Yui

So uh, against my better judgment, I'm dropping in to provide a more rational and measured stance against AI, because lord knows this thread could use one after the nuclear war that just went down in here. I also happen to be a bit of an artist when I've had enough caffeine to will myself into it, so I like to think I can speak from a position of more direct involvement with the issues regarding generative AI. I'd like to start by addressing some other takes on the art theft machine and use thereof first, then try to hopefully provide a bit more insight after. These excuses are no excuse, just to clear that up right out the gate. A common thread I see in AI art supporters is that they act as if doing art has some prohibitive barrier of entry, be it of skill or of money, when this couldn't be further from the truth. In fact, as a school student, you probably have all the tools you need within arm's reach as you're reading this! All you really need is something to draw on, something to draw with, and at least one body part that can hold the latter. It doesn't even have to be your hands, if you happen to not have hands. Art doesn't have to look good, and it in fact probably won't at first, but nobody starts off good at something. It just has to convey the idea. To quite literally illustrate my point, I doodled this in about eight minutes just based off the name of a custom card I recently re-discovered that I made back in 2014. Conductor Angel Now, yes, it looks like crap, but I also did a lot of stuff here that I either don't normally do with art, or that I've never done. My art is usually a lot better than this (and no, I'm not sharing it here). Plus, it's more to make the point, so I'm not too fussy about it looking good to be quite honest. That point being, my motor functions are impaired by autism, and I can still make something legible in less than ten minutes, with zero training or education on art, and only a small bit of on-and-off practice under my belt. Anyone can draw, and honestly, it's way more fun than typing some words and pushing the art theft button. I'm speaking from a non-zero amount of first-hand experience on this one, and I added an extra line break here to further emphasize how important that statement is in this context. And this is where I really get to shine as an artist! So, the short of it is that the training given to generative models is, for the most part, extremely unethical. The slightly longer version is, these models were trained off art scraped up from sites like Twitter, Pixiv, DeviantArt, etc, but none of it was taken with the permission of the artists in question. Not only is this overall a very scummy move, since it's basically piggybacking off someone's years spent honing a craft they're proud of (except instead of someone it's some millions), but it could actually constitute intellectual property violations and/or copyright infringement. The exact legality of it all is still not settled, of course, but hopefully pointing out the ethical issue in greater detail helped shed some light on this particular question. Cow already did this, but I figured I should re-iterate it with my own perspective and more words, as someone whose stuff is potentially getting stolen without my knowledge or consent as I'm typing this sentence. I wish I could draw up a parallel for another hobby you can more directly relate to, but I've got nothing to work with there. This is more or less the most respectable stance I've seen from people who use AI art. As much as it pains me to say it though, even though you don't mean any harm, any use of generative AI does still cause a non-zero amount of it. Again, these are points Cow already brought up, but the more an AI gets used, the more it can learn and correct its shortcomings. Not to mention, pushing the button does mean the machine once again combs over its libraries of unethically-sourced art. It would be like getting a cookie by pushing a button, but every time you do, a small handful of randomly-selected mice (or some other tiny creature, if you don't like mice) get a quick electric shock. You're not gonna kill anyone, but this metaphorical cookie factory does make life a lot harder for your small animal of choice. Even if this site's generator was removed entirely, it would still amount to a drop in the ocean at best, but it's not an ocean worth swimming in to begin with. If you still can't find yourself willing (because you are able) to pick up doing it yourself, you could always post cards in a purely-written format. Once upon a time, this forum even had a dedicated section just for that! This thread has definitely gotten nonsensical in no time flat, but hopefully this sensical post helped give some new perspective on why AI is such a touchy subject, and why people who understand the details generally tell others not to use it. You could present the idea without the use of AI art, is the crux of the problem. You've more or less got your head in the right place at least, so hopefully some of the junk I typed over the rest of this post ends up clicking with you in some way. Or, if you can't be bothered to read all that (I understand that too; I've been behind this keyboard for way too long at present and I'd like to wrap up my post now), I'd like this to be your one takeaway. You don't need classes to be a good artist. Literally the only thing I was taught about how to draw was a friend telling me on Discord "your strokes will look cleaner if you do them faster", and everything else beyond that is purely self-taught. Your hands are free and easy to use, too. On the note of these discussions getting heated... yeah. Please don't mistake some certain individuals as representing anti-AI sentiment as a whole. As for my own opinions, there's not really much to discuss that I haven't already covered. I'm an artist myself. Not a good one, but I take some pride in my work all the same. So naturally, I don't like the idea that my hobby that I do for fun is being put under attack by a machine that fundamentally can't understand not just what art is, but why art is. And I just do it for fun, mind you. There are people who draw, animate, and so on, for a living, and this could very well put their livelihoods at risk if the machine gets good enough at it. So, seeing people use it - even if it's just for fun - doesn't sit well with me. Personally, I'd rather see a total piece of crap drawing made by a human being with love, as opposed to a soulless masterpiece calculated up by a computer that just sees it all as numbers and tags. But I've been drawing since before AI took off, and am probably older than any two non-Cow people in this thread combined, so what do I know?

So, I was gonna respond to this when I first saw it, but I realized that would be very unwise because I just about wanted to rip your head off when I first saw it. After taking a couple days off, briefly forgetting about this post in the first place, and then remembering it a bit earlier today, I'm here to do the replying thing without all the hostility and anger. The long and short of it is, this sort of mentality flat-out and unambiguously makes you part of the AI problem. Your motives are irrelevant, your mindset reeks of double standards, and if everyone subscribes to this same sort of idea, AI actually will replace artists in a matter of decades, if not years, as well as other types of creators as well. If the "dead internet theory" comes true, which I find ridiculous in the extreme, it will be because of precisely this sort of "Well, I can't beat the machine, so I might as well join it!" line of thought. The AI won't go away because you don't use it, but that's no excuse to shun learning a new skill or finding someone to do it for you in favor of pushing the art theft button. By this same standard, you might as well stop telling stories yourself, and let ChatGPT do it, right? But you would never do such a thing, I'm sure, so why's learning a new skill again any different? As a bit of a writer myself, and a half-decent artist who always strives to self-improve, both in creative pursuits as well as how I conduct myself as a human being, I can conjure neither the words nor the imagery to properly express my unbridled disappointment that someone would actually think this way. Especially someone who is so against AI that you literally got institutionalized over it, if everything you say is true.

It's because the cardmaker itself doesn't work properly. Only @YCMaker has the ability to fix this issue (among other things wrong with the cardmaker and website as a whole), and people have been asking for small fixes like this for literal years, with his response amounting to total silence at best.

If you overreact and lose your temper over AI art to such an extent over a rather reasonable request - and this is from someone who also hates AI art - perhaps you should not be typing in response to it in the first place. If you'd verbally lashed out over it in person that would be one thing, but with a forum post, you had to sit down, take the time to type your response, and decide "yes, this is acceptable conduct" before posting. I can't say much else Jordan hasn't already covered, but the sheer inflammatory vitriol of your initial post raises genuine concerns to be quite frank. However, Jordan isn't the one you should be apologizing to. Un-blacklist OP and apologize to him instead. To give your questions a more rational and civil answer while I'm here, it's incredibly unlikely YCMaker will see your suggestion, let alone act on it. He seems to only pop in for minutes at a time before disappearing for weeks, possibly to collect ad revenue, then puppets Falling Pizza's account once in a blue moon (or maybe gets FP to post in person? I don't believe a word of it) to tell us to stop complaining that he won't do his job that he didn't let anyone else do for him. Speaking as a pretty mediocre artist myself, however, I for one would much rather see poor artistry from a human than a masterpiece made by a computer. Even if you don't have time to learn, if you've got the time to put prompts into a text bar and wait for the machine to commit art theft (the main concern with AI), you certainly have time to scribble something down in your notebook and take a photo, if nothing else. And, speaking as someone who dabbled in the forbidden arts before we as a society learned what was happening behind the scenes, it's honestly much more fun doing it by hand anyway! I'm neither willing nor able to force a pencil into your hand, but it's something to consider. If I can do it, I'm certain you can. Your mentality is very much your own biggest obstacle to starting art, and I say that from experience. Which isn't to say becoming an artist who lives up to your own standards is easy. But look at you! Doing sports and clubs? You're a cool enough kid that you've got this