AI Manifesto

The first time I had contact with the ideas of AI outside of complex environments was during class. My History teacher told us about ChatGPT and, at that time, I didn’t give it much thought. But as the weeks passed, it was impossible to remain ignorant about the topic of the insurgent artificial intelligence as it was being brought up everywhere in social media and even in news television. It appeared to me, at the beginning, that AI was a benign form of experimentation, people using new tools to create things that wouldn’t be possible otherwise.


I was right about it, but I failed at perceiving the other side of things. Suddenly, my art forums and communities were exposing stolen art and the decline of work available because of recently developed robotics. What made wake up was when I stumbled by a cover generated of Frank Sinatra singing “No Surprises" by RadioHead. Then I was in a rabbit hole in which people now apparently can just use an artist's voice without their permission, whether they be alive or dead. but the most shocking part of it was the blatant defense of theft and automation of creativity by a lot of users I encountered.


AI "art" only exists because someone created a machine-learning algorithm that scraped the internet for existing imagery and taught it what the components of each image were so that when someone feeds a phrase into an AI engine it can spit out a drawing using bits and pieces of the art in its own database.


There are many philosophical, moral, and legal problems with this. At a very base level it devalues the art of actual artists who've spent vast portions of their lives developing the skill to create actual art. From a technological standpoint, it lives in both a moral and legal grey area because the art used to "train" the algorithms was not licensed, compensated, or credited in any way, which means these AI "art" generators are using actual, real, living artists' work to generate a for-profit business without those artists' consent or contract.


You'll note I put "art" in quotes throughout this post: That's because the pictures an algorithm generates are not "art", they are just pictures. They are conglomerations of existing art cobbled together into a mosaic mash-up based on text input and context clues.


The worst part about this is that most of the AI "art" generators are for-profit paid services that can only exist by appropriating the hard work of actual living artists without ever compensating them for contributing to the algorithms that make the technology and business model feasible.


As a base concept, there's nothing specifically wrong with the idea of AI picture generators. But, like all advanced technology it can be - and in this case actually are actively being - implemented in a way that directly harms the people it aims to replace by using their work with zero regard to their welfare. (by a Reddit User)


Besides art in the form of drawing, I’ve also found out that people are using computers to compose pieces of fiction: books, novels and fanfiction. I cannot express how much all of this hurts me. As a producer in both crafts, being an artist and an author, I feel that creativity is dying and we are helping kill it. Everytime someone uses AI, even if they are not putting stolen work into it, they are feeding the machine and the system and the enterprises are basically gaining free labor from ignorant people who cannot understand why this is wrong and unethical.


AO3 instance on this topic also left me disappointed, but I see their point of view:


What can I do to avoid data scraping?


You may want to restrict your work to Archive users only. While this will not block every potential scraper, it should provide some protection against large-scale scraping.

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AI-generated works and AO3 policies At the moment, there is nothing in our Terms of Service that prohibits fanworks that are fully or partly generated with Al tools from being posted to the AO3, if they otherwise qualify as fanworks.


Our goals as an organization include maximum inclusivity of fanworks. This means not only the best fanworks, or the most popular fanworks, but all the fanworks that we can preserve. If fans are using Al to generate fanworks, then our current position is that this is also a type of work that is within our mandate to preserve.


Depending on the circumstances, Al-generated works could violate our anti-spam policies (e.g.if a creator posts a significant number in a short time). If you're uncertain whether a work violates our Terms of Service, you may always report it to our Policy & Abuse team using the link at the bottom of any page, and they can investigate.


This statement reflects AO3's policy at the time of writing, as we wanted to be transparent with our users about what our current stance is and what can be done - and is being done - to mitigate scraping for Al datasets. However, these policies are also under discussion internally among AO3 volunteers. If we agree on changes to these in the future, those will be announced publicly; additionally, if there are any proposed changes to the AO3 Terms of Service, they will be made available for public comment as is required of any and all changes to our Terms of Service.


We hope that this helps to make things more clear - this is a complicated situation, and we're doing our very best to address it in a way that doesn't compromise AO3's principles of maximum fanwork inclusivity or legitimate uses of the site. As discussions and approaches evolve, we will keep our users updated.


I cannot understand how AI using does not qualify as plagiarism in their eyes if they use already existing writings of others without permission of the authors to train the coding. In my perspective, reading/ enjoying a piece of media done by artificial intelligence is like eating at Hannibal`s table - you eat comfortably until you know who prepared the food, and when you do only repulsiveness lasts.


This Twitter and this Tumblr users made interesting points about regulation of artificial intelligence on fanfiction sites:


Tumblr post Twitter post


In the end, I feel very disheartened by all of this. I was working on a new fic but don’t know if I have in myself the strength to keep posting my art or writing online anymore, be it on Instagram or Ao3, just for it to be used by someone who is too lazy to sit down and learn. I’ve already locked my fics some time ago because of the threat of people reposting them on other sites, but I’m reconsidering if I’m comfortable exposing them in the Archive environment at all. It’s worse because it was the best place to enjoy and share, but as it happens to everything, they ruined it.


For me, the only way you cannot sympathize with artists is if you are either not one, or if you are completely brainwashed by mainstream media where it propagates the thinking that everything is for everyone, disregarding that plagiarism and ownership exists. People often forget that our rights begin where other’s finish.