I was looking back at a post I made about this a few years ago and decided it was time to update it.
Fuck AI. It is burning down the environment at terrifying speeds, it is ruining the economy and every tech it touches, and it is a plagiarism machine built to steal the works of creators without consent or compensation and turn it into profit for billionnaires. It causes psychosis and degrades the mental faculties of those who use it regularly, and it provides nothing of value to the world: it’s wrong almost as often as it’s right, and its outputs are souless recreations and repurposes of the actually good works of humans.
The thing is: I have used AI. Years ago, I did a series of ‘Co-Writing with an AI’ on Twitch and…it was a novelty. A terrible novelty. I didn’t know then that its training data was all stolen, and I didn’t know the affect it was having on the environment. It was also…bad. AI enthusiasts kept turning up to gift me the higher levels of the AI Dungeon or NovelAI programs, and even that couldn’t stop me constantly saying ‘I wish I was writing with chat instead’. The rare moments where it added something cool to the story rather than worthless, aimless drivel, I now know it likely lifted directly from human writers. I quit because it was an exhausting exercise in trying to fix or mitigate the slop. That series received tens of thousands of views on Youtube, compared to my usual 1-10. I have deleted all those videos, and when people turned up to ask if I would do more, I told them I would not. This was before I even knew the true cost of its use; it just became clear that it was worthless.
Outside of those specific videos, no AI has ever been used in any of my work, nor will it ever be used. I commission human artists wherever possible and use stock from human artists when I can’t, and all my writing is my own. On the occassion I use stock art or music, I go out of my way to avoid AI–something that is becoming increasingly difficult and time-consuming due to the flood of slop everywhere, and how difficult it is becoming to identify. Typically, I use things posted from human accounts with consistent style and a humanly-possible number of works from long-standing accounts, or else I just only search things made before 2020. None of that is easy, and if any stock I use ever turns out to be AI (it hasn’t yet), I will replace it immediately.
I do not believe that, in its current state, there is ethical use of AI. The costs to the environment and to creators is too high. It’s theft and it’s destructive. You don’t need it; if you want concept art for a human artist to work from, provide references from other arts and descriptions, just as we did before AI. If you want to bounce ideas around, join a creative forum or talk to other humans.
Without legislation, consent, compensation, and environmental protections, AI is nothing but a huge and unwelcome drain on society, killing creators AND the environment, dulling critical thinking, and spreading misinformation. A drastic change would be needed before I would ever consider using it, or consuming anything that uses it.
My AI Policy is: Fuck AI.