So a recent post garnered some comments and reports for being AI art. In light of this we should all have a little conversation about how AI generated images should be handled in the future.
I think we all agree that AI images that are “garbage” or don’t add anything should be removed, but clearly some feel very strongly that all AI art should always be removed.
It should be noted that the rules as written and as agreed on by the community does not blanket ban AI, it merely says AI art should be avoided, while many other rules say no this or that instead.
Things to discuss:
- Does it matter if an image is AI? Does it always matter?
- What about images that are AI generated, but have been modified by a human?
- What about images where it’s hard to say for certain that it is generated? Me and the other mods did not agree on whether the recent image was AI f.ex which makes it hard to make a decision on whether or not to remove it.
- It can be stressful to artists to be accused of having used AI. If we are too militant on weeding out AI art it could be harmful as there will no doubt be some false positives.
- Should AI posts require being tagged in the title? (and of course be required to be of a certain level of quality)
I think a lot of us mods feel that AI should be allowed so long as it is not low quality and serves some purpose (being entertaining f.ex), and that the community should not be flooded with AI. What are your thoughts?
Edit: Thank you all for your input! Most of the others are sleeping right now I think, so nothing is likely gonna happen until later today.
I have a fundamental issue with AI generated content— it’s trained on data largely without permission, attribution or compensation. At least in the USA, corporations have never really had copyright law enforced on them (with enough money and lawyers, you can either settle out of court or dispute any issues). But this generative AI trend feels to me like a larger kind of loophole which lets corporations blatantly steal works for their own use because they’re interpreted by their deep patterns and merged with lots of other data.
It also takes the humanity out of arts. It’s automating the most human part of us, creating, imagining, and refining techniques and skills.
I’m in favor of a full ban, including content that’s been touched up.
Now moderating it is a hard issue, because it’s only getting harder to differentiate AI-generated content, and I agree that there’s danger in over-scrutinizing. Not sure I can chime in much there.
(This post generated by a human being)
Yeah moderation is the toughest part, especially considering this is a very general “just post whatever” community. Especially as it continues to get less obvious, I’d hate to see AI witch-hunt type comments against either actual artists, or maybe a random person dropping a saved meme they didn’t even realize was generated themselves. For a place I mod which is largely populated by art posts (furry_irl) I opted to require artist credit in the title or post body when applicable, but that seems like it could be a bit tedious for 196.
I think the best case would be something like “we reserve the right to remove posts we believe are machine generated,” but also “do not attack others about it, discuss tactfully, send reports for posts you reasonably believe are generated instead for moderator discretion.”