meow_d

wahaha!

The legend goes like this:

As AI art floods the internet, AI will start to scrape its own outputs, becoming dumber and dumber over time.

I get that you hate learning things about the soulless robot threatening to take your job, but people were shitting on and nerd-emoji-ing any replies to the effect of ‘that’s not how AI works’ just because they wanted a victory lap. As for me, I think it’s cruel to give artists false hope and lull them into complacency. I’m writing this post firstly as a short, non-technical dialectic education about AI training, and secondly to explain what I think are the real weaknesses of AI art and the most disruptive direction it could take.

First, let’s have a look at the unspoken assumptions expressed by the OP. In order to blind-like the post I’m talking about, you need to have an imagined mental model of AI training that’s very common among artists, which I’ve taken to calling the Roomba Brain.

The Roomba Brain is a robot unleashed onto the internet by techbros. It (or a part of it) is at all times scraping the internet for art, and allowing itself to be influenced by the pictures that it sees. The techbros check up on it occasionally, but it’s mostly left to its own devices, leaving it free to suck up things that harm it. When prompters ask it to make pictures, they’re asking the latest and greatest Roomba Brain, the one that’s really been enjoying the taste of its own tail recently, just like the mythical serpent. If you’re really gullible, there’s maybe a single digit number of Roombas per Megacorp, and they’re costly to fix.

The Roomba Brain does not exist.

casual syrup