yatz

I've been moaning a lot over the last few years about the way my creativity has been slowly ebbing away; the rise of generative "AI" over the last year had at one point seemed to deal it the death blow. For years I've been following amazing artists, like Loopydave , Artgerm, krysdecker, PapaNinja and many others; I've tried to learn from them, tried to make my art better, and I feel I HAVE made progress over the years. But now, suddenly, I'm living in this brave new world, where DeviantArt is deluged daily by art that - at least technically - puts my work to shame. Anyone with access to a computer can now generate in an hour more images than I'll be be able to produce over a year - all of them suited to the prompter's (is that the correct term?) particular tastes and kinks, and rivaling the work of the best commercial artists (because the algorithm COPIES those artists' style).

So, I've been struggling, feeling as if this whole art thing is rather pointless. I'll maybe get better - so what? Wouldn't it be more sensible to jump on the AI wagon? Instead of endless hours with my Wacom - prompt!

OK. There's a war going on over here. It's horrible, we'll leave it at that. I can't watch the news, I've got no patience for books or TV or pretty much anything - but I find that I can still create. I write, and I paint (digitally). I posted a Xmas pic, today. I've worked on it for almost a week, and it was a torturous process - but also a very enjoyable one. I found it very hard to set up the (very simple) composition, adjust the (swiped) background, to get the figures right (I don't have a scanner so it's all digital, and I suck at drawing on the tablet), and then the painting itself took fucking ages.

But.

I rediscovered the indescribable pleasure of seeing a painting slowly taking shape and coming alive, that hard to pinpoint stage where you suddenly realize that this is no longer torture, that's it's going to be fine, and the rest is suffering through the delightful agony of doing the work while dying to see how it all ends up. And then, when at last it's done, and you create the PNG - I did it; I CREATED something that I'm proud of. It might not be as good as work by those artists I mentioned above, but it's better than things I've done before, it's the best I can do right now and tomorrow I'll sit down at my computer, toil away for days and create something even better.

Can I get the same satisfaction from feeding a dumb algorithm text prompts? I doubt it.

I can’t really do any artwork right now; my study is housing my elderly mom and her caregiver who I brought over from the north, in preparation for Iran and its minions ramping up operations; so I figured I’d use this space to share my 2 cents. Please use it wisely (do NOT spend it all on booze and loose women).

so:

the same way opposing Israel’s policies doesn’t make you antisemitic, opposing the Hamas does NOT make you anti-Palestinian. Supporting Hamas, however, DOES make you a horrible human being.

Whatever you see in the media regarding the events of that Saturday, the truth of what happened is so, so much more horrific. I’ve been a supporter of the Palestinian cause for many decade, but no person with any shred of humanity in him would support the horrors those monsters have perpetrated a week ago.

Now, you’ll probably be asking: yeah, great, but how do you now stop the killing of dozens, maybe hundreds of innocent children in Gaza? My answer: I have no fucking clue. we had one good shot at stopping the cycle of violence, 3 decades ago, with the peace process started in Oslo. It was destroyed by an unholy coalition of evil, comprised of the fanatic Jewish right and Hamas. Hamas would have nothing less than the destruction of the Jewish state and refused any solution that didn’t give them that; their method of stopping the process was waging a campaign of savage attacks against Israeli civilians, which turned the Israeli public against the peace process. On the other side, the fanatic right-wing Jews would brook no compromise over the piece of land bequeathed to us by their imaginary friend in the sky, and would do anything - including the murder of one of our greatest leaders - to stop it.

so, they all won. And I have no idea how we stop the carnage that’s to come. And the despicable garbage human running my country at the moment (at least when his wife lets him) has no idea, either. His only concern is salvaging what’s left of his reputation, and trying to hang on to power, so he could finish destroying this marvel of a country.

if, by some miracle, we do manage to come out of this, I have one request: if you consider yourself a friend of Israel, please - PLEASE! - do what’s in your power, pressure your government to help us save ourselves from ourselves. We in the Israeli left have been saying for decades that the solution of the Palestinian problem is in our own interest, that if we let it fester it will destroy us. I’m a Zionist, and to me this country is the realization of a dream 2000 years in the making - and now our own stupidity is destroying it. If you’re a friend - help us.

I’ve been pretty much out of it for the last year: the never-ending horror story of building my house, the fascist attempt to destroy democracy in my country, criss-crossing that country to take care of my 94 years-old mom…

So, anyway, haven’t been paying much attention to things. But then, about a month ago, I started noticing lots and lots of new, exciting work, lots of unfamiliar names who were doing what I’ve been trying (and failing) to do for years: make photorealistic renderings of stunningly hot women with heavy-duty FBB bodies. Think :iconArtgerm: doing :iconJebriodo: women, :iconAtariboy2600:’s ladies rendered by :iconSciamano240:. Pretty much a particular dream come true, right? So, yeah, AI is hurting a lot of artists, but - come on, you can’t stop progress!

but then I started reading up on the subject, trying to understand how it works. And waddya know? No intelligence whatsoever involved in this process. If the work produced looks like that of Artgerm or Sciamano240, it’s because the rendering AI has those artists‘ work in its dataset, was probably even instructed to produce work “in their style”. The wonderful new software that has enabled lots and lots of regular joes to produce top-notch art (or “art”) for me to jerk off to is doing this by stealing the labor of real, living artists, who have studied and worked for years, trying to improve their art.

AI is a fiction, but the damage it’s doing is very real. Elon Musk has been using the promise of AI driving our cars for us to drive up Tesla’s stock, and that particular scam has gotten people killed; now Google and Microsoft are racing to insert that half-cooked technology into every aspect of our lives, and the consequences will be dire. One such consequence will be the further erosion of the line between fact and fiction, as pretty soon it will be impossible to accept any result provided to you by those all-consuming giants’ services; because, when it comes to “alternative facts” ChatGPT has got you covered! Great news for Tucker and Trump, not so much for the rest of us. DA is “only” a site for mostly amateur artists, but for myself - like a lot of people here - it’s a large part of our lives, giving us the opportunity to present a side that we’re proud of, that is unique to us. When you use a software that rips off our work, you’re shitting on us - just the same as those faceless corporations that steal our work (well, not mine, but - you know what I mean).

Almost as important: the mind-boggling deluge of work that is flooding the site is making it almost impossible to find new art (as in: Art). If you do continue to use it, please do the bare minimum and tag it as AI generated. This will at least enable people who don’t want to see it to filter it out.

Well, some remain, but many are gone. The story: 17 years into my glorious DA career, I have been hit with my first DMCA takedown notice. Scared the cccchara out of me! Especially frustrating as it was one I disliked very much (and many people liked; this - and the other way around - is usually the case with my works…). Let that be a lesson to you, children: pandering will only get you thrown in DA jail!

anyway: I moved most of the morphs to an old account, only left those I thought were “safe” (and one I love so much I just couldn’t part with). My watchers got a nice new (old) morph, with the name which has the address of said account. I will be posting all new morphs there.

So, I had my first work auctioned off as an NFT. Not by me, of course - hate that shit. Question is: do I do something about it? Aside from that thing of someone trying to use my work without my permission, trying to make money (yeah, good luck with that, pal!) - does it mean anything? If someone does buy it - will he have any real ownership of that work? And, if not - do I care about idiots who're throwing their money (hard-earned or otherwise) on what seems to me to be a scam? Or - maybe, just maybe, I'm the idiot?