In real life I work as an artist and art outsource manager, and I also need to keep up with how the AI software develop. They will affect the line of work for many creative industries, such as writers, visual artists, photoshoot models, voice actors, music etc. I’m not against new tech, or worried about Skynet - I’m worried about how companies are let free to use anyone’s photos, art or texts to train commercial products without the content owners’ consent in a way that shouldn’t fall under the fair use category. And I’m concerned about the impact of these software if left unchecked, as it will have an influence on our culture, and how it’ll shift our appreciation for human arts (which I consider very relevant for humanity).
The most glaring issues with softwares like Midjourney and ChatGPT is that they have been trained through data laundering of immense scale through legal loopholes (such as using the LAION image database, which was allowed to datascrape the Internet on such an immense scale for non-commercial research purposes, but LAION is funded by Stability AI that is using the database for commercial gains with Stable Diffusion). Laws are dragging behind on this subject, and the tech companies everywhere right now are rushing to try normalise the use of AI tech for their own benefit. The more people are using them for fun, the bigger the outcry when this new exciting tool is threatened to be taken away from people. Ultimately though, we shouldn’t allow tech companies to do everything they like with our content online without our consent.
My apologies about leading the conversation to more serious discussion, I just think it’s important for roleplayers to be aware of the current circumstances with the technology, and consider whether it would take our creative community toward the better or worse in the long run if left unchecked.
Edit: I don’t think this genie of a tech will ever be put back in its bottle. But hopefully regulations will be put in place that force tech companies to respect people’s copyright to their own content, so that both creatives and new tech can prosper hand-in-hand, and that the current models will be replaced by more ethically trained AI softwares.
Edit 2: Meant Stability AI (the company) instead of Stable Diffusion (the product).