I've started becoming a militant pest on anyone who posts an AI image on Facebook. Yes, I'm on Facebook - I share with family on friends what I'm doing, and use Marketplace, unapologetically. Sometimes I use it under the banner of 'know your enemy' - you can't knock something if you don't know how it works. Sometimes I think I use it just because I like to remind people they shouldn't be sharing AI images without accrediting the image to the artifical intelligence - my Aunty Diane, the old woman on the mushroom group in Tasmania, my cousin on the east coast, some random posting a beautiful off grid home in an Off Grid group I now no longer follow because it's full of AI images.
How can we be sure that the created AI world won't supersede the beauty and extraordinariness of the real world?
Most of the time I get a thumbs up or an outright defence of why they shared the image.
'It's still cute,' they'll say.
'I didn't mean any harm', they'll apologise huffily.
'It doesn't matter, does it?' they'll refute.
Of course it matters, I retort.
We need proper disclosure more than ever.
The very fact people are sharing it without knowing it's AI is a case in point. If they're doing that now, what will they do when it's a deep fake of a politician in order to change people's minds about them? We've lived in a world of misinformation and propaganda forever - but it's going to get exponentially worse if we can simply prompt an image or a video to sway public opinion.
If people can't figure out what is human and what is AI, how can we trust anything we read online?
What if we believe an indidivual or an organsiation that has been faked and therefore are misled into sharing our bank details or other private information that can impact our reputation?
If we believe everything we see, what implications does this have for politics, economics, and social landscapes?
What if our likenesses and voices are used without our consent to spread lies and misinformation?
How can we know what is genuine and what is synthetic?
Are we happy to be in a world where the machine creates for us, and our powers of individual expression are lost or diminished?
Are we happy to support businesses that choose AI over paying artists to create images for them?
Are we happy to lose our own ability to write in favour of the machine?
Because if we lose our ability to express ourselves, we lose our power entirely.
We should be asking these questions instead of blindly sharing images without knowing where they came from.
We're being led into a world that many of us don't have a choice about. AI is proliferating without the checks and measures that it should have and we have so very little power over what this future might look like.
We need responsible AI practices at the individual level. If the image looks so unbelievable, amazing or extraordinary the chances are that it is artificially generated and we need to check. A reverse image search or Google lens may bring up similiar AI images that give it away, or may show the original 'author' - and if we can't find the source of the image to show us it's authentic, then we should assume it's AI and not share it.
For the record, I loved creating AI images. I found it extraordinary. Yet having critically thought about the questions above, and seen where we're headed, I'm more and more resistant. I encourage you to be critically analytical - it absolutely matters.
With Love,
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thank you for this.
very well put and exactly the kind of reasoning which needs to be used.
Thanks very much.
Well said! This is definitely something that needs wider thought/discussion. At a personal level I have already had my earnings from illustrations eroded badly by AI, and I hate seeing creativity being sucked out of us like this!
I'm sorry to see it's affected you financially. It's utterly unconsciousable companies are "saving money' by using AI over artists and it's utterly dumb of humanity to value machine art over human art.
Did you see the photo of Jesus, I mean wow, isn’t it amazing they had cameras then and they had smartphones, as they were taking selfies…..
Yeah I agree with you. I worry about the photos that people edit to remove things from the background but I worry more about the political connotations. Big Tech and Government is what we should fear the most. Trump and Facebook for example. Powerful rich men have control over us and what we believe.
We’re going to need our wits about us and be security conscious and the next generation will have more of a challenge in their hands. They’re more connected than us and that frightens me.
They ARE more connected... But not necessarily savvy. I mean, there's a lot of smart kids out there but there's just as many uncritical, naive and gullible ones, if not more. I don't think it's unreasonable for us to shout a warning. It's a bit more than the invention of the printing press here. Exponentially more..
I agree with you, entirely!
But what's next? How do we distinguish? "Human watermarking?" I don't have any answers... but the issue definitely needs to be figured out.
Human watermarking sounds ... Gross. I don't know what's next... But there does need to be regulation.
I advocate disclosing whenever AI is used for art. I don't think it's the evil harbinger of humanity's downfall so many fear. I remember fearmongering around Photoshop about 25 years ago, too. But I hate it when people pretend AI art is their own creation because they wrote a prompt, or worse still, insist they created it themselves while pretending AI was not involved. And I wouldn't feel too bad if people who used AI to create ads suffered stubbed toes for every remaining day of their lives.
Stubbed pinkie toes in the middle of the night on the coffee tables when they are getting up to pee. That’s a fitting karma I reckon.
Ouch, the stubbed toe! Or sand in your eye?
I think it's a LOT different from Photoshop. We are at the next level and then some.
Amen. I don't use Facebook that much, but I boycott, so to speak, AI-altered posts here and on Medium in any way. No support from me. What I particularly don't get is that a lot of these people are choosing fairly ugly, obviously fake images. Considering the splendor of talent available on sites like Unsplash or Pixabay, why on Earth would anyone go with that AI trash? I don't get it.
But yeah, agreed. :)
I don't get it either. If any group uses AI images I leave or certainly argue against them sharing it. Drives me insane.
Not a fan of AI 'art' and I am not sure if I ever will be, no matter how beautiful.
Yeah agreed NOW..
I agree that we need to proceed with caution.
On some level, I really like AI art, and my use case for it is as a way to create custom tailored stock images to break up hand-written content. If you see some of my blogs, you will see what I mean. I'm not claiming the art as mine, and my post isn't about the art, the post is about my content, and the art is just a cartoony illustration of that content. I think it's pretty obvious, so I haven't added disclaimers, but I would be happy to start adding a disclaimer that the art was AI generated.
Where I get resistant is with creating any "real" looking images, or when AI art is credited as if its real. My main concern is us getting lazy and starting to fall for deepfakes, or AI enhanced real images (i.e. a real image, but was "photoshopped" via AI to make the person in the image look bad).
It's all amazing technology, but I agree, we need to slow down, and be extremely critical from here on out.
I loved AI images to start with for the exact reason you said. But I have to withdraw from it as the more I know and understand the more I think we have to take a stand and not participate.
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Fully agree with you here! Especially about the deep fakes. I think this election season in America is going to be the test bed for the nefarious purposes of AI images and video. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the video that can be generated is surreal right now, giving it a few months to mature in preparation for September combined with deep fakes to really change a lot of things on opinions. I don’t think this will affect The Donald but absolutely will affect the next round of candidates. If they don’t toe the line - deep fakes of all kinds of shit are going to be employed to destroy their reputations and chances of winning.
We are definitely heading in a strange direction. - I hope that we don’t end up like the people in the Disney movie, fat and connected to headsets in huge farms to keep people distracted while their whole world is stolen out from under them for control.
It's definitely a worry for the election. We have all been warned about deep fakes for ages yet I bet some of will fill for them too!!!
Thank you so much for sharing that you have changed your mind, I am glad to hear it. I remember reading the 'pro-AI' post from you quite a while ago and how it hurt me at the time to hear this from you. Now I am twice as glad to hear that you came to a different view 😊.
One that I agree with very much. AI is amazing, it
willis already used for many good things but replacing human art/artists? Why? There is no need for it (except, of course money!!) There has to be regulations around it. How that's going to look? No idea. Well, the EU is working on it afaik. We will see where this all goes. For starters, attributing AI-generated images clearly when they are being used to publish e.g. a blog post.Anyhoo. thank you for sharing and enjoy Morocco!!
p.s. I didn't know you have a Wordpress blog
I have only just started the WordPress for a few things about the Landie. Haven't written much yet.
I always love to understand tech properly before I make a decision. I loved experimenting with AI as it really was and is incredible. But as you know there's too many dangers inherent in it and not enough reg.