Reiterating My Stance on AI

I can't believe I have to say this considering how transparently loathing I am of AI shit, but I've had 2 people in 2 days approach me with AI stuff and I want it to stop, so for everyone in the back:

DO NOT USE AI ON MY WORK.

Don't animate it. Don't stylize it. Don't even send me AI references that have nothing to do with my work. If you've used AI on my stuff please delete it and don't do it again.

Why?

I, and many of my friends, have had our shit stolen, altered, profited off of. No this is not the same as what fan artists do, people have just re-posted my work that's been sloppily AI'd and then profited off it while adding nothing.

Patreon, some time ago, instituted new terms and conditions to address AI generation content and have been appropriately strict about it - while at the same time lumping 3D art in under those same rules for seemingly no logical reason and increasing the risk of my work getting flagged as something it isn't, potentially resulting in a nuking.

I have seen artists I once respected turn to AI and become shameful, disappointing slop machines for the sake of some convenience that makes their work objectively worse.

I'm now at the point where I don't trust anything not to be AI anymore, to which people might ask "if you can't be sure, why does it matter" and to that I say "because with art the end doesn't justify the means; The means is the entire point."

The process of coming up with an idea, learning how to create it, the time it takes to master the process and get better at it, the critical thought process of examining the thing you're making and making decisions on what to add, what to remove, the knowledge of what will make it better, or the understanding of how to convey something through visual media, an understanding of the limitations you have to work with both from yourself and your tools and figuring out how to overcome them - even in something as seemingly dismissive as porn, all that still applies.

People often praise me for my expressions, but the ability to make a 3D model feel expressive is more than just making a model smile. It's about understanding subtle body language, it's about factoring lighting, and the camera, and the frame and the color. Lots and lots of tiny little things that you learn over time through the process - all of which is lost when you turn over the process to a machine that doesn't think or feel and only depends on amalgamating thousands of other reference points to spit out something completely and entirely average by sheer definition and completely devoid of soul or humanity.

And that's not even going into the catastrophic damage that AI is causing to the world, and to people's ability to learn effectively and think for themselves.

So, nothing generated using AI and sent to me will impress me. It is not helpful to me. It will not be appreciated. When I wanted my characters to be drawn and couldn't afford it, I learned to draw. When I wanted them rendered, I learned to render. If I want my stuff animated, I'll learn to animate.

I appreciate enthusiasm and I can understand a misguided attempt to do something you think I might appreciate or find helpful. I'm humbled that people like my work enough to want to help, but generative AI is antithesis to so much of what I believe in as a creative and as a person. Running my work through AI, especially after the shit I and my friends have dealt with, is not the way to do it.

If you really want to be inspired by me to do anything, learn to draw, or learn blender, and make something that's real and yours.

Fuck AI.

I hope that clears things up.