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I'm fully against it's use here and completely support a ban.

I'm not fully against AI but it's essentially the same as an artist tracing art something well known and hated in the artist community. All AI art must take every piece from somewhere. Every section is traced. That's scum behavior.

If, let's say, one were to use an AI generator that only used art it had permission to use, that's fine and lile tracing cc0 art. It's lazy as hell, and going to likely look terrible, but no moral issue. Currently however you're just stealing other peoples art.

As for the "we already do this for shitposts" argument:

1.) It's reasonably easy to still find the original artists ifthe image isn't generated by AI.
2.) Using it just supports this awful practice.
3.) An insane amount of electricity and water are burned to get that image.
4.) Just find some random, already available image if quality doesn't matter. Photoshop it to fit if you have to and who cares if your skill is trash that makes it so much more funny.
5.) You should put a bitmore effort into your shitpost. Make it a nice, long, fiber filled log of a shotpost.

Personally I feel like AI should be allowed if the memes and content are high quality and that they aren't being spammed rapidly.

What I do think should be done regardless of the outcome to ban AI or not is heavy policing on anti-AI harassment, trolling, witch-hunting, and bad faith arguments. I was just harassed by an idiot and still haven't fully recovered but this shit is unacceptable. So if we ban AI or not we need to ban the idiots trolling and trying to hunt down people they suspect of using AI. These people are toxic to the community and will hurt the community more than even low-effort AI spam will. I'm not going to provide names of people because they will accuse me of harassing them and probably harass me in return (just like the idiot earlier).

AI image generation in particular is something I think should absolutely be banned completely. Giving the benefit of the doubt is okay, providing sources makes the poster a god imo.

Those tools are able to create non-consensual pornography, it can be used to create CP. It also steals from artists, plagiarises their work and enables some really problematic scams that I've been constantly fighting to keep out of an online safe space I maintain.

It's important to take a stand against exploitative shit, if only to show some basic solidarity with those screwed over by it.

I think memes are like the one place ai works for. I don't care much either way, just please lean on the side of allowance when it's hard to tell.

I think whatever your stance on the ethics, trying to ban AI as a method of production is futile. Images created using AI are nearing the point of being indistinguishable from images created using other methods. Jokes from last year about how AI can't get the number of fingers on a hand right already seem outdated. It will soon become impossible to tell the difference between AI and non-AI imagery with any certainty, and we've already crossed that threshold for some images. That means a ban is ultimately not going to work. There's obviously lots of bad quality AI content out there, but there's also lots of bad quality content out there in general. I think focusing on the quality is more relevant than the method of production.

I don't have much opinion myself since I've never used it, I feel like if it's not low quality and is properly tagged as AI it should be allowed. Maybe it should only be allowed on specific days too. Since people can pump out a lot of it. Probably should be limited to less of it if we're going to have it at all.

Maybe also make it so only base images can be AI, but you shouldn't generate whole memes with it, since that way they would at least still be original memes to an extent. Not really sure, though the witch-hunting and tribalism and lashing out at people needs to stop regardless. It makes this community feel unsafe to be in.

I understand all the reasons why AI is bad, but like... Memes are largely made of remixing popular culture anyway. A Spongebob meme is not an original work, it's literally using pre-made assets (in a Fair Use manner). Why should AI be dismissed for a throwaway meme/shitpost? Nearly all memes already exist as an exact copy of someone else's artistic work, slightly remixed.

AI in general is terrible, especially when it displaces the paid labor of real artists, but I feel like dumb shitposts should be the one place it should be accepted since memes are already remixing pop culture anyway. Why should a more advanced remix of pop culture be treated differently? It's just a shitpost? Nobody is making money off of it (at least if it is generated locally and not via a paid service), it is not displacing artists. Why treat it different than memes that crib popular culture already?

I had to teach a class using modern photoshop two years ago and the AI features in Photoshop are inescapable. Of course, people will turn them off (I did because they’re annoying on an interface level if nothing else) but judging by the comments here, I doubt people have any idea how much AI is in the work they see, since they don’t seem to understand the scale at which its employed in regular graphic design tooling at this point.

Aside from that the question of whether something’s art or not is just silly and gatekeeping. If someone put a bunch of low quality sketches that was their shit web comic (I seem to recall some guy did for like 2 days here) people rightfully tell them to get that shit out of here. No body likes bad art, whether it comes from an AI or not. If people want to make it ideological, given what I mentioned above, I suppose it depends to what level moderation wants to succumb to ideologues.

a human manipulating a generated image still doesnt make it art. it can be a nice picture and the tech behind making it can be neat, but it's not art. that said i just dont engage on posts i know are ai content. presenting a generated image without being clear about it is just being a dick. it dosesnt have to be in the title but it should be aknowledged. i dono if a full ban is needed but if i wanted my feed full of slop i'd be subbed to communites for ai, or .world's 196. this place seems more about snark and joy, which ai rarely brings out.

Until there are viable options for ethical AI generation (that is, all training data is used with the authors' and artists' explicit permission), I'd suggest banning it, but erring on the lenient side when people aren't sure whether an image is AI-generated.

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

Pretty much sums up my view of it. It's a shame it's vilified since it's good at making short comics and memes. I'd also rather original ai content then reposts personally.

I can understand certain subs being against it, like traditional art subs and subs relating to shows where movie stills are preferred (the star trek ones for instance). But in the end, this is a meme sub.

That being said, it's seriously polarizing and every post with even a hint of AI turns into a fight. Tagging is at least a small compromise but I don't think it will do much without filtering. Maybe an option would be to ask users who wish to post AI content to use an alt classified as a bot, so users can filter it that way while we wait for a proper flair system.

I'm more lenient than most of the other posts, mainly because at this stage I think filtering and moderation is difficult to do. I also think arguing about if AI art is bad or not is a bit late now given it's everywhere in the open public domain. Was it wrong in how it was generated, absolutely. I don't think at this point using that as a rallying cry is useful, especially since so many memes do the exact same thing, piggybacking on someone else's work.

So I think stick with original rules of higher quality and don't try to chase the impossible path of determining origins. If anything have in the rules that AI generation be labeled as such to let those who want to avoid it for whatever reasons be able to filter them out. I don't think the mods should have to become experts on AI detection (like anyone is at the rate it's going).

I think AI art should be allowed. It doesn't matter if a shitpost is AI or not, and witch hunting should always be punished. There are too many people out there harassing and hurting people online. Their behavior should be discouraged.

Edit: It should be allowed just for the reason that people don't need the excuse to act out. I can't state an opinion without them feeling like they need to downvote to punish me.

oki, here's my stanc

~(gen-pics~ ~mean~ ~ai~ ~images~ ~here)~

• i wud enjoy gen-pic ban

• bt its almost impossibl cuz gen-pics r supr gud now n hard to tell if fake
• new image gen is not prompt -> result anymor - but mor lik an LLM puts together multipl elements n iterativli improves images, lik specificlli addin text to onli smol bit--- "source" here
  • this makes it evn hardr to tell if imag is gen pic... which i thinksies is bad
• mayb we employ som gen pic detector if we're unsure? seems lik best option, cuz evn i, who kindsa knows how stuffsies wrork, cnt tell anymor ;(
• bannin gen pics alsuu removs funi shrek stealin from white house found footag... which... im oki with- bt its kindsa a loss kindsa

so yis, im for gen pic ban n alsuu wan to hav detection tools if were unsur - if u wan ai 196 head ovr to lmmi wrorld i feel...

alsuu - if gen pics wud be fulli allowd - id hav to go outta my way to hide evri singl one when i see one... which i dun lik ;(

a gud way to think bout it is dis:

• when i read text n go "oh... dis is llm genratd" i immediatli stop readin
• samsies for gen pics

I think the strongest argument against a blanket ban is creators like Obscurest Vinyl who clearly have actual talent and vision that lets them put out 100% ai generated art that is actually art. It seems to me that it's harder to make AI images that are actual art, and I'm personally okay with a flat-out ban on AI-generated images, but this also cuts out stuff like ai-generated Pixar movie posters or security footage of Yoda robbing a gas station.

As for false bans, thats why ban appeals exist.