps in capabilities. I imagine it might put me out of work some day... not tomorrow, probably not a year from now, but eventually, they may not need me anymore.

So its certainly not a "dead end". 3 years ago, the image generation tech couldn't get the number of fingers right. Fast forward to now, not only does it get the fingers right, it can get almost every aspect of a person's physical likeness just about 100% correct.

On the other side of that, you have software development, which is what I do, as I said. Trying to "vibe code" an entire software system using ChatGPT or whatever, its not very good... the architecture is bad and there are a good deal of errors.

But you can take that code and hand it to someone like me and I can clean it up and make it good and it happens a lot faster than if I were to do the whole thing myself.

Eventually they WILL get it to where the "handing it to someone like me" part isn't needed. And there will be 3rd party tools that can clean up the "rough draft". There may always be a need for a little human guidance and intervention but it will become less and less over time.

I have no other marketable skills, this is my career, been doing it for over 25 years. GenAI is here to stay, whether I like it or not, whether you like it or not. (and I don't like it, but I'm not going to lie to myself about it). The only thing we could hope for is for new laws that intervene before its too late, but we don't tend to do that in the US these days. My employer has promised us that they will never replace us with automation and I trust them on that. But I can't guarantee this job lasts me another 20ish years to get me through to retirement.

[highplainsdem]

79. There's enough of a backlash already that I think we can reach a point where it's considered

socially unacceptable - unethical, stupid, tacky and lazy - to use generative AI.

Coding might be an exception, but it won't become one unless AI coding tools become as accurate as calculators, and I haven't read anything to indicate that will ever be possible with LLMs, and that the problems with error-riddled code, technical debt and security failures will go away.

The fact genAI tools are unethical because they're illegally trained is NEVER going to go away.

Nor will the criminal fraud, the cheating in school, the unreliability and dangers of chatbots, or any of the other problems with AI.

GenAI will have to go away. We have more reliable types of machine learning for scientific use.

[FascismIsDeath]

81. Yea I think you're giving our citizens way too much credit.

We elected Trump twice and even when Biden beat him, it wasn't the blow out it should've been, if we were a decent people. There are too many of us that are shameless.

AI coding tools don't need to be as accurate as calculators.... at least not for run of the mill business applications, which is my realm. The models just need to be broken down into separate models for separate types of system architecture needs. I was tasked with researching some of this stuff myself. I can take a block of server side C# code that I wrote and paste it into something like Co-Pilot and tell it to generate the client side JavaScript equivalent of it and it does a pretty impressive job. As a coder, I can look at what it generated and immediately see where it needed a few minor tweaks. If someone decides to create new models trained on specific coding tasks and builds more sophisticated user interfaces around those models that goes beyond learning to write prompts, its only going to get "better" (and by better, I mean worse for my job security). GenAI models are really good at reproducing finite, logical patterns already.

I also work with a data scientist who trains models on our client data to formulate predictions and such... and thats actually an ethical use, nothing in those datasets is stolen. Our clients are paying extra for us to take their data and do things like that.

I'm only bringing that part up to say, I work with experts on this stuff. I know a lot about it. I know how much clients like what some of it can do for them. They are not going to be shamed into not wanting it. Thats like saying big corporations will eventually become ashamed of making more money than they should off their products. Die hard, unfettered capitalists are not going to become ashamed of anything that saves them a dime.

This is why I'm scared for my career, I've seen too much of this first hand. And at the same time, I'm pretty much forced to interact with it myself because its becoming part of my job.

Eventually you will probably have some showdown on the copyright infringement aspects of it. And that will likely create a whole new industry where people put together datasets in a legal way and sell them to GenAI hosts for retraining their models on in a legal way. If that happens, and I think it will, it will only strengthen the argument for its continued existence.

Now, as I said, the bubble around it is going to burst just like it did for the dotcom's. But plenty of dotcom's survived the burst and now pretty much rule the world (Amazon, Ebay, Google, etc).

[highplainsdem]

83. I'm just going off what I've read and heard, but based on that, I'm expecting more and

more stories on AI code causing problems for both businesses and government agencies.

We're close to having businesses find out that kids who cheated their way through years of school with AI are too ignorant and too habituated to cheating to be good employees. And at that point school administrators who caved to AI and AI companies earlier, whether from lobbying or FOMO, will feel pressure to get AI out of their schools.

The backlash against AI slop will continue to get stronger.

"AI-free" will become a better selling point almost by the day. I've already seen AI enthusiasts online objecting to anyone, any business, adding labels that something is free of AI. They don't want individuals or businesses who are more successful not using AI to make that widely known. They want customers to assume just about everything they buy involved AI in some way, so it can't be avoided and no one should even try.

There will never be an agreement that creatives will accept allowing AI companies to have as much intellectual property as they want for training data for genAI. The AI bros simply want too much. Some have made it clear they want to get rid of copyright and IP laws entirely. I saw one AI bro say that AI training is so important that businesses should be required to turn over their proprietary data for AI training, that AI companies need that business data.

[FascismIsDeath]

85. Oh yea, it definitely causes problems.

People will take an entire legacy code base and try to run it through some AI model trained on newer languages and expect it to spit out a modernized, cleanly refactored system with good architecture. You will end up with total garbage doing it that way. But if someone who actually knows what they are doing takes an incremental approach, you can make it work well with guidance and strategical planning. "One prompt fixes everything" is not a thing that exists..... yet.

And again, please keep in mind, I'm not defending any of this, I'm one of the people that could lose everything if this ever takes off in a way that makes me irrelevant. I'm just stating factual information based entirely off my own expertise. Generative AI, no matter what purpose its serving, whether it be to generate some form of media like photos and videos or whether its used to piece together code or write some kind of paper or create some kind of music, works way better when its a small steps approach with points of human intervention and tweaking along the way. I got really in the weeds with this stuff a few years ago, as I said, for my own job and honestly, I wanted to see what I was up against.

I agree with you that there is a slight possibility that "AI-free" will be a good marketing strategy for some things... probably moreso for artistic stuff though. I'm a music snob and a hobbyist musician myself and I'd never have AI-generated music in my rotation nor would I ever want to use it with my own little song writing projects. I imagine a lot of other people feel the same way when it comes to other art forms and probably video games too. It may even be a net positive for artists in the future where people would pay more for naturally created arts, increasing its value if its certified "AI-free".

I'm not sure how much weight that will have on other things, specifically in my industry where clients only care about going to a web app and having it do what they need it to do for business purposes. Those kinds of clients will never care how it was done as long as they get the result they want at the end. And that is, again, why I have a lot of anxiety about my own future.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

15. Microplastics are here to stay as well, doesn't mean we shouldn't try to eat less of them.

[highplainsdem]

20. Right!

[Cirsium]

26. So what?

Cancer is more likely here to stay than AI and exponentially grows. Does that mean we can't be against it?

[Melon]

50. You can be against anything...like the protest over cars versus buggy's

China and others including the US are in a race to be dominant in AI. We only see the garbage which are the videoes. But the race is to for dominance with the winner being the leader in technology. The genie can’t go back.

[Cirsium]

52. Horrible

"A race to be dominant in AI." "The race for dominance with the winner being the leader."

That is a bunch of happy horse manure right there.

[Melon]

64. No it's not. The race for AI dominance is driving all the market volatility we see...

China wanting Taiwan, silver prices, battery’s, energy prices, defense dominance…AI is the driver and the key to it all.

[Cirsium]

66. It's a bubble

It is all a bunch of hype.

On edit: Yes, I moved "the goal posts."

[highplainsdem]

58. No country is going to get to AGI, let alone ASI, building more data centers for genAI, which is the

type being promoted now - the type creating the bubble and the circular financing and the insane race to add flawed, hallucinating genAI to every device possible.

If it's a race, it's like the world's fastest race into a dead end at the edge of a cliff.

[Bobstandard]

25. Somebody tell Thom Hartman

Can’t stand his AI bumper “music”.

[Cirsium]

28. Has he changed it recently?

I know he has used the same music for a long time. It is weird, but I think thast is because it is played backward (IIRC).

[highplainsdem]

40. He shouldn't be using AI. It's an insult to real musicians and helps only AI bros. He could ask his

fans who are musicians to write something for him.

[LudwigPastorius]

27. DU ain't as pro-union as it likes to think it is.

I remember when the Stop Online Piracy Act (sponsored and co-sponsored by 15 Democrats, including John Conyers and Adam Schiff, and endorsed by SAG, Actors Equity, the American Federation of Musicians, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, the Directors Guild of America, the International Alliance of Theatrical and Stage Employees, etc. etc. etc.) was explicitly opposed by Skinner and many, many posters here.

[highplainsdem]

33. Well, we're all endangered by genAI now, and even if DUers aren't in unions, they need to understand

that.

And as Democrats who hope to win elections, we need to understand how people in those unions feel.

There are Labour Party members and officials in the UK now who are pandering to the AI bros and trying to give them everything they want (including the use of British intellectual property), and they're being idiots who are probably costing Labour support.

[EarlG]

37. Opposing that bill didn't have anything to do with being anti-union

If that bill had passed, DU likely would not exist. SOPA would have replaced the DMCA's safe harbor provision and would have made owners of web communities like DU responsible for policing the posts of every single user for copyright violations. The bill would have allowed law enforcement to literally shut down entire domains if a single user posted some kind of copyrighted content on that domain.

There was broad bipartisan support AND OPPOSITION to the bill, and we were not exactly outliers in opposition to it. When I refreshed my memory of this bill from its Wikipedia page, it turned out that organizations such as EFF and the ACLU were opposed to it, as were the American Library Association, who said it could expose libraries to prosecution. Nancy Pelosi was opposed to it, as were most major Internet companies, including Wikipedia.

[highplainsdem]

42. Thanks for explaining! Just googled the date for that and it was back when caregiving and

admin stuff elsewhere gave me less time for DU. And I was focusing on ALEC back then: https://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x591230

[LudwigPastorius]

43. I disagree, and I'm not going to argue , but I will say...

that the “what are ya gonna do” attitude toward AI companies hoovering up petabytes of artists’ works can almost certainly be traced to the failure to pass any meaningful legislation to stem the tide of copyrighted works online. There are now at least a couple of generations who would look at you like you are crazy if you suggested paying for music, movies, or art.

Sure, it’s our life’s work, but it’s persistently “free” because no one has to take the responsibility, by law, for it being available for download. Nobody really cares unless it’s their ox being gored.

[EarlG]

46. I'm not opposed to meaningful legislation that would stem the tide of copyrighted works online

SOPA wasn't that legislation, IMO.

DU's policy has always been that the rights of copyright holders should be respected, so if we get sent a legitimate DMCA takedown request from a copyright holder, we'll comply immediately. But we still get the occasional legal threat from firms trying to extort us by demanding that we pay a large licensing fee for an image that some DU member posted -- even though they did not upload the image to DU's servers (which is not possible) but merely hotlinked it from another site for discussion on DU.

If SOPA replaced the DMCA, we could be taken to court over each and every one of those instances -- whether we won or not would be irrelevant, because the time and expense involved in defending ourselves would put DU out of business. From an administrative point of view, we would have to filter and review every single post before it was allowed to be publicly posted, to ensure that no copyrighted content was included. That in and of itself would end most online communities. The solution to avoid being sued for allowing people to hotlink images would be to disable image linking. The solution to avoid being sued for allowing people to post short excerpts from copyrighted works would be to disallow any content reposting at all.

And then what would there be to talk about? Because there is still a fair use component here -- people are allowed a certain amount of freedom to post content for discussion, and the definition of fair use is still fuzzy. The DMCA means that we are obliged to respect the rights of copyright holders by removing their content if requested, but we won't get dragged into court every single time a copyright holder wants to test whether something is fair use or not. It protects sites like DU from egregious legal threats over content that we couldn't possibly police up front. Bear in mind that the legal threats I mentioned above -- the ones we are protected from thanks to the DMCA -- do not come in the form of legitimate DMCA takedown requests, but in the form of demands for thousands of dollars, along with threats that ten times as much money will be demanded if we don't pay up.

I believe that the best outcome is to protect the rights of copyright holders in a way that also allows people the freedom to discuss that copyrighted content online, without violating people's copyrights. Currently I believe the DMCA gets us closest to that goal -- closer than SOPA would have anyway. But I'm just a reasonably conscientious regular guy -- I'm not a billionaire Internet entrepreneur who has discovered that copyright laws can be ignored if you're too big to fail. The major issue with AI companies right now is that they do not seem to be interested in following any copyright law at all -- they think that the Internet is theirs for the taking, and their scraping and reuse of the entire Internet's content is essentially completely lawless at this point. As usual, it's the richest, most powerful people who are happy to flaunt the law on a massive scale -- and can easily afford lawyers and lobbyists that would potentially allow them to end-run something like SOPA, while small businesses like DU would get quickly crushed underfoot.

Anyway, sorry, not trying to have an argument -- just wanted to put my point of view across. For what it's worth, in a former life I used to be a professional musician, so it's not like I only see one side of the argument here.

[highplainsdem]

61. As I've told other DUers who were professional musicians, we'd love to hear your music, if you

wouldn't mind posting it.

I have two brothers who play guitar. One in a garage band as a teenager but never as a paid professional when young, though he's been in his church's band for years now. The other was a professional for years - solo, and in a duo with a female singer, and in a country rock band - and he has fond memories of those days (doesn't play now, unfortunately, due to hand injuries and arthritis).

If you don't want to share your old music or don't have recordings/video, that's fine, and I don't want to pressure you. But if you do, I'd enjoy hearing it, and I'm sure others here would as well.

I remember seeing some of Skinner's artwork a while back, and liking that.

[Polybius]

62. SOPA awful though

I take pride in having been involved in the "Stop SOPA" movement. I recall using a "Stop SOPA" profile picture on Facebook. SOPA had the backing of big businesses, the same foolish entities that dismantled Napster, WinMX, Limewire, Kazaa, and all those other file-sharing platforms back in the early 2000s. It was a wonderful era to be alive before it was snatched away from us, the people. Halting SOPA was our act of revenge, and I consider it one of the biggest victories of the last 15 years.

[Cirsium]

29. Thanks

Keep up the good work. Much appreciated.

[highplainsdem]

44. You're very welcome! Thanks for the reply!

[The Madcap]

31. What worries me

Is how so many companies are tying their data into AI platforms and then "encouraging" their employees to use them for data retrieval. I won't name any companies here, but I will say that I have experienced this. When I try to pull data, I get lots of garbage. Our old search engines do a better job.

I can't visualize this improving, as the errors seem to compound.

[highplainsdem]

45. It's insane for companies to risk their own data that way. But I've never seen as much hype to

sell any tech as I've seen with genAI. So much FOMO leading to foolish decisions and wasted investments.

[nilram]

32. Feel like we should bring back the un-rec experiment

[highplainsdem]

34. Why would you want to unrec a post about how union members and supporters feel about AI slop? If

you have good reasons, you should be able to explain them.

[nilram]

48. Wasn't clear: wanting to unrec AI slop, not this thread.

I rec without comment plenty of things that I think are worthwhile. Commenting when something is unworthwhile slop is counterproductive since it takes it to the top of the most recent threads.

[highplainsdem]

51. Thanks for explaining! I'm relieved to hear that's what you meant.

[KPN]

38. Kicked for visibility. Seems our species denial of unintended consequences

knows no limits anymore .

[highplainsdem]

47. Thanks! And I agree that entirely too many people are unable to see or deliberately ignoring all the

harm done by this tech.

[GiqueCee]

39. I have earned my living...

... as a professional artist for 60 years, and long ago stopped counting the number of times I've been fucked over by the supposed "Smartest Guys in the Room", which is to say "businessmen and/or -women" with delusions of grandeur, and a galloping case of the Dunning Kruger Effect. Their brazen contempt for creative people, without whom many of their businesses wouldn't even exist, still enrages me. Now they're using AI to do it, but their contemptuous disregard for the rights of artists hasn't changed one iota. They actively resent people that can do something that they cannot; that's how petty and self-centered they are.

[highplainsdem]

55. I'm so sorry you ran into that. I agree that business types, suits, are often both too contemptuous of artists, and

terribly resentful/envious of them. I remember producer Rick Beato doing a video some time back about a young band he knew whose very promising first album was messed up by an interfering A&R man. The same thing can happen in all the arts. If the suits have made the decision to invest in talent - if spending a lot of money on that talent seemed like a good idea - then they should get the hell out of the artist's way. They shouldn't let either contempt toward the artist, or some stupid and egotistical idea that that they'll express their own artistic creativity through directing the artist's work, mess everything up. At least not if the artist is staying true to the type of work that led to the business investment in the first place, holding up their end of the bargain.

I saw representatives of the completely misnamed Big Tech lobbying group the "Chamber of Progress" on X a couple of years ago doing all they could to try to turn people against real artists who objected to their work having been stolen to train AI. Trying to make people view real artists as nasty elite "gatekeepers" who didn't want other people to become artists, which is the reverse of the truth. I saw one of these shills for the AI companies, a lawyer, whining that his parents hadn't bought him a guitar when he was young so he never had the chance to become a rock star that those privileged real musicians had (apparently he'd never heard of any real musicians whose families were poor). So that terribly discriminated-against lawyer and AI shill wanted all the unskilled wannabes to know they were being liberated by AI companies, now that AI tools could instantly let them become musicians, visual artists and writers. I'm surprised they didn't have an AI version of We Shall Overcome for their liberation movement.

[electric_blue68]

73. Wow...I missed this...i guess bc I'm not really following stuff closely, being out of the field....

and just making art for myself at present.

Your words

"Trying to make people view real artists as nasty elite "gatekeepers" who didn't want other people to become artists".

and see my post #72

[highplainsdem]

74. I could hardly believe how vicious the "Chamber of Progress" people were when talking about

real artists who just didn't want their work stolen to train AI. The hate they were trying to make others feel toward them. The AI shills didn't want anyone sympathizing with the victims of that intellectual property theft, so it was necessary to try to depict creatives - most of them not at all wealthy and needing other work as well as their creative work - as rich elites oppressing the poor people who just wanted a chance to be creative through AI.

And these were wealthy lawyers and lobbyists working for billionaires...

[electric_blue68]

75. Lord knows, most artists are not wealthy!

I have no problem with great talented people becoming wealthy. But it's rare.

I infrequently wish I'd gotten wealthy through my art.
But in regards to that- the thread of lump sum vs annuity for the really big powerball: I posted- while getting good stuff etc for myself, family and friends; I had a whole long list of what I could for others; people, places, disasters, etc. Special financial set ups to keep generating, and giving out monies, etc. It's good to share, and help (even in small ways).

[GiqueCee]

82. Astute business sense...

... and creativity seldom reside in the same brainpan; some have both, and I envy and admire them. Maybe in the next life...

[electric_blue68]

72. As a former graphic designer, and sometimes illustrator, when not doing clerical work, and long time artist of 55+ yrs..

I don't think it ever occurred to me of non-artists (visual, here, but the other Arts as well) being resentful of creative people.

And I'm no stranger to the nastiness, and outright malevolence of certain people (decades before drumphf).

Otoh, I've been envious at times of various artists who could do things better than me. It almost always involved realistic (but not hyper realistic) painting. But those feelings don't last, and I have much less of that now. Maybe a sigh here, and there. I haven't painted in a long time.

My work is representational B&W, or colored drawings. When I painted it was often abstract, sometimes realistic. I also have very cool ditigal art phone app.

Still, I do enjoy a lot of what I do (thank goodness!).

But I plan hopefully to try some painting stuff again eventually (issue of supplies $); to achieve a bit of what I've wanted to do off, and one a long time.We'll see. 👍

[highplainsdem]

77. I wish you the best of luck with the new painting, and I think the disgust with AI slop and the backlash

against the AI bros could actually make real human art more valuable in the future - even if some companies continue to be stupid enough to try to make people accept AI slop.

I don't think it ever occurred to me of non-artists (visual, here, but the other Arts as well) being resentful of creative people.

I think the resentment falls into a few categories.

The resentment from the Chamber of Progress people was anti-artist propaganda they were being paid to spread on social media. Some of the people who were promoting their own AI art and repeating the same attacks on real artists could have been getting paid, too, because I read that some of them were just influencers who'd been peddling different products and talking about other interests before genAI.

Some of the resentment of creatives was political, coming from RWers who thought creatives looked down on them. They wanted those creatives destitute and loved the idea of AI supplanting them.

Some were people who hadn't had any luck earlier trying to succeed with writing or music or visual art, so they wanted to believe the system was rigged and only people with connections ever got anywhere. They felt AI could make them.successful and they didn't want real artists getting in the way.

And then there were the people who apparently had never really given any thought to trying to be creative and making some money from it, but they'd played with AI a bit and it made them feel so creative they thought they could make a career of it, and they also didn't want those nasty elitist real artists getting in their way.

It infuriates AI users that real artists don't view them as real artists. They believe a prompt they come up with is every bit as much an artistic achievement as a story or painting or song created the oldfashioned, time-consuming way. Never mind that the same prompt given to an AI tool can produce thousands of different results, and the prompt engineer - which is what they are - has little control over what might be churned out next.

[electric_blue68]

80. Thanks for this breakdown, and for your good wishes!

If I'm reasonably sucessful in my new efforts, I'll definitely share the good news.
Might not be till months from now - late Spring, early Summer. We'll see. 👍

At least I did have some luck with lots of effort, and payments, too with my visual art!

[Oneironaut]

86. "Anyone can be an artist now!" - AI Tech Bros

I think there is a lot of contempt there. And, jealousy on their part.

[cachukis]

49. Would that the subject matter be in a glass jar, controlled.

But it is not.
I am frightened for my children and grandchildren.
Yet AI is the natural offshoot of curious minds trying to make computing the best technology.
As a Luddite, I would like the tool to be mindful of us all, but I also understand experimentation and mistakes brought us to our modern world.
Art is the finest representation of a spiritual explanation. And yet, even Picasso understood copying. Folklore and a Bob Dylan modernization are linked in his library.
We are here. We have made the leap from analog to digital and HAL is sneaking into our platforms.
Renaissance masters used camera obscura to raise their techniques beyond the classics.
I still prefer a knife to all the culinary gadgetry available, but a mandolin eases my scalloped potatoes.
We already are entertained by the special effects in so many areas. Color television. Technicolor.
I go to live performances as much as possible.
Will we, the older generations, be impressed with the computer technologists who use AI to expedite their special effects? Will we be thrilled with an AI solution to rebuild cartilage in an aching knee?
Our grandchildren won't know anything different.
I spent years buying and selling antiques. The real thing was costly. The reproduction was inexpensive.
We let reproductions into our world. They are here to stay.

[WarGamer]

53. I'm outraged...

"I'm outraged by the possibility that the plebs may own and hold the Holy Bible produced by Satan's heretical ink and paper printing contraption. The only good Bibles are produced by Scribes, Members of the Scribe Union #383"

[highplainsdem]

56. I'm amused that you think that's a good reply countering what all those people were saying. But hey,

interesting try at mocking unions fighting exploitation by billionaire AI bros.

[TommyT139]

54. No way to block it on here, is there?

Could the folks who post AI crap at least be segregated into their own forum?

Or if there's another way to opt out, I'd love to know how.

[highplainsdem]

57. A forum just for posting AI slop and talking about how wonderful AI is would be an even worse look

for a board representing a party that traditionally backs workers exploited by corporations. There's no way around the two central economic facts of genAI - that it's built on stolen intellectual property, and that it's intended to replace human workers.

It's important that DUers be aware of AI and the harm its doing, and of how ruthless and amoral and/or crazy the AI bros are.

And DUers need to know how to recognize and avoid all the AI clickbait now flooding YouTube, and all the AI scams elsewhere - the AI-generated music on Spotify and other streaming services, the AI-generated books on self-publishing platforms like Kindle, the AI scam ads on Facebook offering to sell seeds for plants that are really exotic looking because they don't exist. The AI-created fake news sites.

AI has booby-trapped much of the internet in only a few years. And the AI bros are aligned with Trump. So we can't just ignore it and try to pretend it isn't there.

[Renew Deal]

60. Block what?

There are multiple levels:

Fully AI generated stories ("news" or opinions)
Fully AI written posts based on peoples prompts
Deepfake video or pictures about events
Deepfakes of people (which is increasingly becoming a problem)

I've seen a bunch of DUers fall for the last one, and the reason is that they are tough to detect

The AI stories might be detectable if they are linked. The posts are very hard to detect. The deepfake videos and pictures are challenging to detect, so it's important to check sources. Even with that, it is challenging.

[Orrex]

78. Add AI "artwork" to that list, I'd say (nt)

[highplainsdem]

65. kick

[electric_blue68]

69. Kick

[highplainsdem]

70. Thanks!

[electric_blue68]

71. YW

[mucholderthandirt]

87. I'm a creative, I'll never support the use of "AI" for any reason. None at all.

I've been a rank and file low collar worker, and I'll never support the use of "AI" for any reason. There's no need for it outside of taking jobs away from people for the sole purpose of saving money.

Even the Progressive insurance company now has a commercial that bluntly says it was created with "AI". That's the jobs of several animators and artists among other, that will no longer provide income for them and their families.

In Hollywood, the actor's jobs are in danger, including stand-ins and stunt people. Basic jobs that kept families going for decades are in danger of going away in all kinds of fields, like customer service. Yes, people hate that job, but it was a way to earn money.

In the hotel/hospitality field, most jobs are done by "AI". In journalism, in content writing, in all kinds of art, like making book covers, editing of all kinds.

Even here we can't get away with it, because some members seem to delight in asking "AI" for info and insist on posting that slop here. And it's all slop. None of it's any good, certainly not better than what a trained human being can produce.

But, follow the money. Follow the advances, if you want to call it that, in robotics, in automation. There's a reason it's being pushed so hard, and it's not so we can live a life of ease, not having to work at anything. Just wait until that generous basic income starts! LOL Fools, all, if you think any of that is being done for humanity.

Only the super rich want any of this. What they don't want is us. How to you think they'll be getting rid of us? War, disease, pollution and environmental collapse, and whatever else comes along. You think RKF, Jr. is there by chance? You think Trump's insanity is happening by chance? America isn't the only place this will happen, likely already coming to a "free" country near you!