Decided to type out another semi rant-style "essay" thing in vein of that previous post about ThatJohnnyGuy and his wacky escapades, so except my news feed to become my 2008-style blog for a bit till I figure out what the hell this is actually used for.

But enough about that, let's get on to the main topic. AI art. An idea that strikes fear into twitter artist's hearts everywhere. It's no secret that the tools used for AI art have been improving and improving every single day with each image database gaining hundreds and hundreds of new images each day to further refine their styles.

The most recent example of this which you may have observed just from scrolling through your twitter feed for an hour or two, is a new image generator powered by Bing.com, the lesser child's version of the lesser child's version of google. The image you see at the top of this post was generated %100 down to the bone by AI, and you probably couldn't tell at first.

I couldn't either, since the AI had somehow managed to learn exactly how to use the color schemes of early spongebob and have those colors bend in with the background creating an appealing theme. Somehow, it was even able to add the subtle grain filter over the image similar to how season 1 of Spongebob was broadcasted.

Now to no one's surprise, artists freaked the fuck out over this because they knew that if AI progresses its 'skills' (AKA learning and stealing from actual people with skill) at this rate, then artists could reasonably be put out of a job with this and become reduced to flipping burger patties at McDonald's.

Sure, the concept of people using AI on official television projects was a pipe dream and was only met with nothing but severe mockery and deservedly so. But to be completely fair, what's stopping companies from just using AI to animate shows? The recent writers strike that's still ongoing currently shows that the 'big guys' don't give a fuck about the people behind the projects, they just want any random slop they can find so they can sell it to the consumer. Because that's how companies work.

It would only make sense from a business perspective to use AI to preform any human jobs, since they can't revolt, take breaks, or have to get paid even a single damn cent. It's effectively a wet dream for any piece of human scum looking to make a cheap buck to add to their ever-growing monopoly. Now what's my take on this? I'm mixed.

Firstly, I understand completely why most artists are completely against any use of AI in any piece of media no matter the context. AI is fundamentally based off of taking other peoples work and then transforming it into a carbon-copy, usually without any real emotion or touch that made it art in the first place. And this applies to any kinda artform, like music, games, and aforementioned writing.

But I think the hate is getting a bit overwhelming and obnoxious at this rate. Like any other tool in art, AI can be used well and it can be used badly, it just depends on the context and intent. For example, using AI to create storyboards and then working off of those to make improvements versus making all your animation with just AI and making it come out inconsistent and wonky in every single aspect as a result.

Since AI art has resolved into NFT territory of just being an easy target to make fun of and get some cheap clicks from it, people can become overwhelmingly hostile towards any use of this incredibly powerful tool. Case in point, the Scooby-Doo fan project that made use of AI voices.

Now if you don't know the context, some guy in his early 20's decided to make a project based off a crossover idea between Scooby-Doo and the FNAF series in a stopmotion style. Now I haven't seen this video yet and I don't know if I ever plan on watching it but from what I've seen, the animation is pretty impressive for being done by just one guy.

But there was a catch, since the guy couldn't afford any voice actors for any characters aside from Scooby and Shaggy who he voiced,(reminder: this is all from recollection so some details may be slightly off.) he used AI voices for the rest of the gang. This was met with immediate backlash.

Now sure, using someone's voice without their permission in a technical sense is not exactly the best thing to do. But it's hardly different from an edited video of the source material, and the guy wasn't trying to pass off the voices as the real voice actors anyways. But since AI, some shmucks decided to get on their high horse and complain about how this guy was Satan incarnate, and how he was exploiting their voices apparently.

This doesn't make sense, as the project was made for free and wasn't even intended to make any profit back. And again, it was one guy who made use of a tool because he didn't have any other options at the time, quit trying to make every situation a case to make yourself look morally superior. Dickhead.

Now I'll bring up another AI related piece of media that's more recent than the Scooby-Doo video, but is in a completely different context. Princess Jane. For some of you who don't understand what I'm talking about, Princess Jane revolves around a character by the title name who talks about random shit, usually relating to a movie made with all AI content.

Her face is distinctly uncanny valley, looking like a rejected design for a doll made for little girls in the 80's and each line is delivered by a lifeless text-to-speech program while she awkwardly teens around like a piece of Jello throughout the video's runtime. The videos were created by a bluechecker AKA idiot by the name of Rufus who genuinely believes he can make this so called 'AI movie.'

Obviously, these videos were met with people making fun of the video or complimenting the videos and Rufus in an obviously tongue and cheek fashion. But there were some annoying twitter moralists who said that anyone who found the videos funny, was invariably supporting AI stealing artists' jobs. This was a much smaller response, due to most people actively realized how stupid this sounded before they even started typing on the keyboard.

So in current day, it seems AI is here to stay and we'll just have to live with it until then. If you want to fight this growing trend in some way, just follow independent artists and ignore any AI content because any attention either positive or negative towards it is giving those people exactly what they want. Attention.

This is Christian Weston Chandler signing out, see ya'll later. *vaporizes myself into nothing but pure dust and atoms*