Universal Chat Thread

[Maniakkid25]

DeviantArt is weird.

Yeah, I've been surfing that cursed area of the Internet, and boy has it changed in the decade or so since my last use! So, if you haven't used DeviantArt in a while -- first off, good for you -- then you'll be interested to note that you can now subscribe to artists like it's a discount Patreon or something, and some artists lock their art behind that paywall. Even more shocking is the flagrant breaking of TOS by using the description to hide content that DeviantArt doesn't like (usually by linking out of DeviantArt) -- which is usually full-on penetration.

But that's not the biggest thing that came to DeviantArt. See, DeviantArt has a feature that anyone can access for free: AI Image Generation. Yes, really -- the repository for art is being used for AI slop, and there is a lot of it depending on what particular niche you live in. Given my particular... interests, I see a lot of it by just tooling around. It made me so ashamed, I subscribed to another (non-AI) artist I really like on their Patreon.

Now, besides the tagging of "this piece was made using AI" or whatever the exact quote is, its actually really easy to tell when a piece on DeviantArt is AI generated: the images have a distinct "style" to them, and when you see it enough, you just know. But yeah, it really is amazing that the art repository that fought against NFTs by setting up tools to make sure people weren't getting their art stolen (or rather, to alert them when it has happened) would swing hard the other way just a couple years later, and embrace AI image generation. It's fucked.

But what really is burning my Pop-Tarts is I know from experience there are image generators that are beyond lazy. See, while the content may be AI images, generally the generator has enough creativity to write a blurb or a caption or story to go with it. "Sure, it's AI Slop, but it's meant to enhance the experience", you could say. Then there are the people who make an AI Image, and call up ChatGPT or Grok to write the caption! And then have the balls to charge people a subscription to see it! Jesus, man, I've got no work ethic, but my god could I ASPIRE to be this lazy!

I was originally planning on ending this by saying "DeviantArt is weird" again, but I've got no good segue into it. It still amazes me that people are that lazy!