In my opinion, AI just feels like the logical next step for capitalist exploitation and destruction of culture. Generative AI is (in most cases) just a fancy way for cooperations to steal art on a scale, that hasn’t been possible before. And then they use AI to fill the internet with slop and misinformation and actual artists are getting fired from their jobs, because the company replaces them with an AI, that was trained on their original art. Because of these reasons and some others, it just feels wrong to me, to be using AI in such a manner, when this community should be about inclusion and kindness. Wouldn’t it be much cooler, if we commissioned an actual artist for the banner or find a nice existing artwork (where the licence fits, of course)? I would love to hear your thoughts!
There are a lot of talented artists here on lemmy.ml and I think it would be wise to ask them if they were interested in providing a banner image that is not ai generated, surely someone would take up the offer.
If they wanted to do it for free, they would have offered.
Artists do labor for free for the benefit of their communities all the time, myself included, mostly out of the goodness of their hearts. Although maybe Lemmy can offer some compensation if they want to commission something. Tbh, I’ve never approached someone or an organization and said, “hey, I think you should change your logo/banner/whatever, want me to make a better one?” I think that’s a bit forward.
I’m glad you have the privilege of being able to give away your time and work for free.
You don’t know anything about me and idk why you say it like that and then totally disengage from the latter half of what I said.
You:
I’m glad you’ve had that privilege. I’m not sure what else you think I might be referring to or how you think this is not ‘engaging’ with what you said.
I said nothing about the second half of your a message because it’s a semantic argument, a.k.a skill issue:
Yeah, go to someone telling them you can do their work better than them, out of the blue, and they’re not going to have have a good response.
What if you said: “Hey guys. I love the community! You might have seen me commenting around too. I just wanted to let you know I do art sometimes and if you’re ever looking for new assets, like your banner, I’d be happy to collaborate. Cheers!”
Would you be upset at getting a message like that out of the blue? People cold solicit all the time, it’s not a bad thing.
But it’s not going to work if you present like you know better than everyone else. People disagree with people, not with facts.
My whole point was that being able to give away your time and skill for free is a privilege.
What’s the point of clutching pearls at the use of AI, if the result of not using AI is checks notes artists don’t get paid for their work anyways because now you can hang the use of AI over their heads to get art for free, with the excuse that doing so ‘is not pro free labor, it’s anti AI’
Valuing art is giving value to art. No budget for art? Cool, use AI. You get what you pay for. But wait, you’re telling me the solution to put more money in artists pockets is instead for artist to give MORE art for FREE? (For the noble cause of avoiding AI of course) See how insane this is?
I have nothing against gifting art. But that is what is it is: a gift. Something of you that has value, with your time as a baseline, that you are choosing to share. Some people are privileged enough to be able to give it away for free. Some are not. The effective reality is that the more art is gifted in the name of moral crusades against AI, the harder it is for artists to live off art in a world where the genie of AI can’t be put back inside its bottle.
I hope this makes you happy and engaged lol
Edit: Here’s another idea. Want to volunteer for your community? Cool, how about organizing a GoFundme to put together money to commission a banner. Maybe make a post about the possibility of doing that instead.
Bam. You have given to your community for free, you have made a community event of it. And even if all you get is 5 bucks, that’s five bucks that some artist got to spend in their gacha addiction thanks to something they created.
That’s what I mean when I say valuing art means giving value to art.