FA+
Shop
AI, Aeromorphs, and consumerism
4 months ago
below will be some thoughts on a recent discovery of my sona being scrapped and used for AI art, touching on some ideals from what i've seen as the over all slog that we are being forced to take. and the brainless response of handwaving reasonability for using "prompts not feeding it images." I might make another journal later about life update, i've had a lot of upheaval but mostly I don't know where i am with that. we will see but it's just been very painful, so idk i'm sorry if this is a nothing rant. but take a read, if you skim read or just skip over that's okay too. but the laziness of folks is agonizing
few days a go we and my fiance were out shoping, aero art came up (I like to bother her with it) and i talked about the weird hyper focus of AI within the aeromorph community. for some reason AI "users" fabricate aero art pretty often, that same week i got a discord ping about someone being rightfully mad at yet another DA page that popped up "making" aero and other mech AI pieces. So when i got home i just wanted to google image to see what would come up, AI or not.. well, clicked on a DA link with 3 aeros and the one in the middle wasn't no standard plane paint job. I've seen lots of digital patterns, camo paints on planes and about every camo on earth at some point bc i'm a loser. but there Ain't no tan paint with brown and dart green spots out there used on planes, and the pattern was not Danish desert. Russia has a clone for flecktarn, but not tropentarn.
while flipping through their "uploads", I spotted a few other aero sonas I recognized from FA and around. be it plane design, camo
or a mix that's not quite right. but you know if you knew. I only have 4 aero pieces really but not a "cannon" plane so i pick a diffrent plane each time I don't know how but my aero had all of my markings "close" enough but not at all right (face, hand, neck spots) it was disgusting seeing this page, I normally pay no attention to anything AI so i don't give it views or nothing but I know it's poison. I had to make a DA page just to dm the person, and not pointing out my plane for fear of them making more just to get at me, they admitted " the art was made with prompts, not feeding it images. i don't think you can own the idea of a camo plane thus you can't claim that as your oc". this is the brain rot that these people have, that it's not the "idea" of a camo plane i own, it's the fact no other sona uses tropentarn. and a plane in their "art" was colored with it
though everyone has worked hard on their sonas, my gal took over a year of concept to finally sitting down and drafting it, being able to add a second camo to her was so fun. i only had her main body for that time, but after my last sona being killed for personal reasons. i was happy to have something i liked again. this is what everyone feels, if they put 5 years or 2 months into making it, some people can brainstorm and that doesn't make theirs lesser. but through all the planning, love, care and attachment to your prefect creation. especially if it involves expression, identity or sexuality etc. people view it as another "thing" not for the intrinsic human nature to create, something that's proven for a million years.
but that's the other side of this, when I made my DA account it really was eye opening. last i heard of DA was when they were starting to put ai stuff in the site, wow... it's all AI slog, I got ads for their "core" package being on sale so i can get a deal on paying for AI tools on DA. the reflection of an art site doing this, seeing more ads for AI and now built into almost everything we use, look at etc. and while everyone is talking about AI as a whole and the overall bullshit of it, it's sadly a reflection to me in what a somewhat everyday persons view on art/objects/creativity. that also the internet is an entire feedback loop of ads, shopping links, bullshit or news. even when looking at something very specific, just because it's all "tagging" hits you'll look for info on Korean war m51 jackets, but no matter how hard you try to drill down and type everything to get what you'd want, you still get street wear ads, shopping links for import "military" jackets or blogs about "how to wear it with style"
the people who like AI "art" along with gen population at this point, don't value someone's real creativity or an autunitic mindset. "you can't make money doing music" " you'll never have a career in drawing, how will you support a family". the disposable ideals people have, the early/mid 10's were a tragic example of people just want cheap things and don't care if it lasts, who made it, repairing said items and environmental impact of buying a jacket for it to break in a year. it was cheap so not worth fixing just toss it and get a new one. i don't want to old man yell at the clouds, standards are rock bottom. back in the before times, company's at least tried somewhat to keep up. but now you can put any slog out and people will buy it, no one asked for funko pops of everything on earth. yet funko made so many of bullshit licenses no one cared about they threw a bunch in the trash, irl e-waste. this doesn't mean good things aren't being made anymore, it's just 1 person and put all the love in to something, and it can be seen as not worth it or marvel puts out some hashed out thing and it's the greatist thing ever made... again.. I know someone that worked for disney's art modeling, they'd animate the rigs they were sent by the 3d artiest and work them into BG concepts. worked on the live action Pinocchio, they've been out of a job for over 2 years bc all places (even disney) are outsourcing to india for animation bc it's cheaper.. kind of like the tag line of the movie The Stuff, enough is never enough.. I forgot to add i was buying lighter fluid at a store, and 3 people were hanging at the check out counter, someone asked what it was for, i told them for my lighter. all of them didn't know you could do that, they you'd just buy the ones you threw away and that's it. wild..
but also saying "hey things aren't great" for somethings makes you a negative nancy, now i'm not saying go on twitter and yell "everything sucks". but i'd make sure to call out in a chat i own every time Dave's hot chicken came up, the local one here in my town served me pink chicken twice multiple months apart. i'd say this so people wouldn't go and waste their money, check out another chicken place or a better food place. it's a chicken place and can't even get the one thing they do right, but even through text it felt like everyone was staring at me like i said "if you like this place go to hell", there's a line of "enjoy what you like" and "don't get robbed". we've checked out local spots that are "must eats" and we've gotten cold food, or it was just fine. personal taste is personal, but cold food is fact and leads standards to be jack shit. if I spent 2/7th of my daily pay on food plus drinks and it's crappy, i don't get the defending the place, it's taking my money and giving me something with no love. a lot of folks are happy to buy something with no love put into it, mass made.. but don't see the beauty of love within a project, or it's something to sell, make money from and commodify it and homogenize it to death. and move on to the next thing to sell to everyone..
but that's it, ads, merch all that is as old as time. it's nothing new, just now the whole culture of something or a property being your life, or resold to you harder than ever is very strange if you are outside of it. Idk where i was going over all, i didn't want to sit and make a whole thesis, or rewrite it for a week. there's plenty of big brain breakdowns of what i touched on, i've just had a lot of people act weird when i want better things for myself and them. and accept crap bc it's cool or it's alright don't worry about it.. fell free to yell at me in replies, or if you have anything to say i'd like to hear. being locked in your own mind or circle isn't good, and different people have perspective and experience's unlike mine or others.
few days a go we and my fiance were out shoping, aero art came up (I like to bother her with it) and i talked about the weird hyper focus of AI within the aeromorph community. for some reason AI "users" fabricate aero art pretty often, that same week i got a discord ping about someone being rightfully mad at yet another DA page that popped up "making" aero and other mech AI pieces. So when i got home i just wanted to google image to see what would come up, AI or not.. well, clicked on a DA link with 3 aeros and the one in the middle wasn't no standard plane paint job. I've seen lots of digital patterns, camo paints on planes and about every camo on earth at some point bc i'm a loser. but there Ain't no tan paint with brown and dart green spots out there used on planes, and the pattern was not Danish desert. Russia has a clone for flecktarn, but not tropentarn.
while flipping through their "uploads", I spotted a few other aero sonas I recognized from FA and around. be it plane design, camo
or a mix that's not quite right. but you know if you knew. I only have 4 aero pieces really but not a "cannon" plane so i pick a diffrent plane each time I don't know how but my aero had all of my markings "close" enough but not at all right (face, hand, neck spots) it was disgusting seeing this page, I normally pay no attention to anything AI so i don't give it views or nothing but I know it's poison. I had to make a DA page just to dm the person, and not pointing out my plane for fear of them making more just to get at me, they admitted " the art was made with prompts, not feeding it images. i don't think you can own the idea of a camo plane thus you can't claim that as your oc". this is the brain rot that these people have, that it's not the "idea" of a camo plane i own, it's the fact no other sona uses tropentarn. and a plane in their "art" was colored with it
though everyone has worked hard on their sonas, my gal took over a year of concept to finally sitting down and drafting it, being able to add a second camo to her was so fun. i only had her main body for that time, but after my last sona being killed for personal reasons. i was happy to have something i liked again. this is what everyone feels, if they put 5 years or 2 months into making it, some people can brainstorm and that doesn't make theirs lesser. but through all the planning, love, care and attachment to your prefect creation. especially if it involves expression, identity or sexuality etc. people view it as another "thing" not for the intrinsic human nature to create, something that's proven for a million years.
but that's the other side of this, when I made my DA account it really was eye opening. last i heard of DA was when they were starting to put ai stuff in the site, wow... it's all AI slog, I got ads for their "core" package being on sale so i can get a deal on paying for AI tools on DA. the reflection of an art site doing this, seeing more ads for AI and now built into almost everything we use, look at etc. and while everyone is talking about AI as a whole and the overall bullshit of it, it's sadly a reflection to me in what a somewhat everyday persons view on art/objects/creativity. that also the internet is an entire feedback loop of ads, shopping links, bullshit or news. even when looking at something very specific, just because it's all "tagging" hits you'll look for info on Korean war m51 jackets, but no matter how hard you try to drill down and type everything to get what you'd want, you still get street wear ads, shopping links for import "military" jackets or blogs about "how to wear it with style"
the people who like AI "art" along with gen population at this point, don't value someone's real creativity or an autunitic mindset. "you can't make money doing music" " you'll never have a career in drawing, how will you support a family". the disposable ideals people have, the early/mid 10's were a tragic example of people just want cheap things and don't care if it lasts, who made it, repairing said items and environmental impact of buying a jacket for it to break in a year. it was cheap so not worth fixing just toss it and get a new one. i don't want to old man yell at the clouds, standards are rock bottom. back in the before times, company's at least tried somewhat to keep up. but now you can put any slog out and people will buy it, no one asked for funko pops of everything on earth. yet funko made so many of bullshit licenses no one cared about they threw a bunch in the trash, irl e-waste. this doesn't mean good things aren't being made anymore, it's just 1 person and put all the love in to something, and it can be seen as not worth it or marvel puts out some hashed out thing and it's the greatist thing ever made... again.. I know someone that worked for disney's art modeling, they'd animate the rigs they were sent by the 3d artiest and work them into BG concepts. worked on the live action Pinocchio, they've been out of a job for over 2 years bc all places (even disney) are outsourcing to india for animation bc it's cheaper.. kind of like the tag line of the movie The Stuff, enough is never enough.. I forgot to add i was buying lighter fluid at a store, and 3 people were hanging at the check out counter, someone asked what it was for, i told them for my lighter. all of them didn't know you could do that, they you'd just buy the ones you threw away and that's it. wild..
but also saying "hey things aren't great" for somethings makes you a negative nancy, now i'm not saying go on twitter and yell "everything sucks". but i'd make sure to call out in a chat i own every time Dave's hot chicken came up, the local one here in my town served me pink chicken twice multiple months apart. i'd say this so people wouldn't go and waste their money, check out another chicken place or a better food place. it's a chicken place and can't even get the one thing they do right, but even through text it felt like everyone was staring at me like i said "if you like this place go to hell", there's a line of "enjoy what you like" and "don't get robbed". we've checked out local spots that are "must eats" and we've gotten cold food, or it was just fine. personal taste is personal, but cold food is fact and leads standards to be jack shit. if I spent 2/7th of my daily pay on food plus drinks and it's crappy, i don't get the defending the place, it's taking my money and giving me something with no love. a lot of folks are happy to buy something with no love put into it, mass made.. but don't see the beauty of love within a project, or it's something to sell, make money from and commodify it and homogenize it to death. and move on to the next thing to sell to everyone..
but that's it, ads, merch all that is as old as time. it's nothing new, just now the whole culture of something or a property being your life, or resold to you harder than ever is very strange if you are outside of it. Idk where i was going over all, i didn't want to sit and make a whole thesis, or rewrite it for a week. there's plenty of big brain breakdowns of what i touched on, i've just had a lot of people act weird when i want better things for myself and them. and accept crap bc it's cool or it's alright don't worry about it.. fell free to yell at me in replies, or if you have anything to say i'd like to hear. being locked in your own mind or circle isn't good, and different people have perspective and experience's unlike mine or others.
I feel like you touched on like 8 different subjects, all interesting with reasonable points of view :
Lowering of people's expectations and standards. Cheap products. Loss of humanity in favor of cold cheap automation. Planned obsolescence. Psychological manipulation of ads and consumerism. General feeling of slow decline. Nobody cares about art and creativity. AI is distressing for artists.
I don't know how to reply without writing a novel 😅
I find Funko Pops ugly and soulless, so I don't know if that makes you feel better, haha.
And I don't use AI and I'm a bit negative, but I don't know how it will turn out. Maybe there's two directions : AI as a tool vs AI as a replacement.
As a tool, it can help you make art quicker, get the idea more easily out of your head, do some tedious things that are boring like smoothing lineart, or resizing without losing quality, or adding 3D contour lines on your drawing to help you learn.
As a replacement, it will create meaningless images that steal people's attention. It's very disappointing for artists to find that their art is fed into a cold unloving machine. The whole point of art is to produce something human, and generative AI just corrupts the whole thing in that respect. Also, you can never really tell if something is a copy or not, so it's stressful in that way too. i wouldn't like to find an "artist" posting a bunch of art in my style. That would be horrific.
cheap products have been around forever, but can really only focus on the modern era post 70's. there was a lot of trash in that era but it wasn't an entire market, affordable option vs an impossibility to have access to good quality at a real price. back in the 2000's it was still somewhat easy to find good quality at a realistic price point, now that manufacturing is as advanced as it is. it's all just to maximize profit, while it is a force on the market to make people buy this. there are also so many people that think "good enough anyway" and it breaks in a year, or just buy soilless trash for their wall. obsolescence is planned in so much, early 10's had clothing. but like i said about brands, it really can be "make whatever and it'll be received good." i shared how to spot good quality clothing at any price point but it never really was taken like i thought it would be, the "why don't you just like things" thinking.
funko pops are a singularity of everything outrageous from fake demand, licensing, value, consuming, and forced hype. pokemon cards are big that way too, i bought them back in the day and they still felt like you'd play and trade them. now it feels like it's all for clicks and unboxing vids, you'd never play with any opened packs now. and I don't have a lot of attachment to pokemon (never played any of the games), it's worth pointing out. fake demand when they can print however many, and the market choosing what is worth what. i am not old man ranting bc this is a problem with a lot of things not just these 2, everything now has to be limited, collectable, and hyped. one off runs can be cool and have their place, pre orders that are open for a long time is a flip side to this. it sucks to miss out, but you had 8 months to buy this figure. it's a bad feed back loop with profit coming from unboxing, videos and ads so it makes that stuff bigger to make things hypeable
it's easy to big brain AI but not bring up small points, like you said a tool vs replacement
AI has been a thing since the 40's, what we say AI is now is post 10's. even mid 2000's the AI wasn't used or seen like it is today. computers reading punch cards, code, and generating outcomes. but it was a closed system, you taught it but that's it, it didn't spread or start to grab other things because it's free learning. and the public didn't have access to it for use to generate crap and not care. in video games you'd scale how they acted on harder settings, more field of view, longer spot difference etc. even learning play styles, but it was all "if this than that". if you start to rack up stats of headshots, enemies might use helmets more. a tool that is taught and even learns within the parameters of the system but not outside.
a replacement feeds into a mass public appeal for garbage, with lowering of standards and expectations. the slog that can be made is consumed and even held up by "influencers" to be worth more, AI itself started to be judged like it was in a vacuum, like i said with games, computer assistances (like spellcheck in W95 and word processing) are all valid, blending tools in art programs that can assist the creative process of an individual to create something personal..
but sadly to me, you can't argue that. i don't get mad but talking about AI like that is filled with holes made by the public not the person talking about AI. the tools are shaped and changed so the most wealthy companies can fire art departments and make soulless art. not help uplift the real people and raw human drive to make art in all forms, to degrade the value of a persons mental ability that have shown for millions of years. bc "why do i need to pay some one when i can hit buttons, i don't have to wait either!", or steal art for prompts. either by teaching AI to "see" what you put in and matches close enough things, or you teach it by feeding in information, either stolen or stock images.
a good comparison to this is; people who grow up on a cartoon made by someone vs AI, regardless of quality of each. the person who made Phineas and Ferb can make a show 15 years after their first toon, and it looks the same or has the "vibe". but AI vids are taught in a nonlinear fashion, they learn either on old versions, fed new or a mix of both. someone nostalgic for an ai vid 5 years ago can not be replicated, the prompt output you get is not the same, even if you put the exact video in, you can never get it 100%. the tech is ever changing, and even shown it degrades if exposed to wrong information. or grabbing multiple videos and mixing them, the "use glue to make a real pizza" was from AI grabbing a video on how pizza for ads are made for the cheese pull.
the move to AI is king is stupid because of this, if you build everything on a tech that can bottom out at any point is asking for problems. I also can't even go into fake videos or deep fakes, like it's fucked and nothing more to say. nothing funny, cool or has worth if it's faked with that tech. it's a bit old to say "you won't tell real or fake", some cases the AI degrades and falls back to looking like shit. but sometimes it's really hard to tell depending on the filter or style you are using, that Ghibli filter is so gross...
it sucks and lame to say, but really to me i can crush it down to "who cares let's stop". all arguments crumble in the modern context of how it's being used. outside of the vacuum we were shown and told years ago is nonexistent, bad players are at full reign to use it however (without sounding dramatic). so all the good people who want to use it in the right way and for the right reasons, are always going to be 2nd. as the DM i got that i touched on here, the idea of instantly telling me "you don't own the idea of a camo plane". no duh i don't, but i don't see any other sona nor plane use tropentarn before. and i do not mean to sound like my sona is better or i'm cool, it's just straight to the point. my sona is the same as german tropentarn, i've seen a few camo sonas before (really neat) but not after this pattern. so to find a jet with brown and green spots over tan, i was used to make that. and to have no critical thinking skills to see past your nose is ugly. i even made fun of them saying "i'd at least appreciate a higher rez image if you are to steal my sona.", i'd at least like to not be blurry if i don't have a choice anyway...
here's my book, it's not that hard for me to really break things down. so sorry if it's a long read but it's been like 15 mins, there's times where you can say more with less.. other times it's important to use what you have up there and really hone in, everything is so snappy, must be short form, and quick to eat up and move on to the next thing. it's important to remember not everything can be short and addictive, the brain helps you in so many ways when you challenge it. AI also fuels this, not trying to sound like a hipster but heard family say "ugh couldn't figure out after 10 mins i just used/asked ai".
thanks for the read, sorry if this was boring or a slog. i appreciated your comment tho, and your art bumps. i wanted to leave a shout, i'm starting out art soon too. ai makes it tough to really try. but never forget real people will never be forgotten completely, maybe even held up again soon
Sometimes it's good to get all your thoughts out "on paper", even if it's a bit long! But you can't control everything, so if some things bother you, I guess you can try your best to work with what you have. Hopefully, the "right to repair" movement will improve things.
I hope this won't deter you from starting art :P There are many reasons to do art (as a hobby, to meet people, to express yourself, etc.) no matter what happens with AI. If you find enjoyment in it, then it's worth it.
Somehow it's enough to talk about till you collapse into a black hole, onlyplays calling ai is really funny. But it's super creative guys breaking it, there's really not much to say without talking in circles when it comes down to "people have extremely low standards and it's not good to challenge that" for some reason. I think i said before in my post that there's not a market for it till it's made, then there's a need for it all the sudden. Funko pop syndrome, that AI aeromorph art no one wants, till it's all over DA then it's "cool sexy art" bc it's a curiosity not a "genre" of expression, cool personal art, pron whatever.