Please stop using Generative AI
I’m talking about tools like Bing’s AI Image Generator, ChatGPT and games like Death By AI. They are a scourge on the world, and if you respect art, yourself or the planet I highly encourage you against using them.
Firstly, from a purely selfish perspective: the results are mediocre. By their very nature, these models produce results that are the aggregate of everything fed into them, so by definition the result is going to be average. 5/10. Fine.
And if you're going to use this to represent a brand, or a performance persona, you deserve FAR more than a 5/10. Because that's gonna drag YOU and YOUR BRAND down.
YES, art is expensive, but thats because its a luxury. If you cant afford to pay an artist, or writer then you've still got options: pick up a pencil, try and strike a deal with a friend or simply don't have art. You wont die by not having a new shirt to sell.
And from a moral perspective, they are built on theft. The entire way these generative AI systems work is that they scrape the internet for datasets, that are then in turn stitched back together to generate the work it is prompted for, like a Frankenstein's Monster. That means millions of artists are having their work stolen and used against their will and without their consent to power these generators. My work has been stolen, my writing and my design has been pumped into these machines, to make money for these companies. The work of deceased artists is being used, the work of small indie artists is being used. It is nothing but theft, taking publicly available work from artists and using it to replace them.
Its also catastrophically bad for the planet. Every time you generate a new image using one lf these AI generators, you are using the same amount of energy it takes you fully charge your phone. Every single time. AI as an industry is using the same amount of energy as a small country, and could overtake The Netherlands by 2027. Look outside, its already blisteringly hot right now, and using all this energy is only gonna make things worse.
Don't try and argue against me in the comments. I've heard it all and am sick of it already.
