General

As for number two, it's been scientifically proven that unrealistic, idealized beauty standards warp people's body expectations. It's the same reason why people get mad at the Kardashians for their heavily edited and airbrushed photoshoots. Or how some men feel anxiety about their penis size because they think men should have 10 in penises.

[b]Letters And Numbers:
But that’s hardly a problem exclusive to AI art. Before AI, photoshop was the boogie man for that, and it was still just shorthand for society pushing unrealistic beauty standards. I mean half the time when I make people with AI they look like terrifying monsters with fucked up faces and limbs bending the wrong way.

Munchies:
I mean ... I drew a parallel to Photoshop.

Letters And Numbers:
Do you think the Photoshop software is a bad thing? Or is it just a tool that can be used for good things and for bad things, like any other tool?

Munchies:
I have no idea why you are focusing on this. Two people made a comment. Another person didn't understand it. I explained.

That said, Photoshop isn't inherently theft, unlike AI art. It's gotten so bad that artists - some of whom use Photoshop - are turning to programs like Glaze to prevent art theft.

aimeecozza.com/what-is-glaze-and-how-can-it-help-protect-against-ai-scraping/

Munchies:

That said, Photoshop isn't inherently theft, unlike AI art. It's gotten so bad that artists - some of whom use Photoshop - are turning to programs like Glaze to prevent art theft.

FAMGM:
Is it just me, or is anyone else getting sick of seeing AI images of fat people?

I’ve enjoyed a few when I first saw them, because it’s fun to imagine an actual human having those proportions, but my objections are:

(1) from the point ot view of feedist discourse: it’s getting really repetitive, it’s already unoriginal, and some forums are just awash with it like it’s actually worth something.

(2) from the point of view of feedist culture: I can see that some feedists, who’ve discovered a love for their shape after years of feeling inadequate, are going to feel that even as feedes/gainers/bb-whatevers that they’ll never attain the unrealistic proportions of AI;

(3) purely aesthetically: it ignores the subtle things that can be appreciated in a fat body, like the way overhang just starts at the hip, in a softly forming bulge that spills over itself, in favour of overt disproportion.

LoraDayton:
Thank you especially for #2. As a non-gaining feedee, I am constantly reminded how my body isn't good enough by both feedists and vanilla people. I'm too fat or not fat enough. Of course as someone who also adores FA/feedist and inflation/expansion artwork, of course there are things I like to see visualized that simply can't happen IRL. But especially the traditional portrait model style of AI images that can easily be done IRL, yeah, those bother me big time.

But more importantly, AI "art" is theft, pure and simple. There is no ethical application of AI "art" if you are not the original artist regenerating/revisualizing your own work. Die mad about it, my mind will never be changed on this. There are practical applications for AI in other mediums, but art and writing ain't it.

I have used some AI generators for visualizing ideas for reference (eg having something to look at so I can write and describe it) but only when I couldn't find another reference image. And I would never pass it off as "art" I created.

X_Larsson:
Why is #2 such big a problem with AI? Both morphing and certain drawing techniques can yield quite convincing results.
Same goes for other kinds of industrialized production, where coexisting products do not compete. See my above examples in the earlier post. We have still have manually produced products that we could buy a century ago. Clothes, furniture, floor rugs and oriental mats, cuttlery, garden items, food, toys, sport goods etc.

And why is it theft? If I "order" a generic, realistic pucture of a horse in a meadow, who did not get paid? I could take a photo myself.
On the other hand, creating and publishing pictures with ie landmarks, people or buildings, then someone could have sold that pic.

Munchies:

That said, Photoshop isn't inherently theft, unlike AI art. It's gotten so bad that artists - some of whom use Photoshop - are turning to programs like Glaze to prevent art theft.



Letters And Numbers:
I didn’t say anything about Photoshop being theft. You should reread the conversation. You were talking about artificial beauty standards and I said that Photoshop gets used interchangeably with airbrush when you’re talking about how pictures (mostly of women) online and in magazines are doctored. Which is not the software’s fault, it’s the magazine editor, etc. it’s a human problem, the software is just software. A paintbrush is just a paintbrush. They’re tools.

Munchies:

That said, Photoshop isn't inherently theft, unlike AI art. It's gotten so bad that artists - some of whom use Photoshop - are turning to programs like Glaze to prevent art theft.



Letters And Numbers:
I didn’t say anything about Photoshop being theft. You should reread the conversation. You were talking about artificial beauty standards and I said that Photoshop gets used interchangeably with airbrush when you’re talking about how pictures (mostly of women) online and in magazines are doctored. Which is not the software’s fault, it’s the magazine editor, etc. it’s a human problem, the software is just software. A paintbrush is just a paintbrush. They’re tools.

Munchies:
Earlier in the conversation, people, including myself, said that AI art is theft. This is why I brought it up, and why I am making the distinction.

The theft is baked into the software's programming. To talk about AI art without the theft is to paint an incomplete picture. The only way for the software to work is by scraping data - mostly without consent. The program cannot exist without it.

This is different from airbrushing (which isn't inherently Photoshop, but for the sake of arguement, we'll say that it is). The software isn't inherently one thing or another. It's a tool that humans control to achieve whatever outcome they want.

Munchies:

That said, Photoshop isn't inherently theft, unlike AI art. It's gotten so bad that artists - some of whom use Photoshop - are turning to programs like Glaze to prevent art theft.



Letters And Numbers:
I didn’t say anything about Photoshop being theft. You should reread the conversation. You were talking about artificial beauty standards and I said that Photoshop gets used interchangeably with airbrush when you’re talking about how pictures (mostly of women) online and in magazines are doctored. Which is not the software’s fault, it’s the magazine editor, etc. it’s a human problem, the software is just software. A paintbrush is just a paintbrush. They’re tools.

Munchies:
Earlier in the conversation, people, including myself, said that AI art is theft. This is why I brought it up, and why I am making the distinction.

The theft is baked into the software's programming. To talk about AI art without the theft is to paint an incomplete picture. The only way for the software to work is by scraping data - mostly without consent. The program cannot exist without it.

This is different from airbrushing (which isn't inherently Photoshop, but for the sake of arguement, we'll say that it is). The software isn't inherently one thing or another. It's a tool that humans control to achieve whatever outcome they want.

X_Larsson:
I am NOT a big proponent of AI technology implementations, but if we all agree it is a tool, and it seems we do, then consider this:
You focus on the "learnìng" process, where the software is tought to identify image critical elements. How is that different from how a traditional artist analyses, works and learns from the masters?
You look, create, review (edit?), make learnings and create again.
To me, it is also similar to taking photos and doing picture processing, chemically or digitally.
These current, human artists OBVIOUSLY learn by looking at the wealth of existing pictures around us, without paying anything extra. The AI does the same, but faster. Like the sewing machine or 3D printer is faster than manual labor.

In my opinion, it seems AI doing generic pictures, and doing fictional, non existing characters, we should be good, from a theft perspective.
Futuristic landscapes, or from different planets, or from space etc, with people, animals, and objects that are new to us, we are not infringing on anybody's specific work.

Munchies:

That said, Photoshop isn't inherently theft, unlike AI art. It's gotten so bad that artists - some of whom use Photoshop - are turning to programs like Glaze to prevent art theft.



Letters And Numbers:
I didn’t say anything about Photoshop being theft. You should reread the conversation. You were talking about artificial beauty standards and I said that Photoshop gets used interchangeably with airbrush when you’re talking about how pictures (mostly of women) online and in magazines are doctored. Which is not the software’s fault, it’s the magazine editor, etc. it’s a human problem, the software is just software. A paintbrush is just a paintbrush. They’re tools.

Munchies:
Earlier in the conversation, people, including myself, said that AI art is theft. This is why I brought it up, and why I am making the distinction.

The theft is baked into the software's programming. To talk about AI art without the theft is to paint an incomplete picture. The only way for the software to work is by scraping data - mostly without consent. The program cannot exist without it.

This is different from airbrushing (which isn't inherently Photoshop, but for the sake of arguement, we'll say that it is). The software isn't inherently one thing or another. It's a tool that humans control to achieve whatever outcome they want.

Letters And Numbers:
AI art software is 2 years old, commercially, right? If there was AI software that only scraped Getty images, for example, and had a license to do that, it would not be theft (really copyright infringement or violations of fair use statutes), correct? The fact that it doesn’t currently work this way today doesn’t mean that’s not where it’s headed. Cars in 1910 didn’t have seatbelts. They all do now, and it’s because people were damaged and standards were set. Fair use is probably the most immediate problem with AI, but also the easiest to solve. But it’s a real problem! And the current Supreme Court is very on the side of the original copyright holder as seen in the Prince/Warhol case this year. Only Kagen and Roberts dissented. There’s a 1st amendment case on the other side, too, though. If scraping scans of magazines to get images for AI is theft (it’s not, legally, it might be copyright infringement or violations of fair use statutes), so is the the kid in her bedroom cutting up magazines to make a collage. It’s just a different application, but I don’t get my blood pressure up about people making collages, even with very famous images. I don’t get upset about samples in hip hop. If the record company wants to pay to clear them, that’s great, but ultimately as the listener, I kinda don’t care about a 2 second sample. I think it’s transforming the sample into something new. I don’t think a bar band should have to pay Creedence Clearwater Revival every time they play a cover of Proud Mary. But if they’re going to commercially release an album of cover songs they probably need the mechanical rights to do so. I think Negativland is great and they made art and I don’t care that they pissed off U2’s publishing company. But they’re complicated questions. I think, at least. It’s a good discussion here, sincerely!

Munchies:

That said, Photoshop isn't inherently theft, unlike AI art. It's gotten so bad that artists - some of whom use Photoshop - are turning to programs like Glaze to prevent art theft.



Letters And Numbers:
I didn’t say anything about Photoshop being theft. You should reread the conversation. You were talking about artificial beauty standards and I said that Photoshop gets used interchangeably with airbrush when you’re talking about how pictures (mostly of women) online and in magazines are doctored. Which is not the software’s fault, it’s the magazine editor, etc. it’s a human problem, the software is just software. A paintbrush is just a paintbrush. They’re tools.

Munchies:
Earlier in the conversation, people, including myself, said that AI art is theft. This is why I brought it up, and why I am making the distinction.

The theft is baked into the software's programming. To talk about AI art without the theft is to paint an incomplete picture. The only way for the software to work is by scraping data - mostly without consent. The program cannot exist without it.

This is different from airbrushing (which isn't inherently Photoshop, but for the sake of arguement, we'll say that it is). The software isn't inherently one thing or another. It's a tool that humans control to achieve whatever outcome they want.

Letters And Numbers:
AI art software is 2 years old, commercially, right? If there was AI software that only scraped Getty images, for example, and had a license to do that, it would not be theft (really copyright infringement or violations of fair use statutes), correct? The fact that it doesn’t currently work this way today doesn’t mean that’s not where it’s headed. Cars in 1910 didn’t have seatbelts. They all do now, and it’s because people were damaged and standards were set. Fair use is probably the most immediate problem with AI, but also the easiest to solve. But it’s a real problem! And the current Supreme Court is very on the side of the original copyright holder as seen in the Prince/Warhol case this year. Only Kagen and Roberts dissented. There’s a 1st amendment case on the other side, too, though. If scraping scans of magazines to get images for AI is theft (it’s not, legally, it might be copyright infringement or violations of fair use statutes), so is the the kid in her bedroom cutting up magazines to make a collage. It’s just a different application, but I don’t get my blood pressure up about people making collages, even with very famous images. I don’t get upset about samples in hip hop. If the record company wants to pay to clear them, that’s great, but ultimately as the listener, I kinda don’t care about a 2 second sample. I think it’s transforming the sample into something new. I don’t think a bar band should have to pay Creedence Clearwater Revival every time they play a cover of Proud Mary. But if they’re going to commercially release an album of cover songs they probably need the mechanical rights to do so. I think Negativland is great and they made art and I don’t care that they pissed off U2’s publishing company. But they’re complicated questions. I think, at least. It’s a good discussion here, sincerely!

Munchies:
I've explained the situation in detail and included sources. I am not sure if you read my sources, or there's something I am not explaining well. But the things you are talking about aren't comparable to what I am talking about.

The AI art programs are not just scraping from big publications or magazines. They are also scraping from smaller creators. I'm talking about people who make art for a living or side hustle. In fact, programs like Glaze were made specifically for these people in mind. (It's in the article.)

And if you think it's okay for these programs to scrape their hard work for the software to have data, then I have nothing more to say to you.

candyscorpion:
To respond to the actual topic in the thread, I am also sick of seeing AI images. Regardless of where the pictures are scraped/stolen from, their database for their prompts is limited and inherently unimaginative, and it therefore ends up spitting out the same recursive imagery over and over again. It's oftentimes rubbery and ugly and if it's looked at for longer than a handful of seconds the cohesion of the image itself tends to fall apart.
As OP said, it also detracts from the unique shapes and sizes of different people and their gains, as well as the diversity of ways a body can carry weight. The majority of AI images I see are all the exact same tight round belly on an otherwise average (perhaps content aware-scaled) body. (And usually a white body.) The way AI generates skin folds rarely cascades in a natural manner; it reminds me of seeing novice artists (usually kids) score a bunch of random diagonal lines all over a character's clothing to imply folds because they don't have a grasp of gravity yet. They know folds should be there in order for it to look natural, but they don't understand how they work or how they form. So seeing a bunch of AI art depict fat people as either made of inflated latex (unintentionally) or like random lumps of flesh is not only literally objectifying, it also slides very quickly into uncanny valley territory. There's style, and then there's error.

Because of the way AI works and the images it pulls from, it also tends to produce very boring images of people standing listlessly in front of a background. Even when self-proclaimed "AI artists" purport to wield their prompts like paintbrushes, it's extremely rare if not impossible to see AI images with dynamic poses or angles. Even for the more unrealistic fetishes like expansion/inflation, the average DeviantArt gallery will have more imaginative pieces than the best AI. Things like POV shots, sequences, custom (original or fan) characters, and so on aren't really possible with AI. But I guess if you're the kind of person who's been getting off to templates to begin with (...also like many DeviantArt fetish accounts), AI fits the bill, I guess.

Munchies:
In fact, a lot of AI is marketed on not paying artists. It's one thing if you, for example, want to use AI art for the cover of your latest fat kink story.


Candyscorpion:
I don't know about you but I can't imagine anything that would put me off more to reading a story than AI cover art. There are billions of free use stock images and plenty of artists in the community to commission. You could even collaborate with models to pose for your story's cover, or if a model's series inspired your story, ask for their permission to use it for the cover! The worst thing they can say is no.

Your story can be the hottest thing ever written but slapping AI on it feels like wrapping it in a dirty dishtowel. After all, both are comprised of a bunch of junk it mopped up.